There’s been discussion recently about the following excerpt of an email sent to Athol Kay by a reader:
My teenage daughter had a slumber party recently, and my wife (who is unaware of Game concepts) overheard the girls talking about the boys in their school. What struck me about the conversation that she relayed to me was that the girls were categorizing the boys into two groups: “Hot & Mean” and “Not-hot & Nice.” There couldn’t be a better example of the Alpha/Beta theory, as interpreted by 13 year old girls. My eyes are open.
Athol: Thanks. I think it’s interesting to see how the 13-year-old girls react to what attracts them. At 13 they simply have no awareness of what would make a good long term partner, so they don’t consider Beta Traits in a boy at all. All they react to is the pure Alpha display of the boys.
Hot & Mean
- They’ve learned bullying at home.
- They’re insecure. Many bullies are insecure, and intimidating other kids is an attempt to cover up their insecurity.
- They want to feel powerful. Boys who bully need to control others.
- They crave attention.
- They have personal issues. Underneath this tough exterior, the bully is likely to be angry or depressed.
- He is very selective, rejecting most of the girls who crush on him.
- He is less likely to embrace the role of boyfriend, since he can hook up with a variety of girls from a young age if he is so inclined.
- He may be good-looking to girls but introverted or shy, which will likely get him labeled as aloof or conceited.
- At puberty, there is a shuffling of intrasexual influence among both boys and girls, as some emerge as physically attractive to the opposite sex. The newly crowned popular kids often get cocky with their fresh power and influence.
Not Hot & Nice
| TERM | STYLE | DESCRIPTION |
| Alpha Males | Secure |
Outgoing, friendly, intelligent, (socially) powerful, confident, and fun social-group leaders, “have their shit together.” |
| Regular Guys | Secure |
Much of the stuff above, but not necessarily leaders, maybe slight NiceGuy(TM) or Jerk qualities. |
| NiceGuys(TM) | Anxious |
Shy, anxious, low social status, maybe many friendships with women but few real relationships, a push-over, walked upon by others, “needy”, ”clingy”, dependent, self-esteem problems, desperate, tries to move relationships too quickly. |
| Jerks | Avoidant | Exciting, arrogant, psychotic scum |
“I’m using a very specific, negative definition of “NiceGuy(TM)” here. Any of the first three types can be “nice” people, in the dictionary sense of the word. And, well, I would guess that there are parallel female equivalents. It is my contention that most human social groups have a male domination hierarchy of some sort, with the more self-confident males near the top and the less self-confident nearer the bottom. Mind you, they don’t butt heads or beat each other up; the more dominant ones lead the group, guide the conversation, are the ones that others look up to, etc. The less dominant ones are followers, and in pathological situations, are ridiculed and taken advantage of.
…Self-esteem theory says that we always want to maximize our self-esteem and that we derive self-esteem from two sources: achievement and affiliations (friends, groups, lovers). Of course, it takes self-esteem in the first place to get these things, so it is circular feedback loop, which can spiral both upwards and downwards. Secure types have this whole system working in a healthy fashion. Anxious types tend to have a lack of affiliations (or at least close affiliations) and so they draw more of their self-esteem from achievement (things like 4.22 GPAs). When both sources are cut off, self-esteem plummets. Avoidant types either don’t like to be close to other people or they tend to see affiliations as being achievements… in a pathological way. The way for them to achieve in this area is being able to dominate and control people. Avoidants don’t care about other people’s feelings and are always looking out for #1.
| Person 1 | Person 2 | Relationship |
| Secure | Secure | Smooth, harmonious |
| Secure | Anxious | Smooth — the Secure person is nurturing to the Anxious |
| Secure | Avoidant | Conflict — Secure loses patience |
| Anxious | Anxious | Roller Coaster — highs and lows, intense emotions |
| Avoidant | Anxious | Power — the Avoidant dominates or abuses the Anxious |
| Avoidant | Avoidant | No intimate relationship possible |
…Now, about Jerks. Jerks tend to see themselves positively and other people negatively, so they tend to have high levels of self-confidence and little respect for other people. It is the high self-confidence that attracts women to them, as it causes them to be rambunctions, energetic risk takers. They think they’re God’s gift to women. They tend to be spontaneous without really thinking about consequences. They tend to be impulsive, and so give off an air of danger and adventure. If we look at the chart above, we see that Avoidant types (jerks) don’t tend to have relationships with each other and relationships with Secure people tend to be filled with conflict since a Secure person is not going to take the Avoidant’s “shit”. And so, it tends to be the Insecure, Anxious type of women who falls for the Jerk. These are the women who may be called NiceGirls(TM), parallel to NiceGuys(TM), except that instead of being turned off by the type as women tend to be, the Jerks see these women as easy marks, easy to dominate and thereby increase their self-esteem, and, whatever else a man might want to do with a woman.
…Another thing: A number of people have either said that Alpha Males are defined as the most physically attractive males or that Alpha Males and Jerks are the same thing. I don’t think that that is the way things are at all. Alpha Males are the benevolent socially dominant males of a group that tend to be leaders, care about people, and that everyone in the group tends to look up to, including the females, and Jerks are abusive headcases who socialize in order to conquer people. Physical attractiveness is a different issue, although people who are attractive have an extra card in their hand when it comes to self-esteem and how other people perceive them, but this is only a benefit and not a determinant.”
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I’m 13 months older than my sister. She had many slumber parties and I knew her dozen or so friends for many years. This “hot and mean” or “Not Hot and Nice” is in many ways just a fantasy. I have never seen it in my entire life except or a handful of disturbed females.
Unless, of course, most young women today are disturbed. If so, that’s men’s fault. Men created civilization, and contrary to the deluded, men civilize women, not the other way around.
Do not ever include male “beauty” into a definition of alpha. Anyone who does should be forced to watch a chimp show on animal planet. Alpha is defined by control of resources… and yes pussy is a resource.
Of all of the things you mentioned, only one will actually make a girl wet:
That’s the main course, everything else is gravy (and, likely, simple rationalizing).
All of the “saving”, “getting him to commit”, “making him a better man” are niceties that girls need to apply so that they can feel the sexual excitement of being pounded by a beast with good cheekbones (you will notice that very, very few of the bad boys that attend events like Sturgis have attractive girlfriends riding bitch on their harleys .. most of those girls look pretty rugged and used. The posturing Johnny Depps of the world, on the other hand…).
Using these definitions, I’d guess that less than 10% of both genders in HS & College fit into the “secure” style…
Ramble I have an Ultra Classic….
what about ther hot nice guys?
you will notice that very, very few of the bad boys that attend events like Sturgis have attractive girlfriends riding bitch on their harleys
And? Bikers do better than if those same guys were non bikers. Just sayin’
Susan,
You are cheating. Mean =/= Bully.
The saying is “chicks dig Assholes “not chicks dig bullies” for good reason.
I’ll bet those 13 year old girls also have a crush on Justin Bieber or One Direction.
Wrong. Good looking men have more influence, earn more money and are more successful in life. Good looks are most definitely part of being alpha.
@Evil
I did not say that all mean guys are bullies. I gave an example of a mean guy who does not attract women. Chicks don’t dig all jerks or assholes, some of whom are bullies, some of whom are ugly, some of whom have an IQ under 100. There are lots of mean guys who women perceive as “creepy.” It’s a mistake to think that “mean” = attractive.
It’s the fact that the guys are hot that gets them female attention.
And?
And, you missed the point.
It’s true, lol. In addition to the Bad Boy archetype, we have the Effete Troubador, the Golden Boy Athlete and the Class Clown. All do extremely well with women.
I’ll bet those 13 year old girls also have a crush on Justin Bieber or One Direction.
It would be funny if that dad had asked for celebrity examples of Hot Mean and their first pick would had been The Bieber…
This is all fine and well, but I still think the main point of the 13 year old’s story is being missed by most of the women here:
If you strip everything else out of the picture (that means maturity, logic, will, agency, etc.) female humans tend to be attracted to the darker traits of men. Yes, a “violent” man can certainly use his strength for good, but that doesn’t make him any less violent. And, since much of “Game” and the ‘sphere base their theories on women’s baser instincts, the story of the 13 year old girls pretty much proves their point.
Yes, a woman *may* grow up, mature, and realize that those ‘bad boys’ are bad news, but, in the end, her basic instinct still drives her to be attracted to them. No matter how you paint it, the color doesn’t change. And the real problem IMO at this stage is our society DOES NOT promote maturity in any way, shape, or form. Instead, we do our best to excuse everyone’s bad behavior, and coddle our children well into their 20′s (as is seen so obviously at your local college campus.) So, in the end, the attitude those 13 year old girls have may stick with them all the way through their mid 20′s, which is exactly what leads to lots of P & D, gnashing of teeth, and cries of “where are all the good men.”
The problem is: young women simply aren’t attracted to “good” men naturally. They must learn it. And currently, there is no one teaching them this lesson.
“I’ll bet those 13 year old girls also have a crush on Justin Bieber or One Direction.”
I don’t know One Direction very well, but anyone can see PLENTY of sexual innuendo from Justin Bieber, and the same could be said about the Jonas brothers as well. (I know, they aren’t really relevant now…) I always got the impression that Justin B’s “handlers” did their best to paint him as a squeeky clean young man that is hiding a lusty dark side. No, I’m not kidding. I’ve always considered him to be very “under the radar” sexually suggestive. I mean, he was pimped out by Usher, right? Have any of you listened to Usher’s music?!
Susan, I really like the secure/anxious/avoidant attachment style chart matrix. A lot of people out there have emotional problems which manifest in relationships. If nothing else, that is very helpful in identifying different types of relationship patterns.
I look back on my early relationships and can identify why they had so many problems and failed. I had a tendency to go for the “wounded outcast” type who was anxious, but I was also insecure and anxious myself. It wasn’t until I fixed a lot of my own issues that I was able to become good relationship material.
I think that’s too simplistic. Rather, dark traits are extreme examples of what women find attractive.
Women are attracted to confidence.
Narcissists are the most confident men.
Women are attracted to calm strength rather than anxiety.
Sociopaths are the least anxious men.
Women are attracted to men who are socially dominant.
Disagreeable, even violent men are the most dominant.
Women are attracted to men who embrace risk.
Dangerous men, and men in dangerous settings are the most comfortable with risk.
Why are women attracted to confidence, a cool head, strength, social dominance and capability in high risk situations? Because in the ancestral environment, these men lived longest and accumulated the greatest wealth and respect of other men. They were the Chiefs, the top males. Women are attracted to characteristics that signal Top Male.
As I’ve shared many times before, it is believed that the Dark Triad trifecta evolved specifically to allow men with disagreeable personalities to reproduce, and they are good at getting in and out, not so good at sustaining relationships. These were men who found themselves unsuited for evolved pair bonding, and evolved in a different direction. Because personality traits are largely heritable, they are common today.
Ted D: The problem is: young women simply aren’t attracted to “good” men naturally. They must learn it. And currently, there is no one teaching them this lesson.
+many. This is the truth that an honest society (ie not the one I grew up in) would make sure that young men learned. Really, I would say that this caps the thread; all else is (and will be) commentary.
Susan – Since we are discussing attachment styles, I thought perhaps a test to determine attachment style might be good for discussion.
http://psychology.about.com/library/quiz/bl-attachment-quiz.htm
My results:
Based upon your quiz answers, you appear to have a secure attachment style.
I would be willing to bet $5 that prior to finding the Red Pill, my attachment style was anxious. And, to be honest, I think I’m still borderline there, but getting better.
I always got the impression that Justin B’s “handlers” did their best to paint him as a squeeky clean young man that is hiding a lusty dark side.
Part of the missing disconnect is that if a man is openly mean he is sexually attractive to women because he is mean the rest will be damned but if he is nice but has a bit of a lusty dark side then women are sexually attracted to that too not the nice part. Has everyone forgotten the fried ice/full package/unicorn concept?
If that were the case instead of romance novels spending 30 pages with the leading man talking about the feelings of the leading lady, they would just be banging nonstop with no emotional connection or conquering her heart and neither almost all of them would end up in weddings, faithfulness and babies.
I know that from men’s POV the whole point is to “get her wet and bang her” but is good to try to enter in a woman’s shoes once in a while and see that is not everything for us and not think that is the only thing there is attractive about a fantasy man, even Athol advocates for balance because even if that woman wants to bang you she will get tired of just banging if you don’t bring anything else to the relationship, YMMV.
Susan – “I think that’s too simplistic. Rather, dark traits are extreme examples of what women find attractive.”
This seems like “chicken and egg” to me though. Are the Dark Traits (I love that I feel the need to capitalize that, as if it is a proper name, LOL) extreme examples of what women find attractive, or did men evolve to lesson those traits as we became more civilized? (meaning, are women actually attracted to some of the worst traits in men and over time the NEED for those traits declined to the point that we started ‘breeding them out’, so to speak.
“As I’ve shared many times before, it is believed that the Dark Triad trifecta evolved specifically to allow men with disagreeable personalities to reproduce, and they are good at getting in and out, not so good at sustaining relationships. ”
I don’t agree on this point, but you know how I feel about humanity in general. I think the Dark Traits (should I add a TM after that?) are humanities most basic set of working instructions, and we’ve simply evolved past them. As in Lord of the Flies, I believe if you take any group of humans and put them into a survival situation, the ones most likely to survive would be the most sociopathic of the group. However, I will add that if a person were sociopathic AND particularly good at hiding the fact, they would certainly be the most likely to survive, and anyone that sided with them, at least until they become a liability to said sociopath.
not sure i see where craig bruce is coming from with these categories. in high school and college i was very confident in lots of aspectsof life and had lots of friends but was terribly shy and uncertain with women, especially in high-pressure social situations. as long as romance was out of the question, i was quite calm and reportedly sometimes charming. a lot of my lack of confidence was because i thought i was supposed to be acting “alpha” but had no idea how to do so.
About 13 year olds being representative of adult attraction mechanisms, I am not so sure. I was super into Sailor Moon when I was 13 and loooved the girliness of the show. I also collected pictures of girls I thought were really pretty, but I never cared to collect pictures of boys. I didn’t crush on the celebrities either.
But obviously I turned out straight.
My results:
Based upon your quiz answers, you appear to have a secure attachment style.
I got: Your Attachment Style: Insecure/Anxious
Not surprised at all. I still have my “all mean cheat for whatever reasons” flashbacks once in while, less frequent now but still happen. Hard to break the programing it looks like.
But obviously I turned out straight.
Is Sailor Moon a lesbian tell? I was a fan and even though I was surprised of them having Sailor Saturn and Sailor Neptune in a romantic relationship I though it was a straight girl show, but then I though the same of Card Captor Sakura so maybe my gaydar is broken…
@Ted D, @Esau
Women are attracted to characteristics that signal the ability and desire to father strong, healthy progeny, and to raise them for 18 years. Those two desires are a tradeoff and women must balance those things to the best of their ability. It’s not a matter of good or bad. As Helen Fisher said, we are designed to reproduce, not to have relationships. The happiness we find, we make.
@ Hope
Me too! I loved that show as well.
@Ted D
That is correct. Before pair bonding, all mating was short-term. Pair bonding evolved as it became clear that it was the most successful method of reproducing. Some men were not capable of making the shift to bonding, and scientists believe they Dark Triad evolved from them. By using an agressive short-term mating strategy they did reproduce, and their descendants are with us today (obviously).
However, and this is where I always get pushback – women evolved to prefer men who exhibit long-term pair-bonding traits. Not all women fit this model – undoubtedly the female descendants of Dark Triad males have some of those same characteristics. It has been shown that STR types tend to mate with other STR types. Or, as Helen Fisher describes it, dopamine-seeking Explorers tend to choose other Explorers.
Susan – “As Helen Fisher said, we are designed to reproduce, not to have relationships. The happiness we find, we make.”
This is absolutely true. However, as civilization has evolved, humanity has put into place systems that counteract some of our more dangerous traits. As much as it offends my “fairness” sensibilities, the fact is fathers keeping daughters “safe from punks” went a LONG way towards keeping young women (who we both agree ARE NOT mature in selecting mates) from ending up with asshats. As much as I dislike anyone being oppressed, the fact is when women had less independence there were far less OOW births and “baby daddy’s” around.
Of course I’m not suggesting we go back to women being less than citizens. But why is it SO SCARY for women to simply admit that at the core of it all, their base instincts are to choose less than savory men to have sex with? I think most men are more than happy to admit that they want to have sex with the most attractive women they can get, so I don’t understand what is so damned horrible about just acknowledging the truth. Once that is accomplished, we can start figuring out how to balance it out so most people do not lose freedom AND we also don’t promote the worst behavior possible. I’m not suggesting we bring back the chastity belt! I would just love to see mothers telling their daughters: “Look, I know those bad boys make you tingly. I know you want to “get to know them better”, but the truth is they are simply bad for you and your future.”
Why is it OK for men to be told, over and over throughout their lives, that THEIR base nature is bad/evil/sexist and to be expected to control them, while women won’t even admit to their own base instincts?
I hope you know I’m on women’s side when it comes to agency, free will, and their ability to OVERRIDE their base instincts. However, it frustrates me to no end that even when presented with plenty of evidence (anecdotal and scientific) women will NOT simply admit the truth: that their base instincts do not select for the best traits in men, and very often select for the worst. Is it shameful? Because I’m not ashamed that I look at and prefer attractive women. At least I’m not ashamed of it anymore.
Susan – “However, and this is where I always get pushback – women evolved to prefer men who exhibit long-term pair-bonding traits.”
Primarily because the environment changed so that long-term bonding became advantageous. So, it was ONLY an adaptation of women’s primary urge that led to monogamy as we know it, correct? That being the case, what if the environment changed again so that long-term bonding was NOT as advantageous? What if women really could manage on their own just fine? Would we still see couples lasting 60 years?
Here is the thing: I feel like you believe that women changing strategies all those years ago to LTR focused somehow rewired their base instincts. I disagree. I believe that adaptation was purely driven by our increasing intelligence and move towards agricultural existence. So, in my mind, if you remove all of our modern living and take us back to our base instincts, you would see the return of women choosing Dark Triad men in full force. And, in some ways, women HAVE returned to their more basic behavior, because our society has largely removed any negative repercussions for bad behavior.
Women are attracted to characteristics that signal the ability and desire to father strong, healthy progeny, and to raise them for 18 years.
Susan, I understand that you want to paint young women’s behavior in the best light possible; but, really, I don’t see how you can write the above sentence without having your keyboard explode. The whole history of reality that’s been described since you started HUS is exactly the opposite: operationally, young women are the most attracted to the men who are the least likely to father and raise healthy children. You cling to these evo-psych justifications like a life raft, but here you’re just openly at odds with reality.
It’s (past) time to expand your thinking; there’s more to behavior than just evo-psych.
Ted
women will NOT simply admit the truth: that their base instincts do not select for the best traits in men, and very often select for the worst. Is it shameful?
______________
ok I KNOW this isnt going to come out right, and I`m sure it will be misunderstood by at least one commentor here.
Ted you are right, many women will not understand which men are good selections and which are not because they seem to go off of instincts and base attraction triggers.
(ok for the misunderstood part)… But isnt what women who “play the field”, find out (the hard way?) They get conned by lying cads and players, they follow their attractions to the bad boys etc. But many can and do realise their mistakes and then make better informed choices. Sure it is too bad it took bad choices to learn who the better choices are, but isnt that human? Dont we all make mistakes along the way, and the smart ones learn from those mistakes?
Ofcourse the gal who makes 40 mistakes, may have other issues…lol
@Ted #30:
“Primarily because the environment changed so that long-term bonding became advantageous. So, it was ONLY an adaptation of women’s primary urge that led to monogamy as we know it, correct? That being the case, what if the environment changed again so that long-term bonding was NOT as advantageous? What if women really could manage on their own just fine? Would we still see couples lasting 60 years?”
O: Careful, Ted; you just might get the kabosh for skirting a little too close in the direction of noticing (and speaking on) things you’re not supposed to notice…LOL.
But yea, seriously – the Four Sirens, is what you’re talking about, and the truth of the matter is, that these four forces have indeed “freed” Women up – ALL Women in American life, I might add – to the point that they simply don’t have to “put up” with the things their female forebears had to put up with. And while it can be said that this was a very good thing, it also came with some very big downsides.
What you’re saying in this post, is but one of them.
“Here is the thing: I feel like you believe that women changing strategies all those years ago to LTR focused somehow rewired their base instincts. I disagree. I believe that adaptation was purely driven by our increasing intelligence and move towards agricultural existence. So, in my mind, if you remove all of our modern living and take us back to our base instincts, you would see the return of women choosing Dark Triad men in full force. And, in some ways, women HAVE returned to their more basic behavior, because our society has largely removed any negative repercussions for bad behavior.”
O: Boom. You really want to get the book, “Promises I Can Keep”, by Edin and Kafalas. I’ve had the chance to briefly chat with them, and it was quite the interesting conversation. Their work highlights many of the very issues you’re speaking to here, and utterly shatters some of the notions some of us have along these lines. For me, and this was long before I ever knew such a thing as EvoPsyc existed, it was just a given that Women can and will employ differing mating strategies depending on the context and the situation.
O.
Susan:“women evolved to prefer men who exhibit long-term pair-bonding traits”
On what planet? This absolutely does not correspond to any reality on earth that I’ve ever seen or heard of. (Can you sell tickets to the place you describe? a fortune awaits!)
and this is where I always get pushback
No shit; but you still seem to be unable to learn anything from this continual feedback.
Girlfriend met my dogs the other day. Dog #1 was happy, always available, ready at a moment’s notice to enjoy a belly rub or any attention at all. Dog #2 was standoffish, snarled a bit, and barely let her put her hand near him.
Guess which one she spent by far the most time focusing on and delighting in getting any hint of attention from over the next few days? Yep, #2. Poor #1 was basically ignored or given a few “aww”s at most.
It ain’t just teenagers.
Tom – “Dont we all make mistakes along the way, and the smart ones learn from those mistakes?”
I’m one of those people that feel like any mistake that can be prevented, SHOULD be prevented. I’m not a fan of “learning the hard way” because many times that process does not only produce negative results for the person “learning”. Women learning to avoid cads while popping out babies hurts society at large. Women getting pregnant by asshats thus making MORE asshats hurts society. The continuing assault on the traditional family hurts society.
I’m all for letting a kid figure out that they should watch where they are walking by letting them run into a pole. But, at some point you have to step in and stop very dangerous behavior before something really bad happens. I think we are WAY past something bad happening, and are now swimming in lots of bad. And, unfortunately enough, we no longer allow Darwinism to weed out the less than intelligent among us. The result? Women that DO NOT learn from their mistakes early end up having multiple children, who are likely to NOT learn from their mistakes either…
@Tom #32:
” But isnt what women who “play the field”, find out (the hard way?) They get conned by lying cads and players, they follow their attractions to the bad boys etc. But many can and do realise their mistakes and then make better informed choices. Sure it is too bad it took bad choices to learn who the better choices are, but isnt that human? Dont we all make mistakes along the way, and the smart ones learn from those mistakes?”
O: Hey Tom! Very good point, and since I’m of the School of Making Things Painfully Explicit, it will be my pleasure to spell this out to you:
Yes, in a completely Vulcan, dispassionate, EvoPsych-less world you would be right. However, we do not live in that world, and even more to the point, the vast majority of guys out there, if they could choose it (keep in mind, most Men do NOT have much choice in the mating dance), don’t want to get together with a Woman who’s been shot through by Bad Boys. Part of this is EvoPsych-informed, of course; indeed, one could argue that it all is EvoPsych-informed.
But the point is made – guys don’t want to get the sloppy seconds, crude as that may sound. It’s the Truth, Ruth.
And this too, is one of the big “game changers” of our time today: the Internet.
In the not too distant past, guys were for the most part clueless about all this stuff; the sexual psychology of Woman remained a mystery for all but a select few. But in the Information Age, not only can guys get access to such info for literally pennies on the dollar if not FREE, but they also can see and read for themselves Woman’s sexual psyche in action. Connecting the dots from there is not a big leap at all.
Now to be fair, *all* Women don’t get down like that; but a not insignificant number of them do, and I’ll be even more brutally blunt, *the Women that guys want most tend to get down like that more often than not*. No, it’s not fair, but nothing per EvoPsych is. What trips a whole lot of people up about it, is when they go to bringing in their own morality plays into the equation. On strictly EvoPsych terms, “morality” simply has no place in the discussion or larger scheme of things.
To me, all this is just par for the course, and really don’t see much point in going round and round on it; but then I realize that I’m in a forum that tends to attract folks who operate a bit differently than I do, and that I have to be mindful of that. What appears to me to be just the cost of doing business seems to others here to be huge areas of uber-neurotic concern. Me? I simply shrug it off and keep it movin’…
O.
The whole history of reality that’s been described since you started HUS is exactly the opposite: operationally, young women are the most attracted to the men who are the least likely to father and raise healthy children.
_______
And here I thought it was all aboyt the tingle….lol
@Ted #36:
“I’m one of those people that feel like any mistake that can be prevented, SHOULD be prevented. I’m not a fan of “learning the hard way” because many times that process does not only produce negative results for the person “learning”. Women learning to avoid cads while popping out babies hurts society at large. Women getting pregnant by asshats thus making MORE asshats hurts society. The continuing assault on the traditional family hurts society.”
O: Boom!
“I’m all for letting a kid figure out that they should watch where they are walking by letting them run into a pole. But, at some point you have to step in and stop very dangerous behavior before something really bad happens. I think we are WAY past something bad happening, and are now swimming in lots of bad. And, unfortunately enough, we no longer allow Darwinism to weed out the less than intelligent among us. The result? Women that DO NOT learn from their mistakes early end up having multiple children, who are likely to NOT learn from their mistakes either…”
O: Hold on Ted, remember what we talked about…certain folk don’t like the idea of actually intervening, don’t you know.
By the way, there’s another aspect of the problem here – the putative intelligent, simply aren’t reproducing *enough*. And to be sure, there have been attempts to get them to do so; Singapore tried it, and it went down in flames:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics_in_Singapore
So, in a way, Ms. Walsh is kinda sorta doing the Lord’s work…
O.
Ted I agree with what you are saying.. As for the women poping out babies, I just dont get it. A simple IUD or the pill or (heaven forbid) condoms will cure that problem. The key here is, not all women enter the dating market with the same tools. Some grew up in homes where the parents NEVER talked about sex. They certianly didnt give any insight to their daughters. Some young women are left to fend for themselves. Other women are desperate for male attend for a wide range of reasons. In a perfect world, all women would havew grown up in good solid homes where sex talk wasnt taboo and the girls had a healthy and wholesome view of men and sex. But we do not live in a perfect world.
Tom – it is far worse than that around here. There are generations of people that have lived on welfare now. These women are not only coming from bad homes, but in some cases actually see OOW birth as the best way to get ahead! Why? Well, once they get pregnant, they can apply for all kinds of assistance including an apartment of their own, so they don’t have to stay living with their mother and 7 half-siblings. (because they all have different sperm donors.)
And we respond by: giving them more money, food stamps, and free housing that they don’t care about, don’t take care of, and eventually brings the property value around them so low you can’t give a house away. I am supporting this mess with my tax dollars, and it REALLY pisses me off.
@Ms. Walsh #17:
“As I’ve shared many times before, it is believed that the Dark Triad trifecta evolved specifically to allow men with disagreeable personalities to reproduce, and they are good at getting in and out, not so good at sustaining relationships. These were men who found themselves unsuited for evolved pair bonding, and evolved in a different direction. Because personality traits are largely heritable, they are common today.”
O: This has always made sense to me, and the female analog to it would be the gal with the bangin’ bod but a Buttaface; she’s built for short term mating. Indeed, guys can be heard saying “I’m not gonna wife that up!”, when they are checking such gals out on the block. As you know, Women with prettier faces tend to attract more offers for longterm mating opportunities.
O.
Ted D: “I always got the impression that Justin B’s “handlers” did their best to paint him as a squeeky clean young man that is hiding a lusty dark side.”
Haha, he must be a freaky boy if he convinced Selena Gomez to stop wearing her purity ring. And One Direction… you know the only want “one thing”.
@Ms. Walsh:
WRT Dr. Fisher, et al – if what you’re saying along these lines, ie, LTR pairbonding and how Women evolved for it over STR mating, how then do you explain both what Ted’s said above, but also what Edin and Kafalas have documented? I should also point out that Tiger’s discussed all this as well in his works – that Women simply wouldn’t need (Beta) Men to care for them due to what Tiger calls “Bureagamy”, but instead simply select Alphas with whom to mate and take it from there (meaning: the State will act as Hubby/Daddy – and not just in the ways Ted pointed out. It’ll also be in the form of expanded Affirmative Action on the campus and in the workplace, certain aspects of healthcare and other state-sponsored services, et al). Clearly, we see evidence of this, *and it is spreading* – it’s not just a matter of it being contained to the “hood”; its gone mainstream.
Your response?
O.
@ Ted D:
Ooh, thanks for the link. I love quizzes!!
My attachment style was secure as well
@Tom:
“Ted I agree with what you are saying.. As for the women poping out babies, I just dont get it. A simple IUD or the pill or (heaven forbid) condoms will cure that problem. The key here is, not all women enter the dating market with the same tools. Some grew up in homes where the parents NEVER talked about sex. They certianly didnt give any insight to their daughters. Some young women are left to fend for themselves. Other women are desperate for male attend for a wide range of reasons. In a perfect world, all women would havew grown up in good solid homes where sex talk wasnt taboo and the girls had a healthy and wholesome view of men and sex. But we do not live in a perfect world.”
O: While there is something to be said for all these factors, I think it would be a mistake to assume that these factors alone account for what we are seeing in our time now. Again, as Tiger and Edin and Kafalas have made clear in their works, there is more than ample evidence to suggest, and prove, that many Women in our time are indeed “going it alone” – choosing to be Baby Mamas. Lots of these ladies know very well what a condom etc look like, they simply aren’t interested in them because they want to mate and give birth. Oh, and Hacker discusses too, both in his Two Nations and Mismatch.
Women may have evolved to prefer LTRs, but the evidence is clear that they aren’t that averse to STR mating either…which brings about the desired effect of birthing kids that they wanted, despite not being able to find suitable Males to LTR with…
O.
@Tom:
Almost.
Stupid people don’t learn from their mistakes.
Reasonable people learn from their mistakes.
Smart people learn from others’ mistakes!
Furthermore, a healthy society:
- Helps smart people to continue to make smart choices
- Helps reasonable people to also make smart choices
- Helps stupid people to make reasonable choices
Letting young women ‘learn from their mistakes’ is morally a real cop-out. It’s bad for the individual women, and in aggregate it is bad for society.
And personally speaking, it’s bad for me as well.
I’m fully agreeing with Ted that things need to change. And while I’ve always been of the conviction that a liberal social democracy is the best way to run a state thus far, I am sometimes tempted to go full Social Darwinism on it all and let the stupid, weak, poor and unlucky suffer and die.
Avoidant!
I couldn’t take the quiz but I know what I’d get. I think that’s part of why I never cared about healing some wounded misunderstood troublemaker: “hey, I’m a fellow student not a guru, solve your own problems. Also, the Civil War is more interesting than you are.”
@Hope
Well, I still do. There’s a new version coming out next year…
I liked Sailor Moon too!
@Ted D
My mother and I talk about that all the time! She says that a welfare check is barely enough to have a decent apartment and healthy food, but it doesn’t stop these broads. She likes to get involved in the community and help people, especially the kids she teaches, and one of the reasons she teaches is so more functioning, working people will take less of everybody else’s tax money.
They really aren’t the best neighbors one could ask for. I LIKED those Chriatmas decorations…
@ Hope:
Sailor Moon was one of my favorite cartoons at that age!
When I was 13 I was in love with Taylor Hanson, whom when I first saw the video for MMMBop I mistook for a girl! (But heaven help anyone in earshot who said he looked like a girl! Lol, I bristled at that!)
I also was grossed out by chest hair. And was way more interested pursuing my hobbies than chasing after actual boys I knew (though admittedly, my low self-esteem had a big hand in that
)
My point is, my 13 year old self is not an indicator of my likes/dislikes as an adult. I’ve grown and changed in so many ways, it’s not applicable!!
Funnily enough, I still think Taylor Hanson is hot, but that’s because he’s grown into an attractive man post-puberty (although many of his teen idol contemporaries didn’t age well..) But in real life I don’t go for guys who look like him. And as an adult I’m no longer grossed out by chest hair (quite the opposite! I like body hair on men; not into the super smooth, groomed & manicured look!) and thankfully my self-esteem is where I wished it had been all along
“the ones most likely to survive would be the most sociopathic of the group”
The military has tests to not allow psychopaths to join or remove them if somehow they get in. Their lack of sense ends to them getting killed or else other soldiers.
Psychopaths almost always end up in prison. All serial killers (most of whom are necrophiliacs and cannibals who mutilate their victims) are psychopaths. They completely lack a conscience and are closer to monsters than humans.
As for evolutionary explanations, I can come up with them by the dozens.
@ Darsh
+1000!
I didn’t have to do drugs to know it’s not for me. Nor did I have to participate in hook up culture to know it’s not my scene.
Of course, having future-time orientation helps but I don’t need to make a mistake myself to know something isn’t good for me!
I have little respect for people who know they’re making a bad choice but do it anyway because it “feels good” in the moment. It’s a cop out. I say to them – Learn to delay gratification! It’ll improve your lot in life..
Sassy, Sai and Iggles: Awesome! Fellow fans of Sailor Moon!
And yeah, I had crushes on some really girly looking guys (not celebrities but guys in class) when I was young. I definitely don’t go for that look anymore.
Sassy, Sai and Iggles: Awesome! Fellow fans of Sailor Moon!
Hey what about me?! I was fan too.
Anacaona, oh you, too!
Ahhhh Ramble! You can’t say all women only get wet for bad-boys…not fair!
Bad boys getting ‘teh gurl’ are the ones that get noticed…seriously NAWALT, and I cannot sign up to that view. And I’m hardly a romantic (ask anyone)
Girls attracted to Bad Boys, my oh my have I run into that one.
Even though I’m straight, I’ve always been attracted to Bad Boys too. My friends growing up tended to be older Alpha Males, dudes I could envy and learn something from. Unfortunately, this matriculation tended to encompass subjects no parent wants their kid learning. And although I possessed few of the obstreperous characteristics of my Bad Boy friends I found those same traits of nascent criminality somehow appealing in a buddy.
Let’s face it, would you rather sit around with some bespectacled nerd marveling over his stamp collection or run the alleys with a James-Dean-Wanna-Be, who tosses fire crackers, breaks glass, and once told an adult who complained: “Shut your trap, old lady!”
As regards dating, we seldom know for certain why we’re rebuffed by the people we hit on. We may assume it’s our bird’s nest of a haircut while in actuality it’s our failure to gargle with Listerine. With that said, I often suspected that the reason I failed to nab the girl was at times because of my good guy persona.
Let’s talk about my first true love. Her name was Lisa and at thirteen she was a spectacularly stunning creature. I swear me and this girl shared a strange, almost psychic chemistry. All I had to do was saunter under her bedroom window at night and there she would appear—seemingly levitating on the balcony–within minutes.
Lisa would scurry downstairs and we’d spend a few precious moments smooching in her hallway.
I’m gone! I’m gaga! I’m a fourteen year old fool in love!
Long story short, I go to work one afternoon (can someone say Illegal Child Labor Laws) and what happens:
My best friend, the Bad Boy—who apparently both my sweetheart and I are attracted to (apparently, for very different reasons)—manages to talk his way into Lisa’s underwear, something I had never managed to do.
Psychic powers be damned, that was the end of me and Lisa.
My experience: There’s a group of women who absolutely despises the nice guy. He may at first appear attractive in the looks department but as soon as they perceive decent (read square, college educated, doing something with his life, no tattoos emblazoned on his jugular) he might as well have a neon sign screaming, “I’m a pussy!” dangling from his neck.
The girl’s parents, of course, constantly bemoan the fact that their daughters climb all over Mr. Nice to get their paws on the Bad Boy, knowing they’re about to witness an old fashioned emotional ass kicking.
But to no avail.
My findings: If you want a real crack at the girl, completely camouflage your good guy credentials.
She asks what you do for a living, holler back: “Do I look like I have a damn job?”
She asks about your background, tell her you report to your probation officer every third Tuesday.
And if she asks you to describe your feelings on emotional domestic abuse, tell her, “They’re evolving!”
It strikes me that the human mind (and not only the female mind) associates *power* and *dangerousness* at a very basic level…after all, things that are powerful (fire, horses, electricity, jet engines, etc) all have the capability to be very dangerous.
If the above is true…and if women are generally attracted to power in men…then attraction to dangerousness is almost (not quite) a tautology.
@slims
“not sure i see where craig bruce is coming from with these categories. in high school and college i was very confident in lots of aspectsof life and had lots of friends but was terribly shy and uncertain with women, especially in high-pressure social situations. as long as romance was out of the question, i was quite calm and reportedly sometimes charming. a lot of my lack of confidence was because i thought i was supposed to be acting “alpha” but had no idea how to do so.”
I was very similar. The “Regular Guy” category seems to allow for a lot of sliding up/down the continuum. Perhaps guys like us would be Regular Guy with a lot of NiceGuy gravity pulling in certain contexts/situations. The closer I got to those situations in which I felt the need to compete with other men for women’s attention, self-promote or elevate my confidence aura, or even step into the spotlight, the gravity of the situation became so distracting that there were occasions in which avoidance behaviors would take over. Take women out of the equation and I was a dominant leader on the field, an often quiet but sharp contributor in the classroom, and was often looked up to by younger men. I was always a leader – primarily by action, but I just never had any good locker room stories.
In my case I chalk it up to three things: self-esteem headwind, high introversion, and regular doses of feminist brainbending. Which is why I have spent a lot of time in the “Anxious” attachment style. The self-esteem feedback loop is a real bitch.
I’ll also say that whatever good looks I was blessed with never seemed to enter the equation for me. I wonder if in today’s SMP with more female aggression or perhaps better termed pro-action, I would have had more often and obvious IOI to help shore up that department. But as it was back then if a woman found me attractive I would either never know or find out long after.
Which is why I am a champion of women doing a lot more approaching. There are a hellova lotta Regular Guys out there who have a lot going for them – except when it comes to those intense and/or highly competitive situations. Not that one-on-one is a cake walk, but it still beats the basement of the Beta house.
The challenge for the Regular Guys with N.G. tendencies is that a lot of women, particularly younger women, really really enjoy those situations because they are often both target rich as well as heavy on alpha’s presenting. Things can really get tingling. Not to mention dancing is just so much fun. But once again venue plays an important role here. Sure a lot of those regular guys go to the bars or clubs, but not because they really want to. Just as there are some women who go but aren’t into it. The difference is those women still have the options in those environments. A lot of the Regular Guys by their own action or alpha-overshadow become nearly invisible quite quickly. So don’t go swimming with sharks if you want to play with dolphins. And if you do chose (yes it is a choice) to swim with sharks, then you aren’t allowed to complain about their sharp teeth and tendency to oscillate between indifference and raw aggression.
@Susan
Wrong. Good looking men have more influence, earn more money and are more successful in life.
No. You are wrong!
Replace “good looking” with “white” and it illustrates the absurdity.
@Ted
If you strip everything else out of the picture (that means maturity, logic, will, agency, etc.) female humans tend to be attracted to the darker traits of men…..
And, since much of “Game” and the ‘sphere base their theories on women’s baser instincts, the story of the 13 year old girls pretty much proves their point
Damn. Cosigned again. You are on a roll….especially when you can wind up Susan’s hamster like you just did.
@Ted
Why is it OK for men to be told, over and over throughout their lives, that THEIR base nature is bad/evil/sexist and to be expected to control them, while women won’t even admit to their own base instincts?
I knew this would be one hamsterific post, but I had no idea how bad it would get.
@Esau
That’s because I consider the source. You’re so wedded to your pain and your butthurt persona that you can’t bear the thought that women want good men, and yet you still have/had difficulty. Read and learn.
http://www.psmag.com/culture/from-sole-mate-to-soul-mate-the-road-to-monogamy-43832/
@ evilalpha:
This may be one of those “the chicken or the egg?” conundrums, but research backs Susan up on this claim:
The research reviewed by Hamermesh shows that attractive people, both men and women, earn an average of 3 or 4% more than people with below average looks, which adds up to a significant amount of money over a lifetime. Beautiful people are also hired sooner, get promotions more quickly, are higher-ranking in their companies (a study found the CEOs of larger and more successful companies are rated as being more physically attractive than the CEOs of smaller companies), and get all kinds of extra benefits and perks on the job including, perhaps, more free tickets to fly in F/B class.
source: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/games-primates-play/201203/the-truth-about-why-beautiful-people-are-more-successful
Chicks don’t dig all jerks or assholes, some of whom are bullies, some of whom are ugly, some of whom have an IQ under 100….It’s the fact that the guys are hot that gets them female attention
Susan,
I’ve never seen you hamster this bad.
“Asshole is aphrodisiac. Take a guy, add “asshole” and he will do better with women than if he were nice. That’s all the phrase “chicks dig assholes” means.
Ryan Lochte got orders of magnitude more sexual attention being an Olympic asshole, than just being an Olympic swimmer. Asshole works for more than just “creeps”.
@Ted D
It’s not scary. I just wrote a post about the appeal of the Bad Boy. Every woman ever born understands this. I’ve also explained why he is alluring. Honestly, my motive in writing this post was to say, “Yes! We are drawn to Bad Boys! At 13 the dark, brooding, disaffected male is very tempting indeed. I see no shame in this. As we mature we learn to make good choices.
Isn’t it the same for men? Don’t you graduate from wanting a roll with the town slut to wanting a woman of higher relationship value?
We all have base instincts, and we overrule them with higher order thinking. Isn’t that obvious? I don’t find that women are unwilling to admit this in the least. Oof, the stuff I’ve heard said at the focus group meetings…
@Esau
What is your basis for this claim among the college population? They’re not having sex with these guys, so how do you know who they are attracted to? Are they attracted to assholes and unable to get sex? Or are they not attracted to assholes and not pursuing them? How many women ready to have sex with assholes will be refused?
I follow the data trail, and it does not support your claim.
I need to mention that among the many reasons I lost respect for feminism while I was around Jezebel was the dismissal of science that didn’t backed up their personal believes and agendas.
“Oh sample size of 40 men says that men are happier helping around the house in marriages? See? Feminism makes everyone lives better! More feminism to save the world!”
“Oh a sample size of 2,000 says that women cannot have sex like men?Boo that study is clearly wrong I can have sex like a man and I am really happy. This is another attempt to slut shame…”
Just saying…
You can’t say all women only get wet for bad-boys…not fair!
I am not saying that all women go for the same type of guy. I am saying that girls that go for the “bad boys” get wet for the “bad” part. The rest of the thinking that goes with it (I can save him, he will settle down with me, etc) is simply the nice* rationalization.
====================
* Nice, as in, it is the part that they can, at least attempt to, sell to polite society. The part about getting wet for mean guys is harder to sell to society.
“Town slut” should be replaced with “hottest girl in town”… except in extreme cases, promiscuity doesn’t affect SMV when it comes to “wanting a roll.”
But to address the point, “graduating” doesn’t happen… most guys will “want” both options simultaneously. When faced with having to make a choice (as is normally the case for most men), most will take option #2.
* Nice, as in, it is the part that they can, at least attempt to, sell to polite society. The part about getting wet for mean guys is harder to sell to society.
Didn’t we had a study that says that women actually can’t tell a good dad from a cad when is about they making the choice of a man for themselves? So is not rationalization or at least not un urpose many women actually do believe that “is going to be different with me”
Susan – I’m wih Jimmy. We don’t graduate from wanting the town hottie to a woman of higher relationship value. We mostly do our best to pick the hottest relationship woman we can snag. I for one always hoped to get a two-for-one: hot and sexy (for me only of course) as well as a woman of high quality character. We never get over wanting the sexy, we simply start expecting more along the way. Some of us end up rather disappointed, but that applies to plenty of women as well.
Of course I might be out in left field. So guys: did you grow past wanting the hussy for a quality woman? Or did you simply start looking for a high quality hussy?
Ana – “So is not rationalization or at least not un urpose many women actually do believe that “is going to be different with me””
Oh I get that completely. And this is why I and others are insisting that at its core, female desire really does tend to favor some unsavory male traits. otherwise smart women would not find themselves involved with a “bad boy” at all. I firmly believe it is often a subconscious choice. However, women by and large are loathe to admit this very fact, and I honestly can’t understand why. If it was commonly known and accepted, then it would also be completely acceptable to duly inform your friend/niece/sister/neighbor that she must be out of her mind with base lust to even think of getting involved with Mr. Motorcycle. And, knowing this to be true, she wouldn’t get involved with him.
The problem I think is that in general women don’t want to admit that they are indeed at the mercy of thier base desire to some extent. Yet, boys have been told they are at the mercy of thier sexual desire from before they hit puberty and are fully expected to compensate for it. So I can’t help but wonder where the accountability is on the female side of that equation…
@ Susan Walsh
No they aren’t. They’re attracted to characteristics that signal the ability to father attractive, successful, healthy progeny. The father doesn’t need to be the person raising them for 18 years. That role can be filled by someone else.
I think everybody is ignoring the effects of culture. Teenage girls have been marinating in “Good Girl Reforms Bad Boy” romantic comedies for decades. And are eager to be the heroine of their own live-action rom-com.
Which inevitably proves to be Tragedy, not Comedy. But the girls don’t get that signal from the culture. And keep making the same mistakes.
@Susan
I don’t think that’s quite it either, Susan. It’s only a guess, of course, but I would think that most boys start out “crushing” on the prettiest long before they’re aware of the sexuality – both his and hers. They nominally start as beta-orbiters and some take a long time to get out of that mode.
But I’m not pleased to think that this implies many men then descend to wanting the proverbial roll in the hay with the town slut, while at worst, a girl’s emotional maturity remains flat.
Oh I get that completely. And this is why I and others are insisting that at its core, female desire really does tend to favor some unsavory male traits. otherwise smart women would not find themselves involved with a “bad boy” at all.
Yeah but we are talking about the cohort of women that are actually pursuing the bad boy. Not all women do, which is the problem here. The raw data that says that 80% of this women are not actually engaging on this, so the pluralistic ignorance keeps getting enforced. Instead of saying that certain percentage of women need to be aware that their attractions triggers are fucked up, all women should be aware that their attraction triggers are fucked up… so what gives?
OT but encouraging:
http://www.amusingplanet.com/2011/02/he-will-never-have-girlfriend.html#1
I think everybody is ignoring the effects of culture. Teenage girls have been marinating in “Good Girl Reforms Bad Boy” romantic comedies for decades. And are eager to be the heroine of their own live-action rom-com.
Tell me about it and the last Disney movies have a thief and a womanizer changing in one day because of “the Disney princess that loved them”… we are so fucking screwed up.
@ evilalpha
Haha.
I just noticed something, in the grand scheme of things a man will listen to what attracts a:
1-Hottie/Model/Sexy/Slut
2- 13 year old girl
.
.
.
.
.
.
3-Outliers/low or none hypergamic/Beta lovers/ happily married women that obviously admire and bed their husbands.
I’m sure other type of women fill in the blanks before anyone would listen to our type. More proof of the 80% disconnect.
Susan at 62: “You’re so wedded to your pain and your butthurt persona that you can’t bear the thought that women want good men, and yet you still have/had difficulty.”
I’m going to — momentarily — attain a Buddha-level of detachment here and just point out, as politely as possible, that here you speak WAY beyond what you know, and it’s both rude and logically meaningless. You actually know almost nothing factual about me or my life’s experiences at all, because I’ve essentially never written about them here; and that’s because I’m not looking for personal advice never base any arguments solely on my own experiences. When I do go anecdotal I speak from the experiences of the dozen or so men I’ve been close to and known very well over the years, and I am (nearly) always careful to exclude myself from the group. What I write is either true, or not, independent of my personal history; whether I’m personally a saint or a sinner, a Martian or a dog, ultimately counts for nothing.
In short, you don’t actually know anything important about me, and it’s a mistake for you to write as though you do. This attack is pure ignorant ad hominem, where you bypass all substance and instead stoop to insulting my motivations with completely imaginary evidence of your own invention. This is just what the worst of feminist bloggers do reflexively — swerve away from nominally objective facts and attack invented personalities instead — and that’s not company you should be proud to be keeping.
I don’t invent facts about your life as a way of countering your arguments; the least you can do is return the favor, if the motivation to avoid logical fallacy is not sufficient in itself. Now go, and sin no more.
What struck me about the conversation that she relayed to me was that the girls were categorizing the boys into two groups: “Hot & Mean” and “Not-hot & Nice.”
What’s interesting to me is we are making so much of this. Most adults understand that there’s a lot in between; I would that these girls will also figure that out.
I like how Craig Bruce differentiates between regular guys and “trademarked” nice guys. It’s the latter that women dislike and distrust precfisely because those are the guys who are overly nice at first and then become nasty when rejected. I’d guess that the average married guy is a regular guy. It’s “nice guys” who have troubles with women. I don’t think “nice girls” do much better though.
WhaI don’t know One Direction very well, but anyone can see PLENTY of sexual innuendo from Justin Bieber, and the same could be said about the Jonas brothers as well.
Compared to the teen idols of the past like David Cassidy, sure. Compared to most of the more blatant sexual images that are out there…nah. Every generation seems to have its safe, not-sexually-threatening,beardless, hairless dreamboys.
@Ted D
No, it was not the environment that changed. Pair bonding evolved 1.5 million years ago. Fossilized remains demonstrate that around that time men who reproduced became smaller and less symmetrical. IOW, women began selecting for different traits, as they realized that women with co-parenting male partners were more successful in raising their young to adulthood. Prior to pair bonding, women raised their children alone, without paternal resources, and often failed. With pair bonding, women evolved preferences for men who would stick around.
That’s anyone’s guess. Did you see the article last week that older fathers contribute 3 times the genetic mutations that older mothers do? We have believed until now that older women were at risk of having children with birth defects, but now they’ve isolated the genetic mutations, and most are from the older father. Most notably, autism and schizophrenia are believed to result from male genes. Here’s what was really interesting – the geneticist that discovered this said that an increase in autism may be evolutionary advancement. We see it as a negative in our time, but perhaps homo sap stands to benefit in some real and material way via an increase in autism. He was 100% serious, and that blew me away. None of us has any idea, really.
Check out the big brain on Ted. LOL, you believe? On what basis? If the people who have devoted their lives to studying this don’t know, how do you know better? Evolution is indeed a rewiring of DNA, and that is what pair bonding accomplished. This was many, many eons before agriculture.
@Esau
This suggests that I am intellectually dishonest and/or stupid. I am interested in the truth. I have worked much harder to uncover it than you have, and I have not taken anyone’s word for anything, nor have I drawn conclusions without evidence to support them. If you have evidence that contradicts mine, let’s have it. Otherwise, you’re just making noise.
My attachment style was secure as well
Mine too, which surprised me given my childhood. I guess 25 years with a good guy can heal a lot.
Susan – “Check out the big brain on Ted”
You didn’t think I was just a pretty face, did you?
But why is it SO SCARY for women to simply admit that at the core of it all, their base instincts are to choose less than savory men to have sex with?
Because there are no babymamas on this blog? Because the women you’re talking to don’t feel that way? The type of woman who’d feel that way is probably not reflective enough to discuss her feelings with you.
Susan…”The role of female choice is not often considered in evolutionary biology”….is this really true? I thought the case of the peacock’s tail…useless but really impresses the peacock girlz…was pretty well-known in the field.
The type of woman who’d feel that way is probably not reflective enough to discuss her feelings with you.
Reminds me of Bellita’s friend that see nothing wrong on trying to steal boyfriends from her other female friends…
This whole thing annoys me because it sounds like the type of article you would see in Cosmo: WHAT TO KNOW WHAT MEN REALLY WANT? We overheard the conversations of a dozen of 13 year old boys. They reveal the secrets of their gender… uncensored. Take a notebook handy girl after this you will be having them eating from your hand.
Yeah..no.
Did you see the article last week that older fathers contribute 3 times the genetic mutations that older mothers do?
3x ? Wow! I’ve been saying all along that older fathers contribute to the mutation rate, but 3x is far more than I’d have predicted.
the geneticist that discovered this said that an increase in autism may be evolutionary advancement.
The genes that make autists autistic also make people better at mathetical, spatial and technical tasks. In our modern world, that can be seen as an advance. I see it las being like the sickle cell gene. A little is adaptive, too much is a big problem.
the geneticist that discovered this said that an increase in autism may be evolutionary advancement.
I just read an study that says that is autism doesn’t has genetic associations: http://spittoon.23andme.com/health-2/autism-study-reveals-no-genetic-associations/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=post&utm_campaign=blog
Indeed, women and men both utilize a full range of mating strategies. According to Buss, women pursue STRs for several reasons, including:
Immediate extraction of resources (prostitution is the extreme case)
Dry run for LTR (problematic because men disapprove of promiscuity)
Test for sexual compatibility
Self-assessment of desirability
Potential replacement for current mate
These behaviors correlate strongly to sociosexuality and personality traits.
@ Ted D
“But why is it SO SCARY for women to simply admit that at the core of it all, their base instincts are to choose less than savory men to have sex with?”
It’s not scary. I’ll gladly admit that Hank Moody of Californication (or worse yet, Lew Ashby) gets me 10x more wet than the average “nice guy”. But when women admit stuff like this, it appears to me that men can’t handle it. They don’t want to know the truth.
Women love confidence, charisma, status, money and ‘dark traits’ in the same way men go for a beautiful face or a hot body. But while men are very good at justifying their preferences, women are stuck with being “golddiggers” or just naive and cheap. I accept men’s shallow preferences, but I rarely meet men who fully accept the ‘shallow’ side of women.
LOL, Susan’s hamster died of old age many years ago.
I believe women in general dont want to be treated poorly by a jerk. They know, subconsciously, a man is probably a jerk because he has many options, and not fearful of saying or doing the wrong thing because there is a line of women behind her. This is attractive to her, as she wants to have what every othe woman wants.
-
“The person who cares least in a relationship has all the power”
@Anacaona
Thank you. It’s quite remarkable to see intelligent people dismiss compelling evidence to avoid altering their world view. It’s no skin off my nose, and I suppose they’ll figure out what works via trial and error.
As a former strategy consultant, I confess I’m very surprised by the blinders people seem to be willing to don. You analyze a market, and you get it right or you go home. One bad strategic analysis and your career is over. It’s not about confirming a hypothesis, or confirming what you think you know, and it’s certainly not about throwing good money after bad when you’re invested. It’s only about the best way forward given the facts on the ground. Anyone who doubts my ability and commitment to this doesn’t know anything about me.
@Jimmy
Thanks for that insight. I suppose it makes sense that women would develop more selectivity over time, given the sexual gatekeeper role and higher risk for the female in having sex.
@Anacaona
Here is an excerpt from the study:
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/columnist/vergano/story/2012-05-12/why-women-fall-for-bad-boys/54919824/1
Personally, I think that making women choose between a handsome adventurous skier and an average looking accountant is stacking the deck somewhat, sort of like Hot & Mean vs. Not Hot & Nice. Are there no other options?
@INTJ
Can you please cite a source for this opinion? It runs counter to everything I’ve read on the subject, and I’ve never come across it before.
@Mike M.
That is a great point, I totally agree. For example, I think Sex and the City did a lot to promote casual, no-strings sex. It romanticized the one-night stand, the asshole (Mr. Big), and ridiculed the man of good character (Aidan). It’s the culture that creates the lag between the perception of hooking up and the actual behavior of students.
Haha, how do you think I feel? The blogger who is hamsterbating and has an agenda to make women look innocent, while the Daughter of Omega Supplicator is the new Helen Fisher.
@Esau
I know little of your lifestyle, but I know a great deal about you in the revelatory comments you have been leaving here for 2+ years. You are confrontational, judgmental and angry. You regularly accuse women of being unfeeling, even our own Jackie, one of the most empathic people ever to post here!
The chip on your shoulder is so large we see you struggle under its weight in nearly every comment you make here.
Ad hom? Fine, I’m perfectly comfortable with that.
I’ve done the hard work here. Either put up a factual argument or STFU.
“I think I love you, isn’t that what dreams are made of…”
That brings back memories of my own slumber parties. We listened to that album, drank Tab, ate chocolate chocolate chip cake, and played poker all night long.
I was part of a crowd of about 15 girls, and we had a slumber party for every girl’s birthday. Those are my best memories from high school, hands down.
@david foster
That was a quote from the study, I can’t really say…
@Marc
Yeah, the Principle of Least Interest is the prevailing strategy in the SMP.
@ Susan Walsh
You’ve never come across the opinion that women seek to mate with attractive (i.e. high genetic value) males and then get high commitment males to raise the children? I’m surprised you think cuckoldry is not the preferred evolutionary strategy. But here’s an example of the countless sources backing up this fact:
http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/comm/haselton/webdocs/haselton_gangestad.pdf
@ M
“I accept men’s shallow preferences, but I rarely meet men who fully accept the ‘shallow’ side of women.”
The difference is, as men see it, we like physical traits, and the personality traits are irrelevant in generating sexual attraction. Personality traits come into play when considering commitment, and the personality traits we like are mostly “good” personality traits.
In contrast, and again this is how it appears to men, women are sexually attracted to character traits that are associated with psychopaths and meatheads and various men of low character that men of good character DESPISE.
Essentially what it comes off as is…You are a woman dating a Jew admitting that you find Nazis sexier than him. That’s how it comes across to a hardened, bitter Beta Guy, or even a relatively healthy Beta Guy with some deep wounds.
Coupled with actual, substantial signals she likes the other guy more? Like Price Discrimination? Or saying she was “wild” but now wants to “settle down”?
Then she is basically inviting a Male Psychological Defense powerful enough to defeat a Soviet missile attack.
@INTJ
I am aware of cuckoldry, but the rate is 2-4%. Why do you generalize from such a small minority?
I think men are loath to examine the HOT part. Women are attracted to hot, handsome, well-built men. Character traits cannot be evaluated at first sighting, or even first meeting. The initial attraction is always physical, even for women.
The de-emphasis on looks among men is wishful thinking. The young women I know speak mostly about looks when they speak of guys they’re attracted to. If he’s handsome, and he’s an asshole, they hope to change him. If he’s handsome, and he’s a beta, they hope to change him.
Susan’s hamster died of old age many years ago.
They only live a few years…if you’re lucky.
That brings back memories of my own slumber parties. We listened to that album, drank Tab, ate chocolate chocolate chip cake, and played poker all night long. I was part of a crowd of about 15 girls, and we had a slumber party for every girl’s birthday. Those are my best memories from high school, hands down.
Ah, Susan, this is wheer we part company. I had a group of 5 girls. We listened to The Beatles’ White Album and then their solo albums and Janis Ian, drank coke and ate pizza. Then we watched horror movies and told each other BS stories about the boyfriends we wished we had.
Thank you. It’s quite remarkable to see intelligent people dismiss compelling evidence to avoid altering their world view. It’s no skin off my nose, and I suppose they’ll figure out what works via trial and error.
This is one of the main reasons I left the catholic church
“But evolution is the only thing that makes sense look at the mountains of proof”
“The bible says…”
“But it could be a metaphor of the human condition, or the world couldn’t it?”
“The bible says…”
“Arrgggh I rather go to hell…”
This was prior 92 when John Paul 2 decided that it was “more than a theory” but at that point I was done and for the looks of it they haven’t changed their stances against proof. I mean I have nothing against faith, but blind faith…nope if your vision of the world doesn’t match science is time to go back to the drawing board, IMO, YMMV.
Haha, how do you think I feel? The blogger who is hamsterbating and has an agenda to make women look innocent, while the Daughter of Omega Supplicator is the new Helen Fisher.
The 13 year old daughter of Omega suplicator…If it makes you feel better Ladrock had a similar issue when he showed statistics and data that there was not Marriage strike in first marriages from men. Man that was crazy, I think the best compromise they achieved was that the data was going to show the strike in the future…any moment… now. So is not you.
Personally, I think that making women choose between a handsome adventurous skier and an average looking accountant is stacking the deck somewhat, sort of like Hot & Mean vs. Not Hot & Nice. Are there no other options?
I wonder if they had different results if they used the same model for different assessments, also across cultures. I remember I did one in psychology class and I had to pick between a white guy with a tie and glasses that looked absolutely miserable and a black construction worker with a big smile. You all know that me likes them white and nerdy but the smile won me over for this particular choice. There is a lot of nuances that are rarely taken in account IMO.
@ A Definite Beta Guy
Well, the character traits I mentioned creates sexual attraction. So the difference is that there are actually more personality traits which qualifies a man for commitment. It’s personality + personality, rather than looks + personality. It’s just a different combination.
The fact that the character traits women lust for exist within psychopaths or sociopaths is not a problem to me. Very few women write letters for men on death row. The physical traits men desire in women exist in all sorts of undesirable women, including prostitutes, porn stars and sluts. Every time I see an attractive man approach a woman in hoop earrings or fishnet stockings, it will annoy me, but knowing they won’t end up together, it won’t genuinely bother me.
I think women can look at other attractive, but trashy women and acknowledge that they are ‘trash’, but men don’t?
PS If there are grammar mistakes, forgive me, I’m not English/American
I had a group of 5 girls. We listened to The Beatles’ White Album and then their solo albums and Janis Ian, drank coke and ate pizza. Then we watched horror movies and told each other BS stories about the boyfriends we wished we had.
Slumber parties were not that common when I was a teenager but we did one when we were in college with other 5 girls. We ate tacos, and drank coke and then watched porn movies it was so funny because there was an evangelical one (virgin like the single ones on the group) that kept getting freaked out claiming “Jesus oh this is a sin” and closing her eyes. We rented very lame movies like Hannibal Licter and make fun the situations (so no perverts not making out among each other, ewww) and then we did share stories of how we were going to meet our future husbands. It was really fun.
@ Susan Walsh
“I’m aware that men like to be with extremely hot women, but the rate is 2-4%. Why do you generalize from such a small minority?”
Wanting something (or rather being evolutionary designed to want something), and actually having it are two totally different things. It’s obvious that condoms, contraception, etc. make cuckoldry much less common these days. It’s also obvious that many women consciously fight their biological impetus for cuckoldry. But that doesn’t mean the evolutionary drive isn’t there, any more than men who marry ugly women aren’t evolutionarily driven to want hot women…
Also note that you don’t have to cheat on your husband to make him raise children that are not his. You can simply become a single mother with the help of an alpha before you marry a beta and have him provide for your children.
“it is believed that the Dark Triad trifecta evolved specifically to allow men with disagreeable personalities to reproduce”
This does not make sense. Things which evolve do not do so for any purpose, structures like DT emerge in populations because they can, and because they are more stable than competing patterns. Maybe DT successfully mimics something evolution selects for as beneficial and thereby gets a free ride. NB it needn’t be a good mimic – think bee orchid- it just needs to press the right buttons.
Susan, variously:
I follow the data trail, and it does not support your claim.
But, does the “data trail” you followed actually refute any of my claims? If not, then I don’t see that it’s material; see below.
I have not taken anyone’s word for anything, nor have I drawn conclusions without evidence to support them. [*]
I’ve done the hard work here. Either put up a factual argument or STFU[**].
Remind me carefully, so I can get it right: which fruits of your research do you believe actually, directly refute the generalized claim that “chicks dig jerks”, or any of its wordier alternatives? I know for example that you turned up all this information on partner counts among college students, which objectively showed that hookup culture participation was much rarer than many commenters had previously typically imagined. And while that’s good work, dispelling pluralistic ignorance and so on, those numbers say nothing directly about who is or isn’t more attractive to whom; and, if anything, I could make the argument that those numbers are perfectly consistent with, and actually weigh in favor of — though not constitute proof of — the generalized “chicks dig jerks” hypothesis.
Give me a pointer to something that you think objectively disproves “chicks dig jerks”, and I’ll either accept it or tell you why I dispute it objectively and quantitatively; evidence and logic, you know, not using made-up stories about people’s underlying motivations. If you can’t provide such a link, then you should quit insisting that your “hard work” is at all material to this hypothesis, and admit that all you’ve got is anecdotal evidence — and there mine or anyone’s is, to first order, as good as yours.
NB: No, I’m not convinced in the slightest by the mathematical modeling you referred to at 62, under the embarrassingly bombastic heading “read and learn”. I’ve done quite a bit of computer modeling myself, and can go into as much detail as you care for about the limitations of conclusions based on such vastly simplified representations; it’s interesting, to be sure, but for dispositive value I’d much sooner bet my life on what plain old anecdotes to hand imply.
* Of course, the claim that you don’t draw conclusions without supporting evidence is, shall we say, hardly airtight; just in this exchange you’ve violated that very principle by drawing (incorrect) conclusions about my life based on no facts at all. More seriously, pick a post at random with at least 200+ comments in the stream, and I’ll show you at least five instances where you’ve drawn conclusions without supporting scientific objective evidence (this is not remarkable, everyone does it). Just because you’ve “done the hard work” in drawing some conclusions does not prove that you do the same for all.
** I wonder: is, say, Ted D subject to the same “put up a factual argument or STFU” injunction? He’s been saying very much the same thing I have on this thread, with just as much or little scientific evidence to back it up. Or do the depths of your self-admitted ad hom reasoning extend to the point that only “angry, confrontational” people are tasked for evidence, while the exact same thing, but said more politely, is allowed to pass? (so much for being evidence-based)
Meanwhile, easy and tasty sauce for the goose:
I know a great deal about you in the revelatory comments you have been leaving here for 2+ years.
Waaaay overblown. Without disputing (for now) your conclusions, what you see here is only a narrow, part-time personality, that may have little or nothing to do with how I am IRL. “On the Internet, no one knows you’re a dog,” as the famous New Yorker cartoon went; many people change in their on-line personas from their real-life ones.
You are confrontational, judgmental and angry.
Even sticking just with my as revealed on-line personality, I don’t agree with this. But, neither would I disown it. Are these bad things?
Confrontational You’re being quite confrontational right in this exchange, as I imagine you think is called for. I call ‘em as I see ‘em, same as you. Why shouldn’t I be confrontational if I see something that deserves to be confronted, same as you?
Judgemental See above. More importantly, can you provide a specific link to any “judgemental” remark I’ve made on HUS that was not warranted?
Angry Skipping over how subjective and shaming this judgement can be, I’ll quote again my favorite t-shirt from the Bush era, which read “If you’re not completely appalled then you haven’t been paying attention.” (Obama non-fans can probably buy the same item today.) Taking out the shaming element, I easily maintain that anger is often justified, even mandated, by the facts. There are many times and places in history when anger and resentment are the only sane options, the only options that self-respect will allow, while complacency is intellectual and moral error. Calling someone “angry” is just a cheap shaming tactic with no dispositive meaning, if it’s no accompanied by a reasoned argument that anger is not appropriate.
You regularly accuse women of being unfeeling Can you link to any specific accusation I’ve ever made that was unwarranted? Or, as a well-known blogger once put it, please “either put up a factual argument or STFU”.
even our own Jackie, Is the sainted Jackie your go-to example, or do you have others? I wrote extensively and lucidly, in the exchange you refer to, as to how the angelic one unmistakably revealed a flash of malice; do you need links? If you want to engage on the facts of what she actually wrote, I’m certainly game; otherwise this boils down to a sort of anti-ad-hom, that “all claims unfriendly to Jackie must be false, because she’s known to be an angel on earth without a molecule of malice” (At least I’m willing to regard her as a full-spectrum human being in three dimensions, which I think is ultimately the more complimentary and sympathetic view.)
That’s actually not too ridiculous… There’s little to no difference between what I was sexually attracted to at 13 and what I’m attracted to today. I could be wrong, but I think attraction cues pretty static for most guys throughout their lives.
That’s actually not too ridiculous… There’s little to no difference between what I was sexually attracted to at 13 and what I’m attracted to today. I could be wrong, but I think attraction cues pretty static for most guys throughout their lives.
Really? If I came here saying that the best way to catch a man would be listening to 13 year old boy wishes would you take me seriously?
At least my husband says that he was pretty dumb as a teen so dunno make his dumb version of self attracted doesn’t seem like a good idea.
@ Jimmy Hendricks
Definitely true. Of course, the difference is that boys are taught to mature and consider things besides just attraction cues, so the mating strategies change as they get older, even if their basic attraction cues stay the same.
Unfortunately, the equivalent message isn’t getting across as loudly to girls, so many of them continue to follow the same attraction cues they had when they were 13.
@Susan,
I’ve read your site for a few months now, along with other Manosphere sites and I’d like to say that I find your use of scientific research to substantiate your claims refreshing.
As I said, I’ve read other Manosphere sites, particularly Game sites. While I agree that many of their arguments are insightful and generally valid, many of them also seem to suffer from both confirmation and selection bias. So keep citing that research…I’m sure I’m not the only one who appreciates it.
@INTJ
Okay from the top
From what I can gather all the research done about evo-bio is done with people that is already past puberty and can select a mate and carry a pregnancy to term or in the case of males have a girl pregnant.
We don’t know even if this 13 year olds started ovulating (I didn’t had my first period till I was 14 for example) and the rate of death at that age from a pregnancy complications for the mother and the child is very high , so is more likely that at that age they haven’t fully developed their attraction cues. We can see it to males able to impregnate them successfully, we can see it in things like aversion to chest hair on males (a secondary sexual characteristic that does indicate fertility on males) and if you look at the media aimed to this target audience, teen heartthrobs are androgynous looking (really all those mean jokes about Bieber looking like a girl are not for free), so even though they are starting to notice boys, this is a too early stage to take it as gospel and/or prediction of their future actions and sexual attractors specially when is just anecdote.
There is no such a thing as studies done at this age to correlate with evobio neither the person reporting is an unbiased source the title of the post was “I see Alpha/Beta everywhere” and he of course is new on this discovery and he didn’t even heard the story first hand, so he had a lot of bias filtering the info, IMO.
So sorry I don’t buy that this tweens are more credible that tons and tons of research in the matter, YMMV.
While I agree that many of their arguments are insightful and generally valid, many of them also seem to suffer from both confirmation and selection bias.
I don’t think you can avoid this. We did a Myer Briggs test and found out that HUS concentrates a huge amount of people of similar personality traits. So it looks like Internet just enables people to find like minded individuals instead of giving them a good doses of variety, YMMV.
A very interesting post; the male reactions to it are quite predictable as usual. I just find it funny that people would want base theories on something that more of a work in progress and is not yet set. We can only make scientific observations after having considered the whole picture.
I personally believe women see their preferences evolve regarding mate response and selection, just like men can switch from STR to LTR minded connections. However, one important point is that the nurturing qualities that men are blaming are also the qualities they’ll need to care for the chosen father and the child. You can’t throw the baby with the bath water.
It seems to me a lot of men around here are decrying the fact they would never find a mate if we were back to just being “animals” and are saddened that some women still function on that model when men have “obviously ” evolved beyond considering women’s looks as criteria number one for mating. If anything, those men should actually be thankful to evolution and women actually refusing to carry the burden of child caring alone or developing a liking to qualities they possess. For everywoman falling for the temporary appeal of jerks, there is some guy buying diners and flowers for a hot but bitchy bimbo. However, it has a short term shelf life; men having more ego desist earlier when women relying on their nurturing qualities might invest more than they should. Should get rid of that nurturing side of women then? May I remind that it is that quality that makes civilization, picking men who have some similar tendencies and replicating them in your children is what makes it that globally we as humans have thrived.
“many people change in their on-line personas from their real-life ones. ”
so…you chose that personality! WTF were you thinking?
Nice Guys(TM) aren’t being honest and girls can read that. They’re socially conditioned to repress themselves in order to get along with everyone and try to make people like them. So when the Nice Guy(TM) does something nice for a girl while pretending he doesn’t want sex from her, he’s not being honest about his intentions or desires.
Imagine if you were a billionaire and wherever you went everyone was extra super nice to you and came up to you trying to be your best buddy and always agreeing with you and never daring to risk hurting your feelings or doing anything that might upset you. You’d know they were all full of shit and just trying to get something from you. And you’d say “you’re not just trying to get my money, are you? This friendship is real right?” and they’d go “no no, of course not, we’re just friends.
” while subconsciously wanting your money and hoping that if they spend enough time around you, you’ll voluntarily give them your money.
An “asshole” is attractive because a girl gets to see all of him, the good and the bad. He doesn’t filter himself or try to impress her or try to be what he thinks she wants him to be. He expresses himself fully, good or bad. She’s attracted to that because she can trust that.
A Nice Guy(TM) sees the asshole getting the girl and he thinks it’s unfair because from his perspective the only difference between himself and the asshole is that the asshole is doing mean things as well as nice and is pushing the girl through a range of negative motions as well as positive. So he concludes “girls like assholes”, when the reality is that he is oblivious to his own dishonesty because he’s been so socially conditioned to behave like the Nice Guy(TM) and repress his desires and thoughts for external approval that he’s essentially too in the middle of it all to see clearly.
This is also why we tell newbies not to buy girls a drink, but advanced guys can buy them a drink. We know the newbie is too blind to his own social conditioning that he can’t tell that the vibe he gives off when he buys a drink is the same as the people pretending to be the billionaire’s new friend. He thinks he wants to do it because he’s just a Nice Guy(TM) but he’s still in denial about his own desires and intent and it takes a while before he’ll finally understand himself in this way. Once he learns to be honest with himself, and he has enough experience, he can return to buying a drink for a girl because NOW he’s coming from a different place (a place of honesty instead of hidden intent).
This expands into some really large over-arching PUA concepts that people who’ve only read The Game and don’t follow modern pickup probably aren’t aware of, but this is the basic summary of a core concept. We call it “Authenticity”, “Congruence”, “Expressing Your Intent” and a bunch of other labels depending on specifically which sub-category of the concept we’re discussing.
@SW
“It’s quite remarkable to see intelligent people dismiss compelling evidence to avoid altering their world view. ”
Yes, it is. But this is always what happens whenever people get ideologically committed to a worldview first, and get interested in evidence second.
The reality is, I think, that for a lot of men it’s actually comforting to believe that women in aggregate are biologically incapable of being genuinely attracted to traits that are good in LTRs. This absolves them of the responsibility to admit that their own individual relationship/sexual issues and shortcomings may have been partly their own fault–perhaps through bad factors they could not control, like personality and life situation, but still things that centered around them, not the other. With the worldview they have now, all fault lies with women, with “female nature.”
As for the conversation among the 13-year-olds . . . does this resemble conversations that any female posters remember having at 13? I went to a lot of slumber parties at that age. We talked about the boys we had “crushes” on or the little short-term boyfriends we had, and I don’t remember this “hot but mean” “not-hot but nice” distinction at all. And we were not all stuck on the same ‘alpha male,’ either–and I’m glad Susan pointed out that Alpha Male does not necessarily = Mean Guy. The tall, good looking “Golden Boy Athletes” (prototype of the alpha male in American middle and high schools) were invariably nice guys. The Mean Guys were kids with family problems who acted out at school and were cruel to others, often especially the smaller boys and the girls. They may have picked up a few troubled girls as girlfriends, but they were never boyfriends or crushes of the majority. They also demonstrated high anxiety and other unattractive traits, while the stable, genial, outgoing, athletic Alphas generally seemed calm and in control–which are all quality traits to have in an LTR, AND are traits that can place one in a leadership position.
This idea that “successful with women” automatically = “poor character” seems like jealousy and projection and resentment Susan’s rundown at the beginning of the thread was perfect. Women like confidence, and some will take confidence along with other poor traits over lack of confidence and some accompanying positive traits, but in the end this means women are just attracted to confidence on a basic level, which is certainly not solely a “dark triad” thing.
@Anacaona
“I need to mention that among the many reasons I lost respect for feminism while I was around Jezebel was the dismissal of science that didn’t backed up their personal believes and agendas.”
That’s when I started to wonder what they were smoking too.
@Susan
this has more than a whiff of truth to it I reckon.
society used to teach everyone about consequences, which kept the fulfilling of the tingles down I suspect, especially pre-pill. It was kept to the pages of emo-romance-porn (Barbara Cartland etc), where it did little harm beyond raising ladies’ temperature in the bath.
nowadays, however, the pill is here and the media is all about the here & now, sexy, hawt, do whatever feels good etc…now it matters, because women are told to do what they want with abandon, no consequences girrrlfriend (well, till it’s too late maybe. single-mom).
if you remove consequences (and so much thought) from tingle chasing, perhaps the cause of the attraction (e.g. confidence) does take priority over the reality (in this case narcissism). Does it really matter that you pick a bad-boy if right here & now he’s got the consequence free tingle going?
Men would be wise to avoid claiming the moral high-ground on short term sexual thinking imho, but maybe it’s more corrosive on society when women reward bad behaviour (rather than men doing ONS with physical hotties but bad-girl personalities). It sends all the wrong signals to proto-PUAs, and hurts the good guys. Nobody wins in the end, well, apart from the alphas and genuine badboyz.
So, I like your list, it gives a plausible reason for the call of the triad. A bit deeper than the standard ‘All wimminz be ebul’ (read it somewhere, won’t be linking to it).
@Anacaona
I just noticed something, in the grand scheme of things a man will listen to what attracts a: 1-Hottie/Model/Sexy/Slut 2- 13 year old girl . . . . . . 3-Outliers/low or none hypergamic/Beta lovers/ happily married women that obviously admire and bed their husbands.
I’m sure other type of women fill in the blanks before anyone would listen to our type. More proof of the 80% disconnect
Nice hamstering, snow flake, but if the 80% were actually given a chance they’d go for a bad boy asshole in a heart beat. So spin all you wish, but men are fully aware that the hottie, the 13 year old, and the 80% ain’t all that different in their attraction triggers. Do you think the loyal husband and the bad boy don’t both find strippers arousing??? Most good girls ain’t really “good”, they just haven’t been given the opportunity to be bad. That’s all.
@Courtley
The reality is, I think, that for a lot of men it’s actually comforting to believe that women in aggregate are biologically incapable of being genuinely attracted to traits that are good in LTRs. This absolves them of the responsibility to admit that their own individual relationship/sexual issues and shortcomings may have been partly their own fault–perhaps through bad factors they could not control, like personality and life situation, but still things that centered around them, not the other. With the worldview they have now, all fault lies with women, with “female nature
Oh no. More of this bullshit!
Look lady, I don’t have a problem getting laid and I still think that “chicks dig assholes”, just like the “losers” that you passive aggressively called out.
Men don’t think this way about women because it’s comforting to us. Men think it because it’s true. But of course women would rather chalk it up to “male ego” than be forced to “own” their shit.
That sounds awesome! I wish I could go back and attend a few of those!
Haha, talk about not controlling the variables! That’s really the point of the post. Are hot guys mean or are mean guys hot? What is the interaction between good looking and “nice” or “not nice?” Studies have shown that women choose pics of men who look “nice” over men who look “not nice” when ranking attractiveness. But again, not having seen the photos, I can’t say what the controls were. Maybe the “not nice” photos looked like James Holmes and the “nice” photos looked like Ryan Gosling.
@INTJ
How is it obvious? What is the basis for this claim? We know that women trade off between “good genes” and “good co-parenting traits” when selecting a life partner. You appear to be claiming that women are perpetually unhappy with their choice once they’ve made it. There is overwhelming evidence that this is not the case, so please enlighten me re your sources.
It’s clear from the data around marriage and OOW births that the beta provider meme is once again not borne out by evidence. Where are these sackless betas working hard and paying to raise another man’s spawn?
I also find it kind of sad that you compare beta males to ugly women men get stuck with because they can’t do any better. There is a lot of self-hatred among betas. Good luck transforming into pure alpha.
@Robobob
Perhaps I phrased it incorrectly. Here is the link re the evolution of the Dark Triad traits:
http://www.hookingupsmart.com/2012/01/23/relationshipstrategies/how-narcissism-evolved
Interesting bits there re attractiveness and narcissism, i.e. “hot and mean”, as well as the prevalence of narcissism in male adolescence.
M – “But when women admit stuff like this, it appears to me that men can’t handle it. They don’t want to know the truth.”
Thanks for the honest answer, and I agree. The thing is, most men have been lied to all their lives and told that “being nice, being yourself” is what women want. So yes, many/most men DO INDEED get upset when they find out that if they had simply just not listened and did what they wanted, they would have had more success. And this is precisely WHY all this lying/hiding of the truth hurts us all.
I’m not advocating that men should all be bad asses, and women should all stop making good mate choices. However, there are plenty of cad/bad asses around, and I certainly see LOTS of poor mate choices around here. Any man that gets upset at the discovery of women lusting for “bad boys” hasn’t been unplugged, because despite all the pushback we get, Red Pill guys know that down at the root of all this “female choice” is a set of triggers that are almost impossible to completely deny. Surely women can make conscious choices to pick a quality mate, but IF she doesn’t make that choice, or if no one ever told her what NOT to choose, she will probably end up sexing up a cad/player/bad boy type. I see it all around me in the section 8 housing areas. These women are NOT making smart mate choices, and in most cases they all end up with several children to several different “bad boys”, because that IS their natural inclination.
“I accept men’s shallow preferences, but I rarely meet men who fully accept the ‘shallow’ side of women.”
See above. I agree with you, but the only reason men are SO pissed off by this is because we were lied to about it most of our lives. If I’d grown up knowing women tended to choose the cad over the dad, I could have made more informed and intelligent decisions regarding my mating and pairing habits. But, by being lied to, I was denied the opportunity to make that truly informed choice. However, all women know that “men are pigs”, so women DO get all the info to make their choices.
“But while men are very good at justifying their preferences, women are stuck with being “golddiggers” or just naive and cheap.”
I don’t “justify” my choice to anyone, because I don’t have to. The only person I owe a justification to is myself, and I’m perfectly fine knowing I like attractive women. So, why are women so upset to learn that deep down, they actually like ‘bad men’. Liking a hot women doesn’t make me a bad person, and liking a guy that is a little sociopathic doesn’t make you a bad person either. (not saying you DO like sociopaths, so I didn’t mean you as in M). And in fact, knowing and admitting this fact MAY just keep you from making a HUGE mistake and marrying an abusive guy.
In the end, it bothers me when people lie in general, but it really gets my panties in a bunch when they lie to themselves so convincingly that others start to believe them as well.
Susan – “Check out the big brain on Ted. LOL, you believe? On what basis? “
See above. Come around and take a walk in the section 8 housing areas around here, and tell me that left to their own devices women DO NOT by and large choose “bad boys” to be their children’s sperm donor. There is NO WAY you can tell me that these guys are all duping women into believing they are “dad” material. To me, the poorest communities in the U.S. represent the most basic existence of humanity (in the West) outside of people literally living in the woods. They KNOW they will be given a roof and something to eat, so they have no need to select a “dad” and therefore they don’t even bother trying. So, their default mode of mate selection is: bad boy
ADBG – “Essentially what it comes off as is…You are a woman dating a Jew admitting that you find Nazis sexier than him. That’s how it comes across to a hardened, bitter Beta Guy, or even a relatively healthy Beta Guy with some deep wounds.”
LOL. Very nice imagery there, and I agree 100%.
Susan – “I think men are loath to examine the HOT part. Women are attracted to hot, handsome, well-built men. Character traits cannot be evaluated at first sighting, or even first meeting. The initial attraction is always physical, even for women.”
Surely you know that many very successful PUA types are NOT at all handsome. So, although HOT may be an instant trigger for many women, it obviously isn’t the reason women go for the “bad boy” en masse.
M – “Well, the character traits I mentioned creates sexual attraction. So the difference is that there are actually more personality traits which qualifies a man for commitment”
Ouch. OK, I’ll buy this completely. But, then you must understand that for the most part, men in general ARE NOT looking for commitment as the end goal. Sure, most of us will sign on for a lifelong commitment with a women we really like to have sex with that seems decent to live with as well, but it isn’t like most guys are literally looking to get married. You see, what we really want is sex, so if you want to drive behavior, well, then giving sex easily to “bad boys” is a losing proposition, hence the newfound interest in Game. Nice guys are learning to be “bad boys” in the hopes of getting sex, which may or may not come with commitment.
And in case you don’t know, I’m actually very supportive of marriage and the core family. I’ve spent most of my life expecting to marry and have children, but even I realized that before all that, I needed to find a woman I liked having sex with. Because as I found out, there IS no marriage without some type of sex life for most guys, myself included.
JH – “That’s actually not too ridiculous… There’s little to no difference between what I was sexually attracted to at 13 and what I’m attracted to today. I could be wrong, but I think attraction cues pretty static for most guys throughout their lives”
I’ve seen somewhere that this is basically true (I really need to start saving links to the stuff I read for use here and elsewhere…) And to me this is exactly why its important to learn what 13 year old people find attractive, because to me that is about the time when their sexuality and attraction triggers are at their most natural state. All this discussion of “maturing” is totally true, but irrelevant to the discussion I am trying to have. Surely who we choose to mate with is not the only behavior we “mature” into. And to me, anything we have to be mature enough to do correctly is something we’ve overridden with conscious decision, because it proves we have to learn NOT to follow our instinct.
INTJ – “Definitely true. Of course, the difference is that boys are taught to mature and consider things besides just attraction cues, so the mating strategies change as they get older, even if their basic attraction cues stay the same.
Unfortunately, the equivalent message isn’t getting across as loudly to girls, so many of them continue to follow the same attraction cues they had when they were 13.”
This is the point I’m doing a VERY bad job of getting across. Boys are taught from an early age to override their base desires when it comes to sex, but as far as I can see, many/most Western women are NOT taught anything similar. I have to wonder why, and I think it is because to admit that women have such base desires undermines much of what Feminism wants us to believe about women.
Mireille – “It seems to me a lot of men around here are decrying the fact they would never find a mate if we were back to just being “animals” and are saddened that some women still function on that model when men have “obviously ” evolved beyond considering women’s looks as criteria number one for mating.”
I can’t speak for other men, but this isn’t my beef at all. I’m miffed because it would have been FAR EASIER for me to grow up actually being myself than to try and be what I was TOLD to be because WOMEN WANTED IT THAT WAY. I’m saddened that at some level ALL women still function on that model while I was doing my best to downplay the very traits they find attractive. It doesn’t bother me that my wife finds assholean behavior a little arousing, I’m upset because I now have an EX-wife because I did my best to NOT be assholean to her, when in fact I should have just stood up to her and been an asshole. I have NO PROBLEM giving my current wife a little assholean behavior now and again to keep her attracted. I just wish SHE and all women knew that they actually want it as well. Then we could stop playing this game of deception, where I pretend to be a nice guy and she pretends to be attracted to that. I’d much prefer we both know and admit that much of what she finds attractive about me IS NOT the good stuff. Sure, she wants the good stuff, and I’m more than happy to provide it. But, the truth is, my wife isn’t hot for me because I cook well, or clean house, or do laundry, or bring home a paycheck. She may LOVE me for all that, but she isn’t ATTRACTED to me for any of it. What is she attracted to? Well, everyone here is aware of what an opinionated asshole I am. I know my wife finds that highly attractive, because she thoroughly enjoys watching me go into “asshole” mode on people. I generally dislike it because most issues cannot be solved with bad behavior. But, on occasion, being a total dick CAN get you what you want, and when I find myself in one of those situations, I do my best to make sure my wife has a great seat to watch. Because rest assured, she will be on my like white on rice later that night.
Courtley – “The reality is, I think, that for a lot of men it’s actually comforting to believe that women in aggregate are biologically incapable of being genuinely attracted to traits that are good in LTRs. This absolves them of the responsibility to admit that their own individual relationship/sexual issues and shortcomings may have been partly their own fault–perhaps through bad factors they could not control, like personality and life situation, but still things that centered around them, not the other. With the worldview they have now, all fault lies with women, with “female nature.””
I’ve said many times that I am fully aware (now) of my participation in the failure of my marriage. The rub is, that failure was not because I lacked any kind of LTR skills. It was because I lacked “bad boy” skills, or more to the point, I did my damndest to NOT be a “bad boy” to her, which was in the end my fatal mistake. I think most women don’t want to be married to a total asshole, just like most men don’t want to be married to a total bitch. However, a little bitch every now and again does make things interesting for men, and it seems that a little “bad boy” here and there makes married/LTR life much more appealing to women. If this information was known and accepted, everyone would be better informed to take responsibility for their relationship issues and work them out, instead of attempting this feat based on completely misguided ideas. In my case, “common wisdom” told me to be more accommodating, more supplicating, and more “nice” for my wife to keep her from leaving, when in fact I should have simply treated her with some good old fashioned assholean pushback. But, I was led to believe women didn’t LIKE assholes, and although they may indeed not LIKE assholes, they are certainly turned on by them. If I had to choose between my wife liking me and my wife finding me sexually irresistible, I would choose hot for me hands down.
EvilAlpha – “but if the 80% were actually given a chance they’d go for a bad boy asshole in a heart beat.”
And now I find myself cosigning you. Although I will allow for NAWALT and say that perhaps 10% of that 80% wouldn’t jump at the bad boy. The rest? Yep, if they could sex up a true alpha bad boy without consequence, they would do it in a heartbeat.
And if indeed women are just as interested in sex as men, why is it so hard to face this truth? Just about every man alive understands that given the chance to sex up a really hot woman without consequence, they would trip over their pants running to her. But somehow the general consensus is that women are not subject to such desire. THAT is the root of all this BS to me.
Susan – “Where are these sackless betas working hard and paying to raise another man’s spawn?”
*raises hand*
I wouldn’t call myself a sackless beta now, but before? Yeah, maybe. And not only did I sign up voluntarily to raise another man’s child once, I’ve done it a second time. However, this time around I had an idea of exactly what I was doing, and why I was doing it. I’m OK with my choice because I’m getting what *I* want out of the situation, and in the process these children will get to have a “father figure” in the house, which studies are finding out is VERY important for proper development of children, including the link I sent you recently regarding a present father being linked to higher self esteem in children.
And to take this a step further, in some ways YOU are that sackless beta Susan, as is everyone that pays taxes. Why you ask? Because OUR tax dollars are supporting single mothers everywhere that got pregnant to an alpha/cad/PUA/”bad boy”. We’ve replaced the sackless beta with the Nanny State (TM). The meme still exists, it has just been absorbed by the state.
@Ted D – “Unfortunately, the equivalent message isn’t getting across as loudly to girls, so many of them continue to follow the same attraction cues they had when they were 13.”
I think my primary attraction cue at that age was “do you have an IQ in the top 1% of the human population?”
I’m not positive that ever changed for me, although if I were dating today, I would do my best to acquire a full psychological profile. I’ve learned that’s important, too after reading enough psychological profiles to learn that there are truly bizzare people out there.
I think you are seeing the adaptive unconscious filtering mechanism at work: the two boys are screened and put in “hot” or “not hot” categories very quickly, and then they carry with them those emotional tags as they migrate to more conscious parts of the girls’ brains. The “hot” guy’s behavior will then be rationalized as attractive almost regardless of what he does; the poor “not hot” guy will suffer the opposing fate. It’s probably quite difficult to escape from these designations.
I don’t think that the “mean” part is necessarily important. It may be hotness uber alles. He could be “hot and mean”, he could be “hot and nice”, he could be “hot yet glacially indifferent”—I suppose that what is important is that the guy is hot, period.
I don’t think that the “mean” part is necessarily important. It may be hotness uber alles. He could be “hot and mean”, he could be “hot and nice”, he could be “hot yet glacially indifferent”—I suppose that what is important is that the guy is hot, period.
Sorry but “hot” needs to be defined, thus a discussion of mean is very important.
And to take this a step further, in some ways YOU are that sackless beta Susan, as is everyone that pays taxes. Why you ask? Because OUR tax dollars are supporting single mothers everywhere that got pregnant to an alpha/cad/PUA/”bad boy”. We’ve replaced the sackless beta with the Nanny State (TM). The meme still exists, it has just been absorbed by the state
But Ted, women “don’t need men”! Lol.
@Ted – “And to take this a step further, in some ways YOU are that sackless beta Susan, as is everyone that pays taxes. Why you ask? Because OUR tax dollars are supporting single mothers everywhere that got pregnant to an alpha/cad/PUA/”bad boy”. We’ve replaced the sackless beta with the Nanny State (TM).”
The Nanny State had certain financial limitations, such as the wall of debt that we’re going to crash into.
@Esau
We know that only 3% of men have sex with more than 6 women during their four years of college.
*Let’s assume they’re the jerkiest of jerks.
We also know that 15% of men are in frats, and another group plays varsity sports. They have more sex than other guys on campus.
*Let’s assume they primarily make up the other 17% of promiscuous, or most desirable, men on campus. To get to 20% overall, we need to define manslut as anyone who has sex with more than 3 girls in college, but for the sake of argument, let’s stick with that.
We know that 15% of women are in sororities, and that female athletes often socialize with males athletes.
*Let’s assume there is a large overlap between women who socialize with promiscuous men and women who are attracted to promiscuous men.
And yet…even the sluttiest men and women are not racking up much of a partner count. If the women are highly attracted to these high status BMOCs, and women are always at the ready when alpha is present, why aren’t we seeing more sex?
And what of the other 80% of women on campus? Surely a woman who sets her sights on hooking up with an alpha might be reasonably expected to succeed, simply by walking into a fraternity party and announcing her desire to get f*cked, no?
If you don’t care for my hypothetical scenario, perhaps these links will serve to inform you:
I. http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Preferred+level+of+sexual+experience+in+a+date+or+mate:+the+merger+of%E2%80%A6-a020536041
II. http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/releases/all-it-takes-is-a-smile-for-some-guys.html
III. http://www.bakadesuyo.com/do-women-who-really-enjoy-sex-prefer-bad-boys
The short answer to your question is that I have little tolerance for or interest in communicating with people who approach the debate with a consistently disagreeable demeanor. You are extremely disagreeable in your communication style, characterized by your frequent confrontations, accusing others of selfishness, cruelty or misandry.
EA – “But Ted, women “don’t need men”! Lol.”
However, life needs resources, and if women don’t have men to GET resources, someone or something has to step in, hence the Nanny State (TM) does the job for us in the modern Western world.
I don’t have a problem with someone that is genuinely down on their luck leaning on the government to help. I take issue with people that see Welfare as a lifestyle choice. Not only are they a leech on society, but they generally make things worse by creating more people destined to grow up choosing the same lifestyle. And, what is even more disturbing to me is they tend to reproduce at break neck speed and in large numbers. While hard working people are having one or two children (because as responsible adults they realize they cannot afford more) many Welfare “lifers” have enough children in the house to form a baseball team. So in a way some areas are literally being over run by section 8 housing because those people keep reproducing, which then increases the need for more public housing. The responsible adults? They get pushed out of the area entirely unless they want to deal with the unsavory side effects of section 8 housing.
I’m dealing with exactly this situation in my area, so I am fully aware that I have a “dog in this fight”, and I will even admit that perhaps MY views are a little jaded. But it is easy enough to see that although I may be a little “heated” on the subject, what I say is plenty true enough.
@ Ana:
You’re right. I remember that post. Women who fall for cads actually think he’s going to treat them different. I can see the faulty logic in that from a hundred miles away, so when I hear that I shake my head and roll my eyes.
Women who don’t fall for cads, don’t go for “misunderstood” jerks who are mean to everyone else but “nice” to her when they are alone. (e.g, Alex Karev from “Grey’s Anatomy”; Season 2!)
It’s juvenile thinking! Mature women realize if he’s rude to waiters, mean to his co-workers, and bitter towards his Ex/baby momma then ONE DAY he’s gonna turn on you too!
Love can’t “save” anyone! Some people learn this lesson sooner than others. And unfortunately, some people never do.
(And yes, women and men are both guilty of trying to so with a lost cause. Prime example of the male hamster: “Yeah, she cheated on me at that party with my friend but she was drunk and didn’t know what she was doing! He took advantage. I love her too much to break up!”)
+ 1!
I agree, this “all women” have a “base instinct” for bad boys is bogus. I never went for the bad boy.
Nonsense. Neither sex is immune to impulsive, risky, or foolish behavior, and both sexes mature cognitively to make better mating decisions over time. The sexual gluttony of most of the men who have options is evidence that many men forfeit education and professional development in hedonistic pursuit of pussy.
@ Ted D:
* stands up, begins slow clap*
Epic. Fucking epic. Could. Not. Have. Said. It. Any. Better.
Ted D for president.
@SciGuy
Bless you, I needed that! I confess I find it ironic that many of the guys who want to discount scientific research are STEM.
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