The 40% of moms unwed statistic I quoted yesterday jolted me into thinking more about something I knew was important, but had thought little about. I don’t yet have much of an opinion on whether to embrace or resist the new low-marriage mating equilibrium we seem to be heading toward, something between US ghettos and Sweden today, relative to a high-marriage equilibrium we might instead choose, perhaps like Japan or Utah today.
Pretty much by definition, women who die in childbirth have had sex. Men who have to go through a kill-or-be-killed trial as a test of manhood. pretty much by definition haven't.
i just read a little bit of this and thot 'who cares about this?' the writing is bad. i think you are trying to sound clever or intellectual or something. just say what you have to say plainly
To Robert and Doug S."Not thinking of yourself as a loser" is a mental feedback loop, just like pleasure from ejaculation, only decoupled from your peripheral hardware. Its purpose is the same though, that is, to motivate you to get a mate and ensure reproduction, so I don't see why with a bit of introspection you couldn't short-circuit it too, if you don't care about its goal and it's cheaper than "the obvious default way out the evolution intended" in the long run.
I think it's quite simple. Sexual desire is about reproduction, and because of differing parental investments the male strategy is quantity and female strategy is quality.
So high quality males will have a high quantity of sex, and high quantity of women will have high quality sex. There's the simple imbalance.
I don't see how the imbalance doesn't exist now. It exists with the clients of prostitutes and it exists with the users of pornography.
"unless it’s being implied that women in committed relationships have more sex than they would otherwise for the sake of their mates? "
well prostitutes have more sex than they would otherwise for the sake of money. And probably even women in relationships have sex for the sake of their mates, eventhough men want more sex and especially with varied partners.
Solution: Unsexy men pool resources to pay sexy men to be monogamous and monitored. A good source of income for untalented actors.
I don't think this can work at all.
Suppose that men are willing to have sex with 10 times as many partners as women, so women will only sleep with the most attractive 10% of then men. So the other 90% of the men get together and pay the alpha males to be monogamous, effectively removing them from the dating pool along with the 10% most attractive women.
Now the remaining 90% of women will STILL only sleep with the top 10% of the remaining men! So every man below the 81st percentile is being a chump, paying an pretty-boy actor without getting any benefit out of it.
What this example shows is that there is no hope of collective action: every man on the margin of desirability has to pay the full price of removing a rival. Which is no improvement over simply bribing the good-looking guy in the singles-bar to leave.
My sense is that both men and women prefer partners of approximately equal or greater sexiness.
And there are even hard numbers on it! See figure 1A ofhttp://papers.ssrn.com/sol3... :)
Roissy tries, but fails, to frame discussions of "alpha male" behavior in the context of singles bar and the poseurs one finds there. But alpha males don't frequent singles bars. Instead they are busy building their career in business and politics. And the likelihood of finding fertile, healthy women suitable for reproduction is lower in singles bars than in other venues (not to mention the high risk of contracting a disease that may terminate your genetic line).
Some, but not all, behaviors found in singles bars are shared by other primates. Put 20 alpha male gorillas in a room with 20 female gorillas and see what happens. Humans aren't the same species: we have some unique behaviors.
I believe polygamy in early societies was promoted by high male mortality. There was a lot of tribal warfare, and some cases where the test of manhood was to kill a man from the warring tribe. Add to this hunting casualties, intra-tribal warfare, and general male risk-taking behaviour.This would make polygamy agreeable to pretty much everyone, since the alternative would be a bunch of single women, which isn't best for anyone.
There seems to be a ton of hand-waving about this topic, especially at blogs such as Roissy's. Where is the hard data? If we're trying to overcome bias, lets look at the hard facts first.
Is there data to support the idea that tribal societies were filled with polygamous 'alphas' and single 'betas'? Browsing wikipedia shows that 80% of marriages in polygamous societies involve one husband and one wife. The vast majority of human societies (and thus an even vaster majority of actual humans) are, either in practice or in law, monogamous.
In societies where financial benefits are not given to the woman upon divorce, do women still initiate most divorces?
Are there more wives who get bored of their husbands than vise-versa? This would be very hard for me to believe.
Before we feel sorry for anyone, shouldn't we first attempt to understand what is triggering this shift in the mating equilibrium? Consider these possible explanations:
The expanding availability of free and low-cost Internet porn has made sex (and hence marriage) less appealing to men.Changes in child support laws has made it easier for moms to forcibly extract resources from (possibly unwilling) dads, and therefore made marriage less appealing to women.
I don't claim these exhaust the range of possibilities, but it seems clear that who we should feel sympathy for depends on what's going on, which I don't think we know yet.
I think that women are more tolerant of infidelity from their mates than men are with infidelity in theirs. This means that there will be more pseudo-stable polygynous men, which will drain a disproportionate number of women out of the active dating market.
Also, what with all this concern about inequality, it would be amusing to see what an "affirmative-action" or "quotas" system for unsexy men would be like.
My sense is that both men and women prefer partners of approximately equal or greater sexiness. So an extremely sexy man may have fewer interesting (to him) opportunities than an averagely sexy man.
I disagree with Will Wilkinson's point. Many, perhaps most, appealing men will have sex with the most attractive woman who is close at hand and will have sex with them. If an appealing man is at a bar he will first hit on an equally appealing woman. But if this woman turns him down he will generally proceed to the next most appealing woman. It's the "closing time at the bar" scenario.
He wouldn't have a relationship with these less attractive women, but he will gladly have sex with them instead of having no sex that night.
But the less attractive woman will probably think she has a shot at having a relationship with this more attractive guy, so she has sex with him. And is surprised when he has sex with her and never calls her again. She complains that guys won't commit. It's not guys who won't commit, but these highly appealing guys who won't commit to her, a woman who is less attractive than them.
Pretty much by definition, women who die in childbirth have had sex. Men who have to go through a kill-or-be-killed trial as a test of manhood. pretty much by definition haven't.
i just read a little bit of this and thot 'who cares about this?' the writing is bad. i think you are trying to sound clever or intellectual or something. just say what you have to say plainly
To Robert and Doug S."Not thinking of yourself as a loser" is a mental feedback loop, just like pleasure from ejaculation, only decoupled from your peripheral hardware. Its purpose is the same though, that is, to motivate you to get a mate and ensure reproduction, so I don't see why with a bit of introspection you couldn't short-circuit it too, if you don't care about its goal and it's cheaper than "the obvious default way out the evolution intended" in the long run.
I think it's quite simple. Sexual desire is about reproduction, and because of differing parental investments the male strategy is quantity and female strategy is quality.
So high quality males will have a high quantity of sex, and high quantity of women will have high quality sex. There's the simple imbalance.
I don't see how the imbalance doesn't exist now. It exists with the clients of prostitutes and it exists with the users of pornography.
"unless it’s being implied that women in committed relationships have more sex than they would otherwise for the sake of their mates? "
well prostitutes have more sex than they would otherwise for the sake of money. And probably even women in relationships have sex for the sake of their mates, eventhough men want more sex and especially with varied partners.
I'd always thought the higher male mortality was balanced out by a high rate of death during childbirth?
Whether I'm right or wrong, I'd still like to see a lot more data and citations which discussing topics like these.
agreed
Solution: Unsexy men pool resources to pay sexy men to be monogamous and monitored. A good source of income for untalented actors.
I don't think this can work at all.
Suppose that men are willing to have sex with 10 times as many partners as women, so women will only sleep with the most attractive 10% of then men. So the other 90% of the men get together and pay the alpha males to be monogamous, effectively removing them from the dating pool along with the 10% most attractive women.
Now the remaining 90% of women will STILL only sleep with the top 10% of the remaining men! So every man below the 81st percentile is being a chump, paying an pretty-boy actor without getting any benefit out of it.
What this example shows is that there is no hope of collective action: every man on the margin of desirability has to pay the full price of removing a rival. Which is no improvement over simply bribing the good-looking guy in the singles-bar to leave.
My sense is that both men and women prefer partners of approximately equal or greater sexiness.
And there are even hard numbers on it! See figure 1A ofhttp://papers.ssrn.com/sol3... :)
Does anyone know of a good study/survey on why do people (men and women) divorce?
It could help us start understanding the theme of this thread.
Roissy tries, but fails, to frame discussions of "alpha male" behavior in the context of singles bar and the poseurs one finds there. But alpha males don't frequent singles bars. Instead they are busy building their career in business and politics. And the likelihood of finding fertile, healthy women suitable for reproduction is lower in singles bars than in other venues (not to mention the high risk of contracting a disease that may terminate your genetic line).
Some, but not all, behaviors found in singles bars are shared by other primates. Put 20 alpha male gorillas in a room with 20 female gorillas and see what happens. Humans aren't the same species: we have some unique behaviors.
I believe polygamy in early societies was promoted by high male mortality. There was a lot of tribal warfare, and some cases where the test of manhood was to kill a man from the warring tribe. Add to this hunting casualties, intra-tribal warfare, and general male risk-taking behaviour.This would make polygamy agreeable to pretty much everyone, since the alternative would be a bunch of single women, which isn't best for anyone.
There seems to be a ton of hand-waving about this topic, especially at blogs such as Roissy's. Where is the hard data? If we're trying to overcome bias, lets look at the hard facts first.
Is there data to support the idea that tribal societies were filled with polygamous 'alphas' and single 'betas'? Browsing wikipedia shows that 80% of marriages in polygamous societies involve one husband and one wife. The vast majority of human societies (and thus an even vaster majority of actual humans) are, either in practice or in law, monogamous.
In societies where financial benefits are not given to the woman upon divorce, do women still initiate most divorces?
Are there more wives who get bored of their husbands than vise-versa? This would be very hard for me to believe.
Before we feel sorry for anyone, shouldn't we first attempt to understand what is triggering this shift in the mating equilibrium? Consider these possible explanations:
The expanding availability of free and low-cost Internet porn has made sex (and hence marriage) less appealing to men.Changes in child support laws has made it easier for moms to forcibly extract resources from (possibly unwilling) dads, and therefore made marriage less appealing to women.
I don't claim these exhaust the range of possibilities, but it seems clear that who we should feel sympathy for depends on what's going on, which I don't think we know yet.
I think that women are more tolerant of infidelity from their mates than men are with infidelity in theirs. This means that there will be more pseudo-stable polygynous men, which will drain a disproportionate number of women out of the active dating market.
Also, what with all this concern about inequality, it would be amusing to see what an "affirmative-action" or "quotas" system for unsexy men would be like.
I don't agree with this but you can't criticize Roissy for lack of... will:
http://roissy.wordpress.com...
Also, all men prefer partners that are much more attractive than they are. Duh.
My sense is that both men and women prefer partners of approximately equal or greater sexiness. So an extremely sexy man may have fewer interesting (to him) opportunities than an averagely sexy man.
I disagree with Will Wilkinson's point. Many, perhaps most, appealing men will have sex with the most attractive woman who is close at hand and will have sex with them. If an appealing man is at a bar he will first hit on an equally appealing woman. But if this woman turns him down he will generally proceed to the next most appealing woman. It's the "closing time at the bar" scenario.
He wouldn't have a relationship with these less attractive women, but he will gladly have sex with them instead of having no sex that night.
But the less attractive woman will probably think she has a shot at having a relationship with this more attractive guy, so she has sex with him. And is surprised when he has sex with her and never calls her again. She complains that guys won't commit. It's not guys who won't commit, but these highly appealing guys who won't commit to her, a woman who is less attractive than them.