Well, there might be an inkling of a point in the visual attraction idea.

That is, back in the day, status typically meant "being able to beat up the smaller guys," which would probably correspond to musculature, etc. So, I see it as plausible that some women would perhaps still trigger off of a physical status when that isn't the sole (or necessarily major) driver of status anymore. After all, there are still guys making mega bucks in sports., Perhaps SOME women are cued in to status as the physically fit variety while others are more attuned to other measures of status, such as displays of wealth, etc.

There are multiple status cues in the modern world, and some aren't easy to see instantly - that multi-million net-worth programmer might drive a Ford Focus, but have a $10,000 server setup. What type of cues are women picking up on and does it vary?

Sad that so many use the word, "evolution" without knowing what it means - simplified as "selecting for success", pointedly NOT optimization, it takes generations. I suppose religious argument still suppresses study of this very real thing.
Evolution's action being keyed to generations is why Lenski used e. Coli for mutation studies, and not the Galapogos tortoise.
And for humans, it's definitely neither willful nor finished with us.
It's just slow. V e r y slow.

I'm no psychologist, but from what I've seen, I think one of the cues (hetero) women use is a man's status among men. That is, the guy other guys accord high status to. It doesn't matter if he's leader of a big bank or a motorcycle gang.

It helps explain why young males, who do ostensibly stupid things, like driving fast or jumping off cliffs in flying squirrel suits, get women. Women might think its stupidly dangerous, and objectively speaking, they're right. A guy with a high percentage chance of a young death will not be as good a bet as a provider as one living in mom's house while he learns accounting. But the ones that survive and take such risks are the guys that guys accord respect, and women seemed drawn to that. Consciously, they're thinking he's exciting and unpredictable. I believe that subconsciously they're thinking he's a high value male. (I've also been amazed at how a woman's view of her man's vigorous hobbies, like mtb-ing, change from "fun" to "stupid", after kids are along and the guy gets knicked up.)

And, just like women are drawn to good looking (proxy for healthy) men, even though it isn't the prime attraction, men are drawn to women with high status among women in their group. So the bitchy queen bee and the obnoxious high school football star pair up. They're probably both good looking anyway, because looks are an indicator of health, and both genders accord status to good looking people. We guys just don't really care if the woman has money or accomplishments. (And, yes, there quite a number of very nice and likeable prom queens and star athletes, they just don't have to be nice.)

"What type of cues are women picking up on and does it vary?"

The answer is yes it varies. There are certain physical appearances that make women hot for a man. But those are typically proxies for status. And they rarely are more significant than the things a man surrounds himself with. Having a nice haircut is roughly as significant as an expensive shirt. Ripped abs usually rate lower than the haircut. And having other women want him trumps all of that.

Guys aren't immune to status, but it ranks way way down compared to physical attributes.

The perfect example of this is homosexuality. Gays have a well deserved reputation for being beautiful. Physical appearance is important to men. Lesbians have a well deserved reputation for looking homely. Physical appearance isn't really significant for women.

Oh, and Rad, I doubt religion has anything to do with people's misconceptions about evolution. People don't like the randomness of it. Religious or not doesn't enter into the equation. Look at all the figures of speech involving evolution. Saying your views evolved doesn't just mean they changed. It also means they are 'better' or 'improved' which as you point out has nothing to do with evolution. It is not a directed process and not every change is better. Or evolving into homosuperior like the x-men. It stems from the same place as "The Arc of the Moral Universe Is Long But It Bends Toward Justice". Which is a bunch of poppycock. Justice, improvement, superiority is by no means guaranteed. They can happen by random chance but intentional action is far more successful.

You know, I encountered a quote on Reddit somewhere: women do not value a man's love, they love a man's value.

I honestly believe that is the norm, and that a man's true quest for romantic happiness is to find a woman who is the exception.

I never obsessed over raising my status, because I never saw it as conducive toward a worthwhile relationship. I mean yeah, it'll get you laid, but it won't get you a relationship worth keeping. The way I see it, raising your status only attracts women who love your status, it attracts women who don't and cannot ever love you for you. Think about it - if she didn't love you when you had a Ford Fiesta, does she love you when you suddenly get a Bentley? I see no way to a "yes" answer to that except by deceiving oneself. (I say the same thing to men who can't love a woman who's homely: he ain't ready for a mature relationship.)

Thing is while our lizard brain wields great power over us, humans also have this thing called sentience, right? The way I see it, sentience is what allowed me to process the life experience of myself and others, and throw in a little dash of self-reflection. The end result? I outgrew my obsession over a woman's looks at a very early age. Likewise, my wife met me when I was down and almost out: her neo cortex talked over her lizard brain. It took me until I was in my 30s to find her but oh well. (Let's just say we're the far opposite of down and out but only long after we got married!)

At some point sentience has to overcome biology: else we wouldn't have a civilization at all, right? Instead of trying to raise your status to compete for a woman, why not just focus on being a decent guy and look for a woman whose neo cortex gets the final say-so? Sure that'll have you waiting a very long time but the way I see it, a sure-fire way to cause women to change their tune is to discover that men are statistically holding out for women who aren't status-obsessed!

Whenever topics such as this come up I am always disturbed by how many people profess to understand how evolution works... and proceed to gloss over one of its key features.

We can certainly talk about average traits, such as average height, average weight... and yes, even average psychology. That is all well and good up until the point where we neglect the fact that the key driving force behind evolution is phenotypic variation within the population.

Evolution by definition is a change in allele frequency within the population... this means a change in the distribution of genes.

By definition we aren't talking about the mere "average" here... we are talking about the distribution, which captures both the statistical mean as well as the variation around that mean.

Some traits are HIGHLY conserved, such as the biological pathways to process glucose into ATP... if that pathway is broken you don't even form a functioning zygote, let alone have the opportunity to seek a mate.

Other traits show significant variation. Human psychology happens to fall into the camp where high levels of variation exist.

The very fact that we have homosexual men and women should help people to understand that there is absolutely nothing unusual about a woman who claims to be attracted to good looks over money.

That may not be the average behavior... but it isn't exactly the same as finding a person who has 4 functional arms.

the women whose children survived to pass on their genes to us were those who vetted men for the ability and willingness to "provide."

Amy has repeated this account many times in many posts--but is it true? Did cavemen and cavewomen form nuclear families, with each man providing only for those children he conceived with "his" woman? Or did the whole tribe share in the care of all its children, regardless of which woman they were born to or which man fathered them? Were they even aware of the connection between sex and babies? (Seems to me that wouldn't be obvious, given that most sex acts don't result in pregnancy, and when they do it takes weeks to become known.)

These are not rhetorical questions. I'd like to know the answers, if they're not lost in the mists of time.

My observations are unrelated to the column, but this statement was interesting to me, "Women don't need men to survive anymore."

Every time I hear women talk like this, I think of third-wave feminists. I've been grappling with the very real possibility that Hillary is going to become our next President, and when she does, she's going to open the doors of immigration, heedless of the kind of hell that refugees are creating in Europe.

And while the visceral part of me is horrified at the prospect, the clinical part of me is quietly amused. Not only will these third-wave feminists (who claim we live in a rape culture and treat it like it's a given) learn what a true "rape culture" is, but they'll be whining and crying that no men are coming forward to protect them when these barbarians are groping and molesting them in public swimming pools.

Men have no legal duty whatsoever when we see a woman getting raped. I'm perfectly within my rights to walk on by and ignore the entire thing. If I see a five-year-old drowning in the ocean, I have absolutely no requirement to do a single thing to save them.

These feminists, all the while claiming that they're being oppressed by men, will demand special laws in place that require men to put their own lives and safety on the line to protect them from sexual assault.

"Amy has repeated this account many times in many posts--but is it true? Did cavemen and cavewomen form nuclear families, with each man providing only for those children he conceived with "his" woman"

No, in a nutshell.

Priminative tribes ( cavemen) are extended families with a process for being in new blood, and fresh genes through marriage into the group.

Scientific studies seem to indicate that a large component of sexual attractiveness for women, is how dissimilar a mans genes are from her own. This genetic diversity tends to produce healthier and more surviving offspring.

This is why a lot of us think the current American nuclear families model with ubiquitous single parenting and divorce is unsustainable.

There is nothing more worthless to civilization and the gene pool than a gay or straight relationship consisting of two individuals, with no offspring and no extended family ties.

It is a very poor vehicle for raising the next generation and transmitting any shared cultural values.

The Asians do it better as they almost always maintain large extended families, and value those relationships.

Rex,

Women (in general) have a very visceral, biologically driven attachment to their own children and sometimes to those of their descendants. They almost never develop the same attachment to anyone else's children. Sisters, neighbors, random strangers, quite frankly if it didn't come out of their bodies it is 'not their's'. Men have a very different reaction to children. Men emotionally bond with a child when they chose to take care of it. Biological relationship is irrelevant. It is all about that first choice. Please understand that this bond is just as strong and hormonally driven as the female one. Only the beginning is 'voluntary'. After bonding happens it is equally traumatic to break for both men and women.

"Were they even aware of the connection between sex and babies?"

To my understanding even cavemen understood sex leads to babies. It is not that complicated and cavemen were technologically ignorant not stupid.

"Did cavemen and cavewomen form nuclear families, with each man providing only for those children he conceived with "his" woman?"

If you mean one man one woman families the answer is no. My understanding is most groups had one man with many women and many men with no women.

"Or did the whole tribe share in the care of all its children, regardless of which woman they were born to or which man fathered them?"

No. Even within a family it was normal (and still is today for polygamous ones) for a woman to take care of only her children. A sister wive's children are competition.

One on average shares 50% of genes with parents, children, and siblings. First cousins share 25%. Therefore, we descend not only from those who were suited enough to reproduce and support their offspring to reproduce, but also from those who had "kin" to help with the latter.

Tribes were predominantly kin.

It's really hard to know what people did hundreds of thousands of years ago. Probably the best bet we have is looking at traditional cultures.

Traditional cultures are all over the place. Some are fairly monogamous (i.e. one husband, one wife, strictly enforced). Some are polygynous (one man, LOTS of wives!). Some are promiscuous (women sleep with whomever they feel like and generally wealth passes through women + brothers, etc. care for the kids). There are even (exceedingly rarely) polyandrous societies. Probably most common are polygynous and monogamous, but other variations do exist. (And some researchers think that matrilineal societies - i.e. those where Dad isn't super important because Mom owns all the stuff anyway and maternal uncles are raising the kids - used to be more common than they appear to be now.)

So it's really hard to tell. Probably the best guess is how people "used to be" is how it worked out best for them.

Rex,

There really isn't a "traditional" society, at least as far as we know it. Monogamy and polygyny appear to be most common - but there's some evidence that matrilineal societies (i.e. where dad doesn't matter much as mom owns everything and maternal uncles do a lot of the "man's work" around the family farm) used to be more common. Heck, even polyandry exists, although it's pretty rare and exclusively between (literal) brother-husbands.

It's one thing that makes me side eye ev bio pretty hard. If there was *one* way in which all human societies functioned, then yeah, it might make sense to have *one* dominant mating strategy. But human societies are widely divergent, so different tactics make sense for both men and women in different situations.

The very fact that we have homosexual men and women should help people to understand that there is absolutely nothing unusual about a woman who claims to be attracted to good looks over money.

That may not be the average behavior... but it isn't exactly the same as finding a person who has 4 functional arms. - Artemis

Artemis, I dont think the point is people are astounded at statistical outliers.

The point is statistical outliers need to stop being pissy about the fact that they arent the normal ones and they need to stop railing against reality

@Patrick - actually, "Women don't need men to survive anymore" presents an interesting opportunity to gather important knowledge about women.

When a presumably heterosexual woman doesn't actually "need" a man to survive anymore - as in when she doesn't need a walking wallet or a meat shield - then you will truly know her character. If she considers men undesirable at this point, she never wanted a man to begin with - she only wanted what he could provide her. This is a woman you want to avoid.

In reality, we men need to free ourselves from being a tool for a woman's survival. It reduces us to objects instead of people. It ultimately makes us disposable. Sadly, males are disposable in almost all sexually reproducing species - but we have the counterbalancing power of sentience. We should make use of this gift.

but they'll be whining and crying that no men are coming forward to protect them when these barbarians are groping and molesting them in public swimming pools
You sound like you feel these women "have it coming" or as if rape were some kind of karmic payback. I sincerely hope these immigrants don't go on a rape rampage. No woman ever has that coming no matter how vile she is.

@lujlp
In this case, "statistical outliers" do need to speak up - if for no other reason but to show that humans are intellectual creatures and that we have the power to change the reality of things. If the number of outliers grow, they can become the new reality.

Rex,

That exceptions exist in no way negates the majority. There currently are and historically have been homosexual societies. There were nations where over 50% of the population was non-reproductive and was part of the priesthood. But they are not the norm. If you need every possible outlier listed I don't have the energy to do that. But the vast majority (>70%) fit in the polygamous/monogamous category. There are clear biological reasons for that.

Jacquelope,

If you are hoping homosexuality is increasing you are sadly mistaken. The percentage is fairly stable at

I got cut off for some reason. Here is the rest of it.

Jacquelope,

If you are hoping homosexuality is increasing you are sadly mistaken. The percentage is fairly stable at

Women still need men today in the Western world; it's just that advanced technology and modern conveniences mean that they don't need a husband/partner to provide for them directly. However, men are still the bulk of the labor force that provides the infrastructure of society in many ways, which women rely on (as well as other men).

Also, the government has (to some extent) replaced men as husbands/partners. So now, instead of arguing with their husbands, this phenomenon becomes possible:

http://www.theonion.com/video/damaged-women-stage-drunken-2-am-march-on-washingt-19840

T. J. Patriarch (an outlier in many ways)

Non-html read as html I guess.

Jacquelope,

If you are hoping homosexuality is increasing you are sadly mistaken. The percentage is fairly stable at less than 2% and has been for a very long time. Migration can lead to specific areas having a higher percentage by reducing the percentage elsewhere. But that is about it.

lujlp Says:

"Artemis, I dont think the point is people are astounded at statistical outliers.

The point is statistical outliers need to stop being pissy about the fact that they arent the normal ones and they need to stop railing against reality"

Thank you lujlp for demonstrating my point that people here don't really seem to understand what constitutes a distribution.

No one here has presented any data that actually demonstrates that a woman being attracted to physical characteristics over wealth is a "statistical outlier".

Let's be very clear about what a statistical outlier actually is. A statistical outlier is a point that exists outside of the normal distribution.

For example, the average woman is 5'6''... if you met a woman who was 5'10'' she would NOT be a statistical outlier. She would be at one end of the normal distribution. A woman who was 7' tall would be a statistical outlier.

Being a few standard deviations away from the mean doesn't make you aberrant or a statistical fluke. That is an expected part of the distribution.

Similarly, we have a portion of the population who are attracted to members of the same sex... that portion is estimated to be in the neighborhood of 10%.

If you define 10% of your population as "outliers" you are probably using that term incorrectly.

@Ben
I wasn't talking about homosexuality. I was talking about women who judge men solely by what their lizard brain says. They're outliers (although not aberrations anymore by Artemis's standards) and cultural shifts can turn them into the norm.

My personal experience is women can't turn that lizard brain off anymore than men can. But as you say it doesn't have to be the sole driving force. The key thing is to know and understand reality. That way you can react rationally and intelligently to your situation. In my view, recognizing that men and women are different is a key part of a happy relationship. Doing what would make you happy for your partner doesn't usually work. A little more thought has to go into things.

And then you need self control. Just as men must learn to control their inherent tendency for physical violence women must learn to control their inherent tendency for emotional violence.

As for the woman who judge men by their physical appearance like men judge women, my best guess is you are talking about a population size of sub 0.1%. So yes, even by Artemis's definition an outlier. Lujlp used the term correctly. If you are in the sub 2% of the population group you are not 'normal' or 'typical'. Getting pissy about reality rarely leads to happiness.

For no good reason, I'll toss my two cents in about what a statistical outlier is. Within the physical sciences, an outlier is not really something that is some specific fraction of a distribution away. It is something that is so different from your data set, that to use it would distort your analysis, because its reason for being so different is different from the rest of the set.

Perhaps your working on improving silicon solar cells, and one shows a momentary spike in performance. The spike might be do to a glitch your testing apparatus, a cosmic ray, something, anything, but not something reproducible to get more power from the sun.

More germane to this conversation, Amy has never claimed that women ignore a man's looks, it is just that in the mix of things women use to find partners, it is not as high a priority as status, or ability to achieve high status in the future, and having signifiers of status increases a man's physical attractiveness. There is no answer to the question: "Does a quality suit make a man objectively look better, or does the signified status make him look better?" The only fact is that many women think a man looks better in a suit. Just as it is a fact that if most women valued looks as much as most men, the ratio of male strippers to female strippers would be much closer to 1-1.

Status, looks, sense of humor, a whole host of traits matter to both genders, just in different amounts for each of us. I think ultimately, all that is important is to know what really makes you happy, as opposed to what you think is supposed to make you happy. A woman who is partly attracted to a guy because he is financially secure is no shallower than a woman who marries a guy poor, but ostensibly better looking guy, nor deeper than the guy who marries the woman he thinks is the best looking he ever dated. The shallow person is the one who overcomes what will actually make them happy, and pairs up with something different.

I am so glad I only wasted 3 minutes of my life reading your garbage.

You guys know you are all assuming that an early 20'ish guy/woman full of pressing hormones (must mate must mate) coming from a limited high school/local neighborhood environment actually KNOWS what they WANT.

I'd feel better about all of this discussion if it was limited to guys/women that have MATURED after having some life experiences.

(I think things would be better if the "getting pregnant" thing was turned off until age 23 and likewise there were no "rules" about dating except "do no harm" until then as well. After that "adult" choices and morals are kicked back into place and it's time to "grow up". Kinda like the Amish rumspringa.)

Agree Bob!

That sounds nice Bob. Maybe with improving technology it will become an earlier option. I'll admit I was talking about instincts and they aren't the best guides to a happy life. But until that technological option becomes available they do have to be accounted for.

@"There is nothing more worthless to civilization and the gene pool than a gay or straight relationship consisting of two individuals, with no offspring and no extended family ties"

This isn't true in societies with taxation and welfare; gay childless couples are often hardworking and economically productive (in fact not having children allows you to be more economically productive), and the wealth they produce is taken by force for the tribe at large. As long as that contribution helps raise the overall success of the population, then there is a benefit to having those genes in the gene pool, and as long as there is a benefit then the mechanics of selection find ways to select for it. Read The Selfish Gene.

"Women do not value a man's love, they value a man's VALUE." This is exactly what the pickup artists have been telling dateless men all along.
What fools people, both men and women alike, is FALSE VALUE. This is what gets endless lines of women coming and cumming after Jerks/Bad Boys/Outlaw Biker types. What women value in a man is how he makes them FEEL, and Nice Guys famously don't generate feelings. It almost doesn't matter if the feeling is good, or bad; it simply must BE, which does a lot to explain the numerous repeated bad choices women make in their men.

Mm. I am reminded of a conversation my military unit had.

The guys determined that their perfect woman was a 23 year old blonde rich orphan mute nymphomaniac, preferably who owned a liquor store.

Having just seen 'Outlander' first season with the wife, it seems that in a perfect world, women want a rich, intelligent, socially important, hunky beefcake who says and does everything just about perfectly. I.E. they are just as greedy as men are in wanting absolutely EVERYTHING. Why not?

However, in real life, we can't HAVE everything. Most women cannot pull down a Christian Grey.

Amy discusses what essentials most women are more prone to jettison when the rubber hits the road.

And, since they can't have status, wealth, AND Jason Momo's abs, well...women in general seem to jettison the abs earlier than the other two. They seem to be content with 'not insulting to look at', though individual results may vary. Amy shouldn't be blamed for measurable TRENDS that women seem to consistently display.

On the other hand, take a look at every single one of Tiger Woods 'conquests'. Somehow, social status, education, and credit rating doesn't seem to have had ANY bearing on his choices...or the choices of the majority of men.

So while I am sure that there are some number of women who prefer their garage band loser hottie, this 'preference' seems to lose it's glow after the third eviction. What their 'inner goddess' lusts after and what their revealed preference is are markedly different.

@jefe
If Pickup Artists have been telling men this, then this makes their moral failure even worse. They refuse to realize that a woman who is like that is not even worth approaching. Instead they tell men how to raise their appearance of value in order to cater to these superficial women. They teach men how to attract women who will never actually love them. PUAs lack the self awareness to realize how they fail.

PUAs lack the self awareness to realize how they fail.

You assume PUAs are look for more than getting their dick played with

"Oh, and Rad, I doubt religion has anything to do with people's misconceptions about evolution. People don't like the randomness of it. Religious or not doesn't enter into the equation."

Bah. Obviously, you have little idea of the bias Americans have for easy "solutions", or the difficulty of getting evolution into public schools, not to mention the influence of Christianity™ --- did you see the opening of that Ark™, on CNN, no less?
And it's not really random. The topic itself, as shown HERE, requires a sound understanding of several physical sciences, or the topic becomes noise. It's WAY easier to hop on the bandwagon with people who assert what it is NOT, which is why I nodded in that direction with the term, "optimization", still a gross conceptual error for all its commonality.

@Jacquelope . . . You . . . you make sense! You aren't a member of the he-man's women-hater club, memebers of which for some reason I don't quite understand love to comment on Amy's site (because she's a strong, smart woman and that makes them break out in rashes, maybe?).

You don't think all women want to spend all day eating bon bons and plotting how to avoid giving those terrible blowjobs while spending their husbands' hard-earned salaries on gewgaws.

It's a little sad that this means you win a giant gold star and hearty handshake from we, the ladies who actually like blokes and enjoy the naked sweaty stuff more than the tennis bracelets. Yet, this is so, and thus I laud you.

I mean, I always wonder about the "women are icky" contingent so prevalent on the Internet. If chicks are so gross and germy and desirous of your massive, throbbing paycheck . . . maybe just go without? Perhaps bang each other? Something like that? I'm not sure why you'd want to date, marry, grow old and wrinkly with someone you find inherently repulsive, yet that seems to be the goal of many of these MRA worthies.

Anathema I know I'm kinda late in posting this but thanks. I had an epiphany about all of this that I felt I need to share, which should be obvious as the sunrise but it apparently isn't, to a lot of people who dabble in this type of discussion.

The REAL problem here is actually not gender hard-wiring. I always suspected this was the case but here's why... people do what you allow them to do. In the context of this discussion, if men in general allow women to treat men like we're success or expendability objects, then that's what we will get a lot of. If women let men do stupid shit, then a lot of men will do stupid shit. Men and women alike will sink to whatever lows that others allow them to - it's related to the law of entropy: everything goes to shit if you let it.

What a person - a man or a woman - has to do is set boundaries. In the context of this article, men have to say no more treating him like that, if you pull this shit then swipe left or put her in the friendzone.

The problem is that he's up against 99 other men who will let her get away with loving only his value and not valuing his love.

Really, this is what drives the he-man woman haters. They're like the feminists, they don't want to hear "not all women are like that"... they want to see some woman hang for the "collective" (not really collective, but collective in their minds) sins of women. (Kind of like the way feminists rage when you say "not all men are like that.") There's one big difference between them and men who aren't women-haters... I want to see the actual offenders get theirs, not womankind.

The only way that's going to happen is simple - when most men set hard boundaries, and demand that we be treated with dignity, the way women have demanded it for themselves. That's it. That's all we have to do. No hate, no broadbrushing, no bullshit. Just set basic boundaries of decent treatment.