Forty years of women's lib hasn't made a scratch on 400,000 years of evolution.

It's not about being "aggressive", it's about being assertive!
Many years ago, a woman acquaintance told me to check out a local nightclub when they had "Ladies Night". The idea was that the women had to ask the men to dance... if the men turned down the requests, they got sent to a "jail" on the stage, guarded by hotties wearing six-shooters. Likewise if the men tried to do the asking.
I checked the place out, and left. My friend told me what the deal is: it takes the women until midnight to get drunk enough to ask the men to dance.
Women have been using their social roles too long as an excuse to avoid having to learn basic assertiveness.

The founders of both Bumble and Tinder where bf/gf who broke up and alleged some pretty nasty shit about the other.

I swear to god---I made this comment years ago on here how we would never see the straight version of Grindr because reasons and I admit I was 100% wrong because not too long after comes Tinder.

Bumble is mostly fake profiles. Part of the reason it sucks is because men outnumber women online so women don't ever have the incentive to really put much effort into the whole process.

My best friend got something like 200 messages a week on match.com in LA. I've heard from several female friends it's common. That tells you just how lopsided things are for women. Except this is not true in....NYC! Women outnumber men.

I'm guessing that LW has not had "instant" success w/her efforts.

I'm also guessing that the men being "messaged" don't spend too much time/effort in picking the woman they want to "message/f*&k".

I'm mean why would they bother? There's 25+ new messages in their inbox to review Who has the time to go back to last week's messages.

Bottom line is that LW might be fishing in the wrong hole.

Men evolved to be the pursuers, in general. Women evolved to be the pursued, in general. But there are always exceptions to the general, and in a country of 300 million people there will be quite a few.

I suggest that those who are comfortable with Bumble's methods use it, and those who find they aren't (like the LW) stick to any of the hundreds of more traditional ways of finding a partner. The important thing is to base your decision on your true preferences, not what anyone says you're supposed to want.

Men evolved to be the pursuers, in general. Women evolved to be the pursued, in general. But there are always exceptions to the general, and in a country of 300 million people there will be quite a few.

THIS.

Also, a good number of my male friends use Bumble. And they LOVE it. Because they know if a woman messages THEM, she's interested. He doesn't HAVE to go out with her. He still gets to choose from among the several women who messaged him and pursue them. He still gets to propose where they go on a date, if he feels the need to take the lead that way. They find this a much better numbers game than sending off messages to 100 women who are each getting bombarded by 500 "Hey u pretty," messages a day.

My female friends who use Bumble liken sending the initial message to starting up a conversation with an attractive man at the bar. You're not tapping him on the shoulder and saying, "HEY WANNA GO OUT," you're just chatting and flirting. And most of those initial messages on Bumble are chatty and flirty.

Does anyone else notice the irony of calling this "Bumble"?

Hmm. My wife made the first call to me. It was a request for tutoring, and we started at the table for a few sessions, then moved to the couch and eventually found our way to the floor reading the books together... So I blame gravity for our relationship.

So is that a 'ha ha' let me flip my hair' sort of flirt or a 'show up in twenty minutes with a six pack and some condoms' kind of flirt?

Most of the girls I dated were quite able to let me know their interest without technology, but then again, they didn't HAVE technology to count on and while they showed interest, they did not feel it was their job to do the first request for a date.

It seems 40 years of Feminist indoctrination hasn't beaten that out of women yet either.

I am agnostic. If a couple is wildly happy together, I don't care if they came together in a rave, a broken elevator or she just Bumbled into him. At the end of the day, how is less important than what.

The one downside I see is that the man will either have an under appreciation of her or an OVER appreciation of his own charms. But that is true anytime a woman expresses interest.

Getting back to Bumble, where the app goes wrong is in removing the filtering that comes from a man needing to lay his ego on the line and expend effort to pursue a woman.

I'd love to know what percentage of men "need" to pursue a woman and "capture" her in order to have a good, loving relationship.

Do I think men like this exist? Absolutely. Do I think the percentage is over fifty? No.

I think that more than half -- and perhaps far more than half -- of men are able to form a good, loving relationship with a woman who "pursues" them in some way -- even if that "pursuit" is simply asking them out at a party or messaging them on some website/app if they really like her -- like her intellect, interests, personality, sense of humor -- and find her attractive.

Who knows, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe only thirty percent of men are capable of this. Or ten percent. I get the feeling Amy thinks it's about five percent, if even that.

Couple of quibbles: From what we know--which is little--the homo-sap and his predecessors had a much higher proportion of high-T men. High-T men are aggressive and promiscuous. And women were underrepresented, leading to presumptions of female infanticide, practiced by hunter and gatherer societies who could not afford more mouths in a difficult environment
So, with twelve men, say, most high-T in a band with seven women, say, the idea that women had the opportunity to "choose" may have been limited.
Back in the day, I would have missed being hit upside the head with a wet sandbag By the time a woman got my attention, she may have been beyond the "a girl has her pride" point. And getting to that point would likely have felt like a rejection.
Anyway, ev psych explains too much,, which is to say it's suspect. Focial roles do modify any wired-in behavior. There are guys who think they're God's gift to women and guys like Aubrey who can't be awakened by a sharp kick to the shins.
IMO, if a woman puts herself out there, she suddenly becomes aware of what she has to "sell", in a manner of speaking and that may make her uncomfortable. If a guy approaches her, she knows that at least the outer layer of what she has to sell is acceptable.

I actually agree with you JD. A lion doesn't need to chase the antelope. The lion needs to eat the antelope. If the antelope wants to survive he needs to run. But it doesn't bother the lion if the antelope walks up to it. It will just eat the antelope and remember this as a lucky day.

Similarly men want sex from women. They don't need to chase women. They just want the outcome. But for women to be happy they need to be chased.

To what Ben and JD said, in the men I have known very few have been big on the chase. I can only think of one who actually needed the chase. Another just needed the appearance. His now wife all but manipulated his mouth and pushed on his chest so that he would as her out. The rest don't care much near as I can tell.

If I look at my own history, most my better relationships started with lady making some kind of move. Maybe not exactly asking out...but my one hair cutter said "You know, I no longer have a policy against dating clients."

Where I'm from If you are physically attractive it don't matter. Men aint tripping on the fact that she asked them out if she look good. Think I would give a shit if Rosario Dawson asked me out? Hell Nah! If any thing it might boost up my ego. How the relationship goes after that is based on how we connect afterwards. This just my perspective though. I"m a basic man, and I"m not trying to figure out if this mean that or that mean this, I just wanna date a beautiful woman and enjoy life

"Because they know if a woman messages THEM, she's interested. "

I don't know about that. A female acquaintance of mine joined It's Just Lunch. The one here had an absolutely horrible male-female ratio, like 10:1. They were so desperate for women that they waived all of her fees, and the men she was seeing on the dates bought her lunches. She admitted to me that she had little interest in any of the guys they set her up with, and only kept doing it because it was cost-free to her.

This topic comes up a lot in this column, and each time Amy tries to show how countless research and 30-gazillion years of evolution shows that men prefer to chase women.

Except those who don't. Sexual diversity is one of our most cherished values. Let it be.

I know of at least three marriages and more than a few long-term relationships that started on OKCupid. I think in every case the woman made the first move--because there are so many jerks out there that you just get very, very cautious about encouraging anyone. This would probably be true in real life as well--but in real life you can flee the bar as soon as Creepy McPenispic starts saying icky things to you. Online, it might take a couple of messages back and forth, and it's just wearying to have creep after creep after creep harass you. So, it seems like guys tend to try and craft the best profile and hope it interests the right lady. If we're going to go all nature show about it, it could be like bower birds or other critters that set up a super neat nest and hang out by it hoping the lady birds will want to swing on in. Or fiddler crabs that hang out by their burrows waving to females hoping one will decide she likes the cut of his claws.

"Women have been using their social roles too long as an excuse to avoid having to learn basic assertiveness."

Cool. Men have been using Amy's comment section too long to make blanket statements to help them cope with past annoyances and sleights because they likely lack assertiveness in real life. A little wordy, but equally fair, I think.