Today the Lion of the Blogosphere blogged about how women supposedly hate men who work in STEM occupations (science, technology, engineering, math). In my opinion, there’s a simple explanation for this. Biologists recognize two major ways organisms pass on their genes: r and K. At the r end of the scale, you have primitive organisms like fish, snakes and dandelions. These organisms provide very little parental care and thus their offspring have very high death rates, but they make up for it by reproducing so prolifically. At the K end of the scale, you have advanced organisms like humans. We have very low reproduction rates (many of us choose never to have children at all), but that’s negated by the high survival rates of the children we do have.
So even though humans as a species are incredibly K selected, some believe that some humans are more K selected than others. In other words, while some men have numerous sexual partners and father lots of illegitimate babies with different mothers, other men are more nerdy, and father very few children with only one woman, but they make sure those children are well parented and provided for.
When men first evolved in the warm hospitable tropics some 200,000 years ago, survival was relatively easy, so instead of natural selection (survival of the fittest), genetic fitness was determined by who could get the most women (sexual selection). As a result, men with the biggest muscles, highest testosterone, best social skills, most charisma and sexual abilities, were the most successful at passing on their genes. But as the ice age emerged and humans moved North, passing on genes became more about natural selection and less about sexual selection. What good is it to be a great pick up artist if you can’t survive the winter long enough to mate?
As a result, the technological skills needed to survive cold winters became more important than the people skills needed to attract women. Big brains became more important than big muscles and big genitals. Men became better at acquiring resources than at acquiring status. Put simply, in the last 200,000 years, humans have been evolving from dumb artistic jocks to smart scientific nerds. Nerds, almost by definition, are better at adapting to technology than adapting to people, so it’s no surprise that they suck at attracting women.
Because nerds evolved through natural selection to acquire resources, they are over-represented among the richest men in America (i.e. Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, the founders of Yahoo and Google).. By contrast, the highest status people tend to be U.S. presidents, celebrities, professional athletes, religious leaders, and rock stars.
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By this logic, why didn’t white women evolve to prefer nerds? They were under the same ecological pressure that favored K-selection / monogamy / resource acquisition over hierarchy status / etc.
That is a very good question & the answer is that cold climate women evolved to be submissive so their preferences were prehistorically irrelevant. Fortunately the rise of feminism has empowered women to now decide for themselves.
So your argument is that, unlike monogamous women in Ice Age Europe, polygamous women in e.g. the Near East, where harems and concubinage were widespread, where marriage based on kinship (often consanguineous) was the rule (1) didn’t evolve to be submissive and (2) had a lot more choice in whom they married?
I’m not suggesting there’s a perfect correlation between climate & female submissiveness & such a pattern would be hardest to detect in populations as genetically similar as Europeans & Near Easterners because range restriction depresses any correlation. But the clearest test of any linear trend is to look at the extremes (i.e. North East Asian women vs. sub-Saharan women).
If you think that white Europeans and people from MENA are genetically similar, then you don’t seem to know much about genetics.
Now you’re just being silly. Women aren’t monolithic. Nerdy women like nerdy men, and there are nerdy women. Criminals aren’t having their innumerable illegitimate children with women in general but with a certain type of woman.
In general female hypergamy is exaggerated and men and women are matched for intelligence level, physical attractiveness, and class or class background. These are facts not a theory.
What women don’t like and neither do I is someone who’s obsessed with something stupid/impractical/useless. The average engineer is much more attractive to women than the average English major generally speaking. But an engineer who spends his free time playing video games is understandably gross.
Women aren’t inscrutable…except to people like lion. Golddiggers are much promoted but rare, and few smart men want a stupid woman no matter how big her boobs are. Attraction is a concrete reality, but thought is always abstract. Looks aren’t everything even for men. The voice, the diction, sincerity, intelligence, similarity of interests, even a woman’s status are part of what makes her attractive or not.
Very good points! The real world is a lot more complex and nuanced than the Internet charicature about women loving “alphas” and hating “betas”. Actually when I first started reading the Lion’s very entertaining blog, I was surprised that so many of his numerous readers felt women hate nerds, because the nerds I know have never had any trouble getting quality women (even in college, before they had any money); but you spend enough time reading the same claims over & over & you start to believe it.
I’m sure there’s some truth to these alpha-beta internet memes but as you explained, they’re probably exaggerated oversimplifications. But to the extent the stereotype is true, my post was a very speculative attempt to provide an evolutionary explanation.
My own experience, though necessarily anecdotal and particular, is that strong (the “in love” sort) attraction is NOT rational for men or women…is NOT rational.
That is, gold diggers are NOT in love. But, as human beings, those same gold diggers can and do fall in love…with…non-billionaires. (George Lucas’s wife left him for a younger man.)
If people like lion and his train could only learn that women are human too…just like standard poodles 😉
Julian Kaye learned this at the end…and it was an older woman…but, my God, Lauren Hutton!
http://movieclips.com/Ehf5-american-gigolo-movie-i-had-no-choice-i-love-you/
We’re all savages in the end.
That clip was intriguing. I can’t believe I still haven’t seen American Gigalo yet.
As for love being rational, if the emotional and physical benefits of love outweigh the social and economic costs, then it is rational, but only the individual (if she’s self-aware) can know that. I define intelligence as the cognitive capacity for low cost/benefit behavior but evolution predisposed our emotions to feel pleasure and pain commensurate with the enhancement or reduction of genetic fitness respectively. There are extremely intelligent people with mutated reward systems so their behavior may be irrational from both both a cultural and evolutionary perspective, but it’s hugely adaptive for them as individuals..
Nerdy women like nerdy men becaue they know they can’t compete with the cheerleaders to get to the alpha men, so basically they settle for Ackward jacob the math nerd who also plays the sitar.
good point andy
Perhaps lion has never been one of the boys the girls liked. I have. Looks go a long way for women even if the guy’s a nerd which I’ve never been thankfully.
But it’s not just my experience, I’ve seen it with other guys. I had a good looking finance professor. He had been a math major and was a nerd, some girls in the class were obviously smitten. I had a young female teacher in HS who was smitten with a good looking boy in her class.
Btw, I’m secure enough in my hetero preference that I can admit some men are much better looking than others.
In general, at base, women are a lot more like men (or gay men at least) than they’re supposed to be and sexual behavior is influenced by culture a lot. There are a few cultures where women are expected to have several sexual partners. There is no shame in it and no shame of not knowing who your father is and no expectation that the man will provide. Some cultures in Nepal, China, the Wodaabe, the Seychelles, the Eskimo are examples.
When anyone tries to explain modern day human behavior as resulting from evolution you should yawn.
Yes, if a nerd is good looking women will sometimes like him even more than they like an equally good looking jock because of the irony. It’s almost like women grade the looks of nerds on a curve.
When anyone tries to explain modern day human behavior as resulting from evolution you should yawn.
That’s too extreme. Evolutionary psychology has a lot of elegant explanatory power, though ignorance of other factors can cause one to overestimate its impact.
Btw, can you talk a little about your latest avatar and why you chose it? WordPress gives me a list of the most clicked links on my blog & ever since you chose that avatar, it’s consistently one of the most clicked on items everyday. I don’t know if people are just curious about you in general or the avatar specifically.
and women do prefer rich guys all else being equal, but i’ve been hit on by rich women. it was clear what they wanted. hey. american gigolo is in my top 10.
of course it’s what i’d like to think…but…
i wonder to what extent female hypergamy is like the preference for a man who’s 4″ taller. and it’s not as if men are hypogamous. although some are, of course.
that is, because men generally make more than women and have higher rank, a man with less is sort of not a man. just like a man who’s shorter is sort of not a man. but rich and very tall women are often forced to make exceptions. iirc, the princesses of manaco and sweden married their personal trainers.
it was a comment on quora regarding attractiveness: any meaningful deviation from the norm is unattractive. so, for example, men up to 6’3″ are more attractive to women, but more than that they’re less attractive…because they’re sorta freaky.
but anyway…one must always be on guard that he not mistake the mores of his particular time and place and whatever generalities of human behavior of his time and place for absolutes.
and unmarried childless women under 30 now make MORE than their male counterparts. so it’s a reverse population bomb or it’s women marry and have children with men who, at least, aren’t above them.
Your height analogy is correct. Women want a man they can look up to; both physically and metaphorically. I think a major reason Oprah never got married is she’s the richest African American of all time, and until she helped elect Obama, the most powerful African American of all time too.
There are men who are richer (i.e. Bill Gates) and there are men who are more powerful (Obama, largely because of her), but there’s no one on Earth who can match her on both wealth AND status, so it’s hard for her to find any man she can look up to, which may explain why her partner Steadman is so tall (since she’s forced to look down at all men metaphorically, at least she can look up to one physically).
Meanwhile her best friend Gayle King Bumpus has the opposite problem. She’s just too tall for most men and is always complaining that she can’t find a man who is tall enough.
Ayn Rand controversially claimed that no rational woman would want to be president because there’d be no man she could look up to.
and this theory makes more sense of the reality.
that is, looking at marriages one finds that women marry men of equal status or class background. (perhaps it couldn’t be otherwise. the genders are near 50/50 in number.)
women from bad backgrounds do and will hook-up with men from bad backgrounds. and this is even true of physically attractive women from bad backgrounds.
i don’t know. the rich women who were very clear with me were not unattractive. they weren’t especially attractive either. they were more “do-able” than average.
i think i’m with soros and chomsky. ANY putative “science” of human behavior, from economics to sociology, will founder on one fundamental reality of humans. namely, human behavior is affected by expectations…is affected by theories of human behavior…etc. not just a little but a lot. man is NOT an animal in the end.
Chomsky’s comment is insightful but too extreme. If a simple elegant theory can explain a disparate collection of facts, then it’s a good theory. It’s that simple. If there’s some theoretical reason why facts can’t be explained, then they wouldn’t be, so chomsky’s assertion would be redundant if it were true. Once you understand Occam’s razor, everything gets real clear. Should be mandatory learning in every high school.
human behavior is affected by expectations…is affected by theories of human behavior…etc. not just a little but a lot. man is NOT an animal in the end.
i agree with you jorge???
the hereditist randians/racists make a straw man of their “opposition”.
the truth is, obama is a “race realist”. this i gathered from a comment he made on “the view”…i saw it on youtube.
and in the end it’s just about expectations again. there are black africans smarter than 99% of europeans. mugabe is nuts, but he’s one!
the idea that black africans must forever be miserably poor is…they can’t be the Japanese or the boche or the Chinese, but they can be much much better off than they are.
may the great disappearer not be disappeared.
[pumpkinperson: This comment was edited to replace offensive language, Aug 6: 2014]
I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Obama is a ethnic-realist. He strikes me as highly rational. If you ever find that YouTube link from “the view” please link to it.
And there is enormous IQ variation within all large populations. The extremely low scores in third world regions is partly caused by the same factors that stunted Western scores in WWI. We don’t know what’s caused the Flynn effect, but the most likely cause is either nutrition or education (depending on how culturally biased the test is).
Mugabe is a fascinating man. I do wonder what his IQ is.
And sorry I had to replace 2 ethnic labels in your otherwise excellent comment (see note at bottom of your comment), but my goal is to get a very diverse multiracial readership & i don’t want your good points overshadowed by your unwillingness to conform to polite society.
I have enormous respect for all races, and I want all races to enjoy your comments as much as I do.
how funny.
your entire blog is offensive and retarded.
so it’s ok to refer to the Germans as the Boche but not ok to refer to the Chinese as chinks?
what a cunt.
I’m half German & Boche is not generally considered a slur but the C word is extremely offensive to East Asians in general & Chinese in particularly. Why would you go out of your way to be so hurtful to an entire human race when it’s not even relevant to your argument?
As a chink, I take pride in it. Some of my online game names includes “proud Chink”. “Absolute Oriental”
When some one called me those names, I only feel happy about it. Just me.
I never understood why the term “oriental” became offensive. The only explanation I was ever given was that rugs are oriental, not people. But the same logic could be used to take offense at any ethnic description: Tacos are Mexican, not people.
Because middle easteners are oriental. And mena people are highly aggressive and dumb which makes sense: impulsive people have low IQs — like MENA scum.
Good Feminists v Bad Feminists
I support equality for women but not for women to support injustice and bullying.
I think there are good feminists and bad feminists.
Good feminists
Against bullying, rape, wife beating, sexism, gender inequality, They support oppressed and those on the margins of society.
Bad Feminists
Bad feminists support evil, they support bullying, rape, wife beating, child abuse, sexism,
I know some people have a problem with feminism. Some people hate equality for women. They fear equal pay, they support wife beating, rape, bullying, sexism and child abuse. Feminism like socialism is a broad church with often contradictory views put forward while claming to purport the same ideology.
But some people who support such evil acts of abuse claim they are feminist and use some sophisticated, manipulative sophistry to argue that supporting bullying, rape, wife beating, child abuse and violence against woman or men is feminist.
I cannot name these people in person because such manipulative people would then claim I was slandering them and then sue me.
But I have heard people arguing for evil and claiming they are feminist.
Rape Supporters
I have heard some bad feminists argue for rape on the basis that rape is not the worst thing that can happen to a woman or that men who are against rape are just paternalistic sexist men who are more concerned at the woman losing her purity than caring about a crime being committed. It is just ridiculous to trivialise rape using such logic. It just sounds like bad feminists arguing for rape. It is the sort of woman who writes love letters to serial killer in prison because she sees them as manly for being evil. There is a serious problem of some men and women supporting rape.
Then I remember one woman saying that we should not see rape as a feminist issue, because now everyone is against rape. What a load of nonsense. Rape is supported by loads of evil men and evil women and that will always be the case. Those rape supporters need to be suppressed.
I also think that there are a sick section of women who are sexually attracted to violent sexually abusive men, using the logic that the more evil a man is the more sexy he is. I think such people should not be allowed on rape juries. I think woman that find evil men sexy are the main reason so many rapists get away with rape, when it comes to trial because such women on juries think all women support evil.
Bully Supporters
Then there are bad feminists who argue for bullying, and argue that men who get bullied are just weirdoes, sad, creepy and deserve to be bullied. Well how can you regard yourself as good when you support bullying?
I met one horrible person who explained that a film that supported a bullied man, was actually an embodiment of the sexist culture This person’s view was that it was the everyman being represented, as the person to support and there are never any movies to support the ordinary woman. What load of sophistry guff. The film was about a bullied man, an outcast, the vulnerable one. I know what it is like to be bullied, and I did not feel like an everyman, I felt like an outcast, who bullies wanted to kill himself. How can you be bullied for being a weirdo and then when a film argues against bullying you are told that you are now the everyman. I wish I was the everyman. I have never been an everyman. What I do not understand is the person who criticised the film would call the bullied man a weirdo one minute and the next an everyman. Well how can you be a weirdo and an everyman.
Wife Beating
I have talked to victims of wife beating who claim that being attracted to violent men who beat them is some wonderful freedom to have. That it is romantic, mysterious and sexy. I argue it is sick to see bullies as sexy and manly for being evil. Then I was told by such woman that I was warped for saying so. So in their view it is normal to be attracted to violent bullying men but that it is warped to argue against women being attracted to such vile evil violent men.
I think one of the main things in sex education should be stamp down on paedophilia of people finding violent bullies as sexy.
Paedophile Supporters
Men need to be taught that sex with under 18 year olds is evil. Yet there are bad feminists who argue that it is some wonderful freedom to be able to abuse children. There are bad feminists who argue that victims of child abuse are only hurting themselves by complaining. Well that is more guff. Many people need their abuser to be punished to get closure.