[Came to this post very late so - first off - apologies for tagging my comment onto yours (to get it near the top) even though it's not particularly related.]
Bryan's graphs get something ELSE wrong....something that almost all journalism gets wrong about the mating market. The problem is the bogus notion of the unitary 'Man' and 'Woman' …
[Came to this post very late so - first off - apologies for tagging my comment onto yours (to get it near the top) even though it's not particularly related.]
Bryan's graphs get something ELSE wrong....something that almost all journalism gets wrong about the mating market. The problem is the bogus notion of the unitary 'Man' and 'Woman' stereotype. Let me explain:
In order to be really revealing OK Cupid's stats would need to distinquish between how the most pretty women rate men and how the least pretty rate them. (that would almost certainly reveal a huge difference.
Similarly the 'how 'men' rate women would need to distinguish between the ratings of the 'babe magnet' alpha male at one extreme and the nerdy 'beta' males at the other. Only then would these graphs really paint an accurate picture.
".... a theme that gets very little attention in journalism about sexual pair bonding – the huge difference between the fortunes of what one might term the More and the Less Desired of each sex. Opinion pieces, sometimes serious and sometimes coy, on the subject of unfair sex are to be found in abundance. What always strikes me when I read this kind of journalism is how it is always framed in terms of a generic species called ‘Women’ and a generic species called ‘Men’; as if the perceived ‘unfair’ asymmetries under discussion are entirely ones between the sexes. The huge intra-sexual differences between the experiences of pretty women and ‘plain’ ones; and between confident ‘alpha’ males and ‘betas’ – this never gets considered."
[Came to this post very late so - first off - apologies for tagging my comment onto yours (to get it near the top) even though it's not particularly related.]
Bryan's graphs get something ELSE wrong....something that almost all journalism gets wrong about the mating market. The problem is the bogus notion of the unitary 'Man' and 'Woman' stereotype. Let me explain:
In order to be really revealing OK Cupid's stats would need to distinquish between how the most pretty women rate men and how the least pretty rate them. (that would almost certainly reveal a huge difference.
Similarly the 'how 'men' rate women would need to distinguish between the ratings of the 'babe magnet' alpha male at one extreme and the nerdy 'beta' males at the other. Only then would these graphs really paint an accurate picture.
I wrote about all this in this essay 'The Less Desired': https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/the-less-desired
".... a theme that gets very little attention in journalism about sexual pair bonding – the huge difference between the fortunes of what one might term the More and the Less Desired of each sex. Opinion pieces, sometimes serious and sometimes coy, on the subject of unfair sex are to be found in abundance. What always strikes me when I read this kind of journalism is how it is always framed in terms of a generic species called ‘Women’ and a generic species called ‘Men’; as if the perceived ‘unfair’ asymmetries under discussion are entirely ones between the sexes. The huge intra-sexual differences between the experiences of pretty women and ‘plain’ ones; and between confident ‘alpha’ males and ‘betas’ – this never gets considered."