site banner
PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   3002 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 19, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

1
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

It is a really bad post. If I was going to try to annoy the majority of posters here, I would call it mansplaining, but that really is what it is. It starts from a strange premise that women don’t know what men find attractive, and are all out here starving themselves trying to be as skinny as coke era Kate Moss because they’re too stupid to understand that men like the slim thick build with big tits (something rather incongruent with the huge implant industry, almost entirely driven by female demand - ie not husbands demanding their wives get surgery). If anything, it’s men who seem more confused about what women like.

I concur that it's a bad post, but it mostly just seems bad by virtue of the poster clearly taking his own preferences and doing mental gymnastics to argue that the whole world would be better off if it catered to them. It does meet the baseline definition of mansplaining, because his fundamental claim to authority rests on him being a man - but unlike with the typical callout targets, there is actually nothing particularly fallacious about the idea that ceteris paribus a man would be more likely to be well-equipped to explain what men find attractive. He just happens to give a bad explanation anyway, against the odds.

The statement that women in general don't know what men find attractive rings true to me, just based on everything I have heard from female friends and romantic partners over the years. You should not make the mistake of confusing this statement for something like "women have a hard time attracting men", because both the former and the negation of the latter can be (and, I'd argue, are) true simultaneously. Men, as a group, have low standards. Some individual men have very low standards, and moreover the low-standards ones are scattered surprisingly widely across the distribution of men by quality of women. Also, increasingly, the preferences of men are such that the quality of the partner they get matters far less to them than the guaranteed and the potential costs of engaging in partner selection. That is, these men prefer a woman who barely passes their standards and throws herself at them for free over one who is far more attractive to them but would have to be wooed/won over (with the attendant cost in time, "emotional labour", money and preference falsification in other domains, risk of heartbreak and threat of social consequences) every time.

As a result, the easiest success strategy for women starts looking something like 1. pick a man; 2. make sure you pass some minimum attractiveness threshold (which can be done by optimising for a very wrong model of male attraction as long as it's not completely insane); 3. hit on him as obviously as your intra-gender social constraints will allow; 4. guard him from any competition. If you follow this strategy, it may seem to you that your optimisation at step 2 did a lot of work, step 3 was just necessary because men are dense, and step 4 is insurance because men are so fickle that they would cheat on a 10 with a 6 for novelty, and that your success therefore means you had a good grasp of men's preferences. In reality, at step 2 you probably optimised in some direction that barely managed to have positive dot product, made it to 6/10, and steps 3 and 4 were the decisive ones because a 6/10 in the hand is worth more than a 10/10 in the (Australian) bush, gympies and all.

(You can benchmark actual ability to judge men's preferences by trying to predict their ranking of the attractiveness of classmates (if they feel safe to share with you), actresses, or fictional characters. I have been in fairly unfiltered mixed company sharing those, and men's rankings never fail to surprise even women who know them well.)

It starts from a strange premise that women don’t know what men find attractive

I actually am much more willing to believe this than I would've been in the past. As I've gotten to know my wife better and better over the course of our marriage, it is shocking the number of times she'll say something which shows that she (or her friends sometimes) doesn't really understand men. My takeaway has been that women do not actually understand men as well as they think they do. It wouldn't surprise me to find that women don't have a very good idea of what men find attractive either.

For what it's worth, some here claim the author is female, and I've seen her referred to as "her" in essays she re-tweeted.

It starts from a strange premise that women don’t know what men find attractive,

Men are belittled for not knowing what women find interesting in dating app pictures (ie not the stereotypical photo of a man with a large fish he caught). Why would only men not know what women like, while women would have insight into preferences of both genders?

If anything it is the opposite: a literal hairy pigwoman can get laid, thus showing women do not need to know anything about men to get their attention, while only a smattering of men will ever be considered worthy of female attention. Thus men have an incentive to try to understand women, which diesn't exist vice versa.

If anything it is the opposite: a literal hairy pigwoman can get laid

Women generally don’t want to get laid, they want commitment from a good man who treats them well. Kudos to circus freaks who find that, but ‘had sex’ does not necessarily indicate it.

Why would only men not know what women like, while women would have insight into preferences of both genders?

Because I think being attractive to men is simpler than being hot to women because men care more about physical features alone while women care about both physical features and more intangible but easily perceived qualities like a sense of presence and charisma, for which being hot is often necessary but not usually sufficient. If that’s misandry I do apologize.

Say you ask the average relatively attractive woman to wear the outfit she thinks men will like the most - she will probably know what it is. Will the average man know the inverse? It’s not that women don’t care about men’s style, either. Men just don’t seem to think about it.

If anything it is the opposite: a literal hairy pigwoman can get laid, thus showing women do not need to know anything about men to get their attention

Since most women have little interest in maximizing the number of sexual partners they have, whether they could find ‘someone’ to fuck is irrelevant. What matters is finding someone good, who will commit, who is nice and who is attractive (in various ways), and that is very much as competitive for women as finding a good partner is for men.

It starts from a strange premise that women don’t know what men find attractive

Do they? If they do, I think the most charitable explanation is that they prioritize other evaluations of their appearance:

  • evaluation by other women, who rate fashionable outfits higher than they rate attractive ones and who downrate women that exploit their attractiveness to the fullest, branding them pick-mes/sluts
  • deliberately lowering the amount of male attention they receive. Back when my wife was my GF I asked her to get a bodycon knit dress, because she had the right figure to rock it (still does). She bought one (nothing racy: long sleeves, knee length, crew neck) and wore it just once, because sudden lulls in conversation when she entered the office really upset her. Her friend would wear the same model in a different color to the same workplace with no regrets

It's fine, you can always annoy us. The lesson of ‘mansplaining’ is that women find correct information threatening.

something rather incongruent with the huge implant industry

Not huge enough, evidently. He probably thinks it should be near-universal, personal interest well considered, given that it’s like 3 points of attractiveness for little effort.

He doesn’t really cover the issues with implants which is that rupturing is an issue, they have to be replaced every 10 years for life (expensive, time consuming, recovery process, inherent risk of anaesthesia), and the initial cost is quite high for many young women, plus you want to shop around to find someone good.

Most people also aren’t relentlessly focused on maximizing their hotness, which is why plenty of people don’t care about style, don’t go to the gym, are overweight etc.

Jesus Christ, I had no idea how shitty they were. All the sales-talk about "helping you achieve the feminine curves you desire" followed by dropping the "hardened scar tissue and breast deflation" stuff is surreal.

The cost/benefit of those things is far higher, especially for women. Men don't care if women have no style, don't go to the gym, and are (slightly) overweight.

You’re typical minding when you say most people know this. People’s opinions bounce off random shit they hear (eg, lies by men reassuring their wives), they can’t cut through it with a sharp intellect like yours.

I'm just a single data point, but I definitely

  • ask my wife to change when she wears clashing/unseasonal patterns or colors
  • encourage my wife to go to the gym and take time of out of my work schedule so she can go
  • avoid buying too much junk food so we can both stay relatively thin

because I'm not attracted to fat, frumpy, flabby women, but maybe your point was about guys looking for a quick hookup?

We're talking about sexual attractiveness (or "maximizing hotness"), so yes, kind of. You want your wife to be healthy and active and balanced, which is understandable, but that has little relevance to attractiveness.

ask my wife to change when she wears clashing/unseasonal patterns or colors

This behaviour strikes me as rare, for combining two seemingly incompatible elements: the traditionally male role of leading/commanding, and the traditionally female role of giving attention and care to aesthetic things.

I understand where you're coming from, but I don't think the combination is as rare as you think. Middle and upper middle class "alphas" or "chads" tend to be masculine leaders while also dressing well and requiring their girlfriends/spouses to do the same. Think of the top salesmen in a sales department or C-suite executives. I suppose the key is that they are probably not interested in women's fashion for its own sake, but only insofar as their woman's raiment can be used to reflect her man's high status and good taste (if I'm honest, this is also partially why I do it, I guess).

What would you imagine drives that demand for boob jobs, if women's wants are indeed the driving force (maybe they are, I'll take your word for it)? Women imagining this is what men want them to look like? Personal self-consciousness before the judgment of other women? Or something else?

Mainly the fear of aging, I guess.

And yet, as an older man with older contemporaries, I feel as if the small breasted women are now the ones not, in Brando's words, "playing soccer with (their) tits."

It ties into intrasexual competition which is ultimately derived from opposite sex attraction but in practice sublimated beyond a broader layer of activity best described as posturing. Men and women both do this in different ways, throughout their lives. Being a man with a small dick is bad, imagine if everybody knew you had a small dick, including other men.

Whoah whoah whoah, who have you been talking to? If it was Ingrid, don't believe a word, plus we dated in the winter time, so there's that.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats