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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   1705 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 2, 2025

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One thing that make male hierarchies different than female ones is instability when exposed to the other sex.

Let's say there is a group of boys. One boy is the leader. He's best at sports, and he has natural charisma. When the boys meet the other sex, the girls will be attracted to the male leader. The hierarchy is stable.

Now let's take a group of girls. One girl is the leader. She's charismatic and smart. But when the girls meet a group of boys, the boys all ignore her and pay attention to the dumb blonde instead. The hierarchy is unstable.

This is obviously an oversimplification, but women generally respect male hierarchies more than the opposite.

Now let's take a group of girls. One girl is the leader. She's charismatic and smart. But when the girls meet a group of boys, the boys all ignore her and pay attention to the dumb blonde instead. The hierarchy is unstable.

Maybe, but I could just as easily spin a yarn about some dominant shaved-headed roid freak being the dominant male in a social circle but losing out when it comes to female attention to the skinny pretty boy with the beautiful face and hair.

This is obviously an oversimplification, but women generally respect male hierarchies more than the opposite.

True to an extent. I think it’s overstated, though. If I think back to high school, all the most beautiful girls were popular. Even where there were one or two exceptions where people were extremely disliked due to actions they’d taken, hooking up with someone’s boyfriend, whatever, this was very much a temporary thing and they were ostracized for a few weeks before being at every party again. If we’re using crass metaphor, they were temporarily exiled from court, not relegated to the peasantry.

I think some root cause of a certain subset of male anguish is that the fantasy of the mousy but extremely hot girl who glows up just for him is just that; barring weight loss in their twenties, beautiful women know they’re beautiful and always have because they remember being 11 and being catcalled by men in the street.

If I think of most groups of women friends I’ve encountered, the hierarchy is usually looks based because social groups for women are highly assortative based on hotness, often unconsciously. It would be extraordinarily uncommon to have a group in which the nerdy fat friend was dominant, unless the whole group was comprised of nerdy fat friends.

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