Saturday, January 26, 2008

peacocks

so anyway, something occurred to me at the Big Day Out, a potential answer to one of the mysteries of a young man's life, which can be expressed concisely as "why don't nice guys get laid?"

it puzzles young nerdy types, of which i suppose i was one at heart, that girls do not choose to go out with them. they say things like, how come they won't look at me even though i'm nice looking and i would treat them right? they say they want nice boys with a sense of humour, and i'm really quite pleasant and i'm very funny. (well, at least, we make ourselves laugh.) worse, we can plainly see that in our villages, the local hardman would pull the town's best-looking chick, even though he had practically nothing to offer a woman, his one talent being biffing other men in the head.

anyway, i'm at the Big Day Out, and many of the young men have their shirts off. by Queensland standards, it was not a hot day, and the numbers of shirtless men increased as the afternoon wore on, so that there were many more when it was cooler than there had been when it was warmer in the early afternoon.

curiously, most of these men were in the company of other men. they didn't seem interested in women, and weren't, so far as i could see, attracting women's attention. on other occasions that i've seen this behaviour, i've noticed that it's not sparked by the presence of women, nor are the men checking women out, approaching them, or doing anything to attract them at all. far from it. these boys are only interested in other boys.

and it struck me. women do not choose. men do.

when i was a teenager, one thing that really irritated me was how competitive other boys were. they were engaged, it seemed, in an endless game of oneupmanship, whose sole purpose seemed to be to seem to themselves greater than others, to elevate themselves at others' expense. not only were they competitive in a quite nasty way at sport (by which i mean they were not content to win, but needed to crow over victories and belittle the defeated -- rather than applauding others' best efforts, they valued half an effort that prevailed.), but also in every other thing. they would jostle for conversation space; they would wrestle if they could; they would engage in pointless dicksizing (literally sometimes), fistfights over absolutely nothing, drinking contests. basically anything that allowed one boy to be ranked higher than another, so that they could be sure how they were ranged, from best to worst, on whatever criteria they valued.

which were not, of course, who was wittiest (boys don't do wit), who was best looking (boys are poor judges, and vanity and fear of homosexuality do not permit them to express opinions on that anyway), who was smartest (being "clever" is no benefit to a boy, for reasons that should be apparent).

i am not going to go all evolutionary psychology on you, but i think it's reasonable to suggest that women, particularly young women, do choose men on the basis of their "fitness" (i don't mean physical fitness; i mean desirability from a broad point of view, and i do mean as providers, as fathers to some extent, as men defined as, if not a stereotype, then an archetype.) how do they find them? how do they judge our "man-ness"? well, it's tough, isn't it? we have many types of behaviour, which often give conflicting signals. when we're older, you can judge us somewhat by our status, our ability to wield power, our wealth or our apparent ability to acquire wealth (and however outmoded, these are all still measures of "man-ness" that count with some women to some extent -- i'm trying not to overstate it or generalise too broadly).

what better way than to allow the men to duke it out among themselves, then select whoever the men agree is alpha man?

all the boys with no shirts on are displaying themselves to other men. when they are acclaimed by other men, they will then pull. they are not trying, in any way, to attract women, because women do not choose. other men choose who the best specimens are, and then women compete for them.

i suppose i wish i had known this when i was 16. i was, objectively, good looking enough, and i was nice, or could be, charming, or could be, and obviously i am smart and sensitive etc etc. but girls wouldn't look at me twice. when i was younger by a couple of years, i was very quiet, gentle and reserved. this was a contrast from my preteens, when i had been much more gregarious, and, i suppose, competitive. i was very popular with the girls then.

but of course, the story does not end there. women are not entirely shallow. (big winky there, ladies.) boys like me do get girls from time to time. indeed, i pull them disproportionately when they know me well. how does that fit my thesis?

well, it's simple. it's not apparent that i am a man in the sense i am describing, at first glance. i don't take my shirt off on cloudy days; i don't like fighting; i don't wrestle if i can avoid it and i've never felt that my (entirely satisfactory) dick would be any better for being confirmed as bigger than another man's (because you don't actually gain any length in the process). but i'm smart and different. and given time, i start seeming to be much more alpha than i do at first glance. particularly if you are willing to downplay the whole wealth (have none) and status (i'm a copyeditor for fuck's sake) thing, which many people are in this day and age. online, i'm strongly competitive too, which gives me the shorter-term impact that shirtless boys are aiming at. am i too competing with other men so that i can be recognised as an alpha troll? fucking right i am. here is a medium that rewards my abilities, much as the "real world" of teenage rewards sporty boys who don't mind being battered in the face to prove a point. (note that people who answer trolling by saying "you wouldn't do that in real life" are missing the point. i wouldn't do it in real life because it would be inappropriate and unproductive, just as teenage boys find it appropriate and productive to punch each other but mostly grow out of it as they get older. it's not that they are afraid of punching -- i never have been, and i've been in fights from time to time, it's that it simply no longer has a context. calling someone a cunt in your local pub has a different meaning from calling some denizen of teh Uselessnet one. but if for some reason it started to be a means of ranking men that we competitively troll each other IRL, you can count on my becoming as fucking annoying in the local pub as i am in your comments.)

so that's my thesis. i realise that you could, were you uncharitable, consider this a sexist proposition. am i saying something bad or degrading about women? i don't think so. it's an idea about how they work, not a descriptive framework. and men, frankly, come out of my thinking worse. we are pathetic peacocks, willing to bicker, scratch and fight in ridiculous contests whose only meaning is that the winner gets to be admired by other men. except that those contests make sense if their prize is being chosen by women.

the key to it is that the qualities that boys judge each other on are not necessarily ones that appeal to women. far from it. women are not apes, or dogs, or whatever. they do not actually weigh up men by their ability at punching each other. my thesis is that they are simply not concerned with the nature of our competition, so long as we have one, and so long as we judge ourselves and clearly present winners and losers.

15 Comments:

At 11:34 pm, Anonymous Anonymous said...

boots sez:

Zen, you still don't get it. The reason young girls are attracted to those fucktards who are preening among themselves is that they give the appearance of being uninterested. The "nice" boys on the other hand are sucking around after the girls and never get anywhere.

The word is coy, or something close to it. Supply and demand. I've tried explaining this with regard to Lady Luck.

The more you evidence need, the less you will get -- it applies to luck, pussy, anything. The buddha was not entirely retarded, though his followers often are.

 
At 3:40 am, Blogger AJ said...

There may be something to this in a general way, but when it comes to actually choosing someone you want to stick with for awhile, I think that reasons become more individualized and have to do with interaction rather than ranking.

You say that you come off more alpha once you're known better, but how does that help you? You have to get to the point of being known first, and if women choose based on who wins the playoffs, and you say you never made it to the playoffs, well,...needless to say I'm a bit confused. In order for a woman to know you better, wouldn't she have had to initially choose to want to get to know you better based on her own criteria that has nothing to do with male competitive ranking but rather on something about you that she likes?

Were you clearheaded when you wrote this? ;-)

 
At 9:19 am, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Nice post.

I will say though, that for every nice boy that isn't noticed by a girl, there is at least one very nice girl not noticed by any boy. Women compete too, of course, but instead of just taking the shirt off, it's psychological, which often means it's a bit more brutal.

 
At 9:44 am, Blogger Dr Zen said...

boots, being uninterested is simply a facet of alphaness, not a lure in itself. Note my thesis: women do not choose.

arleen, sometimes women and men spend time together willy nilly. They might share a flat (common for strangers to live together in the UK) or they might work together. You are forced to get to know your workmates, yes? See, I was clearheaded, but it looks like you weren't.

theminotaur, while you are doubtless right that women compete, I don't think they are competing for the benefit of men. We are not interested in, and when we are younger I'd go so far as to say we are horrified by, "alpha" women. Young women do take their shirts off, actually. They will often happily display themselves to men. You're not allowed to say that, I realise, because the notion that women do anything at all to attract men is not popular among feminists, but of course women do try to pull, just as men do. I think women's interactions are much more complex, but I haven't studied them closely enough to know how it works. How could I? Intrafemale discourse is usually hidden from men, or at best opaque.

 
At 11:48 am, Anonymous Anonymous said...

There are those women who take off their shirts, of course, but that's exactly the kind of "alpha"-womanhood display that nice boys get scared of. As in, "Wow, I wonder what her problem is?" It is generally assumed that a woman doesn't need to take her shirt off to get a man - a mere hint of that possibility is usually enough.

Zen, *everything* young (as well as not-so young) women do is to attract a man. The clothes, the makeup, the saucy talk, etc, etc. But actual flashing girls-gone-wild-style...well, no matter how liberated we pride ourselves on being, such behavior is considered whorish by both men and women. Which is what makes it fun, of course.

BTW, that smack-talk on feminism reeks of sexism. I thought you were on our side.

 
At 11:54 am, Blogger Dr Zen said...

I am far from smacktalking feminists, but the web is littered with horribly doctrinaire women who have a set of rules that anyone who falls foul of is labelled "witch" and promptly burned. I think you would be thrown out of the movement for suggesting that everything women do is about men, btw. Try posting that in the comments of feministing or pandagon and see how you go.

 
At 8:24 pm, Anonymous Anonymous said...

boots sez:

"boots, being uninterested is simply a facet of alphaness, not a lure in itself. Note my thesis: women do not choose."

I consider your thesis to be sideways, but carrying on any lengthy discussion via blog comments is nearly doomed, the comments get buried and lost too soon.

If I said that neither women nor men choose it would be true in its way. Lack of interest and failure to display interest are not the same. "Alphaness" as you put it... is not necessarily about testosterone and musculature, not about money and power, not about winning competitions. In isolation it could be said to be about interest, personal control, increasing demand by reducing supply, and gawd knows what all else.

We've collectively come up with a worldview that presents the world as being a very complex place, but that doesn't make the world complex in truth, just in view.

 
At 8:29 pm, Blogger Dr Zen said...

Well, I feel my thesis simplifies it, because it reduces what on the face of it is complex behaviour to a more general pattern. I've often thought that human beings specialise in making the simple complex and the complex impossible (or sometimes oversimple).

 
At 10:07 pm, Anonymous Anonymous said...

boots sez:

"... I feel my thesis simplifies it..."

There's no arguing that your thesis simplifies things, what can be argued is whether it simplifies them correctly.

The primary determining factor in choice is the opportunity to choose -- without that there is nothing.

Engaging in competitions may, or may not, increase opportunity for choice.

Part of your reasoning was that it makes sense for women to let men fight it out and then pick from the winners. That could be true, or not, but it seems stupid to me that for procreative purposes women would want to choose from men who have habitually placed themselves at risk.

Sexually, aside from rapine, it is women who are the active participants no matter what we Real Men prefer to think. They don't even need to be very active because they tend to have significant leverage hormonally speaking, men's hardware makes them much more desirous of a good fucking.

Men are trying too hard to sell something (a squirt of semen) and women have a buyer's market because men are everywhere and they would all like to squirt their contribution. When the man decides to limit what he can supply, the demand for it increases.

I've been fortunate this morning and thanks to events beyond my control I have an hour in which I could get something done so I'll leave you to consider your own idea that unless you show through competition that you are the Manliest of Men you will be forever horny. Aside from palmation, of coarse.

 
At 1:44 am, Blogger AJ said...

sometimes women and men spend time together willy nilly.

I think that supports boots' view that it's opportunity that is the determining factor in choice, not the outcome of the competition.

 
At 5:40 am, Blogger Don said...

So anyway, I think you've hit on something. We set the rules, we win or lose by them, and accept the alpha's getting the females of his choice as a result. Since it's all instinctive, it stands to reason that a lot of perfectly intelligent people won't be able to see it even as it's happening. Fortunately, being human, we define alpha in a great variety of ways, and most everyone gets a chance to mate one way or t'other.

 
At 9:16 am, Blogger Dr Zen said...

Arleen, your conclusion is entirely unmerited, and doesn't actually make sense. You need to have another look at what I said. Obviously, you must have opportunity to show your quality, but that's a trivial thing to claim.

Don, I once saw a natural history programme about cheetahs, I think it was. They sit in a field, ranked by their pecking order: top cheetah to the front, bottom cheetah at the back. The female cheetahs, also in pecking order, take partners beginning from the front. The females do not choose; the outcome of competition is plain to them. Of course, there are only so many cheetahs at the front of the pack, and lesser-quality cheetahs do get partners. Some at the very back are never chosen and never mate. They are known to die of thirst as they wait to be chosen.

Anyway, young people, I think, have more rigid criteria -- or on their face more rigid ones -- than their older counterparts.

 
At 2:29 am, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Once more on feminism:

No one can "throw me out" of the movement, because it doesn't have a hierarchy of decision-makers as to who belongs. Incidentally, feminism by its formal definition is a movement for women's economic equality. Its goals primarily are equal pay for equal work (which is still a ways away, and the gap gets bigger as you move up the pay scale), and removing hiring discrimination for women. The most common misconception about feminism is that it's about female supremacy: feminism is focused on women's equality. The notion that feminists are a bunch of men-hating dykes who wear sweats and inseminate each other with turkey-basters is propaganda to scare girls and young women away from standing up for themselves. And just like one shouldn't judge all vegetarians by Hitler's example, you shouldn't base your opinion on feminism on a bunch of crazies on internet forums, especially considering that while they talk trash on the web, they aren't writing to congressmen, negotiating salaries, or teaching their daughters math and economics.

 
At 8:10 am, Blogger Dr Zen said...

You are preaching to the choir, although there is much more to it than equal pay and other workforce issues.

I am much more broadly acquainted with feminism than to have read a few blogs, but I think you'll find that they do represent what you could call the feminist "movement". Many types of political thought have this kind of divide: there are those who are putting it into action, those who are theorising, those who are upholding doctrine, those who are hanging on at the margin. You sometimes do have movements in which some are comfortable with diversity but some feel that lack of solidarity leaves spaces for the "enemy" to stick in a wedge.

And yes, you're absolutely right. Most of the more vocal "feminists" are not doing a thing to help or uplift anyone else. They're building themselves comfortable pundit careers. They envy the likes of Germaine Greer, who has parlayed a decent book and a modicum of original thought into a multipronged media career, in which she is paid to have an opinion on everything.

I think that particularly radical feminism works like this: theorists are at the apex of a pyramid, working on understanding (and in some cases--come on down, Judith Butler--thoroughly obscuring) gender and patriarchy issues. Their work informs doctrinaire writers, who understand some of it, and insist that everyone should toe a line that they draw. Their work informs a broader group of women (and men) but it's like echoes in a well by that stage. Within the broader group are many people whose political thought is not much influenced by doctrinaire feminists, because they are working for women's rights in a much more concrete way. Also within it are people who don't actually do anything, or write much about it, but sympathise: fellow travellers, you might say. I believe that in this as in many other areas, you do not see change without the top being persuasive, and the bottom being numerous; but the doctrinaire types will always take the credit, and of course blame the base when things go pearshaped.

 
At 1:42 pm, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I agree with you on this. Thank you for such a well-written response.

 

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