I remember one time on a dating app... I was talking to a girl and I said "I don't even notice how women look. You know what draws me to women? The books they like. Their kindness. I don't even notice when women are pretty or have great bodies." She said "wow! That's great. I wish more guys were like you." I was amazed. I was being deliberately absurd and sarcastic, and I told her so. The idea that women could believe that ANY heterosexual man sees women in that way was shocking to me. That was an early lesson (of many) that women have absolutely no idea how men think. They're often not even honest about what THEY want. They definitely don't want to hear that kind of honesty from a man. This made me think of that for some reason.
You just sounded like a man with basic foresight. If you are going to be in a long-term relationship with a woman, things like kindness and compatible interests are vastly more important than looks. If you are going to spend a lot of time with someone, they ought to be someone it is fun to spend time with. If a woman is cruel and boring you will not have fun no matter how hot she is.
You laid it on a little thick at the end. Men definitely notice hotness, and it's silly not to. But it's also silly to prioritize it.
It also works the other way around. A lot, if not most guys (possibly including Richard himself) genuinely believe women are attracted to "personality" and that it is more important than looks, money and status.
Yes, personality is extremely important, and I feel sorry for you that you don't understand that. Your emphasis on male looks in particular is the result of young people taking feminism way too seriously, and accepting their ridiculous claims about men and women being psychologically similar.
Looks are a major factor. Presumably when women are looking for marriage personality matters more. But for shorter term dating/hook ups, looks are important. And I'm pretty confident they're still very relevant for long term relationships.
If you have any empirical data showing looks are not particularly relevant to men achieving romantic/sexual success, I'd love to see it
FWIW, I have sat through about 13,000 hours of girls gossiping and talking to each other about boys and who they're dating or wanting to date, or scrolling through app pictures together, and I'd say 60% of those conversations are about looks and height, 30% about personality with particular focus on guys who are funny or sweet, and 10% on anything else (job, family, friends, etc). I think you have it right.
I think men and women are very different, but I do agree that looks matter to women (especially younger women before they are truly ready to settle down) and that the less money a man has, the better looking he needs to be. I would also say that personality matters less and less as the man's money goes up.
No they don't. Looks are way less important to women than men, because men are on average way less physically attractive than women. Probably ten times less. Men who want to get by on their looks alone are a thousand times better off going after other men, who actually do prioritize looks and sex.
Looks are at best a bonus to women. Outside perhaps the top two-percent most attractive, men should neither rely on nor prioritize them. And even for the top two percent, the priority should still be to acquire and maintain status.
I agree that even good looking men should prioritize obtaining status and that looks are less important to men but I don't agree that men are way less physically attractive than women. I mean it depends if you're straight or gay or bi, doesn't it? Most women find muscles attractive and most men don't. It's like saying apples are 10 times less attractive than oranges. I think you are also discounting younger women who are not yet interested in settling down with a guy yet. Whether or not they will find happiness that way is besides the point: plenty of women now do this since society has taught them this is the norm.
When I was a young girl, I cared about men's looks a lot - for a short flirt I would have picked a pretty guy over a high-status guy any time. For long-term relationships... the same, I'm afraid. I tell you I was young and silly and following instincts. This can differ a lot between women, I'm sure.
Acknowledging women care about looks is not saying women and men's sexuality is similar. If that was the case, I would think it would be easy for most men to have amazing sex lives because most women would find most guys at least somewhat attractive and want to fuck them. But that is not the case, because female sexuality is different and therefore the distribution of male attractiveness is very different too.
And even when looks are less important for securing mates, its place is taken instead by money and status, so aside from situations where attractive men can pass the initial attraction threshold are too stupid or anxious to follow up on it, personality mostly does not matter.
There's already a lot of evidence that women do care a lot about looks and height, you could use dating apps and see it for yourself and I am certain that at least in developed western countries, looks are by far the most important factor in men's sexual and dating success.
Hypergamy isn’t a straight-jacket. Personality is a distant third to getting attention required to date. Will it stop you from a successful long-term relationship? Yes. But you’ll have options on the dating apps and in person, which is better than 80% of the male population.
On a dating app, I’ll grant that. But in a bar or on a softball team or a hostel or wherever else IRL, a guy who likes himself and who likes women is going to have an advantage over the hypothetical tech guy I came up with, at least when it comes to casual dating.
Women actually are attracted to male personality, particularly the natural Alpha Male/Rugged Masculine personality. It's the main reason why broke thugs, gangsters and jocks are very successful with women. A man who has wealth, good looks and high status but has an emasculated beta male personality would never be desired by women, they would only ever attract explotive gold diggers
Usually those thugs or jocks are good looking or high status (within their social circle at least). Tell an ugly short guy to act like an "alpha male" and what usually happens is that at best they get called a creep and ignored, and at worst, they get arrested, humiliated and fired from their job
I think this is too simplistic. Simply plotting women's perception of nale personality on a "rugged alpha" to "emasculated beta" is a kind of autistic understanding of the world. Women have a variety of tastes. Ruggedness is highly prized among certain groups, but obviously the obsession with Korean pop stars or lanky musician types has nothing to do with that particular standard.
The real deciding factor here is energy and will. An attractive man has a thousand archetypes, but all of them are someone who seems fully present in this life with passion and drive. The reason the classic "emasculated beta" is so disgusting is not really a lack of ruggedness or traditional masculinity so much as it is the fact that he is low energy with no drive or will -- already psychologically dead.
YES to everything you said, Keith. I am 73 years old (female) but sometimes when passing a very masculine man I get slack-jawed and can't help my eyes following his walk as he passes me. "Good lord, would ya look at that!" My husband of 11 years carefully averts his gaze from dropping onto the luscious forms of sexy women, for which I am absurdly grateful. He, at 69 years of age, is a VERY masculine man, and has confidence in that fact.
I think women's attraction is probably correlated with IQ/conscientiousness/EHC traits. You are probably right that dumber women with less foresight are attracted to the alpha male personality. However, women with greater intelligence and foresight are often ambivalent about it, or actively repulsed by it. They are intelligent enough to recognize that, as appealing as an Alpha Male is in the short term, in the long term they are incredibly annoying at best and self-destructive at worst. It's basically the woman equivalent of a far-sighted man who realizes that all women's looks fade eventually, so he needs to select a woman with a compatible personality for a long term relationship.
That's pure cope lol. IQ/Intelligence has very little to do with what people are attracted to (besides assortive mating. People are most compatible with those who are around the same intelligence level of themselves). Even the most Intelligent & educated women are subconsciously more attracted to men who are more hyper-masculine or "Alpha" than men who are less so even in long term relationships, they are not at all replused by it. Looks fade over time but personality is for life.
Also, IQ/Intelligence has very little to do with personality.
I don't think it's cope to recognize that there is a pretty strong correlation between "alpha male" traits and "terrible person" traits, or to notice that many women are intelligent enough to recognize that and consequently find alpha males to be kind of gross.
If a woman is compatible with someone around the same intelligence level as her, then intelligent women will end up more compatible with beta males, just because intelligent men are more likely to realize that "alpha male" behavior is self destructive in the long term and abstain from it. This is why the lower class has more "alpha males" in it, they are not smart enough to realize that acting like one needs to be done in small doses to avoid behaving idiotically.
Women are grossed out by alpha males if their behavior is excessive in some way, if it signals a vice like impulsiivity or bossiness. They can be attracted to beta males who lack such vices, especially if their "beta" traits are perceived as signs of prudence or kindness, rather than weakness.
1. Explain why High IQ and higher class beta males are consistently more likely to be incels then. Why aren't High IQ women choosing these men?
2. No group of women on the planet actually thinks "Alpha Male" behavior is gross unless they are Asexual or completely Lesbian.
3. All human behavior is potentially self-destructive, it's called life. And so called "terrible person" traits in men are often exactly with women are most attracted to. No one on Earth honestly thinks morality is sexually or romantically attractive.
This is cope. Women never sexually desire kind, compliant men. They want to bond with them post-ovulation because they offer the best chance at paternal investment, but let them start ovulating and they are grossed out by those men.
A woman here; just from experience, perceivably low intelligence is rather repellent. Personality is important, but not some specific personality ('alpha'), the necessary ingredient seems to be high energy and passion, like someone stated earlier. So it can be a poor poet passionately writing poems in a little attic room using his last candle. Or a passionate tech guy, or, in some social circumstances, could also be one who gets into fights easily and sometimes wins. The variety of possible high-quality males is all over the place.
Theoretically, I don't think it's likely that hyper-masculine phenotypes have evolved in response to women's preferences, these traits have probably more to do with between-male competition, right? So the optimum for average females is likely somewhere below maximum masculinity.
I agree that all women are subconsciously attracted to alpha males, but I also think that higher IQ women will actually be turned off by guys who are TOO alpha (or alpha in socially unacceptable ways). Seriously, only women who are extremely naive or have limited options would date an alpha who seems potentially violent towards her or the child or just completely incapable of being faithful. Only gold digger types marry very rich, high status guys who are obviously going to cheat. Scratch that: many delusional women do also. Women who really believe they are so awesome an NBA star is going to be faithful long term.
1. Women (even the most Intelligent ones) tend to be subconsciously attracted to violent and potentially abusive men (hell, pornography that features violence against women is mostly popular with women not men), that's why many women have rape fantasies. They know exactly what they are getting into when entering relationships with these men.
2. Women as a group as also more attracted to men who they know are likely to cheat because if a man can easily replace her with another woman then that man must be of high value.
They aren’t turned off; they’re so turned on they crave those men. They just won’t work as a couple. But the “I can fix him” meme comes from a real place, man.
Agreed. And I think this applies to MOST (not all) rock stars - none of them seem particularly capable of "violence". Think of singers like Steve Perry and any number of crooners. These guys aren't beating anyone up but plenty of women would drop their panties in a second for them. Even if they're not rock stars, women are attracted to guys in bands. I think this is because guys in bands have a status even if they're not famous because people look at them. Attention is given to them. But comedians don't get the same kind of thing. Why not? Best guess? There's no romance to comedy. It's the opposite.
Similar to what you’re saying, my biggest issue with this hypothesis is that women are
not that good at assessing which guy will cheat on them. Rom coms tell them that a really attractive man who is smitten will become focused only on one woman to the exclusion of others, when most men realize that many other men are really just trying to sow their oats as widely as opportunity lets them.
Women operate purely based on feelings in romance, in my experience. If they feel attracted and excited they’ll often convince themselves that they’re being rational and sober minded. It rarely works the other way.
This is literally everyone wtf are u talking about. Infact, this is most men. Men are the instinctive animals who largely choose based on looks, and who bend over backwards, to accommodate any other type of flaw. If women choose solely on looks, most men would be single.
Tbf, some men do appreciate the inner values more than outer ones, but this too seems ironically have to become even rarer in our saturated and superficial culture.
I remember a study from Germany after the war where most men said they preferred women who were loyal and good at doing housework over very attractive ones.
That’s always been true. Men value peace in a relationship as the first priority in the context of the relationship. A woman he finds attractive enough and brings peace is worth a million dollars or more.
That there are women around who don't know how men think is actually a good sign. It shows that they've been insulated from the misogynistic ranting that men like my father subjected me and my sisters to. I'm pretty sure we know how men think.
When women can't trust men, men are forced to act feminine in order to win the trust of women. This statement can be generalized further, to say: when humans cannot trust other humans, they are forced to act more feminine to win trust. In a high-trust society, people can act more masculine, stoic, aggressive, terse, Spartan. In a low-trust society, people are forced to be more emotive, apologetic, polite, performative, loquacious, vulnerable, and passive. This is the Zagrebbi Theory of Wokeness in a nutshell.
I am not sure that checks out. Low trust societies are usually more masculine than high trust ones. They are generally full of impulsive, violent men. In terms of trustworthiness, a stoic individual seems far more trustworthy than an emotive one. The emotive person will probably get carried away by their feelings and flake out on their commitments.
Another problem with this theory is that men don’t pretend to be low testosterone, they really are low testosterone. Testosterone levels went from an average of 600 to 450 in just 15 years , from 2000 to 2015. That’s all you need to know about why men are so feminine today . No need for complicated theories about sexual selection .
This has gotta be primarily because we've gotten fatter and more sedentary. I know microplastics is the sexier answer, and I can't imagine they're good for us so we should make an effort to clean our shit up, but it's just so much more straightforward that it'd be increased obesity that's the primary cause, especially given the increase in all the other obesity-related diseases that we've seen:
Why so much pressure on men to behave in a feminine way though? Shouldn't #BelieveWomen be *less* required in a low-testosterone society?
I suppose if I were a radical feminist, I could argue that the patriarchy really had its boot on the female throat back when men were higher testosterone. Now that its boot has been lessened a little bit, we can hear her screaming.
I think it's abundantly clear by now that Woke people - including 3rd wave feminists -and their liberal enablers NEVER STOP seeing and portraying themselves as victims requiring more and more preferential and coddling treatment. See the very recent trans changes OR the very recent super bowl ads about "girl power" OR any race hustler. These people are either zealots living in a delusional fantasy world or liberals enabling them out of fear of -worst case scenario - losing their jobs. Continuously crying hatred and bigotry pays off handsomely and "wins" arguments. (Not really but it'll look like it.)
When has "signaling loyalty" ever been a important factor in men's success in sex and relationships? Such a thing never happened, it would imply lack of loyalty would ever the limit the options of high status men (it doesn't, even when it's obvious). There are good ways to explain the shift in composition of elites in recent years, and women certainly have a lot to do with it, but this theory feels more like a bullshit platitude a feminist might throw at an incel than a good explanation.
This is the opposite of a feminist platitude. Richard is basically saying that men adopt feminist beliefs as a downstream effect of wanting to get laid. Whereas a feminist would say that a high quality man being a feminist would precede any ulterior motive.
While I do think all feminists are delusional in certain ways, I think it depends on how delusional the woman is, feminist or not. I think there are plenty of feminists who believe "All men are dogs and can't be trusted" and there are plenty of non-feminists who are delusional and really believe some guy is treating them great because they have a great personality. I have met these women. (To be fair, I know one guy like this who also thinks women really dig him because of his personality and not the fact that he's very good looking and tall.)
What I meant is that feminists often say that support for feminism makes men more attractive, which is what they often say to unattractive men (like incels). I guess a lot of guys believe the platitude and try to act accordingly, but any guy in that position is most likely low status to begin with, which doesn't track with Richard's theory because he's talking about shifting attitudes in elites.
Sure, feminists tell incels that being a feminist is more attractive but it is hinged on the belief the feminism is sincere. A feminist would be repulsed by a man who pretended to be a feminist just to get laid. And incels almost never use the “feminizing” tactic to try and get women. Instead, they attempt to become more masculine or “chad-like” which tracks per Richard’s theory.
Why would you assume a feminist would always be able to tell whether a man's feminism is sincere or not? And how do you know incels didn't try the feminization tactic? Sure, I guess guys today who are part of incels communities certainly dont try to appear feminist, but a lot of unattractive guys do or did it at some point, including today's incels. It's common enough to have become a stereotype. See what comes up when you look up "feminist male"
Women are not very good at offering men advice on how to be more attractive. I think the largest part of this it's because having to offer a man advice on such matters is itself very unattractive to women, and the advice which could be offered which actually has a chance of making a making a noticeable difference involves solutions which will take long term efforts before they bear fruit. "Make more money" and "get in better physical shape" would improve the prospects of many loveless men today, but these take months or years of concentrated efforts.
Others are correct that an array of more straightforward explanations for cultural feminization are available (viz., women incorporating into the workforce and feminine traits being correlated with educational/professional success). Feminization is more likely the upshot of women gaining bargaining power and enforcing their beliefs/affinities than about men devising a stratagem to signal loyalty and accommodate female mate selection. One of the key struggles of men these days is precisely their inability to reshape themselves into the girly contours of current female mating preferences. Clever theory though.
I think there is probably a simpler explanation than the one Richard elucidate, which relates to his concept of EHC (or maybe just to biodeterminism around IQ and conscientiousness). Elite human capital tend to be more thoughtful and have more foresight than LHC. So they tend to understand that superficially attractive traits are not always positive in the long run.
Highly masculine men have many virtues, but they also often have vices like aggression, impulsiveness, and inflexibility. In a long term relationship they might butt heads with a woman over many different issues. An intelligent woman with foresight will likely realize that, so her initial attraction to masculine men will be weakened by thoughts of the long term. The opposite will happen with less masculine men, women of intelligence and foresight will often realize that they are easier to get along with in the long run.
Regardless of whether Richard's explanation is correct, I think it ultimately shows that deception in relationships is bad. Instead of pretending to be someone you are not to get your mate to trust you, work to actually be more trustworthy. Instead of pretending to have such low levels of sexual attraction that you aren't tempted by other women, be the kind of person who can resist temptation. Be an honorable man who keeps his commitments to women, not a man who pretends he doesn't even need to make commitments.
Stalin is the wrong guy for that joke. He would send everyone important to the gulag sooner or later, nothing personal! "Elite rotation" was the euphemism.
The appropriate comparison (and this one is allegedly not a joke) is the (much more humane and tolerant) Khrushchev visiting an abstract art exhibition and commenting it with... well, you can read it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manege_Affair .
>Before we relaxed pressures for monogamy, the left wasn’t seen as necessarily less masculine than the right
Leftist movements were more feminist from the start. Women actively participated in the 19th and early 20th century revolutionary movements. If you listen to a history of something like the Russian Revolution, the communists have multiple influential women; the only influential woman on the right is maybe the Tsar's wife.
I don't fully agree with Hanania, but I think his point still stands: he is referring to men being more feminine. Just because plenty of feminists were involved back then (when women genuinely had less rights) doesn't mean the men weren't seen as masculine in the way they are now.
Dating as competition is one way to look at the male female dynamic. It’s more type 1 thinking, drawing upon our primal instinct to explain social behaviors.
Another way to look at it is through type 2 thinking. Type 1 thinking (winning a competition, high quality spouse, etc) leads to sub-optimal outcomes in terms of actual quality of life. The constant threat of divorce, or tension due to mistrust, or lack of commitment and lack of love is not worth playing games. Simple as that. Type 2 thinking distills what exactly is valuable about monogamy and a strong nuclear family and makes decisions that create such an environment.
I think something like zero-sum vs positive-sum thinking respectively? i.e. "winning" a spouse (zero-sum competition with other males) versus building a positive relationship with someone
There’s a book thinking fast and slow that I’m borrowing the language from. It’s not quite 1 to 1 on the definition but essentially type 1 thinking is subconscious, fast thinking, that most people do subconsciously whereas type 2 is deliberate, slow thinking that requires effort.
I have this exact thought whenever I read these competitive, market-based accounts of romance and dating. It seems to both not describe reality accurately, and be too zero-sum.
I'm not sure I follow. Incels are not in any way shape or form associated with feminization. I think it's an unusual stretch to do so. If anything, they're viewed as misogynist and proto-fascists. If you mean the stereotype of guys living in their parent's basement, I can see what you're going for, but incels are not remotely feminized - if the term incel means anything. Incels is a term reserved for guys living in the basement who are angry and misogynist.
Feminization makes low status men seem even lower quality, and therefore more likely to be involuntarily celibate. The literal meaning of incel is involuntary celibate. This is a semantics issue, but even for an incel, as in an angry misogynist, the prerequisite is to also be involuntary celibate, so my point still stands.
Fair point, agreed on this being about semantics. If all you mean by incel is involuntarily celibate, I'm with you. I'm just used to Establishment Media always tying them to "proto-fascist" "misogynists" who would despise feminine things, but yes you're right about the original meaning.
Pretty much the entire "alpha male" "beta male" discourse is projection and cope on the part of its advocates. It takes a few accurate observations about how dating works, and then makes up a bunch of ludicrous psychological explanations for why it works like that. The explanations say far more about their proponents and their misanthropic worldview than they do about the men and women they are supposed to be describing.
One of the biggest "aha" moments I had was when I saw a video by a female comedian where she described dating a bunch of losers before settling down. What was interesting was that she described the exact same phenomenon as described by the redpill/PUA community. Where she differed was her description of the attitude she felt towards the men in question. It was clear that she had no real respect for the men she fooled around with and saw them as beneath her and unworthy of marriage. Her husband, by contrast, was a man she was both attracted to, and respected. The reason she had fooled around before settling down was simple logistics: if she had fooled around after settling down her husband would have been upset!
The redpill/PUA community describes the same phenomenon, but projects completely different motivations onto the women in question. They claim that women really respect and are attracted to the alpha males they screw around with and are contemptuously settling for the betas. I realized the redpill/PUAs weren't actually fearlessly facing reality like they claimed. Instead they just sat around making up motivations for women that allowed them to feel hate and contempt for them.
My insight was cemented after I read Ozy Brenan's "Anti-Heartiste FAQ," which had the same theme of agreeing that the behavior that PUAs observed in the dating environment existed, but having different, more accurate psychological explanations for why it existed. Again, I realized that a group that portrayed themselves as fearless truthtellers facing reality were just a bunch of misanthropes taking giant doses of cope. They didn't care about finding the truth, they just discovered a few useful dating techniques by dumb luck and then made up fake explanations for why they worked that let them justify being contemptuous of everyone.
It's isn't a denial of human nature to recognize that violent, aggressive alpha males are usually impulsive, narcissistic morons in the present day. It's just a recognition that the environment has changed since when humans evolved. Traits that were adaptive back then aren't as adaptive now, so most people use their intelligence and prudence to moderate those traits. The only people who fail to do so are one who lack intelligence and prudence.
I am certainly not embracing some kind of beta male slave morality. I am simply recognizing that women are not a monolith and that different dating techniques work differently on different types of women. If I was doing what you accuse me of I would be insisting that beta male techniques work on all women.
Isn’t a much simpler explanation that women have been steadily getting more influential over time?
I don’t think women have changed — they never liked getting harassed by their boss (I suppose there were a few exceptions but most 50’s guys were not Don Draper), but they put up with it because they didn’t want to lose their jobs. They mostly don’t like crude sexual language or humor, either.
Once there were more women in management and a legal system to somewhat protect women, women stopped putting up with it as much.
Older, richer, more powerful men could and can ignore this trend to some extent, but regular guys can’t and changed their behavior.
Men and women have different conceptions of high trust and safety. Feminine high trust is school room compliance. Masculine high trust is sports and the market determining merit and loyalty
It's not a "theory" it's a very bad hypothesis. You make zero predictions based evolutionary theory to back up your supposition. It looks like you've learned evolutionary psychology from pop psych books. This is as bad as Rollo Tomassi.
Interesting but it leaves out that women do want the high libido, high testosterone and only settle for less of both after giving up on those men making a commitment. As such, it's a big leap to say the 34 year old woman actually prefers a less masculine man for marriage. More likely the less masculine man is a second choice of necessity. Which also explains why most divorces are initiated by women and in context to your own observations about high class/feminine men; that demographic has the highest percentage of women initiating divorce.
The other thing I've noticed is there seems to be a certain cyclical aspect of all this. There seems to be a certain similarity between the free-love 60s and the raunchy 2000s, the second-wave 70s and the woke 2010s, and the conservative 80s and the vibe shift we're seeing now. I don't know how far you can project things back or forward but the Trumpian reaction has definite Nixonian vibes, reacting against Black Power/BLM and second-wave feminism/wokery. There seems to be a kind of oscillation between liberal libertinism, liberal puritanism, conservative puritanism, and conservative libertinism (think of South Park). It doesn't seem to be a simple binary of libertinism versus puritanism or left versus right, the axes seem to swing around in ways I can't really describe. I'd be curious if anyone else sees this or can describe it better than me.
I'm always wary of connecting decades with specific social changes just because changes take much longer (the free-love 60s takes decades to build up to that I think, starting with flappers, the effects of the automobile, and the like), but I do see what you're saying and I do agree that we can see what we always see: extremes on one side leads to a backlash. I think Trump's extreme overreach for example is going to be a big problem in 2028. I hope I'm wrong.
Yeah, these things never cleave clearly along the decade turnovers, and why would they? But it's one of the few easy ways (apart from presidential administrations) in common use to talk about a period of time longer than a year and shorter than a century. Start talking about '1962-1975' (JFK assassination to the end of the Vietnam War), for instance, for that period and people aren't exactly clear what you're talking about.
I agree that Trump's overreach is going to bite him in the ass, possibly as early as 2026 (if the Democrats have both houses his freedom is going to be severely circumscribed, and if they get enough votes they can impeach him). I also hope we're wrong. I can totally see the reawakening of woke.
I'm with you 100%. I'm tired of all these anti-Wokesters constantly cheering like Wokeness or DEI is defeated or "over". I've seen ZERO evidence of this and yet all these guys are cheering. And Dems especially haven't walked anything back from what I've seen. They're just being a little quieter for now and in a way I don't blame them since they rightly are thinking "This guy's a lunatic, let's just give him time to alienate alot of the country again". I hate that the Republicans nominated him, but honestly at this point, I don't see how anyone but Trump can win the nomination from these people. It's either him or they'll just stay home and let the Dems take over again.
I remember one time on a dating app... I was talking to a girl and I said "I don't even notice how women look. You know what draws me to women? The books they like. Their kindness. I don't even notice when women are pretty or have great bodies." She said "wow! That's great. I wish more guys were like you." I was amazed. I was being deliberately absurd and sarcastic, and I told her so. The idea that women could believe that ANY heterosexual man sees women in that way was shocking to me. That was an early lesson (of many) that women have absolutely no idea how men think. They're often not even honest about what THEY want. They definitely don't want to hear that kind of honesty from a man. This made me think of that for some reason.
You just sounded like a man with basic foresight. If you are going to be in a long-term relationship with a woman, things like kindness and compatible interests are vastly more important than looks. If you are going to spend a lot of time with someone, they ought to be someone it is fun to spend time with. If a woman is cruel and boring you will not have fun no matter how hot she is.
You laid it on a little thick at the end. Men definitely notice hotness, and it's silly not to. But it's also silly to prioritize it.
It also works the other way around. A lot, if not most guys (possibly including Richard himself) genuinely believe women are attracted to "personality" and that it is more important than looks, money and status.
Yes, personality is extremely important, and I feel sorry for you that you don't understand that. Your emphasis on male looks in particular is the result of young people taking feminism way too seriously, and accepting their ridiculous claims about men and women being psychologically similar.
Looks are still very important. Female preference is roughly 50/50 between personality and looks.
No that number for looks is way too high.
https://putanumonit.com/2020/06/11/dating-assholes/
Looks are a major factor. Presumably when women are looking for marriage personality matters more. But for shorter term dating/hook ups, looks are important. And I'm pretty confident they're still very relevant for long term relationships.
If you have any empirical data showing looks are not particularly relevant to men achieving romantic/sexual success, I'd love to see it
FWIW, I have sat through about 13,000 hours of girls gossiping and talking to each other about boys and who they're dating or wanting to date, or scrolling through app pictures together, and I'd say 60% of those conversations are about looks and height, 30% about personality with particular focus on guys who are funny or sweet, and 10% on anything else (job, family, friends, etc). I think you have it right.
OkCupid itself is the data. Women rated men on average as ten times less physically attractive than men rated women:
https://www.betonit.ai/p/the-typical-man-disgusts-the-typical
Maybe you're saying that because you're personally much stronger in the "status department" than the "looks department."
Then by attracting women I’ve proved my theory correct.
I think men and women are very different, but I do agree that looks matter to women (especially younger women before they are truly ready to settle down) and that the less money a man has, the better looking he needs to be. I would also say that personality matters less and less as the man's money goes up.
No they don't. Looks are way less important to women than men, because men are on average way less physically attractive than women. Probably ten times less. Men who want to get by on their looks alone are a thousand times better off going after other men, who actually do prioritize looks and sex.
Looks are at best a bonus to women. Outside perhaps the top two-percent most attractive, men should neither rely on nor prioritize them. And even for the top two percent, the priority should still be to acquire and maintain status.
I agree that even good looking men should prioritize obtaining status and that looks are less important to men but I don't agree that men are way less physically attractive than women. I mean it depends if you're straight or gay or bi, doesn't it? Most women find muscles attractive and most men don't. It's like saying apples are 10 times less attractive than oranges. I think you are also discounting younger women who are not yet interested in settling down with a guy yet. Whether or not they will find happiness that way is besides the point: plenty of women now do this since society has taught them this is the norm.
When I was a young girl, I cared about men's looks a lot - for a short flirt I would have picked a pretty guy over a high-status guy any time. For long-term relationships... the same, I'm afraid. I tell you I was young and silly and following instincts. This can differ a lot between women, I'm sure.
Acknowledging women care about looks is not saying women and men's sexuality is similar. If that was the case, I would think it would be easy for most men to have amazing sex lives because most women would find most guys at least somewhat attractive and want to fuck them. But that is not the case, because female sexuality is different and therefore the distribution of male attractiveness is very different too.
And even when looks are less important for securing mates, its place is taken instead by money and status, so aside from situations where attractive men can pass the initial attraction threshold are too stupid or anxious to follow up on it, personality mostly does not matter.
There's already a lot of evidence that women do care a lot about looks and height, you could use dating apps and see it for yourself and I am certain that at least in developed western countries, looks are by far the most important factor in men's sexual and dating success.
Women don't care about looks enough to where it makes sense for all but the top two-percent of men to prioritize.
The distribution is different because men ARE just less physically attractive.
You only think that because you're not attracted to men. I happen to think men are, both at the median and at the top, better looking than women.
Personality rates very low after looks and status.
That's why shy, slightly creepy guys who are superficially handsome and make six figures at tech companies date like rock stars. /sarc
Hypergamy isn’t a straight-jacket. Personality is a distant third to getting attention required to date. Will it stop you from a successful long-term relationship? Yes. But you’ll have options on the dating apps and in person, which is better than 80% of the male population.
On a dating app, I’ll grant that. But in a bar or on a softball team or a hostel or wherever else IRL, a guy who likes himself and who likes women is going to have an advantage over the hypothetical tech guy I came up with, at least when it comes to casual dating.
Women actually are attracted to male personality, particularly the natural Alpha Male/Rugged Masculine personality. It's the main reason why broke thugs, gangsters and jocks are very successful with women. A man who has wealth, good looks and high status but has an emasculated beta male personality would never be desired by women, they would only ever attract explotive gold diggers
Usually those thugs or jocks are good looking or high status (within their social circle at least). Tell an ugly short guy to act like an "alpha male" and what usually happens is that at best they get called a creep and ignored, and at worst, they get arrested, humiliated and fired from their job
Right - looks and status matter. People can pretend to have strong frame but eventually the paper tiger gets revealed.
I think this is too simplistic. Simply plotting women's perception of nale personality on a "rugged alpha" to "emasculated beta" is a kind of autistic understanding of the world. Women have a variety of tastes. Ruggedness is highly prized among certain groups, but obviously the obsession with Korean pop stars or lanky musician types has nothing to do with that particular standard.
The real deciding factor here is energy and will. An attractive man has a thousand archetypes, but all of them are someone who seems fully present in this life with passion and drive. The reason the classic "emasculated beta" is so disgusting is not really a lack of ruggedness or traditional masculinity so much as it is the fact that he is low energy with no drive or will -- already psychologically dead.
That's true
YES to everything you said, Keith. I am 73 years old (female) but sometimes when passing a very masculine man I get slack-jawed and can't help my eyes following his walk as he passes me. "Good lord, would ya look at that!" My husband of 11 years carefully averts his gaze from dropping onto the luscious forms of sexy women, for which I am absurdly grateful. He, at 69 years of age, is a VERY masculine man, and has confidence in that fact.
I think women's attraction is probably correlated with IQ/conscientiousness/EHC traits. You are probably right that dumber women with less foresight are attracted to the alpha male personality. However, women with greater intelligence and foresight are often ambivalent about it, or actively repulsed by it. They are intelligent enough to recognize that, as appealing as an Alpha Male is in the short term, in the long term they are incredibly annoying at best and self-destructive at worst. It's basically the woman equivalent of a far-sighted man who realizes that all women's looks fade eventually, so he needs to select a woman with a compatible personality for a long term relationship.
That's pure cope lol. IQ/Intelligence has very little to do with what people are attracted to (besides assortive mating. People are most compatible with those who are around the same intelligence level of themselves). Even the most Intelligent & educated women are subconsciously more attracted to men who are more hyper-masculine or "Alpha" than men who are less so even in long term relationships, they are not at all replused by it. Looks fade over time but personality is for life.
Also, IQ/Intelligence has very little to do with personality.
I don't think it's cope to recognize that there is a pretty strong correlation between "alpha male" traits and "terrible person" traits, or to notice that many women are intelligent enough to recognize that and consequently find alpha males to be kind of gross.
If a woman is compatible with someone around the same intelligence level as her, then intelligent women will end up more compatible with beta males, just because intelligent men are more likely to realize that "alpha male" behavior is self destructive in the long term and abstain from it. This is why the lower class has more "alpha males" in it, they are not smart enough to realize that acting like one needs to be done in small doses to avoid behaving idiotically.
Women are grossed out by alpha males if their behavior is excessive in some way, if it signals a vice like impulsiivity or bossiness. They can be attracted to beta males who lack such vices, especially if their "beta" traits are perceived as signs of prudence or kindness, rather than weakness.
Spoken like a delusional beta lol.
1. Explain why High IQ and higher class beta males are consistently more likely to be incels then. Why aren't High IQ women choosing these men?
2. No group of women on the planet actually thinks "Alpha Male" behavior is gross unless they are Asexual or completely Lesbian.
3. All human behavior is potentially self-destructive, it's called life. And so called "terrible person" traits in men are often exactly with women are most attracted to. No one on Earth honestly thinks morality is sexually or romantically attractive.
This is cope. Women never sexually desire kind, compliant men. They want to bond with them post-ovulation because they offer the best chance at paternal investment, but let them start ovulating and they are grossed out by those men.
A woman here; just from experience, perceivably low intelligence is rather repellent. Personality is important, but not some specific personality ('alpha'), the necessary ingredient seems to be high energy and passion, like someone stated earlier. So it can be a poor poet passionately writing poems in a little attic room using his last candle. Or a passionate tech guy, or, in some social circumstances, could also be one who gets into fights easily and sometimes wins. The variety of possible high-quality males is all over the place.
Theoretically, I don't think it's likely that hyper-masculine phenotypes have evolved in response to women's preferences, these traits have probably more to do with between-male competition, right? So the optimum for average females is likely somewhere below maximum masculinity.
You're right actually
I agree that all women are subconsciously attracted to alpha males, but I also think that higher IQ women will actually be turned off by guys who are TOO alpha (or alpha in socially unacceptable ways). Seriously, only women who are extremely naive or have limited options would date an alpha who seems potentially violent towards her or the child or just completely incapable of being faithful. Only gold digger types marry very rich, high status guys who are obviously going to cheat. Scratch that: many delusional women do also. Women who really believe they are so awesome an NBA star is going to be faithful long term.
1. Women (even the most Intelligent ones) tend to be subconsciously attracted to violent and potentially abusive men (hell, pornography that features violence against women is mostly popular with women not men), that's why many women have rape fantasies. They know exactly what they are getting into when entering relationships with these men.
2. Women as a group as also more attracted to men who they know are likely to cheat because if a man can easily replace her with another woman then that man must be of high value.
They aren’t turned off; they’re so turned on they crave those men. They just won’t work as a couple. But the “I can fix him” meme comes from a real place, man.
Huh?
Contextual Alpha is a thing, as well. There is, after all, an Apex Goth, for example.
Interesting. Who's an example of an Apex Goth?
Robert Smith (The Cure) Dave Gahan (Depeche Mode) Gerard Way (My Chemical Romance.
Those men are not traditional masculine men, in the “kill a bear in Central Park” kind of way, but they will clean up in their cohort.
Agreed. And I think this applies to MOST (not all) rock stars - none of them seem particularly capable of "violence". Think of singers like Steve Perry and any number of crooners. These guys aren't beating anyone up but plenty of women would drop their panties in a second for them. Even if they're not rock stars, women are attracted to guys in bands. I think this is because guys in bands have a status even if they're not famous because people look at them. Attention is given to them. But comedians don't get the same kind of thing. Why not? Best guess? There's no romance to comedy. It's the opposite.
Similar to what you’re saying, my biggest issue with this hypothesis is that women are
not that good at assessing which guy will cheat on them. Rom coms tell them that a really attractive man who is smitten will become focused only on one woman to the exclusion of others, when most men realize that many other men are really just trying to sow their oats as widely as opportunity lets them.
Women operate purely based on feelings in romance, in my experience. If they feel attracted and excited they’ll often convince themselves that they’re being rational and sober minded. It rarely works the other way.
This is literally everyone wtf are u talking about. Infact, this is most men. Men are the instinctive animals who largely choose based on looks, and who bend over backwards, to accommodate any other type of flaw. If women choose solely on looks, most men would be single.
Tbf, some men do appreciate the inner values more than outer ones, but this too seems ironically have to become even rarer in our saturated and superficial culture.
I remember a study from Germany after the war where most men said they preferred women who were loyal and good at doing housework over very attractive ones.
That’s always been true. Men value peace in a relationship as the first priority in the context of the relationship. A woman he finds attractive enough and brings peace is worth a million dollars or more.
And if she brings strife, she may leave with a million of *his* dollars.
Only if a ring is put on first. And even then only without a prenup.
That there are women around who don't know how men think is actually a good sign. It shows that they've been insulated from the misogynistic ranting that men like my father subjected me and my sisters to. I'm pretty sure we know how men think.
When women can't trust men, men are forced to act feminine in order to win the trust of women. This statement can be generalized further, to say: when humans cannot trust other humans, they are forced to act more feminine to win trust. In a high-trust society, people can act more masculine, stoic, aggressive, terse, Spartan. In a low-trust society, people are forced to be more emotive, apologetic, polite, performative, loquacious, vulnerable, and passive. This is the Zagrebbi Theory of Wokeness in a nutshell.
I am not sure that checks out. Low trust societies are usually more masculine than high trust ones. They are generally full of impulsive, violent men. In terms of trustworthiness, a stoic individual seems far more trustworthy than an emotive one. The emotive person will probably get carried away by their feelings and flake out on their commitments.
Replace low trust with high social complexity and it makes more sense
Another problem with this theory is that men don’t pretend to be low testosterone, they really are low testosterone. Testosterone levels went from an average of 600 to 450 in just 15 years , from 2000 to 2015. That’s all you need to know about why men are so feminine today . No need for complicated theories about sexual selection .
This has gotta be primarily because we've gotten fatter and more sedentary. I know microplastics is the sexier answer, and I can't imagine they're good for us so we should make an effort to clean our shit up, but it's just so much more straightforward that it'd be increased obesity that's the primary cause, especially given the increase in all the other obesity-related diseases that we've seen:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10763932/
Why so much pressure on men to behave in a feminine way though? Shouldn't #BelieveWomen be *less* required in a low-testosterone society?
I suppose if I were a radical feminist, I could argue that the patriarchy really had its boot on the female throat back when men were higher testosterone. Now that its boot has been lessened a little bit, we can hear her screaming.
I think it's abundantly clear by now that Woke people - including 3rd wave feminists -and their liberal enablers NEVER STOP seeing and portraying themselves as victims requiring more and more preferential and coddling treatment. See the very recent trans changes OR the very recent super bowl ads about "girl power" OR any race hustler. These people are either zealots living in a delusional fantasy world or liberals enabling them out of fear of -worst case scenario - losing their jobs. Continuously crying hatred and bigotry pays off handsomely and "wins" arguments. (Not really but it'll look like it.)
When has "signaling loyalty" ever been a important factor in men's success in sex and relationships? Such a thing never happened, it would imply lack of loyalty would ever the limit the options of high status men (it doesn't, even when it's obvious). There are good ways to explain the shift in composition of elites in recent years, and women certainly have a lot to do with it, but this theory feels more like a bullshit platitude a feminist might throw at an incel than a good explanation.
This is the opposite of a feminist platitude. Richard is basically saying that men adopt feminist beliefs as a downstream effect of wanting to get laid. Whereas a feminist would say that a high quality man being a feminist would precede any ulterior motive.
While I do think all feminists are delusional in certain ways, I think it depends on how delusional the woman is, feminist or not. I think there are plenty of feminists who believe "All men are dogs and can't be trusted" and there are plenty of non-feminists who are delusional and really believe some guy is treating them great because they have a great personality. I have met these women. (To be fair, I know one guy like this who also thinks women really dig him because of his personality and not the fact that he's very good looking and tall.)
What I meant is that feminists often say that support for feminism makes men more attractive, which is what they often say to unattractive men (like incels). I guess a lot of guys believe the platitude and try to act accordingly, but any guy in that position is most likely low status to begin with, which doesn't track with Richard's theory because he's talking about shifting attitudes in elites.
Sure, feminists tell incels that being a feminist is more attractive but it is hinged on the belief the feminism is sincere. A feminist would be repulsed by a man who pretended to be a feminist just to get laid. And incels almost never use the “feminizing” tactic to try and get women. Instead, they attempt to become more masculine or “chad-like” which tracks per Richard’s theory.
Self-identified incels are popularly thought of as being "redpilled" right-wingers, but are actually more likely to lean to the left https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/news/incels-are-not-particularly-right-wing-or-white-but-they-are-extremely-depressed-anxious-and-lonely-according-to-new-research
Why would you assume a feminist would always be able to tell whether a man's feminism is sincere or not? And how do you know incels didn't try the feminization tactic? Sure, I guess guys today who are part of incels communities certainly dont try to appear feminist, but a lot of unattractive guys do or did it at some point, including today's incels. It's common enough to have become a stereotype. See what comes up when you look up "feminist male"
I never assumed that, I said a feminist would never prescribe for an incel to be an insincere feminist
Women are not very good at offering men advice on how to be more attractive. I think the largest part of this it's because having to offer a man advice on such matters is itself very unattractive to women, and the advice which could be offered which actually has a chance of making a making a noticeable difference involves solutions which will take long term efforts before they bear fruit. "Make more money" and "get in better physical shape" would improve the prospects of many loveless men today, but these take months or years of concentrated efforts.
Others are correct that an array of more straightforward explanations for cultural feminization are available (viz., women incorporating into the workforce and feminine traits being correlated with educational/professional success). Feminization is more likely the upshot of women gaining bargaining power and enforcing their beliefs/affinities than about men devising a stratagem to signal loyalty and accommodate female mate selection. One of the key struggles of men these days is precisely their inability to reshape themselves into the girly contours of current female mating preferences. Clever theory though.
I think there is probably a simpler explanation than the one Richard elucidate, which relates to his concept of EHC (or maybe just to biodeterminism around IQ and conscientiousness). Elite human capital tend to be more thoughtful and have more foresight than LHC. So they tend to understand that superficially attractive traits are not always positive in the long run.
Highly masculine men have many virtues, but they also often have vices like aggression, impulsiveness, and inflexibility. In a long term relationship they might butt heads with a woman over many different issues. An intelligent woman with foresight will likely realize that, so her initial attraction to masculine men will be weakened by thoughts of the long term. The opposite will happen with less masculine men, women of intelligence and foresight will often realize that they are easier to get along with in the long run.
Regardless of whether Richard's explanation is correct, I think it ultimately shows that deception in relationships is bad. Instead of pretending to be someone you are not to get your mate to trust you, work to actually be more trustworthy. Instead of pretending to have such low levels of sexual attraction that you aren't tempted by other women, be the kind of person who can resist temptation. Be an honorable man who keeps his commitments to women, not a man who pretends he doesn't even need to make commitments.
Stalin is the wrong guy for that joke. He would send everyone important to the gulag sooner or later, nothing personal! "Elite rotation" was the euphemism.
The appropriate comparison (and this one is allegedly not a joke) is the (much more humane and tolerant) Khrushchev visiting an abstract art exhibition and commenting it with... well, you can read it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manege_Affair .
That’s a good one. Amazing how masculine everyone was 60 years ago!
It doesn’t take much to be more humane and tolerant than Stalin, admittedly… :)
>Before we relaxed pressures for monogamy, the left wasn’t seen as necessarily less masculine than the right
Leftist movements were more feminist from the start. Women actively participated in the 19th and early 20th century revolutionary movements. If you listen to a history of something like the Russian Revolution, the communists have multiple influential women; the only influential woman on the right is maybe the Tsar's wife.
But, were the men on the Left more feminine?
I don't fully agree with Hanania, but I think his point still stands: he is referring to men being more feminine. Just because plenty of feminists were involved back then (when women genuinely had less rights) doesn't mean the men weren't seen as masculine in the way they are now.
Dating as competition is one way to look at the male female dynamic. It’s more type 1 thinking, drawing upon our primal instinct to explain social behaviors.
Another way to look at it is through type 2 thinking. Type 1 thinking (winning a competition, high quality spouse, etc) leads to sub-optimal outcomes in terms of actual quality of life. The constant threat of divorce, or tension due to mistrust, or lack of commitment and lack of love is not worth playing games. Simple as that. Type 2 thinking distills what exactly is valuable about monogamy and a strong nuclear family and makes decisions that create such an environment.
What is "type 2 thinking"? I've heard of Type I vs Type II error.
I think something like zero-sum vs positive-sum thinking respectively? i.e. "winning" a spouse (zero-sum competition with other males) versus building a positive relationship with someone
I'd never heard the phrase used in such a way before.
There’s a book thinking fast and slow that I’m borrowing the language from. It’s not quite 1 to 1 on the definition but essentially type 1 thinking is subconscious, fast thinking, that most people do subconsciously whereas type 2 is deliberate, slow thinking that requires effort.
Sounds like "system 1" vs "system 2". A separate issue from zero-sum vs positive-sum.
I have this exact thought whenever I read these competitive, market-based accounts of romance and dating. It seems to both not describe reality accurately, and be too zero-sum.
Feminization of men is another luxury belief.
For high status men, it allows showing that they have both high quality and loyalty.
For low status men, it just makes them seem even lower quality than otherwise. Hence, incels.
I'm not sure I follow. Incels are not in any way shape or form associated with feminization. I think it's an unusual stretch to do so. If anything, they're viewed as misogynist and proto-fascists. If you mean the stereotype of guys living in their parent's basement, I can see what you're going for, but incels are not remotely feminized - if the term incel means anything. Incels is a term reserved for guys living in the basement who are angry and misogynist.
Feminization makes low status men seem even lower quality, and therefore more likely to be involuntarily celibate. The literal meaning of incel is involuntary celibate. This is a semantics issue, but even for an incel, as in an angry misogynist, the prerequisite is to also be involuntary celibate, so my point still stands.
Fair point, agreed on this being about semantics. If all you mean by incel is involuntarily celibate, I'm with you. I'm just used to Establishment Media always tying them to "proto-fascist" "misogynists" who would despise feminine things, but yes you're right about the original meaning.
Pretty much the entire "alpha male" "beta male" discourse is projection and cope on the part of its advocates. It takes a few accurate observations about how dating works, and then makes up a bunch of ludicrous psychological explanations for why it works like that. The explanations say far more about their proponents and their misanthropic worldview than they do about the men and women they are supposed to be describing.
One of the biggest "aha" moments I had was when I saw a video by a female comedian where she described dating a bunch of losers before settling down. What was interesting was that she described the exact same phenomenon as described by the redpill/PUA community. Where she differed was her description of the attitude she felt towards the men in question. It was clear that she had no real respect for the men she fooled around with and saw them as beneath her and unworthy of marriage. Her husband, by contrast, was a man she was both attracted to, and respected. The reason she had fooled around before settling down was simple logistics: if she had fooled around after settling down her husband would have been upset!
The redpill/PUA community describes the same phenomenon, but projects completely different motivations onto the women in question. They claim that women really respect and are attracted to the alpha males they screw around with and are contemptuously settling for the betas. I realized the redpill/PUAs weren't actually fearlessly facing reality like they claimed. Instead they just sat around making up motivations for women that allowed them to feel hate and contempt for them.
My insight was cemented after I read Ozy Brenan's "Anti-Heartiste FAQ," which had the same theme of agreeing that the behavior that PUAs observed in the dating environment existed, but having different, more accurate psychological explanations for why it existed. Again, I realized that a group that portrayed themselves as fearless truthtellers facing reality were just a bunch of misanthropes taking giant doses of cope. They didn't care about finding the truth, they just discovered a few useful dating techniques by dumb luck and then made up fake explanations for why they worked that let them justify being contemptuous of everyone.
It's isn't a denial of human nature to recognize that violent, aggressive alpha males are usually impulsive, narcissistic morons in the present day. It's just a recognition that the environment has changed since when humans evolved. Traits that were adaptive back then aren't as adaptive now, so most people use their intelligence and prudence to moderate those traits. The only people who fail to do so are one who lack intelligence and prudence.
I am certainly not embracing some kind of beta male slave morality. I am simply recognizing that women are not a monolith and that different dating techniques work differently on different types of women. If I was doing what you accuse me of I would be insisting that beta male techniques work on all women.
Isn’t a much simpler explanation that women have been steadily getting more influential over time?
I don’t think women have changed — they never liked getting harassed by their boss (I suppose there were a few exceptions but most 50’s guys were not Don Draper), but they put up with it because they didn’t want to lose their jobs. They mostly don’t like crude sexual language or humor, either.
Once there were more women in management and a legal system to somewhat protect women, women stopped putting up with it as much.
Older, richer, more powerful men could and can ignore this trend to some extent, but regular guys can’t and changed their behavior.
Men and women have different conceptions of high trust and safety. Feminine high trust is school room compliance. Masculine high trust is sports and the market determining merit and loyalty
It's not a "theory" it's a very bad hypothesis. You make zero predictions based evolutionary theory to back up your supposition. It looks like you've learned evolutionary psychology from pop psych books. This is as bad as Rollo Tomassi.
Interesting but it leaves out that women do want the high libido, high testosterone and only settle for less of both after giving up on those men making a commitment. As such, it's a big leap to say the 34 year old woman actually prefers a less masculine man for marriage. More likely the less masculine man is a second choice of necessity. Which also explains why most divorces are initiated by women and in context to your own observations about high class/feminine men; that demographic has the highest percentage of women initiating divorce.
The other thing I've noticed is there seems to be a certain cyclical aspect of all this. There seems to be a certain similarity between the free-love 60s and the raunchy 2000s, the second-wave 70s and the woke 2010s, and the conservative 80s and the vibe shift we're seeing now. I don't know how far you can project things back or forward but the Trumpian reaction has definite Nixonian vibes, reacting against Black Power/BLM and second-wave feminism/wokery. There seems to be a kind of oscillation between liberal libertinism, liberal puritanism, conservative puritanism, and conservative libertinism (think of South Park). It doesn't seem to be a simple binary of libertinism versus puritanism or left versus right, the axes seem to swing around in ways I can't really describe. I'd be curious if anyone else sees this or can describe it better than me.
I'm always wary of connecting decades with specific social changes just because changes take much longer (the free-love 60s takes decades to build up to that I think, starting with flappers, the effects of the automobile, and the like), but I do see what you're saying and I do agree that we can see what we always see: extremes on one side leads to a backlash. I think Trump's extreme overreach for example is going to be a big problem in 2028. I hope I'm wrong.
Yeah, these things never cleave clearly along the decade turnovers, and why would they? But it's one of the few easy ways (apart from presidential administrations) in common use to talk about a period of time longer than a year and shorter than a century. Start talking about '1962-1975' (JFK assassination to the end of the Vietnam War), for instance, for that period and people aren't exactly clear what you're talking about.
I agree that Trump's overreach is going to bite him in the ass, possibly as early as 2026 (if the Democrats have both houses his freedom is going to be severely circumscribed, and if they get enough votes they can impeach him). I also hope we're wrong. I can totally see the reawakening of woke.
I'm with you 100%. I'm tired of all these anti-Wokesters constantly cheering like Wokeness or DEI is defeated or "over". I've seen ZERO evidence of this and yet all these guys are cheering. And Dems especially haven't walked anything back from what I've seen. They're just being a little quieter for now and in a way I don't blame them since they rightly are thinking "This guy's a lunatic, let's just give him time to alienate alot of the country again". I hate that the Republicans nominated him, but honestly at this point, I don't see how anyone but Trump can win the nomination from these people. It's either him or they'll just stay home and let the Dems take over again.