Of course women are more selective; they can only shit out one man's baby at a time. Men can get a hundred women pregnant in a single season. You can't write an article about female selectivity without mentioning that basic fact.

Generally, women are really stupid in their generalizations about sex. They refuse to acknowledge that there are some obvious subconscious forces at play. Maybe women hate bad sex because evolution doesn't want them to raise a substandard child, or raise a child with a substandard father? Men on the other hand can always just disappear without calling as you say.

I had an evolutionary biology class and in the discussion section we talked about what men and women find attractive. The girls in the class utterly refused to acknowledge that they preferred men with more money, more status, who were taller, more good looking etc. They kept insisting that the ONLY factors were compatability, sense of humor, and intelligence. Apparently they want at least one person in the relationship to be smart. Even when i said "GENERALLY, ALL ELSE BEING EQUAL, MOST WOMEN WOULD CHOOSE THE GUY WHO HAS MORE STATUS". And they're just like, you can't say that "YOU CAN'T SAY THAT!!".

I thought my favorite line was "generally, women are really stupid in their generalizations".

But then, I hadn't read that you used your tragically small sample size of maybe 20 "women" (girls) to determine that womens' (girls') generalizations are generally stupid.

I take it you are a man without this elusive "status" and are wondering why those biology students with their horn rimmed glasses, pageboy cuts, and baggy pants didn't want to take you home for a romp.

Sophomoric

soph·o·mor·ic

–adjective

1. of or pertaining to a sophomore or sophomores.

2. suggestive of or resembling the traditional sophomore; intellectually pretentious, overconfident, conceited, etc., but immature: sophomoric questions.

"They kept insisting that the ONLY factors were compatability, sense of humor, and intelligence."

Heh. As time goes by, fewer and fewer women hew to this canard. So guys, remember: don't waste your energy cultivating your wit, compassion and intellect. Instead, work on achieving 3% body fat and act as if the world should be lining up to give a rim job.

Granted. The underlying assumption that attractiveness has nothing to do with our makeup as reproductively successful organisms is absurd. However, this assumption is also extremely offensive to a lot of people and they seem to be in good company with other folk who want to ignore it. So, ignoring it is a lot easier than it should be.

""They kept insisting that the ONLY factors were compatability, sense of humor, and intelligence."

Reminds me of a comment made by Adam Carolla, the comedian and radio host. He mentioned that women were always telling him they LOVED a man with a sense of humor and he wondered why women were never interested in him when he was a funny carpenter with no money but were suddenly more interested when he was a funny celebrity with money.

Naughty,

Actually, MY favorite was "they can only shit out one man's baby at a time."

I kinda wonder if this is how he feels about his own birth?

Carolle :)

I'm betting it's only the most hideous-looking of men who thinks women are only concerned with looks, the poorest of men who thinks women are only concerned with money, the most humorless of men who thinks women are only concerned with a sense of humor, and the stupidest (sic) of men who thinks women are only concerned with intelligence.

The reality is that men and women alike seek a combination of traits that matches and complements their own and those things that are important to them. And all of that is based on history, genetics, and personal experience.

I, for one, would not want to go to bed with a brazillianaire (sic) if he looked like the backside of a mutilated hyena after a thunderstorm. Nor would I give even a thought to a humorless rich man with -28% body fat and a schlong the length and width of my forearm.

As much as this "it's all individual differences and cultural diversity" message might seem palatable and nice, it just doesn't turn out to be true. As long as you design a study that is willing to recognize them, there are a great deal of stable differences between men and women in what they find important in a mate.

In David Buss's famous cross-cultural data, it turns out that in any culture you look at (except, for some reason, the Zulu) women care more about income than men do. In EVERY culture, men care more about looks than women do. Other differences are there, but not quite as robust...men have a tendency to prefer a slightly younger woman than them, females a slightly older man. Men care more about the number of previous sexual partners a woman has had. Etc.

We're not uncorrelated, random universes unto ourselves. Individual diversity does not explain the patterns observed.

It's possible that the old social organisation of the Zulu's into 'impi', or 'ibutho' regiments of all men and all women, and then marrying them regiment to regiment meant men's income/productivity was equalised and meaningless as a selector. Even the Spartans had individual estates of varying value, even if only their wives could spend the money.

Please explain how 1 exception out of 37 cultures makes the entire phenonmenon "learned".

"Innate" does not mean "immutable". Environmental factors can always potentially have an impact on the end-state of innate designs. Take a more banal example...I don't think anyone would argue that that "arm with a hand and five fingers" design is not "innate". However, introduce a little thalidomide into the system of a pregnant woman and that "innate" design ends up looking very different.

"Learned", without any innate constraints on the learning, is theoretically equipotential...that is, all possibilities have an equal chance of being learned. That means that there should be an equal chance that "men learn to value women's income more than women value men's income" than vice versa. The straightforward prediction coming out of all of this is that there should be roughly equal numbers of cultures of each type. The ratio, however, turns out to be nowhere near 50/50. On the measures assessed, the preponderance of cultures tend towards the ratio predicted by biologically sensical mating theories, not the 50/50 predicted by "learning".

"Learned", without any innate constraints on the learning, is theoretically equipotential...that is, all possibilities have an equal chance of being learned. That means that there should be an equal chance that "men learn to value women's income more than women value men's income" than vice versa. "

Men can learn to value women's income, it's just not innate to the male sex, it's intellectual, not chemistry, and I see no reason such a trait would evolve for men. Womens physical "figures" and men's reaction relate to IDing their sex, physical fitness and abilty to bear children. Men, imo, feel a sexual 'impulse' whenever they see a attractive woman, but never when thinking about their wealth.

My bad! I think I misunderstood your original post. That all makes sense to me!

Terry wrote: "The girls in the class utterly refused to acknowledge that they preferred men with more money, more status, who were taller, more good looking etc. They kept insisting that the ONLY factors were compatibility, sense of humor, and intelligence."

Facing up to reality can be painful for most people. Perhaps it is subconscious impulses that lead women to usually be attracted to the same sort of guys even if we men think it should be obvious. However, its my view that good looking men with money really have more "compatibility, sense of humor, and intelligence" when "love" blinds one to reality. This explains why the men have to play hardball to dump them. "F**k off, B**ch" is about the only think that really lacks humor.

In other words, they're not lying, they're just crazy!

Um, I mean mysteriaous and magical creatures whose minds and heart run so deep, no mere man can ever hope to understand them.

Nah, they're just lying--primarily to themselves but they know it.