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A late tangent, but I was warming my hands next to last week's heated exchange between @DaseindustriesLtd and @gemmaem and one thing that popped out at me was @f3zinker's chart representing women's messaging behaviour towards men in different positions of the attractiveness distribution, depending on their own. I've seen variants of this data - introduced here with the unambiguous line "Women just about exercise dictatorial demand." - on the internet for a long time (since the days of the OkCupid blog), and it always struck me as strange, insofar as it did not seem to mesh at all with the reality I perceive around me. The points of disagreement are numerous:
I believe I'm personally around the 60〜70% mark of the male attractiveness distribution, and have always been extremely passive about dating. Nevertheless I've been approached by women in the 50〜90 range of their distribution (as perceived by me), and had those approaches convert into relationships (some of them very long-term) in the 60〜80 band. This would put me smack dab in a pink area in that chart, repeatedly. I do not get the sense that any of those relationships were unequal in terms of effort or resources invested.
People around me, including unattractive ones, of either gender match up all the time, and there is no obvious bias in terms of which side initiates. It's not that unattractive and involuntarily celibate men don't exist (especially from the 70th percentile downwards), but the correlation between involuntary celibacy and attractiveness is actually seemingly quite low.
My entire academic and academia-adjacent blob has very low attachment to existing social conventions around dating. I know several people who are poly, and the most disapproval they meet is being the butt of the occasional jokes. Contrary to the stereotype, the ones I know do not strike me as unusually unattractive. Yet, the most attractive poly guys are not pulling massive harems, and in fact I've observed the most attractive poly girls reject repeated advances from the most attractive poly guys (in favour of less attractive ones).
So what's going on here? After reflecting on it for a bit, it seems to me that there's actually an obvious answer: the very framing of the question being charted ("do you 'like', with the implication of interest in a sexual relationship, this person, based on their picture?") only captures meaningful data when asked of men, because men are the only ones for whom look is a dominant term in the value function that estimates whether they want a sexual relationship with someone. Rewording this question slightly in a way that I don't think actually changes the meaning to "Given that this person looks like that, would you provisionally agree to having sex with them?", what's actually going has an alternative explanation that I think rings more true than "women have unrealistic standards": if looks are only a small term in your value function, you don't know enough about the value of the other terms, and the median answer to "would you provisionally agree to having sex" is no, then the looks have to be exceptionally good to shift the answer to "yes".
Importantly, this model does not require the original preference against sex with an unspecified man to be unusually strong: for any given expected utility -epsilon that women assign to having sex with a completely random man, no matter how close to 0, there exists a delta such that if looks are only at most a delta-fraction of women's value function for sex partners, then a random man would have to be top 10% in terms of looks for the expected utility for women of having sex with him to turn positive.
As an intuition pump, imagine we created the same chart for men, using some quality that men don't value particularly highly (but perhaps women do), and a base distribution of women that you(r people) are just slightly skeptical of as sex partners (your pick, based on preference: Some ethnicity you don't like? BMI >25? Cat owners? Age >40?). Take a dating app where you can't post your picture, but instead publicise your monthly income, and also all women are at least slightly chubby. Would you be surprised to find a chart like the above, but for men towards women, where the top 60% earners among men only are willing to "like" the top 10% earning women? Would this reflect men exercising "dictatorial demand"?
I’ll throw my hat in the ring and provide another data point attesting the rarity of women approaching.
I’ve banged a low triple digit number of chicks. After some mental-straining, I can’t think of a single bang that resulted from a girl approaching me, whether in person or her sending the first message in online dating or social media.
I can remember a few times over the years where I didn’t eventually seal the deal but a girl approached or messaged me first (such occasions are memorable because they’re so rare), and I still had to grab the wheel and drive the interaction from there if I wanted the encounter to continue. Think of a generalisation of the modern Bumble tip-off to start the game, when a girl messages the guy “hi” or “hi :)” to put the ball in his court so he has to take over and lead the conversation.
The closest to a girl approaching and my later converting that I can think of was quite a few years ago in a nightclub. She walked by me with her friends; we made eye-contact and she smiled. Yet, that was that and she didn’t make it straightforward much less easy for me at all. I still had to approach her at her table surrounded by her mixed group of friends and hold court for the night (she was decently hot so I stuck it out). Despite my efforts that night into the technical morning, including a few shifts from club to club to afterparty, we ultimately parted ways with me leaving with just a number; I had to get her to come over a different night where I converted. If not for me having limited time in her city, she would have likely ghosted and I would have been chumped.
In my experience and that of many others, girls will generally be neutral bystanders at best in the dating process. They're extremely passive in the approach stage and through the early game of courtship. To the extent that they’re active, it’d be to your detriment. Oftentimes, after the approach (if successful from your end), they'll be adversarial in being a pain for scheduling dates with*, stalling, flaking, ghosting, pushing for dinner dates and/or dates that involve her bringing her friends (so you can monkey-dance and court-jester for her friends, too, and still not get laid). This might not change until you’ve banged her and then suddenly she has skin in the game, thus she becomes more reliable and a team-player in communicating and coordinating with you.
To the extent women approach (or should I say “approach”), it’s generally in the form of standing, sitting, or dancing (if in bar/nightclub) in your vicinity, hoping you’ll read her mind and initiate a conversation (see meme: "How females shoot their shot"). My most stereotypical Chad-ish friends, guys who look like they could be The Bachelor, still need to aggressively approach if they want to get laid with new chicks beyond a Lizardman’s constant.
*There’s a Latin American Spanish meme to that effect. My paraphrased translation:
Guy: So when are you free to hang-out
Girl: Anytime you want!
Guy: How about tomorrow?
Girl: No, I can’t tomorrow
Guy: Monday?
Girl: Can’t
Guy: What about Thursday?
Girl: Thursday? Can’t either.
Guy: When then?
Girl: Anytime you want!
Hmm. Ive had girls approach/initiate though very rare that I can remember most:
girl at club came over and asked if I were single. This was in SF.
girl came over to me at a bar and bought me a drink. This was in a big city in asia.
after meeting once, messaged me on fb. We went on a date afterwards. College.
a friend initiating after I’d become single. We dated for 4 years. College.
There are some other examples, and usually girls that were not sober, but maybe Im an exception here. Though most of my dates and stuff were initiated by me. Most relationships were initiated by the girl tho, usually ultimatums.
Totally understand your anecdote about being her and her friends court jester until you seal the deal.
Im glad I never had to do too much dating outside of college - the flaking drove me insane. Much higher hit rate with friends of friends etc. Funny you mention Bumble as I had ok success there for a few months before covid hit. But you are right - the balls still yours to drive up the court once they send a “hiiii”
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