"When a woman propositions a man, he can also respond in one of two ways; he can say 'yes' or he can say 'yes, please.' He has no realistic choice to say no."
This is just mind-numbingly absurd. Please tell me that this article is some kind of a pg-planted honeypot for Digg voters....
Most people have lower than average social value, and fewer than average # of sex partners. This is because both tend to be distributed according to a power law.
Certainly true, however most people also don't think their social value is something they can work on. Hence a feeling of helplessness that they project onto others.
Learning to work a crowd is like learning a programming language. Humans are individuals, but they tent to have the same basic needs and desires - to be entertained and sexually stimulated is among them.
Now we've got that out of the way, why is it that every writeup of some social science research must have at least one glaring factor that's been ignored? In this case it's:
There is a significant difference, however, on whether they have ever had sexual intercourse with men. Overweight (92.5%) and obese (91.5%) women are significantly more likely ever to have had sexual intercourse with men than normal-weight women (87.4%).
Is this primarily due to the fact that women get fatter as they get older and hence the overweight/obese group is overloaded with the women at the high end of the (15-44) age range? Probably.
Also this bit:
When a man propositions a woman, she can respond in one of two ways; she can say “yes” or she can say “no.” When a woman propositions a man, he can also respond in one of two ways; he can say “yes” or he can say “yes, please.” He has no realistic choice to say no.
thankfully is not true. Yeech!
It is probably true, however, that women at the low end of the attractiveness spectrum have a much easier time of it than men at the low end of the attractiveness spectrum, thanks to the relative abundance of non-picky men compared to non-picky women.
In all species in which the female makes greater parental investment into the offspring than the male does (including humans and all mammals), mating is a female choice; it happens when the female wants it to happen and with whom she wants it to happen, not when the male wants it to happen or with whom he wants it to happen.
Doesn't really justify such a strong statement. Especially if you consider culture & the fact that we are a loosely monogamistic social species with complex social & mating habits. But I think the author was magnifying a realistic point. The relative abundance of non-picky men is a more accurate, but less funny. Similar social effects.
Is this primarily due to the fact that women get fatter as they get older and hence the overweight/obese group is overloaded with the women at the high end of the (15-44) age range?
I don't agree with your premise, here. You need to show any study that would demonstrate that women (a) really get fatter as they get older and (b) they get so much fatter that they would increase their BMI to the point of jumping up in the classification.
Also:
When a man propositions a woman, she can respond in one of two ways; she can say "yes" or she can say "no". When a woman propositions a man, he can also respond in one of two ways; he can say "yes" or he can say "yes, please." He has no realistic choice to say no.
You may be grossed out by fat women, but rest assured that not all men are. Combine that to your following statement about fat women being less picky, and you have a formula where the available mate population is far more favorable to fat women than to normal-weight ones.
I don't agree with your premise, here. You need to show any study that would demonstrate that women (a) really get fatter as they get older and (b) they get so much fatter that they would increase their BMI to the point of jumping up in the classification.
I like that there is a link at the bottom which links to a well-written counter response:
http://blogs.psychologytoday.com/blog/lust-in-paradise/20081...
Even if the link title is "Is Satoshi Kanazawa the Rush Limbaugh of evolutionary psychology?" and the reply article title is (now?) "Is Evolutionary Psychology a Used Car?"
It is a little weird, however, to read an article calling out another article as linkbait, both hosted on the same site.
Thanks for pointing that out. The response was better than the original article, except for this one bit:
Because sexuality is so entangled with power in American culture, it's hard to talk about sex without getting political. The two are nearly inseparable to Republicans especially, as has been demonstrated repeatedly in their opposition to "non-traditional marriage" (only a near-complete ignorance of the history of marriage could lead one to think what we have now is "traditional"), Senator Craig's "wide stance" in the bathroom stall, and their glee in bringing down Bill Clinton over his "unnatural acts."
which is just plain odd, because that's the one and only time politics is mentioned in either article.
Overweight (92.5%) and obese (91.5%) women are significantly more likely ever to have had sexual intercourse with men than normal-weight women (87.4%).
The age range was 15-44, which is wide, and nothing indicates that these findings were controlled for age, the obvious culprit.
The numbers seem about right for my assumed age groups for each category. The fact is that sex is actually very easy to get (for either gender). Quality sex is somewhat harder to find. This is what makes this sort of study meaningless. Sexually undesirable people (not to say that obese women are necessarily undesirable, but that seems to be the null hypothesis) tend to have sex fairly often, just with lower standards.
When a man propositions a woman, she can respond in one of two ways; she can say “yes” or she can say “no.” When a woman propositions a man, he can also respond in one of two ways; he can say “yes” or he can say “yes, please.”
This is not true. I'm 25, male, and have never had sex outside of a long-term relationship. I've definitely said "no".
"Choosiness" is one of those gender-loaded traits where the differences within genders are larger than those between them. Duh.
Men may not be saying “yes, please” to overweight and obese women, but Kaneshiro et al.’s study clearly suggests that they are definitely saying “yes.”
This made me laugh, and might have justified the time I spent reading this otherwise horrible article.
19 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 56.1 ms ] threadNon sequitur.
This is just mind-numbingly absurd. Please tell me that this article is some kind of a pg-planted honeypot for Digg voters....
He then projects this situation onto other men, and refuses to acknowledge his own weakness, to increase his own feeling of self worth.
http://vannevarvision.wordpress.com/2007/10/04/review-analys...
http://polymer.bu.edu/~amaral/Sex_partners/Content_sex.html
Learning to work a crowd is like learning a programming language. Humans are individuals, but they tent to have the same basic needs and desires - to be entertained and sexually stimulated is among them.
What he would seem to mean is that men are much easier to coerce into the sack than women. That's indisputable. To quote Chris rock:
"A man is only as faithful as his options."
Now we've got that out of the way, why is it that every writeup of some social science research must have at least one glaring factor that's been ignored? In this case it's:
There is a significant difference, however, on whether they have ever had sexual intercourse with men. Overweight (92.5%) and obese (91.5%) women are significantly more likely ever to have had sexual intercourse with men than normal-weight women (87.4%).
Is this primarily due to the fact that women get fatter as they get older and hence the overweight/obese group is overloaded with the women at the high end of the (15-44) age range? Probably.
Also this bit:
When a man propositions a woman, she can respond in one of two ways; she can say “yes” or she can say “no.” When a woman propositions a man, he can also respond in one of two ways; he can say “yes” or he can say “yes, please.” He has no realistic choice to say no.
thankfully is not true. Yeech!
It is probably true, however, that women at the low end of the attractiveness spectrum have a much easier time of it than men at the low end of the attractiveness spectrum, thanks to the relative abundance of non-picky men compared to non-picky women.
Doesn't really justify such a strong statement. Especially if you consider culture & the fact that we are a loosely monogamistic social species with complex social & mating habits. But I think the author was magnifying a realistic point. The relative abundance of non-picky men is a more accurate, but less funny. Similar social effects.
I don't agree with your premise, here. You need to show any study that would demonstrate that women (a) really get fatter as they get older and (b) they get so much fatter that they would increase their BMI to the point of jumping up in the classification.
Also: When a man propositions a woman, she can respond in one of two ways; she can say "yes" or she can say "no". When a woman propositions a man, he can also respond in one of two ways; he can say "yes" or he can say "yes, please." He has no realistic choice to say no.
You may be grossed out by fat women, but rest assured that not all men are. Combine that to your following statement about fat women being less picky, and you have a formula where the available mate population is far more favorable to fat women than to normal-weight ones.
Four seconds of googling turns up: http://obesity1.tempdomainname.com/subs/fastfacts/obesity_wo...
see Table 3. The prevalence of obesity (as of 1999-2000) increases from 23% in the twenties to 42% in the fifties, and declines after that.
It is a little weird, however, to read an article calling out another article as linkbait, both hosted on the same site.
Because sexuality is so entangled with power in American culture, it's hard to talk about sex without getting political. The two are nearly inseparable to Republicans especially, as has been demonstrated repeatedly in their opposition to "non-traditional marriage" (only a near-complete ignorance of the history of marriage could lead one to think what we have now is "traditional"), Senator Craig's "wide stance" in the bathroom stall, and their glee in bringing down Bill Clinton over his "unnatural acts."
which is just plain odd, because that's the one and only time politics is mentioned in either article.
The age range was 15-44, which is wide, and nothing indicates that these findings were controlled for age, the obvious culprit.
The numbers seem about right for my assumed age groups for each category. The fact is that sex is actually very easy to get (for either gender). Quality sex is somewhat harder to find. This is what makes this sort of study meaningless. Sexually undesirable people (not to say that obese women are necessarily undesirable, but that seems to be the null hypothesis) tend to have sex fairly often, just with lower standards.
When a man propositions a woman, she can respond in one of two ways; she can say “yes” or she can say “no.” When a woman propositions a man, he can also respond in one of two ways; he can say “yes” or he can say “yes, please.”
This is not true. I'm 25, male, and have never had sex outside of a long-term relationship. I've definitely said "no".
"Choosiness" is one of those gender-loaded traits where the differences within genders are larger than those between them. Duh.
Men may not be saying “yes, please” to overweight and obese women, but Kaneshiro et al.’s study clearly suggests that they are definitely saying “yes.”
This made me laugh, and might have justified the time I spent reading this otherwise horrible article.