WHAT WOMEN WANT?

One person's wow is another's meh is another's ugh.

There's a big ol' goofy guy
Dancing with a big ol' goofy girl --
Oooo, baby,
It's a big ol' goofy world.

One person's wow is another's meh is another's ugh.

There's a big ol' goofy guy
Dancing with a big ol' goofy girl --
Oooo, baby,
It's a big ol' goofy world.

Not to mention there's usually a difference between what one wants in the opposite gender and what one can actually manage to get.

One person's wow is another's meh is another's ugh.

There's a big ol' goofy guy
Dancing with a big ol' goofy girl --
Oooo, baby,
It's a big ol' goofy world.

Not to mention there's usually a difference between what one wants in the opposite gender and what one can actually manage to get.

And even that becomes insignificant when we consider that there is always a difference between what one wants in the opposite gender and what one THINKS one wants in the opposite gender. (Exchange "the opposite gender" with "a partner" for greater precision, folly is not a heterosexual exclusive )

Men tend to value good looks the most; women place more value on a gentle touch, and they have had to be concerned, historically, with a man's ability to function as a provider.

That men and women start out with different desires is not a reason to criticize either one; it's how ethically we act to fulfill our desires that is what matters.

Besides, marrying for good looks is shallow. Marrying for money is at least rational.

depends on the gender. men and women are psychologically hardwired differently with opposing biological goals. men chase beauty, women chase status. men seek sex, women seek commitment. in other words, men want sex with beautiful women while women want to get married to high status men. hence, for women, sex is a means to an end, while for men, sex IS the end.

Do you belong to the look-but-don't-touch school of lovemaking? Coz, otherwise looks have every little to do with sexual compatibility. Not if both parties know what they're doing at least.

sex isnt possible if the woman is so unattractive that just the thought of her kills any erection.

Their fetish doesn't have to be the same as yours... in fact, relationships where both have the same fetish (e.g. good looks) might not last as well as more complementary couplings.

As a side note, before you mentioned that, I had never even considered that some people out there might actually have beauty pageant applicability as a partner criterion... ick, ick-ick-ick!!!

i had no idea that pursuing good looks is a fetish. is it unnatural for men to not want ugly children?

and selecting for beauty pageant participants is a recipe for disaster, as the women who make their livelihood off their physical appearance are such high maintenance that its more of headache than can possibly be imagined. theres a quote that perfectly describes it, "no matter how beautiful a woman is, someone somewhere is tired of f***ing her." its much more sensible to select for a women whos attractiveness puts her in that class, but has an occupation outside of  marketing/entertainment.

Men tend to value good looks the most; women place more value on a gentle touch, and they have had to be concerned, historically, with a man's ability to function as a provider.

That men and women start out with different desires is not a reason to criticize either one; it's how ethically we act to fulfill our desires that is what matters.

you actually think women place value on something like "gentle touch"? how do you then explain the success of novels like Story of O, and its modern day equivalent, 50 Shades of Grey? there is no outrage, not even by the crazed feminists. just universal acclaim, with women reminiscing of the men theyve dated who made them feel the same as the protagonist in both novels.

its really a wonder how straight men who are intelligent enough to understand and embrace anarcho-capitalism do not understand the female sex at all.

its really a wonder how straight men who are intelligent enough to understand and embrace anarcho-capitalism do not understand the female sex at all.

No, it really isn't. Every woman is unique, and they have, as you point out, different motivations than men. They also think in entirely different ways than men, ways that to us sometimes seem completely illogical, even "crazy". These intuitive leaps aren't "bad", but they can seriously confuse men who follow different logic paths.

Of course the article doesn't answer the question of what women want, but I can help find the answer by kicking off a process of elimination.

What women don't want:

1. Me

Of course the article doesn't answer the question of what women want, but I can help find the answer by kicking off a process of elimination.

What women don't want:

1. Me

Yeah, a defeatist attitude is the number one universal turn-off.     
To make your chances of getting a woman even smaller (bear with me), you should grow embittered and start blaming them for not wanting you.
To improve (!) even on that, you should start a habit of whining about all this, as often as you can and in as inappropriate forums as possible...

Oh, wait, you got all that down pat, already.

Near as I can tell, I'm the only XX posting on the forum.  What I don't get is people bright enough to enjoy good science fiction who don't (seem to) get that when you have two huge populations, and the centroid of a given trait for one differs from the centroid of the other by, say, less than half-sigma, there isn't much that can be meaningfully said about the differences between the two groups on that point.

What "women" want is what any human being wants:  having one's individuality respected.

fwiw, I couldn't read "The Story of O"; I started it, skimmed early bits, cut to the end, and wish I were not even the same species, or even genus, as the author.  And I have met XY types who wanted to feel like O, but I suppose you'd say they were not "real" men? 

Once upon a time I attended this huge seminar, with something like 800+ participants.  One evening we had a guest speaker who, without bothering to introduce his topic, started right off with a male beauty contest. 

We had to subdivide into regions, and pick a semifinalist from each, and then choose one from them.

Some of the guys really got into it, posing, whipping off shirts and throwing them to the audience; a lot just hated it, and stood there with their arms severely folded, waiting for the point of it all.  Some of the women cut loose with wolf-whistles and hooting.

Finally, though, we had our winner -- a guy I thought was pleasant enough in looks but not anything to write home about.

And our speaker stepped forward and said, "399 guys have just had the experience of being rejected solely on the basis of looks."  He pointed out that our culture is such that, while before the contest, women may fight like cats in a sack, afterwards the losers console one another with "You totally deserved to win, I can't believe they didn't pick you" kinds of things.  Our guys here in the seminar, however, had no such network and were having to not only deal with the rejection, but do so alone.

But we were just getting started.  With all the guys up on the stages, there were plenty of seats empty, so Speaker had the women fill in the middle section -- according to income:  6-7 figure incomes in the front rows, and falling off after that.  Considering I worked as a shift supervisor in a pizza joint at the time, I was surprised to find that I was not in the very last row (though I was in my row alone):  there was one woman behind even me.

Oh, jeez, I think, I can see where this is going.  Sure enough, Speaker said that when he gave the word, we women were to attempt to "pick up" a guy and see how far we could get in 20 minutes.

I'm an introvert anyway.  And I'm feeling quite worthless all the way in the back; I totally wrote off approaching any of the semifinalists, let alone the winner.  I get it, I'm thinking, and I'm just going to sit this one out.  Thanks anyway.

"And if you're thinking about not playing," Speaker announced, "you're already playing."

Aww, f uck!  Busted!  Well, I was at the seminar at all to get out of my comfort zone, so I scrunched up what few guts I had, cast about for guys physically nearby, and --

The woman behind me stood up and launched into some speech about wanting to see what this looked like from "back here".  She had zero income as such -- she was independently wealthy.

And Speaker told her (without actually laughing in her face) that if she was really interested in what things were like from the bottom of the economic heap, she would have played it through; as it was, just as the game was about to begin, she was standing up to announce, "I'm more valuable than you think I am!"

So then game was on.  I decided to play Ms. Nice Guy, on the grounds that, if the guy I approached didn't like me, well, that was his loss.  Speaker afterwards confirmed that, yep, that's quite a common guy strategy.

So I picked out a guy -- a good-looking guy, too, in my opinion better than Mr. Seminar-pageant-winner -- and invited him for a drink of water out of one of the coolers by the ballroom doors.

Long, uncomfortable ("introvert", right?) story later, I got much "farther" than I dreamed I could -- we walked out onto the beach together and he let me put my arm over his shoulders (which was funny as he was rather taller!)  Still, I was ever so grateful for the bell that called us back in.

We heard later of one couple who actually had to be called back out of the room of one of them.

The post-mortem was fascinating.  Few women wanted to speak up; those who had the guts, admitted being ashamed of acting exactly like guys they despised for acting like that. . . .

The guys were great; they shocked and surprised themselves and had no problem admitting it.  One of them pretty much summed it up with:  "This [trolling for babes] is what I do!  And, here I'm all like, 'What do they want from me?'" and he mimed recoiling like a heroine in a melodrama, which was funny and he meant it.  Another guy, one of the semifinalists, said the rich women "were so pushy!  It was like they thought they could just buy you or something!"   Which is, so I hear, something that pretty women tend to get from rich guys.

So there we were, us XXs and XYs, and each individual one of us quite spontaneously acting like the opposite sex.  And the only thing that changed was the dynamic of a) who gets valued for what and b) who pursues whom.

In other words, those behaviors are not sex-linked; they are artifacts of the circumstances.

If you're interested in this further, Speaker was Warren Farrell, author of Why Men Are the Way They Are, which title was, I believe, intended to fox women into reading it.

If you're fond of thinking that you always know why you do what you do, you won't like it.  If you recognize that we're all driven by unexpected and unsuspected forces, internal and external, you'll learn a lot.  I highly recommend it, but I especially recommend it for the women in your lives.

Great post, Mellyrn.

I was going to go all Arthurian, and respond to the OP with "what women want is to have their way."  But my wife's idea of having her way is Grand Tea, and one of my best friend's ideas of that (Transylvanian gal) is to stand in the kitchen while everybody eats at the table.  And God help you if you go into her kitchen without permission....definite "culture counts" going on.

That's quite fascinating! Thanks for sharing, Mellyrn.

While there are certain unavoidable biological differences between men and women, I think most people under-rate the impact that culture has on our gender traits and expectations.  Of course, it's hard to see when you're inside that culture--you grew up in it and have lived in it all your life.  Men and women tend to think and act differently because that's what our society expects of them.