Heterosexuals work under the Pareto Principle.

Here's a courtesy link to the Pareto Principle. Don't worry, you don't have to read that, although it might help. It's a pretty damn useful concept.

Anyway, there's a common perception out there that All Women Are Prudes. I have an idea as to why this notion's persisted so strongly in the face of a torrent of contradictory evidence in the past 50 years or so.

Heterosexual attraction for males: Is such that about 80% of women are potentially sexually appealing. Maybe a great deal of them in the lukewarm sense of "I wouldn't say no if she asked" or "I wouldn't kick her out of bed for eating crackers" but frankly, the threshold for sexual attraction is set pretty low.

Heterosexual attraction for females: Is the other way round, in that only 20% of men are potentially sexually appealing. The attraction threshold is way higher, but there's absolutely nothing lukewarm about how women feel sexually towards men in that top 20%.

As a result of this difference, men tend to live in one of two worlds:

The bottom 80%: Live in a world where women make no goddamn sense so far as sex is concerned. Women seem to paradoxically have no sexuality and yet routinely engage in flamboyant sexual displays. These men often don't realise that they fly underneath most women's sexual radar. If your life is like this, the sad truth is that you're not sexy enough. You get nothing, you lose! Good day, sir!

The top 20%: Live in a world where All Women Are Lustful and in fierce competition for their affections, no matter what sort of strings may be attached. There's pretty much no limit to what women will do for them, competition is fierce and they will have an Unwanted Harem and all the drama that goes along with it. The problem for these men isn't trying to satisfy their own sexual appetite, the problem is doing so with the least amount of danger to himself.

If I may put on the tattered hat of evolutionary psychology: because of pregnancy, the biological cost of reproduction is much higher for females than males; thus, females have much more of an incentive to be picky about their partners. There's nothing very mysterious about this dynamic.

How well it holds up today is iffy, to say the least. I've met plenty of women who don't have particularly high standards, but who knows.

I thought you were talking about the Pareto criterion.

@Penguin. I must admit I don't really care about the why. Just what is.

Intresting theory. It's not really something I know much about, and I want to learn more about the Pareto Principle now.

Well, has this changed since the Renaissance, when the prevailing view was that Women Are Lustful? The Victorian era is when literacy became widespread, books cheap, and anthropology important, and so our ideas of the past are seen through a Victorian lens, and the notion that All Women Are Prudes is actually fairly recent.

Also, I doubt that four in five men cannot get laid.

edited 8th Apr '10 9:32:01 AM by calieber

If I can get laid, anyone can get laid.

Actually, come to think of it, I must be an exception, considering that I have had little competition for my affection but everyone who has liked me has been quite sexually interested. (All three of them.)

Here's why this theory fails: people have different turn-ons. What is sexy to one female isn't to another, and vice versa. So, considering the infinite varieties and tastes of women, its no surprise that far more than 20% of all males do eventually get some action. This scenario also does not take into account multiple partners at all.

Clam articulated the big thing that was bothering me about this: "women" isn't a monolithic entity that judges each individual man's worthiness of the Overpussy.

..."Overpussy"? XD

calieber: "women" isn't a monolithic entity

A much younger and less world-weary Haven 'd that women were a Hive Mind, but only with regards to their bladders, which is why they always went to the bathroom at the same time.

That's more like a Hive Bladder, though.

I considered typing that and rejected it. Scholars are still divided as to the reasoning behind this course of action.

I certainly never intended to imply that women act as some sort of monolithic entity. I think that's going on at the reader side, nothin' I can do about that.

Common trends of behaviour don't mean everyone acts a certain way. If you aren't able to figure that out by yourself, it's a bad idea to read anything I write which doesn't have swear words in it.

Men are never going to catch a break.

edited 10th Apr '10 2:23:10 AM by Knighted

Nonsense. I contend that men do great, so long as they're sufficiently sexy.

On average?

Enjoy your virginity, kid. Make friends with it!

'Kay! I'll take the vow of celibacy, 'cause it's a commitment I can keep regardless!

This is what the internet is for, people. Find the woman whose 20% you fit into, then bang each other. I don't care if she lives on the other side of the world.

Y'all just got served by a freakin' Ace!

(Seriously, the little one speaks truth. Of a sort.)

edited 11th Apr '10 1:34:52 PM by Korgmeister

Come to think of it, all the girls to be interested in me have been very atypical, to say the least.

This has also been my experience.

EDIT: Can't fault their enthusiasm, though.

edited 12th Apr '10 1:21:12 AM by Korgmeister

How about linking this to the fact that women generally have more pressure placed on them to be sexually attractive, therefore they are generally more sexually attractive? I think that's an interesting angle to consider.

What I mean is, I tend to be pretty picky when it comes to who I find attractive, and lack of attraction in my case generally has less to do with genetic things like height or facial features and more to do with boring/ill-fitting/shabby clothes, poor physical shape, bad hygiene, things like that.