Heterosexuals work under the Pareto Principle.

That would certainly be a valid angle to pursue.

I'm actually just stating these tendencies and seeing what explanations people come up with. I would agree that men these days often do tend to do a pretty pisspoor job in terms of proactively making themselves attractive.

There is some validity to the principle, but I think that one of the things that isn't really accounted for is that "sexy" is a very fluid term, and, in many cases, "sexy" when applied by a woman on a man is almost entirely based on attitude. Many men could easily get laid if they only understood that they could get laid.

To clarify, our culture implies that most women can basically get laid whenever they want because men are sluts and not picky. Women, on the other hand, are sluts and somewhat picky. This results in men getting shot down more often, and losing confidence. Lost confidence means that they don't try as often, or as proficiently ("expecting failure" is probably not on most women's "sexy" list)

I was intentionally celibate for six years after a couple of bad relationships. Last year I decided to get back into the game, and I've had much less trouble establishing interest from females, partially because I don't fear rejection ("can't be worse than being celibate for six years") and partly because I now know that I have something to offer... whereas, before my celibacy, I always thought that there must be something wrong with me if the girls I liked didn't like me back the way I wanted them to like me back.

I have also been finding out that attractive women that I was interested in years ago also had crushes on me at the same time. It was lack of confidence that killed my chances then.

In my experience, this is mostly correct for sober people. That doesn't mean that man on the 80% team will never get laid, just that it will mostly be because of pity, alcohol, or ulterior motives, and they will be the ones chasing the girls and not the other way around. When a man of the 80s is being chased by a woman, beware the crazy ones.

Men never really seem to notice me. Not that I do much to try and attract them, but I have plenty of male friends and none of them seem to be intrested in being anything else. For the most part I'm fine with this. I don't need a man, to be happy.

I am curious why, except that would require me to ask you about lots of personal details, such as how you dress, and how you carry yourself, what you look like, etc.

Meh, if she's happy, why mess with it?

Not saying this is the case, but it's also possible that your male friends are interested, but have their own reasons for not acting on it. Men are stereotyped as not being complicated or difficult to see through, but are, in fact, individuals with all sorts of unique qualities, motivations, and inner conflicts.

If women aren't considered as one monolithic entity with the same attractions, then the "men live in one of two worlds" conclusion seems invalid.

^ Exactly, yes.

Wow, that was easy.

blah blah blah correlated tastes blah blah blah

edited 17th Apr '10 12:20:21 AM by WilliamWideWeb

Thanks for bringing some sanity back.

A little probability theory goes a long way.

No, about 68 percent of the time, it goes between a decent way and a nice long way, but about a third of the time it doesn't go very far or goes really far.

93% of statistics are made up on the spot.

Actually, what I described wasn't made up, but normal.

@William. You aren't fucking kidding. Watching educated people trying to bring binary logic into the real world where probability theory is a far more useful tool is painful to watch.

Does ring a bell, GMH.

I've always heard it said that 75% of women like about 25% of men at any one given time. Those men who are not in the top 25% still can find the 25% of women that might go after them, or wait for a woman to switch from one to the other (since it is not constant, and becomes closer to parity with age.)

Bumping this because a scientific study suggests that one of the underlying assumptions behind the theory are false.

I was slowly rising and starting to hit the edge between the 80 and 20 until a move to a different city hit the Reset Button and put me firmly back in the 80 area.

Bullshit. That is all.

All right, I'm going to say it: What about the theoretical figures for homosexual attraction?

On the matter of the primary figure itself: It makes sense, but, as stated above, the collected "20%"s of 100% of heterosexual females probably coincide with 100% of heterosexual males.

However, this is just the baseline of selectivity. For example, as a male, I may well find most women at least somewhat sexually attractive, but whether I would in fact want to be in a relationship or even sleep with them is far more dependent upon their intelligence being at least close to mine, if not possibly higher... Which is (not to brag) really rare. And even that is further narrowed by certain personality traits that I would find essential in even a casual encounter. And let's not get into my taste in men...

Simply put, human attraction is absurdly complex. Especially for this choosy bastard.

Don't know why but the Willy Wonka quote in the OP made me laugh.

I just blame society's gender roles and be done with it.

Because there are a lot of people who don't fit these stereotypes.

edited 21st Jan '11 10:40:56 AM by GlennMagusHarvey