https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx/reel/CwXXjtyO2Wt/
- The "sexy sons" theory claims that women find some men more physically desirable because they have good genes that will pass on to their sons.
- Evolutionary psychology argues that the female orgasm may have evolved as a response designed to retain sperm from desirable partners.
- One study found women who perceive that other women find their partner to be attractive are more likely to report orgasm during sex.
The logic of the mating market dictates that women will generally be able to get a more attractive partner for a casual sexual encounter than for a permanent husband. Attractive men are often willing to have sex with less desirable women, as long as they do not become encumbered by entangling commitments. Rock stars and sports stars perfectly illustrate this logic. They often have groupies for causal sex with no hint of commitment. This mating market logic leads to a disturbing consequence. Women married to men matched to their level of desirability will sometimes be tempted to have affairs with men whom they find sexier than their husbands.
Why risk discovery, ruin a good reputation, and chance abandonment by having an affair with a man higher than your partner on the mate value scale? Steve Gangestad and Randy Thornhill proposed one answer: Women can acquire better genes from higher value extrapair matings than from their regular mates. Good genes may bring better resistance to disease, increasing the health and hence survival of their children. Women, of course, don't think about these things consciously. Their passions for other partners are blind to the evolutionary functions that have shaped them. Women just need to find other men sexy; knowing why is unnecessary.
One indicator of good genes has emerged over the past decade; symmetry. Humans, like many organisms, show a physical arrangement characterized by bilateral symmetry. If you draw a line straight down the middle of your body, starting with your face, the two halves are more or less mirror images of each other. The "more or less" qualifier is the key, since no one is perfectly symmetrical. Each of us carries a host of small deviations from perfect symmetry, ranging from Cindy Crawford's small mole to Lyle Lovett's lopsided grin.
Deviations from symmetry have many causes, but they have been most strongly linked with two determinants. First, symmetry signals "developmental stability," a genetic resistance to pathogens and mutations. A person who is genetically susceptible to pathogens and mutations will develop a more lopsided face and body than those who are genetically resistant to pathogens and mutations. Second, symmetry is a sign of a genetic resistance to a host of other "environmental insults," such as extreme temperatures, poor nutrition in childhood, and exposure to toxins. It is, in short, a genetic marker of health.
Symmetry can be measured in practically any organism. With humans, researchers typically take a variety of measurements, such as feet, ankles, hands, wrists, elbows, and ears. By taking multiple measurements, researchers achieve a higher level of reliability in their index of actual symmetry. To study the effects of symmetry on human mating, Gangestad and Thornhill studied 203 heterosexual couples who had been involved in a romantic relationship for at least one month. After assuring participants of confidentiality and anonymity, they questioned each person about whether they had ever had sex with someone else while in their current relationship. They also queried participants about whether they had sex with someone else whom they knew was already married to, or seriously involved with, someone else. They then applied steel calipers to assess participants' degree of symmetry, taking seven measurements from each side of the body.
Gangestad and Thornhill discovered a groundbreaking result. Women preferentially chose symmetrical men as affair partners. Assuming that symmetry is a marker for genes for health, women who have affairs appear to select men who, for genetic reasons, are unusually healthy and whose genes than make children more healthy and resistant to diseases. Men who are rather asymmetrical are especially prone to being cuckolded by their more symmetrical rivals.
How do women "detect" such symmetrical men? The most obvious answer is simply to look. In extreme cases of asymmetry like Lyle Lovett or symmetry like Denzel Washington, women merely need to gaze through their own eyes. But there is a more subtle means by which women can detect symmetry - through their sense of smell. In an innovative study, Gangestad and Thornhill asked men who varied in symmetry to wear the same T-shirt for two days straight without showering or using deodorants. They instructed these men not to eat any spicy food - no peppers, garlic, onions, and so on. After two days, they collected the T-shirts, and then brought women into the laboratory to smell them. The women rated each on how good or bad it smelled. They were of course not aware of the purpose of the study in advance, nor did they know the men who had worn the T-shirts. The fascinating finding was that women judged the T-shirts that had been worn by symmetrical men as more pleasant smelling, but only if they happened to be in the ovulation phase of their menstrual cycle. So one clue to the mystery of how women detect men with good genes lies with the "scent of symmetry."
Some women pursue a "mixed" mating strategy - ensuring devotion and investment from one man while acquiring good genes from another. Women detect the scent of symmetry, prefer that scent when ovulating, and choose more symmetrical men as affair partners. This may not be good news for lopsided men. After all, the genes a man is born with are beyond his control, and it may seem a gross injustice that women are more likely to cheat on these men. But women's sexual psychology is designed neither for fairness nor justice. It is designed to help women reproduce more effectively, regardless of the pain inflicted on their partners.
There are two potential criticisms of this reasoning, but they turn out to crumble under close examination. The first is that modern women often don't want to have babies with their lovers, and so one might argue that the quality of their lover's genes is irrelevant. Women's sexual psychology, however, was forged in an evolutionary furnace lacking birth control. Sex led to babies regardless of a woman's conscious desire to reproduce or not. Ancestral women who had affairs with healthier, more symmetrical men tended to bear healthier, more symmetrical babies. Modern women have inherited from their successful ancestors an attraction to these me . The fact that roughly 10 percent of children today have genetic fathers other than their putative fathers suggests that these internal whisperings continue to operate today in the modern world.
A second possible objection is: Why wouldn't women want symmetrical mates as husbands as well as affair partners? The answer of course, is that they should and do. But the economics of the mating market means that most women are able to attract a more symmetrical man as an affair partner than a husband. Some women, in short, are able to get the best of both worlds - attracting investment from one man while obtaining superior genes from another.
Men's obsession with a woman's physical appearance and sexual availability results in what many women experience as objectification, or being treated as "sex objects." But men don't hold the monopoly on sexual objectification. The modern phenomenon of female rock groupies provides a perfect example. Groupies typically get neither investment nor attention nor much time from the rock stars whom they seek for sex. As Pamela des Barres observed in her book I'm with the Band: Confessions of a Groupie, a half-hour "quickie" can make a groupie's day. Most of these women do not delude themselves that the male rock stars will fall in love with them, have a relationship with them, or even remember their names in the morning. And they risk a lot by such brief flings - the loss of their regular boyfriends and the possibility of contracting sexually transmitted diseases. Why do they do it?
My studies with Heidi Greiling support an intriguing idea known as the theory of "sexy sons." Women who mate with sexy men tend to bear sexy sons. When these "sexy sons" grow up, they attract an above average number of women, thereby gaining a genetic edge on the competition. Their mothers gain in ultimate reproductive success through the increased reproduction of their sexy sons.
When evaluating qualities women want in a one-night stand outside of their regular relationship, women topped out in requiring the following attributes (using a 1-9 scale): sexy (8.7), highly desirable to the opposite sex (8.2), desires sex with you a lot (8.2), sensuous (8.2), physically attractive (8.6), good looking (8.3), sought after by members of the opposite sex (8.3), thinks you are sexy (8.3), and greatly desires you (8.3). Contrary to what women want in a regular partner, women seeking brief flings appear to go for the "studly" charmers who have what it takes to bed a variety of women. These are precisely the qualities that would give their sons a mating advantage in the next generation.
These same qualities shine through when women express the minimum percentile they require for various types of relationships. The contrast between the minimums women express for regular mates and for one-night stands is especially striking because women relax their standards for many qualities when seeking brief encounters. For degree of education, for example, women required husbands to be in the 61st percentile, but for one-night stands they required only the 47th percentile. In sharp contrast, women became more exacting in a one night stand on precisely the qualities one would expect according to the theory of sexy sons. Whereas they wanted their husband to be in the 58th percentile on sexiness, they wanted their brief flings to be in the 76th percentile. On physical attractiveness, they required husbands to be only in the 54th percentile, but demanded the 77th percentile for one-night stands. In brief encounters, it seems, women demand sexy partners who are highly desirable to other women, perhaps because their sons stand a greater chance of being sexy themselves. Women, of course, do not think these thoughts; there is no conscious calculus of genetic effects. They just find some men sexy and that's all they need to produce sons who will be sexually successful. (Sperm Wars: Infidelity, Sexual Conflict, And Other Bedroom Battles)
https://www.amazon.com/Sperm-Wars-Infidelity-Conflict-Bedroom/dp/1560258489
https://x.com/jackkorte_/status/326142294606626816
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/love-digitally/201707/why-women-have-affairs
1. Ensuring Reproductive Success
The better genes hypothesis suggests that having sex with a man possessing better genes than a female’s regular partner (e.g. genes for higher intelligence or genes for greater athleticism) would be advantageous because this will mean that any offspring resulting from this encounter will also possess these genes, thereby giving them advantages in life, such as a better job earning more money or with greater status. Furthermore, a female may be motivated to be unfaithful with a male who is attractive, because this will increase the chances that any sons will themselves be attractive, thus increasing the probability that a female will have grandchildren (referred to as the sexy son hypothesis). Female infidelity may also be driven by the strategy of genetic diversity. A female who has children with several males will produce genetically different offspring, giving each a chance of success in different or changing environments. For example, one child might inherit intelligence, whereas another might inherit physical strength, with the possibility of each characteristic being advantageous depending on the environment they inhabit. Finally in terms of producing offspring, the fertility backup hypothesis suggests that a female whose partner might have reduced fertility may benefit from a sexual affair, in order to make it more likely she has children.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/your-neurochemical-self/201302/every-break-up-has-a-lesson
Bonobos have a seductive reputation, but the truth is less inspiring. Female bonobos fight with each other for the privilege of courting the son of the alpha female. This eerily familiar behavior can be explained by what biologists call the “sexy son hypothesis.” A female mammal has a low lifetime reproductive capacity, and the best way to spread her genes is to have prolific sons. Choosing a prolific father helps you do that. And that’s one reason why female mammals are attracted to the big kahuna despite the frustrations of that choice. The lesson? Chemistry is not necessarily a good guide to long-run compatibility.
swarthy_pariah@kiirukikuyu·Jan 4, 2020
A man’s physical attractiveness will usually outweigh his educational &/ or career attainments. Women’s mate selection criteria is quite primitive. In short, she won’t fuck your paycheque or PhD. 🤷🏿♂️
https://twitter.com/degenrolf/status/1049714377144840192
THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT WHITE FEMALES WHO HAVE CHILDREN WITH NON-WHITES, PARTICULARLY BLACK MALES THAT I DON'T LIKE! I THINK IT HAS TO DO WITH THEY BEING MORE LIBERAL SEXUALLY AND SOCIALLY, HENCE THEIR MATING OUTSIDE OF THEIR RACE!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDmwPqma5Q4
FOR INSTANCE, ALL OF MY BROTHERS' WHITE GIRLFRIENDS AND WIVES LIKED ME, BUT I NEVER REALLY LIKED THEM (EXCEPT FOR TAMI LACROIX)
