"The Friendzone" and persistence

[DolphinDynasty]

It's not like we've got a shortage of single people, or that anybody has to be attached to somebody in some way. It's not likely to kill off the species within the next 5 generations at least, and even if it did, so what?

Yeah, easy for you and others who have no trouble finding boy/girlfriends to say!

Um, I don't "find" boyfriends or potential lovers, they saunter up to me in parking lots/libraries/diners or shout at me from car windows, and I ignore them. I don't like or want them in my life, don't care who they are or what they "actually" want, like they'd be honest about it anyway. Except ne dude who invited me to perform sex acts for money, which I also turned down, because that's an easy way to either get hooked on bad shit or killed, or maybe locked in some dudes basement, I don't know.

Still, at least he was honest about it, which is more than what most go in for.

I could not care even if I went the rest of my life without friend, boyfriend, or anything else, as humans are fucked up even before they claim to care about somebody else, which isn't really true since its more of a "you give me and I'll give you' kinda thing they actually want, and that mor akin to a business transaction or trade, not a relationship.

Fuck it, I'd say, if no guy ever pestered me, insulted me, or dehumanized me about it, but they do. A lot. And it's annoying.

 

[DolphinDynasty]

Or, maybe I should learn whatever language is spoken in that one remote town in China, where women make all the rules, run the town government, choose their partners and/or husbands, and its her family that raises, if any, all the kids.

There's been literally no rape , the ladies took over, nor even attempted rape since except by one outside visitor who was not Chinese but was attempting to become a citizen I think, and they threatended to castrate him if he ever set foot back in the town again after physically throwing him out.

Decades this has been going on, perhaps longer, not much if any violence, not much if any thievery, and if there is it's again by an outsider who doesn't know the ruling class is all women, then tries to talk their way out of it and usually gets beaten badly, or something permanently injured or cut off by a group of the guys before they throw them out.

Of curse, they're all dirt poor and wouldn't know what to do with any tech if you gave it to them with a its of instructions.

 

[ruby sparks]

Imo this has a lot to do with both evolution and culture. Yes, it's mostly (though not exclusively) males who do it, for a variety of complex reasons. It is, unfortunately, part of the mating dance of apes and other species where males by and large compete for females.

We really should teach kids (mostly boys) not to do it. It should be taught in classes at schools, imo. To a lesser extent, we should also teach kids (mostly girls) how best to avoid it. Imo.

Pretty much. Not to open the usual can of worms, but persistence in men is built into how we work. For every woman who is holding their face and shaking their head at persistent guys, there are 5 who end up marrying and having kids with them.

Even as a relatively self-aware man the drive to interact with women is really strong. It takes serious transcendence of your own inborn tendencies to not be annoying. Expecting that from men at large? Good luck.

Anecdote 1: I remember seeing an address by a female, feminist sociologist once. She prefaced it by saying that after she told a colleague beforehand what she was going to say, the colleague suggested she might want to consider wearing a bullet-proof vest during the address (at a woman's conference as I recall), and I feel a bit the same now, lol. What she said was that women are often to some extent complicit in the 'games' being played, that they sometimes say and play 'no' when they don't mean it, and I don't mean just about the sex act (though the speaker did). And that this can cause confusion for many men.

Now, part of the reason for that is to do with 'traditional' gender roles (in the 'game') of which I am not a fan and about which I would agree that a lot of the roles/rules are by and large disadvantageous to women, historically and to some extent still today. For example, the risk of being thought of as 'slutty' by readily agreeing to sex is one likely factor, and one would have to deplore that. Another factor, possibly much more important and foundational in our evolutionary biology, is that women, for various reasons, have to be much more choosy and discriminating than men when it comes to choosing partners, which may mean that by and large it is easier for a woman to have and want a platonic relationship with a man than the other way around.

There may even be survival advantages in a woman having male 'allies' and some of the 'recruiting' may have to involve what we might loosely call 'flirting'. I don't mean all the time and I do agree that a typical male may tend to see flirting when it's not actually going on.

Anecdote 2: Just yesterday, a female doctor I was seeing (as a patient) was very friendly to me and at one point touched my knee in a very friendly way. I interpreted it as flirting. Maybe I was right, maybe I was wrong (most likely I was mostly wrong). I was able to realise that I was probably mostly wrong by reflection afterwards but that didn't stop the almost automatic thought occurring in the first instance. I probably did, vainly, hold on to the ego-enhancing possibility that I wasn't wrong.

All that said, I think it's really important to stress that biology is not destiny and that biological facts are not excuses. But I think it's very important to at least understand them and to appreciate the nuances. The devil, imo, is usually in the detail, for most human issues.

As to men at large making enough adjustments, I agree that this might be difficult, but I would definitely feel that we should continue to try to make it happen, even if it'll never be perfect, and I'm fairly sure you'd agree.

 

[rousseau]

Imo this has a lot to do with both evolution and culture. Yes, it's mostly (though not exclusively) males who do it, for a variety of complex reasons. It is, unfortunately, part of the mating dance of apes and other species where males by and large compete for females.

We really should teach kids (mostly boys) not to do it. It should be taught in classes at schools, imo. To a lesser extent, we should also teach kids (mostly girls) how best to avoid it. Imo.

Pretty much. Not to open the usual can of worms, but persistence in men is built into how we work. For every woman who is holding their face and shaking their head at persistent guys, there are 5 who end up marrying and having kids with them.

Even as a relatively self-aware man the drive to interact with women is really strong. It takes serious transcendence of your own inborn tendencies to not be annoying. Expecting that from men at large? Good luck.

Anecdote 1: I remember seeing an address by a female, feminist sociologist once. She prefaced it by saying that after she told a colleague beforehand what she was going to say, the colleague suggested she might want to consider wearing a bullet-proof vest during the address (at a woman's conference as I recall), and I feel a bit the same now, lol. What she said was that women are often to some extent complicit in the 'games' being played, that they sometimes say and play 'no' when they don't mean it, and I don't mean just about the sex act (though the speaker did). And that this can cause confusion for many men.

Now, part of the reason for that is to do with 'traditional' gender roles (in the 'game') of which I am not a fan and about which I would agree that a lot of the roles/rules are by and large disadvantageous to women, historically and to some extent still today. For example, the risk of being thought of as 'slutty' by readily agreeing to sex is one likely factor, and one would have to deplore that. Another factor, possibly much more important and foundational in our evolutionary biology, is that women, for various reasons, have to be much more choosy and discriminating than men when it comes to choosing partners, which may mean that by and large it is easier for a woman to have and want a platonic relationship with a man than the other way around.

There may even be survival advantages in a woman having male 'allies' and some of the 'recruiting' may have to involve what we might loosely call 'flirting'. I don't mean all the time and I do agree that a typical male may tend to see flirting when it's not actually going on.

Anecdote 2: Just yesterday, a female doctor I was seeing (as a patient) was very friendly to me and at one point touched my knee in a very friendly way. I interpreted it as flirting. Maybe I was right, maybe I was wrong (most likely I was mostly wrong). I was able to realise that I was probably mostly wrong by reflection afterwards but that didn't stop the almost automatic thought occurring in the first instance. I probably did, vainly, hold on to the ego-enhancing possibility that I wasn't wrong.

All that said, I think it's really important to stress that biology is not destiny and that biological facts are not excuses. But I think it's very important to at least understand them and to appreciate the nuances. The devil, imo, is usually in the detail, for most human issues.

As to men at large making enough adjustments, I agree that this might be difficult, but I would definitely feel that we should continue to try to make it happen, even if it'll never be perfect, and I'm fairly sure you'd agree.

One interesting point on that is that this is the inversion of evolution's effect on men, and it's probably not going away either.

On the male side, the key factor to our sexual behavior is ensuring that the baby is ours. And so, averaged out, men rightly invest in women who aren't promiscuous. And so this type of behavior would be hard-wired into women, in the same way persistence is hard-wired into men, because promiscuous women are less likely to reproduce.

Should women be judged for promiscuity? Surely not. But when men look for a long-term partner they will be judged for it, and not necessarily because they're 'sluts', but rather because the man wants to make sure the baby they have is his.

 

[ruby sparks]

One interesting point on that is that this is the inversion of evolution's effect on men, and it's probably not going away either.

On the male side, the key factor to our sexual behavior is ensuring that the baby is ours. And so, averaged out, men rightly invest in women who aren't promiscuous. And so this type of behavior would be hard-wired into women, in the same way persistence is hard-wired into men, because promiscuous women are less likely to reproduce.

Should women be judged for promiscuity? Surely not. But when men look for a long-term partner they will be judged for it, and not necessarily because they're 'sluts', but rather because the man wants to make sure the baby they have is his.

That last point is indeed one of the plausible arguments put forward by some (many?) evolutionary biologists. One has to always, I think, add the caveat that evolutionary explantations are mostly restricted to being 'just so' explanations. But still.

As I said, I might agree that these things are not 'going away' or going to go away, but I think we can still strive to modify them when they result in social problems.

Worth noting that some experts would say that women too are inclined towards promiscuity (and infidelity) but in different ways, to different degrees, and for different reasons. One broad argument runs along the lines of saying that if they weren't, males would not have to have evolved strategies to counter the risk of it (eg mate-guarding in apes). At best, I think that secondary argument is likely only partly true. The counter-strategies could have as much to do with male competitor behaviour. But I think there is evidence that female promiscuity and infidelity of itself can have individual and species advantages.

 

[Bronzeage]

It's not like we've got a shortage of single people, or that anybody has to be attached to somebody in some way. It's not likely to kill off the species within the next 5 generations at least, and even if it did, so what?

Yeah, easy for you and others who have no trouble finding boy/girlfriends to say!

How do you know anything about other people's difficulties when finding a partner? There is no shortage of people who help you catalog your personal flaws, but now we can add petulance to the list.

I can testify, no one has "no" trouble finding a boy/girlfriend. If one is seeking a partner for sex only, it's only a matter of dropping one's expectations(some people call this standards). There are places where people go where expectations are so low, no one expects to learn the others name and the relationship lasts only as long as it takes. One of the expectations you'll have to lose is expecting to have sex with a woman, but once you get over that, it's really just a matter of timing.

Since you used the term boy/girlfriend, instead of random casual sex partner, we'll skip the tutorial on public parks after dark. Finding a boy/girlfriend requires only one thing, and that is the person must want to be a boy/girlfriend. That can be frightening and I'll concede, it's not for the fainthearted.

If repeating a lesson made it easier to learn, we would not be having this discussion, again. I'm coming up on my 62nd birthday, so I have roughly 60 years of observing my male friends and their problems with finding female friends. In earlier days, we didn't know what a neckbeard was, but my neckbeard friends had girlfriends. None of them were likely to make the cover of Teen Vogue, but everyone of them was happy to have him. After decades of observation, I have concluded, physical appearance and attraction is one of the smallest elements of why a woman likes a man. It almost doesn't matter. It still helps to wear a clean shirt.

The only guys who didn't have girlfriends(we'll exclude the ones who wanted boyfriends), had a common problem. They didn't like themselves. Call it self esteem or whatever, they looked at themselves and concluded that either no one would want them, or worse, only someone as disgusting as themselves would have them. They didn't want to be a boyfriend and no one could make them do it.

There is no rule that says you have to have a girlfriend. No one will stop you at the border and demand to see your girlfriend. Girlfriends can be a lot of work, but on the whole, usually worth it. There's always the chance of getting a bad girlfriend, but that's easy to remedy, and it makes a good girlfriend easier to identify.

Another of my 6 decade observations is, the only thing that changes a person is pain. If something hurts, we will try to get away from it. It helps if we move toward something better, but that's not always easy to see. If being alone is a painful thing, there are only two choices. First, we can change and no longer feel lonely. Second, we can seek a companion. To find a companion, one must be ready to be a companion, which means ready to accept all the unique faults and flaws which come prepackaged in every person. They'll be doing the same for you, so it's not like you're out anything on the deal.

The worse thing that can happen is to become numb. Numbness drops the pain level to just below the level that makes us want to do something. This means being stuck there forever.

 

[rousseau]

One interesting point on that is that this is the inversion of evolution's effect on men, and it's probably not going away either.

On the male side, the key factor to our sexual behavior is ensuring that the baby is ours. And so, averaged out, men rightly invest in women who aren't promiscuous. And so this type of behavior would be hard-wired into women, in the same way persistence is hard-wired into men, because promiscuous women are less likely to reproduce.

Should women be judged for promiscuity? Surely not. But when men look for a long-term partner they will be judged for it, and not necessarily because they're 'sluts', but rather because the man wants to make sure the baby they have is his.

That last point is indeed one of the plausible arguments put forward by some (many?) evolutionary biologists. One has to always, I think, add the caveat that evolutionary explantations are mostly restricted to being 'just so' explanations. But still.

As I said, I might agree that these things are not 'going away' or going to go away, but I think we can still strive to modify them when they result in social problems.

Worth noting that some experts would say that women too are inclined towards promiscuity (and infidelity) but in different ways, to different degrees, and for different reasons. One broad argument runs along the lines of saying that if they weren't, males would not have to have evolved strategies to counter the risk of it (eg mate-guarding in apes). At best, I think that secondary argument is likely only partly true. The counter-strategies could have as much to do with male competitor behaviour. But I think there is evidence that female promiscuity and infidelity of itself can have individual and species advantages.

Sexuality is fluid, and I don't think you can pin our behavior to one monolithic evolutionary rule. If nothing else is true, the most important fact is that people like sex, and they want to have more of it. The end goal for most people is to first, have children, and secondly, have children who will also be sexually successful. A lot of the times it isn't a conscious thing, it just happens.

But even if you'd call them 'just so' stories, some of these stories have a ton of explanatory power for our behavior. In theory there should be something like natural laws that dictate how men and women behave, averaged out. Men want to make sure they're raising their own child, women want to make sure their partner won't abandon them, and will see their offspring to maturity.

 

[rousseau]

One thing I find interesting, from a book I read (and this Wikipedia page):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertility_and_intelligence

In a 1988 study, Retherford and Sewell examined the association between the measured intelligence and fertility of over 9,000 high school graduates in Wisconsin in 1957, and confirmed the inverse relationship between IQ and fertility for both sexes, but much more so for females. If children had, on average, the same IQ as their parents, IQ would decline by .81 points per generation. Taking .71 for the additive heritability of IQ as given by Jinks and Fulker,[14] they calculated a dysgenic decline of .57 IQ points per generation.[15]

I'm going to take some leaps here, but the trend seems to be that smart men are in high demand, and much more likely to have kids than their female counterparts of high intelligence. I'd hazard a guess that a part of this is that smart men are able approach to women in more productive ways than via persistence, and smart women are more likely to be off put by the brunt of men being persistent. So smart men usually have many women to choose from, while men of lesser intelligence are forced to bash their head against a wall until something sticks.

The catch-line here is that persistence in men is going to be selected for by the brunt of relationships that occur. Most people who have kids do so simply because the guy was determined enough.

So sure, we can teach men to lay off a bit, but in a lot of cases even the parents of these boys are the same men who are responsible for this behavior. In other words... persistence, thy name is men.

 

[ruby sparks]

One thing I find interesting, from a book I read (and this Wikipedia page):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertility_and_intelligence

In a 1988 study, Retherford and Sewell examined the association between the measured intelligence and fertility of over 9,000 high school graduates in Wisconsin in 1957, and confirmed the inverse relationship between IQ and fertility for both sexes, but much more so for females. If children had, on average, the same IQ as their parents, IQ would decline by .81 points per generation. Taking .71 for the additive heritability of IQ as given by Jinks and Fulker,[14] they calculated a dysgenic decline of .57 IQ points per generation.[15]

I'm going to take some leaps here, but the trend seems to be that smart men are in high demand, and much more likely to have kids than their female counterparts of high intelligence. I'd hazard a guess that a part of this is that smart men are able approach to women in more productive ways than via persistence, and smart women are more likely to be off put by the brunt of men being persistent. So smart men usually have many women to choose from, while men of lesser intelligence are forced to bash their head against a wall until something sticks.

The catch-line here is that persistence in men is going to be selected for by the brunt of relationships that occur. Most people who have kids do so simply because the guy was determined enough.

So sure, we can teach men to lay off a bit, but in a lot of cases even the parents of these boys are the same men who are responsible for this behavior. In other words... persistence, thy name is men.

I hadn't read of that before. There's probably something in it, but I wouldn't be sure what.

By the way, you may have noticed the 'Richard Carrier Drama Llama' thread, which in some ways is arguably related. Basically, Richard Carrier is accused of inappropriate persistence.

https://talkfreethought.org/showthread.php?14372-Richard-Carrier-drama-llama

 

[Jobar]

The only guys who didn't have girlfriends(we'll exclude the ones who wanted boyfriends), had a common problem. They didn't like themselves. Call it self esteem or whatever, they looked at themselves and concluded that either no one would want them, or worse, only someone as disgusting as themselves would have them. They didn't want to be a boyfriend and no one could make them do it.

:nod:

I'm coming up on my 63rd birthday, and my observations are very much the same. If you don't like yourself, there's not much chance anyone else will. Better in fact to learn to love yourself; the more you can do that, the more probable it is you'll find others that will love you.

 

[rousseau]

One thing I find interesting, from a book I read (and this Wikipedia page):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertility_and_intelligence

In a 1988 study, Retherford and Sewell examined the association between the measured intelligence and fertility of over 9,000 high school graduates in Wisconsin in 1957, and confirmed the inverse relationship between IQ and fertility for both sexes, but much more so for females. If children had, on average, the same IQ as their parents, IQ would decline by .81 points per generation. Taking .71 for the additive heritability of IQ as given by Jinks and Fulker,[14] they calculated a dysgenic decline of .57 IQ points per generation.[15]

I'm going to take some leaps here, but the trend seems to be that smart men are in high demand, and much more likely to have kids than their female counterparts of high intelligence. I'd hazard a guess that a part of this is that smart men are able approach to women in more productive ways than via persistence, and smart women are more likely to be off put by the brunt of men being persistent. So smart men usually have many women to choose from, while men of lesser intelligence are forced to bash their head against a wall until something sticks.

The catch-line here is that persistence in men is going to be selected for by the brunt of relationships that occur. Most people who have kids do so simply because the guy was determined enough.

So sure, we can teach men to lay off a bit, but in a lot of cases even the parents of these boys are the same men who are responsible for this behavior. In other words... persistence, thy name is men.

I hadn't read of that before. There's probably something in it, but I wouldn't be sure what.

By the way, you may have noticed the 'Richard Carrier Drama Llama' thread, which in some ways is arguably related. Basically, Richard Carrier is accused of inappropriate persistence.

https://talkfreethought.org/showthread.php?14372-Richard-Carrier-drama-llama

I wonder how much of it comes down to sexual desire. As if there is one component of the brain that says 'sleep with every woman you see' and drives that kind of behavior, and another component that says 'chill out man', and they're constantly fighting with each other. In some men the first component is really big and the second is small, in others it's vice versa or about equal.

So at the root of persistence is men who really want to get laid.

 

[Jobar]

[YOUTUBE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aB5tx68i1M4[/YOUTUBE]

When you learn to love yourself
You will dissolve all the stones that are cast
You will learn to burn the icing sky
To melt the waxen mask

(And yes, certainly I'm aware that song is about lesbian love. But it's true for everyone.)

 

[ruby sparks]

I hadn't read of that before. There's probably something in it, but I wouldn't be sure what.

By the way, you may have noticed the 'Richard Carrier Drama Llama' thread, which in some ways is arguably related. Basically, Richard Carrier is accused of inappropriate persistence.

https://talkfreethought.org/showthread.php?14372-Richard-Carrier-drama-llama

I wonder how much of it comes down to sexual desire. As if there is one component of the brain that says 'sleep with every woman you see' and drives that kind of behavior, and another component that says 'chill out man', and they're constantly fighting with each other. In some men the first component is really big and the second is small, in others it's vice versa or about equal.

So at the root of persistence is men who really want to get laid.

Yes. I don't think that's controversial. It would be going too far to say that men are 'progammed' or 'hard wired' to have sex with as many women as they can but that women are similarly predisposed to be much more selective, but I do believe the tendencies are there. I recall reading of at least one study which reinforced the idea. Men and women were shown photographs of people unknown to them and asked 'would you have sex with this person?' and men strongly tended to say yes in many, many more cases.

 

[ruby sparks]

This might have been that study, I'm not sure:

Gender Differences in Receptivity to Sexual Offers: A New Research Prototype
https://interpersona.psychopen.eu/article/view/121/html

It wasn't done using photographs. Confederates (students playing a role as part of the experiment) approached and asked other students.

So there were three questions, as follows...

“Would you go out with me tonight?” ('Date' question), “Would you come over to my apartment” ('Apartment' question) and “Would you go to bed with me?” ('Sex' question).

This screenshot displays how the results differed between male and female responses:





And actually, that screenshot above is from previously run studies cited in the link. The study in the link used a slightly different (meant to be improved, by allowing for degrees of certainty/uncertainty in responses) rating system, but got similar results:

 

[Jobar]

 Sociobiological theories of rape

"Rape is viewed as a natural, biological phenomenon that is a product of the human evolutionary heritage." As disturbing as that is, I fear it's true. (Not that being natural excuses it, of course. Smallpox, black plague, and polio are also 'natural'.)

 

[Bronzeage]

I hadn't read of that before. There's probably something in it, but I wouldn't be sure what.

By the way, you may have noticed the 'Richard Carrier Drama Llama' thread, which in some ways is arguably related. Basically, Richard Carrier is accused of inappropriate persistence.

https://talkfreethought.org/showthread.php?14372-Richard-Carrier-drama-llama

I wonder how much of it comes down to sexual desire. As if there is one component of the brain that says 'sleep with every woman you see' and drives that kind of behavior, and another component that says 'chill out man', and they're constantly fighting with each other. In some men the first component is really big and the second is small, in others it's vice versa or about equal.

So at the root of persistence is men who really want to get laid.

The root of persistence lies not in wanting to get laid, but in mis-perception and a skewed self-perception. It's not really about wanting to get laid, it's about getting laid by a particular person.

There is no more powerful aphrodisiac that the voice in one's head which says, "Hey, I think she likes me." Ask any man to list the traits he finds attractive in a woman and we'll see things like sense of humor, intelligence, shoe size, whatever. But, if we include "HITSLM", it's at the top of every list. When this involves a woman he finds attractive, HITSLM is an adrenaline/endorphin cocktail that is rarely matched by any other experience. It gets our attention and makes us focus our efforts. A man under the influence of HITSLM is probably clinically insane, or at severely impaired, for at least a short period of time.

This reaction can lead to serious consequences because the memory of it stays with us. The problem arises when she doesn't like him, quite as much as he thinks, or wishes. Why would a guy pursue a woman who doesn't like him? He's chasing that HITSLM reaction. He knows it's there, it has to be, but just a little out of reach. That distance, slightly longer than one's arm, marks the boundary of the friend zone.

 

[ruby sparks]

 Sociobiological theories of rape

"Rape is viewed as a natural, biological phenomenon that is a product of the human evolutionary heritage." As disturbing as that is, I fear it's true. (Not that being natural excuses it, of course. Smallpox, black plague, and polio are also 'natural'.)

Rape happens in other species too, I understand, to varying extents, depending on the species dynamics. In Oran utangs for instance, it's the smaller (less attractive to females) males who do it. It isn't common in all ape species though, or so I read.

 

[rousseau]

I hadn't read of that before. There's probably something in it, but I wouldn't be sure what.

By the way, you may have noticed the 'Richard Carrier Drama Llama' thread, which in some ways is arguably related. Basically, Richard Carrier is accused of inappropriate persistence.

https://talkfreethought.org/showthread.php?14372-Richard-Carrier-drama-llama

I wonder how much of it comes down to sexual desire. As if there is one component of the brain that says 'sleep with every woman you see' and drives that kind of behavior, and another component that says 'chill out man', and they're constantly fighting with each other. In some men the first component is really big and the second is small, in others it's vice versa or about equal.

So at the root of persistence is men who really want to get laid.

The root of persistence lies not in wanting to get laid, but in mis-perception and a skewed self-perception. It's not really about wanting to get laid, it's about getting laid by a particular person.

There is no more powerful aphrodisiac that the voice in one's head which says, "Hey, I think she likes me." Ask any man to list the traits he finds attractive in a woman and we'll see things like sense of humor, intelligence, shoe size, whatever. But, if we include "HITSLM", it's at the top of every list. When this involves a woman he finds attractive, HITSLM is an adrenaline/endorphin cocktail that is rarely matched by any other experience. It gets our attention and makes us focus our efforts. A man under the influence of HITSLM is probably clinically insane, or at severely impaired, for at least a short period of time.

This reaction can lead to serious consequences because the memory of it stays with us. The problem arises when she doesn't like him, quite as much as he thinks, or wishes. Why would a guy pursue a woman who doesn't like him? He's chasing that HITSLM reaction. He knows it's there, it has to be, but just a little out of reach. That distance, slightly longer than one's arm, marks the boundary of the friend zone.

I guess you could say that sex is the rocket fuel, and HITSLM is the targeting program.

 

[DolphinDynasty]

 Sociobiological theories of rape

"Rape is viewed as a natural, biological phenomenon that is a product of the human evolutionary heritage." As disturbing as that is, I fear it's true. (Not that being natural excuses it, of course. Smallpox, black plague, and polio are also 'natural'.)

Rape happens in other species too, I understand, to varying extents, depending on the species dynamics. In Oran utangs for instance, it's the smaller (less attractive to females) males who do it. It isn't common in all ape species though, or so I read.

There's also a fish that can only mate while permanently damaging organs, ducks have an issue with it because the biology of males and females is directly opposite to procreating, with one's sex organs a reverse corkscrew shape and the other a corkscrew, there's another fish (the angler fish) that can only procreate from the male being absorbed by the female in terms of nearly his entire body being fused underneath and into her larger form.

Nature's just plain screwy so I guess humans fit into that quite well, really, as do other animals that will do seemingly irrational things to either survive, get laid, or just plain eat.

But I do sometimes wonder if its really that a guy is dealing with a vague hope of the HITSLM from what Bronzeage was saying, or if it's more of a scorecard, or maybe more of a primitive drive or some mixture.

Hmmm. I suppose it really doesn't help that I simply don't see people, even when they are ascetically attractive or symmetrically attractive or otherwise "pretty", in such a thin veneer. They are all of them more than their faces or bodies or hairstyle or hobbies or TV shows and movies they watch, or maybe I just sometimes wish they were.

Eh, either too "rich" for me, or too thin a standard, I guess.

I hear the US has whined their way away from the Human Rights Council because atrocities committed by Israel don't count, because baby Jesus. Not that the HRC was amounting to much except for a bunch of foreign states holding a similarly negative perception of bad ideas and stupid pissing contests.

Two hours of sleep and getting kicked around again by my bosses because my usually high numbers tanked on Monday is making me cranky.

The point, I guess, is not even Stephen King or John Saul could really get close to how freaky this planet can be.

 

[ruby sparks]

But I do sometimes wonder if its really that a guy is dealing with a vague hope of the HITSLM from what Bronzeage was saying, or if it's more of a scorecard, or maybe more of a primitive drive or some mixture.

As with almost everything about human behaviour, it's probably a mixture of different things.