Solutions For Unsexy Men
Tyler Cowen in his book Discover Your Inner Economist attributes to Bryan Caplan the following about their colleague in the world’s grooviest economics department Robin Hanson:
“When the typical economist tells me about his latest research, my standard reaction is ‘Eh, maybe.’ Then I forget about it. When Robin Hanson tell me about his latest research, my standard reaction is ‘No way! Impossible!’ Then I think about it for years.”
Exactly right. For my money, Robin has more provocative ideas per day than most people will have in their whole lives.
And he’s done it again, this time in a way I hope will be of interest to readers of this blog, in a pair of posts over at Overcoming Bias. One is titled “40% of US Moms Unwed” followed by “Who Cares About Unsexy Men?” (Answer: Robin Hanson does. And no, dear reader, it is not because Robin is himself an unsexy man. He once had a commenter ask “Can I mate with you now?” Robin cares because he’s good guy.)
The conjecture Robin is advancing in these two posts might be summarized as follows: societies which have monogamous marriage as a strong institution are good for men who are unsexy, that is to say, unattractive, unartistic, unathletic, low in wealth or social status, and so forth. The reason is that even an unsexy man can offer something to a woman: commitment and support, both to her and to any children they might have. Since men and women exist in roughly equal numbers, they can pair off and even unsexy men can have a reasonable chance of marrying. (For a similar argument, see Robert Wright’s The Moral Animal.) But if women prefer to rear children alone, then we might tip into a different equilibrium. If women are no longer interested in what unsexy men have to offer, we end up with a fierce competition among men for sexual access to women, and a lot inequality among men. Sexy men will end up effectively polygynous, while unsexy men will be cast into the outer darkness of celibate despair.
It is a bleak projection and one that Robin himself doesn’t like. I suggest interested readers look at the underlying posts. What struck me most was the great outpouring of comments generated, two of which I reproduce here.
Some suggested that a turn to porn is the way to go; of these, one of the more interesting is the one here:
I’m so darn nurturing, but not sexy, so what I do is go over to my sister’s house and play with her little babies until I am all out of love, then I go home and watch amazing porn in peace and quiet. It’s a good life, I hope all the unsexy men adapt as well.
We at ErosBlog should be honored to provide a public service.
But perhaps best of all was the very first comment on “Unsexy Men”, in which the commenter came up with a one-word answer to the problems of unsexy men:
Robots.
Yes, I guess I now see a point of contact between the two blogs…
Shorter URL for sharing: http://www.erosblog.com/?p=3601
hmm… a very thoughtful, and thought provoking, post.
If nature were efficient on an individual basis, the unsexy men would just hook up with the unsexy women and a mutual problem’s solved.
Evolution is a much longer game than that, though, and the imperative is to breed upward… so we’re all -sexy and unsexy alike- wired to want to bonk what we perceive as the best (rich, smart, tough, handsome, talented etc). The unsexy, and that goes for both men and women, are in relationship purgatory as long as they keep trying to punch above their weight. Anyone who’s tried online dating figures this out eventually.
“…monogamous marriage as a strong institution are good for men who are unsexy, that is to say, unattractive, unartistic, unathletic, low in wealth or social status, and so forth.”
Why does this sound so wrong to me? I can’t imagine wanting to marry someone that had none of these qualities at all. Even if it would get me kids and someone to help me look after them, it sounds like pure hell. What’s to guarantee that, once married, a man like this will have more sex besides the one night needed to conceive a child?
It kind of sounds like the majority of women have to be miserable or the majority of men have to be lonely wankers for society to work. Are there no better solutions, such as more men working out, helping to make a larger range of body types more sexually acceptable, more women having sex with more than one man or making information on how to have good sex more mainstream?
I find it a bit remarkable that this author thinks of “commitment and support” as something that are only useful in a monogamous everyone-married world.
Personally, what keeps me coming home to my wife isn’t that she’s sexy or helps pay the bills. It’s that she’s there for me when I need emotional support; she wants to hear how my day went; she cares about me. And that’s one of those things that’s a difference between a happy and joyful life and a sad and depressed one, for me.
(I also find it a bit remarkable that this all is only applies to “unsexy” men, not “unsexy” women. And I use the quotes because tastes differ phenomenally here, despite the social ideals of what sexy people supposedly look like. A lot of people in actual practice care about personality more than porn-perfect body type.)
Now, maybe that’s inherent in this fellow’s premise, which is that he’s trying to explain data about unwed mothers. However, I’d begin by questioning his explanation of that data — which starts with equating “unwed” with “not in what he thinks of as a marriage-like relationship”. (And also that it equates to “wants to raise children alone” rather than “I got pregnant but decided this guy wasn’t going to be a good father/husband, but I’d get married happily if the right guy did come along”.)
And I see that there’s a lot of questioning of at least the former of those assumptions in the comment thread, but no extra data — as opposed to anecdotal evidence — being supplied.
I’d finally close with noting the assumption in Molly’s comment’s last paragraph, which is that the majority of men would not make their partner happy if they were in a relationship. (I think this is Molly restating Robin’s argument, not that she herself is making that assumption.) Frankly, I think that assumption is utter tripe.
H.B. I, myself, don’t assume the majority of men are awful. I haven’t gotten to know enough of them to honestly make any kind of comment on the majority, really, but the ones I’ve met haven’t been that bad on the whole :).
It’s true I went along with the article’s assumption that there were a lot of unsuitable men out there, but that’s mainly because the thought that in order for some men with no suitable qualities at all to be “happy”, someone else would have to be in a relationship with no communication or a horrible sex life. After I wrote it I wondered how many of these men there actually *were*.
Actually, the whole article reminds me of another statistic that I hold just as dear as Mr. Hanson does his about the unwed mothers: the majority of fat girls have more sex. The fat acceptance movement aside, fat women are still not seen as sexy in general, but for some unstated reason they manage in terms of sex. Why can’t the unsexy men do the same?
Having thought about it a little more, I think this article might point more to ideas about gender imbalance than a good argument for “saving” marriage. The idea that women are the keepers of the sexual keys and men have no power over that is something that seems to screw up a lot of things even before the sexual revolution. In my own experience, no one gets laid as much as they should, whether they’re sexy or not.
Hmm, the links I tried to put in the comment seem to have been mislaid.
Fat girls get laid more often:
http://www.indi...79778
And an article from Pretty Dumb Things: “The generalization that really bothers me today, and mostly because it arose as the basis for a comment to a recent post of mine wherein I lamented my recent lack of sexual activity, is this: that women can always get laid, whereas it’s ever a challenge to men.”
http://prettydu....html
I’ve had two female friends, in an unsolicited way, tell me they got horny once and went out to a bar and got themselves picked up for sex in a short time. Not remarkable, penthouse used to be filled with letters from men writing about how they got lucky out of the blue. I knew one male friend who would just flat out ask every woman he met for sex until one said yes, but this usually took days. My sense is that if a living breathing woman goes out on any given afternoon she can find a sex partner within a short time, because there are always going to be men out actively hoping to act on ‘luck’.
With the advent of the women’s movement and (to a greater extent) porn cassettes and the internet women are now actively seeking out anonymous partners more than they did back before birth control pills and the heightened awareness of personal hygiene. I have no facts on my side but my gut feeling is that women can feel free to refuse the majority of male riff raff because it is certain that another bus will be along shortly to fill in the void. Unless you are a male musician women tend not to ask you directly for sex. It may be that anyone with a good attitude about themselves will put out positive feelers that others can act on if they please. Maybe ‘fat girls’ have figured out faster than ‘fat guys’ to be accessible if they want a certain kind of result from other people. The ‘fat girls have more sex’ idea made me wonder if other girls were actually offered as much access to sex as their larger compatriots or just chose to refuse sex more often.
My wife and I stopped having sex over ten years ago. In retrospect we never sat down and decided to stop having sex. We just had a series of arguments that never got completely resolved and sleeping apart stretched out from one night, to two and then when I thought about it we hadn’t slept in the same bed for some months, and by that time it was too late to turn back. Once I decided I wanted to have sex again potential partners, reasonably, said ‘no’. Primary reason given for the refusals was because I was still married. There is enough right about my relationship with my wife that I didn’t want to divorce her then just because I wasn’t getting laid. As a result I now go years between sexual encounters. I consider myself essentially celibate. Long winded point being that if asked for a survey I’d want to list myself as celibate, although I had sex about a year ago and would gladly have it tomorrow if I found a suitable partner. Surveys don’t have time for all these grey matters. If an average ‘fat girl’ has sex twice a week but wants it once a day and a different body type girl has sex twice a week but wants it once a month a survey is going to come to a conclusion that doesn’t relate to the satisfaction or happiness of the respondents. Losing weight, getting a divorce and then trolling bars to end up getting laid twice a month would improve my ‘getting sex’ statistics but I suspect my overall quality of life would be worse if I wasn’t part of my family, dysfunctional as it may be. The surveys are well meaning but inherently limited. There is just no ‘unified field theory’ of the heart.
In reply to this bit, from Molly: “Having thought about it a little more, I think this article might point more to ideas about gender imbalance than a good argument for “saving” marriage.”
Yes, that! I was starting to have similar thoughts about the article; thanks for following the same threads and putting words on it and stating it more clearly.
And, too, with this idea about unsexy men — I’m thinking of some of the men I’ve known, from a hobby club. A lot of these men spend lots of their time doing things a lot of people think of as “playing with toys” (and spending thousands of dollars on them, in little bits and pieces), are deeply involved in things that are traditionally “guy stuff” that women aren’t interested in, are generally overweight, balding, a little unkempt, on the upper side of middle-aged, and generally what I suppose counts as “unsexy”. And a significant majority of them have partners. Many of these partners are “girlfriends” rather than wives, too — clearly not there for commitment and support, but because they enjoy being with these men (and it shows, when you get to know them, too).
And in most cases I can see a fair bit of what they see in these men, too, though I gave a rather unflattering description of them — they’re generally very pleasant people, passionate about things and glad to share them, cheerful, and really enjoy other people’s company. I’m not at all surprised that their partners seem happy to be with them.
So I rather wonder how many of these supposedly “unsexy” men are just being misjudged by a self-confident and unimaginative straight guy who can’t see how someone would want to sleep with them. (If he is really sexy and self-confident, maybe he’s got the luxury of thinking that most women are unsexy based on surface appearances and prejudices, and supposes that this is the common viewpoint from both sides.) The commenter who described himself as “nurturing” really sounds like he’d be a catch, to me.
I’m interested to see this post from 2009 because I get the impression that there are now a network of men on social media teaching young men that all the women are bedding a few hotties and ordinary guys have no chance. I think that advice is something very dark, the kind of advice which actually prevents people from achieving their goals. I think that almost all unhappily single people have a good chance of finding someone if they go do things face to face with people of a sex they are interested in, then let the ones they are interested in know they are interested. I am still stuck on step 1 though :(
Robin Hanson’s subculture has a weird mix of polycules and sex parties in one corner, and confident speculations about sex and behaviour in another … looking back from 2023 that space looks different too.
For all the debates about how quickly women can find partners by propositioning random people, there are anecdotes about men who make it work.