Did factor analysis turn up any interesting clustering? I find myself wondering if there might not be archetypes with conflicting sets of features that different women find attractive, for instance. Maybe the "high class stable man" vs "roguish rambler" or something. It seems like there must be some sort of split for types like that which explains say Middlemarch and the dozens of other "which man will she choose?" types of stories. Or maybe they are just all competing traits that tend to clump together themselves, so different archetypes just happen to compare well with each other since one person can't have all the traits.
Women's taste still seems strange to me, and with 3 girls approaching their teenage years I find the topic suddenly concerning in a way it hasn't been for about 20 years :D
Yes, I extracted five factors, I'm busy making all the graphs, and while none of it will likely be of much assistance to you as your daughters go through puberty, I promise that at the very least it will be interesting!
Men don't seem weird to each other! I think what makes it difficult for men, and what explains many of these general trends, is that women have greater overall emotionality, but low sex drives. The average man is jerked around by sexual cues he constantly tries to resist or ignore, while the average woman's libido is like "wet wood" and can only catch alight under the right conditions as per Bettina Arndt... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LFRBtoRsxs ...but she's full of anxieties and sentiments that men either lack, or try to repress because they're "gay."
To me this isn't boring at all - this is deeply strange! Even Mrs. Apple Pie is unusual in this regard; she prefers Skwisgaar Skwigelf to Charles Offdensen, and I find her interests much easier to empathize with than those of the mysterious median maiden.
So in some sense you researched male sexuality and female emotional preferences? Because that is what men and women respectively tend to think about when getting the question what they like.
I had to google Skwisgaar Skwigelf and Charles Offdensen. And was spontaneously doubtful that any woman could find the latter attractive. I guess I'm just being gay.
I had to google Bettina Arndt too. I thought she sounded really sensible in the video but after reading more about her and by her I didn't. I hope that someone who doesn't suffer from a severe lack of selfsensorship says the same things.
There was an Offdensen video in footnote 16! You have to look past the reedy voice, past the baseless claims that he's a robot, past the fact that he can't shred like Skwigelf to see that like Mister Romantic Average, he's mature, he's impeccably dressed, he always does what has to be done, and dammit, he returns phone calls from the United Nations.
On the other hand, Bettina Arent was just someone who talked about women's sex drives in a way that was a bit more evocative than saying "women have, uh, low sex drives, compared to men." Looking around at most of the things she says I can't find anything particularly shocking; she comes across to me like many American conservative women do, except that she's fixated on sex and feminism rather than immigration, Godlessness, or the global warming hoax that people like me no longer realize is a hoax.
You caught me with sloppy reading again! But although I do read carelessly, this survey has given me new perspectives on one point: The nature of conservatism and liberalism. Your finding that conservatives tend to like lipstick and high heels has deepened my understanding of the nature of the political divide and how to position myself in it.
>>she comes across to me like many American conservative women do
Yes. The world is filled with people who take pride in being biased. For a moment I believed that Bettina Arndt was an exception from that rule. Until I didn't.
Mm, that isn't going to do much for you. It's true that the *dimension* on which lipstick loads is *modestly* correlated with conservatism, but the specific items don't individually correlate much - red lipstick vs conservatism has nonsignificant r = 0.07.
That romantic preferences recover the same political map everything else does is actually another post I'm trying to put together (with yet another graph). But the TL;DR of that is that if you want to position yourself to be appealing to conservative male readers, you want long hair, jewelry, a submissive attitude, a lack of education, and obvious signs you're good with children. On the other hand, leftist male readers want you dominant, well educated, and freethinking, wearing a t-shirt and short hair, and probably like that you continually downplay your cooking skills.
If I just cut my hair I will tick all the boxes for the leftists. No matter how many conservative viewpoints I amass, I obviously belong among leftists.
While Substack is a somewhat conservative space, my sense is that conservatives don't tend to answer surveys about romantic interest as often as leftists do. Unfortunately, looking over the numbers the sample appears to lean towards tough-minded libertarian leftism. This is pretty much what one might expect given the nature of the survey and the person who created it.
As for factors, there is a PCA done, and the difference between gay men and women does indeed tap into broad dimensions of variation in desire. I just haven't posted that yet because realized that I had made a complete thought here, and it was better to post what I had now. (And on the home front I'm still behind on birthdays; we just celebrated #3's today, but we're still behind on #1.)
This is interesting, thank you!
Did factor analysis turn up any interesting clustering? I find myself wondering if there might not be archetypes with conflicting sets of features that different women find attractive, for instance. Maybe the "high class stable man" vs "roguish rambler" or something. It seems like there must be some sort of split for types like that which explains say Middlemarch and the dozens of other "which man will she choose?" types of stories. Or maybe they are just all competing traits that tend to clump together themselves, so different archetypes just happen to compare well with each other since one person can't have all the traits.
Women's taste still seems strange to me, and with 3 girls approaching their teenage years I find the topic suddenly concerning in a way it hasn't been for about 20 years :D
Yes, I extracted five factors, I'm busy making all the graphs, and while none of it will likely be of much assistance to you as your daughters go through puberty, I promise that at the very least it will be interesting!
Very excited to see them! Thanks for your hard work.
Men are weird. Women are boring. That was my main impression of your posts on your survey results.
But I think that women are a bit weird too. We are just better at hiding it from ourselves and others.
Men don't seem weird to each other! I think what makes it difficult for men, and what explains many of these general trends, is that women have greater overall emotionality, but low sex drives. The average man is jerked around by sexual cues he constantly tries to resist or ignore, while the average woman's libido is like "wet wood" and can only catch alight under the right conditions as per Bettina Arndt... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LFRBtoRsxs ...but she's full of anxieties and sentiments that men either lack, or try to repress because they're "gay."
To me this isn't boring at all - this is deeply strange! Even Mrs. Apple Pie is unusual in this regard; she prefers Skwisgaar Skwigelf to Charles Offdensen, and I find her interests much easier to empathize with than those of the mysterious median maiden.
So in some sense you researched male sexuality and female emotional preferences? Because that is what men and women respectively tend to think about when getting the question what they like.
I had to google Skwisgaar Skwigelf and Charles Offdensen. And was spontaneously doubtful that any woman could find the latter attractive. I guess I'm just being gay.
I had to google Bettina Arndt too. I thought she sounded really sensible in the video but after reading more about her and by her I didn't. I hope that someone who doesn't suffer from a severe lack of selfsensorship says the same things.
There was an Offdensen video in footnote 16! You have to look past the reedy voice, past the baseless claims that he's a robot, past the fact that he can't shred like Skwigelf to see that like Mister Romantic Average, he's mature, he's impeccably dressed, he always does what has to be done, and dammit, he returns phone calls from the United Nations.
On the other hand, Bettina Arent was just someone who talked about women's sex drives in a way that was a bit more evocative than saying "women have, uh, low sex drives, compared to men." Looking around at most of the things she says I can't find anything particularly shocking; she comes across to me like many American conservative women do, except that she's fixated on sex and feminism rather than immigration, Godlessness, or the global warming hoax that people like me no longer realize is a hoax.
>>There was an Offdensen video in footnote 16!
You caught me with sloppy reading again! But although I do read carelessly, this survey has given me new perspectives on one point: The nature of conservatism and liberalism. Your finding that conservatives tend to like lipstick and high heels has deepened my understanding of the nature of the political divide and how to position myself in it.
>>she comes across to me like many American conservative women do
Yes. The world is filled with people who take pride in being biased. For a moment I believed that Bettina Arndt was an exception from that rule. Until I didn't.
Mm, that isn't going to do much for you. It's true that the *dimension* on which lipstick loads is *modestly* correlated with conservatism, but the specific items don't individually correlate much - red lipstick vs conservatism has nonsignificant r = 0.07.
That romantic preferences recover the same political map everything else does is actually another post I'm trying to put together (with yet another graph). But the TL;DR of that is that if you want to position yourself to be appealing to conservative male readers, you want long hair, jewelry, a submissive attitude, a lack of education, and obvious signs you're good with children. On the other hand, leftist male readers want you dominant, well educated, and freethinking, wearing a t-shirt and short hair, and probably like that you continually downplay your cooking skills.
If I just cut my hair I will tick all the boxes for the leftists. No matter how many conservative viewpoints I amass, I obviously belong among leftists.
Hehe, thanks for doing this! Pretty much fits what I thought but you never know until you actually do the data.
Sounds like the 'attraction to men of women vs gay men' is kind of a combination of your Factors 2 and 4 for 'attraction to women of men'.
I'd be willing to bet as well your survey's substantially more right-leaning than average. But...that's life! Go ask Aella I guess. ;)
I'm guessing you didn't have the sample size for breaking down straight women any further, or straight vs bi?
Thanks again!
While Substack is a somewhat conservative space, my sense is that conservatives don't tend to answer surveys about romantic interest as often as leftists do. Unfortunately, looking over the numbers the sample appears to lean towards tough-minded libertarian leftism. This is pretty much what one might expect given the nature of the survey and the person who created it.
As for factors, there is a PCA done, and the difference between gay men and women does indeed tap into broad dimensions of variation in desire. I just haven't posted that yet because realized that I had made a complete thought here, and it was better to post what I had now. (And on the home front I'm still behind on birthdays; we just celebrated #3's today, but we're still behind on #1.)
Oh... I see my other post questioning groupings was partially answered here :D
Happy birthday to the little sprogs!
No prob. Family first! Enjoy your kids' birthdays!