I want a woman's opinions on these often made comments on females

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’ve been hearing the following comments for a long time now, and though I’ve never heard any woman outright say that they agree (well, some have on a few), they haven’t denied these either. Suprising since they’re pretty big generalizations that sound as though they should offend someone. In my personal experience, I have seen where people are coming from when they say these things, and have even said some myself when frusterated, so I’d like to see some insight from women on these.

Sorry if these offend anyone, I suppose the comments are pretty snarky, but I want explanations. I’m hoping this doesn’t end up in the pit.

Women are illogical
Now, I have lived with my mom, my grandma, a friends mom, and a sister, and I have encountered moments when a conversation simply had to end because the person I was talking to simply could not understand what I was saying, and it wasn’t due to lack of intelligence. Fact of the matter is, I’m not sure why this happens. Granted, I have a speech impediment and sometimes I can’t find the right words to express myself, but I know when I’m coming in loud and clear and it’s puzzling when I see that someone is still not able to understand something despite my best efforts, or to see them continually refuse a simple solution to a simple problem. Example:

Me and a friend are watching Starship Troopers with his mom. During this particualr part of the movie, and army is walking through a canyon when a giant flying bug, swoops down, grabs one of the soldiers, lands on a ledge, and starts eating him. The leader of the army kills the soldier to put him out of his misery. The flying bug flies away.

Me: …Wait, why didn’t he kill the bug?
Friend’s mom: What?
Me: The bug. That general guy should have killed the bug so it wouldn’t kill anyone else.
FM: Well JoeSki, he was putting the soldier out of his misery.
Me: Huh?
My friend: No mom, he was asking why he didn’t kill the bug. We know why he killed the soldier.
FM: sigh JoeSki, if you were in a great amount of pain with no medical attention nearby, would you rather die a horrible death, or have someone out you out of your misery?
Me: I’d like someone to put me out of my misery, but I’d also like the guy that put me out of my misery to kill the bigass bug that put me in that pain. It’s not like the sarge was low on ammo, he had a machine gun!
FM: He was putting the solider out of his misery!
Me and my friend in unison: WE KNOW!

After that, there was a lot of ranting and raving untill we just gave up trying to explain the question. I have a hard time talking to my grandma since she can’t go 5 minutes without contradicting herself, not agreeing with a blatant fact, refusing to listen to answers for her problems, and ceasing to make sense. This is probably due to her old age than gender however. Moving along, I can remember several instances just like the one described where I’m dumbfounded by something said or done by the opposite sex, but very very few by men. What’s the deal here?

All the woman are attracted to assholes
This is more more sweeping and generalizing than the others. I’ve seen various men yelling at women for no reason in public places, and in school, have noticed how popular some of the bigger jerks are with the ladies. Being a very nice guy, and one who was picked on quite a bit, this one esspecialy frusterates me. While eating out with my sister and some friends of her, one of them commented on how she finds nice guys “boring”, and how she needs someone mean. I didn’t know what to think. She went on to explain how then nicest guy she knew had been hitting on her for a while know, but how she wasn’t attracted to him in the least simply becauyse she found him to be a bore. To me, it’s hard to count this one out given how many jackasses I’ve seen with girlfriends, and given the existence of The Lifetime Network and their horde of movies portreying men as the salt of the Earth, a channel dedicated to women, I’m beggining to think, who have matured out of this phase, assuming that’s what it is.

Of course it’s ludicrous to think all women are attracted to assholes, it just seems that way to nice guys in their darkest hours.

The moment you get a girlfriend, all the women start becoming interested in you

I’ve got no experience here, but I’ve heard it many times, including several times on this very forum. What’s the deal here? Do women not have confidence in men being able to hold down a relationship untill they see a man do it in action? Is a man really that much more appealing when he’s got a woman around his arm?
Again, I’m not trying to upset anyone here. Lord knows that men are far from perfect. I’ve always wondered what women think about these comments since I never see or hear them respond to any of these when the topics are brought up.

2

Well, I’m not a woman, but I will comment on the “women are attracted to assholes” comment. It’s been said on this board before, so I’ll say it again:

Assholes have self-confidance, and THAT is the main aspect of why women are with them. An asshole has the guts to go up to a girl and start talking with her, complimenting her, etc…If he also happens to have physical qualities the girl likes, then BAM, she’ll more than not be attracted to him. Usually, the asshole part of them doesn’t appear till after he is solidly “the boyfriend.” At this point, many women are in “relationship mode” and either a) don’t notice b) don’t care c)are in denial (this is usually in SERIOUS cases involving abuse. Battered wives have sometimes been known to testify FOR the wife-beating husbands.)

Now, there are also a good portion of women who DON’T date assholes, but you don’t notice them because it doesn’t stand out, only the asshole relationships stand out.

3

I have not noticed that the capacity for totally missing the point or being illogical was limited to (or even more common in) women. I happen to be a woman and a computer programmer: I am extremely logical. Doesn’t mean that I always get another person’s point (nothing to do with logic, that), and it certainly doesn’t mean that I always do the logical thing. But I usually know what the logical thing is.

If women are less logical, it’s because society has said that it’s okay for them to be so. Let’s face it: there are times when we’d all like to simply stick to our guns regardless of whether our position really makes sense or not. If society has given you “permission” to do so, perhaps it is easier to do so. I don’t know; I’ve never felt that freedom and never expect to, but I’m speculating here.

Similarly, I have never been attracted to guys who mistreated me in my opinion. Bear in mind that you never actually see the interior of other people’s relationships, so what appears to be mistreatment to you may not actually be to them. But bouv certainly has a point; them as asks is more likely to get. The impression I’ve gotten from a lot of posts on this board and talking to male friends is that an awful lot of you ‘nice guys’ seem to want a woman to tattoo “I want a date with so-and-so” on her forehead before they’ll ask her out.

But there’s another problem with self-described nice guys. With many of you, it’s like friggin’ pulling teeth to get you to express any kind of preference about anything! You may think that’s being nice. What it comes across as is indifference. I’ll take a guy who says what he wants and when he wants it (at which point we may discuss it - I’m not saying I’ll always agree) over someone who says “Whatever you want” any day.

Last, many women tend to be more constrained with someone they know to be single for fear they will appear to be ‘coming on.’ They are likely to be friendlier and more natural with someone they know is taken.

Just MHO. But I’m 48, so I’ve been a woman for quite a long time.

4

I have no idea about the illogical part. I have a couple of other thoughts to add to the other two subjects, but first let me say that I 100% agree with what has been posted so far in reply - these thoughts are just in addition to.

Another reason girls may like “assholes” is because we aren’t afraid of hurting them. Women are supposed to be the more sensitive ones in the relationship, and it feels very unfeminine to some women to be with a man who is more easily offended and hurt than she is. When I have dated guys who were too nice, they made me feel like the black widow in comparison. When I date guys who are less than nice, I feel like more of an equal. Men may dish it out in some ways, but women can be nasty, too, and I would rather be with a guy who I know can take my moods.

Men who are in relationships who get attention after never having it do so because they have that confidence they lacked previously. Confidence is the #1 attractive quality in men to women. They don’t have the stink of desperation about them, which is the #1 turn-off.

5

This seems to me to be more of a human trait than a woman thing. Some women do this; some guys do it too. I knew one guy (who I liked quite a bit for a while actually) who only got interested in girls right after they got together with someone else. Once I started dating DangerDad, he asked me out, although we’d known each other for at least two years and I’d been quite friendly. He did this over and over; I have no idea how he ever got married, but he did eventually.

I suppose it has something to do with the person’s attractiveness being confirmed (or just pointed out), or perhaps something about possessiveness and the challenge of ‘taking him/her away.’ Or the fact that someone who’s attached is safely unattainable. Depends on the person, I guess.
As for illogical, I haven’t noticed that it’s particularly gender-based, though there’s certainly an old cultural idea that women are incapable of reason. We still have the remains of that, so you probably tend to notice it more in women because it confirms the idea (an illogical woman is stereotypically feminine, while an illogical man is just a dumb guy), and because (especially in prior generations, not so much now) women sometimes feel pressure to act less intelligent than men in order not to hurt their feelings/make them feel unmanly/be unattractive/and so on.

I don’t know about being attracted to jerks. I myself have always gone for the gentle nerdy geek type. Tall, skinny physics majors were my thing in college. :stuck_out_tongue:

6

[QUOTE=JoeSki]

Women are illogical
I think that in the older generations–and probably all generations, eventually–there are a lot of housewives who turned their brains off when they got married. The slow mental rot accumulates over time. Having said that, I also know for a fact that there are many situations when a man thinks a woman is being illogical simply because he doesn’t know her motivations. I have a good friend whose motivations in life are to make lots of money and be a good, reliable friend for lots of people. He does both very well. He doesn’t understand why I don’t take every single money-making opportunity that comes my way–because I need free time. He doesn’t need free time. I do. He thinks I’m being illogical. For me, getting to a place in life where I have lots of free time is a motivation.

In this particular instance, isn’t it logical to assume that the soldier has two choices: to kill the soldier first, in which case the bug flies off and can’t be shot; or to kill the bug first, which makes the soldier suffer longer. Your choice? I haven’t seen the movie, by the way.

All the woman are attracted to assholes
Ditto on the confidence thing. We really don’t want a whiny spineless mama’s boy (hint: complaining that you’re a nice guy who can’t get a girlfriend IS A MAJOR TURNOFF). We want a man who will stand up for us, stand up for himself, get a grip, get a life, and get himself out into the world. It’s our big problem in life that there are very few men in between the whiny spineless mama’s boys and the grade-A assholes.

The moment you get a girlfriend, all the women start becoming interested in you
Follows from above. When a whiny spineless mama’s boy actually gets himself a girlfriend, he stops whining so much. He moves towards the narrow middle ground between WSMBs and GAAs.

[QUOTE]

7

Everyone else, especially ** Sattua** have pretty much covered the asshole/taken guy questions very well, so I’ll put in my two cents about the illogical question.

First of all, in your example, I think the mom was just applying her own logic (he made a choice to kill his own man first, which scared off the bug, which is why he didn’t kill it because it was out of range, that seems obvious to me, sonny) and if you had rephrased the question (Why didn’t he at least try to kill the bug too?) you might have gotten a better answer.

But in general, some brains are like railroad tracks and some are like spider webs. If you have a railroad track brain, you follow a fairly linear progression of ideas…if a and b happen, then c is pretty much guaranteed. If you are dealing with a spider web brain, there are all these other aspects coming in to play…if a and b happen, then c might happen if d doesn’t interfere and if the conditions are right for e, but if a and b occur before f has a chance to resolve d, then c can only happen if e happens first. Since a linear mind doesn’t even realize that d, e and f are in play, there is no way to understand why c didn’t happen unless the web-brain explains it and draws a little diagram. But most of the time the web-brain assumes you know all about the importance of d,e and f, and doesn’t feel the need to explain the logic. So the track-brain feels the response is illogical, and instead of asking probing questions, just shakes his head and goes back to reading the paper.

8

I had a friend who said once he started dating a really attractive women that women came out of the woodwork for him, they would approach him while he was with her all the time. Some attractive women make a living hanging out with guys just so women will like the guy more. I don’t personally believe its confidence as that wouldn’t change. It must be female competitiveness or the assumption that if a beautiful woman likes you you must have something really good to offer.

9

Okay, I’m a guy (38 and still single), but I wanted to share a couple of my own thoughts and experiences.

Women only wanting taken guys:
When I was in my mid-20s, I used to go to the Red Lion and ask the young ladies to dance. I was consistently turned down, week after week. One night, I happened to stop in for a drink with a female coworker. Not a “date”, just grabbing a drink together after work. Within the first ten minutes of sitting down, I had no less than three women come ask me to dance. A couple of them had turned me down in the past. Bizarre, if you ask me.

Women wanting assholes:
Ladies, if you want aggressive, no-nonsense guys, could you do all of us “nice guys” a favor? (This is going to sound bad, so sorry.) Sit down and have a long, serious talk with all of your lesbian and feminist friends. The ones who are busily working to legislate manhood out of existence. The ones who have turned “expressing interest” into “sexual harassment”. The ones who are flooding the media with the idea that men should be “sensitive” (What the hell does that mean, anyway? It means a man who does whatever the woman wants). The ones who declare little boys to be “ADHD” and pump them full of drugs to make them act more like little girls, when all those little boys are doing is acting like little boys. Tell these women to let boys be boys, and let men be men!

From what I’ve seen over the years, the fight for “equality” has produced a generation of men who think there is something wrong with being men. And in too many instances, “equality” has not been attained by women coming up to the level of men (which I’m all for), but by pulling men down to the level of women. The result is men who are afraid to show their manhood and act like men.

About sexual harassment. To me, sexual harassment is making outright, unwanted sexual advances. However, simply asking for a date, even repeatedly after refusals, is not. That used to be called “persistence”, and was expected. Now, it’s grounds for a lawsuit or worse. We’re afraid to be persistent, especially in the workplace. And, unfortunately, the workplace is about the only place to meet people of the opposite sex any more, thanks to busy work schedules. But we men have been conditioned to believe that persistence is going to cost us our jobs.

10

:smiley: This is what my mom and I call a “Alice and the White Rabbit” conversation, or “White Alice” for short. We’re both women, and pretty logical. But occasionally, it’s like a person you’re talking to, (of either sex) doesn’t seem to allow it to “pierce the void” as to what the point actually is. In this case, your friend’s mom somehow got hung up on the “but he had to be put out of his misery” thing. She was "short circuiting’ and couldn’t get past that. I’ve had that happen with people of both sexes (usually customer service reps from utility companies, but that’s another story ).

After that, there was a lot of ranting and raving untill we just gave up trying to explain the question. I have a hard time talking to my grandma since she can’t go 5 minutes without contradicting herself, not agreeing with a blatant fact, refusing to listen to answers for her problems, and ceasing to make sense. This is probably due to her old age than gender however. Moving along, I can remember several instances just like the one described where I’m dumbfounded by something said or done by the opposite sex, but very very few by men. What’s the deal here?

Another poster put this quite well in a recent pit thread. I’ll try to sum up her take on it.

To women, there are three types of men:

Assholes, as you said. The thing is, assholes are pretty much the only kind of man that will actually approach us and show interest. Also, they don’t exactly advertize that they’re assholes. They are able to put on the “I’m a great guy looking for a wife” act to GREAT effect, so they act all sweet and loving and really go all out until the girl is in love with them. THEN, once they’ve got her heart, they go back to being their asshole selves. It takes sometime before the girl realizes that it’s not a matter of him “having a hard time” and if she just loves him enough it will go back the way it was, so you see a lot of girls with the man after he metamorphizes back into an asshole. It’s not like BEING an asshole attracts women.

The second type of guy is the self proclaimed “nice guy”. This is the one who generally bitches at how only the “bad guys” get the girls (and no, not like in your honest question, I mean a guy who not only believes it, but becomes quite misogynistic about it. Blaming women for dissing him and not being with him and giving themselves to the “deserving” nice guy instead of the 'bad boy". Some of these self proclaimed nice guys can be quite insane with their beliefs.

The good old plain nice guy. We really DO prefer this one. Trouble is, where IS he??? Like the self proclaimed nice guy, the true nice guy tends to hide and admire from afar. Women aren’t automatically blessed with “nice guy” radar. So it’s not like we can walk into a club and KNOW that the nice guy hiding in the corner thinking “gee, I’d like to meet her” is actually interested in US, rather than contemplating his tax return ya know!! :smiley:

It sucks, but the assholes and the players APPROACH us, show interest, ask us out. And they are quite good at pretending actual interest and affection. So that, rather than that they are assholes is why they get the dates. They exude confidence as well. Many nice guys tend to be so self effacing and shy that unfortunately, it is hard for a girl to feel interest in a guy who can barely speak to her.

Not just men. PEOPLE are more attractive to others when they’re involved. And it’s not because they’re on someone’s arm. It’s because generally, when you are involved with someone, you’re relaxed, confident, happy. YOURSELF. All those things that are more likely to attract others.

When you’re lonely, what do you do? (I do it too ), you worry about being alone, you’re sad, you feel desparate, like you’re NEVER going to find anyone. All that shows, even if you think you can hide it. The vibes of that have about a hundred mile radius, and those you’d be interested in as mates can smell it like there’s no tomorrow.

11

Okay.

  • I’m not illogical. My SO often says “Sugar, stop being so logical!”
  • I don’t go for arseholes. I am a strong person, I don’t let people push me around. It’s true confident people are more attractive, but arsehole-ishness is a complete turnoff for me.
  • I haven’t lusted after anyone else’s partner, but I guess it could be the 'forbidden fruit" aspect.

My 2 cents.

12

The statements are a result of selective memory (and highly illogical thinking, for that matter).

Women are illogical
Yeah, some women are. But then so are some men. But, when a man is illogical, his argument or behavior is only a reflection on himself (“wow, John is nuts”). When a woman is illogical, it becomes further evidence that all women are illogical (“Jane’s not thinking logically, just like a woman.”)
My assumption is that any man who says that probably has serious problems with basic logic himself.

All the woman are attracted to assholes
No, they’re not. Just the ones that the complaining guy is noticing - the one who is dating the non-asshole is probably less flashy. Also, it is equally just as true (or untrue) that all men are attracted to psycho-bitches from hell. (Of course, there are rarely several page long thread dedicated to exploring that topic… why is that, I wonder?)

The moment you get a girlfriend, all the women start becoming interested in you
I’ve never become interested in someone else’s partner.

13

Phase42, well said.

For the record, I’m female.

~S

14

Women are illogical
Everyone is illogical at times. The difference is that women are societally free to give an illogical response as a valid opinion. They very often know they are being illogical, but don’t feel pressure to BE logical. It bothers women much less than it does men to admit that they may not have a logical reason for feeling the way they do, and that their feelings are no less valid because of it. The other thing is that a higher preponderance of women use lateral thinking - on occasion, once I’ve described my convoluted thought processes, my “illogical” reasoning suddenly makes sense to the male of the species.

The example you cite is less illogical thinking than an inability to actually listen to what is being said, and it has nothing to do with gender.

All the woman are attracted to assholes
What is the definition of an asshole, and what’s the definition of a nice guy? “I don’t get dates because I’m a nice guy and all the women go for the assholes” is a cop-out. There’s another reason you’re not getting dates. This has been fairly comprehensively covered by other posters, and I agree: confidence is a big turn on. I also agree that a lot of women are convinced that men who turn out to be assholes will magically stop being assholes. On the other hand, maybe men and women have different ideas about what makes someone an asshole.

(Probably I should admit here that I’m attracted to arrogant, opinionated, self-confident men, and find self-avowed nice guys a turn off, but I will say in my defense that the arrogant bastards I fall for have plenty of other redeeming features, and can also be nice).

The moment you get a girlfriend, all the women start becoming interested in you
Already excellently explained by other posters: self-confidence, and “safeness”: women might flirt more with a man who is taken, because flirting is fun, and doesn’t necessarily have to lead somewhere; a man who is taken might flirt more with women for the same reason. Also, when you are turned on, your body produces pheromones, and that attracts other people.

15

Women are illogical
The Giant Flying Bug and Half-Eaten Soldier thing from Starship Troopers - hey, I’m a woman and when I saw that I jumped off the couch screaming “SHOOT THE ********* GFB you retarded *****!” So at least some of us women think like that.

Anyhow, in this situation I think grandma was totally locked into the human suffering concept here and hadn’t gotten to the GFB issue. It’s like she stopped watching when the soldier was being gnawed on and in that sense didn’t see the GFB escape. This may be the result of social conditioning, innate tendencies of women to empathize, or just that grandma is absoultely clueless about strategy.

All the woman are attracted to assholes
It’s the self-confidence thing. Assholes ooze it from every pore, and most women find self-confidence very sexy.

Also, true assholes frequently put on a nice-guy face for the girl - so you might see his assholeness, but she doesn’t (at least at first). I fell for one of these once. Maybe I’m the oddball, but once he showed his true colors I dumped him. Sure enough, the next day he comes round with flowers and apologies that were quite tempting, but I told him to save it for his next victim.

You’re a nice guy and you want a date? You’re going to have to risk rejection. You’re going to have to go up to women and ask them for a date, and you’re going to have to deal with the fact that some of the answers are going to be “no”.

The moment you get a girlfriend, all the women start becoming interested in you
I have no idea why this is - but I’ve seen it lots of times.

16

Women are illogical

I can’t speak for all women, but yeah, I am illogical.

I look at it this way. I can either be this big, superlogical math brain, or I can be intuitive. I’ve never known anyone who was both. I rather like “knowing” things before I’m actually told, and it comes in handy when dealing with people. I’m comfortable with the unexplainable.
All the woman are attracted to assholes

This is true, unfortunately, for a lot of women. I see girls every day at work (domestic violence victims) who beg us to drop charges against their boyfriend for beating them up. (Fortunately WV is a no-drop state.) A lot of these girls are smart, have a lot going for them and could probably have pretty much any guy they wanted. But they stick with the alcoholic loser with no job who beats them in front of their kids. It’s baffling.

To be fair, though, guys are the same way. IF a woman is pretty, the bitchier she is to guys the more they want her. I have seen good men end up with women like this. These are truly great guys, and yeah, their wife is hot, but she treats him like crap. I don’t get it. Is having a hot wife so important to some men that they’re willing to put up with endless carping behind closed doors just so the whole world can see that they were able to attract a beautiful woman?
The moment you get a girlfriend, all the women start becoming interested in you

There are two reasons for this.

  1. Some women want a roll in the hay with no commitment. If a guy they know has just gotten engaged, etc., they think “ooh. He’s already taken. He won’t be the type to start calling constantly after we sleep together.” Plus there’s the challenge aspect of it, too. “Yeah, he gave her a ring – but I bet I could break 'em up!” It’s the whole naughty homewrecker fantasy.

  2. There’s something about getting settled into a relationship that makes other people realize what a catch you were to begin with. “Oh Joe’s engaged? Well I’m not surprised, he’s such a nice guy. Back when I was sick he brought me soup and flowers and we were just buddies” and then all of a sudden it’s “how could I have been so BLIND Joe’s the one for me, ohhhhh he’s so wonderful,” etc.

  3. Hi, Opal.
    Guys do the same durn thing, too. I was never more popular with the opposite sex than I was when the news broke out that I was getting married. Every man I ever wanted in the past suddenly just had to have me.

17

It’s amazing how “man with self-confidence” translates into “asshole”. Also, many men behave one way in private but a different way in public. I’m not saying that there are no such things as assholes; hell, I’ve been married to two of them. But many of my male friends have been branded assholes merely for having some confidence.

Some women are into the conquest, just as some men are. It’s not that the man suddenly becomes more desirable as a person because he gets a SO. Some women just want the thrill of the hunt, as it were. They derive some of their self-image from thinking they’re so desirable that a man will cheat on his SO for them.

Robin

18

Although you could have been a little more tactful, I have to agree with just about everything you said, although there is a difference between persistence and harassment.
I grew in the atmosphere of male traits and male tendencies being a bad thing. That had a big impact on me, as I’m sure it did on others around my age (late 20’s to early 30’s). Even as recently as the 90’s, I remember hearing lots of stories about how, for example, a woman would come to work nicely dressed, a male coworker would compliment her, next thing you know she’s suing him for sexual harassment.
While there are plenty of guys with no confidence for other reasons, I’d have to say, for those of us who grew up with being a man = bad attitude, that had an effect on a lot of us.
Now I’ve been married for over 6 years now, so I got over most of it, thankfully. Also, I’ve also noticed that most, or all of the women on this board don’t have the male traits are a bad thing attitude.

Also, when it comes to women going out with jerks, sometimes when I drive, I listen to a radio talk show host, who’s name I won’t mention since many of you here on the boards hate her, but when a woman complains about going out with, or being married to a jerk, when asked by the host if the guy was nice at first and then suddenly turned into a jerk, 99% of the time, the woman will say that the guy was jerky, or kind of jerky in the beginning, but she chose him anyway, usually thinking that he would change.

19

Yup, I have to agree with this. I always had a lot more guys interested in me when I was already seeing someone, because I didn’t have that “I need to find a man” air about me. Instead I just came across as happy, relaxed, friendly, etc., and thus attractive. Desperation is not a good feature. At the very least, possible partners will wonder what is wrong with you that you seem clutchy or desperate - have you run off countless others before with some negative thing about your personality?

20

All sweeping statements are wrong, including this one. :slight_smile:

That being said, I don’t think women, overall, are illogical. At least, no more illogical than men are. If a generalization has to be made, I’d say that women, overall, tend more toward lateral thinking, which is a different, more complicated kind of logic than linear thinking. Lateral thinkers automatically include a set of variables that linear thinkers tend to exclude, so the lateral conclusion typically makes sense to linear thinkers once you’ve explained all the variables. Thing is, a lot of lateral thinkers don’t explain the extra variables, because the inclusion of those variables is so automatic and obvious to them that it simply never occurs to them that anybody wouldn’t understand that those factors are in play. Thus, you have both sides left wondering how stupid the other person has to be to not see something so simple and logical.

It’s like a conversation I had with one of Dr.J’s attendings one time. They were talking about equivalency studies, which basically prove that new drug A is just as effective as established drug B. They don’t show, or even attempt to show, that Drug A is better than drug B. As these studies are often brought up by drug reps trying to sell you on drug A, I asked why they even bother. The whole table looked at me like I was stupid, because obviously the point of the studies is to prove that drug A is as effective as drug B. After explaining my thought process (when you’re trying to sell something, you have to establish that you’re better than the competition in some way rather than equivalent, otherwise people are quite likely to just stick with what they’re used to, and besides, by saying “we’re just as good as them” you’re just reinforcing the competition as the high standard all such products should strive for–in essence, these studies are money down the drain if they’re meant as sales tools) they conceded that I sort of had a point. If I had just kept repeating my conclusion, instead of explaining how I got there, they would have had the exact same opinion of me that you had of your friend’s mom in the bug scenario.

I also don’t think that women are attracted to assholes any more than men are attracted to high-maintainence psycho-bitches. Some are, sure, but you tend not to notice the ones who aren’t. The couples consisting of a nice man and a nice woman tend to sort of fade into the background, because we’re not as dramatic as the nice person being shit all over by someone who doesn’t deserve them. Sometimes, we fade so much people think we aren’t even a couple. (No, really, couple weeks ago I went into one of our favorite restaurants with the girls from work, and the waitress asked me how my brother was. :eek: )

Women are however, attracted to confident people, as are men. Assholes are, if nothing else, confident. That confidence is often over-inflated and misplaced, but it’s there. Confidence is hot. It’s sexy. It’s…it’s that je ne sais quoi some people who aren’t classically good-looking, or fashionable, or “cool” or whatever have that makes you want to jump them. The guy lurking in the corners pissing and moaning about how he’s willing to rearrange his whole life for a woman but nobody ever gives him a chance? He is neither confident nor attractive. Nor is he a nice guy.