In men-world we think a guy is cool when he knows a lot of practicalusefulexpertystuff, when he has a good nature, and when he shares stuff like a brother. Women also value such men … as a brother. So no different!
Women want to be entertained, intimidated by biceps and to bask in his social confidence. That includes dancing, which affords the opportunity to showcase all three at once. You get it?
There was a study on a slightly related subject… dont ask me to find it! … which states that men have a different idea of what a goodlooking dude would look like from what most women do.:
For example, men think stubble works, yet most women preferred clean shaven actually. Thy also prefer well manicured hands and well fitting clothes. Headhair should be awesome. Yet we tend not to think of these things as masculine, but gaybo, so we dont do it, or not consistently. Our loss.
And the survey showed all those things that people who like to argue about the sexes like to talk about. The men were the ones who were saying that the “perfect male body” is a musclebound hulk like Hugh Jackman or Ryan Gosling. UK women actually sided more with the wiry David Beckham and slender Brad Pitt. Meanwhile, women were also the ones who thought smaller celebrities like Emma Watson and Gwynyth Paltrow were “more perefect” than men who with curvier celebs.
So if you want to really give a lot of thought to this, scrawnier geeks would seem to have an advantage with women, because that’s what they like.
“Scrawnier geeks” is a bit of a stretch from “wiry David Beckham and slender Brad Pitt”.
Women like Beckham and Pitt because they are good looking and awesome at what they do.
I also take what women say they like with a grain of salt. Whether they say it or not, women do, in fact, like Hugh Jackman and Ryan Gosling.
“High status” doesn’t necessarily mean “holding down a real job”. Look at the most popular romantic film in history - Titanic. Rose rejected her high status fiancé, family and lifestyle (which she took for granted, being born into it) to be with the Jack the penniless hobo artist. His status was derived from his ability to present her with an intriguing world she knew nothing about.
Fortunately he died before she had to find out what living with a flaky jobless guy was actually like.
A guy who can do nothing but talk football to a woman at a party (assuming she isn’t all that interested) is not going to do well also. A guy who refuses to go out Saturday night so he can watch a game isn’t either.
Certain people might find excessive football watching less appealing than video games. It takes all kinds. That isn’t the issue - it is whether the person of interest sees him or herself as less appealing than the hobby.
Right, just like I said it’s not a single-value stat like you’d have in a role-playing game. If you look at the comment I was responding to, bump was asserting that sf and gaming were automatically and universally low-status activities, while woodworking or football obsessions are automaticallly high-status, which simply isn’t true…
The idea that a female cosplayer is inevitablly going to consider a hobby like cosplay ‘low-status’ and reject any guy into cosplay or watching sf over a weekend in favor of a guy who spends his weekends woodworking doesn’t actually fit with reality. And, again, female cosplayers outnumber male cosplayers 2:1, so it’s not like a guy into it is stuck competing with five other guys for the one chick who doesn’t consider his hobby terrible, he’s got a better playing field than the guy taking dance classes.
I’ve heard about this and I am starting believe that it could be a very important part to how geek culture is. I remember reading an article on a theory of systemizing vs empathizing affinities in the brain. Basically, the affinity to “systemize” was more common with men, autism, and the STEM field. The affinity to “empathize” was more common with women and just social interaction.
I’m young, and this is just anecdotal but I spent many of my earlier years only interacting with people through various video game and “geekdom” forums. As a minority, the amount of overall misogyny, racism, etc. I witnessed was off the charts. The people who perpetuated these things were mostly men, a part of STEM and definitely had issues with empathizing in general.
I think the reason why you see less women and other minorities in geek culture compared to men is because the culture tends to be more often than not, just unwelcoming outside of the “majority identity” An earlier post in this thread noted the obsessive property of a lot of nerdy-hobbies and that would seem to make sense for a person more inclined to “systemize”
Just rambling here, but a lot of women I’ve spoken to have felt that these geeky-dudes are way more inclined to just treat them like sexual objects. Perhaps a strong affinity towards systemization goes beyond just little hobbies but even with social interaction. Maybe there’s an issue with putting people of differing identities on the same level? Sounds like an offspring of the autism spectrum to me.