Lopsided sex ratios are the reason why there has been a rise in hookup culture and a decline in marriage rates, not anything to do with a sexually loose or hypergamous culture like Modern Wisdom’s Chris Williamson or Evie Magazine thinks
It wasn’t Tinder, porn, Facebook, the internet, smartphones, that caused hookup culture, rather it was lopsided sex ratios among college grads (Zoe Strimpel in “Good Slut” also doesn’t like the Tinder terror but for a different reason)
people nowadays on podcasts like “The Gray Area” are saying that smartphones are the problem
These ratios wouldn’t be a problem if college grads were more open minded on who they date but now we have the problem of “assortative mating”
mating behavior responds directly to sex ratios (this is what is hardwired into biology)
Lopsided sex ratios make polyamory more popular and that’s not a bad thing. Shows that demographics and culture are intertwined
The intertwining also happened in the 1920s when there weren’t many men and so sexual mores were loosening
Demographics and culture came together again in the 60s and 70s because of shortage of baby boomer men giving rise to the sexual revolution argued by Marcus Guttentag
What is the study done by Marcia Guttentag?
The story of Sam - she doesn’t trust guys that have no fear of rejection. The men other women wants she avoids and so she chooses the less confident ones. This gives her control!
These books before internet dating took evolutionary psychology assumptions, then repackaged this junk science as faux wisdom for singles
Pg. 11: study by Match.com
Angela Saini in her book “Inferior” talks about the “myth of the coy, passive female” becoming conventional wisdom
Pg. 30: What is the study by Sari Van Anders talking about socialization and testosterone??
Testosterone levels depend upon circumstance and situation
Pg. 33: Women have been socialized to desire masculine men!
Pg. 54: study by O’Sullivan shows a gap between how men approach dating and what men actually prefer. In practice, it’s different, but in preference there is a majority of men that want women to make the first move, 72%. Where are these studies?
Pg. 131: dating younger men!!
Demographic backdrop:
Population growth in the U.S. has historically tilted the dating market toward whichever sex dates younger.
During the Baby Boom, each yearly age cohort was about 4% larger than the one before it.
Because Boomer women typically dated men 3–4 years older, this created a lopsided market — e.g., in 1967, 25% more 20-year-old women (born 1947) than 23-year-old men (born 1944).
Psychologist Marcia Guttentag's book Too Many Women? linked this imbalance to the sexual revolution of the '60s–'70s.
Modern version of the gap:
Women now outpace men in college graduation (982,000 women vs. 734,000 men in 2011; 813,000 men in 2015).
Birger frames "dating down in age" as a way to rebalance the odds: same-age pairing (31/31) is roughly 4 women to 3 men, but a 31-year-old woman dating a 27-year-old man shifts it to about 5 women to 4 men — better, though still not even.
Why dating younger men could appeal to successful women:
Age gaps can offset personality/status differences the way they did for the author's parents.
Cited problem: nearly half the workforce is female and many are breadwinners, but they struggle to find men comfortable with their success.
Interviews (via OkCupid's data scientist) suggested older women found younger men more comfortable with their "awesomeness," while peers their own age could feel more competitive or set in their ways.
“Men are like this!” response is really a market responding to scarcity
1948: botanist Angus Bateman tested one of Darwin’s theories from “The Descent of Man”
The theory? That males choose women. He performed a test with fruit flies. It confirmed Darwin’s hypothesis
Robert Trivers, a researcher, looked at Bateman’s study and now he is considered one of the most influential evolutionary biologists
Trivers concluded that female fruit flies don’t feel the need to be sexually assertive and have sex with multiple partners
Academics David Buss, Geoffrey Miller, Steven Pinker, Don Symons built upon Trivers and promoted a sexual solution theory
Patricia Gowaty, evolutionary biologist, studied bluebirds and her findings didn’t align with Trivers findings
Bluebirds were thought to be monogamous but actually were mating with males that weren’t their primary partners
Gowaty replicated Bateman’s experiment and found that females were just as sexually assertive as males and assertively mated with the same frequency
“Only 36 percent of men accurately detected that they were being flirted with. The women were even less successful at recognizing flirting. Only 18 percent of women knew when the men were flirting” [pg. 18]
“Not that Nobel laureates require much affirmation, but a 2015 OkCupid study reached a similar conclusion. OkCupid found that women who make the first move with men end up with more attractive partners than those who sit back and wait for men to message them” [pg. 21]
“Men are attracted to confidence, Maya says. Plus, men have so little experience with assertive women that the novelty itself becomes a huge turn-on” [pg. 53]
“Are there still men out there who are scared off by smart, successful women? Of course there are. But the world is changing fast. When Match.com’s annual singles survey asked men about their biggest turn-ons for 2016, the number-one answer was “female entrepreneurs….Ninety-five percent of men want women to ask for men’s phone numbers and initiate the first kiss, according to the Match survey. Women are “piling into the job market, gaining economically, and gaining sexually and socially,” Fisher says. For men, “feminism has really made dating easier, safer, and more enjoyable for them” [pg. 11]
“Historically, women have married men a few years their senior. While I understand the rationale for this-women favored men who were providers, and older men tended to be more financially secure-the traditional age gap has always had demographic disadvantages for American women. Whenever the population is growing, which has long been the case in the United States, the dating market tends to favor the sex that dates younger” [pg. 131]
“Your decision-making process isn’t exclusively focused on finding the best, it’s also fixated on maintaining maximum flexibility. Otherwise, you run the risk of ending up worse off than you could have been” [pg 44]