Men have fewer easy opportunities to upgrade partners than women. That's why we can appear to have the moral high ground.
Really? Do they have this ready ability to upgrade because:
I wouldn't have said males stereotypically claim this particular high ground to a greater extent than females do---at least in the overall population---nor would that explanation seem the most plausible reason for why it would be so.
In your previous comment you speculated:
On an overly cynical side note, men adapt this way to more suitable partners too. It's just that we usually don't fall in love with resources and social status, but boobs and pretty faces.
Resources and social status tend to be more easy to 'upgrade' than core physical attributes.
Wow, it didn't feel nearly that sloppy when I wrote it, I swear! Thanks for debugging me. Now for the politically incorrect explanation of my thought process...
I think when constructing the argument my brain actually substituted "women I sexually care about" with "women". How horrible is that... For (hopefully obvious) reasons females who sexually interest males are far fewer that males who sexually interest females. Does this seem acceptable to you? As you stated, it's easier for men to upgrade their attractiveness, and this can be tru...
Information that surprises you is interesting as it exposes where you have been miscalibrated, and allows you to correct for that.
I suspect the users of LessWrong have fairly similar beliefs, so it is probable that information that has surprised you would surprise others here, so it would be useful for them if you shared them.
Example: In a discussion with a friend recently I realised I had massively miscalibrated on the percentage of the UK population who shared my beliefs on certain subjects, in general the population was far more conservative than I had expected.
In retrospect I was assuming my own personal experience was more representative than it was, even when attempting to correct for that.