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On saying "Thank you" instead of "I'm Sorry"

I've seen and considered this advice before, but when I am doing perhaps too much apologizing, the reason is usually that I actually am trying to get signal on whether/how much I've upset the other person.

Even if they only say "it's okay" out of obligation, I can usually tell from tone and word choice and so on whether that's what's going on. There's a big difference between a terse "it's fine" and a warm "what? No, it's totally fine, you have nothing to apologize for". It's not perfect, of course, since people are sometimes intentionally deceptive here, b... (read more)

Is being sexy for your homies?

Oxytocin1y156

Hmm, while it's true that many women can still attract a mate/have plenty of sex if they don't put effort into their looks, it definitely seems to me (anecdotally, through both my own lived experience and what others talk about) that women get more male attention when they do put in effort

Valentine1y1711

I think the point is that women are clearly optimizing way harder for female approval of their looks than they are male approval.

This article is pretty wild to read in this context. I think it has some Hell Realm memetic code embedded in it, & LW is kind of awful at navigating Hell Realm memetics, so I kinda hesitate to point at it here… but with that caveat: it's just fascinating that here's an article spelling out how to maximally appeal to the male gaze, focused on some sincere attempts at data, and the apparent female reaction is disgust and eyerol... (read more)

Is being sexy for your homies?

Oxytocin1y40

Maybe true, but I think it's even more likely that the world would be better if everyone were asexual, or at least did not have such a high sex drive that it causes them to do things they don't endorse

0Richard_Kennaway1y

It is better to master one's urges than to either cut them off or be their slave.

3johnvon1y

Just a reminder that if everyone were asexual, the species would become extinct in short order :).

Is being sexy for your homies?

Oxytocin1y194

> dating is an inherently risky business, especially for men

I don't want to start an oppression olympics, but it feels important to note that the risk to women of men getting violent or stalkerish at some point in the dating process is much higher than the risk to men of another man attacking them for being interested in the same woman. (and I think this has always been true, including in the ancestral environment)

1Viliam1y

Oh, I agree! I was focusing on the part why would it make sense to seek approval from the same sex. (I think that in the ancestral environment, some stalkers would get beaten up by other men. But that would not be universally reliable, and would depend on social status.)

Is being sexy for your homies?

Oxytocin1y236

at best, separating the sexes into distinct classes would result in a situation that sucks for any kitchen-gender people that would rather be serving staff, and vice-versa. And we should expect there to be a lot of such people, because in general the variance within the sexes is greater than the variance between the sexes.

7antanaclasis1y

A way of implementing the serving-vs-kitchen separation that avoids that problem (and actually the way of doing it I initially envisioned after reading the post) would be that within each workplace there is a separation, but different workplaces are split between the polarities of separation. That way any individual’s available options of workplace are, at worst, ~half of what they could be with mixed workplaces, regardless of their preference. (Caveat that an individual’s options could end up being less than half the total if there is a workplace-gender correlation overall (creating an imbalance of how many workplaces of each polarity there are), and an individual has a workplace-gender matchup which is opposite to the trend, but in this case at least that individual’s lesser amount of choices is counterbalanced by the majority of people having more than 50% of the max choices of workplace fitting them.)

Is being sexy for your homies?

Oxytocin1y367

Also, just as a data point, some parts of the OP that were presented as obvious but don't resonate with my experience at all (I am AFAB and identify as non-binary but am generally perceived as a woman)

* "it's still kind of suss and not a good sign if nearly all of someone's friends are of the opposite sex" - I've never had many female friends and men seem to find me attractive anyway (less so since I cut my hair short, though)
* "in order to be respectful it is absolutely necessary that I address the attraction question" - I'm not even capable of determinin... (read more)

AnthonyC1y152

Also yeah I think the deal is less that women want someone to protect them and more that they want someone to do just general physical tasks - needing to be protected almost never comes up in day-to-day life but needing to move a heavy object or do grimy repair work comes up all the time

Speculation: This is interesting. Suppose in a tribe it's the strongest men most likely to be called on to defend others in the rare times it's needed. In that view , the buff gym bro's existence could be valuable primarily to less-buff men: he's making himself less (or at ... (read more)

Is being sexy for your homies?

Oxytocin1y7737

Alternate hypotheses:

* Women are annoyed by compliments from men because they get a ton of them (and mostly they do end up being attempts to manipulate), and men are overjoyed by compliments from women because they get very few of them. (This does leave open, why do men compliment women so much more than the other way around?)

* In general, gender norms are mostly enforced within-gender - it's mostly men telling their sons to "man up" and men telling other men what's effeminate, and mostly women telling their daughters to "act like a lady" and policing fash... (read more)

3jimmy1y

The frequency explanation doesn't really work, because men do sometimes get excess compliments and it doesn't actually become annoying; it's just background. Also, when women give men the kind of compliments that men tend to give women, it can be quite unwanted even when infrequent. The common thing, which you both gesture at, is whether it's genuinely a compliment or simply a bid for sexual attention, borne out of neediness. The validation given by a compliment is of questionable legitimacy when paired with some sort of tug for reciprocation, and it's simply much easier to have this kind of social interaction when sexual desire is off the table the way it is between same sex groups of presumably straight individuals. For example, say you're a man who has gotten into working out and you're visiting your friend whom you haven't seen in a while. If your friend goes wide eyed, saying "Wow, you look good. Have you been working out?" and starts feeling your muscles, that's a compliment because it's not too hard for your friend to pull off "no homo". He's not trying to get in your pants. If that friend's new girlfriend were to do the exact same thing, she'd have to pull off "no hetero" for it to not get awkward, and while that's doable it's definitely significantly harder. If she's been wanting an open relationship and he hasn't, it gets that much harder to take it as "just a compliment" and this doesn't have to be a recurring issue in order for it to be quite uncomfortable to receive that compliment. As a result, unless their relationship is unusually secure she's less likely to compliment you than he is -- and when she does she's going to be a lot more restrained than he can be. The question, to me, is to what extent people are trying to "be sexy for their homies" because society has a semi-intentional way of doing division of labor to allow formation of social hierarchies without having to go directly through the mess of sexual desires, and to what extent people are

1qvalq1y

Ideally you'd try to have a separate bakery with reversed gender-roles.

5Valentine1y

Ah yeah, oops, I noticed that possible confusion and forgot to say something about it. The fact that the bonobos use sex to reassure each other is purely incidental to why it came to mind for me. The structure of interest was more "Our tribe just encountered a potentially rare resource, so let's focus on reaffirming our tribal bonds before we even orient to the resource." Like for men, they could focus on just maximizing appeal to women… but that'd heat up competition between them. So maybe instead there's a draw to affirming male bonds. Being useful to other men. Working on being a more functional member of the male cluster. Likewise for women. The main factor in picking a mate isn't getting a guy to want to have sex with her. It's in making sure she's well-supported while having children. If there's competition between the women for attracting a specific man, that can create rancor in their ranks, and that can weaken all their children's support. So there's maybe a natural draw to focus on bonding with other women first precisely because they're the competition. Slightly different dynamic as with the men, but roughly the same overall effect.

Oxytocin1y367

How to Ignore Your Emotions (while also thinking you're awesome at emotions)

Oxytocin5y30

FYI I have had a very similar experience to what you're describing. You're not alone. I too found that being kind to notme instead of shouting at them is helpful. And, I've found one of the things that helps most is feeling really seen/heard by others, so hopefully this helps!

LESSWRONG
LW

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