Comment: The following science report reveals another reason why young women also need to be taught about rape, and false rape claims. We've explained previously that the emphasis on rape indoctrination is always on the male when, in fact, women have much to learn, too. For example, young women need to know that after-the-fact regret about one-night stands is a common, indeed natural, feeling for women -- much more than for men. This can lead to feelings of resentment and of being "used." Feeling that you've been "used" is often not rape but it might feel like it, and some young women think that it is. (The difference is this: feeling that you've been "used" is your own fault if your outward manifestations signaled to the guy that it was OK for him to proceed.)
The following story is about a study that shows women are hard to read when it comes to how they feel about men. They send mixed signals. Sometimes a man might misinterpret these signals as consent -- and that just might be a reasonable interpretation, too. And sometimes the man proceeds further than the woman secretly desires -- and then, she regrets having gone there -- and blames the man for misreading her.
Ladies and gentlemen, we have a fundamental difference between the sexes in the crucial area of communication when it comes to sex -- but only males will serve prison time if they "get it wrong." Both sexes need to be taught to understand the other.
HERE IS THE NEWS REPORT:
Everyone Agrees: Women Are Hard to Read
A new study backs up what men have said all along: Women are difficult to read. And the women agree.
Researchers at Indiana University showed video clips from 24 different speed dates and asked male and female participants two simple questions: “Do you think the man was interested in this woman?” and “Do you think the woman was interested in this man?” Their answers were then compared with the responses of the speed daters themselves.
The results, published in the January issue of the journal Psychological Science, show that both men and women are able to gauge a man's interest in a woman, but are equally baffled when it comes to figuring out if a woman is interested in a man.
In fact, a flip of a coin would be almost as accurate in predicting a woman's romantic interest on a date.
Skyler S. Place, who headed up the study, says that the biological drive behind dating — finding an optimal mate for gene promotion — gives women reason to be elusive.
"Being coy forces the men to spend more time interacting with the woman, because they are unsure if they have successfully courted her," Place said. "Therefore, the woman has more time to gather information about her date."
Ultimately, women have more at stake while dating because they face higher "sunk costs" — a woman can carry the child of only one man at a time, while a man can impregnate many women.
Video clips taken from the middle and end of dates provided the most accurate assessments, Place said, suggesting that the daters' true feelings became more evident as they collected information throughout their encounter.
The speed dates were conducted in Germany as part of Humboldt University's Berlin Speed Dating Study. None of the Indiana University study participants understood German, and were using only visual cues and tone of voice to determine daters' interest.
The findings might be sound, but what about the old dating adage to just be yourself?
"From an evolutionary perspective, there is nothing wrong with a woman being 'open' and 'honest' about who she is — it is simply in her best interest not to present herself as actually interested immediately," Place said.
Getting to the second date, however, is still a good sign.
Link: http://www.livescience.com/culture/090204-romantic-interest.html
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
3 comments:
actually it sounds like the researcher has a pre-conceived notion, when he says "it is in women's interest to be coy..to delay". This researcher is basically taking advantage of his position to posit his own opinion. It could just as easily be said that it is in women's interests *not* to be coy, as zeroing in on a prospect relatively quickly would not affect her supposed "sunk cost". Also, it sounds like the researcher is trying to absolve women of using their free will.
To tell you the truth, I think in the long run all this research, including much that has been done in the area of evolutionary psychology, is going to mostly be twisted around to present women in a better light and place them in a still better position, than men- even moreso than they already are.
This will be due to the combined efforts of both P.C. and chivalrous researchers.
Another example is how they have done brain imaging which (from what I've read) shows that, given a specific task requiring use of language abilities, the language processing areas in women's brains show more activity than a man's. So of course the researchers conclude that "women have superior language abilities".
But I would ask, couldn't it rather mean that their brains *need* to work harder than men's, to perform a given task? It's like the researchers are saying, "if a woman has to expend more physical effort than a man to lift 75 pounds, then women are using their muscles harder and are thus stronger than men."
Actually I didn't word that last part right in my comment above. What I should have said, is that it is as if the brain imaging researchers had said,
"to lift a given weight, a woman's muscles undergo more strain (i.e. "work harder") than a man's - so therefore, women are stronger than men)."
["work harder" must be placed in quotes, because ultimately, the same amount of work is being done in each scenario - the same amount of weight is being lifted, and the same language task is being performed.]
Boy, I'm on a roll tonight..
In my first comment when I say,
"it is in women's interests *not* to be coy, as zeroing in on a prospect relatively quickly would not affect her supposed 'sunk cost'."
..what I mean to say is that, since women base mate selection on a man's status (money being a proxy for status), being direct should cut down on the time required to find a suitable mate, to help weed out the "less fit" men (since status must be communicated - it is not as immediately apparent as a woman's youth and beauty are to a man).
Post a Comment