I was mostly nodding along the first part of the post, but I think that in the secod part you are making a crucial mistake by uncritically assuming that traditional culture around gender is a direct result of our evolutional history and not a goodharted reaction to it with all kind of indirection, misgeneralisation and lost purposes in between.
I’m reminded of a story I heard long ago about bonobos. Supposedly if you toss a big pile of food into the middle of a bonobo tribe, they start fucking each other before getting to the food. The issue being that if there’s any possibility of there not being enough food for everyone, that could result in the bonobo tribe fracturing in fights, and they don’t want that. So they start by affirming their bonds with each other.
If you have a group of men who rely on one another for survival, and then they encounter a Helen of Troy… this could spell disaster for all of them.
Men and women were not historically two separate groups whose survival depends only on relying on the other members of the gender ingroup. If anything, it’s the opposite. Men need women to pass on their genes and vice versa. In natural conditions men and women were part of the same tribe, contributing their labor to the survival of the whole.
We can justify “Bros before hoes” on evolutionary grounds only if “bros” is not a gendered term, representing your whole tribe. Tribe before foreigners. And then we can see how this principle is misgeneralized towards gender groups.
But… I mean, think of a bakery of all (straight) men.
Then think of the same bakery, but it’s all (straight) women.
Then imagine the same bakery, but it’s mixed sex.
Can you see what happens?
Even if there’s no attraction going on in the last case, the fact that there could bedramatically changes the unspoken dynamics. It’s just not as stable as the other two.
The opposite, in my experience—the dynamics of mixed collectives at work is much better. Single gendered groups often downfalls into unrelated to work hierarchical struggles, toxic behaviours and forced attempts to correspond to gender stereotypes. But a more diverse environment leads to some kind of checks and balances situation, where everyone tries to be nice to each other and the worst offences of both male-only and female-only dynamics do not happen.
In general, I think the story makes much more sense if we start from obvious intended equilibrium “men try to appeal to women, women try to appeal to men” and then try to explain how traditional culture around gender failed in this regard, arriving us to an obviously weird equilibrium, instead of trying to rationalyze it.
Guys give zero fucks about manicures or whether your purse matches your dress, but boy oh boy do other women notice!
This choice is a little odd. In close to every context I’ve listened to, I hear women say that some muscle tone on a guy is nice and abs are a plus, but big muscles are gross — and all of that is utterly overwhelmed by other factors anyway.
Appealing to other gender is a complicated multidimentional optimization target. Feedback is very muddy. You have to just look at successful people and try to do what they did, or if you want to be ahead of the curve, try to do what they did but even more so. Additionaly, there is a factor of competition. If you are bad at hitting the intended target but others are even worse, your behavioral patterms are reinforced. And it’s not that many people will not be able to find a pair at all.
This all leads us to a situation where the clearest metrics is your approximate success inside your gender group. And then goodharting happens and men/women start to compete with other men/women just for the sake of competition and not for the sake of appealing to the opposite sex. And then, of course, it’s not surprising if a woman cares more about the opinion of other women in the question of beauty. After all, men are not experts and can’t properly appreciate all the nuances and effort that were put into it. But other women, - they are experts of the craft, so their compliments count more. And vice versa.
So traditional gender culture was constructed around the notion that people should succeed in their gender group, achieve their rightful place in its hierarchy which can be used as a simple one dimensional score. And then get matched with people from the other gender group with similar score. And so, of course, men who try to directly appeal to women by looking more like K-pop stars or having non-abysmal emotional intelligence and agreeing to do their fair share of housework are looked down upon as defectors by other men, and society as a whole. They are framed as non masculine, gays, soyboys, simps, too desperate and so on. Likewise, women who try to appeal directly to men are framed as sluts and pick-me’s.
Another missing piece is the fact that humans have two different attraction patterns. We both want to be with people who are like us, but also are attracted to novelty and difference. Different people may have these patterns expressed in diferent proportions. Traditional gender culture goes in the direction of sexual and romantic attraction being about the attraction of the opposites—that’s why masculinity is framed as opposing femeninity—and friendship about the attraction of similarities.
There is some convinience in not having to figure out what exactly you want from the partner and just strive for the top of the hierarchy of the opposite gender group. But It leads to “Are straights okay?” meme, where people do not have any common interests with their spouses and low key hate them. Because they didn’t even think that their preferences may be different from what society claims they are supposed to want.
With that in mind, modern (post-modern?) advances of gender equality and the destruction of rigid gender roles are very advantageous. An opportunity to return to a simpler equilibrium, that wasn’t goodharted, where everyone is trying to find specific qualities they want in the partner, instead of just trying for the top of hierarchy that you may not even like. It also allows for more satisfaction of preferences in principle. Everyone can’t possibly be with the top 10% of the opposite gender hierarchy. But it may be possible for everyone to find someone fitting the top 10% in qualities theyin particular value.
I was mostly nodding along the first part of the post, but I think that in the secod part you are making a crucial mistake by uncritically assuming that traditional culture around gender is a direct result of our evolutional history and not a goodharted reaction to it with all kind of indirection, misgeneralisation and lost purposes in between.
Men and women were not historically two separate groups whose survival depends only on relying on the other members of the gender ingroup. If anything, it’s the opposite. Men need women to pass on their genes and vice versa. In natural conditions men and women were part of the same tribe, contributing their labor to the survival of the whole.
We can justify “Bros before hoes” on evolutionary grounds only if “bros” is not a gendered term, representing your whole tribe. Tribe before foreigners. And then we can see how this principle is misgeneralized towards gender groups.
The opposite, in my experience—the dynamics of mixed collectives at work is much better. Single gendered groups often downfalls into unrelated to work hierarchical struggles, toxic behaviours and forced attempts to correspond to gender stereotypes. But a more diverse environment leads to some kind of checks and balances situation, where everyone tries to be nice to each other and the worst offences of both male-only and female-only dynamics do not happen.
In general, I think the story makes much more sense if we start from obvious intended equilibrium “men try to appeal to women, women try to appeal to men” and then try to explain how traditional culture around gender failed in this regard, arriving us to an obviously weird equilibrium, instead of trying to rationalyze it.
Appealing to other gender is a complicated multidimentional optimization target. Feedback is very muddy. You have to just look at successful people and try to do what they did, or if you want to be ahead of the curve, try to do what they did but even more so. Additionaly, there is a factor of competition. If you are bad at hitting the intended target but others are even worse, your behavioral patterms are reinforced. And it’s not that many people will not be able to find a pair at all.
This all leads us to a situation where the clearest metrics is your approximate success inside your gender group. And then goodharting happens and men/women start to compete with other men/women just for the sake of competition and not for the sake of appealing to the opposite sex. And then, of course, it’s not surprising if a woman cares more about the opinion of other women in the question of beauty. After all, men are not experts and can’t properly appreciate all the nuances and effort that were put into it. But other women, - they are experts of the craft, so their compliments count more. And vice versa.
So traditional gender culture was constructed around the notion that people should succeed in their gender group, achieve their rightful place in its hierarchy which can be used as a simple one dimensional score. And then get matched with people from the other gender group with similar score. And so, of course, men who try to directly appeal to women by looking more like K-pop stars or having non-abysmal emotional intelligence and agreeing to do their fair share of housework are looked down upon as defectors by other men, and society as a whole. They are framed as non masculine, gays, soyboys, simps, too desperate and so on. Likewise, women who try to appeal directly to men are framed as sluts and pick-me’s.
Another missing piece is the fact that humans have two different attraction patterns. We both want to be with people who are like us, but also are attracted to novelty and difference. Different people may have these patterns expressed in diferent proportions. Traditional gender culture goes in the direction of sexual and romantic attraction being about the attraction of the opposites—that’s why masculinity is framed as opposing femeninity—and friendship about the attraction of similarities.
There is some convinience in not having to figure out what exactly you want from the partner and just strive for the top of the hierarchy of the opposite gender group. But It leads to “Are straights okay?” meme, where people do not have any common interests with their spouses and low key hate them. Because they didn’t even think that their preferences may be different from what society claims they are supposed to want.
With that in mind, modern (post-modern?) advances of gender equality and the destruction of rigid gender roles are very advantageous. An opportunity to return to a simpler equilibrium, that wasn’t goodharted, where everyone is trying to find specific qualities they want in the partner, instead of just trying for the top of hierarchy that you may not even like. It also allows for more satisfaction of preferences in principle. Everyone can’t possibly be with the top 10% of the opposite gender hierarchy. But it may be possible for everyone to find someone fitting the top 10% in qualities they in particular value.
That last reminds me of Gwern’s “The Melancholy of Subculture Society” with regard to creating a profusion of smaller status ladders to be on.