3 Minute Monday
Hi friend,
I learned about female intrasexual competition this week – the competition between women over a potential mate.
“Such competition often includes self-promotion, derogation of other women, and direct or indirect aggression toward other women.”
I think it’s important for men and women to realise that most competition occurs within their own sex, rather than against the other sex.
Humans are naturally tribal.
If you bring people into a room and flip a coin to decide whether individuals are blue team on one side of the room or red team on the other side, then ask each team what the think about the other one, they’ll start saying things like “well the red team looks a bit stupid don’t they, they’re definitely not as strong or smart as us”.
Despite the selection criteria being completely arbitrary, by chance, AND known to all participants.
My point is that if there’s any opportunity to chunk people into groups, they will quickly start seeing tribal dynamics.
Men and women have been convinced over the last few decades that they are adversaries, not collaborators.
Men and women need each other and have worked together for hundreds of thousands of years to be effective partners.
Now I’m not trying to justify male-female collaboration by showing females that their enemy is other women.
Women need other women too, but laying all the ills of the world at the feet of the opposite sex seems an inaccurate default which is ruining cross-sex collaboration.
(This obviously happens in both directions too, with men blaming women and I’m going to try and do a version of this for men also)
So here are 3 surprising examples of how women behave in highly intrasexually competitive ways…
Age Gap Dating Shaming is one timely example.
Leonardo DiCaprio went viral for a graph of him only dating women under 25 and then moving on before their 26th birthday.
You’ll notice that almost all age-gap dating shaming came from women, not from men.
Why?
Female intrasexual competition.
Even though Leo is taking away viable female’s fertile years from other potential male partners, it was women who had the biggest problem with the age gap, precisely because a young women who can capture an older high status man is a bigger threat to women than she is to men.
By shaming women into dating within their own age bracket, the dating pool of high status men is opened up more and competition is lowered for other women.
Slut shaming is another example of how women try to control the sexual behaviour of females.
Again, most slut shaming comes from women, not men.
“If one woman offers blowjobs on the second date, it’s harder for other women to keep them in reserve until the fourth date as their special treat.
This creates a downward spiral of young women feeling like they have to offer more and more sex to more and more guys just to stay in the mating game.
Thus, slut-shaming is a way of enforcing a more restrained sexual norm on other women so that not all women have to become more promiscuous than any of them would like.” — Geoffrey Miller & Tucker Max
Think about it this way – if men had the opportunity to tune every women’s sexual desire up, do you not think they would?
It’s women who lose out when the price of sex drops, thus they are the enforcers of that price.
A final example is reproductive rights.
Polls consistently show that women are more likely than men to support a reduction on the abortion limit.
28% of men supported a reduction vs 46% of women. (YouGov 2011)
24% of men vs 49% of women. (YouGov 2012)
35% of men vs 59% of women (Angus Reid)
“If it were left to women to vote on the issue, with men out of the picture, there’s a good chance that the result would be in favour of restricting abortion.
On the flip side, if only men voted, they’d almost certainly vote in favour of women’s reproductive rights.” — The Guardian
Women who are pro life can control the reproductive strategies of other women by taking them off the dating market.
A woman who can have more consequence-free sex is a bigger competitor for mates (even to married/committed women) than one who faces a greater risk of getting pregnant.
This isn’t to say that arguments for being pro-life don’t come from religious or moral grounds too, but the intrasexual competition is an obvious contributor.
In short – I think that men and women’s cross-sex tribal blaming needs relaxing, intrasexual competition is much higher than intersexual competition, and the headlines about who to point the finger at are often wrong.
In an already atomised society, we should be working on reducing division between groups, not increasing it.
MODERN WISDOM
I do a podcast which has had 60 million+ downloads. You should subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
This week’s upcoming episodes:
Monday.
Andrew Doyle – how much does the modern critical social justice movement have in common with the Puritans and Salem Witch Trials of the 1680s? Also, why are you a bigot if you don’t think I’m hot and why is Ben Shapiro a terror?
Thursday.
Dr Christian Jarrett – breaking down the science of personality change. Just how much can you alter your personality? Is your personality YOU? Is it possible to overcome shyness, introversion, become more ambitious or conscientious? Very good.
Saturday.
Charlie Walker – what is it like cycling thousands of miles across Russia, getting arrested for espionage, war time reporting and walking the boundary between Asia and Europe to see if there’s any cultural differences?
THINGS I’VE LEARNED
1.
Punishing landlords hurts people who need housing (everyone).
Ireland launched a campaign against “greedy” landlords with rent control, 52% tax, no deductions, no evictions.
They succeeded & landlords left the market in droves.
Now there are only 716 homes available to rent in the entire country of Ireland and 150 people queued for a one bed property last week.
Why would landlords selling up reduce stock?
Surely it just means people were able to buy cheap?
No, because a rental may have 4+ tenants, while owner-occupied houses usually have just two occupants.
Occupancy is reduced with a heavy home ownership ratio.
2.
The Inner Citadel rears its head again.
“It’s easier to just decide you’re hot than actually become hot.
It’s easier to decide you’re smart than actually become smart.
Low agency people just move the goal posts closer to them rather than do the work.” — RunRich on Youtube
3.
Why I love Evolutionary Psychology so much.
In order to transcend your programming, you first must become aware of it.
LIFE HACK
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Also they’re giving away an extra free Whoop gift with every purchase.
Big love,
Chris x
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PS
I’m back in the UK today and going to the Jordan Peterson show in Manchester this Wednesday. See you there!
