Rob Henderson holds a PhD in psychology from the University of Cambridge and is a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Who holds the power in modern dating? With growing gender divides and political polarization, it’s no wonder dating feels harder than ever. So, how did we get here, and what’s the way forward? Expect to learn why political division between the sexes has grown so wide, if this is a reaction to the growing sex ratio imbalance of socioeconomically successful women compared to men, why so many men are dealing with ED and if men are to blame for women not being able to orgasm, the traits that predicts relationship satisfaction, what psychology teach us about how to choose a good partner and much more… Sponsors: See discounts for all the products I use and recommend: https://chriswillx.com/deals Get a Free Sample Pack of all LMNT Flavours with your first purchase at https://drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom Get a 20% discount & free shipping on Manscaped’s shavers at https://manscaped.com/modernwisdom (use code MODERNWISDOM20) Get a 20% discount on Nomatic’s amazing luggage at https://nomatic.com/modernwisdom Extra Stuff: Get my free reading list of 100 books to read before you die: https://chriswillx.com/books Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic: https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom Episodes You Might Enjoy: #577 - David Goggins - This Is How To Master Your Life: https://tinyurl.com/43hv6y59 #712 - Dr Jordan Peterson - How To Destroy Your Negative Beliefs: https://tinyurl.com/2rtz7avf #700 - Dr Andrew Huberman - The Secret Tools To Hack Your Brain: https://tinyurl.com/3ccn5vkp - Get In Touch: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: Why are left-wing women attracted to right-wing men?
Left-wing women are learning to love right-wing men. Political division has become a sexual fetish. Today, in online political fandoms, people behind enemy lines are often seen as potential sexual conquests. Right-wing men want a liberal art hoe, whereas some leftist women lust after the right-wing anon.
It's hard to pin down discourse like this sometimes, but this trend is also substantiated in studies about the dating patterns of progressive women. What do you think about that?
Yeah, you know, I wonder about these sort of media trends, these headlines, because often the reason why they get so much interest is because they're sort of at odds with our intuitions, right? And I know you've spoken with plenty of people about this idea of assortative mating. We tend to be attracted to people who are somewhat similar to ourselves.
So then when you have this splashy headline, you know, right wing men want the left wing art ho, the left wing art hoes want the Republican MAGA bro or something. You know, it's a little edgy. It's a little catches us off guard.
But I think there's, you know, to the extent that it might be true, you know, if you think about what are the qualities that women find attractive in men, sort of self-sufficiency, ambition, income, you know, all the kinds of qualities that are associated with sort of a masculine guy.
And then you look at sort of the voting patterns of men and you find that the predictors of voting for the conservative parties also tend to be the traits that women tend to find attractive. So if you look at self-identified, Uh, if you ask men, you know, how, how masculine do you feel versus how feminine do you feel?
The higher men rate themselves as masculine, the more likely they are to support a conservative political candidate, uh, and the more, uh, or the less masculine they feel, the more likely they are to support a left-wing candidate. And then, um, And you can ask other questions about income.
There was a really funny study a few years ago in the UK about height, that there's a sort of a small but significant correlation between height and voting for conservative political parties. I don't know if that would hold up today. This was like 2016, 2017, that period. But...
And then there's interesting work around attitudes around social dominance orientation and men who are sort of sure of themselves, confident, go out into the world, achieve something. They also tend to like things like low taxes and they tend to like things like a strong military, police, all those kinds of things kind of cluster together.
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Chapter 2: What traits do women find attractive in men?
Yeah, yeah. So so if he were, yeah, like you said, an Andrew Tate character, or just someone who openly said, like, I'm kind of a hedonistic, pleasure seeking guy. And then he's doing all of this, I think, yeah, it wouldn't be a story. But it's the fact that he says one thing, but then does another, there's the hypocrisy element that
bothered a lot of people and it kind of reminded me of uh you know the whole like sneaky fucker idea in uh evolutionary biology um you know the the formal the more scientific term is kleptogamy of men who or males species who adopt the appearance of more sort of feminine traits and then thereby uh sort of disguise themselves and this is sort of acts as a shield against more sort of dominant uh competitive rival males they think oh he's just a soft
you know kind of a weak guy he's sort of a submissive feminine guy and they uh therefore feel less uh less bothered if you see this weak guy hanging out with the women and then the woman then the guy the sort of sneaky fucker guy that gets to gets to have his pick of the women here and i think like a lot of a lot of guys are kind of adopting this of this um you know
You can if it's the case that women want, you know, the the handsome guy, but then also sort of a politically left wing. And this is just going to incentivize a lot of camouflage, I think.
What is it that you think that's sort of allowing these guys to get in with women? Is it a degree of safety and security? Is it that this person doesn't seem like that much of a threat? Is it that they align with my political beliefs, that they're going to be more sensitive? Is he signaling long-term investment? Yeah.
Yeah, I think all of the above, you know, you're signaling that you're a reliable person, you're compassionate, you're kind. You know, our mutual friend David Buss, his classic study found that the number one trait that people search for, male or female, the number one trait that they search for in a romantic partner is kindness.
And, you know, if you talk about equality and all those kinds of things, then, yeah, you're signaling that you're a kind and caring, compassionate guy.
But I think social media, it's kind of it's difficult to sort through the actual signal versus the noise around it, because if you're a high profile guy with millions of followers and you're talking about equality and women's rights and all of these things, and then you as an observer are seeing those comments receive lots of likes and shares and retweets.
And this guy's getting so much attention and accolades. And you're thinking, well, he's saying this and people are applauding him. And I think this strengthens the belief that what he's saying is actually what he believes. That's actually what he supports and how he lives his own life.
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Chapter 3: How does political affiliation influence dating preferences?
But the idea here is most women would rather, you know, maybe share Leonardo DiCaprio than have you know, some guy who's barely scraping by for their sole husband. And I do wonder sometimes because like over the last five or 10 years, there's been this discussion around polycules, poly relationships, open marriages, all these kinds of things. And maybe this is kind of the
inevitable outcome of the deregulation of the sexual marketplace of men falling more and more behind and, you know, people seemingly unwilling or uninterested in sort of figuring out what's going on there and prove men's prospects and thereby that would actually improve monogamy.
Yeah, you wrote about men floundering, women most affected. I love that framing, dude. I've got one that I want to give you in a second, which is even more spicy. But men floundering, women most affected was basically an explanation of sex ratio hypothesis, right? Mm-hmm.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, that's, yeah, that's, you know, whenever you see men falling behind, you know, often the headlines and the articles are framed as, well, women are suffering because, you know, they're unable to find a desirable male partner.
But, you know, the logic is let's concentrate on the woman who's suffering when actually, you know, the reason why she can't find desirable male partners because the men are the ones who are like floundering and falling further and further behind. Yeah.
Yeah, it's a... I always find that framing very interesting. And I think it kind of shows who is still considered to be on top and who is still considered to be on bottom. You kind of beg the question or you sort of reveal your priors when that kind of framing comes around. And yeah, dude, you know...
If you, as a woman of the internet, perhaps, who tweets things a lot or retweets things a lot, has an issue with the dearth of eligible male partners, but also tweets about, like... Why these men are losers and incels? Why can't they pick themselves up by their bootstraps? Cause and effect are occurring in front of your eyes here.
That if most groups are falling behind, we spend billions and billions in taxpayer funded money to try and work out what's going on and help them. And we put committees together and we create new social movements. We put Title IX in and we change the way that universities are structured and we do all the rest of it. we don't tell them to pick themselves up by their bootstraps.
Like if women have a problem or if any group, except for men, have a problem, we say, what can we do to fix society? But if men specifically have a problem, we say, what is it that men are doing where they don't fix themselves? And this sense that sort of modern men are being made to pay for the sins of a patriarchy that they no longer feel a part of
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Chapter 4: What is the impact of social media on dating dynamics?
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If authenticity is a big predictor for relationship satisfaction, is that a vote in the box for oversharing, for being quite transparent about sort of what's going on?
as opposed to uh keeping some stuff just for your journal and the therapist room interesting yeah i i think generally well it depends on what what the um the conversation is about um you know if you have your sort of most wild extreme thoughts like i don't know maybe those don't always have to be aired well like i'm gonna punch a baby and put it into the road or yeah yeah yeah
Yeah, well, but but I think like when it comes to issues around the relationship itself, that maybe there's a way I think like it's better to generally over communicate rather than to let things slide and let resentments build up.
And then it potentially explodes later into a serious argument that I mean, there's a way I think to over communicate and a kind of diplomatic, respectful way of just like, why do you do that? That upsets me. Stop doing that. You know, that's probably not the best way to go about it. But if you see something and you point it out in a gentle way.
And I think that is probably a better approach than just letting it all build up over time.
What about the role of when we think we can't do any better?
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