Bonecrker #48 - Sexes Approaching Eachother

For all the myths that women are more intuitive, more social, more emotionally intelligent, aware of feelings etc., it is all basically a lie.

The bottom line is this: Men don't actually make the first move... women do.

They signal openness. Or rather, they are supposed to. Then an interested man will signal his interest to approach, usually by looking her in the eyes and smiling. A normal man won't apporach unless invited. If a man approaches without being invited it either means he is a psycho or he is one of the few men that have learned that women just don't get it, and he is compensating by testing the waters more aggressively. Yes, a lot of men don't know the steps to meeting a woman and, as a result, are socially awkward and have trouble meeting women (even when she is highly interested). This lack of skill leads to lack of confidence which then becomes a vicious circle.

Part of the problem is women are just as clueless about doing their part in the meeting ritual.

But, the biggest part of the problem is most women are completely out of control of their own sexuality. What I mean by this is, rather than deciding beforehand what she wants and then figuring out how to go about getting it, she tends to instead shut down. 90% of the time, and she is completely uninterested in any partner. That's a big problem because (most) men hunt and women choose. If 90% of the time that choice is no to anyone, and she is unaware of what she is doing, the chances for success aren't very good. The other 10% of the time, she gets overwhelmed by her needs (hormonal and otherwise) which forces her to be open to men who aren't a good match... leading to the ironic perception that there are no good men (ie no men who are a good match for her) Even though she is surrounded by them. Add in that most women put themselves on sexual display with the way they dress but shut down all signals of interest and the stage is set for some pretty fucked up behaviours.

In short, neurotic behavior in both men and women, lack of knowledge and lack of skill are at the root of the problem. Add in the fact that the relationship is mostly and illusion from the woman's point of view (ie she can and will walk with no notice and no reason at all) and you have a highly unstable situation where nobody is getting their needs met.

To fight against this, people have to study the situation and bring what they are doing into conscious awareness, and focus their will on making changes.

For example, I discovered that even though most women won't signal interest, a man can provoke her by skipping a step. Simply looking any woman you meet directly in the eyes and seeing if she looks back, and then smiling if she does... this forces her to say yes or no with her body language. That's an aggressive thing to do (in non-neurotic cultures, women signal first, not men) but it is still in the realm of acceptable behavior. Men going, "hey, baby, hey baby," while you are trying to get to work, or worse, approaching when you make it clear they are not welcome, isn't acceptable. It means the guy is either a dumbass or a psycho. Unfortunately, alot of women are open to them during their 10%.

As a woman, it is extremely easy to get around this. First, choose who you want. Then, do what a man would do. Look him right in the eyes and smile. You might have to do it several times if he is a dumbass. He'll usually approach you unless he is taken.

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“Women chat happily, send sexually explicit signals and encourage the man’s attention, even if they have absolutely no interest in him. This gives a woman time to assess a man, say [Karl Grammer of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of Urban Ethology in Vienna, who studied 45 male-female pairs of strangers in their teens and early twenties]… Importantly, the women also seemed to control the encounter – what the women did had a direct effect on what the men did next. ‘You can predict male behaviour from female behaviour but not the other way around,’ says Grammer” – New Scientist Magazine (London), February 14, 2001

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Cary (1976) discovered that the woman, through eye contact, controlled the course of interaction with a male stranger, both in the laboratory and in singles' bars. Perper (1985) gave a detailed description of courtship, stressing an escalation-response process in which women play a key role in escalation or deescalation. The steps in this process are approach, turn, first touch, and steady development of body synchronization.

Although these reports are clearly valuable, most researchers addressed courtship very generally, and some failed to recognize the importance of the female role in the courtship process .What was needed was a more complete ethogram of women's nonverbal courtship signals. To compile such a catalog of flirting behavior exhibited by women involved in initial heterosexual interaction, more than 200 adults were observed (Moore, 1985) in field settings such as singles' bars, restaurants, and parties.

Research has shown, therefore, that the cultural myth that the man is always the sexual aggressor, pressing himself on a reluctant woman, is incorrect. -- Courtship Signaling and Adolescents: "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun"? Monica M. Moore, Ph.D.Department of behavioral and Social Sciences, Webster University

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Further Reading:

Zenpriest #40 - Girls Just Wanna Have Fun

Philalethes #29 - They Can Do It Because They Really Believe It!

Rats!