The Dating Game As An Asshole Filter

sinesalvatorem:
Epistemic Status: Wild speculation
I wonder how much of the complaints a lot of straight women have about men being jerks to them in romantic contexts are because being the responsive partner is probably an asshole filter?
That is, a filter that’s easier to pass through if you’re an asshole than if you’re not. An asshole filter need not keep out all decent people or accept all assholes, but the set of people who get through will have a larger proportion of assholes than the general population.
And, if you only get dates by being asked out by someone else, the set of people you interact with will be the set of people who are most willing to ask people out. Unfortunately, the people most willing to do so will probably also be the ones most willing to cross boundaries, because asking someone out is the type of socially fraught issue that’s way easier to handle if you just don’t give a fuck.
Add to this the fact that high socio-sexual orientation (ie: high willingness to sleep with a lot of people) is positively correlated with being an asshole, and you find that it’s a double asshole filter: The people who feel comfortable making a thousand approaches are more likely to be assholes, and the people who want to make a thousand approaches are more likely to be asshole.
This doesn’t mean that everyone who has a high willingness to seek out new partners and feels little anxiety about doing so is an asshole. However, it does mean that that set will contain more assholes than the population at large.
It’s also partly a numbers game, because someone who approaches people very often will have an outsized impact. Let’s assume a group of 100 straight men has 90 decent people and 10 assholes. 30 of the decent people are terrified virgins who never hit on anyone. 50 of the decent people and 5 of the assholes have a reasonably normal approach rate and hit on 20 people a year. Meanwhile, 10 of the decent people and 5 of the assholes are active pubcrawlers who hit on 20 people a month.
If you’re a woman who’s mostly around this group of men then, even though only a tenth of them are assholes, more than a quarter of the times you’re hit on will be an asshole. The rate goes way up if you’re in an environment that encourages frequent, casual, low-effort approaches (like a bar or club), because that environment will attract assholes and allow them to out-compete non-assholes by being pushier. At the extreme end of ease-of-approach, you get dating sites, where you’ll often find that a majority of the messages in your inbox will be from assholes.
(Which may explain the saying “you won’t find a good man at the club”)
Meanwhile, if we assume an equal distribution of decent and terrible women, a guy who’s hitting on them should encounter far fewer assholes. Even if he’s doing nothing to screen out assholes, sheer chance should lead to him hitting on an asshole only one in ten times, instead of nearly three in ten times.
Add in the fact that most people prefer not to hit on assholes and this man’s asshole hit rate should go down even more. I would not be surprised if the median man is dealing with an asshole:decent ratio five times lower than the median woman - at least in any community where frequent, casual, low-effort approaches are possible. Adjust for the fuck-huge sex-gap in physical strength and having five times as much contact with assholes starts becoming positively dangerous.
Other things that writing this out caused me to notice which I wasn’t originally thinking of:
This could actually do a lot to explain the observations that 1) assholes have a surprising amount of sexual success, given that 2) women don’t actually want assholes. I’ve seen red pill folks argue that the latter is a lie while their opponents argue that the former is a lie, but “being a straight woman on the dating market is an asshole filter” actually explains both pretty well. You may not be interested in assholes, but assholes are certainly interested in you.
This might also explain why conservatives often claim that cultures that make it easy and shameless to have frequent, casual relationships are uniquely bad for women. I’d been kind of confused by this, since none of the claimed negative effects seemed obviously sex-specific (other than pregnancy, which contraception largely obviates).
On the other hand, if dating is an asshole filter, they might actually be right that strong constraints on socio-sexuality might decrease the effect. After all, those same dark-triad high socio-sexuality personalities are highly concerned with self image and really don’t want to be known as a dangerous rake. I still don’t think that re-imposing those restrictions is a good idea, but it’s interesting to see where they’re coming from.
It also gives an interesting, plausible etiology for the thing where feminist women keep complaining that the feminist men they date are assholes. It seems likely that this is an area where the asshole filter is being made stronger on both sides: sex positive feminist women are more open to casual relationships than average, and non-asshole men who care about feminism are more cautious and careful about boundaries. Thus, the expected value to the asshole of lying about feminist beliefs is higher and their competition from non-assholes is lower.
Overall, I don’t really have a good solution to this. The inequality, at least, would be solved if both groups were equally willing to approach. But, lol, good luck getting that to happen. Alternatively, it might be helped if non-assholes made more approaches. However, there’s still the problem that the average non-asshole doesn’t want to make as many approaches as the average asshole, as well as the fact that his awareness of when his approaches might be unwanted is part of why he’s not an asshole. Tackling the problem on the asshole side is harder, because assholes don’t actually want to be told how to be less sexually successful.
In conclusion, the world is broken and I’m not sure what to do about it.
The above post is very wise. Read it. Then, if you feel like it, read my response. The original post is more important than my commentary
Overall, I don’t really have a good solution to this.
being the responsive partner is probably an asshole filter?
I think you answered your own question there. “Don’t be the responsive partner”.
If you believe in sexual dimorphism, you’ll immediately point out that “women are not wired this way”. Yep. Didn’t say it was a good solution. It’s not. But it’s a solution that exists, which is a proof of concept that solutions do exist, and it can inform other success strategies.
This doesn’t mean that everyone who has a high willingness to seek out new partners and feels little anxiety about doing so is an asshole. However, it does mean that that set will contain more assholes than the population at large.
OH MY GOD THIS.
This applies to essentially everything worth talking about in modern life. This resolves almost all arguments over social science policy. This counters almost every political position on almost every side, namely the ones that are overconfident.
“I’m not saying that your idea X will make everything Y. I’m saying that X will statistically bias things in the direction of Y. Things will still be random, but the will be slanted towards Y”. This is pretty much how every policy argument should be framed.
It’s also partly a numbers game, because someone who approaches people very often will have an outsized impact. Let’s assume a group of 100 straight men has 90 decent people and 10 assholes. 30 of the decent people are terrified virgins who never hit on anyone. 50 of the decent people and 5 of the assholes have a reasonably normal approach rate and hit on 20 people a year. Meanwhile, 10 of the decent people and 5 of the assholes are active pubcrawlers who hit on 20 people a month.
Bayes rule everybody. Base rates matter. Again, this generalizes beyond the original post
Meanwhile, if we assume an equal distribution of decent and terrible women, a guy who’s hitting on them should encounter far fewer assholes. Even if he’s doing nothing to screen out assholes, sheer chance should lead to him hitting on an asshole only one in ten times, instead of nearly three in ten times.
I know we already covered “why don’t women just ask men out”, but coming back to it for a second: The above argument can be made even stronger to advocate for women to take initiative. Because the same argument showing “the guys doing the asking out will be more sociopathic than average” also applies in reverse! “The guys not doing the asking out will be less sociopathic than average”. If one was very concerned with avoiding assholes, they could just take initiative and ask out all and only those who don’t ask people out themselves. This will give them an order of magnitude better odds at finding a non-asshole
This could actually do a lot to explain the observations that 1) assholes have a surprising amount of sexual success, given that 2) women don’t actually want assholes. I’ve seen red pill folks argue that the latter is a lie while their opponents argue that the former is a lie, but “being a straight woman on the dating market is an asshole filter” actually explains both pretty well. You may not be interested in assholes, but assholes are certainly interested in you.
So, just working from my historical perspective for a second, which I recognize is very different from OP’s.
(1) Is absolutely reasonable grounds to be highly, highly skeptical of (2).
Further, every single argument in the face of (1) that posits (2) as true (note: I believe (2) is true) requires the abdication of agency on the part of a woman. It requires that we decide women are not responsible for choice of partner. Either that or it requires that women are uniquely bad at judging who is or is not an asshole. Even when they are currently engaged in being an asshole.
This might also explain why conservatives often claim that cultures that make it easy and shameless to have frequent, casual relationships are uniquely bad for women.
You know what I really wish people would do? Is pay attention to who supports those claims. Not who presents them in public, with the full weight of their reputation behind it and the risk of backlash if people don’t like it. But who supports it when it counts: in voting and shit.
It’s overwhelmingly conservative women.
The above would have been a lot less confusing if people paid attention to this.
On the other hand, if dating is an asshole filter, they might actually be right that strong constraints on socio-sexuality might decrease the effect. After all, those same dark-triad high socio-sexuality personalities are highly concerned with self image and really don’t want to be known as a dangerous rake. I still don’t think that re-imposing those restrictions is a good idea, but it’s interesting to see where they’re coming from.
This flirts with an idea I’ve been sitting on for a while now:
Data point: Lots of people very strongly believe that conservative attitudes towards sex and relationships are good and healthy and supportive, and credit this with their happiness and success
Data point: Lots of people very strongly believe that conservative attitudes towards sex and relationships are oppressive, and can demonstrate personal experiences to this effect
What if the key operative difference is that that former group adopted these attitudes willingly, while the latter group had them imposed on them by force.
Let’s say for argument that conservative attitudes towards sex and relationships are good, but that these attitudes have to be syncretic with an individual’s personal quirks. Like it’s not enough to go by-the-book, people have to improvise a little bit.
People who voluntarily adopt these attitudes will know themselves well enough to know what they need to do to make it work for them
People for whom this is imposed by force… the person doing the force likely does not know what the person being imposed on needs to make it work
Food for thought
It also gives an interesting, plausible etiology for the thing where feminist women keep complaining that the feminist men they date are assholes.
Literally every single male feminist leader I have ever met (N =~ 20) has turned out to be a sociopath, rapist, or otherwise criminally bad. And for every single one it was immediately obvious to me. This has been so strongly and consistently true that I can’t help but assume that the women aren’t 100% blameless in this. Sometimes you really don’t want to believe someone is as bad as your eyes see that they are.
It seems likely that this is an area where the asshole filter is being made stronger on both sides: sex positive feminist women are more open to casual relationships than average, and non-asshole men who care about feminism are more cautious and careful about boundaries.
They would do well to consider what message this sends to those non-asshole men, and what incentives are set up for them.
At best, this very strongly incentivizes non-asshole feminist men to dissociate themselves from feminism, and specifically to dissociate themselves from very sex-positive female feminists. At worst, it actively encourages them to become assholes.
Thus, the expected value to the asshole of lying about feminist beliefs is higher and their competition from non-assholes is lower.
This is one reason why “Listen And Believe” is so dangerous
Overall, I don’t really have a good solution to this. The inequality, at least, would be solved if both groups were equally willing to approach. But, lol, good luck getting that to happen. Alternatively, it might be helped if non-assholes made more approaches.
Reread this sentence, substituting in the identities of the groups.
“The inequality, at least, would be solved if men and women were equally willing to approach. But, lol, good luck getting that to happen. Alternatively, it might be helped if non-asshole men made more approaches
“Fuck you, do it for me” feminine hypoagency strikes again!
Overall, I don’t really have a good solution to this. The inequality, at least, would be solved if both groups were equally willing to approach. But, lol, good luck getting that to happen.
This is very interesting because it encodes a fundamental difference in worldview between, well, I don’t know exactly so to be conservative: between me and feminists.
“The inequality would be solved if [people did things differently]. But [they won’t]”
I read this, and I conclude: “well then this is not a problem. This is just the downside consequence of decisions that people are making. Given that they are strongly defending these decisions, and will not change their decision, even if I apply social pressure to them, then this is their personal deal, and our collective work here is done”
Feminists appear to read this and conclude “the world is sexist”.
Weird, you’d think if they cared so much they’d stop perpetuating it. :P
However, there’s still the problem that the average non-asshole doesn’t want to make as many approaches as the average asshole, as well as the fact that his awareness of when his approaches might be unwanted is part of why he’s not an asshole.
Tackling the problem on the asshole side is harder, because assholes don’t actually want to be told how to be less sexually successful.
Someone needs to start crashing feminist clubs and screaming this at them every fifteen minutes until someone internalizes this lesson.
The above is why every every attempt at making rules to police morality fail. Codes of conduct, for example.
Assholes are assholes because they ignore your boundaries. Assholes will ignore your rules. On the other hand, non-assholes are intensely aware of these rules and boundaries, and will err on the side of caution.
If you implement eg. a code of conduct that bans, oh I don’t know, “harassing speech”, then two things will happen. The guys actually doing the harassing will just ignore you and keep doing the thing they were doing all along. The non-assholes, meanwhile, will experience a chilling effect. Precisely because they are so sensitive to these boundaries, and precisely because they err on the side of caution.
The end result is that every time, every single time something like this happens, the net effect is “attacking the good guys for no goddamn reason”

Thank you, but there are some comments I would make:

Further, every single argument in the face of (1) that posits (2) as true (note: I believe (2) is true) requires the abdication of agency on the part of a woman. It requires that we decide women are not responsible for choice of partner. Either that or it requires that women are uniquely bad at judging who is or is not an asshole. Even when they are currently engaged in being an asshole.

Not really? At least, my conception of it doesn’t require that. Mine requires that 1) women encounter way more assholes in a romantic context than men do, 2) women are no better at screening assholes from that point than men are, so 3) women date assholes at a higher rate than men do (with the rate-of-date difference being roughly proportional to the rate-of-contact difference).

Note that the important property of “asshole” I’m thinking of is their propensity to violate your boundaries. Men date people like this pretty often too. However, when straight men and women talk about their exes, women call them “asshole exes” and men call them “crazy exes”. They’re conceptualised differently, but the underlying property that makes them bad for you remains the same.

So, if the asshole filter causes women to have romantic first contact with assholes X times as often as men, then women having X times as many asshole ex boyfriends as men have crazy ex girlfriends is what you should expect on priors. Women dating more assholes doesn’t require they have uniquely bad judgement - them avoiding assholes as often as men do would require uniquely good judgement. Tests have to balance sensitivity and specificity, after all.

You know what I really wish people would do? Is pay attention to who supports those claims. […] It’s overwhelmingly conservative women.

I’m aware of that, yes. Sorry to not be more specific. What I was confused about was why they supported those claims. I assumed they had a good reason, since I would expect those women to know what they mean first hand. However, I didn’t really see how it would work the way they said it did. Now I get it.

Data point: Lots of people very strongly believe that conservative attitudes towards sex and relationships are good and healthy and supportive, and credit this with their happiness and success
Data point: Lots of people very strongly believe that conservative attitudes towards sex and relationships are oppressive, and can demonstrate personal experiences to this effect
What if the key operative difference is that that former group adopted these attitudes willingly, while the latter group had them imposed on them by force.

Strong agree.

They would do well to consider what message this sends to those non-asshole men, and what incentives are set up for them.
At best, this very strongly incentivizes non-asshole feminist men to dissociate themselves from feminism, and specifically to dissociate themselves from very sex-positive female feminists. At worst, it actively encourages them to become assholes.

Sounds about right. And, as a sex-positive female feminist, this certainly sets up trouble for me. Not from directly dating assholes (I’m gay and initiate even more than I’d like to), but from having more potential allies be turned off from my cause. To quote the original article which created the idea of asshole filters:

When word gets out that Fred rewards the people who transgress his boundaries, he runs the risk of escalating the baseline transgressiveness of everyone who finds out. It may not be a lot, and it won’t be universally to the same degree. Some people will sigh or grumble but not email him personally. But everyone gets the message, “Fred’s preferences don’t much matter; when Fred says something, he doesn’t much mean it.”

(As a side note, quite aside from people’s level of transgressiveness, either as a personality trait or at a moment in time, when you set up a system whereby the honest, rule-following people get screwed and the transgressors are rewarded, you should expect that the honest, rule-following people with whom you ultimately deal, who didn’t cross over to transgressiveness, will be wicked pissed. Not only will you be dealing with transgressive people being transgressive, you will also be dealing with non-transgressive people being confrontational. Politely, circumspectly, firmly, icily confrontational.)

[bold mine]

So, yes, I care about this. I want to deal with it. I’m just not sure how I’d influence people around me enough to actually fix anything like this.

Reread this sentence, substituting in the identities of the groups.
>“The inequality, at least, would be solved if men and women were equally willing to approach. But, lol, good luck getting that to happen. Alternatively, it might be helped if non-asshole men made more approaches
“Fuck you, do it for me” feminine hypoagency strikes again!

I really don’t know what you want from me here.

Like, there’s a reason I dismissed that possibility with “lol, good luck getting that to happen”. It’s not. At the the macro level, it just doesn’t change. It hasn’t changed in the past half-century from the sexual revolution when everyone thought it would, and it ain’t changing now. Do you prefer an article that ends with a “solution” as actionable as “everyone grows a second set of arms”?

Whenever any other women ever ask me for dating advice, I always tell them they should ask people out more. Even before I noticed the asshole filter, I had every reason to advise this. The lesbian sheep problem (for queer women), the fact that people rarely feel threatened by romantic advances from women (fairly or unfairly), the fact that the stable marriage problem is only solved optimally for the asker, etc.

I’m a broken record on this. No one who’s spent more than a minute around me could doubt that I’m in favour of women initiating more. (As a lesbian, this would be hugely beneficial for me just from a selfish perspective.) However, I know that advising people individually is the best I can do, and that even then they’ll mostly ignore me. Social engineering on this problem is beyond my pay-grade, and possibly beyond G-d’s pay-grade.

I’m equanimous enough to accept those things which are fixed in heaven and earth, and this I know to be true: Fifty years from now, a lesbian will still walk into a room and turn every girl’s head while thinking to herself “Why won’t anyone date me?”

I’m glad for the people who read the OP - whether male or female - and felt a kick in the pants that motivated them to initiate more. This is everything I could hope for. However, most won’t, and accepting this is the only way I can avoid going insane.

This is very interesting because it encodes a fundamental difference in worldview between, well, I don’t know exactly so to be conservative: between me and feminists.
“The inequality would be solved if [people did things differently]. But [they won’t]”
I read this, and I conclude: “well then this is not a problem. This is just the downside consequence of decisions that people are making. Given that they are strongly defending these decisions, and will not change their decision, even if I apply social pressure to them, then this is their personal deal, and our collective work here is done”

From this perspective, it’s not a problem that shy male virgins feel terribly lonely. They looked at the situation and made the decision they thought was rational. They’ve made their bed and should lie in it with their body pillows.

And maybe you do accept this and do think there’s nothing wrong here. I disagree.

I think that this is tragic. I think that people not being able to have fulfilling romantic relationships is really unfortunate, regardless of who it is. Sure, some people really shouldn’t have romantic relationships (like abusers), but we aren’t even talking about that - we’re talking about people who are no less decent than anyone else having decreased life satisfaction because of that feel when no gf.

And this is most often due to their own choices.

I think it should be possible to acknowledge that something is bad and could stop being bad if the people involved acted differently, but not think that means those people don’t deserve our concern. Asking people out is hard. (I think. It’s hard to remember what it was like when I had strong approach anxiety, but I also hear most people would object to speaking extempore on a stage in their underwear, so maybe I’m just uncommonly shameless.) It’s OK for someone to be too afraid of pain to pull out the thorn, even if I think they made the wrong choice.

I think that the fear of hitting on people is usually way worse than any actual consequences, which means the degree to which most people avoid it is irrational. For this reason, I’d rather they do it more. But I think it’s perfectly reasonable to look at a situation and think “Boy, that behaviour sure is failing to maximise utility. I wish I could find a way to alter the incentive structure so this problem would stop happening. However, as I can’t, I’ll just accept it glumly.” That’s my position on the dating problems of both shy men and responsive women (to the extent that the problem is initiation and not something else).

(But, like, to anyone reading who may be in this situation: Please note that the way out is right there. There’s so much money being left on the ground right. over. there.)

Feminists appear to read this and conclude “the world is sexist”.

Hello! Feminist here! I wrote this and concluded “Our social systems are borked in a way that’s hurting people”.

I don’t usually use the word “patriarchy” but, if I did, I’d define it as the emergent social systems that fuck with you in a gendered way. There isn’t a cabal of men cackling at the top, nor is patriarchy mostly enforced by men. These systems exist because everyone is making the decision which seems most reasonable to them in their own situation. And these decisions all add up to a massive clusterfuck that hurts men, women, and everyone in between.

The world is sexist. The world is ordered in such a way that the hand you’re dealt has a lot to do with your sex and gender, and it’ll probably be a crappy one. That doesn’t require a Conspiracy of Sexism; it just requires that our society have been thrown together by haphazard incentives.

Wednesday, May 17, 2017