How men & women are different

The social justice people lied: men and women are different. Why, and how? Plus, Danny DeVito versus Paris Hilton, the real reason there are so few women CEO's, and why men don't wear makeup.

Disclaimer: this article talks about politically sensitive stuff.

I'm not trying to make a case for a particular agenda here (at least consciously), I'm more just curious about the differences between people and think it's worth studying.

That means I'm probably gonna say stuff that offends everybody with strong opinions one way or the other.

If you're easily offended by discussions of gender that don't conform to your precise views, left wing OR right wing, that's totally okay. This article probably isn't for you. You're welcome to not read it. Instead, consider putting away all your screens and going for a walk, or doing some journaling, or doing something that'll make you happy.

A quick reminder: everything I talk about in this article is based on averages. Obviously there are women who like computers and men who like dolls — and there's nothing wrong with that — but they're the exception, not the general rule of thumb. This article is about the general rule of thumb.

With that out of the way, if you're interested in hearing a random guy on the internet rant about the differences between men and women, let's begin!

I grew up in Berkeley, California, where they taught me that men and women are the same.

That was a big fat lie. There is a giant mountain of evidence that men's and women's brains are different from one another from birth. Much of this evidence cannot be explained by culture or upbringing.

Here is a sample of that evidence:

1. Gender roles have been mostly the same in every single known culture across human history. (Obviously there are cultural differences in how gender is expressed — in many cultures, men dress flamboyantly or paint their faces — but they only go so far. There are no known human societies where the women fight the wars and the men stay at home to raise kids, for example.)

2. Today in the West, gender differences in terms of stuff like career choices are the greatest in the countries with the highest levels of gender egalitarianism, like Sweden. This is because when you give people freedom of choice, they tend to do whatever they want. So because men and women want different career paths, when you give them freedom of choice, they choose different career paths.

3. Darwinian game theory computer models predict that men and women would evolve differently.

4. Men have more testosterone at birth than women, while women have more estrogen at birth than men. Both testosterone and estrogen are shown to affect behavior.

5. Pretty much all other animals demonstrate gender-based differences in behavior — even animals that don't have "culture". Male bears behave very differently from female bears. Male lobsters behave very differently from female lobsters. Male chimpanzees behave very differently from female chimpanzees. Male spiders behave differently from female spiders. It would be quite strange if humans were an exception.

(I could find more bullet points if I wanted to spend another half hour doing research, but you get the point.)

Now, there is some merit to the "culture" side of the argument. There are gender differences in how boys and girls are raised, which explains some of the gender differences we see (I’d estimate around 20%).

There's also a legitimate argument to be made that some of those gender differences in how boys and girls are raised are harmful to society. Men can resent having to keep their emotions bottled up, and often really enjoy talking their feelings once they learn how to. And lots of women yearn for the sort of freedom that men have — in fact, many women throughout history have dressed up as men in order to gain this freedom. Clearly society has expectations around what it means to be a man and a woman that don’t vibe 100% with what we evolved to want out of life.

Leela from “Futurama” dressed as a man. Women throughout history have wanted more freedom than their gender role gave them — some of them so much that they dressed up as men.

That being said, the "men and women are the same" story is total bullshit. The evidence is overwhelming — gender differences are primarily biological — and believing anything else is delusional.

Why are men and women different?

This all raises the question — why are men and women different?

In this article I'll argue that men and women are different because men and women are playing different games, evolutionarily speaking. In terms of Darwinian game theory, men are rewarded for things that women aren't rewarded for, and vice versa. Because men and women are rewarded for different behaviors, they evolved to behave differently.

Allow me to elaborate further:

Why Men Are Constantly Horny And Women Aren't

Her: "Ugggh, men are pigs. They just look at me like I'm a piece of meat. It's disgusting."

What's the bare minimum a man has to do to have a child? Spend 5 minutes having sex. What's the bare minimum a woman has to do to have a child? Spend 9 months carrying a baby, and then, in all likelihood, spend another 18 years raising that baby.

This is the first fundamental asymmetry between men and women. Women pay a much higher price for having sex than men do.

The most obvious consequence of this is that women are a lot pickier about who they have sex with than men are. Men get turned on whenever they see a pretty woman — but women usually want some romance and connection before they go to bed.

Porn for men versus porn for women. Porn for men tends to be pretty visual and gets straight to the fucking. Porn for women tends to be literary, and there's a lot more romance, intrigue, and drama than sex.

Why Men Take More Risks Than Women

The second consequence of this is that men are willing to take more risks than women.

Why? Because men have more to gain by taking risks. A high-status man can theoretically have hundreds of children, as many kings, conquerors, and dictators throughout history appear to have done. A high-status woman cannot have hundreds of children, because she's gotta spend 9 months carrying each of them.

A high-status man can have many kids with many women.

On the flipside, men have more to lose by not taking risks. It's easy for women to find sex if they want it, but it's pretty hard for men. That's why there are men in their 30's who are still virgins, but very few women in their 30's who are still virgins.

That means men have to gamble more than women do. But how do they gamble?

Danny DeVito vs. Paris Hilton

The pickup artist Mystery, made famous as Neil Strauss's mentor in the book The Game, says that there are 2 things people look for in a dating partner: survival value and reproductive value.

Reproductive value is about being fertile and having good genes — which is why men are attracted to child-rearing-age women with symmetrical faces and shapely hips.

Survival value is anything that helps you protect yourself and your family from getting killed — in humans, mainly skills and social status. If you have survival value, you can feed your family, protect them from wars, get them into better colleges and jobs, et cetera, increasing your odds of having grandchildren and being successful in the Darwinian game of life.

Mystery says that men mainly look for women with high reproductive value, while women mainly look for men with high survival value. In other words, men want to date pretty women; women want to date successful men.

Paris Hilton, a woman with good genes but low character, is considered a desirable partner by men. Danny DeVito, a man with poor genes but high status, is considered a desirable partner by women (sorta).

If you don't believe me, look at what men and women are insecure about. Women tend to be insecure about their looks — they are constantly putting on makeup, shopping for new clothes, and looking at themselves in the mirror. (I once watched a female friend of mine spend 2 hours doing her makeup until she had it "perfect".) Men tend to be insecure about their skills and the value they can create — they don't wear makeup, but they fear not being useful and not being perceived as manly enough.

If you still don't believe me, look at the things men and women are willing to suffer for. Women put themselves through a lot of pain in order to look better: they wear high heels (extremely uncomfortable), they pierce their ears (painful), they often get cosmetic surgeries (expensive and painful), they spend tons of money on nice clothes and makeup (expensive), et cetera. Men don't suffer any pain to improve their looks, but they'll suffer intense pain at the gym, work extremely long hours, take dangerous jobs, et cetera.

This is the real reason why most CEO's, entrepreneurs, world leaders, and bigshot hotshot successful people are men. Being a CEO, entrepreneur, or world leader is really fucking hard. It takes a ton of sacrifice to get there — those guys usually work 80+ hours a week.

Women don't have a biological incentive to make sacrifices like that. Men do, because they have to gamble. They know that if they gain lots of status, power, and resources, they'll have more survival value, and more women will want to have kids with them.

@ghastlyI dont see a difference tho @thejessicacrow

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Another consequence of this is that women are more likely to admit and work on their shortcomings. Men are more likely to be boastfully overconfident, because in many cases, if they show weakness, society will leave them behind.

Her: "Why don't you go to therapy?"

Him: "I don't need therapy. Therapy is for crazy people. You callin' me crazy?"

Why Women Love Babies

Another big difference between men and women is that women are the "primary caretakers" of their children. Why? 2 reasons.

First, the man isn't always going to be there. If a kid just came out of a womb, his mother's probably pretty close by, but his father might be long gone. Primary caretaker is an important job, and women are more likely to actually be there to do it.

And second, women have a greater incentive to raise their kid because they can be more confident that the kid is actually theirs. If you're a kid's mom, you can be pretty confident you're their biological mother, because you spent 9 months carrying them in your belly. But if you're a kid's dad, you might wonder in the back of your mind whether you really are that kid's dad.

That's why in almost every human society on the planet, women stay at home and raise kids, while men do more dangerous stuff like hunting, going to work, and fighting wars. In many cases, fathers will even go to another country in order to earn a higher salary so they can take care of their family back home. That's because in evolutionary terms, fathers are more expendable than mothers, so it makes sense to give them the dangerous work.

This isn't just cultural — most women appear to have a biological urge to take care of things. This is why women who remain childless often adopt tons and tons of cats.

Things vs. People

There are 2 environments that a human being must navigate in order to survive and reproduce: the natural environment and the social environment.

Generally, men specialize in navigating the natural environment, while women specialize in navigating the social environment. Men do things, women do people.

This is why at very young ages, boys are more interested in playing with cars and toy guns, and girls are more interested in playing with dolls. 15 years later, when they go off to college, the girls are more likely to study sociology, while the boys are more likely to study computer science. Then when they enter the workforce, the girls are more likely to work in HR, while the boys are more likely to work in IT. Et cetera.

“Love Island”, a TV show popular with women, and “Monday Night Football”, a TV show popular with men.

This stems partially from dating and partially from women's and men's separate parenting roles. Women need to be good at dealing with people, because they have to evaluate potential romantic partners and because they have to comfort and support their children. Men need to be good at dealing with things, because that's how you put food on the table.

(Men don't need to be as good as women at evaluating potential romantic partners because their job is much easier. Men only care about 3 things in romantic partners: kindness, intelligence, and looks. These tend to be obvious within about 30 seconds. Women, meanwhile, have a much longer list of qualities that they need to evaluate in the men they date. That's why women are constantly trying to get to know the men they like better: they need to find out ASAP if they have a keeper, or if they should move on.)

This difference between men and women — that men are interested in things and women are interested in people — seeps into how men and women do basically everything. For example, when two men hate each other, they tend to be overtly physically aggressive. When two women hate each other, they pretend to like each other, then gossip about each other behind each other's backs.

Another consequence of this is that women tend to be more interested in getting people to like them and fitting in with their community than men.

Women have a greater incentive to be polite — that's how they protect their relationships. Men have a greater incentive to be confrontational, because they care more about things than about people. This is why, say, men have an easier time asking for a raise than women.

That's also why in almost every era of history, women have been more religious than men. (This is still true today if you consider stuff like feminism and social justice to be religions.) Fervently believing in something that's obviously not true can make you more popular with other people that believe the same thing. And for women especially, fitting in is more important than understanding the truth. So women are more likely to believe what society tells them to believe, while men are more likely to look for their own truth.

The things vs. people dynamic also extends to how men and women raise children together. Kids need 2 things to grow up: emotional support, and life lessons. Because women tend to be better with feelings and men tend to be better with reality, generally, the mother is responsible for most of the emotional support, while the father is responsible for most of the life lessons.

I could go on — there are dozens more examples — but the point is, men and women think differently, so they do things differently.

Understanding gender differences (and making the best of them)

Your first task is to accept the other gender for what they are. Women are always frustrated that men are not more like women, and men are always frustrated that women are not more like men. This is a waste of time. Instead of thinking that your way of doing things is better, understand that there's wisdom in the other way of doing things, and work to understand it.

Your second task is to learn what you can from the other gender and apply it to yourself.

A lot of men think that they become more attractive to women by being ultra masculine. This is bullshit. Women are actually attracted to men who have a healthy balance of masculinity and femininity.

This is because most things in life require a blend of masculinity and femininity — being overly masculine makes you weak and exploitable in most situations. For example, men think it's an insult to their pride to back down from a fight — but most of the time, you should back down from fights. If you never back down from fights, people can goad you into fighting them, then use it to ruin your career.

Similarly, being overly feminine makes you detached from reality. The company Bumble, run primarily by women, consistently makes the most retarded ideology-based decisions about how to run its dating app. Often, these decisions go directly against feedback they're getting from their user base. For example, they insisted that women should send the first message for years, even though the women who use Bumble have expressed over and over again that they don't want to message first.

So if you're a man who’s obsessed with Andrew Tate, try and get in touch with your feminine side. And if you're a woman who's obsessed with astrology, try and get in touch with your masculine side!

Hey! Thanks for reading.

My name's Theo, and every Monday I post an article about something that was on my mind the week before. Usually about psychology, long-term trends in the world, or the hidden underlying principles that govern society.

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