What women want

And I get it. You want that to be your story, to be seen for how precious you are and treated that way. To be discovered and valued and lifted up and seen and recognized. It’s Cinderella. Women want to feel that they are marrying up, at their deserved status. Whether they are or not, they want to feel like that’s what’s happening, that they are landing a prince, that it takes a prince to match their own value.

Women have a strong prejudice for mating across and up, and they want the proof that they did just that. It makes them feel good about themselves and about their lives and the men in them. They want men to measure up. And they can get unhappy very quickly if the men don’t. It degrades and disrespects their own perceived value. Their man needs to be a prince because his proving his bona fides also serves to confirm her own. And women want to see this story be repeated and reaffirmed in their lives. That’s the key element you see repeated in most romance stories aimed at women.

For a long time, I couldn’t quite figure what it was that I was missing, probably because I’m a man. This proving process isn’t a male fantasy, it’s not a male instinct. Men marry across and down. Income and status in the hierarchy have little correlation with mate choice for men. But they matter a lot for women, whether they admit it to themselves or not. It defines how they judge potential mates. And to some degree it’s only women’s shorter biological clock that forces them to compromise and just take the best that they can get out of their available options. Otherwise they might wait a heck of a lot longer than they do.

And both sexes seem to get the message, and even seem to enjoy the process most of the time. Men try to prove that they’re princes worth accepting, and women try to prove that they’re princesses worth pursuing (not just to men, but to one another, and to themselves). But it’s not all fun and games. And sometimes the whole system breaks down.

If you don’t see men pursuing women and trying to prove themselves to them, that doesn’t mean something has improved, it means that something is broken. If men aren’t outperforming and overperforming for women, it means they aren’t valuing or being valued by women. And the fallout for both can be much greater than we would ever, in our pride, wish to admit. It leaves a void that’s hard to fill.

Humans, like all animals, have their mating rituals, their displays. The ways they advertise their desireability and compete within their sex and compete for the other sex. They have deep, endemic desires, the displays they’re watching for. Women desire to be presented with gifts and to choose from among the suitors. They take the gifts presented as a proxy for the hidden value of the person. Men take the woman’s beauty as a proxy for her hidden value as a goddess. A goddess he can adore and from which he can call forth the world, creation, the future, new life.

It’s not an unrealistic desire. How men see the women they love and desire is hard to align (realistically) with what women see in themselves (but on some level want to). They want to be the goddess, the divine virgin, the untouched fertile ground, the perfect eden, the cradle of being. And they want to be watered, seeded, impregnated with the future. To become the fulfilled mother goddess. And that’s a little absurd.

Luckily, men are a bit absurd in their feelings. The degree of beauty men see in women is a kind of madness. They see the sun rising and music erupting, they see a potential far beyond the reality. They will give anything just to touch the flame and feel the heat of it. And women want someone to see them like that, to be a goddess, a queen, in the eyes of someone who is themselves a noble and worthy lover, a young god, a prince, a future king (who will be confirmed and fulfilled in that kingship by finding a queen).

It’s silly, but I’m reminded of the music video for Dark Horse, where Katy Perry is brought a litany of gifts from suitors, who she destroys when they don’t meet her standards. It’s absurd, but it also an expression of a common form of female wish fulfillment. It’s an insane idea, but not entirely unrealistic, really. I’m sure Katy’s real life has been a bit life that. Women select. They want to select. They love selecting. The power of choice, of making the most beneficial choice that they can, affirming their own elite value, is a fundamental motivation for them in life.

To turn toward a darker corner of this phenomenon, I think this may be why abortion activism has always centered around the idea of being “pro-choice” and of control over the woman’s body and what gets done with it and made from it. It’s not just that it’s a compelling argument, it’s that it’s a specifically powerful argument for women, because it touches one of their most fundamental motivations, one so strong that it can even override their desire to protect and bear their own young, their regard for the lives of the weak and innocent. Women don’t simply love or simply want men, or even children, they want to select. They want to choose, and that includes specifically rejecting unacceptable options. Which mate, which children, by whom and how will their body be used, and under what circumstances will they allow this part of themselves to be accessed?

Abortion, the elimination of undesirable life, is the result of women’s desire to choose being taken to its furthest and most unrestrained extremes, just as the production of undesirable pairings and pregnancies (sexual assault) is often the result of men’s desire to be chosen being taken to its most overwhelming and monomaniacal extreme. It’s the point at which all else is sacrificed to this value and where we see the worst perversions and outcomes of the sexual system (for each sex respectively).

The argument that I must have this right (to steal a life, or to steal access to a life) because I have a deep fundamental need that cannot be resisted or compromised, that this is owed to me and my right to it can be asserted against another to any length, is common to both sides. There is a desire to possess (on the part of the man) and a desire to not be possessed (on the part of the woman). Or perhaps you could say that both need the same thing, the man to possess the woman and the woman to possess herself, and each chafes at the limits the demands of romance and the demands of pregnancy place on them. There is a desire by both to wield personal control over their needs and not be subject to the whims of chance. To not be compromised.

To each sex this may seem strange. Perhaps the two seem less similar than I make them out to be. But that is mostly down to the differences in motivation that make one argument seem quite compelling and sensible and the other seem strange and hard to justify. They are both fundamental needs. Men need to be chosen by women. Women need to be able to choose between men. Men want to make a successful venture and be accepted. Women want to receive successful ventures and accept only those they choose. It seems a great tragedy to each to be frustrated or restricted in their respective desires. And I wouldn’t argue that they are exactly the same. But they are equivalent. They are the reciprocal. They are keenly felt by both and keenly resented by the other. They are the matching burdens of the sexes.

To carry that kind of desperate need for a whole lifetime, as it nearly tends to be, is a great pressure for a man to labor under. It is a lifelong frustration and struggle. The constant need to prove yourself worthy of something that seems as necessary for living as air and food is its own kind of hell.

For women, their needs tends to collect around the ability to make very specific choices at very specific times. The ability to say not him, not now, not like this. And now, like this. And it’s a much more settled matter, once she has chosen. It is easier to effect the removal of a negative, allowing a positive, than maintain an endless struggle for the production of a positive. You can take your value for granted, generally, in the feminine case. The resources are there. Their value is recognized. You just need to control their distribution. But for men the question is production, and it’s success is always in doubt.

The fact that we have about half as many male ancestors as females bears this thesis out. Far more men have been lost to the ash pit of history to get us to our current genetic profusion. And that’s a condition that’s hardly unique to male humans, but rather is shared across the whole mammalian kingdom. Sexual success for males is an ongoing battle for productive capacity, demonstrating value, whereas sexual success for women is about specific, selective moments of gatekeeping to maximize advantageous choices, conserving value.

Control ans selection are the deep questions for women. They can mostly assume the stability of their value and productivity. Men have to prove theirs in competition with other men, and against the prejudices and expectations of women. Both want to be valued. For women, being able to control what they choose, what they allow, allows them to assert and affirm their value by maintaining and guarding it. They establish status by how much they can be withholding and selective.

It’s not clear, however, that women actually realize they’re doing this. It seems perfectly clear, as well as strange and even frustrating and dispiriting to many men, though. Just recently I heard my wife wondering aloud why all the women in the romantic comedies she had been watching were so mean. Almost every single one eet the male lead and treated him like dirt, often in ways that were quite unfair. Usually his only great crime was failing to show the female lead the deference she deserved at their first meeting, or some other minor crime of manners. And in return she would treat him abominably. But he would slowly win her over and prove to her that he wasn’t dirt, pursue her doggedly despite her hostile behavior, slowly prove himself and win her over, and eventually bells would ring. He would engage in grand gestures of generosity, and she would deign to tolerate him. Why, my wife wondered, were these women allowed to behave this way? And my answer was, “Because they can.” In the world of these movies, which are simply female wish fulfillment, the women can be as picky and selectively harsh as they want, and they will still be pursued at great personal cost by wonderful and perfect men. It’s porn for women.

Male fantasies also focus around an idealized vision of women who validate the value of the men by giving them exactly the kind of affirmation they want. Complete acceptance, complete availability, complete access, complete openness, complete unquestioned value of what you want to give them. Men want to give and have their gift be accepted. That’s why the mantra that fantasy women repeat to fantasy men in pornography is “give it to me, give it to me.”

Not that I’m comparing all chick flicks to pornography. But the lazier, more indulgent kinds are more clear and obvious in their exploitation of female sexual fantasies. They play, without much artifice or realism, to the fulfillment of basic desires. If you’re curious why one form of fantasy should focus so much on nakedness and penetration and orgasms and the other so much on the complex personal and social and emotional journey to that point, I would suggest reading my essay on the difference between spouses and roommates.

There is a lot to be learned about what the other sex is looking for, what they want, what their desires are seeking, in their indulgent fantasies. It’s an unvarnished window into the basic drives that we hardly like to even admit to ourselves. Women would like to be so desireable that they wouldn’t have to worry about being aggressively selective. All the best men would still chase and value them and sacrifice for them and treat them like princesses. And men would like to be so desireable that they wouldn’t even have to worry about being rejected. They could simply present themselves and all the best women would see how desireable they were and want them and welcome their attentions and treat them like a king.

Both sexes want everything for nothing. They want to get it all, the best and most of everything, without any cost or compromise to themselves. Most of these indulgent romances my wife was watching at least show the female protagonist having a change of heart and attitude. They make some effort to make the protagonists sympathetic, so we can see why they would be desired. The relationship isn’t entirely one-sided and self-indulgent, not in the long run.

On the other hand, most pornography shows the women really being pleased and fulfilled and delighted by the men. It may seem self-serving, but the men are, at least, fantasizing about being capable of pleasing someone else. But in a way that is very easy and natural and comprehensible for them and doesn’t demand anything of them other than what they already are and have and want to give.

And we still aren’t far from the fantasy of the princess. A princess can afford to be picky. She deserves a prince. Why not, then, create literal fantasies about that? You get the power of control and selection, the fulfillment and ego affirmation that brings. You adorn yourself with the divinity you long to possess. The only problem is that it’s very hard to grant that kind of insane worth to yourself without seeming like a crazy person (and possibly becoming one). It’s better to have someone else do that for you. It’s better to have someone else make you a king or queen, a goddess or a god, than yourself.

Considering how much distance there is between the sexes and how annoying it is to have to work with the reality of the other sex (instead of our fantasies) it must take a pretty big carrot to get the sexes to leave their private, segregated spaces of comfort for the discomfort, disappointments, and dependence of the other sex. Luckily for the human race, the carrot, as well as the problem, is built into the other sex. Women are insanely beautiful and desireable. Men are insanely passionate and desirous. We’re both a perfect and a perfectly bloody match for one another. We’re pleased to see that the other sex has what we want, and supremely frustrated at what the other sex does with it. Still, we’ve got this far. I think it’s a fair bet that somehow we will keep on.