How come it that, both in media and sometimes in real life, males are often seemingly more interested in females (eg always try to ask them out, are shy about it, etc) than females are in males?
In: Biology
In nature, is it not mostly the male’s job to get the females attention?
Men produce 10 times more testosterone.
Testosterone is largely responsible for sex drive.
Because one of the many gender roles of western society (and in many societies, to be fair) is that men should be the ones to make the first move. And when it comes to media, bear in mind that the vast majority of this is created by men, which means it’s written using the man’s assumptions about and experience with reality. Many men get the impression that women aren’t really interested in men until the men make moves, and that impression influences how they write female characters. If you watch something made by a woman though, you’ll often see female characters expressing plenty of interest in male characters (in many cases more than the male characters express in the women).
Because males can impregnate more than one female at a time, and females can only be impregnated by one male at a time.
This leads females in many many species to be far more selective about their mates which comes off as being less interested in sex.
it’s due to evolution. a male can impregnate many females but it’s not the other way around. what would be the point of a woman soliciting many men? almost every question you have about why people fo anything can be answered from the evolutionary viewpoint. im just on mobile right now so i didn’t want to explain more about why men chase and women choose. also the gender roles due to society is bullshit. gender roles exist because of biology, not society. in fsct, the further you go back in human history, the more entrenched those roles became. were cave women hunters? no. so why is it magically that society in modern times told them they couldn’t be soldiers? they’ve never been capable of it in human history.
Wow, a lot of wrong answers here.
The right context here is biology. Men and women have divergent reproductive strategies, one of the main reasons for this is the difference in investment (of time, energy, risk to life) when reproducing. Women have to choose carefully, a man can feasibly impregnate many women and not be involved with raising any of the offspring at all. This leads to differing approaches, need for courtship and signs of commitment.
Look up human mating strategies on Wikipedia for a start. It’s a very interesting topic to explore.
There’s birth control available now, making this less important, but in general, with other animals too, it’s about reproductive potential and risk.
A male mammal can produce a LOT more offspring than a female while also carrying non of the risk of pregnancy and birth. The female has to be pickier to make sure they produce the most “successful” offspring possible. And in social or pair-bonded species, find a partner who will actually invest into the upbringing of the kids. Biologically there is some benefit for females in cheating. Find one partner who is a good provider, but mate with a more “attractive” male if the two qualities can’t be found in one partner.
With mammals it’s pretty uniformly the female who carries the risk, and the male who has to demonstrate its fitness. In birds it varies. You can tell by who invests more energy into offspring by their looks. If the male is colorful, behaving weirdly, and often physically smaller, and the female is drab, the female picks the male and also “pays” more to raise chicks. In some species it’s the other way around and the females compete for the attention of males who then do most of the brooding.
With birth control (and abortions) humans can circumvent the biological difference, but it’s not been that long that it’s widely available (and still isn’t everywhere). Social constructs take a while to change. And how people pick partners is still instinctual.
It’s a bit of a cycle I’m my opinion. I think people act out what they see as acceptable in media in their real life as well. If you’re constantly bombarded with messages that men should be assertive and persistent and that the ideal woman is just waiting around for the right guy, but not too pushy herself, then that’s pretty powerful reinforcement for that behavior.
From an evolutionary standpoint women are the choosers, so the men have to express interest and persue. Ever see the mating rituals of other animals? Birds dance or sing, gorillas pound their chest, that sort of thing? This is that for us. Humans are complicated animals but still just animals so we have a “mating dance” just like most other species. The man demonstrates, the woman chooses, to grossly oversimplify
A mix and match of things.
First on the physiological side of things, male can still impregnate another woman while the other is pregnant. Since a woman cannot, her sexual urges usually lower or even disappear while she’s pregnant. Male don’t. Their body don’t know when they are waiting for a child in another body. So it keep its sexual activity and thus expectation high.
Next on the tradition side of things. From old times, the man was the dominant sex. It took what it wanted (here females). At a time where survival was the most important, the strongest rule. Eventually, when we stopped acting like animal and started behaving more “humanlike”, things changed, but old habits die hard. The male was still the dominant, but it no longer just “took” what it wanted. It had to go courting. Over time, the “dominant” part slowly faded away, but the fact remained that in most case, the male was the one expected to court.
Finally, let’s look on the other side. Why female were usually more shy. Simply put, most men at the time liked more meek women. Due to the simple way evolution work, this lead to a snowball. (I’ll explain the basic principle of evolution after to complete my explanation). Due to it, most male kept dominant traits, while female kept meeker traits. This has barely changed in centuries, but due to current event, this trend is likely to change and come to a more even field within the next few ones.
Now to explain the basic of evolution: When something work, it tend to get passed onto the next generation. The whole purpose of any specie is simple: Eat, live, reproduce. You’re a success if you can reproduce. As such, your traits get passed on, with a few subtle changes sometime. Since at the beginning, dominant male had an advantage, most male stayed dominant. Since at the beginning, meek female had an advantage (by not angering the guy that bring food and pleasing him) female tended to remain meek. And with the tendency for that balance to remain for centuries, meek males had a harder time finding a companion, preventing them from passing their genes, where dominant female had a hard time finding a companion, once more preventing the genes from passing.
Fortunately, since people are made from genes coming from both a male and a female, there is always a chance for a different things to happen. As a result, there always will be dominant and meek from both side being born. The balance is skewed, but self regenerating. Considering that we’re now slowly stopping these traditions, the balance is likely to come back to an equilibrium by itself.
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