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
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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