Type the word “Seduction” into any Search engine, and you’ll be met with a plethora of results for videos, e-books and courses, all claiming to help you “Meet that one special girl“, “Win back a lost love” or “Attract any woman“.

Much of this advice is commonsense but obvious, and should therefore be free of charge (i.e. dress smartly, be clean and smell nice), some is practical but vastly overpriced (i.e. be more confident, and go out more often), whilst some is completely absurd, and evidently aimed at extracting as much money as possible from naïve people, before they realise they’ve been cheated by a Charlatan (i.e. Psychic influence, Cosmic ordering and pretty much anything that mentions ‘Energy’).

So, maybe you’re looking for that special Seduction ‘Secret sauce‘, and are hoping to attract women. Well, I’m afraid it’s bad news my friend, you can’t attract any woman, neither can I, and anyone else who claims to be able to is a liar!

Now, you may have seen Spamvertisements claiming that you can start a successful business overnight; but you didn’t reply to them because you knew they were Multi-level marketing or a front for an illegal scam. Similarly, there’s no secret way to become a champion Sportsperson overnight; and the same argument could be levelled at all other purported Miracle cures and Get rich quick schemes.

Just think about this for a second: If there really was some ‘secret sauce‘, Multi-Billion dollar companies and top athletes wouldn’t need to invest any time or effort building up a reputation, getting in shape and clawing their way to the top of their chosen niche. Everyone could just buy whatever Magic bullet was advertised, and instantly become richer than Bill Gates and more successful than Muhammad Ali, all without a stroke of effort. It’s a delicious thought, but clearly a fantasy.

Seduction, however, is just half as bad; since it’s only women who can attract men - simply by dressing in revealing clothing and looking pretty. But, this passive approach doesn’t work for men – who need to be more active, and to manipulate the woman of their desire into choosing them as a sexual partner, via various seductive methods.

All of this has its roots in Evolutionary theory and Sociobiology, which helps to answer the bizarre paradox of why large numbers of men should find it highly arousing to look at visual images of naked women – it doesn’t matter whether these are paintings, photographs, pixels or a real person; intellectually, most men are not morons, and know that arousing images are just that – images - however, the basic male inclination is to have an especially low threshold for sexual stimulation.

Various theories have been put forward to explain this paradox, including eyesight having evolved differently in the sex responsible for hunting in hunter-gatherer societies, through simpler explanations such as seeing people having sex likely means that you too will be having sex shortly.

In other mammals, female reproductive value is revealed primarily by the presence or absence of oestrus; that is to say, by advertising ovulation. But, human females do not advertise ovulation; and thus natural selection seems to have favoured a male’s ability to “assess” reproductive value largely through visual cues.

What we know with more certainty is that because a man can potentially impregnate a female at almost no cost to himself in terms of time and energy, natural selection has favoured the basic male tendency to become sexually aroused by the sight of naked females, with the strength of arousal being proportionate to perceived female reproductive value. Thus, for a male, any random mating may pay off reproductively, and even if he fails, he has lost proportionately very little.

Human females, on the other hand, invest a substantial amount of energy and incur immensely greater risks by becoming pregnant; hence the circumstances of impregnation are extremely important to female reproductive success. If a female makes a bad choice and is inseminated by an inferior male (i.e. one whose offspring fail to survive or reproduce), she may spend months pregnant, not to mention lactating once her offspring are born, only to find that her genes have not been passed to future generations, after having expended all that time and energy.

Thus, a nubile female almost never experiences difficulties in finding willing sexual partners, and in nature, nubile females are nearly always found to be with a partner. The basic female “strategy” is therefore to obtain the best possible ‘husband’, and be fertilized by the genetically fittest available male (always, of course, taking risk into account), and to maximize the return on sexual favours bestowed.

To be sexually aroused by the sight of males would promote random intercourse, therefore undermining all of these aims, and also wasting time and energy that might be spent nurturing children, or in economically significant activities. Thus, a female’s reproductive success would be seriously compromised by a tendency to be sexually aroused by the sight of males.

A male’s desire to look at naked women, especially women he hasn’t seen before, and to seek out opportunities to do so, is part of the motivational process that maximizes male reproductive opportunities. There is no corresponding benefit for females in wanting to look at naked men; hence natural selection has not favoured female impulses to become sexually aroused by the sight of naked men or to seek out opportunities to look at them. If females tended to become sexually aroused by the sight of male genitals, men would be able to obtain sexual intercourse simply by displaying their genitals - however, the deliberate display of male genitalia to unfamiliar women is understood to be a sort of threat, whereas a similar female display is understood to be a sexual invitation.

So, why are there so many adverts claiming that men can attract any woman? The answer is simple: Low-intelligence men that no sane employer would ever hire, but who know that sex sells, reason:

I like women that have spent time in the Gym and who use make-up - therefore, women must also like men that have spent time in the Gym and who use make-up.

Thus, through their faulty logic (or possibly even though fraudulent intent in some cases), these men surmise that by selling obvious advice augmented with exaggerated claims about exercising, wearing cosmetics and spending a lot of money on clothes – their pupils will have women falling at their feet - even if these self-styled Seducers themselves have made zero effort to prove the efficacy of their expensive programmes, before promoting them to gullible and lonely adolescents on the Internet.

You might also enjoy reading:-

• Why Do Women ‘Tease’?
• Why Men Are More Visual
• The Female Mate Selection Process
• Women can smell a man’s intentions from his sweat
• Chimps trade meat for mating

Posted by Jonathan in Philosophy, Sociobiology

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