Moscow is full of smart sexy women and they particularly like westerners. Outside of Moscow, there are very few good economic opportunities in Russia, particularly for women. In fact, the environment they live in is rather harsh, and it has led them to some very different behavioural adaptations and psychologies. Many of them aggressively pursue marriage with westerners, and thousands of them sign up to be mail order brides as a way out of their harsh environment.

There is nothing terribly new or even unusual about women using their ‘sexuality‘ or childbearing resources in exchange for other resources to improve their position in life. In fact, males do it too sometimes. The behaviour is as old as sex itself, nor is it unique to humans, but can be seen in many species. For hundreds of years and in many societies, arranged marriages were the norm. At its most basic these arrangements allow financially wealthy males to ‘obtain’ a sexual or childbearing partner in return for assuring the economic security of the woman (as terrible as that may sound). Arranged marriages are still common today in some cultures. The primary difference here is that in previous times the woman rarely had any choice in the matter. While we often claim it offends our ‘civilized’ sensibilities, functionally, the behaviour is no different than a stay at home wife, or teenage girls getting free drinks from hopeful male suitors in a bar in New Jersey.

If it looks on the surface as if western men are doing the exploiting, that is a distorted view of the situation in Russia. For the most part these are smart, savvy women. They are making their own decisions and doing the best they can to improve a difficult situation. They are using the best tools they have available to them, and they do so with their eyes wide open.

So aside from improving the economy and insisting that all Russian men change the way they treat women, another alternative is to distance oneself morally, which does not help them at all. In any case, Russian women know that the best thing that can happen to them is lots of western men. This will not only help many of them to find a way out, but the influx of the western male perspective should improve the way they are viewed and treated. After all most western Europeans have been trained and socialized from birth to treat women quite differently. If nothing else, the presence of western male mating ‘options’ cannot help but improve their negotiating position with Russian men, and be a positive force for change in a society where attitudes are long overdue for it.

Ok, so having established the moral high ground; if you visit Moscow, or at least Russia, you will be surprised how undemanding and open-minded Moscovite women are compared to their western counterparts. Russian women, in general, are more open about sexuality, for example. ‘Ménage a trois‘ and other experimentation are relatively common. They don’t really treat sex with the same reverence we do in America. Also in Moscow, the lines between girlfriends, mistresses, and hookers, seem to get a little fuzzy at times. There are a lot of ‘part-timers’. Predictably, Russian women seem to expect less of men than western women. A little sensitivity and affection can also go a long way if you find a woman that doesn’t think of it as a weakness. Outside of Moscow, such differences are even more pronounced.

You can also have some great fun in ways that no western woman would tolerate. Take Russian paintball… You play this game with five guys and ten girls. The guys each get their own paintball gun (usually a semi-automatic) and their own uniquely coloured paint. The girls dress in bright clothes and set off into the forest five minutes ahead of the guys, each with their own paintball mask.

For those of you who don’t know the rules of hunting, if you shoot it, you can keep it.

Posted by Scott as Psychology, Sociology at 10:44 PM BST

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A man’s desire for different sexual partners, and for frequent sexual activity, is a natural, instinctive, biological drive. It has been a highly desirable and successful attribute in our species. It must also have been a great evolutionary strategy too (otherwise it wouldn’t be so prevalent). Men that did not possess a strong sex drive might typically not have passed on their genes to subsequent generations. So, what we see in the gene pool today are mostly instinctively strong sexual drives, and behaviours that have been so successful throughout man’s evolution that they are characteristic of virtually all males.

It turns out that most women do not walk around all day ready to have sex at the drop of a hat like we do. Many women are ‘not receptive’ to sexual advances most of the time and have to be switched on. So what triggers a woman’s sexual receptivity, you ask? It’s usually a combination of factors, one of the most important being male lust.

Most women are highly sensitive to desire in men. Men behave differently, or talk differently, or give off pheromones, and women can sense it. Either they feel it, smell it, or catch you looking when you shouldn’t. Probably they know it’s there because the chemistry of your attraction affects their chemistry too, part of that “woman’s intuition” thing. If you don’t think this is true, try to hide your attraction from a woman who really turns you on. It’s hard if you are around her a lot. And if she doesn’t know, her sexual receptivity can be triggered anyway, without her knowing how, or why.

That is not to say that all male lust will turn a woman on, or even that male lust is always necessary. But it can exert a powerful effect on a woman’s chemistry in combination with the right mix of other factors. Because male lust affects women’s chemistry and can help to trigger sexual receptivity, it can be one of the most important assets in a man’s seduction toolbox. This is one of the reasons why it’s a good idea for you to maintain a high sex drive.

This is why the movement in the late 80′s to implement Seduction rules on many student campuses, to deal with date rape issues were so lame. These proposed “rules of conduct” would have taken away one of the most important catalysts in female sexual chemistry and consequently male/female bonding. Most women know this at a gut level. Some women light up when guys come on to them, and seem to want lots of horny guys paying attention to them, even if they are not interested in any of them. They just enjoy being switched on, but they need the horny guys to make it happen.

It is therefore a males “job” to be horny to assist in triggering female receptivity and to initiate the possibility of sexual activity. Because the presence of a strong male sex drive is an important initial catalyst in triggering a women’s sexual receptivity, it is also important for male-female bonding and for that relationship in our species. A strong female sex drive is not needed to trigger male receptivity and is therefore less critical. So guys, cultivate a strong sex drive, it is good for your relationships too.

Posted by Scott as Sociobiology, Sociology at 8:00 PM BST

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Everyone knows that, on average, men are more ‘slutty’ and selfish, than women, right? There is a strong tendency to condemn the male sex in general, as being promiscuous, and bad. All we are talking about here is the notion that the average man has more (different) sexual partners than the average woman. Well if we define “the average number of different sexual partners” as an appropriate measure of promiscuity, this assertion is demonstrably flawed… I’ll show you.

To demonstrate why this assumption is flawed, imagine a closed world of five men and five women, and imagine that they were all ‘straight’. This is not my vision of utopia, just some simplifying assumptions to illustrate a point. If only one man has sex with only one woman, sex takes place only once in this world; and the average number of partners is 1/5 for both men and women. If two different men are with two different women then the average number of partners is 2/5 for both; three men with three women equals 3/5 for both, and so on.

OK, but we know men are sluttier, right? So let’s see what happens when men try to get more sex than women. Let’s say, for example, that one man has sex with two different women. Here, the average for men is 2/5 and the average for women is also 2/5! The same sluttiness equality between the average man and the average woman results no matter how slutty the men try to be. Furthermore, the same mathematical equality results, no matter how many of the men try to get slutty. If the men have sex many times with the same women, we still get the same result; namely male sluttiness = female sluttiness. The inescapable mathematics of this simplified fornication model lead us to the stunning conclusion that (at least in this closed world with simplifying assumptions) it is actually impossible for the average man to be more ‘slutty’ than the average woman. The mathematics applies to all situations of equal men and women regardless of whether it is five, fifty, or five billion. The simple reason for this is that for each man that has sex with a unique (different) woman there must be a unique woman that also had sex with that man. If five men have sex with the same woman, there are five normal, one-woman guys on the male side, and the female side is balanced with four virgins and a ‘slut’. But they are equal, on average!

Now let’s relax the assumption that there are equal numbers of men and women. After all, maybe women live longer, on average, and maybe there are, in fact, more women than men in the world. Let’s say in our simplified world that there are six women and five men. Now if each of the men had sex with only one woman, the average number of partners for men would be 5/5=1, but the average for women would now be 5/6<1. In this situation there could be a (small) difference in ‘sluttiness’. Now the interesting question that arises is: Do we want a world in which the men withhold sex from female number six, just to be in keeping with a less ‘slutty’ model of behaviour? Would we really want a world in which one in six women don’t get any sex, just to keep the averages! I don’t think so, but let’s ask woman number six…

Bear in mind that if there are significant differences between male and female homosexuals, then putting aside the assumption of everyone being ‘straight’ can allow some serious imbalances in sluttiness. Other than that the only way it is even possible for men to be more promiscuous than women, is if there are more women around. But if there are more women than there are men around to take care of them, Surely, it is every mans duty to take on a little ‘extra’ even if they are a little older! And they call us the selfish sex!

Posted by Scott as Philosophy, Sociology at 7:26 PM BST

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In order to understand what is really going on with this phenomenon we need to stop projecting our male perspectives onto women. Actually this apparently annoying behaviour makes perfect sense when evaluated from the point of view of a woman.

One of the reasons that women engage in this ‘teasing‘ behaviour is because of their need to attract sufficient interested males to serve as potential mate selections, or choices. The problem for a woman is that for most of human history, sex all too often, meant a large investment of her reproductive availability, time, and energy in the genes of that particular male. For this reason alone, it has always been critical for a woman to make a good choice in the first place.

Because of this biological reality many female mammals have evolved the tendency to remain sexually unreceptive without at least the availability of choices. It becomes clear that the presence of choices is important for some women to have their sexual receptivity triggered at all. Other women may be triggered by outright competition for sexual access, such as dating many men or even getting them fighting. Ever wonder why so many women like guys fighting over them? They can be sexual triggers for a woman and some of them consistently instigate fights. Even with a highly desirable mate available, lack of sufficient choice can be sufficient for some women to remain sexually unreceptive.

Since the mere physical presence of males does not, on its own, provide a choice of mates for a female, it is the presence and availability of more than one interested male that triggers receptivity. So what should a woman do if she has an interested suitor and is in this psychology? Obviously, she should draw in others to compete with him.

Another reason that women engage in ‘teasing’ behaviour is because flirting is a sexual skill that has a useful purpose. However, this skill must be practiced just like any other, even if no mating results from it.

Women don’t actually set out to tease men. It just happens that attracting many men without mating with them is a sexual strategy that women have evolved to help them make the best of their biology. This behaviour evolved because it is successful. The fact that it makes the unsuccessful suitors uncomfortable is biologically irrelevant.

Posted by Scott as Psychology, Sociobiology at 1:15 AM BST

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