Cracking the Code: This Makes a Woman Irresistible

I don’t think there’s anything more attractive to a man than a sophisticated woman who knows how to say no. Males compete for status, and the essential dimension of competition that differentiates them from women, I would say, is something like productive economic generosity.

It’s not like women aren’t productive, and it’s not like they’re not generous, but the ground rules are different. Women are looking to equalise the economic disparity that’s attendant upon differential costs for reproduction. So, men are evaluated on the basis of their potential for economic reciprocity and generosity, and that gives them status.

Women peel from the top of that hierarchy; basically, they let males compete it out on the economic front, and then women select from the top down. The higher the status a woman has, the higher the status of the mate that she can obtain. That brings up a question, which is, what gives women status? And that’s a really hard question because, first of all, we know that economic viability is not one of those things.

Male economic viability and sexual success are correlated insanely highly. It’s something like 6 or 7, crazily high—one of the most powerful single-variable relationships that you can find in all of the social sciences, far higher than the relationship between intelligence and life success, for example. But the correlation between female economic viability and sexual attractiveness is lower than zero, so it’s actually slightly negative. So, there’s a massive sexual dimorphism.

Then you ask, well, what gives female status? And one of the answers is obviously associated with beauty and reproductive capacity and sexual attractiveness; those things all tangle together extraordinarily tightly. But that’s not the only thing. So, imagine that you have an attractive girl and a variety of relatively high-status men are chasing her.

Now you might ask, well, how do they evaluate her status? They evaluate her status by her ability to say no. So, imagine a high-status person offers himself or herself to you. If you’re of lower status, you’re going to say yes right away. But one marker of higher status is, ‘Well, no, I don’t need what you’re selling.’ But what I’m selling is great. Yeah, but I have so many offers that I’m not inclined to take your offer because I have options. And it’s ‘no’ on the part of women that signals their status.

I don’t think young women know this at all because they want to know how to compete with men, let’s say, in the power game. And that’s a tough question because women are smaller, and they’re not as physically powerful, and economic prowess isn’t as attractive to them, and it doesn’t make them more viable on the mating market. So, the whole game that women are playing is way different than the game men are playing.

You may wonder, how can women level the playing field? I believe a significant part of it lies in women asserting their right to say no. This concept is gradually gaining recognition, even among those on the far left who emphasise ‘no means no.’ However, clarity on what constitutes a ‘no’ isn’t always straightforward, especially in the context of a chaotic college party.

Yet, when a woman confidently declines advances, it adds to her allure in the eyes of men. Particularly for those considering a long-term relationship, observing how a woman responds to pressure becomes crucial. If she readily agrees, especially for high-status men, it may signal that her status isn’t as elevated as presumed; she appears unable to assert her boundaries.

Conversely, when a woman firmly refuses, even to high-status men, it prompts introspection. Her ability to resist may hint at a deeper sense of self-worth and independence, qualities that intrigue men. This dynamic is echoed in female-centric pornography, where the chase and eventual consent are central themes.

It’s so interesting because the classic female pornographic story is, you know, there’s this extremely attractive, highly productive man who’s got a real capacity for aggression; he’s a pirate or a surgeon or a werewolf or a vampire or a billionaire. Those are the fundamental female pornographic tropes.

And he has women at his disposal, but this woman is shielded off from him, and they dance around each other for a long time, which essentially means that she’s saying no. And he’s finally enticed into a relationship with her where he sacrifices all, you know, his access to all other women. And then they have hot, steamy sex.

And so, you know, most of female pornography is extended foreplay, and that’s this romantic dance of no followed by, you know, a very spectacular consummation. And that certainly mirrors the optimal female reproductive pathway, obviously, because otherwise, it wouldn’t be the hottest pornographic fantasy.

I really think it’s based in reality. And so I don’t know how it is that you communicate to young women that, especially if they are of high female status, but even if they’re not, that the most potent tool they have in their armament with regard to status, with regard to being taken seriously, is their ability and willingness to say no.

If it’s the beautiful, high-status women who begin that trend, the rest of the women will follow because trends always start in the aristocracy and trend downwards. Now, okay, so here’s another thought, and this has to do with the built-in antagonism and hopefully eventual cooperation of the sexes on the sexual front.

So, women are checking out men all the time, and women have all sorts of tricks for doing that. They might be provocative, for example, because they want to test a man to see if he can control his temper. And no one likes to talk about that, but any smart woman is going to do that because she wants to find out if her partner—she wants someone who has the capacity for aggression, but she wants someone who can control it because a man will be provoked by children.

And if he can’t control his temper, then he’s going to be aggressive. And so, she has to check that out. And you don’t check that out by having a formal conversation; you check that out the same way children check out their parents, which is by harassing them and seeing what happens.

Men check women out. So maybe one of the things a man wants to do if he’s going to commit to a long-term relationship is he wants to find out, well, does this woman have what it takes to actually commit to a long-term relationship? And what that means, in part, is that he has to know that she’s capable of controlling her impulsive desires, right?

Because otherwise, she’s going to stray, and that’s actually a worse problem for men than it is for women. You can tell a woman has control over her impulses if she can say no. And the girls might ask, ‘Well, you know, I gave the guy what he wanted. Why didn’t he call me?’

And the answer is, ‘No, you gave his impulsive libido what it wanted, and that’s what you established a relationship with. But you completely sacrificed any possibility at all of being attractive to his more mature and potentially long-term productive and sophisticated self.

You make yourself attractive to that by saying, “Not on your life, Joker. You know, I’m taking myself too seriously for that, and my future, and my future children, and even our future relationship.” And I don’t think there’s anything more attractive to a man than a sophisticated woman who knows how to say no.