Let's Stop Oversimplifying Attraction
No, dating isn't a "market" and our thinking of it s as such is poisoning the discourse
Numbers can be deceptive.
In our hyper-Apollonian culture here in America, we tend to forget that scientific data is nothing more than measurements. Measurements can be flawed. Measurements can apply to us or not apply to us as individuals. Measurements can be misinterpreted or poorly interpreted, and they can be misconstrued by people with both good and bad intentions.
Recently, YouTube’s algorithm tumbled me down the rabbit hole of right-wing rage, dating gurus, and Evangelical end-of-the-world predictions. Don’t ask me why.
I use YouTube to catch up on sports news and maybe to listen to music I can’t find on Apple Music. Still, somehow, I keep getting pushed to the crazier, more eccentric sides of the platform. After reading The Chaos Machine: The Inside Story of How Social Media Rewired Our Minds and Our World by Max Fisher, I now know this is intentional.
I stumbled upon this video titled Chris Williamson: Why Men & Women Are Giving Up On Love. Making lemonade out of life’s lemons, I figured, “Since I’m here, I might as well dig in and see what I can find to write about.”
This video is decidedly not in any of the aforementioned categories, but I know I only landed on it because the algorithmic gods have decided to reroute my digital fate like Google Maps trying to find a newly opened nightclub in 2010.
The interview itself isn’t that bad. I even endorse a few of the things he said. He says that the solution to our current dating woes is NOT to roll back women's rights and women’s education. I wholeheartedly agree. But a lot of what he said was a hodgepodge of bogus hypotheses, exaggerated claims, and sexism masquerading as science.
Let’s discuss this video, and we’ll debunk some bullshit about dating preferences and height along the way.
Narrative Oversimplification
I found myself piqued when Chris repeated a ubiquitous oversimplification of dating and love. The gist goes something like this:
Women have reached newfound heights in socioeconomic status, they’re getting college degrees at higher rates than men, they’re entering the workforce and are making something of themselves professionally in ways that men are not, and now, men feel like women’s standards are too high and women feel like there are no good men while they chase the few “high value” winners at the top. Men are left out to dry. Women decide to go it alone and are left unfulfilled. Everyone except a few winds up unhappy.
You’ve probably heard this before. It’s all over contemporary men’s discourse. I criticized Jordan Peterson for touting these same tropes, though Chris Williamson and Jordan Peterson are qualitatively different lads.
Williamson says we need more empathy between the sexes, a message I wholly endorse, even if his description of the modern dating climate is incomplete and deeply flawed.
Peterson says we need to figure out a way to “tilt the society” so that men “at the bottom” get “access” to women, just like those at the top have (“access” is such a creepy word). For Peterson, the best method to achieve this goal is socially enforced monogamy (even though socially enforced monogamy is technically what we already have).
That women are reaching newfound heights in socioeconomic status is indisputable, and it’s been substantiated in the data we see coming out of Pew Research and other respectable organizations time and time again. Women are moving up in the world, this much is true. But then things get a bit murky. Like Peterson, Williamson makes a lot of brazen and unfounded assumptions.
He says women’s socioeconomic rise causes the “tall girl problem” (his words, not mine). Because women want to date a man who’s as tall as them or taller, so says Chris, a woman who’s six feet tall struggles to get a date because there are so few men who are taller than they are.