The Economist reports this week rather mischievously:

The battle of the sexes

Face off

A disease-free society helps effeminate men attract women

IT IS not just a sense of fairness that seems to be calibrated to social circumstances (see article). Mating preferences, too, vary with a society’s level of economic development. That, at least, is the conclusion of a study by Ben Jones and Lisa DeBruine of Aberdeen University, in Scotland, published this week in the Proceedings of the Royal Society.

Dr Jones and Dr DeBruine, themselves a married couple, examined what might be called the Deianira paradox. Hercules, demigod and paragon of masculinity in the ancient world, was indirectly done for by his own sexual prowess—his jealous wife, Deianira, accidentally poisoned him with a potion she thought would render him eternally faithful. Deianira’s predicament is a woman’s ultimate dilemma. In a man, the craggy physical characteristics associated with masculinity often indicate a strong immune system and thus a likelihood of his producing healthier offspring than his softer-featured confrères will. But such men are also more promiscuous and do not care as much about long-term relationships, leaving women to raise their kids alone.

Nowadays, sound parenting is often more important to the viability of a man’s offspring than Herculean strength. That, some researchers suspect, may be changing the physical traits that women look for in a mate, at least in some societies. A study carried out in 2004, for example, discovered that women in rural Jamaica found manly types more desirable than did women in Britain, which led to questions about whether those preferences were arbitrary or whether women in different parts of the world might be adapting to circumstances that place different emphasis on manliness in the competitive calculus.

Dr Jones and Dr DeBruine therefore looked to see if there is an inverse relationship between women’s preference for masculine features and national health. Sure enough, they found one. In environments where disease is rampant and the child-mortality rate is high, women prefer masculine men. In places like America and Britain, where knowing how to analyse health-care plans is more important than fighting off infection, effeminate men are just as competitive. [...]

These results echo earlier research by Dr DeBruine’s thesis adviser, evolutionary biologist Bobbi Low. She found that polygamy is more common in societies that have more disease. In those societies, a modern Hercules can have his way because women prefer to share him rather than have a wimp to themselves. Healthy living, though, seems to have tipped the balance towards Deianira.

The cited paper's abstract does not use the term "effeminate" and neither does The Guardian's report on the topic (although it occurs in one reader's comment).

Living in a district that is well supplied with effeminate-looking men and masculine-looking women I especially noticed the term.

A separate article in The Economist report a contra finding to the research:

Homosexuality in China

Collateral damage

Neither comrades nor spouses

“THERE are three ways of being an unfilial son,” argued Mencius, an ancient Confucian philosopher. “The most serious is to have no heir.” The desire for male descendants has had many baleful consequences in China, and in recent years one that used to be hidden has come to light. Millions upon millions of women are trapped in loveless and often miserable marriages to homosexual men. Thanks to the internet their cries for help have been heard widely enough in mainstream culture to earn their plight a commonly accepted abbreviation. They are known as “tongqi”, combing the words “tongzhi”, or comrade, Chinese slang for “gay”, with “qizi”, meaning “wife” in Mandarin.

It is estimated that 15-20% of gay men in America marry heterosexual women. But Liu Dalin, a pioneering sexologist now retired from the University of Shanghai, has put the share in China at 90%. If so, the number of tongqi in China may be as high as 25m. Li Yinhe, a sociologist at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, explains this in almost the same terms as Mencius: “The name for a family without descendants is juehu, which means ‘a house that is severed’. That is considered the biggest tragedy and causes huge pain.”

But so do many tongqi unions. Mrs Li explains why she thinks a woman should never marry a gay man: “Their husbands don’t want to look them in the eyes. They’re not willing to get close to them or touch their bodies. This is a huge blow to a woman’s sense of self-worth.”

He Xiaopei runs a Beijing-based tongqi support group, called Pink Space. She says some tongqi have sunk into severe depression because of their husbands’ refusal or inability to have sex with them. Tongqi brides typically have little sexual experience before marriage, and little knowledge of homosexuality. Once they have discovered their husband’s sexuality and accepted that he cannot change, they often feel angry and betrayed. [...]

That does not invalidate the findings of Jones and DeBruine, even though the Chinese health system is, overall, less than first class. As in all sociological research, confounding factors may produce contrary results in a particular case. The surplus of new-born male children over females reported here in 2002 as 116.9 males to 100 females may, in an odd way, do something to ameliorate the problem. It should reduce the pressure for "confirmed bachelors" to take a wife.

The Aberdeen University Face Research Lab is here and runs online experiments that web visitors can try.

"It should reduce the pressure for "confirmed bachelors" to take a wife."


That's the optimistic view. But The Economist, in its gendercide piece, was far more pessimistic, thinking that this would simply raise the level of pressure on men to marry and was gloomily pointing out that unmarried young males are known to be trouble-makers...

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I saw a theoretical possibility for gay men to share apartments - reducing the social pressure on them to become married to women. But I admit that that is armchair speculation (even though my chair has no arms).

Effeminate guys are sexy, that's all.

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Many girls would think Daniel Radcliffe looks sexy and I suppose some boys would too. Considering that the British health system is rather better than the US, I would imagine that American girls would prefer Clint Eastwood, although there are probably also American bears who think he's a hunk:


Here's Daniel:


Am I wrong or am I right?

Originally Posted by roadkill

Many girls would think Daniel Radcliffe looks sexy and I suppose some boys would too. Considering that the British health system is rather better than the US, I would imagine that American girls would prefer Clint Eastwood, although there are probably also American bears who think he's a hunk: YouTube- Sudden Impact - "Go Ahead. Make My Day" Here's Daniel: YouTube- daniel radcliffe - equus Am I wrong or am I right?

i don't think daniel looks particularly effeminate there, just adolescent.

this is more effeminate i think;


a choice sampling of the lyrics:

do i attract you?

i guess i'm a little bit shy!

why don't you like me?

i could be anything you like

why don't you like me
why don't you like me

should i bend over?

ooooooo!

all i'm saying about this one is that japanese healthcare must be kick-ass.

There's been a backlash recently in Japanese fashion against BL/visual kei/host looking guys and in favour of Wolverine types, but I think it's still a minority thing and not at all mainstream.

Personally I can sum up the problem with the "Hercules" archetype in three words and without recourse to any dodgy evolutionary psychology: trying too hard.

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PS... DBSK are Korean - I know they all look alike

Actually, now you come to mention it, the same stuff more or less is sexy in Korea as in Japan - a few years back when the first SK soaps were imported Chinese girls got really into Korean stars; now Japanese films are getting more popular the Japanese type is seen as sexy (Cool Brother was seen as Japanese-looking), but there's still the slight WWII issue and the fact that state tv has been producing anti-Japanese propaganda since about forever (anti-SK too, but less of it and mostly just trying to claim that they're poor and unhappy since the split, they've given up on it now). Chinese guys tend to look less effeminate than Koreans or Japanese. Anyway, this is a roundabout way of saying that Chinese healthcare is terrible but they're still totally into girly-looking guys.

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Bitten by the female gaze

I wanted to hate Twilight, but it subverted its weak source material and provided a rare vision of female desire

o Bidisha
o guardian.co.uk, Monday 19 January 2009 12.15 GMT

Like all good vampire victims, I grappled with my temptations before succumbing. But I'm big enough to admit it: I went to see Twilight at the cinema. I arrived ready-loaded with disdain, because the original book series by Stephenie Meyer is so revoltingly sexist: 100% passive boy-worshipping girl in thrall to abusive immortal guy. A perky introduction to battered woman syndrome for teenagers.

Imagine my surprise when director Catherine Hardwicke sliced through Meyer's female masochist poison and produced a defiant articulation of the female gaze and female desire. The hot vampire hero, played by Robert Pattinson, lurks, slim and muscly, pale and defined, wearing makeup, lusciously coiffed, looking exactly like … a girl. An actual girl. A tough, cool, sexy, androgynous girl. Heroine Bella simply stares at him, mouth open. For the whole film, he is the object, she the boyish beholder, the desirer, the wanter, the one who says, "You're beautiful". And upon seeing him for the first time, the entire cinema gave a groan of longing.

Hardwicke's film has many things to recommend it: a beautiful sensitivity to landscape, a lot of humorous teen awkwardness, smouldering high-burn chemistry between the leads, a neat'n'perky script. But it is also a very rare instance in which a major work is constructed entirely from the perspective of a female watcher. The depiction of the central romance confirmed something I've thought for a long time: that heterosexual girls find androgyny attractive, that this is one of the unique, specific secrets of female sexuality, little heard of because culture and society are devoted to male, not female desire. That machismo is something men cultivate for the delight of other men, not women.

There's the commonness of a teenage girl having a girl crush (thanks, Katy Perry, fore making that a pop-cultural talking point). There's the massive straight female following of lesbian drama The L Word – in particular the not-quite-butch, definitely-not-femme character of Shane, played by Katherine Moennig. There are the high-culture testaments of thinkers like Camille Paglia in her treatise Sexual Personae and Germaine Greer in The Boy and The Whole Woman, who note the feminine beauty of the young male pop stars teenage girls go crazy about and argue that girlish boyhood (and boyish girlhood) creates a space for specifically female desire. Shakespeare toys obsessively with the dramatic frisson of youthful androgyny, gendered transgression and its subsequent confusions of desire: in Twelfth Night, Olivia falls for Viola-as-Cesario. And it is well known that the housewives' choice is usually a nice, comely young man.

Why the female gaze should be so difficult for "people" to deal with, why so little in art and culture and politics and society are seen from the position of women, I have no idea. Of those women artists who do articulate it I can think of only Catherine Breillat, Claire Denis, Kathryn Bigelow, the artists Elizabeth Peyton and Sam Taylor-Wood, Nan Goldin's doomed boys. I think of Karyn Kusawa filming Michelle Rodriguez's smouldering eyes in Girlfight, Kimberley Pierce shooting Chloe Sevingy falling in love with Hilary Swank in Boys Don't Cry. Mary Harron showing us Patrick Bateman's full beauty routine in American Psycho.

Twilight the film has been a massive success, but its audience is dismissed as fangirls, groupies, teenyboppers, airheads. It is sneered at by the same critics who misogynistically savaged Sex and the City and Mamma Mia, two other films made for women, with such blatant transparency. Strange that the belittling should be so vociferous; we women are the biggest group in the world, yet our viewpoint is ridiculed and denied, our testimony ignored. But that's the way it goes. The studios will use Twilight's profits to fund more films in which there are no decent roles for women, no women in major positions behind the scenes, no women directors. That's happened with Twilight's sequel: Hardwicke has been sacked and replaced by the guy who made The Golden Compass. The female gaze has been blinded yet again.

Bidisha: I wanted to hate Twilight, but it was a rare film about the female gaze | Film | guardian.co.uk