Where did the "Men only want sex and women only want attention" come from and why is it repeated so much?

I-Fail-Forward · 2021-08-25T15:42:39+00:00

It's repeated so often because it makes it easy.

It's easier to engage with a stereotype than to engage with a person, or to say that "women just want attention" to explain why a guy can't get anybody to have sex with them.

Or for a woman to say "men only want sex" to explain why they are having trouble connecting emotionally to somebody.

Plus it gives people a framework where they know the moves.

For movies and shows especially, it makes for very easy drama or comedy or what have you. Everybody recognizes the setup, so nobody has to explain the joke.

It's the same reason awkward humor persists as the main form of humor in so many shows, it's easy.

Writing real seeming relationships is hard, making it a man vs woman thing, with easy to understand rules (men want sex, women want gifts or attention or w/e) sets up a whole series of basically already written "funny" or "dramatic" scenarios.

flamingoinghome · 2021-08-25T16:28:51+00:00

Tbh, I think it's ego preservation all the way around. It's a lot easier to say "men only want sex" when a guy dumps you than to admit he just wasn't that into you. It's a lot easier to say "women just want attention" when a girl leaves you on read than to admit she's just not interested in you.

Sweeping generalizations are easier to swallow than the idea that it's personal.

TotalTravesty · 2021-08-25T14:48:00+00:00

Reductive reasoning. It’s a great way to look right most of the time while dazzling the type of people who think an entire human belief system can fit on a bumper sticker.

Throw in some hot takery designed to offend and a steadfast aversion to learning about different people and you’ve got the makings of a media “career.”

superlurkage · 2021-08-25T16:14:47+00:00

Only siths believe in absolutes

DjangoUBlackBastard · 2021-08-25T15:22:20+00:00

So:

Kevin Samuels isn't redpilled. He's in the manosphere, but not redpilled at all. Hell Kevin preaches the importance of marriage constantly he's just an old school Christian misogynist.
FnF are clowns that hate women and constantly lie so their takes are clown takes. They barely believe what they say.
I think what's more accurate is to say "when first opening a relationship with the opposite sex women are seeking attention while men seek sex". To a man all that nurturing stuff and womenly inspirational stuff comes AFTER sex. A women telling you everything is going to be alright while rubbing your head is something a woman does to demonstrate value beyond sex but it's not their primary source of value. Plenty of men would mess with women that don't display these traits. On the other end of things most women aren't going on a second date with a man that pays them no attention unless they really think that man is above their weight class. Or think of it like this - women are more likely to want a man they don't like for a relationship to be a platonic friend while men are more likely to want a woman they don't like for a relationship to be a FWB.
I'll be responding to your last sentence here. Women can easily get sex from any man they want. No matter how good you are in bed a woman can easily go buy better sex if that was the main reason she was with you or go find comparable sex from other men. Tons of men want to sleep with her. What tons of men don't want to do is spend time with her, care for her, and provide for her. Sex in my experience isn't going to keep a woman around long term, but these other things can. I have friends that on the low have talked to me about their issues in the bedroom. One that has premature ejaculation issues, one that has had women turn him down because he was too little, another that was a PIV virgin up until he was 28 (haven't spoken to him in a few years so idk about now) because he literally couldn't get it up and got too nervous. 2 of them are married and the third has one of the healthiest relationships with his GFs I've ever seen (and he always ends up leaving them in the end). All of them bring large value to their SO's lives outside of the bedroom and it's no issue. The women are happy. I don't know one man in a sexless relationship that's happy outside of the 2nd man I mentioned in the last sentence but that's a long story.

Nihi1986 · 2021-08-25T15:27:48+00:00

Because it's true, though certainly exagerated and simplified.

A man wants sex AND a connection, emotional support, someone to share the life with. Women want and like sex, of course they do. They also want many other things.

It's obvious that men and women don't want and need all this stuff in a similar degree. If women liked and wanted sex the way men do, everyone would be having lots more of sex, even the average or below average looking guys with poor social skills. The broke, the short, the fat, the loser... everyone. And they'd be way more promiscuous.

As for men needing and wanting attention and emotional support, I think they do, most of them, but it rarely makes the man less interested on the hot but toxic girl and more interested on the supportive but ugly girl.

Also, I may be wrong but I don't think the girls are so interested on casual sex and hook ups and not for the same reasons that men are. Seems they expect to use the casual sex to get a relationship or fun cool dates with the guys they fuck. They would probably hang out with them even if sex wasn't an option. The guys would have a sex session and get back to their stuff rather than spending more time with the girl, and they wouldn't hang out if sex was not an option.

ShinyBronze · 2021-08-25T17:48:07+00:00

No one is saying women don’t like sex, they just like sex with certain guys.

Men are a lot more indiscriminate with sex.

F+F and KS both say it in their own ways:

Men control access to relationships and women control access to sex.

I seriously doubt many women go out of their way to have sex with dudes. Many find themselves in the right place at the right time and go for it. Men actively seek out sex and try to find situations where they get get it.

xQueen-Bx · 2021-08-25T15:21:05+00:00

it comes from experience and observing reality

oldmanwinter_68 · 2021-08-25T16:00:13+00:00

I have found that when a woman is really into me sexually, she behaves in a pretty eager, aggressive fashion. So for example, I was walking with an LTR in the park a few weeks ago, and we started kissing, and I suggested we go back to our place and she looked at me and said she couldn't wait so we were intimate right then and there. And I've seen that happen many times, i.e. the woman is so horny that getting laid is the only thing she can think about.

I think that one difference between men and women is that women will often enter sexual relationships with men they are kind of "meh" about if he contributes in other ways, for example if the man has a steady job and can help support a family. The classic "billy beta."

The man in that relationship will often get the impression that the woman has a much lower sex drive than him. Which she does -- as far as he is concerned. And then he will be perplexed if he learns about her "wild days."

KJ1017 · 2021-08-25T16:12:43+00:00

I honestly don’t know where it comes from either.

I must be an alien I guess. Because I have no clue how men exist who want to just get a quick fuck and be gone. Am I the only one that wants a bit of attention too? Not a relationship but some attention.

JumboJetz · 2021-08-25T16:49:03+00:00

I have to wonder if the orgasm gap is a major reason women are perceived as less interested. I once on a dating site had a (plus size) woman pursue me and basically say she just wants me to get over to her place so we can have sex.

Got there and this woman is the easiest woman to make orgasm I’ve ever seen. I gave her 50 orgasms that night I feel like. She clearly has some genetic or psychological quirk that made orgasms super easy for her so she pursued casual sex more like a man would I guess.

pubgmisc · 2021-08-25T17:29:33+00:00

IMO red pill grandfather is Rollo Tomassi and his books, they all get knowledge from him. The recent drama is because these 2 other guys started saying stuff to clout chase and gain folloewrs, cuz F&F have over 10 mil a month in views, once it was like 45 mil. I think you're referring to women control sex, men do so with relationships since women date up, and men care sport fuck for forever because of the candy store analogy. The attention part is like free currency for women, and they;re saying that it should be done merit based / if she deserves it etc. , checks and balances type thing

RedPill115 · 2021-08-25T21:46:31+00:00

Where did the "Men only want sex and women only want attention" come from and why is it repeated so much?

Attractive + Prefers Relationship: Leaves dating market via long term relationship.

Unattractive: Leaves dating market because as constant rejection is very unpleasant.

Attractive + Relationship Sabotaging: Most common person in dating market. Their attractiveness means they're getting rewarded from being in the market so they stay in it, their relationship sabotaging means they never leave the market via long term relationship.

If you're reading a source of men's dating advice the most immediate obstacle is trying to avoid the women who will soak up your attention, then disappear - it's like trying to grow crops in the winter. It's just not going to work. It's not fun - and - you think you're failing because of you but really you're failing because of external factors you can't control.

Whisper · 2021-08-25T21:59:50+00:00

Both men and women want both sex and attention.

But women are the gatekeepers of sex, so they must decline it sometimes, and pretend indifference sometimes. And since men are the gatekeepers of attention, a similar principle applies.

Additionally, a result of this, men tend to be thirstier for sex, and women for attention, because they do not control the supply.

Similarly, women who do not gatekeep sex, and men who do not gatekeep attention, invite the contempt of their peers.

-saraelizabeth- · 2021-08-25T23:38:00+00:00

So this question came up on /r/AskHistorians a while ago and the answer is interesting. I'll copy and paste below. The answers below the commenter's answer I copy/pasted below in the thread are helpful, too. But basically, this should help answer your question and give a historical perspective on why this saying is, and precisely how stupid and arbitrary it is.

TLDR = men actually used to be the artistic, enlightened, sex-only-as-a-necessity "spirit" gender while women were the horny, hedonistic, sex-fiending and ravenous "body" gender, but that paradigm eventually did a complete flip-flop after the middle ages when gender roles began to change. Here's an additional short article on the progression of this swap. You can see how this characterization of men and women was particularly useful to justify why men "needed" to guide and control women, especially via marriage.

Answer by /u/mimicofmodes (link to the original):

I have a past answer on this, which I'll paste below:

In the seventeenth century, it was indeed generally understood that women were voracious sexual creatures. This was particularly true when it came to non-virgins, a trope that would actually continue through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: a woman who had been introduced to carnality by a man was supposed to be fundamentally changed, to have been transformed into someone who needed to be restrained from leaping into bed whenever a man seemed at all interested. Widows compounded the issue by having been initiated into lust and then left bereft of a man to take care of her needs.

It is very easie for him which never experienced himself that vain Pleasure, or repenting Pleasure, chuse you whether I mean the accompanying of lewd Women, but such as are exercised and experimented in that kind of Drudgery; they I say, have a continual desire and Temptation is ready at hand: Therefore stake heed at the first, suffer not thy self to be led away into lustful Folly; for it is more easie for a young Man or Maid to forbear carnal Act than it is for a Widow ...

The arraignment of lewd, idle, froward, and unconstant women, by Joseph Swetnam (1615)

But according to Aristotle, who was still considered an important natural philosopher in this period, once virgin maids reached the age of menstruation they began to have their passions raised - which is why they needed to marry, so that there would be a man lawfully allowed to service them. (Though even in his time, he made the point that teenagers might be physically able to conceive, but that it wasn't good for their bodies to give birth until closer to twenty.) A good woman would restrain herself from acting on these urges, but women as a whole were understood to feel them - and the "weakness" and "frailty" understood to be inherent to women extended to their ability to resist. And a truly depraved woman would deliberately not resist in order to seduce a man into doing what she wanted, flouting the natural order of things by taking the active and commanding role. (Unmarried adult women, it should be noted, were seen as big problems, in part because of their uncontrolled sexuality. It was generally assumed that a single woman trying to live without the authority of a man, either a parent or employer, was a prostitute.)

Another point is that early moderns understood the concept of the female orgasm, and drew conclusions from it that we'd now consider bonkers. Since women had a shorter refractory period than men and were capable of multiple orgasms, and men's physicality was considered the norm, women could be seen as needing multiple partners in order to be fully sated. "Though they be weaker vessels, yet they will overcome 2, 3 or 4 men in satisfying of their carnal appetites," Thomas Wythorne, Elizabethan musician and tutor, wrote in the sixteenth century. By contrast, a man was capable of being sated by a single woman, and indeed, was pretty much always one and done.

But we know that attitudes did change. As with a number of issues, this comes down to societal changes in the second half of the eighteenth century, changes often called the "cult of sensibility" - "sensibility" in this sense refers to emotionality, kindness, and refined feeling. In a sentimental novel of the period, it was important for both male and female characters to display how strong their emotions were by fainting and crying at every opportunity; in real life, few could really match the sensibility of a character like Richardson's Pamela, but women of genteel backgrounds were considered to have larger reserves of the quality, and to be inherently more delicate than women of the lower orders and all men. That is, weaker, but in a positive sense. This weakness, rather than targeting their moral susceptibility to temptation, affected the nerves and the body - including their physical capacity for sex. This carried the seeds for the "cult of domesticity": good women were physically weak but morally strong, and therefore suited to stay at home and tend to the well-being of her husband and children.

In light of these developments, women on the whole could not be seen as inherently carnal beings. Women whose marriages had been consummated or who had sex outside of marriage were still seen as having been awakened into a new state of sexuality, but the strong moral sense of the women who insisted on being married before engaging in sex prevented them from becoming insatiable; the women who were "ruined", on the other hand, lacked that moral sense and were generally seen as as rapacious as all women had been seen a century earlier.

(Regarding the tidbit about the cigar clubs: that's a weird, misogynistic thing for your professor to say. Women weren't seen as "the lustier sex" because they actually were begging for it constantly, but because a number of interlocking cultural factors, as discussed above; they actually had lives, professions, and hobbies of their own to occupy themselves with.)

EmptyApartmint · 2021-08-26T00:40:17+00:00

Women are historically revered as the "prettier" sex, whereas men have always been "strong". A mans testosterone turns him more animalistic, aggresive and horny. Women feel attractive when they are being paid attention to and fawned over- often times, we get turned on by the idea of us turning him on.

Physiologist21 · 2021-08-26T03:05:11+00:00

Thousands of years of data.

SaBahRub · 2021-08-25T15:06:21+00:00

It’s just defensiveness and fear

“Real” men avoid getting hurt or exploited by having no feelings at all. And if women don’t care about sex, you don’t have to consider their desires and feelings

Yay, everyone loses except for emotionless sex fiends and mercenaries

BumblingBeta · 2021-08-25T14:53:00+00:00

The sad thing is women always demand a price for sex. Men can just have sex because they like women the way they are. Women demand attention, money, dates in order to have sex.

It just goes to show that women don't want sex as much as men, if they demand all these other things need to be in place before they have the sex. I find that sad. Then we are told from women themselves "but but but we want sex just as much as men do!!!". If they did, why all the demands for money and attention before the sex even happens?

Tobinaor · 2021-08-25T14:53:33+00:00

Men are thirsty because we look/stare/gawk at women. We look before we ask.

Women’s thirst is different. They want to be looked at by men. They get looked at before getting asked.

Online proves it with how much men look at porn or stare at girls on twitch or consume onlyfans content. Even the tinder strategy of just matching anyone.

Look how women are on social media. Modeling, fitness, make up, and signing up for tinder for validation.

Does it have to be repeated or just observed?

redback-spider · 2021-08-25T18:11:27+00:00

Nobody tells that women ONLY want attention, but that they care about attention a lot more and they often are fine to get attention without sex, while a man that meets a women just to talk and not with the goal to have sex, is either mentally sick and needs therapy or is gay.

I mean that women often claim to have guy friends that they friend zone, even the existence of the friend zone proofs this statement correct. A man FIRST / PRIMARY want sex.

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Liberal_On_Guns · 2021-08-25T15:53:09+00:00

Nobody says "only"

silent36 · 2021-08-25T16:45:12+00:00

It’s true for those not invested. It’s no deeper than that. It’s like why not just swim in the pool even though there may not be sharks in the ocean. Why not take the for sure less risk?

Overall men will go for sex and women will go for attention, you could welcome any and everyone or you could be smart and find the exceptions keeping the proverbial “default” in mind

Flightlessbirbz · 2021-08-25T17:50:40+00:00

Because there’s some truth to it, but it’s a major oversimplification. I’d say men are much more interested in sex, but both sexes seek comfort/care/stability from their partner in relationships. In a casual context, it may be more accurate to say men only seek sex while women primarily are seeking validation/attention. But in an LTR context, it’s far more complex.

SteveSan82 · 2021-08-25T18:09:12+00:00

Behaivoral psychology.

Optionsmfd · 2021-08-25T18:26:23+00:00

women want time attention and resources (security)

men want sex

women need a reason to have sex... men just need a place

bluehorserunning · 2021-08-25T20:28:10+00:00

I think it's part of tradcon/terp theology.

ChibsFilipTelfordd · 2021-08-25T21:48:39+00:00

Because the edges stick out in all cases. The republicans aren't trying to oppress women and overthrow the government, the democrats aren't trying to implement communism. But the loud minority of each are, and that's what the media picks up on.

Most men aren't trying to lie and finagle for sex, most women aren't leeches and attention whores.

Yet some are each -- and the edges stick out.

Master-Edward-3 · 2021-08-26T00:30:53+00:00

There’s surely some truth to it. If you look at online dating alone bout 95% of men seek out a person to stick it to. While women seek out validation with sexualized pictures yet don’t want to be available for sexual encounters. Unless you are like Chris Brown or someone of the sort. On a tangent what gets me is even on some obvious hookup sites you have women that dress and pose provocatively yet say they don’t need any men for hooking up for sex.. or just looking for friends on hookup apps and will block any man asking for a one night stand on a website created for it because logic.. Yes of course not every last individual but enough to make it a general principal. Men would like sex usually and women do like attention,gifts and validation on appearances without putting out.

gopherish · 2021-08-26T04:38:17+00:00

It’s about validation: men get more validation from physical intimacy than emotional intimacy, and for women, vice versa. Both sexes do get validation from both, it’s just about priorities. The difference is caused by biological differences between the sexes, i.e. sperm are cheap and eggs are expensive.

Nox-FleuretXIII · 2021-08-26T08:29:26+00:00

Men sleep with women they dont wanna hang out with.

I think the attention part is wrong its more about women wanting someone to care for them and ergo women are willing to be together with someone they dont really wanna sleep with.

manfrom-nantucket · 2021-08-26T17:29:07+00:00

Where did this come from? I'd say butt-hurt men and women who were bitter about being dumped.

RedPill115 · 2021-08-25T20:08:43+00:00

To me, if a man says this he's just letting everybody know that he's bad in bed and no woman actually values him enough to do anything more than just sleep with him once.

Red Pill's Pre-Selection Theory confirmed.

Pre-selection: the idea that women feel attracted to men they think are wanted by other women.

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