Rainy day vibes, y'all.

Not sure if it's actually been discussed before but I wanted to bring up a discussion about Attraction and the Apex Fallacy.

For those who are new and unfamiliar with the Apex Fallacy, it's when you judge an entire group of people based on its best members. Typically, this is done with attributes relating to abilities rather than purely physical attributes, but we'll get to that later.

For example, someone might notice that a lot of popular physical sports are dominated by black men. They then commit an Apex Fallacy by concluding that ALL black men must perform very well in physical sports. Obviously, there are a lot that aren't.

Relating that to the topic of attraction, there might be a lot of instances where you could point out a general sense of an Apex Fallacy. One seemingly common sentiment that we're all familiar with is "Where have all the good men gone?"

"What? You mean most aren't like that? Why not? What's wrong with them? Well I won't settle for less because that's just what I'm attracted to. You can't expect me to be attracted to losers."

I don't think it would be a stretch to say that there are some key attributes in mind when women make this sentiment:

  • Tall
  • Conventionally attractive
  • Financially/Socially successful
  • Caring
  • Strong
  • Assertive
  • Has leadership qualities
  • Competent
  • The ability to project any of these traits

- to name a few. I will touch on the last one as a bit of a rebuttal for the NAWALTs that I'm sure will comment.

Attraction is a fickle thing. Sometimes it's based on real, existent traits like the ones I just mentioned, and sometimes it's based on a person's mere perception of another person, whether it relates to these traits or personal conditions. I find myself attracted to people that I feel are given a bad rap. Others are treating them poorly and I may see things about them that convince me that they aren't deserving of the treatment they're getting, and more often than not, women I've met facing these situations have, at the least, turned into good friends.

Anyway, before I get too off-topic, I'd say that the list of traits being made a requirement by women demonstrates an Apex Fallacy, because there are plenty of men that don't quite possess all or even most of them in any capacity, while the last bullet point may be up for debate.

Comparing and contrasting this with men, I can't think of a lot of traits that would be universal among men aside from physical ones. Being physically attractive, open, pleasant/kind, reciprocal, mentally stable/secure, and supportive are about all that I can think of that men would ask for in a woman, and I'm unsure of whether this could be considered an Apex Fallacy or not. The real big question here as far as attraction is concerned: Can judging by physical attractiveness alone be considered an Apex Fallacy?

So how about? Is women's attraction to men contingent on Apex Fallacy? Are both? Neither?

Discuss.