For the Sake of This Discussion, Let's Define "arousal/attraction" threshold as: the level of attractiveness of a member of the opposite sex that is necessary to elicit an instinctual arousal in someone.

Let's define attractiveness as the objective criteria that has been observed to be correlated with attraction. For women this would be signals of fertility - classic youth, beauty, and femininity. For men let's define is as looks, status, charisma/confidence.

A simple real world example would be a 25 year old man seeing a 25 year old women in a sundress walking down the street- her glowing hair flowing, her toned legs visible. she smiles at him - for most men this would instinctually trigger the "ok, I'm attracted!" threshold. this means - the minimum "arousal/attraction". threshold has BEEN MET. For women it may be being out - and noticing a tall, dark and handsome man - who is dressed well, walking confidently - same thing happens - the minimum "arousal/attraction" threshold is met. Or perhaps it's a man of high status commanding and leading people.

This sets the one for events that may follow - as meeting this threshold is, in general necessary to see if then the person may be a suitable partner (aka dating). failure to meet the threshold indicates that it may be much, much harder for romantic feelings to develop, even if there are shared values/chemistry/common interests.

now this seems obvious, but there are certain ramifications of this - especially in the modern dating age.

First of all - men have always operated as such. however, women are becoming more and more like men - in the sense that a guy must be "fuckable" before she even considers him a viable romantic option - and when I say "fuckable" I mean "oh, he's sexy, oh he's cute" - It can't be a simple "oh, he seems nice". it has to be a resounding "hell yeah!" in the past I believe a women would get to know a man who isnt an immediate "hell yes" and gradually get closer to him through common interests and develop feelings. I think this is disspearing fast.

One big different between men and women is the vast vast majority of men fail to meet this "threshold" (women consider the average man unnattractive, and only very rarely see a man out and say "oh he's cute/hot") - it means that only a very small % of men will be considered viable dating options from the get go - even if said men have common interests/compatibility with the women. Whereas far far more women meet this threshold for men.

If you place 100 random men in front of one random women, I'd bet only an average of around 5% of those men would be considered "threshold has been met", where's far more women (maybe 25-30%) would be considered for a random man.

A man's main issue is that he likely rarely runs into a women who notices him, even if he is put together, as the bar is very very high for the "minimum threshold" for most women. this is corraborated by online dating statistics and men vocalizing the rarity that they get hit on / women liking them / compliments in real life - often going sometimes years without one.

I think this actually converges to our tribal days of non-monogomy - where only a few select men are considered attractive enough to reproduce.