As it turns out, males keen on picking up casual sex partners ought to dispense with the romantic fluff and opt for a more caveman-like approach to courtship. In a recent study published in the journal Sex Roles, University of Kansas researchers Jeffrey Hall and Melanie Canterberry suggest that women open to engaging in casual sex are more attracted to men that employ assertive courtship strategies — strategies some may deem borderline misogynistic.
The study surveyed 363 male and female undergraduates at a mid-western American university as well as a nationwide non-college online sample of 850 volunteers. Both the students and non-college volunteers were given several measures to assess assertive courtship strategies. For example, participants were asked to rate either their reported use or attraction to strategies such as “not letting up” when a women becomes defensive, picking on a woman’s appearance or behaviour, and letting a woman know she is not in control.
Results confirmed the researchers’ prediction that males and females who both harbour more sexist attitudes and have unrestricted sociosexuality (the degree to which individuals require closeness and commitment prior to engaging in sex), were more likely to report use and reciprocation to assertive courtship strategies.
The aggressive courtship strategies explored in the study reflect popular male-oriented dating advice, namely, the bulk of Neil Strauss’s New York Times best-selling memoir, The Game. The book describes Strauss’s own training in the “art” of speed-seduction. The so-called pick-up artists who mentored Strauss advocate that upon meeting a woman, a man ought to compete with other men for her attention, tease her with back-handed compliments and minor insults, and initiate sexual contact upon successfully isolating her from her friends.
The study analyzed sexism from the perspective of ambivalent sexism theory, which claims that sexism is composed of hostile and benevolent components that reflect a deeply ambivalent relationship between men and women. Hall and Canterberry define hostile sexism as “negative attitudes toward women and an overt justification to preserve male privilege in the face of threats to patriarchal power.” So a male known to hit his wife is clearly a hostile sexist.
Benevolent sexism, on the other hand, is what most of us would euphemistically call “chivalry,” according to researchers from the Washington, D.C.-based Society for the Psychology of Women. In an article published in Psychology of Women Quarterly, they warn that women may be benevolent sexists if their expectations of men include carrying things for them, performing car maintenance, or paying for the entire bill when out on a date. Aside from claims that benevolent sexism arises fas a response to hostile sexism, there are many worries that benevolent sexism, although seemingly positive, is a threat to gender equality. A benevolent sexist man will put a woman on a pedestal in exchange for her subordination: she is wonderful and all, but must know her place. In a scenario where a woman must have sex in return for a man’s paying for dinner, both people are benevolent sexists.
Both hostile and benevolent sexism were shown to predict a positive reception to aggressive strategies by women. Although hostile sexism is undoubtedly more condemnable, benevolent sexism may play a great role in promoting aggressive courtship strategies due to its widespread social acceptance.
From a wider cultural point of view, it may not come as a shock that there are men capable of practising such backward sexual objectification. It is perhaps more counter-intuitive to think that some women find these strategies suitable, even desirable, grounds for intercourse. In the case of undergraduate males, harbouring sexist attitudes did not predict use of aggressive courtship strategies but did predict a positive reception to aggressive strategies by female undergraduates. The results were confirmed in the larger national online sample. However, in this sample it was instead found that hostile sexism was indeed predictive of male-reported assertive strategy use. Since the online sample was taken to make the results more generalizable to the population, the authors suggest that this finding may indicate that sexism as a whole is more predictive of assertive strategy use.
Despite the female reaction to aggressive courtship strategies, the results do not mean that heterosexual women must have a negative opinion of their own sex as some kind of prerequisite for finding speed-seduction pick-up cues attractive. The study was not trying to place a value judgment on the use of such tactics but instead investigated the characteristics of the initiating males and reciprocating females involved. The authors warn that one of the unfortunate implications of their study is that persistence of sexist attitudes, even subjectively positive ones, could serve to “socialize and make acceptable male sexual aggression” via the promotion of aggressive courtship strategies.
