Essay talk:Human mating strategies and sexual preferences

This is not a great rationalwiki article, to be honest. Some of the statements are very broadly put in a way that isn't supported by the studies linked. It leans a bit heavily into pseudoscientific presentation as a result. ikanreed You probably didn't deserve that 17:22, 22 July 2015 (UTC)
 * It is, of course, an EvoWiki port. The material seems true in broad outline, at least; we need something about the evolved differences between the psychologies of men and women that isn't merely dismissive. - Smerdis of Tlön, LOAD "*", 8, 1. 19:32, 22 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Then we need to do a hell of a lot better than this. ikanreed You probably didn't deserve that 19:41, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

What males look for: waist, Breasts, youthfulness

What females look for: Status and Resources,Intelligence

...What? Maybe we should add penis size as a criteria while we're at it. Physical preferences in females isn't even mentioned. Can't someone write a better article about this topic that goes further than clichés from old research? Or at least nuance the existing one. We should be wary of evolutionary explanations of sex difference, certainly if they're full of cliches, without taking socialization into context. Recent research has found that these 'laws of attraction' found in experiments using pictures and surveys, don't apply in real life dating situations. (Paul W. Eastwick and Eli J. Finkel.). There's been a critical review of research cited here(Terri D. Conley, Amy C. Moors, Jes L. Matsick, Ali Ziegler, Brandon A. Valentine.(2011) Women, Men, and the bedroom Methodological and Conceptual Insights That Narrow, Reframe, and Eliminate Gender Differences in Sexuality)

78.23.194.106 (talk) 18:09, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

This seems like a "Burn it to the ground" candidate
I know that Smerdis was just importing an evowiki article that suited that site better. But... there's not really a rationalwiki article in here. It leans hard to biodeterminism, and lacks the introductory material that might clarify that these are statistically measured trends not absolutes about human behavior. ikanreed You probably didn't deserve that 19:17, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

Who wrote this trash and why is it on RW?
It's just a description of the status quo from the perspective of a frustrated 20something dudebro. I could have written this, 10 years ago.

Leave the "original research" to conservapedia. &mdash; Unsigned, by: 62.159.14.31 / talk
 * It's certainly not a great article and needs context and proper, genuine criticism. The section on waist-hip ratio does run through alternative explanations and the different results of different studies, but it needs to be totally rewritten put everything in context, explain why this is being studied (good luck explaining that) and summarise what the studies show - basically most studies are low-quality and limited, and the alleged evolutionary explanations are very weak. This attempt to reduce human behaviour to numbers is classic sociobiological pseudoscience, and ties into a much longer tradition of people attempting to define the ideal human body for centuries (which ignores the role of social convention in judging attractiveness). The Wikipedia article isn't great either, but RationalWiki has the opportunity to expose the nonsense rather than take a neutral point of view. --Annanoon (talk) 11:05, 1 February 2019 (UTC)
 * It's all total nonsense. Here is an actual academic study which thinks you can measure attractiveness by showing people pictures of silhouettes and asking which is the sexiest! And that's after a run-through of how all the earlier studies are rubbish. People are paid to do this? Even Men Born Blind Prefer a Low Waist to Hip Ratio in Women, at least when sexing up mannequins. How curvy do you like your headless women? Am I the only person to see the obvious problem in these studies? --Annanoon (talk) 11:14, 1 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Hate replying a month late, but you're right.  None of the science in this article is really scientifically substantiated with the authority we're stating and it feels like a bunch of incel garbage.  But it already survived and AfD, and it's clearly not getting fixed by any of the users who wanted to keep it.  So I dunno.  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 16:04, 7 March 2019 (UTC)

I moved it arbitrarily to essayspace. Post angry comments below. 16:15, 7 March 2019 (UTC)