Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Women Are Sponges

This past weekend, I went with two of my brothers to a card game tournament in Las Vegas. Being the observer of humanity and gender dynamics that I am, I ended up having a few different discussions with one of my brothers about the various girls who attended the convention and played in the tournament. Initially, both my brother and I were surprised that there were as many girls as there were, given that most players of the game are men. For this reason, there were more women who were volunteering at the event as judges and program support than who attended it as players.

There were several other observations that we made in short order. All of the girls who attended the event as players had accompanied their boyfriends to the event. Hence, there were no single girls who attended the event as players. Most of the girls who played in the tournament placed in the bottom percentiles. Most of the girls played more for the enjoyment of the game than out of a strong desire for competition or victory. The overall average attractiveness of the girls at the event, both those who played and those working as event support staff was below general population average. Of course, most of those observations were fairly straight-forward and intuitive.

However, there was one interesting observation that my brother made not long after we left. Of the girls who played in the various tournaments, their competitive skill was highly correlated with their respective boyfriends' competitive skill levels. Given the other observations that we made, I would have expected all of the girls to remain very poorly competitive. However, the correlation between the skill level of the boyfriends and the skill level of their respective girlfriends was too high to be ignored.

- The one girl who was most competent and competitive at all the various game types was dating a fellow who also was a fairly skilled and experienced player.
- The girl who was the most fun and personable, but only moderately skilled was dating one of the most positive and fun fellows at the event. He was extremely friendly and relaxed, but lacked sufficient experience or competitiveness to rise above the average level of competition.
- One girl who consistently placed close to last was dating a guy who was a decent guy but a bit below average at the game.

There were also a few other girls playing in the event who also seemed to match our observation, though neither my brothers nor I interacted with them much. In any event, these observations seem to match the experiences of Alte/ButterflySquash in her post on women being empty vessels. She observed that women generally adopt opinions, interests, and mannerisms from the people around them. Our observations this past weekend not only support that observation, but extend it even further. Not only do women generally absorb opinions, interests and mannerisms from their boyfriends/husbands, but their knowledgeability and competence regarding such hobbies, interests and stances are directly correlated with the knowledgeability and competence of their men. This lends even more support to the idea that men are naturally hard-wired to be dominant leaders and that women are hard-wired to follow, learn from, and support their men.

13 comments:

  1. Agreed, you see this in paintball.

    Few single girls, or if they do show up single, one of the badboys will swiftly take her.

    The best female players date the best male players. (learning through extra coaching etc)

    The worst ones soon leave the sport or become 'field bitches' (just judge, fetch supplies, tend to players etc)

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  2. Good stuff Silas. I liked the one at traditional marriage too. Keep them coming.

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  3. It's one thing to say that women are designed to have a disposition to follow and respond to men, but quite another to say that they are empty vessels waiting to be filled by men. All people "generally adopt opinions, interests, and mannerisms from the people around them," and I thank God that a good many of my opinions have been formed by women, not least of whom is my own mother and wife.

    There is a danger in having such a strong reaction against unbibilical feminism that one's pendulum swings too far to the other side, making women to be little more than lemmings who are nothing without men.

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  4. Silas, after I read this post and thought about it for a while, I've realized a few things. Your evidence proves too much or too say it differently, your pulling a hasty generalization. The point you agreed with, "women are empty vessels" and the basic presumption that women will do whatever the man in their life does is far from proven. Your sample size is too small, also they very possibly could have liked the game before meeting their man. Not saying that necessarily was the case, just that your evidence is far from proving your proposition. Also, you seem to be implying that this can't or at least does not happen the other way around. That men don't learn big things from their woman, which I have known to happen many times, and they were not as you would term them "beta's".

    One thing you noted that I very much so believe is that bf/gf's were of similar ability and interest in the game. It's hardly surprising.

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