Women More Likely to Prefer Less Emotional Men; The Crisis of Male Suicide

When tackling feminist theory of patriarchy, we usually get told that patriarchy teaches men to be emotionally unavailable and lack empathy in order to keep our dominant power structure in place. Here's the famous feminist magazine Everyday Feminism expounding on that very concept:

"And women aren’t the only ones who suffer under this everyday patriarchy. Everyone does.Because patriarchy demands that those in power conform to a specific set of rules — ones that require the suppression of feelings, and include a lack of empathy."

When we investigate such claims from feminists, we do not find such "institutionalized" concepts, we don't have boot camps nor curriculum in academia where boys are put in specialized classes to teach them to be above women by sacrificing their emotional cognition and humanity. Sure men can judge or mock one another due to emotional sensitivity, but is that really passed on from father to son, or is it expected from men by society at large? Are men treated or perceived better by women by being emotionally available? Let's see what scientific studies say about these matters. From the University of British Columbia, professors Jessica Tracy and Alec Beall, conducted a study where women find brooding, prideful men as sexually desirable, and happy smiley men less attractive. An article from the Daily Mail reports:

        "Women find happy men significantly less sexually attractive than those                            who swagger or brood, researchers said today.

They are least attracted to smiling men, instead preferring those who looked proud and powerful, or moody and ashamed, according to a study.In contrast, men are most sexually attracted to women who look happy, and least attracted to those who appear proud and confident.

 The University Of British Columbia study, which is the first to report a significant gender difference in the attractiveness of smiles, helps explain the enduring allure of 'bad boys' and other iconic gender stereotypes.

It is also the first study to investigate the attractiveness of displays of pride and shame.Lead researcher Professor Jessica Tracy said: 'While showing a happy face is considered essential to friendly social interactions, including those involving sexual attraction - few studies have actually examined whether a smile is, in fact, attractive.'This study finds that men and women respond very differently to displays of emotion, including smiles.'

 More than 1,000 adult participants rated the sexual attractiveness of hundreds of images of the opposite sex.

These photos included universal displays of happiness (broad smiles), pride (raised heads, puffed-up chests) and shame (lowered heads, averted eyes).The researchers found that women were least attracted to smiling, happy men - in contrast to men, who were most attracted to women who looked happy. 

Overall, the researchers said, men rank women more attractive than women rank men.Study co-author Alec Beall said: 'It is important to remember that this study explored first-impressions of sexual attraction to images of the opposite sex.' We were not asking participants if they thought these targets would make a good boyfriend or wife - we wanted their gut reactions on carnal, sexual attraction.' 

Professor Tracy and Mr Beall said that other studies suggest that what people find attractive has been shaped by centuries of evolutionary and cultural forces. He said previous studies have found positive emotional traits and a nice personality to be highly desirable in a relationship partners.For example, evolutionary theories suggest females are attracted to male displays of pride because they imply status, competence and an ability to provide for a partner and offspring. 

According to Mr Beall, the pride expression accentuates typically masculine physical features, such as upper body size and muscularity. 

'Previous research has shown that these features are among the most attractive male physical characteristics, as judged by women,' he said.The researchers said more work is needed to understand the differing responses to happiness, but suggest the phenomenon can also be understood according to principles of evolutionary psychology, as well as socio-cultural gender norms."

Source: Happy guys finish last: The impact of emotion expressions on sexual attraction.


Correlated with the above traits for sexual predilection among women for less emotional men, is female preference for men with Narcissistic Personality Disorder. These men are highly dysfunctional emotionally, are prone to marital instability and infidelity, abuse and manipulation; yet despite all that, women still find these types of men alluring and reward them with relationships, families and companionship:

"Helping to explain why this association emerged, further analyses demonstrated that it was driven by all four facets of sexual narcissism—sexual exploitation, grandiose sense of sexual skill, sexual entitlement (Study 1 only), and lack of sexual empathy (husbands only). Additionally, although partner sexual narcissism was unrelated to infidelity on average, partners’ grandiose sense of sexual skill and partners’ sexual entitlement (Study 2 only) were positively associated with infidelity, and partners’ lack of sexual empathy was negatively associated with infidelity (Study 2 only)."

Source: Sexual Narcissism and Infidelity in Early Marriage



Researchers V. Tamara Montrose and Carrie Haslam of Hartpury College in England, report that narcissistic traits retain their appeal even among veterans of the dating scene, as well as those who are specifically searching for a spouse:

"The narcissistic male does not make a good partner, but even experienced females do not realize this,' they write in the journal Personality and Individual Differences. To the researchers' surprise, they found that women 'wishing to get married were more attracted to the narcissistic male personality than those not desiring marriage ' 

Their study featured 146 British women between the ages of 18 and 28. Seventy-six percent said they were looking to get married, while 24 percent did not. The women reported how many men they had been involved with romantically in past years: 52 percent said they had zero to five previous partners, while 7.5 percent reported having 21 or more. 

They were then presented with 20 statements related to narcissism and attraction, and asked to rate their agreement or disagreement with each on a one-to-five scale. These included 'Confidence in a male is more alluring than modesty;' 'Male vanity is an attractive attribute;' and 'I am attracted to men who take pleasure in being the center of attention.'"

To the researchers’ surprise, they found that women “wishing to get married were more attracted to the narcissistic male personality than those not desiring marriage.” Specifically, marriage-minded females responded much more positively to such assertions as “I am drawn to a man who displays authority” and “A man who uses manipulation to influence his success at work is attractive.”Source: Should have known better: The impact of mating experience and the desire for marriage upon attraction to the narcissistic personality

The feminist movement needs to explain how come they adamantly claiming that powerful men teach other men to be less emotional and apathetic, study after study actually find out that women are the ones opting and preferring such traits in men. This is the mixed message men have been getting from women for a long time, yet when we claim that good or nice men don't get rewarded for their efforts, they get accused of being exactly what the narcissistic men they reward; self-entitled males with a superiority complex towards women.

Men who are good fathers, husbands and who actually do their best to have a functioning family unit and contribute positively to society, are the ones getting the short end of the stick in marriages, suffering more of the divorces, child alienation and suicide rates Here's one particular study reported by Forbes how divorce and dissolution of relationships can lead men to commit suicide due to pressure to perform in a economic crisis:

"Another interesting finding is that while divorce and separation are linked to suicide risk in both sexes, divorced/separated men seem particularly vulnerable to suicidal 'ideation' (thoughts and planning) and to suicide itself.

That said, there’s still a lot of pressure on men to fill out the masculine husband role, whatever socioeconomic class one is in, and the reality is that today this classic role may be somewhat unrealistic. “There is a large and unbridgeable gap between the culturally authorised idea of ‘hegemonic masculinity’ and the reality of everyday survival for men in crisis,” write the authors. One way of taking back one’s own masculinity, they suggest, is to take one’s own life.

The reality is that there is a constellation of variables that all interplay, and can compound one another. Men of lower socioeconomic status may, for example, feel the breakdown of a relationship more, and conversely, financial problems can contribute to marital problems and pressures. When things break down for men, they really break down."

 Source: Men, Suicide and Society: Why disadvantaged men in mid-life die by suicide

And here's the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health reporting on how child alienation through bitter disputes in divorce courts and custody hearings, are also leading causes for high suicide rates in men:

Model 1 presents the age adjusted effects of sex on the risk of suicide. Divorced men were over eight times more likely to commit suicide than divorced women (RR = 8.36, 95% CI = 4.24 to16.38). After taking into account other factors that have been reported to contribute to suicide, divorced men still experienced much increased risks of suicide than divorced women. 

They were nearly 9.7 times more likely to kill themselves than comparable divorced women (RR = 9.68, 95% CI = 4.87 to 19.22). Put another way, for every divorced woman that committed suicide, over nine divorced men killed themselves. 

These results dramatise the terrible consequences of being a divorced man in America, and lead to the question: why are divorced men killing themselves? Some analysts argue that the research community has ignored a plausible explanation for the excess suicide risks experienced by divorced men. 

As Perrault³ and Farrell⁴ observe, while social, psychological, and even personal problems facing women are readily denounced, societal institutions tend to ignore or minimise male problems as evident in suicide statistics. For instance, in many jurisdictions in the US there seems to be an implicit assumption that the bond between a woman and her children is stronger than that between a man and his children.⁵  

As a consequence, in a divorce settlement, custody of children is more likely to be given to the wife. In the end, the father loses not only his marriage, but his children. The result may be anger at the court system especially in situations wherein the husband feels betrayed because it was the wife that initiated the divorce, or because the courts virtually gave away everything that was previously owned by the ex-husband or the now defunct household to the former wife. 

Events could spiral into resentment (toward the spouse and “the system”), bitterness, anxiety, and depression, reduced self esteem, and a sense of “life not worth living”. As depression and poor mental health are known markers of suicide risk, it may well be that one of the fundamental reasons for the observed association between divorce and suicide in men is the impact of post divorce (court sanctioned) “arrangements”. 

        So once again, we can clearly see another major instance of the feminist movement lying through their teeth about male emotional capabilities and how "patriarchy" is responsible for the high suicide rate among men, and not female abhorrence of good, emotional men, who are the father and husband materials, and predilection for evil men.