All over the greater diaspora, Aunties bemoan that desi children are picky. How will they ever be satisfied? How will they ever settle down and start popping out the requisite grandkids?
Aunties can sleep better at night now that SCIENCE is on the job. Examining peoples’ behavior in online dating settings (which is equivalent to looking at biodata), they’ve noticed a few clear patterns:
Men are easy – they are generally interested in hotness above all. 
Women are choosier, but it turns out their preferences are fungible. This is good news for aunties because it gives them a metric with which to translate different suitor’s attributes to a common scale, allowing them to rank apples and oranges. They can tell, for example, whether an average woman (in this study) is likely to prefer the not quite as handsome, shorter i-banker or the more gorgeous, slightly taller, high school English teacher.
What is this common scale? Money. According to these researchers, women will forgive men’s flaws if (gasp) they earn more.
Consider looks. A guy can compensate for ordinary looks with more moola, which tells us what he has to reveal in his biodata if he wants to be a playa:
Suppose you’re an ordinary-looking guy whose online picture is ranked around the median in attractiveness… And suppose you’d like to be as successful with women as a guy whose picture is ranked in the top tenth. Then you’d need to make $143,000 more than him. If your picture is ranked in the bottom tenth, you’d need to make $186,000 more than him. [Link]
Cash also acts like elevator shoes for our shorter brothers:
… a 5-foot-0 guy would need to make $325,000 more than a 6-foot-0 man to be as successful in the online dating market. [Link]
Race matters too. Generally speaking, men were more willing to date somebody of a different race than women, with the exception of Asian women who preferred White men over others. (3/4ths of Asian-white marriages have Asian women and white men [Link] )
For equal success with an Asian woman, an African-American needs no additional income; a white man needs $24,000 less than average; a Hispanic man needs $28,000 more than average. [Link]
It’s not clear whether brown women act like their other Asian counterparts – any thoughts?
Lastly, if you want to get around these sorts of hurdles, skip the biodata and move straight to cha:
… people who are terribly picky in choosing partners online will relax their standards if they spend just three or minutes talking to someone at a speed dating session. [Link]
There you go. Now that science has helped Aunties, maybe it will come up for a way for the rest of us to be able to evade them. Oh yeah, it’s called caller ID 
In case you’re interested, here is the academic paper in question
.
Related posts: Speed kills (part 1), Speed kills (part 2)
285 BNB,
That is not surprising, since old stories get reworked in many ways including in their avatars as jokes.
Here is another innovation.
Single guy outsources to find dates
HMF, Amitabh was talking specifically about South Asian manifestations of patriarchy, and he mentioned enjoying patriarchal practices that benefit guys, not women, so I don’t think chivalry is what he was talking about.
Amitabh, if you had a daughter like I do, then you would understand why patriachal attitudes are something you would not want her to have to deal with.
You’re probably right, I’m not sure what would be considered a mild form of South Asian patriarchy, however, chivalry is a mild form of patriarchy, as the word and concept is rooted in horses, warriors, knights, etc.. all epithets of men.
I’ve been socialized into doing that regardless of gender, it was the feminist solution 😉
haha 🙂
I used to do all that giving up my seat for a grl stuff. then I though. if women are equal, I should not do this. They get equal benefits, and equal work. they should stand on the train like the boys. completely equal…If a grl questions that, ill just ask them if womens lib happened. Im all for equality, but it should be both ways.
P
It’s not your height that’s working against you, my Friend.
I actually do really well in person. i was just cribbing about online filters…no real complains about real life. im not that much of a d!ck in reality. i have just been mentally throwing around the idea. not sure why womens lib dont work both ways. just dont make sense to me. pl keep it civil.
…and pl dont insult me then call me your friend.
Right. It’s your need to make sense.
funny…
Well, I don’t give up my chair for women unless they’re elderly or pregnant, and then I do the same for men too.
BTW, OMFG We made it 300+ comments without a single flame war breaking out, despite the whole gender war aspect of this.
I don’t want to jinx this, but have we reached a new era of civility on Sepia Mutiny? Wow.
I know a couple of guys who are unhappy in there marriages but won’t divorce their first wives for this reason. In all of these cases the first wife married the guy before he was in the $$$. Plus, the guys didn’t have a pre-nup.
Somebody did a study about how not even lawyers get prenups, even though they know all the arguments for them. When it comes to marriage, they want to shut their eyes and say “It wont happen to me!”
I’d like to believe they do this for all women not because there is some deep seeded belief that women are weak but they have those kind of manners. And I appreciate it even if they know I’m quite capable of it. My mother always told me ‘marry a man who would treat you better than anyone else’ however I actually rather marry a man who treats everyone well and is good and kind in his actions towards everyone not just me.
Oh I don’t think that they are mutually exclusively completely but some men balance it far better than others in terms of where they choose to be employ this behavior and where they choose to let me pay the bill so to speak. Chickie said it best below…
Actually honestly I give up my seat to anyone that looks like they need it, young old man woman anyone. Frankly it’s a damn hour and I’m young it’s not going to kill me to stand. I’m shocked at how many people are just pure a**holes (women as well) to pregnant women or people with children.
Oh My Gawwwwwd. Ennis.. DON’T JINX.. Enjoy the discussion…
SHHHHH!
I so believe that. My husband was vehemently pro-pre-nup and argued like a banshee in his contracts class, of course this was before he met me and we eloped. I am also pro-pre-nup for all of my friends.
one of the most sad moments i saw while riding the train in ATL… a few teenagers were cursing up a storm..and a small kid, around 5 yrs old, was sitting behind them… one of the elderly ladies told the guys to keep it down, since there was a kid nearby…
it led to a heated argument.. and one of the teenagers slapping an elderly female… i was horrified… just shocked…
a 15 year old slapping a 60+ old lady? that was true
chivalryaholeness.It’s because a flame war would’ve affected the bet!
Sriram, you have to make bets at the start of each one of ANNA’s posts, then you can keep away the flames 🙂
im not a v!olent man, but i might make an exception for such a kid…
I agree with you. I would NEVER expect a guy to give up his seat for me unless I was pregnant or incapable of standing for some reason, and I wouldn’t take it if it was offered.
…brown?
pregnant, sick, handicapped, old different. in the case of sick, handicapped, or old, i would give up the seat for a guy too. pregnant doesnt apply (if i remember my college pre-med classes correctly).
P
i dont get it.
ennis, i can’t let this pass by unnoticed :).
Puliogre in da USA, I’m certain no woman(grl) is going to ask you why you haven’t given up your seat for her, yet you’re ready with a retort about women’s lib, as though things really were equal between the sexes. And it seems your effort in the equality movement is to give up offering your seat to a lady.
And when I wrote “my Friend”, I was meaning it respectfully. My apologies for the offense it has caused.
good one.
youd be surprised. people behave funny. some grls act like they have a god given right to have all the patronizing benefits of a patriarchy. i.e. the nice perks. and besides, this is more a thought experience than recurring practical social situation.
I cant correct broad social injustices. I can however behave in an internally consistant fashon with my thoughts. My effort in womens lib isnt JUST to give up offering seat. It is on the other side as well. treat women with respect, as my equal in every way. dont discriminate against a grl. when people assume that a grl job candidate isnt qualified (and then point to an equal candidate who is a boy as good), I preffer to stand against such injustices. I believe that laws/employment/achievements are more or less gender neutral. anyone can do anything with hard work. In line with this philosophy, i dont think i should be giving up the seat because it just seems patronizing. sort of like a grl is a wilting willow that cant stand. and the guy is stronger so should stand. I just dont think thats true. sorry if you dont like that attitude. this kind of filters into my love life as well. i want a truly equal partner. i tend to be attracted to grls who are about as smart/successfull as i am (and hope they are looking 4 same thing in a b0y).
Somebody did a study about how not even lawyers get prenups, even though they know all the arguments for them. When it comes to marriage, they want to shut their eyes and say “It wont happen to me!”
Interesting. I’d be curious to see what the age breakdown of the lawyers sample was. Lawyers fresh out of law school just don’t have enough bank to justify a pre-nup, IMO. Now, a long time litigation partner at one of those fancy BigLaw firms on his third marriage? He is sooooo getting a pre-nup.
the idea of a pre-nip scares me. its like planning for a divorce before the wedding starts. although my mom has advised me to get one if i ever get married. scary to hear my mom say that.
I hear ya JOAT. I don’t even ride the bus with my kids here in SF. When I was pregnant I usually got a seat after some perfectly healthy person sitting down glanced over and saw me sitting on the floor… Well, before I stopped taking the bus.
Yah, I’d give up my seat for a pregnant man too! 😛 Y’all know ya couldn’t handle it! J/K
the idea of a pre-nip scares me. its like planning for a divorce before the wedding starts
I understand that, and that’s actually why we didn’t bother with pre-nups when we got married (and to be fair, we didn’t really have any assets back then either).
However, I think it’s just a matter of good planning. I mean, people have wills drawn up all the time, and that is basically planning for death while you’re still alive.
death is inevitable. divorce is not.
It’s true that death is inevitable, but most people don’t expect to die at 40, more like 80. Does that mean it’s a good idea to wait till you’re 50 to make up a will? Of course not. It’s just good planning to have a will drafted when you’re say, 30, and have it revised every few years, as your circumstances change.
good point. i havent even thought of that…
ugh don’t even get me started on those international dating website…most are geared toward divorced middle aged white men who want “unliberated brides.”
I find the idea of a prenup disturbing, good planning or not. It would have been a dealbreaker if my husband wanted one.
True…a girl I knew in med school once said she would never date a male friend of ours, because when he went to pick up his then girlfriend, he honked his horn outside her house, and she wanted him to ring the doorbell and escort her to the car. My then boyfriend, now husband did the same thing and it never bothered me. I sometimes wish he would open the car door for me, but I know it’s absurd for me to want that and yet want to be “equal” so it’s fine with me that he doesn’t usually do that. Another girl I knew, also in med school, held a firm belief that women shouldn’t handle money in public so expected her date to always pay. It surprised me that these women who were clearly driven and successful felt that way. You can’t control people’s expectations, but you can control who you marry and fortunately for you Puliogre there are women who don’t care two hoots for chivalry as long as you’re nice.
Why? I mean you buy health insurance against catastrophic health calamities, you don’t just rely upon clean living and exercise, right? Sometimes things go wrong in a marriage, despite your best efforts. Don’t you want that possible situation to have as little legal messiness as possible?
I like to think that we’d be fair and split our assets fifty-fifty if that happened. I just find it personally disturbing–I don’t care if other people do it. It’s not for me. I wouldn’t marry someone I couldn’t count on to be fair in the case of a divorce.
The problem is that the success or failure of a marriage is not at all like the possibility of a catastrophic health calamity. Yes, clean living and exercise will improve your chances of living a full, healthy life, but they are no guarantee. On the other hand, the success or failure of a marriage is generally completely in the hands of the two people involved.
As such, it is important for each person to take the time to get to know each other well enough to ensure that marrying the other person is the right thing to do. If your idea of marriage is a commitment for life, you should be careful before making that commitment, and you should ensure that you live up to it. As such, if you believe marriage to be this sort of commitment, the idea of a prenuptial agreement goes entirely against that and would only serve to undermine the trust between the two partners.
In any case, for many young couples there probably isn’t much of a need for a prenuptial agreement. For an nth marriage that involves children from previous marriages and each partner has a lot of assets, then a prenuptial may make more sense.
The “comforting” parts of patriarchy are the extremely superficial ones, like men opening doors and carrying your bags and so on. These are nice gestures that shouldn’t be limited to male-female, but that we should all do for fellow humans. While some women might find the benefits of patriarchy comforting, (and I know that’s true for many women who were brought up to think they’d marry a well-off guy and he’d provide for them and if they ever wanted to work it would be purely optional, for their entertainment and not to contribute to the family income) I find the cost too high.
All that “taking care of” comes at the price of respecting your independence, the right to make your own decisions, male family members often making the most minor decisions for you without asking, feeling free to ask you to make their cups of tea and fetch and carry for them, and more importantly, laying down where you may and may not go, whether you can ask your parents to pay for a postgrad degree or expect a share of the inheritance, judging you for relationships with the opposite sex that they’d turn a blind eye to with male children, and generally judging you more harshly and critically on everything from appearance to life decisions while indulging adored sons, expecting you to be primarily responsible for home and children even if you have a full-time job and generally defer to your father, husband and brothers and be more willing to “adjust” or give up what you want in favour of males. It’s a high price to pay for getting doors opened, isn’t it? If patriarchy were really so fine and dandy, you wouldn’t hear so many objections to it.
That isn’t necessarily true. Especially in the case of families where lots of money is involved. I say a pre-nup should be automatic for all weddings, make that the default. Then sometime during the marriage, they can sign an agreement just called a “nup” where if they get divorced, half the assets are moved, or something like that.
See, if what we call “pre nup” is automatic, it wouldn’t be called anything, it wouldn’t have a special name assigned to it, there would be no awkwardness associated with it, it would just be common law. The way I see it, if either party has no fear, and no malintention from the beginning, they’d have no objection. The document would be moot in the first place.
Any woman who would object to signing it, is basically saying, “I don’t trust you”, it’s not the othe way around
Somebody did a study about how not even lawyers get prenups, even though they know all the arguments for them. When it comes to marriage, they want to shut their eyes and say “It wont happen to me!”
They are absolute idiots or they are pretty sure that their spouses will make more money than them.
In the arena of relationships women hold the cards. One night stands: chemistry, pure animal attraction. But in the case of long term relationships it will be the women who sets the course and a man paying the bills. What do I mean by paying the bills? Well children. Women who want to have and care for children(s) have to make significant career sacrifices, so if the couple’s standard of living is to remain stable the man has to make an appropriate high income for the years when the children are very young. Women are not dumb they marry for the money to insure this..then again if they wish to marry desi guys its cool..most desi guys are paid. Its just the ones who are not…and then are able to achieve who get a sense of the duality. I know Bengali Chick and some others have written of finding love early in life and that is a rare and wonderful thing…but for those who may not be as lucky a more practical approach usually suffices 🙁 for chemical attraction.
In regards to prenups: I absolutely would want one, have no idea how one could actually bring it up though. I’m sure it would be a deal-breaker for most women. If you’re a divorcee looking to get married for the 2nd time, then I don’t think anyone, including your prospective bride, could reasonably object.
As for the patriarchy issue, these are examples that routinely occur in my family (both immediate and extended) as well as the circle of desi friends that I grew up with. Note, these are not things I would expect women to be nostalgic about, in fact I could understand why they would hate them, but they are things that seem to work well for men (including me). Just off the top of my head:
1)When the whole clan gets together, the men usually tend to sit around while the women (most of them educated professionals) pretty much do most of the work related to cooking, setting the table, getting the food ready, cleaning up afterwards, etc. I often do help out with setting up and clean-up, but just as likely you’ll see me sitting around with the rest of the guys (some of my male cousins do help out too but it’s always the women doing the bulk of it). Usually the men eat first too though there is some overlap.
2)While there is respect for all elders, regardless of gender, there is more respect and a different kind of respect for older males.
3)The whole concept that the woman is joining her husband’s family after marriage and not the other way around seems to be pretty strong.
4)In terms of what SP said, “expecting you to be primarily responsible for home and children even if you have a full-time job and generally defer to your father, husband and brothers and be more willing to “adjust” or give up what you want in favour of males” seems to ring true for us as well.
I’m just wondering why women feel that guys should challenge any of this. This is not trolling, I honestly want some opinions. It’s a different matter that we may not find women willing to put up with these things, and therefore we’ll have no choice in the matter but to change. But given a choice, why would we challenge it?
Amitabh, your honesty is pretty striking, and it’s quite refreshing actually. Here’s why some men might not like patriarchy so much (and again, I speak from the experience of my family and friends) – a woman who is intelligent and not a doormat will likely be frustrated in a patriarchal family and relationship and take out at least some of this resentment on the men around her, particularly her husband (what men call “nagging,” or blaming men for not meeting expectations or social ambitions, or being passive-aggressive, or hiding expenditures because one is tired of answering to one’s husband for every little thing, which can slip into irresponsibility and deceit); not all men are ambitious and cut out to bear the pressure of social and financial ambitions (particularly if both they and their spouse are from well off families) single-handedly, and patriarchy is definitely not so great for men in this regard; in extreme cases, you see some uber-princessy women born of patriarchal contexts too, who really do expect to be taken care of in every way and can’t be independent, and just as it sucks to have a helpless male at home and have to care for him like a child, it sucks to have a helpless wife who can’t take care of bills and insurance and house hunting and that sort of thing. Lots of men are not cut out for the rat-race and professional grind and would rather explore different interests or focus on parenting, and you can’t do that when you’re responsible single-handedly for the family money. Perhaps most importantly, for every woman who is content in the role that patriarchy assigns her, there’s one who resents it even if she conforms to it, and that makes for a lot of unhappy and frustrated women, and as we all know, unhappy and frustrated people are not the easiest or most pleasant to be around. And when the norm for dominant behaviour is set by patriarchal and controlling men, women who are strong and ambitious will model themselves on such men and be just as controlling and obnoxious in turn to those who are weaker (think repressive MILs). As a lot of desis probably know, patriarchy doesn’t always produce women who are all sweetness and light, it can produce some pretty unpleasant and unlikeable women just as it produces unpleasant men. As for the most pragmatic reason of them all, which is what this thread is about – women who have a choice might rather not marry a man who relates to them in a patriarchal way. Some folks like to whine about it, but the “exit” option is a perfectly valid one, and a basic evolutionary mechanism.
Those are the pragmatic reasons. The ethical reasons, one hopes, are that men would find it distasteful to treat women that the care about and respect like lesser beings – a basic sense of fairness, perhaps. That’s why people are able to challenge unjust social norms that they have been born into and brought up to feel comfortable in, no?
Well any of one us wouldn’t want to change our situations if they worked to our benefit. But I think it’s deeper than simply wanting to change to “accommodate” the woman. The level of my partners sensitivity to treating me equally, pitching in, making sure I don’t get dumped on simply because it’s always been that way in the house and making sure to avoid unequal nonsense situations has a absolute direct impact on his relationship with me and him having a happy successful marriage. Women only put up with it for so long, pent up frustration comes out in some form of the other.
Amitabh if you were married and your relationship with your wife was directly negatively affected by how the “system” is treating her wouldn’t you want to change it?
I have young women in my family who very educated have chosen not to be with a punjabi male, and alot of it has to do with the points Amitabh said in post #347.
I came from punjabi family that was more modern then most, but still when I want to my white friends homes , I was amazed at how much the men did. Plus I also noticed that the men and women sat together instead of sitting apart.
Also with a young daughter, I will make sure she does have to deal with the ways of the old country.