In 2017, David French of the National Review wrote an article stating that men enter high-status professions and achieve wealth in part, or even primarily, to gain access to beautiful women. D.C. McAllister responded to French with her own analysis, “Can We Be Honest About Women?” in The Federalist (Dec.12, 2017).  She countered French by saying many men enter high-status professions in order to best other men in their field of expertise, not just to get beautiful women.  McAllister said competition can fuel men even more than sex.  Here, McAllister misunderstands cause and effect, ends, and means.  She misunderstands the underlying reason for male status aspiration and male competition.  At the most primal level of evolutionary adaptation, male competition is only about sex.

Woman Collude For Their Own Benefit

Most importantly, McAllister’s piece in The Federalist took issue with the assumption that women are passive and innocent in this situation. She spelled out basic truths about women that created ire among her feminist detractors.  David French asked what is wrong with men.   Rather than posit that men are wrong, McAllister correctly asserted that women “naturally” collude with men for their own benefit. Further, McAllister courageously proffered “we can’t always assume women are hapless damsels in distress horrified by how they’re objectified.   Women love the sexual interplay they experience with men, and they relish men desiring their beauty.  Why?   Because it is part of their nature.”

Citing a Pews Research study entitled, “On Gender Differences, No Consensus on Nature vs. Nurture,” McAllister noted that Americans valued physical attractiveness in women more than other traits.  Nurturing and empathy were second.  The traits most valued in men were morality and professional success.   Men want women who are attractive and emotionally sensitive, and women want good men who are financially successful.  (Zsa Zsa Gabor famously asked: “I want a man who’s kind and understanding.  Is that too much to ask of a millionaire?”)

Men are Drawn to Beauty Like Moths to a Flame

This is human nature.  McAllister aptly opined, “men are drawn to beauty like moths to a flame, and women want to be the flame.”  Beauty is a source of power, a woman’s “erotic” or sexual power.

“When men are being their sexual selves, drawn to a woman’s beauty, they’re not exploiting women, they are responding to them.”   McAllister continued, “let men love a woman’s beauty and let a woman delight in a man’s competence and success.  This is part of the dance between the masculine and the feminine, and we would be miserable if we stopped it.”  McAllister quoted James Joyce in “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” and cited an earlier analog in the Bible’s, “Song of Solomon.”  Adoration of female beauty is archetypal and mythic.  Most heterosexual women want to be desired and acknowledged for their physical beauty.   Can we be honest about that?   This is McAllister’s central point.  The fact that women want to be (and should be) acknowledged for their character and skills is entirely beside the point to this biological truth.

Women are Attracted to Economic Power and Men Will Produce It

McAllister inadvertently identified insights from evolutionary psychology and mate selection science.  She revealed the perennial erotic-economic bargain: the provision of resources (providing and protecting) for sexual access given in return — granting access to female beauty with its inherent signaling of fertility.   Thus, women are inextricably attracted to “economic” power, and men will compete and even conspire to produce it.   That is a fundamental biological and evolutionary truth.  It has been a successful adaptation for thousands of years.

All Male Behavior is a Response to Female Choice

All male behavior is etiologically a response to female choice in mate selection. Erotic power is “first cause” and reigns supreme because it is the power that sustains and populates the human race.  Male status aspiration and power displays are a result of adaptive success in attracting women.  So-called “trophy wives,” or “a beautiful woman on a man’s arm,” are mostly for the sheer pleasure of being next to “the flame” of female radiance.   They are the reward, the raison d’etre.   Men want a beautiful woman on their arm in the spirit of Lord Byron (She Walks in Beauty) and James Joyce.  To the degree this is a status display, it is meant (mostly below awareness) to elicit the response of the next woman.  The goal is more sexual access.  Status is the means.   The current woman and the next woman demonstrate the result of male status.

Power acquisition is an evolutionary adaptation for sexual access to women, but this power can be abused.   David French wrote derisively about men, lamenting sexual harassment in media, politics, and entertainment.   McAllister, to her credit, admitted that this male power, while sometimes off the rails, is also desired by women.   And a women’s beauty is part of the ancient agreement.  As Mae West once said, “it is better to be looked over, than over-looked.”

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