The 80/20 percent thing

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I believe that it was I who first raised the idea that men, some of them anyway, might not limit themselves to the "top 20%" so far as willingness to date a woman is concerned, but may nevertheless value the "lower-rated" women less in various ways. Although I can think of only one situation in which I see myself as having been guilty of taking advantage of a woman that way, and in retrospect I am truly ashamed of that although I have reason to believe that woman did OK later in life, at least she eventually got married. Although she probably had Borderline which could have contributed to the situation.

Where I got into somewhat of a disagreement was my assertion that despite the above, there are (a minority of) women on Earth who at least sometimes don't care — if they're horny enough and attracted to a guy, and presented some concrete examples to corroborate that claim. But I totally agree that a woman dating a man she suspects of not valuing her as much as other women he hasn't managed to date will feel deeply disrespected. I don't dispute that for one second.

Right? Haha

The funny thing about the idea that "I did it, therefore everyone must do it!" is that the belief can be applied to anything, but the application doesn't make the thing better. Seems to me the ultimate goal is to validate one's behavior as "acceptable", even if it isn't. Adding in a final note of "but nobody wants to admit it!" is just a nice l'il gaslight to reverse-uno the fact that it is in fact sketch cringe behavior.

If what you were doing wasn't wrong, it wouldn't need an "appeal" to validate it. It would stand on it's own against morality, without needing everyone else to also "jump off the bridge" to make it look "normal".

The fact that you know other people who do the same, just means that those specific other people do the same - it does not mean that "everyone" does it, and it does not mean that it is "acceptable". Those are both generalizations, as well as self-projection.

If a group of thieves got together, and decided that since they all steal, and think stealing is ok, that everyone steals, and stealing is in fact ok, would y'all go along with it and get to stealing too? After all, the idea that stealing is wrong is just a matter of "social etiquette", and we just don't TALK about stealing in polite company, but everyone totally steals...

"Everyone steals, don't they? Isn't is human nature? You might not even realize you're stealing, but you still do it!"

The gaslighting is pretty obvious.

I don't rate women. Neither do most people I know.

"Oh yes you do! Everyone does!"

It's adorable when people try to play the "different opinions" or "bias both ways" cards, but they still think they're right. It's like saying "Look, we BOTH made mistakes, so YOU should apologize..."

Considering how many people there are in English speaking countries, such as the USA or the UK (hundreds of millions for the former and tens of millions for the latter), there will be quite a lot of people who rate other people in terms of their attractiveness, even if overall, the people that do this are in the minority.

And we don't really know how common this sort of thing is without specific research into such a phenomenon.

An opinion about how attractive you think somebody is, that's one thing that I think most people have. But actually rate them with a number? I have never done it and I can't remember hearing anybody else doing it either unless in American comedies about teenagers.

I watched a funny one in Dutch

The joke was that the women in the office were rating each other and obviously the Alpha rated herself the highest but then when the men came in they rated her the lowest and the lowest as the highest

It only sticks out in my mind because it was in Dutch and we was playing a game to see if we could work out the jokes without understanding the language properly

I suppose you had to be there really but I thought it was hilarious

You dated in the last generation when men and women could actually talk to each other. Alas I just missed the boat.

I'm not sure you can apply this in the current context. It's human nature to discriminate between people (I think even babybird agreed with this) based on the level of superficial attraction you have for them. Secondly somebody sharing their lived experience and observations is not necessarily motivated by seeking validation for their behaviour. Why? because what I do in my head and how I interact with people are completely different. For me I always treated people the same based on their level of politeness and courtesy regardless of their looks or background or gender.

It's only in the last 2 decades that I am more careful in how I interact, particularly around younger women, who seem (at least to me) to be more sensitive and less open minded than they used to be.

Men and women can’t talk to each other?

Nonsense. They do it all the time.

For some reason I only ever hear that claim made by males who struggle to talk to women. Curious that.

Before around 2010 I had no trouble talking to women. then something weird happened and in the space of 10 years from 2010 to 2020 I had 4 different women take me to HR complaining about something I said or the tone of my voice. I also notice trying to get women to engage in deep conversation without detouring into superficial content is like getting blood out of a stone. It never used to be like this. Just my observations, not saying it applies every where and I am not trying to generalise. Just my experience.

Yet more generalizations...

Now we're claiming that everyone discriminates, and that it's only based on superficial attractions. Again, this just sounds like more attempt to normalize one's own behavior. Maybe YOU do, but leave the rest of us out of it.

Unless one has met literally every woman alive, or at least a statistically significant number of women (millions), even actual true valid real with my own eyes lived experience still only applies to those specific people, and to then transfer those experiences to others is a generalization.

Whether or not someone else agrees with you is irrelevant - reality is what it is, it doesn't magically conform to whatever consensus happens to have been reached, by whomever wants it to be true.

It's also all well and good to declare that one treats everyone in an equitable and deserved way - but the hitch in that is, who is to say what your standards are for this? You could be rude to anyone who doesn't treat you like a king, and lavish anyone who kowtows to you sufficiently with praise and favor - and the initial statement still holds technically true - your idea of politeness" could be through the roof by other people's standards. We have no way of knwing without further specificity.

Normally, we determine that we are likeable, because people like us. But It seems that some people have decided that likeability has nothing to do with what other people think, but rather their own self-assessment - or the assessments of others just like them. But if a jerk asks another jerk if they did anything wrong, of course they're gonna say no, they're both jerks, and wouldn't know better anyways.

Related: When I go on Amazon or some other site, and there are reviews for a product, are those reviews from the product manufacturer? Or are them from the customers who bought and used the thing? What do we call it when a manufacturer sings their own praises, and rates their own work? An advertisement, ya? What would people generally trust more - an advertisement, or 500 customer reviews? Why do we use customer reviews instead of just trusting the company that they are as great as they say they are? On what basis is a company a great one, if they do the least sales, and get the lowest reviews? Because they said so?

Discrimination can actually save your life

Y'all should get a dictionary

(But please... a dictionary without "y'all")

Confirmation bias (which I see around a lot) can and does lead to unfair discrimination

That's why people should keep their toxic thoughts about other people to themselves