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Comment by mattmaroon | Hacker News Reader

There's this sort of black-and-white distinction between "good girls" and "gold diggers" and it's entirely imaginary. I'll spare you the evolutionary psychology behind it (which is easy to find if you're interested) but all women care about a man's success (of which money is merely the most frequent, but not only, indicator) to a large degree. Saying a girl doesn't care about money is like saying a guy doesn't care about looks.

Society has come to view both genders' preferences as shallow, but for whatever reason makes a much bigger deal about it when it comes to women, which is really not fair. They can't help being attracted to a successful guy anymore than we can to a hot girl.

My guess is that in NYC, due to the financial industry guys are more sensitive to it, and as such women respond by being a bit more circumspect.

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The difference between the two is honesty. A guy will tell a girl "I thought you were beautiful, and wanted to meet you". A girl will rarely say "I thought you were rich, and wanted to meet you."

For whatever reason, the vast majority of golddiggers are utterly dishonest about what they are really seeking. This leads men to get into bad relationships (which they would have avoided if the woman were honest), and they often lose big when their career doesn't turn out the way they hoped or when they want to downsize their job (e.g., quit the $300k/year corporate law job for an $85k/year public defender job).

I've got no problem with that rare girl who openly admits her desire to trade sex for money. I don't want a relationship with her, but I won't condemn her.

[edit: I'll similarly condemn a guy who lies to honest women to get them into bed. I'll giggle when a guy lies about money to sleep with dishonest golddiggers.]

It's not for money, it's for security. It's really no worse than what guys do.

It's really not worse at all, both are just people doing what they evolved to do. Society frowns upon it more so many of them feel they have to be coy about it.

Dishonesty is not worse than honesty, simply because it's evolved? By that logic, rape is also not worse than consensual sex (assuming it's evolved behavior).

As rational and moral beings, aren't we supposed to transcend some of our evolutionary instincts?

It's not dishonesty per se because it's not a conscious behavior. Most women don't know they give a rich guy bonus points, just as men consciously underrate the importance of their spouse's appearance. It's one of many areas where humanity's conscious thoughts and actions radically diverge.

It's a subtle subconscious leaning. A similar example: doctors routinely prescribe things that get them paid more (for instance neurologists whose practices own their own MRI machines prescribe 4x more MRIs than ones who do not) however when examined under a polygraph, both groups say that the money is not an influencing factor. The money clearly is the difference, they just don't know it.

(FWIW, rape is not believed by most in the field of evolutionary psychology to be a behavior that has evolved into "normal". It's gotten a lot of coverage in the field due to the controversial nature of the idea of rape as an adaptation, but there is no clear evidence for it in anthropology or studies of closely related primates.)

The argument you pose about morality is dangerous. Who defines which of our genetic attributes are ok and which are not? Why is it perfectly fine to have brown hair, but immoral to want a rich husband (if only subconsciously) when you can't help either of them? If anything the latter is universal, the former occasional.

I agree with what you are saying to a certain degree, but following on your same line of thought, evolutionary psychology and what not - back in the cave-human age, cave-women look for security in a cave-man; this doesn't necessarily have to be money, but a sense of the cave-man's gravitas to inspire confidence and take care of shit when shit hits the fan.

Counter-example to your thesis that women only want money: Musician's that only gets gigs in dive bars, firefighters that receive a municipal-level salary, and tons of bro's you would see at "bro-bars" with no financial prospect but a rabid enthusiasm for alcohol, local sports & Amerrrica.

I'm not saying women aren't superficial. They are just as superficial as men except that they lie about their intentions to preserve their ego for themselves and to others. But that's no reason for men to be resigned about it. There's nothing more sad than a man who accepts the superficial reality of society and proceeds to go about "nest-building" and "peacocking" to attract a superficial trophy wife, and give up his freedom and personal goals in return.

The system is easily hackable and I dare say, men are justified to hack the system as the whole mating-seeking thing is based on deception and dis-ingenuity. And there are tons of literature available online and in print about PUA for anyone who cares to explore that route.

I didn't say women want only money. They want success (and not only success) of which money is just the easiest and most direct indicator.

That's not fair though, because society frowns on golddiggers. Just imagine the confidence it takes to declare yourself a golddigger as opposed to saying you like hot chicks. Social pressure is by far the dominant factor at play here.

The interesting question is why is it so? Maybe because money-making ability is a somewhat less intrinsic quality. Maybe it's the undeniability of the biological response when you see someone beautiful. Some would call it sexism and leave it at that.

I wouldn't call it sexism. When I was maybe 10, I was friends with another kid (a boy, like myself) just because he had a nintendo. Most people (my adult self included) would condemn that behavior in much the same way, particularly coming from an adult.

If you'd condemn a man behaving the same way (e.g., making friends in order to use a playstation), it isn't sexism.

It's entirely sexism. Most people wouldn't condemn a man for choosing to talk to the more attractive of two girls at a bar. It would be considered normal behavior. Yet most would condemn a woman for talking to the richer of two guys.

Unless appearances are some better indicator of a person's quality than wealth neither is more or less shallow than the other, but one is judged to be moreso. If that's not sexism nothing is.

Well, an interesting study would be finding out if rich couples opposed to couples who find each other attractive are happier overall.

One may or may not be a better indicter of long term compatibility.

The difference is that gold-diggers don't want to sleep with rich men just so they can bask in the glow of their richness. They want to sleep with rich men in the hopes that they'll buy them fancy things, or at least fancy experiences. They want to enrich themselves at the expense of the rich man, whereas the man chasing beautiful women isn't hoping to make himself more beautiful and them less so.

This is also the difference between gold-diggers and normal women: gold-diggers are conscious of the fact that they're trying to score with rich men.

The man wants to enrich himself by boning the hottest chick he can, and possibly at her expense if she is seeking a longer relationship. It's perceived sexual gratification vs perceived financial gratification. Both are similarly illusory IMO.

The fact that women are statistically more likely to exhibit behavior (using personal relations for money) which society frowns on does not make it sexist to frown on that behavior. Only treating women differently for that behavior would be sexist, and I don't believe we do.

Similarly, men are statistically more likely to exhibit violent behavior (and there is an evolutionary basis for this). Therefore, condemning violence is sexism, since the condemnation has a disparate impact on men? Um, no.

Women are statistically more likely to exhibit that behavior only because they have orders of magnitude more chances to do it. I think if men could pull it off they'd do it even more frequently than women.

In both cases you're selecting to improve the chances for your offspring.

"Most people wouldn't condemn a man for choosing to talk to the more attractive of two girls at a bar. It would be considered normal behavior. Yet most would condemn a woman for talking to the richer of two guys."

Would they? Maybe I've just been hanging out with too many women (in a non-sexual context), but they complain about guys that talk to the obviously-prettier girl at the bar all the time. Meanwhile, talking to the more successful-looking of two guys is pretty normal, as long as you aren't blatant about it (eg. asking how much they make).

I think it's more that girls will judge guys for going solely for attractive girls, and guys will judge girls for going for richer guys. Both sexes are shallow, both sexes complain about shallowness in the opposite sex, and most people of both sexes will recognize that basically everyone is shallow - in private. But public discourse tends to feature more males, so we hear more about how golddiggers are evil than about how babewatchers are evil. Either that, or it's just because we're male and girls tend not to share their real opinions for fear of offending us.

That's because people don't know why they feel things. The feeling comes first (e.g., being attracted to someone) and then we make up a satisfying rational explanation for it.

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