i find the reasoning behind the fact that young men are more xenophobic than young women (which i have observed to be true) hard to believe. men who are not good with women have difficulty finding mates in any culture. conversely, a man who is good with women is good with women everywhere, simply becoz he understands feminine psychology better than other males. and while every woman is different (even within the same culture, not to talk of women in different cultures), theyr'e not that different.

a better explanation of why women are less xenophobic is that most (not all) understand, at some primal level, the beneficial effect of shuffling the genetic pool for their offspring. this feminine attraction for the different is also understood by most men, which explains their dislike for the "foreigner"

The argument the gentleman presents is built on shabby generalizations from scant evidence. To address just one point, let's look at the tendency he observes for women to be more interested in international travel. Where is data to back this up? In most most societies and cultures -- in fact, within our own culture up to about 30 years ago women were much less likely to have opportunities to travel internationally, and, I would strongly surmise, to display a complementary interest in traveling abroad than men. Is this reflective of a sudden change in the genetic makeup in that segment of humanity living in America in the years since Richard Nixon's presidency? Hmmm... Might it reflect the changing social norms for gender, the political gains of the women's movement and the emergence of intensified internatonal flows of information and peoples, in general, but disproportionately affecting "first world" nations?

Evolutionary psychology is rid through with this kind of ridiculousness. We observe our own narrow social norms and prejudices then cite some (usually spurious) generalization about the universal cross-cultural nature of the behavior, then fix it as an adaptive, sex-linked trait. And it gets a ready audience in silly academic and popular journals.

Mr Kanazawa definitely has some of his own reasons for writing this article and as a male from a developing Asian country, I can see a lot of evidence for this. Yes, this is in no way cold hard evidence, but it is quite prevalent nonetheless which this article somewhat supports.

The bit about women having universally (so to speak) appreciable mate attracting qualities is definitely true, as any straight hot-blooded male can attest to. Also, there is more than ample evidence that men aren't judged as much by the way they look but how well they seem to be doing in life, be it owning a sports car or crafting the most ornamental sheath for his unmentionables. Whether this leads to men being more xenophobic is a little hard to justify in any truly meaningful sense. Really interesting read though!

Some of what you say makes sense. However:-

Xenophobia is not quite the same as racism.

You are ignoring the fact that most immigrants to the West are sexual competition for young white men (being young men themselves) as a factor in young male native's their attitudes to immigrants.

Foreign traveling females often to go to poorer countries where there are few men wealthy by UK standards.

I think you need to take into account how the attractiveness of white women in general is rated abroad. Very highly outside Western countries in my opinion. And conversely the attactiveness of women from many parts of the world is not highly rated by white men. The fact that they would be perceived as rich (as all Westerners are) in developing nations for example is not the most important factor for Western men, its their assessment of the native females attractiveness.

A few hundred years ago the roles were reversed with young single men raiding outside the borders of their respective villages, countries, for brides precisely for the reason of seeking out a different genetic match than the one present. Women on the other hand would have risked loosing the social status they have and bargaining position in their society.

So the situation would have been reverse with young women being xenophobic, while young males more open to change.

The situation could fluctuate back and forth depending on environmental, and other factors. My guess is xenophobia is rampant when the adverse effects from it outweigh the benfits that could come from not practicing it.

That's it, I'm getting a penis sheath.

I completely agree with the author. I have made this exact decision in my own life. I have had many oppertunities to live overseas. But I choose not to, because, living in the U.S., I have the best chance of finding a woman who will understand me, especially my humor. Why create more work for yourself, and waste time and money (resources) going overseas and trying to convince some woman who doesn't understand english that all your friends back home find you charming, or funny, or cool, etc.

What the author forgets to mention, however, is that we have excelled at exporting our culture and values to other countries. For that reason, there are plenty of countries in which we get too much credit (sometimes too little) for being American or for being white. Lots of young men I know are more than happy to travel to foreign places if they think they will be idolized. Every white college kid I met wants to be an english teacher in Japan for example..........

...it reminds me of the advantage many white/Western men might have in quite a number of foreign countries if they went there -- namely that they'd likely be significantly *taller* than the natives, which could give them a distinct advantage with the local womenfolk that might plausibly cancel out the negatives having to do with the social factors talked about in the article. Perhaps publicizing this aspect would cause the number of single men traveling abroad to increase.

But, yea, lots of white/Western kids these days think Japan and things Japanese is/are cool, though the trend does go back about two decades. I like to joke about how it expresses a deep inner longing for the benefits of living in a more patriarchal and traditional society...

this post is kinda ridiculous. just place a photo of betty page next to pamela anderson and you will see quite clearly that the ideal woman is culturally substantiated. perhaps a man anywhere can tell the difference between hip ratios, but the blogger fails to acknowledge the ubiquity of American cultural hegemony. never underestimate the power of TV and radio... and of course the military...

but if this blogger's setup were true--that the signifiers of women's reproductive health were innate--you could easily tell a completely different story. the man would be more likely to travel, knowing that, wherever he went, there would always be women to impregnate. while the woman would be less likely to travel because, wherever she went she would have no idea how to judge a mate.

evo psych is fun cuz its a whole lot of narrative and not much substance. it reminds me of nizbit & wilson. human history is a blank canvas and empirical evidence is so much colorful paint. You take all these wonderful correlations and smear the surface with inferred causation.

I find this hard to believe.

The elephant in the room is that men are SIGNIFICANTLY more open toward interacial mating than women are.

Granted, a lot of men who date interracially would prefer their own race of women, but can't get them.

Women often try to say that men only care about women's looks. I can see the truth in that. But when it comes to height and race, women are all a bunch of hypocrites.

This whole article is quite a stretch.

The xenophobia of young, single men has a simpler explanation which is better grounded in evolutionary sexual selection theory: their aversion to foreign competition for mates or jobs required to find a mate.

Young, single males are in search of desirable mates. They are likely to resist the incursion of young single males from rival breeding populations. The extreme case of this is invading armies which practice rape as a form of anthropological domination.

Likewise young, single men also form teams to rival dominant males within their own breeding populations. These teams of "young turks" may take the form of trade unions, officer cliques or radical political parties. Anthropologists report that great apes also form coalitions and express "demonic male" behaviour in the struggle to control their range.

One reason why the Catholic Church sacralised the Holy Family was to encourage young males to get hitched and focus on getting ahead. This was a highly successful civic strategy, which sure beat war-lordism and vandalism.

Large numbers of un-married men and women of mating age is a recipe for prostitution and gangsterism.