I have always been slightly bewildered by the term "predatory male" to describe a man who is enthusiastic in desiring (and proactive in attempting to secure) sexual relations with a woman. A predator, in my understanding, is a creature that hunts and eats another creature; the result is that the eaten creature always dies. This metaphor seems at best a little extreme when applied to a man who simply is willing to exert energy and brainpower in order to persuade a woman to jump into bed with him. Romance is supposedly the prelude to the pounce. And yet I have never witnessed a lion taking a zebra out for a candle-lit meal.
It is often said that the writer H.G. Wells was a predatory male. There seems to be a general consensus that this is true. Really? Let's take a look at him compared with a cheetah. Forgive me if I lack imagination but I can't picture Mr Wells reaching speeds of between 112 and 120 km/h in short bursts over the African savannah, accelerating from 0 to over 100 km/h in three seconds. I can't even picture him attaining 20 km/h on his way to a newsagent's in Bromley. Would Wells even have been capable of catching a young fleet-of-foot woman, let alone an impala? I doubt it. I do, however, recommend his books, including his unjustly neglected later works such as Mr Blettsworthy on Rampole Island, The Autocracy of Mr Parham and the especially marvellous Christina Alberta's Father...
Another point: a cheetah has an average killing success of 50%. This compares unfavourably with the wild dog's average of 80% but favourably with a lion's average of 30%; a tiger's average may be as low as 10%. Now let's consider the success rate of the so-called "predatory male". In my life, like almost all men throughout history, I have chased women. I have managed to entice a certain number into bed (it would be tasteless to specify an exact figure; let's just say that it's a positive integer that equals twice the sum of its decimal digits). If we divide the number of women I have attempted to get into bed with by the number I have succeeded in getting into bed, my success rate is 0.00375%. Any true predator with such an abysmal average would surely evolve into a herbivore!So let's drop this unhappy phrase, "predatory male". Let us simply speak of "normal males" or just "males".
I got attacked by predatory mail once, it was a foolscap envelope and it gave me a nasty paper cut...
ReplyDelete(I hope Kyle doesn't take this too seriously!)
thank you Rhys, thank you for shedding some light. when i consider what you've written, even the most successful males don't average much better. actually those who are more successful probably have lower percentages since they go after more women.
ReplyDeletethere have been shorts bursts of time in my life where my success rate has been much higher, but those moments are far and few between. so your percentage is probably spot on.
damn women.
No, the thanks are to you, George, for understanding what I have written without attempting to make tactical use of it (many men will pretend they aren't interested in chasing women simply to trick women into thinking they are safe with that man; then the man pounces. It's deceitful).
ReplyDeleteThe most successful predatory male in history was Georges Simeon, who enticed 4000 women into bed. And yet there are almost 350,000,000 desirable women in the world; therefore even his average success rate was only 0.00114285%