September 9, 2012

Kanazawa is back

Awhile ago, Satoshi Kanazawa of the London School of Economics got in big trouble for a blog posting at a magazine pointing out that data from dating websites suggests that, on average, black women are seen as less attractive than other women. And then he offered some speculation why that might be, such as differences in average femininity and masculinity levels.

This line of thought was not favorably received, with critics replying that it was only people like Kanazawa and the rest of the White Male Power Structure that kept strong black women like Serena Williams from being idolized as the exemplars of feminine grace that they are, and that Kanazawa made them so angry that they just wanted to punch him in his smirking face, and smash his skull open with a brick, and grind his ... well, let's just say they were miffed. 

For his offense of miffing certain readers, Kanazawa was told he couldn't blog by the LSE for a certain amount of time. Now, that time is over, so he has a new blog, E pur si muove, at Big Think. Here's his first post:

136 comments:

Anonymous said...

rotfl. didn't greek philosophers have small dicks? satoshi must be in good company.

anony-mouse said...

Since Galileo almost certainly didn't say that, isn't the 'scientific fundamentalist' relying on fable?

Anonymous said...

What goes unmentioned is that Kanazawa also claimed that black men are more attractive than white men.

Hands up everyone who agrees? (Sit down, Troot)

Anonymous said...

It's all well and good that Kanazawa is politically incorrect, but the problem is that he's also a pretty poor scientist.

Pat Boyle said...

He was ostracized for the explanation not the observation. He said that black women have less estrogen and that was what made them unattractive. That may be true or not - it should be an easy question to resolve.

However his real offense is to note that black women are less attractive, and that while certainly true is very unwelcome.

It may be something else. It may be simple skin color. Certainly women all over the world try to lighten their skins. And the pond can't get the public to adopt black dogs. Black isn't really all that beautiful.

Albertosaurus

Anonymous said...

From the link:

black females and Asian males were less physically attractive than their competitors......women are significantly more physically attractive than men and black men are significantly more physically attractive than nonblack men.

I just don't see how this can be called "science". There is nothing remotely scientific about these conclusions.

He certainly is a psuedo-scientist though clearly not a self-serving one. :)



wren said...

A shame it is not open for comments.

Anonymous said...

"What goes unmentioned is that Kanazawa also claimed that black men are more attractive than white men"

To whom? Black women?

Gloria

Anonymous said...


It's all well and good that Kanazawa is politically incorrect, but the problem is that he's also a pretty poor scientist


Says someone who will not put a name to the accusation.

Anonymous said...

Judging from the post Steve linked to, Kanazawa is unapologetic.

Mr. Kanazawa, thank you for your bravery and honesty.

Nanonymous said...

Oh god, not another blog post about how Kanazawa is Galileo of our times. Sigh.

When bad science arrives at the right conclusion, it's still a bad science.

From his post:
in the past 12 months, there have been at least three articles, published in highly prestigious, peer-reviewed scientific journals, which confirm all of my conclusions and speculations in my original blog post last year.

"All"? Doubt it. Almost certainly not. But of course, there are no references, so no way to check the claim out. He couldn't even get enough courage in him to spell out what the actual post was about.

Anonymous said...

"What goes unmentioned is that Kanazawa also claimed that black men are more attractive than white men.

"Hands up everyone who agrees?"

I did know he found that, but I sit here asking myself, a woman, if I find, on average, black men to be more attractive than white men.

As a white woman, I'll ofer that really dark, actually black skinned men are a total turn-off to me. So, a guy as dark an Obama Senior is just totally unattractive because of his skin color, right off the top.

As for American blacks, I'd say that in youth, they tend to be more attractive in body structure than white males or Asian males or Hispanic males (although I really don't like their skinny calves and ankles). They seem to have superior shoulder width and more muscle definition and that's very attractive.

However, their skin often keeps me from finding them attractive when their physiques are because a lot of African-American men seem to have acne or skin bumps. Another point is color--the more black, the less attractive. It seems the darker they are, the more there's a yellow cast in the whites of their eyes that I find unattractive.


Anonymous said...

I just became his 42nd follower on twitter.

Luke Lea said...

Great title.

Anonymous said...

Black isn't really all that beautiful.

Black is the most desired color for electronics.

If white is beautiful why aren't albinos in demand?

Anonymous said...

If all blacks looked like Will Smith, I guess Kanazawa would have a point.

Of course, there will be a distribution as well, since clearly some East Asian women are attracted to black men or partially black men (otherwise Tiger Woods would not exist). In addition, some larger fraction of East Asian women are attracted to white men, but it seems that the majority of them prefer to stick with East Asian men.

Anonymous said...

In defense of black dogs:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/08/adventurous-dog-swims-wit_n_1748896.html


The are the coolest, best looking animals on the planet.

Anonymous said...

Very white people, like Stanley Ann Dunham and Irish people, tend to find black people attractive. They might be hoping for some sun resistance in their offspring. Unfortunately, mating between such extreme skin colors often yields mulattos with a lot of very dark freckles. They are certainly not good looking.

Gilbert Ratchet said...

Whether he's right or not, or a good scientist or not, one can't help but be inspired by his uncompromising endorsement of scientific fundamentalism:

"No other criteria besides the truth should matter or be applied in evaluating scientific theories or conclusions. They cannot be “racist” or “sexist” or “reactionary” or “offensive” or any other adjective. Even if they are labeled as such, it doesn’t matter. Calling scientific theories “offensive” is like calling them “obese”; it just doesn’t make sense."

Oh yeah!!! Preach it, brother. THIS is why academics get tenure.

Of course the sentiment also proceeds from the mouths of leftists when they defend anthropogenic climate change (that "inconvenient truth") and evolution. But when it comes to HBD or Roissy-style Game theory, all bets are off, and they immediately start acting like OJ's lawyers.

Anonymous said...

He wasn't attacked for the science but for the non-PC half of his conclusion (and only the non-PC half) so i'm glad he survived.

If it's true that the males of any ethnic group are always darker than the females then a darker-lighter preference ought to be one factor in attractiveness although i'm not sure how major it would be.

There's also the idea that a lot of what is considered attractive in females are things which signal fertility. IIRC skin condition is one of those and as light skin reflects light and black skin doesn't that would cut out one way of signalling - for those with good skin anyway.

In that particular case it wouldn't be so much about differences in average attractiveness across the board but more about the most attractive individuals in a light-skinned group being able to signal it better than those in a dark-skinned group shifting the average indirectly.

Maybe. Dunno.

I find the what of attractiveness to be a bit dull but the why is interesting.

Anonymous said...

Black isn't really all that beautiful.

That is an opinion, not a scientific fact good for all time and all places. For example in the Hindu epics the heroes and gods are black. Today those same Hindus are suffering from a color inferiority complex.

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1543xavier1.asp

the Indians being black themselves, consider their own color the best, they believe that their gods are black. On this account the great majority of their idols are as black as black can be, and moreover are generally so rubbed over with oil as to smell detestably, and seem to be as dirty as they are ugly and horrible to look at.

So the black idols were beautiful to these black Brahmin idolaters and at the same time ugly to the white European Xavier. Proof that beauty is subjective, and therefore outside the domain of science.








Whiskey said...

Yeah, Kanazawa's offense was to point out that, well Black women are the least attractive ON AVERAGE to men of all races.

Such a hate-fact cannot be tolerated.

As for Black guys being more attractive than White ones, sure. Black guys on average have darker skin, a more attractive feature in men (which women find attractive). Its the other way around for men, lighter skinned women are more attractive than darker skinned ones. Sex differences are funny that way. Black guys are on average less intelligent than White guys, and since intelligence correlates highly negatively with testosterone, i.e. the more testosterone you have on average the less smart you are, and vice-versa, that's also attractive in men (for women) ON AVERAGE. While again, guys prize intelligence in women (less likely to cheat when tingling for random other Alpha dude). Black guys are more aggressive, less cooperative, and more prone to violence. That's attractive in men (for women) on average, and the reverse in women (for men) on average.

You can see this in real life. There are a few David Bowie-Imam couplings, but most of them are Seal and Heidi Klum, or Tiger Woods and Elin Nordgren. Or Rick Fox and Eliza Dushku. Or famously, any Black athlete or rapper and a random female member of the Kardashians.

Anonymous said...

East Asians should not talk about ugliness of others. I think the reasons people point to black people all the time is because they run their mouths and they are at the bottom of pretty much everything so it's always an easy victory. I believe in his orginal article he said black males are the most attractive among males and East Asian females are the most attractive among females. That is simply wrong. The black males that are considered attractive are admixed with Caucasian genes giving them features that are closer to white males. Also, living in white society has affected their professions, economy and personalities. Without those factors black males would not even be looked at. As far as East Asian females, attractive ones are few and far between. Asian fetishists are very vocal in creating this illusion that they are the most attractive. I don't think it has much to do with physical looks though outside of much lower obesity rates. I think it's largely a mistaken, old idea that East Asian females are submissive amd docile.

Dennis Dale said...

I'm appalled at the comments here. Kanazawa simply noted who was getting laid. I defy you to find a better metric for sexual attraction.
Some of the white guys here react just as the black women and their liberal enablers do; not liking what K's conclusions imply they attack his science and then his person.
They are both arguing from consequences (if very subjective consequences), whether they realize it or not. I expect it from the Left (their critique on race and sex can be seen as one big appeal to consequences). Here, though, among the HBD realists, it's ironic.

Whiskey said...

Let me add, Kanazawa says the data shows what everyone knows, i.e. that Black men are more attractive physically than White men. Duh. That's as obvious as Conan O'Brien lamenting his pale skin.

Different races are optimized for different things. Male sexiness is not everything. White guys don't do the sexy bit, the kind of society seen in say West Africa with lots of sexy men but no technology, male cooperation, and social stability. The price of male sexiness is living in a place like Pakistan or Nigeria. The price of living in Finland, or Sweden, or Switzerland, is a lack of sexy dominance and male violence and cruelty. Which women of all races find as arousing as a BDSM e-book.

The tragedy of the West is that is built upon unsexy men and empowering women. Who hating hating hating the unsexy men, turn to any other group of men to provide sexiness. As John Derbyshire hints at understanding in his latest Takimag post. Western societies depend on a mostly equal, egalitarian sex-relationship to produce the monogamous nuclear family and high amounts of trust and male cooperation. Edison didn't invent the light bulb in the gold fields or tribal Afghanistan; technology and scientific progress DEPEND on the things that women abhor: high trust, cooperation, not much sexy posturing.

After all, no one ever Eat-Prayed-Loved in Finland. Or Dusseldorf. Women avoid equalist, sex/gender egalitarian places like the plague and go for places where women are treated poorly. Africa, Asia, Latin America.

Anonymous said...

Wait a minute, there are shit tons of data from dating websites to find out what people actually DO. I've read some of the data, and I certainly don't remember black males doing better (e.g.,likelihood of getting a return response, being picky about whom they contact or reply to, likelihood of being contacted, etc.) compared to white guys.

And when it comes to black guys dating white women, they're hardly ever dating even within the top (right hand side) 50% on the attractiveness bell curve.

It's always seemed like by age 22 90% of the white girls who once had a thing for black guys got over it, with the remaining 10% being very overweight, emotionally unstable or having a lower IQ.

Svigor said...

Black isn't really all that beautiful.

Black is the most desired color for electronics.

If white is beautiful why aren't albinos in demand?


*Triump the Insult Comic Dog Voice*

Man, c'mon man. I mean, really man...

Anonymous said...

Add evolutionary psychologist Jesse Bering to the Stephen Gould school of dishonest morons regarding the race/IQ debate. He attacked Kanazawa for what he called his "dubious claims about racial differences, especially with respect to intelligence."

Anonymous said...

"Very white people, like Stanley Ann Dunham and Irish people, tend to find black people attractive."

I have always noticed the tendency for women who have extremely pale skin, freckles and/or red hair to be more likely to find black men attractive.

And among black women who date white men, they have a thing for blond haired men at far higher rates than other women who like white men.

Clearly there's some weird psychology going on.

jody said...

serena williams has never looked more on drugs than she did today. freshly on the good sauce, she is now built like a bodybuilder. almost none of the MEN'S players look that muscular.

azarenka was robbed of her rightful US open victory and 2 million in cash by a shameless drug cheater.

a woman doesn't start delivering all time records in serves when she's almost 31.

Anonymous said...

intelligence correlates highly negatively with testosterone

It may not correlate with it at all. Smart men have more control over their impulses than dumb men. There's more of a filter. I doubt that on average smart men are less capable of aggression than idiots. In smart men aggression is more focused, less random, better directed towards avenues in which it can be useful. People who are highly successful in business often come off as very aggressive. But along with intelligence they have a strong filter, so they're far less likely to have any domestic violence convictions than black NFL players.

" guys prize intelligence in women (less likely to cheat when tingling for random other Alpha dude).

That's not the primary reason. What would Whiskey of all people know about smart guys' psychology? The main reason why smart men seek smart women is very simple: conversation. They want someone with whom they can share their inner lives. Ideas, thoughts on books they've just read, etc. I think that in the real world that's a more powerful motivation than eugenics (though I guess it shouldn't be) or than Whiskey's musings on cuckoldry.

Anonymous said...

"What goes unmentioned is that Kanazawa also claimed that black men are more attractive than white men.

Hands up everyone who agrees? (Sit down, Troot)
"

Kanazawa is lazy and he only added the "black men" part to fit his hormonal explanation on black women... he should read the actual graphs he put in that article... as racehist explains, white men have the highest "mean latent physical attractiveness" scores. Kanazawa's mind get's crossed up after saying "Net of intelligence, black men are significantly more physically attractive than nonblack men." he loses the "net of intelligence".

http://racehist.blogspot.com/2011/05/black-women-rated-less-physically.html

I have no idea why you'd normalize attractiveness to intelligence but he does. His real claim is "black men of similar intelligence to white men are more attractive".

These attractiveness studies are almost always terrible and I find them completely boring. Mate selection is much more interesting and there's a lot more going on than "attractiveness" to the point where "attractiveness" isn't really "attractiveness" to women.

Anonymous said...

Let me add, Kanazawa says the data shows what everyone knows, i.e. that Black men are more attractive physically than White men. Duh. That's as obvious as Conan O'Brien lamenting his pale skin.


You're the biggest kook on the web. God knows, that's saying something.

Anonymous said...

Some of the white guys here react just as the black women and their liberal enablers do; not liking what K's conclusions imply they attack his science


His science is crap.

Some guys here think Kanazawa is a genus just because the left dislikes him. That's not a very scientific mode of thinking either.

Anonymous said...

"women are significantly more physically attractive than men"


Scientifically!

What a buffoon this guy is.

Anonymous said...

"What goes unmentioned is that Kanazawa also claimed that black men are more attractive than white men.


I did know he found that



He did not "find" that. He claimed that. He asserted that. He argued that. He did not find it.

Anonymous said...

I have always noticed the tendency for women who have extremely pale skin, freckles and/or red hair to be more likely to find black men attractive.


Really? You've always noticed this tendency?

The quality of the comments is heading downhill.

Anonymous said...

"It may be simple skin color."

I don't think it's a big factor. I've seen lots of East Indian women who looked attractive to me. Same for Filipinas. I think that the biggest factors working against black women are facial features and personality. Men are attracted to fine, delicate facial features and are repulsed by rough, coarse female personalities. Black women themselves scapegoat hair as an explanatory factor. This is obviously because hair is easier to change than face or personality. They can easily do something about their hair, so they spent all their efforts on that. Hair a factor in attractiveness, but not a very important one.

Kylie said...

"I have always noticed the tendency for women who have extremely pale skin, freckles and/or red hair to be more likely to find black men attractive.

And among black women who date white men, they have a thing for blond haired men at far higher rates than other women who like white men.

Clearly there's some weird psychology going on."


You mean like opposites attract?

Anonymous said...

I have no idea why you'd normalize attractiveness to intelligence but he does. His real claim is "black men of similar intelligence to white men are more attractive".


Yeah. And he offers zero evidence to support even that hypothesis.

Juan said...

Dennis Dale,

Black women get laid earlier and more often than any other women. The problem is that they usually get laid by black men, who are the least selective of men when it comes to impregnating women. That has a dysgenic effect on black looks.

Anonymous said...

"That is an opinion, not a scientific fact good for all time and all places. For example in the Hindu epics the heroes and gods are black. Today those same Hindus are suffering from a color inferiority complex. "

That's hilarious considering Hindu's believe dark skinned Dalits are being punished by God for sins in a previous life.

Alcalde Jaime Miguel Curleo said...

Amusingly the new-breed "science" voluptuaries are starting to imitate the other infantile treehouse pressure groups. Cf. the dull Professional Atheists' section of your local bookstore if you've got one, usually right next to the shelves for "Why Progressives Have Higher IQs And Smell Nicer." I kind of preferred it when they were just arguing about PCs vs. Macs, which at least had less resemblance to a political movement than to an inane sports argument

Miley Cyrax said...

You guys arguing over black vs. white physical attractiveness are arguing over a red herring.

What drives female attraction to men is more status than looks, and white guys have the most status (socially, but perhaps not economically in all instances, e.g. vis a vis Asians in the U.S.) as the culmination of centuries of cultural hegemony. Thus they achieve the greatest success with women across the world, ceteris paribus.

So even if black guys beat whites with their looks, white status trumps all.

jody said...

other than some HBD nerds (not all of them of course), i don't know anybody who thinks "black" (not sure which africans we're talking about here specifically) men are universally considered the most attractive men.

i guess the (incorrect) idea here is that the more manly a man is, the more attractive he is? that's true up to a point i would agree, but it's not some perfectly linear thing. there's a range, but fall outside of it in either direction and attractiveness declines. in the linear HBD version, bodybuilders are the most attractive men possible, but 99% of people regard the top pros as far too muscular, venturing way off into preposterous territory.

west africans are actually pretty ugly in general, with horrible skin and hair (that they themselves don't like), exaggerated noses and lips, and they smell different. other africans aren't exactly the same, the east africans are taller, less muscular, skinny, and unathletic, with noses that have more narrow bridges and sometimes less kinky hair. the south africans are shorter and have a more medium build.

of course the most important thing that i've pointed out on this topic, which the HBD nerds seem to miss time and time again, is that the woman is often looking for a provider. security. stuff. and that means money. wealth. and africans are the worst at accumulating or holding wealth. so they are automatically one of the least attractive options for a woman who is in demand.

homosexual men in particular, who would kind of be the ultimate arbiters of which men are most attractive in a strictly sexual way, clearly don't universally think west african men are the most attractive. in particular, there's no need for them to weigh the wealth factor, as gay men aren't looking for money in their partners. they are looking for them to be as hot as possible though.

otherwise every famous gay guy would have a black guy pounding him in private, but we almost never find that. the most desireable gay guys are almost always tanned hunks of various european ethnicities. anderson cooper just lost one, who traded in anderson cooper for another european hunk.

Severn said...

There is no scientific answer to the question "Who is more attractive - men or women?" or "Which is more attractive - dogs or cats?" or "Who is more attractive - white men or black men?" or "Which is more attractive - Lenonardo's Mona Lisa or Michelangelo's David?" because these are not scientific questions.

If Kanazawa were a scientist he'd understand that.

J. Jonah Falcon said...

Kanazawa's data does find that black men are rated more physically attractive than white men. The follow up by Kaufman and Wicherts confirms this:

From the link:
"Kaufman and Wicherts reported that both black women (48%) and black men (46%) were rated as "attractive" or "very attractive" more frequently than were white men (42%)."

Follow-on analysis also illustrates the tendency of HBD proponents to whine about "political correctness" anytime its claims are exposed or debunked. Time and time again, HBDers invoke a "political correctness" mantra when things are going badly for them, and when bad science is exposed. Kaufman and Wicherts follow up says this- QUOTE:

"if ratings of attractiveness have less than 2% common variance, one is hard pressed to side with Kanazawa's assertion that attractiveness can be rated objectively.

The low convergence of ratings finding suggests that in this very large and representative dataset, beauty is mostly in the eye of the beholder. What we are looking at here are simple ratings of attractiveness by interviewers whose tastes differ rather strongly. For instance, one interviewer (no. 153) rated 32 women as looking "about average," while another interviewer (no. 237) found almost all 18 women he rated to be "unattractive." Because raters differ strongly in terms of how they rate interviewee's attractiveness and because most of them did numerous interviews and ratings, this source of variation needs to be taken into account when testing for average race differences in ratings of attractiveness. Kanazawa does not indicate that he did so...

Kanazawa interprets his findings in terms of adult attractiveness yet the majority of his data were based on the ratings of attractiveness of the participants when they were teenagers...

Kanazawa claims to be only interested in the "hard" truths on human nature. And the truth of the matter is: As adults, Black Women in North America are not rated less attractive by interviewers of the Add health study, which is one of the most nationally representative samples ever available for investigation."


In short, Kanazawa's claim of "objectivity" is bogus, and his methodology is suspect, no matter how many pious cries of "persecution" due to "political correctness" are made.

Critique of Kanazawa on the merits- and found wanting

jody said...

"Wait a minute, there are shit tons of data from dating websites to find out what people actually DO."

don't confuse whiskey with actual data about white guys being somewhat sexually dominant in a real world multiracial society.

http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/your-race-affects-whether-people-write-you-back/

Anonymous said...

From the link:
"Kaufman and Wicherts reported that both black women (48%) and black men (46%) were rated as "attractive" or "very attractive" more frequently than were white men (42%)




Heh.

Those words appear nowhere at the link. I give you points for creativity though.

Anonymous said...

J. Jonah Falcon,

It's interesting that in the link you provided states that:

"Other rigorous peer-reviewed published research (involving a much less representative and smaller sample of the United States) has shown statistically significant mean differences in attractiveness ratings based on ethnicity."

But lets go straight to the slight of hand:

"Kaufman and Wicherts reported that both black women (48%) and black men (46%) were rated as "attractive" or "very attractive" more frequently than were white men (42%)."

Why would we be comparing black women to white men? You compare black women to white women.

Anonymous said...

"serena williams has never looked more on drugs than she did today. freshly on the good sauce, she is now built like a bodybuilder. almost none of the MEN'S players look that muscular."

Just saw the pic an hour ago. You're right.

She actually made Michelle Obama look fairly feminine in comparison...well, at least MO's body, not the jaw.

Anonymous said...

"Very white people, like Stanley Ann Dunham and Irish people, tend to find black people attractive."

What Stanley Ann Dunham found attractive was being different, ahead of the curve (or what she perceived as ahead of the curve), being rebellious.

Obama Sr. was not a physically attractive man. Perhaps he had some charm, however, but in looks, how many women out of 10 would rate him above a 2 or 3 ?

Anonymous said...

That's hilarious considering Hindu's believe dark skinned Dalits are being punished by God for sins in a previous life.

What's hilarious is how some gullible people have been fooled into believing that the caste system is based on skin color. If dark skin is punishment for sins in a past life practically all hindus of all castes are being punished, including their gods. And albinos are being rewarded for being good in their past lives. Funny indeed....

Anonymous said...

I'm appalled at the comments here. Kanazawa simply noted who was getting laid.


You need to write "I will read the writings of the guy we are talking about before giving my opinion on him" five hundred times.

Kanazawa did NOT note who was getting laid.

Mike Steinberg said...

@ J. Jonah Falcon,

The Wicherts & Kaufman critique cherry picks the ADD Health data.




Ex Submarine Officer said...

women are significantly more physically attractive than men

I don't have any opinion on whether Kanazawa is a pseudo-scientist.

But I do know that men's magazines are full of pictures of women.

That isn't so interesting. But the fact that women's magazines are also full of pictures of women, usually including the cover shot, is pretty interesting.

The two things men and women have in common is that they both enjoy the company of men and looking at women.

Anonymous said...

"It may be simple skin color."

I kinda doubt it. There are lots of Indian and Hispanic girls with dark skin who are quite attractive. It's when you throw in the coarse features and nappy hair that girls really seem ugly. The black odor doesn't help either.

As far as black men being more physically attractive than white men, it's possible but it's a close call and it turns a lot on individual taste. It's not like the situation with black girls who are clearly far less physically attractive than girls of other races.

The whole situation is rather unfortunate -- there are two adjectives which are personal insults in any language -- "stupid" and "ugly."

Anonymous said...

"Whiskey said...

Let me add, Kanazawa says the data shows what everyone knows, i.e. that Black men are more attractive physically than White men. Duh. That's as obvious as Conan O'Brien lamenting his pale skin."

You pathetic cuckold Whiskey. Get your head out of your ass. No one but American nerds think women across the world find black men attractive. The idea might be tan white men, or the famous "Latin lover," but not black guys. And a blond California surfer dude with a tan doesn't look like Conan.

There is no data showing black men being more attractive to women than white men, except your posts and the posts of other guys obsessed with interracial porn and their own cuckold fantasies. Please point to said data.

I've traveled through a lot of the world, literally nowhere outside the US are black men considered sexy by women of other races.

TH said...

a blog posting at a magazine pointing out that data from dating websites suggests that, on average, black women are seen as less attractive than other women

He actually used data from the Add Health, a big longitudinal study with interviewer ratings of participant attractiveness. Data from dating sites are, however, probably more valid than interviewer ratings, because they more closely reflect "revealed preferences", while interviewer ratings may be influenced more by political correctness.

Also, as has been pointed out above, Kanazawa found that black men are more attractive than white men only after controlling for intelligence. Smarter African-Americans are lighter-skinned, with more European ancestry, than the average black.

While his claims about attractiveness are probably right, Kanazawa is generally a pretty sloppy researcher who loves to rile up people more than anything. He's an academic troll really.

Anonymous said...

It's not clear that black women are less attractive. In Brazil they're widely seen as hot in bed and great fucks. They also look very different from American black girls.

Anonymous said...

Black guys are on average less intelligent than White guys, and since intelligence correlates highly negatively with testosterone, i.e. the more testosterone you have on average the less smart you are, and vice-versa, that's also attractive in men (for women) ON AVERAGE

Is that true within a race? Sure, I could buy that with the Asian-White-Black continuum, but not necessarily within a race. The sedentary nerdy lifestyle that high IQ men often end up embracing correlates with the nerdy build, sure, but that's more a lifestyle choice than due to testosterone. See the GTA Vice City "programmer" code for a humorous visualization of this.

As to intelligence and whether women find it a turn-on, it depends on the woman. Within a society there are different types of people who fit different niches. Different women seek different sorts of men, and this is apparent to those who make a study of who is getting action, and why. For some women only jocks will do. For others, only musicians fit the bill. Other women only go with violent criminal types. Others go for well dressed, professional types. Others for wealthy, powerful guys. Others for guys in uniform. There is certainly a fraction of women that find intelligence a turn on (Jewish women are probably this way more than most).

Genetics for attraction to a certain type tend to occur along with the genes for that type, because very often it is not the first time a phenotype has been expressed. The previous time that phenotype was expressed (parent, grandparent), that phenotype attracted a mate, and now that mate's genes for desire of the phenotype are now effectively intertwined with the genes for the phenotype itself.

In my view, this explains why there is so much variation in what women find attractive, and why they have "types". (e.g. the daughters of athletes, powerful men, nerds, professionals, criminals, musicians etc. will often have either genes from their mothers for attraction to that type, or intertwined genes from their father for attraction to that phenotype). It also explains why men have their "types" as well.

As far as white women/black men - the white women who would choose black men for husband material are generally land whales, who white men give a large berth. In fact, the only berth these whales can find is in the home of a black man. I'm not talking voluptuous or curvy, I'm talking that which can only be classified as BBW.

For the white women who are physically attractive (and some are) and with a black man, they tend to be low IQ and "raised" by neglectful parents who let MTV do most of the imparting of moral imperatives. Or gold diggers, if the black man is wealthy.

Anonymous said...

Which women of all races find as arousing as a BDSM e-book.

Fricking lol! This to Pat: You wonder why BDSM is not viewed positively. BDSMers are shunned because BDSM is depraved and abhorrent. The proliferation of BDSM pornography very likely contributes to rape and murder, when susceptible individuals are exposed to it. Turn the fantasy into reality and it becomes violent crime.

Worse than homosexuality, IMO.

SFG said...

"Fricking lol! This to Pat: You wonder why BDSM is not viewed positively. BDSMers are shunned because BDSM is depraved and abhorrent. The proliferation of BDSM pornography very likely contributes to rape and murder, when susceptible individuals are exposed to it. Turn the fantasy into reality and it becomes violent crime.

Worse than homosexuality, IMO."

Pretty much, although kinky sex does not preclude an otherwise normal relationship the way homosexuality does; two heterosexual kinky people can get married and raise a family.

Obviously the porn is more dangerous.

And 'as arousing as a BDSM e-book'? Fifty Shades of Grey stayed on top of the bestseller lists for the entire summer. There is obviously a huge built-up demand for kink, probably as a reaction against the wimps feminists have forced the average guy to become. Roissy pretty much says an alpha is supposed to be a dom, though without the whips and chains and paraphernalia.

Amused said...

On the white men and black men thing.

The corresponding testpool had over 30 % black women, which isn't exactly represenative. There was no weighing of these facts.

Second, the difference was 46 %(black men) vs 42 %(white men).

That means that only 9 % more found black men on average more attractive than white men, and in a pool of over twice as many black women as the population.
The amount of Asian women was, for instance, negible.

If you control for all factors, I'd wager that black men would still be rated slightly more attractive, perhaps by a 45 % to a 43-44 % margin.

Not exactly a landslide. But again, if you reduce the overrepresenative black female pool they might just go below the norm.

It's hard to say.

Turtle Dove said...

Good to see Kanazawa back. He's a good, honest, smart scientist.

I'm not understanding the "black guy more attractive" thing, given that all the really huge Hollywood male stars, even in this politically correct age are White. And all the covers of those romance books tend to be White guys.

Anonymous said...

Just asked my girlfriend if she found black men more attractive than white men. She said, yeah, if I want to get smacked around.

Her answer may be colored by the fact that she works at an urban hospital.

Anonymous said...

"Kaufman and Wicherts reported that both black women (48%) and black men (46%) were rated as "attractive" or "very attractive" more frequently than were white men (42%)."

Even if this is true, it really proves nothing. If someone sits you down and asks you to rate pictures (which I assume is how this was done), you're going to notice if you're giving some of the white women 8s, 9s, and 10s, but you never give a black woman higher than a 6. (If you've had extensive SWPL training, you may not notice it consciously, but you'll certainly notice it unconsciously, because that's what SWPL training teaches you to do: notice race so adroitly that you can avoid reacting inappropriately to it.) You certainly don't want any of the nice, educated scientists to think you're some kind of knuckle-dragging racist.

So if you're white, maybe you start giving the black women an extra point, or looking extra hard to find something attractive in them. If you're black, maybe you start giving them extra points out of solidarity. Heck, I've felt the urge to insert some "fairness" that way even when using a site like HotOrNot when I was anonymous and no one was watching. You can play that game when you're just rating people and don't have to follow up on it, and that explains why it doesn't match up with what people do when it comes to actual dating and accepting online match requests.

I live in a very white area, so I don't have much second-hand (and no first-hand) experience with interracial dating. But nearly all the white women I've known -- rich or poor, thin or fat, smart or dumb -- who dated black men seemed to have something to prove. I always felt bad for the guy, because he was obviously being used to shock her conservative parents, or to prove her PC bonafides, or to convince herself she's just as adventurous as the big city girls.

Anonymous said...

Kanazawa's estrogen hypothesis never got off the ground:

"Kanazawa surmises that Black women’s lower attractiveness might be due to low estrogen and high testosterone. Yet, high estrogen levels and low testosterone is a leading cause of fibroids, which significantly impact Black women, especially Black women who are overweight. Also, Black women have been found to have higher levels of estrogen in a study on breast cancer. "

mr. whiskey's hypothesis:

"and since intelligence correlates highly negatively with testosterone, "

there was a study showing pre-pubescent boys having slightly higher IQs than boys with slightly higher testosterone, but if your claim were true men would get positively retarded two months into their puberty.

Mark said...

The OkCupid dating site did a study that found women responded to emails sent from black men 21.7 percent of the time and white men 29.2 percent of the time. This would seem to indicate that women find black men less attractive. It is possible, on the other hand, that Kanazawa is right and black men are more attractive to women. Women could be taking factors into consideration other than physical attractiveness in picking guys for relationships. So you can't really disprove the theory that women find black men more physically attractive by pointing out who they actually date.

NOTA said...

A little off-topic but interesting: Felix Salmon writes a Saileresque post. I very much like the way he just matter-of-factly incorporates results relating to IQ and common sense observations: People with lower IQs are more likely to get taken advantage of in complicated financial arrangements, and less likely to get their retirement planning right, because those are complicated things that being smart helps you get right. Similarly, he simply states (correctly) that some people aren't going to benefit from a college education, because they're just not bright enough, and the companies that offer them a college education are mostly just ripping them off.

I always have believed that _The Bell Curve_ should have been much more read and understood on the left, because to the extent we all agree that intelligence is something that people differ in through no fault of their own, we also ought to care what happens to the folks whose intelligence dice rolls came out all small numbers.

NOTA said...

Anon 10:10:

Balancing in terms of IQ is interesting. I am pretty sure there's a positive correlation between IQ and attractiveness. Is it about the same correlation across races?

Assuming Cochran's ideas about genetic load differing between blacks and whites and explaining the IQ difference, I wonder how much that's also reflected in appearance.

NOTA said...

Most peoples' entertainment reflects what they like or find interesting, but tends to be exaggerated or more intense. For example, I wouldn't really enjoy trying to fend off alien invaders with inferior technology, or being chased around by brain-eating undead in a post-apocalyptic world, or holding off cannibal hordes with improvised sword and spear type weapons after all the technology stops working. And yet, I enjoy books about all those things, and all those things involve stuff I kind-of like (adverarial situations, cleverness in overcoming limitations in your technology or resources, speculation about ways a society adapts to huge changes). Similarly, I imagine there's a fair demand for either bodice rippers or BDSM sort of stories from women who don't actually have any desire to be raped or whipped, but who find dominant and powerful men interesting in various ways. A related thing happens, I think, with the common geek-fan-service portrayal of hot and badass women. Probably most of the fans aren't really wanting to go out with a girl who can kick their asses, but rather find strong, assertive, capable, independent women attractive.

Lots of people loved _The Sopranos_ and _The Godfather_. Hardly any actually became mobsters and started having people who crossed them murdered, put severed horses' heads in anyone's beds, etc.

I'm not up on the literature, but I think there's not anything like a consensus or strong evidence to say that porn has a big effect on behavior.

JayMan said...

On attractiveness, racial differences in such, and the link to IQ, see here, at my blog:

Evidence for Cochran’s & Harpending’s Theory of Genetic Load: The Link Between IQ and Attractiveness | JayMan's Blog.

Some studies do indeed find that Black men are rated as more attractive than White men, on average.

The findings are what they are, but I'm of the mind that we need more studies with much larger datasets and in different cultures. I'd even like to see genetic evidence to control for the degree of admixture in subjects.

BB said...

Actually, Asian men (like Kanazawa) and Black women, being largely losers in the mating game, should contemplate dating each other.

I used to know a Japanese guy who was married to an aunt Jemina type of Black woman. Both were happy at first glance.
There´s nothing really wrong with authentic African women. East African women are very feminine, and some west African women aren´t that bad. (ckeck out Naughty Nomad´s blog for field reports). It´s just that the wrong kind of African women were imported to the USA, for some reason.

As for Asian men, there´s been a selection for wimpy nerdy types in recent immigration waves. Asian men aren´t by and large the sisies they´re made out to be in the HBDsphere.

Anonymous said...

Probably the greatest endorsement of the view that black women are less attractive, is that so many black males go out with white women instead. I can't possibly think of a greater repudiation of black females then this.

By the way, black Labrador Retrievers are beautiful dogs and make wonderful pets.

Kylie said...

"The two things men and women have in common is that they both enjoy the company of men and looking at women."

Can't agree. It's been my experience that I am one of the few women who actually does enjoy the company of men. I will seek out and enjoy the conversation of a man who is intelligent and funny but physically unattractive. I don't know and have never even heard of another woman who will do that.

And it's been my observation that men enjoy the company of men while women enjoy the admiration of men. Not quite the same thing.

Anonymous said...

I'd like to know where, other than in their fevered fantasies, Whiskey et al find the data that black men are more attractive to women.

This seems to be an exclusively American thing, driven by American media. Certain *kinds* of white men (not Conan O'Brian types) are elsewhere considered the tops in attractiveness (it's usually either tan "California blond" dudes or Latin Lothario types; keep in mind Lothario, Don Juan, etc., are Meds...not black).

All statistics show women in the US bear children to Hispanic/Latin men at far higher rates than they do to black, if you want to look at interracial sex statistics (6% of children born to white mothers have Hispanic/Latin fathers vs. 1-2% having black fathers).

Anonymous said...

Haha, the guy who didn't realize what the ACT was and horribly botched his estimations of state IQs. Why hasn't he committed seppuku?

Maya said...

"I have always noticed the tendency for women who have extremely pale skin, freckles and/or red hair to be more likely to find black men attractive."

I'll respond to your anecdotal evidence with anecdotal evidence, since we're all sharing here. But I kinda, sorta look like Lindsay Lohan, before she grew tits and became hot, and I find Conan O'Brian to be rather attractive. Also, I grew up in a super diverse environment, and I never noticed this tendency. The really pale Irish girls from the local catholic school tended to date pale Russian, Ukrainian and Polish guys the most, while the more olive skinned Bulgarian/Romanian/Hispanic girls were very likely to date Turkish, Persian and Arabic guys. And there was this one rumor about an Indian girl getting kicked out of her house for getting pregnant by some Guatemalan. I remember wondering back then if there is some sort of a biological mechanism that makes people seek out something close to their own phenotype, even outside of their proper ethnicity.

Severn said...

the more testosterone you have on average the less smart you are, and vice-versa


Ah, so that explains why women are so much smarter than men!

There are some real retards commenting here. I guess they console themselves by telling themselves they have high testosterone.

Severn said...

I do know that men's magazines are full of pictures of women.


That isn't so interesting. But the fact that women's magazines are also full of pictures of women, usually including the cover shot, is pretty interesting.



Kanazawa claimed to have discovered that, scientifically and objectively, black men are more attractive then white men, women are more attractive than men, etc.

And all he really showed was that he does not understand what the words "scientifically" and "objectively" mean. Neither do you, it seems, but you're not posing as a scientist but rather as some commenter on a blog.

Here's a news flash - men find women attractive, and women find men attractive. It would be an odd screw-up on the part of Nature if it were otherwise.

Maya said...

"And 'as arousing as a BDSM e-book'? Fifty Shades of Grey stayed on top of the bestseller lists for the entire summer. "

I haven't read past the first page myself, but I've now interviewed quite a few people to find out why they like it. The results of my study suggest that the appeal of the novel has the most to do with the idea that a simple girl can have a powerful, rich, good looking man fall for her out of the blue and become the center of his world. From what I was told, I gather that the billionaire basically runs around and does stuff for the girl throughout the book while staring at her with passion, and he gives up most of his habits upon getting involved with her. Seems like the draw of the book is the fantasy of a girl getting the love of a much-hotter-than-reasonable-given-her-talents-guy that no other woman was able to get before, not the fantasy of being dominated. But, again, I got this from second-hand sources, even if they were numerous.

Maya said...

"That isn't so interesting. But the fact that women's magazines are also full of pictures of women, usually including the cover shot, is pretty interesting.

The two things men and women have in common is that they both enjoy the company of men and looking at women."

I disagree with your last statement. When I read every women's magazine on the stand, as a 13 year old, I didn't stare at the images of those female models because they were easy on the eyes, but out of fascination with my competition as the said competition was at the peak of flaunting its most evolutionary desirable assets. I think men watch sports for the same reason.

Anonymous said...

White guys don't do the sexy bit, the kind of society seen in say West Africa with lots of sexy men


Whiskey's Homo-erotic Fantasies, Part 361.

Maya said...

"After all, no one ever Eat-Prayed-Loved in Finland. Or Dusseldorf. Women avoid equalist, sex/gender egalitarian places like the plague and go for places where women are treated poorly. Africa, Asia, Latin America."

Actually, based on my experience competing for study abroad spots and the Fulbright grant, I'd say that Europe is the most in demand among the American girls, with Australia following closely behind. But, yeah, a novel about an old SWPL trying to find herself would have to take place in "exotic" and "unusual" locales.

Anonymous said...

Benefits for the bloodline of a very white person who chooses a black mate...blah blah

Benefits for the bloodline of a black who chooses a white mate: 1. IQ points...blah

The reasons so few whites choose a black mate...blah blah"

You appear to have forgotten the cost part of cost/benefit. That IQ part you mention as a benefit to blacks works both ways and is a massive cost for white people. It means all their descendents lose an advantage that took millenia of lucky evolution to develop.

The only people who benefit from it are those competing with white people which is why those people promote it so strongly...

for other people, not themselves.

Pat Boyle said...

There is an interesting political resonance to this topic.

One reason that the attractiveness of black men is not simple is that women don't judge men solely on the basis of their looks. Women also look for partners who are "good providers".

What does a good provider look like? Mitt Romney. What does an attractive black man look like? Barrack Obama.

Albertosaurus

Anonymous said...

"intelligence correlates highly negatively with testosterone"

intelligence will correlate with r/K type behavior

testosterone will correlate with r/K type behavior

It makes no sense for a woman to have children with an r-type male unless
1) They have no other choice.
2) They're on welfare.
3) The male is wealthy and they live somewhere with harsh alimony laws.

Chicago said...

Whites are the best looking and most attractive group of people on the planet. Everybody else is just a dull, flat black monochrome color. We are the ones with the sparkly looks and the intelligence and the rest of the non-white world knows it; they are envious even as they try to appropriate some of it for themselves. Supposed "scientific" studies that say otherwise are just junk science, total nonsense. Anybody with an ounce of commonsense and a little observation knows this. Whites are a minority worldwide but we are the ones with the blue, grey, green, hazel and brown eyes and varying hair colors and smooth hair textures; everyone else just has the standard black. We don't recognize what we've got and just end up throwing it all away.

Anonymous said...

"It's not clear that black women are less attractive. In Brazil they're widely seen as hot in bed and great fucks. They also look very different from American black girls."

Yes it is. In Brazil they're widely seen by white tourists as hot because semi-attractive women with a lot of black blood are a novelty in their home countries. They're widely seen by the locals as too disagreeable to be great fucks.

josh said...

Re "fraction of women that find intelligence a turn on...(Jewish women...more than most.) You havent spent a lot of time among jewish women,I'm guessing,sport.Jewish girls have a saying,and u can fill in any appropriate ethnic term you choose: (Italians) for sportin',Jews for courtin'.

Steve Sailer said...

In the movie Eat, Pray, Love, Julia Roberts divorces Billy Crudup, breaks up with James Franco, doesn't light a spark with some random Italians, rejects Richard Jenkins, and, finally, when she gets to Java, decides that Spaniard Javier Bardem (Penelope Cruz's husband) is, maybe, good enough for her.

Anonymous said...

Let me state categorically that I am far more attracted to black women than I am to white MEN! (And interdivestally let me add that I am much more attracted to the blog posts of white MEN,than I am to those of black women.)

Truth said...

"Just asked my girlfriend if she found black men more attractive than white men. She said, yeah, if I want to get smacked around."

Albertosarus, your expertise is needed here!

Maya said...

"You havent spent a lot of time among jewish women,I'm guessing,sport.Jewish girls have a saying,and u can fill in any appropriate ethnic term you choose: (Italians) for sportin',Jews for courtin'."

The average characteristics of your pool of potential love interests says a lot more about you than it does about the gender in which you're interested. I remember thinking this about the speaker at my 9th grade anti-violence assembly who kept getting date raped in college. Since then, I've confirmed that this applies to everyone ever.

Anonymous said...

"Yes it is. In Brazil they're widely seen by white tourists as hot because semi-attractive women with a lot of black blood are a novelty in their home countries. They're widely seen by the locals as too disagreeable to be great fucks."

No I lived there for years and it's the locals who find black girls to be hot and good in bed, that's the stereotype.

Also black men there are not sexually prized by the local women...at all.

Sometimes culture can blind you, guys. HBD exists but you have to look at people across the world and across time to understand human nature; not just 2010 USA and its neuroses.

Historically it's Latin men that are found to be attractive/romantic.

Anonymous said...

"All statistics show women in the US bear children to Hispanic/Latin men at far higher rates than they do to black, if you want to look at interracial sex statistics (6% of children born to white mothers have Hispanic/Latin fathers vs. 1-2% having black fathers)."

Actually, looking at CDC data for 2010, 5.1% of children born to white mothers had hispanic fathers and 2.9% had black fathers. I wouldn't exactly call the hispanic percentage "far higher" than the black.

http://i.imgur.com/EBaMI.jpg


And curiously, American-born hispanic mothers have children with black fathers 5.5% of the time--more frequently than white mothers do with black OR hispanic fathers.

http://i.imgur.com/k2ILN.jpg

Anonymous said...

"The enemy of my enemy is my friend "

This might be the motivation of overweight, very pale, women, the ones who are labeled fire crotch cows by white society, to date black men. It might be more revenge than rebellion. Take that white world who created me and hates me!

Anonymous said...

Indeed, if black men had small dicks while short stubby Mexican men had big dicks, I'll bet black men will still be favored for their body shape and muscles.



What is the origin of this myth that black men have impressive physiques and muscles?

I suspect the typical reader of this site gets most of his data on what black men look like from watching TV. Yeah, the typical black man looks just like Will Smith/Denzel Washington/Lebron James/Evander Holyfield/Dennis Haysbert.

Does the "D" in HBD stand for "dummies"?

danny said...

I never, ever liked those lordosis, butts that blacks have, but obviously some do.
I once read a semi-porn paperback where the protaganist was talking about a pimp who could get rare kind of girl with unusal traits: black girls with good legs; Asian girl with big tits. I don't remember what the unusual white girl would have had. Blacks almost never have good legs. I don't know about Asians and tits, but they don't tend to be large. Maybe the Brazilians get the natural tan frm the mixture, the bigger boobs from Africa and the good shape legs from Europe.

Truth said...

"Yeah, the typical black man looks just like Will Smith/Denzel Washington/Lebron James/Evander Holyfield/Dennis Haysbert.

Does the "D" in HBD stand for "dummies"?"

LMAO! If you mesh those five into a composite, the typical black man probably does.

Anonymous said...

Probably the greatest endorsement of the view that black women are less attractive, is that so many black males go out with white women instead. I can't possibly think of a greater repudiation of black females then this.

Likewise, the large numbers of white males intoxicated by asian females, a rampant phenomenon known as yellow fever or asian fetish, is a repudiation of white females and a confirmation of Kanazawa's scientific deduction ranking Asian women as the most desirable women on the planet.

Truth said...

"This might be the motivation of overweight, very pale, women, the ones who are labeled fire crotch cows by white society, to date black men. It might be more revenge than rebellion. Take that white world who created me and hates me!"

Do you want to date one of those "fire crotch cows?"

No?

Good. Then shut the fuck up and let them find someone who does.

Anonymous said...

"What is the origin of this myth that black men have impressive physiques and muscles?"

People notice outliers more.

So people notice particularly impressive physiques more than average ones.

The small minority of men with particularly physiques who also have naturally lower body fat will be noticably more noticeable.

People then extrapolate from those outliers. However differences in outliers are still differences.

It seems to me that if females in the hoe-farming parts of Africa could feed their children themselves and the men competed with each other for females via violence and display then men from that particular part of Africa ought to have had some selection pressure on them for physically attractive traits.

So it seems to me men from those parts of Africa (not all Africans) *ought* to be above average on some physically attractive traits e.g. physique, jawline etc.

At the same time they would also have developed r-type bahavioral traits which would make them very unattractive as a mate outside a context similar to one where those behaviors developed e.g. welfare, wealthy sports-stars.

So basically a positive (on average) outweighed by a larger negative (on average) except in certain contexts (contexts ironically dependent on white subsidy).

Clutch cargo cult said...

Did Whiskey really say black men have, "...on average, have darker skin then whites?". Tee hee

Anonymous said...

"Good. Then shut the &$@! up and let them find someone who does."

Just making an observation. What do you want me to shut up about? I don't think it is strange that a person who is ostracized will seek a new tribe. A chip on your shoulder is a sign of wood further up.

BUT, if their partner of last resort was you, I'd steer them toward a vibrator and a sperm bank.

Anonymous said...

Blacks almost never have good legs

Yet black africans are by far the best runners in the world. Which means they have the most superior legs of all the races. How can that not be good?

Turtle Dove said...

Hello? I am still saying that if black men were seen as more physically attractive, they would be the major male movie stars, not guys like Brad Pitt. Hollywood and the rest of the Anti-White media take every opportunity to push black males with white women, so if white women were that receptive, every single romance cover would have a black guy on it. Go look at them. They don't

Anonymous said...

It seems to me that if females in the hoe-farming parts of Africa could feed their children themselves and the men competed with each other for females via violence and display then men from that particular part of Africa ought to have had some selection pressure on them for physically attractive traits.


Interesting theory. Except that West-Africans in West Africa do not have the traits in question. Nor did black men in the US, until very recently.

I was born in New York in 1960. I grew up in America around both blacks and whites. I joined the army in 1979 and served for eight years. I've spent my entire life around a lot of in-shape guys of all racial and ethnic backgrounds. And I never saw guys with the "body-builder physique" until the late 1990's. I never saw any guys of any race with those huge shoulders, chest, and arms.

It's pretty obvious that what is going on is chemical enhancement - anabolic steroids, HGH, supplementary testosterone being taken by guys in their teens, etc.

This seems to be going on with guys of all races. I saw a tremendously muscled Hispanic guy just a couple of days ago. But I suspect there is a racial component to it as well - a lot more black guys than white guys are juicing.

The "outliers" you speak of do exist and they do color peoples perceptions. But they are not natural outliers, any more than the East German womens weight-lifting team were natural outliers.

Aaron B. said...

"[I]f your claim were true men would get positively retarded two months into their puberty."

Uh, didn't you? I sure did. I got better though. I think.

Anonymous said...

"I was born in New York in 1960. I grew up in America around both blacks and whites. I joined the army..."

Similar background and experience. I'm not talking about bodybuilders i'm talking about naturally strong, hefty guys (like me) who liked sport and didn't try that hard apart from that. The black version of that type didn't seem any stronger than me but they seemed *visually* to have more definition.

I don't know why that was but i assume it was lower body fat?

Anonymous said...

TurtleDove
"every single romance cover would have a black guy on it. Go look at them. They don't"

Sure that's because the debate gets deliberately shifted by nasty little anti-white people from black men (maybe) having a higher average in certain attractive physical traits (but below average in others) to "black men are more attractive" generally.

So if 15% of black men have a good jaw and 12% of white men and among other attractive traits white men are 15% and black men 12% then you still put a white man with a good jaw on the cover of romance novels because of all the other stuff.

There's also a shift caused by men's idea of what should be attractive to women (but mostly isn't) which tends to be stupid and weighted towards muscles and stuff like that (e.g. if you averaged a group of mens score of how attractive he thinks a particular WWF wrestler would be to women and the average of a group of womens scores there'd be a big difference imo.)

Anonymous said...

I'm not talking about bodybuilders i'm talking about naturally strong, hefty guys (like me) who liked sport and didn't try that hard apart from that. The black version of that type didn't seem any stronger than me but they seemed *visually* to have more definition.



I've never seen these black guys with the super low body fat.

Of course, I'm currently 52, somewhat out of shape, and have about 12% body fat. By my personal standards pretty much all guys are toting around a fair amount of fat.

But even allowing for that, I'm perplexed by claims that blacks had/have more muscle definition. The black guys I saw in the showers in the army ran the full spectrum of body types - skinny, portly, well-built - just like the white guys. Until I encountered people on blogs saying otherwise, it had never crossed my mind that black men might be leaner on average than white men. If anything I'd have said the reverse was true.

Anonymous said...

I was watching some Bananazawa stuff on youtube, and I must say there's something simple-minded about his ideas despite his political incorrectness.

For one thing, he's fallen for the fallacy that 'since intelligence is unnatural, all unnatural stuff must be linked to higher intelligence'. But that's just crazy. For example, Kanazawa speculates that gays must be more intelligent on average because homosexuality is unnatural. Using this logic, hermaphrodites must be super intelligent since they are far rarer(less natural)than gays. And may be midgets are more intelligent too since midgets too are relatively rare. And if we follow this silly logic to its full conclusion, people with downs syndrome must be more intelligent since most people don't suffer from Mongoloidism. I mean it's ridiculous.
Intelligence itself may be relatively rare and 'unnatural' but that doesn't mean it has to correlate to other forms of unnaturalness.

Another thing... Bananazawa says 'conservatism is the natural way of man'. Since conservatism is natural and liberalism is unnatural, liberals must be more intelligent.
But is conservatism really the natural mode of man? I don't think so. I think the natural mode of man is amnesiac, hedonistic, and utilitarian. By human nature, most people want to have a good time, stick to stuff that has immediate practical value, and not bother with much else. The natural mode of man can be found amongst yobs of UK and Negroes of UK. Hardly a conservative bunch. And if I hadn't been forced to go to school and learn 'received knowledge and wisdom handed down from the past', I would have stayed home and just watched TV or gone walking with my doggy.
And I would say most American conservatives are not really conservatives. They are more amnesiac. They don't much care about their ancestors, heritage, history, and etc. Country music culture is mostly hee-haw and me-and-my-gal-and-my-truck-that-won't-start, and etc.

True conservatism requires lots of intelligence because it's about memory and preservation. It goes against nature. Jews and Chinese were deeply conservative for 1000s of yrs, and they were indeed going against nature. Instead of going through the cycles of living for today, they were trying to preserve the wisdom, story, and values of the past, and this required tremendous memory, organization, scholarly pursuit, keeping records, learning, and etc. What is more conservative than the idea of the library, and it was no easy task in ancient times to build libraries, stock them, maintain them, and etc.
Most people don't wanna expand too much energy on such stuff. This is why so many current black youths know so little about black history. Why should they read about black history when it be so much more fun to listen to rap and dance and have sex and do drugs? True conservatism requires discipline. It requires preservation of memory and wisdom that most people naturally have no use for. I'll bet most people who major in Classics and Shakespeare and such stuff are highly intelligent. They may be politically liberal but they are temperamentally and intellectually conservative in that they see the value of preserving stuff of the past that most people in the present see no value in. Most people are happily amnesiac and wanna stay that way.

Anonymous said...

Like people of primitive cultures, most people only value and wanna keep what is of immediate value. Thus even with technology, most people are only concerned with the latest gadgets and immediately forget about stuff from the past. But people who collect, preserve, categorize, and classify old stuff tend to be intellectually engaged with the past. They see the value in historical memory itself even if it may have no immediate value in today's world. Hunter gathering societies are essentially amnesiac, not conservative. They forget most of their history--except some stories passed down through folklore--, and they only care about stuff--like simple tools--that have immediate use in their lives.

It was with the rise of higher civilization that memory and conservatism became important. Thus, poets like Homer memorized long long poems, and these were passed down from generation to generation. The memorization/preservation/conservation of such long poems required intelligence. And when people invented written language, it was the conservative-minded people who record stuff for posterity. And it was conservative minded people who invented history so that they could remember events of the past, study them, and make sense of them. And generations of Jewish scholars memorized the entire Torah and they thought about it over and over and over, and they wrote down their thoughts in Talmud. Was this kind of conservatism natural? If it's natural, how come yobs and most Negroes don't go for that stuff? They live very natural lives, but they are more like lions that hunt 3 hrs a day and sleep 21 hrs a day. They don't wanna conserve or preserve anything. They prefer to live day to day, for the moment, and they don't even remember much of their own past--many don't even know their parents, and having no such memory, they have forgotten the values associated with parenting and morality.

Conservatism isn't simply about maintaining knowledge of what is most immediately useful, pleasurable, or relevant. It is preserving memory of the past for posterity in the conviction that what may seem useless here-and-now to most people may actually hold great truth and meaning for the future. This is why so many Jews master history and seek to control it. They may be politically 'liberal', but they are no less conservative than their forebears in seeing great value in preserving knowledge of the past and learning from it.
In the ending of FAHRENHEIT 451, the book people are required to memorize entire books. They are conservatives of literature. Now, memorization alone is only one kind of memory, and one could argue it is a limited kind of intelligence, and we can see this in the limitations of the rote-memory-centric nations of East Asia. Even so, the idea that people should study and work so hard to memorize the knowledge of the past is not natural, and it requires a great deal of mental energy.

Svigor said...

I have always noticed the tendency for women who have extremely pale skin, freckles and/or red hair to be more likely to find black men attractive.

Actually, black-haired white women are about twice as likely to have had sex with a black as blondes or redheads:

The percent of white females in this sample who report any black sex partner, by hair color:
Black 8.2%
Brown 5.0%
Blond 3.9%
Red 3.9%


http://racehist.blogspot.com/2009/04/more-data-on-racial-mixing.html

Probably all those liberal Jewish girls. They gotta find something to do while their men chase the shiksas, right?

It may not correlate with it at all. Smart men have more control over their impulses than dumb men. There's more of a filter. I doubt that on average smart men are less capable of aggression than idiots. In smart men aggression is more focused, less random, better directed towards avenues in which it can be useful. People who are highly successful in business often come off as very aggressive. But along with intelligence they have a strong filter, so they're far less likely to have any domestic violence convictions than black NFL players.

You might as well be talking to a post.

That's not the primary reason. What would Whiskey of all people know about smart guys' psychology? The main reason why smart men seek smart women is very simple: conversation. They want someone with whom they can share their inner lives. Ideas, thoughts on books they've just read, etc. I think that in the real world that's a more powerful motivation than eugenics (though I guess it shouldn't be) or than Whiskey's musings on cuckoldry.

Smart guys seek smart women because people find mates like themselves (assortive mating). Whiskey HATES HATES HATES the words, "assortive mating."

Anonymous said...

"For one thing, he's fallen for the fallacy that 'since intelligence is unnatural, all unnatural stuff must be linked to higher intelligence'."

It is a coincidence that I was just wondering whether reason is an obstacle to the mating choices people would "naturally" make. If we are going to concede to natural selection, I guess we have to concede that everything we do is natural. Reason is just one decision making method, along with all the other unknown ones categorized as "feelings". From what little I've read from the evolutionary psychologists, there is some support for this idea.


http://longnow.org/

Don't loose all hope in the preservation of history. Back in Steve's Justin Knapp post a few months ago, one commenter mentioned the Long Now Foundation, which might interest you.

Anonymous said...

"Actually, black-haired white women are about twice as likely to have had sex with a black as blondes or redheads:"

There goes that theory, but how many are Fat?

TGGP said...

The blogosphere is just the place for work of Kanazawa's sloppiness. A pox on his employer for his temporary ban.

Dennis Dale, the Inductivist has also shown that fat chicks (as in, highest weight subjectively marked by GSS interviewers) get laid more. Do you want to argue they must be more attractive? That's an issue of supply, not demand.

Truth said...

"Probably all those liberal Jewish girls. They gotta find something to do while their men chase the shiksas, right?"

Jewish girls make up 1% of the American population.

Anonymous said...


Can't agree. It's been my experience that I am one of the few women who actually does enjoy the company of men. I will seek out and enjoy the conversation of a man who is intelligent and funny but physically unattractive. I don't know and have never even heard of another woman who will do that.



I kind of understand what you are saying. I only find smart guys attractive. So, that is who I dated when I was young. It is not so much that I didn't like the smart good looking guys, but really good looking guys have so damned many women chasing them all the time that they don't have time for another girl. I went more for the typical smart but plainer looking guy who had no women chasing him. That is really a much better deal. You still get someone interesting and from a good family with good values and you don't have to live so paranoid that he is going to cheat because who would he cheat with?

unix said...

"So it seems to me men from those parts of Africa (not all Africans) *ought* to be above average on some physically attractive traits e.g. physique, jawline etc."

Jawline? JAWLINE? Africans are prognathic. Their jawlines are about the last thing in their favor.
You want a good jawline? JFK Jr. had a good one, RIP. Cary Grant. Brad Pit.
There are black men with good jawlines, yes. But good jawlines are not the racial characteristic that might shoot them ahead of all others in the "Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all" debate.

viva italia said...

"But even allowing for that, I'm perplexed by claims that blacks had/have more muscle definition. The black guys I saw in the showers in the army ran the full spectrum of body types - skinny, portly, well-built - just like the white guys. Until I encountered people on blogs saying otherwise, it had never crossed my mind that black men might be leaner on average than white men. If anything I'd have said the reverse was true."

Exactly. Some "bloggers" are sucked into their computers and rarely come up for air.
I think it is a fact that blacks have normally a low fat ratio, white middling, and Asians, quite high. Despite the slenderness of most Asians, they are actually of a rather high fat to lean ratio, which is why they swim well. Women are also high fat to lean ratio on the average, compared to men. This is an advantage in childbearing, obviously.
Also, blacks have "bunchy" muscles, short and concentrated, while Caucasoids are more elongated. So it's not total nonsense.
That said, the body form of a well built Caucasoid is the most appealing to this reader. I think of the Greek statues.
This is all a matter of taste, and body form for me is largely eye candy. It wouldn't be enough in itself to make me commit for life. Or even a few months.

unix said...

"Blacks almost never have good legs"

"Yet black africans are by far the best runners in the world. Which means they have the most superior legs of all the races. How can that not be good?"

Talking about form, not function.
In any case, the hypothetical prostitutes under consideration would not be paid to do much running.

genetic redux said...

Some one has said that darker, more "med" looking people were more likely to hook up with blacks than were the blondes and redheads. I'd say that's true. To the extent I notice such things (which is not too much), I notice blacks are more confident chatting up whites who are (at least to them)of ambiguous ethnicity. Many are uncomfortable about dating outside their race, I think. And maybe they think they can pass off an olive skinned, black haired person as --- whatever they want to be.
OTOH, when I was in highschool, I remember the brown eyed, brunette girls were the ones who talked enthusiastically about marrying a blue-eyed blond guy and having blond kids. One girl talked hilariously of how everybody in her family had brown eyes (and she had really pretty big round ones), even the dog. She wanted to stop that trend asap. Really nice girl. Saw her on facebook with her sons, and she's still looking as good natured as ever. Her sons do appear to have had the dad she was looking for.
The red haired girl in my class, though, wanted to marry an Italian like her olive skinned dad, and have little southern Italian looking kids.
She married a brown-haired guy and had brown haired kids. Looking back I'm amazed at the extent to which girls of 14 were already thinking of marriage and children and genetics. Do they still? And this was the late 60s, when the cultural revolution was in full swing.

Anonymous said...

I'm trying to find studies of body fat in blacks and whites to get to the bottom of the claims that blacks do (or do not) have low body fat.

Here is one such study.

In the study, researchers used computer tomography (CT scans) and dual- energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) to measure visceral fat in about 1,400 white men and women and 570 black men and women aged 18 to 84. Participants' height, weight, BMI and total body fat composition were also measured.


At a given body fat percentage, black men and women had lower visceral fat than white men and women. Conversely, blacks also tended to have higher subcutaneous fat than whites. Researchers controlled for age and smoking status, among other variables.


Note that higher subcutaneous fat would tend to mask muscle definition.

Anonymous said...

Tropical environments where females could feed their offspring on their own *will* have had major differences in selection pressures compared to environments where females needed some level of male provisioning.

From an hbd point of view i think that logically must be true and i'd also say that environmental difference is likely to have been the key factor in "out of Africa" or rather "out of the tropics."

I think there would have been selection for physical differences and much more importantly for the r-type of r/K behaviors. From an hbd angle i think that's plain.

On the other hand there's the constant promotion of black male, white female pairings in the media (and echoed by some people online) as part of the meme warfare aimed at the stealth genocide of white people.

So there's an hbd angle and a political angle.

It seems to me the best way to counter the meme warfare without the endless angels dancing on the head of a pin conversations about physical attributes is to focus on the infinitely more important part which is r-type vs K-type behavior.

It makes no sense at all for a female to have children with an r-type male unless
a) they have no other choice
b) they're on welfare
c) the male is wealthy and there are generous/harsh alimony laws

Severn said...

I think it is a fact that blacks have normally a low fat ratio, white middling, and Asians, quite high.


If that were the case then I'd think that there would be some studies finding that to be the case. And to be honest, there aren't.

That may just mean that there is a shortage of good research in this area. On the other hand, it may mean that your "fact" - which is actually a hypothesis - is incorrect.

Anonymous said...

Kanazawa has recently claimed that homosexuals are smarter than straights.

Maya said...

"Looking back I'm amazed at the extent to which girls of 14 were already thinking of marriage and children and genetics. Do they still?"

I don't think those girls were thinking about their reproduction scientifically. They were just fantasizing about the babies they were going to have and about their future husbands. And, of course, girls still fantasize about that stuff. Always have and always will. Back in middle school, I used to read Teen and Seventeen magazines, and they often addressed the topic of "how to make him your boyfriend". The advise that kept surfacing and resurfacing was: STOP TALKING TO HIM ABOUT THE KINDS OF BABIES YOU WOULD HAVE TOGETHER. Because, apparently, this was a very common mistake. Now, I scoffed at the dim mind who would need this spelled out to her, but I did name my and any new love interest's children without fail and within a short time period. I'd come up with 3 for girls and 3 for boys, and I'd really agonize over middle names too.

Severn said...

If conservatives were politically anti-liberal but still deeply engaged intellectually and culturally with their past, liberals might have more respect for conservatives


You tend to repeat yourself. You made the exact same comment earlier in the thread.

I don't agree with you. No doubt many self-described conservatives are not very historically aware and are not very intellectual. But the same remark applies in spades to self-described liberals.


most conservative culture is about guns, nascar, country music.

And most liberal culture is about rap, hip-hop, feminism, resentment of white men, and eco-worship. What's your point, exactly?


Look at Alternative Right site. Its idea of cultural discussion is.. Batman.

I think there is a widespread - and correct - perception on the right that it has been losing in the realm of popular culture. So you see these efforts to be be more hip and relevant. On the whole it's a good thing. The right has a tendency to focus too much on Serious Thinkers, and it can't all be Montesquieu and Burke and Hayek.

Now, if only we saw some serious reflections on Reflections on the Revolution in France on the left-wing sites ...

Anonymous said...

"And most liberal culture is about rap, hip-hop, feminism, resentment of white men, and eco-worship. What's your point, exactly?"

Most may be, but when it comes to elite or serious culture, you're gonna find far more liberals than conservatives. I used to work at specialty video stores, and they were all run by liberals.
So, while most conservatives are into nascar and most liberals are into stuff like sex and the city, when it comes to 'higher culture', you're gonna find far more liberals,and this is true in colleges, creative circles, literary circles, art communities, and etc.
And that makes a difference. Cultural power isn't decided by what MOST PEOPLE like but what the elites of a community like. So, while most libs may be morons, lib elites are not. But what can be said about the conservative elite?

Severn said...

when it comes to elite or serious culture, you're gonna find far more liberals than conservatives.


Well, if a brilliant and thoughtful liberal says so, who am I as a stupid conservative to gainsay you?


I used to work at specialty video stores, and they were all run by liberals.

"All the intelligent people I know are liberals! Also, how could Reagan have won, when I don't know a single person who voted for him?"

I'd point out the specific type of logical error you are making here, but I'm sure that I don't need to - after all, you're really smart and intellectual and stuff so you must know it already.

Anonymous said...

The right has a tendency to focus too much on Serious Thinkers


LOL

rob said...

r/K guy, are the same one who was commenting at West Hunt a couple weeks ago?

Anyway, why a woman would have an 'r-type' babydaddy:

How do you think the r-types came to predominate in particular environments? Because having lots of kids with relatively low investment in each child led to more grandchildren than having fewer kids but investing more in each. Certainly for men, and probably for women too. Modern America is that kind of place. Not enough kids die of starvation or neglect to make much difference. Reproductive success is largely a function of birfin' mo' babays.

Most of the women who have cads' children are themselves r-types. It's hard for most white people to believe, but black women like black men: they carefully crafted them over long time periods to be the sort of mates they want. You (prolly) think domestic violence is a really bad thing: Truth thinks it's a joke. Rihanna thinks it's hawt, and has a revealed preference for it.

Not to mention that the r-type women are the product of their generations of sexual selection for (a particular type of) masculinity. Put less politely, r-type women are butt ugly and dudely looking: that's why Tyler Perry in a dress is so funny: lots of black women look like black dudes in drag.

rob said...

Oh, as for men being less attractive than women. There's an OKcupid(?) datablog post on male and female ratings: when men rated women they ended up with a roughly normal distribution. Women rated men much more harshly, and there was a huge peak at maybe 2 (on a 1-5 scale, IIRC) and then a tail.

I think it's fair to say that women are more physically attractive because they average ~3 and men average ~1.5(?) when rated by the opposite sex.

I would like to know the sex and race of Addhealth and other survey raters: white chicks sometimes say/think that mannish black women are attractive, Michelle Obama comes to mind. As far as I can tell, black women and white men find each other utterly unappealing, so black women would tend to rate white men much lower than white women would.

As for K-dog's original dataset he mentions at bigthink, of course black men in college get laid the most. They ain't there cuz they're smart. Pretty much all of them are affaleefs, and black men either have very low standards or a much different aesthetic sense than whites. If white Lax dudes were counted separately from the actual student population of white guys, they'd clean up on quality and quantity of poon.