There is some dispute about the roles of the sexes in mate choice.
In the popular wisdom, the man is active and the woman is passive. The man chooses, the woman sits there and waits to be approached.
It is not surprising that classical feminism, in its attempt to ascribe to the women a role as active as possible in everything, as well as neofeminism in its pursuit to make men as passive in everything as possible, are looking for any arguments they can find to support their claim that, although externally the man's role in mating seems to be the active one, it's really the woman who has the say.
That seems to be the prevailing scholarly theory as well. The man is the pursuer, but the woman is the selector. (That's how the biologists actually describe the female's role in a typical mating game – the selector.)
Paradoxically, this point of view is also held by many masculists – probably because imagining the woman being in charge (and the man thus at the mercy of her decision) frees them from the thoughts of their own incompetence.
Some masculists insist that men are in a hopeless situation, with women having complete power over us, not only thanks to being given a privileged status by law and social customs, but also thanks to their superior cunning and lack of moral scruples. Unsurprisingly, those wannabe men's right activists suggest that it's actually the woman who chooses herself a partner, but since she leads him with subtle tricks of psychological manipulation, he ends up believing that he is the active partner. (Simon Sheppard has written a thick book dedicated primarily to this concept.) I've been trying to make up a name for this school of masculism, but haven't yet found a suitable one. Masculodesperatism? Masculoimpotentism?
Anyway, I propose a hypothesis different from both of the above theories.
I suggest that one who observes the reality closely, realises that no one chooses anything. A man pursues every woman who is not revoltingly ugly – unless, of course, he has something else to do that is very important or urgent, or is very tired or something. A woman, in turn, resists every man who is not a moviestar, playing guitar on a stage, or something comparable. At each such encounter, there is a certain probability that the man's insistence happens to be strong enough and the woman's resistance happens to be weak enough so the two end up having sex. After that, there's a certain probability that they have sex again, a certain probability that she gets pregnant, etc. It's all a game of chance and numbers.
Even though each one of us has preferences as to which members of the opposite sex are more desirable or less desirable, we men end up taking what we can get and women end up spreading their legs when they can't resist. There is no actual mate selection on either side, only selection attempts. I daresay all those books advising a female reader how to choose Mr. Right from among all her suitors are quite useless – except as sources of income for their authors and publishers, obviously.
The biologists like calling the female "selector", because it sounds a lot nicer than "resister". In reality the woman can't be a selector, because selecting requires decision-making. Anyone who has had significant experience with women, knows how poor women are at making up their mind. Women hate having to make decisions. For us, the freedom to make our own choices is a blessing to which we strive. For the (typical) woman, the necessity to make decisions is a burden. Indeed one of the most important functions of a man in a woman's life is to relieve her of that burden. In simpler words: a woman yearns for a man who will tell her what to do. But that's another story. The point of this article is: apart from rare exceptions, neither the man nor the woman actually chooses their mate.
