This question has bothered me for a while. The average man has a lot of interests, and since different men tend to have different ones, the total number of distinct male obsessions and hobbies is numbered in millions. All women have pretty much the same interests, and there are scarcely more than a handful of them in total. Why should travel, of all things, be one of those?
I'm guessing that this is a recent development. In the past most travel was dangerous, unpredictable, uncomfortable - the kind that still appeals to a subset of high T adventurous guys. If Richard Burton and Columbus were alive today, they would probably try to cross the world in a canoe or swim across the Bering Strait naked in winter or traverse the Antarctic on foot, all in a shorter amount of time than the current world record holder.
That's not the kind of travel women have ever liked. They're into packaged deals - hotels, fat tour guides, group photos in front of the Eiffel Tower, lying on the beaches of a continent other than their own. This is all very modern.
Some would tell you that to women travel is like jewlery or flowers - they don't like it for itself, they just like seeing men spend money on them through it. And indeed one would expect all the leading experts on jewlery and botany to be men, not women. But what is one to make then of the fact that single women often travel with each other on their own dime?
I've heard the theory that women like to travel because in hotels they don't have to cook or do any household chores. Perhaps there's some truth to that, but I doubt that it's the whole truth. Wealthy women still seem to like riskless travel more than wealthy men do.
My hunch is that women's desire for frequent superficial changes of scenery has to do with gender differences in focus and attention. It is more male to want to focus deeply on one thing at a time and it is more female to prefer to quickly jump from one topic to another, never delving deeply into any one of them. Perhaps the feminine passions for constantly redecorating one's home and changing one's wardrobe are related to that.
The intelligent high T guys' preferred type of travel (mountain climbing and the rest of it) isn't just dangerous, it also requires a lot of focus. It can often be described as a single-minded pursuit of a difficult goal, in other words the very opposite of anything that the average travel agency has ever tried selling. Most men won't climb the Everest, but a largish percentage will put even more effort into other, stationary hobbies than it woud have taken to climb it. Compared to that packaged tours seem passive, scatterbrained, and above all, boring, to many men. But not to any women.
Friday, September 16, 2011
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I'm on an internet dating site (Match) and I've noticed this. Women have a limited space to put things in their profile and they'll often have long lists of the places they have been to. I've always thought it was meant as a status symbol. They're showing they have the money to take all these expensive vacations. They could list other things like favorite authors, movies or music but those hobbies don't cost much money so there's no increase in status in that. Women are also interested in other expensive things as status symbols like the jewelry, their wardrobe and their houses. The common denominator is they all costs lots of money. I don't imagine that the guys on internet dating sites are going to want to date a woman more because they see on her profile she's been on a package tour to some place like Istanbul. Women on internet dating sites seem pretty oblivious to what might actually attract a guy.
ReplyDeleteMARK: THE PREDOMINANT THING IS TRAVEL!! SOME WHEN TALKING ABOUT SALARIES WANT MEN WITH 100,000 PLUS. I HAVE BEEN ON 2 SITES AND NOW ON MATCH.COM. IT IS DISHEARTENING BECAUSE I AM DISABLED FOR 5 YEARS AND DID NOT LIKE TRAVEL BEFORE EXCEPT IN AMERICA WHICH I DID IN MY 40'S. I AM 60 AND SINGLE. THE OLDER I GET THE MORE I FEEL THAT THE SEXES HAVE VERY LITTLE IN COMMON. NEVER ONCE ON ANY SITE DID THEY MENTION LIKING PHYSICAL CONTACT!!!!
DeleteHeh. This post of mine was totally inspired by Match.com. I've always known that women of all ages love this sort of travel, but Match profiles have been recently hammering this point to me pretty relentlessly. I'm now assuming that the profiles that lack any mention of travel (probably less than 5% of the total) are spam. Some profiles (far more than 5%) devote more verbiage to travel than to everything else combined.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if bragging about status is a big motivating factor there. None of them brag about the size of their homes or the make of their cars in their profiles. At least some of them must have wealthy parents - not a word about that.
I'm sticking with the scatterbrained theory. They seem to constantly need a change of topic, a change of scenery, something new. A shallow, short-term look at a topic, then on to the next one. Packaged tours provide quick, shallow looks at other countries.
I've thought about it some more. They definitely brag about their homes to each other in person. But not to men on dating sites. They want men to be attracted to their looks and personalities, not to their money.
ReplyDeleteThey talk both to each other and to men about travel, though. Why? Probably because they naively expect men to be as excited by touristy travel as they are, the same way that the more clueless among nerds expect women to be able to be excited by programming languages. They're picturing it as something that they could enjoy doing together with men.
One good argument in your favor would be to compare men and women who leave their home country to live abroad by choice. I'd hazard a guess that more men will pick a country and "go native."
ReplyDeleteFrom what I have noticed, most of them like to travel for first hand felt emotions. They can't get enough of it and different places and thus experiences gives them varying emotions which they can later share with their buddies and go to those feelings again. Not to mention that talking about it with friends leads to friends sharing their experiences/emotions and they can feel those too. We may be adrenaline junkies they are emotional junkies.
ReplyDeleteWhen you say scatterbrained, it comes down to feeling various emotions. As long as they can feel a range of emotions they are doing well then. When you delve deep into one emotion (focus, concentration) they don't want to handle it. Its boring. Just one emotion? No way !
Bitches
ReplyDeleteI found this post because I had an inkling to look into the same topic. This guy has a somewhat interesting take on it:
ReplyDeletehttp://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20120312192005AA7Ey75
What is clear is that we're all noticing the same things.
You're all missing the point. Like everything else, human behavioral tendencies are shaped largely by instinct. Thousands of years ago, when cave-dwelling humans lived in small clans, women instinctively migrated from one clan to another, often over great distances. There was a valid Darwinistic reason for this -- continuously inbreeding within the same small clans would produce genetic anomalies and weak offspring, so the innate female behavior of moving from one place to the next helped assure the survival of our species.
ReplyDeleteThings haven't changed much in 10,000 years.
I don't think that in historical times women showed much desire for travel UNTIL it became safe relatively recently. Did women travel much in 18th century Europe? In the Middle Ages? In ancient Rome? I have a strong impression that in all of those periods they traveled far less than men. I don't see this desire of theirs being caused by an ancient instinct for travel per se, but by an ancient tendency to be scatterbrained. Before modern technology and travel agencies made travel safe and quick, it did not appeal to the scatterbrained.
DeleteWhat has been discussed here is just what I have been thinking all along - the whole travel thing for women is a shallow, short-term, immediate change for the sake of it that doesn't demand too much focus (that's why soaps and other trash TV is so popular with them). And the dating sites are awash with attractive women that have an insatiable desire for travel, and thus hinting at their interest in men with high salaries.
DeleteDespite the nice, cosy, false sense of security that a packaged holiday provides to some far flung place that no one has ever heard of before, they dodn't seem to have the radar to detect the dangers that some locals can pose to them, which is why it's no surprise whenever you hear these stories when it all goes wrong.
And what about bloody Global Warming?
Rick
Greetings, misogynists. Oh, I'm sorry, you don't know what that word means? Here's the definition, according to dictionary.com: a person who hates, dislikes, and mistrusts women.
ReplyDeleteSo let me sum this up - wait, do I have the attention span to do this? Maybe I need to check tmz.com first. Hold on... Okay, got my gossip. I'm ready to go. Let me sum this up. You believe women like to travel for the following reasons:
1) To impress other people
2) The need to have novel emotional experiences
3) They can't focus on one thing for too long so they need to get out and see new things
4) They want men to spend money on them
5) Women want a break from house work (wait, WHAT?! Are you serious?)
I'm a woman, in case you didn't get that from my text above. I'm an educated woman. I must have some focus in my life because I completed my graduate degree and managed to get promoted 3 times over the last 5 years all while plugging away as a part-time student.
I'm also an American (I'm under the impression that you folks are British which is why I mentioned that).
I (and many of my other female friends) love to travel. I don't believe I've ever traveled for any of the 5 reasons you short-sighted morons listed above. I don't give a flying f*ck who is impressed with where I've gone, I have *plenty* of novel emotional experiences right here in Indiana, I addressed the focus issue already, I hate when other people spend money on me, and I don't think house work ever crosses my mind when I travel (whether in the form of relief or noticing its absence).
So you're wondering what the big secret is? Women love experiences and memories. We love romance and adventure. We clearly don't get that from you lumps of flesh so we have to go out and get it on our own. We love connecting with other people and want to understand humanity. The best way to do that is see all the other cultures and observe what they do, appreciate their art and architecture, listen to their music, try to speak their language, taste their food, get drunk with them and dance in the streets. It's the best. I'd rather spend every dime I earn on books and travel because I love to learn and I love fun experiences. The same concepts apply to domestic travel, too. The South is much different than the Midwest, and the West, and the East Coast - there's a lot to see in America and I love visitng new places.
And the type of travel I do isn't always luxurious or easy. I stayed in a slum of a hotel in South Carolina recently. It was a hoot because the other patrons were easy going, fun-loving, and threw some damn good parties.
I'm assuming you men are bitter and single. Bashing on ladies will not help you attract one. Just a little bit of loving advice from this Hoosier girl.
I'll grant that many of the reasons given here for women's attraction to travel are less than charitable, but the point that women, as a group, seem to have a much stronger desire to travel than men. Are we men just a bunch of xenophobes?
ReplyDeleteI think the answer is that women are much more attracted to newness and change, it feeds them, makes them feel more alive. There is nothing necessarily superficial about it, but it is something that appears more to a person's feminine side. I recently read The Way of the Superior Man by David Deida, and he does a good job of describing the duality between change and stability in men and women. The question is how those two impulses ideally interact in a relationship and within an individual.
I have this situation with my wife. I thank you all for your comments because it did shed some light. Even the woman who shared. (Although she seemed very upset ) She spoke the truth and how women can't see why we men WOULDN'T like to travel. I see both sides.
ReplyDeleteLet me add this... the fact of the matter is traveling is an expensive hobby... and men are usually preservationists, and money hoarders ( we're thinking survival all the time ) we see $$$$ while women see the opportunity to enrich their lives. Its all about balance.. I don't think either sex is really "wrong" its why we were put on earth together... to even it out. If everyone thought like men we'd all be at home watching a 100 inch TV and relaxing with all our money turning into slobs. If we all thought like women, our passions would always lead us and that can just get seriously dangerous. But we have balance so we all end up traveling a little bit and being couch potatoes a little bit... not a bad deal if you ask me.
I'm inclined to go with what the one female contributor has said--not about the misogyny or lumpishness of the rest of us, but her simple statement that women love romance and adventure and connecting with others. Here I think "romance" is used in its broadest sense, a liking for what's distant and different and exotic, and new connections are always more interesting when they're made across geographic and cultural boundaries. We men like this, too, but to a lesser degree, to the point that we find ourselves balancing it against the inconveniences of travel, the expense, the other negatives. I'm glad that I forced myself to travel in Europe. When I asked what I like about it, my answer tends to be:
ReplyDelete1. I was tired of thinking of pictures on postcards whenever "Paris" was mentioned. Now I think about a real place. Same with London, Rome, etc.
2. It gave me perspective on my own country. After a week or so in England, I started hearing my own accent. It sounded alarmingly flat and I was involuntarily shading toward a British pronunciation. In France, I no longer felt snobby speaking French: it's not snobby to speak French in France and my French skills improved. I learned that in most of Europe, people are quite a bit less open than in America, and strangers don't smile at strangers in the street. (If I'd been a woman, especially an attractive one, the experience might have been quite different.) In Italy I was so used to this that when a salesgirl started a conversation with me, I was startled. It turned out she wasn't Italian, she was from Columbia. So I learned, from this and other encounters, that this American openness applies to all of the Americas, not just the United States, and also that people in North, Central and South America all consider themselves "Americans," the United States is just "North America."
3. It made me appreciate what I have just because of where I was born and not thanks to my own doing. Returning home, I realized for the first time how vast America was, with virtually unpopulated areas as big as whole countries in Europe. When I stepped into my tiny house, it seemed to have grown immensely, it was nothing but space. For a week or more I drank in this new wealth until my sense of scale adjusted.
Notice that in this there is nothing whatever about romance and adventure, relaxation or escape. Overall it was three weeks of inconveniences that at best I had grown used to but very rarely enjoyed. And this brings to one last thing: if I had found romance and adventure and "connection," I probably wouldn't be running on about it because that would make me sound like, well, a woman. Women are free to sound like men and use the "f" word just as frequently or more so, but men who talk like women still do so at their peril. I think, too, that where women are the travelers, we're more like the destinations: geographically and attitudinally fixed, interesting and worth connecting with while still new and different, less so when better known, and in any case often just one spot on an itinerary. If we're lucky, that becomes the home spot, but the itinerary doesn't stop.
Nice post. I was looking for a place discussing exacting this as I've signed up to match.com and noticed the same things. I was already quite sensitive to this topic as my GF broke up with me after 2 years saying as one of the main motivations that I don't like ENOUGH to travel. I've highlighted "enough" because we used to go somewhere together at least once every 2 or 3 months, but she claimed that instead she needed "a change of scenery at least once per month". I am not a person who dislikes travelling, on the contrary I do and have lived and worked in 4 different countries around Europe and often enjoyed more than her the places we visited together.
ReplyDeleteBut there are things I partially understand:
- that a person who has lived in a single place her entire life might want to experience more than I do how other countries live, but I don't believe this can be done so much with short stays.
- that attractive persons with a tendency of getting drunk and flirting (such as male friends of mine) like travelling more because they satisfy their narcissistic need. This is probably what the female above calls "romance and adventure". I also noticed that these people like learning languages and other things because they always believe to be very good at that.
I disagree with the idea they want to travel for the money or to impress. Some of them may do, and probably this is true for men too, but I think it's not a general phenomenon.
The bottom line for me is that, as true for anything, travelling is a very nice thing if used with measure. Therefore when I read or hear that a woman or a man stresses it too much my narcissism-alarm bell rings because someone who can't stay too long in one place is someone who can't stay too long in one relationship. This, however, has nothing to do with sleeping around, which is just HOW a "bad" woman (or man) might use travelling, a serious woman might be obsessed with travelling while being well-mannered (like my ex). Narcissistic people travel and it just happens to be the case that there are more narcissistic women than men.
I meant in the last sentence that "Narcissistic people are addicted to travelling and it just happens to be the case that there are more narcissistic women than men"
ReplyDelete"All women have pretty much the same interests, and there are scarcely more than a handful of them in total". What an bizarre statement. I'm a guy, and that's as far as I got because a statement like that is ridiculous beyond belief. Men and women may have different types of curiosity, and experiencing different cultures may be an interest shared by more women than men. But to suggest women don't have as many interests as men is absurd.
ReplyDeleteInteresting stuff. I have noticed all the female profiles in online dating, almost always mentioning traveling. The ones that do not are usually conservative girls who want to stay home and cook and have a family-oriented approach to life. I think there is a theme here from my more general experience, but I'm not sure. I want to suggest that men are generally more conservative in general than women (i.e., less open to new experiences), and I would predict southern conservative women are less likely to prefer traveling. I'm in academia, and the kids here LOVE traveling (boys & girls - I stand out). Academia is known for being very liberal. Just a thought - and a testable one.
ReplyDelete