The Brutal Tactics of Female Sexual Competition - Dr Dani Sulikowski
These notes were generated by AI and may contain inaccuracies.
Dr. Dani Sulikowski's research focuses on the evolutionary psychology of human behavior, narrowed to female intrasexual competition—how women compete with each other for the largest share of the population's reproductive success.
The currency of evolution is reproductive success. Genes promoting it increase in frequency, along with their mechanisms and behaviors. Female intrasexual competition maximizes an individual's relative reproductive success, not absolute. You win by reproducing at a greater rate than the population average, increasing your lineage's representation over generations. This can be achieved by increasing your own reproductive success or inhibiting rivals'. Net reproductive success matters: accelerate your own (foot on the gas) or brake rivals' (foot on their brake).
Consciousness varies by person and may not matter much. Consciousness provides post-hoc justification for evolved behaviors. People generally don't know why they do things—experiments show they confabulate reasons when manipulated unknowingly. Women (and men) don't need to understand that their behaviors inhibit rivals' reproductive success; they just need to be compelled to act. Women are overtly aware of nastiness in their behavior, as most have been bullied by other women. Through a feminist lens, some ideologies (e.g., viewing motherhood as oppression, marriage as subjugation) inhibit others' reproduction while seen as liberating.
Proximate: "She's a bitch, I don't like her." Ultimate: Behaviors suppress a rival's future child-bearing potential. Few women connect ostracism, gossip (e.g., "bless her heart" about casual sex), or relational aggression to reproductive suppression—it's the "game within the game."
Women connect it to physical appearance and attractiveness, key to female mate value on the mating market. Women notice attractive newcomers in workplaces/social settings raising ire due to jealousy. Relational aggression correlates with appearance, dress, and skin exposure.
Study (possibly Maryanne Fisher, but unsure): Women outside lab waiting room react differently to same woman asking directions—one version modestly dressed, one exposing skin. Women aggress more against the sexually signaling version, seen as greater mating threat. This lowers her confidence, excludes her from groups, reduces male attraction—countering her sexual availability signal.
Female intrasexual competition signaling: Dressing up (clothes, makeup) targets other women, not men. Interpreted as signals of intrasexual aggression, social aggression, dominance. Attractive women signaling sexually are seen negatively; less attractive women doing so seen as dominant/competent. Attractive woman signaling sexual availability in social scenarios provokes counteraggression from other women.
Women moderate dress (dress down) in new groups to avoid backlash—experientially learned, but evolved. Women train to behave certain ways for other women's benefit.
Male intrasexual competition maximizes own reproductive success (sprint race, only gas pedal)—societies send men to war/die because populations recover quickly via remaining men. Suppressing male rivals doesn't work long-term; others pick up slack.
Female intrasexual competition is relative; suppressing rivals works because female reproduction is capped (no quick recovery if 40-50% women lost). Women focus on braking rivals (trip others in race), allowing low overall success but relative wins. Asymmetry: Men sprint independently; women hinder each other, slowing the field.
Biology: Women face gestation/breastfeeding (2-year cycle), opportunity costs, resource needs, mate retention challenges. Men face fewer impediments (e.g., can have kids from prior relationships).
- Tracy Vaillancourt's work.
- Study: Men more accepting of political rivals than women of allies.
- Joyce Benninsson/Tracy: Male basketball players show more physical affection to opponents than female players to teammates.
This explains female brake pedal (savage but reproductively useful) vs. male gas-only. Women excel in social skills (manipulation, lie detection, lying, tracking alliances/gossip)—men oblivious (e.g., forgetting feuds).
"Intrasexual competition is a fundamental organizing principle of female social behavior."
Women receptive (nod, "Yeah, that's exactly it")—all have received/engaged in it (individual differences). More resistance from men, who defend women ("sexist"). Men blind to it: rarely targets, don't detect subtlety, women-are-wonderful bias.
Intrasexual competition shows in women's dating advice (formal studies on relationship formation, timing children, marriage decisions).
Women give more reproductively inhibiting advice to other women (framed as friends or colleagues) than what they say they would do themselves. This advice covers decisions like whether to get married, when to start having children, and whether to stay home as a stay-at-home mom or return to work. Studies show women are more likely to tell others about the importance of going back to work rather than staying home, and to delay children to invest in career success, compared to their own preferences. Their own choices serve as the benchmark for what they presume is most adaptive.
This pattern appears informally in mass media and social media, with articles like "I had an affair and it was the best thing I ever did for my relationship." Target released a Valentine's Day jumper saying "dump him" in giant text. Another article questions if having a boyfriend is "right-wing coded." These devalue monogamous and committed relationships, translating into individual advice women give each other and lab-measured results.
Articles justify these views as emancipating women, encouraging independence, noting 50% of marriages end in divorce, leaving women with no money and kids. They frame leaving bad relationships as positive, pushing back against archaic norms. However, the discrepancy arises because women espousing anti-natal, anti-relationship ideologies do not embody them themselves, creating winners (those who promote but don't follow) and losers (those who buy in fully).
In manipulative intra-sexual competition, winners promote reproductively inhibiting ideologies without following them, while losers embody them. If no one falls for it, there's no payoff. Leaders (winners) and followers (losers) exist, with extreme losers being young women in their early 20s getting sterilized (tubes tied or severed) to be "free" for sex without contraception worries or being tied down. This signals liberation, gets celebrated on social media, especially by women in their late 30s with three or four kids.
Tubal ligation targets fallopian tubes to eliminate ovarian cancer risk (hard to detect until late stage), common post-reproduction. Between 15-30% of women who have the procedure inquire about reversal, including some young women who did it for permanent contraception and later regret it.
Articles like Vogue's "Is having a boyfriend cringe now?" (more toxic than "right-wing") exemplify this. Proponents endorse but may not follow, gaining reproductive advantage over those who do. Stats show few right-wing women.
Reproductively inhibiting memes spread like multi-level marketing of snake oil: sellers convince buyers who then sell to others, believing it. Promoters improve relatives' genes' success by suppressing others' reproduction, even if they themselves end up with zero offspring. Supporters aren't identifiable as winners or losers; believers create a philanthropic smokescreen.
Alex Cooper promoted casual sex ("sleep with him and not catch feels") but later revealed engagement, proposal in a rose garden, and family pivot. She likely believed it initially as progressive and modern, but life pulled her differently, raising questions about past militancy.
Broad elite female support for LGBT and transgenderism acts as fertility suppression. Women strongly favor gender ideology, pushing it in female-dominated industries due to reproductive suppressive implications. Having a girlfriend or wife isn't cringe like a boyfriend or husband.
Women reach biological reproductive ability before it's adaptive (long-term lifetime success). Early 20s is a period for self-reproductive suppression. Feminism targets this, encouraging risky sexual behavior as liberation, but marital sex becomes "unpaid/emotional labor" and oppressive.
Manipulative signals require appearing to do the behavior, often costly. Women navigate cost-benefit: oversignaling leads to own goals, like extreme sterilization (e.g., one woman set tubes in resin necklace). Mechanisms for signaling overshoot, causing self-harm.
Own goal means reproductive failure, though culturally framed as liberation (unlimited sex, no childcare). Women engaging in this are often unhappy/miserable (per Louise Perry). Cohorts now beyond reproductive years regret missing the boat, facing depression. Casual sex is liberating, but spousal sex is oppressive—a duality.
Generally no. Men might benefit in mate-poaching by sabotaging rivals' relationships, but not by caring about rivals' reproductive success—only if it aids gaining the partner.
You've decided you want his partner for whatever reason. Other men can pick up the slack, and there's very little men can do within themselves to move the population's background reproductive rate, so the payoff matrix isn't there.
Zooming out from individual interactions, at the stage of reproductive suppression we're in, with birth rates well below replacement and declining, this is manipulative reproductive suppression. Once reached, men might benefit from their own reproductive suppression at broad scale, as their weapon becomes powerful enough.
We wouldn't have an evolved mechanism as men to understand that or adapt quickly. This is not novel; birth rate decline, rise of feminist ideals, and feminization of institutions are part of a repeated pattern in civilization after civilization. This is the human mating system going through cycles—this is the system operating as intended, not a bug.
Declining birth rates are seen in civilizations declining, alongside falling price of sex, vulgar art, declining marriage rates. In Rome, before its end, policies like baby bonuses tried to motivate women to marry and have children due to severe fertility decline. Birth rates declined sharply because women chose liberation, freedom, no marriage, no motherhood, careers—leaving few women having few children, giving them pick of men. Reproductive success restricted to elite men; rest of men excluded.
Cultural adjustment anti-family, anti-coupling, anti-mating affected women more than men. Many men wanted to mate, fewer women did, skewing sex ratio so women had more power, and high-status men gained relatively more power.
Reproductive suppression works against men; unclear how ingrained evolutionarily. Easier to influence women. Why no defense in women? F to M transitions 5 times M to F; ROGD (rapid onset gender dysphoria); eating disorders; social contagions, especially during puberty—scanning for what's cool, vigilant for trends.
Why not patch this bug? It's not a bug, it's a feature. For women who lose, it's a bug—their genes don't pass on. For winners engaging in it, it's a feature promoting their reproductive success, so genes perpetuate.
We might be progeny of women least susceptible, even if they endorsed it. Human civilizations cycle; female manipulative reproductive suppression occurs under affluence and safety. In non-affluent, unsafe societies, payoff absent—women invest all resources in own reproduction. In affluent organized society, elite women accrue excess resources; law of diminishing returns makes pouring into own reproduction less adaptive—shifts to manipulative suppression of rivals. More affluent/safer, more scales tip that way.
Not adaptive under all circumstances, doesn't reach fixation.
Winners enter genetic bottleneck as fertility drops below replacement—effective population size smaller than actual. Not massive crash, but large numbers of women not reproducing: modest falls in children among mothers, but massive increase in women having no children drives decline. Proportion of women with zero children is the big cohort.
Almost impossible to have these conversations publicly without heat. Lack of exposure explains no blowback yet. Talking birth rate decline, motherhood, reproduction cuts to heart—everything else peripheral, in service of birth rate decline. Poor relationship advice reduces reproduction or leads to single motherhood, damaging success (fatherless children have systematically worse outcomes).
Haircut study: women advise rivals (similar attractiveness) to cut more hair. Fun with feminists on peripherals, but birth rates/motherhood threatens core strategy, makes women angry.
Essay/podcasts by woman on workplaces: correct on observations when women reach critical mass—changes emerge before 50% female, as mechanisms not democratic; lower critical mass manipulates male/female colleagues.
Got traction because woman said it—if man, absolute death. Is workplace entry good for women (careers, independence)? Depends on 'good'. Societies need reproduction at replacement to exist, above for growth/prosperity. In our society, reproduction cheap; excess wealth enables suppression.
If women invest in non-reproductive activities making above-replacement impossible, society can't sustain—end of society. No individual sacrifices excitement/independence for collective; feminism frames as social reproductive conscription.
Men work to bone, die in wars for civilization—raw deal too. Inevitable result dooms society after generations—bad for society. Individualistic society prioritizes current fun over continuation.
Pushback frames as removing agency, independence. Effective framing. Libertarian fantasy: everyone does what they want, all happy—but most follow crowd/norms, vulnerable to manipulation without guardrails.
Bad for society if terminal. For individuals: women in mental health crisis, unhappy, childless/partnerless. Happiest: married with children; least happy: unmarried childless. Robust data (multiple studies, long periods, life satisfaction, well-being, mental health) confirms.
Soft misogyny to say highest female contribution is working like father, sex like brother. Few pro-motherhood/pro-natal voices.
Least recognized: toxic masculinity cottage industry, framed as man-hating anti-male feminism.
It's the man-hating stream of feminism that brands not just men as toxic, but boys as toxic. In Australia and the UK, there's talk and implementation of preemptive education in schools for young boys to teach them not to be toxic. A recent Australian study claimed young boys have toxic attitudes, such as believing some women lie about sexual assault allegations, which is actually the truth. This branding of male toxicity has terrible effects on men, who are collateral damage in this enterprise.
Branding men and masculinity as toxic destroys female mate choice preferences by targeting every aspect of men that women should look for in a high-value partner. Most regular masculine behaviors labeled toxic are exactly what women should seek. This skews women's mate choice.
Socially dominant and aggressive men make excellent providers and protectors, but such behavior is demonized as toxic. Men no longer police each other's bad behavior due to societal condemnation. For example, men who mistreat women or show inappropriate interest in children used to be beaten in a back shed to deter them, but now the policing is demonized more than the original offense.
Benevolent sexism—etiquette around gender roles favoring women—is labeled inherently bad. Men can no longer demonstrate mate quality through traditional behaviors, leading to beta behavior to signal they're not strong or masculine. Women are taught to reject masculinity as red flags.
Docile men signal harmlessness, but this is not a costly signal differentiating mate quality. True signals like physical dominance, strength, leadership, and competence require real traits; docility requires nothing. Demonizing masculinity obliterates reliable male ways of advertising mate quality, leaving unreliable indicators. Surviving masculine signals are systematically depreferred by women.
Women struggle to suppress attraction to dominant traits or prefer their reverse, leading to incompatible relationships that fail, especially since women terminate relationships more often. If women date men their brain rejects as low-quality, they perpetually trade up, struggling to form stable long-term relationships for raising families.
Women promoting cinnamon roll husband or golden retriever husband approaches should be examined for who they actually marry. Some women cycle through medium-term relationships with undesired types due to memes, while others realize their error.
Blanket advice like "don't be pushy" affects hesitant men more than boundary-violators, pushing good men further back.
A CCTV video from Vietnam (about a month ago) showed a man protecting a woman traveler from a knife-wielding thief hiding behind a pillar. Responses criticized the man: "This guy's not worth your time," "Men are trash," "Girl, just leave him." This contradicts demands for masculine protection, creating impossible standards—benevolent sexism is oppressive in one narrative, a failing of modern men in another.
Men can't win: approaching women is demanding, sexist, presumptuous. Posters said, > "I don't owe you polite conversation." Even expecting politeness is sexist. Men fear false accusations of harassment/assault, blended with fears of accidentally offending, paralyzing young men.
Examples of coercive gamesmanship: Withdrawing emotional comfort after rejection (e.g., stopping cuddling and turning away to sleep) to manipulate.
A 20-21-year-old in London refused to approach women at a bar, told "under no circumstances approach a woman in public." This hypersensitivity disrupts chaotic young mating dynamics, especially with alcohol.
86% of women want men to make the first move, but men are deterred, effectively halting courtship.
Devaluation of motherhood/marriage, demonization of husband/father material, career valorization create a reproduction-hostile environment, throwing out social guardrails for romantic navigation.
This impacts everyone but hurts lower reproductive potential individuals most. High-potential women (highly attractive, fertile, socially positioned) are least hurt and set trends (e.g., pixie cut harms average women more).
Hostility raises the bar: only top reproductive elites succeed, eliminating competitors. It's like slowing the female race—everyone slows, but winners still win individually, even if civilization suffers long-term.
Evolution selects local maxima even if leading to extinction. However, manipulative suppression doesn't end lineages: at civilization's fall, surviving high-quality lineages become founder populations of what rises next—like a dire game of musical
Society reaches a dire game of musical chairs where each round, someone fails to reproduce and a lineage drops out. Sensing the end is near, individuals want the game to end before they are the one left without a chair. Once female behavior hits intense reproductive suppression, social cues intensify competition:
- Massive drop in the price of sex
- Increased casual sex
- Vulgarity
- Decreasing marriage
- Decreasing birth rates
These cues signal the final stage, prompting everyone to vie for a chair. The genetic prize for surviving women is becoming part of the founder population of a new society post-invasion, where women survive and reproduce. A lineage starting as 1 in 10,000 could become 1 in 50 in the new population.
Winners maintain genetic capacity for losers to ensure they can win. As competition intensifies, behavior becomes fiercer because relative gains are greater with fewer competitors. At low birth rates, lineages want society to collapse for the next phase to begin, avoiding elimination in the final rounds.
Greater female representation in institutions, rather than reproduction, results from female intrasexual competition and manipulative reproductive suppression. This leads to gussying up, decline, and collapse of institutions.
Helen Andrews' great feminization attributes female workplace behavior to misplaced motherhood motives, but this does not resemble motherhood and fails theoretically. Instead, women flatten meritocracy and deprioritize productivity to hasten institutional endgame before losing in musical chairs. This systematically dismantles institutions.
Helen's view sees this as pro-social maternal instinct misapplied; the alternative is highly competitive intrasexual competition, designed rather than misfiring.
Current trends are not misfires but how human societies repeatedly operate. This explains recurring cycles and who wins the genetic race, perpetuating the system.
Evolutionary mismatch assumes environments changed so drastically that effective strategies apply erroneously. Instead, the system adapts even in novel conditions, performing as intended.
Rejects strong evolutionary mismatch premise: the world is humanity's extended phenotype, shaped by evolved biology and psychology. Changes reflect what our psychology favored; not everything maladaptive happens due to smartphones, internet, or the pill.
Dismissing behaviors as mismatch gives a 'get out of jail free card,' avoiding explanations. Applying adaptive explanations reveals coherence in dismissed behaviors, rather than assuming no function due to a 'weird' world.
Follow Dr. Dani Sulikowski on Twitter at DrDaniS for all updates.
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