PART I – How To Read Male Sexual Body Language, A Study For Women –
And The Men Who Wish To Cheat The System
Christopher Philip
I’m frequently asked by my female readers what a guy meant when they noticed him carrying himself in a certain way. Usually, they wonder what it meant when a guy left his legs uncrossed in a “crotch display.” Usually I need to presume that she is curious to know if he’s sexually interested, in her.
Notably, her “aim,” or goal is never mentioned in her correspondence, she simply inquires with the intentions of improving her skills at reading a men who peaked her interest.
To me this indicates a more passive aim, rather than an active aim, which in and of itself is interesting. I often then dig a bit deeper to qualify the question. “Did you like him?” I ask. This question is usually passed over, probably because it hadn’t crossed her conscious mind. So much in body language, in women, isn’t conscious. Women feel a certain way and their bodies leak this information to the outside world. If they fancy a man, she displays coyly and submissively by taking the natural course of action programmed by her body – end of story.
I get it; women aren’t the aggressors in the encounter. Similarly, and in contrast, men aren’t usually the ones displaying courtship behaviours to attract. To the original question about leg spreading, I usually counter with, “Men display dominance – usually – it could mean he likes you or it just might be his demeanor.”
I continue by pushing back, “Did he make eye contact to anchor his dominance cue? How did his eye contact make you feel?” Why, because usually women are the choosers, they decide if they like a guy, or more likely some subconscious internal driver does, and then they emit nonverbal sexual cues to solicit attention. It seems that this is how academics also examine the situation since there is very little research conducted on how men use body language in courtship.
Priming The Research
Researcher Karl Grammer and Lee Ann Renninger from the Institute for Urban Ethology, University of Vienna, Austria and Joel Wade from Bucknell University, Lewisburg, PA sought out to discover the courtship patterns of men in an observational study. They note that females are the choosier of the sex, but they wondered what exactly drove women to accept an approach from an otherwise unknown male. Given limited information about a man, on what criteria did women base their courtship decision? And what do men do to increase their success of being selected?
The researchers set out to examine men on six dimensions. They examined what they call:
(a) Intrasexual touching, “intra” means within, meaning male-to-male touching. This includes resting the elbow on the shoulder of an adjacent male, tapping on the shoulder, elbow to the ribs and playful shoving. They figured successful men would be more likely to unilaterally touch other men due to it’s implication in raising status and social power. It was important for them to discern between reciprocal touching versus unilateral touching because it highlights the dominance differences between two people.
(b) Space maximizing movements, we call these “expansive movements” or appearing larger. A space maximizing movement includes movements of the arms or legs that extend at least one torso length away from the body. It includes stretching or extending the arms across adjacent chairs, or halfway across two adjacent chairs using both arms, hands on the hips or arms akimbo. The second two cues were included because the cumulative expansion between the two limbs summed to a full torso length worth of expansion.
(c) Open postures such as arms uncrossed, legs open. This includes leaving the torso unshielded from view. The researchers note that men who use open body postures are judged more potent, active, and persuasive.
(d) Glancing behaviour and otherwise making eye contact with women. In previous research, eye contact has been shown to be an important regulator of a man’s approach in courtship. Women have been previously shown to report discomfort when men approach them whom they hadn’t previously noticed.
(e) Amount of gesticulation. Studies have shown that using gestures such as palms up, as well as other expressive hand gestures adds to social power, openness and agreeableness.
(f) Auto-manipulation, meaning self touching, what we call “displacement” type behaviour. These include cues such as touching the face or lips, rubbing the eyes, neck, chin, ear, nose, forehead, scratching, playing with one’s hair and touching or adjusting clothing. The researchers note that auto-contact is associated with nervousness and uneasiness so was examined for exploratory reasons or as a control.
CONTINUE PART II – How To Read Male Sexual Body Language, A Study For Women – And The Men Who Wish To Cheat The System
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