I took a swing dancing class once on the advice of friends who said I needed to join some social group for the purposes of meeting women.
Most of the participants were men doing the exact same thing. Most of the remaining participants were married couples. Perhaps young, single women are aware of when they might be walking into an ogling trap?
The main thing I learned (apart from novice swing dancing) was that joining up in social groups for the explicit purpose (or even partial purpose) of evaluating potential mates is inefficient.
There is another aspect of this that I legitimately want to ask questions about: what do you do if all of your interests are male-dominated, and you're seeking a female partner with characteristics anti-correlated to those types of interests?
I'm not just talking about preferring some male-dominated things, and needing to try new things. I'm talking about already having tried lots and lots of things and learning that, after years of reflection, the only things you actually enjoy just so happen to be male-dominated. (Basically, I'm saying the excuse of "try something new" is not applicable in this case).
For me personally, one of my greatest recreational hobbies is to play very complicated, strategic board games. I love playing immersive games that take many hours to play and require fairly intensive level of thought and focus. I grew up playing competitive chess, and I have always just had a really deep seated fondness for this type of game, even from a very young age. I love the idea of having a partner who likes it as much as I do, but after years of going to board game meet-up groups, university game clubs, and playing with my extended network of friends, I have not ever met a female who enjoys these games anywhere close to the level that I do.
In terms of athletics, I mostly like to do long distance running and weight lifting, both because I tune everything out and have "introvert time" -- definitely something I don't want to share with a partner. I also love to play squash which is unfortunately a very male-dominated sport.
I love hiking and camping -- but what is so funny is that you can take an activity like hiking and just add one tiny variation to it to turn it into geocaching, and now suddenly it is a male-dominated "nerd" hobby with a very negative connotation when dating.
Hiking == good, rugged, self-reliant, healthy
Geocaching == dork, lame, anti-social, takes too long
Sigh, it's all about status.
I also enjoy recreational software development, which again is heavily male-dominated. Even the interests I have that skew on the more popular side of things, like Premier League football or certain obscure corners American humor, tend to be male-centric (e.g. how disappointing that the subreddit about Earwolf's Hollywood Handbook is so male-dominated!).
Yet I consider myself extremely willing to try new things. My interest in feminist literature was piqued once after reading a Slate Star Codex post, and I went off the deep end reading every highly regarded piece of feminist literature I could for months. I have gone through long patches of life when I am pseudo-religiously focused on yoga and meditation. Animals are a hugely important part of my life, particularly cats. I mentioned taking a dance class.
I'm not going to win awards for being the world's most well-rounded guy, but I try hard to challenge my perspective and explore new things. And even still, the God's honest truth about who I really am inside is that I just so happen to be most passionate about a bunch of hobbies that happen to be male-dominated.
Probably the singular interest I have that is widely shared with women is that I love cooking and spend a lot of time perfecting recipes and cooking unusual things. But I am vegan and a lot of that has been motivated by my desire to never sacrifice the tastiness or desirability of my food just because I am vegan -- and so even this makes people uncomfortable.
The uncomfortable truth as I have grown older and become more comfortable about understanding who I really am is that I just simply don't share hobby interests with very many women. I would prefer to meet and share relationship experiences with more women, but I have adjusted to accept that dating life for me means long periods of being single punctuated by opportunities to date those extremely rare women who happen to be interested in or at least curious and tolerant of my interests and personality. They have been amazing women ... but it's still not the ideal.
At my local university, there is a salsa dancing group that meets every week, and goes on outings to clubs regularly. There seem to be 4 girls for every guy. The guys have to timeshare across different girls, and of course girls end up dancing with each other much of the time.
OK. I've seen this work so often, but it could be that this is not efficient if you are actively looking.
I think I understand your dilemma with male-dominated hobbies. Most of the things I do are male-dominated as well. I met my girlfriend in high school, and for a long time it annoyed me that she showed little interest in my stuff. Until at some point I realised that it's not necessary to like all the same things. It doesn't matter that we are different in many regards; over the years we've still found a lot of things we both like, and deep down we seem to have a similar world view despite being superficially completely different.
So maybe you should stop looking for women that are similar to you, and accept that your future partner will not care about the majority of your interests. At least in my experience that's really okay; as long as you have respect for another.
I don't mind looking for women who are different from me. Some of my previous girlfriends were very different from me and we got along very well.
I wrote my reply based on the claim that I should join some social groups or something to heighten the chances of randomly meeting someone new.
If you assume that is the way to do it, then the dilemma is (a) it's not very efficient because most people doing the activity aren't really a good match and are just trying to do the activity, and (b) all the activities that actually make me happy are male-dominated and even anti-correlated with popular depictions (depictions that are borne out in the data too, e.g. when OKCupid posts their data) of what women want in a man.
If you disregard the suggestion of needing to use social hobbies as a means for finding a date, then I agree with you, and finding people who are different from me has been the primary way in which I have had previous relationships.
Maybe if you like yoga, try pilates. Only one time in my pilates class has there been a guy. I've also heard barre is pretty these days and I think that's also mostly women and maybe similar to yoga.
Most of the participants were men doing the exact same thing. Most of the remaining participants were married couples. Perhaps young, single women are aware of when they might be walking into an ogling trap?
The main thing I learned (apart from novice swing dancing) was that joining up in social groups for the explicit purpose (or even partial purpose) of evaluating potential mates is inefficient.
There is another aspect of this that I legitimately want to ask questions about: what do you do if all of your interests are male-dominated, and you're seeking a female partner with characteristics anti-correlated to those types of interests?
I'm not just talking about preferring some male-dominated things, and needing to try new things. I'm talking about already having tried lots and lots of things and learning that, after years of reflection, the only things you actually enjoy just so happen to be male-dominated. (Basically, I'm saying the excuse of "try something new" is not applicable in this case).
For me personally, one of my greatest recreational hobbies is to play very complicated, strategic board games. I love playing immersive games that take many hours to play and require fairly intensive level of thought and focus. I grew up playing competitive chess, and I have always just had a really deep seated fondness for this type of game, even from a very young age. I love the idea of having a partner who likes it as much as I do, but after years of going to board game meet-up groups, university game clubs, and playing with my extended network of friends, I have not ever met a female who enjoys these games anywhere close to the level that I do.
In terms of athletics, I mostly like to do long distance running and weight lifting, both because I tune everything out and have "introvert time" -- definitely something I don't want to share with a partner. I also love to play squash which is unfortunately a very male-dominated sport.
I love hiking and camping -- but what is so funny is that you can take an activity like hiking and just add one tiny variation to it to turn it into geocaching, and now suddenly it is a male-dominated "nerd" hobby with a very negative connotation when dating.
Hiking == good, rugged, self-reliant, healthy
Geocaching == dork, lame, anti-social, takes too long
Sigh, it's all about status.
I also enjoy recreational software development, which again is heavily male-dominated. Even the interests I have that skew on the more popular side of things, like Premier League football or certain obscure corners American humor, tend to be male-centric (e.g. how disappointing that the subreddit about Earwolf's Hollywood Handbook is so male-dominated!).
Yet I consider myself extremely willing to try new things. My interest in feminist literature was piqued once after reading a Slate Star Codex post, and I went off the deep end reading every highly regarded piece of feminist literature I could for months. I have gone through long patches of life when I am pseudo-religiously focused on yoga and meditation. Animals are a hugely important part of my life, particularly cats. I mentioned taking a dance class.
I'm not going to win awards for being the world's most well-rounded guy, but I try hard to challenge my perspective and explore new things. And even still, the God's honest truth about who I really am inside is that I just so happen to be most passionate about a bunch of hobbies that happen to be male-dominated.
Probably the singular interest I have that is widely shared with women is that I love cooking and spend a lot of time perfecting recipes and cooking unusual things. But I am vegan and a lot of that has been motivated by my desire to never sacrifice the tastiness or desirability of my food just because I am vegan -- and so even this makes people uncomfortable.
The uncomfortable truth as I have grown older and become more comfortable about understanding who I really am is that I just simply don't share hobby interests with very many women. I would prefer to meet and share relationship experiences with more women, but I have adjusted to accept that dating life for me means long periods of being single punctuated by opportunities to date those extremely rare women who happen to be interested in or at least curious and tolerant of my interests and personality. They have been amazing women ... but it's still not the ideal.