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A certain subset of men talk about being attracted to confidence as if it is:
a) confined to heterosexual women
b) somehow evil, or at the very least, unfair/illogical.
Anecdote: at one point, I looked over a male friend's dating site profile. He is, in fact, a nice guy - in the best way possible. But what the profile said to me was that he was unhappy, not self-confident, and not much fun to be around. The first two are somewhat true right now; the third is definitely not. I spent a long time explaining to him that he needed to fix his profile because the job of his profile was to get people he wanted to talk to interested enough to want to know more, and that the way he needed to do this was by coming off as interesting, happy, confident, and a good time, while also revealing something about his personality/interests. I told him he shouldn't say anything in his profile that he wouldn't tell a pretty young woman he met at a party within the first two minutes of speaking to her, because when we're looking at online profiles, we generally know within even less time then that whether we want to get to know someone better.
If you wanted, you could say I was telling him to lie, or argue this fits into the narrative of "women only want assholes, not nice guys." But, really? I'd have given that advice to anyone of any gender trying to meet anyone of any other gender. The Rules tells women to appear as if they have busy social calendars, even if they don't, because that will make them more attractive to men. All human beings like the idea of getting someone confident and sought-after more than getting someone who isn't. Not a gender thing: a human thing. And I think most adult women and men have learned that "be yourself" is lousy dating advice, and not because other people are bad or shallow. We have parts of our personalities that are more or less attractive to the people we want to meet. The people we are attracted to do not owe us their sexual interest or love. For those of us who are somewhat nerdy, there may be social skills that come naturally to others but that we must practice to get good at. This doesn't mean other people are shallow for wanting us more post-learning these things.
Is this totally gender-neutral? Of course not: men on average want casual sex more than women do. But I think it's a lot more gender-neutral than this conversation makes it out to be. And the confidence thing is both a signaling issue and a legitimate thing to be interested in - most of the people I've met who came back to the "nice guys don't get women" issue (as well as most of the nice women I've known who were having trouble finding someone) needed to learn some basic skills and accept that prospective partners are not like your parents: they are not supposed to start out giving you unconditional love and acceptance. You have to find out what they want and how they work, and how you fit into that. I think most people work it out and become decent human beings and partners.
