The pheromone / T theory makes sense, and I have a hypothesis: it’s because in the same way Northern Europeans, living in a fairly protein-poor area, evolved to be able to sustain ourselves on milk products via lactase persistence, East Asians became dependent on soy to provide extra protein. And soy lowers testosterone. As they became soy-dependent, the men became more passive, conformist, and “feminine”. East Asian women likewise were selected to those most receptive to low-T men — hard selection for provider betas, IOW, as the women who just couldn’t feel it for their soy-dependent menfolk failed to pass on their genes. However, that doesn’t mean that they’re naturally attracted to men with such low T levels. Women are women, after all.

So it appears to have been more or less an accident of history: Europeans with milk dependence, and East Asians with soy dependence. And milk doesn’t lower T, while soy does.

The only downside with this theory is that Eastern Europeans and Central Asians, who never had a soy dependence, also appear to have lower blood T levels — Russian and other Slavic women, for example, show a similar huge imbalance vis-a-vis Western European men — perhaps something else in the steppes of Eurasia also drained T in the same way soy does. The unbelievably harsh winters, perhaps, and large distances required to hunt to obtain enough food, which again selected for provider betas over strutting alphas.