Category Archives: Alpha

June 4, 2013

Can’t Buy Me Alpha

By Rollo Tomassi

Buy_Alpha

I can’t imagine most of the manosphere, to say nothing about MRAs, haven’t read about the latest feminist triumphalism in a recent Pew study that’s determined that 23% of women now out-earn men. The ironic inconsistencies are an easy mark for most red pill men, but I imagine they’re particularly galling for MRAs:

Moms now earn more than dads in almost a quarter of all U.S. families, the highest level in history. It’s a huge leap from 50 years ago when only a handful of moms were bringing home the bacon, according to a study released Wednesday by the Pew Research Center.

Overall, women – including those who are unmarried – are now the leading or solo breadwinners in 40 percent of U.S. households, compared with just 11 percent in 1960, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau analyzed by Pew.

Cue the MRA rage posts about unmarried women receiving uniquely feminine social benefits and entitlements men have no access to, not to mention state enforced male child support for unmarried mothers and remarried mothers. I get it, really I do, but my emphasis here isn’t so much about the factual information being skewed by the feminine imperative, rather its neurolinguistic delivery of  those distortions.

That’s both good news and bad news, depending on which end of the scale you examine. At the top level, educated women are catching up with men in the workforce. But at the bottom rungs, there are more single mothers than ever and most of them are living near the poverty line.

Bear in mind this report by Amy Langfield was what hastily replaced this report by Bill Briggs – For Richer or Poorer?, When wives make more, some men’s health suffers – on NBCs frontpage. As I’ve written before, the feminine imperative will never allow even its own message to be sullied with a male perspective.

When wives bring home more bacon than their husbands, household budgets surely may sizzle but in some cases, men may pay a price. Some guys who lose their role as primary earners are known to lose sexual steam and may deal with insomnia and other issues, researchers say.

In relationships where women’s wages become slightly fatter than what their spouses pocket, scientists have determined that men are about 10 percent more likely to require prescription pills to combat erectile dysfunction, insomnia and anxiety, according to a recent study by Washington University in St. Louis’ Olin Business School.

Naturally the comment section is rife with feminine ridicule and accusations of men’s masculine insecurities being made manifest in not being able to get it up when wifey makes more money. The apex fallacy is a helluva drug for the feminine imperative.

“There is a powerful social norm for many men that it’s important to make more than their wives and, essentially, when that social norm is violated, what this does is make them feel emasculated,” said Lamar Pierce, a professor of strategy at Olin who completed the study in February, working with colleagues in Denmark. Other research has shown that men with wives who earn more are more likely to cheat. 

It’s going to be important to read that linked 2010 article about men who’s wives earn more being more likely to cheat, because this is the crux of who gets to decide what emasculation feels like for men. Lamar Pierce’s assertion, as with most blank slaters, is that masculinity is the result of “powerful social norms”  and not the result of a culmination of what millennia of biological and psychological evolution physically made of men. The nuts and bolts get discarded when the feminine imperative defines the terms of what men feel and why they do.

The problem here is that the nuts and bolts are about the physical male sexual response. What is it about women earning more money (excluding for single mother bonuses) that makes them less likely to pass the boner test? If the feminine imperative is to be believed, it’s due to men’s fragile egos and masculinity being defined by his ability to provide. No mention is made of women’s lack of femininity, physical sexual attraction or simple logistics when she’s the one tasked with bringing home the bacon. No mention is given about women’s desire to even be in the position of being the sole or majority breadwinner.

Buying Alpha

The main problem with women earning more than their men is far more hardwired into both gender’s psyches than the experts consigned by the feminine imperative will ever be allowed to relate. It’s not very complimentary to the imperative because it reveals far too much of its real inner workings and exposes its social engineering to effect them.

On the feminine side we have the cruel reality of feminine Hypergamy that’s constantly reminded that the man she’s paired with (or would pair with) isn’t capable of, or is less capable of, the provisioning her Hypergamy ultimately demands of him, and which she can provide for herself. For the single professional woman this imbalance results in their constant search for a man they consider “her equal”, and is the cause for many post-Wall women’s common lament of not being able to find the guy she thinks she deserves.

By this distorted logic, professional women subscribe to the social convention that they can ‘buy Alpha’; that their credentials, financial and social status ought to be the deciding factor for men’s intimate estimations of them, and any man not abiding by these conditions is by definition “infantile”, has a “fragile ego” and is “threatened by successful women”.

Feminine Operative Social Conventions are the meta-hamster of the gestalt consciousness of the feminine imperative.

On the masculine side the problems are twofold. The first comes from men’s evolved subliminal understanding about how being a provider is his last, best, resort of securing a mate who will send his genes on to future generations. Once this capacity is removed, he becomes conscious of his vulnerability to the predations of his wife’s Hypergamy.

If men met their future wives when the women already were the bigger breadwinners, “they never have any problems later on,” Pierce said. “The problems are all coming in marriages where the guys are making more, they get married, then their pay slips (below their wives’ salaries).” The study was published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

Since mass media is rooted in a fem-centric reality, we’re spared the gory details of women’s Hypergamic re-estimations of their husbands. Rather, we’re left to believe that it’s the husbands who have an inability to cope with their wives making more money (due to fragile egos remember?) and suffer from a masculine insecurity that’s making their cocks go soft. No mention is made of men’s now-impassable Hypergamic shit-tests women demand of men affecting their previously stable marriages.

For the majority of Beta men, their cow-eyed confidence and reliance on being able to at least provide an equal contribution to a woman’s wellbeing as part of his Beta-Game sexual strategy gets flushed down the toilet when she out earns him. For Beta men, men’s primary sexual market value is derived from performance – unfortunately Betas are beginning to be outperformed by women and their wives. Once that outperformance is actualized for women, only Alpha dominance defines men’s SMV since it’s the other remaining side of women’s Hypergamy and their pluralistic sexual strategy.

The Bought Alpha

The second masculine issue is the bought Alpha. When a woman is in fact capable of her own provisioning all that’s left wanting for her hypergamy is Alpha dominance. Most breadwinning women are condemned to being frustrated by this dynamic. The majority of elite earning women simply lack the feminine grace and physical appeal to attract this Alpha dominance. Fewer still have the capacity to surrender to that Alpha, but the upper 1% of elite earning women can, and they illustrate the dynamic here. I realize it’s an old article but have a quick read – Guys more likely to cheat on high-earning women.

In fact, men who were completely dependent on their partner’s income were five times more likely to cheat than men who contributed an equal amount of money to the relationship, according to research presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association.

You’d think such men wouldn’t want to risk their meal ticket. But lower-earning men may be self-medicating their inner macho guy, says Cornell University sociology graduate student Christin Munsch, who conducted the study.“Having multiple sexual partners may be an attempt to restore gender identity in response to these threats,” she writes. “In other words, for men, sex [outside their relationship] may be an attempt to compensate for feelings of inadequacy with respect to gender identity.”

Despite the masculine shaming threaded throughout the article, what’s not being addressed is women who make substantially more money, or all the money, in their relationships have flipped a dangerous gender script. As elite earners, women tend to want to pair off not with the the guy who’d otherwise be a loyal, respectable Beta provider under other conditions, but rather the men they feel they ‘deserve’. The provisioning part of their Hypergamy has been satisfied, so the visceral part is all that’s left wanting. Thus they gravitate to the Alpha cads they’re aroused by, and they ‘deserve’ by virtue of their earning ability and status. These women’s Game is a reflection of Beta men’s Game – they believe that their provisioning alone will be the lynchpin in keeping their spouse loyal.

An Alpha guy (like Jesse James from the article) grows tired of being his wife or girlfriend’s accessory, and as is the Alpha nature, he’s happy to have the financial backing to fund his infidelity. An inverse of this would be Tiger Woods’ marriage and his indulgences. The marriage becomes a means to an Alpha end (or a hinderance for Tiger), and our rich, empowered wife duplicitously loves and hates that her Man is so desired by other women, but can’t balance her Hypergamic nature any other way.

62 comments   |  tags: | posted in Alpha, Biomechanics, Hypergamy, Operative Social Conventions, Relationship Game, Sexual Market Value, The Feminine Imperative

May 20, 2013

He’s Special

By Rollo Tomassi

special

Sunshine Mary had an interesting insight about some of my analysis of Soft Dread:

It may come as a comfort for a guy who’s unused to sentimental declarations of appreciation, but it’s important to remember the why in that declaration, rather than the who in that declaration.

Although it seems mercenary, there is some truth to that. However, we are grateful because our husbands have saved us from spinsterhood. So it’s not a “rather than” situation, it’s that we are grateful to him because of what he has done…it’s both the who and the why. I wouldn’t have wanted to be saved from spinsterhood by just any man, ya know?

Mary knows I love her, and this is in no way a cut on her, but here’s a new item to add to the Hypergamy doesn’t care list:

Hypergamy doesn’t care about who you are, it only cares about what you are.

Your awesome personality, charm and any number of ingratiating personal traits are all perks – value added – that contribute to what you might consider Relational Equity, but as we’ve already observed, Hypergamy doesn’t care about Relational Equity. The problem with Mary’s estimation here is she hasn’t considered women’s Hypergamic capacity to make any man into a special man so long as he meets her Hypergamic criteria.

Chick Logic

In the past I’ve described the female sexual strategy as schizophrenic, but what it really is is pluralistic. All the jokes you read as 4Chan memes about ‘chick logic’ are only funny because we all have an intrinsic, largely unspoken, understanding of this sexual pluralism. The female sexual response is characterized by a dual nature, Alpha fucks and Beta bucks.

That’s the simplistic, distilled version ready for easy consumption and understanding, but the feminine sexual response is much more detailed on an individual level, and much more significant on a social level than just this jargon. Every stimulus bearing on the feminine, from how she’ll explain her girl’s night out to her LTR Beta, to how women in the workplace can rejigger legislature to create a society directed by the feminine imperative, all come back to the Alpha fucks / Beta bucks equation for optimizing Hypergamy.

Alpha fucks and Beta bucks is literally a biological imperative for women. I wrote in Balancing Sexual Pluralism about this pluralism describing the desire for that perfect balance of Alpha sexuality when ovulatory impulse predisposes women to it, as well as Beta comfort and security when her cycle predisposes her to it. This isn’t just my speculations, it’s a scientifically documented phenomenon common to all women. Yes, in this instance, all women are like this. It is literally in their DNA.

Hypergamy is the constant striving for an optimization of a woman’s sexual plurality. Although there may be behavioral permutations that women will use to achieve it, or the imitation of it, the underlying motivation of Hypergamy is the same for all women. It’s a hard-coded psychological survival script that’s benefitted the human race since our tribalist beginnings.

The War Brides Effect

Recently there’s been a lot of discussion on the forums I frequent about  Michelle Knight, Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus being held captive by Ariel Castro for a decade. Let that sink in a minute, a decade. That’s 10 years. That’s a lot of life to live. That’s a lot of normal to get used to. There are other cases like this; Jaycee Dugard and  Elizabeth Smart come to mind, but are all of these instances the results of a hard-wired Stockholm Syndrome in women?

As it applies to women, I think Stockholm Syndrome is a convenient term for psychology to a give a name to what really amounts to adaptive hypergamy. Granted, due to media sensationalism we may not hear about incidents where men have been taken captive for as long, but this identifying with one’s captor is far more prevalent in women than men.

Primarily I attribute this to the War Bride effect, wherein evolution selected-for women with a psychological facility to adapt to a new dominant male captor as a species-beneficial survival trait. Have a read of War Brides for the full theory, but the short version is essentially this: in early tribal societies, women evolved a capacity to accept new out-tribe (presumptively Alpha) conquering men as their masters after the fathers of their children were killed or otherwise defeated and neutralized.

This is not unfounded historically. There are documented tribal traditions in cross-culture societies where it was not only accepted, but expected of a man who’d defeated another in a challenge to assume responsibility of the slain man’s children and wife(ves). In terms of inter-tribal warring, it was common practice for the conquering tribe’s men to take (and often rape) the defeated tribe’s women. Another, more humane, version of this War Bride effect is found in Old Testament Jewish law where a dead man’s brother was expected to take his wife to bear children irrespective of the woman’s interest.

I originally went into detail in War Brides about this dynamic due to men’s observing women’s ease of transitioning romantically from one lover to another. That facility is a vestige of a psychology evolved to ensure Hypergamy is optimized with the best mate a woman’s environment (and her own physical conditions for attraction) will allow her. More often than not, in our evolutionary past, a woman’s conditions and environment were not of her own choosing, thus psychological contingencies had to evolve in order for women to maintain a mental and emotional dissonance while still ensuring as Hypergamously optimal a situation as she could.

Women lacking the mental capacity for selective, impersonal indifference to men would’ve been selected-out, either by debilitating emotional breakdown or by her new captor’s disregard for her provisioning. We can draw modern day parallels to the latter situation when we hear about how a woman might divorce her previous Beta provider husband for an Alpha lover only to regret having done so. It’s not the emotional consideration she regrets, but rather the loss of provisioning when her Alpha pumps and dumps her. Hypergamy is sated from one side of her sexual pluralism (Alpha fucks), only to create a deficit on the other side (Beta bucks).

War Brides vs. Alpha Widows

Where all this gets interesting is in considering the Alpha Widow dynamic;

 These are the Alpha Widows – women so significantly impacted by a former Alpha (or perceptually so) lover that she’s left with an emotional imprint that even the most dutiful, loving beta-provider can never compete with. A woman doesn’t have to have been an archetypal slut in order to have difficulty in pair bonded monogamy.

On the surface of it, it may appear that the Alpha Widow dynamic contradicts the War Brides dynamic, but if we dig deeper we find that they are both mutually reinforcing principles, and both are expressions of Hypergamy attempting solve the problem of women’s plural sexual strategy.

It is actually a woman’s capacity for selective indifference that predisposes her to an Alpha Widow state because the Alpha(s) she “can’t get over” imprinted an idealized state of an optimized Hypergamy for her. So the guy she banged in high school or college (the one with enough Alpha impression to take her virginity) is the idealization she harbors while married to the dutiful Beta. Even the abusive lout that a battered wife keeps returning to and refuses to press charges on, still represents that Hypergamous ideal to her.

Women will pine for the most significant Alpha they’ve experienced in life. It’s not who the Alpha was it was what he represented to her in terms of an idealized Hypergamy. That’s not to delegitimize women’s genuine feelings of love, respect and devotion for that Man, but it is to say that all of those feelings are consequences of her impression of an idealized Hypergamy.

There’s a lot being made about how women should or shouldn’t settle for ‘Mr. Good Enough’ before it’s too late. Granted, much of women’s indignation about settling for less than they deserve stems from an overly exaggerated appreciation of their true (and decaying) SMV courtesy of social media and social conventions intended to alleviate the anxiety of the approaching Wall. However, the underlying psychology of that indignation is rooted in women being forced to acknowledge that they’ve reached a point in their lives where they can no longer achieve an idealized Hypergamy.

So the stress responses are social variations of “Don’t tell me I can’t have it all”, “I deserve better than ‘good enough’” or, “Look at (insert aging celebrity’s name), she’s proof that you don’t have to settle.” All of these are pleas for a recognition of an imperfect ability to balance her sexual pluralism.

80 comments   |  tags: , | posted in Alpha, Biomechanics, Hypergamy, Idealizations, Psychology

March 14, 2013

Hyenas

By Rollo Tomassi

In my time spent in the manosphere I’ve been asked on more than one occasion what I thought about the concept of the Alpha Female. For a time I was resistant to the idea, not because I didn’t allow for the possibility that certain women were predisposed to being Type A personalities and given to the same desire for power and control that men predominantly have, but rather due to the way that Alpha Female came to develop that personality.

As the social impulse to feminize men took root, so too was the counterbalance of masculinizing women instituted. As I’ve stated in earlier post, the concept of power, real power, isn’t invested in controlling the action of others, but in how much control we can exercise in the course of, and over our own, live’s. Freud’s concept of penis envy not withstanding, up until the time of the sexual revolution it’s been men who’ve seemingly had the most control over the courses their lives will take. This of course is a classic fiction for the majority of men, but this is the perception even the most unassuming women have had with men – even the poorest of men have more power to decide what direction their lives will take than women.

In a natural state, women’s biological, emotional, provisioning and protection needs have always been sustained by men. Women evolved to be the more necessitous sex. This isn’t to say women were patently helpless, didn’t provide nurturing or couldn’t adapt to new environmental challenges, but it is to say their individual survivability, if not entirely dependent upon men, was greatly enhanced by cooperating sexually and socially with men. Due to this male-centric necessity women’s predisposition for a want of a survival-level security evolved – and so too did the subliminal anxiety to ensure themselves against survival insecurity.

As social progress advanced (and occasionally retreated) so too did the influence of the Feminine Imperative over men. I would argue that the Feminine Imperative, as a socio-sexual construct, was evolved from a desire not so much to control men, but as a means to relieve the anxiety of women’s earliest insecurities. This struggle for power necessitated the development of the Feminine Imperative, but only in the respect that it afforded women real power – a greater control over the course that their own lives would take.

Ensuring an enduring dominance of genetic material being passed on with the best male stock (i.e. Hypergamy) was of equal importance to ensuring the survivability of her offspring. This is nothing new to the manosphere, it’s simply the Alpha Fucks / Beta Bucks dynamic, but reduced to its evolutionary beginnings. As women were (and still are) afforded greater control over their own lives (true power) the application of this power is spent in easing women’s dependency upon men. A woman’s desire for power is rooted in easing the anxieties and insecurities her feral and tribal ancestors hard-coded into her contemporary psyche.

For every female CEO exercising her influence over today’s (male created) corporations, for every book about the End of Men, for every speech about Feminist Triumphalism, it’s important for men to understand that all of these overt declarations of power stem from women’s primal insecurity about their own survivability without the aid of attracting and sustaining an enduring relationship with a man.

Alpha Females

I drew this up to put into context the misnomer that is the Alpha Female. I find it ironic, but not unexpected, that a fem-centric society will adamantly resist the idea of Men being Alpha, yet enthusiastically embrace labeling strong independent women® as Alpha Females. Feminists and Mangina intellectuals alike will spend endless hours elaborating over how human males can’t possibly be compared with Alpha lions or wolves in the wilderness, and that it’s basement dwelling keyboard theorists who promote the idea; yet will giddily endorse women like Sheryl Sandberg as being Alpha Females.

At the risk of reopening the “what is Alpha?” can of worms, women cannot be Alpha in the same sense that Men are considered Alpha. The operative point being that Alpha in the male sense is a derivative of the male biology. By virtue of testosterone, male animals have (by order of degree) an inborn disposition towards an Alpha behavior set. On the most rudimentary scale, Alpha behaviors and physical traits are defined by their utility to that male and the breeding motivations they inspire in females.

Before I get run up the flagpole for asserting that testosterone is a key element for determining an Alpha status, allow me to direct your attention to today’s linked video. There is a species of mammal wherein the female of the species possesses more testosterone than the male, and consequently the role of sexual agressor and pack leading Alpha status is conferred to her.

They’re called Hyenas.

Watch the video (it’s short) and contrast the female hyena’s behaviors and,..physical characteristics with the fem-centric popularized notion of an Alpha Female.

To be sure, there are Alpha traits and behavioral learnings most Beta men can develop and internalize. I’m still a firm believer that to a greater degree, Alpha status for men can become who a Man is. In fact behavioral Alpha dominance is (was) passed on from one dominant male to his offspring, or close relation. So it does stand to reason that women too can learn these dominant behavior sets. The rapid masculinization of contemporary women is proof of this, and women may also internalize this dominance schema to become who they are; but does this make them Alpha?

Obviously women are not hyenas, but the physical dimorphism of hyena sexuality is an interesting illustration for the masculinization of females in humans. Primarily it changes the social dynamic of the group. Women can do what our female hyena does in this video through anabolic steroid use and a lot of heavy lifting, and with similar physical results, but does this alter a female security desire evolved for thousands of years? That answer might be yes, but for a woman to be Alpha she must physically and mentally transform into as close an approximation of a man as societal conditioning and physical mutation will allow.

This being the case, is she really female anymore?

57 comments   |  tags: , , | posted in Alpha, Biomechanics, Hypergamy, The Feminine Imperative

February 18, 2013

Taming the Beast

By Rollo Tomassi

beast

Sunshine Mary proposed an interesting question in a comment thread last week:

Knowing what we know about hypergamy – that it’s inborn and does not give a crap – and also what we know about women’s attraction cues swaying toward much more alpha men during ovulation…can men deal with the thought of living with someone who is having to fight against (presuming she’s fighting against it) a general innate desire to trade up and a specific desire to stray with an alpha male during ovulation?

The short answer to this is yes, in fact men have socially and psychologically evolved contingencies to mitigate hypergamy since our hunter-gatherer beginnings. You could even argue that much of our cultural and species-level achievements were the result of men’s latent drives to deal with women’s innate hypergamy.

The common mistake Mary is making here is to presume that hypergamy’s natural state is in a vacuum. Hypergamy is not static. The capacity an individual woman possesses to optimize hypergamy is specific to that woman. There are many complex variables that affect what contributes to a woman’s self-perception of her sexual market valuation.

For a general instance, a hot 22 y.o. coed will generally be more predisposed to her hypergamous impulses because she has the capacity to capitalize on it better than a 44 y.o. divorced mother of two. Too many guys think that hypergamy requires this endless attending to, but with the exception of outlying women, women will should regulate their hypergamy based on their self-perceived capacity to optimize it.

Simply because a woman’s natural state is hypergamy doesn’t mean she is able to optimize it. She may lack opportunity (i.e no Alpha men in the right place or at the right time), she may lack the physical appeal, she may have internalized beliefs that cause her to be more self-conscious, she may have self-esteem issues (over and under inflated), or she may simply be acculturated in a society that enforces limits upon her capacity to optimize hypergamy. All of these limiting conditions contend with her innate hypergamous impulse.

This is the primary struggle women face; managing these limiting factors in the face of a hardwired hypergamy, while facing the constant, inevitable, progression towards the Wall.  Cash in too early and face the nagging doubt she could’ve consolidated with a better man’s commitment. Cash in too late and live with the consequences of settling for the man her looks, personal conditions and societal influences allowed her to consolidate on (Alpha Widows). Remember, all of this occurs within the framework of the varying personal limitations (or benefits) she has a capacity for.

Hypergamy Unbound

One common misunderstanding I think most guys have about hypergamy is that it requires a constant attention. Most MGTOWs follow this logic to some degree, thinking that the effort necessary to contain women’s hypergamy means this endless mindreading and jumping through vaginal hoops in order to maintain some balance and harmony in any relationship with a woman. They think the pay off isn’t worth the effort, and by their individual case they may be correct, but what they don’t account for is the natural balance between the genders that is already existent. Hypergamy is far easier to contain the less a woman is able to capitalize on it.

Imposing limitations on women’s hypergamy is really a matter of application. Why is our reflexive response to label possessive men as ‘insecure’? Because underneath his overt controlling we believe a man lacks the capacity to inspire genuine desire in his woman, thus prompting her to self-regulate her own hypergamy. Yet, we still consider Mate Guarding to be wise in a measured application. So there you have the line in controlling hypergamy – like virtually anything else in Game, apply it overtly and you appear ‘insecure’, apply it covertly and you seem confident and in control.

To really grasp this you have to also take into account the Alpha/Beta response dynamic. Women’s hypergamy will predispose even the woman with the most secure attachement to her mate to shit test him. When men become aware of this their rational minds see it as insecurity and a nuisance that they will constantly have to deal with. However, nature has engineered into our own psyches the means to deal with these tests in ways we’re not really aware of. I’ve experienced even the most beta of men put their foot down after a particularly mean shit test and basically tell their wives or GFs to STFU. It came from exasperation, but that provokation and the response their woman got for it was exactly passing the test. They didn’t realize they were doing it, they were just pissed, lost their temper and later maybe apologized for acting so brash, but this was exactly what their women’s hypergamy needed to confirm that he isn’t a pushover.

Mate guarding is another of these subliminal efforts to contain hypergamy. Most (generally beta) men don’t realize that they are manifesting mate guarding behaviors at exactly the time his woman is ovulating and more aroused by the sperm of the unfamiliar Alpha. Her disposition manifests in behavioral cues that his evolved psyche registers and reflexively triggers his own subconscious mate guarding behaviors – all in a naturalized effort to contain her innate hypergamy. Nature is already aware of hypergamy and has evolved contingencies to limit it.

Another aspect of limiting hypergamy is the inter-sexual competition women subject each other to in the sexual marketplace. Amongst women, hypergamy is essentially a race to the top. The higher value resources (high SMV men) drive down the cost (effort) for the lower value ones. The highest value men cascade down in value by the frequency of lower value men, but hypergamy doesn’t seek its own level, it always defaults to a better optimization. For a woman, the biological jackpot is to secure a commitment of genetics and resources from a mate who registers higher than herself in SMV valuation.

The very nature of hypergamy has a culling effect amongst women. As if the pressures to optimize hypergamy weren’t urgent enough in the light of her personal conditions and the impending Wall, add to this an unforgiving inter-sexual competition that mitigates hypergamy.

Thwarting Nature

If a guy swings drastically toward the beta chump side of the bell curve, this may well trigger a new self-perception for a woman and reinvigorate her hypergamous impulse. Likewise social media is contributing to new generations of women who lack a realistic self-image with regard to SMV and thus a false perception of their capacity to optimize their hypergamy. Women’s overinflated sense of SMV and all the contributing factors to it is a manosphere meme now. All of these factors and more upset the balance of the feminine imperative with the masculine and demand new social and psychological adaptations

Many a manosphere commenter will tell you how unbound women’s hypergamous nature has become since the rise of feminism, fem-centrism and the multi-generational push to feminize every aspect of western culture. While it’s true that hypergamy doesn’t care, and many a man suffers the unprepared consequences of outdated expectations of relational equity, I don’t believe the cultural shift towards the primacy of the feminine imperative is the doom of modern society.

To be sure the sexual revolution and feminine-ubiquitous hormonal birth control has radically shifted primacy to the feminine imperative and its prime directive of hypergamy, but what this means is a readjustment of the masculine imperative is now necessary. With the rise of the internet and the meta Game that is the manosphere I think we’re seeing this adjustment in its beginnings. In our past, society and nature evolved ways to contain hypergamy in ways we’re only peripherally aware of today, but they were serviceable contingencies that kept hypergamy in check. That balance will return eventually, either by men opting out of the traditional measures or women coming to a generational realization of the predicament unbridled hypergamy and the consequences of the falsehoods fem-centrism has brought to their mothers and grandmothers.

64 comments | posted in Alpha, Hypergamy, The Feminine Imperative

January 17, 2013

Mister Softee

By Rollo Tomassi

mr_softee

I have friend named Floyd. Floyd is in his early 50′s and spent the better part of his life in the military. He’s in fairly good shape for his age and has the rough, but stoic attitude of a soldier who’s seen actual combat. He doesn’t talk too much about those years, but he is an interesting guy and has a wealth of world-learned experiences that he’s more than ready to let you know about.

Floyd is not what I’d call a Type A personality, but he does have the pragmatic ‘get it done’ personality taught in the military, and he’s prone to being opinionated. At the risk of splitting hairs again, I’d definitely say he’s Alpha, but in a subdued, matter-of-fact, self-evident sense rather than the stereotypical in-your-face douchey Alpha caricature most beta chumps like to associate it with. Being a Man comes natural to him, and his expressions (or non-expressions) of such irritates the betas we know – but in a passive sense rather than an aggressive one. Just being who he is, often enough, gets eye rolls from our more plugged in friends.

Unfortunately Floyd’s Game-ignorant. After his discharge, he followed the ex-military formula for marriage by getting involved with a very domineering woMAN who promptly got ‘accidentally’ pregnant 12 years ago. They have a son whom they share custody of, the divorce not being final until last year. For all his Alpha cred, he followed the ‘do the right thing’ script right up until the finalization of his divorce. In the military, he was ostensibly a badass; with his ex he was always trying to find a solution to her problems with a rational ‘get the job done’ approach. He didn’t see the method behind her madness then, he does now.

Since the finalization Floyd has gotten together with a new girlfriend, Ann, who is the polar opposite of his ex. Against my advice he’s moved her into his home, but the bright side of this arrangement is that Floyd has learned the importance of maintaining Frame with her. Maintaining Frame with Ann isn’t too difficult for him as she’s about a point below Floyd in SMV. She’s not unattractive, but Ann loves Floyd because he takes care of business like the Alpha  her ex never was.

I was hanging out with Floyd last weekend and the conversation got around to how unlikely it was that Ann would get with a hard ass like Floyd. She say, “Oh that’s just his schtick, he’s really a big softee. Underneath all that he’s really a sweet guy.”

The Scripting

Now I realize these are the words of a 48 year old woman who’s vested interest and second chance at long term security are in my tough-guy friend, but it struck me that no matter how genuine a Man can be in his personality, no woman wants to accept a personality that is incongruent with her own imperative.

The main reason for this is rooted in women’s innate solipsism. If the reality doesn’t fit with her interpretation, rationalize the reality to force fit it to that interpretation. The nuts and bolts of it is that Floyd represents a valuable prospect at a second chance for provisioning. Floyd is not an overly emotional or emotionally available guy, but to reconcile the wish that he would be, Ann must tacitly endorse that he is; “you just don’t know him like I know him.”

A lot of freshly unplugged guys have trouble accepting Game as being anything more than an act – a series of behaviors meant to elicit a response in a woman, and once she’s been attracted they can go back to their regularly scheduled personality. They rely on rote memorization instead of learning and internalizing Game. What a lot more don’t understand is that even in their blue pill Beta Game days they also followed a similar ‘acting’.

This acting is encouraged in much the same way as Ann was attempting to distort her own reality. As with most women, they fall in love with a dichotomy; they want a sweet guy, who’s tough and gets shit done. If one of these aspects is out of balance her rationalization engine (i.e. Hamster) will make subconscious attempts to compensate for it in her words and beliefs. “I want a sweet guy with a good heart” is boilerplate for the feminine imperative because it ‘sounds right’. Men hear this and ‘act’ on it in the deductive belief that it will endear him to women in general.

The greater truth is that, for all the conflicting messages about men needing to get in touch with their feminine sides, and then men need to Man-Up, your personality is still going to be rationalized to fit a woman’s psychological ideal.

Upping the Alpha Doesn’t Mean Offing the Empathy

I think too many critics in the manosphere believe that the underlying message is about men needing to kill off the emotional, sentimental or impassioned aspects of their personalities. I would never advocate this. Firstly because I don’t think it’s entirely possible, but more importantly, you shouldn’t have to. No man should lessen himself or his human experience to accommodate the feminine imperative.

When I wrote Kill the Beta people assumed I meant that doing so would also include killing of the better parts of their  personalities. Beta is a mindset in the same way Alpha is. You can be an emotional Alpha, and women will swoon, but be an emotional Beta and you’re doomed to feminine pity. Emotions and passions only reinforce a self-defeating loop for a Beta mindset, but in careful, self-controlled measure they strengthen an Alpha mindset.

The problem is in the measure. Most Betas, raised from birth to believe that women want a “sweet man with a good heart”, build a personality around that message. Thus we have several generations of men trying to out “sweet” one another. In the end of The Game Neil Strauss worried that PUA practitioners would turn into “emotional robots”; men only aping the behaviors that have value in their getting laid and not genuinely emotional. I think his worries are unfounded, because most men of the last generations have such a foundation of ‘being in touch with their emotions’ the issue is more about the self-control necessary to maintain that emotionalism.

Upping the Alpha doesn’t mean offing the empathy. Game doesn’t mean learning sociopathy – it means learning control of one’s psychology. Most Betas find themselves miserable because they’ve been raised to believe that self-expression and open communication of emotions are the keys to successful living with women. It’s interesting that for all the understanding about how women are wired for emotion and men are wired for reason that it should be the men of the last generations who are more emotionally expressive than any preceding generation.

Guys like Floyd aren’t any less emotional or compassionate or sentimental, they simply know the value in controlling their more ephemeral aspects. They know when to apply it and when to withhold it. They know the reward value a rare display of emotion means to women who want to write their own script for the Man they’re in love with.

89 comments | posted in Alpha, Communication, Idealizations, Inter-gender Communication, Psychology

January 14, 2013

House of Cards

By Rollo Tomassi

house-of-cards

Rational Reader Martel (who’s blog I’ve only recently become aware of) trapes into the shark infested waters of the manosphere with another attempt at defining the elusively subjective definition of Alpha. It’s almost a red pill right of passage now; become Game-aware – offer self affirming definition of what makes himself a Man an Alpha.

Before I begin here, let me state emphatically that this is not a take-down piece. Martel’s observations here made me consider a few things I’me not sure I developed adequately when I wrote the Desire Dynamic.

Martel does make a good stab at the beast. Most anyone familiar with my reductionist approach to Alpha mojo knows I don’t mince semantics into the debate. Alpha is as Alpha does – as popular as Vox Day’s delineations of degrees of Alpha, beta, sigma, delta, omega, etc. are I’ve always held that Alpha is a mindset and not a demographic.

I do agree with Martel’s observations, I’m not sure he’s considered a few things in forming his Alpha perspective. I think one of the primary stumbling blocks Game-aware men have with regard to Alpha-ness is the disparity of defining it in male terms. When Martel uses Michael Jordan’s example as a male definition of Alpha, he’s disappointed that women don’t share that estimation. Rationally, logically, and certainly perceptively, men see and appreciate the accomplishment, status, talent and stature of Jordan. Why wouldn’t women see and appreciate the same?

Martel figures that it’s women’s innate solipsism and irrationality that makes them count Alberto Tomba as an athlete to be reckoned with (actually I was surprised it wasn’t David Beckham, but that Spice Girl in the picture ruins the fantasy I guess). However, it’s not solipsism or illogic that brings women to this, it’s that men have a different criteria amongst themselves for what makes a man an Alpha. It seems illogical, and yes I’m sure Tomba inspired tingles of imagined self-role fantasies, but the fundamental disconnect is the disparity in men’s ideal of Alpha and women’s perception of Alpha.

Relational Equity

One of the more rage inspiring posts I’ve ever published here was Hypergamy Doesn’t Care. It’s become a manosphere meme now. It was simplistic in its measure, and it struck a nerve. I got so much enthusiastic follow up on that post (thanks red pill reddit) I had to elaborate and explain the dynamic in greater detail with Relational Equity.

It is from the male concept of relational equity that much of what men determine as Alpha characteristics for men comes into conflict with what women perceive as Alpha. Martel’s male expectation was that Michael Jordan, or even one of his peers, would be the obvious athlete that either sex would agree upon as being an elite example. As men, we understand the dedication, determination and personal investment necessary to achieve this level of accomplishment.

Jordan’s is one extreme example, but in other arenas, and by order of degrees, men have an appreciation of  the achievements of other men – even if only because they have a common frame of reference. Those positive character attributes – determination, confidence, fidelity, humility, sacrifice, dedication, commitment, etc. – even in marginal degree, men believe should have Relational Equity. These virtues should be factors in attraction for a woman.

It seems logical and entirely rational that women would have the same appreciation for this equity, but time and again men’s expectations are trumped by women’s hypergamous response. From Relational Equity:

As if all of the investment, emotional, physical, financial, familial, etc. would be rationally appreciated as a buffer against hypergamy. The reason for their shock and disbelief is that their mental state originates in the assumption that women are perfectly rational agents and should take all of their efforts, all of their personal strengths, all of the involvement in their women’s lives into account before trading up to a better prospective male. There is a prevailing belief that all of their merits, if sufficient, should be proof against her hypergamous considerations.

For men, this is a logically sound idea. All of that investment adds up to their concept of relationship equity. So it’s particularly jarring for men to consider that all of that equity becomes effectively worthless to a woman presented with a sufficiently better prospect as per the dictates of her hypergamy.

That isn’t to say that women don’t take that equity into account when determining whether to trade up or in their choice of men if they’re single, but their operative point of origin is ALWAYS hypergamy. Women obviously can control their hypergamic impulses in favor of fidelity, just as men can and do keep their sexual appetites in check, but always know that it isn’t relationship equity she’s rationally considering in that moment of decision.

Women love opportunistically, men love idealistically. Much of men’s idealism is rooted in the mistaken notion that women have the capacity to appreciate their sacrifices and they’ll be loved for who they are rather than what they represent to women. As I’ve argued in the past, attraction and arousal are two separate elements for women. As Martel elucidates, a couch surfing Alpha will be arousing enough to pull tail despite his impoverished condition. He has no relational equity, and so frustrates the efforts of men who believe that the definition of Alpha ought to be based on the equity they hope women will appreciate.

Women will return (even if just mentally) to the callous or cavalier Alpha because he arouses her, but she will stay faithful to her husband because what he offers is attractive to her. This is why I say, by and large, women love most men for what they represent – once they cease to represent that, once they stumble in maintaining that, hypergamy is free to run. On a personal level this may be you losing a job or how you failed a shit test, on a meta scale it may be women’s social capacity to provide for themselves.

House of Cards

From Martie Hasslton on Sexual Pluralism and Mating Strategies:

According to strategic pluralism theory (Gangestad & Simpson, 2000), men have evolved to pursue reproductive strategies that are contingent on their value on the mating market. More attractive men accrue reproductive benefits from spending more time seeking multiple mating partners and relatively less time investing in offspring. In contrast, the reproductive effort of less attractive men, who do not have the same mating opportunities, is better allocated to investing heavily in their mates and offspring and spending relatively less time seeking additional mates.

The vast majority of men (i.e. betas) fall into this latter category. One of the reasons the scattershot sexual strategy of more Alpha men is considered a social deviance (Playa’s) is because it’s in direct conflict with the socially normalized, investive mating efforts of beta men – as well as the maternalistic, security side of women’s sexual pluralism. Betas are invested in relational equity as a sexual strategy.

The problem inherent in this mental model is that it is entirely dependent upon maintaining that singular, personalized investment in their mate. The root of male providership, the personal sacrifices men endlessly expect themselves to make, are all contingencies against feminine hypergamy. Once those provisions and sacrifices falter, the house of cards risks collapse.

In the words of Chris Rock, “Men, if you lose your job, your woman will leave you. It might not be right then, she might tell you, ‘It’s OK baby we’re gonna get through this’, but just know, the clock is ticking.” This is the time you will hear “I love you, but I’m not in love with you” or “You’ve changed, you’re not the man I fell in love with.”

Men’s idealistic love expectations being to conflict with women’s opportunistic love expectations. His idealism predisposes him to believe the strength of his relationship is dependent upon his intrinsic qualities – fidelity, compassion, empathy, sacrifice, humor, determination, etc. – qualities he’s convinced make him Alpha and up to this point his wife or girlfriend claimed were appreciated. It’s only under conditions where he’s unable or less able to provide extrinsic resources, or conditions in which she (or women in general) can provide for themselves that feminine hypergamy takes mental precedence.

It’s at this point of disillusionment that these men realize that his self-perceived Alpha status, based on what he believed women, his woman, would appreciate, has no equity for her.

Genuine Desire

Martel continues:

Even if reliable beta-boy wasn’t as exciting as the greaser, there was a chance the reliable guy could get the girl. The tingle had to compete with her reputation, the chance of unwanted pregnancy, advice from her elders, her own moral code, and curfews.

She might want to bang the butler, but there was a chance she’d be faithful to her husband instead. There’s more at stake than women deciding who they want to boink, there’s also who they actually boink.

Genuine desire is a very difficult trail for most guys to follow. I emphasize the want part of Martel’s quote here because while hypergamy is often mitigated by personal and social elements, the underlying, ambient desire for a hypergamously optimal mate (or mating) is always the operative for women.

The problem with Martel’s assessment here is that it’s founded on a definition of Alpha rooted in an expectation of Relational Equity on a woman’s part. Intrinsic attributes, invested effort and extrinsic rewards will never be enough to make a woman desire to bang you. In various combinations they may be a sufficient buffer against her hypergamy, they may be endearing qualities she loves about you, but they aren’t sexy in and of themselves. She may not fuck the pool boy due to moral convictions, fear of loss, or simply because she lacks the capacity to attract him, but it wont stop her from wanting to.

There will come a point when a woman’s conditions will make her more dependent on a man’s intrinsic qualities. His empathy, love, loyalty and compassion makes a world of difference once she’s past the Wall.  As her ability to remain a sexual competitor diminishes, her dependency on her husband’s emotional and security provisioning takes precedence. This may even be a genuine appreciation for a woman, but it’s important to understand that this new appreciation is the result of her opportunistic understanding of love. At some point she will need to love these intrinsic qualities.

78 comments | posted in Alpha, Hypergamy, Idealizations, Inter-gender Communication

November 12, 2012

All In

By Rollo Tomassi

I can remember reading with great interest the particulars of Tiger Woods’ affairs when they went public. Considering his talent and drive I had always thought he’d cashed in far too early by marrying his Swedish model, but this woman represented the feminine archetype most men idealize for most of their lives. When the unattainable becomes attainable for a man so deprived, he tends to look past anything but his most immediate gratification.

However, Tiger was following a common script for beta men, and just this weekend a new example of this script has been illustrated for us in the resignation of General David Petraeus. Petraeus’ story is a classic tale of when youthful beta idealism, an almost self-affirming obliviousness of the SMP, and a Contextual Alpha status run headlong into the realities of our contemporary sexual marketplace and the brave new world of a fem-centric society.

Understandably most of the media concern about Petraeus revolves around the political implications of his resignation as CIA director, but there’s much more ‘under the hood’ here with respect to how he came to resign. For the breakdown have a read here for the timeline of events.

First and foremost, Petraeus is a beta. I realize that’s going to come off as presumptuous on my part, and possibly offensive, but I’m making this assessment based on history and behaviors here.

Disgraced former CIA Director David Petraeus exchanged a sexually explicit email about having sex under a desk with his mistress and continued to pursue her by bombarding her with thousands of messages even after she had broken off the affair it has been revealed.

I have no doubt that manosphere readers subscribing to the “Leaders of Men” definition of Alpha will have their rationales about how Petraeus was never really Alpha, or his actions prove his betaness, but his story follows a common pattern for betas in a feminized social structure. He married his idyllic ‘high school sweetheart’ and launched his military career. Only later in life does he become aware of his true SMV as his wife’s nose-dives after hitting the wall. After his contextual Alpha status has been established he begins to come to awareness of his now matured SMV, and a flirty, subjectively attractive, late 30s PhD looks a whole lot better than clinging to the idealism that’s kept him unaware of how the SMP really works.

For young idealistic betas, the fairytale scenario of marrying the ‘girl of your dreams’ out of high school (college?) seems perfect. If you need a musical example of this, listen to any Taylor Swift song or ‘Hey there Delilah’ by the Plain White T’s. The idea of only ever having sex with that one special girl, that “genetic celebrity”, only reinforces the fantasy for a young beta who’s never gotten laid before. At 17-19 this seems like conviction, but 37 years later, and after realizing his true SMV it’s a liability; it’s a sacrifice that cannot be appreciated.

The cruel hoax is then revealed once a man becomes established in his personality, his career, his maturation and mastery of his particular elements. His achievements are commonplace to the wife he’s been with for decades, but they’re a wellspring of attraction and arousal for women unfamiliar with how he achieved them. As I outlined in Navigating the SMP, there comes a point (usually by his early 30s) that a man, at least should, become aware of his higher sexual market value while realizing the SMV declination of the woman he’s committed himself to. He starts to see the code in the Matrix, and the long term wisdom, or lack of wisdom, his youthful idealism led him to.

The Status-to-Marriage Failsafe

As I stated though, a man should become more aware of his higher SMV as he matures. For some, this is an internalized, subconscious acknowledgement –it’s something a man knows, but either hasn’t the reason or the opportunity to act upon it. For other men it may be a more overt acknowledgement, one useful in prompting dread or reigniting competition anxiety in women. Still for others, such as Petraeus, the acknowledgement doesn’t really come until the right opportunity to address it comes along. In this case in the form of Paula Broadwell.

One societal fail-safe against this inevitable male SMV awareness the feminine imperative has established for women comes in tying a man’s status to his degree of commitment to his wife. For as accomplished and determined a man is, for as lofty as his achievements may be, in girl-world none of that matters unless it directly benefits a woman he’s committed to in an enduring security. Beyond the obvious financial imbalances written into our contemporary divorce laws, there is the societal aspect that accompanies a man’s ‘downfall’ when he cheats on his wife. Tiger Woods could weather the cash & prizes settlement of his divorce, but what he couldn’t weather was the hit to his reputation. His status, his personal perception, was damaged as a result of his breach of contract. Similarly Petraeus, a General with the distinction of a storied military career and directorship of the CIA had his status diminished as a result of this status-to-marriage association.

To further complicate matters Petraeus himself ‘believes’ in this status association so strongly that he was willing to resign his position – relinquishing the source of status that made him attractive to the likes of Broadwell – in order to comply with it.

Back to Beta

Petraeus’ story of beta doesn’t end here. As his relationship with Broadwell decayed we can see further evidence of reverting to beta in his ‘thousands of emails’ to her. As with most people reinserted into the SMP after having married in their youth, Petraeus reverts back to the only social skill set he knew when he was dating his wife – an adolescent social skill set. So the beta desperation comes back strong. For all of his post-revelation posturing about how “We all will make mistakes. The key is to recognize them and admit them, to learn from them, and to take off the rear view mirrors – drive on and avoid making them again.” Petraeus literally made thousands of them. Like any desperate beta I’ve consulted with, he ‘wants his girlfriend baaaaack’ and so, like a teenage boy, inundates her with a barrage of emails over the course of months – not unlike the battery of texts Tiger Woods sent to his mistresses.

I often get criticism for suggesting men ‘explore their options’ in their 20′s. Spin Plates, learn Game, understand the intricacies of how a feminized acculturation has crafted men to be what the imperative would have them be. The idealistic zeal of young men is admirable, (it’s what makes us men) but it’s important to take a long-view of how that idealism is useful to a feminized society. Have a look at the context and reporters uncovering this story. There is no male perspective, there is no male insight, only the reactions of a female perspective in accordance with the feminine specific understanding of the SMV and the social failsafes instituted by fem-centrism.

The set of convictions idealistic young men cling to today aren’t what they believe they are. Your ideal of a “quality woman”, you’re grandfather’s high school sweetheart who was your grandmother are useful archetypes that the imperative is more than happy to have you delude yourself with. There may have been a time when that idealism meant something, but it’s important to understand that it is now a tool of a feminine-primary acculturation.

127 comments | posted in Alpha, Idealizations, Operative Social Conventions, The Feminine Imperative

November 1, 2012

Mate Guarding

By Rollo Tomassi

Ah, another week, another fantastic article from the Chateau. I found this particular post interesting because the study (once again by our friend Dr. Martie Haselton) he breaks down here confirms virtually everything I was developing in Your Friend Menstruation. It pretty much sums up in no uncertain terms what I was detailing about how women in their folicular (proliferative) phase of menstruation become more sexually aroused by men exhibiting Alpha physical traits and behavioral cues.

However, Heartiste and this study go one step deeper than just the observable arousal from Alpha cues. It also demonstrates women’s observable aversion (disgust) to beta cues in men during the same menstrual fertility phase.

At their most fertile period, these women are less likely to feel close to their mates and more likely to find fault with them than women mated to more sexually desirable men, the research shows.

“A woman evaluates her relationship differently at different times in her cycle, and her evaluation seems to be colored by how sexually attractive she perceives her partner to be,” said Martie Haselton, a professor of psychology and communication studies at UCLA and senior author of the study.

Through a series of high-profile studies, Haselton’s lab has revealed telling changes that take place in women’s behavior during ovulation. Possibly to increase the odds of attracting suitable mating partners, these behaviors include a tendency to dress up and to speak in a higher-pitched, more feminine voice and — in a potential inbreeding-avoidance mechanism — to refrain from contact with male kin. In addition, the lab has found that women whose mates are less sexy and masculine tend to be more attracted to other men during the few fertile days leading up to ovulation.

The researchers found that women mated to the less sexually attractive men were significantly more likely to find fault with their partners and, again, feel less close to their partners during the high-fertility period than the low-fertility period. Women who rated their mates as more sexually attractive, meanwhile, did not exhibit these changes and instead reported being more satisfied with their relationship at high fertility than at low fertility. [emphasis mine]

Most of this I elaborated on in Your Friend Menstruation, however Heartiste then gave me some food for thought here right after this research finding:

When a man’s woman is being bitchy, the problem is him, but not in the way most men would think. Most men will promptly resort to DEFCUNT Level 1 Beta Supplication Mode to appease their harridans, thinking, wrongly, that their women are bitchy because they haven’t gotten enough signs of commitment and support from their partners. And who could blame these men for thinking this? When nagging, inconsolable women lob heat-of-the-moment accusations at their men, the accusations usually take the form of scattershot wails about one-size-fits-all conventional relationship issues that come straight from therapists’ hackneyed textbooks.

“You don’t care about me.” “You never listen.” “You don’t support this marriage like I do.” “You forgot to go food shopping AGAIN. How many times do I have to remind you?!”

So these beta men, quite reasonably, care harder, listen longer, support stronger, and buy enough groceries to fill a fat housewife’s appetizer plate. He reasons, “This is what she claims she wants, so this is what I’ll give her. And that should make her be nice to me like she was last week.”

In the meantime, the alpha male is now on his fifth year of forgetting to go food shopping, and his lover hasn’t bitched once about it

The subconscious default Beta behaviors Heartiste is alluding to here are exactly what I’d classify as Mate Guarding behavior. Appeasement, supplication, sensitivity, etc. are all the classic default behaviors Beta men will resort to in order to solve the “problem” of their mate’s apparent dissatisfaction with him. You see, the man with a Beta mindset earnestly believes that Beta Game is his best strength in attraction with women. So when something is wrong with his precious little snowflake he automatically defaults to upping the Beta.

The more Beta the man the more his proclivity to Mate Guard will be.

I realize this is a very bold statement, but judging from the principles of sexual selection and how women’s biology has evolved to better effect her innate, sexually pluralistic hypergamy, only less sexually arousing Beta men would have needed to psychologically evolve mate guarding mental schemas to protect their parental investments with biologically hypergamous women.

Furthermore, the more organically Alpha men would be rewarded not only with relational fidelity (for fear of losing the hypergamic optimization he represents to a woman), but also sexually due to women’s natural arousal by them during her fertility phase. You could also make the case that predominantly Alpha men would be less prone to mate guarding since their sexual selection and mating frequency would be greater than predominantly Beta men, but this is also further compounded by women’s biological arousal and sexual rewarding of Alphas as dictated by her menstrual cycle.

End result? Alpha men would have been less environmentally motivated to evolve mate guarding strategies that Beta men evolved as a contingency to women’s sexual pluralism (i.e. cuckoldry)

Beta Contingencies

In Mrs. Hyde I quoted yet another study by Dr. Martie Haselton from Why is muscularity sexy? (Aunt Giggles wept):

According to strategic pluralism theory (Gangestad & Simpson, 2000), men have evolved to pursue reproductive strategies that are contingent on their value on the mating market. More attractive men accrue reproductive benefits from spending more time seeking multiple mating partners and relatively less time investing in offspring. In contrast, the reproductive effort of less attractive men, who do not have the same mating opportunities, is better allocated to investing heavily in their mates and offspring and spending relatively less time seeking additional mates.

From a woman’s perspective, the ideal is to attract a partner who confers both long-term investment benefits and genetic benefits. Not all women, however, will be able to attract long-term investing mates who also display heritable fitness cues. Consequently, women face trade-offs in choosing mates because they may be forced to choose between males displaying fitness indicators or those who will assist in offspring care and be good long-term mates (Gangestad & Simpson, 2000). The most straightforward prediction that follows is that women seeking short-term mates, when the man’s only contribution to offspring is genetic, should prefer muscularity more than women seeking long-term mates.

Using strategic pluralism theory as a guide, we can see how mate guarding behavior in predominantly Beta men would have evolved out of necessity. While women (in the past) may have to face trade-offs in weighing genetics versus provisioning, vows of fidelity do little to quell her arousal for Alpha seed when she’s in the proliferate phase of her cycle. In fact I’d argue that the advent of monogamy and monogamous marriage itself is a mate guarding strategy evolved by the meta-interests of Beta men (the most numerous men).

Just to end this on a positive note, I think it’s important to remember that through Game, self-betterment physically & educationally and red pill awareness men aren’t doomed to the absolutes strategic pluralism outlines. In fact this theory, I think accurately, only defines the contingencies and logical outcomes of the SMP – it’s not outlining determinism, it’s illustrating probablism . It doesn’t mean a man can’t transform himself into a contextual Alpha.

48 comments   |  tags: | posted in Alpha, Biomechanics, Hypergamy, Sexual Market Value

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 1,571 other followers