Tag Archives: physical attractiveness

July 15, 2014

Separating Values

Every so often I’m in the midst of considering an idea, sometimes even typing away at a draft, when the internet gods hand me the divine gift of an example of exactly the concept I’m attempting to make a bit more concrete. Today was one of those days.

59 year old Robin Korth made an effort in feigned indignation on the Huffington Post last Saturday. I can’t imagine most of my readers haven’t been made aware of it already since this story is making the rounds in the manosphere; Return of Kings and Chateau Heartiste were predictably first to the punch. Please do, at the very least, skim through these posts (they’re not long); they provide many more examples of red pill wisdom than just the points I’ll make today.

These blogs have already done an admirable job in dissecting Ms. Korth’s feminist boilerplate, male-shaming efforts so I don’t really feel the need to toss another log on that fire. Briefly though, Robin was upset that a 55 year old man she met online found her body beyond his threshold of physical arousal – in other words, she didn’t pass the boner test for him.

For all her self-induced self-perceptions of what she believed men should find ~~attractive~~ arousing about her, the man, Dave, was completely honest with her about his evaluation of her sexual market value. But as I’ve stated in prior threads, women say they want honesty, but they never want full disclosure.

Dave went so far as to make a counter offer, by making suggestions she might better present herself in a more sexy context for him to increase her arousal potential:

We talked for some time more, my head reeling at the content of the conversation. He spoke of special stockings and clothing that would “hide” my years. He blithely told me he loved “little black dresses” and strappy shoes. He said my hair was not long and flowing as he preferred, but that was okay because it was “cool looking.” I felt like a Barbie Doll on acid as I listened to this man. He was totally oblivious to the viciousness of his words. He had turned me into an object to be dressed and positioned to provide satisfaction for his ideas of what female sexual perfection should be.

He explained that now that I knew what was required, we could have a great time in the bedroom. I told him no. I would not hide from my own body. I would not wear outfits to make my body more “tolerable.” I would not undress in the dark or shower with the bathroom door closed. I would not diminish myself for him — or for anyone. My body is beautiful and it goes along with my mind and my heart.

I’m just going to take a moment here to point out a few notable observations.

Initially I assumed Dave was attempting to establish Frame, and maybe in a Beta way he was, but in doing so Dave is negotiating desire – his own desire, and this is equally ineffective when men do it from an advantage because eventually a man will realize he’s compromised his genuine passion and the woman will grow resentful.

Also, Dave makes the mistake of appealing to Robin’s reason – an obvious Beta tell. Like a properly conditioned Beta, Dave lays everything on the table in full disclosure. Most feminized men internalize the popular notion that women want to know and discuss the sexual things “they like” in order to pragmatically and rationally fulfill each other’s “needs.”

It’s counterintuitive for men to express what they like sexually, especially when this trope is taught to them as part of their ‘open communication’ (i.e. “the key to a great relationship”®) sensitivity training. What Robin was really upset with was less about his words and more about her hypergamous filters being tricked by a guy who ‘just doesn’t get it’ that a woman has to want to please a man.

Genuine, unnegotiated desire doesn’t work rationally or pragmatically.

If Dave had read The Gift he would know that buying for, or requesting that a woman wear lingerie is a Beta push. A woman buys and wears lingerie to please a Man for whom she has a desire to please – anything else is a form of negotiating desire.

However, Ms. Korth’s example is one of a commonly solipsistic woman who’s default presumption is that pleasing anyone but herself is self-diminishing servitude.

I can’t say as this comes as a shock – most properly conditioned women now feel that just cooking for a man is a form of submitting to, and appreciating him for, his authority (cooking has become the expectation of men to prove their worth in a fem-centric role reversal). Under the doctrine of egalitarian equalism any act of anything less than mutually autonomous independence has the potential to be turned into (the perception of) patriarchal domineering.

Conflating Values

One of the major problems women have, and more than even some red pill men have, is the conflation of sexual market value with their intrinsic personal value as a human being.

It needs to be emphasized that while personal value is influential in sexual market value, SMV is distinct from your value as a human being. I’m stressing this because, in the age Disney Princess empowerment, this conflation of the two has become a go-to social convention; and not just for women.

What Korth suffers from is presuming her personal value is her sexual market value.

It’s disruptive to her self-perceptions and ego-investments when that presumption is challenged by a man who doesn’t want to fuck her for reasons based on the intrinsic value she believes she’s entitled to by virtue of maturity and imaginings of self-sufficiency. Just as women aren’t aroused by men’s own self-concepts of virtuousness and aspirations of higher purpose, men aren’t aroused by whatever ephemeral self-perceptions a woman may have.

From the Timeline of the Professional Woman:

This is the overreach of the feminine imperative – to attempt to thwart men’s biological predispositions by convincing them what they should find attractive and arousing in women. This becomes all the more ironic when you consider that the women the imperative would have men be attracted to are masculinized versions of women.

Feminist ‘equalism’ is always shocked that evolved human biology and its feral predispositions won’t cooperate with it, but such is the frustration with any social order or ideology which fails to account for the realities of human being’s natural states and biological imperatives. There is a conceived, higher-order expectation that, through freewill, conviction or some other learned, reasoned means, people will rise above the influence of their base nature and comply with what they believe will make for an idealized existence.

What egalitarian equalisim, struggles against is basic human instinct, nature and impulse.

Sexual Market Value vs. Personal Value

After two years since publishing it, my SMV chart continues to be a benchmark for manosphere / red pill theory and it’s extended beyond whatever humble hopes I had for it. However, it’s always been very contentious because it places a valuation on men and women according to the dictates of the sexual marketplace:

[…] however for our purposes today it is important to note that these valuations are meant to encompass an overall sexual value based on both long and short term breeding prospects, relational desirability, male provisioning capacity, female fertility, sexual desirability and availability, etc. et. al.. Your milage may vary, but suffice it to say the ten scale is meant to reflect an overall value as individuated for one sex by the other. Outliers will always be an element of any study, but the intent is to represent general averages here.

When you attempt to quantify any aspect of human ‘value’ you can expect to have your interpretations of it to be offensive to various people on the up or down side of that estimate. There is simply no escaping personal bias and the offense that comes from having one’s self-worth attacked, or even confirmed for them.

The first criticism I’ve come to expect is usually some variation about how evaluating a person’s SMV is “dehumanizing”, people are people, and have intrinsic worth beyond just the sexual. To which I’ll emphatically agree, however, this dismissal only conveniently sidesteps the realities of the sexual marketplace.

Again, sexual market value is not personal value. Personal value, your value as a human being however one subjectively defines that, is a definite component to sexual market value, but separating the two requires an often uncomfortable amount of self-analysis. And, as in Ms. Korth’s experience here, this often results in denial of very real circumstances, as well as a necessary, ego-preserving, cognitive dissonance from that reality.

Denial of sexual market valuation is a psychological insurance against women losing their controlling, sexual agency in their hypergamous choices.

You Shouldn’t Know This Stuff!

I recently read a story on the Red Pill Reddit forum about a guy who’s girlfriend discovered my book he’d been reading. She began picking through various sections and, expectedly, got really pissed off at the chapters on SMV (the chart in particular). They both discussed the parts she’d read and she admitted she wanted to read the whole thing, but from what they talked about she confessed that there wasn’t really anything she disagreed with.

Her words were, “You men shouldn’t know this stuff!”

It wasn’t that she was irritated by the sections of the book, but rather the fact that men might become aware of women’s sexual strategies as laid bare by the SMV sections and chart.

In the most visceral, biological sense, the primary value of women to men is sex. Almost a year ago I was involved in a lively blog discussion about how men sexually size up women within the space of a glance. Either a woman has sexual potential or she doesn’t. Women like to complain that this is sexual objectification, but men’s brains are literally wired to do exactly this. When we see an arousing woman it triggers the parts of our brains involved with tool manipulation – that’s a feature, not a bug, of the male sexual response.

That may seem shallow or dehumanizing, but just because sexual valuation is a prime value for women it doesn’t mean it’s their only value – in fact far from it. However, there is a distinction between the two, but there’s is a definite utility to women’s interest in maintaining their hypergamous selectivity when they conflate the two together, or deny / reject the validity of sexual market value altogether.

This is what Ms. Korth, and countless other women who share her mindset, has illustrated here. The reality is that a man, Dave, is separating her sexual market value from her estimation of her personal self-worth (inflated and exaggerated as it may be). Robin mistakenly believes her self-impression should be her sexual market value, but this simply isn’t, and never will be, the case.

245 Comments | tags: Chateau Heartiste, feminine psyche, gender relations, hypergamy, intergender relations, male perspective, manosphere, personal interpretations, personal value, physical attractiveness, Robin Korth, sexual impulse, sexual market value, SMV, social conventions, women | posted in Biomechanics, Case Studies, Hypergamy, Idealizations, Inter-gender Communication, Psychology, Sexual Market Value

June 18, 2014

Controlling Interests

By Rollo Tomassi

I realize I dropped this quote last week, but it provides us with a unique illustration of the prevailing feminine psychology that’s been evolving since the sexual revolution.

“When looking for a life partner, my advice to women is date all of them: the bad boys, the cool boys, the commitment-phobic boys, the crazy boys. But do not marry them. The things that make the bad boys sexy do not make them good husbands. When it comes time to settle down, find someone who wants an equal partner. Someone who thinks women should be smart, opinionated and ambitious. Someone who values fairness and expects or, even better, wants to do his share in the home. These men exist and, trust me, over time, nothing is sexier.”

― Sheryl Sandberg, Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead

In last week’s post I made note that Sheryl Sandberg was blissfully ignorant of her blatant admission of feminine hypergamy, but I felt her ‘advice’ to women here represented so much more than just a display of her solipsistic ignorance.

For as long as I’ve butted heads with many obstinate deniers of hypergamy’s influences, on women personally and society on whole, I’m not sure I’ve read a more damning indictment of hypergamy from a more influential woman. Sandberg’s advice to the next generation of women essentially puts the lie to, and exposes the uncomfortable truth about, women’s efforts deny the fundamental dynamic of female sexual strategy – Alpha Fucks / Beta Bucks.

Even if you want to argue the evolutionary (psychology) and biological origins of women’s pluralistic sexual strategy, the fact is now socially evident; women have come to a point where they’re comfortable in openly admitting the truth that Red Pill awareness has been drawing attention to for over a decade now.

Courtesy of Sheryl Sandberg, the Alpha Fucks / Beta Bucks basis of women’s sexual pluralism is now publicly recognized. It’s kind of ironic considering that what the manosphere has been trying to make men aware of for years is now being co-opted, embraced and owned as if women had always practiced an open sexual pluralism – incredulous to any man’s shock over it.

However, the truth is that a feminine-centric social order can no longer hide the increasingly obvious fallout and consequences of a society restructured to accommodate women as the predominant sexual interest.

Last week I speculated that Sandberg was ignorant of the feminine-primary implications that her statements draw attention to – and I’m still of the opinion that an innate feminine solipsism motivates more and more women to this admission – but it’s impossible to ignore the new degree of comfort in which women feel in laying bare their dualistic sexual strategy.

To some significant extent the Feminine Imperative no longer needs to keep the ‘Good Genes’ / ‘Good Dad’ dichotomy ugliness a secret from men.

In last week’s post I mentioned that a new ambient sense of an assured long-term security in the feminine mind was predisposing women to prioritize the ‘Best Genes’ (Alpha Fucks) side of feminine hypergamy. Sandberg’s ‘advice’ is a vital confirmation of this, however, she tacitly acknowledges a window of opportunity during which women possess a better capacity to pursue this side of hypergamy:

The things that make the bad boys sexy do not make them good husbands. When it comes time to settle down, find someone who wants an equal partner.

In these two sentences Sheryl (and by extensions the Feminine Imperative) essentially confirms women’s pluralistic sexual strategy, my (now infamous) sexual market value graph depicting women’s peak SMV and decay, and the first half of the time line of women’s phases of maturity I laid forth in the first two installments of the Preventative Medicine series.

Selling the Beta

With regards to men, I believe the most salient part of Sandberg’s admission is found at the end:

These men exist and, trust me, over time, nothing is sexier.

For the better half of the time since the sexual revolution it was necessary for the Feminine Imperative to convince a majority of men that their eventual Beta providership for women was not only their duty, but also a prime aspect of feminine attraction. As I mentioned last week, under the (pre-sexual revolution) old-order attraction model this may have been the case to a large degree. However after the revolution, and as women’s hypergamy prioritized towards ‘Good Genes’ short-term sexual partners, the ‘Good Dad’ (Beta Bucks) men needed an ever increasing ‘sell’ of their own attractiveness by women.

This persistent sell was a necessary element of ensuring a future long-term security for women while pursuing increasingly more short-term breeding opportunities as feminine-primacy expanded into society. The future ‘Good Dads’ would need to be patiently waiting out women’s “indiscretion years” during their SMV peak, so the sell became an ever-evolving definition of what women found attractive in men based on that old-order model of dependability, patience, industriousness, and every other characteristic that defined a good provider.

Quoted from Why Muscularity is Sexy:

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.

Strategic pluralism theory is a pretty good definition of feminine hypergamy, but what this theory hadn’t yet accounted for (at the time it was published) was the necessitousness of women with regards to short-term mating strategies and long-term parental investment opportunities over the course of the various phases of maturity as they aged.

The Beta investment sell was necessary because it ensured male parental investment at a later (usually just-pre-Wall) time in a woman’s life. Thus, Sandberg’s praise of men “who think women should be smart, opinionated and ambitious. [Men] who value fairness and expect or, even better, want to do his share in the home” will eventually be sexier than the Alpha “bad boys, the cool boys, the commitment-phobic boys, the crazy boys” she encourages women to fuck earlier in life is an excellent example of this sell.

Ironically it’s exactly with this sell that women encourage the very transactional nature of sexual relations with men they’re screeching about recently. It’s the Choreplay fallacy on a meta scale – do more around the house, play into the equalitarian schema women think they need in a provider, support her ambitiousness and opinionatedness and you’ll be considered “sexier” and get her Best Sex she’s been saving just for a guy like this.

Building the Beta

The problem the Feminine Imperative runs into with selling the Beta is that as women’s “independence” expands this sell becomes less necessary and less effective. Less necessary because women’s personal, social and legal long-term security insurances have become almost entirely disconnected from men’s direct (not indirect) provisioning. Less effective because men have become increasingly aware of their disenfranchisement of the old-order provisioning model as being something they might equitably be rewarded for.

As the consequences and repercussions of women’s hypergamous priority shift to Alpha Fucks become more evident and real for men; and as their capacity and comfort with connecting and relating these experiences with other men becomes more widespread, the less effective the sell is for Beta men awaiting their turn to enter into a pre or post Wall monogamy with the women attempting the sell.

Throughout the 70’s, 80’s and most of the 90’s, the sell was effective because men were isolated socially and technologically from each other’s relative experiences. From the late 90’s onward that isolation has diminished while the societal results of feminine-primacy have become more glaringly, and painfully, evident to men.

In its ever-reinventive fluidity, the Feminine Imperative found it necessary to transition from selling men on being later and later life long-term providers for women into building a generation of men who would expect of themselves to fulfill that role when the time came. These men would be raised and conditioned to be the patient Beta providers women would need once they had followed the Sandberg model of hypergamy.

These would be the boys / men who would be taught to “naturally” defer to the authority of women under the auspices of a desire to be an equal partner.

These are the men raised privately and created socially to be ready for women, “when it comes time to settle down, and find someone who wants an equal partner.”

These would be the men ready to expect and accept a woman’s proactive cuckoldry of him in the name of being a pro-feminine equal.

These are the men raised to accept an open form of hypergamy in place of the selling to an old-order Beta provisioning model.

The Hypergamy Schism

The problem this creates for women becomes one of dealing with the men they need to sell a secretive hypergamy to and the men they build to accept an open form of hypergamy to. The increasing comfort with an open admission of hypergamy is relative to a woman’s capacity to get away with it.

A woman like Sheryl Sandberg has the means to decisively ensure her future independence and long-term security (at least in the financial sense) whether she’s married or not. She could very well return to the Bad Boys she found so arousing and advises women ‘date’ and never rely on a man’s direct provisioning. As such she’s very comfortable in publicly revealing the ins and outs of post-sexual revolution hypergamy without so much as an afterthought.

While she publicly affirms the build model of Beta provisioning (under the guise of equalism) and expects “those guys will be awaiting you” this doesn’t hold true for a majority of women. Women with affluence enough, or a physical attractiveness sufficient to virtually ensure their future provisioning are much more comfortable with the build a better Beta model than women who find themselves more lacking in this assurance.

The more necessitous a woman finds herself in the sexual marketplace, the more likely she is to deny the mechanics of her own hypergamy.

A woman less confident in consolidating on her future long-term security (and / or cooperative parental investment) has a much more personal investment in keeping the truths of hypergamy a secret from men. As such, these women will be more predisposed to misdirecting the men becoming more aware of this truth and relying more on the selling model of Beta provisioning.

Needless to say this split between women comfortable in open hypergamy and women reliant upon secretive hypergamy is a point of conflict between the have’s and have not women in the sexual marketplace. The more men become aware of women’s hypergamy and strategic sexual pluralism, through women’s open embrace of it or the manosphere, the more pressure the ‘have not’ women will feel to also embrace that openness.

273 Comments | tags: Alpha Fucks, Beta Bucks, beta guy, feminine imperative, gender relations, hypergamy, intergender relations, manosphere, physical attractiveness, sexual market value, Sheryl Sandberg, society, women | posted in Alpha, Communication, Hypergamy, Inter-gender Communication, The Feminine Imperative, The Matrix

March 26, 2014

Preventative Medicine – Part II

By Rollo Tomassi

Navigating the SMV continues to be one of my most prolific posts. I can remember originally writing that post and plotting the graph as a one-off response to a comment (by Deti I think) made requesting a graphic representation of how both men and women’s SMV waxes and wanes as they progress through life. At the time I had no idea how influential and accurate the graph would be, but it seems that not every three or so months someone links or emails me an outside study with a graph that is so similar to my initial perception of sexual market valuation and devaluation that it kind of creeps me out a little bit.

This most recent graph comes to us courtesy of the Red Pill subreddit, linked to the Cougar and Cub Dating Study on Whatsyourprice.com.

From the chart above, we see that the perceived value of an attractive woman peaks when she reaches 25 years old, and gradually diminishes as she ages. The perceived value of an attractive man however, starts at a much lower price when he is young, peaking only when he reaches the age of 34. It appears from the value curve above that at least some stereotypes we often hear do hold some truth. For example, that female models earn the most before they turn 30. Or that men become more attractive as they age.

But no matter what some of you may read from the value curves above, it has proved a useful tool for predicting when Cougar-Cub couples get together, and when they are likely to break up. The value curves also provide clues of what types of Cougar-Cub relationships stand the best chance of surviving in the long run.

Granted, my own parameters were slightly broader in scope (female SMV peaked at 22-23, men’s 36-38) but the base premise is astonishingly similar. As you might expect the comments are rife with “well-not-in-my-case”, “people are individuals” personal anecdotes, but the grouping of the graph plot is too similar not to recognize a consistency of form with my original SMV graph:

There are other studies and graphs that reflect this basic model. Some are more forgiving and project the feminine SMV decay a bit less or starting later – rarely is men’s SMV any less rigorous – and each study has differing objectives, but the form of the curves are so alike that it’s impossible not to notice the general similarities. I’ve done several followup posts in order to address the most common (deliberate) misunderstandings, as well as the most pressing questions about my SMV graph, so while we move on to the next section of the SMV timeline this week please be sure you reference the side bar category I have set up that exclusively covers the topic if you have questions. I’m prefacing this week’s continuation of Preventative Medicine with this graph because it will be an integral element to understanding the progression through the Epiphany and Transitionary phases.

The Late Party Years

Although not a subsection itself, the latter third of a woman’s Party Years deserves some mention in that the end of this phase is often a prelude for the rationales women develop leading into the Epiphany Phase. As I mentioned here, some third party SMV studies will place a woman’s peak SMV as late as 25-26 years old. I’d argue that this is far too late in a woman’s life progression.

Statistically, most women express a desire to settle down, be married and start a family at or around the age of 27 to 30, and most marriages do happen between 26 and 30 for western women. The popularized, feminized ideal of a woman enjoying her prime – often excused as fulfilling her nebulous professional potential – is a primary contributor to this marriage postponement, but it’s important to point out to men dating women in this phase that the last two years of the party phase will be the stage at which a woman will begin to feel an urgency for long term commitment.

I summed this phase up in Cashing Out, however, it’s here that women, with the foresight to see it, will make their best attempts to consolidate on marriage with the man who best embodies, or has the potential to embody, the Alpha sexual-genetics with the providership parental investment that an optimized hypergamy seeks to balance in the same man. At no other time will a woman feel more urgency in capitalizing on her still prime attractiveness and sexual agency with a man she believes will fulfill the dual dictates of her sexual strategy.

“Where is this going?”

This is the most common phase in which a man will hear the words “where is this going?” from a woman, or is delivered ultimatums of withdrawal of intimacy (no more sex, or threats of break up) if no proposal is forthcoming in the foreseeable future.

Although women’s preferred method of communication rests in the covert, as she matures towards a condition of a lessened capacity to intra-sexually compete with her younger peers (competition anxiety) most men discover that women in this demographic, by necessity, lean more on overt communication. The coquetry, indirectness and blasé indifference that she used to hold and enjoy male attentions during her SMV peak years is progressively traded for more direct certainties of promised, committed assurances of future security.

Side note: Bear in mind that security for women isn’t always manifested as financial provisioning, but can be emotional investment, parental investment, physical security and most importantly fulfilling a masculine role of stability and dominance in her life.

Of primary importance is the consideration that women seek the Alpha Fucks / Beta Bucks (AFBB) balance of their hypergamous interests in the same man at this stage. That’s not to say this isn’t always the operative for feminine hypergamy, but it’s during the late party years phase that a woman (on some level of consciousness) begins to realize this time is her best opportunity to use her quick-burn SMV to consolidate on an optimized hypergamy. This isn’t due to premonitions of the Wall per se, but it is the first recognition of her diminishing capacity to sexually compete for male attention with young women experiencing their own SMV peak years.

During this period women will often make their first earnest attempts to find ways – sometimes by coercion – to ‘fix’ an Alpha into satisfying the Beta Bucks side of her hypergamy equation, or, to seriously evaluate an already committed Beta’s potential to ‘man up’ and be more Alpha, more ambitious and assesses (what she believes will be) his future SMV potential.

Lastly, bear in mind that women in this phase experience this urgency in direct proportion to what their looks, sexuality and command of male attention will afford them. It’s simple reasoning to figure that women who maintain their physical attractiveness / sexual agency and are consistently rewarded for it with male attention will prolong that state as long as possible. Thus, some attractive women may perpetuate their party years until such time as that attention abruptly ends.

The Epiphany and Transitory Phase

I’ve written extensively on these phases so please have a read of my prior posts The Epiphany Phase, Time’s Up and Cashing Out for a more in-depth understanding of what to expect from women during this stage of life.

Between the ages of 28 to about 30 (sometimes later for attractive women perpetuating their party years) women often enter into a more cognitive awareness of their personal conditions with regard to their declining SMV. This phase I call The Epiphany Phase; it is the point at which the subconscious awareness a woman has of her sexual market value in relation to her eventual date with the Wall can no longer be subconsciously repressed and ignored.

It is of primary importance to men to fully understand the significance this phase has for women. The epiphany isn’t about women hitting their SMV Wall during this phase (though it’s possible) it’s about a woman conscientiously coming to terms with a markedly lessened capacity to sexually compete with her SMV-peak peers for the same male attention she enjoyed during her party years.

The abstract exaggeration is to think a woman necessarily hits the Wall at 30, her physical attractiveness shrivels and she magically transforms into a spinster cat lady overnight. Women absolutely (with effort) can and often do retain their looks and sexual agency past this phase; some into their late 30’s and 40’s. However, what defines this phase is the conscious realization that their looks are no longer what they were in their prime. Combined with this is the awareness that they can no longer sexually compete at the same level as young women in their SMV peak for the attentions of men they now hope to consolidate their hypergamy on in long term commitment and provisioning security.

The Epiphany phase isn’t about women hitting the Wall so much as it is about an urgency to consolidate upon a man’s commitment of long term security with the competition anxiety that comes from realizing it’s now she who must to put forth the effort to secure it rather than having it offered to her as it was by the men in her SMV-peak years.

From The Epiphany Phase:

This is a precarious time for women where she makes attempts to reassess the last decade of her life. Women’s psychological rationalization engine (a.k.a. the Hamster) begins a furious effort to account for, and explain her reasonings for not having successfully secured a long term monogamous commitment from as Alpha a man as her attractiveness could attain for her. Even women married prior to this phase will go through some variation of self-doubt, or self-pity in dealing with the hypergamic uncertainty of her choice (“Is he really the best I could do?”).

A woman’s late party years are often the stage during which she entertains the hope that she can ‘civilize’ the Alpha Bad Boys who satisfy the visceral side of her hypergamy into assuming the providership role the other side of her hypergamy demands and is increasingly becoming more urgent for her – most Alpha Widows are made during this period. However, it’s during the Epiphany phase women (conveniently) make the rationalizations necessary for justifying this ‘fixing’ effort.

During the Epiphany Phase a woman’s inner and outer dialog is self-excusing, virtuously self-educational and self-congratulatory.

“I used to be so different in college, but I’ve grown personally” or “I’ve learned my lesson about pursuing the ‘wrong kind’ of men, I’m done with Bad Boys now” and “What happened to all the Nice Men?” are the standard clichés women will tell themselves and vocally (overtly) broadcast, directly or indirectly, to all the men with a providership potential in the hopes of signaling to them that she will now entertain their feminine-preconditioned offers of love, loyalty and dependability she had no interest in during her party years.

It’s during this stage that women will make radical shifts in their prioritization of what prerequisite traits qualify as ‘attractive’ in a man and attempt to turn over a new leaf by changing up their behaviors to align with this new persona they create for themselves. Since the physicality, sexual prowess and Alpha dominance that made up her former arousal cues in a Man aren’t as forthcoming from men as when she was in her sexual prime, she reprioritizes them with (presumed) preferences for more intrinsic male attributes that stress dependability, provisioning capacity, humor, intellect, and esoteric definitions of compatibility and intimacy.

For the spiritually inclined woman (which is to say most women) this may manifest in a convenient return to religious convictions she’d disregarded since her adolescence. For other’s it may be some kind of forced celibacy; a refusal to have sex under the hypergamic auspices of her ‘party years’ in the hopes that a well provisioning male (the ones not realizing their own potential SMV as yet) will appreciate her for her prudence – so unlike herself and all of the other girls who rejected him over the last decade.

The self-affirming psychological schema is one where she’s “finally doing the right thing”, when in fact she’s simply making the necessity of her long term provisioning and security a virtue she hopes men will appreciate. And if they don’t, then there’s always shaming them to think they’re ‘less-than-men’ for not living up to her eating her cake once she’s had it

While looks and masculine physical triggers in men are still an important attraction factor, her desire for a personal association with a man’s status and affluence begin to sublimate her physical priorities for attraction as she increasingly realizes the necessity of these attributes for her (and any offspring’s) long term provisioning. It should be noted that the appeal of a man’s potential for provisioning is proportional to her actual (or perceived) need for that provisioning.

As a woman moves into the Transitory phase (29-31) this re-prioritization also coincides with the adjusted self-perception of her own SMV. As a woman becomes more cognizant of her lessened ability to sexually compete for men who (she believes) would meet her best hypergamic balance, she’s forced to reassess her self-image. There are many feminine social conventions already pre-established to help her deny or buffer this reassessment. However, her hindbrain still acknowledges the competition anxiety that (unless, by effort or genetics, she’s a notable physical exception) she simply cannot command the kind of male attention women in their SMV-peak years do.

Note that the reality of this assessment, or realistic expectations of it, aren’t the source of this anxiety, but rather it’s what she believes them to be. An exceptionally attractive 30 year old woman may still be able to sexually select men above what most women her age can expect, but it’s what she believes about herself, her internalized expectations for her age and party years experience has taught her. And as you may guess this self-assessment is also subject to the influences of social media and social conventions that pander to this same Transition period anxiety.

The Transition

I believe it was Roosh who stated that the only women who complain about men needing to Man Up or how men have somehow shirked the masculine responsibilities the ~~Feminine Imperative~~ society expects of them are always 30 years of age or older. Younger women simply have no motive to complain about what they believe they are entitled to in a man beyond his being ‘hawt’.

What I term as the Transition phase is the culmination of the Epiphany phase’s influence on a woman who’s thus far been unable to consolidate on monogamy with a male who fulfills the role of provider (Beta provider most often) that her hypergamy now holds in much higher priority order. When women in this phase complain of men’s “adequacy issues” what they’re really bemoaning is their chronic inability to find (or merit) a man who can balance the dual influences of her hypergamy.

The urgency for this consolidation is further compounded by the misconceptions most women hold about the Myth of the Biological clock, but in biological terms she’s well past the years of her prime fertility window and conceiving and bearing children becomes progressively more difficult for women with each passing year.

In the Transition phase the competition anxiety that prompted the Epiphany phase is exchanged for an anxiety that results from confronting the possibility a woman may never consolidate on a long term security. However, as always, feminine social conventions are already in place to absolve her of any real personal accountability for this incapacity.

Thus, begins the ‘Men are threatened by powerful women’, ‘Men have fragile egos’, ‘Men are shallow and only want young chippys they can manipulate instead of vibrant, women who are their intellectual equals’ and various other canards intended to simultaneously shame men into compliance with their hypergamous imperative and relieve women of any personal accountability for the anxiety the Transition phase forces them to experience.

In closing todays post, I think it’s important to consider other outcomes of personal decisions women often do make during these periods. As I mentioned in Part I, it’s not uncommon for women to already have consolidated on monogamy (LTR or marriage) well before either of these phase take place. While the experiences may differ, the underlying influences that prompt these phases remain more or less the same. I’ll elaborate more on this in Part III as it primarily relates to the later phases of women’s maturation process.

225 Comments | tags: Alpha Fucks, Beta Bucks, beta guy, feminine imperative, gender relations, hypergamy, physical attractiveness, sexual market value, SMV, social conventions, women | posted in Foundations, Game, Hypergamy, Sexual Market Value, The Feminine Imperative

February 23, 2014

Beta Fucks

By Rollo Tomassi

I had an interesting experience last Friday. I had finished a good workout and was on my way home when Bebé Tomassi texted me asking if I would pick up a sandwich for her from Subway and bring it to her at a school function. Sure, why not.

I get into the local Subway at around 6:30 pm and it being a Friday night and Subway isn’t the most happening place to be on a Friday, I’m there with only a couple ahead of me in line. The woman looked to be late 20’s, I’d guess 27-28, and not too bad looking – 5′ 9″-10″, blonde – if she’d been dressed better she might rate a 7 on the Tomassi scale. The guy she’s with was thin, short mop of hair, about the same height, maybe around her age.

What made them notable was the gender dynamic between them I picked up on immediately. Within the first 3 minutes of coming up behind them in line the guy had made every Beta tell I think Roissy has a term for. When I got in line he was hugging up on her from behind, leaning in and she stood there like a tree. His posture and body language, as well as his attitude instantly told me this couple’s relational dynamic – he was the qualifying Beta and she was the mouthy, hard-to-please Hyena.

She noticed me when I came up. I was the only other person in Subway and I still had my gym clothes on. Some top 40 crap song came on the overhead and she blathered out, “I hate this shit music. They should put Metallica or Slayer on, that would be funny.” as if she expected the Beta to ask the management to switch stations. She gives me a glance as if offering an opening after that comment. I order my daughters sandwich.

“No! Don’t get me lemonade, it’s too syrupy here, get me diet Dr. Pepper.” she belts out to the Beta dutifully getting their drinks. The sandwich artist asks here what she’d like on her sandwich – reaches over and touches my forearm (IOI, kino) “This might take a while, I’m very choosy”, she says to me in her ‘tone’.

“I’m not in a hurry.”

Sandwiches get made, Beta pays. My girl’s sandwich is done at the same time (she’s not too choosy), and as Alpha Girl and Beta Boy are about to leave she grabs both their sandwiches and mine ‘by mistake’. The Subway cashier stops her to tell her she picked up my sandwich (remember, we’re the only people in the store), Beta puffs a nervous laugh, she looks at me, “Ohh, sorry,..” hands me the bag and holds eye contact just that beat longer than normal.

“Come on we gotta go.”, Beta reaches around her waist, and like the cane that pulls a bad actor off the stage, they exit.

Passive Game

I did nothing to actively Game this girl, she was Gaming herself. I’ve seen this before. There’s a branch of Game (I think Roosh mentions it) that speculates that sometimes girls will Game themselves and all you need to do is not fuck it up. Sometimes less is more; when a woman is already attracted to you, Game becomes remaining aware of the indicators, allowing the proper flow and just presuming the sale.

I preface today’s post with this because it ties in nicely to a particular discussion last week’s post sparked. I’ll admit, being married kind of puts a Man in a ‘nothing to lose’ perspective. A lot of guys like to speculate that a wedding ring makes a man more desirable – it doesn’t. If married men are at all attractive to women it’s not due to some fantasy of preselection by his wife making him more attractive as a long term prospect; it’s because, generally, he’s not actively pursuing women. There’s a certain power in indifference – you’re far more desirable when you aren’t qualifying yourself to women, and no guy is more indifferent than one who knows with all certainty who he’ll be banging that evening.

However, there is also an amplification of attraction and arousal for a more Alpha man when a woman is in a relationship with a man she perceives as Beta. A similar amplification also becomes heightened when a woman is the focus of one or more Beta orbiters. The persistent affirmation by, and supplication of, Beta men puts that Alpha in a spotlight. A constant atmosphere of Beta attention and concern has an effect of preselecting that (more) Alpha Man for a woman. A common complaint many Beta men share is being an emotional tampon for a woman, listening and commiserating with her about the ‘asshole boyfriend’, only to have her desire for him become more amplified and off she goes for her desired sex with him again. The Beta(s) rationalizes this as ‘a moment of weakness’ for his special girl, but is unaware that his constant Beta affirmations contribute to her attraction to that Alpha.

As I stated, I wouldn’t have had to apply much Game to the Subway girl – the Beta boyfriend had already done a lot of the heavy lifting. This particular dynamic is something to remember if you’re Gaming a girl with a boyfriend or a girl who drops a boyfriend disclaimer into casual conversation. A girl’s boyfriend may not be the Beta this guy was, but if he is, let that form the basis of your Game. I should also add that this ‘Beta does the lifting’ dynamic is the root of AMOGing and running boyfriend destroyer Game. You should also be aware when this tactic is being run on yourself.

Husband = Beta

Now before you think I’ve gone completely mercenary, this incident made me think of this comment from last week’s post from Lucas Bly:

So essentially, I’m reading the last four paragraphs of your essay to read:

“She married you because you are a provider, not because she was attracted to you. She’ll never be as attracted to you as she was to her previous Alpha Fucks.”

That’s a tough pill to swallow, my brother.

The issue being, of course, what to do with yourself, and with her, after you discover you got gamed into that kind of marriage.

Here’s a tougher pill to swallow, she’ll never be as attracted to you as she is of the guy’s she sees as Alpha after you’re married too.

In the interests of full disclosure, Lucas had petitioned me earlier about his particular situation being similar to the guy in Saving the Best. What the kid in the Subway made me think of was a wondering if he had at one time been relatively Alpha enough to attract this dominant woman, or if she perceived him in a good provider role. She certainly fit the script of the 27-29 year old woman looking to cash out of the SMP before her attractiveness capital (such as it was) expired. But on the other hand, she wasn’t averse to giving a perceptual Alpha IOIs right under his nose. It’s an interesting passive cuckolding effect.

Lucas’ musings prompted the question: Does an Alpha (perceptually) drop in status for a woman once he’s committed to monogamy with her?

One common situation I get from newly red pill men is that after a few years they find themselves trapped in a sexless marriage or living arrangement and they want to know how to get back to the hot monkey sex they had (or their wives had with previous lovers) in the early stages of their relationship. Once they become red pill / Game aware and realize what they are and how they got there, the next question is how to get back to what he had before.

The question is usually along the lines of “Help Rollo, I used to be really Alpha back in the day, but now my wife sees me as a Beta provider, what do I do?” Virtually every man on the Married Man Sex Life forums looks for a solution there for some variation of this situation, but is it that marriage itself, by it’s very nature predisposes a woman to view her husband in a Beta status? The go-to definition is Beta Provider, not Alpha provider.

Hypergamy being what it is, it’s Alpha Fucks / Beta Bucks; if a woman, being the arbiter and decider with whom she will pair-off with in the long term, has agreed to commitment with a man, it would follow that on some level (whether true or not) she believes this man will be a provider and parent for her and future children. So the question then isn’t so much about a man backsliding to Beta after having been considered Alpha enough to fuck the woman who would be his wife, that may be, but rather it’s the familiarity and provisioning that define marriage makes a woman consider him Beta-provider by default.

Dr. Warren Farrell explored this in some of his writing. He posited that the familiarity of marriage predisposes women to consider their husbands as family members, thus the concept of sex with a family member is repelling for women. This is further complicated by parenthood; when boyfriend becomes husband, and then husband becomes Daddy, the family familiarity dynamic makes having sex less and less appealing.

I think there may be something to this, but when you combine it with a fattening and less appealing Daddy, and Mommy, the complex worsens. Thus any strange, outsider, Alpha becomes the stuff of fantasy for women.

Burninator picks up the narrative:

“After the marriage, sometimes just a few short years, then we hear of the sexless husband, fully betatized, begging for sex. But based on his previous experience with the woman, what should he have been looking for to tip him off?

My question is pointed more towards the men who are alpha who get duped.”

He’s referring of course to the husband in the Saving the Best post. I’m not entirely sure most guys, and especially men with a Beta mindset, are very receptive to the red flag warnings telegraphed by women, but Deti makes a good stab at it:

1. A guy in that situation should take note of the kinds and types of men she was attracted to/fucked before. Huge red flag if you are markedly different from those kinds of men. For example: She used to date guys in shitty bands and small time pro athletes. But she’s now taken quite a shine to mid level business managers and guys with steady jobs. Indicates she’s changing lanes; going for the beta bucks. This woman is for dating; not for marriage.

2. She was a slut with other guys; makes you wait; then when she finally does take the plunge, the sex is of pornstar quality. Seems to be putting on an act; a performer on stage.

3. Entitlement mentality surrounding sex. To her, sex is a commodity which she uses as a currency for exchange. She expects something in return for giving you sex.

4. Firmly controls the sex. Won’t do certain things; will have sex only at certain times; doesn’t like certain sexual acts because “only sluts do THAT” and “I don’t want you to think I’m a slut”. Immediately gets up after sex to expel the semen because “I don’t want to get a yeast infection” or to take care of the wet spot.

5. Closely related to this is that she remains in control of herself during sex. Never seems to be completely free or enjoying herself; always assessing her own performance and your evaluation of her sexually.

6. Wants to move rapidly to commitment. Puts out overt and subtle hints that she expects ever increasing investment and commitment in exchange for the sex she’s doling out.

These are pretty good tells for a woman looking to cash out of the SMP with a provider, but again, I’m not entirely convinced that women in the Epiphany Phase of life are reserving these tells exclusively for Beta men.

Validational Sex vs. Transactional Sex

Commenter jf12 brings us to the heart of the matter:

At J4G we were discussing validational sex vs transactional sex. I pointed out it was really primate alpha sex vs beta sex. In alpha sex, the female gladly services the male, and she gladly pays him (bananas and grooming). In beta sex, the female ungratefully requires servicing from the male, and demands payment from him (bananas and grooming).

It should also be noted that when a female primate does engage in a transactional sex exchange with a Beta male, it’s during the down cycle of her menstruation (point of lowest potential fertility). As with female primates (including humans), when she is in the proliferative phase of her menstrual cycle (just pre-ovulation, and the highest potential fertility) her biochemistry predisposes her to seek out the sexual attentions of more Alpha (masculinized) ‘good genes’ males.

I covered this fundamental at length in Schedules of Mating. Alpha Fucks / Beta Bucks is the behavioral manifestation of feminine hypergamy and the dualistic nature of women’s sexual strategy as prompted by female biology. From an evolutionary / adaptive species-survival standpoint, women’s sexuality is nothing if not pragmatic and often opportunistic.

Most often when I’m asked the “How do I get my wife to fuck me again?” it’s coming from a man who once thought he had the best his wife had to offer, sexually, emotionally, etc. only to discover she had or still has the potential to be much more than he can coax from her or she’s willing to give to him. Again, I have to come back to the question, does his being her husband make her impression of him Beta by default?

I’ve had the premise that only Beta men consider getting married thrown at me on occasion. I think this presumption may be putting the cart before the horse – maybe, eventually, a man cannot help but be perceived as a Beta by his wife because he is her husband, a parent and provider (or should be). Many divorced men express disbelief when they discover just how wildly sexual their ex-wives can be with their new lovers. They take it as some personal failing that they were unable to bring out the slut in their wives when they were married, but I might argue that their position as husband and father made this impossible for them.

There’s a lot more I could write about this. What do you do if you find yourself in this situation? Leave, divorce, cheat on her? That may be enough to push past that comfortable familiarity. I can think of one married blogger who’s husband cheated on her with the result being her unconditional submission. Dread Game, both overt and soft dread, might cut through that familiarity. Strong Frame control is the lynchpin to a good relationship, ensuring that your SMV is above that of your wife or LTR, and knowing the power this has can keep an Alpha impression functional.

However, in the end, you have to evaluate the worth of changing yourself in order to reestablish that Alpha sex connection. If divorce isn’t an option for you due to religious convictions, then you’ll have to factor that into your evaluation. If not, then you’ll have to consider the depth and importance your commitment means to you versus the effort (or even having to make an effort) you’ll make to reestablish yourself. You’ll need to consider this with all the logic and rationalism at your disposal, divorced from emotional considerations – most times that’s the most difficult part. You’ll want to couch your decision making process based on Relational Equity, but you have to set aside that emotionalism and use cold pragmatism.

233 Comments | tags: Alpha Fucks, Beta Bucks, beta guy, intergender relations, physical attractiveness, relationships, sexual market value, SMV, women | posted in Alpha, Biomechanics, Game, Hypergamy, Inter-gender Communication, Relationship Game

January 23, 2012

Plate Theory VI: Abundance & Scarcity

By Rollo Tomassi

Law 16: Use Absence to Increase Respect and Honor
Too much circulation makes the price go down: The more you are seen and heard from, the more common you appear. If you are already established in a group, temporary withdrawal from it will make you more talked about, even more admired. You must learn when to leave. Create value through scarcity.

Plate Theory is for your benefit, not for women’s. That might sound harsh, but it’s a method intended to increase your value as a commodity that works on two levels. First, the external – by practicing honest, non-exclusive dating you communicate to your prospective plates that you are in demand. I’ve gone so far as to tell men to foster this sense by never answering the phone from Friday to Sunday evening, even when they have no other plans. The perception that your attention is sought after increases it’s value – it’s when men are too eager to get with a woman that their attention becomes worthless and IL declines. Nothing serves a man better than having 3 or 4 women competing for his exclusive attention and fostering in them that feminine competitivie anxiety in as subtle and covert a way as possible. It’s a real art that women are all too familiar with. Women are natural plate theorists, they simply use their varying degrees of physical attractiveness to line their plates up.

Secondly, plate theory is for a man’s own internal benefit. As I said in my original thread, it’s much easier for a man not to give a shit if he truly doesn’t give a shit. It’s far easier to deal with women on the basis of indifference when you have a subconscious knowledge that there are at least 3 other women who’ll be happy to have your attention if one plays games with you.

You will invariably pass most shit tests in this fashion. The reason men fail most shit tests is because they subconsciously telegraph too much interest in a single woman. Essentially a shit test is used by women to determine one, or a combination of these factors:

a.) Confidence – first and foremost
b.) Options – is this guy really into me because I’m ‘special’ or am I his only option?
c.) Security – is this guy capable of providing me with long term security?

By practicing Plate Theory, your mental attitude will be such (or should be such) that you will pass most shit test based simply on this practice. Abundance thinking is the root of Plate Theory. A lot has been written about approaching women (and really life in general) from a position of Abundance. People often make the mistake of assuming that having a wide variety of choices tends to cheapen the commodity, and to a degree this is accurate, but it also allows for a better, learned awareness of which choice amongst the pool is common and which is of higher quality.

,…but Rollo, I’m so busy that I have no choice but to ignore and postpone. They sense it and seek me out. I worry that I’ll create crazies. My weekends are jammed. At what point do we stop?

This is a the best problem you can have. You’ve successfully flipped the script; you’ve gotten to a point where it becomes instinctive and your plates actively seek out your attention. By default, you’re creating value by scarcity. At what point do you stop? How old are you? If you’re under 30 stay in the game. If you’re over 30, stay in the game, but cool things off occasionally – the only time a man should even contemplate monogamy is after experiencing abundance. If you’re innundated with women occupying your weekends, consider hooking up with a proven plate on a Thursday evening and reserve your weekends for your other pursuits.

Also, don’t be afraid to clear your schedule to hang out with friends or do other things that interest you. Remember, scarcity increases value. Too many guys think that plate spinning is something that needs a constant effort, it doesn’t. In fact applying yourself equally across all your active plates only pushes you closer to settling for one or two. Most guys think that they have to continually spin their plates, you don’t; if you’re doing it correctly they’ll spin themselves for you. The anxiety is that if you don’t keep applying attention to any one plate she’ll lose interest and fall off. Sometimes this is the case and you have to be prepared to accept it, some plates have to break in order to spin more, and that’s OK. More often than not however, your scarcity will create value and mystique, thus they will pursue you for their affirmation.

Plate theory of course can be a means to an LTR, but bear in mind that it’s essential that you practice it long enough and effectively enough to determine what a quality woman means to you and how to recognize her. As with most Game skills, the AFC will use them to some degree of success up to the point that he finds his idealized “girl of his dreams” and launch into a self-destructive LTR because his idealization was based on juvenile impressions rather than a mature understanding of what a quality woman’s characteristics are. This is all due to a lack of concrete experience.

Spin plates for as long as possible, because once you do commit to an LTR, even with the tightest of Game you will lose a measure of the competitive anxiety that made your attentions valuable to any one woman. All your plates fall off AND the girl you’re engaged in an LTR with relaxes. This is root of why men find that the woman they had hot sweaty monkey sex with when they were dating becomes more sexually reserved a few months after they’re a couple. The competitive anxiety is relieved and therefore sexual frequency and quality is no longer a proving trait for her. That’s not to say there aren’t methods to stoke this anxiety in an LTR, but, by comparisson to being single, the frame of the relationship doesn’t have to be contested when she and you understand that she is your only source of intimacy and sex. In a committed relationship, you simply cannot spin plates.

28 Comments | tags: physical attractiveness, plate theory, reason men | posted in Game, Idealizations, Plate Theory

January 5, 2012

A League of Your Own

By Rollo Tomassi

“Rollo, I’m newly Game-aware, red pill guy and I’ve been meeting girls with more and more success since my conversion, but I can’t help the feeling that the really hot girls I want to get with a so out of my league.

Any suggestions?”

Iron Rule of Tomassi #8

Always let a woman figure out why she wont ƒuck you, never do it for her.

An integral part of maintaining the feminine imperative as the societal imperative involves keeping women as the primary sexual selectors. As I’ve detailed in many prior comments and posts, this means that a woman’s sexual strategy necessitates that she be in as optimized a condition as her capacity (attractiveness) allows for her to choose from the best males available to satisfy that strategy.

This is really the definition of hypergamy, and on an individual level, I believe only the most plugged in of men don’t realize this to some degree of consciousness. However, what I think escapes a lot of men is the complex nature of hypergamy on a social scale. For hypergamy to sustain it’s dominant position as the default sexual strategy for our society, it’s necessary for the feminine imperative to maintain existing, foster new, and normalize complex social conventions that serve it. The scope of these conventions range from the individualized psychological conditioning early in life to the grand scale of social engineering (e.g. Feminism, Religion, Government, etc.)

One of these social conventions that operates in the spectrum of the personal to the societal is the idea of ‘leagues’. The fundamental idea that Social Matching Theory details is that “All things being equal, an individual will tend to be attracted to, and are more likely to pair off with, another individual who is of the same or like degree of physical attractiveness as themselves.” In a vacuum, this is the germ of the idea behind the ‘leagues’. The social convention of ‘leagues’ mentality is where ‘all things are not equal’ and used to support the feminine imperative, while conveniently still supporting the principle of social matching theory.

The latent function of ‘leagues’ is to encourage men to filter themselves out for women’s intimate approval.

As social conditions progress and become more complex, so too do men’s ability to mimic the personal attributes of providership and security. In other words, lesser men become intelligent enough to circumvent women’s existing sexual filters and thus thwart their sexual strategy. These ever increasing complexities made it hard to identify optimally suitable men from the pretenders, and women, being the primary sexual selector, needed various social constructs to sort the wheat from the chaff. With each subsequent generation they couldn’t be expected to do all of this detective work on their own so the feminine imperative enlisted the aid of the men themselves and created self-perpetuated, self-internalized social doctrines for men to comply with in order to exist in a feminine defined society.

The concept of leagues is just one of these doctrines. Your self-doubt about your worthiness of a woman’s intimacy stems from a preconditioned idea that ‘you’re out of her league’. The booster club optimist idea that “if you think you can’t, you’re right” is true, and boundless enthusiasm may overcome some obstacles, but to address the source of the disease it’s more important to ask yourself why you’ve been taught to think you can’t. A lot of approach anxiety comes from your own self-impression – Am I smooth, hot, affluent, funny, confident, interesting, decisive, well-dressed enough to earn an HB 9’s attention? How about an HB 6? Our great danger is not that we aim too high and fail, but that we aim too low and succeed.

I’m not debating the legitimacy of the evaluative standards of the sexual market place – it’s a harsh, often cruel reality – what I’m really trying to do is open your eyes as to why you believe you’re only meritorious of an HB 7. Looks count for a lot, as does Game, affluence, personality, talent, etc. but is your self-estimation accurate, or are you a voluntary participant in your own self-devaluation in the SMP courtesy of the leagues mentality the feminine imperative would have you believe?

The Economy of the League

As I stated above the purpose of fomenting a stratified League mentality in men serves to autonomously filter the lesser from the greater men for women to chose from, however, it also functions to increase the valuation of the feminine as a commodity. Like any great economic entity, the feminine imperative lives and dies by its ability to inflate its value in the marketplace. Essentially the feminine imperative is a marketeer. One of the sad ironies of this, and the last, century is that the feminine imperative has attempted to base women’s SMP valuation on a collective importance to the detriment of the individual woman’s SMV. For men this is inverted; a man’s sexual valuation is primarily individualized, while men as a collective gender are devaluated in the SMP.

What I mean by this is that, as a collective entity women’s sexuality cannot afford to be perceived as anything less than the more valued prize. If all vaginas are considered the gold standard then men’s sexual default value will always be lower. By this definition men, on whole, are out of women’s league.

For further consideration lets assume that average men, most being varying degrees of beta, are blessed with the ‘miraculous gift’ of an average woman’s sexual attentions. The power dynamic is already pre-established to defer to a feminine frame, so it’s small wonder that men would be prone to ONEitis even with an objectively average woman. This is the intent of the League schema – to unobjectively predispose men to commitment with women who under objective condition couldn’t enjoy the same selectivity. Roissy once postulated that for a healthy relationship to exist the Man must be recognized by the woman to be 1-2 points above her own SMV. This is a pretty tall order considering the feminine imperative’s emphasis on women’s sexuality being the more valued as default. And this is to say nothing of contemporary women’s overinflated self-evaluations due to the rise of social media.

Gaming the League

All of the above isn’t to say that there isn’t a kernel of truth to the notion of leagues; it’s just not the “truth” men have been led to believe. For as much as the feminine imperative would have men subscribe to Leagues, it equally seeks to exempt women from the same League hierarchy by evaluating women as a whole. Needless to say men have their own rating systems – most popularly the ubiquitously physical HB 10 scale. I should add that it’s a foregone conclusion that any rating system men would establish for women in the feminine reality would necessarily need to be ridiculed, shamed and demonized, but you knew that already.

Irrational self-confidence is a good start to circumventing and unlearning the concept of Leagues; unlearning this conditioning being the operative goal. The Game-aware Man can actually use the concept of Leagues to his advantage with enough guile. When you approach a woman without regard to a League mentality or even a Zen-like obliviousness to it, you send the message that there’s more to you than a feminine reality can control. It’s exactly this disregard for the influence of the feminine imperative that makes the Alpha attractive; he’s unaware of, or indifferent to the rules his conditioning should’ve taught him earlier. Just in the attempt of Gaming a woman obviously “out of your league” you flip the feminine script by planting a seed of doubt (and prompting imagination) about your perceived value. Doubt is a very powerful tool, in fact the very concept of Leagues is founded upon men’s self-doubt. Turn that tool to your advantage by disregarding women’s social convention of Leagues.

24 Comments | tags: hypergamy, iron rule, physical attractiveness, social conventions | posted in Iron Rules, Operative Social Conventions, The Feminine Imperative

December 6, 2011

Case Study – Creative Intelligence

By Rollo Tomassi

Below I have posted descriptions of 4 men from a case study I was involved with as part of a graduate study for personality psychology. Before you ask, no, this wasn’t an original study, however it was a measures experiment we performed to see how the results matched with our own university.These descriptions are excerpts from that case study comparing female mate selection. They were presented individually to 101 university women between the ages of 18 and 36. All were single/unmarried and none were aware of the intent of the experiment. I’ll present more details of the experiment after you have chance to respond so as not to spoil your genuine responses. Here are the descriptions:

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M is an art student. M has always had a passion for painting and plans to pursue a career in art. He creates paintings of people and complex landscapes. His paintings are so lifelike that they are often mistaken for photographs. The consensus amongst his art professors is that he is, by far, the most talented student they have seen. One professor, an expert on lifelike paintings, says he believes M is one of the most talented artists ever to produce these paintings. To make extra money to support his schooling, M has sold a few of his best paintings. They have sold for between 100 and 200 dollars. One professor lamented that M’s paintings are worth far more, but like so many other artists, he will probably never make very much money selling them.

L is an art student. He paints abstract paintings. L came into art by chance. He took an art class as an elective because it fit well in his schedule. For his midterm project, he produced an abstract painting after an hour of “fooling around” with the paint and canvas. The majority of the painting actually consisted of paint he accidentally spilled onto the canvas. A very wealthy man who was looking for art for his home discovered L’s painting in the student art studio. He paid L $5,000 dollars for the painting. Some of the man’s other wealthy friends liked L’s painting and commissioned a total of $100,000 in paintings from him. L and his art professors were shocked at the success of L’s paintings, because, in the words of one professor, “he has no real talent, just some good luck.” L continues to capitalize on his success by selling his abstract art.

L and M are considered highly desirable by other women on campus and very attractive. Friends of L and M say that they are dependable, kind, and generous friends.

J is an entrepreneur who had great success in his first business venture. He started a small software business in a friend’s garage. His product was a new kind of software for improving factory designs to radically increase the profitability of manufacturing. Within his first year, J secured contracts with Ford, General Electric, and Boeing. In the next three years, J sold his software to most of the top manufacturing companies in the United States and several of the top companies in Asia. After 5 years in business, J’s company was valued at 120 million dollars and had 250 employees. The Wall Street Journal credited the success of J’s company to the “brilliance and novelty” of J’s product and to J’s “sheer genius as a businessman.” However, J’s company fell victim to misfortune the next year. After J rejected a take-over bid from Microsoft, Microsoft filed a lawsuit claiming that J’s software infringed on some of their patents. Although most experts agreed that the suit had no merit, the cost of defending himself against the lawsuit created huge cash flow problems for J, which drove the company into bankruptcy. Although J has very little money left, he has recently begun a new business venture to sell another of the software products he has invented.

R recently inherited 20 million dollars from the couple who had adopted him when he was a year old. They died in a car crash, having made their fortune in commercial real estate. Before they died, R worked as a sales person at a computer company. Although R worked at the company for several years, he had not advanced past his starting salary or rank within the company. He went to a community college, but after graduation he didn’t feel sure what to do with his life. A friend who was working at the computer company suggested that R join him and work there. In R’s words, “I guess I’m just not very good at this job. At least now I won’t have to worry about money any more.” R and his adoptive parents were very close, and he was deeply saddened by their deaths.

J and R are both attractive and in their mid-twenties. They were recently nominated as two of the most eligible bachelors in Los Angeles.
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Bear in mind, these guys a theoretical archetypes, how they relate to women is irrelevant. How the subject women percieved them is what’s being assessed. Of these 4 men, which do you suppose was rated the highest in desirability with which to have a short-term sexual affair with by these women? And which man was rated the highest in desirability to enter into a long-term relationship with?

This study was done to determine comparative priorities in women with regards to male ‘creative intelligence’ vs.‘provisioning ability’ in female mate selection. I would’ve titled this thread as such, but I wanted to get some unbiased and impulse responses from readers here to see what the perceptions of these archetypes were from men and the reactions guys expected from women to these archetypes.

You’ll notice that care was taken in these archetype descriptions to balance out the physical attractiveness of each man (i.e. both artists were considered equally attractive by peers and both businessmen were ‘eligible’ bachelors). What was at issue wasn’t their extrinsic characteristics – comparative physiques or obvious Alpha presence – but what women chose in regards to these men’s intrinsic characteristics. The theory being that Creative Intelligence is of a higher mating value in the short term while a better Provisioning ability is more desirable in the long term. Bear in mind that hypergamy influences the decision making process for both of these sexual strategies. Also added was the caveat that legitimacy of provisioning ability, and the potential for future provisioning in it’s absence (i.e. the down on their luck men), played a factor in this mate selection.

Creative Intelligence

So what exactly is “Creative Intelligence”? Although there is no firm consensus on how to define it, we often know it when we see it. We also know a bit about it from a century of creativity research. Within humans, creative intelligence is closely associated with the highly heritable general intelligence, and creative intelligence seems to rely on the generation, selective elaboration, and skillful implementation of ideas and strategies. In other words, creativity represents a strong capacity for successful improvisation, thus it became a desirable, selected-for species survival trait.

The problem is that creativity sounds desirable, as does intelligence, so “creative intelligence” can become a vague term that seems useful for solving any behavioral problem, whether technological, ecological, social, sexual, or cultural. Many plausible adaptive functions explain the origins of human creative intelligence. These include: tool-making and tool-using, hunting, foraging, and food preparation methods, social strategizing within and between groups and sexual courtship dynamics (i.e. hunter-gatherer proto-Game).

Sorry for the psych lesson, but we had to be specific.

Trade Offs

As I elaborated in Schedules of Mating, most women face trade-offs in mating. In selecting a long-term mate, it makes hypergamic sense for women to put greater weight on traits that advertise ability and willingness to invest in protection, provisioning, and care of the woman and her offspring. This will favor the evolution of ‘good dad’ indicators – reliable cues of paternal investment ability and willingness to participate in those responsibilities. In our past, women of very high mate value (HB 8 and above) had the luxury of attracting a long-term mate who has both good dad potential and good genes. Fast forward through the ages and women have progressively had to settle for a committed partner who is not ideal either paternally or genetically. Then add to this the increasing complexity of men adapting to mimic these cues in order to facilitate their own breeding strategy. Consequently women are, by order of degree, incentivized to secure better genes or better paternal care from short-term or extra-pair partners, while simultaneously seeking long term provider males. Either would help at any time.

In this study, the idea was that, issues of relative attraction and arousal being satisfied, women will prefer a male possessing a higher capacity for Creative Intelligence in short-term sexual encounters to ensure the best possible future options for her offspring, while choosing a mate with better Provisioning ability for long term parental investment.

Art and business were chosen as two contrasting domains of work. Each requires distinct styles of creative intelligence, but both demand combinations of practical and theoretical skills, individual effort and social interaction. Hence, merit-based success in either domain may function as a mental fitness indicator. In each domain (art or business), one vignette described a man who showed high creative intelligence in his work, but who was poor due to bad luck and adverse circumstances. The other vignette in each set described a man who was average on creative intelligence, but who was wealthy due to good luck and beneficial circumstances. All vignettes made clear that each man’s creativity level was largely endogenous, reflecting natural (and presumably heritable) talent, but that his wealth level was largely accidental, gained through no merit or fault of his own.

Results

Each woman completed two forced-choice questions: (1) “Based on these descriptions, who do you think you might find more desirable for a short-term sexual affair?”; (2) “Based on these descriptions, who do you think you might find more desirable for a long-term committed relationship?” (L or M in the artist vignettes, and R or J in the entrepreneur vignettes). Next, participants rated the desirability of each man as a short-term mate and as a long-term mate on two 9-point scales (where ‘1’ = not at all desirable, ‘5’ = average; ‘9’ = extremely desirable). The rating questions were as follows: “Overall, how desirable would you find L [M, R, or J] as a long-term partner?” “Overall, how desirable would you find L [M, R, or J] as a short-term partner?

In this study M was overwhelmingly chosen as the short term partner. 89% of the participants chose the naturally talented, but out of luck artist for a short term sexual encounter. 7% chose L the rich artist, 3% chose J the poor/talented businessman and 1% opted for R the wealthy/untalented businessman.

J was also rated highest for long term relationship, but not as significantly as M in the short term. 67% of our subjects chose J, and surprisingly 17% chose L (rich artist). R was rated at 12% and M took 4% for the long term choice.

4 Comments | tags: arts, evolutionary psychology, hypergamy, intergender relations, physical attractiveness, social conventions | posted in Case Studies, Foundations, Hypergamy, Idealizations

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