The Burden of Selectivity

You get the men you deserve ladies.

The latest hotness in feminine self-righteous indignation in the manosphere this week is the new Atlantic article by Kate Bolick (courtesy of Susan Walsh and her self-impressed 3rd page link). I generally don’t bother myself with bleating, overwritten catharsis articles bemoaning the woes of an HB 5, post-Wall, aging spinster upset with (beta) men not excusing her indiscretions by sharing in her entitlement to provide her with the loving stable relationship she maliciously turned down at 28. However, it did spark an interesting debate at SoSuave with regards to the variance in selectivity in mate selection respective to each gender.

I believe there’s an interesting misconception about the mutuality of shared criteria both men and women commonly seek in a life-partner. Women, steeped in their solipsistic ‘girl-world’ reality, tend to find it inconceivable that a man wouldn’t share in precisely the same life expectations and scheduling that women would. Their feminine imposed reality presume that men will autonomously know that what works best for women is ALWAYS the “right thing to do.”

However, I think we’re kind of assuming false equivalencies in respect to how either sex goes about choosing an acceptable mate for life. On this side of 40 (or hell, even 30) it’s real easy to reflect on our past experiences and presume we as men actually had any clue as to what qualities in a woman we knew were or weren’t deal breakers for commitment. Infidelity notwithstanding, what was really a red flag for you when you were in your mid-20s? Did you even know? I sure as hell didn’t.

Women’s hypergamous natures make them far more exacting in their selection process, far earlier in life, and their list of prerequisite attributes and characteristics more rigid than any man’s would ever be. This same innate hypergamy also makes them susceptible to a constant doubting about any selection they do commit to. Ergo, the biologically hard-wired need to shit test even after 10 years of marriage.

Not so for men. If she’s relatively hot, sexually accessible and marginally loving, we’re usually in. And you know why we’re in? Because it seems like a good idea at the time – and that’s what gets us into trouble in our youth. In fact we’re not encouraged to presume we could actually be selective. That would mean preempting women as the prime selectors for their imposed reality – men even being educated in what would account for a red flag is pretentiousness deserving of shame.. Men are far less prone to turn down a ‘sure thing’ that’s producing semi-regular rewards / reinforcement (sex) in favor of an ‘unsure thing’ that’s an unproven commodity for him. It’s only later in life, when we can remove ourselves from the game and look at things objectively that we get even an inclination of what characteristics a woman needs to possess beyond the physical and sexual for us to decide what works best for us.

And then, God forbid, a Man actually take action based on his personal assessment of the characteristics he does decide upon. From a societal standpoint men will never enjoy the same degree of social support women do for taking action in “doing what’s best for them.” Any Man with the forbearance enough to reject or break up with a woman based on his personal criteria is instantly labeled ‘shallow’ and shamed for daring to reject the poor victimized woman he was “lucky” to have had ever accept him.

The trick of women’s mate selectiveness lays in keeping men ignorant of what qualities (beyond the sexual) might make for the best LTR pairing long enough for her to capitalize on her beauty and youth, but not so long as to push past the expiration date of her hitting the Wall. This is why the 28 to 30 year mark is so pivotal to women. Her decade (or so) long window of prime beauty and selectivity is winding down. It’s not a woman’s mythical biological clock that’s prompting her to consider her maternal instincts – it’s the, now very real, actualization that she needs to lock down a commitment to provisioning from a man who, by the time he hits 30-35, should be awakening to the way women’s game is played and starts to feel more comfortable in qualifying women based on his learned experiences.

Nothing simultaneously frightens and excites a woman more than a Man who’s self-aware of his own sexual market value. This is why every effort is made via social conventions to repress him from realizing this, and every effort is made to shame and ostracize him once he’s conscious of it – and a prime example of this is the duplicitous nature of articles like Bolick’s decrying men’s unwillingness to grow up and give women the life they should know is “doing the right thing” after 20 years of berating men for not respecting them asserting their independence from men.