During the Q&A section of the Man in Demand talk I gave back in September I was asked about where I believed the social dynamic of Open Hypergamy would lead. In specific the idea was proposed, and I agree, that the logical next step for a social order founded on feminine Hypergamy and one that prioritizes the female sexual strategy as preeminent would lead to a state of openly accepted cuckoldry.
Although I can’t say it’s an accepted social dynamic as yet, there are many social indicators that are revealing this push towards a normalized cuckoldry. I’ll explore these for a bit in this essay, but for now these indicators are about a move away from conventional monogamy in the hopes that a ‘soft cuckoldry’ might be a precursor to instituting a more accepted open cuckoldry.
I think it’s also important to keep in mind a couple of primary principles about this shift. First is the fact that, initially, an openly accepted state of feminine-controlled cuckoldry will never be called ‘cuckoldry’ proper. If we use the example of a socially accepted (if not celebrated) open Hypergamy as a model, open cuckoldry will be sold as a more logical, more humane sexual strategy for men and women in light of divorce statistics, romantic boredom and other sexual studies that indicate men and women weren’t evolved for monogamous commitment.
The second is that open cuckoldry is the extension of a unilaterally feminine controlled Hypergamy. That is to say that as Hypergamy becomes more normalized as a social imperative that sexual strategy will extend to optimizing Hypergamy across genders. If that optimization is taken to its logical end it will require men not just to adopt cuckoldry as a norm, but to socially reward them for advocating it among their own sex.
Cuckoldry By Any Other Name
As I said, it wont be called ‘cuckoldry’; the connotations are negative, so a redefining will be made in order to make the practice more socially palatable. The Feminine Imperative wont recruit the very men it needs to perpetuate cuckoldry as their own sexual strategy if the term is derogatory. Thus we’ll get euphemisms for alternative lifestyles, ‘open marriages’ or a “Designer Relationship“:
We live in an era when everything is customizable. Relationships are no exception. Some people will continue to practice their grandparents’ form of monogamy, and others, probably the majority, will be serially exclusive and pair-bonded. Still others will explore some form of non-monogamous expression that encompasses one or more of the facets we’ve discussed or may flow in and out of being exclusive based on what the relationship requires. (We’ve done this ourselves.) Having the ability to customize a relationship means having the freedom to respond to life’s vicissitudes.
The first time I came across the concept of ‘soft polygamy’ I was in a behavioral psychology class exploring the practices of modern marriage and contrasting them with the long term sexual behaviors of men and women. As you might imagine the context of the study focused entirely on the ‘bad behaviors’ of men who essentially transitioned from serial monogamy to serial marriage. The idea was that in the process of moving from one LTR to another men were establishing a soft form of polygamy.
In a social respect, men have far more to lose from serial marriages than do women. The financial liabilities of divorce are well known to the manosphere, but so are the emotional and familial accountabilities. So from a strictly male perspective, serial LTRs are a dicey prospect, but from a female perspective, in a feminine-primary social order, institutionalized Hypergamy and the soft polygamy that results from the Sandbergian sexual strategy, soft cuckoldry becomes pragmatic in optimizing Hypergamy for women.
At this point we should consider the Heartiste maxim about feminism again:
The feminist goal is removing all constraints on female sexuality while maximally restricting male sexuality
Institutionalized cuckoldry is the logical means to restricting male sexuality, but we have to consider what function that restriction serves for women. From an Alpha Fucks / Beta Bucks perspective the plan is simple; restrict that sexuality as women find need for a particular man’s service.
Diamonds and Rust
While I’m reluctant to prognosticate, my guess is that future generations of men will be conditioned to accept their role in this cuckoldry as part of their socialization. The above Forevermark diamond advertisement is one illustration of this. Open Hypergamy and its acceptance has already made its popular debut in mainstream media and advertising, and likewise open cuckoldry is just now finding a social foothold.
It takes the Red Pill Lens to appreciate the efforts as they’re being made by a large society. The Forevermark ad is intended to be funny or cute, but it belies a deeper, more poignant truth about Alpha Widows, Hypergamy and the long term sexual strategy Plan and roles women expect men to play in it.
I was made aware of this ad being circulated from a reader on Twitter and at first thought it was a reworked joke. It is however legit and billboards with this campaign are up in major cities. Without the benefit of a Red Pill Lens I can see how most men would laugh it off or women might giggle sardonically about it, but the the fact remains that a clever copywriter is aware of the sexual dynamics that make it funny.
I pulled the following quote from Deti on one of Dalrock’s more recent post:
“I think what we will continue to see is growing disengagement.”
Yeah, this has been discussed here and elsewhere in the almost 5 years I’ve been around here.
I think that what will happen is that things will continue sliding in the same direction they’re going now, until a critical mass is reached. I don’t know what that critical mass is, what will trigger it, or when it will be reached.
We live in a mostly free society with a hybrid of capitalism and socialism. We have maximum freedom and autonomy right now, with both sexes being free to pursue pretty much whatever they want, however they want to. That is the prime characteristic driving the current circumstance — that, and up to now, there’s been enough money taxed, borrowed and stolen to pay for it.
A growing number of men are not getting as much sex as they want. A growing number of women aren’t getting commitments in the form they want — when they want or from the men they want.
So things are going to keep sliding that way. More and more men will walk away and direct what energies they have left elsewhere — into work, or beer/bros/Xbox/porn, or travel/leisure. (Oddly enough, this might make many of them more attractive to women, since they’re spending less time directing their attentions to women.) More and more men will earn just enough to support themselves, since they don’t plan on marriage, and fatherhood is out of the question. They will lack the skills to improve their lives. They will not get nearly as much sex as they want, but they will learn to live with it — mostly through porn, the occasional hookup, and the even more occasional prostitute. The price of prostitutes will skyrocket as demand increases; and a few more women will go into high-end call girl work to earn side money.
More and more women will direct their attentions into their work, travel/leisure, and having children without men. (This will definitely make more of them less attractive to men except as on again, off again sex partners.) They will not get the commitments from men they want, but they will learn to live with it. They will complain about it with increasing volume and shrillness, but they’ll learn to live with it.
Until something happens to cause the tides to turn. Again – don’t know what, or when, or how. But something will happen to cause a hard reset. And it will be exquisitely painful for everyone. I don’t want it to happen, nor do I relish it. It’s not something to desire or look forward to because of the pain it will bring. But I do think it will happen. I don’t think it will happen in my lifetime or my kids’ lifetimes. We could easily slide like this for another 50 to 100 years.
I think one consequence of this separation of the genders will include a socially normalized institution of cuckoldry. To take hold it will need to be termed something different, but in effect the process of women conceiving with one man and then expecting another man to parentally invest himself in that child will be a casual expectation of women. With so many men effectively (if not intentionally) going their own way, the idea that any man wouldn’t be expected to serve as a surrogate parent will become commonplace.
Genders divided by feminism or feminine social primacy will need a ‘customized’ form of cuckoldry that allows for the Alpha Fucks side of Hypergamy to be reconciled with the Beta Bucks side by enlisting different men for either purpose.
The Pink Pill
I want to end here with an essay I read recently on the fallout of the new female form of Viagra:
In an infamous cartoon in The New Yorker in 2001, one woman confides to a friend over drinks: ‘I was on hormone replacement for two years before I realized what I really needed was Steve replacement.’ Medicine has been reluctant to engage the question of just how much monogamy and long-term togetherness affect sexual function and desire, and the ‘Steve’ problem remains an issue that is tacitly acknowledged and yet under-discussed. To return to Julie’s growing pile of self-help titles, the books all promise to return, revive, restore without really getting down to the brass tacks of why desire extinguished in the first place. As Julie notes, the honeymoon grinds to an end, but the issues leading there are complex. In short supply is attention to the way mind and body react to social structures such as popular media, faith and marriage.
To develop drugs to boost libido is like ‘giving antibiotics to pigs because of the shit they’re standing in’
The American psychologist Christopher Ryan argues that the institution of modern marriage – meaning an exclusive couple bound by romantic love – is antithetical to long-term excitement. Ryan is best known for Sex at Dawn (2010), a book authored with his wife Cacilda Jethá, that makes the case that sexual monogamy is deeply at odds with human nature. He is among a growing number of researchers suggesting that the rift between women’s purportedly limitless sexual potential and their dulled actuality might owe to the circumstances of intimacy. Accordingly, the conjugal bed is not only the scene of dwindling desire, but its fundamental cause. The elements that strengthen love – reciprocity, closeness, emotional security – can be the very things that smother lust. While love angles toward intimacy, desire flourishes across a distance.
The entire article is very insightful if not a bit depressing, but with the Red Pill Lens we can begin to understand the latent purpose behind the message. I’ve gone on record about the pushback against clearing the pink pill for use as being a direct threat to women’s control of their own Hypergamy. The concern, ostensibly, is that a libido stimulating drug might be used to induce a woman into having sex that her otherwise sober sense would prevent; effectively it could be a ‘rape’ drug.
What’s finally being addressed in this article however is what I’ve been saying since I was aware of the drug’s trials – a chemical that induces libido in women removes an element of their control in sexual selection and compromises Hypergamy. I’m not entirely sure the author was aware of the points she was revealing in this, but she succinctly makes the case for both institutionalized cuckoldry (or certainly a ‘customized’ soft polygamy for women) and advocates for women maintaining control of their Hypergamy unclouded by a drug that would remove that control by chemically inducing them into sex that isn’t of their own choosing.
The ‘cure’ to women’s low libido is holistic, not biological. Women’s sexual deficiencies are presumed not to be the result of a ‘broken’ biology, but rather a lack of proper motivation. I should point out that all of this validates all the points I was making about Dread in marriage last month on Biblical Gender Roles – maintaining a condition of proper motivation (i.e. Dread), the holistic cure, is exactly what even femosphere authors are tacitly advocating.
The elements that strengthen love – reciprocity, closeness, emotional security – can be the very things that smother lust.
Yet now, even when a pharmaceutical solution to the lust problem is made available the ‘cure’ is rejected. Why? Because on a root, limbic level women’s hindbrains know that Hypergamy cannot be optimized with a drug that removes Hypergamous choice. The real solution has never changed and women are now put into a position of having to openly acknowledge that for all of the pretense of “mismatched libidos” or “sex just declines after marriage” social conventions, men’s cuckoldry is the real plan for Hypergamy.
When presented with a pill that will make them sexual, when given a cure to their low sex drives with the men who’ve made lifetime commitments to them, women will still refuse to take it. Hypergamous doubt can’t be quelled with a pill.