Sugar Babies

Whenever I use a manosphere acronym I’m always torn between presuming my readers will already know the terminology and need to re-explain a concept that the letters represent to new readers. We use a lot of acronyms and placeholder terms in the ‘sphere. These are necessary, but when you apply needed terms to abstractions and unfamiliar ideas critics will always fill the blanks in for themselves by telling you what you think you mean according to their preconceptions.

Next to the (abstract) terms of ‘Alpha’ and ‘Beta’, SMP and SMV are two of the more contentious placeholders for manosphere concepts. SMP is Sexual Marketplace and SMV is used to represent the relative Sexual Market Value of an individual within that SMP. There’s a lot to consider when when we attempt to define just what that ‘marketplace’ entails, but the point of contention for critics is that by valuating a person based on a perceived market state we dehumanize that individual. For those uninitiated to Red Pill concepts, a complete denial of any sexual marketplace is usually the first retort.

“People are People and everyone is special” or some variation of the nebulous individual’s uniqueness needing to be held as the benchmark for each case of ‘value’ are the common refrains. Even denying an observable, measurable marketplace altogether for fear of being ‘judgemental’ is part of the Red Pill critic’s predictable counter to the idea of a sexual marketplace.

However, the latent purpose of this denial is really a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ tactic that keeps players ignorant of the system they exist in. Just as with the 49th Law of Power, deny the game exists and you can better play it.

As with all Red Pill truths, the awareness of where one fits into the scheme of the SMP, and accepting the sometimes cruel realities of it can be a bucket of cold reality for men (and women). The simple truth is that our capacity to valuate various stimuli in our environment has been a survival-beneficial adaptation for us.

We commodify a lot of our personal lives these days. We simply don’t have a problem accepting the easier aspects of this. ‘Time is money” is quick aphorism we apply to a lot of situation for ourselves. When a woman does the breakdown of all her ‘unpaid’ housework or childcare for an article in Forbes she’s lauded for commodifying and valuating that work. But let a man commodify women based on their general sexual appeal and utility to his sexual strategy and he’s dehumanizing and objectifying women.

If you’re interested in further reading about how we apply market principles to various aspects of our lives I’d suggest the book Life Inc. by Doug Rushkoff. It’s a great read, particularly the ideas about how we view buying a house as an investment rather than a place to live. I bring this up here because it’s a similar dynamic to how women invest themselves with men in the long term and the short term according to Hypergamous necessity. Women’s Hypergamy largely defines the modern sexual marketplace.

The Benefits of Opportunism

Women love opportunistically, men love idealistically. I’ve written several essays about how Hypergamy predisposes (often subconsciously) women to sexual opportunism, and men’s concept of love is rooted in idealism. I won’t belabor summing up these dynamics today, but if you want to review them you can read through the Love series of posts, and male idealism can be found here.

In 2016, the modern dating landscape, as well as contemporary marriage, has become varying degrees of ‘sex work’. I went into this topic a year and a half ago in Commodifying Love. This post was mostly meant to elaborate on another post Dalrock had written observing the utility feminist had with being miserly with love. I sought to explore it a bit further:

As Open Hypergamy becomes more proudly embraced and normalized in society, so too will women’s sexual strategy be laid more bare. And in laying that strategy bare, so too will women’s opportunistic model of love become more apparent to men. This new apparentness is already conflicting with the old-order messaging that kept men hopeful of realizing their idealistic love state.

Women cannot sell Open Hypergamy and the love-conquers-all ethereal ideal love at the same time.

I daresay this quote was a good bit of foreshadowing. One aspect of having a Red Pill lens is that it allows you to see the writing on the wall in so many ways with regard to intersexual dynamics and how they influence societal shifts. When I proposed that men and women’s concepts of love differ, and that much of the disconnect between the sexes is the result of the fact that we don’t share a mutual point of origin for that love, Blue Pill people got upset.

Women’s concept of love originates in an opportunism stemming from a subconscious need to optimize Hypergamy. To this day I still get angry comments from women for having used the word “opportunism”. Naturally, there’s a negative connotation to opportunism, but I use it in this context to describe a function in women’s sexual strategy. I could’ve used the term ‘practical’ or ‘pragmatic’, but often enough what inspires women’s need to optimize Hypergamy is anything but practical or pragmatic.

Everyone needs to realize that men are the “romantics pretending to be realists” and women; vice versa.

This week I received more than a few requests to give my take on the latest trend in women’s sexual opportunism. This comes courtesy of Vanity Fair and their exposé of the Sugar Babies/Sugar Daddies “dating” dynamic that’s become part of The New Prostitution Economy. Have a read of the whole article, but the short version is a breakdown of how women (all in their SMV peak years) look for “arrangements” with generous men eager to fund their lifestyles or (ostensibly) their education goals. In exchange, these men get the privilege of ‘dating’ if not fucking these women who would otherwise be out of whatever league they ascribe themselves to.

I have a real love-hate relationship with articles like this. It’s far too easy to pile on and get wrapped up in the salaciousness and outrage dynamic – which is really what the article is written to prompt. But at the risk of writing an article about how “horrible women are/becoming” I think this trend is really the next logical extension of what I was describing in Commodifying Love a year and a half ago.

Yes, it’s just prostitution by another name. Yes, there is a pop-culture effort to normalize what would otherwise be a manipulative exploitation of men – but who cares, right? If poor Beta saps have the money, it’s only pragmatic that women legitimize the ‘pay-to-play’ model while they can capitalize on it in their prime years, right? And yes, the feminist narrative will simultaneously vilify the men resorting to being a “Sugar Daddy” while applauding the empowered women who play the game as well as they do.

Sarcasm aside, what’s underneath this dynamic is a graphic illustration of just how women’s opportunism looks when the stigma of keeping Hypergamy concealed from men is now brought into the light and proudly embraced in a feminine-centric social order. The social effort to normalize Open Hypergamy takes another step forward when women’s effective prostitution becomes indistinguishable from ‘normal’ dating – that is dating based on common attraction or interest.

The ‘date’-as-investment-opportunity becomes inseparable from women’s opportunistic concept of, and approach towards, love. Commodifying love and sex blurs the line between what is genuine desire and what is motivated interest. The conventional meme is that women have a difficult time separating sex from emotional investment, but the progression of Open Hypergamy – in this case the deliberate feigning of intimate interests on the part of women – puts the lie to this and reveals the true pragmatism with which women will apply their sexuality. Open Hypergamy becomes open prostitution, but this relationship becomes an accepted exchange or transaction the more comfortable women get with revealing the crueler nature of their sexual strategy.

“You can’t tell who the hookers are anymore.”

When we look at women’s opportunistic approach to love, psycho-social dynamics like the War Bride dynamic come into stark contrast next to the Sugar Babies trend – they are both natural extensions of women’s need to optimize Hypergamy and ensure their long term security.

“You can’t tell who the hookers are anymore,” says another guy at the bar, a well-known D.J. in his 30s. “They’re not strippers, they’re not on the corner, there’s no more madam. They look like all the other club girls.”

He tells a story of a young woman he let stay in his hotel room one weekend while he was working in Las Vegas. “She met up with this other girl and all of a sudden they had all these men’s watches and wallets and cash. They wereworking.” He laughs, still amazed at the memory.

“It’s like hooking has just become like this weird, distorted extension of dating,” the D.J. says. “ ‘He took me to dinner. He throws me money for rent’—it’s just become so casual. I think it’s dating apps—when sex is so disposable, if it doesn’t mean anything, then why not get paid for it? But don’t call it prostitution—no, now it’s liberation.”

They all look the same because the commodification of intimacy is the same. Hooking is dating when the only degree of separation is in the comfort women have in the transaction. The necessary compartmentalizing of feelings or emotional investment on the part of women – the ones we’ve been sold for so long as inseparable from their sexuality – are only mitigated by men they perceive as having a higher SMV than those who they view as ‘clients’.

Money isn’t a factor in this equation of SMV; why would it be when provisioning is so easily had via dating clients ready to pay her rent or something else comparable? I’ve dug into this before, but with respect to women’s short-term sexual priorities (the Alpha Fucks side of Hypergamy) money rarely plays a role in genuine arousal; and even then it’s by order of degree in how necessitous that woman may be – or in this case, how entitled to those resources she has convinced herself she deserves.

The larger social embrace of “Sugaring” is an extension of Open Hypergamy. So not only is there an expectation of capitalizing on a woman’s party years, but that once she’s reached the Epiphany Phase she can be relatively confident that her years of Sugaring will be socially normalized and not factor into her long-term capacity to optimize Hypergamy (see the Sandberg effect). Women’s opportunistic concept of love is informed by Hypergamy, so it feeds into the SMP valuation of her intimate transactions.

And this dynamic isn’t just limited to younger women in their SMV peak years; women in their later phases of maturity have also found how useful apps like Tinder are in getting men to do the manual labor tasks they’d otherwise have to pay for themselves.

Genuine femininity has become so rare in our present social order that it can now be bartered as a luxury experience for men who can afford it. So uncommon is feminine behaviors and demeanor now that men will pay a woman’s bills when they can convincingly act feminine, sweet and appreciative. It’s no surprise that married men account for the majority of Sugar Daddies; they seek what they lack in their marriages – sex, femininity, appreciation, caring, even loving conversation – an escape from wives who feel entitled to their efforts and provisioning with out reciprocation.

Even feigned femininity is better than a nagging loneliness in marriage

Transactions

Acknowledging Hypergamy openly is acknowledging the transactional nature of women’s concept of love. It’s ugly, but as Hypergamy becomes an increasingly normalized a blurring of the line between dating and prostitution becomes more common. As I’ve said before, there will come a point that even the most Blue Pill man will be forced to recognize women’s blatant sexual strategies. As it stands now there is some confusion for these guys, thus, we see men wondering who the hooker is and who the available club girl is because both employ similar methodologies.

As a result men become less able to distinguish genuine desire from transactional role playing by women. Even in marriage transactional role playing has already been normalized and a presumption of a feminine frame of authority pervades most marriages – wives allow a husband to believe he’s in his Frame so long as the transaction is beneficial to what her ego believes is her due (see Briffault’s Law).

Solutions & Caveats

Sometimes it’s not enough to simply say “now you know, and knowing is half the battle”. The other half of the battle is taking actions and precautions to avoid the tar pits and protect oneself. In the future I believe it will be imperative for men not only to understand the nature of women’s sexual strategy, but also what to expect from the results of women’s previous decisions to effect them.

Guys ought to consider that by marrying or engaging in an LTR with former Sugar Babies they will not only deal with an Alpha Widow in terms of her sexual past, but also Sugar Daddy provider widows as well. Imagine the lifestyle switch to a lower socioeconomic status than what her former Daddy provided her with. Even dutiful Betas in Waiting will find their patience tested in competing with the previous lifestyle of a Sugar Baby.

Of course the easiest answer is always to recuse yourself from dating a Sugar Baby, to say nothing about entering an LTR with her, but as I mentioned earlier, hooking will be dating or some crossing of that line in the not so distant future. It’s important to bear this in mind, particularly when the transactional nature of it will run contradictory to the narrative that men are never owed sex for anything. The subcommunication is one of an implied contract, but the indignation will be one of men’s non-selected presumptions that sex is what’s being barter for.

From now and into the foreseeable future men must consider women from a realistic assessment of how their sexual strategies inform their decisions and base their own decisions accordingly. It’s also important to remember that the sexual market place differs in various contexts. Usually this context is reflective of the culture or social group engaging in, and reinforcing it. Women sexual opportunism doesn’t change, only how it’s expressed in a social context. Not all women are ‘Sugaring’, however the motives that allow for a normalization of it exist in all women – even the sweet nice ones who want to make a good impression on you.

It’s not impossible to engender a genuine desire in a woman. If that weren’t the case I wouldn’t be writing, but it’s important to be aware of how Hypergamy will evolved social dynamics to better facilitate its optimization. This can be a very damaging influence on both women and the men who attempt to navigate a sexual marketplace founded on unchecked Hypergamy.