An interesting side discussion was started in what proved to be a very popular post thread for The War Brides of Europe, and rather than let it disappear beneath a thousand-plus comments I thought I’d pick up on an old post I’ve had in my drafts for a while now.
One of the foundational ideas of Red Pill awareness from the earliest PUA years has been the 80/20 concept – 80% of women want to have sex and / or pair off with the top 20% of men. This has been a fast and loosely defined in terms of subjective sexual market value (SMV) between men and women and the ratio of disparity between those valuations.
In intersexual terms, this 80/20 rule finds its roots in the economic theory known as the Pareto Principle: “80% of your sales come from 20% of your clients.” While I’m not sure the principle is directly translatable, it mirror the general rule of Hypergamy and women’s innate drive to optimize their sexual strategy with who they perceive as the top tier 20% (Alphas) men are fucking the 80% lion’s share of women. Many a despondent Beta picks up on the principle and uses this to justify his failures to connect with women.
I’m of the opinion that the 80/20 rule is often abused to justify men’s failures or successes with women (more often failure), however the fundamental notion is both observable and easily verifiable in-field as well as statistically. It is however important to keep in mind that the 80/20 rule as it applies to Hypergamy is often bastardized in its inverse. The presumption goes that if 80% of women want to have sex with the top 20% of men it should necessarily mean that the top 20% of men are fucking 80% of women. Many a despondent Beta picking up on this dynamic will use this assumption to disqualify himself from Game or give up in futility. More on this later.
As a point of reference, it’s important to remember that Hypergamy doesn’t seek its own level with regard to SMV comparisons. Rather, Hypergamy is always seeking a socio-sexual pairing that is a ‘better than’ exchange for a woman’s own, realistically comparative, SMV. And as I’ve mentioned previously, Hypergamy is always pragmatic about establishing that ‘better than’ SMV exchange with men’s.
While the Red Pill’s expanded definition of Hypergamy encompasses far more than just ‘marrying up‘, the 80/20 sexual selection process is simple enough that even Aunt Giggles in her heyday could illustrate it:
As you might guess the fundaments of basic Hypergamy are easy to understand, so the tendency is to oversimplify the complexities that really define Hypergamy and how the 80/20 basics play out. And lastly, it’s important to bear in mind the dual nature of women’s Hypergamous filtering, impulses and attendant emotional investments – the 80/20 dynamic applies to both the Alpha Fucks and Beta Bucks aspects of Hypergamy, however the characteristics that would optimize the former tend to come at the expense of the latter (and vice versa).
All that said, the 80/20 principle is fairly simple; a majority of women across the broadest SMV spectrum (80%) will always want for a ‘better than’ pairing (both sexual and provisional) than their own comparative SMV.
If the underlying mechanics of Hypergamy-inspired desire were only about a 1 or 2 step difference in SMV the distribution ratio wouldn’t be 80/20. As sophomoric as it is the above graph is relatively accurate: an SMV 3 woman is desirous of an SMV 8 or above man as representative of a Hypergamously optimal pairing (sex and/or provisioning).
For the 80/20 rule to hold true we’re looking at a comparative difference of 5 steps in SMV. Now, granted, this is on the extreme end of the spectrum, and it should also be noted that SMV is also a question of context and based on a woman’s ‘filtering’ perception of a man’s SMV being legitimate. However, this doesn’t alter the ‘better than’ merited pragmatism of Hypergamy.
Whether or not a woman is actually capable of this optimization isn’t relative to understanding the principle. Indeed, with the expansion of instant communication, social emphasis of women’s empowerment and esteem, and the influence social media exercises over the female ego, an SMV 3 woman of today might likely believe she is in fact deserving of a man 5 steps above her own (a good example). But for purposes of understanding how the Pareto principle applies to intersexual dynamics we must focus on the latent purposes for it to exist.
Common Errors
The easiest (or most convenient) mistake to make about this dynamic is to presume that the consolidation of Hypergamy (locking down a man 5 to 1 steps higher in SMV in monogamy) defines the 80/20 rule. Remember, this principle is about desire and women’s expected (entitled?) satisfaction of it, not the actual consolidation (LTR) of that Hypergamous ideal.
In the prior thread the conversation centered on the mistaken idea that the Pareto Principle is not universal or is only observed in some systems, but not in human sexuality. To which I’d argue that in no other system is this principle more evident than intersexual dynamics – and not just among humans but countless other species. It’s unflattering to the disguise in which the Feminine Imperative would put it in, but, whether realizable or not, the 80/20 rule practically defines female desire.
The second mistake it to presume the inverse: that 20% of men actually get 80% of women. Usually this gets trotted out as an equal-for-equal argument that presumes, again, that desire should necessarily translate into consolidation. Betas and lower SMV men do get laid and pair off with women for any number of reasons, but the principle isn’t about who’s actually fucking who. Rather, it’s about who has more access to sexually available women based on their SMV valuation. Nice Guys may finish last, but they do finish eventually – whether they finish ‘well’ is a thought for another post.
A third common mistake, made mostly by women, presumes the goal-state outcome of intersexual dynamics should be to arrive at a monogamous state. This is the consolidation of a female sexual strategy, and because we live in a feminine-primary social order, that committed, monogamous end to women’s sexual strategy is perceived as the socially “correct” goal. At no point is men’s imperative interests (sexual or life-rewarding) a priority, if it’s considered at all, in the Hypergamous equation. In the absence (or disregard) of men’s conflicting interests the Feminine Imperative substitutes what best fits its own interests as the socially ‘appropriate’ goals for men. Then it qualifies ‘manhood’ according to its proxy interests for men, so that any man not measuring up to them are not considered truly ‘men’ by its definition.
Women’s innate Hypergamous nature ensures a distributive model for desire that aligns with the Pareto Principle – even if the overall result of women settling for less than optimal Hypergamy appears to contradict it. Again, it’s important to remember that women’s Hypergamous desires are often not reflected by the outcome of those desires.
Want is not have
The concept that a woman’s Hypergamous imperative wouldn’t be a mutual goal between the sexes is an alien thought to most women. Much in the same way that men idealistically want to believe women mutually share their concept of love for love’s sake (and free from the conditions of their Burden of Performance), women are mistaken in believing men’s sexual strategy is synonymous with the female strategy and shares a mutual end. By way of feminine solipsism and a social order that only considers women’s imperatives as legitimate, collective feminine social consciousness rarely gives men’s imperatives an afterthought – and then only when they become problematic to the Feminine Imperative.
Women subconsciously reinforce the feminine-correct goal state of LTR monogamy by a continuous, autonomous, expectation of its fulfillment – even when that fulfillment creates cognitive dissonance with their short term vs. long term sexual strategy. It’s part of women’s Hypergamous firmware to do so because it ensures (or tries to) their subconscious need for parental investment and long term security / provisioning.
What women necessarily must disregard is that their own sexual strategy choices are determined by the want to pair with a mate who exceeds her own SMV. Thus, the Pareto principle applies.
In Open Hypergamy I made mention that there is a social transitioning taking place among women where revealing the uglier side of Hypergamy is becoming more acceptable. The degree of comfort with which women have in revealing the machinations of Hypergamy is proportional to their capacity to play the 80/20 game well enough to consolidate on a 20th percentile man (or his closest approximation). For women still uncomfortable with openly embracing the uglier side of Hypergamy concealing the truth about the 80/20 becomes a practical priority. You will find in the future that many of the conflicts you read between Strong Independent Women® of differing social or moral perspectives will be based in their degree of comfort in openly relating the machinations of Hypergamy.
Women for whom keeping the 80/20 rule concealed from men’s popular consciousness (women with less capacity to compete intrasexually) can ill afford to have men aware of their own SMV and how it affects their long term sexual strategy. High value Red Pill aware men have the leisure to exploit Hypergamy and low value Red Pill men aware of their Hypergamous role risk denying women of the resources to provision them in the long term.
The Male Side of the Principle
Way back in the Peak Hypergamy post Hollenhund got me thinking about how the Hypergamous aspect of the Pareto Principle can become men’s primary source of frustration and apathy:
I have to COMPLETELY OVERCOME all my handicaps to the point where I am BETTER than 80% of men at least.
I have to have my shit together better than the vast majority of men. I’m having a hard enough time just getting to be AVERAGE, but what I need to do in order to have any kind of sex life and get ANY of my sexual needs met AT ALL is be better than the vast majority of guys out there.
So, in other words, you’ll end up killing yourself anyway, but you’ll do it the slow way, by making sure you’ll end up an exhausted wretch with an ulcer, high blood pressure and similar health problems? Because that’s what you’re basically saying there.
I tend to think of how men confront the challenge of their performance burden is a parallel to their understanding of the 80/20 rule. On some level of consciousness men either possess some evolved instinct for it, or they develop some learned understanding of their own role in relation to how the 80/20 dynamic applies to them.
I think much of what frustrates men about assessing their own SMV in a Blue Pill mindset comes from an instinctual understanding of the 80/20 rule and reconciling it with what they’re being socialized to believe women ought to evaluate them for. Before any Game, before any Red Pill awareness, men’s first deductive impression is to classify themselves into SMV respective “leagues“, and women who would or wouldn’t be sexually accessible according to those leagues.
Ironically, even men’s Blue Pill league evaluations fail to account for women’s 1-5 SMV step over evaluation of their own SMV. The equalist agenda teaches men that their leagues should be based on a like-for-like parallel, when Hypergamy really demands men’s SMV be well above that of women.
This of course gets distorted once men begin to become Red Pill aware and over-exaggerate the abstract concept of Alpha and how it applies to themselves. In a way they fall victim to believing they must become an Alpha parody in order to measure up to women’s apex fallacy impression of a top 20% man.
Needless to say Red Pill awareness and applied Game will reveal the truth about the 80/20 rule. Initially it seems like a horribly unjust set of conditions for an ‘average’ man, but the rule is still based on the fundamental biological and psychological underpinnings of Hypergamy, and therefore open to exploits for a Red Pill aware man.
Quality Assurances
In the above example (h/t Young Patriarch) we can see the comparison between a naturalistic, Hypergamous socio-sexual order contrasted with an idealized socio-sexual structure. The Sexual Freedom model mirrors the 80/20 rule, while the Regulated model is representative of an idealized structure designed with the intent to evenly justify pairings according to a distributive monogamy.
As I mentioned earlier, men have an instinctual understanding about how the 80/20 Pareto Principle applies to women’s Hypergamy. And while Game is a modern contingency for it I would argue that the cross-culture concept of a monogamous marriage between men and women was a broader contingency designed not just to counter women’s Pareto-centered sexual strategy, but to ensure a greater majority of (lesser SMV) men had the opportunity to pass on their genetic heritage.
I could point out that the Regulated model above is very representative of an egalitarian model for monogamy based again on the like-for-like presumption, but Hypergamy being what it naturally is will always confound that ideal. However, I have to also point out that the Regulated ideal has always been a convenient selling tool to keep both men and women ignorant of the uglier, visceral nature of the Hypergamous sexual marketplace.
Marriage as a social adaptation serves (or served) as a negotiated buffer against Hypergamy, but it also serves as a perceived buffer against men’s Burden of Performance that would otherwise necessitate the constant super-achievement that Hollenhund describes above. As a social dynamic marriage was a Beta breeding insurance policy that conveniently enough took root about the time human beings began to adopt a largely agrarian lifestyle.
Today equalism and the fantasy of an idealized, mutually beneficial monogamy based on the Old Set of Books is little more than a contingent workaround for the 80/20 rule reality. As this idealism decays and is replaced by either Red Pill awareness or men learning the harsh realities of modern marriage liability the more we will see a shift away from the Regulated model in favor of a now openly Hypergamous model.
Recently NY Mag had yet another feminist triumphalism article in the same vein as the Atlantic’s End of Men article (apparently 6 years is the period in which the femosphere believes popular awareness of its bullshit memes end). However there was this one salient point that illustrates this shift in monogamy:
In 2009, the proportion of American women who were married dropped below 50 percent. In other words, for the first time in American history, single women (including those who were never married, widowed, divorced, or separated) outnumbered married women. Perhaps even more strikingly, the number of adults younger than 34 who had never married was up to 46 percent, rising 12 percentage points in less than a decade. For women under 30, the likelihood of being married has become astonishingly small: Today, only around 20 percent of Americans are wed by age 29, compared to the nearly 60 percent in 1960.
In the old order of monogamy the mutually beneficial exchange centered on quality assurances, either via polygamy (sexual assurances) or monogamy (provisonal assurances) in a Beta context. These assurances, having been more or less compensated for by men’s willing or unwilling assistance via social and legislative means, are no longer an incentive for women to marry or commit to a long term monogamy, and this is evidenced in almost a decade of statistics that show this decline.
A Wife for Every Beta
In Christian Dread I made mention of Nick Krausers’ appearance on London Real. For a bit more elaboration on this principle cue the video to 5:00 and watch until about 8:33.
A wife for every Beta is the old order negotiated social contract function of committed monogamy. In a state of nature where 80% of men can never be assured of a genetic legacy, most men have no incentive to participate in an organized society. What the Regulated model of sexuality does (albeit inefficiently) is gives Beta males the incentive to cooperate in larger society by establishing monogamy as the predominant social order. And then, as Krauser mentions these societies tend to outperform those based on a Hypergamous, naturalistic socio-sexual structure.
As mentioned this arrangement was based on an exchange of long term security for women for assurances of sexual access and ultimately a genetic legacy. Essentially it was a negotiated compromise of the desire for the Alpha Fucks aspect of Hypergamy for the assurances of a long term Beta Bucks aspect of Hypergamy. By today’s socio-sexual standard this old order arrangement is supplanted with the relatively assured guarantee of satisfying both aspects of Hypergamy at different phases of a woman’s maturity in life. Thus we see the Epiphany Phase, Alpha Widowhood and every variety of schema I outline in Preventive Medicine.
The new, post-sexual revolution order is a model ostensibly based on ‘sexual freedom’, but what this really represents is a return to that naturalistic sexual order based on pre-agrarian, evolutionarily incentivized Hypergamy. We revert back to an open acceptance of the 80/20 realities that, if we’re honest, always informed even a Regulated socio-sexual model of monogamy.
In the new era of Open Hypergamy, women’s only necessitated compromise of her sexual strategy depends on her exaggerated self-impression of her SMV measured against her capacity to lock down an optimal male. This also explains the endless push to create self-confident, self-important ‘independent’ women. Women’s naturalistic predilection for the 80/20 Pareto Principle of sexual selection virtually assures their long term isolation – thus the need for a self-created impression of women’s self-sufficiency.