In last week’s comment thread, we were linked to a study that purported cuckoldry is far rarer than previously suspected. While I and many others are skeptical of the methodology of the findings I think it’s far more telling about the state of the Feminine Imperative that such a “study” (really meta-study) would be so triumphantly emphasized in the femosphere, thus highlighting the latent purpose for such a study to begin with.
Culum Straun links it for us:
New research suggests that the percentage of men (unknowingly) raising children who aren’t their own is only around 1-2%, as opposed to the 10-30% figure previously accepted over decades.
Reasons are unclear – the first hypothesis was that birth control may have reduced the *pregnancy* rates of women but not the infidelity rate – but apparently the 1-2% figure holds steady going back centuries, so that can’t be it.
The study authors conclude that in all probability the benefits of “superior genes” are outweighed by the risks of being caught and the social stigma etc.
I’d be really interested in seeing what you guys think – is this information that needs to be used to revise our view of the world around us, or is there some flaw in the reasoning/logic leading to 1-2%? The most obvious thing I can see is that we don’t know the methodologies of the underlying studies which were combined to find the meta survey..
I found it interesting that the first reflexive from the femosphere was to wave this in the air as if it were some kind of vindication or a refutation of Hypergamy. “See guys? We don’t actually lie about paternity; if we marry and fuck you we statistically have your kids.”
It’s important to remember that the definition they are exploring here is one where men are “unknowingly” raising the progeny of another man. From the article:
This challenges evolutionary psychologists who have suggested that human women “routinely ‘shop around’ for good genes by engaging in extra-pair copulation to obtain genetic benefits.”
They conveniently ignore the genomic evidence that shows roughly 80% of women bred with 20% of men in our evolutionary past (including Neanderthals), but the basis of the study is flawed because they ask the wrong question. Whether or not the women in our evolutionary past were pair-bonded in whatever social arrangement that passed for institutional monogamy at the time is functionally irrelevant to the latent purpose of cuckoldry.
It does, however, expose the mental point of origin of author Annalee Newitz. If she had cited the source for her quote I’d be less skeptical because no evo-psych researcher worth their salt would presume that women exclusively seek better genetic stock while within a pair-bonded relationship. It’s an indictment of the openness with which women embrace Hypergamy that they’d still need a janitor to sweep its ugliness back under the rug occasionally.
For the greater part of evo-psych research, the emphasis of study has centered on biological and evolutionary motivators (Estrus) that prompt women to Hypergamous predispositions and the end-purpose implied in women fulfilling their sexual strategy.
The Ends of Cuckoldry
The term “cuckoldry” isn’t strictly confined to duplicitous women duping husbands/boyfriends into believing the kid is theirs when it’s some other guy’s. Consider the marked increase in single motherhood since the Sexual Revolution; the statistic for abortion, the declining marriage rate and the fact that now, in westernized society, and the majority of births (close to 60%) are born to unwed mothers.
Now consider the social imperatives and zeitgeist of the past 70 years that promote women’s Hypergamous choices to the point that every woman’s sexual strategy and breeding choices are legislatively mandated to be supported. Men are mandated to support women’s breeding imperatives both directly and indirectly. Is that not the end purpose of cuckoldry?
Cuckoldry is implicative of far more than this woman’s narrow definition. And it’s narrow because women like Newitz are selling a salve to misdirect men in a larger society from considering that their cuckolding is really by and of their own volition. This is because men have been conditioned over the course of successive generations to think they are some kind of hero for ‘saving’ a woman from her own breeding decisions by directly or indirectly forgiving indiscretions and supporting and raising a child he didn’t father.
Just because a man knows the child isn’t his own doesn’t make it any less cuckoldry.
The question that needs to be asked, and is conveniently avoided in the article, is “what is the latent, evolutionarily motivated purpose of cuckoldry that would best serve women’s dualistic sexual strategy?” This is the uncomfortable question those nefarious evo-psych researchers really ask.
In the past, duplicitous, concealed, cuckoldry was a very risky prospect from a social perspective. It could mean family/tribal ostracism or even being stoned to death. So the larger, most deductively efficient way to achieve the same Hypergamous ends of cuckoldry is to reengineer a society where men are either ignorant of their own role in that cuckoldry or provided social rewards for their knowing participation in a socially acceptable form of cuckoldry. The latter is where we’ve progressed since the Sexual Revolution.
The ends remain the same, but it is cuckoldry by a different name. When we can restructure a social order that accepts and excuses both proactive and retroactive cuckoldry before the fact, we normalize it and defuse the consequences for women, while holding men accountable for its consequences or their unwillingness to participate in it. And even when a woman aborts a child – the ultimate confirmation of Hypergamous disapproval – that social order pre-approves her choice, pre-approves holding her unaccountable for it and concurrently makes the men who would find fault in it villains for judging her pre-approved act.
Sons of Cuckolds
Reader Petherton linked me to a fascinating article which not only illustrates that Hypergamy was an issue for the Greatest Generation, but also details the wages of ‘secret’ cuckoldry. Apparently the Archbishop of Canterbury has discovered he is the illegitimate son of Sir Winston Churchill’s last private secretary after taking a DNA test to prove his paternity.
Petherton:
This is a perfect example of women’s hypergamous nature. She rides the cock carousel and gets impregnated by an Alpha who’s already taken. She quickly marries a Beta who is hovering in the background and cuckolds him. He never unplugs, she loses respect for him (if there ever was any in the 1st place) and he drinks himself to an early death.
Eventually the truth comes out. Instead of taking responsibility for her actions, she paints herself as a victim. The pregnancy is blamed on alcohol, and she successfully generates pity from everyone. In fact she generates admiration from everyone for her brave and successful fight against alcoholism, and for putting up with an alcoholic husband.
No one anywhere suggests the truth: that she had a strategy (whether conscious or subconscious) to find the best genes for her offspring, while fooling another man into providing for that offspring. When she gets busted, she successfully paints herself as the victim. You couldn’t make it up!
Needless to say, I found this article and the blatantly revealed cuckoldry oddly karmic in its timing coinciding with the “cuckoldry” study’s release. However, we should now consider the Arch Bishop’s response to his mother’s proveable cuckoldry of his “father”.
“His deepest identity isn’t about which man was his father, but who his heavenly Father is.”
This is exactly the diplomatic response I’d expect from men (albeit a religious one in this instance) steeped in a feminine-primary social order and conditioned from birth to affirm his Blue Pill existence. While egalitarianism is ostensibly about baseline equalism and “it’s what’s on the inside that counts”, on the outside, there is no better social mandate that serves the evolutionary ends of Hypergamy. The Arch Bishop’s response to his mother’s cuckoldry is a textbook example of how the Feminine Imperative conditions men to excuse, affirm and perpetuate its ends.
He said the right thing.
From Schedules of Mating:
Cheating
For this dynamic, and the practicality of enjoying the best of both genetic worlds, women find it necessary to ‘cheat’. This cheating can be done proactively or reactively.In the reactive model, a woman who has already paired with her long term partner choice, engages in a extramarital or extra-pairing, sexual intercourse with a short term partner (i.e. the cheating wife or girlfriend). That’s not to say this short term opportunity cannot develop into a 2nd, long term mate, but the action of infidelity itself is a method for securing better genetic stock than the committed male provider is (or was) capable of supplying.
Proactive cheating is the single Mommy dilema. This form of ‘cheating’ relies on the woman breeding with a Good Genes male, bearing his children and then abandoning him, or having him abandon her, (again through invented social conventions) in order to find a Good Dad male to provide for her and the children of her Good Genes partner to ensure their security.
I want to stress again that (most) women do not have some consciously constructed and recognized master plan to enact this cycle and deliberately trap men into it. Rather, the motivations for this behavior and the accompanying social rationales invented to justify it are an unconscious process. For the most part, women are unaware of this dynamic, but are nonetheless subject to its influence. For a female of any species to facilitate a methodology for breeding with the best genetic partner she’s able to attract AND to ensure her own and her offspring’s survival with the best provisioning partner; this is an evolutionary jackpot.
The Cuckold
On some level of consciousness, men innately sense something is wrong with this situation, though they may not be able to place why they feel it or misunderstand it in the confusion of women’s justifications for it. Or, they become frustrated by the social pressures to ‘do the right thing’, are shamed into martyrdom/savior-hood and committed to a feigned responsibility to these conventions. Nevertheless, some see it well enough to steer clear of single mothers, either by prior experience or observing other male cuckolds saddled with the responsibility of raising and providing for – no matter how involved or uninvolved – another man’s successful reproduction efforts with this woman.Men often fall into the role of the proactive or reactive Cuckold. He will never enjoy the same benefits as his mates short term partner(s) to the same degree, in the way of sexual desire or immediacy of it, while at the same time enduring the social pressures of having to provide for this Good Genes father’s progeny. It could be argued that he may contribute minimally to their welfare, but on some level, whether emotional, physical, financial or educational he will contribute some effort for another man’s genetic stock in exchange for a limited form of sexuality/intimacy from the mother. To some degree, (even if only by his presence) he is sharing the parental investment that should be borne by the short term partner. If nothing else, he contributes the time and effort to her he could be better invested in finding a sexual partner with which he could pursue his own genetic imperative by his own methodology.
However, needless to say, there is no shortage of men sexually deprived enough to ‘see past’ the long term disadvantages, and not only rewarding, but reinforcing a single mother’s bad decisions (bad from his own interest’s POV) with regard to her breeding selections and schedules in exchange for short term sexual gratification. Furthermore, by reinforcing her behavior thusly, he reinforces the social convention for both men and women. It’s important to bear in mind that in this age women are ultimately, soley responsible for the men they choose to mate with (baring rape of course) AND giving birth to their children. Men do bear responsibility for their actions no doubt, but it is ultimately the decision of the female and her judgement that decides her and her children’s fate
Who’s the Daddy?
Finally, we complete the cuckoldry trifecta with the Spectator article, Who’s the Daddy. Again, serendipitously, the rationale of this article exposes (perhaps obliviously) the social underpinnings of the Feminine Imperative’s motives in getting men to accept women’s Hypergamous choices as the preeminent social norm.
Many men have, of course, ended up raising children who were not genetically their own, but really, does it matter? You can feel quite as much tenderness for a child you mistakenly think to be yours as for one who is.
[…]Uncertainty allows mothers to select for their children the father who would be best for them.
If the definition of cuckoldry ought to be confined to deceptive duplicity, as AnnaleeNewitz suggests in her article, why then should we need a push to legally mandate men to being accountable fathers by default when they proveably are not?
Ironically, the very same DNA swab test that betrayed the Arch Bishop’s mother’s cuckoldry is the test Melanie McDonagh proposes we make illegal or irrelevant in a court of law. And unironically, the Arch Bishop parrots back the mantra of the Feminine Imperative to excuse his own mother’s birth-fraud.
But in making paternity conditional on a test rather than the say-so of the mother, it has removed from women a powerful instrument of choice. I’m not sure that many people are much happier for it.
Novaseeker had an excellent comment on this:
From the time paternity tests became more available and reliable, and men started using them to avoid paternity claims, the same argument has been made: it’s bad for the kids. Who cares if he isn’t the bio-dad, fatherhood isn’t about biology, it’s about a parental relationship. We should trust women who determine who the father is, so that she can choose the best man she thinks to be the father, etc., etc. The same arguments have been made for some time. In fact, medical ethicists also make the same arguments, to a large degree, in support of not disclosing non-paternity when it comes up in tests that were not specifically undergone to determine paternity — in other words, if your kid is getting tested for inherited disease, and the hospital finds out that it isn’t your bio kid, they don’t tell you that, for all the reasons stated in the article.
This really is a visceral issue for women. Paternity tests strike at something fundamental in women, even if the actual cuckolding rate remains low: the possibility to cuck, if needed. It’s a visceral issue for women, at a very deep and basic hindbrain level, for fairly clear reasons. If paternity tests were ever to become standard/mandatory at birth, the cucking strategy, even if it is a rather uncommon one, would become completely unavailable, and almost every single woman finds that to be a problem based on her hindbrain (and regardless of how her forebrain will formulate that deep, basic discomfort).
I’ve stated it in the past, but as the Feminine Imperative becomes more comfortable with Open Hypergamy and Open Cuckoldry more men will find its machinations unignorable. Thus, as increasingly more men refuse to participate in the game of their gender’s debasement the imperative must pursue legal mandates and fluid social restructuring to force men to comply with it.
Novaseeker again:
An amazing thing is how easy it is for women to dismiss the significance of biological fatherhood. It’s almost as if it simply doesn’t matter to them.
If that’s not an obvious flag of the FI, and the attendant idea that one sex’s sexual strategy must always impinge on the other sex’s sexual strategy, I don’t know what is. It places zero, zilch, nada importance on the male interest in having genetic progeny — again, it’s as if that interest simply doesn’t exist, and is illegitimate to even take into consideration.
There was a time when I had difficulty explaining the difference between men’s idealistic concept of love and women’s opportunistic concept of love. I’ve recently come to see that the best explanations and contrasts come from the openly embraced examples set by women that can’t be ignored.
There is no better example of women’s opportunistic love, indeed, women’s innate solipsistic nature, than the phrase “it shouldn’t matter to the man who the biological father of the child really is – he just needs to accept it and support it.”
And there is no greater evidence of the Feminine Imperative’s purpose than a society structured to ensure that men and women believe this, as well as perpetuate it.