polygamy

In writing and editing this series for the last few weeks a lot has happened in the Future is Female movement. I’m not a big fan of awards shows for obvious reasons; they have all gone from being a celebration and acknowledgement of creativity and performance in entertainment to being little more than a stage upon which political and social protests are aired by pampered celebrities. However, the recent Golden Globes anti-male / anti-masculinity screed by Oprah Winfrey initiated the next step in what can only be described as socially accepted misandry. I have no doubt that the (now annual) Women’s March planned for January 20^th will see this anti-male, female supremacism go far beyond what it did in 2017 and echo Oprah’s open hatred for men and an unapologetic call for the removal of men and the criminalization of any semblance of conventional masculinity.

The original intent of this series was to raise awareness of the dangerous inherent in our coming intersexual social relations. And in the time I’ve been considering this I had to finally take a birds eye view of where we’ve come from and where we’re likely to end up with regard to the social direction I see the sexes headed today. For the final installment of this series there are a couple of articles I’m going to reference that got me thinking recently. The first was an article on Quillette by William Buckner titled Romanticizing the Hunter Gatherer. I’m using this as a starting point today because I think this piece speaks to some common misperceptions of our evolutionary past as hunter gatherer, tribalist beings.

When it comes to evolutionary psychology (evo psych) and biology (evo bio) there is always a tendency to want to focus certain speculations on particular ideological bents. In fact, there is a current push to typify all science as being inspired by male-primary sexism and a motion to reform the sciences by requiring them to basically concur with what ever serves the Feminine Imperative’s most flattering interests. Another popular idea amongst egalitarian equalists is the speculation (really romanticization) of our hunter gatherer ancestors being natural egalitarian equalists themselves. Equalists love to presume that human beings’ natural state is one of collective cooperation and gender equality, but according to new studies there’s no evidence to support these ideas (emphasis mine):

But what about egalitarianism? In a 2004 study, Michael Gurven marshals an impressive amount of cross-cultural data and notes that hunters tend to keep more of their kill for themselves and their families than they share with others.12 While there is undeniably a great deal of sharing across hunter-gatherer societies, common notions of generalized equality are greatly overstated. Even in circumstances where hunters give away more of their meat than they end up receiving from others in return, good hunters tend to be accorded high status, and rewarded with more opportunities to reproduce everywhere the relationship has been studied.

[…] In the realm of reproductive success, hunter-gatherers are even more unequal than modern industrialized populations, exhibiting what is called “greater reproductive skew,” with males having significantly larger variance in reproductive success than females.15 Among the Ache of Paraguay, males have over 4 times the variance in reproductive success that females do, which is one of the highest ratios recorded. This means some males end up having lots of children with different women, while a significant number of males end up having none at all. This is reflected in the fact that polygynous marriage is practiced in the majority of hunter-gatherer societies for which there are data. Across these societies, the average age at marriage for females is only 13.8, while the average age at marriage for males is 20.7.16 Rather than defending what would be considered child marriage in contemporary Western societies, anthropologists often omit mentioning this information entirely.

Much of this article confirms a majority of what the Red Pill has been observing and considering for a long time now. The Pareto Principle being the highlight in this last part here; 20% of men reproducing with 80% of women. I’ll also draw your attention to the studies that suggest that only one man for every 17 women reproduced as little as 8,000 years ago (after the advent of agriculture). The Quillette article is a fascinating read, particularly from a Red Pill perspective, and I’d encourage you to read it. The operative point in this is that this research confirms that, despite the feel-good belief that human beings are naturally monogamous and naturally egalitarian, our hunter gatherer ancestors were largely polygamous.

The second article I’m going to reference is The Link Between Polygamy and War from the Economist last month. This is a very in-depth research that breaks down the connection between modern polygamous social orders and their tendency for political unrest and unstable societies. The Economist is a paywalled site, but again it’s well worth the read. This is a very thorough detailing of how men in these countries are systematically disqualified from reproduction in polygynous social and religious societies due to their lack of resources. Only wealthy men are permitted a wife (the only sanctioned way a man can have sex) and if a man can afford more it is a sign of his prestige that he can take as many as he has the resources for.

Men in South Sudan typically marry as often as their wealth — often measured in cattle — will allow. Perhaps 40 percent of marriages are polygamous. “In [our] culture, the more family you have, the more people respect you,” says William, a young IT specialist in search of his second wife. Few South Sudanese see the connection between these matrimonial customs and the country’s horrific civil war. If you ask them the reason for the violence, locals will blame tribalism, greedy politicians, weak institutions and perhaps the oil wealth which gives warlords something to fight over. All true, but not the whole story. Wherever it is widely practiced, polygamy (specifically polygyny, the taking of multiple wives) destabilizes society, largely because it is a form of inequality which creates an urgent distress in the hearts, and loins, of young men. If a rich man has a Lamborghini, that does not mean that a poor man has to walk, for the supply of cars is not fixed. By contrast, every time a rich man takes an extra wife, another poor man must remain single. If the richest and most powerful 10 percent of men have, say, four wives each, the bottom 30 percent of men cannot marry. Young men will take desperate measures to avoid this state.

The article goes on to link the unemployment of young men to their resorting to criminal (and often open war) means to take the wealth necessary for them to procure a wife. This then leads to violent and social unrest. When we look at militant Islamic organizations one of the first, and probably most convincing, rewards young fighters are offered is the guarantee of a wife – even if she is the spoils of war. Much of what prompted the Arab Spring uprisings has been attributed to the unemployment rates in these countries and the consequent result that those young men cannot ‘legitimately’ afford to marry or have a family. They literally have nothing to lose and a wife (sexual release) and a family to gain.

When one man can monopolize 20 wives and thereby force his rivals from the gene pool we have a similar condition to that of our hunter gatherer ancestors. Only in this instance polygamy (really polygyny) is a socially mandated, socially approved convention.

One persistent debate I read in the manosphere is the contention that human society, achievement, stability, etc. is the result of post-agrarian monogamy. Usually this debate crops up between the more traditionalist faction of the sphere and the more brutally pragmatic of Red Pill aware men. I understand the premise from the traditional perspective; there is every evidence that the conventional family structure has been the lynchpin of social progress. I agree with this assessment, but from an evolutionary perspective human beings are not innately monogamous. Our conventional monogamy and family structure, and the resulting progress is really in spite of ourselves. The evidence is there in our genomic records. Our success as a culture was due to controlling the feral aspects of both men and women’s natural sexual strategies via social conventions, religion and personal conviction. And the result of this control is a social contract that is based on monogamy.

That said, there is no denying that monogamous societies make for the most stable societies – or at least they have up to this point in history. Even the Economist article highlights this fact. Monogamy reduces reproductive stress on Beta men – or at least until recently. One reason we have Disney myths of soul mates so prevalent in the past generations is as social a social reinforcement for monogamy. The social convention of idealistic love being a mutually accepted concept between the sexes is also a social reinforcement for monogamy. These were conventions that held men in an idealized state of monogamy. Even the worst Beta still had a hope to reproduce if the mythology was such that “there’s someone for everyone.”

But again, all of this idealization of monogamy is really in spite of ourselves. Left to our own means and our unfettered sexual strategies men will be ruthlessly polygynous and women will resort to ruthless Hypergamy.

The New Polygamy Polyandry

You can probably see where I’m going with this now. Since the time of the Sexual Revolution (and unilaterally female-controlled hormonal birth control) we have seen a systematic degradation of this monogamous social order in favor of a female-primary social order. This social order is predicated on women’s complete control over the reproductive fate of society. Whereas before there were social checks and balances in conventional monogamy, these have been replaced with the unrestrained, unquestioned imperatives of women’s sexual strategy – Hypergamy. In just 5 short decades men have ceded any claim to not only our own sexual strategy and interests, but to any right to paternity.

When we look at how social trends have shifted with regard to women’s sexual selection process we can see the end game more clearly. We’ve gone from ’No Means No’ to ‘Yes Means Yes’ , to itemized permission documentation of every sex act, and now to “enthusiastic consent”. Women’s end game is not unlike our original state of polygamy in that only the most desirable Alpha men will be allowed breeding rights to women – with the social contract being all women are entitled to Alpha Fucks. Enthusiastic consent is a ‘thing’ because on some level of consciousness women loathe the idea of transactional sex with Beta men. And as women’s provisioning and security needs are already met by the state and men’s own direct or indirect resource transfer, there is no longer any desire for “sex they’re really not that into.”

If not for ubiquitous, free online porn and soft prostitution (Sugaring, Tinder, Seeking Arrangements) western culture might find itself in a similar situation to the polygamous countries described by the Economist.

I think it’s important for Red Pill aware men to consider that as women consolidate more and more power via social conventions that only apply to men (MeToo, Times Up, etc.) the end game is one of polyandry for women. This cartoon was a funny one because it accurately describes women’s sexual selection process, but it’s unfunny because it also belies women’s idealized state – one in which men are either draft animals or breeding stock. 

I had quite a few men ask me where I think we’re headed with regards to intersexual social dynamics and I would say that what I’m ultimately seeing is an erasure of conventional monogamy replaced with a Hypergamous polygamy in which women will have uncontested control over reproduction. I see a lot of similarities occurring with men who drop out of life, and either neglect or refuse to build their lives around supporting a family or entertaining a wife. The guys I talk to very much want to get married and have kids, but the downsides are so unimaginably dangerous for men it seems hopeless to them. The old monogamous social contracts no longer exist, but men are still being held responsible for not putting themselves on the line to take risks that only apply to them.

So, not unlike the young unemployed men in the Arab Spring, today’s drop out guy has very little hope for a monogamous future with a woman. But this hopeless circumstance is being instituted by western women, not a religious dogma. Un restrained Hypergamy leads us back to our feral, tribalist polygamy, simply because women have no use for Beta men. Sex with Betas is (or soon will be) considered rape and without porn or some other sexual sedation Betas would likely resort to violence to solve that problem.

What to Do

Anonymous Reader hit me with this comment:

Distilled to it’s essence this is how women in uncontested control of men and masculinity will view men: according to their basest Hypergamous needs and in the context of complete solipsistic self-interests.

Something more like an ant colony or beehive than a civilization of humans. A society of women owners, a handful of males allowed to breed and a whole lot of neutered workers.

I’ve used the Sadie Hawkins’ World analogy for some time now, but this is what the new order of Fempowerment has created for men and women going forward. As much as it goes against every evolved instinct for women, it will be women who must pursue and make the effort to initiate sex and intimacy with men. There will likely be some pushback from more traditional/conventional women who truly desire men to pursue them – nothing is more flattering for a woman’s ego – but the social environment will be such that the risk of personal destruction will become so high, and the juice not being worth the risk of the squeeze will be so low, that even the top tier men in the SMP will be incentivized to allow women to make the first move.

Essentially what MeToo, Enthusiastic Consent and Fempowerment is establishing is an even higher standard of what constitutes an ideal Alpha. It is a tightening of the market of sorts. Women are reluctant (and then resentful) to settle for a less-than the best Hypergamy with a suboptimal male as it is now, but add to this the condition that only the most ideal of Alphas represents the only legitimate sexual experience

Some Solutions:

1. Play the Game better: Learn Game so thoroughly that you can use the corrupted system to your best advantage. The bar is set so low for men today that even marginal self-improvement, Red Pill awareness and Game savvy can set a man apart from the overwhelming majority of Beta, feminized symps. In essence men can make themselves into commodities women will compete for. There is a danger in this though; women who want to consolidate on the Alpha who wont commit open themselves up to false accusations in reprisal.
2. MGTOW: As there are varying degrees of MGTOW I can’t say that the most isolationist of MGTOWs response is really a solution. Distilled down, MGTOW is an abdication of meta-Frame to women. However, not all MGTOWs are cut from the same cloth. Many will explain that MGTOW is just men not using women as a benchmark for their ego validation, and my response is, great, I think any Red Pill aware man ought to do the same. Taking womankind off the pedestal and replacing them with your own Mental Point of Origin is key in any man’s unplugging. That said, isolation may not be the best approach to dealing with the Future is Female crowd.
3. Transactional sex: Reducing intersexual relations to Tinder hook ups, Sugar Baby/Daddy contractual agreements, or ‘Seeking Arrangements’ will preclude a transactional understanding and imply specific positive consent. This still has its dangerous though. Even a Tinder hook up can go bad for a guy if a woman still has regrets at a later date. However, at least from a social standpoint a woman seeking a sexual encounter can be thought of as being proceptive about the experience and not a victim of coercion.

I’d encourage more solutions in the comments. I’m sure a lot of this series seems overly reactionary or disheartening for men who are looking for a return to that stabilizing monogamy. There is an element in the manosphere today who are looking for their Red Pill Trad-Con woman who will police the worst of herself in order to return to the golden era of monogamy. I have my reservations about the real motives of the few women who subscribe to this story, but the issues isn’t about what they will do, but rather what they can do in a feminine-primary social order that allows them to renege on their convictions without consequence.