Hypergamy
Don't confuse the map with the territory
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A week or so ago I listened to the Sex Cells podcast titled “Educated Women + Political Preferences.” This was – at least in my view – a much more honest take on the hypergamy dilemma that many in the manosphere who tend to have a lot of scorn over women for this evolutionary import. I think the presumption that women are all gold diggers tends to be a self-fulfilling one. After all, if you try to attract women by flashing your wallet – the women after money are inevitably be the kinds who you will attract.
But the manosphere is on to something often discussed in less sneering tones by the likes or Jordan Peterson and Geoffrey Miller: that women tend to date up and across hierarchies. This is not just a case of a hierarchy of money. For instance women that value education will want to date someone with a similar or greater level of education level to them.
A housemate from London told me the story of how much she judged her friend as “materialistic” that was almost instantly attracted to men once she learned what kind of car they drove. Until my housemate realised that all a man had to do was to say he went to Oxford and the same would happen to her. In that moment she realised that a degree from Oxford was her Lamborghini. A proxy or heuristic for where a man sits in the hierarchy - that her values dictate - she should be pursuing.
This tendency to ‘date up’ is a problem when women are increasingly out graduating and out earning men. But it is only a problem so long as women don’t realise that the material ‘proxies’ for the values system are not the goal itself but just that – proxies.
In the podcast Eliza tells a story about her attraction to someone deflating when he told her he worked at Woolworths. If a sports car is a magnet, stacking shelves at Woolworths is a repellant. I have to say, this resonated with me, particularly her thought process afterwards where she reasoned that the life stage he was in was not conducive to her desire to settle down and have kids.
I am a lawyer, and probably have out earned most men I have dated. This is not necessarily a problem in the short term, but have to admit that the thought of “this means I always have to be the breadwinner” which for some reason is synonymous to “this means I can never have children with this man” popped into my head. I only recently realised that this is a false equivalence. Instead I should be asking men I date if they are ok with being the breadwinner despite me earning more. There is no reason why we must take the economically rational decision at the family level and live off the greater income. I am no princess and am more than used to roughing it or living cheaply when I need. There is no reason why the higher earner needs to be the breadwinner. Particularly if non-economic factors, like allowing the mother to be with the child for the early years (or at least the first year) can be weighed up against the economics of this decision.
By uncoupling presumptions like this, women can override the instinct to be hypergamous in part. When it is possible to live off a salary that is half yours – why would you insist on a man earning the same or more? If the universities are churning out people without necessarily giving them a quality education – why would you prize a degree from such an institution over someone who is self-taught? In other words, whatever proxy that women are pursuing as a marker of the type of man they wish to date – make sure we are not confusing the territory with the map. If you want a man to support you while you take time out with your children, ask if he would do this regardless of what his pay is in relation to yours? If you are after an educated man, talk to him about the type of things which would indicate that he is educated in the way you would like him to be.
In another podcast, Modern Wisdom with Geoffrey Miller. He talks about how couples in which the women out earn the man can game hypergamy - such as by switching roles in the bedroom. By creating the circumstances that allow a man to show his women that he is ‘the man’ - regardless of circumstances external to the relationship – and crucially women need the awareness to know how they want the man to be ‘dominant’ or ‘to lead’ and men need to be able to articulate what makes them feel like the man of the house.
The fluidness of the gender roles today is much lamented, but may be the thing that actually means a lot of the problems that exist between the sexes can be reversed engineered by working out what the thing each actually needs rather than merely the proxy or signal for that thing.
As usual, you think solidly into the substance of an issue. As humans we seem to get thrown so easily by circumstantial change. I used to often reflect, when young priests and nuns despaired of the loss of their orders charism; are their really no poor to teach and no lost souls to comfort?
I think one of the biggest problems facing relationships today is not so much whether or not the man earns more money than the woman, but whether or not he is able to be an actual man.
You only need to see young men at the park with their children or look at the physiques of young educated men (it is different amongst the trades) and you can see that being a man is not prized and it is the feminine virtues that are most dominant. Our whole society now behaves like the inside of a thirteen year old girls mind.
As I got older I begun to notice the deference that young men gave to me. As a builder I work in a completely male dominated world. Men are very hierarchical and meritocratic. I don’t think the same is true for women. A young man can run around in white football boots because he can actually kick goals from the boundary line. I think women display a much greater propensity for unearned status than men do.
The dominant attributes of both sexes probably need to be tweaked in each generation. There is never a time when we do not need women to be the best mothers and nurturers that they can be or that we do not need men to be as dependable, and courageous and brave as they can be.
The script needs to be re imagined when the pathways begin to change. Men trying to be mothers just become soft, clammy and flaccid. Women trying to be fathers become hard, bitter and hysterical.
As a 60 something man I have lived through the era of female supremacy. Through that time men have vacated the space. As in the blues brothers, women naturally are easily lured by men by their weakness for enveloped love. Similarly, men cannot fight effectively with women. They have the weapons but these are weapons they cannot use.
Since women decided to use all the weapons at their disposal without restraint, men have backed out of the fight. Women do not know the Queensberry Rules.
I think in the end this has been good for men. It may not look like it at the moment, as we flounder around weekly. But the fact of the matter is that our success as inventors and innovators has created a world where our natural physical strengths are not as overwhelmingly needed as they have been for most of human history. These inventions have freed women from the shackles of their nature and created value in areas other than strength and protection. Hence some women earning more than men in professions that rely on womens natural strengths.
I think this is good for men because we need to reimagine the same ideals of dignity, bravery and self sacrifice but in a way that lives in the present and not just the past.
The last 2 years has shown us what female tyranny looks like. Where were all the men? Mum was in charge; no, not mum; her spinster sister. (I know Dan Andrew’s is a man, but he is a man very much pandering to a radical feminist agenda) (witness the wholesale listening to doctors. When did we start listening to doctors. Women are the ones who listen to doctors)
Men need to stand up to women not with violence but by taking back the important task of anchoring the family. The only thing that will stop the destructive indulgences of female supremacy is men becoming men again, albeit a little changed.