On the MGTOW Claim of Female Hypergamy

hypergamy

hī-pûr′gə-mē

noun

1. The practice of marrying into an equal or more prestigious social group or caste.

2. Act or practice of seeking a spouse of higher socioeconomic status, or caste status than oneself.

(—from the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th edition)

     

     A common claim of fellows of the MGTOW persuasion (more or less the male version of anti-masculinity feminists) is that women are hypergamous. This means, in addition to the dictionary definition of the term, that women will dump their mate without much hesitation if they somehow attract a man of higher wealth or social status. So some MGTOW men criticize women for forming a relationship with a man, being in a seemingly loving and stable relationship with him, and then leaving him if their doctor or boss or therapist or whoever happens to take a fancy to them—generally based on these guys’ own experience with at least one woman. Women are thus interpreted to be something along the lines of ruthless and heartless gold diggers. Well, is this characterization of women true?

     It seems to me that something along the lines of this sort of hypergamy is common throughout much of the animal kingdom, or at least among vertebrates, simply because it is a very effective mating strategy. Animals as diverse as elk, jungle fowl, sperm whales, and even stickleback fish have a mating strategy in which males compete for females, and the females choose the males who appear to do best in the competition. This can take many forms, from males fighting over females, as is the case with bighorn sheep and elephant seals, to males making more glorious, though relatively passive, displays, like peafowl or prairie chickens. By choosing the most aggressive, strongest, most impressive males the females are increasing the odds that their offspring will inherit greater aggressiveness etc., and thus be better at the job of survival and passing on the inherited genes to future generations. This type of strategy often involves, during mating season, of alpha males accumulating harems of females, and taking them away from other males, with more beta types (generally but not always younger and less mature), coming together in bachelor herds to play video games and…I mean, to do whatever non-mating males of that species normally do.

     Other species, including insects like butterflies, adopt a similar strategy with similar benefits by requiring the male to essentially rape the female. If you ever see, on a warm spring day, a butterfly fluttering crazily through the air in a wild zigzag pattern of evasive maneuvers, with a second butterfly close behind in hot pursuit, you may know that the one in front is female and the one close behind is male. This strategy ensures that a female will mate only with a male who is faster and stronger than her—again increasing the probable qualities of survival for her offspring by joining her genes to that of a relatively superior mate. I read a book by Carl Sagan long ago, with the title Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, a book well worth reading, claiming that studies have shown the humans have some of this instinct themselves: women who were successfully date-raped by a man were MORE likely to date him again than men who attempted to rape a woman but were successfully repulsed. The successful rapist would be, in certain crude ways at least, superior to a man so weak that the woman could fight him off. From a biological point of view it makes perfect sense.

     So human females, being animals with innate instincts like any other animal, naturally would prefer the best mate possible, not just for the benefits of having a rich man taking care of them or a famous man bestowing prestige upon them or a virile man screwing them silly, but for the instinctive desire for a superior man adding his own presumably superior DNA to her own to produce the best babies possible. (People on the left tend to deny the very existence of human animal instincts, more commonly known as human nature, but that is irrelevant, and simply demonstrates the divorce from empirical reality that is endemic on the political left in recent decades.) Also of course a superior man will probably be more effective at providing for a female and her children, which is also a very high priority from a reproductive/mating perspective.

     This instinctive mating strategy among humans is certainly nothing new. It has existed from the origin of our species, and is attested to in ancient literature. For example in the Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana it is asserted that a man of higher social status than a woman is likely to be able to score with her easily; and among the women who are easiest to attract (there’s a longish list) is the woman who is of higher caste or social status than her husband.

     Thus it has been fairly common in the human species that high-status males acquire more than one female mate, and low-status males often do without as incels, or resort to prostitutes or whatever. I read long ago (or maybe I saw it on a YouTube video—I don’t remember now) that one reason why western civilization became as powerful as it did is because this polygamy of upper class men, accumulating harems of wives, concubines, and slave girls, resulting in many lower class men being bachelors, was superseded by universal (or near universal) monogamy in Europe. This strengthened western society by giving almost every man a family to represent and fight for, and thus produced more pride, dignity, self-worth, and self-confidence among western men, and also more men who could be called “alpha males.” It resulted in a stronger sort of social cohesion, and increased social equality, as well as a more formidable population of men willing to fight to protect their families, their rights, and their dignity.

     But, as may be expected, this strength of western civilization is being undermined, as is just about every other aspect of western civilization that allowed it to prosper and even dominate. As married monogamy and the nuclear family decline in the west, a new dating culture (facilitated by dating apps) is causing society to revert back towards the primordial strategy of high-status or otherwise “superior” men getting most of the women. Stefan Molyneux, an intellectual utterly loathed by the politically correct left, has claimed that dating apps and postmodern “romance” has resulted in a return to polygamous harems and increased numbers of incels, largely because of the filters women put on their date searches: they want a man at least six feet tall with a six-figure salary and a nice car, six-pack abdominal muscles, etc. etc., resulting in a few men attracting most of the sexually attractive females, and the majority of men settling for unattractive ones or none at all. This of course helps to destabilize western society, as well as reduce the number of white babies being born in the world…which just happens to be in tune with the western-civ-hating ideology of the socialist left.

     Returning to a mating system in which a relative few men impregnate (or just copulate with) most of the sexually receptive females does, as I said before, make perfect sense from a reproductive and evolutionary sense—especially lately when women do not need a man to support them but can simply “marry” and be supported by a socialized political system; but it does destabilize and weaken western society. If western civilization is to recover from the degeneracy in which it is sinking at present, it is probable that a return to more or less universal monogamy, an emphasis on family life, and less sluttiness among young and youngish females, will be one of the ways in which that is effected.

     SO…men who want to attract an attractive mate and keep her, men who do not want their woman to leave them for a more “superior” man, would do well to cultivate their own superior qualities, and do their best to appear as superior as possible to women…which is, after all, one of the main reasons in history why men have striven for wealth and prestige in the first place. (I’d guess one of the main reasons why men were so eager to become Roman Emperors back in the day, despite the likelihood of an early and violent death, was the thought of the harem of hot women they could enjoy.) Men who are incapable, or just unwilling, to enhance their own social position, or their own masculine qualities in general, may reconcile themselves with the thought that it’s all for the good of the species, if not the society, that they as betas don’t mate anyhow; plus maybe they can earn their way to becoming a maximum-level mage on Runescape.