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attraction, biology, culture, evo-psych, hypergamy, marriage, relationships
For those who don’t know, hypergamy is a term that sprung forth from evolutionary psychology and socio-biology that basically encompasses the idea that women have evolved to become biologically driven to marry up, always seeking men of higher status, wealth, etc. Always prone to dump our loyal relationships when something better comes along.
It’s a highly flawed theory for several reasons, one being that for most of human history women couldn’t even own property of their own, so all marriages involved marrying up, so to speak. Then there were arranged marriages, in which the woman had no say at all, so wealthy families simply arranged marriages that would produce greater wealth and power.
If you want to get romantic about it, I’d say the precise opposite is true. Left to our own devices, women actually prefer to marry down. If you read fairy tales and ancient literature, women are forever being instructed to marry up. Look at Cinderella with her Prince or Beauty and the Beast. There has been a huge investment all through human history to try and convince little girls that what they really aspire to romantically is a dashing prince with a powerful kingdom who will be able to provide for us and our families for many, many years.
Why has this form of romantic brainwashing been so persistently applied? Because nobody really wants a prince. Women want pirates, rogues, Robin Hood and his merry men. These characters in our fairy tales are far more interesting, far more enchanting then a prince who has simply done the right thing all his life. Good guys finish last. That’s not entirely a myth. Which guys are “good” however, is something that has often been unfairly defined by culture, by other men. The man with the great wealth, status, family connections, has always perceived himself to be one of the “good guys,” entitled to his choice in women.
Women have never liked being entitled to and almost like cats, we’re liable to do the exact opposite and seek out somebody who does not feel entitled to us, indeed, may even feel somewhat unworthy of us. No, not submissive, but appreciative.
Women, rather than evolving into proper commodities who would unite kingdoms and make profitable marriages, have been disappointing fathers, rebelling for centuries, and running off with the shoe maker. Why? Because he’s so dreamy! Because we’re in love! Because women have rather defiantly refused to comply with cultural dictates declaring us to be commodities. We have also failed to substantiate evolutionary theory, by proving ourselves completely unwilling to comply with any sort of reason-based, survival of the fittest, ideals. So sorry. Apologies.
The undeniable truth of the matter is that for centuries women have been making really pathetic mating choices that appear to defy all reason. Rogues, refuse, rejects. Bonnie and Clyde. We are always in love with the stable boy, not the banker. Consider the pioneers. It’s not even rational to hook yourself to a man with a covered wagon wanting to go explore a hostile frontier and build a family against horrendous odds, all but certain half your offspring are going to die. Much safer, much more biologically reasonable to stay behind and marry the guy next door. The guy next door seldom appeals to us, however.
What can I say, women have been refusing to comply with biological imperatives for eons. That is not because we don’t have any, it is because cultural imperatives are often falsely applied to women, by men who are rather baffled by what they perceive as irrational behavior. Men often have no idea what motivates women so they rationalize it away and call it a biological imperative.
Male solipsism, it’s a real thing in the world. Perhaps it helps men to cope with constant rejection. A women could be tossing things at some guys head and he would conclude, “I’m an awesome guy, this must just be a hormonal malfunction.” Could be, or perhaps she just hates you. Harsh but true. Even harsher, perhaps her hatred is justified. Perhaps you are a louse.
There’s a couple of problems with hypergamy. First off, men who subscribe to it heavily are actually in relationships just waiting to be offloaded and downgraded when something better comes along and catches her fancy. That is just a sad way to live. Also, it implies that you can never really be loved for who you are, because who you are is so small, so insignificant in the face of female hypergamy, that you are rather powerless to stop it. As you get older, or poorer, or less desirable, you cannot rely on loyalty, intimacy, trust, love, because you don’t believe in such things and all you can see is your own declining value in the hypergamy equation. That’s heartbreaking. It’s also quite false. Visit a nursing home or a widow of a 60 year marriage and tell me that women are ruled by hypergamy. If it were a real thing in the world, I cannot tell you how many complete yahoos would have been offloaded long ago.
Women are flawed human beings who usually marry for love. Yes love, we love men, flaws and all. If you’re going to try and understand women with scientific theories, flow charts, and evo-psychology, well let the Divine Comedy begin.
I like this post because it’s an ode to women! Surely, I love women! But I disagree with any attempt of generalization. I met women who married freely not for love. There are women murderers, terrorists, etc. Some women married again while they husbands were alive.
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I ran off to marry a man who grew up dirt poor and was a high school drop out, and we spent two years living out of various vehicles. Take that, hypergamy!
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LOL, so did I! Best decision I ever made 😉
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Bravo! A tour de force!
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I’m not sure, IB, that I’d agree that women prefer to “marry down,” but, these days, with more women graduating from college than men, it might be a necessity. According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, only 28% of respondents to a Pew survey agreed that it is “generally better for a marriage if the husband earns more than the wife.” Of course, that WSJ article is looking at things strictly from an economic/earnings standpoint. It doesn’t take into account the allure of pirates, rogues, and Robin Hoods.
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“… baffled by what they perceive as irrational behavior.”
‘perceive’?
“Men often have no idea what motivates women…”
Do women?
‘perceive’!?
I’m sticking with the horse theory.
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Mike, that is funny!
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Harrr Matey! Have ye seen me wench pass by here? She left me when i commandeered that Spanish payroll ship and became rich. Harrr!
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So true! I see it in teen girls again and again and again (and slightly remember this from my dating years), women choose the underdog, the one in need of nurturing and “fixing”. Sometimes it’s wise, sometimes it’s not, but rarely have I seen this “evolutionary marker” of hypergamy exibited in real women
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I’m always surprised how easily so many people assume that evolution outside of change to allele frequencies through heritability is still evolution. Psychology and sociology are two areas where the stated linkage to ‘evolution’ seems to me to be reliably elusive and rarely can be shown outside of belief that it must be so because some PhD says so.
You post about hypergamy is a case in point and, I think , right on. I think these kinds of claims are (upon much clooser examination) devoid of any linkage to evolution we find in nature.
I think the evidence is much stronger and much more compelling that women – like men – tend to respond to and with much more interest (scientifically understood to be length of time) to whatever arouses them. Tis often includes the company of other people. It is not surprising to me that people like being around people who arouse them (and I mean arousal in the biological sense and not only the sexual).
I think there is compelling evidence to be had for the arousal hypothesis. Effective teachers, for example, invariably utilize this arousal principle (and exercised in many ways) and control it to effect in the classroom; less effective teachers go back to their psychology texts to figure out if all the different kinds of learning styles have been tried, while the even less effective teachers go back to the sociology textbooks to see what terms can better describe the nebulous forces of groupthink interfering with their heartfelt but failed attempts to teach beyond the targeted median. To shift blame for personal preferences/rejections/failings and so on to some vague outer force I think is quite human. That doesn’t make it true or even likely, as you quite rightly point out, but it does help make it understandable why people tend to do this. Let’s just invest too much certainty that the blame is properly placed. After all, each of us may indeed be the louse.
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Are we actually finally agreeing on something here? 😉
“Effective teachers, for example, invariably utilize this arousal principle (and exercised in many ways) and control it to effect in the classroom; less effective teachers go back to their psychology texts to figure out if all the different kinds of learning styles..”
Yes, I completely agree. I have watched education become an abstract intellectual exercise involving matrixes, theories, and PhD’s until it hardly resembles anything human anymore. Meanwhile, some of the best teachers are operating much more on something resembling instinct and human relationships.
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Exactly. Relationship of mutual respect and caring is key.
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Exactly right. Watch this brief video clip to support your comment about the best teachers using something resembling institnct and human relationships:
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My parents were wonderful and provided for all my emotional and physcial needs… but they kicked me out when they found out I was secretly engaged to my husband! They didn’t even go to our wedding!!!!
The relationship is repaired now… they adore my husband!! But wow! I wonder if the manosphere is talking about hypergamy happening when women don’t marry the alpha they love… so they’re stuck with a beta that doesn’t turn them on that much, and in their late 20’s or 30’s, they end up looking for someone else (hypergamy). I’ve seen that happen… so maybe it just isn’t as tempting when you’ve married young and married right.
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Thanks for your comment. Another hopeless romantic, I see. Perhaps there is something to be said for marrying young and marrying right 😉
The manosphere of course, is comprised of a diverse bunch of beliefs, and there can be lots of wounding in those parts. I think that damage tends to cloud their judgement sometimes. The problem with hypergamy is that it doesn’t fit biologically, it’s an irrational theory that flies in the face of the evidence. It’s also not scripturally sound, which is important, at least to me.
What I find kind of sad is that there are men so tied to the theory of hypergamy that that presume women cannot ever love them properly. Also that kind of fear of being rejected at any moment lends itself to desiring an unhealthy amount of control over women, which can very quickly become abuse.
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You’re, of course, right about the fear of being betrayed, and it leading to control issues/abuse… love takes being vulnerable – being open to being hurt potentially, and having trust broken. It’s sad but it’s true that any relationship could go south pretty fast with emotional or actual physical cheating… I think that’s where the manosphere tries to teach men to have enough self-worth in order to mentally get beyond that fear so that they aren’t crippled or controlled by it. To know that if that happens to them, that they will be ok and can move on (just like the self-confidence a woman would need to feel if she were cheated on).
I don’t know if I’ve seen any evidence biblically for it, the only example I can think of would be Potiphar’s wife. A woman who snagged a good man (powerful and wealthy even), but who sexually pursued someone that was younger and more handsome possibly. Doesn’t make sense with the whole marrying up thing at all, though… but as far as looking for a better alpha-type, it may fit. And then the false rape claim when she didn’t get her way… it almost sounds like recent events.
Maybe it’s just that we all have such a sinful nature… some scholars actually think Bathsheba almost willingly had the affair with David by not being more like Abigail and telling him straight out “no” and getting him to come to his senses. Who knows if she allowed it to happen, but if that was the case, that might be an example of a woman married to a great, loyal, definitely alpha kind of male, that when tempted, went ahead and had an affair with someone higher up (in alpha maleness), and lived to regret the consequences. We’ll never know for sure, and I’m certain she felt horrible grief and shame for the events that happened afterward… and who knows I could be so off on whether or not these things happened this way.
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IB2:
“There are men so tied to the theory of hypergamy that they presume that women cannot ever love them properly. Also that kind of fear of being rejected at any moment lends itself to desiring an unhealthy amount of control over women, which can very quickly become abuse.”
There’s been a big movement among the Gamesters—including the Churchian ones—recently, advocating what they call ‘Dread Game’. Basically it involves maintaining a relationship by keeping the woman in such a state of fear that she coerced into staying. Which is really a projection of what you said in the quote above because only cowardly men could retain a relationship that way.
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What a lot of gamers don’t seem to understand is that when women get wounded, it naturally creates fear and dislike of men which then can evolve in anti-male sentiments and feminism. So they’re actually fueling a cycle of unpleasantness in the world. Men have incredible power to break that cycle, to actually heal some of the things that are wrong in our world, rather then contributing to it.
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Fortunately, then there’s hope for some of us incorrigible rogues, pirates, and outlaws. LOL
I have never seen the slightest evidence of female hypergamy. Good/high-value women tend to marry men who think they aren’t good enough for them. Low-value women tend to look for weak males and thugs. I’ve seen more women dump good men for complete losers than I’ve ever seen them go for ‘the bigger better deal.’
“entitled to his choice in women.”
I hadn’t thought of that before, but it’s an excellent point. Among the Churchian Gamers who preach hypergamy, there is a definite attitude of entitlement present.
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What about men who have Hyper-Game and are just cruising around looking for the next best thing. Is that a thing? My rap albums talk like it might be a thing. Makes more sense than the notion that women are the flaky ones.
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Interesting, spot on observations, i do wonder then what the story is for men, perhaps a certain gentleman would care to comment or post 😉
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They’re right about hypergamy. They’re just wrong about the definition of “better” or its application being universal. Women “mate up” according to our own inbuilt drives, our own rationalization (“He may be sexier, but he’ll be gone in a week and where would I be then?”) and social norms as assigned by our families or other women.
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Loved it 🙂
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Reblogged this on MGTOW 2.0.
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as a man, i can say this is the most inaccurate post i have ever seen
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