As an addendum to yesterday’s big post, I’m reposting a fantastic, detailed comment left by Novaseeker. Read and learn:
The species is mostly a pair-bonding species — pair bonding coupled together with opportunistic cheating by men and women alike. Men and women both had an “interest†in policing the level of overall sexual license, because of the downsides for each of them due to the infidelity of the other. And women also had an interest in policing the sexual license of their own sex, because when female sexual license is permitted, it quickly becomes a race to the lowest common denominator –> in other words, the sluts ruin it for all of the other women, because it discourages men from committing to women in general — something that harms all women. So historically women have played a huge role in regulating their own sexuality — slut shaming, social rules around sex, in some culture FGM and so on, all of this primarily came from women as a means of controlling the sexuality of their own sex. The idea that feminists have that this was largely male-forced is rather misleading.
The trouble is, once the genie is out of the bottle basically the only ones who can manage to put it back in the bottle are the women themselves. The alpha males are living high on the hog in the current culture, getting more access sexually to more women than they have had in the West pretty much ever. There’s no incentive at all for them to want to change the system — this is a system that is an alpha male’s dream, really. For women, the issue is more complex, and I think often a woman’s attitude about the current system varies by age and SMV. When women are younger, the current system appears favorable to all but the highest SMV women (who are screwed, really, because the alphas who would be their “normal†mates under a monogamy system are screwing around with lower SMV women just because they’re available, and have no real incentive to commit to a high SMV woman) — women in the middle of the pack have sexual access to alpha males and can deploy that sex in an effort (usually a futile one) to try to snag an alpha into committing to them. These women are, in effect, punching well above their weight in sexual terms, much higher than they would in a monogamy system — so they are the real beneficiaries, together with the alphas, of the current system. I think that as women age and realize that the idea of snagging an alpha commitment is not going to materialize, they can begin to see that having so many women throwing themselves at these guys sexually really hurts the ability of themselves to find mates in numerous ways: (1) it makes it harder for these women themselves to be attracted to and bond with men of their own SMV level, because they are used to punching above their weight, (2) many of the men in their own level are not as interested in them knowing that they have been screwing alphas in their early 20s and (3) the guys often improve their own participation in the market as they age to 30 and beyond, thereby making these same age and level women even less attractive to them. I think therefore that the attitude of at least some women towards the current scenario changes as their life experiences begin to add up and as they themselves begin to age.
In summary, the current set up favors (1) alpha males and (2) middle of the pack women. It disfavors: (1) most males, (2) the females both at the top of the pack and the ones who are below the middle of the pack — both of these sets of women will have a harder time in this dating/mating setup than the middle of the pack women. And, in the long run, as the mid-pack women age out of the highest SMV levels, and are more serious about commitment, the current system begins to turn against them. It never, however, turns against alpha males — they win the whole way through. And that’s why it’s foolish to think that they will be incented to change their behavior or even the system as a whole. Only women can really change it, by reinstituting sexual morality among themselves. But that seems also to be unlikely precisely because the mid-pack women in their early 20s are “benficiaries†of the system in the sense that it gives them at least a “shot†at snagging an alpha to themselves. That’s why the system is becoming entrenched, really.
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
Question, simply because I don’t follow, and it wasn’t elaborated here: how are women below the middle of the pack disadvantaged by the status quo? Presumably, they’d normally end up with men below the middle, as well; how has that changed?
Thanks.
I wrote a comment on this in the “My Kingdom for a Piece of Tail” thread.
Will –
I think what happens with the women below the middle of the pack is a kind of mirror, to a significantly lesser extent, to what happens with the women in the middle of the pack, but with lesser men. So, while the mid-pack women are after the alphas (and get them for sex) the lower pack women are after the mid-pack men — able to get them at times for sex, but not for commitment.
The main difference, I think, is that a good number of the mid-pack men won’t sex down to the low-pack women, and would rather opt for x-box and ESPN. That doesn’t happen with the alphas and the mid-pack women because the mid-pack women are still at least cute and often attractive, just not 8+. So an alpha is still attracted to a cute 6 or 7. A midpack guy, though, is often more at the “cut off”, in that the women of his own SMV are probably about the lowest on the scale that he’s attracted to — and there are limits as to how far “down” he will reach, even if sex is on offer. This varies by the guy, of course, and there are enough guys who will do so, but there are also plenty of guys in the mid-pack who, if they are relegated to 4s and below, will choose x-box. That doesn’t really happen with the alpha males and midpack women.
Now of course, the lower pack women could simply stay within their own band of attractiveness and seek commitment there — and some of them do this even today, of course. The current system doesn’t really prevent that, but at the same time because some of them can reach up towards the mid-pack men, that creates similar disincentives for them to reach parallel to their own level men. In all, I think that they suffer less than the high SMV women, but the “I prefer the x-box to the women who are available to me” thing is what has a negative impact here.
Ah, gotcha. Thanks!
Well if this uplifting piece doesn’t convince me to just shoot up heroin, than I don’t know what will.
Would it be inappropriate to postulate that mid-range women are also deluded into believing they can reach high alpha ala the cultural signals they’re given: Sexy in the City’s fugly Sarah Jessica snagging Mr. Big and bland Mary Sue level women swinging from alpha vampire dick?
I disagree that women’s ultimate goal is a committed monogamous relationship defined by sexual loyalty or that any of them are “hurt” by the current situation; this is an androcentric viewpoint. For women a committed relationship is not defined in terms of sex but the man’s time/resources/emotions, and so most women will simply delude themselves that the alpha really wants to commit to her but for some reason “doesn’t know what he wants”, etc. And so for women, even if they are part of a de facto harem (or even a groupie) they won’t see it this way, but will instead see it as a quasi-committed relationship where they will potentially be the woman to beat out the other women in winning the alpha prize.
That first paragraph is brilliant. I’m not sure where the idea that men were responsible for “slut-shaming” came from, but it’s falling apart before my eyes. Feminism would do well to accept responsibility where due.