Hypergamy Isn’t Quite What The Fable Says It Is

Hypergamy. Alpha Fucks and Beta Bucks. It’s a core idea of the Sphere. Women pursue a bi-polar sexual strategy: they want a reliable, low-maintenance, provider to pay the bills, take care of the kids and haul the heavy freight (Beta Bucks), and they want excitement, tingles and random emotions with some sex thrown in (Alpha Fucks). The usual theory, taken straight from the pornographic tendency of echo-psycho, is that women are attracted to men with Good Genes, dominant Alpha male, hunter-fighter-winner types who will breed strong sons and beautiful daughters from them. So they get pregnant by the Alpha and fool the Beta into raising the children.

This fable causes large-scale reality-field distortions in nearly everyone who comes near it.

Because the truth is that most women who fool around, don’t fool around with evo-psycho approved Alpha Males. They fool around with douchebags, losers, low-income musicians and artists, drug addicts and drunks, the local Lotharios of the holiday town, with other married men, and with men who don’t stay for breakfast and even the occasional PUA. Women have sex for two hundred and thirty seven different reasons, many of which barely made sense to them at the time.

They choose losers and abusers for two reasons: first, they can’t hack the competition for the small number of over-subscribed Alphas; second, they don’t want to threaten the relationship that exists in their heads with their Beta Provider, so they don’t have flings with men who are viable partners. They choose losers and douchebags because they don’t want to feel that could be doing better than their Beta, as that would then cause them to regard him with contempt for not being as good as the next guy, and then to regard themselves with contempt for staying with him when they could do better. That then re-doubles back on the Beta Hubby, because it’s his fault she feels self-contempt. Not hers for tasting the forbidden fruit and being an ingrate.

 

(Not the Alpha she’s fooling around with) 

For additional silliness, add the assumption that women are good judges of breeding stock. If this is so - and the really crude evo-psycho theories assume it - then apparently douchebags, unemployed artists, drug addicts and all sorts of other people whose phenotypical behaviour screams “unsuitable” in fact have excellent genotypes. Which they do, if “excellent genotype” means “breeds douchebags, heroin addicts, bi-polars and low impulse control”. Maybe losers, abusers, drunks and violent men are the true inheritors of the Earth, and this civilised society thing is a dreadful evolutionary mistake.

Or not.

Maybe many women are just dreadful at spotting a good partner - which explains why 30% of them get fed up with their choice within 10 years and divorce him. Maybe many women know a good deal when they see him putting food in the cupboard, petrol in the tank, clothes in the wardrobe and mowing the lawn, and are smart enough not to threaten that for the sake of some sex and cheap thrills, so they fool around with “the bad boys, the cool boys, the commitment-phobic boys, the crazy boys”, all the unsuitable boys. Maybe female choice is not what makes an Alpha male - after all, in nature for the animals that do the Alpha thing (which is not many of them), the females just stand around and wait for the males to decide who’s the Alpha.

Maybe many women are morally flawed, emotionally dysfunctional and, when you get past the glamours, have un-attractive personalities. Maybe there aren’t that many Good Women out there, not now, in the present exact conditions of really existing Capitalism. Maybe there never were, and they behaved themselves in public for fear of shame, inside their houses, they made the lives of their husband and children a sheer hell of indifference, contempt and sarcasm. Maybe it was always like it is now, except now, men don’t have to marry any of them.

(Renton. Mark Renton. Who she really fools around with) 

The practical problem for many men is that they don’t want to be jerks, freeloaders, clowns and drama-triggers, and they don’t want to be around women who choose that kind of second-rate phenotype. They would rather believe they were being rejected because they weren’t James Bond, than because they weren’t Mark Renton. They are being rejected for casual relationships because they are husband material and the girls don’t want husbands yet.

Hypergamy is rarely Alpha Fucks and Beta Bucks. Mostly, it’s Asshole Fucks and Beta Bucks. When put like that, it may be even more threatening. It’s one thing to get James Bond’s girl when he’s finished with her, but to get Mark Renton’s girl when he’s finished with her? Not so palatable. And that’s why evo-pyscho sells: it’s much easier on everyone’s ego.