Hypergamy. The word is part of the common vernacular of the men’s movement, though you’ll find precious few people in the mainstream who know what it means. And however obscure its meaning may be to the average person, for the community of men daring to see themselves outside the box, it is a very important idea to understand.
If you have been around the red pill world for any length of time, you have heard of hypergamy. Defined literally, it is not very complicated. It means a woman marrying a man of a higher caste or social status. It’s counterpart word, hypogamy, describes women who marry beneath their means. All three of them.
In our community, we look past the literal definition and use an expanded understanding of hypergamy to describe a range of behavioral traits that point to the natural inclination of women to pair bond their way into a better life. Hypergamy, when we are thinking from the neck up, is a constant reminder of what we are confronted with in women. Hopefully, in the fog of sexual attraction and emotional infatuation, it helps us to see women’s proclivities and motivations more clearly.
It’s important to note here that hypergamy, in the red pill definition, is about a lot more than money and personal power. And by that I mean it is about a lot more than what a woman is attracted to in men and who she is inclined to marry because women don’t just marry up, they also fuck up. In the realm of sociobiology, that points to cuckoldry as a manifestation of hypergamy.
Allow me to mansplain this. A woman finds herself a nice doctor or lawyer. He works hard, brings home the bacon, treats her with respect, doesn’t hit her, drink excessively, gamble money away or cheat on her. Most men, including those that pride themselves on having a good understanding of women, will look at this situation and see a woman disinclined toward infidelity. After all, she has it completely made. She comes from a good family. She has an abundant, even cushy home life, generous income that he works for, everything she could ever want all the way down to a massive walk-in closet full of clothes. No way she would cheat, right?
Wrong.
Women are most commonly driven to marry this kind of man for the security he can provide. That doesn’t mean those men are what women desire sexually. Some women will, in fact, restrain the desires fueled by sexual hypergamy. Many will not. And this is how the cuckold is born.
The New York Times Magazine reveals that 30% of men who pursue paternity testing because they are suspicious of whether they are actually the father find out their suspicions were warranted. Think about that. 30%. Nearly 1/3 of all men who suspect something is rotten on the home front turn out to be right. And what about all the men who never suspect and never test? Are we really to imagine that the only cuckoldry going on is in the men who wise up and start digging into the genetics?
What kind of world-shaking would be going on right now if every father in the world sought confirmation to their paternity? How many men would we find are going into offices, climbing behind the wheels of semis, driving the streets in squad cars and walking into coal mines every day to pay for the care of offspring that are not their progeny? How many men are now divorced, taking what is left of their paychecks after the courts garnish them into poverty, all for a child or children they did not father?
And that is just the financial consequences. The Times Magazine article cited playwright August Strindberg, who explored this topic well over a hundred years ago. And I quote from the article here: “The Father” is the story of a cavalry captain whose wife hints that he might not be the father of the daughter he adores. Consumed with doubt, he rages at his wife: “I have worked and slaved for you, your child, your mother, your servants . . . because I thought myself the father of your child. This is the commonest kind of theft, the most brutal slavery. I have had 17 years of penal servitude and have been innocent.” Unquote.
I really appreciated Strindberg’s recognition that his protagonist even recognized that he was indentured to the servants of the house as much as he was to the family that resided there, possibly even a child that was not his.
30 percent guys. 30 percent.And all because women are wired to better deal themselves with everything in life, with the possible exception of their professional lives.
Hypergamy plays a role in sending women outside their marriages for more sexually exciting adventures. And as many of you know, the psychological underpinnings of that drive in women is part of the reproductive strategy. Women are wired to reproduce. The drive in them to snag security, money, and power through men are just expressions of the same basic biology.
While I am not a rigid determinist (and don’t have much patience for them), you can’t deny the role of biology in leading women to select powerful, successful men that can provide the protection and provision seen to be beneficial to long-lasting reproductive success. In the same light, once that protection and provision has been corralled and controlled, it still makes sense that women would seek out and mate with physically superior male specimens, and even be willing to allow the duped dad to believe a big fat lie if it serves her biological mandate.
More telling information is hidden in plain view in marriage statistics. The average marriage lasts 8 years. Couples tend to wait a minimum of two years before having children. That points to the possibility that most divorces are initiated shortly after children start school, when the mother suddenly finds she has a lot more time on her hands, and just as the fathers income is starting the ascent toward the peak.
Now, as I often try to point out, none of this is stated to demonize women. Men have their own biological peccadillos, including some number of men who are married and keep producing children with women to whom they are not married. All moral judgments aside, men who lean toward viewing women through the rose colored glasses of romantic love, which is most of them, tend to remain clueless till the DNA results are in.
And that is if they are both smart enough and fortunate enough to get the test. As Carnell Smith of Paternityfraud.com informed us at ICMI 14 in Detroit, and I quote:“DNA should mean Do Not Ask. Because it is now illegal to even get a test and if you get a test without the mother’s permission you will be criminally prosecuted.”And it is not that the test even matters in most cases. There are 36 states in the US that won’t relieve duped dads of child support even if they can prove the child is not theirs.
To me, this is more evidence of the biological impetus behind hypergamy. It is a force strong enough to have resulted in state-sanctioned cuckoldry. Women want to better deal themselves and we give it to them.
I said earlier that one area where women tend to not better deal themselves is in employment. We have the evidence supporting that, even as a reason for the earnings gap between men and women.
Of course, I am just speculating here, but it occurs to me that salary negotiation is a part of the protector/provider skillset. Or, to be blunter, women tend not to negotiate salaries very well because in the realm of reproductive success, they don’t have to. The way women garner most of their resources is not through direct acquisition. It is through exploiting the production of resources in men.
They do it through the social paradigm that puts the financial onus on men to use their resources to attract women. They do it through divorce and they do it through cuckoldry. Hypergamy drives all of it.
Of course, what you do with this information is up to you. I’ve personally never let it drive me into isolation but I don’t have any harsh words for men that go that route. Whatever you do, guys, don’t be part of the 30% or in the unknown quantity of men who will never know. You deserve and have always deserved much better than that.
Paul Elam offers fee-for-service private consultations at anearformen.com. To support his video work onYouTube, you can become a patron via Patreon or subscribe/donate here.
