I’m going to introduce a new word, and motion that we retire the less appropriate uses of old ones. That word is ochlogamy. As awkward-sounding as the word may be, it’s the perfect word to describe the modern sexual marketplace, more appropriate than “soft polygamy” and “hypergamy”, terms that are commonplace today.
The Roissy-sphere uses “soft polygamy” to describe the nightmarish opposite-sex scene, as if a reversion to pre-monogamous norms were in motion. This is partially correct. Polygynous “alpha” males are becoming more imposing every year, increasing the scope of their damage, while “beta” and “gamma” males are being squeezed out. However, polygamy has a certain officiality that is not present on the modern casual-sex market. Moreover, it’s more appropriate to call it polygyny, as the sexual market is only weakly polyandrous, hence the large number of men it leaves with nothing. Yet if this market were traditionally polygynous, each woman involved would be sleeping with a single alpha exclusively, which is not the case. No secret harems exist, and slutty women definitely double-dip. Women who participate in the casual-sex market are not even serially monogamous, but are permitted, due to the anonymity of large urban communities, to offer themselves to the entire set of “alpha” males of their acquaintance. It’s much like “dating the football team”, but with the “teammates” often not knowing each other.
So, what do we call this shit? One might consider invoking the impractical concept known as polyamory, but this makes an outright absurd assumption that love (amour) is involved in the modern sexual marketplace, when it’s clearly not. The sexual marketplace is about social status, not love or even sex as an end in itself.
Probably the most accurate word used to describe the sexual marketplace is hypergamy, asserting that women offer themselves to the men who hold the highest status. According to a certain notion of hypergamy, we’d expect a similar configuration to what we observe: a few alpha males in (possibly nonexclusive) sexual possession of a large number of women, and a large number of men with little or no sexual access. However, the problem with the word hypergamy is that it’s too vague and morally neutral. There’s good hypergamy and bad hypergamy. If women were most strongly attracted to men of integrity, intelligence, and compassion, that would be a good form of “hypergamy”. When women are attracted to men based on an empty and pestilent notion of social dominance, as seen in the world of “game”, that’s a very bad form of hypergamy. The nefarious existing variety of hypergamy– whereby men are encouraged to be boorish, aggressive, and borderline criminal “alphas” and “badboys”– on the modern sexual market is a symptom of the underlying problem, but not this subculture’s defining characteristic.
Now I’m going to discuss ochlocracy, a style of “government” that often emerges in a lawless state. Literally meaning “rule by the mob”, it describes an undesirable political arrangement in which power is held by those who, in a society with enforced laws, would be called “organized crime”. In an ochlocratic society, might makes right. Not surprisingly, the criminal underworld has a distinct ochlocratic flavor, with disputes being resolved by private agents of brutality (hit men) rather than in the court system. The social collapse observed in post-Soviet Russia illustrates the dangers of ochlocracy, which leads to diminished life expectancy, increased crime, declining standards of living, and wide disparities of economic and social fortune.
Monogamy is the sexual counterpart of democracy. It’s designed to enfranchise nearly everyone, so that no one has a stake in upsetting or destroying the common peace. By contrast, traditional polygamy is the counterpart of aristocracy– a few “entitled” people are allowed to have disproportionate sexual access; there is also a small yeoman (“beta”) class with some access, freedom, and enfranchisement; and most people are peasants who have none. Now consider the modern state of opposite-sex relations in large cities, where loving relationships are falling out of favor while “arrangements” become more common. The destruction of sexual mores during the Sexual Revolution, coupled with the rise of malignant, empty elitism, has brought about a sexual regime that is certainly not monogamous or democratic, but it’s not aristocratic either, since the “alpha” class is fluid and determined according to a man’s boorishness– in other words, his willingness to break social norms. This is the essence of an ochlocratic environment. The “alpha” males are the ones who figured out that (1) the sociosexual marketplace is relatively lawless, and (2) that they can profit immensely by behaving in ways that would be criminalized by a more lawful society (e.g. one in which casual sex were properly shamed).
Hence we have ochlogamy, a fluid sociosexual configuration in which stable relationships are uncommon, and sexual access is mediated by a fluctuating notion of social status that correlates most highly to a person’s willingness to behave in a way that a more proper arrangement would consider shameful and criminal. It’s the world of “game”, and unless we can bring back or reinvent sexual mores, it’s not going away.
“If women were most strongly attracted to men of integrity, intelligence, and compassion, that would be a good form of “hypergamy”.[…]”
You say that because you think these are attributes that you possess as opposed to the attributes that matter.
How can you doubt the process that got us here in the first place?
If you really are intelligent, why don’t you use that intelligence to your advantage?
Your intelligence is a ‘skill’ in the dating market the same way being famous or being rich is.
to select for ‘Social Dominance’ is good, because it can be archived in so many different ways. Even if you weren’t one of the lucky ones with good genes or born into wealth/high status.
This is why ‘Game’ is good for people like you: the (seemingly) intelligent Beta. ‘Game’ is the great equalizer.
You may not be blond, 6 foot tall 200 pound muscle, but you should be smart enough to understand the fundamental principles of the female selective process and act accordingly, to archive whatever realistic goal you have in mind.
It all depends on what you want. If you to get laid more often, the Game can help you do that. But if you want a lasting, meaningful relationship leading to a lifelong companionship with someone of worthy and excellent character then Game is highly, highly unlikely to help you achieve that—if only because the women who are attracted to Game are, on average, of low moral character.
Game succeeds on its own terms. But I play for higher stakes. This is my blessing—and my curse.
Ochlogamy… It’s just too hard to pronounce. LOL.
For a taste of it, go down to Annapolis harbor on a Saturday night. We were there this weekend. *shakes head in disbelief*
I would say that monogamy wasn’t really “democracy” — at least not for women. It was more like sexual socialism for men, which was more or less forced on women.
I think you need to realize that men and women have different interests in the mating game. Left in a state-of-nature, most males of most species do not mate. That suits the females of most species just fine, because they all get to mate, and they get to mate with the “best” males. Females only rarely go lacking for mating, whereas it is typical in nature for most males to go without mating.
In our species this underlying flow is still present, even though we evolved to pair bond due to the substantial parental investment required for our young. Hunter-gatherer societies were, and are, remarkably pair-bond oriented because they are egalitarian — there isn’t that much hierarchy among the men, which inhibits hypergamy from really taking root. Once agriculture and civilization come along, however, stratification comes back with a vengeance and this of course creates huge hypergamic pressures in women. The strong power of the strong men in this society resulted in quite a bit of enforced polygamy, which was likely just fine with most of the women at the time. Again, they get to mate, and with the big man and partake of his resources instead of being stuck with some schmuck in a tent somewhere.
Eventually of course this is unstable, because too many men go without, leading to unrest, social disturbance and so on. But in order to counter the hypergamic, polygynous pressure in an inherently stratified society, you need to *impose* monogamy. It is very much, and in every way, an imposition on women, and goes against the sexual/mating interests of the female sex, as a class. Almost certainly the re-imposition of monogamous pair bonds in the stratified setting was a peace bond among men which was forced on the women. It is a kind of sexual socialism among men in which women are the “goods” which are parceled out among the men.
And so understandably women chafed under this system. It goes against their prime mating instinct, which is hypergamy. So, in order to reinforce the system, female sexuality and sexual instincts were suppressed. With belts and suspenders. Church, social custom, law, mores, all bent in on women to desexualize them, and suppress their sexual urges and natures. This was specifically to counter what was well realized by our forebears to be the biggest threat to the system of universal monogamous pair bonds: female sexual and mating preferences, which in a stratified system, are hypergamous, meaning most women will not be satisfied with a monogamous system which leaves them with the schmuck in the tent.
The rebellion of women against this system in the 20th century was simply their sex finally rebelling against the imposition of monogamous pair bonding on them in the context of a stratified society. Of course this leads to a mess. The reason for that is that our entire civilization was balanced on the fulcrum of monogamous pair bonding. Women paid the price for that, and the society as a whole gained the benefit. The individual, or even collective, sexual/mating interests of women run counter to the basis of our civilization, which is precisely why, once those interests were unleashed, we have seen the civilization markedly decline in quality. This doesn’t mean women are “bad” or “evil” — it just means that where female hypergamous tendencies are not reined in or regulated in a stratified context, the civilization will tend to stall out because of the impact this has on most men. That’s where we differ from animals, by the way — we are civilized. And a sine qua non of our civilization as homo sapiens in the system of sexual socialism among men known as monogamous pair bonding.
What we are seeing today, for the first time in history likely, is how hypergamy operates in a system which is largely egalitarian. In other words, in our culture, women are now competing with men for resource acquisition and wealth building, status building and so on. So what we are seeing is not that women are ditching hypergamy, but rather that the qualities at which their hypergamous selection apparatus are directed have changed. In an agricultural society, hypergamy was attracted to the strong man with the resources and the muscle and power to back that up. In our egalitarian society, that is not needed by women, but their hypergamous nature still seeks to sift among men, somehow, so as to comfort themselves that they are making mating choices that, at least in their own minds, satisfy some “optimal”. Generally this will tend to seek out whatever qualities among men are “rarer” but still dominant. So, in agricultural days, wealth and power were both rare and dominant. Today, not so much, because the women have their own wealth and power. So selection looks elsewhere to find qualities in men that are both rare-ish and dominant — hence socio-sexual dominance becoming a primary mate selection criterion for women today. Women simply need *something* to use to sift among men for mating, and that *something* must be rare-ish (so it can be sifted for) and dominant (so it can be desirable per hypergamy). It really is as simple as that. In our current setting with feminism and its aftermath having feminized most of the men in our culture to one degree or other it is almost a given that women will be selecting for the men who have not been feminized in that way, because these men will be both rare and dominant.
Disagree. Just as men have r-selective and K-selective tendencies, so do women. You’re describing the “hypergamous” (or, as I would say, ochlogamous) r-selective female. My point is that there’s another way, the one taken by the good girls.
The r-selective male tendency is to gamble for social status. The winners become the alphas and the losers become gammas (or get killed). The K-selective tendency is to form a pair bond with a highly desirable partner of middling social status and raise successful children in a monogamous family setting.
In women, the r-selective tendency is to enter the harem and rise to the top of it (alpha female), making her children legitimate heirs, who inherit the father’s status, and the other womens’ children by him bastards, who will not. If she fails and ends up in the bottom of the harem, she’s a low-status gamma and her children face paternal neglect and low social status.
The K-selective “beta female” wants to find a highly desirable and loyal “beta” male who, due to his monogamous commitment to the relationship, will invest heavily in the offspring. If he is genetically as fit as the alphas (which high betas, such as I, usually are) he will provide both good genes and good parenting– the optimal combination.
K-selectors are, in a sense, arbitrageurs working to “beat the market”. (Actually, this has more in common with fundamental than technical analysis, but this crude metaphor isn’t worth taking to this extent.) They’re trying to find high-betas who are as desirable and genetically fit as the alphas, but chose to avoid the crude, dangerous, and damaging physical and social competition necessary to establish oneself as the alpha. And yes, such men and women exist.
Monogamy is like democracy in the sense that it keeps every man enfranchised. Not to be crass, but consider the ability to have children analogous to “votes” in the reproductive “election”. One man, one vote. One man, one woman.
It’s democracy among men, Cless, but not among women. Monogamy is the system that ensures most men of mates. Women will mate, regardless of the system, and under non-monogamy, many women will mate genetically better than they would under monogamy, relatively speaking. The trade-off for women is that under non-monogamy there may be less male parental investment and resources available, but that’s a very different trade-off than the one faced by men — which is basically the trade-off between mating and not mating.
The trade-off for women is that under non-monogamy there may be less male parental investment and resources available
This is basically true.
And if you could eavesdrop on a high-beta women’s group discussing a member’s recent divorce it usually centers around one topic: What kind of father was he? If he was a “good” father we’re more inclined to take his side in the debate, even if he was a less-than-ideal husband.
If the couple is childless most of us will just shrug and change the subject. Women invest (wittingly or not) in marriage for the “sake of the children”. It’s rarely for the money (I was earning more than my husband when we married) or for the sex (easy enough to get).
This is why the divorce rate for couples with children is lower than that for childless couples, although still appallingly high.
Stated another way … if the k-selecting women are, as you say, all trying to find high betas who are as genetically desirable as the alphas without the alpha downsides, this *still* leaves most women with the schmuck in the tent under a system of monogamy, because there are also relatively small numbers of such high beta males. It’s a wider pool than the socially dominant alpha males, but even taken together with the alpha males, represents in the aggregate a minority of men. Meaning that the rest of the mass of women who would be paired up with the schmucks in the tents under a monogamous system are better off being wife 2 or 3 to a high beta or alpha than they are under monogamy.
Monogamy is a male-oriented system, full stop. There’s a reason why women were the ones to rebel against it.
Social and economic hierarchies tend toward pyramidal shapes, with a few men at the top and most men at the base. This occurs even if the people are completely equal in talent and genetic fitness, for technical reasons that can be explained using economics, game theory, and mathematics (I can get into more detail if you want, but after 7pm because it’d be a long post and I’m working now.)
Genetic fitness has an inverse-pyramidal shape. There’s a tail of people who are in very poor health or have genetic problems, but the bulk of healthy people are “pretty damn good” from an evolutionary standpoint (keep in mind that a 100-IQ, physically fit, 5’9 “average Joe” would be a hot commodity during the paleolithic).
So the schmucks in the tents are rare– maybe 5-10% of men– so full-on monogamy does not leave the majority of women settling such men.
When I say “schmucks in the tents” I mean every guy who is not one of the alphas/high-betas that all women would prefer to mate with, either under an r-drive or K-drive selection scheme. Women will “settle” for lesser men if they are *forced* to do so. Under the old regime, this happened due to the institution of enforced polygamy — it forced most men and women into marriages relatively early due to social shaming for contrarian behaviors. Under the current system, this shaming no longer exists, so we currently see the frenzy of the 20s (with women competing either on an r-drive or K-drive basis for the men who are most desirable based on those respective drives) followed by women “settling” (or not) beginning in the mid-30s and later.
Our current system is a hybrid, because while it is largely de facto polygynous, at least at the lower age ranges, it is nevertheless de jure a “soft monogamy” system (i.e., monogamy which is easily dissolved legally and without social shame). So most people do still “pair up”, at least for a certain period of their lives, while the overall tenor of the system as a whole is still de facto polygynous. Monogamy as a norm has not been completely thrown out, but has been diluted substantially, resulting in the current system. I suspect that a system of diluted monogamy coupled with de facto polygyny suits most women (r or K) better than a system of hard monogamy does, whereas for men it is the reverse.
… due to the institution of enforced monogamy, *not* polygamy. Ugh. More coffee needed in the morning it seems.
sexual socialism
The problem with sexual socialism or ochlogamy is that either under situation, I’m stuck with the ugly and unwanted women, so I’m left with no incentive to support either system…
One point of clarification.
Hypergamy is always present as a selecting factor, whether the social order is egalitarian or not. However, the hypergamous pressures on mating differ depending on context.
So, in the hunter-gatherer example, it operates and selects from a relatively narrow band of differentiation among the males, based on abilities to hunt and provide and so on, because these societies are still characterized by sex-based roles. So that is the selection criterion.
In a society like ours which is both hierarchical *and* male/female egalitarian, hypergamy will not select based on specific “things” a man can bring to the table, because women can just as easily do so themselves — because it is male/female egalitarian. In that setting, hypergamy will select other traits among men that are both rare and dominant, which is what we see happening today.
Disagree with the claimed analogy to democracy.
Democracy is an unjust system where we give everyone an equal vote, even though some, probably even “many”, people are exceedingly ignorant about the matters they are voting on. Unchecked, we have tyranny of the majority.
It is absurd that we give everyone the same number of votes. Some people deserve more votes than others, based on a broad swath of criteria.
It is also an absurd system in that the impact of the marginal vote is zero. A rational agent would rarely or perhaps never vote.
Overall, voting is often a poor way to make decisions.
Monogamy has little or nothing to do with democracy. The argument for monogamy stems from the idea that human society advances through economic, scientific, and technological progress now, not through evolution/natural selection. Yet, people are still strongly motivated by hormones that tell them to have sex and make babies. We want to channel this natural human motivation into a productive avenue rather than an unproductive avenue. To put it bluntly, a man who is sexually disenfranchised is a bad worker bee.
To argue for monogamy on the grounds that every man “deserves” or “has a right to” a woman is foolish. Some men do not deserve any women! (Likewise, some men do not deserve a vote in the political arena.)
The system tends to be much more complex than that. Although every man has a vote, not everyone participates in voting. The young disproportionately do not vote. There are also criminals and permanent residents who are disenfranchised.
I do not think anyone truly argues that monogamy is about every man “deserving” a woman. Monogamy is a system that that seems to foster the most “stability.” Although stability is not the best thing for genetic advancement, people tend to choose it over the alternatives.
To put it bluntly, a man who is sexually disenfranchised is a bad worker bee.
I certainly agree with this.
The main issue is this — we have, as a civilization, embarked on an experimental journey to see whether we can sustain ourselves as a civilization without a strong monogamy as one of our foundational bases. People disagree as to whether we will succeed at that, and those of us who are living now, and our children’s and grandchildren’s generations, will live to see who is right about this debate.
No disagreement there, but why on earth would anyone want to conduct such a vile experiment? It’d be like the “experimental journey” of starving myself for 6 days to see if I survive. Sure, it’d be interesting to know, but I have no desire to find out.
Because women demanded that monogamy be relaxed, Cless. It’s no mystery as to who was involved in changing the laws and the social climate, and who was driving that bus — it was mostly women. Women as a group seem to prefer soft monogamy — that is, some norms of monogamy with a lot of flexibility to remate and so on — what we have today. We’ll see if it works to sustain civilization or not over the next few generations, but I think we know why we have the system we do today.
I half-agree. I think some very bad men and women had a hand in it. I think more of the people involved were probably women, although the greatest beneficiaries have been evil men.
Definitely. The men were sitting in the legislatures that changed the laws and so on, and were also driving the culture as well, that’s correct. The thing is, though, that the top men win under any system — they just win *bigger* under a soft monogamy system. Robert Wright, in his book “The Moral Animal”, describes our current system as “serial monogamy/de facto polygyny”, which is pretty much correct, I think.
Cless:
Do you differentiate between an Evil Alpha who is popular with women and a Good Alpha who is popular with women, or does being popular with women and getting laid alot automatically make you a bad person?
I don’t believe in separating the world into bad/evil and good/saintly people. Nobody is truly good or bad. We’re all fallible beings who are either fighting to improve or lazily enjoying our imperfection. That is the key difference.
But I think promiscuous behavior does count as “bad” in every case.
I don’t know Black &German.
I have no idea what you mean by promiscious behaviour. Serial monogamy? lots of one night stands? Any sex that is not within marriage, even though given the marital laws today by that standard I’m not sure I can recommend the majority of men ever have sex then.
Casual and impersonal sex, especially that outside of a committed and monogamous relationship.
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