Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11
In the first post of this series, I discussed the history of my sex and relationship theorizing. In the second post, I discussed the duality of women's sexual response and the concept of hypergamy. In this post, I'll discuss "The Field", or the figurative playground where people meet, get to know each other, and hook up. I will also discuss how we determine our relative "value" and how that influences our mate selection.
In the first post of this series, I discussed the history of my sex and relationship theorizing. In the second post, I discussed the duality of women's sexual response and the concept of hypergamy. In this post, I'll discuss "The Field", or the figurative playground where people meet, get to know each other, and hook up. I will also discuss how we determine our relative "value" and how that influences our mate selection.
The Field
For those familiar with The Red Pill community, this is often referred to as the "sexual market place." I like using the term "The Field" as a form of shorthand, so they'll be used interchangeably. Like any marketplace, your value is determined by the market, which consists of all the people actively or passively looking for a mate within your sphere of existence. There's a degree of variability for each individual that's playing the field because they will have characteristics that are more appealing to some and less appealing to others. Regardless, it only takes a small group to come to a reliable assessment of your value.
Men pretty much universally look for the same basic set of characteristics in women - facial symmetry, a waist-to hip ratio of around 0.7, shiny hair, full breasts, a clear complexion, and youth (women's peak fertility usually occurs around the early 20's.) Society may pile on more, such as specific body weight (though rail-think is NOT desired by most men... that's actually a female fallacy), piercings or tattoos, clothing style, etc. Think of all the things women do to look more attractive. Those are the things she does to increase her perceived value on the open market.
Women, as I discussed in part two, ideally look for an alpha male (attractive, fit, confident, outgoing, funny, charming, assertive, etc.) with beta traits (compassionate, loyal, patient, caring, etc.) Since those males are rare, they carry a VERY high value. Only the highest value females (i.e. - a "10" with a good personality) can attract these males. The next tier of women will seek out alphas and try to convert them to betas -or- settle for a high value (literally a rich dude.) The rest pretty much fall in line with roughly approximate matching.
How Value Changes Over Time
This is where the concept gets fascinating. If we allow ourselves to make generalizations, we can plot both sex's "sexual market value" over time when each is playing the field. In the last post, I mentioned Rollo Tomassi. He produced an excellent graphic that more or less illustrates this point. It can be found by following the link to his "The Rational Male" blog:
The graph represents both genders' ballpark value as they progress through life. Remember, the higher the value a person is, the higher the value of the person they can expect to attract. As you can see, women peak early then fade rather fast. They peak (at a relative score of 10) around 23 or so. By 30, their value drops by about half. By 40, their value plummets to 2.
Men don't peak until around 36 then slowly drops off. Even at 50, men still rate as a 5. "Why is this" you ask?
Biology.
And money.
When playing the field, men want attractiveness which is a proxy for fertility. For women that peaks in the early 20's. Not at all surprisingly, our society fawns over women at this age. Women in their early 20's have the pick of the litter between any alphas (for fun) or older betas (for commitment if they want to settle down.) Since attractiveness is women's principle asset on the open market, value fades with attractiveness. They lose the ability to attract the best alphas, then the lower alphas, then the best betas, until finally they're limited to either really old alphas or really shitty betas.
Men, on the other hand, reach a peak much later but fade slower. Since women not only look for attractiveness (which also peaks in the early 20's and doesn't have as much weight as female attractiveness for assessing value), but also their ability to be providers. Since men tend to improve their socioeconomic standing as they age, they hit a sweet spot between rising SES and falling attractiveness somewhere around their mid-30's.
Implications
For our ancestors, this system worked pretty well. It also established a trend of older men pairing up with younger women, both near their peak. Indeed, we see this effect even today. This is the reason college-aged women tend to date older men. This is the reason older men leave their wives for their young, sexy secretary. This is the reason the "look younger" cosmetic market exists (artificially increases women's attractiveness as they age.) This is the reason guys are so willing to buy status symbols like cars and fancy suits (artificially increases the perception of their ability to provide.) We go to great lengths to increase our value on the sexual market.
However, we currently experience a handful of social trends that upset this a bit. The most obvious is the career woman that puts off marriage and child-rearing until her mid-to-late 30's. If she gets married at 37, she's a full fourteen years past her fertility (and attractiveness) peak. Her value on the open market is going to be a fraction of what it once was. Not only has she decreased all the way down to a "2" on the market (thus meaning a 60 year-old guy would have the same value), but all of her male cohorts are going for the much higher value younger women. In essence, her dating pool has eroded far more than she would have expected. Indeed, I've known women that did just this, then lament on the absolute barren market for the men they expected to be able to land.
This trend has been somewhat negated by an increased promotion of beta characteristics in men. This is most notable by recognizing the "get in touch with your feminine side" teachings. This subtle shift in the proportion of alphas to betas means there are less alphas for the younger women, but more betas for the older women. Again, it's supply and demand. Greater economic success for women has created a bigger need for betas.
It's worth noting the very top women run into an entirely different issue in this system. If a woman is independently wealthy, she has zero need for a provider. As such, rich women will always prefer alphas (they're more sexually appealing.) However, alphas, per their alpha nature, kind of suck at long-term relationships. Rich women can attract very high value men, but those men are likely to cheat or leave after the honeymoon period wears off. Unless, of course, she can break his alpha ways.
Oppression Versus Protection
Speaking of those independently wealthy women....
One of the greatest changes of the last fifty or sixty years has been the breaking of barriers for equal opportunity for women in our society. I am an ardent supporter of equal rights across the board for all members of a society. Having said that, I think we've made a very, very big mistake in attribution.
Since the beginning of the equal rights movement, gender equality has been predicated on the idea that men have actively oppressed women to hoard power. Women were made second-class citizens. It's difficult if not impossible to argue women were placed on a rung below men with issues like voting and property rights. Was oppression really the intent, though?
In The Myth of Male Power, Warren Farrell discusses the hypothesis that men didn't subjugate women for power, society (fueled by biological size differences) set up a system where women would exchange protection for affection. When I first read the theory, it made no sense. Then I started recounting my history classes (I was a history major along with psych, though I would not recommend it as a field of study.) This idea started to make a lot of sense.
Looking back over American history, it's easy to see how women were oppressed. However, this has not been the case throughout history. In some cultures, women enjoyed true equality or even led the society. What was different about these more equal societies?
There were generally two things that set them apart. First, they perceived themselves as relatively safe. They didn't have immediate threats of invasion, wars, or tribal in-fighting. In other words, there was no need for physical protection.
Second, many openly embraced the idea of allowing women to train to fight. Embarrassingly, I didn't pick up on this until watching the History Channel's 'Vikings.' Lagertha, for whom both Shelly and I have a serious crush for, is a sheildmaiden that fights alongside the men and eventually held the title of "earl." Yes, she's a fictional character on a fictional show, but the point is historically-accurate - societies became more gender-equal when women were given the same opportunities and responsibilities as men.
Both of these concepts could probably serve as either/ or conditions to bring about true gender equality, but this isn't even a consideration among contemporary gender rights activists. We're too hell-bent on blaming men as oppressors. Instead, we should take a step back, survey the actual mechanics of the situation, and try a new approach.
But Don't We Live in a Safe Environment Now?
When I bring up this issue, the retort almost always involves the claim that we live in one of the safest environments in the history of mankind. Indeed, we do... but we don't perceive it as such. According to the newspapers, evening news, and Facebook memes, our society is on the bring of extinction from vaccines, chemicals in the air and water, climate change, terrorists, lead paint, the sun, etc. In other words, we're really good at generating irrational fear.
I would argue that irrational fear defeats the first of my gender equality conditions. If we think the world is a scary place, we're doing to try to feel safe. How do we feel safe? We revert back to our drives that evolved over tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of years - men that can protect women make women wet, and men feel the drive to give their lives to protect said women.
I would also argue our need as men to protect women and women's need to feel protected by men inhibits our desire to actually prepare women to face danger. For this, I have personal experience. For the last two years, Shelly has been training jiu jitsu and boxing with a little mma added for good measure. She's also physically strong. The result? She could kick many guys' asses. As her husband, that creates a noticeable effect - I feel far less desire to protect her. It could be walking down the street, her getting into a disagreement at the checkout line at the grocery store, or it could even be an online argument. The more capable she becomes at defending herself, the less drive I feel to protect her.
Does this happen on a wider scale, though?
I think it does.
I have some female friends that have advanced pretty far up the corporate ladder. I asked a few of them about their experiences framed within this "protection" idea. I would predict the "glass ceiling" isn't made up of men that want to maintain their good 'ole boys club because they want to maintain power. I would predict the glass ceiling exists because being at the top of the corporate ladder is a shitty-ass (but well-compensated) job. CEOs of companies basically commit their lives to their job, which often includes making ridiculous sacrifices to their personal lives. Men don't want women in those positions because they're shitty positions. It's protection, not oppression.
Sounds outlandish, right?
Let's take a look at the other end - the glass cellar. You're not as familiar with that term, right. That's because nobody likes to talk about it because it confirms the protection hypothesis, thus disproves the oppression hypothesis. The glass cellar are those shitty, dangerous jobs we see on that "Dirty Jobs" program. Almost without exception, these jobs are held by men. They don't have the high pay and perks of the corporate ladder jobs, but they do have significant risk. Whereas the corporate jobs have social and familial caveats, these glass cellar jobs are dangerous because there's a decent chance you're going to get seriously hurt or killed. Think lumberjack, garbage person, roofers, high rise steel workers, truck drivers, or coal miners. Yes, there are some women in these careers, but few women want the jobs and few men want women to take the jobs... and it ain't because of the power these positions hold.
The key to gender equality isn't destroying gender roles. The key to gender equality is creating a safe world and supporting women's efforts to be able to protect themselves. Then and only then can we truly achieve gender equality. Altering, modifying, or vilifying masculinity may produce more beta males for the women on the down slope of their market value, but a far better solution might be to actively teach everyone to use both masculine and feminine characteristics depending on the situation. For males, we already know mastering both gender roles dramatically increases their sexual market value. For females, encouraging masculine characteristics also decreases their drive to feel protected by a man and decreases men's drive to protect women. It would be a win-win all around.
Conclusion
In this part of the series, I introduced the idea of "The Field" or sexual marketplace, how all of us has a sexual value that increases then decreases with age, the implications of this difference, and the true nature of gender roles. In part four, I'll tackle love. Specifically, how do men and women experience love. Is it similar? Different? The source of unmeasurable angst?
Tune in to find out!
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Thoroughly enjoying this series, Jason.
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