Hypergamic Affirmative Action.

The aeroplane is like a woman. To get the best out of her you have to seduce, not rape her.

(Attributed to a Polish pilot in WW2)

Over at Alpha Game, Vox noted the recent developments in Iran on the subject of gender relations. The Ayatollahs have begun to implement a social policy designed to push women out of the engineering professions. Incidentally, it's a very similar approach that has been advocated by many traditionalist bloggers in the manosphere. Vox writes:

Of course, the Iranian action presents a potentially effective means of solving the hypergamy problem presently beginning to affect college-educated women in the West. Only one-third of women in college today can reasonably expect to marry a man who is as well-educated as they are. History and present marital trends indicate that most of the remaining two-thirds will not marry rather than marry down. So, by refusing to permit women to pursue higher education, Iran is ensuring that the genes of two-thirds of its most genetically gifted women will survive in its gene pool.

Now, I have quite a lot of respect for Vox but I think he is totally wrong on this one. Hypergamy simply can't be socially engineered away, and the approach taken by the Ayatollahs and advocated by many in the manosphere i.e handicapping women in order to make second rate men look better is simply an affirmative action program for beta males.

The social, sexual and economic liberation of women in the latter half of the 20th Century has meant that for the first time women were able to compete with men in society without restriction. The result has been spectacular if not particularly beneficial to the happiness of women. Whilst not all degrees are created equal (men still overwhelming dominate the "hard" fields of knowledge) the fact that there are now more degree credentialed women than men is simply astonishing. As income is broadly correlated with economic well being,  its safe to assume that women have been able to achieve a economic parity with men. The manosphere may not like this result but the fact is that women have been able to effectively compete with men when the shackles of social convention have been removed.

In my experience, women today seem to have more "balls" than men do.  They seem more driven, more ambitious and can make stuff happen. They seem to cope better with adversity than many of my male patients.  With most women, life goes on. The kids need to be fed, the uniforms washed and the bills paid. Many men flounder. My readers may not like this but they are my objective observations.

I'm not applauding this phenomenon or deriding it but simply stating the fact of it. The fact is that there are many women of great ability and intelligence. Now its true that this ability can impaired by failing to educate a woman or denying her a role in the economic system, but the innate ability and potential remains. All of us know individuals who, through the hardships of life, were denied an education but are yet wise, prudent and industrious. We also know others who have gone to the best schools but remain eternal morons. In the real world educated morons are no match for the street wise.

Now, suppose we take a bright girl and deliberately hamper her education and deny her economic liberty in order to make her dependent on a man. Now, suppose we introduce her to some buffoon who has finished at Harvard. Does his artificial status enhancement satisfy her hypergamic desires?
I mean, after getting to know him she recognises that he has some social status but in real life can't manage his own affairs, make a decision or have an opinion. Is such a man attractive to her? Ponder this last point.

Sure, she may marry such a man because of her limited options, economic necessity or social convention but she is doing it for other reasons besides being attracted to him. Any marriage where the partners are there for  mutual convenience instead of mutual attraction soon becomes a prison to one or both.  Modern divorce laws are perhaps the most destructive solvent in the West today but it would be a mistake to think all was well with the institution of marriage prior to their introduction. Traditionalists fail to explain the surge in divorce once it became liberalised. Happy marriages don't fail; its the unhappy ones that do, and its quite obvious that there were a lot of unhappy (and sexless) marriages in the good ol' days .

Happy marriages are marriages of mutual desire. It's not a prison when you want to be there it's only a prison when you don't.  In order for a woman to be attracted to her partner (and therefore want to have sex with)  he has to satisfy her hypergamic imperative. The problem with female hypergamy is that is is relative to the woman's own ability and status. A dumb woman has an deep ocean of suitable suitors, a smart woman a far smaller pond. Sure, some women may have an overinflated opinion of their own capability (they are easily cut down to size) but a naturally superior woman has a real problem. She may marry a man because of her economic disability, she may stay with him for the love of God but there is no way in hell that she'll want to screw her husband's brains out if she is not sexually attracted to him. Sexual attraction is an animal instinct not a rational calculation and it is conditional on the satisfaction of her hypergamic desires. He has to be smarter, wiser, and more challenging than the woman. Socially disadvantaging women in no way fixes this problem. For if a man hath no alpha then his woman hath no desire. Alpha here does not mean straight out sexual allure, but things such as masculine virtue and intelligence. Taking away a woman's rights in no way gives a man alpha qualities. There's the problem.

The manosphere rightly criticises women for their diminishing femininity, but what the manosphere does not do so well is criticise the increasing infantisation of men.  When Roosh and his followers point out that quality women are only to be found outside the U.S. he is giving the masculine version of the modern feminist lament that there are no good men at home. What many manosphere commentators fail to recognise is that the nice computer nerd is the male equivalent of the nice fat chick. The manosphere demands thinness  but criticises women for wanting its feminine equivalent. Mote, beam, eye. It's all a bit of hypocrisy.

Calls to take away the rights of women are really nothing more than an affirmative action program for weak and beta men. Desirable men don't have a problem getting married.