Zeta Game - Hypergamy Crossroads

Sure there is a lot of biology being played out when it comes to sex, dating, and creating family, but this guy sure has a narrow perspective and a very one-sided attitude - too much whining and blaming for me to take this seriously.

I'm sure some man-hating women could write a similar piece about men, just by turning the statements around:

> "the natural tendency in women to benefit from reducing men to a purely utilitarian role in their lives."

Could become....

"the natural tendency in MEN to benefit from reducing women to a purely sexual role in their lives."

And...

> "the innate programming in men to protect and provide (and thus compete for women’s attention) plays directly into the hypergamous gambit, most often resulting in men participating in their own misuse and exploitation."

Could become...

"the innate programming in women to be sexually desired (and thus compete for men’s attention) plays directly into the gambit, most often resulting in women participating in their own misuse and exploitation."

Sure, at times exploitation occurs while dating, but only if a person lets themselves be exploited. If you are controlled by the opposite gender, there is something wrong with you, not the entire opposite gender!

Human characteristics and desires are not as flawed as this author describes them (he specifically uses negative words to describe women's biology and characteristics such as: "women are void of a moral compass" and "women’s propensity for pathological self centeredness..."). The biology of sex is not intended to be equal, but it is intended to be balanced. Human dating/mating characteristics are designed for survival of the species. Both males and females have dating/mating characteristics that could be viewed as negative or selfish, but they actually serve a positive purpose.

Anyway, I thought the article was extremely biased. Reminded me of how a man-hating female would piece together an article about how all men are perverted or how men oppress women or something like that without any facts or substance.

But this author does have pretend facts by saying it is "fact" that women are "so utterly devoid of a moral compass that one of the major tools in the woman’s hypergamous repertoire is to shame men into sacrificing for them- and to quietly laugh at them as they do it."

Really, he claims that statement as a "fact". Now you understand why I couldn't stop rolling my eyeballs as I read the article.

Here is the only thing in the article that had any substance, IMO:

> "I have talked to many men who vigorously complained about the financial drain that their wives or girlfriends had become. But when I asked them if they set up the relationship by lavishing them with gifts, flowers, expensive dinners, etc., they would get quiet in a hurry."
> "They did not want to accept that they were paying the consequences for their own actions early in the relationship. They went shopping for a whore and then got pissed off because that is exactly what they ended up with."

Sure there is a lot of biology being played out when it comes to sex, dating, and creating family, but this guy sure has a narrow perspective and a very one-sided attitude - too much whining and blaming for me to take this seriously.


One way to look at it is who is getting the shaft and who isn't. Today, men clearly get the shaft. Invert it and women wind up in a velvet cage. Boo. Hoo.

The fact of the matter is that that while women are hypergamous, men are promiscuous. You can't get an inversion where women are reduced to a purely sexual role in their lives. Sure some men are able to afford mistresses, but that is an exception, not the rule.

Personally I don't see the article as whiny -- he lays out the biases against men and his way of dealing with it.

The article is biased because it is a response to a system that is extremely biased against men. What women should be concerned about is that the more experience men have with the system the more they realize they can't win. As a man gets older he sees relationships with women as being more and more risky and that risk being harder and harder to mitigate. At some point a man sees the risk too great, the reward too paltry, and then he drops out of the romantic lives of women.

As a woman gets older she finds she finds it harder to attract another man for a relationship. Some men dropped out, some have died, and some only want one thing.

As women treat men as objects, men return the favor albeit differently.

"too much whining and blaming for me to take this seriously."

Im sorry but you either did not actually read the article or just
didn't get it.

Also his dialogue which depicts some of women's natural tendencies is a much needed insight and counterpoint to the "original sin comes from men" Zeitgeist. Without such a one sided framework as to what entails power and vulnerability I don't think Feminism would have ever been able to take off the way it has. Feminism actually claimed that the traditional roles were a reflection of men's oppression towards women. In short they thought men were powerful and women were vulnerable. They came from a framework that did not recognize women's inherent selfishness, ambition, and willingness to use those close to them. They instead attributed these characteristics to men as a way of explaining how men were able to oppress women.

Saying that women were oppressed by men is major problem because, aside from demonizing undeserving men, you will be unlikely to address all the female privileges that exist at the expense of men. Women have always had the capacity to successfully advocate for themselves so it makes sense that they had many privileges at their disposal in the traditional gender roles. Paul's article gives us a perspective of the male female relationship that shows women have tendencies of selfishness in which they seek to exploit men and that men indeed can be vulnerable. He gives us a dialogue which will make it easier to question the idea of women's empowerment, the kind that suggests women are too passive and too willing to be subservient to the wants of others. It should also question the unilateral focus of advocating for women's "rights and protections" for what is supposed to be in the name of equality.

"The biology of sex is not intended to be equal, but it is intended to be balanced. Human dating/mating characteristics are designed for survival of the species. Both males and females have dating/mating characteristics that could be viewed as negative or selfish, but they actually serve a positive purpose."

I hope you realize that nature is not moral or fair by a long stretch. Have you ever heard of the parasitic wasp which injects its eggs into a living caterpillar. The larvae hatch inside the caterpillar and start feeding off the caterpillar's blood while they use chemicals to suppress the caterpillar's immune system. The caterpillar continues to feed as the larvae get larger. Once the larvae are large enough (about a week I think) they chew their way out of the caterpillar while the caterpillar is still alive. As if all that was not twisted enough the caterpillar is tricked into weaving a silk layer, which would have been used for its own transformation, to defend the larvae in their cacoon. Finaly the caterpillar stays to defend the wasp larvae from potential predators as it starvea to death. Sorry if that's to detailed but I just wanted to get the point across. Another example is the female spider which will sometimes eat the male spider after mating. There is a simple relationship between the size of the male and the likelihood of being eaten after sex (the smaller the male the more likely to be eaten). That suggests that the "sexual cannibalism" is not a balance of costs and energy but simple opportunistic hunting (just easy prey).

Drives in sexual relationships are not necessarily fair and balanced just because of evolution.

"I'm sure some man-hating women could write a similar piece about men, just by turning the statements around"

I don't think those were interchangeable or even comparable. Men paying on dates, giving gifts, and supporting her is not comparable to her making herself attractive. Women making themselves look good has to do with vanity and giving yourself options. Women actually dress up more when they go out in public. I also saw a small study saying women who are in a relatiinship dance more provocatively at the club with their girlfriends than the single women... A man speanding money on a woman benefits her directly. The only compatible thing would be him working out, dressing nice, and having a nice (car?). All that would be for him. I don't think women would even want guys in front of the mirror for as long as they are. Then there's women who shop for shoes, jewelry, and other crap guys don't care about but women think it makes them look good.

Lastly sex in relationships is not exploitive... cmon. Its not even true that it would be work for just her. Women like sex and intimacy; if he were to stop she would likely be upset. (They also cheat about as much as men). Sex is work for men too! When married their supposed to have sex with only one woman, maintain interest after umteen years, and try to please her too. Having sex doesn't make you deserve anything, especially in a relationship. I think people who say that are just useless and parasitic (I'm not suggesting you would say that).

The only comparable work to men's breadwinning is women's domestic work. But like I have said in the past this is no longer fair as domestic work is made easy by school, programs, and technology.

The one thing I can't understand is why women have control of the resources and the kids.

Elam is not attacking and criticizing the system, he is attacking and criticizing women. Based on his definitions and biological explanations, women are "void of morals", "selfish", and "pathologically self centered". He does not state that some women become this way as a result of the system, he uses these negative terms to describe our biology - something that is in all women and cannot be changed.

I would not have been offended if he had attacked the system and I would not have been offended if he had used non-misogynist terms and explanations to describe female biology and characteristics.

For example, the article is on hypergamy. Let's take a look at Webter's dictionary definition of hypergamy vs. Paul Elam's.

Hypergamy (defined by Webster's): marriage into an equal or higher caste or social group.

Hypergamy (defined by Paul Elam): the natural tendency in women to benefit from reducing men to a purely utilitarian role in their lives.

Can you sense the mysogyny in Elam's definition?

Like I said before, both males and females have mating/dating characteristics that can seem selfish, but when these characteristics balance each other out as nature intended you will see they serve a positive purpose: Survival of the species.

Women have a desire to marry equal or up so that offspring will be provided for. Knowing this motivates men to compete and be successful. The more successful a man is the more women/sex he gets so he can fulfill his desire to spread his seed. Both the female's and male's desires work hand-in-hand to ensure procreation, healthy offspring and successful society which are necessary for our species to survive. Criticize them all you want, but without them our species would be screwed.

Perhaps Elam is trying to even things up a bit as I often see mysandrist articles about males' innate desire to "spread their seed". These articles describe all men as perverted serial cheaters that cannot be helped because it is part of their biology. Other mysandrist articles blame testosterone for all violence and evil in the world. I can see why men get offended by such articles.

I felt Elam wrote with the same narrow-mindedness and gender-insulting manner that anti-male authors use.

BTW - "As women treat men as objects, men return the favor albeit differently"

I agree, however this goes both ways, as some men are also known to treat women like objects. Usually when men and women allow this to happen they are fully aware of the situation. You know like when you see a 60 year old millionaire with a 25 year old hottie. Both are getting what they want. But it would be unfair for either of them to later complain that they are being used if that is how the relationship was set up to begin with.

Lets face it -- nobody bats an eye when men are accountable for their bad behavior. Why is there a problem when women are held accountable? If women are so filled with justice, why are they so silent about the anti-male system? There is a slim minority of women who are speaking out and they are outnumbered by the women who screwed over men and seek to make the lives of men worse. The vast majority of women have no problem with the status quo -- it is to their benefit! And when it turns out not to be, men can be blamed for that.

Now as for Paul Elam's definition of Hypergamy -- he does mention that the checks on women's natural hypergamous behavior are gone. And how have women responded? I'll tell you how, by treating men horribly. Women are not innocent on how they treat men.

As it has been said: "Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander." It is a firmly established fact that men can be held accountable for their shortcomings. It is perfectly acceptable to hold women for their shortcomings as well. I would say that it would be misogynistic to NOT hold women equally responsible.

Its about more than just letting women know about their selfish ways and curtailing it, its also about letting men know so they can protect themselves. Right now it seems neither the state, society, or the families (especially mothers) are warning men and their sons of what they face.