Manly Thor's Day Special: Hypergamy part 3

Part one is here and part two here.

The perhaps not obvious subtext of all discussion of hypergamy is the critical assessment of men by women. It's hiding, for example, in the final paragraph of the Stephanie Coontz piece that started all this:

I am not arguing that women ought to “settle.” I am arguing that we can now expect more of a mate than we could when we depended on men for our financial security, social status and sense of accomplishment. But that requires ditching the Lois Lane syndrome, where we ignore the attractions and attention of Clark Kent because we’re so eager for the occasional fly-by from Superman. 

It's that word "settle" that gives it away.  Women look at men and they make critical assessments and then they make a choice of some sort. And the challenge a woman is presented by hypergamy—meaning the fact that she will be aroused by male status—is that she has to make the decision over and over again. The problem is not, as Coontz would have it, that Lois Lane is waiting for Superman to fly by but that Superman regularly does fly by and she responds when he does. If she doesn't actively decide not to act on her impulses, then she will inevitably end up acting on them.

That's why I keep coming back to the male equivalent: the hot young woman who walks into the room and he responds. So too, when a man a woman believes to have status starts flirting with her—she responds. The point is not what she intends to do but what just happens. And it can seem like the really important question is, "At what point does a response become a threat to a relationship?" And lots of jealous boyfriends and girlfriends and husbands and wives worry about that a whole lot.

Here is the issue: You go to a party where your partner interacts with attractive people and  then comes home and you have great sex because she or he is so aroused from those interactions. Do you treat that as a threat to your relationship?

I think what you really want to worry about is not the fact that everyone gets aroused by others but what they are or are not willing to commit to. Significantly, the word "commitment" doesn't appear even once in the Coontz article and that is rather odd for an article that is about marriage. Coontz examines the question entirely in terms of what a woman can get out of marriage and that is a recipe for failure.

The point here is not that men resent being judged and criticized, although we do. The deeper point is that we hate and are terrified of being left. Women fear being cheated on and with good reason. A lot of men cheat. The flip side of that is that a lot of women do leave men and they do so much more easily and often than men leave women.

(And maybe she only leaves in spirit. We've all seen the marriage where the woman stays but constantly disdains and criticizes her husband.)

Going back to the Kate Bolick piece that inspired Stephanie Coontz in the first place, you can see the nightmare right in the opening sentences of her article:

In 2001, when I was 28, I broke up with my boyfriend. Allan and I had been together for three years, and there was no good reason to end things.

That makes her a male nightmare.  If there is one thing every marriage-minded male has in common is that he has been or will be an "Allan" at some point. And it tore him apart. Kate Bolick doesn't see it but she has incredibly low status as a marriage partner because she does things like breaking up when there is no good reason other than her not being ready.

A big part of the reason is that she has quite a lot of status in others ways. Just look at her. And she gets published in The Atlantic. But you wouldn't marry her for love because you can never love a woman who might just leave you at any time.

What Bolick doesn't see is that sex and glamour is all she has to offer. As a lover, which is to say more than just a sex partner, she is a complete failure. She doesn't see that, quite possibly because she has so much status as a sex partner. Read this and note how little self awareness there is here:

And yet, as a woman who spent her early 30s actively putting off marriage, I have had ample time to investigate, if you will, the prevailing attitudes of the high-status American urban male. (Granted, given my taste for brainy, creatively ambitious men—or “scrawny nerds,” as a high-school friend describes them—my sample is skewed.) My spotty anecdotal findings have revealed that, yes, in many cases, the more successful a man is (or thinks he is), the less interested he is in commitment.

When she was twenty-eight she broke up with her boyfriend for "no good reason" and she turns around and gets snide about high-status men who aren't interested in commitment. Never once does she seem to ask herself just why it is that she even gets to spend so much time with high-status urban males. Does she seriously think that she'd have done so if she didn't have such high value as a sex object?

 I know, what a pig I am for even thinking so. But what does a woman who could turn around at any second and leave you offer? What is is she good for other than sex?

Guys, don't let women blame this one on us.