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A quick post for the new subreddit. Are we headed for a new era of polygyny? Looking at contemporary metropolitan dating markets, both anecdote and data arguably suggests that what I’d call casual open polygyny is becoming a lot more common. By this I mean sexual dynamics in which men and women enjoy casual open sexual relationships, but where the male parties in such relationships have more simultaneous female partners than the female parties have male partners. I think the data supports this kind of polygyny specifically rather than general polyamory as the dominant new model, insofar as it seems that a large subset of young men have few or zero sexual partners and a small subset of men have large numbers of sexual partners, with the SD in number of sexual partners being much higher for men than women. (But of course there are plenty of women who have multiple partners too.)
If I had to guess, I’d say this trend is being facilitated by things like hookup apps, societal atomisation, better contraception, and the decline of religion. But we also perhaps shouldn’t be too surprised — monogamy and polygyny are the two most common stable mating norms both cross culturally and historically (polyandry is exceptionally rare; general polygamy fairly rare).
Still, this trend obviously creates a problem in the longer run, because our society is still largely built around social monogamy: Men and women who form long term partnerships overwhelmingly do so on a one-to-one basis. As sexually actively young people transition from polygyny to monogamy in their late 20s, this leaves a lot of jilted women and bitter romantically inexperienced men, hardly a recipe for a happy long term marriage.
In the long run there will probably be some kind of correction, possibly via polygynous marriages becoming more commonplace.
There will also need to be a correction in terms of norms and expectations. Looking to the future, a significant proportion of young men may simply fail to find a romantic life partner unless they can distinguish themselves in some way. This is already how it works in many stable polygynous societies, but a lot of the resentment of Incels comes about because we’re at a liminal period, where monogamous norms dominate public discourse but de facto open casual polygyny is an increasingly common in the sex lives of young people.
Ah, the air of freedom. And no obscene input lag in the text box!
Somewhat low-effort and speculative, but better put it out there than forget. Just the other day I wondered about the implication of within-Hajnal line (actually applying more broadly across Europe) marriage pattern: that a meaningful and equal proportion of women and men never married and left little to no offspring. Strict monogamy ensures that for every incel or monk out there exists a counterweight in the form of old maiden or nun; differential mortality rates affect this but not critically. Even an undesirable woman won't stoop so low as to marry an undesirable man; and Prince Charming is already taken, and the Church would rather you don't bear his child. This is tragic and self-defeating in a sense, but it also accelerates evolution, by precluding the ability of lower-value genes to survive via daughters.
While Hajnal specificity is often explained just like that, with the role of religious institutions, it may also be related to ancient signatures of greater sexual selection pressure in European populations, which are hypothesized to be downstream from lower rates of polygyny. It's reasonable to suspect that this produces contemporary pro-White trends evident on, say, dating websites.
But there are other, less sexy views on how best to bias human evolution. E.g. Lee Kuan Yew characterized the good old times thus:
We (rather, you) may be returning to the norm for our species. Just as the West has disenchanted the world and succeeded with the Universal Cultural Takeover in the last few centuries, the globalized postmodernity is now de-Hajnalizing the West.
P.S. Some Twitter edgelord I've forgotten (not Uriah, bless his soul) had a thread on the «late stage civilization chick» or something to this effect, mocking a type of a conventionally attractive young woman ubiquitous across nations, populations, clubs and platforms: big butt (usually in tight jeans, with some beige top), duck face, tanned skin, long dark hair, empty stare. It's a deliberate look and not some biological change, of course. But it feels primeval, and a rebellion against the modern world and fragile European beauty ideals.Such women wouldn't appear out of place in a prehistoric tribal chieftain's harem.
Well I hate to think what this sort of shift would do to low value men as a whole, we already have enough tension. But if we could make sexual imperatives align with economic growth, that might not be the worst outcome, in the medium term.
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