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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   33821 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026

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I was catching up on the quality contribution threads for last month (yes, I'm very late...) and I ran across this post from @Amadan.

I found this part specifically was interesting in the broader context of the discussion:

Assuming, of course, that their standards are not too high... You don't want fat Sally the checkout clerk or carousel-riding Cathy, fine. You insist on a 20-something slim attractive virgin who is agreeable and submissive? Hmm, good luck if you're not a 6/6/6. (Or a Mormon.)

One of these things is not like the other.

For men:

  • Six figures: quite difficult to do. Statistically only a fourth of the men in the US achieve this (and of course this assumes that the requirement won't change if all men achieved this).
  • Six feet: mostly driven by genetics and childhood nutrition. And only achieved by 14.5% of men in the US (according to Google).
  • Six pack: this presumably any man could achieve with sufficient exercise (and diet control) though it might be difficult to do concurrently with a six figure job.

For women:

  • 20-something: every woman will be a 20-something for ten years of her life.
  • Slim/attractive (they're mostly the same thing): partially driven by genetics? But still, exercise and diet go a long way here.
  • Virgin who is agreeable and submissive: these are all completely within the median woman's control. As they say, manners cost nothing.

Is it just me or is this scale a bit tilted?

(Apologies for responding so late and in a top-level comment; I didn't want this getting buried in a weeks old thread.)

Indeed. I have commented on this before:

Maybe women now do have ridiculous standards. But so do men.

Women's marriage standards are "six feet, six figures, six inches." Men's marriage standards are "teenage virgin". These are not the same. Every woman was a teenage virgin once (modulo the few who got broken in as lolis). Most men never meet the three sixes. There isn't a possible world where most women get what they want (becoming the exclusive wife of a top man); there is a possible world where most men get what they want, and we lived in it from the abolition of polygamy until the sexual revolution.

Never forget what they took from you.

And:

Yeah, great post. If you want a hot, relatively chaste, young, smart right-leaning woman, that’s not impossible, but you better be the equivalent of that as a man, namely a successful, attractive, charming, relatively young guy who probably has similar values, which in the case of chastity is likely some kind of religious conservatism. Young Mormon men seem to have no issue marrying chaste(ish) pretty blondes who will vote for Romney and deliver 3-4 children, because that’s their milieu. Too often some chubby suburban secular engineer whose primary hobbies are video games and online political discussion thinks he deserves the same.

The fact that you think these are equivalent requirements shows how ridiculously lopsided the sexual marketplace is against men. All a woman needs to do is be young and chaste, which is something every girl was at some point, and vote for a party that half the country supports. Meanwhile, a man who has spent decades studying and working to become an engineer or a lawyer is told "whoops, sorry, that's not enough, you also need to have interesting (to women) hobbies, be physically fit, and have a handsome face; I'm sure you will find time and energy to do all while you are working at a ridiculously demanding intellectual job, and also you better get all of that done way before you turn 35 because otherwise the idea of you marrying a 23 year old is just creepy!"

In other words, every aspect of a man's life, from his career to his hobbies to his body, must be optimized for attracting women, and it is no one's fault but his own if he fails.

"Women don't care about your struggles, they wait at the finish line and fuck the winners." -- Richard Cooper, The Unplugged Alpha

I know it's tempting to go meta and do some kind of both-sides moral equivalence thing here, but I think that's just wrong. Female sexuality is fundamentally stupid and evil in a way that male sexuality simply isn't.

Female sexuality is fundamentally stupid and evil in a way that male sexuality simply isn't.

This kind of comment reminds me oddly of feminist arguments that men are evil because they're, well, men. And I suspect that to some degree a statement such as this is borne of years of exposure to precisely such arguments (though I'm speculating.)

I'm more sympathetic to railing against individual women than against the entirety of the dance. At the risk of breaking into parody, you have a choice: Accept the dispassionate world as it is and deal with it as best you can, or complain incessantly against the unfairness of it all.

To some extent the railing against female sexuality in the western world is done by the very people who suggest that the asexual/androgynous model, where we eschew our roles and meet in some vague middle and ignore the elephant of sexual differences in the room, is equally unpalatable and goes against nature, or whatever.

It doesn't have to be one way or the other. We've created the current monsters of dating apps and optimizing romance (or sex, if you prefer). This model will then fail to the degree that it is unsustainable, leaving the bodies of a lot of lonely hearts, newly minted lesbians, or angry incels in its wake. Or it will transmogrify into something worse. I think, however, that as reassuring as it may be to lay it all on women, it is not particularly helpful.

I don't think wanting a harem of hot nubile young women is more stupid or evil then wanting one hot guy to commit to you. Also I don't think that most modern western men actually want a teenaged virgin. Hot young woman sure, but most men these days are not that into virgins. Nor commitment part of the what they took from you is a family plenty of men and women don't want kids these days and judging by the number of single moms with dad nowhere in the picture , rampant among the lower classes plenty of men don't care much about their kids or families.

The fact that you think these are equivalent requirements shows how ridiculously lopsided the sexual marketplace is against men. All a woman needs to do is be young and chaste, which is something every girl was at some point, and vote for a party that half the country supports. Meanwhile, a man who has spent decades studying and working to become an engineer or a lawyer is told "whoops, sorry, that's not enough, you also need to have interesting (to women) hobbies, be physically fit, and have a handsome face; I'm sure you will find time and energy to do all while you are working at a ridiculously demanding intellectual job, and also you better get all of that done way before you turn 35 because otherwise the idea of you marrying a 23 year old is just creepy!"

No you're missing the point. Mormons get to marry hot virgin blondes because chastity is part of the culture. You don't need to be an engineer to live that life you need to be a Mormon. The basic requirements in Mormon culture to get a slim virgin wife is to have served your mission. So no, if your goal is to marry a virgin and have a traditional marriage all that time being an engineer is a waste of time because that's not how modern secular western culture works, a women who is a virgin too long sees her sexual value decrease, guys don't want to hook up with virgins because they're "too clingy" and even her girlfriends would judge her eventually. Waiting for marriage is just not a thing in modern secular culture. But as a Mormon or half a dozen other conservative religious subcultures you only need a job that can rent an apartment and a good reputation in the faith and there you go you can easily marry a teenage virgin.

Our fictional engineer is not out of luck, however, he simply needs to to open Filipina.com and he'll have dozens of young pretty women falling all over him.

the idea of you marrying a 23 year old is just creepy!"

This will still exist but are you really telling me you'd turn down a marriage with a hot 20 something because it would annoy some of the most Who annoying people in the world? I actually feel that you are letting the most annoying women possible set the tone. If you look at the marriages actually happening 6/6/6/ isn't really the standard and the father you get away from tiktok and the apps, the better. Who really cares what the tiktok girlies think?

I don't think wanting a harem of hot nubile young women is more stupid or evil then wanting one hot guy to commit to you

I agree, but I think there's an important difference, which is that society has no problem telling men that their fantasy of having a harem is stupid, unrealistic, unreasonable, and will lead to social disapproval if actually pursued. In fact, I was discussing this issue with another poster a few weeks ago, and as a result of that discussion I checked out the /r/polyamory subreddit. They have an explicit rule against men asking for advice on how to set up this kind of poly relationship.

And I think most men in the West have internalized this social norm. Like most straight men, I like the idea of having a harem. However the prospect of being with one and only one female partner doesn't leave me feeling cheated.

By contrast, society is unwilling to tell average women that their fantasy of exclusive commitment from a highly desirable man is just as unrealistic and unreasonable as an average man's fantasy of building a harem. If Mr. Tall Dark and Handsome won't commit, it's because men are bad people. And women are encouraged to feel angry and cheated that their primal desires have gone unfulfilled.

Modern culture includes porn. By what standards is modern culture not telling men that their desire to have lots of consequences free sex with a variety of low commitment partners is OK? I’ll wager by those same standards it’s telling women than they shouldn’t get too hung up on a man’s height/income/fitness.

Modern culture includes porn. By what standards is modern culture not telling men that their desire to have lots of consequences free sex with a variety of low commitment partners is OK?

Umm, by the standard that this is what men are generally told? I mean, it's easy enough to test - just pick a mainstream online forum in which dating is discussed. Say that you are a man and that you would like to have a harem of women, kind of like Elon Musk, or that you would like to jump from young woman to young women, kind of like Leonardo DiCaprio. Say that you are having trouble making this happen, express some frustration, and ask for advice. See what kind of response you get.

By contrast, society is unwilling to tell average women that their fantasy of exclusive commitment from a highly desirable man is just as unrealistic and unreasonable as an average man's fantasy of building a harem. If Mr. Tall Dark and Handsome won't commit, it's because men are bad people. And women are encouraged to feel angry and cheated that their primal desires have gone unfulfilled.

I'd love to see something more concrete than the mere assertion that 'society says this', because from my experience, women are intimately aware of how they rank in the dating market and are able to adjust their expectations accordingly. Indeed, that's why most people were able to couple up - at least until smartphones caused us to stop socialising in person.

If 'society' is truly telling women they are perfect and deserve perfection, why did 'society' only start doing this around 2014 or so?

I'd love to see something more concrete than the mere assertion that 'society says this', because from my experience, women are intimately aware of how they rank in the dating market and are able to adjust their expectations accordingly

In principle, this is not too difficult to test. Pick out a mainstream online forum which discusses sex and relationships such as /r/datingoverthirty; make a post as a young woman who is stuck in a "situationship," -- she is seeing a man whom she finds attractive but he's not interested in formally becoming boyfriend/girlfriend etc. Have her express frustration with the situation and see what the responses are. How many people tell her that the problem is she is trying to date out of her league? Of the people who do give her that kind of advice, what happens to their comments?

Alternatively, just do a Google search and look at the myriad mainstream articles complaining about men being "commitment-phobes" or "Peter Pans" or whatever. Almost all the time, when a woman complains about men being unwilling to commit to her, it's because she is trying to date out of her league, but this is almost never said in these types of articles. Rather, the problem is blamed on men.

If 'society' is truly telling women they are perfect and deserve perfection, why did 'society' only start doing this around 2014 or so?

I think it's always been a problem, but it's gotten worse in the last 10 or 20 years.

I understand this is a useless thing to say, but you're probably getting to the root of the problem here: modern secular culture sucks, and Mormon culture is way better. If you're a modern secular man wanting to wait for marriage, you're mostly going to be out of luck unless you get very lucky somehow. I suppose that goes for the modern secular woman, too

I know it's tempting to go meta and do some kind of both-sides moral equivalence thing here, but I think that's just wrong. Female sexuality is fundamentally stupid and evil in a way that male sexuality simply isn't

I wouldn't go that far but I do think that polygamy is the male equivalent of unreasonable female sexual desires. Just as it's unreasonable for an average woman to want commitment from a highly desirable man, so too is it unreasonable for a man to want a harem. Unreasonable in the sense that the math simply doesn't work. It's not achievable for more than an ultra-small minority.

Even so, we are all descendants of (1) men who did in fact have multiple wives; and (2) average women who nonetheless were married to high-status men. And obviously this evolutionary past heavily informs the sexual desires of both men and women.

The difference, though, is that for the most part, men accept that they are not supposed to engage in harem-building. They may still try, but if they publicly complain about their lack of success, society won't tell them that they are perfectly fine and if they are having difficulties it's because women are unreasonably demanding exclusivity.

By contrast, if an average woman complains about not being able to achieve commitment from a highly desirable man, she will be told that her desires are reasonable and if there's a problem it's with men.

So I would say that (1) female sexuality is stupid and evil; (2) male sexuality is also stupid and evil; (3) for the most part, the stupid and evil aspects of male sexuality are kept in check by societal pressure; and (4) our modern gynocentric/feminist society has greatly lessened the checks on female sexuality, so that (5) it does in fact seem like "[f]emale sexuality is fundamentally stupid and evil in a way that male sexuality simply isn't."

How is wanting commitment-free sex from a rotating harem of virgins less "stupid and evil" than wanting commitment from a "chad" who probably won't commit?

Women don't want to fuck a beta who fundamentally despises them. Truly a mystery and an injustice wrapped in an enigma.

But "commitment-free sex from a rotating harem of virgins", pumping and dumping, is not the male fantasy. It is an adaptation to our current circumstances, where there is no secure rights over women. Much like the rational response to a lack of secure property rights is to steal anything not nailed down, and to hell with tomorrow, the rational response to a lack of secure marital rights is to despoil as many virgins as you can, then dump them before they dump you.

If you look at men's romance, you will see that what men want is a non-rotating harem of virgins who they commit to for life. No man wants to know that the virgin he has fucked is going to get fucked by another man; it kills the soul. "She was never yours, it was just your turn" is a philosophy of despair.

From "The Three Magic Words" by the Dreaded Jim:

For the higher races to reproduce, have to prevent women from continuing to cruise for a higher alpha all their fertile years. If not allowed to cruise, property of the first male they have sex with, and compelled to honor and obey.

For about the cost of two dates, you can have a hooker, and it is not an adequate substitute. Hookers are only a marginal improvement over masturbation. What progressives offer men, a rotating series of hookups, is just not what most men want, as revealed by men’s actions.

Yes, a harem is better than just one wife, but a changing rotation of whores is not a harem. The point of having more than one woman is having more than one woman. If I sleep with several women that is really great. If one of them sleeps with another man that is really bad and I will certainly dump her, probably beat her, and might well kill her. I will be very angry and sad for a very long time.

...

A man needs to own a woman, he needs a house, and land and children. A man that does not own a woman breaks, and a rotating collection of sluts is not ownership.

If she is free to suspend cooperation at any time, men are disinclined to invest in her and her children. You pump and dump, so that if you are lucky, you dump her before she dumps you. You spin the plates to avoid being spun. There is always someone more alpha than you are. You pump and dump because it hurts less that way. Evolution shaped you that way, evolution makes it hurt, so that you would not waste time looking after a chick that becomes pregnant with Jeremy Meeks’s demon spawn. Evolution has planted the knowledge in you that investing in a woman you do not own is a bad investment.

You don’t plant trees on land you don’t own, and if you don’t have some land and plant some trees for your grandkids, it hurts.

Roissy truthfully tells us how to operate in defect/defect equilibrium with women. But the point is to achieve cooperate/cooperate equilibrium.

And from "Female Sexual Preferences" by the same:

Men want to bang every fertile age woman. Woman want to be banged by Mister one in thirty.

Women are allowed to successfully fulfill their goal, men are not allowed to fulfill their goal.

Men want to own a woman. Even successful players find it terribly disturbing and soul destroying that the woman that they bang has banged no end of men before them, and will soon bang someone else. This leads to player burnout. Even marginally successful players soon get burnout. The knowledge slowly soaks in that in the game of players and bitches, the bitches are winning, and even successful players are losing. One soon starts feeling homicidal, and is apt to kill the adulterous woman and or her latest lover. Players counsel other players “avoid oneitis” “She was never yours, it was just your turn”. Bullshit. This is the counsel of despair.

If one cultivates a detached attitude “It was just my turn, she did me a favor”, one avoids homicide, but this is not very satisfactory at all. If one abandons one’s telos, one is psychologically broken, hence player burnout. She was not doing you a favor. You were doing her a favor. If you adopt this attitude, you avoid homicide, but develop other disturbingly weird and unpleasant behaviors and attitudes. It is terribly stressful. Homicide is less stressful. There is a reason why the bible counsels to avoid sluts, but today, nothing but sluts, so what is a man to do?

Successful pursuit of telos requires ownership. One despairs or becomes homicidal because even if one get one dick wet from time to time, one is failing at accomplishing one’s telos. Player burnout is a manifestation of despair. One avoids homicide, but in a world with no female companionship other than sluts, loses one’s soul.

I don't think any of this makes sense. Any 'rational' approach to sex in this sense wouldn't involve sex with women you won't have kids with. A non-secure marriage is still the best route to kids, other than sperm donation. Modern women and men have lifetime single digits of sexual partners and most end up in one or a series of long-term relationships if not an actual marriage. Players and pumping and dumping just aren't the experience most people are having. And if players generally burn out, but many people who get in insecure marriages don't, what does that really say?

Not that this is a knockdown argument against patriarchy or legally enforced marriage commitments, there's more complexity there, it's just that Jim is very wrong.

Dude. You need to stop looking at Dread Jim for life advice. Hating women and wanting them to be property is not a recipe for happiness.

I lost my chance at happiness a long time ago; this is all that's left.

There are things under your control. I doubt you're so old as to have no opportunities for improvement. Anyway, if morality doesn't sway you, a desire for truth should. Jim is mostly wrong about everything. He tells a compelling story to doomers who want reasons for their hatred, but these doom prohets are not actually insightful or wise, they're just crafty tale-tellers.

They are both stupid. The former is significantly less evil in practice in that 1) If it works for you, like Genghis Khan, then it is what it is; and 2) Its not supported by majority narratives, so it hurts far less people practically.

Now, its true that far more women in the world will secure 6-6-6 men than men will acquire 6+ women harems that are functional. But since several orders of magnitude more women expect 6-6-6 than expect 6+, the former is significantly more evil as an idea in the world. Its kinda like how murderers are more evil than ghosts.

If it works for you, like Genghis Khan, then it is what it is;

And if it doesn't work for you, society isn't going to tell you that you're settling for less than you deserve. And chances are you won't feel anything negative about it. Personally, as a man, I would love to have 3 or 4 concubines -- beautiful, youthful, exclusively committed to me, and accepting of my other relationships. But I don't feel any sense of disappointment or frustration over the fact that I haven't been able to build a harem. If I complained about the situation online, I would be (rightly) mocked. The most positive comments I could expect to receive is a suggestion to go out and get a few billion dollars or become a world-renowned athlete or actor.

Its not supported by majority narratives

Yeah, average women are regularly told, in substance, that they are very desirable; that they should never settle; that they deserve the best; that if their dream-guy won't commit, it's because that guy is a jerk; etc.

How is wanting commitment-free sex from a rotating harem of virgins less "stupid and evil" than wanting commitment from a "chad" who probably won't commit?

There is an important difference which is that society has no problem telling men that their primal desire for a harem is stupid, unreasonable, anti-social, and unrealistic for all but a very small minority of men. And most men have internalized this message. If a man has one wife, at some level he may desire a couple concubines as well but he won't feel outraged or cheated if this desire is not fulfilled.

By contrast, society is very reluctant to tell average women that her desire for exclusive commitment from an extremely desirable man is similarly stupid, unreasonable, and unrealistic. One of the most common female dating complaints is that the woman is in a "situationship" with a man who keeps stringing her along. Outside of a few dark corners of the internet, most of the reaction she will receive is that the man in this situation is a bad person; she won't be told that almost certainly it's because she's an average woman chasing men who are out of her league.

Women don't want to fuck a beta who fundamentally despises them

Fortunately for women, men are much less likely to despise a given woman than the reverse.

Women may despise individual men, but the few who despise men as a class don't want to fuck them.

Incels despise women as a class but still want to fuck them.

I agree men and women should both be given better advice about realistic expectations.

Women may despise individual men, but the few who despise men as a class don't want to fuck them.

Completely disagree. You just need to search social media for women who post things like "I hate men" or "kill all men" and then check up later on their relationship status.

Incels despise women as a class but still want to fuck them.

Well, they despise women BECAUSE those women won't have sex with them. In a hypothetical world where things were arranged so that the vast majority of men could have a respected, socially approved sexual/romantic relationship with a woman, there would be far less of this type of hate.

I agree men and women should both be given better advice about realistic expectations.

It seems to me this is a bit of a cop-out because there is a world of difference between what society says to men and what society says to women as described in my previous post. Generally speaking, society is far more accommodating of female desires and far more eager to blame men for any problems with romantic/sexual relationships.

The women performatively "hating men" mostly do not, by revealed preferences, hate men. Incels really do hate women, and while you can cast them as victims, they are victims only of their own inadequacy and self pity. Society isn't making them feel that way , and society isn't obligated to reorder itself so women who don't want them will want them.

As for their being such a difference in how society treats women, yes women have their own pressures men don't, which many of them find very unfair and oppressive.

I don't think society is as hard for either one as they say, and find whiny feminists and loser men equally insufferable, mostly victims of their own mindset.

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society isn't obligated to reorder itself so women who don't want them will want them.

Completely avoiding the moral judgment, if we don't meet a post-scarcity society soon, societies that wish to continue, or at least, continue supporting the elderly, may begin to attempt this.

Whether they succeed or not is another story entirely, but the desperate flailing may be extremely torturous. When women can achieve status in ways other than marriage, they won't marry, and the baby bust trends with marriage bust.

The women performatively "hating men" mostly do not, by revealed preferences, hate men. Incels really do hate women,

Strong disagree. What percentage of incels do you think would accept a romantic/sexual relationship with a reasonably attractive woman? (In fact, incels regularly tease each other over the fact that most of them would "ascend" if they had the opportunity.)

while you can cast them as victims,

The question is what is the source of their hate, not whether they are victims.

ociety isn't obligated to reorder itself so women who don't want them will want them.

Assuming this is so, so what? Have I stated or implied otherwise?

As for their being such a difference in how society treats women, yes women have their own pressures men don't, which many of them find very unfair and oppressive.

Again, assuming this is so, so what? Does this contradict anything I have said?

I don't think society is as hard for either one as they say, and find whiny feminists and loser men equally insufferable, mostly victims of their own mindset.

Again, assuming this is so, so what? It seems reasonably clear that in the area under discussion, society is far more accepting and accommodating of women's unreasonable desires than it is of men.

Of course every incel would leap at the chance to score an attractive woman. That doesn't mean they actually like women.

Does society have more sympathy for women? (The "women are wonderful" syndrome?) Yes, generally so (at least in the West). That doesn't mean incels deserve sympathy, any more than the proverbial carousel rider does.

More comments

Female sexuality is fundamentally stupid and evil in a way that male sexuality simply isn't.

Them's fightin' words, and we could get into a real fight over this. Men have done stupid and evil things for sex, and so have women. Male sexuality will happily fuck six year olds, is that fundamentally smart and good?

Male sexuality will happily fuck six year olds,

Do you mean 16 year olds? Because preying on teenagers is definitely the dark side of male sexuality in a way actual pedophilia generally isn’t.

Male sexuality will happily fuck six year olds, is that fundamentally smart and good?

What the hell? This is not male sexuality. Men are attracted to fertile-age women, because there is no point in fucking a female who can't get pregnant. That means teenagers and twenty-somethings, not prepubescent kids. Pedophiles are a tiny minority of men, and universally despised by the majority.

My friend, it is entirely possible to get a ten year old pregnant, and some men have done so. Remember the case with the furore over abortion rights?

I'm very much cynical about "no X would do Y" because I'm reading cases in the news every damn day. No father would rape his daughter for years. No father would help his new partner cover up the murder of his child. No woman would beat a four year old to death.

Oh yes they bloody well would.

What the hell? This is not male sexuality.

Come on, you should know better. You're responding to your direct distaff counterpart.

Claiming all men are inherently evil attracted to children is part and parcel of female sexuality, as a way to provide cover for the "make sure anyone in an age group more attractive than mine is prevented from selling sex to men in exchange for resources" impulse that produces this answer, so that's what's on display.

Male sexuality will happily fuck six year olds,

I would have to disagree with this -- if you are talking about men in general, I think it's pretty clear that your typical man's sexuality focuses on entities perceived to be fertile human females, which excludes 6-year olds.

To be sure, there are sickos out there, but I think it's pretty clear we are talking about men and women in general.

Male sexuality will happily fuck six year olds, is that fundamentally smart and good?

That is rather fundamentally unusual and unacceptable behavior in any remotely modern society I can name. There is a massive difference between ~most men being attracted to 16 year old women, but denying that attraction because of laws and socialization, and attempting to sleep with literal small children.

I might as well claim that "female sexuality" involves peanut butter and particularly attractive German Shepherds, since that has been documented at rates >0.

if we're going to say X sexuality is more evil than Y sexuality, then it is going to invite "here are instances of Y sexuality being pretty damn creepy". Both sexes, and sexuality, and fetishes/perversions/kinks, can be pretty damn creepy.

'Women are attracted to what they see as hotness in guys' is no more, or no less, creepy than 'men are attracted to what they see as hotness in girls'. That male sexuality does seem to be a very simple on/off switch of "young, big booba, big ass = dick go sproing!" is not the fault of women. Nor is it the fault of men if women can be attracted to older men who are more interesting/have a broader or deeper range of experience and, yeah, money/status.

"Good provider, good genetic material for potential offspring, attractive, dependable, funny, 6/6/6 = pussy wet" is not the fault of men. Can we stop saying "your preferences are evil" unless those preferences are actually evil? It's the male equivalent of "you should find tattooed, pierced, fat women just as attractive as Sydney Sweeney" - "no, just because I'm short, balding and not particularly well-paid, she's a bitch for not giving me a chance!"

Can we stop saying "your preferences are evil" unless those preferences are actually evil?

Evil is kind of a loaded word, so let's just say that everyone -- male and female -- has sexual desires which are unreasonable and/or destructive. And by that I mean that (1) it's not mathematically possible for everyone's sexual desires to be satisfied; and (2) if people pursue these sexual desires anyway, it's bad for society.

So for example, most men, even average men, instinctively want a harem but there simply aren't enough women in existence for every man to have a harem. At most, only a few extremely elite men can have a harem -- e.g. Elon Musk or the King of Saudi Arabia.

Similarly, most women, even average women, instinctively want a committed relationship from a highly desirable man. This is similarly unreasonable. There just aren't enough highly desirable men in existence.

As I mentioned in a couple other posts, the difference is that men are told (and have internalized) that their instinctive desire for a harem is unreasonable. By contrast, society is very reluctant to tell women that their instinctive desire for commitment from a highly desirable man is just as unreasonable.

As I mentioned in a couple other posts, the difference is that men are told (and have internalized) that their instinctive desire for a harem is unreasonable. By contrast, society is very reluctant to tell women that their instinctive desire for commitment from a highly desirable man is just as unreasonable.

Seems to me you can make the case that the female desire is downstream of the male one, at least on a macro timescale. There do exist many naturally monogamous animal species, and while their courtship involves some mate selection where everyone tries to get the most attractive partner possible, it seems like things shake out so that most individuals have a mate. It doesn't make evolutionary sense for a monogamous animal to prefer sterility to a sub-10% mate; I don't know how that trait would be preserved.

"Harem" animals are generally ones where the male has enough aggression to kill non-affiliated females/ kill their mates/ kill their offspring, and at that point the calculus does shift to make it questionable whether any given female should make a virtue of necessity and try to affiliate with Chad before he swoops in, murders their children, rapes them and pillages all their resources anyway. As you point out, most women would still prefer monogamy with a reasonably mid-status man, but all of the lurking "girls like bad boys" instincts that men deplore can be explained by women needing a partner who seems like they'd be able to defend against marauding other males.

There do exist many naturally monogamous animal species

But humans are not one of them, and neither are most primates. 90% of bird species are monogamous but only 3-9% of mammals.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monogamy_in_animals

To put it another way, male-on-male aggression is adaptive for males in a polygamous society, and so is the female tendency to go for the strongest male because making babies is expensive and time-consuming and making sperm is free.

I would caveat that "naturally monogamous" in animals isn't exactly what humans would interpret that to be or to mean. In mammals, complete genetic monogamy is extremely rare and usually tied to things like votes; coyotes are one of the largest 'strictly' monogamous ones, and that's still got one-in-twenty extra-couple mating. Even a lot of monogamous bird species aren't genetically monogamous: something like one in eight swan babies aren't genetically tied to the mother's 'husband'.

It's a meaningful category, still, to contrast species that where serial mating (eg, raccoons) or outright multiple paternity is common (eg, housecats), or where mating is 'indiscriminate' (rabbits), but the extent that the line gets fuzzy makes it hard to categorize humans, even before considering what extent humans have drifted from their historic environment.

To put it another way, male-on-male aggression is adaptive for males in a polygamous society, and so is the female tendency to go for the strongest male because making babies is expensive and time-consuming and making sperm is free.

I was suggesting that in evolutionary terms, it's more plausible that the causal arrow should have run from the development of male aggression, to polygamous society and women driven to affiliate with "bad boys," than the other way around.

For one thing, your argument about the adaptive advantage of infidelity/ hypergamy should be true of monogamous bird species as well as mammals, but the birds have retained the monogamy. For another thing, humans are pretty weak overall, so our male strength and aggression is much more useful for intraspecies conflict than for pure survival via inter-species defense or resource acquisition. Chad's ability to beat up the dweeb in no way translates to Chad's ability to take down a buffalo or fight off a lion, so it's not clear how there'd be a strong-enough adaptive advantage to females breaking monogamous coordination to pursue Chad en masse unless you have an existing culture of violence where Chad might just beat up your man and rape you anyway. Thus, it seems like the precipitating factor is more likely the emergence of battle-males in conditions of plentiful resources.

Of course, once that's in place you certainly get positive feedback loops where the polygamy increases the aggression and vice-versa.

It's not really accurate to say that humans are 'not monogamous'. We are not perfectly monogamous, but we are mostly monogamous. The modal human reproductive unit is, and always has been, one man and one woman.

There are some cultures that allow a degree of polygyny for elite men, but those cultures are being outcompeted by monogamous ones because polygamy reduces fertility.

To say 'humans are polygynous' because a small minority of societies allow a small minority of men more than one wife, is a bit like saying Japan is a violent country because some small percentage of the population commits violent crime.

More comments

A man's teenage virgin immediately stops being a virgin and rather soon stops being teenaged, and observing men who were able to fulfill their preferences fully shows that they want not one woman who is a teenage virgin at one point, but more teenage virgins.

I'll say this: very few sexual preferences strike me as being so evil as the man who has a preference for virginity paired with a disinterest in marriage. At that point you've got a fetish for burning the commons for no reason.

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