Perhaps the most salient feature of Clown World is the disintegration of relations between the sexes. Dave Chappelle said years ago that “men and women don’t get along anymore”, and things have only become worse since then. Mistrust and communication difficulties have increased to the point where genuine animosity is often present. This article describes one of the causal factors.
Hypergamy is a biological term that refers to mating strategies, particularly the strategy of females, who serve as the gatekeepers of reproduction in most species.
Evolutionary psychology teaches that females have evolved to “marry up” by the workings of natural biological laws. The higher the quality of the mate they can attract, the more likely their offspring will survive to reproduce. Over the course of the biological past, the offspring of females that specifically sought out high-quality breeding partners have outcompeted the offspring of those who were not as selective. The end result: hypergamous females.
Social science has adopted the term for human behaviour. In this context, hypergamy still refers to sexual selection, but specifically to the female tendency to prefer men who are wealthy, educated and ambitious (i.e. males who have demonstrated the greatest capacity for resource acquisition). In societies all over the world, free women try to attract high-status men if they can.
Described thus far is the scientific background of the term ‘hypergamy’. When people talk about hypergamy in the context of Clown World, they’re referring to two related, undesired phenomena.
Thanks to the advent of dating apps such as Tinder, women have a greater choice of mating partners than ever. Before social media, the choice was mostly restricted to who they knew in physical space: friends of friends, studymates, workmates, men at the pub. After social media, the choice has expanded to every available male in the entire city.
Before social media, unattractive men could go to a pub and rely on the fact that, sooner or later, a woman would choose to sleep with them on account of that her other options were limited. After social media, unattractive men have to compete with every spare Chad within 50 kilometres. This has led to a great number of them simply giving up hope of finding a sexual partner.
Today, even moderately attractive men are uncertain of being able to attract a decent woman. Because women inevitably choose from among the highest quality of the men available to them, and because the majority of men are now available to them, getting laid sometimes comes down to being in the top 10 or 20 percent. This has led to a record number of young men not getting laid.
The second phenomenon relates to women discarding the men they are already with in the hope of trading up.
A commonly held maxim states that “women are only as loyal as their options”, and today, thanks to social media, they have an abundance of options. The Internet is capable of connecting every woman with a near-unlimited stream of tall, muscular, good-looking men. Some women think that some of those men look a lot better than their current partners.
Many men today feel – whether justified or not – that the women of today are likely to abandon any relationship they are in as soon as a more attractive male comes along. These men feel that long-term relationships are much less secure that they used to be, owing to the fact that hypergamy is out of control.
Clown World is more cut-throat than normal life in many ways. Because the basic spiritual connection to other sentient life has been broken, people don’t care so much about other people’s suffering. As such, relationships are a lot more exploitative and shallow than they used to be. This is as true of sexual relationships as business ones.
The existence of hypergamy has led to one extremely thorny political question: to what degree, if any, should female sexual nature be controlled?
Marriage was invented to control hypergamy. The idea was that if every man got exactly one woman – no more, no less – that fighting for the highest quality mates would no longer happen. As long as men could be convinced to be faithful to one woman, the resentment that arises from men not being able to get laid would be minimised.
The problem is that no-one wants to get married in Clown World. Not only are people mostly incapable of making a long-term commitment to anything nowadays, but the law also makes it a dangerous proposition. The rise of “divorce rape” has meant that men who marry are in danger of the woman getting bored, divorcing them, and then claiming alimony on the grounds that she is accustomed to a certain lifestyle.
This has led to a return of the social outcomes that marriage was designed to prevent. The few Chads at the top of the dominance hierarchy get laid all the time, the many at the bottom of the dominance hierarchy never get laid, those in the middle live in fear of losing their position, and misery abounds. The inevitable outcome is a large number of men dropping out of society entirely.
It’s hard to predict where the hypergamy phenomenon will end. But some clues might come from the disconcerting increase in men who no longer believe in women’s emancipation. A return to what Jordan Peterson calls “forced monogamy” is entirely possible, as unlikely as it might seem right now.
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This article is an excerpt from Clown World Chronicles, a book about the insanity of life in the post-Industrial West. This is being compiled by Vince McLeod for an expected release in the middle of 2020.
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If you enjoyed reading this essay, you can get a compilation of the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2019 from Amazon for Kindle or Amazon for CreateSpace (for international readers), or TradeMe (for Kiwis). A compilation of the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2018 and the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2017 are also available.
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