This blog has touched upon the effect that the birth control pill, now a fifty-year-old institution, has on women’s attraction mechanism. However, the studies examining the matter don’t seem to agree. I have read, (and experienced), contradictory evidence that supports both theses that women on the pill prefer niceguy betas or badboy alphas.
Does anyone have clear, updated information on this topic? It strikes me as one of major importance in any discussion about changes in Western female temperament, mating preference and even looks. Not to mention, the pill may cause changes in men who have to drink the water that is now polluted with estrogenic compounds. The subject deserves more rigorous science than it is currently getting. Naturally, it’s understandable why feminists would be loath to broach the subject, but that’s no excuse for the paucity of corroborating science by non-feminists, aka rational people.
UPDATE
JR writes:
I don’t know of any recent scientific studies, but you only have to think rationally in order to shed light on the topic. Unless the pill has in fact affected women’s biochemical processes, it stands to reason that they have reverted back to a more or less ‘pre-cultural’ preference for ‘alpha males’ of the crudest variety because the pill has freed them from considering the potential negative consequences of sexuality.
The female preference for alphas is basically a given, so the only question is: are there artificial forces preventing them from chasing them constantly?
This is a good point, and one that’s been discussed before. The pill exerts a psychological and a physiological effect on women. How much emphasis to give each effect is up for debate (though I tend to agree with JR that the psychological influence is just as strong as the physiological influence), but that there is an influence seems to me unassailable. You just can’t fuck with the primal forces of nature without some kind of blowback.
Note that the psychological conditioning caused by the pill is not limited to just the pill; condoms and other forms of prophylactics would have the same mate choice conditioning effect as the pill, if not to the same degree. The difference with the pill is that it alone could seriously fuck with the physiological engine of female mate choice.
