As far as I know, the word “hypergamy” was coined by F. Roger Devlin, who wrote the seminal works of the manosphere. Devlin’s work exposing feminism is a real tour de force, and he introduces a number of concepts that have done us great service over the last decade.

You can find a good list of his essays here.

However, many of these concepts have remained unknown outside our online community. Perhaps the most important is hypergamy, which Devlin defines this way:

Men have a tendency to seek sexual variety, but women have simple tastes in the manner of Oscar Wilde: They are always satisfied with the best.

Phyllis Schlafly, perhaps the original anti-feminist of the second wave era, recently argued that the (mythical) “pay gap” would promote marriage if it actually existed, citing women’s hypergamous instincts:

Another fact is the influence of hypergamy, which means that women typically choose a mate (husband or boyfriend) who earns more than she does. Men don’t have the same preference for a higher-earning mate.

While women prefer to HAVE a higher-earning partner, men generally prefer to BE the higher-earning partner in a relationship. This simple but profound difference between the sexes has powerful consequences for the so-called pay gap.

Suppose the pay gap between men and women were magically eliminated. If that happened, simple arithmetic suggests that half of women would be unable to find what they regard as a suitable mate.

[...]

The pay gap between men and women is not all bad because it helps to promote and sustain marriages. Since husband and wife generally pool their incomes into a single economic unit, what really matters is the combined family income, not the pay gap between them.

In two segments of our population, the pay gap has virtually ceased to exist. In the African-American community and in the millennial generation (ages 18 to 32), women earn about the same as men, if not more.

It just so happens that those are the two segments of our population in which the rate of marriage has fallen the most. Fifty years ago, about 80 percent of Americans were married by age 30; today, less than 50 percent are.

Just a coincidence? I think not. The best way to improve economic prospects for women is to improve job prospects for the men in their lives, even if that means increasing the so-called pay gap.

So why is it important that Schlafly used the term? Because national politicians actually listen to her. She is a wealthy, upper class member of the political elite, unlike us poor divorced guys slaving away in the fields. While she may be considered something of a radical, she has clout. Enough, apparently, to spike the ERA.

We could hold her opposition to the ERA against her, but let’s be realistic: it never would have been used to level the playing field. Instead, it would have been used as a cudgel against the “patriarchy,” resulting in interminable lawsuits and an even more powerful feminist legal regime than we have today (if such is possible). Because men and women are not equal, no human law can make them so; it can only make life worse for most of us.

More legislation purporting to equalize men and women will have the same effect this legislation always has had: it will grow and enrich legal professionals and bureaucracies and introduce more expense and complexity into the lives of the common people. Schlafly is right to oppose it, and it’s good to see she’s taking some cues from the manosphere as well.