Dr. Kitten, PhD, is a useful girl to have around. Studying mainstream western psychology may have taught her all the wrong answers, but it did give her a certain facility with asking the right questions, and understanding the answers without too much difficulty.

The other day she laid this one on me:

“If there’s just a few men who all the women are attracted to, and the rest just get ignored...”

(Jealous as she is of FunSize, FanGirl, and whatever plates she might find out about, she has to admit she’d rather share my attention than have any of the various guys who have proposed to her all to herself.)

“… then is that true of women as well? Are there apex women who all the men want instead of anyone else? And what are they like? How do they get there?”

The answer, of course, is “No.”

Hypergamy is the reason, and it’s much talked about, but rarely understood. Most people think it just means “women are cheaters with an inherent tendency to trade up”.

If you think that, you missed the whole point. Hypergamy actually happens because women are monogamous, and men aren’t.

Here’s how it works:

(Full article on trp.red)