How have women evolved with hypergamous selection if they haven’t had a choice in their mate until modern era?

Puzzled-Medicine-782 · 2024-12-30T11:30:41+00:00

Humans have existed for 300,000 years. You're talking about a ~roughly 2000 year period. That's not very much, as far as evolution goes

AidsVictim · 2024-12-30T04:41:15+00:00

Your presumption that women had no choice in partners is wrong. Most women chose from within their group/class like most men. Most did not have arranged marriages.

Zabadoodude · 2024-12-30T08:22:33+00:00

Women didn't have no choice in their partner selection. Throughout most of our evolutionary past women lived in close proximity to their brothers and fathers. There are few things that get an otherwise gentle man more blindly enraged than the thought of his daughter or sister being raped. Any man that tried to "take" a woman by force would get his skull bashed in by these men. Arranged marriages are more recent, and were never universal across all cultures.

It's also important to remember that hyoergamy is a general trend, not a hard rule. Plenty of women marry and have children with their equals

FreitasAlan · 2024-12-30T04:14:56+00:00

What does this new anthropology come from?

KinkyPrincess33 · 2024-12-30T04:16:59+00:00

My lord, the cognitive dissonance is real.

MasterAd6260 · 2024-12-30T04:37:49+00:00

The same way men have a natural instinct to be attracted to attractive, desirable women more than unattractive, undesirable women.

Schleudergang1400 · 2024-12-30T08:01:25+00:00

Everyone wants someone who is better than them in the aspects that are relevant for the sex-specific traits that are wanted in mates. Overall, people mate with equal value people. The most desirable mates in a population are (theoretically) wanted by most others, but not everyone can get them. Not even just the sperm, as commitment is relevant for successfull procreation and survival of the offspring. It's not better to have badboy Chad-sperm but no father, than to have Billy-beta-sperm but a committed, loyal father who is good with children.

Everything being average statements here.

Wanting someone better and getting someone better for a committed relationship are two very different things. It's a mating market. What happens at markets? Equal value things get exchanged.

Read up on social exchange theory, assortative mating, homogamy and dual mate choice in humans. Hypergamy is a niche thing.

jtinian · 2024-12-30T03:57:31+00:00

How have women evolved with hypergamous selection if they haven’t had a choice in their mate until modern era?

They haven't. The majority people across human history were poor and had little to no choice with who they mated with.

when our modern instincts

This evolution was a recent development?

They simply cheated and actually had the baby of the man they were actually attracted to and had the arranged marriage man raise the baby. ( Plausible but this seems so dangerous and risky, as if the man finds out he will likely have killed her and the kids, and this would have had to of happened en masse to keep the selection evolution going ).

Natural selection takes place over time spans like 100 million years. Instincts are one of the consequences of natural selection. You're talking about learned behaviors, which have nothing to do with our genetics. Also I don't know how they would've had paternity tests back then, and if this man did find out, he would most likely abandon the family rather than kill them because I wouldnt assume that level of psychopathy on this hypothetical man, it's just not that common.

They simply didn’t have as many kids as the ones who were with men they did actually see as better?

I'm not getting what you're saying here, please elaborate.

Downtown_Cat_1745 · 2024-12-30T10:31:03+00:00

Hypergamy never meant a man being more physically attractive than a woman. It was always about money and social status.

Now that women can make their own money, hypergamy is dying. Feminism killed it.

Artistic_Speech_1965 · 2024-12-30T11:35:17+00:00

Tbh there are some wrong basis in this reasoning. Women could choose their partner at a certain extend. They just need to follow the male gaze principle and any men from all background may be interested, the family or the said woman just to choose the one with the most ressources

Marriage of a upper class man with a lower class women were more frequent than the other way around

Stunning-Spirit5275 · 2024-12-30T14:22:20+00:00

Arranged marriages. Parents acted as a proxy for hypergamy

Plazmatron44 · 2024-12-30T18:34:31+00:00

6000 years of civilisation isn't enough to undo millions of years of evolution.

4jayc4 · 2024-12-30T22:48:10+00:00

until very recently, they had no choice in who they mated with

Your core premise is simply wrong.

Females of our species had the choice of who they're mating with for millions of years, then a brief period of a few thousand years of forced monogamy and now they're free to choose again.

Cultural-Ad-8486 · 2024-12-30T08:53:13+00:00

Because it's not true.

Evolutionarily, men and women have been choosing partners for relationships almost voluntarily for tens (and even hundreds) of thousands of years.

Literally "primitive" tribal societies are unironically peaceful to us. And we have lived like this for hundreds of thousands of years, just like modern homosapiens, and millions of years like our other ancestors... Societies then worked quite simply: everyone worked and behaved as politely and calmly as possible, because only in this way and together could they survive; if someone violated the rules, they were kicked out or expelled.

This is not even just atropology, but modern observations of hunter-gatherer tribes in Central-South Africa and South America.

And this is not taking into account that anthropologists have real theories about the reason for the reduction of fangs in our species of people (especially in men). And the reason is that our fangs are a tool only for intraspecific competition, predators cannot be scared with them. And it looks like there was a real genetic selection: women constantly chose men with small fangs because such men are less aggressive.

What you are describing is a super modern life (the last centuries - a thousand years) and even that only applies to the "upper classes".

Since ordinary people lived the same way as thousands of years ago according to the principle: you need to stick together or die alone. And this changed only in the middle of the last century, since life became safe and in abundance of everything.

*P.S: also the latest scientific data support the idea that homosapiens is a species that adheres to serial monogamy. So you can't seriously divide people into: alphas, betas, omegas…

Rahim556 · 2024-12-30T11:23:41+00:00

Even cavewoman "Ugga" was secretly lusting after the hunter caveChad "Chug," and planning to monkey branch up from gatherer BetaBerries "Ug."

ImaginaryDimension74 · 2024-12-30T03:52:52+00:00

They have had a say in their mate, arranged marriages have always been the exception, not the rule, and even in arranged marriages it’s often been about hypergamy.

Conscious-Truth-7685 · 2024-12-30T12:09:59+00:00

u/HTML_Novice brother, I am 42 years old, have been married twice for a total of 20 years, have had several long-term relationships in between and more sexual partners than I care to count and I have been relatively poor my whole life. I can guarantee you this is absolutely 100% bullshit. Women as a monolith are not hypergamous, and while some women will select for "status," virtually ALL of them want someone who is a good person and treats them well.

All this nonsense you wrote, all the posts like yours on this sub are one gigantic cope to write off your collective inability to find and keep long-term, fulfilling, and productive relationships. To be honest, I completely sympathize with that, and I think there are important conversations to be had towards alleviating that, but this ain't that my guy. These thoughts, these ideas, the time invested in developing and defending them only make your life harder and take you further away from securing the thing you clearly want - to be loved.

There is a really easy way to prove or disprove these things you believe. Attain the level of status you think ALL women desire and then see if you are more successful with those women compared to now. You and I both know it wouldn't make a lick of difference, and at some point, you have to dig deep and ask yourself, why is that. That is a meaningful question worth exploring.

Bikerbats · 2024-12-30T04:45:17+00:00

The answer is simple: Your premise is false. There is no evolution of hypergamous selection, because women are not, and never were naturally hypergamous.

DoubleFistBishh · 2024-12-30T04:58:50+00:00

Women aren't hypergamous.

wtknight · 2024-12-30T04:44:34+00:00

Women have done things extramaritally for a long time, even if their marriages were arranged.

badgersonice · 2024-12-30T14:50:15+00:00

Humans aren’t gorillas, and don’t mate like them. Women for much of history were not forced to mate with merely the strongest brute… and female choice has actually likely been a civilizing factor of humanity. Humans are actually quite a bit less sexually dimorphic in strength and size than our closest relatives, very likely due to women choosing more companionable, cooperative males who can navigate a complex society rather than just beat the shit out of anyone who disagrees with them.

Neither of our closest biological cousins have harems. And regardless of your fantasies, the majority of human reproduction simply is not rape. Women have mostly had at least some degree of choice in a lot of historical times and places… and they likely had a lot more choice among the peasantry and prior to the establishment of extreme hierarchies.

In addition, most male humans tend to actually kinda hate it when their female relatives get raped— they are the ones who guard female choice, often with extreme violence. (For example, I just recently read an account where members of one Scottish clan molested some women of another clan— the women’s male clansmen murdered almost all of the molesters outright. They then took the leader, beat him, broke all his limbs, and tied him into a small dinghy and set him adrift to die of exposure on the ocean… which of course angered the other clan and triggered a massacre. Men are actually quite violently protective of female sexual choice). It is only some of the really fanatical brainwashing religions that don’t grant women any sexual choice at all.

Rape is incredibly socially destructive to any community: that’s why men use it as a weapon of war. Most men oppose forcing their daughters and wives to sexually service brutal men against their will.

HappyCat79 · 2024-12-30T17:34:38+00:00

I think it destroys the premise that women are all hypergamous.

Imaginary-Order6227 · 2024-12-30T20:27:11+00:00

Your false premise is the reason why.

stats135 · 2024-12-30T04:18:48+00:00

However, until very recently, they had no choice in who they mated with

Sexual selection comes from millions of years of evolution. A mere few thousand years of civilization can hardly put a dent in it. Almost all females, from wild animals to insects, are hypergamous. Our female bald monkey ancestors evolved hypergamy long before we were even considered human.

if the man finds out he will likely have killed her and the kids

Nah, he'd only kill the child. Again look out into the wild. Males would often kill the offspring that wasn't his, but he would never kill the female he wants to breed with. In humans there was a correlation of civilizations with religions that "sacrificed" their first born child to the gods and civilizations that did not restrict female sexuality pre-marriage, and thus paternity of the first born was in question.

PullHisHairIDontCare · 2024-12-30T06:36:05+00:00

Every man I know is stronger, taller, and makes more money than me. ;) yay

Throw-it-all-away85 · 2024-12-30T07:11:57+00:00

My body literally won’t get pregnant by a loser. My eggs won’t choose xx sperm if a man can’t wonderfully raise a daughter

No-Breath6663 · 2024-12-30T04:53:57+00:00

Women have had a lot of power throughout all of history and the claim they didn't is easily debunked with basic data and historical information.

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Anonreddit96 · 2024-12-30T06:24:42+00:00

Cuz the parents of the women are also hypergamous. They also want the women to go into a family with higher social status than themselves. Go check arranged marriages where they are still happening like in india. In the majority of cases the groom would be earning equally or much more than the father of the bride.

pyrolid · 2024-12-30T06:37:27+00:00

I understand your point, but instincts like these are not developed recently. They have pretty much existed since millions of years, right from the time we were monkey like beings roaming the savannah. And since these instincts were always beneficial, they have stuck around

I also feel the whole concept of arranged marriages is very recent in the human timescale. But even if it's not and even if homo erectus fathers were deciding the husbands for their homo erectus daughters, it's still beneficial for women to exercise the control they have, however limited it might be, in the best way possible. Or cheat with a better mate if nothing else works

So i frankly dont see a scenario where women will not develop these instincts

Makuta_Servaela · 2024-12-30T13:16:43+00:00

Even presuming the hypergamy thing is real, evolution has existed longer than human culture has. We have been females for thousands of years before we were women.

If anything, your "hypergamy" thing probably comes from a pretty common trope in bonobo and chimpanzee society, being that females just kinda mate with whichever male- especially males more likely to end up more dominant, because (for bonobos) it means the rest of the troupe are more likely to see her baby as "the troupe's baby", or (for chimpanzees) it means whatever male happens to rise to dominant at the time will assume it's his and not bother the baby. That's also common in other species such as lions and zebras that are notorious for having aggressive males prone to asocial behaviour and prone to attacking babies in the group that aren't his.

In other words, "hypergamy" likely started because of male violence/selfishness forcing females to act that way to protect her baby.

hallcyon11 · 2024-12-30T13:22:34+00:00

I’ve wondered about this too. How did women develop an evolved preference if they couldn’t choose, for the most part, throughout our evolution.

My theory is as humans started to organize themselves into tribes, women started to have more ability to choose.

I think in caveman days if you tried to rape the hottest women you’d get a rock to the back of the head pretty quickly.

BobtheArcher2018 · 2024-12-30T14:27:41+00:00

The impact of kin influence on human evolution is talked about in evo psych. It is more complex than the OP let's on. The extent of kin influence on the mate choice of both genders varied greatly. Moreover, even when kin had strong formal control over female mate choice, that did not mean the bride-to-be's preferences had no way of manifesting themselves.

The interests of the kin and of the principals do not always diverge, for one. You also have to worry about the principals running away or killing themselves. And of course 'love' is a thing, including inside families. It's not as if every parent in history until the 1900s didn't give a shit if they made their child miserable.

So kin influence matters, and definitely complicates the history of human sexual selection and the evolution that proceeded from it. At the same time, human sexual selection and related evolution isn't that radically different than that of organisms without consciousness and kin influence over mate choice.

EssentialPurity · 2024-12-30T14:59:18+00:00

Because Natural Selection doesn't work that way. It doesn't optimize species like that.

In this case, there is no evolutionary pressure against hypergamy because it doesn't reduce reproductive success (men are too sexually immoral to pass up the opportunity of being the superior male monkeybranchers leave their partners for) and doesn't reduce survival significantly (again, the superior males never reject monkeybranchers, and this includes not killing them because this would be squandering of sexual opportunity).

And there's also no evolutionary pressure for non-hypergamy, because superior males are not unfit for survival and the males who have a problem with it typically are unfit because they have less rizz. It is, women will not be at any significant significant disadvantage by being hypergamous, nor at any significant advantage by being "hypogamous".

It means that hypergamy will simply remain within Human nature forever until something changes very drastically in the environment and endures for a very long term.

So... If you have such a problem with hypergamy, just summarily execute all high status males along with their progeny, and ensure this practice becomes entrenched in culture. Or just implement Communism to equalize Material Conditions. Just don't touch the women because it's not exactly a very smart move to suppress the very only people capable of doing the most important part of reproduction.

Practical-Delay-344 · 2024-12-30T20:03:28+00:00

Early humans lived in groups of 30-50 individuals afaik. Paternity was not important as long as it wasn't incest. Men and women who liked each other had sex, everyone in the tribe raised the resulting offspring. Of course, women had choice. Violence against members of the tribe would have likely gotten you expelled.

Podlubnyi · 2024-12-31T00:40:53+00:00

However, until very recently, they had no choice in who they mated with.

Rape has been a punishable crime for millennia. Forced marriages have been illegal in Christendom at least since the Codex Justinianus of the 6th century. There have also always been a sizeable number of women who chose not to mate with anyone.

HeroMyLove · 2024-12-31T12:05:05+00:00

Please just stay away from the redpill content

kinoki1984 · 2024-12-31T12:16:02+00:00

The only reason women can date up in the quantity they do is because the dating market allows it. Women’s beauty is in itself a currency. Just look what happens when the economy turns to shit and something like OnlyFans is available.

As a man I also date up. Or I have. Since I have traits that are generally attractive to women I get women that are both richer and more attractive. We all want to date up. But unless you have a trait that can elevate you it’s difficult.

Xeltar · 2024-12-31T23:02:53+00:00

It seems like a conclusion should be that evopsych is nonsensical?

balhaegu · 2025-01-02T02:59:04+00:00

There is a dual scenario happening simultaneously.

During times of peace women had fair amount of choice in whom they marry. They would run away with their lover if parents disapproved. They could join a nunnery if they didnt want to marry. They could seduce a man they like most. Men dont simply get a woman they want. You think its easy, but look at it from a man's POV. There are 20 other young men in the village, and they all want the most beautiful woman. In Anarchy They would need to fight to the death amongst themselves to decide who gets to marry her. So the men have an unwritten agreement to avoid bloodshed and play fair, by letting the woman accept or reject each of their proposals, and the losers go after the next beautiful woman and so on. Women maximized survival of themselves and offspring by attracting mates that had highest resources, status, or potential.

During times of unrest, war brides and rape, and sex slaves would be common. In these times women increased survivability by either seducing the most dangerous, egotistical, and strongest man who, if he falls in love with her, wouldnt let other men touch her and would be her guardian, or simply obeying and submitting to the whims of the captors. If you resisted you were more likely to be killed. Those that played along survived and had children.

Combine the two scenarios in everyones genetic ancestry spanning many millennia and we get the paradoxical and contradictory desires, icks, kinks, fetishes that women have today.

IcyTrapezium · 2025-01-06T08:54:00+00:00

Women started having less of a say in certain economic classes because marriage was invented as a way to pass down property.

For most of human history we didn’t have property that we farmed. We were gatherer-hunters.

I think rape was probably less common than you think within a group. Outsiders likely raped more since it was easier to get away with. But within a social group violence wouldn’t have yielded great outcomes. We are a social species who work together. That means intragroup violence would cause disharmony.

InitialPaths989 · 2024-12-30T04:27:50+00:00

Most of known history people have lived in polygamous societies. Women are so hypergamous they just share one man with the resources. You weren’t likely as a man to have procreated the last 13,000 years. All women were though. Tinder is a polygamist society, that’s what happens when you let women go on their natural instincts, they just share the top men.

Proudvow · 2024-12-30T05:45:40+00:00

However, until very recently, they had no choice in who they mated with. Even when our modern instincts were being formed, they were honestly more or less at the whims of whichever man took them.

For most of that time it was the strongest highest status men. That only changed for a very brief portion of human history after the top men realized the bottom men would just skewer them in an angry mob if they didn't also get women, and enacted policies that kept the average man happy. With violence removed from the equation and pro-male policies not just removed but replaced with pro-female policies, circumstances are rapidly shifting towards the old status quo.

Gotta remember that while written law has existed for 4,000 years humanity has existed for 2.8 million years; for most of the history of evolution it was might makes right and that's it, so that's what women ended up selecting for. And civilized societies feature very low pre-reproduction mortality rates, so they exert almost no evolutionary pressure that would change things.

DankuTwo · 2024-12-30T09:12:14+00:00

Women ALWAYS had a choice in who they slept with, and had a substantial choice in who they ‘married’ (if they happened to live in a society where ‘marriage’ existed) for the vast majority of human history (hundreds of thousands of years, almost all of which was lived before the development of agriculture and the building of even small-scale, hierarchical societies). People extrapolate the more controlled existence of a tiny number of elite women who had less choice to imply that no women had a choice.

If you were part of a small hunter gatherer troop you were not pair-bonding for land (no one had any) or titles or anything; you didn’t have any to begin with. A huge percentage of people were something akin to a slave for much of the past 7,000 years, if you happened to live in a large, hierarchical society (think Sumer, Egypt, Greece, Han China). No one cares who you ‘marry’ if you’re a slave. Similarly, no one forced Anna Hathaway to marry William Shakespeare….she was already pregnant when they wed! This was probably often the case.

Even in the classic scenario most people associate with past marriages (16th - 18th century European nobility) women at the very least usually had right of veto over a marriage. Matches had to be reasonable, but were rarely just flat out imposed on all parties by their parents.

In short, the history is very long and varied, and human existence is MUCH longer still!

Siukslinis_acc · 2024-12-30T08:15:31+00:00

The parents wanted to select the best mate for their daughter, becase it unifies families and the parents might get more status/riches.

SecondEldenLord · 2024-12-30T12:05:54+00:00

What makes you think they didn't have a choice? Most did and besides, what is so bad in being taken care of and raising children?

Sharp_Engineering379 · 2024-12-30T06:25:50+00:00

It’s C) hypergamy is a zoological term which doesn’t apply to humans, who have been coupled up artificially for as long as Abrahamic religions began.

Men can’t seem to understand that men are taller, stronger, and generally make more money than most women, so of course women are dating bigger and stronger people with more resources.

missmireya · 2024-12-30T05:38:41+00:00

I've evolved...the older I get, the pickier I get.

Whiskeymyers75 · 2024-12-30T04:41:12+00:00

Modern hypergamous selection is weird to me considering the obesity epidemic especially affecting women. 40% of women aged 20–39 are obese and more than 2 out of 3 women in America are overweight or obese. Which hot guys with money are getting with these women?

philseven12 · 2024-12-30T05:39:53+00:00

Women been chasing the image since the beginning, they didn't evolve into it. It's they factory default settings. It's just now they can finally act on it

profstarship · 2024-12-30T06:09:20+00:00

The idea they didn't have a choice is obviously flawed as majority of parents would take their daughter preferences into account regardless of what you read regarding empire building among the ruling class. 2nd even among those hand selecting for their daughters would also align with this preference because that's how they get the most value out of the situation.

So then you're really just left with a chicken or the egg question. Which came first, daughters wanting rich dudes, or dad's wanting rich dudes for their daughters. Either way ultimately it was aligned over time regardless of which came first, and did not spontaneously come to existence with the creation of birth control and no fault divorce.

giveuporfindaway · 2024-12-30T07:18:31+00:00

I'm not sure what hypergamy has to do with choice or the absence of choice. I also don't see why hypergamy can't persist albeit not be acted on in a society with less choice.

And yes until recently, cuckolding men was common and unverifiable. You'll notice that an evolved trait that all women have is to get angry at men for wanting DNA verification. This is an emotional reaction rather than an intellectual one. Because if women were both sympathetic and intelligent they would understand that taking such a thing on faith is equivalent to women having faith in men that they won't be left post-pregnancy. It's two sides of the same coin.

PositiveApricot8759 · 2024-12-30T09:27:53+00:00

Have you maybe read Pride and Prejudice? It was like the early 19th century, but still, Darcy had to be the tallest and the richest one in the county.

Title	How have women evolved with hypergamous selection if they haven’t had a choice in their mate until modern era?
Author	HTML_Novice
Upvotes	13
Comments	275
Date	December 30, 2024 3:32 AM UTC (1 year ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/PurplePillDebate
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/PurplePillDebate/comments/1hpdz6y/how_have_women_evolved_with_hypergamous_selection/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/PurplePillDebate/how-have-women-evolved-with-hypergamous-selection.1539886 https://theredarchive.com/post/1539886

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