TLDR: The manosphere definition of hypergamy is that women are generally attracted to men whom they perceive as superior or higher status within their environment. Social status is context based, and therefore hypergamy can manifest in a wide variety of different ways, many of which may not be immediately obvious. The 80/20 rule means that the top 20% of men within a given social environment have the majority of casual sex opportunities which they take advantage of to varying degrees, but the majority of sex, period, is still had within relationships.

I often see these claims disputed on PPD, especially by the more hard line blue pillers. I believe one issue causing the confusion is that there are many different takes on how this manifests IRL. I think this comes off to TBP as moving the goal posts. In this post, I will try to explain how I view hypergamy and the 80/20 rule within a frequent TBP claim I largely agree with, which is that "like attracts like."

I think a lot of the confusion understandably comes from the technical, academic definition of the word hypergamy, which literally means marrying up in social class/caste. TRP/the manosphere definition of hypergamy means something only vaguely similar to this.

My take on hypergamy is that as a general rule, women are attracted to men who they consciously or subconsciously view as superior to them by a measure that matters to them. This could be the man outearning her, or being her boss at work, or in a respected niche in her field, or it could be something else entirely. Blues and purples often point out "lol shes just marrying him for his money!" and yes sometimes these greater earners are simply beta bux, but sometimes there is a mix of attraction and provision, especially if the man excels in a profession she is passionate about.

Frequently, I believe that women are attracted to men who they view as superior in ways totally unrelated to earning potential, and that this may be less noticeable/obvious to some as hypergamy. For example, a high earning business woman who loves skiing can fall for the expert ski instructor who only makes 30k a year. They may even be roughly looksmatched. A bluepiller might see this as evidence against hypergamy because she outearns him and they are roughly equal in looks, and hence claim that "like attracts like" instead. IMO they aren't wrong in this regard, just incomplete. Said businesswoman might have a colleague who is puzzled by her mate choice, instead preferring for herself a charismatic preacher in her church, perhaps also earning only 30k a year, who is active in community service or even charity missions to other countries. The point is that in both cases, the woman is attracted to a man she feels is above her in a way that is relevant to her life, or in other words, he is like her, but better, as opposed to just point blank above her in some universal measurement system that in actuality does not exist. In her world, these men are alphas, (or more technically and likely high betas, but lets not digress here). Social status is heavily context relevant. Just think of all the 90's "black guy meets white guy" comedies, where the jokes essentially revolve around sudden reversals of social hierarchy when each guy takes a turn being forced out of their element and learning how to survive in a different environment from each other. This leads to my next point...

The 80/20 rule, in my opinion, does not mean that there is some absolute, universal, scale of men into which a clearly defined top percentage exists. The only dynamic where this kind of applies is to the issue of height, but even then, women care to varying degrees about height. I view the 80/20 rule as applying to within given social circles/environments/cultures. So for example, within a popular ski resort, roughly 80% of the women will be attracted to roughly 20% of the men. In my opinion and experience, that doesn't necessarily mean 80% of the women are only attracted to that 20%, but rather that they are attracted to them, with varying numbers of outlier men outside the 20% also being attractive to individual women within the aforementioned 80%, and then of course the 20% of women who for whatever reason feel no attraction to the most popular top 20% of men. This leaves room for quite a few pairing offs with more equally matched couples, but also leaves room for a lot of people feeling left our and frustrated. Another TBP claim I agree with is that most sex is had within LTR's, and therefore the top 20% of men are not having 80% of total sex. However, in my experience and observation within a decent variety of social environments, the top 20% of men in a given environment, say, our aforementioned ski resort, are having 80% of the total casual sex, or sex outside of a committed LTR including ONS/FWB. The average girl may not ride the cock carousel, but I think the average girl does have 1-3 ONS/FWB in between her LTRs, usually figuring out fairly quickly she does not like casual sex or at least that the negatives outweigh the positives for her. In my experience, when these average girls have their rare hookup, they tend to be having them with the same small pool of guys. The top 20% within a given environment gets 80% of average girls 1-3 hookups. The top 20% also gets 80% of the CC riders casual sex. Additionally, not all of the top 20% of a given social circle necessarily wants to hook up, but again, my experience is that they and even lots of men outside this 20% still have 1-3 ONS/FWB in between their LTRs. Lots of the 20% of men just pair off happily with a very hot girlfriend (serial monogamy is quite common), who may feel insecure at the colossal female attention he receives. This actually leaves an even smaller % of dudes having an even greater % of casual sex than 80/20. In summary, my belief is that within given environments, 20% of men have 80% of the sexual attraction capital, and that some of them leverage their value to obtain casual sex occasionally, while some do so frequently.

Some final thoughts/observations are that some men within the top 20% in one environment rank considerably lower in another environment. For example, a ripped gym bro might kill it in the fitness scene, but have zero female interest in an indy rock music scene, and vice versa. This sometimes contributes to "peter pan syndrome" where young guys do puzzling things like take 7 years to graduate college because they are having a blast in greek life, and on some level know this will not last after graduation, or starving musicians touring in bands way past their prime. In other words, some men are trying to stay within the environment in which they dominate as long as possible, past when it would be "normal" to do so, due to knowledge that they will never replicate their success in another one. Another problem that I think contributes to dead bedrooms and divorces is where women are attracted to men in an environment they can not remain in forever, become heavily invested in them and eventually marry, re prioritize lives in such a way that fundamentally strips the attraction from their man out of practical considerations (IE he has to sell his motorcycles, moving away from the coast/mountains prohibiting surfing/skiing, he has to quit his band/the military to be home more often, etc), then stop feeling attraction for their man. The top 20% biker/surfer/band dude ranks maybe 50th percentile within the corporate environment, for example. She was attracted to the sexy surfer, not the 8-5 corporate drone.

Ultimately, I believe that my view on this, while still rendering attraction and dating a zero sum game, has significantly more optimistic implications for men than is often believed by the negative nancy's of the manosphere. More than just 20% of the male population have the potential to attract women, even for casual sex. You don't need to be the top 20% in some universal competition, just the top 20% in something, preferably some environment with a lot of girls ;) And even if you're not in the top 20%, you still have a chance of pairing off happily but will have less casual sex options. But if you do make it to the top 20, it really becomes a landslide.

In my opinion, all of this is becoming increasingly obvious to Western men, which leads to a future post of mine I am still formulating, and will use this post as the groundwork. It should be fairly optimistic by manosphere standards.