The End Of Hypergamy?  Not So Fast . . . 
The Red Pill Room | March 30, 2012 | by Ian Ironwood
-------------------------
 One of the things that sucks about blogging is that there are often
too many subjects about which to expound going on at one time.  You
simply can't write about everything.  Thankfully, the Manosphere is a
a gloriously churning maelstrom of vigilance, and you can count on one
of your Manosphere brethren to watch your back on important issues.
 And, in this case, one of the Manosphere sisteren.

Honorary Manosphere pundit Susan Walsh over at Hooking Up Smart had a
lovely piece today examining Liza Munday's contentions in her new
book, The Richer Sex.
[http://www.hookingupsmart.com/2012/03/29/politics-and-feminism/is-the-end-of-hypergamy-near/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+HookingUpSmart+%28Hooking+Up+Smart%29]
 I encourage you to check it out.  Susan dissected the overtly
feminist work with admirable Red Pill perspicacity, and in particular
recognized something that Ms. Mundy apparently has not: Men aren't
terribly thrilled with what they have lost due to the rise of female
earning power.

I want you to read the whole post, but of particular note is this
astute observation Susan makes:

> Apparently, Mundy describes the cheerful male helpmeet greeting his
> frazzled wife with a glass of wine at the end of the day at least
> half a dozen times in the book. It sounds more like Mad Men in
> reverse than a plausible scenario for American married couples. I
> also find the reference to manly pursuits extremely patronizing and
> hypocritical – is this the enlightened version of the 1950s sewing
> circle?

Why no, no it is not.  Thank you, Susan.

The Red Pill truth of the matter is that women who "marry down",
whether you use income, class, or education as your metric, take a
very real hit to their social status by doing so.   Women in
aggregate are highly judgmental, and as they continuously seek to
establish their place in the social hierarchy of women, after
determination of marital status and childbearing status, the status of
the woman's husband is often factored in even before her own
professional success is taken into account.

I happen to have grown up in a very science, technology, and
medically-oriented burgh, and I spent most of my 20s, as I was hacking
my way painfully through college, working in offices because I have
more sense that to work construction.  I was a male clerical worker
(mostly temp jobs) for nearly ten years.  I got to work in every kind
of office a major metro area has to offer, from insurance to medical
to computer to pharma to the local public school system.  I was a
regular cubicle hound for years.   So I got to witness the female
social network in action, up close and personal, over and over again.

I was fortunate enough to work under some crackerjack female managers,
as well as some real screachtards.  But as I evaluated the power
centers of each new job (a vital step for a young male in the
minority) I began to notice some interesting patterns.

For example, I once worked in one of the medical departments for a
university hospital, directly under one of the most competent managers
I've ever had.  Dr. X had two advanced degrees, loads of professional
accolades, and a generous salary, not to mention perks and honors that
come with such a position.   But Dr. X was married to a very
intelligent man who was pursuing a MFA in creative writing . . . and
had been for over a decade.  He had also yet to publish anything.  

Now Mr. X's non-existent teaching salary was about what Dr. X made in
her first quarter.   He was a "house husband", even though they
employed a housekeeper.  I met the dude at two different functions,
and he was the consummate Beta: intelligent, caring, deeply concerned
for community affairs and very supportive of his wife's career . . .
but behind his back the line of shit that got talked about him was
impressive.  "Golddigger", "Gigolo" (the first time I've ever heard
that term used to refer to a husband that way) and other epithets were
whispered, and sympathy for "Poor Dr. X" about her loser hubby who
wouldn't get off his ass and get a real job were gossip-fodder all
night long.  

He was just the kind of sensitive house-husband Liza Mundy was
speaking of when she was talking about the new "acceptance" by men of
their new roles.  Mr. X was viciously emasculated, and Dr. X was
professionally damaged by that.  And with no children involved, the
level of loathing by these women was intense.  Despite their sympathy
for the good Doctor X, the other women who controlled the department
severely discounted Dr. X's leadership abilities based almost solely
on her (to them) poor skill in selecting a mate.  She "married down",
and that put a negative spin on what was an otherwise robust career.
 Mr. X was "holding her back", "dragging her down", and she was
"carrying him".  There was even open speculation as to whether or not
she would be open to the possibility of an affair.

Let's contrast that to Ms. Y, another mid-level manager I worked for
in the private sector.  With two masters degrees and a decade and a
half of experience in her industry she was at about the same
professional level as Dr. X, but Mrs. Y was married to
an entrepreneur and developer.  He had even used her money to start
his company and get his first few projects going.  He was just shy of
a bachelor's degree, but his high-profile projects pushed him into
social circles he likely wouldn't have been privy to, otherwise.  Ms.
Y repeatedly used Mr. Y's company to look for sales prospects, and
_vice versa_.  When Ms. Y needed sponsors for charity events or
promotions, Mr. Y's company was there, and when Mr. Y's company needed
corporate sponsorship for something, she made sure her company got
behind it.  

Add in one terribly cute adopted baby and you have a real Power
Couple.   And that's the only way a woman can survive the stench of
"marrying down" on her career.

I put up with this myself, from time to time.  Yes, Ms. Ironwood
out-earns me, even at her state job, and has limitless potential to
pile up dough in the private sector some day.  Me, I've about maxed
out my salary potential as a copywriter, and the only way I can
increase my income is through freelance or writing books.  Since
that's an option, I'm not intimidated by my wife's success -- I've
been telling her for years I'm worth tens of millions in potential
intellectual property rights.  But if I hadn't had my very first
submission get published and hit the New York Times Best Seller's
list, making me a by-gods Author instead of a poor college student
with a day-job, it would have been a different story.   That was
enough of a status-boost in my community to make us a "power couple",
not a career woman with a husband who did something creative or
something while he took care of the kids.

Look at the reaction to Demi Moore's highly-popularized union with
Ashton Kutcher, compared to the Brad Pitt/Angelina Jolie couple.  
Demi's image was hurt (except among cougars who were hungry for some
validation of their own middle-aged lusts for young flesh) by her
pairing, whereas minstrels wrote epics about Brangelina's
relationship.  Being a Power Couple energized both of them, whereas
Demi was brought down in status while Ashton went up.  

I know, I know, comparing celebrities to real people is just wrong.
 But it illustrates my point: not only have men not accepted their
"new role", neither have women.   Because in the judgment of the
female social matrix women who cannot attract a superior mate to
themselves are themselves downgraded, regardless of their
accomplishments.  

		
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		_Women now account for the majority 
of higher-educated workers._

And that doesn't even get into the profound alienation that men feel
about the whole idea.  

Understand first that men naturally compete -- with other men.  
That's been the gold standard since the Time Before Writing.  What we
competed for wasn't important -- it was the competition that mattered.
 That spirit has been enshrined in competitive sports and other
endeavors in every human culture.  Men compete.  Against each other.

But with industrialization and a flood of women entering the workforce
back in the 1960s and 1970s, and then the next wave of professionals
and information-class female workers in the 1980s and1990s, men were
faced with the uncomfortable prospect of competing with women for
jobs, not men.  And they considered the competition unfair.  While
three decades of corporate culture in which women were not only
involved, but were actively working to promote and advance other women
(when they weren't sabotaging them to get ahead) has given us a fairly
workable set of social and legal rules regarding the workplace, that
doesn't mean that men have embraced the idea.  Hell, some barely
accept it, and others refuse to work with women at all, becoming
self-employed rather than deal with a female superior.

		
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		Women have made significant gains in the workplace,
particularly in middle management.  This has _not _translated
into higher feminine happiness.  Nor into attractive mating
possibilities.

Indeed, men have not embraced the idea of women in the workplace the
way that feminists wanted them to.  Not at all.  Feminist ideology
stated that once there was legal and cultural parity between men and
women in the workplace, then both could compete for the same jobs
based on merit, from a level playing-ground.  Once women started
moving into positions of power, men would naturally come to respect
them for their leadership abilities and follow them just as well as
they would follow a man.  

In the Feminist Utopia, a strong, independent woman was valued by the
men who were her subordinates.  And if they didn't have respect for
her, then that was due to their sexism and chauvinism, not due to the
faults or flaws in the female executive in question.  Laws and
cultural diversity classes would be brought to bear, forcing men
to acknowledge and support the superiority of their female
superiors, while a sisterhood of career women mutual supported and
mentored each other to break the glass ceiling, take control of the
corporate state, and eventually re-shape the world in their image with
the happy obedience and willing cooperation of their re-educated
male colleagues.

		
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		Women have long complained about men not doing
a fair share of housework.  Now that housework parity has
been achieved, professional women are finding that they are
not as attracted to a domestic house-husband as they would 
have thought.

Didn't quite work out that way.

Feminism missed a lot about this.  And one of the big things that
they missed was the fact that men don't like competing with women --
and when they are forced to, they rebel.  Since the law and corporate
culture prohibit an active rebellion without retribution, men take the
road of the Puerarchy, and go subversive.

It's not an organized subversion as some feminist speculate -- there
is no vast, right-wing anti-feminist cabal who has a 10 year plan to
put every woman in the world back into dependence on a man.  Or if
there is, no one has invited me to it yet.  No, resistance to female
authority and female competitors happens because when placed in
a competition with both men and women, men often discount the women
out of the equation.  They can justify this because of the
"advantages" that just being female grants their colleagues.  

And this helps explain one of the reasons why young men are so
reluctant to marry: they no longer view women as equal partners or
even potential subordinates in a relationship.  Faced with
highly-competitive females at work who are operating aggressively in
competition, these Guys (hard to call them Men until they get made
Men) it becomes that much harder to drop the competitive nature of
intergender relations long enough to do more than hook up -- and
certainly not enough to wed.  

Women are _scary_ to these guys. 

They often have power over them (middle management seems replete with
single women in their late-30s and early-40s who have devoted so much
to their careers that they're still single -- and will likely die that
way), they always have the power to hurt them just by suggesting you
said something inappropriate, and they can use unfair advantages of
flirtation and even affairs with senior management to advance their
careers . . . while being publicly appalled about such things.
 After being challenged at work all day, forced to compete against
women, the allure of a "dude's apartment" complete with beer signs,
videogames, and non-stop internet porn seems like Valhalla.   

		
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		Anecdotal evidence tends to suggest that men with female superiors
feel
less compelled to achieve, and are over-all less ambitious than their
male-led peers.  Some ambitious men studiously avoid female-led
positions
due to the unlikelihood of getting a future raise or promotion 
and the higher likelihood of sexual harassment charges.

Consider the raunchy Comedy Central show _WORKOHOLICS_, focused on
three stoner loser roommates who work in a cube farm for a
ball-busting bitch of a (pointedly single) female executive who
regularly dominates, emasculates, and berates them.  It's a paen to
the Puerarchy.

Do they respect their successful and aggressive female manager?
 They_ fear_ her -- but any loyalty due her is _purely_ based on her
very low  expectations of their performance, not because she has
earned it in their eyes.  The _WORKOHOLIC_ Guys _endure_ work, they
_tolerate_ their boss, but they have no ambition to achieve because
they know such ambition is often singled out and punished.  Besides,
why go to all that trouble if you're just going to get your legs cut
out from under you again?  Better to go home and grind on _HALO 3_
for nine hours straight before whacking off to porn, passing out, and
then getting up and doing it again the next day.  They rarely even
make the effort to meet girls, much less pursue them.   And trying to
impress them with false expectations of future potential is just too
damn hard to do convincingly.

Relationships?  They get enough of that shit at _work_.

The Guys are certainly not eager to jump into a marriage with a woman
-- they saw what happened to their fathers' generation, and things are
looking even less rosy now.  They're content to pursue their personal
interests at home, keep their damn mouth shut at work, and most don't
have more ambition than to stay employed for the next decade.

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Meanwhile, the Girls (the Guys' female contemporaries) are discovering
that the same dudes they eagerly compete with at work have zero
respect for them "as women".  That is, they don't want to date.
 They want to have sex, sure, but the Guys don't want to invest
anything into a relationship with a Girl from work.  That's just
asking for trouble.  

At first that works out fine for both, as both are fully immersed in
hookup culture, complete with friends-with-benefits and booty calls.
 But as a few years go by and the early 20s become the mid-20s, the
Girls quickly get tired of the hookups and start to pursue "real"
relationships.  Only they are being frustrated by the utter
disinterest that's being shown in them.

That's highly frustrating to a generation of women who were taught --
incorrectly -- THAT THE ROAD TO MASCULINE RESPECT AND ADMIRATION WAS
THROUGH CAREER SUCCESS.  And it is -- _for other men_.  But while a
dude will certainly look at a woman's career and earning prospects as
a plus, in most cases, if they are too much over his own then he's
going to loose interest quick -- we know what happens when you go down
that road.  No one wants to have to ask his sugar mama for beer
money.  Past a certain point, career success actually starts hurting
a woman's prospects of finding a marriageable mate.  And without
one, her future in the increasingly female-dominate workforce is very
limited.  She might break the glass ceiling, but if she doesn't have
a husband then despite four decades of feminist propaganda the female
social matrix discounts the woman's status dramatically.

 [http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-MtO5Ia9la7w/T3Xnpqd_90I/AAAAAAAAAj8/LHSCmFLJxDA/s1600/earning+power.JPG]

So how does the Feminist Utopia deal with marriage, then?

According to standard feminist ideology, marriage, when entered into
at all (it being an essentially oppressive custom of the fallen
Patriarchy, after all) is to be no less than the perfect union of
equals . . . though in practice any marriage where the man actually
takes any leadership role is usually condemned in feminist circles as
atavistic.  Despite that, feminists are themselves locked into the
female social matrix.  If they don't "marry up", then they get
accused of bagging a "Nigel" (as in _"men are horrid creatures who
have oppressed women for centuries, using their superior strength and
position to dominate us -- but Nigel doesn't believe in all of that,
do you dear?"_)-- what the Manosphere refers to as a White Knight or a
Manigina.   Nigels are the epitome of the sexless submissive Beta
male -- just the perfect kind of mate, according to feminist ideology.
 

Only feminists _despise_ Nigels.  It comes across in every post about
them in feminist discussion groups.  They betray their own ideology
with their loins, and often leave poor Nigel by the side of the road
after a few years in pursuit of the Alpha cock they've starved
themselves for.  Feminists may say they love Betas, but they're
voting with their vaginas . . . and eventually some of those dudes,
embittered by their rejection, find themselves in the Manosphere.

From a feminist perspective hypergamy isn't a problem -- it's a
solution.  Rejecting inadequate males after using them for resources
(emotional support, sperm, additional revenue) in favor of a
higher-status male is in itself status-building in feminist circles --
basically what that horrid _EAT, PRAY, LOVE_ woman did.  Hypergamy
proves their personal superiority to their first husbands, and even to
their second husbands.  

So the idea that Hypergamy is going to vanish now that women earn more
than men is just bullshit, any more than the idea that men stopped
objectifying women in the workplace just because of sexual harassment
laws.  No matter how many happy, smiling Manginas Ms. Mundy exhibits
as proof that men have "embraced" their new testicle-light role, the
rest of us _know_ it's Blue Pill bullshit.   Men, as Men, are
rejecting that role and going their own way, marrying down themselves
or not marrying at all, or marrying third-world brides with more
traditionally Agricultural Age concepts of matrimony.    That's the
factor that Ms. Mundy hasn't examined.   The rejection of the
American Working Woman by the American Working Man, unless the matter
of children is involved.

Some feminists see this as a plus -- the idea that a man and woman
should need to be married in order to support each other flies in the
face of feminist rhetoric about independence.   Dr. Emily Nagoski,
noted Sex Nerd, has proudly trumpeted the fact that she and her
romantic interest don't "need" each other (which makes any talk of
marriage just seem silly), they stay together because they "want" to.
 They love each other, and love alone should be enough to establish
and maintain a relationship, independent of economic concerns.  Or,
as one sarcastic feminist commented, 

> _Yeah, God forbid she actually stick around because she LIKES the
> dude or anything. Can’t have that._

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Well, no.  No, we can't.  Why not?  BECAUSE MEN, IN AGGREGATE,
_DON'T_ WANT THAT KIND OF MARRIAGE.  Its one based on their ability
to be entertaining, and once that stops, the relationship is OVER and
they know it.  Or, as I responded to the above-sarcastic feminist:

> _Well, that is kind of the point._ 

> _Most men view marriage as a life-long commitment that may possibly
> include reproductive rights, certainly involves combining finances
> and financial security, implies certain legal and ethical
> obligations, certainly includes a sexual component, not to mention
> establishing an entirely new family built around the compromises of
> blending your individual family cultures. His wife will be what
> socially defines him and will be how other men in his masculine
> culture will judge him._ 

> _And you think that a man should make a decision and establish a
> commitment that weighty based on your willingness to “like a
> dude”?_ 

> _What happens if you stop “liking” him? You leave? Take his
> kids? Half his stuff? Because you “just aren’t happy” or “I
> love you, but I’m not in love with you”, and “I settled
> prematurely (!)” or any other EatPrayLove rationalization? Because
> you met another dude you like a little bit better? I mean, is it any
> wonder that older women are discovering that men in their brackets
> are more than a little “commitmentphobic” . . . because actual
> commitment to a marriage has been pretty thin on the ground for the
> last forty years._ 

> _Yeah, Goddess forbid she stick around because she actually made a
> COMMITMENT to a dude or anything. Can’t have that._

_
_
To which she replied, basically, 

> _WHY TURN DOWN MONEY IN THE FAMILY BECAUSE IT’S GOT GIRL COOTIES
> ON IT?_

_BECAUSE IT'S NOT ABOUT THE FUCKING MONEY._  That's what they don't
understand.  They want to _think_ it's about the money, so they're
the first to say it's NOT about the money, that the money doesn't
matter.  And it doesn't, but not for the reasons they suspect.

Men look at resources and wages and earning and success _very
differently_ than women.   WOMEN FEEL THAT THEY SHOULD ENJOY THE SAME
PRESTIGE AMONG MEN THAT A MAN WOULD GET FOR THAT LEVEL OF SUCCESS --
but men aren't giving it to them, and they're not getting much more
from other women.  Why?  MEN SEE WAGES AND INCOME AND PROFESSIONAL
SUCCESS AS A MEANS TO AN END: TO ATTRACT A HIGH-QUALITY MATE.  WOMEN
SEE WAGES AND INCOME AND PROFESSIONAL SUCCESS THE SAME WAY . . . ONLY
MEN AREN'T ATTRACTED TO SECURITY ISSUES THE WAY WOMEN ARE.  

It's like the metrosexual dudes who think if they look pretty enough
and smell good enough and lack hair in all the right places, they'll
find Ms. Right.  The problem is that AS MUCH AS WOMEN ENJOY
GOOD-SMELLING DUDES WHO LOOK PRETTY, GOOD LOOKS ARE NOT THE PRIMARY
MOTIVATOR OF THEIR SEXUAL ATTRACTION CUES.  MONEY AND SECURITY IS.
 That includes emotional security, of course, so a successful career
woman may indeed find a man who fulfills that emotional need (she
doesn't have a financial need) . . . but the moment she marries him,
the power and sex balance has been broken.  He needs her for
financial security and she needs him for emotional security, but
emotional security isn't a recognized metric among the female social
matrix.  

But the sarcastic feminist won't recognize that.  She maintains
_"__THERE’S NOTHING ABOUT ECONOMIC SECURITY THAT MAKES PEOPLE HAVE
TO ACT LIKE JERKS."_ Of course, the caveat is that she means that
"_there's nothing about economic security that makes MEN have to act
like jerks"_ -- no doubt if it's a woman who is suddenly demanding
economic security from a man in the process of divorce, she's entitled
to whatever she can squeeze out of him, as per standard feminist
practice.   

If a woman happens to be a SAHM and wants more control over the
household income, her husband will be labeled a "jerk" or worse if he
doesn't grant it by feminists.  But if a SAHD wanted to control the
finances of the household, assuming a much wealthier wife, then he's
labeled a "controlling loser jerk" and conventional wisdom says "she
can do better".  Hypergamy, alive and well.  

		
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There is one bright bit of sunshine from this gloomy picture, though.
 Thanks to the new economic parity between men and women, I think
we'll see some punitively unfair divorce laws overturned a more and
more high-profile wives get divorced by their less-well-earning
husbands.  After we see a few female execs get taken to the cleaners
by their boy-toys, we'll see a feminist cry about further divorce
reform to "protect the right of a woman to generate and control her
own capital" or something like that.  Predatory husbands who Game
these old broads and then dump them a few years later for half their
fortunes will change a few tunes.  Perhaps enough to even begin to
approach fairness in divorce laws.

But as far as Liza Mundy's contention that men are learning to accept
and embrace their new roles, despite the implicit emasculation
involved?

		
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		_"Oh, shut up about your 'lost masculinity' . . . it's not like I
was going
to let you use it anymore, anyway!"
_

Don't count on it, Cupcake.

 
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