An Analysis of Human Sexual Strategies- Part 1: The State of Nature

(Note: this post is going to be updated over time as I track down scientific studies which offer support to some of my arguments/theories)

Several authors in the manosphere  were highly influential in bringing me into, and keeping me in, this part of the internet. Vox at Alpha Game, Rollo Tomassi at Rational Male, and finally Dalrock. Each of them added greatly to my understanding of human nature, primarily in the field of socio-sexual behaviors. One of the greatest insights provided to me was by Dalrock, when he clued me into the fact that the preferred form of female sexual strategy is Serial Monogamy. I had always internalized that men were naturally polygamous, and that women were monogamous, but the exact nature of the female sexual strategy had never been locked down in my mind. Once Dalrock cleared this up for me, I was suddenly able to understand what was really going on in American (and Western Civilization) culture today.

This series is an attempt to explain the different sexual strategies of men and women, and why they have led to our current situation. This first post will examine the state of nature, or how humans would interact without any culture (including religion) to guide them. This is going to be a graphic heavy series, because I think visual representations work best for this kind of analysis. Also, each post is going to be on the short side, to make discussions easier.

To start with, lets separate the human population into male and female groupings, and then assign them into tiers. There are 5 tiers each, all of them based on attractiveness, and each represents about 20% of the general male or female population.   This isn’t entirely realistic, because there tends to be bell curve for female attractiveness, but the general point is carried across.

Triangles represent males, circles females. Starting from the left with the male population, you begin with the most attractive at Alpha and go all the way down to the least attractive at Epsilon. On the right we have the female population, beginning with the most attractive at 10 and going to the least attractive at 2. Each group is an attempt to categorize women by attractiveness, grouping 10s and 9s together, 8s and 7s together, 6s and 5s together, 4s and 3s together, and 2s and 1s together. This will be the visualization I use throughout most of this series.

Male to Female Sexual Attraction Preferences

While female attractiveness is absolute, not relative, I theorize that men are willing to have sex and seek sex with all women equal to their attractiveness and higher. Furthermore, a man is willing to seek and have sex with a women who is two tiers below him in sexual attractiveness. This resulting pattern of which tiers of women men are willing to have sex with looks something like this:

As you can see, the top tier (Alpha) males are the most selective, and the bottom tier (Epsilon) males are the least selective.

Female to Male Sexual Attraction Preferences

There seems to be some general consensus in the manosphere that women tend to only find about 20% of the men in any given population attractive. This means that women tend to be attracted to only the top tier (Alpha) males. The pattern looks something like this:

As you can see, the top tier men (Alpha) get all of the female attention. Everyone else, from Beta on down, is out of luck.

Male and Female Sexual Attraction Preferences Merged

You start to get an understanding of the state of nature when you merge the two different sets of preferences together. The following graphic combines both, keeping the attraction lines only when the attraction is mutual. It looks something like this:

Here, the clear winners are the top tier males (Alpha), because they are the only males with mutual attraction to females.

The State of Nature

This leads us to the state of nature, where male and female attraction preferences merge with sexual strategies. The preferred male sexual strategy is polygamy or Polygyny, which happens to fit in nicely with male attraction preferences. This means that men are more than willing to mate with all of the women they are attracted to. As I mentioned earlier, the female sexual strategy is serial monogamy, whereby the woman would be in a monogamous relationship with a single man, until such time as a better man shows up who is available, at which point she leaves her old mate for the new one. Now, historically, the female sexual strategy has not been applied, because males held a distinct advantage in that they were both protectors and providers; men held more power when it came to mating. Hence, women had to accede to men when it came to sexual strategies.

Of course, the attraction preferences for men and women mostly don’t line up. This means that the lower tier women couldn’t attract a man whom they themselves were attracted to.  The female need for resources and protection forced them to make concessions when it came to attractiveness as well. Essentially, this meant that to get resources and protection for themselves and their children, women were forced to establish relationships with men that they were not attracted to. Here is a representation of what this looked like:

The top tier men (Alpha) are once again the winners. Their attractiveness to women allows them to “corner the market” as it were, and mate with the top three tiers of women. They are the winners of the genetic lottery, and in more ways than one. To realize the disparity in this system, look down at the Beta and Gamma men. Beta, in order to get a woman, is forced to look all the way down to the 4s. Gamma men have to go all the way down to the 2s. They have no choice but to take women at the extreme range of who they will have sex with.  Of course, this still leaves them better off than the bottom two tiers of men, Delta and Epsilon, who get no opportunity to mate at all.

Just as important is the fact that the 4s and 2s are not with men that they find attractive; they are compromising on their preference for mating with a top-tier man in order to gain protection and provision. Also, the top three tiers of women must all share the resources that are supplied by the Alpha tier of men. While that amount of resources is probably greater than that provided by the lower tier men, they still must share. This isn’t ideal for them; they would rather have the Alpha tier all to themselves. But because men hold all of the power in the state of nature, they are forced to compromise.

This brings to an end the first post in the series on the state of nature. In the next few days I will write up part 2, which covers how culture/civilization constructed a new system that men and women would have to follow: “Hard” or Lifetime Monogamy.

Part 2 can be found here.