Via Kevin at Slant Truth, a pop psych article is in dire need of more fisking. Purporting to share with us 10 “politically incorrect” “truths” about “human nature” by justifying all your favorite stereotypes, it’s quite a delight of an article. Kevin himself was only able to get past the introduction and first point (Men want to bang Barbie and Barbie alone, and ain’t nothing wrong with that) before he had to stop, presumably from a creeping case of the head-explodies.
Thanks to his excellent groundwork, I was able to get to the third point before my brain stopped functioning in self-defense. (This, by the way, will leave #4-10, such as “Most suicide bombers are Muslim” and “Men sexually harass women because they are not sexist” up for grabs.) It was the audacity for #3 in the face of reality. Sure, we’ve heard a million times that men only want nubile, well-racked 15 year olds and that they are naturally and blamelessly relentlessly polygamous, but did we know that this actually benefits women?
3 Most women benefit from polygyny, while most men benefit from monogamy
When there is resource inequality among men—the case in every human society—most women benefit from polygyny: women can share a wealthy man. Under monogamy, they are stuck with marrying a poorer man.
The only exceptions are extremely desirable women. Under monogamy, they can monopolize the wealthiest men; under polygyny, they must share the men with other, less desirable women. However, the situation is exactly opposite for men. Monogamy guarantees that every man can find a wife. True, less desirable men can marry only less desirable women, but that’s much better than not marrying anyone at all.
Men in monogamous societies imagine they would be better off under polygyny. What they don’t realize is that, for most men who are not extremely desirable, polygyny means no wife at all, or, if they are lucky, a wife who is much less desirable than one they could get under monogamy.
That’s right! Polygamous systems are great for women, who can share the wealth associated with the best men! This leaves only beta-males and super-fuglies out in the cold and really, can you count weak men and ugly women as people? Didn’t think so. Women have been tricked into thinking monogamy is a good deal, but really it’s just preventing them from the happiness of being wife #3 to a much cooler guy than they’re currently chained to.
This is true because having more wives, like having more chairs, doesn’t do anything to divvy up your resources; being the 4th wife of a guy who makes $100,000 a year is superior to being the only wife of a guy who makes $25,000 a year, because the guy who makes more money is obviously better. The status is well worth dealing with the other three wives.
Also, since women today have no access to resources of their own, it makes sense to focus all of our energies on getting the alphaest alpha male we can possible get before we and our children are driven from the tribe and eaten by coyotes.
Of course, to say that “polygamy is better for women than men!” is just so jaw-dropping that I have to assume that this whole article is some sort of shit-stirring put-on. Because, no, really, anyone with a PhD should be willing to show why they fuck they think that. With the recent Warren Jeffs trial, media has recently had polygamy on the brain, and it shouldn’t be too hard to show that polygamy is great for everyone except the genetically unfit.
Let’s see what the benefits of polygamy are:
1. Natural selection, being all-powerful, ensures that only the best of the best make it to the top and earn all that tantalizing wealth and those luscious wives. Power-crazy, insane corrupt people are naturally weeded out:
Warren Jeffs’ official title in the FLDS Church was “President and Prophet, Seer and Revelator”…effs, the sole individual in the church who could perform marriages, was responsible for assigning wives to husbands. Jeffs also had the ability to punish men by reassigning their wives, children, and homes to another man…In July 2004, Warren Jeffs’ nephew, Brent Jeffs, filed a lawsuit against him alleging that in the late 1980s his uncle sodomized him in the Salt Lake Valley compound then owned by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS). Brent Jeffs said he was 5 or 6 years old at the time, and that Warren Jeffs’ brothers, also named in the lawsuit, watched and participated in the abuse. Two of Warren Jeffs’ other nephews also made similar abuse claims against him. One of the alleged victims, Clayne Jeffs, committed suicide with a firearm after admitting that Warren Jeffs had sexually assaulted him as a child.[21]
In June 2005, Jeffs was charged with sexual assault on a minor and with conspiracy to commit sexual misconduct with a minor for allegedly arranging, in 2002, a marriage between a 14-year-old girl and a 19-year-old man who was already married. The girl, known as “Jane Doe IV” (Elissa Wall)[22] testified that she begged “Uncle Rulon” to let her wait until she was older, or choose another man for her. Rulon Jeffs was apparently “sympathetic”, but Warren Jeffs was not, and she was forced to go through with the marriage. The man that she was to marry was apparently her first cousin. The 14 year old alleged that her new husband raped her repeatedly, starting on their wedding night.
2. In the zero-sum game of resource acquisition, we don’t have to take in any other considerations as long as we match nubile young women to men of sufficient status. Stories like this:
Sara Hammon saw some of her sisters pulled out of school to be married to men they didn’t know. She dreaded a similar fate. And so, she ran away from home before she was old enough to drive legally.
She left behind 19 mothers, 74 siblings, and a father she says could never remember her name, even though he repeatedly molested her.
And, she left behind a culture she says was oppressive for young women.
aren’t really how it works at all, you see. Sure, everywhere we see polygamy we see incredible levels of child abuse, sexual dysfunction, and poverty (polygamous communities in the American west suck up social services like a bunch of Fundamentalist money vacuums This is partly because having that many dependents is really tough on a guy, and partly from the fundamentalist Mormon belief that it is righteous to defraud a non-Mormon government.)
Anyway, sure, every time we see a polygamous community we see nothing but unsustainable bad things, but that’s because they’re all doing it wrong. If we did polygamy this other, imaginary perfect way that still somehow managed to favor multiple-wives over multiple-husbands then everything would be cool. Really.
3. The endless wealth of the alpha male should be available for all women to share
Nothing says keeping the resources like acquiring more dependents. If I’m wife #1 to a wealthy guy, I’ve no reason to worry that my standard of living will dip when sexy young wife #2 drops in, and of course we’ll welcome wife #3 with open arms because our husband, a man biologically driven to complete his Barbie collection, would never sacrifice our material comfort by getting more dolls if he can’t afford the bigger Barbie Mansion Playset, right? Plus, under a system where men are slaves to biological imperative and women can only get access to real resources by exploiting this, we never have to worry about being tossed when we’re past our sell-by date.
And if the measure of a man is how many wives he can attract, I suggest you check out Tom Green, and his lovely family desert retreat, Greenhaven. That’s a catch, mind you, the “less desirable” men mentioned in the article can’t even offer their wives the luxury of a bunch of trailers in the desert. They live in caves and eat bugs. Is that what you want, missy? No, then marry the nice man like I told you to.
And you can always leave, if you are that bothered by it, allowing a steady stream of used wives to trickle down to those lonely beta males, or if you’re over 45, a gamma male. This plan is perfect!
Clearly, the evidence shows that Alan S. Miller Ph.D. and Satoshi Kanazawa Ph.D. aren’t just making shit up, so we have no choice but to accept the other points as unfortunately true, regardless of how it angers our little progressive minds.
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