In response to The Pill Causes Bad Mate Selection, Gunner Q objected to the alpha/beta terminology used.

“…you are trying to use non-Vox Day/Heartiste definitions of Alpha and Beta. I missed that footnote on the first reading and it makes your arguments disingenuous at best. An Alpha man is the specific man that a specific woman SHOULD want? That’s a hopelessly moving goalpost.”

It’s important to note that the Manosphere did not invent these terms and the way it uses them need not be scientific nor consistent. In the context of scientific research on hormonal contraception, we need to consider how the terms are used in the scientific fields (e.g. evolutionary biology and psychology; anthropology).

It’s also important to note that the definitions are inherently fluid as a function of selection and adaptation. Different traits will be selected in different times, places, and situations (e.g. socioeconomic differences). Nevertheless, certain genetic expressions are fairly consistent and non-variable.

Alpha traits are (merely?) proxies—or indicators—of genetic fitness. Good looks (e.g. facial symmetry; tall height), good physical fitness, no deformities, masculinity^[1], wealth, and high social status all suggest good underlying genetics. It is fairly uncontroversial that most fertile women are attracted to men with these kinds of traits.^[2]

Beta traits are those traits that are not alpha traits, that is, those traits that do not correlate strongly—at the population level—with genetic fitness. Such traits may include being fun, nice, woman-like (e.g. emotional; caring and nurturing; empathetic), physically sub-optimal, and unattractive.

“The most sexually attractive men are very often terrible choices for fathering children. The Pill is not driving such behavior. Women have always gone for the bad boys.”

Simply put, ‘alpha‘ implies genetic fitness and ‘beta‘ does not. Both sets can include both positive and negative traits. This is a very important point. While alpha traits indicate good fitness for reproduction, beta traits indicate long-term relationship stability and good child-rearing skills. A woman can mate with someone with any combination of traits, desirable or not. But—critically—reproductive choice is permanent and thus the more important consideration. It’s possible to influence and change her mate’s traits over time^[3], but she can’t change her children’s genes after the fact.

“Women SHOULD want healthy, emotionally stable, productive men. Women DO want sociopaths, drug dealers and starving musicians. The Pill doesn’t change that.”

Not all such good men are beta men, nor are all alpha men sociopaths. Women do want these positive things and can find them in men of all types. Regardless, the alpha/beta distinctions are not about what any individual woman explicitly wants or should do. Choosing a mate in this context is amoral. It is her evolutionary imperative to find the best genetic match she is able to. Any given individual may fail at this task (either intentionally or unintentionally), but the pill lessens the desire for genetic (and sexual!) compatibility.

Hypergamy states that women will try to marry up. We know that there are upper bounds to this, for many different reasons (competition, limited selection, personal fitness, socioeconomic status, etc.). The most genetically fit man that an obese, low-intelligence, chain-smoking, tattooed, debt-ridden, short, blue-haired woman can mate with is going to be her ‘alpha’. He probably won’t have many (any?) really good alpha traits, but it’s the best that she can do personally.

In modern society there is now a disconnect between having sex and reproducing (and marrying). Abortion, contraception (e.g. the pill), social acceptance of fornication, and the rejection of patriarchy have all contributed to separating sex from the evolutionary imperative to reproduce. Historical societies, almost universally patriarchal, had structures in place to ensure that negative traits were suppressed socially and positive ones expressed. A modern woman can have it all: consequence-free sex, children with anyone (including bad boys), and having the State or a beta-male raise her children (e.g. society sanctioned cuckoldry).

Statistics on virginity show that women are almost universally promiscuous in their youth. Who they have sex with need not be who they end up choosing to mate or marry. There is really no question that women today are having sex with alpha men, but they are not necessarily staying with them. Not even Brad Pitt can keep a woman.

While on the pill women can have as much sex as she wants, but she won’t have children with anyone, alpha or beta. What matters is what she does when she goes off the pill. There are a number of possibilities. Is she giving an alpha children, but marrying a beta man? Or is she now denying her husband sex or frivorcing him?

So what we see is that the very structure of society has changed and the pill’s effects fit right into it. Whether this is causal or merely correlative is unclear.

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^[1] Another term that should probably be defined, if possible, more specifically.

^[2] One well-known example is a woman laughing at a not-funny joke that a tall, attractive, muscular, wealthy man says while otherwise mocking a short, unattractive, fat man who does the same thing. Or how some men are praised for “getting in touch with their feminine side” while other men are rejected for the same.

^[3] This almost certainly happens in almost all real marriages, but research on this topic is outside the scope of this post.

What role does feminism as a social movement play in society’s ills? Is it a cause of the fundamental problems or merely a symptom? While many people in the manosphere have asserted that feminism plays a key causal role, this notion has been questioned. I’ll be examining this broad question over a series of articles. In the first article in this series, I’ll be considering the validity—and societal impact—of the claim that hormonal oral contraception (“the pill”) negatively changes the way a woman selects a mate.

To answer this question we will consider the recent research done by Gurit E. Birnbaum entitled “The Bitter Pill: Cessation of Oral Contraceptives Enhances the Appeal of Alternative Mates”^[1] and the commentary by anthropologist Edward Dutton^[2].

Reproductive Strategy

Before discussing the pill, let’s consider the evolutionary imperative: to reproduce. Evolutionary biology leads a fertile woman towards a somewhat unconscious reproductive strategy that maximizes her chances to pass on her genes as many times as possible. This involves the following three primary areas:

(1) Reproductive Fitness

A normal fertile woman will prefer alpha male traits^[3] : physically fitness, good looks, and masculinity. These traits are proxies that indicate underlying good genes that give her the highest chance to produce healthy children with the lowest risk of genetic mutation.

(2) Compatible Immune System

A woman uses the body odors of men to help find the best genetic match that indicates immune system compatibility.^[5] Ideally, she should find a match that is not too similar, but also not too far away. The goal is to produce healthy children by avoiding both inbreeding and conflicting alleles. Historically, this meant marriage involving the genetic equivalents of distant cousins.

(3) Seeking Men of High Status

A woman will seek a man of high status.^[4] Her goal is to have as much wealth and support for her and her children. From an evolutionary standpoint, hypergamy is a proxy for genetic fitness.

This is a fertile woman’s natural state.

The Pill

Having established the natural tendency of women, we now ask whether the pill has any effect on this? The research indicates that it does.

While the natural reproductive strategy is expressed most strongly during a woman’s peak fertility—while she is ovulating—her overall preferences do not change throughout her cycle. By contrast, the pill works by taking a woman out of her fertility cycle and causes her to enter a period of semi-permanent infertility. This results in mental and physiological changes that cause her to unconsciously seek a non-reproductive strategy—inverting her default, natural strategy. Her focus shifts from reproductive success towards personal success.

(1) Reproduction is unimportant

A woman on the pill will seek beta male traits^[3] : nice, fun, woman-like, unattractive. These traits make a woman feel validated and supported. She may become repulsed by the alpha traits that she would find attractive in her fertile state.

(2) Genetic Incompatibility

Rather than finding a good genetic match for having children, a woman’s desires shift:

“…women’s perception of men may serve a different function: pursuing cooperative partners who assist with child care (“good parents”) rather than genetically compatible partners. Women may therefore revert to having opposite mate preferences, becoming fixed on seeking less genetically compatible men whose body odor resembles that of their apparently supportive genetic relatives.”

A man who is genetically like her brother or a close cousin is going to be much more likely to support her than a more distant match, even though any offspring would be less genetically fit.

(3) Seek Men of Any Status

If children don’t matter, then a good genetic match is unimportant. Any man will do. If she wants sex, status doesn’t matter. If she wants wealth, she’ll be able to temporarily extract wealth from almost anyone. If she wants a husband, the average beta will suffice.

The Consequences of the Pill

Of course these effects are not absolute. Individually, woman both on and off the pill can make alternate choices. Nevertheless, the overall negative effects should not be ignored.

The pill alters a fertile woman into an infertile woman, changing her life plan. She’s biologically no longer interested in children (outward focused), but in what makes her most comfortable and supported (inward focused). The hormones in the pill cause real physiological changes that change her perception of men. Even her sex drive can change. While this is listed medically as a side effect, biologically-speaking it seems to be the point.

There are two potential major scenarios where this will cause problems.

First, a woman on the pill before marriage selects a poor genetic fit (beta). Eventually when she stops taking the pill, she will have reduced attraction to her husband and suddenly be strongly attracted to the alpha men she would have naturally been attracted to before marriage.

Second, a woman marries a good genetic fit (alpha), but who goes on the pill after marriage (to avoid children), will develop a lack of sexual attraction to her husband. She may start criticizing her husband for his masculine traits and viewpoints that she was previously attracted to.

The marriage in both scenarios faces a heightened risk of sex-starvation, infidelity, or divorce. But even if these things do not happen, the swings will likely cause personal relationship instability and discontent. One can easily imagine this contributing to mental disorders like depression.

Analysis and Summary

Dating and marrying a woman while she is on the pill should be avoided. Men married to women who go on the pill after getting married should be aware of the risks.

The pill contributes to genetic and relationship mismatches. Divorce risk for most marriages is highest during fertile childbearing years, precisely when she is most likely to change pill usage. Contrast this with a pill-free normative natural marriage entering the infertile years: the relationship is firmly established and her husband has likely developed sufficient beta traits needed for her long-term support. Such a marriage is unlikely to end in divorce.

When women on the pill hook up with or marry poor genetically matched men, it does two things: (1) it leaves their otherwise best matched man unmatched and (2) takes someone else’s best matched man. What does this look like? Well, women on the pill can potentially have sex with as many “bad-boy” men as they can, but they generally won’t marry them. They’ll marry poorly matched men. Single men will be left with fewer prospects, as their best matches are marrying the wrong men. Married men will be left with greater divorce risk as the women who should have been their wives marry the wrong men. It’s an unmitigated sociological disaster for both married and unmarried men.

So what is the role of feminism? Feminism promotes female supremacy through its key tenets—careerism, marriage-avoidance, and children-avoidance through easy contraception, abortion, and divorce. All of these are, of course, counter to the evolutionary imperative.

The pill, while not essential to feminism, is a tool with a synergistic feedback effect. A number of red-pill memes demonstrate this: (1) women reproducing with feminine men produce more genetically feminine men, (2) women reproducing with masculine bad-boys have feminine men raise their (now) sociologically feminine boys (e.g. marrying single mothers), and (3) the pill amplifies feminine marital discontent. The pill helps enable these and more.

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^[1] Birnbaum, G.E., Zholtack, K., Mizrahi, M. et al. Evolutionary Psychological Science (2019) 5: 276. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40806-018-00186-6. (download here)

^[2] He has been accused of anti-semitism and supporting eugenics, demonetized by YouTube for various red-pill positions, and had his work rejected by academic publishers. He is friends with Bruce G. Charlton, who is not loved by our host. YMMV.

^[3] What is meant by alpha and beta in this context? While there are certainly men who—from an evolutionary standpoint—should not breed, each woman’s ideal alpha may be very different. Alpha should be defined as the best evolutionary choice available to a particular fertile woman. The beta is a man who does not maximize her offspring’s genetic odds of survival. He’s a bad genetic fit for her. He may be someone else’s alpha or no one’s at all. The terms are relative and contextual.

The terms alpha and beta are not value judgments. For example, alpha men often have low dependability and beta men have high dependability. A woman will probably be doing well if she finds a man with a good combination of alpha and beta traits to see her through various life stages.

While the terms are frequently assigned motives and morality in the manosphere, the use here is merely descriptive of the ways a normal population of fertile women find the best genetic match for reproduction. Trade-offs can and do occur, resulting in deviations from the mean or expected behavior, but the general concepts hold.

^[4] As with alpha and beta, high status is relative. Women seek the highest status that they can attain relative to their own status. This doesn’t mean they don’t marry men who have low-status in the absolute sense, nor does it imply that low-status men and women are unworthy of marriage. They are merely trying to maximize their genetic fit.

^[5] Wedekind, C., & Füri, S. (1997). Body odor preferences in men and women: do they aim for specific MHC combinations or simply heterozygosity? Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences, 264(1387), 1471–1479. (download here)