I’ve listened to a lot of theories about Alpha and Beta males, but am not sure all of it is inate.
Ive seen some alpa males become beta males in a big hurry when their boss was an alpha male or the corollary to that, seen males I thought were pretty beta, step up and lead when the shit hit the fan.
Maybe if more women had spent significant time in the military they would realize that this stuff is situational.

My husband is like that. He knows who his boss is, and does exactly what that boss wants to the best of his abilities, but he keeps being given supervision over more and more people at work, because he is the guy that everyone wants to work for.

My father was the most mild mannered, quiet talking guy you ever met, but for four years, in the jungles of the South Pacific he was a stone cold alpha killer.

If you are a brown nosing dickless wonder all of the time, I am pretty sure that is a catagory for you lower than beta.

Context matters, yes. Where a man fits in a hierarchy.

That said, some men are beta in pretty much any environment.

Context matters, yes. Where a man fits in a hierarchy.

That said, some men are beta in pretty much any environment.

Amy Alkon at October 24, 2018 10:48 PM

Agreed, just not sure alpha and beta is a very good way to classify male behavior. Most smart men I know are a mixed bag. They fight when they have to but are smart enough to pick their battles.

Defending men is not a virtue signal.

Context matters, yes. Where a man fits in a hierarchy.

That said, some men are beta in pretty much any environment.

Amy Alkon at October 24, 2018 10:48 PM

You're basing Alpha and Beta on affluence and status. That's only part of the equation. Alpha and Beta mostly have to do with mindset. For instance, a lot of military men are very Alpha in their work lives but very Beta when it comes to dealing with women.

> Women prioritize finding men who are "providers"

Partially true. If the guy is a hot Alpha, women will often have sex with him, regardless of his ability/desire to be a provider.

"....how women don't go for the chronically unemployed men with wonderful personalities who are living in their grandma's basement?"

This is what the Incel 'movement' is all about, surely?

When the office girls melt for the Culligan man, or the HR director quietly admits to me that she gets a little weak in the knees and drools when she sees the new physical therapist/personal trainer who works at the next office over, or I accidentally got included on the girls' weekend text message - women are sexual beings. Women like a man's butt, a man's bulge, or a well-defined set of glamour muscles.

I remember a girl in high school who would walk around grabbing the jocks by whatever muscle she could. She'd say, "Make it harder and you can date me."

The real bullshit is the whole objectification canard that was put forward by shuggoths who couldn't get a rise out of a man to force their weird extremist sexuality on the rest of us.

George Yancey: what do you mean, "we" men?

I doubt that you would defend a family member, if that meant more than dialing something on your phone.

PS: that's your job, if you're a man.

"You're basing Alpha and Beta on affluence and status."

Best not to assume. Men signal confidence with their behavior.

Yes, women get weak-kneed for men's looks but that is not what they prioritize if they have to choose. Women's emotions push them to go for high-status males, men who can provide, in a way men's emotions do not.

You might click the link in the post. It goes to Norm Li's mating budget research.

http://www.advicegoddess.com/ag-column-archives/2018/10/mock-love-to-me.html

in mating, as in life, we tend to be on a budget. Evolutionary social psychologist Norman Li and his colleagues recognized that, and instead of asking research participants the open-ended sky's-the-limit! question "So, what do you want in a mate?" they gave them a limited "mating budget." This, in turn, forced participants to decide which traits and qualities were "necessities" and which were "luxuries."

The Li team's results echo a body of cross-cultural findings on mate preferences. Men in their study overwhelmingly deemed "physical attractiveness" a "necessity." (Consider that the female features men find beautiful correlate with health and fertility in a woman.) Meanwhile, the women they surveyed, under these "budgetary" constraints, overwhelmingly went for "status/resources" over male hottiehood. This reflects women's evolved motivation to go for men with an ability to invest in any children who might pop out after sex.

Because women coevolved with men, they are, at the very least, subconsciously attuned to men's prioritizing physical appearance in female partners. This, in turn, leads a woman's emotions to sound the alarm -- in the form of fear and hurt feelings -- when her male partner seems to find her less than lookalicious.

The only training men need to look at girl's butts is called puberty. But I can get it. Yancy just isn't an ass man. Still, he needs to understand that for many of us this isn't trained behavior. It is pure instinct and doesn't involve the conscious mind at all.

Isab, you are right that the alpha-beta classification is pretty crappy. There are a lot of cases where the classification falls apart and doesn't apply.

> Yes, women get weak-kneed for men's looks but that
> is not what they prioritize if they have to
> choose. Women's emotions push them to go for high-
> status males, men who can provide, in a way men's
> emotions do not.

So why is 50 Shades so popular?

> Men signal confidence with their behavior.

Sure, but many men are confident professionally and with other men, but not confident when dealing with relationships with women.

Their professional confidence helps them attain status and affluence, but women still are not interested in them.

It isn't just that the woman has a greater investment: she can be nearly helpless for years and years while pregnant and with small children. For a million years a woman with a man who stayed with her and helped her and provided food and shelter (even if a cave) had a MUCH higher chance of passing on genes. Likewise, the things that attract a man are all signs of both health and properly balanced hormones to have kids.Note for example that women who train for athletics too hard can stop menstruating--can't get pregnant then. While the real world is certainly weird, it is not arbitrary. While women may deny what they are doing when they go out in yoga pants, men know. If it was for comfort, men would go out in yoga pants--cargo pants and a big T-shirt are comfortable but women don't wear them.
As to hierarchies: men are programmed to function in groups/teams (like hunting parties for the past million years). A team with a strong leader makes the whole team better off. Men understand this.
The whole alpha/beta thing is vague and unsatisfying. We can classify a real man as someone who would be dangerous if you fucked with him or his family, who handles his responsibilities, who doesn't scream when there is a bug. It does not mean someone who is an aggressive jerk.

Yes, women get weak-kneed for men's looks but that is not what they prioritize if they have to choose. Women's emotions push them to go for high-status males..... ~ Amy Alkon at October 25, 2018 6:48 AM

Looks can be an indicator of status; or ability to provide.

A good-looking guy has probably not been beaten down by a lifetime of poverty or hardship. Well-developed musculature can be a sign of a lifetime of being fed and having spare time in which to work out. Of course, it could also indicate a long stretch of incarceration with little else to do to occupy one's time.

Isab, you are right that the alpha-beta classification is pretty crappy. There are a lot of cases where the classification falls apart and doesn't apply.

Ben at October 25, 2018 6:56 AM

Precisely. One of the the things I hate most about Pop Psychology. They slap a simplified label on a whole basket of complicated male behaviors without bothering to qualify or quantify them.

Spreading your genes through successful mating is less than half the battle. The larger part is and always has been, keeping those kids alive to adulthood.

I have the feeling that men are less socially sensitive in this arena than women are. Men are primarily driven by fertility indicators, i.e. youth, health, and such. Which is why women and gay men try to increase their indication of such things by working out and makeup. Women on the other hand are driven by wealth indicators. So men respond with clothes, cars, and houses. Fertility indicators are relatively fixed. Some things change over the years but by and large a sexy Neanderthal chick would still be sexy today. Wealth is highly variable. At least on that time scale. A model T was fairly expensive for it's day and age. But anyone driving a car similar to a model T today is dirt poor. Transportation, clothes, and homes, what is commonplace today would have been unthinkably expensive 100 years ago. Even simple things few people consider today such as hallways didn't really exist prior to the 1700s. While women have sought wealth and status for thousands of years what wealth and status mean has changed and the rate of that change is increasing.

As for the sneaky-fuckers theory, I wouldn't put this as part of that. Instead Yancey is trying to increase his own status. He is advertising that he is an 'alpha'. As for how successful at that he is, at least in these parts the answer seems clear. And as for how honest or logical his argument is . . . lying to chicks is fairly traditional male behavior.

"So why is 50 Shades so popular?"

From what I've been told (haven't seen or read any of it myself), the Grey character is very wealthy. I think that's part of the intrigue of the concept -- what will (some) women tolerate in order to be the mate of a high-status man?

"So why is 50 Shades so popular?"

From what I've been told (haven't seen or read any of it myself), the Grey character is very wealthy. I think that's part of the intrigue of the concept -- what will (some) women tolerate in order to be the mate of a high-status man?

"#IAmSexist: It's time that we men take responsibility for our role in the problem of violence against women."

And what responsibility would that be given most research shows women commit the majority of all child abuse, domestic violence, and nearly half of all sexual assaults

Spreading your genes through successful mating is less than half the battle. The larger part is and always has been, keeping those kids alive to adulthood.

Ah, but if you spread enough seed more than a few will survive to adulthood. It's been said that Genghis Khan still has descendents to this day, and quite a lot of them.

"So why is 50 Shades so popular?"

Becuase unlike men women dont know how to find free porn sites like literotica.com

Spreading your genes through successful mating is less than half the battle. The larger part is and always has been, keeping those kids alive to adulthood.

Ah, but if you spread enough seed more than a few will survive to adulthood. It's been said that Genghis Khan still has descendents to this day, and quite a lot of them.

I R A Darth Aggie at October 25, 2018 2:02 PM

Yes, and half of England is most likely descended from Alfred the Great. But most people who lived even three thousand years ago, do not have direct descendants alive today.
Passing on your genes wasn’t the norm.

Our ancestors were the few, the brave, and the lucky. Genetic studies indicate that 6000 years ago, for every 17 women who had children, only one man did. We may be descended from peasants 150 years ago, but you don’t have to go back too many generations before that to find that everybody’s ancestors were the aristocracy. They were the ones that had enough to eat.

"I just haven't ever seen it go so low, so deep into male self-loathing and self-flagellation as this piece does."

This level of self loathing is taught. My guess is his Mother was a self described feminist.

As to the whole Alpha beta provider stuff. Evolution plays the long game. With a billion throws of the dice every throw, something doesn't have to ever have been successful, to keep on being tried by a few.

Ah, but if you spread enough seed more than a few will survive to adulthood.
______________________________________

Exactly. Rich male celebrities may be careless about condom use, but last I heard, there's no shortage of poor, charismatic men with plenty of "baby mamas." (The women, presumably, also don't have much worth living for, which is why they don't insist on condoms either.)

I'm probably a beta male, but there is NO WAY IN HELL I would use the warped, demented feminist ideology as a way to get laid. I find the whole thing disgusting and misandrist.

"So why is 50 Shades so popular?"

You may have just proved the point, Snoopy. The 50 shades BDSM guy was wealthy.

I wouldn't worry about his mother Joe J. The guy is a philosophy professor. This is what is taught in the schools. It's what he teaches. His whole culture is soaked in toxic femininity.

George Yancey: The acts of soul murder had already begun.

When I was young, I used to enjoy watching Soul Murder Train. It was basically like Soul Train but with one key difference: if a band wasn't soulful or funky enough, the audience rushed the stage and knifed them. A similar show I enjoyed watching was American Bandstab.

Amy: Women prioritize finding men who are "providers"

Snoopy: Partially true. If the guy is a hot Alpha, women will often have sex with him, regardless of his ability/desire to be a provider.

Here's a good piece in the Wilson Quarterly: Looks Do Matter

An excerpt:

The researchers add that more symmetrical men have handsomer faces, more sex partners, and their first sexual experience at an earlier age, and they get to sex more quickly with a new romantic partner. “Moreover,” they tell us, “men’s symmetry predicts a relatively high frequency of their sexual partners’ copulatory orgasms.”

Those orgasms are sperm retaining, suggesting that symmetric men may have a greater chance of getting a woman pregnant. It doesn’t hurt that the handsomest men may have the best sperm, at least according to a study at Spain’s University of Valencia, which found that men with the healthiest, fastest sperm were those whose faces were rated most attractive by women. There’s evidence that women care more about men’s looks for short-term relationships than for marriage, and that as women get closer to the most fertile point of the menstrual cycle, their preference for “symmetrical” men grows stronger, according to Thornhill and Gangestad.

During the past couple years, I read another piece that said the same thing I put in boldface: that women don't care that much about a guy being a provider or high-status if they just want to have sex. In that case, they're more interested in a guy's looks.