Kitten is still struggling to come to terms with having to share my attention with FunSize, not to mention the occasional plate. FunSize, of course, is experienced at this, and has no issues, but Kitten feels threatened by her very presence, and won't talk to her for long enough to bond and stop seeing her as a threat.

Since Kitten is actually Dr. Kitten, PhD, she likes to intellectualize things that upset her, thinking about them in abstract terms rather than as they relate to her personally. This gives her emotional distance so she can cope. So the other day (I actually started writing this sometime back, so it was a while ago now), she hits me with this question:

"How does polygamy [by which she means polygyny] fit into evo psych? How did monogamy [by which she means monogyny] form?"

Fleshing out the gist of my answer into a compete description for TRP:

Polygyny is a mating strategy optimized for replacing combat losses, because one man can easily keep multiple women pregnant. It's used by warlike societies, or those with high male-specific mortality rates.

Monogyny is a mating strategy optimized for appeasing low-tier males, because it guarantees them a mate. It's used by peaceful societies which depend on beta male labour and cooperation for their prosperity.

Polygyny's effect upon the Sexual Marketplace is to increase the availability of apex males.

This benefits:

• Apex males, because they can mate with more women.
• Women who are seeking mates, because they have increased options (share an apex male or have exclusive access to a higher order of non-apex male than they otherwise would).
• Women who are mated to non-apex males, because apex males will lure away more of their competition.
• Women who are mated to apex males, because it reduces their risk of being abandoned for another option.

Monogyny, in turn, decreases the availability of apex males.

This benefits:

• Low-tier males, because the options available to women seeking mates are decreased, and they face less competition.
• Women who are mated to apex males, because they can receive more of their mates' attention.

Yes, "women who are mated to apex males" appear on both of these lists. These women face increased competition for their mates' attention, but reduced risk of total abandonment.

This means that any change which empowers apex males, or women, increases society's tendency towards polygyny, and anything which empowers low-tier males increases society's tendency towards monogyny.

Judeochristianity is a very interesting case because it made a transition from polygyny to monogyny. However, modern Christian and tradcon values are heavily monogynous.

This is why tradcon values are appealing to early-stage TRPers, and repugnant to late-stage TRPers.

Early-stage TRpers, still infused with the values of low-tier males, find monogyny appealing. They do not wish to face competition from high-tier males, and are very concerned with maintaining loyalty in their women.

Late-stage TRPers don't like tradcon or its monogynous values. They are unconcerned with maintaining loyalty in their women, because their high desirability does this for them, and disloyal women are easily replaced if it doesn't. They are also unconcerned with competition, since the amount of it that can beat them is less than the supply of attractive women. Instead, they wish to maximize their available options, and their ability to mate multiple women in parallel.

Women's individual preference tends to vary depending on whether they are more concerned with mate quality or mate loyalty. Women who fear abandonment tend to view monogyny as a moral imperative, while women who fear being stuck with a beta tend to have a less hardline attitude.

An important takeaway here is that the real condition of polygyny or monogyny is a response to the balance of male desire, female antipathy, and the power balance between the two... and thus actual arrangements will often be a lot more polygynous or monogynous than society explicitly endorses. People in such conditions need to find ways to act on the sexual realpolitik (or the relationship/hookup won't work at all) without being publicly shamed (which tends to happen to women whose men are less monogynous than the standard, or to men who are less polygynous than the standard).

For example, in societies with traditional monogynous marriage, polygyny tends to take the form of discrete tolerance of side chicks so long as they are hidden from public view, or of a man "dating" multiple women at once. In polygynyous societies, monogyny would mostly take the form of a single-pair marriage where the husband never takes a second or third wife.

For our purposes, it is wise to remember that monogyny is a concession. You don't treat it as an obligation in a relationship... you decide if you want to give it, and if so, for what? Behaving like an apex male isn't sufficient to get you treated like one, but it is certainly necessary.

7 tips given to Whisper by the community for this post.