IN THE PREVIOUS entry, a reader wondered at the popularity of the term “beta man.”

Vishal Mehra wrote:

Regarding this alpha-beta thing, we don’t see this usage in any older writers. So either they used different words for this phenomenon or the phenomenon of beta men is itself novel. Or the phenomenon itself is illusory and this classification is wrong and incoherent.

One characteristic of the beta man may help explain why the term has become so common. The beta man is white. No one refers to a non-white as beta. The need for a new name for the spineless white man may have been prompted by racial reality. Never has the white man been so weak. The beta man is not weak vis-a-vis women so much as he is weak vis-a-vis his own ancestry and heritage.  He is the dispossessed, a stranger in his own land, passively assenting to the decay of his civilization.

                                               — Comments —

James P. writes:

“Regarding this alpha-beta thing, we don’t see this usage in any older writers. So either they used different words for this phenomenon or the phenomenon of beta men is itself novel. Or the phenomenon itself is illusory and this classification is wrong and incoherent.” 

Alpha and beta men are a product of feminism. Before feminism, people got married. If each man and each woman in society expects to have one lifetime spouse and little or no extra- or pre-marital sexual activity, then by definition there is not a large pool of “beta” men who are denied women or a small number of “alpha” men monopolizing lots of women. If every man is, with only rare exceptions, limited to one woman, and is more or less guaranteed one woman, then there can be no alphas or betas because each man receives the same amount of female sexual attention. The men and women pair off one-to-one, and the lower status women have little incentive or opportunity to chase the higher-status men. 

Under feminism, on the other hand, women are free to engage in pre-marital sex and can abandon their marriages without social or economic penalty. This means they are free to compete for the highest status (“alpha”) men and can ignore the lower status betas. The result is a small number of men who get lots of sexual attention, and a large number of men who get little or no such attention. The only way to reverse this situation is to undo feminism and return to monogamy. I doubt this will happen unless the liberal state breaks down. 

Vishal Mehra is correct that this phenomenon has not existed in all of history or in all lands. However, that does not mean the phenomenon is an illusion. It is a very real example of the dysfunction that modern liberal ideology has inflicted on us.

Laura writes:

I agree with what you say, but the term “beta man,” as we saw in the previous entry regarding a wife who used the term in reference to her husband, also is used to describe a generally spineless man, not just those who are neglected or left by women. I think it is part of a larger loss of cultural pride in whites, especially white men.

Expatriot writes:

Laura wrote in the previous entry,

“To call someone a beta is clearly an insult and is so general as to be almost meaningless.”

In the true sense of the word, “beta” is value-neutral. Beta men are just regular men, no more no less. Properly speaking, there is nothing inherently derogatory about the term. It only sounds like an insult because the word “man” itself has become a term of insult under feminism.

Under traditional patriarchy, men collectively were, by social convention, accorded higher social status than women collectively. This social convention had the practical virtue of defusing female hypergamy by making regular (beta) men acceptable to regular women and making monogamy possible. In exchange for their artificially elevated status, (beta) men were expected to play the role of men to the best of their ability by observing a code of socially positive masculine behavior—not cry, not complain, stand up for themselves and those who depended on them, sacrifice themselves for the good of the community when the need arose, and put the needs of women first (note: the needs of women, not their desires; and of individual women, not women collectively). Beyond that bare minimum (which was, however, quite a lot), men were not expected to pretend to be “alphas” to qualify as men. Believe it or not, they could be romantic, socially awkward, or the nicest of nice guys and still have enough value to women to get themselves a mate, even if they didn’t set their loins afire. Every Jack had his Jill, more or less.

“Alphas”, then as today, were those men who would have attracted women even without the advantage afforded by the social convention of male dominance. Individual men who are naturally dominant, not merely by convention. By definition, these could only be a small percentage of all men. Suggesting that the mass run of men could remake themselves as alphas by aping their mannerisms or mindset would have seemed as absurd and pointless as suggesting that a man who was 5’8” could make himself 6’2” by sheer effort of will.

Vishal Mehra wrote in the previous entry:

“This female hypergamy that the Gamers make too much of is a modern Western phenomenon and there is absolutely no warrant to generalize it over all history and all lands. That sexual license of all sorts spreads as a society rejects God…”

Hypergamy does not mean promiscuity or sexual license. It refers to the desire of women to marry up. When VM later writes, “It may be truer to say, at least in my country, that a girl of a lower status family prefer to marry boys of higher status families,” he is giving almost a textbook definition of hypergamy. Thus it is not merely a modern Western phenomenon and it is in fact possible to generalize it over all history and all lands.

Jesse Powell wrote, ”…on the other hand all men, or almost all men, can be ‘alpha’ in relation to the women they are romantically involved with; this is because in general men have higher status than women. An average status man, in relation to other men, will have a higher status level than the average status woman. All men can, and should, be “alpha” within their romantic relationships regardless of the status of the man in the overall society. …there is no reason for a man to be “beta” in relation to women other than the pathologies that have been created by feminism.”

No, men used to have higher status than women, but they don’t anymore. That’s what feminism has been all about—eliminating or reversing the higher status of men vis-à-vis women. In a world in which women participate in society on an “equal” footing with men—i.e. in which traditional sex role distinctions are erased—they are bound to view men collectively as lacking in sufficient status to be worthy of them, regardless of the masculine or unmasculine qualities of individual men. This is the objective reality of the world today. Now, I agree that men (and women) should not accept this reality and should do whatever we can to restore a proper relationship between men and women, but it’s fanciful to imagine that just any individual man can by sheer force of will reimpose patriarchy at the micro level when the entire weight of the legal system, the educational system and the propaganda industry stands squarely opposed to this. There’s nobility in the effort, certainly, and maybe this is the only way back, or the first step at least—individual men hurling themselves into the breach. But when you write things like “there is no reason for a man to be ‘beta’ in relation to women”, you make it sound like men have unilateral say-so in the matter, when nothing could be further from the truth. The “pathologies that have been created by feminism” are social pathologies that have become deeply entrenched in our society, not merely psychological ones inhabiting individuals. This inability on the part of modern Westerners to understand the distinction between the collective and the individual, the social and personal, leads to constant confusion. And I am a Westerner myself, but having lived most of my life in Japan, where this distinction could be said to constitute one of the cornerstones of their culture, it seems obvious to me.

Laura wrote:

“Never has the white man been so weak. The beta man is not weak vis-a-vis women so much as he is weak vis-a-vis his own ancestry and heritage. He is the dispossessed, a stranger in his own land, passively assenting to the decay of his civilization.”

The decline of the white man goes like this. Until a couple generations ago, white men were on top of the world, a world they had conquered and were dominating. In addition to the status provided by patriarchy, they had the additional status of being the highest-ranking men in the world—the alphas of the world, so to speak. As such, they were highly attractive to women. But this very success planted the seed of its own undoing, because it allowed white men to become complacent and very unmasculine on an individual level—simply because they could afford to be, because they had a collective status advantage large enough to offset these negatives. This is especially true of Englishmen, and to a lesser extent of other men of the Anglosphere. Think of the stereotypical effete upper-class Englishman of even a century ago, or earlier during the heyday of the Empire. Even allowing for the exaggerations of Hollywood, were these guys “manly” by any stretch of the imagination? You look at them and think, “These guys conquered the whole world? Something doesn’t make sense.” But it does make sense. For one thing, letting your money and status do the talking is a lot easier than doing the work of being a man. Rich men have always found it easier to let the “bulge in back” stand in for the “bulge in front.” For another thing, men are actually the romantic sex and as such prefer to believe that women love them for who they are rather than what they have. White men thought they could give away the world they owned and their women would still respect them. These are the men who acquiesced to feminism. It’s as if they were showing off, saying “See how powerful I am. I can give my woman the vote, equal rights, the whole thing, and I still don’t have to worry about losing her, ‘cause I’m high status, very high status, and only very high status men like me can get away with doing stuff that would have been fatal to any other men in history. Or maybe it’s because I’m such a very very good, moral man and she appreciates my righteousness. In any case, I’m the man.” The decline of the white man thus did start with weakness vis-à-vis his own women, although one cloaked in a kind of macho vanity and moral exhibitionism.

Laura writes:

The hypergamy paradigm has truth to it, but it is exaggerated in Game ideology. I agree with Expatriot that a man cannot by sheer force of will overturn a feminist culture. Female psychology has entirely different consequences with sexual freedom and the economic autonomy of women.

Poor white men were loved for many thousands of years by women. But then even the poor white man had a pride in his place in the world and possessed authority. Whether the white man gave away his stature in relation to women or in relation to other peoples first, I don’t know. Certainly, he did both. As Expatriot says, it was a lot easier to give in than do “the work of being a man.” A combination of “macho vanity and moral exhibitionism” is a nice way of putting it.

N.W. writes:

Why are we debasing our dialogue too a reductionist set of definitions which completely constrict our ability to honestly discuss the problems which confront us? This whole inane conversation about alpha males and beta males degrades the level of discourse to a set of defintions which do not allow for a nuanced discussion of the issue. Essentially, we have narrowed the limits of the discussion to a terminology which is generally used by a field biologist to discuss his observations of wild animals. Why we would even try to use the same terminologies to discuss the interactions between men and women is beyond me.

Man has been blessed with the gift of freewill. Man can determine what he will do in the world. Man is not an animal to be scientifically categorized like some wild beast. I do not know why you would allow for the discussion on your otherwise excellent site to be debased in such a manner. If someone has something to say about the character of individuals then let them use accurate adjectives to describe the manner and not allow themselves to digress into this ideological shorthand.

Laura writes:

As I said in the previous post, I don’t normally use the terms alpha and beta. I find them repugnant. But Mr. Mehra raised the question about why the terms had become so common and I was wondering about it too, why a wife would even think of her husband as a “beta” man. I understand the definitions of these terms in Game lingo, the reductive evolutionary thinking that is involved and the real dynamics that have influenced this thinking. I’m not particularly interested in pursuing that subject because it has been explored exhaustively elsewhere. I was just musing on the fact that white men so commonly refer to themselves in this demeaning way.

Jesse Powell writes:

On the issue of “alpha males” and “beta males” in general, I do think it is an issue mostly invented by the men’s rights types but it is still worth discussing as it relates to the choices women make as to the men they want to be with and it relates to men’s ability to function in the romantic world. If a man is not “alpha” then he will be seriously harmed in his efforts to find a mate; in the same way, women are harmed when there are not enough “alpha” men to go around. I think a lot of men are confused about how to navigate the dating world and how to behave as men when they are married; discussing the finer points of what being an “alpha male” and “beta male” means is meant to answer the questions men have about what it means to be a “real man.” 

In dealing with these issues, I would like to challenge some of the assertions made by Expatriot. 

Expatriot said, “Under traditional patriarchy, men collectively were, by social convention, accorded higher social status than women collectively.” 

I want to take issue with Expatriot’s contention that “traditional patriarchy” was something created by “social convention.” Patriarchy is something that derives from the natural strengths and abilities of men, it is not something artificially created to “defuse female hypergamy.” Expatriot even says “In exchange for their artificially elevated status, (beta) men were expected to play the role of men to the best of their ability by observing a code of socially positive masculine behavior . . .” Again, the status of men was not “artificially elevated” in the past, it was high because of men’s natural abilities. Also, men were expected to engage in “socially positive masculine behavior” not in exchange for their “artificially elevated” status but simply because such masculine behavior was the natural role and duty of men. Patriarchy is not an artificially constructed culturally imposed norm; it is an outgrowth of the natural differences between men and women. In the same way men’s duties towards women and children as they have been traditionally understood are not artificially constructed either but are the result of the natural differences between men and women. 

On the issue of women’s “hypergamy,” women simply want the best partner that is available to them; in the manosphere much is made of the tyranny of women’s “hypergamy” but all hypergamy is is women seeking the best man they can find; men to seek the best woman they can find; there is nothing sinister about trying to find the best man as a woman or trying to find the best woman as a man. The reason why women seek men who are higher status than themselves is simply because men in general are higher status than women in general (when I say “status” in this context I mean making more money, achievements in the “public sphere”, the areas of life that men naturally excel in). A woman would be crazy to seek a man with the same “status” as herself because surely she could find a man higher status than herself since men in general have higher status than women. 

Expatriot comments “No, men used to have higher status than women, but they don’t anymore.” I think that is debatable; men overall still have higher status than women in the sense of making more money and holding positions of power and decision making; more importantly however I want to emphasize that men’s higher status comes from nature; or God; and this means that men are higher status than women regardless of the pathologies of the system they find themselves in; higher status in the sense of having a duty and an opportunity to shape the world according to their will and according to their vision of how society should be. Even when women hold positions of authority or the legal system is biased in favor of women in certain ways it must be remembered that women hold such power because men allowed them to exercise such power; the ultimate power lies in the hands of men regardless of the cultural conventions of any society at any particular point in time.

Expatriot writes:

Of course patriarchy is based in natural biological differences, but it is a social convention nonetheless. Christians would call it one ordained by God. The male strength and superiority that Jesse refers to is mostly that of men collectively, cooperating and competing in hierarchies under a social order, not of individual men operating atomistically. The whole is more than the sum of its parts. While even non-alpha men have their strengths and should try to cultivate them, the fact is that most men are not as strong as women would have them be. This is where social convention or culture comes in. It establishes masculine and feminine roles that are within the reach of ordinary men and women yet affirm the ideals that women have of men and men have of women. Some individuals exceed cultural norms and some fall short, but the important thing is to affirm these norms and the ideals they embody. Culture belongs to the realm of art not nature. Of course to be successful, art must be true to nature. But it is not a mere imitation or extension of nature. It is a refashioning of nature, one that draws out and elaborates certain positive and useful elements of nature while counteracting and neutralizing the negative and harmful ones. Dams and canals make water work for us in a productive way, and they are entirely products of human ingenuity—material culture—though fashioned from natural materials like brick and stone.

Culture is like a vessel. When it is shattered, the contents are scattered and wasted—they do not magically reconstitute themselves into a whole.

Returning to the original topic of discussion—female hypergamy and the alpha-beta distinction—it is well and good to see biology as something to be transcended. But, like original sin, it should not be denied. And that is why so many nowadays dwell on it to the point of what seems like obsession—because it is denied, or downplayed at least. It is not necessarily reductive to focus on something important that is being ignored. But since to fully understand something often requires focusing on it to the exclusion of all else (temporarily, at least), this focus can easily be mistaken for over-generalization and reductiveness. You can only write about one thing at a time within a limited space, unless you want to weaken your writing by qualifying every other thing you say. I’m only speaking for myself here; I realize there are others who could rightfully be accused of reductiveness. 

Sebastian C. writes:

I wanted to comment on this Alpha/Beta classification by pointing out two things: a) it is not altogether untrue (I stick by my grammar), but b) it is terribly reductionist. Reading the Rosissy website, it is obvious those guys have taken one fundamental truth and universalized it beyond its scope. Much of what is discussed there would be fairly obvious in a saner, less ideological society. The one thing I do take issue with is the notion of the “Beat Provider.” This is what they call the men who marry the women they (and presumably many others) have slept with, now regarded as a spoiled piece of meat. It’s interesting to me as a Catholic how they remain trapped in the Madonna/Whore paradigm they seek to transcend. But even more interesting is the sight of a 50-year-old “player” at a gathering of adults.

I play and follow golf. You may have heard of Phil Mickelson, one of the most successful and likeable golfers on tour. Linked here are pictures of Phil the “Beta Provider” with his wife (who defeated breast cancer) and their three daughters. If these pseudo-intellectuals using evolutionary psychology think Mickelson is a “beta” because he is married with children, I feel sorry for them. I sure hope those late middle age “play’as” have composed at the level of Beethoven or written at the level of Henry James or Gustave Flaubert to justify the barrenness of their lives. Consider that even after his monumental public and financial success, Flaubert wrote a long letter to his friend Guy de Maupassant lamenting all he had given up to pursue his art. He was brought to tears upon seeing his sister playing by a river with her two children and realized in a flash the absurdity of the oft-repeated mantra that his novels were his children. 

Roissy-types may say that Mickelson is obviously an alpha male, which is why he “landed” a pretty wife, though of course he provides for her and is presumably faithful, which they see as bad. But according to their logic, Tiger Woods is the real alpha because he would not be tied down to one woman. Yet Woods, besides seriously injuring his ex-wife and his children, may have ruined his career as well. I think Wood’s behavior was a form of radical narcissism, arrested development and desperation, not very alpha at all. I’ve never understood the hatred people expressed for his wife, but that’s by the bye. 

Essentially, the problem with the alpha/beta classification is that the men who use it are emotionally damaged, obviously scared and more than a little “beta” themselves. I also think there’s an ethnic element to it if one paints with broad enough brushstrokes: Italians, Spaniards and French have Game, period; Anglos, the Irish and Jews do not and need to learn it as if it were a science; Germans, Czechs, Slavs are somewhere in between. I genuinely think there is something to this – and being part Italian, I’ll stick to it. But honestly, I’ve had American women share similar observations.

Laura writes:

I have known some Irish men, including relatives, who are genuises, but I guess in general they are not as brilliant as you Italians. : – )

Vishal Mehra writes:

Precisely because Game is nihilist and perverts our language, it is important to discuss it throughly and expose its assumptions. More so, since it seems to attract conservative-leaning men in particular, many of whom seem unaware of the underlying corruption of thought and language.

Female hypergamy is basic to Game. This requires a notion of status, both for men and women. Games classify women as 1-10 based upon looks but men are only classified as alpha and beta, depending upon the number of women they are able to seduce. Thus the definition of female hypergamy is circular. The traditional measures of status: money, family, profession, etc. are all dispensed with in Game. There is no way in Game to look at a man and tell his status without knowing the number and looks of women he is able to seduce.

There are also other misunderstandings regarding status. Men, collectively or otherwise, do not have higher status than women. Status can be compared only among peers. A man can compare his status with his peers, extending outwards to all men, I suppose, asymptotically. Status may be compared of families, of professions, of castes/estates etc.

Men do not dominate women, at least they should not and vice-versa. The only normative rule is wives should be subject to their husbands in all things. This headship is to be interpreted in the light of Christ’s Headship of the Church. See C.S. Lewis’ Four Loves and also Anthony Esolen’s article on the Culture of Divorce. The journalist David Warren has also said that obedience comes easier to men since they are used to working with other men outside the home so the commandment to obey is specific to women. And vice-versa, men are commanded to love since loving comes easier to women.

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