Jack’s post on the Ordinance of Fear has stimulated me a flesh out some thoughts I’ve had for some time on this topic. I’ve written substantially about attraction such A Christian understanding of attraction, and the role it plays in marriage: Part 4. It’s one of the works I consider seminal to this blog and perhaps wider Christian ethos on tying natural attraction to the Bible whereas most Christian pastors have no clue about it at all. Digging deeper into our understanding of hypergamy, we need to example it from multiple angles. There’s three main factors that we have observed in the real world about women and their own attraction triggers.
  1. Women are not good at understanding what attracts them. When asked, very few are self aware of what they like. They usually respond in a way that bypasses attraction such as naming qualities (e.g. kindness, family man) they would like in a man they are already attracted to.
  2. Women are not good at discerning between good and evil directional aspects of what attracts them
  3. Like-attracts-Like principle where generally worldly women are more oriented to being attracted to the worldly versions of attraction and sexual desire. This also does not exclude Christian women being tempted toward worldly versions if they are surrounding by unattractive men.
Expressions of hypergamy Diving into some more of the details of hypergamy, I’m going to propose some examples that we’ve seen before and may have not either. I’m not particular tied to these examples, but I would like help to refine them into something that is usable. To define some terms first. Hypergamy is the overarching observation that women want to marry up. This means that women are sexually attracted men that are superior or have more dominion than themselves. Women are hardwired to want their man to be better at them in almost every aspect possible — even the most hardcore feminist — unless they are actively trying to LARP (live action role play) as the man in the relationship. Main categories are going to be mental, physical, and emotional. Though spiritual is often denoted as a separate component, in reality this should pervade the Christian walk which is all 3 of these categories so it’s more a holistic application rather than a separate one. Plus, we are trying to orient what the natural attraction is from the worldly attraction and that makes the discernment easier. These are some but not all of the list of traits that fall under the umbrella of hypergamy and tend to be something women are sexually attracted to.
  • Mental
    • Power/Authority
      • Leadership/headship – Genuine authority vs Gentile authority
      • Dominance – Dominion/dominate vs domineering
      • Authority subset – Respect vs Fear
    • Status – Reputation and fame vs ill repute and infamous
      • Publicity – Good reputation vs “no publicity is bad publicity”
  • Physical
    • Height – Tall vs taller than her vs shorter than her vs short
    • Athleticism – Physical dominance vs violence/abuse
    • Looks – Handsome vs Narcissism
    • Physique – Muscular vs bear/bodybuilder vs normal vs thin/fat
  • Emotional
    • Masculinity – Manly/the man vs machismo vs feminine
      • Women feel good around manly men but get the ick with feminine men
    • Money – Security/provision vs gold diggers
    • Charisma – Good Charm and Influence vs selfish (e.g. the Dark Triad)
    • Humor – Funny vs Offensive
There’s more than this, but just a start. If this is understandable or resonates with you, I’d like some help in filling out more of this so we can get a standardized understanding out there that would be useful to all men.
  • Sexually – Women want to be dominated physically, mentally, and emotionally in the bedroom although the lines can be more blurred on how dominant they prefer. Most have some sort of dominated fantasy,  but this stems from usually already being attracted from the above.
It is only Attractive Male Attention that is validating to a woman. Many of the attributes above trigger a woman enough to be attracted to a man, and that’s where he is afforded some influence on her and her feelings. If you don’t trigger these and give attention you are likely to be named a loser or creep as SNL put it. To go back to Jack’s post a bit, I don’t think fear is outside of hypergamy but more so fear has some interplay in many of the different aspects of triggers of hypergamy. There’s a dominion type fear both regularly and sexually where the lines are blurred between a dominate vs domineering man where she likes some of it but if gone too far she may hate it. There’s the power dynamic with respect/fear. There’s the fear of violence, fear of lack of provision or divorce, and many other things like that. Fear mostly plays into the mental and emotional side of relationships, although some women get themselves into physically abusive relationships. Perhaps mental and emotional are too close together to really distinguish as well. I could see some of the traits falling under emotional or mental. If anyone else has any ideas, be sure to comment on them.