I had another essay building on last weeks essay on responsibility and accountability planned this week, but I saw a tweet that caught my interest and started me down the rabbit hole of sexual market value again. More specifically, how what constitutes a high quality product in the sexual market place.

Christian McQueen (@TheCadClub on twitter) recently tweeted out the following:

If this trend continues it’ll be very easy for pretty girls world-wide: 1. Be in shape 2. Don’t have grey hair (dye it if need be) 3. Don’t be a hateful feminist You’ll have your pick of great men.

I’ve touched on this idea before in Gendernomics and previous essays, most particularly in Female Sexual Strategies Part 2. The gist of my argument was that if one has a market, where a need exists and the only options to satisfy that need are poor ones, then those poor solutions can still do remarkably well. This is a function of the contrast effect more than anything, in that if you’re 6 ft 1, and go out with a group of men who are 6 ft 3 and taller, you look short by comparison.

This comes down to the fact that people would rather have a need fulfilled to a minimal degree as opposed to not having it covered at all. If you have to drive in a nail, and you can’t find a hammer at a good price, you may use a wrench or a rock. You have a need you have to fulfill, a preferred way to fulfill it (want) but you will compromise.

As I’ve mentioned, I travel a lot for work, and this means that I also end up talking to a lot of random people on various means of transport and in general. One of the most interesting groups to talk to are women in their 70s, 80s and 90s, who have daughters and granddaughters, as they tend to lament the lifestyle choices of their offspring. This is because back in their day, before egalitarian equalism, it was common knowledge what men wanted in a wife, often embodied in aphorisms like

“The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach” – Know how to cook and take care a man.

“Behind every great man is a great woman” – Know how to support your man and help him succeed.

I could extrapolate much from these simple sentences, however our culture contains enough examples of what type of wife or husband is undesirable in comics, literature and culture. Personally my favorite examples in comics is from Andy Capp and Bringing up Father, both demonstrate the dynamic of hapless Beta male with the domineering, harridan of a wife. Back in the 1940s and 1950s, this was a funny caricature, these days such comics appear almost prescient in how gender relations have developed.

The Projection Factor

Myself and others have observed that both sexes tend to project their own valuation criteria for an opposite sex partner onto themselves, meaning that women often think that the things they look for in a man are also attractive to a man and vice versa. For the typical Beta man this often translates into becoming the supportive caretaker that he desires his partner to be. This is a man who argues “but I’m such a great guy, I cook, clean, I listen and nurture my partner“. Likewise, you will find the “Strong, Independent Women” making statements such as “I have a great career, I’m highly educated, decisive and ambitious, why can’t I find a great man?”

In both cases, the person becomes the embodiment of what they think will make them high sexual market value and great long-term prospects, not realizing that they have identified the wrong variables on which to focus. The men think of what would be great traits in a female partner, and figure “women should appreciate these traits in a man” and the Strong Independent Woman thinks “I want a man who is successful, ambitious, educated and decisive, men should love a partner like that as well“. This is a typical example of people applying an egalitarian equalist mindset to what creates sexual market value. Women prefer men with more experience, men prefer women with less experience.

This is an old problem in start-ups or among product designers and engineers, they think “I would really love this product, therefore everyone should also love this product” without taking the time to conduct necessary market and customer analysis. The result being that one invests resources into a product for which there is no market, then when one fails to capture a market for the product, instead of re-evaluating the product and value proposition they elect to blame the market.

There are many things that can be wrong, first off the product can be flawed or incapable of competing, the wrong market can have been targeted, or many other things. For instance, the articles that are published with some regularity, where a group of women, often in their late 30s to early 50s lament their inability to find “equitable relationships”, are a case of over-valuing themselves compared to what the market thinks. Over-pricing to put it bluntly. Alternatively, the women embody the traits and qualities they are looking for in a partner, such as financial success, corporate success, educational success or others, which is a case of building a product that is not what the market desires.

Relative Value

What I liked about Christian’s tweet, was that it showed how far the female side of the product development sphere has drifted away from the male market. This is because our cultural and social narrative for the past two to three generations has been that of “egalitarian equalism”, where men are not permitted to have standards and women should never settle. In essence, a man should accept whatever he can get in the market regardless of his own preferences. Women on the other hand are entitled to the best market has to offer at a very low cost to them. This goes back to the argument that if the only products available to satisfy a need are poor quality products, then one will often buy a poor quality product because it’s better to satisfy a need using a poor product than having it go unfulfilled. For instance, I hardly ever eat fast food, but if I land in a new place at 11 PM on a Sunday and the only thing open is a Burger King, I will have a burger instead of going to be hungry.

In Gendernomics I talk about relativity in the sexual market place, and in sexual market value, which in essence breaks down to the fact that what you consider a 9 or 10, is dependent on the supply of women in your market. If you are in New York, LA or Miami, cities where the most physically attractive women tend to congregate, your standards tend to be higher, if you live in a small town in the Midwest, populated mostly by 5s, then you are likely to value those 5s as 8s or 9s, based on that they are the 8s and 9s of that particular market.

This is little different than in a market where the average rate of return on capital is 2% annually above the risk free rate, a company that earns 3% is an amazing company. However, in a market where the average rate of return on capital is 12% annually above the risk free rate, the company that earns 3% is shit.

Summary and Conclusions

When the bar is lowered, the result is that an entire market will be less satisfied. J.D Rockefeller revolutionized the oil industry and gained a market share that resulted in Standard Oil having to be broken up with anti-trust legislation, based on a very simple value proposition “Our oil will burn in a predictable way and is less likely to start a fire than the oil produced by other companies“. In essence, “Our product does not have the side-effect of starting random fires“.

This raised the bar for other companies, as they either had to offer a better price that made up for the fire risk, or step up their product to the level of Standard Oil. In this sense, the sexual market place is a constant arms race where men compete to build a better mouse trap, to get an edge in the market place. Much of “the game” is based around learning how to best demonstrate the ways that you are different. In essence, demonstrating that your value proposition is in-fact better than that of another person. This is not necessarily done explicitly, as men often do when engaging in Beta game, where they more or less present their resume to a woman during the first date. “Male feminist ally”-game is a typical example of an attempted avenue of differentiation, where men seek to signal that they are different because they reject masculinity and embrace the feminine.

When one man improves in a way the market appreciates, this raises the bar for every other man. If every man in the world had 10% body fat, and great muscularity, then it stops to be a means by which a man can differentiate himself. Likewise, if all women are in shape, pleasant, feminine and nurturing, these qualities stop being factors of differentiation (things that set one woman apart from others) and become “expected features” (things all women are expected to be).

The effect outlined in the last paragraph is what we’ve seen most clearly in computer technology and network infrastructure over the past 20 years. The first cellphone to have internet and email had a massive competitive advantage in the business world, these days we expect every cell phone to have internet access and email. 10 years ago, a cafe having wifi was pretty rare, and was a big differentiating factor, these days people expect it.

To return to the tweet that sent me down the rabbit-hole, the bar has been lowered so extremely that what our fathers and grandfathers could expect as features, have now become factors of differentiation. The interesting thing, as a man who is very deeply embedded in the self-improvement focus of The Red Pill is that men have worked very hard to improve themselves over the past 20 – 25 years, while women have done the opposite in many cases. Men have added features such as dressing better, grooming, working out and learning how to cook, in addition to the already existing features. Women on the other hand, have by large added some features such as being competitive in the workplace, getting higher education, but they have also removed traditional features such as femininity, nurturing and caring.

A note:

I recently launched a Patreon page where I will be posting additional content every month for those who support me and I will do a Google Hangout for the highest tier Patrons (limited to 10 people).

I’ve also had some requests for consults, which I’ve declined up until now, but due to demand I’ve chosen to open up for doing some consults on request. For details please check out my Consulting and Patreon Page

As always you can buy my book Gendernomics at Amazon.com as both paperback and Kindle