Gendernomics: Micro

Summary of Gendernomics: Micro

This excerpt presents the author’s prescriptive market analogy for dating. Its accounts of male and female motives, and its evolutionary explanations, are claims within that framework rather than conclusions established by the analogy itself.

The microeconomics section aims to be prescriptive: it proposes ways a man might improve what the author calls sexual market value through deliberate action.

The central analogy is a man as a startup, developing from a new venture into an established company. Analytical models are used to assess personal strengths, peers, and circumstances. The purpose is to choose a goal and actions suited to the environment, then use experience to revise them.

The section also applies risk management, due diligence, and mergers as analogies for relationship decisions in Western societies.

The aim is to inform deliberate action and avoid the "any action is better than no action" trap. This is not a carte blanche for over-analysis, if you find yourself spending more than a week working through the methods in the micro-chapter, it is likely that you are engaging in analysis to postpone action, rather than inform action.

Ultimately, the world tends to admire the man of action, not the man of thought, unless they are both combined in one man. Thus, aspire to be the Warrior-Monk, rather than the Monk or Warrior.

Strategy and the Sexual Market Place

Strategy comes from the Greek word "Strategos" meaning generalship. The distinction between strategy and tactics is the scope and scale. The general focuses on planning the entire flow of a battle, how to utilize his men, the reactions of his opponents and many other factors. Tactics on the other hand are the individual actions and parts that build up a strategy. One can thus argue strategy as bottom-up or top-down.

The major difference is the perception of the planner, but most planners have a preference. Those who prefer top-down strategy are often analytical and more drawn to structures and procedures. Those who are bottom-up are often more flexible and tend to take the view that strategy is a result of tactics. The former is planned strategy the latter is emergent strategy. The argument for emergent strategy is that plans can become outdated as conditions change. Learning from action can reveal opportunities the original plan missed.

Within strategic management, there are two major schools, planned and emergent. Planned strategy is based on a thorough analysis of the company, the market, environmental conditions, the value chain and the goals decided by the owners of the company. The type of analysis that the models in the preceding section of the book facilitates. This type of strategy championed by among others Michael Porter favors an analytical and planned approach to achieving the goals of the company.

Henry Mintzberg describes five perspectives on strategy. (19) These can overlap: a deliberate plan may produce a consistent pattern of action and establish a position in a market. A pattern that differs from the original intention can reveal an emergent strategy.

Strategy as a plan - A directed course of action to achieve an intended set of goals, this involves deliberate action informed by reasoning and research. A successful result may provide useful information, but does not by itself show that the plan caused the success or will work in another setting.

This is the approach that would be most appropriate for most men who are new to the sexual market place. If they were naturals, they would already be utilizing strategy as a pattern with success, and one does not alter a winning strategy until it becomes clear that it is no longer winning.

Strategy as a pattern - A consistent pattern of past behavior with a strategy realized over time rather than planned or intended. If the pattern is different from the intent, this is an emergent strategy. A realized pattern may be deliberate, emergent, or a combination of both. Understanding why it worked requires examining the actions and circumstances, rather than assuming that an unplanned success was merely coincidence.

This is often the situation with naturals they engage in a pattern that leads to sexual success, however are unaware of the mechanisms and methods they utilize to get this success. Devoid of most knowledge of the "why", they are aware of the "How" and therefore realize success, however are often unable to teach or explain their success. For them, "Just be yourself" is actually a solid strategy for sexual market success.

Strategy as position - locating brands, products, or companies within the market, based on the conceptual framework of consumers or other stakeholders; a strategy determined primarily by factors outside the firm. This approach is rarely recommended in the sexual market place, unless you have the ability to position yourself based on your performance. Actors, musicians and a few other groups have the ability to base their strategy, not on themselves but on the actions of the outside world. The concept of "build your own brand" that has gained much traction in recent years for employees and consultants alike is based around this idea.

A male in the sexual market place can gain great benefits from tailoring his brand around the female sexual strategies outlined in a later chapter if he has a specific preference. A man who likes women who are into heavy metal for instance, would be well off to tailor his brand around this preference. The assumption is that appearance and demeanor help communicate shared interests to the people one hopes to meet.

Strategy as perspective - executing strategy based on a "theory of the business" or natural extension of the mindset or ideological perspective of the organization. This is the approach taken most often by men who are "red pill". Their strategy in the sexual market place can follow either of the three above and their planning, pattern or position will be based on a red pill perspective and red pill theory.

Strategies within the sexual market place based on Red Pill theory, can be very successful for advanced participants. It is not recommended for men who are new to the Red Pill, or sexual market place theory as it requires that the theory has become their default perspective, rather than conscious thinking.

Strategy as ploy - a specific maneuver intended to outwit a competitor. This particular observation is more of a tactic than a strategy, an action or a set of actions utilized not on a long-term basis, but rather required for defeating the opposition in the short term.

Once a man enters the manosphere, starts to learn game and to engage in the recommended self-improvement, he is engaging in the school of planned strategy. Having identified a problem and a goal, he performs a set of actions in order to move from AFC (Average Frustrated Chump) to Alpha male.

In contrast, "a natural" as they are known with the manosphere, are men who appear to "just get it" and experience sexual success from an early age, despite not having had much training or knowing why what they do works, just that it does. Much of the manosphere material on game was originally observed in naturals in the field, and then the analytical group crunched the data to find the principles that made the behavior have the effect. Thereafter they field-tested the material in experiments.

While there has been much discussion on naturals, one could argue the situation in the form of two different learning styles and different ages of entry into the sexual market place. A man who enters the market place early in life, has the benefit of practicing on a less jaded market, as women his own age, and perhaps younger will not yet have developed many of the defense mechanisms women develop as they experience being hit on over and over again. Furthermore, one of the main recommendations for men who are entering the world of game is to get out into the world and practice.

One could compare entering the sexual market place in your twenties or thirties to starting to play football on a college team. You could be a great player; however, everyone else has much more experience actually playing the game. When a man enters the sexual market place late, the experience of any woman he approaches is likely to eclipse his own; therefore, it is an up-hill battle. The natural who enters the market place early on the other hand, is on more even footing with the women he is approaching.

The natural, due to his early entry into the sexual market place, has often spent hundreds or thousands of hours interacting with women, hitting on women, and engaging in the behaviors that late entrants learn intellectually rather than naturally. This translates into interaction confidence. A man with no experience in the sexual market place who is approaching women with thousands of hours of experience, competing against other men with thousands of hours of experience, is therefore, at a disadvantage that must be rectified.

Where the inexperienced man is utilizing patterns of behavior that he has read about or observed by others, the experienced man is subconsciously using the same pattern.

Thus, natural vs trained is a false dichotomy, the actual categorization being unconscious competence vs conscious competence. The former a case of doing what works without an awareness as to why or how, the latter a case of doing what works because of why and how it works. The author favors conscious learning because understanding a method may make it easier to adapt. Experience and feedback are still needed to learn whether that understanding is accurate.

A company that achieves success through unconscious actions, non-existent plans, and barely formulated goals, is unlikely to be able to recapture what made it successful in the first place during business cycle transitions. This is among other reasons why early entrants into markets often fail to become market leaders within that market as it matures. Without knowing what the cause of success was, one cannot ensure that salient qualities are maintained as the company grows. If one is aware of unique selling points, it is possible to maintain them and in fact strengthen them through transitions.

The trained and red pill aware man on the other hand, borrows from all of the strategic schools once he gains experience. As the knowledge is within his conscious mind, he is able to devise plans and create structures that assist him in reaching his goal. He knows to practice techniques, movements and stratagems to the point where they become a part of who he is in the form of unconscious mastery. Thus, he makes them part of who he is due to deliberate practice.

In "Outliers", Malcolm Gladwell popularized a 10000-hour account of expertise. Calling this 10000 hours of deliberate practice still does not establish a universal threshold for mastery, especially in dating. The useful point is that learning 10 routines at a workshop cannot guarantee expertise or success.

The Red Pill aware man knows how to position himself within a market, and maintain his brand to ensure that his investments are not lost, but rather grow in value over time. He knows which paths to take in order to add value to his brand, and which paths to leave behind to avoid affecting his brand negatively.

The man knows that the sexual market place is a competition, and the only path to victory is one wherein he both provides a better value proposition and is able to out-think and outperform his competitor.

Finally, he has built a mindset for success and rejected systems of thought that are detrimental to his goals in life. The author treats this as the most important aspect of his development and often where naturals find their nemesis. A natural, despite his self-trained ability with women, boosted by early success in the sexual market place often offers little thought to the other aspects of his mindset. A natural may not yet have swallowed the red pill, and thus will perceive women from a blue pill perspective. This may frequently lead the natural alpha to a life consisting of multiple divorces, and general turmoil, of which he does not accurately identify the source.

If one searches recent history, it is littered with natural Alphas who attempt to get married and be a one-woman man, only to have their lives torn to pieces repeatedly because of their inability or lack of willingness to be faithful. This is frequently one of the larger problems that a natural alpha faces unless he is of the introspective type, and is able to arrive independently at the information that men aware of red pill theory have learned.

Risk vs Reward - Sexual Strategies of the Genders

The following account interprets reproductive costs through a simplified model of male and female strategies. Biological differences alone do not establish the specific motives assigned to individuals in this model.

The sexual market place consists of two genders, males and females. The two genders have biological and evolutionary influences on their development that shape the present strategies. Perhaps the most prevalent difference is that for women throughout the development of our species have experienced much harsher consequences for engaging in sexual behavior.

In a world where everything ultimately boiled down to getting sufficient energy to live another day, a pregnancy requires a staggering amount of additional calories, especially in later months. The pregnant human female also becomes exceedingly vulnerable, especially in the third trimester. Furthermore, one must take into account the risk of giving birth itself, which has many potential and life-threatening risks. This combines into a situation wherein the human female must be offered either a great reward, or a promise of risk mitigation.

A great reward is in the form of genetic material that is clearly of very high quality and thus will reward her (and her genes) with offspring that are highly likely to survive and reproduce. This will fulfill the function of the human organism, and will weigh up for the risk associated with pregnancy.

Risk mitigation is in the form of securing a mate who will ensure her security, and that of her children. This is in the form of protection while she is pregnant, helping her get enough food and assisting her through birth. Furthermore, an assurance that the man or his kin will raise the offspring should she succumb during childbirth.

Thus, arose the concept of "last minute resistance" among females, wanting to ensure that the male will stick around or ensure that he is genetically fit enough to mate with.

The model treats the male’s reproductive investment as lower and emphasizes possible conflict with another male. This is a selective account of consequences, not evidence that sex has no other costs for men. If he was able to copulate with her prior to his death, she may still bear his children; however, within the context of cavemen, the end result also may be the death of the female and her offspring at the hands of an alpha male.

For the male, if he is able to copulate with many females, he could utilize a strategy to do so with many partners, thus ensuring a large number of offspring. However, this lays all the risk on the female, a risk she will be unwilling to accept unless his genetics are of high quality.

When the male elects to make contact with and seduce the female. He faces high risk if she is pair bonded or mating with another male. The tendency of a male to feel fear before approaching an attractive female is therefore a remnant of this real risk. As previously mentioned, within the context of a tribe, the alpha will seek to ensure paternity by eliminating competitors for the attention of his mate.

From these biological differences, males and females have developed different sexual strategies, both rooted in the same biological function, but manifesting in different ways.

The author imagines a division of labor 100.000 years ago: men hunting large animals and women caring for children and older people. This scenario is used to explain supposed differences in focus, social skills, and nurturing. The scenario alone cannot establish how ancestral labor was divided or how particular psychological traits evolved.

Thus, the genders developed different characteristics, and their sexual strategies naturally caters to the preference of the other gender, utilizing the means of their own gender. Men utilized their ability to focus, perform and be goal oriented to appeal to females. Women utilized their social ability, multi-tasking and nurturing ability to appeal to men.

However, the major difference between the two was that while a male due to the lower cost and investment would happily mate with just about every women. In fact, one male could keep a group of 50+ women all in some stage of pregnancy without much trouble. The female had to ensure her position in the hierarchy, the fitness of her offspring and her own security when mating.

Therefore, females based their strategy on filtering potential suitors, thus reducing the pool of men that she would mate with in order to secure the best possible deal for herself and the most high quality offspring. This is the core of the question the female always asks herself when considering a mate: "Is he the best I can get?" this is the beginnings of hypergamy.

From this spawns the dichotomy of women, where they will rapidly sleep with a man to secure superior genes if possible, and will seek to delay mating with a male who appears to be a security play. They want to ensure that the former does not disappear prior to mating, and that the latter will stay around after mating. The human female can therefore be said to view reproduction as a high-investment decision, one that must be carefully considered in lieu of present context.

The male on the other hand, seeks to maximize the odds of having a maximum amount of offspring, and will therefore, attempt to bypass as many filters as possible to maximize mating opportunities. From the R/K perspective, a male could seek to either appeal to a single woman and secure her as his mate, which means calibrating to her filters, or seek to appeal widely to multiple females and thus bypass filters on a mass-market scale. The text invokes a claim that only 1 in 17 men reproduced in an earlier population. Even taken at face value, that claim does not identify which individual mating strategy was most successful or establish the mechanism behind the disparity.

The female and male are therefore engaged in a constant arms race of females attempting to filter and males aiming to avoid filters. The man is engaging in a mass-market strategy, whereby he seeks to appeal to as many women as possible in order to increase his chances of successful reproduction. This is what men mean when they describe dating as a "numbers game". The number of women one has to approach until one passes a sufficient number of filters. Whereas the female is engaging in a highly differentiated strategy, aiming only to secure reproduction with the man who has the traits she subconsciously desires.

The Beta Orbiter strategy is interesting in this regard, as it imitates the female mating strategy more than the male. Rather than appealing to women in general to maximize his options, the Beta orbiter aims to appeal to one female above all others. By appropriating the differentiation strategy of the female, the beta male makes an effort to best her in a female-centric negotiation.

From the perspective of economics, this creates a negotiation wherein both parties are attempting to satisfy only the requirements of one party to the negotiation. This could perhaps explain why many such marriages and unions end poorly, as the Beta is approaching it with only the perspective of what she requires from him rather than focusing on what he requires from her.