A letter to today's unwanted men, part 2
The way things used to be: A wistful backwards glance
My effort in this extended "letter" is most emphatically NOT to "black pill" anyone, or to foment despair and demoralization.
I write to my fellow men, at least the bulk of whom, like myself, cannot lay claim to being "high-status." We lack prestige, acclaim, appeal, looks, money, power, or other signifiers of status.
In a previous age, however, the likes of us would have no cause to conclude that our prospects of finding wives was at all bleak. Before the sexual revolution wreaked its malicious havoc, monogamy still held sway. Those who deviated from monogamic norms, men and women alike, were subjected to scorn and shame by the wider culture.
Under such circumstances, women's natural proclivity towards hypergamy, that is, their tendency to be drawn to men who are their perceived social betters, was tempered by an awareness that ordinary gals from oridinary places were unlikely to wind up with matinee idols or dreamboat radio crooners.
Of course it was all well and good to swoon over Cary Grant and Clark Gable, or to sigh and blush at the dulcet tones of Bing Crosby and Pat Boone, but when it came down to choosing an actual husband, a girl had to be practical. Of the men who presented themselves in her real life-- as opposed to her silly, flighty fantasies-- she was quite capable of apprehending what was appealing, even attractive in these more ordinary men.
Harold, the boy who lived up the road, for example, might be a bit stout, but he could also be awfully sweet, and he was always a gentleman. Clarence from next door wasn't exactly be a born romantic, but he did possess lovely blue eyes, and he could be relied upon to be loyal and true. Theodore for his part, did have an unfortunate stutter and a cleft palate, but by golly he always managed to lighten the mood with his witty banter and his roguish grin. And though Gilbert might be short in stature and dull of mind, he was clearly a conscientious worker who concealed a generous heart under his stolid exterior.
Even in pre-sexual revolution times, most young women, even those on the homelier side, did not want for wooers and suitors. Their wooers and suitors were, of course, more often the ordinary types of men, the above paragraph perhaps representing a typical inventory of the choices that an ordinary girl of marriageable age had at her disposal.
Note that, in the attitude shown by the hypothetical girl in question, there is no bitterness that she doesn't have access to the sort of men that might be seen as hyper-desirable, those devilishly handsome and deliriously debonair fellows who tended to cavort with starlets and actresses and fashion magazine models. Our hypothetical girl, here depicted as common of her type, doesn't dwell on such things, as they don't concern her; they are irrelevant to her life.
In choosing the suitor she wishes to marry from amongst the crop of young men who have come to court her, our girl doesn't feel in the least like she is "settling." She does not grumble to herself that she could "do better." Whomever she ultimately picks, be it Harold, Clarence, Theodore, or Gilbert (or perhaps some unmentioned dark horse candidate), she does not feel she is doing the lucky lad any kind of favor by plighting her troth to him at the altar. She acknowledges that she is quite far from perfect herself, and is happy that he will have her, just as he is thrilled that she will have him.
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After they tie the knot, do they live "happily ever after"? Of course, things are never so simple as that. Every marriage has ups and downs, and some relationships have considerably more valleys than peaks. No societal setup is perfect. Still and all, who would deny that the scenario I have described is infinitely superior to the contemporary state of affairs? Superior, that is, even if one were to readily admit to its surely numerous flaws and drawbacks?
The ideal of lifelong monogamy, enforced by social pressures and taboos, reinforced by the shaming of scoundrels and homewreckers and the stigmatization of divorce, fornication, and cohabitation, is, I submit, a cultural paradigm much more humane, reasonable, and conducive to harmony and fulfillment, than its polar opposite-- that is, the current dispensation-- which by contrast seems almost diabolically rigged to create heartbreak, discontent, disillusionment, and alienation in as many people-- men and women alike-- as possible.
Enforced monogamy, in fact, constrained the worst impulses of both men and women. It prevented the formation of harems and keeping of concubines by the most powerful of men, and the concomitant exploitation and subjugation of women, while at the same time ensuring that men of mid- or lower-status were not utterly shut out from marriage and fatherhood.
Today, battered as we are by wave after wave of culturally-engineered depravities, each more outrageous than the last, it is difficult to conceive of living in the world occupied by our hypothetical girl and her hypothetical suitors spoken of above. Such innocence has all but been bred out of us; for all too many, one's portion now is to be perpetually horny, and forever alone.
(to be continued)
Read part 1 here
AUTHOR’S NOTE: If you find this subject to be of interest, you might enjoy my extended essays Ruminations of a Low-Status Male ,and A Final Solution to the Incel Problem.