Male scarcity

Male scarcity is the condition that arises in a society where, due to circumstances, there are significantly less men than women in the sexual marketplace. Male scarcity has been common throughout history and is often cited as the reason why religions such as Islam permit men to have multiple wives (polygyny). The opposite of male scarcity is female scarcity, which is famously the case in China and India, as a result of the one-child policy, and sex-selective abortion of female fetuses.

Uniquely under male scarcity, men have a higher SMV than women, which means inceldom is practically nonexistant, proving that one way the socio-sexual dynamic changes in men's favor is the mass death of males, which eases competition.

Causes

Male scarcity is exclusively caused by war, because wars are fought by breeding-age men, and because men sent to fight wars often die in battle, there will usually be less men left alive after the end of a given conflict, resulting in less sexual competition for the survivors. Eugenics advocates also believe that war is a good way to filter undesirable weak males from the gene pool based on the assumption that the strongest will survive the war, while the weak will be killed. This might have been the case in the Ancient world, but definitely not in modern times; in fact, modern wars seem to favor the weak in terms of survival, because the best way to survive a modern war is simply to not fight in it.

In Ancient times, the conquering tribe would also kill any males from the conquered tribe and take their women as concubines and rape slaves, increasing the ratio of females to males even further.

Real and fictional examples

• This was constantly the case in many ancient European civilizations such as Athens and Rome, since almost all non-aristocrat males spent their youths in the military and were effectively removed from the sexual marketplace unless they lived long enough to retire.
• Up to 70% of the male population of Paraguay were killed in the War of the Triple Alliance in 1864-1870 against Paraguay's neighboring countries of Brazil, Argentina and Uraguay (the Triple Alliance).
• The fighting-age men who were drafted into World War I are commonly referred to as the "lost generation" because of how many of them never returned. 18-28% of the pre-war male population of the Kingdom of Serbia were killed as a result of the war, for example.
• Adolf Hitler planned for this to happen after World War II, in Nazi Germany, the military branch Waffen-SS was open only to conscripts assessed to have Aryan features (i.e Chads), they also met a certain height requirement of 5' 9" tall (5'10 for the SS-Division Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler), however these requirements were loosened after the beginning of the war. Most elements of the SS performed domestic/policing duties and had a much lower casualty rate than the armed forces, the Wehrmacht. However, there were many divisions and formations of the Waffen-SS that took part in some of the most ferocious fighting of the war. The plan was possibly for the undesirables to go into the meat grinder in place of the proper Aryans so more Aryan genes could be passed on later.
• Currently, male scarcity is observable in Iraq, South Sudan, Syria, Somalia or any country with an ongoing or recent armed conflict
• In the lore of the Fallout games, one of the vaults constructed by the Vault-Tec corporation, Vault 69, had a population of 999 females for every 1 male
• In the Zelda games, the Gerudo race is exclusively female, the sole exception being the king, who is a single male born once every 100 years
• The sex of most reptiles is determined by the temperature it was exposed to as an embryo, with higher temperatures leading to more females. Because of global warming there is currently male scarcity in many reptile species.

See also

• Male disposability