Strategic pluralism

Strategic pluralism is a theory in evolutionary biology refers to the fact that there are different strategies that increase women's fitness: investment in the offspring vs getting 'high quality genes' from a 'high quality male' who is often high status and can thus can fulfill her cavewoman desire to feel protected, which in 2024 serves little to no purpose. Both help spreading a woman's genes in future generations (a.k.a. increase fitness), but aiming too high means getting no investment (i.e. being pumped and dumped), aiming too low guarantees investment (betabux), but is often accompanied by worse genes.

This theory is often summarized by the expression "Chad fuxx, beta buxx" (cacography of "Chad fucks, beta bucks"). One of the meanings of this expression is that Chads can have sex with women without doing much efforts, while Beta or low-value males can give women their money or material goods hoping that said women will have sex with them. The other meaning is that Chad can have offspring by pumping and dumping most women, and that said women are often left alone by Chad and need a Beta (less aggressive, more reliable) male to take care of them and Chad's offspring, including financially; the Beta male, however, will not be allowed by those women to impregnate them and, in the most extreme cases, may not be allowed to have sex with those women.

Historical Basis

Confucianism

The Three Feminine Obedience is a Confucian principle, that a female should obey her father when she is young, her husband when she is a young adult, and her son when she is middle aged. This has basis on female preference of attractive traits at different ages. In western terms it can be phrased as playmate (sex, physical attractiveness and dominance), workmate (marriage and resources), and soulmate (emotional support). A malformed version of this is the Chad being a playmate, beta being a workmate, and "Gay Best Friend" as soulmate. See also The Wall#Dissection into Age-based Dating Strategies

Dual mating strategy

Some have suggested this might mean women naturally engage in a dual mating strategy where they get genes and investment from different partners (from an alpha male and a betabuxx respectively).

One UCLA study stated that, “a great deal of the evidence indicates two overlapping suites of psychological adaptations in women: those for securing long-term, cooperative social partnerships for rearing children and those for pursuing a dual-mating strategy in which women secure a social partner and engage in selective sexual affairs to gain access to 'good genes' for offspring”. The lack of loyalty with a dual-mating strategy begets the feminine imperative.

More recently, the dual-mating strategy fell in disfavor in the scientific community for a number of reasons. One reason is that non-paternity rates are globally very low, even though contraceptives and relaxed marital norms should make AF/BB occur much more often if it was natural. E.g. only 3% of all children in the U.S. live with a step father. This means the vast majority obtains both genes and resources from the same man. Nonetheless, the strategic pluralism highlights a trade-off that especially beta women face between conspicuously advertising themselves to obtain 'good genes' (whoring) vs. getting long-term investment from a man of equal SMV. It is a trade-off because very highly quality men have plenty of other options and are thus often less inclined to invest their resources into a female of lower SMV, but highly interested in getting her pregnant (or enjoying the causal sex). One can regard the entire system of state funded single moms (who are singles due to being pumped and dumped by a high quality male) as an instance of a large scale dual mating strategy with the provider mate not being a particular male but the state itself.

Memes

Analogous concept

• Briffault's law
• Settling down
• Betabuxx
• Feminine imperative