What the “manosphere” gets wrong about cuckolding

What the “manosphere” gets wrong about cuckolding

Brooke Selza

The “manosphere” is the online world of angry young men who have taken the “red pill,” a reference to the movie. matrix, They are supposedly waking up to the truth of gender and sexual politics, at the core of which is the idea that men don’t actually have any institutional privilege, but are rather subject to the whims of women, and will be taken advantage of by them unless they assert their dominance. In their worldview, “cucks” are the disenfranchised victims of hyper-feminist power.

For evolutionary biologists, Cuckold Cuckoos are birds that lay their eggs in the nests of other species and then raise their offspring unknowingly to foster parents. In humans, it is widely used to refer to husbands with unfaithful wives; such husbands are said to be “cuckolded.” More recently, however, the term has been adopted by both male spheres and the alt-right. Cuckold As a more general synonym for weakness, despair, and stupidity.

The revival of such tropes, previously common in Renaissance and Shakespearean literature, has been spurred by the study of evolutionary psychology, which has proven a treasure trove of inspiration for the most sly interpretations of female behavior. Evolutionary psychologists have generally emphasized two core characteristics of cuckoldry: that a man is tricked by a woman into raising a non-biological child, and that caring for that child is a “futile” endeavor. Both characteristics resonate in male spheres because they portray women as amoral, promiscuous, and untrustworthy, and infer that men are victims of female cunning.

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A closer look at the science reveals a more complex picture of cuckolding. Cuckolding can advance male perspectives and interests as well as female ones. Cross-cultural studies of cuckolding show that men are not necessarily being duped, and that men may even defend cuckolding when it suits their interests. In patriarchal societies, the “cuckold” is portrayed as a hapless sucker duped by a cunning woman, reinforcing misogynistic rhetoric and protecting men from responsibility for their own words and actions. But anthropologists have shown that fatherhood and fatherhood are flexible concepts that can be understood by both women and men. and Men have used that to their advantage.

One of the most common borrowed theories found in online forums about cuckolding is the idea that women pursue a double-mating strategy: they seek a long-term partner (a “beta” in patriarchal jargon) who will be a reliable husband and provider, while secretly searching for an “alpha” – a non-spouse partner with “better” genes to father children. The problem is that there is little evidence that women actually practice a double-mating strategy. While some studies have shown that women tend to be interested in non-spouse sex during ovulation, many studies have not, and no studies have shown that these preferences are related to non-spouse childbearing. Even within evolutionary psychology, the double-mating theory is now largely rejected.

Anthropology has uncovered other explanations for infidelity that do not require deception. In some societies, women maintain multiple partners as a way to ensure reliable resources in the face of uncertain circumstances. In many of these cases, social norms and beliefs are constructed (by both men and women) to support this system. In the folk concept of “divisible paternity,” rooted in many South American indigenous cultures, a man who has sex with a woman around the time of conception is considered the claimant to biological parentage and is expected to provide for her and her children. Children with multiple “fathers” are more likely to survive than children with a single father. The system benefits women and children, but it is also thought to benefit men, as it improves their access to extramarital partners and strengthens alliances between men. In my interactions with Himba pastoralists in Namibia, where multiple partners for both men and women are common, I have found that men are taught by their fathers to suppress their jealousy of their wives’ lovers and that children should be treated equally regardless of their parental origins.

Throughout history and cultures, men have used their wives’ relationships outside of their partners to suit their own needs. From ancient Greece to medieval Europe, infertile men hired their wives as lovers to continue their bloodline. In other cases, men suggested their wives take extramarital lovers as an ally or to curry favor. This was often done through formal “wife-lending.” In most cases, husbands were considered the rightful fathers of any children born through these relationships, and these arrangements served the men’s interests.

It is inaccurate, at least in the human realm, to see infidelity as merely a ploy and the infidelity victim as weak and stupid. This is not to deny the fact that male-male relationships are often secretive or potentially harmful. Rather, this diversity is a reminder of the dangers of asserting universalistic “natural” tendencies in humankind, as is often the case in depictions of infidelity in the male sphere. We need to understand not only why behaviors occur but also how they change. In addition to more accurately depicting human behavior, paying more attention to diversity could also serve as an antidote to the pernicious appropriation of knowledge that feeds the online underworld of Internet pseudoscience.

This is an opinion and analysis article and the views of the author are not necessarily those of Scientific American.