Obviously I’m not a female and I don’t play one on TV nor in real life, but I hear women throwing around the terms alpha and beta males all the time. Obviously they have never walked a mile in a man’s shoes, and no one seems to object to their, ranting, even when it becomes bitching. I though it only fair that I return the favor. Also I consulted the Muses and they seemed fine with it.
Sonia. Thomas Martine Ronaldson. c. 1942.
What is a beta female? I suppose since it isn’t really a common term I get to use it however I want. But like all words in a hostile context it should be defined. I think if you are reading this, by which I mean, if you can read, you are a beta female. No doubt I have already crossed so many lines that very few females are still reading, but the point isn’t to be offensive nor to join the crowd apologizing for reality. I value truth and facts despite what sub Theta Joe Biden has to say and there are some very real problems created by not thinking this through. I get the impression that while women like going to the bathroom in groups, they don’t like being categorized in groups. Each one of those women in the group on their way to the bathroom taking selfies tags the others women as “her girls”. Each women thinks it’s ‘her’ story and not ‘their’ story. I can only think of daring such a thing as the groom with groomsmen and probably not even then. Generalizations seems to diminish the relational aspect of women which is their penchant. If you lump one woman in with other women it’s like saying you don’t know her. But I’m ok with it.
All the science on IQ distribution I have seen shows the same thing. Women cluster towards the center of the graph like it was a bathroom at a sports arena. Most of them fall around average intelligence while men are more distributed along the curve. There are a few studies that show the male curve is ahead of the female curve. And given the outright hostility to such an idea at every level of our culture I am inclined to believe this. If these studies err, they certainly err in favor of making women look good. While it is fair to say that most men and most women are average, there are more average women. And at the upper end there are more than ten times the number of men populating that portion of the graph than women. So if the beta male is the average male those above the average are the Alpha males. The same should go for women, but there are hardly any Alpha women. It’s science. And it looks like the low end of the curve, the Gamma females, we could say, are pretty rare too, and like I said, probably can’t read. IQ obviously isn’t everything. It is possible for people to be intelligent and not assertive or successful. But I think in general intelligence and capability are restless. Especially in a culture so dominated by the myth of meritocracy, and climbing various greasy poles.
This has some implications. C.R. Wiley was mentioning that even in evangelical circles the publishing industry was dominated by these Alpha females, who were generally feminists. It only makes sense, NY publishing circles are competitive. Women favor seeking wisdom from other women. And maybe a very small percentage of women at the top, really can do it all. To them feminism might make a lot of sense, because they are so capable that chasing a career might not be detrimental to their raising a family. But their capability and experience is so different from the average woman, from most women, that following their advice may just be disastrous. And since most books by women or for women are heavily based on examples, a disconnect here is a big disconnect. Wanting to share in an example, in someone else’s story, when you simply can’t, will leave you very frustrated and probably bitter and alone. Beta Females would be most fulfilled having a family and a bunch of kids and not focusing on a career, endless school, or all of the above together. That’s just the way God made most women. Having kids keeps women out of trouble the same way that hard manual labor keeps men out of trouble. It makes less time for gossip, legal meddling in myriad laws(think nanny state), and cultural meddling of failed social reforms (think prohibition)(I Timothy 5). But attempts at marriage to your career or your degree program aren’t all that attractive to the decent men. And since having it all isn’t possible, that means that the ball which gets dropped is the relationship/marriage/family ball. When your life doesn’t look like the Alpha female life, you are forced to blame someone. And it’s hard to blame that woman on the self-help book with the perfect hair and makeup. And you can’t blame yourself, you followed all the steps. So you blame your husband and leave.
If this is a social experiment I think the Millennial generation should demonstrate that it is a failed one. Or we could look at the vast majority of divorces filed by women. When are we going to admit this? It looks increasingly like being a good mother and wife was more about nurture than nature. Good mothers don’t just happen they were made by training. Good wives don’t just happen they were made by training, and probably a lot of prayer. And so we have rebelled against the advice of Paul: “that they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children”(Titus 2). You had one job! Ok maybe two. But raising incompetent kids an leaving your husbands in droves hardly seems like a success.
I think alpha to beta relations are more scalable on the male side than the female side. As I mentioned, trying to share experiences across that divide can be dangerous. A beta female trying to balance all the tasks she sees an alpha female balancing, a media empire, three children, a church speaking circuit etc, will end up in a nervous breakdown. But men are more theoretical. Beta men watching alpha men will take the principles of the leader and apply them to their own smaller kingdom. You may not be a king but you have a domain you rule over, however small. And that may be the most glorious thing in the world. As Chesterton said there is nothing more wonderful than a common man, with is common wife in his common home raising their common children. The Alpha female is very rare and not all that attractive. Beta females are better of emulating the older beta-female-of-God next door than the Alpha female on the back of that dust jacket or on the mega church speaking tour. The path to true greatness is a queen of her house, giving of herself every day for her children and her husband. Which seems to be more difficult and more rare than just getting a job or endless graduate studies in graduate studies. And it is therefore the more glorious. Don’t you want glory? Don’t you want to pass away surrounded by endless well adjusted grandchildren? Grandchildren not raised by you but by their married parents? Or do you prefer to die in a pile of paperwork and statistics detailing further decline? Even if your paperwork sold a million copies.
Further Reading: https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2015/10/02/sorry-girls-but-the-smartest-people-in-the-world-are-all-men/