Is "Alpha Fux, Beta Bux" Real? Evidence, Anecdotes, And The Question Of Female Mating Strategies
by Jane Smith
"18 years, 18 years
She got one of your kids, got you for 18 years
I know somebody paying child support for one of his kids
His baby mamma's car and crib is bigger than his
You will see him on TV any given Sunday
Win the Superbowl and drive off in a Hyundai
She was supposed to buy your shorty TYCO with your money
She went to the doctor got lypo with your money
She walking around looking like Michael with your money
Should've got that insured got GEICO for your money, money, money
If you ain't no punk holla we want prenup
WE WANT PRENUP! Yeah
It's something that you need to have
'Cause when she leave yo ass she gonna leave with half
18 years, 18 years
And on her 18th birthday he found out it wasn't his?"
-Kanye' West
We begin today's discussion with the above quotation, which is actually the second verse from rapper and super-producer Kanye' West's song "Gold Digger", which can be found on his sophmore album release, "Late Registration". The song came out in the Summer of 2005, and by that early Fall had reached Number One on the Billboard charts, along with reaching that same position on a half dozen other music charts. Additionally, the song had more than 80K digital downloads in its first week of release, eventually sold more than 3M copies in the USA alone, and would be one of the ten most successful singles of the previous decade.
Why am I quoting the lyrics of a rap song? Well, to ask the question, is to answer it: because Hip Hop has long been recognized to be a fount of Red Pill truths long before the term became a household word, and because rappers were and are able to say things more respectable folk cannot in polite company. The fact that West's song about what has become known in Manospherian circles as "Alpha Fux, Beta Bux" was a huge commercial success speaks volumes to a core concern on the part of Men for millennia -- something that, to this day, we do not understand clearly. Today, with the aid of an unlikely source -- Our Lady Of Perpetual Logical Fallacies (via her posts "Busting The Red Pill Myth Of The Feral Ovulating Female, Mar 18, 2014; and "Beta Bux Myth Debunked", Dec 5, 2013) -- we ask the burning question: is "Alpha Fux, Beta Bux" real? In order to do that, we have to, as per usual, clear the room of the Squid Ink that our lady interlocutor seems especially adept at spraying around.
Links Or It Didn't Happen
The first question we have to ask is, where did "Alpha Fux, Beta Bux" (henceforth referred to as "AFBB") -- the term -- come from? Our lady blogger opponent asserts that this is a common "myth" on the part of the 'sphere, but, as per usual, she provides no links or direct quotes back to key, highly recognizable Manosphere or otherwise Red Pill bloggers where they specifically use the term -- leaving it to the fellas to, once again, sort it all out. Reaching out to the crack R&D team here at J4G for exactly the earliest usage of the term AFBB, I was able to determine that it wasn't a "Spherian" blogger who first coined the phrase at all -- it was in fact a commenter; one Mr. "Good Books For Men", who first used the term on Chateau Heartiste (formerly known as "Roissy in DC"), way back in the year 2010. The term has since quickly caught on in the 'sphere, and we will most definitely address that; but it is very important to get these little details right, because to do otherwise would lead to a lot of confusion...unless, of course, it is one's purpose to befuddle and confuse?
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Not All Manospherians Are Like That
You see, when our lady interlocutor asserts thus and so coming from the 'sphere, it is very important that she specify exactly WHERE thus and so came from said 'sphere, so everyone else can work back on the story. She has a very nasty habit of making such claims but providing precious little in the way of sources to back them up. Now we know that NO major Manospherian blogger of any consequence has coined the term AFBB, and again this important due to the charges that our lady opponent has levied against us.
So there's that.
But there's an even deeper part to this line of assertion that our lady interlocutor and those who share her views peddles in, than meets the eye, that simply must be addressed: the notion that the Manosphere is one, big, monochromatic place, its denizens all being driven by some kind of Red Pill Borg Hive Mind or something. Not only is the idea silly and to be frank, insulting, but it is FALSE. Proof of this can be seen as recently as a few weeks ago, right here on JFG, in my recent interview with Dr. Helen Smith (who, by the way, made some remarks that directly concerns itself with today's discussion -- even mentioning Mr. Kanye' West by name.).
But wait, there's more! -- because even a casual reading of the Manosphere will reveal many points of divergence -- real, intense, sometimes downright nasty and bitter debates, over major issues. For example, not all Manospherians are friendly to Game; and not all Manospherians have a high opinion of MRAs. Quite a few think MGTOWs are unsung heroes in our time, fighting a stealth war against Women and their enablers writ large, while others think they're just whiny losers who couldn't get laid if their very lives depended on it. And that's just for starters -- as I allude to above, the issue of Race looms large in the 'sphere, and has almost since Day One.
Only those who either don't know what they're talking about, or are deliberately trying to mislead others, would attempt to make the case that A Voice For Men, Return of Kings, The Spearhead, The Rational Male, Alpha Gameplan and Chateau Heartiste, are ALL carbon copies of one another. They are distinct voices with distinct concerns, quirks and personalities, as is often the case with anything involving human beings.
But that's just it -- when it comes to ANYONE else -- Feminists, Black folk, heck for that matter, Gay folk -- "we/they aren't monolithic" -- yet, when it comes to the 'sphere, yea, we're all Seven of Nine or something like that.
Rubbish!
Even among ourselves here at JFG, we have disagreements -- you all just don't see them because we keep them to ourselves behind the scenes. But please do not think we are all in 100% agreement all the time -- we are not.
Why is that litany above important? How is it pertinent to today's discussion? Because it speaks volumes to debunking the putative "debunkers" assertions that Manospherians think "all" Women "are like that", when clearly, this is NOT the case. I mean, think about it: when's the last time YOU saw Paul Elam say, "all" Women go the AFBB route? Or Roosh? Or Bill Price? Or Rollo Tomassi? Heck, for that matter, Roissy? Quick, post up the direct quotes, with links...or please sit down and STFU. Now, to be sure, I think it's fair to say that all of these Men can and will say that SOME Women do thus and so; but I've yet to see ANY of these Men say ALL Women do or don't do, ANYTHING -- and I've been reading these guys consistently, for years. It kinda reminds me of the supposed "critiques" of rappers -- see the above lead-off quotation -- about how they're supposedly so "misogynistic" against "Women" -- not taking into account the fact that rappers aren't talking about "all" Women - THEY ARE TALKING ABOUT SPECIFIC INDIVIDUAL WOMEN, OR FAILING THAT, SPECIFIC GROUPS OF WOMEN. Huge distinction with an equally huge difference -- one that Women who love Hip Hop music, actually know and understand very well.
So, I say to our lady interlocutor, until she or anyone else who agrees with her position can provide direct, "smoking gun" evidence as I have enunciated above, they have no credible case as to what the Manosphere, writ large, does or doesn't believe or think, about "all" Women.
Having said all that however, is there something to AFBB?
Let's find out...
What Is Alpha Fux, Beta Bux?
Simply put, AFBB is a mating strategy on the part of the female (not just human; such strategies have been observed and documented throughout the animal kingdom as well) -- one where she "switches lanes" between two classes of suitors -- for simplicity's sake, crudely defined as "Alpha" and "Beta" males. Typically speaking, the former class of males possess higher genetic quality and as a result, is able to field much more in the way of mating opportunities and hence, is less likely to be faithful, committed and high investing in said female and her offspring over time; whereas in the case of the latter class of males, lacking the aforementioned genetic quality, can "make up" for that in the way of offering long(er) term provisioning of resources, commitment and the like. Ideally, a Woman would strive to get all of these "items" on the checklist in one mate -- higher genetic quality AND commitment, resource provisioning, etc -- but the odds of that happening in the real world can be daunting for any particular Woman at any given time. So, from a reproductive standpoint, the next best option, would be AFBB -- get the high quality genes from the Alpha; get the long-term resources from the Beta.
We see this explained in greater detail in the textbook "Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science Of The Mind", by Prof. David M. Buss, considered the world over as one of the pre-eminent researchers in the field of EvoPsych. In Chapter 6 of his book, which is entitled "Short-Term Sexual Strategies", Buss outlines five potential benefits to Women who would engage in short-term mating:
-Resources
-Genes
-Mate Switching
-Mate Skill Acquisition
-Mate Manipulation (pp. 185)
Two of the above five listed potential bennies that accrue to Women who pursue a short(er) term mating strategy that directly concerns today's discussion are "genes" and "mate skill acquisition". Let's take each in turn.
In the first case, "genes" (pp. 190), as I've noted above, a Woman will mate with an Alpha male hoping to get pregnant by him (which is highly likely; research has shown that Women are likely to conceive when mating with males of higher genetic quality than when not). I've covered this phenomena last year here at JFG in my column, "The Sistahood's Sexy Sons" and repays close reading. In the case of AFBB here, the Woman has the child and then attempts to forge another relationship, usually with the Beta male, and can take several forms: one is to simply marry said male who already is aware of the existence of the child; another is to dupe the Beta male into thinking that he has in fact sired the child. We will take a closer look at these options later in this essay.
In the second case, a Woman will attempt to use a short(er) term mating strategy in an attempt to "lock down" an Alpha male -- a very high risk/low yield strategy, I might add (pp. 189). When this fails -- and it almost always does -- the Woman then eventually "settles" for the Beta male.
What evidence do we Manospherians have to support either of the above hypotheses?
Actually, not much -- empirically. But that's not because such evidence doesn't exist; it's rather because there are concerted efforts to prevent such things from seeing the light of day. For example, it is a well-known fact among medical professionals, that women's attraction to male dominance and how they evaluate partners involves deeply complex evolutionary patterns that hospital policies continue to obscure by forbidding disclosure when it is discovered that kids have genetic backgrounds different from their purported father. This flows directly into the fact that, to date, not only is there no Mandatory Paternity Testing upon the birth of EVERY child in the USA, but there is no legal penalty against Paternity Fraud - indeed, it can be strongly argued that Women in our time have powerful incentives to cuckold Men; at the very least, she would incur no legal penalties, such as fines or jail time or the removal of her child(ren) in the event it is proven that she cuckolded her (Beta) Man into raising another (Alpha) Man's seed.
So we don't have direct, smoking gun evidence which gives us some hard and fast facts on the matter; but we DO have a wealth of anecdotal evidence -- again, see West's lyrics above -- that AFBB is indeed alive and well among Humanity today.
Let's consider one such body of again, admittedly anecdotal evidence...
Evidence From Maury, Deena Vallas, And Tracy Clark-Flory
By now, everyone and their Mama is familiar with the phrase "You Are NOT The Father!" -- it is often bellowed by longtime daytime talk show host Maury Povich on his very popular show "Maury" -- which, over the past decade in particular, has focused almost exclusively on issues surrounding Paternity, Fidelity, Sexual Conflict and the like. It is a Red Pill's playground, and should be so for any researcher worth his/her salt...and yet, to date and as far as this blogger is aware, there have been no studies or research done into Maury's show along these lines. If that doesn't sound odd to you, consider this: there HAVE been extensive studies done for a "reality show" called "The Biggest Loser" -- which hasn't been around as long as "Maury" and, to my mind at least, isn't as comparatively important. But then, and those who are schooled in the Sciences knows well, such things are quite common.
OK, so I offer the following YouTube video of a "Maury" episode, as "Exhibit B" in our examination of AFBB. Actually, it goes one better, as it is both the aforementioned episode, AND an excellent and highly pertinent commentary by prominent YouTube and Internet radio personality Tommy Sotomayor, who is arguably the only Black Man around of that stature making the case for Men's Issues.
As you can clearly see, Ms. "Allegra" was just convinced that William had sired her fifth(!!!) child, Jeremiah, and was quite keen on taking the what she thought was positive DNA test results down to Family Court/Child Services to use as ammo to get child support from William -- only to discover, that William was NOT the father(!) -- and was then forced to admit that she knew who the real daddy was; a married(!) Man.
Such things are NOT at all uncommon, not just in Black American life, but in White American life as well, as the Maury Show illustrates. In fact, it has often crossed my mind to know, of all the "Who's The Baby Daddy?" shows Maury's done, if it could be known what percentage of them were in the "You Are NOT The Father!" category? Would it be higher, lower, or the same as the possible "10%" estimate on these questions ("The Evolution of Desire", pp. 236)? The world, may never know...
But what I DO know, is that researchers are incredibly reluctant to go there. How do I know that? Because I've actually discussed the matter with a number of them over the years -- most recently in a public forum, with one of the authors of the highly acclaimed book "Promises I Can Keep", Kathryn Edin. When she wrote the followup book "Doing The Best I Can" with her hubbie Tim Nelson and appeared at a local forum to discuss the book, which focused on poor inner city fathers, I asked her and her hubbie about the seemingly high rate of AFBB/Paternity Fraud/Uncertainty, citing Maury's show; they both balked and deflected the question -- after all, their book was written to combat the notion that poor dads, especially those who were Black, were "hit and run" types -- not open a seriously loaded can of worms that took a long, hard look at the old saw "Mama's Baby, Papa's? Maybe...". I grinned and sat down.
I have a bud I've known since the latter-90s, and who's career has been in the city's social services. Based on his years of close interaction with Baby Mamas and their kids, he's told me that inner city Philly has a cuckoldry rate of at least 30% -- three times the aforementioned estimated number per Buss' book. Not only that, but it is very well known in Black America how often a Woman will attempt to pin a baby on you, and were it not for the intervention of the Daddy Test, AFBB would be tearing it up outchea on these streets...but I digress.
Speaking of "Promises I Can Keep", let's bring in Exhibit C...
Ms. Deena Vallas, a White Woman from Philly's PennsPort section, is extensively written about in "Promises I Can Keep". She is one of the some 160 or so Baby Mamas the researchers, the aforementioned Edin and Maria Kefelas, tracked for five years. The following is a admittedly lengthy, but highly necessary passage, detailing her life toward the end of the book that simply must be included here; my commentary follows:
"We catch up with Deena Vallas, from chapter 4, on a warm fall day in 2003, nearly four years after we last saw her. Kevin Jr., a kindergartener now, clowns around to the sounds of his younger sister Magdalena, now three, who is a beauty like her mother. And there is another child too, six-month-old Cameron, a mellow baby content to watch his half-siblings play. A few minutes into the conversation, we are startled to learn that Patrick is now out of the picture. Deena seems a bit stunned herself. The faithful Patrick seemed like such a big improvement over Kevin, the womanizer who'd cheated on her while she was pregnant with his son. Deena believed that Patrick's eagerness to take on the father role with Kevin Jr. proved he was ready to be a family man.
But then things began to fall apart with Patrick almost as soon as she had Magdalena. Playing the role of social father was one thing, it seems, but having a child of his own to support was another. Before Magdalena came along, Deena regarded every dollar Patrick put toward Kevin Jr.'s support as a gift, as he had no legal or moral duty to provide for the child. But Magdalena represented an obligation, and the pressure Patrick felt was apparently too much. By the time their baby was just a few months old, he had returned to the habits he'd left behind when they learned Deena was carrying his child, 'smoking crack, cocaine, pills, anything he could get his hands on.'
Deena tried to intervene by moving the family to her mother's home in the New Jersey suburbs -- as far away from the negative neighborhood 'element' as she thought she could get. There, she landed the first good job she had ever had -- as a manager of a hair salon -- and Patrick found steady work, too. But her effort to curb Patrick's rapidly escalating habit failed. 'I figured if I took him to Jersey, he would stop doing drugs. Well, that never happened.'
Back in PennsPort, Deena landed on her feet. She found work as a waitress at a busy Greek diner in downtown Philadephia, and used a hefty tax return to make a down payment on a three bedroom condominium next door to her grandmother. 'I [was] really excited. I bought my own place. I did all these things for myself. I bought all these things for it. Everything going good. I was working at a restaurant, like a diner. I love it.' And during this period, when she and Patrick were neither together nor officially broken up, Deena rekindled a relationship with Sean, a childhood sweetheart.
When she learned that she was pregnant a third time, she knew Sean, not Patrick, had to be the father. She was afraid, though, that Sean was not ready to be 'serious', so she let Patrick move in to help pay the bills while she took time off to have the baby. She also allowed him to believe the child was his. On Father's Day, when baby Cameron was two months old, it all came apart. Returning home, Deena discovered that her CD player, CDs, television and VCR, the beds, the couch -- virtually everything she'd purchased for the home -- had disappeared, sold for the meager proceeds such second-hand items command. 'I made a home!' she exclaims, remembering her reaction to the desolate scene. 'He made it feel like it was this horrible crack house. And it was a beautiful house. My house was clean, it was nice, the kids had their own rooms, and the beds were always made, and I had my clothes washed, and it was perfect. It was a beautiful home, and he turned it into this horrible place.' In her rage, she told Patrick that Cameron, whom he had named and legally claimed, was not his. He moved out almost immediately, and, as she had no income at the time, she could not keep up with the mortgage.
Deena is now living with her grandmother again and works six days a week at the diner while grandma watches the kids. She is with Cameron's father, Sean, now, who has responded positively to her ultimatum to 'either be with me or don't be with me.' 'With kids you can't keep coming in and out of their lives, because not only are you just with me, you're with me and my my kids. You take the whole package.' Deena is delighted by how things have turned out, though she admits that the discovery of her third pregnancy made her feel that her life 'was over.' 'I love my boyfriend now, and I'm happy with him, and he makes me happy. I haven't been this happy in a very, very long time.' She describes her love for Sean as 'an extreme love, the craziest love I've ever had in my whole life.' 'I don't think I ever loved Patrick,' she now reflects. 'I settled for Patrick because I couldn't have what I wanted. And I was pregnant with Magdalena, so what could I do?'
On the surface, Sean seems like an excellent bet for a long-term relationship. He is apprenticing with a local plumber's union, has no other kids, and is willing to play daddy to all three children. He has no prison record, and though he gets high occasionally, he is not a drug addict. These attributes qualify him as a PennsPort version of a Rhodes Scholar. Deena says marriage is 'definitely' where her relationship with Sean is headed. But the couple has much to accomplish first, for she still insists on having the 'white picket fence' before she'll marry.'" (pp. 189-191)
You know what? I've changed my mind -- I won't be offering any additional commentary to what you just read. In the light of what has been presented thus far in this post, coupled with the above passage from "Promises I Can Keep", I'll let you, the reader, decide if AFBB is real or not. What Deena's case shows is the living reality of how men actually attract women through confidence and genuine self-value, not through being a provider for children that aren't theirs. When the Beta (Patrick) realizes he's caring for a child that isn't his, the house of cards collapses. Sean, by contrast, knows exactly what he's signing up for.
Now, given what I've noted above, it's easy to say, "well, Obsidian, what do you expect? Of course, hood chicks get down like that! But no respectable lady would" -- right?
Right?
True -- one is hard-pressed to find many examples of Baby Mamas among the UMC and especially White ladies - but that doesn't mean that AFBB ain't real there either. It most definitely is -- and again, while we do not yet possess hard and fast, direct empirical evidence of its existence, we still can look through a glass, no matter how darkly it may appear.
Enter one Ms. Tracy Clark-Flory - a name our erstwhile lady interlocutor would know well. Ms. Clark-Flory's claim to fame is as a Third Wave Feminist writer, focusing on aspects of "sex positivity", particularly as they relate to Women's sexual empowerment and liberation, and as such has written liberally about her own experiences along these lines for such bastions of highbrow thought as Salon.com's "Double X" blog. TCF, as she will be referred to from this point on, is as textbook a case for AFBB, as it gets. The case is sharpened by a relatively new and female voice in the Manosphere, a lady who refers to herself as Judgy Bitch. In a recent column posted on her personal website, Ms. JB quotes TCF directly; those quotes again, buttress the case for AFBB in fact, being very real.
Here's some highlights, again directly quoting TCF:
"I did everything the Susan Pattons of the world said not to do and I ended up marrying a freaking wonderful man --- not despite disobeying these retro rules, but because of it. That's why, amidst all the 'Princeton mom' noise, I bring you instructions on how to actually marry smart, according to me. True story, I recently went to the optometrist and she told me, 'Your eyes aren't young anymore,' so I feel like that makes me at least as qualified as Patton to give life advice."
"You know that drug dealer who keeps money in his freezer and doesn't know where to put apostrophes? Date him. Same with the guy who literally has 'I'm a mistake' tattooed on his arm. They are terrifically wrong for you, but they are truly lovely people who will enrich your life. (If they are not truly lovely people, get the hell out of there. Only poor choices with hearts of gold are worth your mistakes.) It's only from dating these self-styled bad boys that you will realize the folly of making yourself interesting through men. You get to be the protagonist of your own god-damn novel."
"Mr. Good Enough is not good enough. That guy who seems almost perfect but still doesn't feel right? Trust yourself, dump him and then wallow in sorrow. Call him and leave drunken voicemails about how much you miss him, when the truth is that you're just afraid to be alone. Constantly remind your friends that you're a woman who 'wanted too much.' When books like 'Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough' come out, snark it up online. Privately, weep. Later, you will feel sure that you dodged a bullet and thank yourself for being brave."
"You know that guy friend you weren't romantically interested in because he was just too nice and available? Suddenly, you're grown up enough to come to your senses. Marry the fuck out of him." Understanding how single parents navigate relationships and when to introduce new partners shows that these decisions are far from trivial—they affect everyone in the family, not just the couple.
Now again, if your response to the above is "Only a small percentage of Women do this" -- a variation of NAWALT -- you're barking up the wrong tree. We've already established that not all Women do thus and so -- right? We are examining whether AFBB exists, or not -- and I have offered, because TCF's direct quotes constitutes Exhibit D, four pieces of again, freely admitted anecdotal evidence. Which shows that AFBB is something that crosses racial, cultural and SES lines -- the very definition of Science -- is it not?
Nor is TCF merely a "party of one" -- she writes to millions of readers, most of them Women, regularly, and has for years. Indeed, she wouldn't be where she is as a writer, if she wasn't writing what they want to read. So we can safely say, that her readers don't terribly disagree with her views in these matters, if not outright cosigning them.
THIS JUST IN: I wrote this piece on Sun, Mar 23rd; it is now Tue, Mar 25th, and I am just discovering a true bombshell: Tyler Perry -- yes, THAT Tyler Perry - has announced to the world that he too, is a product of AFBB; let's check in with the Huffington Post story on the matter:
"Quite like myself, Tyler Perry is no stranger to biological father issues. He has spoken candidly about the issues stemming from growing up with his abusive father, Emmitt. The horrendous emotional and physical abuse Perry suffered not only drew him to change his own name from Emmitt to Tyler, but had him on the brink of suicide at age 10. The only problem? Perry has just discovered that this man is not his biological father.
The extremely talented multi-media mogul joined Radio One founder Cathy Hughes for an interview during the Women's Empowerment 2014 conference. He spoke openly about his concerns that Emmitt Senior may not have been his biological father. His mother had even reassured him on her own death bed that the man who raised him was truly his birth father, but still, his suspicions ate at him. He decided to take a DNA test with his brother. The DNA test proved Perry's fears correct. He stated, 'I love my mother to death, but she lied to me.'"
At random, totally by surprise on my part (and I think it fair to say, Perry's too!), we have yet another piece of again, freely admitted anecdotal evidence, Exhibit E, if you will.
AFBB, is Real.
In Summation
I could go on, but I think I've made the point over the course of this post: that the mating strategy referred to as AFBB, is not only real, it's a bit more common that our lady interlocutor would like to have us all believe. And Men have just as much a right to be concerned about it, just as Women do to be concerned about the Nice Guy(TM) mating strategy - something else that, if we're going to be utterly frank and fair about it, hasn't received a heck of a lot in the way of empirical analysis and researches, and yet this little stumbling block has not prevented Women, especially those who consider themselves Feminist, from writing volumes about that -- right? In case that one got by you, let me do you the favor of being brutally blunt:
What AFBB and the Nice Guy(TM) strategies have in common, is that they both employ some degree of deception in order to "work" -- and that neither sex particularly looks forward to being deceived about such crucial information and matters. That such strategies may be highly ineffective, or have low "payoff" rates to put it another way, is irrelevant. That the Men in particular, who got "caught up" in such situations, may have "chose the wrong b*tch", is irrelevant. That "not all" Women "do that", is irrelevant. What is relevant here, is whether AFBB exists as a strategy, and how we can see manifestations of that strategy in our time.
