Cities As Harems

Many animal species are organized into harems, wherein a single male dominates a group of females and their children. When males become adult, they must leave home and wander singly or in small male groups hoping to tempt harem females into liaisons or to start new harems.

I’ve heard that polygamous sects are often run this way today, with older men kicking out young men when they come of age. But re-reading Montaillou on rural 1300 France makes me realize that humanity has long has related harem-like gender patterns.

Back in 1300 France, centrality gave status. The biggest cities were at the top, above towns and then villages. At the bottom were woodcutters and shepards, all male, who spent most of their time wandering far from villages or towns. Along with soldiers and sailors, these men lived dangerous low-status high-mobility lives in sparse areas. They sometimes tempted women into liaisons, or made it rich enough to start a family in a village. Such mating strategies may explain why such men moved so often even they were poor and moving is expensive.

Back in the high status centers, there remained a few high status men and women, many low status women, but fewer low status men. The lower status women were often servants to high status males, and often had affairs with them.

In the US today, the states with the most men relative to women are Alaska, Wyoming, North Dakota, Nevada, Utah, and Montana — mostly harsher low density areas. In contrast, the states with the most women relative to men are District of Columbia, Rhode Island, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, near some of our biggest high status cities. Most big US cities have more women than men. The exceptions are San Jose, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Honolulu, Austin, Seattle, San Diego, places with new booming, mostly tech, industries. Men are more willing to move to try new often-harsher industries and places.

We hear college-educated women complain today that there aren’t enough college-educated men to go around, either during college itself or afterward. Of course there are plenty of other men around, but these women mostly consider such men beneath them. Seems to me this isn’t that different from 1300 France; women are more eager to locate near high status people. They focus on high status men, and lament there aren’t enough to go around.

Sometimes people fear today that low status men unhappy from being unable to find women will cause havoc. But in the past men avoided such feelings successfully by just avoiding women. By rarely seeing women they less often felt the envy that might cause havoc. If there’s a bigger problem today it might be because low status men more often come into contact with attractive but unavailable women. From this perspective, maybe low status men avoiding women via male-oriented video games isn’t such a bad thing?

Added 5July: Birds are like this too.