the problem is the kind of pursuit. My theory predicts high answers on all questions; your theory predicts high answer in appeal, interest showing, conversation, but not on the other questions.

On my theory they are not going to give truthful answers to those questions. No matter what their answers, if they show more interest in men already in a relationship, they are more interested in getting hold of the sperm of men who have greater sexual success, (this being the best indicator of reproductive success in the ancestral environment) than they are interested in forming a relationship – they are primarily leking, rather than relationship shopping. Further, even if the answers were to agree wholly with your theory, no matter how much their answers were to agree with your theory, the fact that the answers refer to the guy who is in a relationship, to whom such answers are unlikely to apply, and not to the guy not in a relationship, to whom such answers do apply, would show that they are lying to the interviewer, and probably lying to themselves, or were sincerely unaware of their own Darwinian motivations and behavior.

Why should cheating women prefer unattached men?

They don’t. Women shopping for the best possible monogamous relationship prefer unattached men, as do women looking for a back up string in serially monogamous relationships. Undeniably, human females pursue a mixed strategy. My claim is not that monogamous with cheating and polygamous with cheating strategies are non existent but that “a good woman is hard to find” – that the major and predominant strategy is leking.

If on the other hand they plan to switch, they should prefer attached

Why? If attached, he probably will not change, if he changes, he will change again. If a women seeks a relationship, she should seek a currently unattached male, whether she is currently in a relationship or not. If she seeks to lek, she should seek a currently attached male, since she wants the most reproductively successful male, whether she is currently in a relationship or not. But is she seeks a relationship, she is probably in a relationship, since it is easy for a college age woman to have a relationship if she wants one. If she is not in a relationship, she probably does not want one.

Leking behavior is substantially incompatible with having any relationship at all – leking is behavior much more extreme than monogamy with cheating. The majority of women do in fact behave in this extreme fashion (casual observation and anecdote, I cannot present evidence for this claim)

On the theory that such women are at an unconscious level primarily motivated by desire for protection, she can only receive protection from one male at a time, but is at the event to shop for such protection from the most sexually desirable male. The question then is, to what extent are single women single, and males mateless, because the majority of women are not following that strategy.

it is the patriarch’s interest that their daughters marry a good supporter, and then get impregnated, if at all possible without being discovered, by the best men who would however never have dreamt of marrying her.

It is in the patriarch’s interest that such misconduct occur undetected. However, it is also in the patriarch’s interest that his son in law has confidence that there is no such undetected hanky-panky going on, and also in the patriarch’s interest that his son in law engages in vigorous sexual guarding behavior, since such behavior encourages, and is difficult to separate from, supportive and protective behavior. If the major effect of failure of guarding is a redistribution of support costs from the son in law back to the patriarch, the patriarch’s interest in sexual guarding behavior is likely to considerably exceed his daughters interest in sexual guarding behavior. In a society with welfare, a patriarch has a considerably diminished interest in guarding behavior, and his interests are in that case more closely aligned with his daughter’s interest – thus less motive to behave patriarchally. Indeed, the distinctive characteristic of patriarchal societies is that there is a vigorous clash between fathers and daughters concerning sexual choice, which is resolved in favor of fathers and to the disfavor of daughters. Welfare removes the clash, since the cost of the behavior formerly restrained by patriarchs is now born by all taxpayers, thus removing the benefit of patriarchy to potential patriarchs. Patriarchy is a strategy to avoid the need to support the offspring of other males. Welfare makes it difficult to avoid giving such support.

The reason men control resources, is that women want men who control resources.

This is not what I observe. Who gets more and better pussy? The poet and the musician, or the CEO? Lord Byron was whom the ladies wanted, not Clive of India. Patriarchs want their daughters to marry men who control resources. Daughters want to bang men who bang lots of women. The popularity of rock singers and Lord Byron shows that the predominant female strategy is not monogamy nor polygamy, with or without cheating. Lord Byron’s financial worth was infamously negative, and he received support from his innumerable women, he did not support them. Serial killer rapists on death row get hot letters from much younger women that they have never met. Accountants who have contracts with fortune five hundred companies do not.

Clive of India famously said: “I walked through vaults which were thrown open to me alone, plied on either hand with gold and jewels.” Had he instead made a similar statement about harems, I expect he would have done better with women, to judge by the experience of those in prison for rape and false imprisonment.

You are taking a society in which there is a gigantic welfare state, affirmative action in favor of women and, as for your complaint, a legal system skewed in their favor and you conclude that whatever you observe of this society tells you about what happens when women exercise free sexual choice.

Exactly so. Such a society does provide them with free sexual choice, at the expense of everyone else’s choices. Absent welfare, the very high costs of such choices are apt to fall on fathers and brothers, who are apt to react by creating patriarchy and reducing women’s scope for free sexual choice – which male strategy greatly benefits not only the male kin of females but also grandchildren, nieces, and nephews by ensuring paternal socialization. This male strategy greatly reduces the destructive zero sum sexual competition that gave us the peacock’s tail, redirecting it into creating wealth and conquering nature, and dramatically improves the safety and socialization of children. It also oppresses women.

Obviously if there was no welfare, poor women without parental families would behave better. They would have to behave better or starve. If there was no welfare, but also no patriarchal restraint on female conduct, it is not apparent that affluent women would behave better – observe what happened to Lord Byron.

If you ask for a gene test, you will get resistance from your wife, the medical profession and the legal profession, and if the test comes out bad, the judge in the divorce case will treat it as inadmissible, and the fact that you obtained it as misconduct

Therefore you don’t marry, so there is no divorce case.

Or to say the same thing in different words: therefore conduct yourself as a male in a society which is neither polygamous, nor monogamous, but instead based on leking. Refrain from providing resources to women and children.

In practice, choosing a good woman, vigorous guarding behavior, and firm exercise of authority with the strong threat of physical violence is still a viable strategy in today’s society, but, good women famously being a minority, it can never be a viable strategy for a majority of males, can never be the predominant strategy.

if still observing what you say in America or Britain, it still would not show leks.

How so? If the majority of men are mateless, the majority of children fatherless, then what makes the system serial monogamy rather than leking?

For this to be serial monogamy, the marriages and sexual relationships would have to be dissolved by bad male behavior, rather than bad female behavior, which is not what is typically observed. In my personal observation, the dissolution of the marriage of a wealthy male is just as much as the marriage of a poor male preceded by his wife having sex with numerous men, which bad conduct is known to her kin and those men, known to a lot of people, but not him or his kin. Of course this kind of observation is not publicly available, but what is publicly available is whether a freshly divorced male has a partner. He rarely has a partner. If divorces were initiated by male rather than female misconduct, they would be initiated by the male moving in with someone else – by the male transferring his sexual guarding behavior from his older wife to his younger mistress, with divorce following this change in guarding behavior with substantial delay. And this would be highly visible, whereas female misconduct leading to divorce tends to be less visible. Since this male behavior is uncommon, the female misbehavior must necessarily be more common – thus marriages and sexual relationships are typically dissolved by leking, rather than by serial monogamy, thus the proportion of singles is approximately a measure of the proportion of leking.

I am just back from the supermarket. I observed, being Saturday, the opposite of what you claim – lots and lots of couples, many of them with children.

Personal observation: Leking women do not spend much time in supermarkets. And if they are in a shopping center, they are engaged in personal and immediate consumption, not purchasing food for home consumption, my most recent observation of a leking woman in a shopping center being a woman struggling to open a bottle of water. I walked out of the supermarket, and on the way to the car park observed in the shopping center but outside the supermarket several women, alone or with other woman, behaving in a fashion from which I concluded that they will very shortly be having sex with a stranger met in that shopping center. Of course you might observe the same behavior, and form different conclusions about their intent.

So the problem, unfortunately from a libertarian’s point of view, could also be income inequality, and female labor. For instance a conservative could say: if we want more or less generalized monogamy, women should earn less than men.

In England in past centuries, women earned very little. This did not seem to greatly benefit Clive, nor handicap Byron.

I do not follow your reasoning.

The pitfall of the study for our purposes is in the statement: “The
items [...] were combined into a single composite score”

Both our theories predict pursuit; the problem is the kind of pursuit.
My theory predicts high answers on all questions; your theory predicts
high answer in appeal, interest showing, conversation, but not on the
other questions.

To our purposes we need the answers to the specific question “How
likely would you initiate a relationship with this person”

A substantial majority of women describing themselves as
attached preferred an unattached male – indicating that they were
engaged in monogamy with cheating.

I saw this, and found it mighty surprising, until I realized that the
result was not statistically significant, p=.14.

Why should cheating women prefer unattached men? It makes no
difference whether they are attached or not. Are they handsome,
healthy, brilliant, is the only important thing. If on the other hand
they plan to switch, they should prefer attached – most of all, they
should prefer previously long-term attached, now recently unattached

It has occurred to me that we are basically rehashing an old debate.
In this discussion, you are Burke/Hayek, claiming that there is group
selection between groups with different social norms, although
differently from Hayek, you seem to think of the norms as legislated
rather than spontaneously evolved.

I, on the other hand, am a mix of Smith and Hamilton/Dawkins,
claiming groups won’t prevail unless it is convenient for individuals
to adhere, and to the extent that genes control phenotypes, groups
won’t prevail unless it is convenient for genes that individuals
adhere.

Because they [patriarchs] are concerned with support and
protection – if the husband fails to provide support and protection,
they will, but they do not want to. In a patriarchal society, the cost
of detected or suspected cuckoldry is greater to the patriarch than to
the husband.

Precisely. My point is, it is their interest that their daughters
marry a good supporter, and then get impregnated, if at all possible
without being discovered, by the best men who would however never
have dreamt of marrying her.

Why should patriarchs support and enforce a society which is
distinctly against their interest?

So why was patriarchy? The reason men control resources, is that
women want men who control resources. Men would make alliances
to better control resources, therefore they would get more women.
Among them, they may sort of require some sort of equality, surely
with the bravest more equal than the others, but they won’t care that
all the rest are getting less – and if too much monogamy is brought
about, quickly new alliances will be formed.

I think you are undoubtedly right if you claim that human monogamy is
a big conundrum, and the fact that it only happens in big societies is
in your favor. My personal suspicion is that it was the
indissolubility of marriage that caused monogamy, but it’s just an idea.

hence dowry payment

Well obviously, if your daughter is supposedly so special than I can
support only her children, then you will have to contribute.

Bridewealth payment is what you observe in 90% of polygynous
societies.

If you ask for a gene test, you will get resistance from
your wife, the medical profession and the legal profession, and if the
test comes out bad, the judge in the divorce case will treat it as
inadmissible, and the fact that you obtained it as misconduct

Therefore you don’t marry, so there is no divorce case. You can have
a long-term relationship without it being a threesome with the
government. You can even have a wedding.

Therefore monogamy with cheating is not the predominant
mating mode in society where women exercise unrestricted sexual
choice.

You are taking a society in which there is a gigantic welfare state,
affirmative action in favor of women and, as for your complaint, a
legal system skewed in their favor and you conclude that whatever you
observe of this society tells you about what happens when women
exercise free sexual choice. That’s like claiming that the financial
crisis shows what happens with unregulated capitalism and unhampered
free markets.

I am just back from the supermarket. I observed, being Saturday, the
opposite of what you claim – lots and lots of couples, many of them
with children. In northern Italy there is no patriarchy worth
speaking of, but if we were to look, we would probably discover that
all the above factors are considerably less present (although they are
actually present.) That America has another problem, besides
preposterous amounts of debt, is way possible, but I wouldn’t look at
absence of patriarchy to find it.

However assuming these causes away, if still observing what you say
in America or Britain, it still would not show leks. Serial monogamy is
tantamount to polygyny as far as the count of mateless men is
concerned, if men remarry with younger women – a point which did
not occur to me previously. I apologize for not having taken this
observation more seriously before – I dismissed it, shrugging and
thinking “welfare”, because it does not fit my observations, which
however are limited.

So the problem, unfortunately from a libertarian’s point of view,
could also be income inequality, and female labor. For instance a
conservative could say: if we want more or less generalized monogamy,
women should earn less than men.

seems to me that in order for it to support your position, the article should show no difference between single and attached women in preferring an already attached man

I do not follow your reasoning. The article shows that the overwhelming majority of women describing themselves as unattached preferred an attached male, showing that they were engaged in lek behavior, not mate seeking behavior, which is probably the reason that they were unattached. A substantial majority of women describing themselves as attached preferred an unattached male – indicating that they were engaged in monogamy with cheating. If they were leking, they would not be attached.

In our society, the majority of women are unattached, and the majority of children fatherless. Since unattached women overwhelmingly lek the predominant behavior is leking.

We know, on the other hand that patriarchs are primarily concerned with support and protection, and are apt to severely thrash misbehaving daughters

Why should they?

Because they are concerned with support and protection – if the husband fails to provide support and protection, they will, but they do not want to. In a patriarchal society, the cost of detected or suspected cuckoldry is greater to the patriarch than to the husband. For high status patriarchs and sons in law (who set the pattern for the whole of society) the benefits of marriage to the son in law are not that great, hence dowry payment.

There is no significant risk of cuckoldry today, unless one chooses to take it,

I do not follow. How do you know who your children are? If you ask for a gene test, you will get resistance from your wife, the medical profession and the legal profession, and if the test comes out bad, the judge in the divorce case will treat it as inadmissible, and the fact that you obtained it as misconduct. Further, when a woman sleeps with someone outside of a relationship, my personal impression, based on anecdote and casual observation, not any evidence I can present, is that she is substantially less likely to use condoms than in her relationship sex, even though the risk of disease is much higher. Of course this impression could be the result of women telling everyone, including themselves, that they use condoms more than they actually do.

But in any case, the risk of cuckoldry is only a factor if we are discussing monogamy with cheating. If we had a society that predominantly operated on the basis of monogamy with cheating, as in the days of patriarchy, children would predominantly have fathers that believed themselves to be natural fathers. Children do not. Therefore monogamy with cheating is not the predominant mating mode in society where women exercise unrestricted sexual choice. Most men are in no danger of being cuckolded, because most men do not have mates and most children do not have fathers.

If we still had the patriarchy, we would today have socially or legally mandatory paternity tests for legitimate offspring, because cuckoldry would still be an issue. It is not an issue any more. Society treats paternity as no business of anyone but the mother. Patriarchs, on the other hand, demanded strong guarding behavior from their sons in law, and strongly discouraged the son in law from guarding behavior to anyone except their daughter. As the absence of guarding behavior was an impropriety, the absence of a paternity test would today be an impropriety also.

The overwhelming majority of women are more interested in a man described as in a relationship, than the same man described as single and available.

It seems to me that in order for it to support your position, the article should show no difference between single and attached women in preferring an already attached man – but it shows the opposite, as usual theory would predict. Note that no such difference was shown in the attractiveness rates. So the difference could not be caused by the male in question having been chosen badly.

In order to support your position, the authors should have looked at unattached men who have lots of detectable casual sex, and show them to be interesting with no difference between attached and single women. My prediction would be that he would be more interesting for attached women for casual sex, less interesting than attached men for every woman for relationship.

We know, on the other hand that patriarchs are primarily concerned with support and protection, and are apt to severely thrash misbehaving daughters

Why should they? They share 50% of their daughter’s genes, zero of her husband. If he is a cuckold, so much the worse for him, he should have satisfied/controlled his wife better.
Hence usual stories about women who don’t want to go married far away from father and brothers. If your story correct, they should crave this.

we have monogamy with such a high risk of cuckoldry that sooner or later they stop seeing each other

There is no significant risk of cuckoldry today, unless one chooses to take it, in which case he can ask for something back. We have complete control over reproduction, and we can check the outcome. There is a lot of infidelity, which of course breaks relationships. It is what we would expect of serial monogamy. In my experience even non-wealthy men and women have multiple long-term relationships, although most times not marriage. I’m on the continent, though, so I don’t know about Liverpool.

If patriarchy, so arranged marriages, then females must react in order to align reality to their interest, and short of eloping and manipulating parents, their only way is increasing short-term liaisons. So more patriarchy, more cheating. Similarly price control causes house shortages, not the opposite.

Surely there is a natural rate of casual sex. Patriarchy, and you will have a shortage of good girls. Feminism, and you will have a shortage of good men. In both cases the level of casual sex should increase. (More difficult for a girl to be commitment-attractive, so more incentive to go short-term).

That is a plausible argument, and I have presented a plausible argument in the other direction, so the only way to resolve the question is observation and experiment. Fortunately, there has been just such an observation and experiment.

The overwhelming majority of women are more interested in a man described as in a relationship, than the same man described as single and available. This only makes sense if they are searching first and foremost for the best available semen, while love, support, and protection is fairly low on their list of priorities – as should be obvious from the sexual choices made in romance novels, where the heroine prefers a male who is unlikely to be available.

We know, on the other hand that patriarchs are primarily concerned with support and protection, and are apt to severely thrash misbehaving daughters, and enforce monogamy younger males with sword and shotgun – monogamy in the sense of guarding only one woman, not in the sense of sleeping with only one woman. High status patriarchs expected their high status sons in law to sleep with lots of women, but to only know the paternity of the children of the patriarch’s daughter.

Thus, the system wherein males support and protect females and children is imposed by patriarchal control over sexual choices, not female control over sexual choices. And in our society, we see that females and children mostly do not receive male protection and socialization.

A lek is a system where most males remain mateless – they don’t copulate at all or close, not a system where they have a mate but face some substantial risk of cuckoldry.

In today’s modern European society, most families have no male head of household. Therefore most males are mateless. The “matriarchal” social pattern originally observed in the ruins of Detroit and in the housing projects of Liverpool, and once deemed deviant, has become the norm, the new majority. We not only have monogamy with a high risk of cuckoldry, we have monogamy with such a high risk of cuckoldry that sooner or later they stop seeing each other, whereupon it is no longer monogamy. Nor is it serial monogamy. A wealthy male may marry one woman after another, usually while sleeping with multiple women the entire period, but women rarely marry one male after another. Women are mostly single. Mothers are mostly single. That is not polygamy, that is not monogamy.

If there is forceful restraint, there must be some powerful force that needs restraint

Or the opposite. Let me play devil’s advocate once more. (I realize this is not usenet, but here we are.)
Parents and offspring are in conflict. If patriarchy, so arranged marriages, then females must react in order to align reality to their interest, and short of eloping and manipulating parents, their only way is increasing short-term liaisons. So more patriarchy, more cheating. Similarly price control causes house shortages, not the opposite.

Surely there is a natural rate of casual sex. Patriarchy, and you will have a shortage of good girls. Feminism, and you will have a shortage of good men. In both cases the level of casual sex should increase. (More difficult for a girl to be commitment-attractive, so more incentive to go short-term). This is out of intuition, so may be wrong.

Too much monogamy won’t work on the side of males either. If the bravest men don’t get more women, they won’t be bravest, so defeat
(I’m thinking of hunter-gatherers)

Obviously females should be attracted to males that bang the most females most frequently

To those who could, for sure. To those who actually do, if she can detect this, surely not if going long, although she can put up with it if it’s just casual.

If the female chooses to go short-term, whether the male is an asshole or not should make no difference. She probably goes short because she realizes that in any case she has no hope. Important should be that he is handsome, healthy, high status, and brilliant. I think of bad boys as very high status in their groups, although not with fathers

One thing that may happen is that what was high status once is maladaptive today, therefore groupies and rockstars.

Biology predicts that if females mate with only one male, and that male does not have too many other females doing the same, that male will provide parental care.

I don’t think I agree. If male parental support increases success of offspring, the male should still try to find a top female to commit to and then have lots of casual sex with all the others available.

Females are not a homogeneous lot. Top females will go long; less attractive females will accept/try casual sex since they realize they have no hope of commitment from top males, or they will seek commitment from less attractive men, or both.

“Sex and culture” reports a lot of human societies with a lot of casual sex, so there is something you have left out from those percentages.

Let’s add something to them. 80% polygyny, 20% monogamy; 10% of females cheating (from dna studies of cuckoldry), some percentage of unattached, less attractive females having casual sex with top males. Some very high percentage of males cheating.

which nominally monogamous pattern is not well described as either polygamy or monogamy

Well in this case, monogamy probably doesn’t exist, not even in birds. A lek is a system where most males remain mateless – they don’t copulate at all or close, not a system where they have a mate but face some substantial risk of cuckoldry.

18% of primates are monogamous.
An interesting example is gibbons. Enforced, apparently, by females; nonsense if lekking.

You have a compelling argument – non human communication and social skills are inadequate for patriarchy to operate, so no one except females would enforce monogamy. Other animals are not capable of the patriarchal human pattern where fathers channel the sexual choices of the next generation. You have drawn my attention to the fact that the evidence of comparison to other animals is considerably less persuasive than I had thought. If gibbons are predominantly monogamous, then female gibbons cannot prefer assholes.

So let us look instead at our own recent past a century or two ago. It is clear that among us, monogamy was in those days enforced primarily by patriarchs. A reduction in such enforcement must result in a increase in the behavior being very forcefully restrained. If there is forceful restraint, there must be some powerful force that needs restraint, and that force is hypergamy – the propensity of females to mate with a small number of top males. But which males are “top”?. In humans and primates, status in the male hierarchy is not all that strongly correlated with reproductive success. Obviously females should be attracted to males that bang the most females most frequently – and that will not be the one who attracts females through his capacities as a producer and protector. Male status among males is not a reliable source of male status among females. The top male will be the Victorian cad, for example Byron, the threat against which Victorian patriarchs guarded.

And let us look at our present: Statistical measures of our society indicate a substantial proportion of all reproduction is non monogamous – out of wedlock births are not necessarily the result of hypergamous mating, but they usually are. We would expect the proportion of non monogamous sex to be higher than the proportion of non monogamous reproduction. Marriage breakup is not necessarily caused by married females engaging in hypergamy, but that is overwhelmingly the most common cause (personal observation and anecdote, I cannot present any evidence), so if we add together the large proportion of children born out of wedlock, and the large proportion of marriages that break up, we get evidence that a substantial majority of all human sexual activity in modern western society is hypergamous.

And let us look at the female equivalent of porn – romance: “Bridges of Madison” county is what sells. This is hypergamy porn. Even though in the end the male commits, the situation is set up so that that commitment is as improbable as possible – the heroine beds a pirate captain or a traveling salesman or a vampire or such. Women who in real life make the mating choices of romance novels are not going to have a monogamous relationship, and the heroines of Romance novels are not trying very hard to have a monogamous relationship.

lek requires the unimportance of parental care from males. If lek, only gametes from males. If resources, then polygyny with low parental care, monogamy and cheating with high parental care, even sort of polyandry with biologically improbable parental care (tamarins).

But among primates parental care from males is always important, if available – for one thing all male primates have some substantial capacity to deter common predators. This is true even for quite small primates, since aboreal lifestyle limits predator size. The protector role of the male was important in the ancestral environment, and the crime victimization survey indicates it remains significant today.

“monogamy and cheating with high parental care” is allegedly the human pattern – but if you get too much overly blatant cheating, you don’t get much male parental protection, in which case you have something closer to the lek pattern. And right now, with high levels of divorce and illegitimacy, we don’t get much male parental care and protection. As measured by delivery of male parental guarding of offspring, which is after all what counts, we are at present predominantly a lek species. Lekking females prefer assholes.

Biology predicts that if females mate with only one male, and that male does not have too many other females doing the same, that male will provide parental care. Males are not doing so, which suggests that females are not doing so.

In those societies where we did have high male parental guarding, we had patriarchy – fathers very strongly influenced female sexual choices, strongly influenced everyone’s sexual behavior, and strongly influenced which younger males achieved reproductive success.

Humans, a lot but not incredible parental care, thus 80% polygyny, 20% monogamy

“Sex and culture” reports a lot of human societies with a lot of casual sex, so there is something you have left out from those percentages. In the western civilization of the past, the predominant pattern was that high status males had one wife that they guarded and whose children they acknowledged, protected, and supported, and lots of sex with low status females that they did not guard, the parentage of whose children they did not know, and whose offspring they did not protect or support – which nominally monogamous pattern is not well described as either polygamy or monogamy

In today’s society, I am not observing either polygyny or monogamy. From the point of view of evolutionary biology, polygyny is families with one reproductive, protective, and possibly supporting male parent and several reproductive females, monogamy is families with one reproductive, protective, and possibly supporting male parent and one reproductive female.

What today is the majority human pattern is families with no protective male parent, which also happens to be a very common pattern among primates. This mating pattern, if it was common in those few parts of our ancestral environment where females exercised significant choice, will have led to female preference for assholes, females for whom monogamy is an aspiration, but only seldom and partially achieved.

but for all of them to continually try to get the impossible, the best male committing to them and to no one else, and continually fail just makes no sense

They will bang the best male they can, as in a romance novel, and hope he commits to them as in a romance novel, but will be entirely unsurprised that he does not – which behavior makes perfect sense biologically. Observe that the love interests of romance novels are frequently unavailable, for example vampires. The heroines of romance novels are not even trying for monogamy, they are trying for the best possible male sperm. If the heroines of romance novels are looking for love, they are looking in the wrong places.

He controls by the capacity to do violence

To compel females and push away males is different, but you would probably answer it does not make any difference in practice. I’m not sure what to think, so I’ll let it drop.

We don’t see anything related to us making that trade off.

18% of primates are monogamous.
An interesting example is gibbons. Enforced, apparently, by females; nonsense if lekking.

I think I can settle with this claim: lek requires the unimportance of parental care from males. If lek, only gametes from males. If resources, then polygyny with low parental care, monogamy and cheating with high parental care, even sort of polyandry with biologically improbable parental care (tamarins).

Humans, a lot but not incredible parental care, thus 80% polygyny, 20% monogamy. Females do not lek even if they can, because parental care useful. They do, however, cheat; so yes, good women are hard to find, but for all of them to continually try to get the impossible, the best male committing to them and to no one else, and continually fail just makes no sense. So no need to enforce monogamy, but lots of need for jealousy in both sexes.

(Good men are also hard to find – they will devote resources to other females and their children, which drives women mad.)

The link to the pdf does not work for me; readers say the file is damaged and cannot be repaired.