[bambax]

Yes, monogamy is usually framed as being good for women and detrimental to men when in fact it's been invented so that non-alpha males could mate; in a "natural" world, most (all) women would mate with the alpha male of the group, and all other males would not mate at all.

Therefore it shouldn't be unexpected that women who didn't get to marry the alpha male, are unhappy and eventually want out.

[maxander]

As someone who hangs out in circles where polyamory is common, I can say that it doesn't quite work out this way. There are certainly the super-desirable guys who have unreasonably-many unreasonably-attractive partners- but they still only have so much time in the day, they can't sustain real relationships (or even consistent sexual relations) with everyone. Those with only a fraction of these golden boys' attentions will occupy the rest of their romantic energies with others, and those others will occupy the remainder of their romantic time with others, and so on "down." Its hard for everyone to wind up happy, but no harder I think than in monogamous crowds.

(And the same thing happens, symmetrically, with the super-desirable girls. And pseudo-symmetrically with gays and lesbians and bisexuals and etc etc etc.)

[awl130]

ironically, women's empowerment could eventually lead a society back to pre-historic times in a genetic sense. imagine a society where women no longer need husbands or fathers for either income or childcare (which is the current trend in the OECD). imagine further that there is no more stigma towards artificial insemination. then women will pick the fittest sperm from the bank (let's say an Olympic athlete with a Nobel Prize). thus we have reverted back to a time when the alpha males sire a far greater proportion of progeny. what kinds of long term effects are there on a society's gene pool? does this society then have less diversity, and thus decreased overall fitness as a whole?

what happens to the vast majority of prospectless men? mass immigration of females is one solution. but eventually the donor country will bar them from doing so. so imagine a country where 80% of single men will not get a chance to produce offspring. is that a recipe for civil unrest?

without any traditional patriarchy, it is in the female's best interest to get inseminated by multiple alphas. maybe there will be a social movement that that says for every alpha baby, a female must bear a baby with her beta partner?

[IndianAstronaut]

One thing people forget is that in historical societies, the number of men would be less than women. This is due to war, other violence against men, etc. This left surplus women who were more inclined to the alpha males/royalty and fewer men without partners.

[robotresearcher]

It's a little much to present an untestable hypothesis as 'in fact...'.