There's more out there than Alpha/Beta Phallacies

I'll go with 4. I'm romantic like that.

Because I wanna play, and if I'm gonna be a fish...

(Op honestly, this is pretty genius. Well done!)

I’ve decided that if BB.com brahs get to base their entire world view on a completely misunderstood and old fashioned model of reproductive skew in communally breeding societies, the lovely lifting ladies of MFP need to pick an arbitrary and oversimplified behavioral reproductive model to base our treatment of males upon. Now, since my field of research is mostly ichthyological in nature, my examples will be based on fish breeding behaviors, however, this is also appropriate as the majority of work in reproductive skew is done at the ichthyo/herpo level since anything beyond observational analysis becomes exponentially more problematic when working with avian and especially mammalian models. So here we go ladies, I submit for your approval, the following reproductive models:

Option #1 The Clownfish:
In the clownfish model, females get to keep a harem of males. Females generally remain close to the established nesting site and only venture far away when the nest is threatened by an invading clownfish harem or a possible predator. Subordinate males are kept in line through the aggressive and dominating behavior of the larger female. Males are responsible for providing for the nest, bringing food back for the host anemone and the female. Subordinate males who please the female will be allowed to fertilize the eggs. Subordinate males who fail to please the female will be killed. Good new for the guys though, if the female gets eaten by a predator and you are the most dominant male, you get to sex change and become the new female!

Option #2 The Garibaldi:
If keeping a harem of males seems like too much work for you, you may prefer the Garibaldi model. Among the Garibaldi, males select and defend a nesting site. Prior to the breeding season, Garibaldi males spend weeks primping and pruning their nest site to make it as attractive as possible to potential female suitors, and of course the Garibaldi males are bright orange and flashy as compared to the females, because after all, boys need to look pretty. Once breeding season arrives females are able to choose from a veritable buffet of males doing their sexy dance. When they find a male they like, they deposit their eggs and leave, never to be bothered by emotionally clingy males or obnoxious offspring again. The males are then left to do all the work of caring for and protecting the fertilized eggs and young Garibaldi fish.

Option #3 The Seahorse:
If you prefer a “slightly” more equitable treatment of the sexes when it comes to reproduction, you might like the seahorse. Male seahorses still have to do all the work involved in child rearing, so don’t worry, you can still “hit it and quit it”, but you can feel good about yourself knowing that the male seahorse got to choose YOU as the most attractive mate. The male seahorse carries the fertilized eggs in a breeding pouch on his belly, and as he has a valuable limited resource, gets to have some say on who gets to use his “breeding pouch”. When he decides he’s ready to mate, he advertises himself to the females in the area. The larger and more physically aggressive females will then display and fight amongst themselves to establish who is the biggest and badest winning the honor of getting to mate with the available male.

Option #4 the Convict Cichlid
For the romantically old-fashioned, perhaps you would like the reproductive strategy espoused by the Convict Cichlid. Male and female cichlids mate for life (one of the overwhelmingly FEW species that have been shown to be truly monogamous). Males and females share equally in the responsibilities for preparing and defending the nest as well as for caring for the eggs and young cichlids as they grow.

So ladies, place your votes. Option 1 through 4, each lady gets only 1 vote to be tallied whenever I feel like it. And sorry guys, but you don’t get a vote. Cause I’m a clownfish.

TL;DR Human behavior is more complex then alpha/beta dichotomies.