Dominance

I’ve been watching with some interest the proceedings of the Ariel Castro kidnapping case. As more of the details come to light and the media aggrandizes the victims (virtually insuring a book or TV deal), there’s a lot of uncomfortable questions that need to be answered.

“Most of the sex that went on in that house, probably all of it, was consensual,” Castro said. “These allegations about being forceful on them — that is totally wrong. Because there was times where they’d even ask me for sex –many times. And I learned that these girls were not virgins. From their testimony to me, they had multiple partners before me, all three of them.”

I covered this a bit in He’s Special, making modern comparisons to the War Brides:

,..there’s been a lot of discussion on the forums I frequent about  Michelle Knight, Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus being held captive by Ariel Castro for a decade. Let that sink in a minute, a decade. That’s 11 years. That’s a lot of life to live. That’s a lot of normal to get used to. There are other cases like this; Jaycee Dugard and  Elizabeth Smart come to mind, but are all of these instances the results of a hard-wired Stockholm Syndrome in women?

Just for the record here, I wouldn’t dream of trying to defend Castro, but in eleven years time a lot can become normal. I have no doubt that Castro held these women captive for 11 years, and the media would have us believe they endured sex dungeon conditions living like the Gimp in Pulp Fiction, but there comes a point of normalcy in ones daily routine life.

“I am not a violent person. I simply kept them there without being able to leave.”

“We had a lot of harmony going on in that home,” he said.

In our lives there is a certain degree of routine and structure most people become accustomed to. I get up at 5am most mornings, I’m at the gym until 7:30 and I’m off to work until 5pm. Somethings change every day but I live in a set of patterns and I know what to expect most of the time. The more I read about Castro the more I’m thinking the guy settled into a state of normalcy with these women and they with him. In 11 years they made no reasonable dramatic effort to escape? They endured a forced abortion and a homebirth (not unlike Jaycee Dugard) and still no collaborative plan they could come up with was effective for 11 years until one day Ariel left the door open? None of these girls were malnourished, and they could stand to lose some weight.

Naturally the feminine-primary meme is that Castro was “blaming the victim“, but I don’t think that was his point. He knows he’s going to prison for life plus 1,000 years, why not just shut up and go away? There was something of a normal life that became a routine for them all for 11 years. That’s 11 Christmases, 11 Easters, 11 independence days. The MSM will spin the story of their heroic support of each other and I don’t imagine the girls wanted to be there, but at some point living with Ariel was their ‘normal’.

Ariel, got sloppy. He got comfortable in that normalcy. Even if he was abusive, after 11 years my guess is he expected for that normalcy to continue and this was what his plea was really about. He actually thought they “had a lot of harmony going on in that house.” It’s easy to pass off his words as insanity, but here was a guy who at least wanted ‘harmony’. At the end of it all, all he wanted was what most men want – his means were evil and reprehensible, but wanted harmony.

Domination

A week back CH had a study and post regarding the importance of dominance and how it’s ultimately dominance that attracts women to men. Of course Roissy would like for looks to play a lesser role in attraction, and my perspective is that arousal is based on the physical to a much greater importance than women can afford to let on, but dominance is a key factor in attraction. I would also argue that an elite physique is the most obvious environmental cue for male dominance. The best form of peacocking is a good build.

However, all of that breaks down if the guy lacks a dominant Alpha mindset. Without that self-confidence and competitive spirit, the best looking guy becomes a foil for a more dominant one. Conversely, enough bravado and fearless genuine Alpha dominance can make even the ugliest of guys attractive by order of degree.

Ariel Castro was one ugly motherfucker, my guess is he never had the Game needed to even sniff at the women in the porn he claims he’s addicted to, but what Ariel had in spades was dominance. Raw forceful dominance he used to enslave not one, but three captured women. Capturing  and physically coercing them to be his prisoners was an act of dominance, but the want, and the expectation that he could have a harmonious normal life with these women was a testament to his (delusional) sense of self-importance.

Irrational self-confidence is the cornerstone of attraction.

When we contemplate male dominance it’s important to remember that to whatever degree we can actualize being dominant – at work, with women, in competition – our own personality, both flaws and attributes, will be manifested in our dominant actions and our beliefs. Castro is a piss poor example of a human being, but he’s an excellent illustration of how his frustrations and his personality were transferred into his actions.

He’s the negative side of that coin, and much of what is termed the Dark Triad of personality traits might also be considered dominant self-importance. However, that same sociopathy that makes for the bad examples is also the root of the positive ones. It really comes down to the individual, their sense of purpose and how they choose to direct that dominance.

If all this sounds like a pep talk to get you to adopt a more dominant mindset it wasn’t really my intent. I’m asked a lot, “Rollo if confidence is the key, then how do I get more confident?” This is a common deductive argument, as if they sold confidence in bottles at the drug store and all you had to do was buy the right brand. It doesn’t work this way. You have to believe it.

It’s fine for me to tell you act irrationally confident, and hope that the act becomes a permanent fixture in your personality, but most men don’t feel confident even when they’re acting confident. Confidence, and dominance, come from real established options and the knowing that you can successfully generate more. This is what makes confidence attractive, it’s the unspoken message to a woman that this guy can, has proven before, and potentially will again, produce more than he needs and other men aspire to do so.