Category Archives: Idealizations

December 26, 2014

The Red Pill Lens

One of the results of becoming Red Pill aware is a meta “awareness” of the feminine centric social order we live in today. On this side of the Red Pill it’s almost routine for me now to filter what’s presented to me in popular media, social doctrine or even casual conversation through a Red Pill lens.

Whether it’s the latest pop hit lyrics of a song my daughter is listening to in the bathroom, the latest movie or book, or just listening to someone rattle off an old Blue Pill trope in casual conversation, my sensitivity to how thoroughly immersed in fem-cetrism our society has become is overwhelming.

I’ve had guys in the manosphere joke with me that having this ‘lens’ is like having the special glasses that let you see the alien/zombies and propaganda in the movie They Live. While I get a laugh out of this I also have to think that those glasses never really come off. So when the holiday season comes around this awareness manifests itself more for me since I’m reacquainting myself with family and friends who are immersed in this Matrix and don’t realize they’re mouthing the meme’s and social focus of a feminine centric order.

I think it’s kind of ironic that during the holidays we’re expected to lock horns with our relatives over the latest generational/political/ideological differences, yet these all take place in a common, feminized social narrative. Your uncle may not agree with you politically, but he’ll slap you on the back while you both drink a beer and say, “Women ‘eh? I guess we’ll never figure ’em out” and expect you to have some common agreement with him in spite of those differences.

I bring this up today (and for this weekend’s discussion questions) because it was due to this seasonal Red Pill awareness that I was better prepared to appreciate the holiday classic, It’s a Wonderful Life from a Red Pill perspective.

I’d just returned from a work trip last week and my daughter informed me that the movie was being shown in our local metroplex theater on Christmas eve. I’d seen it before on TV with all the intermittent commercials, and remembered how tedious I thought it was (it’s a pretty long movie for 1946), but she insisted and I wanted to do something with the family. I’ve never watched the movie start to finish, and when I did pick up scenes on TV during Christmas time, it was long before I had any Red Pill inclination.

Needless to say I was shocked (pleasantly) by how thoroughly Red Pill I found it. If you want to see what a pre-sexual revolution gender dynamic is like, this is your movie. Yes, it’s idyllic, but that idealism is founded in a social order, an ‘old books‘ social order, that reveals what our new feminine-primary social order is today. It shows you what we’ve become, but unfortunately the greater whole of our contemporary society lack the special glasses to really appreciate this distinction.

Some notable scenes:

George Bailey, the cab driver Ernie and the cop Bert ogle the sexy Violet Bick after she flirts with George and just flows down a busy street to be checked out all the more by every man on the street. In modern terms these men are all guilty of sexual harassment, but in 1928 (the film’s beginning) and viewed from a 1946 perspective of that time, there is nothing harassing about it. It’s de rigueur, and she enjoys the attention.

The family interaction between George, his brother Harry, and their father with Ma Bailey just prior to Harry’s graduation party. There is matronly deference to their mother, but both of the boys are being boys and there is no expectation for them to settle down. Both the brothers are naturally, effortlessly, cocky & funny with the maid and their mother. This isn’t a forced attitude, it comes off as both positively masculine and fun at the same time. Also, their father is the respected head of the household, both by virtue of his social status and integrity as well as his position as ‘father’. Needless to say, he’s never ridiculed as the buffoon he’d be portrayed as on a post-sexual revolution social order, and in fact dispenses a wisdom that benefits George later in life.After the graduation party George and Mary walk home in the odd dry clothes they were able to find after having fallen into the school pool. Mary is in a bathrobe and George in a football outfit. This flirtation and interaction is perhaps one of the best examples I can think of as an old order form of Game. George is cocky, funny, confident, ambitious, playfully teasing and yet still conscious of Mary’s perception of him as he effortlessly delivers a positive, masculine vibe.Again, it’s idyllic, and men being the true romantics will want to believe such receptivity could actually take place without any confusion of signals with an idealized, Quality Woman woman like Mary, but it’s the atmosphere and the attitude of expecting Mary to respond to George’s delivery that belies the era this scene and story was written in. Nothing seems forced at all, and we don’t expect Mary to match George’s masculine Game with one of her own feminine-empowered forms of Game. From a Red Pill perspective, we want a gal like Mary to exist, but you wont find her in 2014.

These were just a few scenes I thought stood out, but this film is an essay in the old order social structure a lot of well meaning Red Pill advocates would like to believe is still a possibility.

In the last thread commenter Xsplat asked the question whether an Alpha man could also be a provider. His criticism of the manosphere is that Alpha men are being painted as caricatures of cads, assholes and bad boy players women want to bang as part of their Hypergamous mating protocol. Betas are the opposite of this; good for provisioning only – cuckolds to be used for parental investment with only a perfunctory servicing of mediocre ‘duty’ sex as an intermittent reward to keep him pulling the cart.

If there are caricatures of Alpha and Beta being drawn I’d suggest this is due more to women and their comfort with Open Hypergamy and men deductively modeling their gender expectations as a result. That said, Xsplat’s not wrong. It is entirely possible for an archetypal Alpha Man to be an upstanding member of society, provide for his family and be well respected both by his peers and his wife. The character of George Bailey is an old order example of exactly this kind of man.

In our era women have an unprecedented facility for providing for their own security need, but that doesn’t eliminate the root level, emotional need for optimizing Hypergamy with a man who is an Alpha provider. For the most part women simply don’t expect to find this optimization in the same man. There are men they want to fuck and men they want to consolidate monogamy with, and finding this satisfaction in the same man is so rare, so unexpected, that his character becomes unbelievable. The George Bailey of 1928 is an unbelievable character in 2014.

As I’ve illustrated in many a prior post, Alpha is a state of mind, not a demographic. Just because the Alpha energy of a kid like Corey Worthington will get him laid without trying doesn’t preempt a woman from being aroused by, and attracted to a George Bailey. Context is king of course, but what matters is that self-interested Alpha mindset. While many a convicted felon possesses this mindset, and receives women’s sexual interests as a result of it, I’d still encourage men to use that Alpha energy to a positive, self-benefiting effect.

So the questions for this weekend are:

What Red Pill observations do you find unignorable in contemporary society? It’s dangerous to attempt to make others aware of this perception, but do you try anyway?

Do you see examples of the old order as I have in It’s a Wonderful Life? Understanding the idealisms inherent in it, what other examples of this old order to you know?

Alpha providers, while being an idealistic character, can exist, but are they realistic? I’d propose that embodying this role has become one of being seen too readily as a Beta by women due to the unbelievability of it. Does men’s romantic nature predispose them to thinking they can adequately fulfill this role? Does that romanticism expect women to be receptive and appreciative of it? Is that expectation on of investing in Relational Equity?

243 Comments | tags: Alpha Fucks, Beta Bucks, blue pill, dread game, feminine imperative, feminized men, gender relations, hypergamy, intergender relations, male perspective, manosphere, rational male, rational male year one, rationalmale, red pill, Rollo Tomassi, rollo tomassi the rational male blog, sexual market value, SMV, social conventions, the rational male, therationalmale | posted in Alpha, Game, Hypergamy, Idealizations, Unplugging

December 23, 2014

Domain Dependence

By Rollo Tomassi

I received the following email from a reader this week:

Hi Rollo, I ran across the below thread on the TRP discussion on Reddit. I’m not normally a big follower of reddit but this one was good and is something that I’ve thought for a long time. Online Dating really, really, really sucks for men. And turns women into bitches. And has changed the world from an 80/20 market to a 95/5 market. The average male and actually for most above average males too … like SMV 6s and 7s have been completely shut out. And learning Game does little good for these men.

Was wondering if you’d care to discuss such things.

One of the founding Red Pill principles I explored over a decade ago was the tendency for men (and women) to create Buffers against rejection for themselves. I’ll still argue that men being the ‘initiator’ sex are subject to the consequences of rejection far more than women ever will be, but left unchecked, and if we’re honest, deliberately ignored, these rejection Buffers often develop into psychological schemas men internalize as a specific “preference” when it comes to interacting with with women:

Buffers are generally the paths of least rejection that become ego-invested “preferences.” Buffers aren’t so much about those “preferences” as they are about the motivations behind them.

At this point you might be thinking, “well, what the hell, I don’t want to feel rejection, why not employ buffers against it?” The main reason for embracing rejection is that rejection is better than regret. Scan back through this short list of buffers; how many of these have become greater, longer term problems for you than a briefly painful rejection would’ve been? Buffers also have a tendency to compound upon themselves in that one tends to dovetail into another, or more, until you no longer realize that they were originally rejection prevention methodologies and gradually become associated with your genuine personality. After a long enough period, these buffer become “just how I am.”

In the past Roosh has gone into some speculation that there will be a narrowing of the already harsh 80-20 rule of the SMP the closer western society gets to a total consolidation of feminine social primacy. Certain bloggers will debate the numbers, but I tend to agree with his proposition, though I’d say that a starting point of 80-20 might be a bit generous. However, considering the comfort with which women and popular culture are embracing open Hypergamy, I think I would actually step up his timetable for ‘Peak Hypergamy’.

For now, men are being presented with some very simple and pragmatic choices:

Learn Game, stay in the Game. Make the most of what they have to work with in their given circumstances and focus on self-motivated self-improvement. In a sense it’s a form of MGTOW, but with the expressed purpose of actively engaging in the SMP as it’s accessible to an individual guy. In other words, don’t wish it were easier, wish you were better – play the game better but always with yourself as your own mental point of origin.

Exit the Game. No one truly exits the Game, but they can minimize their active involvement in it. For the most part this doesn’t have to be a complete capitulation to one’s sexless, intimacy-less fate, but it does imply a degree of self-imposed indifference to women’s interest. Unfortunately this option seems the most pragmatic for men who either haven’t the patience or circumstance to opt for improving themselves and succeed at the Game, or they simply don’t see a commensurate reward for the investment they’d need to make in assuming the liabilities that come with dealing with most women these days.

Continue on in a Blue Pill ignorance. Although this ‘choice’ is the most common (i.e. at least 80% of Beta men) it will be the one to disappear the most rapidly. Even without a growing Red Pill community, Red Pill awareness is becoming more difficult for even the most plugged-in of men to ignore. Women’s flaunting of Open Hypergamy and blatant admission to a sexual strategy of Alpha Fucks / Beta Bucks combined with a widespread Red Pill awareness will challenge even the most ardent of White Knight’s and idealistic ‘average frustrated chumps’. Still, there are diehard self-righteous Betas who’s dedication to the path that the Feminine Imperative has set before them has made any deviation from it unthinkable. They build a life of dependency on the untenable Blue Pill goals and the means to realize them.

The problem inherent to all of these options is that to a lesser or greater degree they rely on a static state of a particular environment, condition or domain.

Domain Dependency

Just for the record, yes, I’m quite familiar with the anti-fragile doctrine proposed by Taleb with regard to domain dependency. I do see a parallels in this with regard to Red Pill awareness, but this is in no way an endorsement of the book – I simply don’t have enough familiarity with it.

For Red Pill purposes though, Domain Dependence is being good at what you do in one setting, but completely unable to transfer that ability to another setting. I think this dependence is one of the more overstated preoccupations Game critics have in really accepting the validity of greater Red Pill truths.

A cheetah is a deadly and effective predator when he can use his speed to run down prey on the wide-open African plains, but put him in the Brazilian rainforest, with its dense jungle, and he’s probably going to sleep hungry more nights than not.

Translated into predictable Red Pill critique, the idea is similar – “Yeah, sure, game works well for picking up low self-esteem bar skanks, but I’m looking for a Quality Woman.” What’s implied isn’t necessarily incorrect; the most ridiculed, stereotypical examples of Game came from the trials and errors of early PUAs making observations and applying what they’d learned in a contextual domain – night clubs, bars, etc. While those observations were, and still are, invaluable information to a greater meta-understanding of Red Pill awareness, for the most part those early successes were dependent on that specific (club style) domain.

Game has branched out from that beginning to be applied in broader domains. Thus we have specific areas of application dependency based on what can produce at least somewhat replicable results in those settings. Nick Krauser writes the book on day Game, Roosh the book on South America and Northern & Eastern Europe, while other authors ply their trade writing about Game in marriage or under the auspices of religion(s).

And while I have a great deal of respect for the most of them, a creative mind doesn’t work like this. The creative mind has the ability to migrate from one realm to another without even thinking about it. It’s what allows us to connect this dot with that dot. There is a certain applied reasoning and science behind a Red Pill awareness, but it’s important to remember what the ‘A’ in PUA stands for – Artistry.

Crossing Domains

I’ve known a number of guys in my time who swear that there’s nothing hotter than a woman 15 – 20 years their senior. Others love to explain to me how behind the times I am by pointing out the inherent dangers and liabilities of dating single mothers (for anything more than a one time bang). Still others tell me how enthusiastic a lay the obese women they regularly bang are. All of these guys express a preference for the type of women they can reliably get into bed with and will staunchly defend and praise their preferred type of woman.

Their domain dependency became their internalized, ego-invested preference.

I’ve touched on this dynamic in a few of my earliest posts, but I think it’s important to realize that domain dependency isn’t just about the type of woman you’ve developed a preference for, but rather how you’re predictably rewarded (in this case with sex) within that particular domain. You can semi-reliably do well with Goth girls, fat girls, older women, single moms? It’s important to understand the specifics and motivations of the women within that domain. You went on a sex safari in Southeast Asia or the Philippines, yet get flaked on by every western girl you approach? There are (obviously) specifics that influence those domains.

After all of this, the Red Pill is universally applicable, or it’s not. The same fundamental Red Pill dynamics, operating within the context of a specific domain, are applicable with the correct art necessary for that domain.

Red Pill truths are domain independent. Hypergamy is the same to a girl in Brazil as it is to a girl in Vegas. The domain changes, and with it the necessary art based on a woman’s incentives and the priorities for that given domain, but the underlying purpose and requisites of Hypergamy is unchanged. Yes, cultural, religious and familial limitations of that Hypergamy may apply within that domain, but root level Red Pill truth is still the prime directive for women.

Within a man’s lifetime he will have no choice but to cross into, and adapt to unfamiliar domains many times. These domains are not just locales or social settings, but the specifics of a particular stage of a woman’s life as well as his own life. Marriage is a domain. Single man sex life plate spinning is a domain. Online dating, a dependency on impersonal texting, really any of the Buffers I’ve elaborated on in the past are all examples of a domain men develop a dependency on, and later a rewarded preference for.

While it’s vitally important for a man to have a solid grasp of the elements of his own, temporal, domain it’s equally important to understand how and why he came into it. What rewards did he receive or hope to receive that led to his developed “preferences”? Were those preferences dependent upon a Blue Pill condition for reward?

This is key in avoiding domain specific dependency. That’s a pretty tall order for most men, and actually it’s one of the prime reasons most Blue Pill men never come to Red Pill truths. The Blue Pill is itself a meta-domain that men are largely conditioned to be dependent upon. Coming to Red Pill truths requires the self-realization of a domain dependency on Blue Pill idealisms, their promised rewards and then letting them go.

It’s important for a man to develop a fluidity of transitioning from domain to domain. Red Pill awareness prepares him for fundaments that will be applicable in all domains, but accepting that those domains exist and influence (sometimes adversely) his ‘preferences’ is the first step in developing the art necessary to excel in a new domain.

Isolation is dangerous. The presumption that conditions will never change and / or the preoccupation with security is a woman’s realm. Men must accept that they must adapt themselves to adequately perform in changing domains.

243 Comments | tags: Alpha Fucks, Beta Bucks, beta guy, blue pill, dread game, evolutionary psychology, feminine imperative, feminized men, gender relations, genuine change, hypergamy, intergender, intergender relations, male perspective, manosphere, plate theory, rational male, rational male year one, rationalmale, red pill, Rollo Tomassi, rollo tomassi the rational male blog, sexual market value, SMV, the rational male, therationalmale | posted in Foundations, Game, Hypergamy, Idealizations, Psychology, Relationship Game

December 8, 2014

Hysteria

By Rollo Tomassi

In light of the Feminine Imperative having itself capsized over the UVa rape fantasy retracted by Rolling Stone this month, I was reminded of this video and post by Heartiste (Roissy) a few years ago:

Basically, the guy had a few friends follow him around the mall, one guy filming him and the other two guys (I can’t tell if any of his hired guns were women) acting as his “groupies” or entourage. He goes around identifying himself as “Thomas Elliot” when people, mostly women, ask him his name. Eventually, he begins to pile up admiring and gawking female attention, which only snowballs into more female attention. Apparently, not one of these starstruck chicks thought to question if Thomas Elliot was a real celebrity. That’s the power of preselection and fame; so powerful, it can disengage a woman’s neural logic circuitry.

Heartiste goes on to make the prerequisite Game principle & application observations here, but there is a much larger dynamic in play. While the mall makes for a good setting to test this experiment, it is fairly isolated. A security detail gets assigned to “Thomas Eliot” and even some shops close in order to avoid a crowd panic, but could this dynamic be proven on a larger scale?

This is a very interesting social experiment, particularly when compared to the now infamous (and staged) viral video of Shoshana Roberts walking around New York and enduring the attentions of men she found less than savory. Interesting because they’re essentially trolling for attention from the opposite sex with similar methods, and the results are telling about how each gender perspective generates and reacts to that attention.

Darryl Long made a comment on this topic, and I’ve been considering it for a while now:

On this topic of how women’s attraction changes across their lifetimes I don’t think any analysis is complete without looking at the phenomena of teen-idols. As a man who has sisters and daughters its clear that there is something biological going on with pubescent girls in a way that is radically different from boys. Boys may fantasize about a poster girl, but they never fall over themselves for heartthrobs like Bieber, or Lief Garret, and David Cassidy (in the old days). I’m amazed that many of these teen heartthrobs are more on the fair/effeminate side than masculine. They look like they have good genes, but the most important thing is that all the other girls like them. They are male figures that girls lend incredible status making them even more attractive.

Preselection is a very powerful motivator of women’s hypergamous decision making process. Even the perception of fame (or even the potential for it) is a prime motivator and incentive to lock down a man who presents the hypergamous optimal ideal – a guy who satisfies the sexiness her Alpha Fucks hypergamous needs require and the long term security of provisioning potential from status-confirmed Beta Bucks.

Whether this “famous” guy actually embodies this ideal is irrelevant to a woman’s Id-centric psyche. When women are younger, tweens and teens, this self-convincing is much easier since girls lack any real world experience to reference with respect to what the guy really represents. A capacity for abstract thinking is something that develops as we mature, but the desire to optimize hypergamy is a limbic, instinctual drive for girls and no amount of reasoning can compete with the fantasy of a pre-fabricated idealized Hypergamy.

They want to believe it.

Thus we have hordes of girls and young women willing to go to behavioral lengths they would never consider with the mundane men they’re familiar with in order to just brush with the possibility of that hypergamous ideal. They will literally climb over one another to realize this.

In a Game sense, preselection (and prequalification or 3rd party endorsement) is a very powerful, instinctual impetus for women. Even in marginal, isolated social settings preselection is an overriding imperative:

Your goal should be to attract women effortlessly, so play to your strengths no matter what they are; there is a groupie for every male endeavor. – Roissy

Mass Hysteria

Once you have a basic understanding of the preselection dynamic and how it is an evolved feature of women’s psychological firmware, the next step is to understand how the power of preselection influences women (and by association men) when scaled to a feminine social dynamic.

Roissy notes from the first video:

Apparently, not one of these starstruck chicks thought to question if Thomas Elliot was a real celebrity.

As I’ve noted in prior posts, perceptions are the overriding imperative of the feminine psyche. It’s not that women on an individual level don’t possess the faculties to discern legitimate social proof, it’s that on a social level they want to believe in that social proof. The estimation of the collective feminine mindset is a powerful influence on the individual woman since it plays on that non-abstract, instinctual need for a pre-verification of optimal hypergamy.

In other words, the effort of sexual-selection vetting has already been done for them by the feminine hivemind.

Verifying legitimate social proof takes individual time and effort. Perhaps not as much as men have a rational capacity for (the New York stunt fooled more than a few tag-along guys affirming the pseudo-social proof), but for women that opportunity for meeting a hypergamously ideal man supersedes the mental efforts needed to verify social proof. The greater mass of women already believe in the preselection and the intersexual competition is on and overt.

I’ve made the distinction before with regards to women’s preferred communications methods; covert communication being women’s native language, but when women resort to overt communications it’s generally because the content of the information needing to be transferred outweighs the need for how it’s delivered, or the context of that information.

Transferring information about a man’s preselected approval amongst a collective of women is one such override. However, it’s very important for men living in a feminine-primary social order to understand that social proof is not just limited to preselection of men as potential partners.

This social proof dynamic extends to the perceptions of women in a collective peer group, as well as men for whom they have no sexual interest in, but serve their material interests nonetheless.

The current cultural atmosphere of male suspicion and autonomous rape-threat assessment of men is another variation of this perceptual, hysterical, collective belief dynamic. Women want to believe in the presumption that every man outside of their preselected, collective approved, hypergamous ideal is a potential rape threat. In other words, a man who might, by force or coercion, assume control of her hypergamous sexual selection.

The narrative, the perception, is all that matters.

And like the women who never had an afterthought as to whether “Thomas Eliot” was the real deal, likewise women become so ego-invested in the certainty of their collective perceptions that, even in light of contrary evidence, the only acknowledged verification of that perception is how it makes them feel.

This contradiction of a collective feminine hysteria is what many luminaries of the Feminine Imperative are now being forced to confront. It’s important to remember during this UVa / Rolling Stone rape debacle that women, and more than a few enabling male sympathizers, wanted to believe this travesty was true in spite of the vaudevillian outlandishments and still refuse to accept that it isn’t.

From Truth to Power:

Denial

The first step to really unplugging from our preconditioning (i.e the feminine Matrix) is recognizing that this conditioning has led to the beliefs we think are integral to our personalities. The psychological term for this is called ‘ego-investment’. When a person internalizes a mental schema so thoroughly, and has become conditioned to it for so long, it becomes an integral part of their personality. So to attack the belief is to, literally, attack the person. This is why we see such a violent reaction to people’s political, religious, inter-social/inter-sexual, inter-gender, etc. expressions of belief – they perceive it as a personal attack, even when presented with irrefutable, empirical evidence that challenges the veracity of those beliefs.

People resort to denial when recognizing that the truth would destroy something they hold dear. In the case of a cheating partner, denial lets you avoid acknowledging evidence of your own humiliation. Short of catching a spouse in bed with your best friend, evidence of infidelity is usually ambiguous. It’s motivated skepticism. You’re more skeptical of things you don’t want to believe and demand a higher level of proof. Denial is unconscious, or it wouldn’t work: if you know you’re closing your eyes to the truth, some part of you knows what the truth is and denial can’t perform its protective function.

One thing we all struggle to protect is a positive self-image. The more important the aspect of your self-image that’s challenged by the truth, the more likely you are to go into denial. If you have a strong sense of self-worth and competence, your self-image can take hits but remain largely intact; if you’re beset by self-doubt, however, any acknowledgment of failure can be devastating and any admission of error painful to the point of being unthinkable. Self-justification and denial arise from the dissonance between believing you’re competent, and making a mistake, which clashes with that image. Solution: deny the mistake. Attribute it to an outside element rather than resort to introspection.

This degree of core-level denial is where the likes of Jessica Valenti, Susan Walsh and Zerlina Maxwell find themselves today.

“No matter what Jackie said, we should automatically believe rape claims.” http://t.co/3HFlXR7jme True insanity pic.twitter.com/AFXIyn32FS

— Roosh (@rooshv) December 6, 2014

In spite of still growing confirmation that the story was a hoax, femosphere bloggers hold out hope against hope that even the smallest part of a medieval-like rape story to rival Silence of the Lambs could be true.

The pivot for this will of course be how the falsehood injures women who genuinely are rape victims, but this is just the shiny keys jingling to distract anyone sympathetic to their ego-investments from the fact that they wanted to believe this story was legitimate.

They wanted to believe it without an afterthought of critical analysis.

They wanted to believe it in spite of the obvious melodramatic dialogue described by “Jackie”.

They wanted to believe a naive freshmen girl could be frat boy initiation raped for three hours on the shards of glass from a broken glass table and never seek medical treatment or have anyone raise an eyebrow over the bloody mess that her back must’ve looked like as she nonchalantly walked out of the party house.

They wanted and still hope that even the most marginal parts of the story might be true. They want any shred of hope that will distract from the fact that they must now confront their complete acceptance of this obvious farce without any compunction of critical thinking.

They all have to face the fact that their presumption of male guilt comes before any logic or reason. This is the uniquely feminine hysteria that even men will invest themselves into if it means they can more positively identify with the Feminine Imperative.

171 Comments | tags: alpha widow, dread game, false rape, feminine imperative, gender relations, hypergamy, intergender relations, Jackie, Jackie Coakley, male perspective, manosphere, neural software, preselection, rape, rational male, rational male year one, rationalmale, red pill, retraction, Roissy, Rolling Stone, Rollo Tomassi, rollo tomassi the rational male blog, Sabrina Rubin Erdely, sexual impulse, sexual market value, social conventions, social proof, Susan Walsh, the rational male, therationalmale, Thomas Eliot, UVA, white knights | posted in Communication, Hypergamy, Idealizations, Inter-gender Communication, Operative Social Conventions, Psychology, Social Conventions, The Feminine Imperative

November 28, 2014

Rational Male – Q&A

By Rollo Tomassi

SoSuave and Rational Male reader compleks had a few questions about what he read in The Rational Male book. Since I’ve been doing these weekend questions lately I thought these might make for some interesting discussions. Hopefully they wont distract you from family time this holiday weekend, but maybe they make for some interesting dinner table talk.

Just a side note here, I’m deliberately leaving my own answers less detailed than I normally would so as to inspire your owndiscussions:

If The Rational Male was recommended to me as a book about game, I probably wouldn’t have read it. But my friend who put me onto it basically described it as a life altering piece that would forever change the way I viewed the world of inter-gender relations.

Big sell!

So I read it.

Being freshly unplugged I’m still just awakening from that groggy comatose/confused state. However I feel as though I have a slight head start on at least some of the material. Just by sheer chance, rather than any real research into the subject.

I’ve only ever been in one LTR (2years), and it was with the girl I first hooked up with (she let me sleep with her, better hang onto this one!). Anyway, I ended that (5-6years ago) and have been single ever since, with no desire of entering another relationship.

I started ‘spinning plates’ about a year ago, just through a natural realization that any moral/ethical objection was actually completely unfounded. Not just my own (programmed) objections, but objections from the feminine perspective, which I guess are one in the same. I thought I must have been ‘wired’ differently because I had no desire of settling back into a LTR. I actually argued my case on multiple occasions to avoid it happening.

This book was eye opening and definitely shed some light on issues I never would have even thought to question.

If you care to keep reading I’m just going to spew some thoughts/questions having just finished the book. Keep in mind this is from a very rudimentary understanding of the text.

QUESTIONS

1) Does ONEitis best Hypergamy?
We all know a girl (either personally or anecdotally) who is in a committed relationship with some deadbeat. Everyone knows she can do better, but you can’t possibly convince her to leave him. What factors are at play here? Does SHE suffer from ONEitis to the point that her hypergamous tendencies have been shut off?

Or could it be a case of low self esteem and lack of self worth, so much so that she believes he is the best she can do? Or could he actually just be an Alpha male (albeit a bad example of one)? I’m sure there’s a grey area or middle ground here with many factors potentially at play depending on the specific scenarios. But it’s a pretty common scenario and I’d like to hear what you guys think.

I get this one now and then – “What about this one great looking girl I know who’s stuck on this complete douchebag, deadbeat, scumbag, suckup, :insert invective here:?” While I’m not sold on the idea that women ever get ONEitis for a guy, I am thoroughly convinced that women being 1-2 SMV points below a particular man they’re involved with develop a strong attachment for him.

For women, oftentimes that attachment gets paired with the soul-mate myth. I’d separate that “spiritualism” from the ONEitis a man gets for a woman, but it’s still rooted in the same dynamic – the subconscious realization that this person is the ‘best they can do’ in the SMP.

The reason I’d make the separation between how men experience ONEitis and women is due to the concepts either have when it comes to love. Women’s concept of love is rooted in opportunism as a result of their innate drive towards hypergamous optimization. All this ‘deadbeat’ needs do is be perceptually 1-2 levels above her own perceived SMV and the Alpha prerequisite for Hypergamy is met.

Most guys looking from the outside of that perception in realize the guy’s a fuck up (even Alpha Buddah, Corey Worthington is an example), and we can’t understand why that subjectively hot woman can’t use reason and rationality to see that he is, but then, this is due to our own self-perceptions and our mistaken belief that women’s reason can be appealed to.

2) Genuine Inter-Gender friendships?
Okay, so i don’t have the book with me. But I remember reading a sub-section on inter-gender relationships. It didn’t sit well with me when I read it, but it’s probably something I will have to re-read. I have a lot of female friends. Friendships that go back 15 years. Some of these are very close friends in a completely non-sexual way.

I’m closer with some of these girls than I am with many of my male friends.
Initially these friendships may have blossomed based on the fact that I was a shy kid and didn’t have any ‘intimate’ relationships with women till I was 19. But they are now concreted as some of my most valued friendships.

What is your take on Rollos opinion of inter-gender friendships (as outlined in the rational male)?

My take in the book, and still is, is that men and women cannot be friends in the same way and to the same degree of intimacy that same sex friendships develop.

Men and women cannot be friends in the way or to the degree that most people perceive same sex friendship to be. Now the natural response to this is “I have lots of female friends” or “what are you trying to say, I can’t have female friends, they all haffta be enemies?” Which of course is the standard binary (black or white, all or nothing) retort and the trained AFC thinks anyone suggesting that men and women’s relations as friends could be anything less than equitable and fulfilling is just a neanderthal chauvinist thinking. However, they are incorrect – not because you wouldn’t want to actually be a woman’s friend. There are fundamental differences in the ways men and women view friendship within the framework of their own sex and the ways this transfers to the concept of intergender-friendship.

Quite simply there are limitations on the degree to which a friendship can develop between men and women. The easy illustration of this is that at some point your female “friend” will become intimately involved with another male; at which point the quality of what you perceived as a legitimate friendship will decay. It must decay for her intimate relationship to mature. For instance, I’ve been married for 18 years now; were I to entertain a deep friendship with another female (particularly an attractive female) other than my wife, my interest in this woman automatically becomes suspect of infidelity – and of course the same holds true for women with man-friends. This dynamic simply doesn’t exist for same sex friendships because the sexual aspect is inconsequential.

I should add here that the presumption of an equatable degree, character or quality of intergender friendship (platonic) being the same as a same-sex friendship is a product of the same “we’re-all-the-same-with-different-plumbing” naive equalism that deliberately ignores complementary differences between the sexes.

This presumption is actually a vetting mechanism for women’s control of sexual selection and Hypergamy. The social convention that promotes the idea of equitable concepts of friendship only serves women’s imperative of being able to hold the attentions of multiple male orbiters until such a time that she can optimize both sides of her sexual strategy (Alpha Fucks / Beta Bucks). The longer you’re rapt by the idea of an equal intergender friendship, the longer she has to consolidate on whatever side of hypergamy she’s prioritizing at the phase of life she’s in. In other words, the longer you’re in the bullpen, the longer you’ll be a Plan B prospect.

3) Religion vs Evolution vs Habit?
This is a bit abstract. But in terms of a decayed loveless marriage, what would you say are the factors holding these marriages together? Neither party is happy, but they are also unwilling to do anything about it.

One clings to a religious frame as reason to not leave/divorce, as the children are all old enough now that “staying together for the childrens sake” no longer applies.

The other seems completely indifferent and stuck in the routine. Both are mid 50’s and have been married for 30 years and probably just scarred shitless of being alone. But what would you make of this from an ‘unplugged’ point of view. (might be a stretch from the realm of this book, but just curious).

What you’re describing is akin to the phenomenon of Grey Divorce. In the time line from my Preventative Medicine series, I briefly outline what’s known as the 20 year itch – the period of life, usually after 50 around the time a long-married couple becomes ’empty nesters’ and the binding responsibilities of raising children is at, or almost at an end.

It’s around this phase that a reassessment of one’s partner takes place and the prospects of living out the rest of a life with that person gets serious consideration. This is a phase that’s very telling of the overall prospects of marriage as an institution on whole and how either sex really considers their idealistic, loving union from very mater-of-fact practicality, when there is no longer a mutually cooperative goal (childrearing) as the centerpiece of that relationship.

Religion and/or a conviction that children are better raised by an involved two parent (male and female) family who are both mutually invested in the success of their kids is generally a bond that both parties mutually agree to as the cornerstone of their marriage.

Once that goal has been met (or termed out) then that relationship must be reestablished and based on a genuine interest and desire for the other person. For a man this may involve his realizing an understanding of tenets of the Game that he’s, until then, unwittingly been a party to. For women this may be a longing for renewed interest from extra-marital (but not necessarily infidelity) attentions and desire from other men.

It’s kind of telling how men’s idealistic concept of love endures beyond his late-life Epiphany stage. In spite of having experienced the consequences and all-downside risks men face in their prior marriages, it’s still overwhelmingly men who want to remarry and take another shot at that idealism.

It is women, in either their veiled pragmatism or their aging, unrealizable opportunistic concept of love who are more or less indifferent to the prospects of remarriage.

“Most currently divorced or widowed men are open to the idea of remarriage, but women in the same circumstances are less likely to be,” says the report, which draws on figures from a survey it conducted in May and June. Almost two thirds of men either want to remarry or would at least consider it, while fewer than a half of women would.

These stats alone are more than enough to verify my assertions of how either sex hold different concepts of love.

Men still dream of an idealistic love, and women have find precious little use for men beyond the practical when presented with the prospect of having to optimize Hypergamy at an age they are no longer capable of intersexual competition.

111 Comments | tags: Alpha Fucks, alpha widow, Beta Bucks, beta guy, dread game, evolutionary psychology, feminine imperative, feminine psyche, friendships, gender relations, hypergamy, intergender relations, male perspective, manosphere, rational male, rational male year one, rationalmale, red pill, relationship, relationships, Rollo Tomassi, rollo tomassi the rational male blog, sexual market value, sosuave, the rational male, therationalmale | posted in Case Studies, Game, Hypergamy, Idealizations, Inter-gender Communication, Operative Social Conventions, Psychology, Sexual Market Value, The Feminine Imperative, Unplugging

November 23, 2014

Vulnerability

By Rollo Tomassi

One of the most endemic masculine pitfalls men have faced since the rise of feminine social primacy has been the belief that their ready displays of emotional vulnerability will make men more desirable mates for women.

In an era when men are raised from birth to be “in touch with their feminine sides”, and in touch with their emotions, we get generations of men trying to ‘out-emote’ each other as a mating strategy.

To the boys who grow into Beta men, the ready eagerness with which they’ll roll over and reveal their bellies to women comes from a conditioned belief that doing so will prove their emotional maturity and help them better identify with the women they mistakenly believe have a capacity to appreciate it.

What they don’t understand is that the voluntary exposing of ones most vulnerable elements isn’t the sign of strength that the Feminine Imperative has literally bred a belief of into these men.

A reflexive exposing of vulnerability is an act of submission, surrender and a capitulation to an evident superior. Dogs will roll over almost immediately when they acknowledge the superior status of another dog.

Vulnerability is not something to be brandished or proud of. While I do believe the insight and acknowledgement of your personal vulnerabilities is a necessary part of understanding oneself (particularly when it comes to unplugging oneself), it is not the source of attraction, and certainly not arousal, that most men believe it is for women.

From the comfort of the internet and polite company women will consider the ‘sounds-right’ appeal of male vulnerability with regard to what they’re supposed to be attracted to, but on an instinctual, subconscious level, women make a connection with the weakness that vulnerability represents.

A lot of men believe that trusting displays of vulnerability are mutually exclusive of displays of weakness, but what they ignore is that Hypergamy demands men that can shoulder the burden of performance. When a man openly broadcasts his vulnerableness he is, by definition, beginning from a position of weakness.

The problem with idealizing a position of strength is in thinking you’re already beginning from that strength and your magnanimous display of trusting vulnerability will be appreciated by a receptive woman. I strongly disagree with assertions like those of various Purple Pill ‘life coaches’ that open, upfront vulnerability is ever attractive to a woman.

The idea goes that if a man is truly outcome-independent with his being rejected by a woman, the first indicator of that independence is a freedom to be vulnerable with her. The approach then becomes one of “hey, I’m just gonna be my vulnerable self and if you’re not into me then I’m cool with that.”

The hope is that a woman will receive this approach as intended and find something refreshing about it, but the sad truth is that if this were the attraction key its promoters wish it was, every guy ‘just being himself‘ would be swimming in top shelf pussy. This is a central element to Beta Game – the hope that a man’s openness will set him apart from ‘other guys’ – it is common practice for men who believe in the equalist fantasy that women will rise above their feral natures when it comes to attraction, and base their sexual selection on his emotional intelligence.

The fact is that there is no such thing as outcome independence. The very act of your approaching a woman means you have made some effort to arrive at a favorable outcome with her. The fact that you’d believe a woman would even find your vulnerability attractive voids any pretense of outcome independence.

Hypergamy Doesn’t Care About Male Vulnerability

When I wrote Women in Love and the followups, Men in Love and Of Love and War, I described men’s concept of love as ‘idealistic’.

Naturally, simple minds exaggerated this into “men just want an impossible unconditional love” or “they want love like they think their mothers loved them.” For what it’s worth, I don’t believe any rational man with some insight ever expects an unconditional love, but I think it’s important to consider that a large part of what constitutes his concept of an idealized love revolves around being loved irrespective of how he performs for, or merits that love.

From Of Love and War:

We want to relax. We want to be open and honest. We want to have a safe haven in which struggle has no place, where we gain strength and rest instead of having it pulled from us. We want to stop being on guard all the time, and have a chance to simply be with someone who can understand our basic humanity without begrudging it. To stop fighting, to stop playing the game, just for a while.

We want to, so badly.

If we do, we soon are no longer able to.

The concept of men’s idealistic love, the love that makes him the true romantic, begins with a want of freedom from his burden of performance. It’s not founded in an absolute like unconditional love, but rather a love that isn’t dependent upon his performing well enough to assuage a woman’s Hypergamous concept of love.

Oh, the Humanity!

As the true romantics, and because of the performance demands of Hypergamy, there is a distinct want for men to believe that in so revealing their vulnerabilities they become more “human” – that if they expose their frailties to women some mask they believe they’re wearing comes off and (if she’s a mythical “quality woman“™) she’ll excuses his inadequacies to perform to the rigorous satisfaction of her Hypergamy.

The problems with this ‘strength in surrender’ hope are twofold.

First, the humanness he believes a woman will respect isn’t the attraction cue he believes it is. Ten minutes perusing blogs about the left-swiping habits of women using Tinder (or @Tinderfessions) is enough to verify that women aren’t desirous of the kind of “humanness” he’s been conditioned to believe women are receptive to.

In the attraction and arousal stages, women are far more concerned with a man’s capacity to entertain her by playing a role and presenting her with the perception of a male archetype she expects herself to be attracted to and aroused by. Hypergamy doesn’t care about how well you can express your humanness, and primarily because the humanness men believe they’re revealing in their vulnerability is itself a predesigned psychological construct of the Feminine Imperative.

Which brings us to the second problem with ‘strength in surrender’. The caricaturized preconception men have about their masculine identity is a construct of a man’s feminine-primary socialization.

The Masks the Feminine Imperative Makes Men Wear

To explain this second problem it’s important to grasp how men are expected to define their own masculine identities within a social order where the only correct definition of masculinity is prepared for men in a feminine-primary context.

What I mean by this is that the humanness that men wish to express in showing themselves as vulnerable is defined by feminine-primacy.

For the greater part of men’s upbringing and socialization they are taught that a conventional masculine identity is in fact a fundamentally male weakness that only women have a unique ‘cure’ for. It’s a widely accepted manosphere fact that over the past 60 or so years, conventional masculinity has become a point of ridicule, an anachronism, and every media form from then to now has made a concerted effort to parody and disqualify that masculinity. Men are portrayed as buffoons for attempting to accomplish female-specific roles, but also as “ridiculous men” for playing the conventional ‘macho’ role of masculinity. In both instances, the problems their inadequate maleness creates are only solved by the application of uniquely female talents and intuition.

Perhaps more damaging though is the effort the Feminine Imperative has made in convincing generations of men that masculinity and its expressions (of any kind) is an act, a front, not the real man behind the mask of masculinity that’s already been predetermined by his feminine-primary upbringing.

Women who lack any living experience of the male condition have the calculated temerity to define for men what they should consider manhood – from a feminine-primary context. This is why men’s preconception of vulnerability being a sign of strength is fundamentally flawed. Their concept of vulnerability stems from a feminine pretext.

Masculinity and vulnerability are defined by a female-correct concept of what should best serve the Feminine Imperative. That feminine defined masculinity (tough-guy ridiculousness) feeds the need for defining vulnerability as a strength – roll over, show your belly and capitulate to that feminine definition of masculinity – and the cycle perpetuates itself.

“The Mask You Live In” by director Jennifer Siebel Newsom (dual surname noted) is the perfect example of this perpetuation. You have a woman deciding for a larger public in a documentary what the male experience is and then solving the problem (i.e. the tired trope of men needing to get more in touch with their emotions) for men.

Men are ridiculous posers. Men are socialized to wear masks to hide what the Feminine Imperative has decided is their true natures (they’re really girls wearing boy masks). Men’s problems extend from their inability to properly emote like women, and once they are raised better (by women and men who comply with the Feminine Imperative) they can cease being “tough” and get along better with women. That’s the real strength that comes from men’s feminized concept of vulnerability – compliance with the Feminine Imperative.

Ironically Newsom is still oblivious to the fact that she can only create such a documentary in an environment of feminine-primacy. No man could produce this and be taken seriously in our contemporary social climate.

It’s indictment of the definers of what masculinity ought to be that they still characterize modern masculinity (based on the ‘feels’) as being problematic when for generations our feminine-primary social order has conditioned men to associate that masculinity in as feminine-beneficial a context as women would want.

They still rely on an outdated formula which presumes the male experience is inferior, a sham, in comparison to the female experience, and then presumes to know what the male experience really is and offers feminine-primary solutions for it.

From The 16 Commandments of Poon:

IV. Don’t play by her rules

If you allow a woman to make the rules she will resent you with a seething contempt even a rapist cannot inspire. The strongest woman and the most strident feminist wants to be led by, and to submit to, a more powerful man. Polarity is the core of a healthy loving relationship. She does not want the prerogative to walk all over you with her capricious demands and mercurial moods. Her emotions are a hurricane, her soul a saboteur. Think of yourself as a bulwark against her tempest. When she grasps for a pillar to steady herself against the whipping winds or yearns for an authority figure to foil her worst instincts, it is you who has to be there… strong, solid, unshakeable and immovable.

True vulnerability is not a value-added selling point for a man when it comes to approaching and attracting women. As with all things, your vulnerability is best discovered by a woman through demonstration –never explaining those vulnerabilities to her with the intent of appearing more human as the feminine would define it.

Women want a bulwark against their own emotionalism, not a co-equal male emoter whose emotionalism would compete with her own. The belief that male vulnerability is a strength is a slippery slope from misguided attraction to emotional codependency, to overt dependency on a woman to accommodate and compensate for the weaknesses that vulnerability really implies.

I know a lot of guys think that displays vulnerability from a position of Alpha dominance, or strength can be endearing for a woman when you’re engaged in an LTR, but I’m saying that’s only the case when the rare instance of vulnerability is unintentionally revealed. Vulnerability is not a strength, and especially not when a man deliberately reveals it with the expectation of a woman appreciating it as a strength.

At some point in any LTR you will show your vulnerable side, and there’s nothing wrong with that. What’s wrong is the overt attempt to parlay that vulnerability into a strength or virtue that you expect that woman to appreciate, feel endearment over or reciprocate with displays of her own vulnerability for.

A chink in the armor is a weakness best kept from view of those who expect you to perform your best in all situations. If that chink is revealed in performing your best, then it may be considered a strength for having overcome it while performing to your best potential. It is never a strength when you expect it to be appreciated as such.

431 Comments | tags: Alpha Fucks, Beta Bucks, dread game, emotional vulnerability, feminine imperative, feminine psyche, feminized men, gender relations, hypergamy, male perspective, manosphere, plate theory, rational male, rational male year one, rationalmale, red pill, Rollo Tomassi, rollo tomassi the rational male blog, SMV, vulnerability, women | posted in Game, Hypergamy, Idealizations, Inter-gender Communication, Love, Positive Masculinity, The Feminine Imperative, Unplugging

November 21, 2014

Intimacy

By Rollo Tomassi

Bad Painter had a great question a few months ago:

What exactly is intimacy? What does that look like in a Redpill context?

I used to think I knew what intimacy was, in a blue pill way at least. And I have come the realization that intimacy is either not worth shit, or I simply don’t get it. What I do know is that those times were I was informed intimacy had been achieved were not correlated with my feeling comfortable, more secure or less anxious rather it was the opposite.

This is a good question.

In my writing I use the term ‘intimacy’ as a sort of confirmation of a woman’s genuine interest, but I don’t think I’ve ever really defined it.

Strictly from a PUAs sense I would say intimacy is a woman’s sexual availability – in no uncertain terms it’s confirmation of her intimate interest and acceptance of you, but then again, in my own sexual past I’ve had more than one fuck-buddy with whom I really didn’t share any real intimacy with.

In those instances I was (at least perceived) a point or so above these women’s SMV and enjoyed all the Alpha benefits that arrangement afforded me, but beyond the sexual, I had no real interest in any kind of intimacy, shared or not.

In a sense, I actually had a much deeper intimacy with the three fuck-buddies I would bang in my 20’s than the women with whom I’d invested myself with in more “meaningful” relationships. You see, with my fuck-buddies all pretense of caring about what they thought of me personally (and certainly from a long-term investment) was simply a non-issue. I was free to express as much or as little of myself as I wanted because I wasn’t actively qualifying for their future investment in me. My Frame was dominant from the outset – sex-on-call is a pretty strong indicator of dominant Frame.

When I was writing the final edits of the Wait For It? post for the Rational Male book I felt that I needed to add a caveat towards the end of that section to account for a sense of intimacy for red pill men, who by conviction or otherwise, weren’t comfortable with actually fucking a woman to confirm genuine desire.

The point of that being that sex isn’t necessarily a determinant of intimacy, but rather the real desire for that person and the want for a mutual connection (to be consummated by sex) creates a condition of intimacy.

Zenpriest on intimacy:

“When one considers that one must “game” a woman, even your wife, in order to keep her around, then it also means that you must always be operating at a “higher level” than her. It totally negates the whole notion of having a “soul-mate” and means that on many levels, a man will always be alone.”

That is probably the most important lesson a man can ever learn.

Intimacy with a woman is impossible if you have any interest in being her lover. If you are fine with being one of her grrrlfriends, and don’t mind the stupid messed up games women run on them, then you can share to your heart’s content – and will always be on the LJBF ladder.

The fundamental problem with today’s concept of marriage is that it seems both men and women expect their spouse to be all things to them – lover, confidante, helpmate, “soulmate”, co-housekeeper, and co-wage-earner. With so many role demands, it is inevitable that everyone will fail at some of them. That is why the old division of roles worked fairly well for most people – each could concentrate on a few things they were good at, and leave the rest to the other person.

Zenpriest outlines one of the fundamental differences between a forced egalitarian equalist approach to relationships with the natural complementary approach – intimacy between two autonomous, self-sufficient, self-reliant individuals is an impossibility in a sustained relationship. If there is a complete self-sustaining independence between both partners (an eqaulist idealized state) then there is no true purpose for intimacy between the two.

Buena Vista:

I have been the Alpha Fucks, the Beta Bucks, and I have been both at the same time. Civil marriage requires a man, as Deti notes by inverse example, to commit to permanent Game. Permanent Game rarely involves true intimacy. This is the reality of the Plan B Nice Guy in marriage.

Eon:

It seems that intimacy, like love, is only possible if you are greater than (and thus truly independent of) the object of your love.

Softek:

In my opinion, intimacy is unchanged by the red pill. It’s the ideas and perceptions about it that are changed.

There’s a lot of dichotomy: sex, attention, and affection are all thought of as needs, but at the same time, if you’re not getting any of those things, the only way to get them is to take on the mindset of having an abundance of them.

And the guys who seem to have free access to all of those things have access to them because they don’t care if they have access to them or not.

I have to consider these perspectives of intimacy and cross reference it with the Cardinal Rule of Relationships:

In any relationship, the person with the most power is the one who needs the other the least.

Although in an extreme this may seem manipulative to the uninitiated, this balance exists in every relationship irrespective of whether one party is intentionally using that power or not. In fact the most frustrated men you’ll ever meet are those whose women aren’t intentionally using the power his qualifying for her intimacy bestows upon her. He wonders why he can never merit her intimacy, while she, obliviously, wonders why he keeps trying to merit it.

As I illustrated in my fuck-buddies example, I was free to be as intimate as I chose with them because I literally had nothing to lose by doing so. And in that state of outcome indifference they wanted those occasions of intimacy far more than any woman I’d held in a high enough esteem to think I needed to qualify for their intimacy.

However, from a Red Pill perspective, I think the idea that “real” intimacy requires a constant effort of Game is in error. I’ve shared an enduring intimacy with Mrs. Tomassi for 19 years because Game and Red Pill awareness are simply part of who I am now. Game, if that’s even the right word for it, becomes effortless once you’ve made Red Pill truths an intrinsic part of who you are.

I still think Buena’s right though, permanent Game rarely involves true intimacy, but only if that Game is a constant act a man feels he needs to make believable to sustain his relationship. This then comes full circle to wanting to fulfill Blue Pill idealisms of intimacy with applied Red Pill awareness.

Learn this now, you will never achieve contentment or emotional fulfillment in a blue pill context with red pill awareness.

Most men’s concept of intimacy, like love, is shaped by his Blue Pill conditioning. The key to real intimacy is understanding how it can grow and be sustained in a Red Pill context. Chasing after an intimacy defined by the feminine suffers from the same misdirection of presuming women’s concept of love (opportunism) agrees with men’s (idealism).

So, weekend discussion questions:

How do you define intimacy?

Do you think men and women share the same concept and definition of intimacy?

Is ‘true’ intimacy only achievable when you have nothing to lose and nothing invested in a woman?

End Note: I’m well aware that intimacy has far broader inferences than just the relations between men and women, and I’m not attempting to pigeonhole the entire concept. There is intimacy with your family, your God, your pets, yourself and a variety of other things. However, even in those instances there is still a power dynamic at play.

196 Comments | tags: Alpha Fucks, alpha widow, Beta Bucks, blue pill, dread game, feminine imperative, hypergamy, intimacy, male perspective, manosphere, Men and women, rational male, rational male year one, rationalmale, red pill, relationship, Rollo Tomassi, rollo tomassi the rational male blog, sexual market value, SMV, the rational male, therationalmale, women | posted in Idealizations, Inter-gender Communication, Love, Sexual Market Value, Unplugging

November 2, 2014

Alpha Tells

By Rollo Tomassi

For as long as I’ve been writing in the manosphere, the definition of “what is Alpha?” has been the number one point of contention I’ve had to state and restate the most often. I’m not going to rehash this now as I have several posts on the nature of Alpha already linked in the sidebar, so if you’re looking for my take on Alpha that’s where to find it.

However, to lead in to today’s post I need to address the basis of what I believe are the most common misunderstandings about the term Alpha.

Well before the inception of this blog, in the early beginnings of what would evolve into the manosphere there was a need of terminology to describe the more abstract concepts developing in the ‘community’. Some of these analogies and terms are still with the manosphere today, others have morphed into more useful abstractions; Alpha Widows, Hypergamy (in its true nature), the Feminine Imperative, even Red Pill awareness are all examples of established terms or analogies for understood abstractions. Among these are also the concepts of a man being Alpha and Beta.

From The Unbearable Triteness of Hating at CH:

5. Etymology Hate

Hater: Your definition of an alpha male is false. In the animal kingdom, the alpha male is leader of the pack, not a cad/badboy/jerk who pumps and dumps women.

Isn’t it just like a nerd to get hysterical over the appropriation of a narrow-sense scientific term to conveniently illustrate broader truths about men and women.

One of the most common disconnects men encounter with the Red Pill for the first time is equating the term Alpha with its usage in describing the mating habits of Lions, Wolves or Silver Back Gorillas. It’s easy to ridicule or simply dismiss a valid, but uncomfortable, Red Pill truth when you’re simplistically comfortable in defining ‘Alpha Male’ in literal etymological terms.

This is the first resistance blue pill men claim they have with the Red Pill. They have no problem understanding and using abstractions for blue pill concepts they themselves are ego-invested in, but challenge that belief-paradigm with uncomfortable red pill truths and their first resort is to obstinately define Alpha (as well as Hypergamy) in as narrow, binary and literal a sense as they can muster.

“Get in Touch with Your ~~Feminine~~ Beta Side”

The next most common misunderstanding comes from conflating the abstractions of Alpha and Beta with masculine and feminine traits. In this (often deliberate) misdirection, the concepts of being Alpha or Beta become synonymous with being masculine or feminine. This is the personal basis of Alpha and Beta many Purple Pill advocates (really blue pill apologists) comfortably redefine for themselves, to suit themselves.

This purple pill conflation is really just a comforting return the the curse of Jung – anima & animus – if the complete man is an even mix of Alpha and Beta, masculine and feminine, then all the worst aspects of his “betaness” can’t be all bad, and he reinterprets what really amounts to a complete androgyny as “being the best balance”.

Unfortunately, and as blue pill chumps will later attest, the feminine expects to find its paired balance in the masculine, not an equalist idealization of both in the same man. Thus women, on a limbic level, expect men to be Men.

This one of the missives of an equalitarian mindset; that an individualized, egalitarian balance of masculine and feminine aspects in two independent people should replace the natural complementary interdependence of masculine and feminine attributes in a paired balance that humans evolved into.

What purple pill temperance really equates to is a 21st century return to the 20th century feminized meme “men need to get in touch with their feminine sides”… or else risk feminine rejection. 60+ years of post sexual revolution social engineering has put the lie to what an abject failure this concept has been.

What they fail to grasp is that an Alpha mindset is not definitively associated with masculine attributes. There are plenty of high-functioning, masculine men we would characterize as Alpha based on our perception of them in many aspects of life, who nonetheless are abject supplicating Betas with regard to how they interact with, and defer to women.

Whether that disconnect is due to a learned, Beta deference to the feminine (White Knighting), some internalized fear of rejection, or just a natural predisposition to be so with women, isn’t the issue; what matters is that the abstraction of Alpha isn’t an absolute definitive association with the masculine.

Likewise, Beta attributes are neither inherently feminine. As has been discussed ad infinitum in the manosphere, 80%+ of modern men have been conditioned (or otherwise) to exemplify and promote a feminine-primary, supportive Beta role for themselves and as many other men they can convince to identify more with the feminine.

The Beta mindset isn’t so much one of adopting a feminine mindset as it is a deference to, and the support of, a feminine-primary worldview.

The reason purple pill (watered down red pill) ideology wants to make the association of Alpha = Masculine, Beta = Feminine is because the “get in touch with your feminine side” Beta attributes they possess in spades can be more easily characterized as “really” being Alpha if it helps make him the more androgynously acceptable male he mistakenly believes women are attracted to (if not directly aroused by).

Alpha Tells

From jf12:

The sexual alphaness of a male towards a female is exhibited by her wanting to please him, and the sexual betaness of a male is exhibited by him needing to please her. A man’s alphaness obviously and definitionally does not cause her to more require him to please her (i.e. alphaness does not rub off like that). And also, betaness is not transferrable, no matter how much we betas wish that our women-pleasing caused women to want to please us.

Moreover, the social dominance of a male in a male hierarchy is barely correlated with his sexual alphaness, and certainly not causal. There are far too many counterexamples, such as Bill Gates, Napoleon Bonaparte, Horatio Nelson, and the list is very very long.

However, and this is a key sociologically empirical point, the social dominance of a *female* human (the best kind!) in a *female* human hierarchy is extremely correlated, in this precise way: A woman to whom women cater to will 99.9% of the time demand to be catered to by her man. This is why women believe man-pleasing women (I admit there are some) are “lesser”. It is also why men (e.g. me) who have tended to be mated to females who are socially dominant in a female hierarchy are invariably betas. It’s simply false that female-dominant women tend to choose men who demand pleasing.

What critics of an Alpha/Beta dichotomy conveniently sweep under the conversational carpet is that the dichotomy they want to debate only exists in their convenient, personal interpretations of Alpha or Beta mean to them.

From a male perspective we can endlessly debate (from our own personal biases) what we believe constitutes an Alpha state (remember, an abstract term, stay with me here) and the expectations of which we think women should respond to according to those expectation. But it’s women’s instinctive behaviors around Alpha men (or men they contextually perceive so) that provide us with the tells as to how she perceives a man’s Alpha or Beta status.

For as much as we believe women should respond to our definition of Alpha – and despite how women will explain they agree with those self-prescribed definitions – as always, it is their behaviors when in the presence of, or in a relationship with men they perceive as being Alpha (or of higher sexual market value than themselves if you prefer) that they bely their true, instinctual recognitions of Alpha.

In a social environment where men are conditioned to believe that women are as equal, rational agents as men, the belief men put their faith into is that women will appreciate their intrinsic qualities and base their sexual selectivity upon a man’s virtue, bearing, intelligence, humor, and any number of attractive intrinsic qualities. However, the truth of what women base their sexual selectivity upon (arousal) is far more evident in their instinctual, unconditioned behavior when around Alpha men – as well as men’s instinctual sensitivity to that behavior.

There are many examples of this Alpha reactive behavior. I’ll make an attempt to illustrate a few of them here, but I expect there’ll be many more offered in the comment thread an I’ll encourage a discussion of the behaviors that serve as Alpha tells. Rossy/Heartiste has made a sport with his ongoing “spot the Alpha” series of posts in which he analyzes a picture or video of a woman’s reaction to a man who she is obviously has an Alpha interest in as her body language and subcommunications suggest. (h/t to CH for today’s image)

The common criticism of these images is that red pill men would read too much into these displays, but the underlying message in that criticism is rooted in understanding and willfully ignoring what our instinctual perceptions of them are. We know Alpha when we see it, but need an explanation to protect our own ego’s Alpha assessment of ourselves.

The Real Selection

For all the delighted ego ’empowerment’ of women boasting they are the sexual selectors in this life, there is still a nervous uncertainty about being found acceptable themselves to an Alpha lover of higher SMV status than they might otherwise merit. This is where the illusions of an assortive mating model break down for women. If feminine-primary sexual selection were the only element to mating there would be no need for the behaviors women are subject to in seeking the approval from men they perceive as Alpha.

There’s a look, an attitude and a presence women will give to Men for whom they have a natural deference to. I don’t just mean blatant sexual subcommunications like casually biting her lower lip, or the hair twirling that’s almost cliché now. It goes beyond the sexual into a kind of meta-attraction/arousal. While the sexual urgency for an Alpha is strong and manifests in a woman’s forwardness toward him, the meta-attraction is both of submission and a subconscious desire for his approval of her.

Men predisposed to a Beta mindset also display many of these same behavioral cues with the women they hope will appreciate them in the same fashion a woman does for a Man that her hindbrain instinctually knows is of a higher SMV. In Beta men we see these behaviors as evidence of “clinginess” or “neediness” and is an identifiable Beta tell; but in women this natural and unprovoked leaning in to a Man, this desire to submit for his approval, is a positive indicator of Alpha attraction.

This is why, as third party observers, we instinctually find such behavior in men distasteful; we subliminally sense a complementary imbalance between the man and woman.

When a woman makes an unforced effort to please a man with subtle words, unintentional wide-eyed contact, and body positioning / posture you’re dealing with a woman who is compelled to defer to you as Alpha.

That isn’t to say this can’t be faked. In fact strippers, good ones at least, are not just physically arousing, or more sexualized, but are in tune with the deficit most men feel when it comes to this Alpha deference. Beyond just the sexual aspect, one thing that makes strippers so enticing and seductive is that the majority of men are simply unused to the fawning affections and Alpha interest (albeit feigned) of any woman, much less an attractive one.

This is also one reason men become so prone to ONEitis both inside and outside this contrived, transactional, sort of attraction. Men are the True Romantics, they want to believe a woman’s sincerity in her Alpha deference to him.

Does the girl you’re interested in come to you, or do you go to her?

I’ve emphasized the importance of establishing and maintaining Frame for years now, but I sometimes wonder if the importance of holding Frame isn’t lost on most men.

To an equalist mindset this Frame establishment seems like I’m advocating men be domineers of their relationships and a man rely on some dark manipulative psychology to enforce his will in that relationship. That’s not what I’m suggesting for the simple reason that it’s too effort consuming, and genuine desire is unsustainable within that constant effort. Maintaining Frame demands a voluntary, uncoerced, desired compliance.

What I’m suggesting is that men simply not invest themselves in women whose Alpha interest in them is mitigated by doubt or an obvious SMV imbalance. This is difficult for most men as it conflicts with our want for an idealized romance with a woman – a want for a love that requires a mutual definition with a woman lacking the capacity to realize this with him. And it’s within that idealized desire men lose Frame and excuse the behaviors of Alpha deference.

The Medium IS the Message

As I’ve written in the past, the Medium IS the Message with women. On some level of consciousness men instinctually understand their relative status with a woman based on the behaviors she directs toward him.

Is she affectionate without being prompted or only when circumstance makes your comfort needed for her?

Is Amused Mastery an easy default for you, or does she resist even playful attempts at it?

Does she initiate sex with you, or is your provocation only ever the precursor to sex?

Is sex even a priority for her (with you)?

Does she make efforts to make things special for you (you both) or is your relationship one of her grading your efforts in qualifying for her Alpha approval of you?

What most guys think are ‘mixed messages’ or confusing behavior coming from a woman is simply due to their inability (for whatever reason) to make an accurate interpretation of why she’s behaving in such a manner. Usually this boils down to a guy getting so wrapped up in a girl that he’d rather make concessions for her behavior than see it for what it really is. In other words, it’s far easier to call it ‘mixed messages’ or fall back on the old chestnut of how fickle and random women are, when in fact it’s simply a rationale to keep themselves on the hook, so to speak, because they lack any real, viable, options with other women in their lives. A woman that has a high interest level in a guy has no need (and less motivation) to engage in behaviors that would compromise her status with him. Women of all ILs will shit test, and men will pass or fail accordingly, but a test is more easily recognizable when you consider the context in which they’re delivered.

Are you making psychological concessions with a woman who’s never displayed an Alpha deference to you?

189 Comments | tags: Alpha and Beta, Alpha Fucks, Alpha Male, alpha state, Alpha Widows, amused mastery, best of rational male, Beta Bucks, blue pill, dread game, evolutionary psychology, gender relations, hypergamy, intergender relations, iron rule, manosphere, masculine and feminine, Napoleon Bonaparte, rational male, rational male year one, rationalmale, red pill, Rollo Tomassi, rollo tomassi the rational male blog, sexual market value, SMV, social conventions, the rational male, therationalmale | posted in Alpha, Foundations, Game, Idealizations, Love, Sexual Market Value

September 23, 2014

The Burden of Performance

By Rollo Tomassi

From Love Story:

Men are expected to perform. To be successful, to get the girl, to live a good life, men must do. Whether it’s riding wheelies down the street on your bicycle to get that cute girl’s attention or to get a doctorate degree to ensure your personal success and your future family’s, Men must perform. Women’s arousal, attraction, desire and love are rooted in that conditional performance. The degree to which that performance meets or exceeds expectations is certainly subjective, and the ease with which you can perform is also an issue, but perform you must.

One of the most fundamental misconceptions plugged-in men have with regard to their intersexual relations with women is the issue of performance. Back in late March of this year I read an interesting article from Roosh, Men are nothing more than clowns to the modern woman and it struck me that although I certainly agreed with him in the context he presented it, there was more to the ‘entertainment’ factor than simple amusement on the part of women.

Women don’t seek out comfort or stability in men anymore—they seek entertainment. They seek distraction. They seek hedonistic pleasure. This is why provider men (beta males) are so hopelessly failing today to secure the commitment of beautiful women in their prime, and this is why even lesser alpha males fail to enter relationships with women beyond a few bangs. Once the entertainment or novelty you provide her declines—and it inevitably will—she moves on to something or someone else. In essence, the only way you can keep a girl is if you adopt the mentality of a soap opera writer, adding a cliffhanger to the end of each episode that keeps a woman interested when being a good man no longer does.

After reading this I tried to imagine myself being a recently unplugged man or a guy just coming to terms with the uncomfortable truths of the red pill and learning that all of the comforting “just be yourself and the right girl will come along” rhetoric everyone convinced me of had been replaced by a disingenuous need to transform oneself into a cartoon character in order to hold the attentions of an average girl.

That’s kind of depressing, especially when you consider the overwhelming effort and personal insight necessary in realizing red pill awareness. Roosh later tempered this with How to be a good clown and Clown Game vs. Good Man Game, and although he clarifies things well in Game terms, the root of the frustration most guys will have with the ‘clown factor’ is that, in these terms and in this context, their performance isn’t who they are.

In this environment it’s easy to see why the MGTOW option seems like an understandable recourse for red pill men. It’s a very seductive temptation to think that a man can simply remove himself from the performance equation with regards to women. I’ll touch on this later, but what’s important here is understanding the performance game men are necessarily born into. Like it or not, play it or not, as a man you will always be evaluated on your performance (or the perception of it).

I think what trips a lot of men up early in their red pill transformation is sort of a sense of indignation towards women that they should have to “be someone they’re not” and play a character role that simply isn’t who they are in order to hold a woman’s interest. I covered this idea in Have A Look and developed how women are like casting agents when it comes to the men they hope will entertain them.

This was really about a sexual context when I went into it, but as I read Roosh’s original article I began to consider that women’s “character” role they expect men to perform changes as their own phases of maturity dictates and their SMV can realistically demand for that phase. In other words the “characters” they want performed in their Party Years will be different than the ones they want after their Epiphany Phase, which may be different than the character they want for their mid-life years.

How realistic it is for men to be that character becomes less and less relevant as women are socialized to expect disappointment from men actually living up to the characters they’re conditioned to believe they should realistically be entitled to at various stages of their maturity.

Living Up

Right about now I’m sure various male readers are thinking, “fuck this, I’m gonna be who I am and any girl who can’t appreciate me for me is low quality anyway.” This will probably piss you off, but this is exactly the blue pill mentality most ‘just be yourself‘ Betas adopt for themselves.

It’s actually a law of power to despise what you can’t have, and deductively it makes sense, but the fact still remains, as a man you will always be evaluated by your performance. So even with a ‘fuck it, I’ll just be me’ mindset you’re still being evaluated on how well ‘you are just you’.

The simple fact is that you must actually be your performance – it must be internalized. In truth, you already are that performance whether you dictate and direct that, or you think you can forget it and hope your natural, undirected performance will be appreciated by women (and others), but regardless, women will filter for hypergamous optimization based on how well you align with what they believe they are entitled to in a man in the context of their own perception of their SMV.

Looks, talent, tangible benefits and other core prerequisites may change depending on the individual woman, but to be a man is to perform. Even if you’re a self-defined man going his own way who enjoys escorts to fulfill his needs, you still need to perform in order to earn the money to enjoy them.

It Doesn’t Get Easier, You Get Better

For Men, there is no true rest from performance. To believe so is to believe in women’s mythical capacity for a higher form of empathy which would perdispose them to overriding their innate hypergamous filtering based on performance.

Women will never have the same requisites of performance for themselves for which they expect men to maintain of themselves. Hypergamy demands a constant, subliminal reconfirmation of a man’s worthiness of her commitment to him, so there is never a parallel of experience.

Women will claim men “require” they meet some physical standard (i.e. performance) and while generally true, this is still a performance standard men have of women, not one they hold for themselves. There simply is no reciprocal dynamic or prequalification of performance for women, and in fact for a man to even voice the idea that he might qualify a woman for his intimacy he’s characterized as judgmental and misogynistic.

Social conventions like this are established to ensure women’s hypergamous sexual strategy is the socially dominant one. Expecting a woman to perform for a man is an insult to her ‘prize status’ as an individual.

From a humanistic perspective there’s a want for a rational solution to this performance requirement, but as I’ve outlined in prior posts, appeals to women’s reason are no insulation against the subliminal influences of hypergamy.

I read many a ‘dating coach’ who’s approach is complete honesty and full disclosure in the hopes that a like-minded, rational woman will naturally appreciate a man’s forthrightness, but this presupposes a preexisting equal playing field where subliminal influences are overridden by mutual rationalism.

The real hope is that women will drop their innate hypergamous performance requisites in appreciation of this vulnerable, inadequate honesty.

What they sweep under the rug is that you cannot appeal to a woman’s reason or sentiment to genuinely forgive a deficit in a man’s performance. Love, reason, both demand a preexisting mutual appreciation in a common context, but neither love nor reason alleviate the necessity of performance for a man.

Women simply are not motivated to compromise hypergamy on their own accord. They will not be reasoned into accommodating a situation of mutual needs by overt means.

It is a Man’s capacity to perform and demonstrate (never explicate) higher value that motivates women to accommodate mutual needs in a relationship – whether that’s a same night lay or a 50 year marriage.

Demonstrating Higher Value

I get the impression that DHV tends to get a bad rap both from blue pill critics as well as red pill aware men. A lot of that gets wrapped up in technique and practice. It’s easy to dismiss this concept as posturing or bluster, but DHV, as a principle isn’t defined by egotistical measures or how well a guy can ‘showboat’ himself around women.

A lot of DHV is unintentional. In fact the best most genuine forms of DHV are exhibited when a Man doesn’t realize he’s actually performing in a way that demonstrate his higher value. This can be as simple as walking int a room in the right context or environment. Even humility can be DHV in the proper context.

What I’m driving at here is that after reading all of this you might think I’m saying you need to be superhuman to qualify for women’s performance standards, and again that’s kind of depressing – that’s not what I’m getting at. A woman’s performance standards are dependent on many varied contexts and according to the priorities she places on the type of character she finds both arousing and attractive and according to what her conditions dictate for her.

It’s not how you perform so much as that you perform. Ambition and personal drive to perform and be the best and most successful you you can be may have absolutely nothing to do with your intention of attracting a woman, but you are still performing and you will be evaluated on that performance.

DHV or DLV is performance whether intentional or not. You cannot remove yourself from this performance equation. You can cease to direct your part in this performance, but until you die you cannot exit the game.

189 Comments | tags: alpha widow, beautiful women, dread game, gender relations, hypergamy, manosphere, performance, personal interpretations, rational male, rationalmale, red pill, Rollo Tomassi, sexual market value, SMV, social conventions, the rational male, women | posted in Foundations, Game, Hypergamy, Idealizations, Unplugging

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