Category Archives: Positive Masculinity

November 27, 2012

Boys will be Boys

By Rollo Tomassi

There is an interesting subset of men that has evolved in our feminized social environment over the past 60+ years. I can’t quite refer to them as Betas since that seems too broad, and though Roissy’s initial coining of the term “Herb” (as in ‘herbivorous’) seems useful, these ‘men’ are something belonging to that set, but actively embracing and advocating for the feminine imperative. “Vichy Males” is probably a good starting point; men who are so invested in the conditioning of the feminine imperative that, unaware of how it affects their own interests as men, actively collaborate with and promote the feminine imperative’s social reengineering of masculinity.

These ‘men’ are not the oblivious blue-pill guys that the manosphere takes efforts to unplug from the feminine Matrix. They are the advocates of gender realignment, the male feminists, the men whose perspective it is that a more “equal” society is one in which masculinity is redefined to better convenience the feminine imperative. These are the ‘men’ who emphatically define “healthy masculinity” in a feminine framework where the results of testosterone and all of the innate traits that make one male are character flaws that disturb a feminine defined ‘equality’.

For the better part, Vichy Males are more or less oblivious to the feminine imperative that’s conditioned them. Whether this is a willful denial or simple indifferent ignorance is debatable, but in either case these men take the identification schema of Beta Game to the logical extreme. In some instances I’m certain the most successful amongst them make a livable wage from their dependent feminist evangelism (the feminine imperative rewards only the most Alpha-like crusaders who tow the feminist line), but for most, their advocacy is really an extreme form of identification-for-intimacy Game. In a world of White Knights, to seem unique requires a greater devotion to the feminine imperative.

Social Engineering

I had originally intended to use The Frisky’s most recent ‘feminizing boys’ article as my example for today’s post. It certainly raised the hackles of a few commenters from yesterday’s Chauvinism post, but unfortunately it’s too easy a target – it’s an incomplete beginning that doesn’t show the inevitable result of the feminization of boys. Women are encouraged to teach boys to be more like girls, teach them to pee sitting down, embrace their emotionality, cry on demand, and basically act less like little boys have an innate knack for, etc., but this is only half the picture. Those boys grow up into the gender-confused feminized men women later despise.

For the other half of the picture I present to you the most recent gender-fare from (once again) The Atlantic - The End of Violent, Simplistic, Macho Masculinity. Kudos to The Atlantic for its gender neutrality in allowing a Vichy Male like Thomas Page McBee to join the ranks of Kate Bollick, Hannah Rosin and Sandra Tsing Loh for their monthly serving of feminist triumphalism. McBee and his male-apologist sympathizers are the end result of “teaching boys to be feminists.”

While McBee is barking up the Hugo Schwyzer tree, this article reads like an exposé into the mental reasoning of a fully feminized Vichy Male. It’s more or less what I’ve come to expect from masculine apologists but I thought I would highlight the parts of it that give us an insight into the conditioning of the feminine imperative.

From the opening sentence we get an overview of how the Vichy Male’s perspective aligns with his feminine assimilation.

Boys aren’t supposed to do a lot of things: show fear or pain, compassion or tenderness; but of course men feel a full range of emotions, whether we’re “supposed to” or not.

There’s never a question about the dynamic of boy’s / men’s expectations of restraining their emotionality. The main presumption that the feminine imperative indoctrinates in its adherents is that gender is a social construct, and as such the “supposed to” aspect of this assertion is really a presumed societal expectation. Not even an afterthought is given to the idea that perhaps men aren’t wired for emotions in the same way as women. This of course might give pause to the idea of a blank-slate people-are-people equalism so the imperative conditions those questions away from any critical analysis.

However, even if this were the case, and gender was a social construct, might there have been a good reason that boys were  taught in the past to suppress their emotionality and rely more on rationalism and determination to endure pain? Perhaps it led to better, more pragmatic decision making? Again, these are question the imperative can’t afford to have concrete answers for.

The other is more personal. I know that if you are a man, you’re reading this with awareness or resistance, that how you interpret these men says a lot about the type of man you are. It’s easy to pretend to be objective, to describe a movement as if I’m not invested in its outcome, but as I researched this story I realized that I couldn’t tell the truth without exposing all of it: healthy masculinity as a sea-change, and why I want my own counter-narrative to be part of the turning tide.

Here we have a man parroting the standard male-shaming the feminine imperative conditions into women. The circular argument goes like this; if you’re a Man with a different interpretation of masculinity and this redefinition offends you it’s because you are insecure in your masculinity. This is a standard trope feminism has bred into the past 4 generation of men and women – “if you don’t agree with the feminized interpretation of masculinity it’s due to your insecurity in your own masculinity.”  Ergo, you’re less of a man for disavowing the interpretation. And this interpretation of ‘healthy masculinity’ is one which more perfectly aligns with, and doesn’t inconvenience, the feminine imperative.

He points to data: Generation Y men do more housework and are more involved fathers than any generation in American history. They also have more cross-sex friendships, which Kimmel suggests means that young men see women increasingly as true peers—equals—in life and work.

Again, more feminine-centric presumptions about male intent. Nowhere is there a consideration given towards motive or the socio-economic variables that may have led to these data.

He lists some of the words the men at the summit used to describe healthy masculinity: nurturing, kind, positive, good, caring, courage, confident, inclusive, courageous, honest, accountability, and respect. Not your father’s Marlboro man—but maybe closer to the reality of your father. Which is the point. “We have an exercise we do where we ask men and boys to name the strongest man in their life and then talk about what it is that makes him strong,” McGann says. “Most of the time, it’s their father or a counselor or a minister, and the ways in which they care for them. Or it might be about integrity, or it might be about their willingness to stand up for what they believe in, their compassion, all those kind of qualities—which are much more qualities of character. Those are always the things that we’ve associated with healthy masculinity.”

Here we see the feminine imperative evident in the qualities that should make for a “healthy masculinity.” Dropping a few of the more subjective qualities on this list, you could easily describe women having a “healthy femininity” with these characteristics. The aspersion of the ‘Marlboro Man’ is simply one more caricature of masculinity that’s been a go-to derision of the feminine imperative for decades.

The main problem with the Vichy Male characterization of a new “healthy masculinity” is that their comparative definition of ‘traditional masculinity’ has been so distorted by the feminine imperative over the past 60 years that it’s become a straw man parody that’s easily knocked down. The former “masculinity” they oppose is the ridiculous, beer swilling, fart joke, boob mesmerized, borderline abusive masculinity that’s been reinforced in pop-culture courtesy of feminization. A masculinity that requires a uniquely feminine correction is the mental image these men cling to while establishing themselves as the perfected, new and feminized version of masculinity. In other words, masculinity can only be positive in a feminine defined social framework.

The toxic narratives of unhealthy masculinity are often unquestioned, and they start very young. “There are no four more depressing words in educational policy circles then ‘boys will be boys,’ ” Kimmel says. “Because when do we say that? We say that when we throw up our hands in resignation that we can’t do anything. Why don’t we say ‘boys will be boys’ when a man wins the Noble Peace Prize?

Because doing so would give unique credit to masculinity as being the source of a man’s ability to achieve a Nobel Peace Prize through sheer determination – and that’s a credit the ‘equalist’ agenda can’t afford to have men think about. Boys will be boys and truly, despite the feminized bleating, women wouldn’t want it any other way. Boys will take risks, boys will injure themselves, boys will leave the security of the safe side of the sidewalk their mothers forbid them to leave, because that’s what boys do.

Compassion might be a place to start, for yourself and others. “Trying to hold men accountable connects to unhealthy masculinity,” McGann says. “I’ve said for years that one of the things about unhealthy masculinity, or dominant stories of masculinity, is that men are socialized to push past pain, ignore pain, like it doesn’t harm you in any kind of way, you’re not vulnerable. If you can’t really recognize and experience your own pain, then how can you do it with anybody else?”

Men push past pain for good reason – it is the key to growth into a healthy maturity. Men push past pain, not just a social expectation from other men, but because of the same expectations from women. It’s by necessity, not social pressure.Very few men fail to recognize their own pain, but a feminine mindset determined to vilify masculinity would rather we believe that not expressing that pain is always a net negative. The irony this mindset is oblivious of is that at the first mention of a man’s pain, at the first expression of his own self-concern he is accused of bitterness. “You must’ve been really burned to think what you think.” This is the root of the Male Catch 22.

Like a lot of guys, I had a shitty dad. He was uneasy in himself, abusive, shut down. Being a guy to me seemed located in his hamstrung emotions, his uncomfortable displays of drunken vulnerability. I remember him singing Frank Sinatra in this mournful voice, how I pitied and hated him, how I never wanted to become him.

“No Luke, I am your Father.”

“That’s not true!,….THAT”S IMPOSSIBLE!!”

I suppose I should mention here that virtually all Vichy Males are Promise Keeper.

Whether or not men know the phrase “healthy masculinity,” signs of changes are blooming everywhere. I think about Kimmel, who says the roots of the shifting gender roles are a movement away from rigidity. Feminism allowed women to unlock the parts of themselves society kept from them, and now men are doing the same. He posits that a cure for what ails us that sounds familiar to me, the work I’ve done to become my own man embodied: “I don’t see us as becoming a more masculine culture or a more feminine culture, I see us becoming a more balanced culture,” he says. Look at the last election: men helped vote women into power all over the country, including a transgender woman in New Hampshire.

Mark Minter, paging Mark Minter, please report to the comments section, thank you. One element I find interesting in feminist men is a desire to experience the same so-called liberation from a masculine gender role assignment that feminist women claim to have. It’s as if the feminine identification isn’t complete unless they can tap into that same gender straightjacket indignation release women do – they can’t be ‘equals’ unless they suffer a similar (albeit self-constructed) gender role release. This is the level of conviction Vichy Males strive for.

One part I do agree with though, “Feminism allowed women to unlock the parts of themselves society kept from them, and now men are doing the same.” The tragic irony of women’s innate Hypergamy’s unfettered release on men is entirely lost on McBee. And yes, Men, Alpha Men, are now released from the same previous constrictions.

Men are embracing a more nurturing fatherhood with zeal, from Michael Chabon to the super-engaged, former stay-at-home dad Chris on Up All Night. And Modern Family‘s dinosaur patriarch, Jay, is as old-school as they come, especially next to his touchy-feely son-in-law, Phil. In a reversal of past tropes, however, Jay’s blundering inability to connect to his feelings makes him the joke to be tolerated and Phil’s the man of the moment. More techy than macho, he’s thoroughly nonplussed when he realizes he’s on a gay date just as he’s being kissed.

As I stated above, the only model for masculinity these ‘new men’ have for comparative purposes are the distorted archetypes of masculinity that a feminized pop-culture and media has characterized for them, and here we have the perfect example of this. When all you’ve ever had representative of a masculine archetype has been ridiculous cartoon characters of men, it’s not such a daunting task to “be a better man” than them. In fact, the episode McBee describes here not only props up a “dinosaur patriarch” archetype, but also knocks him down with a character he identifies with in being the ‘new’ definition of masculinity. Yay, for team ‘new man’!

You can read the article in its entirety if you have the stomach, but it essentially ends on the same note as my last highlight here.

Positive Masculinity

Our popular conscious perspective of masculinity has been remolded by the feminine imperative and fed back to the likes of Vichy Males like McBee here. I wish I could say he was an outlier, but he’s not. He’s one more crab in the barrel pulling frustrated, confused and conflicted men back down into feminization. Maybe unwittingly, maybe as a form of Beta Game, but men endorsing and evangelizing the feminine imperative are the most effective ambassadors of the imperative. It’s men, and particularly ones other men respect, who make the best tools for feminization – in fact men’s participation is an integral part of the imperative’s effectiveness in social engineering.

One aspect of McBee’s misgivings I do agree with is the need for a Positive Masculinity. A masculinity not predicated on the social interests of the feminine imperative. One defined by uniquely male standards that embrace our natural capacities for focused agression, that accepts rather than derides the effects of testosterone as a constructive (and yes, destructive) part of our natures. We need a masculinity that recognizes women’s innate arousal and attraction to it as something that sets men apart by its difference from women, not one that attempts to homogenize and androgynize it to be more palatable to women. A masculinity that is respected for being the predominant driving force in what our species has become as a result of it. A masculinity that is unapologetically dominant and beneficent.

We don’t need men to get in touch with their feminine sides, feminization has reinforced this for far too long. Masculinity isn’t about ‘men behaving badly’ in a feminine context, nor is it about parodies of men rediscovering “manly pursuits” pre-manufactured by what the feminine imperative laughs at men for.

Masculinity is about Boys being Boys, and Men being Men.

102 comments | posted in Hypergamy, Inter-gender Communication, Operative Social Conventions, Positive Masculinity, The Feminine Imperative, The Matrix

November 26, 2012

Chauvinism

By Rollo Tomassi

chau·vin·ism

1: excessive or blind patriotism — compare jingoism
2: undue partiality or attachment to a group or place to which one belongs or has belonged
3: an attitude of superiority toward members of the opposite sex; also :behavior expressive of such an attitude. Compare male chauvinism.

I had an interesting conversation over the long weekend about my Shallow post with a few red pill friends. The topic of NLP (neurolinguistic programing) and how select terms are ‘owned’ by the feminine imperative was discussed. It’s interesting to dissect how the terminologies of certain feminine social conventions have entered our contemporary lexicon as the ‘official’ definitions we simply take for granted in our blue-pill ignorance.

The subjective nature of terms like “Shallow” and “Superficial” are easy examples of this feminine repurposing, but then you get to “Misogynist”, “Sexist” and of course “Chauvinist” and you can see how these ‘official’ terms evolved into what they are today. In fact, “Sexism” was so universally defined as male-specific, Websters needed a new word to describe a female form of sexism, “reverse-sexism.” And of course “Misandrist” still gets the red underscore of a misspelled word in my WordPress spellchecker.

Chauvinists

The problem I see is in defining ‘Chauvinism’, particularly as opposed to ‘Misogyny’ – they’re practically synonyms in the lexicon of the feminine imperative. The biggest fallacy I think most AFC guys and all women I’ve read write on Chauvinism subscribe to is that women own this term. It is absolutely possible to describe a woman as a Chauvinist, but in a modern context it has been uniquely defined in the masculine. In fact, to get down to the roots of the term when it was defined as a masculine attribute, the original terminology was “male chauvinist pig” courtesy of Gloria Steinem and the militant feminist movement of the 1970s.

However, more important is how the term has become synonymous with masculinity. For the past 40 years it’s been developed in westernized society that masculine = chauvinism and that any uniquely masculine trait, behavior or characteristic is at the very least suspect, if not outrightly so, chauvinism.

Why is this? Why should a man be labeled ‘chauvinistic’ for expressing his masculinity? Masculinity and the behaviors that are derived from it are no more negative than those expressed in the Feminine depending upon individual conditions. But it’s the masculine that is vilified by both sexes (at least in the last 60 years).

Positive Masculinity

Why can’t the masculine be a positive? The underlying theme for Rational Male is an effort to get back to a positive definition of masculinity. Thatt’s not advocating a wife-beating, caveman ideology, rather it’s a move back to defining the masculine in terms that don’t equate it with chauvinism. The difficulty occurs in attempting to relate to both men and women a need to unlearn this pre-described terminology, that even our own parents helped brow-beat into cultural consciousness. Chauvinism as masculinity has been parroted constantly for so long now that a new generation of AFC sons from AFC fathers now resort to internalizing this doctrine and ego-investing themselves in avoiding anything even remotely construed as masculinity in a desperate attempt to identify with what other women repeating the same ideology (masculine equals domineering opression) have been socially conditioned to accept as what a man should be to achieve the ‘gift’ of their intimacy.

Then men are ridiculed (even by their own) for even prompting the thought that something might not be entirely equitable in gender relations when behaviors consistently don’t match ideology. The man to even subtly point out inconsistencies in women’s behaviors is automatically a Chauvinist for exposing a feminine weakness in their argument. And now we come full circle and hear a constant bemoaning from feminized pop-culture, “Where are all the REAL men these days?” Why can’t we have Superman again? All in complete, blissful ignorance of the history and circumstance that have lead to the decline of positive masculine males.

The only reason men outside the sphere have any impression that the manosphere is based in Chauvinism is because they have no grasp of the true definition of the terem, nor do they understand the engineering which evolved the term to what it is now. It’s far easier to engage in misguided attempts to identify with the feminine; to spit back the rhetoric women say they approve of as a condition for their intimacy while simultaneously contradicting themselves with their own behaviors.

For far too long young men have bought the basic Carl Jung psycho-babble women have repeated since the 60′s – “Men need to get in touch with their feminine side” as if this were the ultimate in female identification and an avenue to their intimacy. In fact the opposite is true – men need to rediscover their masculine sides and be unafraid of the consequences. In my experience the manosphere makes the single best attempt to do this in modern culture, without resorting to actual misogyny.

It’s time to stop buying the lie that masculinity is laughable, ridiculous or definitively negative. The world desperately needs Men. Men with strength of will to pass the meta-shit test of a feminized popular culture when it tells him he’s pitiable because he’s been poisoned with testosterone and the traits that make him masculine are to be controlled as character flaws.

75 comments   |  tags: | posted in Operative Social Conventions, Positive Masculinity, The Feminine Imperative

November 21, 2012

Promise Keepers

By Rollo Tomassi

I had a 25 year old guy relate to me recently how disappointed with himself he was. He’d gotten together with a new girlfriend, made that commitment of exclusive monogamy, and had all the noble intents most betas assume when they enter that form of pseudo-marriage. The problem was that he’d had a fuck buddy for some months prior to his ‘legitimately’ dating his now girlfriend and regrettably had to cut her out of his life. Predictably, the FB was upset as most become when presented with losing the investment of all those sexual encounters unencumbered with little or no emotional rewards. The guy was determined to honor his arrangement with the new GF, but the FB persisted and became more emotionally invested until they settled upon a ‘just friends’ solution to their prior involvement.

After a week the guy has doubts about the GF and since he and the FB are ‘still friends’ they get together to discuss said doubts. Needless to say this discussion then leads to comfortable, reliable, “sure thing” sex with the former fuck buddy and now we come to the regret and disappointment he feels about himself. One might think that this is a simple case of a 25 year old sorting out what works for him sexually and his struggle with monogamy in the light of having other actionable options, but his disappointment doesn’t originate in this.

“I feel like a piece of shit because i promised my self over 10 years ago I would never do this. I broke my only promise to my self that I always stuck with.”

I found it interesting that a then 15 year old boy would have the prescience to make some vow of fidelity to a future girlfriend (or wife) to himself. For obvious reasons he didn’t strike me as particularly religious – he didn’t have a ‘promise ring’ on either for that matter. So what was it?

“I can pick up girls and bed them no problem anymore, but when it comes to relationships, I’m lost completely. And yes I do feel like something is missing with my current GF.”

That explains part of it. Alpha while single, beta when monogamous is a very common theme for the feminized, preconditioned youth of today. And of course in light of having (and having had) other sexual options that Alpha-Single / Beta-Monogamous conflict about a girlfriend is to be expected, but that still didn’t explain the promise or the disappointment adequately.

“I felt like a piece of shit. Over 10 years ago when my Dad cheated on my mom, I PROMISED my self i will never be like my father and cheat. I never cheated ever, until tonight. I feel numb, confused, and dont know what to do.”

Slay the Father

One common theme I’ve encountered amongst the more zealous beta White Knights I’ve counseled over the years has been this determination, bordering on fanaticism, with outdoing the life-performance of their asshole fathers. Before I go on further, many of them had legitimately rotten, alcoholic dads, who were abusive to them and their mothers. Others had the perception of their fathers colored for them either by their ‘strong independent®’ single mothers, or by watching their fathers resolve their own beta tendencies in a post-divorce life. Whatever the case, each of these guys had a mission – to be a better man than their father was, protect their mothers, and by extension the future mother their girlfriends and wives would become for them. His father’s personal failings would be his personal triumphs.

The problem inherent in this modern day Oedipus scenario is that the feminine imperative is more than happy to use it to its universal social advantage. Feminization and its blue-pill conditioning of boys to be better “men” is defined by how well that “man” is acceptable to a feminine culture. Thus we get gender blurring, and boys are taught to pee sitting down by single mothers because “your asshole dad always made a mess and left the lid up.” Better ‘men’, uniquely feminine-acceptable men, pee like women.

The father-hating boy becomes the masculine-hating adult beta male. Feminine social conditioning is cruel to be sure, but nothing cements that conditioning in better than a living example of what a man is not to be and then committing your life to not becoming it. As I stated earlier, those considerations may be legitimate, but the end result is the same; a beta who thinks women will categorically appreciate his devotion to the feminine by his promise not to become like “other guys” – like his asshole dad.

This is in fact a very solid extension of Beta Game‘s presumption that women will view him as unique amongst other men for being so well adapted to identify with the feminine. And of course the majority of women who care more about dominant Alpha characteristics, who have no appreciation for his ‘promise to be a better man’ then become “low quality” common women to him.

This then is the root of the conflict the guy in my example is experiencing. He’s coming into a more mature understanding of what his father experienced with his mother and women, and it’s clashing with that adolescent declaration of devoting himself to what he thought, and what his conditioning at the time, was his imperative.

“If I’m a better man than dad I’ll be deserving of love the way I envision it, I’ll be appreciated and hypergamy will be inconsequential due to the equity I’ll invest in our relationship.”

Only at 25 he progressively finds that he is just as human, just as male, as his father was.

Beyond Oedipus

Unsurprisingly this is a very tough psychological schema to dig out of a beta who’s invested his ego in it for so long. Even when he experiences firsthand the trauma of realizing that women aren’t the way he’s always believed they would be and taking the red pill, this ‘promise to be better’ persists. Layer onto this the social reinforcement of the ridiculous / reprehensible male, and compound it with either his mother’s vulnerability or her consistently negative characterization of his asshole father, and you have a recipe for a permanent blue-pill existence.

That said, it’s not impossible to unplug ‘promise keepers’ with enough harsh, experiential reality to awaken them out of their adolescent paradigms. Making them aware is the toughest task, but introspect on their own part is the next step. It’s very important to recount the ways ‘bad dad’, and your reaction to him, has directed and influenced your interactions with women. It is a supremely uncomfortable epiphany for ‘promise keepers’ to realize that Mom is just as common as the women rejecting him, who are helping him realize his adolescent presumptions were wrong. Most ‘promise keepers’ are shaken awake by two sources: the consistently incongruous behavior-to-stated-motivations by women, or by his own internal struggle with keeping his promise in the face of what he can’t quite place is what’s in his best sexual interests.

89 comments   |  tags: , , , | posted in Idealizations, Positive Masculinity, The Feminine Imperative, Unplugging

November 16, 2012

Glitches in the Matrix

By Rollo Tomassi

Every so often there’s a visible glitch in the feminine Matrix. Usually these come in the form of some notable men making an obvious push back against the fem-centric social undercurrent. When these ‘glitches’ are brought to the notice of femcentrism the predictable social response is to resort to the standard shaming schemas and brandings of ‘misogyny’ of the offenders and moving on.

I was going to use super bowl commercials as a convenient illustration, but in the recent decade even these have been sanitized and reformatted to serve the feminine imperative. But this commercial is something else. Naturally it’s a european TV spot; the thought of doing a spot like this would never enter the minds of fem-centric American ad agency creatives.

A few years back Harley Davidson brushed the surface of the dynamic this commercial taps into. They had a campaign with the tag lines of “Go ahead, we’ll wait ’till you ask your wife.” and “Your wife called, she said it was OK.” all referring to men purchasing a new motorcycle. In Harley Davidson’s instance the sales motivation was male shaming with the intent of questioning the men’s “manhood” in who really makes the decisions for them. Women get a knowing snigger from it, and men are pressured to buy with the reminder of how truly controlled they are by the women in their lives.

Where the Harley campaign had an element that women could positively relate to, this commercial pushes past this dynamic and exposes in no uncertain terms the ugliness of fem-centrism. I can’t be sure, but my guess is that most of the reactions these men’s wives had were genuine. With the exception of the woman at the end smashing the windshield (dramatization) it looks as if most reactions were shot unbeknownst to the women. The producers wanted a visceral effect and they got far more than they probably bargained for. The commercial has since been excoriated by women, the advertising community, and was of course pulled by Toyota. Women didn’t like what the mirror reflected back at them.

The dichotomy here is that hypergamy propels women toward the most dominant, decisive, Alpha their capacity to arouse can afford them, but their need for long term security conflicts with entrusting a man with decisions that directly affect her. The solution then is to socially limit or eliminate a man’s ability to make decisions based on his (a masculine primary) frame. When one woman in the clip screams, “You are so selfish!!” you’re seeing the visceral reflex of the feminine imperative clashing with the masculine imperative.

If and when a new masculine-primary social paradigm evolves, expect the feminine social reaction to be equally as hostile.

144 comments | posted in Hypergamy, Operative Social Conventions, Positive Masculinity, The Feminine Imperative, The Matrix

November 14, 2012

Case Study – Inspire Her

By Rollo Tomassi

My good friend Greasy Pig from the SoSuave forum needed some Game analysis.

Damn, Rollo! Now I’m starting to second guess myself. lol
One of my plates sent me a topless pic, so I responded very positively. I didn’t gush compliments, I just told her it was an awesome pic and she had nothing to be ashamed about with her body.

I was using the `reward good behaviour by giving her your attention’ philosophy.

Interestingly, she hasn’t sent any more pics. I’ve subtly suggested she should send more but she just laughs it off.
Maybe I shouldn’t have been so quick to respond? But how do you know when and what to reward with your attention?

Context is King.

The deductive (beta) response for a guy receiving a topless pic is to applaud it, encourage it and reinforce it in order to get more and / or confirm for himself that he’s “in there” with this girl.

The problem is that the attention you give her is in the context of your approval. Your approving of her topless pic satisfies her reason for sending it – male affirmation of her attractiveness. Once satisfied there’s no reason to send more, or really any reason to pursue a guy who will default to giving her unearned approval. Strippers know this dynamic well.

The counterintuitive (Alpha) response is a measured disapproval, or casual indifference. That disapproval shouldn’t be a negative rejection of her, but rather an invitation to try harder with the next one. This is exactly why short text-long response time Game is effective – it provokes imagination in women. Neg Hits are based on the same premise; redirection of qualification. Most of women’s shit tests can be circumvented or turned to your advantage by keeping your focus on redirecting her qualifications of you into her qualification for you.

Shit Tests (revisited)

The subconscious understanding is that a man with options (a presumptive Alpha) will be preoccupied with more important issues than a topless shot of some new girl he may or may not be interested in, and, is so flush with other potential women who are interested in him that hers may be one of many women’s boobs he’s seen previously or even that day.

Try to imagine the process of what went on in this girl’s head. She had to think about taking the shot and what it would prompt in you. She probably wore something she thought was sexy to cover the rest of her, looked herself in the mirror, posed, took the shot, reviewed the picture to make sure she looked good, then pressed ‘send’ and sent it to you. It may not seem it, but that’s a lot of complex decision making on her part.

The suspense, the imagination of what your response would be, all serve to stimulate that chemical rush she finds thrilling. You might think, “well duh Rollo, that’s the principle of ‘gina tingles”, but it’s really different because she is the one self-stimulating that rush, not a guy, not you. She may get tingles from your response, or her imaginings of how you’ll respond, but it’s the uncertainty that prompts the rush. Now think about the millions of ‘self-shooter’ girls doing exactly the same thing, for exactly the same reason.

When you immediately respond in the affirmative it ends the rush she wants to savor. Conversely, when you prolong that rush (and maybe add a bit of playful indignation) you stoke that Alpha fitness uncertainty in her even further. In a sense this puts you into the position of being her drug dealer – you’re the guy who gives her that rush. And like the junkie she is, she will pursue you to get it.

Right now this girl is laughing off your suggestions to send you more topless pics because you failed her shit test. A lot of men think that a shit test always comes in the form of bitchiness or sarcasm, but women test more often with lures of access to their sexuality as a measure of men’s Alpha fitness. And the more you suggest that she send you more pictures of her tits, the more certain she is that you aren’t the Alpha who gives her that rush.

You must inspire a woman to acts of sexual spontaneity, you can never ask for it. When you ask a girl “show me your tits” and she does, it’s great, but when she flashes you without asking, it’s inspired.

97 comments | posted in Biomechanics, Case Studies, Inter-gender Communication, Positive Masculinity

July 30, 2012

16 Years On

By Rollo Tomassi

On July 20th my wife and I celebrate our 16th wedding anniversary. It’s no secret to my readers that I have a very good marriage and I’m constantly asked what my ‘secret’ is for keeping things positive, or the Oprah classic, “what do you do to ‘Keep It Fresh™‘?’. The manosphere is littered with stories of guys and their divorces contrasted against the stories of single guy’s decaying LTRs or dealing with recovering from them. I try not to make a habit of personalizing things that gloss myself, but when I do just understand it’s more from a sense of being a wild card. Guys with successful marriages (a dubious term at best) don’t really have the motivation to come to forums like the manosphere and share their insights. Why bother if that area of one’s life is more or less taken care of? So in light of this, I’ll share a few things I’ve learned in the last 16 years that make for a good marriage from my perspective.

Let me begin by giving you all some background; Mrs. Tomassi is my first marriage and Bebé Tomassi is my one and only daughter. As I’ve said before, by society’s current standards I’m a freak. I’m a freak in that I met my wife and we dated for 8 months (non-exclusively for 4) before I proposed to her. I was 28 when we married. After 2 years being married we decided to have one child – by design. My wife expected me to be a Man and I in turn expected her to be a Woman. I did not knock her up and then marry her. She was not a single mother, nor did she have excess baggage from previous relationships.

This is important to know, because when I relate stuff like this I often get the “well, you did everything right” response, when in fact every bit of what I enjoy with my wife today is due to me doing much more wrong. I had to unlearn what 26 or so years of feminized and emasculated teachings had taught me up to that point. Admittedly unaware, I had come across a unique situation – a woman who actually wanted a Man to be a Man, and in all honesty I was completely unprepared for it. I was an AFC (really a recovering AFC by that point due to a psychotic  relationship prior to all this) and there was no community back then to inform me otherwise. I had read some of Dr. Warren Farrell’s books, but that was the extent of my own self-understanding with regard to my own gender conditioning.

Being the Driver

Now I had come across a woman who on our first date insisted that I drive HER car. My truck was a piece of shit of course , but after years of this gender equalism brainwashing, a woman, upfront, wanted me to take control. Since then I’ve always been the driver (with the exception of her driving us home after I had my wisdom teeth pulled). This was symbolic of how the next 16 years would play out.

Mrs. Tomassi is no push-over and she most certainly gives me shit tests even to this day. In fact I’ve described marriage as one life long shit test and I still hold to that, but from the begining she expected me to be positively masculine – to be the decider, to be the initiator, to have the ideas and to confidently execute them. Even in my worst failures, the fact that I attempted honestly was more important than the outcome. This may not have been the case in the short term, but in the long term is where you can see the appreciation in the behavior. We compliment each other in our understanding of our gender roles.

When we met my wife was dating two very rich men (we were non-exclusive, remember?), I had 2 nickels and a beat up pickup truck to my name. Mrs. Tomassi is a medical professional and the men she’d dated prior were E.R. doctors and specialists; guys making well over $300K annually. They had boats, cars, large homes, status, dispoasable wealth, and yet despite all of that I’m the one she pursued and locked in with (her Mom thought she was insane to marry me at the time). They had it made, but for all that wealth they were still clueless when it came to being Men – they were uncomfortable in their own masculinity. A lot of guys mistakenly believe that having a large bank account is the key to getting women, and while that might help in the short term, in the long term it’s to your own detriment (she’ll end up with half after the divorce) if you don’t ultimately kill the inner AFC and fearlessly embrace the postiveness of your own masculinity.

The Ingredients

There are so many aspects I can detail about what makes for a good marriage, but all of these really boil down to two things, genuine desire and mutual respect. Too many couples become complacent and comfortable in their marriages and this leads to a decline in both of these areas. A certain degree of subtle anxiety and constructive discontent is necessary for a good marriage. That comes off as negative to the plug-ins of the Matrix, but it’s really what makes each partner want to be better for themselves and each other. Taken too far it becomes abusive, but none at all and the marriage becomes stagnant which is equally dangerous. In the right proportion, this anxiety makes for a marriage that retains it’s mutual desire (which is really analogous to Interest Level) and mutual respect.

So how does this anxiety manifest itself? An easy example is staying in shape together. I can honestly say my wife is still hot (if not more so since the boob job). I want to bang my wife as often as humanly possible; how many men married for 10 years can make that statement? My wife is a piece of ass and I see guys eye her all the time. Likewise I’m a bodybuilder and keep myself in peak condition. I get women in their 20′s flirting with me often enough, and this confirms for her and myself that we are both desirable people – this is one example of this anxiety, and we both recognize it and respect each other for it.

There are other ways this anxiety can be applied, for instance C&F (cocky & funny) goes a long way in marriage. Mrs. Tomassi loves just enough C&F attitude from me to reaffirm her perception of my confidence. As I said earlier, marriage is a life long set of shit tests and carefully used C&F is a tool that can be used to diffuse a lot of these before they even happen. Confidence is still the thing that makes a woman want a man, even in marriage. Generally a shit test IS a test of confidence. Prior to marriage, it’s latent purpose is to help a woman determine whether a guy can provide for her long term security. After marriage, a shit test is used to reassure a woman that she married the right guy.

I’ve come to find that Game is even more necessary in marriage than when you’re single – there’s far more at stake when the commitment is intended to be for a lifetime.

I have a lot of rules I pop off with about LTRs & marriage. I emphasize that a man not even become monogamous until he’s 30 and that he shouldn’t consider marriage until his mid 30s. Again, I state this not because I did so myself, but from my side of the fence I can see the huge advantages to doing so now. Marriage should be a last resort, something to be forestalled until a Man, by virtue of years of experience, has the ability to recognize with measurable accuracy, a woman who deserves what he provides her. The PRIZE mentality is essential. A man must be a Prince first, before he can be a King when he marries.

After 16 years of marriage I can honestly say there are no appreciable advantages (outside of raising children) that a man cannot enjoy single that he can married. That’s not meant to be pessimistic, but rather a caution to emphasize how important it is to disabuse yourselves of this AFC, romanticized, marriage-as-goal mentality. It’s also not to say marriage is never worth it – just that marriage is complete advantage for women with negligible, if any, benefit for men. Marriage will either make a man’s life or destroy his life; enter into thinking about it like this and you’ll make a better decision. Is this person deserving of what I provide? Women will NEVER, even in the best of marriages, fully appreciate the sacrifices a man has to make in order to fulfill his commitment of marriage. Entering into a life-long binding commitment of fidelity that offers a man very little appreciable advantage, and knowing the totality of the risk he’s assuming in accepting that sacrifice will never be fully understood or appreciated by the woman he marries. This is why you have put your head into thinking whether she’s deserving of your provisioning, security, confidence, attention, etc. even when it goes against what you think is your kind and good-hearted nature. If you’ve come to a point where in spite of the acknowledged risks you still want to make that commitment, you must be as self-concerned about marriage as you would be in saving your own life.

54 comments | posted in Game, Idealizations, Inter-gender Communication, Positive Masculinity

July 16, 2012

Value Added

By Rollo Tomassi

There’s nothing more refreshing for me than to read the insights of new Rational Readers. Generally it’s not that most offer anything terribly novel (some do), but it’s the predictable, persistent, feminized societal interpretations that keep reusing the same tired rationales which gives me hope that positive masculinity is cracking that shell. In other words, girl-world isn’t really coming up with anything new; it’s just retreads of old tropes.

One new Rational Reader, ‘S’ (maybe for Susan?) decided to take me to task for my graphically detailed essay on Navigating the SMP. Have Hamster, will spin.

While S suffers from the common female malady of reverse rationalizing her ‘circumstances’, she does provide a perspective on a topic I have yet to cover here in her followup response:

Fine, I read that. I just don’t agree with you philosophy that women somehow have no purpose after the age of 30. What if say there were circumstances outside of her control that prevented her from getting married at what a simpleton might deem as an acceptable time…what if she never partied and slept around? There is more to a woman than physicality and it pisses me off that there are men like many of the above (bitter much?) who don’t appear to see worth in a women once her..what’s it called..sexual market value declines…it just strikes me a scarily misogynistic..like some creeped up from of American Psycho shit and it makes me scared for our society.

There is a lot to be said for developing true companionship with someone, having a kind of partner in crime relationship that endures…A woman of any age is appropriate for this.

To paraphrase Roissy’s inimitable words, the closer you get to the truth the louder the feminine will screech. As odd as this is going to sound I actually agree with most of S’s point here. You see, when I was detailing the timeline of men and women’s respective sexual market values, my intent was to provide a raw and unvarnished view of how, in contemporary social dynamics, men and women’s sexual market values differ over the course of time. I made the efforts (loose as they were) to reveal the slow-burn valuation of men’s SMV in contrast with women’s quick-burn SMV.

Emotional Response

Exposing uncomfortable truths is kind of a mixed bag when it comes to the emotional response to those truths. For instance when I read articles about feminist triumphalism regarding how much more ‘advanced’ women are over men today, or I read reviews like ‘The End of Men‘, the analytical portion of my brain gives way to the more emotive response. Why try right? If I’m obsolete, if the cards are stacked in women’s favor before I even get dealt a hand, why not go my own way? There’s a certain hopelessness to that initial emotional response, especially when there’s no hint of sympathy or contrition forthcoming from ‘powerful’ women and all the women aspiring to that empowerment. This is just how the game has shaken out, too bad for you men, you’re fucked now.

I imagine S probably feels the same way when she sees the landscape of the sexual marketplace on display in such Darwinian, graphic terms. Once you’ve hit the Wall ladies, your value begins its decline in earnest, so The Threat then becomes men becoming self-aware enough of their increasing SMV to capitalize upon his increase and your decrease accordingly. This is the nasty part of hypergamy; the countdown to the Wall is ever-present, but so is the subconsciousness-level doubt about having made the optimal hypergamic mating choice before the clock reaches zero. Every SMP opportunity after that point will always be colored by what opportunities she could’ve consolidated upon before it.

I often get called a cynic or uncaring in the delivery of my observations, but try to understand my approach is always about pragmatism. Should women’s overall value mean more than just her physicality and sexual availability? Yes, of course, just as Men’s intrinsic value ought to be more broadly appreciated for the qualities of his character and the sacrifices he makes to facilitate a woman’s reality. I would love nothing better than to think that the human spirit combined with mutual good-will and understanding could lift us above our base, innate drives. I would love to live in a world where men could get a hard-on based solely upon his estimation of a woman’s respective “worth”, and where women swoon for a humble, noble, loyal and devoted overweight and underemployed man with a negative balance in his bank account.

In the manosphere, every day I read about the conflict between what our higher selves should want in a woman. There’s no lack for articles and blog/forum responses making impassioned pleas for women’s fidelity, loyalty, intelligence, grace, femininity, appreciation, and a long list of other ephemeral qualities as being ideal for an LTR prospect. In fact I’d argue that the majority of men’s misreading women comes more from seeing past the red flags and attributing more importance to these qualities than a woman actually merits. For every divorced man who uttered the words “I never thought she was capable of this” I’ll show you a guy who rationalized his attraction to his ex based on what he thought were her ‘value added’ qualities.

Relationships – Nature and Nurture

I would never argue that a man or woman NOT aspire to be better than they are as human beings. There are always going to be human elements to any relationship that transcend what we’d expect the nature of the Game to dictate to us, but underneath that compassionate understanding, behind the flowery sentimentalism, is still the base drives, the feral hypergamy, the cruel reality of the Wall, etc. that we will never be exempt from. On Friday I’ll have been married for 16 years to a beautiful, loyal, feminine, woman. Mrs. Tomassi embodies a great many of the ideal qualities that most men would put on their LTR vetting list – she’s a great partner in crime for me, but my initial attraction to her had far less to do with those qualities and far more to do with how much she turned me on. However, as comfortable as I am with her, as intimate as we are with each other’s identities, warts and all, I still understand the base framework necessary for all of this to take place within.

A relationship based solely upon physicality and sexuality is every bit as weak as one based solely upon esoteric appreciations of ‘higher‘ value-added qualities.

The strongest, healthiest relationships are those in which both parties have a mature, mutual understanding and embrace of both the natural aspect and the nurturing aspect of the SMP. Women will never come to appreciate men’s intrinsic sacrifices made for them without coming to terms with naturalistic side of Game and the SMP. Likewise men need to come to terms with the reality of their conditioning and the fem-centric Matrix in order to appreciate the gravity of their decision to commit to a formalized monogamy / marriage. They need to appreciate the risk of the situation they find themselves in, but have hitherto ben unaware of. For both genders, coming to this understanding is often an ugly prospect.

Likewise it’s important to develop an appreciation for, and an embrace of those value-added qualities which move beyond the naturalistic side of the SMP. While being of primary importance, sex and the feral aspects of the SMP aren’t the only aspects of a healthy LTR. When it comes time to make the transition from spinning plates to informed, committed monogamy, you still have to live with that person and this is when those value-added attributes make or break the LTR.

I understand S’s and so many other women’s frustrations with the Game as it applies to women’s deficiencies. I’ve written at length about how women would rather have the Game changed to better suit their capacities to play it. In this instance S repeats a common moan in that she expects men to appreciate the ‘value added’ elements of a woman’s persona in priority to her base attractiveness. Her fears that men might adopt some policy of neglecting “quality” women in favor of “arousing” women, while understandable in terms of feminine competition anxiety, are really unfounded. If anything it’s the majority of beta men conditioned to believe that “it’s what on the inside that matters” who’ve borne the brunt of women’s social dissatisfaction for the past 40 years.

Guys don’t seek out the community because they’re getting too much pussy from being ‘Nice’ and appreciative of women’s ‘deeper’ qualities and they don’t know how to let down all these women easy. If anything compromises self-respect (assuming an AFC even has a concept of that) it’s a Scarcity/Sniper mentality. Worry less about the guys tapping their “harems” and more about the chump crucifying himself to be the martyr for his singular “dream girl”. He’s far more common.

112 comments   |  tags: , | posted in Foundations, Hypergamy, Idealizations, Positive Masculinity, Relationship Game

July 9, 2012

The Adolescent Social Skill Set

By Rollo Tomassi

Having been on vacation recently (sorry for the lack of updates) I took some time in between fishing charters and tequila sampling to look at the overhyped stories about the upcoming olympic games. Unfortunately the games don’t really hold the same appeal they used to, and now especially against the more constant awareness people have of professional sports. So in order to generate advertising revenue for the games themselves it’s become necessary for the media to seed the human interest stories months ahead of time about athletes the public would likely never have been aware of left to their own interests. Knowing who the top javelin throwers in the world are is a pretty niche interest.

So it was with a bit of non-olympic interest that I became peripherally aware of the Lolo Jones story. Grit Artisan had a pretty good breakdown about our newest American feel-good olympic hopeful. Win or lose, expect to see her image plastered on a LOT of sportswear, cereal box and energy drink advertising for the next 8 months.

Before you get the wrong impression, my intent in beginning this post off by drawing attention to Lolo isn’t to eviscerate her. I actually kind of like her. Minus the manjaw, she’s a solid HB 7.5 on the rigorous Tomassi scale, mainly because she got the athletic appeal I like, but she also seems genuinely likable. I use Lolo because she is a prime example of socialization based upon an adolescent social skill set:

From Grit’s post:

-She considers her virginity a gift (!) that she wants to give to her husband. She thinks its the hardest thing she has ever done in her life- harder than college or training for the Olympics. She also realizes and acknowledges the past temptation and opportunities that she could have had sex.

I think it’s important to note that a fem-centric media has used 29 year old Flo-Jo’s Lolo’s virgin status not only as a rallying cry for evangelically defined abstinence, but also as the typical and convenient male-sexual-response shaming device it loves so much. Track & field fans or not, all women can lament in chorus with poor Lolo’s quest to find the Right Guy™ amongst so many immature and uncontrollably sex-concerned boy-men:

It was on Twitter earlier this year where she first announced to her almost 55,000 fans that she was a virgin.

She also said on the program that she has grown accustomed to being rejected by men as a result of her beliefs.

She said: ‘Here’s the two things that happen when you tell a guy you’re a virgin, this is the honest truth. One, you tell them [and they say] “oh ok, I respect that”. But you can already see in their eyes [that they're thinking] “she’s lying about this and I’ll crack it”.

‘So we’ll talk usually one to three months [later], then they’re like “oh shoot, she was serious”. Time for me to exit.’

I can’t imagine shots like this wouldn’t convey any message to the average guy other than, “I’m a devout christian and I’m waiting for marriage.” Yep, must be those incorrigible men’s sex drives that make ‘em bottle out before putting a ring on it. Nothing like the continuation of the ‘there are no good men left’ meme to get the otherwise uninterested ladies into watching the Olympics. Maybe Garfunkle and Oates could dedicate this song to Lolo at the opening ceremonies?

Late Term Virgins

Before I get knee deep in the moral rationales for her ‘decision’, let me begin by stating that in and of itself I don’t necessarily disparage the idea of retaining ones virginity (male or female) when that person is fully self-aware of the long term implications that decision represents. I can already hear the howls from the monogamy minded members of the manosphere, “Why would you discourage women from retaining their virginity? Don’t you know the more dicks she’d had the less likely she’ll be able to pair-bond with a guy? You’re encouraging premarital sex and thus cock-carouseling!”

I’ve covered most of this material in Late Term Virgins, but the salient point here is about adolescent social skills:

Simply put there are experiences and opportunities for personal growth that only embracing our sexuality can offer. One point I regularly make with respect to AFCs is that at some stage in their maturation they became retarded. I use “retarded” in the clinical, not the derogatory sense here; their social maturation becomes held up by their lack of access to experiences that would help them develop new cognitive models. Most of the time this is due to an inability to see past old conventions they learned in adolescence which halts them from passing to the next level so to speak. The problem with saving oneself for marriage becomes apparent in this. I’m not saying there is no merit in it, just that most people subscribing to it blindly do so without understanding the limitations inherent in it.

Whether that person is Lolo Jones or Tim Tebow, the latent purpose of a vow of chastity made in a person’s adolescence is an effort to curb the long-term consequences of the actions that a volatile chemical cocktail of pubescent hormones prompt in them. This ‘decision’ is couched in whatever moralism helps them and their parents sleep better at night, but it doesn’t offer much in the way of educating a 15 year old promised virgin to understand the social implications of that promise when she reaches 30 and is still a virgin.

Wearing our public faces (the ones that look like wisdom and prudence) there will no doubt be a demographic with some reason to celebrate Lolo or Tebow. “Wow, they really do hold to their convictions. They are an example, unlike us lesser people who were too weak to resist our carnal appetites.” And while they finish that sentence there’s still a nagging discomfort in revering ‘celebrities’ for not experiencing something that 99% of the human population has experienced well before age 30.

Call it a Double Standard if you like, but when we encounter a 40 year old virgin male our underlying impression of him is not one of reverence, but rather one of suspicion. We wonder what’s wrong with a guy who’s never had sex. Part of being a total Man is to have had sex; it is to have had consolidated upon our most basic biological impetus. A man incapable of this (by choice or by circumstance) is considered deviant and forces us to wonder at his social maturation. In other words, a normal guy should’ve gotten laid by 40.

Lolo’s is an interesting case. There comes a point when normal women ought to have had sex as well. While we can make the case that sex-positive neo-feminism endorses cock-carouseling as a deviancy, there is also a stage at which we begin to wonder about a woman’s maturity and socialization when she hasn’t had sex by a certain age. By today’s standards, at 30 Lolo is practically a nun. We can cling to the sense of hope she inspires by holding out for marriage, but at what age do we determine that maybe Lolo is still stuck on the idealism of her youthful promises?

Adolescent Social Skills vs. Mature Social Skills

My sister-in-law got pregnant at 18 and married at 19. After about 20 years of marriage and 2 children she went feral. Hypergamy prompted her to divorce the husband who’d ‘done the right thing’ at 20 years old and remarry a millionaire. There’s more to this story, but one annoying aspect of her very brief dating period of the millionaire was her psychological regression back into the only social skill set she’d ever known; the one she’d used right up until becoming a teenage mother. Her phone call conversations with this late 40′s millionaire took me aback at first – it was script taken directly from the worst 80′s Brat Pack movie. Cutesy pet names, and behaviorisms that bespoke a woman who’s social understandings were frozen in time since the mid 80′s to be thawed out in 2003.

I shouldn’t really say that she regressed to her adolescent skill set, because she never really had the opportunity afforded by experience to develop a mature way of socializing as an adult (of 40+ years at the time) should realistically be expected of. Her story is a gross, anecdotal illustration that made me realize the larger, much more nuanced, whole of people using their last relatable experience as reference for understanding and applying themselves in novel situations.

One of the most consistent dynamics I deal with when I’m asked for counseling or even just casual advice is determining how much real-world experience the person asking me has. For example, it’s a much tougher task to unplug, and teach a guy Game who’s social understanding is rooted in idealistic, adolescent beliefs he’s never had the opportunity to mature past via experience. For many in the manosphere it’s an almost enjoyable act to be the iconoclast of juvenile, Disneyesque plugged-in idealisms, but it really does nothing to help the man (not to mention woman) who’s only frame of reference has ever been based in their adolescent social skills and understandings.

With every passing year, by order of degree, it becomes that much more difficult to get a person to accept their social retardation and unlearn their adolescent skill set as their only skill set.. A man of 25 might be willing to come to terms with his lack of referable experience, but the man of 45′s ego, by virtue of age, relies upon that model in order to feel validated. He’s had half a lifetime of experiences, but all of that was built upon, and limited by, a social model he’d learned and frozen at age 18.

Add the feminine rationalization hamster to this equation and it’s easy to see how stories like my sister-in-law’s come to pass. For women there’s little motivation to move beyond the adolescent model that worked so well for them in their teens. Thus we have mid-50′s women who’re easily entertained by television (HBO’s Girls) and stories that allow them to vicariously relive the framework of their adolescent social awareness. I have little doubt that in my sister-in-law’s psyche nothing was out of the ordinary, but to those around she was either cute in her unawareness of her 20 year old social behaviors, or she was an anachronism.

Women can get away with a lifetime of social awareness halted at age 17, but socially, men are expected to know better. This is why Lolo Jones gets a smile and a wry wink at 30, but the 40 year old virgin man is “creepy.”

Social Models

There was a time when the practical merits of virginity made sense. When a person’s life expectancy was about 50 years, an adolescent skill set was much different than it is today. There’s a reason individual cultures had ceremonies for passing into manhood and womanhood at age 15, we needed to be men and women at a much earlier age. Adulthood was literally 18. Since then, our biology and our evolution, physically and psycho-socially, conflict with that older model. We’ve drawn the process of maturation out to accommodate a longer lifespan as well as the contemporary expectations of education, career, family, etc. as per the norms of the societies that foster them.

Yet we still use the older socialization model – the one when more was expected of us earlier – as a base for judging the relative maturity of an individual. For all the handwringing about ‘Kidult’ men not manning up to fem-centric expectations, it’s almost comical to think that those expectations are rooted in a traditional, social model for maturation that hasn’t existed in almost a century in western culture. They want the anachronism of the old model to be relevant to men for exploitative purposes that they’re willfully or blissfully unaware of, yet we’re supposed to congratulate a 30 year old woman for not having sex based on an antiquated social model. Lolo Jones living in 1912 would be an old maid by those social standards; people of that era would wonder what was wrong with her.

69 comments   |  tags: | posted in Biomechanics, Idealizations, Positive Masculinity, Psychology, The Feminine Imperative, Uncategorized

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