Articles from November 2012

Friends Like These

RT, I just finished reading Playing Friends and I was wondering, what would be a good way to tell a woman that you don’t accept her “olive branch”?

Should I ever encounter this situation, I would like this tool in my arsenal. The best reply I can think of would be “That’s not a good idea” and walk away.

Any better phrases out there? What is the ideal “level” of confrontation to use?

As I said in that essay, when you do decline a LJBF a certain amount of tact has to be involved. Any overt ‘in your face’ response will prompt an equally overt confrontational response. The trick is to convey your non-acceptance of her offer in as covert a fashion as possible, but still courteous or at least “business-like.”

The first obstacle men have to get over is that LJBFs are rejections. They are not genuine offers of some kind of enduring friendship. This goes back to what I’ve written about intergender “friendships”, and a lot of AFCs get it into their heads that they’re going to buck a trend and actually be ‘besties’ with their LJBF girl. I’ve already covered most of this in that essay so I wont go back over that, but the natural inclination for most men when faced with a rejection – that most often comes after a very long period of “sniper mentality” – is to opt for the path of least resistance and certainly the one which will make him and her the least uncomfortable. Women know this. This is precisely why a LJBF has been proven so effective for generations. It gives both parties an acceptable out, or on his part, an out that at least blunts the rejection.

The Process

The problem with all this is that the LJBFed guy is caught in the process without ever having understood that he’s playing a predictable part in a feminine social convention. So he sees the LJBF as an event rather than what it really is, a feminine-approved socially permissible mechanism for rejection. As a guy gets consistent LJBFs he begins to see the process, but all this comes after having had exclusively invested himself in the LJBF girl up until the point of the rejection. This is where the “frustrated” part of AFC comes from; his investment.

That’s the first part; a man has to recognize the LJBF for what it is. This is part of the learning process because a guy has to also do some very important self-analysis at this point. Most chumps will self-evaluate and try to find flaws in their sniping. “She might have accepted me if I had done X, Y & Z to prove I’m worthy of her.” Rather, a guy ought to self-realize why he was in a potential LJBF situation in the first place. I’ll tell you now, if you got a LJBF rejection, odds are you went about the process wrong. You sniped, you pined, you most certainly placed yourself into a position of qualifying yourself to her and thus handed her the frame from the outset. As I’ve mentioned in some previous essays, you most probably believed the lie about “women needing to feel comfortable with a guy” and jumped past the uncomfortable sexual tension of attraction directly into the comfort of rapport and familiarity.

Now, I’m outlining all of this again to emphasize that any response you can give a woman issuing the LJBF rejection should be done so from a position of complete awareness. It’s not the actual words you say so much as you understand how you got to the point of a LJBF rejection. In other words you are most likely, at least partially, responsible for allowing it to get to the point of you having to counter-reject her LJBF.

“No, thanks.”

So then how do you go about it? Some have offered the blunt “I have enough friends” line, but you’ll deal with the social fallout of such an overt counter-rejection and most likely get the “you’re an asshole response”. Depending on how comfortable you are with that I’d say it’s fair game, but don’t expect her not to behave like this. Women’s easiest recourse at that point would be to think all you were interested in was fucking her. I realize how shitty that seems, particularly when most guy’s getting the LJBF are there after having tried for months to get to the point of pressing the issue of intimacy and applying all the effort and personal investments (not limited to just missing other better opportunities). How could she possibly come to the conclusion that all you wanted was to get in her pants? It’s her only social acceptable, ego-preserving recourse, despite all you did to “prove” yourself up to then.

There’s couple of better ways however. One is allowing her to deliver the LJBF and let it roll off. You don’t have to be a prick and say “thanks, but no thanks.” You could simply let the rejection go and strategically withdraw – so long as you think you can do so. Cut off all contact and move on to spinning plates as you should have been anyway. This is simple pragmatism, if not a bit introverted, but the end result is the same – she gets the message that you’re no longer wasting yourself on her as a cause.

The other way is a the assertive counter rejection. This is not an overt “I have enough friends” response, but rather a drawing of attention to the social contrivance she’s using and explaining it to her in direct terms.

After her LJBF, you can say, “I really wish I could be your friend, but I’d really thought we meant more to each other than that after so long, and honestly, I’m looking for more. Sorry, but I guess I was wrong about you.”

I wouldn’t use this verbatim as some kind of script to follow, but this approach effectively puts the onus of the rejection back on her and makes her aware of the LJBF as a rejection. It’s very similar to a neg hit in that it puts her into a position of not qualifying for your own intimacy. The idea is to defuse any “he just wanted to fuck me” ideas and draw attention to it as a rejection. The problem with a LJBFs as a social convention for women is that it’s gotten to a point where it’s a default, autonomous response, and not a real rejection of intimacy. It’s become such a useful tool that women no longer understand the latent function of it. When they’re made aware of it, in a responsible way, recognizing the rejection aspect is unavoidable. In a rational world it’s a Man’s responsibility to approach, initiate, be decisive, etc. with a woman, it should be incumbent on a woman to give him a straight rejection or acceptance of his approach. Unfortunately not all of us are mature enough at any given stage to do so, so we develop social contingencies to cope with uncomfortable circumstance.

Go Dark

All this said, even after delivering an assertive counter, you MUST stick to your choice. You can only walk away with your self-respect and her own respect for as far as you’re willing to follow through with it. Cut off attention, focus on other things, take some time for yourself, analyze how you came to be in the LJBF position, etc.

She will try to get you back as a friend (see: beta orbiter), for her own ego preservation if nothing else. Do not allow this. It’s not her punishment, it’s not spite, it simple utility. The longer you entertain her the longer you will be paralyzed. You will be in limbo because you refuse to see her behaviors are her message, not her words. When extinguishing a behavior, in behavioral psychology, subjects universally attempt novel behaviors in order to reestablish a previous reward / reinforcer that prompted the prior behavior. This is called an Extinction Burst. People will do this too. The AFC will step up his efforts in new ways in order to prove his merit for intimacy, and women will be flirtatious and accommodating in ways they never thought necessary in order to reestablish prior attention levels they enjoyed before a takeaway. Be prepared for this.

*This post dedicated to my ever-growing reddit following.

Boys will be Boys

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.

Chauvinism

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.

Promise Keepers

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.

Shallow

Recently Vox had a not unexpected run-in with the ladies over at Aunt Giggles’ Beta Emporium regarding one of my favorite feminine social conventions. There’s a very definitive feminine ownership of certain terms that the feminine imperative uses to maintain its primacy. Like any good ideology, control of the messaging is vital to perpetuating the feminine social frame. Thus terms like “shallow” and “superficial” are contextually defined from a feminine perspective and, through shaming, serve to enforce feminine primacy.

There are a lot of applications women will use “shallow” for, but the primary use is to shame men’s natural arousal/attraction cues being based on physicality. As I detailed in The Wall, women have a life long relationship with the impending decay of their only real agency over men – their physicality and their sexual access.

Why should physical appearance be a criteria for anything? The operative question; Why should the importance Men place on the physical always be characterized as “superficial”? Why is it that a man is “shallow” for following his biological imperative, while a woman seeking commitment is considered “prudent”?

Because women are only acting on behalf of their own biological imperatives when they do so. Like all feminine social conventions, if men can be made to believe that a woman’s best interest is actually his own, she retains control of the frame. How do they effect this? Repeat it over and over until men identify with it and it becomes a societal norm. This then places men into a state of internal conflict – they’re not supposed to want hot women for fear of being deemed “shallow”, but yet they always seem to find themselves attracted to, and aroused by, the most physically ideal women they encounter.

Controlled Selection

So, how, and why, then does this social convention work? Why is it necessary? The simple answer is that the latent purpose of shaming men into denying their own biological imperative better serves to maintain women’s control of hypergamous sexual selectivity.

The cold hard reality all women face is that, in the sexual market place, they are always a depriciating asset. In a biological sense, a woman’s sexual marektability decreases as she ages, but even when this isn’t universally the case, the insecurity that comes from realizing ths decline is still present for women. With effort, a woman can be sexually desirable at 40, but the internalized anxiety she experiences from having to remain sexually competitive with women 20 years younger doesn’t diminish – at some point she’ll lose her edge.

In order to counter this dynamic a social mechanic had to be developed. Men would need to be shamed for their biological preoccupation with younger, sexier, more sexually available women that they naturally, and observably, prefer. If men could be socially and psychologically convinced that physicality (their primary determinant for attraction & arousal) was less important than intellect, integrity, or any other esoteric, moralized virtue (or the perception of it at least), this then (theoretically) levels the playing field of intra-sexual competition among women. By making his importance of physicality “shallow”, women of all shapes and sizes could be instilled with “inner beauty”. It’s what’s on the inside that counts and any man to disagree is “shallow”, “superficial” and thus undeserving of their intimacy.

With this social convention in place women can have their cake and eat it too. Sexual selectivity in their youth and a realitive assurance of that same selectivity in securing a long term commitment of male provisioning as they age. Social convention circumvents biology and women retain the frame. It’s only when “scientists” such as myself pull back the curtain and show you the Wizard of Oz that men are labelled “misogynists” or “superficial.” It’s the perfect convention; one that even in revealing it still shames the one doing so – or at least calls into question his motives for doing so.

“Shallow” at Home

How important does the role of attraction play in a relationship? The funniest thing is you can apply the same idea to women with regards to a man’s level of success. If a guy cheats on his girlfriend or wife after she ‘lets herself go’ and puts on 20 extra pounds he’s called ‘shallow’, yet if a woman leaves a guy who’s out of work and/or lacks a certain level of ambition she’s just “being prudent” or doing what’s in her best interests and her children’s. It’s a man’s biological imperative to mate with as many fit and attractive females, while it’s a woman’s imperative to choose the male who is best capable of satisfying hypergamy and providing her with long term security, and by default to ultimately share in parental investment. But, feminized society calls a man ‘shallow’ and a woman ‘wise’ for embracing the sexual strategies and arousal cues nature has dealt for them. So it’s my advice that we stop accepting this epithet of ‘shallow’ as some kind of punishment for simply being a man.

I can remember a poll thread on SoSuave we started that went something like, “What do you notice first about a girl?” and went on with physical attributes like Boobs, Ass, Legs, Hair, etc. The thread basically devolved into a ‘you’re just shallow’ flame-fest, but it was fascinating to see the pre-set responses from the teenage male members. Answers that didn’t even apply to the topic like, “I’m really only interested in her ‘great personality'” were common from the more plugged-in responses. This idea of not coming off as ‘shallow’ even in a relatively anonymous forum just proves how endemic this notion of ‘shallowness’ really is.

Embrace your testosterone, really, it’s OK. No one faults a woman for not being attracted to an ambitionless, unsuccessful guy. You shouldn’t feel guilty for admitting to a preference for a girls ass or the size of her chest.

Mid-Life Crisis

After watching last Friday’s video a few times I thought about how ironic it is that a man should be made to feel infantile, or “less than responsible” for indulging in his own wants. For certain a surprise sports car purchase may be an extreme example, but sometimes over-exaggeration is necessary to illustrate a larger point. That larger point is the nature of defacto personal and social control women exercise over men. It’s part of the feminine Matrix to think that ‘responsibility’ should be uniquely framed in what best serves the feminine. We literally don’t know any other way to interpret it most of the time.

When a man begins to ‘go rogue’ the feminine imperative has many pre-established social conventions to mediate this. Obviously designating ‘responsibility’ to serve the feminine frame is the social control, but there are other powerful conventions that the imperative uses. One of these is the Myth of the Mid-Life Crisis.

A lot of hokey comedies have been produced covering mid-life crises. Usually the main characters are cast as overweight schlubs trying to recapture their by-gone days. In real life men are ridiculed, usually around age 40, for losing their mojo and acting ‘irresponsibly’ or ‘erratically’ in some silly gesture of reclaiming his independence. However, this masculine shaming hides a more desperate latent purpose for the feminine.

The SMV Crossover

The most stereotypical mid-life crisis occurs for a man around age 40. It’s important to remember that a man’s SMV really begins to peak between 38-42. It’s at this point that men have the best chance to truly unplug from the Matrix; and it is also at this point that the Threat of a man becoming self-aware of his now fully developed SMV has it’s greatest urgency for women to repress him from realizing it. Even life-long blue pill men generally come to an understanding that their wive’s SMV has dropped and their own SMV is greater. For the first time in his relationship history, he faces the Cardinal Rule of Relationships from his own perspective – women need him more than he needs women.

The feminine imperative has come to expect this awakening. In decades past, before there was a formalized Game, before there was the connectivity we have today, the feminine imperative relied upon social controls that limited a man’s becoming aware of his SMV. Through pop-culture and mass media men were taught to expect this ‘crisis’, even enlisting men to promote the idea. However, the imperative cast the ‘crisis’ as irresponsible and juvenile. It relied upon the time-tested shaming of masculinity in the hopes men would self-regulate when the time came that his SMV outclassed that of the women in his life. So we got hokey movies, and ridicule of men wanting to trade-up their wives for ‘trophy wives’.

Mid-Life Awareness

Probably the most common story I experienced when I did peer counseling back in Nevada was the disillusioned married guy. Most of these guys were professionals, mid to late 30’s and all their stories were the same; “I feel like I’ve done everything anyone ever expected of me for the past 10-15 years and I get no appreciation for it.” These guys “did the right thing” and either their wive’s were unresponsive to them or they still viewed these men as a “fixer upper” project that they were constantly working on.

This experience is what helped me to better understand the myth of the Mid-Life Crisis. Men, in most western culture’s do in fact experience a mid-life crisis, but this isn’t due to the trivialized and oft ridiculed by pop culture reasoning. Women, and feminization, would have us believe that men experiencing a mid-life crisis need to buy a sports car or divorce their wives in favor of a ‘trophy wife’ due to some repressed need to recapture their lost youth. This of course fits into the feminized myth that men are egoisitic, simple creatures and masculinity is infantile in nature, but this only serves to reassure women that they “still got it” at 40.

The truth about men’s mid-life crises isn’t about recapturing youth, it’s about finally understanding the trappings they’ve been sold into through their 20’s and 30’s and coming to terms with that often horrible truth. Some men do in fact buy the sports car, get the new hottie wife or act in some fashion that appears reckless and irresponsible. This isn’t due to infantilism, but rather new understanding of their own position as men. They’ve “lived responsibly” for so long and for so little appreciation that when that true realization is made they feel the need to move. They’ve become respected, put in the hours, the sacrifice, the censoring of their own views. They realize now that they’ve sold off true passions in favor of maintaining what others have told him was his responsibility – whether it was his choice or not. And all for what? A fat wife? A shrew? Maybe even a fantastic marriage and a wonderful family life, but also a nagging doubt about not seeing enough of the world by 40 because of it.

I worry about men who don’t come to this crisis, these are the men who are truly lost. These are the guys who remain life long AFCs, happy in their ignorance.

Glitches in the Matrix

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.

Case Study – Inspire Her

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.