The Key Masters

In last week’s comments Not Born This Morning dropped this comment in the last thread:

It has been said and it seems fairly well established as a presumed reality that “Women are the gate keepers to sex and men are the gate keepers to commitment”. This model of gender specific “gatekeeping” seems to be the most widely accepted model in the red pill community and the general culture accepts it readily. This model seems rational enough, it significantly forms our frame of understanding about gender dynamics upon which we base our interpretations of behavior & intents, and our decisions to act. But is it the best model to explain what is really going on? Could this model be inferior in that it fails to account for an underlying more fundamental motivator? Is there a more accurate explanation for women’s intents and behaviors? Could this model be potentially deceptive?

The sex side of this model is simple and easy to understand. It is very clear and specific to the fundamental biologic. It is inarguable, not negotiable. The primary drive motivating the sexual aspect is not political or social. It is biological. This is not the case with the commitment side. The commitment side is primary to the political and social realm. “Commitments” are always components of contracts written or otherwise.

To comprehend what I’m about to explain, we must first agree on the primary definition of commitment. As I understand it, a commitment is a pledge to do something, a proclamation to perform certain action (or inaction) within a specific context for the benefit of another usually in exchange for some consideration. In the sexual context women seek “commitment” from a man primarily for provisioning and sexual exclusivity. The man “commits” to the woman that he will abandon his freedom and not enter into sexual relations with other women. He pledges himself financially and sexually to her exclusively. Realistically, this form of “commitment” includes the man abandoning his options. If he becomes sexually involved with another woman, it is widely considered that he has “broken his commitment” and he is dishonored by her and society for “breaking the commitment”. But, has he really broken any commitment other than a self denigrating pledge to forgo his freedom and abandon his options? Since obviously the male imperative is polygamy and spreading his seed, then isn’t the imposition to “commit” in the first place really a dishonor of his sexuality and a dishonor to him? If so, isn’t “commitment” in this context nothing more than a form of enslavement?

So by saying men are the “gate keepers of commitment” aren’t we really saying that men are the “gatekeepers of their own enslavement”?

I’ve read this line of thought from various MGTOW hardliners in various iterations and I’ve even written a post on the concept of commitment  and what it does or doesn’t mean to a man. The idea is to equate committing to a woman with some irrational agreement to self-induced slavery. However, the problem most men have with commitment is that the old set of books has a social mandate for men to keep their word or honor an agreement. It’s what men do. Say what you mean and stick to it, but as with most every uniquely male custom, Honor among men has been one more useful distortion of the Feminine Imperative.

As I mentioned in the Paradox of Commitment, men don’t have nearly the fear of commitment our feminized social order would have us believe. Men aren’t “commit-o-phones” when it comes to military service or dedicating themselves to a business. These are the areas the women’s magazines conveniently overlook when it comes to comparing men’s commitment with committing to women in monogamy. I’m bringing this up because it’s important to see how men commit to things other than fidelity to a single woman.

If we’re going to equate monogamous fidelity to a woman with slavery we also need to see how other commitments can be viewed as being, or not being, slavery. Is the commitment of military service slavery? Particularly if you know have a pretty good idea of what to expect from that commitment? Are you volunteering for slavery if you start a business and become financially beholden to it?

From  the Paradox of Commitment:

You can even take marriage out of the equation; if I’m in a committed LTR with a GF and over the course of that relationship I realize that she’s not what I’m looking for (for any number of reasons, not just sex), even though she’s 100% faithfully committed to me and the LTR, should I then break that commitment? If I do, am I then being unethical for having broken that commitment irrespective of how I break it? Should the commitment to my own personal well being and future happiness be compromised by another commitment?

What’s my obligation; neglect myself in favor of a bad commitment or to the principle of commitment itself?

It’s my take that commitment ‘should’ be a function of genuine desire. Ideally, commitment should be to something one is so passionate about that the limiting of one’s own future opportunities that come from that commitment is an equitable, and mutually appreciated trade. This is, unfortunately, rarely the case for most people in any form of commitment because people, circumstance, opportunity and conditions are always in flux. A commitment that had been seen as equitable sacrifice at one time can become debilitating 5 years after it depending upon circumstance.

Under the old social contract, the idea that a man would compromise his sexual strategy to fulfill a woman’s (Hypergamy in the long term) had a presumed exchange – sexual access, parental investment, companionship, a good, supportive feminine role example for the kids, etc. – that made the commitment of marriage at least somewhat appealing, if not entirely equitable. I supposed a case could still be made that even under the old order of conventional gender roles and expectations men were still committing themselves to a downside bargain. But in our new, feminine-primary social order, with our broader communication, it’s certainly signing up for slavery of a sort in comparison to the options available being single.

A lot of guys think that by my advising men to spin plates and remain as non-exclusive as possible that its sole purpose is to free them up to indiscriminately bang as many women as possible. While sexual variety maybe an upside to non-exclusivity, there are many more freedoms and options that a non-exclusive man can invest himself in where committed men cannot, or wouldn’t even think to.

So yes, from a male sexual strategy perspective, and considering the terms of that commitment and consequences of breaking it are all glaringly apparent, signing up for that commitment might be assigning yourself to a kind of slavery. Under our present social conditions, staying single might be as good as it gets for men.

However, that said, there is still an undeniable, idealistic, hope that men can make the best of a marriage. Most men (see the 80% Beta men) still remarry in far greater margins than women, even after horrific divorces. We can attribute that to the sustainability of men’s sexual market value lasting longer than women’s, but the desire to want for a lasting monogamy is what I’m getting at. Even in light of the fact that women are hardwired for Hypergamy, and in light of women’s inability to appreciate the sacrifices men must make to facilitate their realities, men still, sooner or later, have a desire to lock down or otherwise wife-up a woman he idealizes. I have read the testimonies of men who will go to any length to stay in a marriage if even the outside hope of it improving exists.

I think this desire might be both a conditional and innate drive in men.

In Mrs. Hyde I quoted a study by Dr. Martie Haselton from Why is muscularity sexy? :

According to strategic pluralism theory (Gangestad & Simpson, 2000), men have evolved to pursue reproductive strategies that are contingent on their value on the mating market. More attractive men accrue reproductive benefits from spending more time seeking multiple mating partners and relatively less time investing in offspring. In contrast, the reproductive effort of less attractive men, who do not have the same mating opportunities, is better allocated to investing heavily in their mates and offspring and spending relatively less time seeking additional mates.

It’s entirely possible that a man’s sexual strategy is the simple result of his adapting to his circumstance.

Under the old social order, prior to the upheaval of the sexual revolution and feminine social primacy, investing heavily in one’s mate made good sense if the guy wanted to procreate. As men, I think we still want to apply more value to our commitment in this respect. I think it gets back to the fallacy of relational equity, but because most Blue Pill men believe that there is value in their committing to a woman, and they falsely think that women have the capacity to appreciate it, we tend to build more into it as some kind of mutually understood relationship leverage.

Gatekeepers

Back before Roosh began making his necessities into virtues, he had a pretty good insight about women being “gatekeepers” of both sex and commitment:

A popular manosphere saying is that women are gatekeepers to sex and men are gatekeepers to commitment. I wish this was an absolute truth, but it’s not. As a collective, women are often gatekeepers to both sex and commitment. Most men reading right now can surely attest to their failed attempts to secure commitment from women they slept with, and if you poll the entire population of men, you may find that they are the initiators of monogamous relationships more often than women. It only makes sense for this to be true: it is way more damaging for a man to have his woman sleep with another man and get cuckolded than the other way around. The 0.5% of the population who are skilled players and have more say with commitment don’t put a dent into this common reality. As a sex, men have very little say in determining the relationship dynamic.

[…]It would be a nice fantasy for us men to believe that we have a say in relationships and sex. It’d be nice to think that our “alpha” behavior and our game determines how a relationship can proceed, but often it doesn’t. We’re just giving the girl what she has already decided on. Do you really think you’re selling televisions to customers who came into the store with the intent to buy bicycles? The girl who falls in love with us wanted to fall in love with us, the girl who had fun with us wanted to just have fun with us, and so on. And even when a girl wants a bicycle, she still wants a certain kind of bicycle. This is why game is a numbers game, because girls are incredibly picky even when they are sexually available. The horniest girl in the club who decided on having sex will still have her pick of the litter and opt to get the best that she can.

From the perspective of men using Game to secure some kind of commitment with a woman, I’d agree, it is a numbers game. But, in general, most men aren’t learning PUA/Game to settle into an LTR and most Red Pill aware men (should) understand the nature of women well enough to leverage Game if (ever) they do look for commitment.

Roosh was correct about men not really being gatekeepers of commitment though. I think there’s a definite want on the part of guys to believe that they have some sort of leverage in the ultimate scheme of things. The Feminine Imperative constantly conditions men to think that their commitment to a woman is something insanely valuable to women. Thus, we see shaming tactics designed to call men out for avoiding commitment irrespective of men’s reasons for wanting to take precautions. This has the effect of conditioning men to think that they are the gatekeepers of something valuable.

In a sense, commitment is something valuable to a woman, however, in the age of Open Hypergamy and Strong Independent Women®, the writing is on the wall for men with regard to the convenient need for that commitment at the end-game phase of a woman’s sexual market value. So yes, a man’s commitment to monogamy with a woman has inherent value, but men are hardly the gatekeepers of it when it is a woman who does the deciding as to whether any one guy’s commitment makes any difference to her.

So, we come to a question of comparative equity with regard to men “signing up for slavery” and how inherently valuable his commitment (as convenient as it’s needed) really is to a woman. I have no doubt there are several women reading this right now who are in “relationship limbo” with a guy they desperately want to commit to them in some official capacity. And no doubt they’ll drop a story in the comments personalizing it to be typical of men, but I would argue Roosh’s point that men are the initiators of monogamous relationships far more often than women. Ironically, commitment only has value to a woman when it’s denied to her by a man who’s SMV outclasses her own.

For obvious reasons, highly desirable women, women at the peak of their sexual market valuation, are always the least concerned with men’s capacity to commit. They largely have the luxury to be selective, but furthermore the time at which women are at their highest SMV is usually the point at which men are still building upon their own. Eventually, commitment only has an appreciable value to a woman when she is most in need of it; when her SMV is in decline.

I should also point out that men, the majority being Blue Pill Betas, are the most necessitous of a woman’s commitment when she is at her highest, his is an unproven commodity, and he appreciates the value of a woman’s commitment. Thus, most men look for a stable monogamy in their early to mid 20s, while more mature men who’ve had time to build their SMV into their mid to late thirties tend to be less concerned with monogamy. This is why we hear the constant drone of women bemoaning that highly valuable, supposedly peer-equitable men’s unwillingness to commit and settle down with women aging out of the sexual marketplace. Women are far less concerned with the commitment-readiness of young, unproven men who themselves would commit to even a women in the mid-range of her SMV.

At the end here, I think it’s time Red Pill men disabuse themselves of the idea that they are the ‘gatekeepers’ of commitment, and rather employ their internalized Red Pill awareness and Game to be the ‘key masters’ of women. While I have no doubt that commitment can be a carrot on the stick for some women, the problem really lies in how that commitment is in anyway valuable and balance that knowledge with the fact that commitment, once given, becomes valueless and taken for granted when it’s established. The fact that you’d commit to a woman isn’t something that carries a relationship, no matter how badly she wanted it from you before.

There really is no quid pro quo when it comes to commitment or value in believing you’re a gatekeeper of it.