Of Ego and Choice

Last week I ran across a thread on the ‘Purple Pill Debate’ sub on Reddit that called into question the Red Pill idea that women’s egos have become overblown. This “debate” sub is essentially a forum dedicated to Blue Pill hacks expressing their dubious confusion about various topics discussed on the Red Pill sub so I wont grace the forum with a link here. That said, it is an interesting forum to peruse when looking for examples of how a lot of the fundamentals of Red Pill awareness are deliberately misconstrued. The Blue Pill mindset will make great efforts to insulate itself from unignorable Red Pill truths that threaten to break comforting ego-investments. Those efforts begin with a willful misunderstanding (and later denial) of Red Pill premises.

I’ve explored the topic of women’s ego inflation in various post on this blog, but truth be told I’ve had this more thorough examination sitting in my drafts folder for a while now. The idea that women’s sense of self-worth has been grossly overblown is something I think the Red Pill community often takes for granted. It’s fairly easy to see both online and in real life. I resisted fleshing this post out for a while because it presents the risk of being perceived as some gratuitous attack on all-women-being-like-that in their ego aggrandizements, so I’ve been content to just allude to this phenomenon in my posts.

It’s easy to throw red meat to the manosphere in this respect since women’s inflated egos are something most factions of the ‘sphere almost unanimously agree on. And of course, simply doing so makes the man pointing it out, by default, a misogynist. Then, either the mud gets slung by indignant tumblrinas, or his points are perfunctorily dismissed and the conversation ends.

The Purple Pill “Debate” thread was simple enough, but such misguidance needs to be:

A narrative that is constantly pushed is the notion that the female ego is inflated from a constant barrage of male attention, thus leading women to have an inflated sense of value.

Attention and offers of sex from random strange males is not validating in most cases. Male attention and offers for sex are so easy to come by, they hold next to or even absolutely no value. To put it into a more crude term “dick is cheap”. Being offered free sex from a man that is not attractive to you is the equivalent of being offered a free bag of feces. It is free and it still might have some value, but I am not going to take it.

The whole idea that any of this is extremely validating is farcical and incorrect.

This premise is misguided in two respects. The first is defining exactly what is contributing to women’s ego inflation. The second is how a woman is validated by the attention that contributes to it. I’ve written extensively on the psychological effects attention has on women. Attention is the coin of the realm in girl-world. Women use attention as a form of currency with other women, which in turn establishes peer status among women’s social groupings:

The capacity to attract and hold attention denotes social rank within the peer clutch. The more attractive the girl, the more popular she becomes and the more influence she wields. This isn’t to say that any particular female is cognizant of this. However, when ostracized from the collective, this capacity for attracting attention in a high degree makes her despised. The attention can still be beneficial for affirmation (i.e. realized jealousy), it’s just that the intent that has changed.

Thus, women use attention not only for their own affirmation, individually and collectively, but also to do combat with each other. Far more damaging than physical fighting is the long term psychological impact of denying this reinforcement, or better still, delegitimizing or disqualifying a girl/woman’s capacity to attract this attention. Combine this with a woman’s natural, and innately higher agency to communicate both verbally and non-verbally (i.e covert communications) and you can see the potential this has in damaging a rival. This might explain a woman’s natural propensity to gossip. When a woman attacks the respectability and character of another (“she’s such a slut”), in essence, she is assaulting the woman’s agency for garnering attention by delegitimizing it.

The first misdirection in this thread is that attention only comes in one form that is ‘validating’ for women. It is a mistake to assume that male attention is all that contributes to women’s validation. My guess is that the original poster was male and trying to wrap his head around what form of attention ought to be validating from a male perspective. I say this because this mistake is also a common one amongst recovering Betas considering MGTOW. They often think their case is hopeless because women are so far removed from them due to all the “incredible amount of male attention” they receive online and in real life.

From this respect I can understand the OP’s point. Attention and ‘offers’ of sex – tacit or direct – from random strange males is not validating in most cases. With the proper incentive, male attention and offers for sex are so easy to come by, they hold next to or even absolutely no value. From the perspective of male attention, the (I think accurate) presumption is that unless a man is perceived as Hypergamously optimal his attention is worthless in ‘validating’ a woman’s ego.

The term “validation” is easy to mold to whatever definition a man or woman might find convenient with regard to affirming one’s ego. In a Red Pill aware sense this validation needs to translate into some sort of reinforcing of a person’s self-perception of their sexual market value (SMV). On the ‘Man Up’ side of things the perception is one that men ought to find some esoteric source of inner strength and purpose to find ‘validation’ for their egos, while avoiding the idea that how many women he sleeps with or the ‘quality’ of the woman he’s banging might contribute to ‘validation’.

It’s funny how Blue Pill (and a few Red Pill) critics will foster the idea that the only reason men learn Game is because they’re “validation seeking“, but yet they resist the idea that women’s egos would be similarly validated by the “incredible amount of male attention” they believe even the most mundane of women is capable of generating.

However, the OP is asking the wrong question. Women’s egos are not inflated by the value of men’s attention, but rather the perception of an unending abundance of prospective men. An abundance of male attention contributes to a sense of security for women’s SMV. A lot gets made about the influence of “thirsty” guys on women, but the only value they represent is a Buffer against women ever having any personal insight about their ego valuation. Thirsty guys only serve to convince a girl she has options and therefore leisure to demand a better-than-merited Hypergamous option (i.e. apex fallacy Alphas).

Feeding the Beast

Recently Petapixel had a not-so-funny photo exposé of the dutiful Betas behind the ego-validating shots of girls on Instagram. The complicity of the average Beta male in the feeding of the female ego is never to be underestimated. Not the least of which because they are unaware of their active participation in creating a generation of woman who will have nothing to do with him while she enjoys her peak SMV years, but also to complain about his inadequacies of meeting the requirements her ego demands of men when she finds it necessary to lock down a ‘marriageable’ man. He is the architect of his own failings, but it seemed like she’d like him better if he took the Instagram shots of her at the time – the ones she would use to advertise her SMV to the Alphas who she knew were the only men worth taking a picture for.

At no other time in the history of humanity has it been easier for a woman to validate her ego or (falsely) evaluate her SMV. But that validation isn’t based on quality, but rather perceived quantity. It’s not just male attention that contributes to this. A constant chorus of ‘go grrrl’ supporters, endless Fempowerment memes and special social dispensations since before a girl enters preschool make up a far greater influences for ego-inflation than male attention. If anything girls are taught from a very early age not to value male attention (in abundance or lack) as a source of validation or confidence. This returns us to the nebulous ‘inner strength and purpose’ meme, albeit with the Strong Independent Woman® branding.

In contemporary society women’s attention and indignation needs are as ubiquitously satisfied as men’s need for sexual release (i.e. internet porn) is . This, of course, leads the larger whole of women to perceive their social and SMV status to be far greater than it actually is – and when that inflated SMV is challenged by the real world there are countless social conventions already established to insulate women and simultaneously convince men that women’s perceived status should be the fantasy they believe it is.

It’s important to keep this in mind because men’s adaptive sexual strategies key on women’s self-impressions of their SMV (and often personal worth). This then forms a cycle wherein men’s attentions for women’s inflated sense of self-worth become the benchmark for future validation of it.

Hypergamy predisposes women to evaluate male attention on various levels. The attention of random strangers offering sex to her (even if this is her imagined state) is still attention, and while not as validating as the genuine sexual interests of a guy she perceives as Alpha, it’s still contributing to her overall sense of self. The quantity of attention skews the perception of her own desirability. Women rarely complain about the attentions of ‘friend zoned’ Beta orbiters – even when they know these men are playing what they think is a worthwhile ‘long game’. What women bemoan is a lack of Alpha, Hypergamously acceptable, men’s attentions. What we hear are complaints of quality, not quantity.

Why is it that women are distressed over a deficit of “marriageable” men?

Have a read of this Brookings Institute study

This data is nothing new. Compare this to Newsweek’s 1986 survey of women’s “chances” of marrying a suitable man.

As I’ve stated many times over, Hypergamy is founded on an evolved, biological-level doubt. Doubt that a woman will ever consolidate on an optimized (better-than-SMV-merited) attachment with a Hypergamously ideal male. Doubt that the male she consolidated on is in fact the ‘best she could do’.

The primary reason the anxiety of finding a ‘marriageable man’ is persistent in women is because they believe that their due is to marry a man of “equitable” value to what they perceive themselves to be. That self-perception of value is the result of a woman’s conditioned beliefs over the course of her lifetime. The popular response to this is that women have “made themselves better than ever and it’s listless men who aren’t keeping pace” in respect to education, career advancement, etc. The evaluation of self-worth for women (at least in the sense popularized by the Feminine Imperative) is ostensibly meant to be founded on criteria for attraction which has conventionally been a standard for male to female attraction. But notice that it is once again men who must shoulder a greater burden of performance to even be considered “equitable” in self-worth to make him ‘marriageable’ for women.

The truth is that Hypergamy always seeks a better-than-deserved arrangement when it comes to the men women want to breed with and share parental investment with. The anxiety is one born of women’s doubt in their capacity to optimize Hypergamy as contrasted to what their socially-inflated egos lead them to believe they’re entitled to with men. As women’s egos and self-aggrandizement expand, so too does the expectation of entitlement to an even more aggrandized male expand. The dearth of ‘marriageable’ men is both a reflection of men’s unwillingness to participate in their own indenturing and women’s unrealistic expectations of men prompted by an unrealistically exaggerated sense of personal worth.

Again, as a solution, we have a plea from the Blue Pill world for men to Man Up and accommodate this exaggeration. Women’s ego-aggrandizement is nothing that can’t be solved by Blue Pill men’s more invested efforts in appeasing it. Almost 7 years ago Roosh wrote an essay on what he expected from women (and it’s Game implications) in the future. It turned out to be quite prophetic, but in this essay he made this prediction:

Game Plus Fame Will Be More Important Than Anything

It doesn’t have to be national fame, but you must be known for something with a reputation that precedes you. You must have a YouTube channel with millions of views. You must be a proprietor of a hipster butcher shop. You must be a popular writer, artist, or musician. You must be nightclub promoter or DJ. You must be a competitive skateboarder. Your must be the notorious editor of a cupcake newsletter. In a culture where a million people are “famous,” you’ll have to work your ass off for scraps if you’re not. Nurture your own style and niche and then leverage that to get pussy. Game will always have its use, but game plus fame will be the qualities that tomorrow’s Casanova possess. Otherwise you’ll be approaching all day and night to fuck a 6 who stops calling you after a couple bangs. You must have the complete package to get the hottest girls, with game being only the first ability of a multi-level game warrior. Guys without game will simply not get laid, not even with ugly girls.

While I would disagree with the assessment that ‘fame’ is a prerequisite element to get the lay today, I do agree with the idea that the social proof that comes with genuine ‘fame’ status is now a vital part of what makes for male attention that women perceive as validating of their egos. As Roosh implies here, that fame need not be anything more than the contextual variety, and I’d also add that the perception of fame, or even the perception of a potential for fame, is now a required element for a man women would consider ‘marriageable’.

From an Alpha Fucks, short-term, ovulatory phase Hypergamy perspective, a man can get by on Game, looks, confidence, etc., but for anything more than this men are in a competition. This is not a competition with other men per se, but with the expected entitlements women’s egos and an entire feminine social order has convinced them is men’s duty to embody for them.

In our brave new world of instant global communication, social media and the ego aggrandizing influence it has on women is exactly what anyone should expect it would be. When we look at the progress of the social and legislative repercussions that the influence of unfettered Hypergamy has had on our social order should we really be surprised that women would use social media as a vehicle for expressing and advancing their sexual strategy?