Misperceptions of the Red Pill

One of the most common criticisms of “those Red Pill guys” I read today is the misperception that any guy devoting any headspace to the nature of women, how to go about changing his outlook in intersexual dynamics or really understanding intersexual mechanics is only applying himself in order to get laid. Old school Roissy addressed this as a common form of Red Pill hate long ago:

From The Unbearable Triteness of Hating:

12. Fallacy of Misdirected Obsession Hate

Hater: A guy who spends his life obsessing over how to get women is a loser.

A guy who spends his life obsessing over climbing the corporate ladder to get more attention from women is a loser.
A guy who spends his life obsessing over mastering guitar and playing in a rock band to get more attention from women is a loser.
A guy who spends his life obsessing over pursuing financial rewards and acquiring resources to get more attention from women is a loser.
A guy who….. ah, you get the point.

I made an effort to address this in Crisis of Motive as well, however, that essay took a more general look at the reasons people behave as they do.

A common (often deliberate) misdirection is that the only purpose men apply themselves to when considering Red Pill truths is that it’s all about PUA and chasing pussy. From there the argument becomes one of men becoming ‘pussy beggars‘ because they mistakenly believe this is all that studying intersexual dynamics is good for.

I get this a lot from MRAs as well as MGTOWs and trad-con guys who believe men shouldn’t ever bother themselves with the nature of women or the underlying mechanics, and focus themselves on whatever ‘higher-order’ principles or ambiguous virtues their belief set predisposes them to valuing. Usually these tend to be old books, old social contract ideals that they believe men need to return to.

Then the focus centers on how unburdened they’ve become with women, because they’ve either given up or have otherwise dissociated themselves from caring enough to understand the nature of women. Then, a sort of self-righteous AMOGing follows in some feigned pity about how other men are stuck following their penises instead of applying themselves to whatever it is they think ought to be valued. It’s a very convenient cop out for guys who’ve either attempted to understand Red Pill truths or applied Game and failed in some capacity, or for Blue Pill men unwilling to let go of the idealism it’s taught them, but still see some undeniable truth in the Red Pill.

I find this kind of ironic when I consider how hard-line PUAs tend to value the practice and repetition of Game above (not necessarily to the exclusion of) really looking under the hood and understanding why theses same intersexual mechanics make a man fully Red Pill aware. These are the “just get out there and do it” guys, and I do see the necessity of practice and learning. However, in either instance, it becomes all too easy to dismiss a man’s interest in understanding these mechanics as being motivated by hedonistic impulses. This is half the reason Red Pill awareness is shunned in religious contexts. A good part of understanding the fundamental nature of women aligns directly with old-school doctrine, but the disqualifying concern is that men would use it for their own self-important pleasures. It’s easy to presume that all the Red Pill is about is facilitating men’s obsession with getting laid because men are taught that this is all men think about. But whether it’s in a religious context, or an old books ‘man up’ context, the element of shaming and pathologizing men’s sexual impulse to promote an ideologic bent is always there.

That’s the heart of this misperception; the belief that the Red Pill is only about banging women or it’s in some way giving men reasons to encourage them to give up on women in despair. It’s only about building a man’s life around women (pussy beggars) to the exception of all else or it’s wasting one’s life trying to understand something not worth the effort. Those are the binary rationales attached to accepting the truths that the Red Pill reveals to men. These are usually the result of some irreconcilable conflict between that truth and an ego-investment in his Blue Pill idealism.

Ostensibly, the concern stems from some ideal of personal responsibility and that Red Pill awareness is in some way encouraging guys to ignore anything like responsibility and just following their most base impulses. Anyone who’s been involved in the Red Pill as a praxeology of intersexual dynamics understands this is a wrong impression, however, it does serve to stroke the egos of guys who need an easy dismissal of the truths they’re uncomfortable with. In a sense it becomes a new form of Game to them; AMOGing those pussy beggars by being maverick examples of a guy who is enlightened above his animal sexual nature. The belief is not unlike Blue Pill men’s dedication to their identifying with the feminine as a means to make himself unique and “not like other (typical) guys.”

There are a lot of different variations of this ‘Game’. Maybe it’s the tough-guy pastor who adopts just enough Red Pill awareness to pretend he’s got the masculine experience to tell men how they ought to ‘man up’ – while absolving women of any personal responsibility in their own natures. Sometimes it’s the Power of Positive Thinking guru who plays a similar, though secular, game with his flock – if you just ‘think differently’ you’ll be unique and have no reason to “chase pussy”. Then there’s the trad-con “authority” who also perpetuates the “nothing’s sexier” myth about men who ‘do the right thing’ by accepting their own indenturement to women, but are also ‘above it all’ enough to never have to worry about the risks men put themselves into by doing so.

The Importance of Hypergamy

A lot gets made about a perceived over-emphasis on Hypergamy. While Hypergamy serves as a very important foundation to many Red Pill truths it’s not the straightjacket critics want to make of it. However, the misperception critics like to harp on is that just the simplest most basic understanding about the mechanics of Hypergamy are too paralyzing for most men. Again, it’s something believed to be deterministic to the point that a lot of men simply throw up their hands and give up. It would be better for them to stay totally ignorant (or less aware) of how Hypergamy influences not just their personal lives, but also their work, social, family and political lives. In being ignorant of Hypergamy a guy might develop some irrational self-confidence in spite of its influence that would help him.

Some critics like to promote the idea that because Red Pill awareness, as a praxeology, doesn’t plainly present hard and fast actionable solutions for men that it is promoting some endemic culture of victimhood. Thus, we get comparisons of men complaining or whining about their own miserable (often sexless) state, or the state of unfairness in a world that is aligned against them. These are the critics who want easy answers and when none come, or the ones that are obvious conflict with the Blue Pill idealisms they refuse to disavow, they believe it’s the Red Pill’s duty to give them some bullet point list that tells them what to do. Thus, the Red Pill doesn’t make it easy enough to be useful.

What they fail to wrap their heads around is that the Red Pill is not one-size-fits-all and that anyone promoting a universal cure-all is selling something dangerously close to Dream Girls and Children with Dynamite. Rather than bothering with the introspection necessary to use what the Red Pill is telling them, they seek simplistic formulas to remedy their conditions. Most critics who believe Red Pill awareness promotes a sense of male victimhood resort to this opinion because they lack the personal investment necessary not just to understand intersexual dynamics, but also the harsh necessity of abandoning their Blue Pill ideals completely.

Often enough what the Red Pill is showing them is requiring that they stare at the abyss of a past life based on Blue Pill fallacies. Solution? Conflate the praxeology, the studying of intersexual dynamics, with complaining and a victimhood belief. Rather than invest the time and attention needed to understand intersexual dynamics it’s far easier to conflate what Red Pill men debate with angry feminists’ easily disprovable rhetoric.

The Scope of the Red Pill

In the linked podcast above I addressed another common misperception with Anthony Johnson; that of the belief that all the Red Pill is about is limited to the personal situations of men. All of the misbeliefs I’ve led up to here are founded on the idea that Red Pill awareness is exclusively compartmentalized to the personal states of men, and beyond that the social and political landscape is caused by social constructionist reasons. The misperception, as I said, is that understanding intersexual dynamism is only about getting laid or complaining about not getting laid. Learning anything more in-depth only indicates some degree of obsession with getting sex.

In The Feminine Mystique I outlined the latent purpose the Feminine Imperative foments in the mythology of women being these fickle, unpredictable and unknowable enigmas to men.

Perhaps the single most useful tool women have possessed for centuries is their unknowablity. I made that word up, but it’s applicable; women of all generations for hundreds of years have cultivated this sense of being unknowable, random or in worse case fickle or ambiguous. This is the feminine mystique and it goes hand in hand with the feminine prerogative – a woman always reserves the right to change her mind – and the (mythical) feminine intuition – “a woman just knows.” While a Man can never be respected for anything less than being forthright and resolute – say what you mean, mean what you say – women are rewarded and reinforced by society for being elusive and, dare I say, seemingly irrational. In fact, if done with the right art, it’s exactly this elusiveness that makes her both desirable and intolerably frustrating. However, to pull this off she must be (or seem to be) unknowable, and encourage all of male society to believe so.

What critics and Blue Pill men do by discouraging a fully developed understanding of what makes for Red Pill awareness in men is a surrender to this unknowable social convention. Either women are unknowable or not worth the bother of men having figured out their nature the effect is the same; keeping men ignorant of how the Feminine Imperative directs their lives. This ignorance has ramifications that go far beyond just the individual man and whether or not he gets laid.

I mention this in the above interview, but what critics don’t want to confront is the far greater scope that understanding the praxeology of the Red Pill implies. Those dynamics stretch from the biological, to the psychological, to the personal and familial, to the political and the global. A man can use Red Pill awareness to get laid, deal with an unresponsive wife, challenge a female boss at work, better understand the sexual marketplace as well as the latent purposes of feminine-primary legislation designed to maximally limit men and maximally unfetter women. However, just understanding this, just discussing it or a want to have a more complete grasp of Red Pill awareness is not an effort in bemoaning a man’s state within it. This is the danger I see coming from some elements within the Red Pill community; there’s a tendency to see the education (or even the want of an education) in Red Pill awareness as some substitute for acting on it. It is not, and it’s high time men in the ‘sphere realize that Red Pill awareness, and making it useful to an individual man, consists of both the theoretical and the practical.

I’ve had critics tell me that the Red Pill is only desperate guys learning to get laid, and to them I’ll point out the recent story of Daniella Greene, the FBI translator who left her military husband to marry the very ISIS fighter she’d been tasked to investigate. Watch the video at this link and then think about how many Red Pill truths this story confirms. Think about the far greater scope and importance an understanding of Red Pill intersexual dynamics has here. Are we just going to say “well, bitches are crazy, she must be damaged” or do we see the mechanics behind her actions with a Red Pill Lens? This is only one example of the scope of the importance a developed Red Pill awareness should mean to men.