Social Conventions

Virtue

I’ve never had meaningless sex,… I meant to bang every girl I ever did.

Whenever I author a particularly inflammatory post or forum thread that grates on people’s ego-invested beliefs, one of the first accusations I expect to have leveled at me are those that echo a shaming appeal to moralism. I can generally identify a pretty important issue if the response to exposing some uncomfortable truth requires questioning my common sense or ethics. On a larger scale, many a White Knight, and many an ethics-invested woman will simply default to ‘higher self‘ arguments when confronted with simple observations that challenge what they believe – and what they assume everyone else believes along with them.

People with questions don’t frighten me, it’s the people without any that scare the hell out of me.

My problem isn’t necessarily with principles or morals or ethics in and of themselves, but rather men chumpishly clinging to them when in actuality they really had no other options to give themselves a wider perspective on what they believe.

They make necessity a virtue.

For instance, telling yourself you’re remaining (conditionally) celibate in order to hold to some higher ideal is really just trying to prove a negative if you don’t really have any valid options to influence your decision in the first place. If you weren’t get laid to begin with it seems like prudence to convince yourself and others that it’s really by your design. You ‘win‘ by not doing anything.

And it’s unassailable. I can’t doubt the merit of a guy’s convictions when nothing is what’s required to prove them. I read a lot of guys who question the merits of Game. Some reject it entirely or profess some desire to “get out of all the game playing” in order to rationalize their inability to adopt a new, more productive, mindset for themselves. Usually this is accompanied by some qualification as to how they’ve seen it all, banged their fill of “low quality women“, and now have developed some higher sense of self – all while implying those still “in the game” have not – and are now giving themselves ‘permission‘ to exit the game by settling down with some girl in blissful monogamy. They’ve finally grown up and are doing “the right thing.” It’s like all endings to romantic comedies – he’s really a bastard with a heart of gold who met the ‘right’ woman to bring it out in him. For women, this is usually part and parcel of the Epiphany Phase, but for men it’s the virtue signaling that accompanies his following The Script.

Anyone would sound like an idiot for trying to convince you not to be moral – to drop your integrity or demean yourself – but that’s the reason appeals to moralism sound good. Being resolute is admirable, but until your virtue is significantly tested they’re just excuses that look nice on your sleeve. Guy’s who have legitimate harems don’t make announcements about how they’re renouncing them in favor of ONE quality woman. There’s no self-convincing, they just do it, without any fanfare or seeking affirmation from others for having done so.

It’s been my experience that the guys who are the most vocal about the merits of self-esteem and personal integrity trumping sexual experience are generally the same guys who aren’t hooking up with any real frequency anyway. Remember, a sacrifice is only significant when you actually have something relevant to lose.

The points these guys like to make are generally based on common truisms that very few people will argue with – and they know this. We’d all like to think that possessing some basic form of self-control is admirable, particularly in respect to our base impulses, but for as much as we’d like to self-righteously pat ourselves on the back for “resisting temptation“, the fact remains that yes, we are still motivated by those impulses. I can’t think of anyone who’d want to identify with the “sex driven man” label – the guys who lets his dick do his thinking – and certainly not as his recognized source of esteem, however, the physical/biological forces that motivates his libido is still very real.

Flowery prose doesn’t make a personal anecdote a universal truth. It’s interesting that a virtuous Purple Pill guy will make a point of personal esteem being a paramount virtue in one paragraph, yet still equate bedding a “woman of value” with a sense of victory. He did it the right way, right?

It’s interesting to me when I hear appeals to righteousness in the form of deriding the experiences of men (sexual or otherwise) by characterizing them as worth less because they supposedly compensate for some inner failing or need for ‘personal validation‘. One canard is the presumption that a guy with many lovers in his past must somehow be banging his harem to impress himself or others. I’ve honestly never known a guy who didn’t enjoy sex for the sake of sex. Considering the difficulty most men encounter in just banging the handful women they do in the average lifespan, I doubt the few men who actually can enjoy a variety of women do so simply to acquire more accolades from other men for having done so. And that’s the utilitarian aspect of moralistic men shaming other men – it’s not that men with more access to sex need to validate themselves, it’s that moralistic men with less access to sex believe that those men would even care about their opinions enough to be validated.

What’s ironic to me is that the same self-righteous appeal to adhere to convenient convictions is actually done for much of the same reasons they accuse other men of – to garner respect and affirmation for doing so.

If you choose to derive your personal value from some esoteric sense of what sex ‘should‘ mean, more power to you, but I find it’s a much healthier position to accept a balance between our carnal natures and our higher aspirations. It’s not one or the other. It’s OK to want to have sex just for the sake of having sex – it doesn’t have to be some source of existential meaning.

It is as equally unhealthy to convince oneself that self-repressions are virtues as it is to think that unfettered indulgences are freedoms. There is a balance.

Social Matching Theory

How to spot a rich guy

We laugh our asses off at this joke, but why is it funny? It is funny because human beings, like many other higher order animals, have the innate ability to make cognitive comparisons on a subconscious level. The reason it’s humorous is because we see an imbalance in a system and make deductive conclusions with regard to individual conditions. This is the basis of the Social Matching Theory.

Social Matching Theory, in essence, is defined as follows: All things being equal, an individual will tend to be attracted to, and are more likely to pair off with, another individual who is of the same or like degree of physical attractiveness as themself.

Just as an aside, this is a well recognized social psychology theory, not something manufactured by Game theorists. However, in a nutshell it outlines the sexual marketplace dynamic, before adding variables like Game, status, provisioning, etc.

This is a naturally occuring commonality among many specific aculturations and societies. The trick to this theory is of course that ‘All Things’ are rarely equal. However, my point to this isn’t to naively assume that attraction and sexual pairing happen in a vacuum – far from it. It is to illustrate an underlying psycho-biological principle that operates beneath our consciousness that prompts other psychological schemas from an intimately personal (micro) level to the social psychology of an entire (macro) culture.

As I’ve posted in several forum threads with regard to “Why Women Cheat” or why men are so compelled toward sex with archetypically attractive women, the root of this desire is a psychologically evolved  opportunism that is founded on our ability to make and assess these natural comparissons in order to better facilitate our own survival and the survival of our offspring. It has served our species so well over  millennia that this natural comparisson making capacity has become an autonomous and subconscious aspect of experiencing our environment. We understand that eating a large apple is preferable, from a survial standpoint, to eating the small one. We have a tendency to want what our biologies compel us towards and develop idealizations based on what we think would best satisfy these ends.

As I stated, I understand that attraction and intersexual relations do not happen in a vacumm and there are many (generally predictable) variables that influence this, but Social Matching Theory isn’t about the process of attraction or pairing so much as the motivations for selection. I’m often asked about the importance placed on physical appearance, prowess, etc. bearing influence on attraction, and I can speak from my own experience saying yes, it absolutely does. A fat guy is simply not going to attract a Fitness America competitor without some very unique circumstances influencing this attraction. Neither would I support this attraction being based in a qualitative, genuine physical desire for the fat male. It is an imbalance in a system.

All things being equal; socio-economic, intellectual, emotional levels etc. you will have a tendency to attract and be attracted to people of similar physical presence as yourself. This is the root of the psychological schema many men and women apply when they follow the “He/She’s out of my leauge” mentality. They are manifesting this subconscious understanding that the prospects of another person of a more idealized physical presence being attracted to them or pairing with them would be an unlikely match. They self-perceive this imbalance and thus limit themselves to opportunities that have a better likelihood of success in gratifying their need – in this case sex.

Look at the ‘Rich Guy’ picture again. The woman in this imbalance we might presume is a ‘Golddigger’. This too is inspired by an innate understanding of the Social Matching Theory. Why else would an (arguably) attractive woman in comparatively good shape, wearing a thong (indicating sexual availability), be with a morbidly obese male if he didn’t posess some other redeeming variable to inspire the match? We see a picture and laugh, and women make the internalized rationalization that she’s not genuinely interested in the guy, but is ‘in love’ with his provisioning means. Superficial? Perhaps, but it still illustrates this comparative instinct we have, particularly when we know nothing about individual circumstance. The possibility does exists that this woman genuinely loves the guy, or is attracted to him, but this isn’t our first impression. In fact it takes significant, trained, mental effort to consider the possibility because the Social Matching comparison IS our natural default.

Finally, I should add that the Social Matching Theory is also one of the primary foundations upon which AFCism and ONEitis is based. This natural fear of rejection associated with both of these schema stem from a subconscious understanding of this theory. ONEitis in particular can be traced back to this self-perception of imbalance leading to the “I’ll never find a better woman/man than this person” mentality in so much as it represents a limitation of opportunism. In other words, it becomes preferable for a person to stay and accomodate an otherwise intolerable relationship if that person has internalized the understanding that their relationship represents an imbalance in this Social Matching. Abuse endured from the more idealized mate becomes preferable to rejection from anonymous, less idealized sources of intimacy.

At this point you may be wondering what brought this post to the surface. I recently got into a debate with a self-described feminist who entirely rejected notion that a sexual marketplace should even exist in contemporary human society. It wasn’t that she was denying the underlying dynamic of the sexual marketplace, but rather that it was an antiquated and dehumanizing influence in the human condition. Up until this conversation, I’d always taken the idea of a sexual marketplace and sexual market value as applied to individuals as a given. The SMP was a recognized universal framework in which we maneuver – some successfully, others with difficulty. The rejection of this idea, or the desire to alter it sociological, seems absurd to me, even though I would agree that it is a brutal game we play. My counterargument with her was that the SMP is actually more representative of our humanity, in that it’s healthier to accept that the way we evolved as a successful species was due to the harsh reality of the SMP. She wouldn’t hear it.

Positive Masculinity vs. Equalism

If you type the word “equalism” in a blog’s text box you get that annoying little red line underneath it indicating that you misspelled something. In other words, the English language doesn’t officially recognize that word in any dictionary. I suppose this is apt since for the last 50+ years the effort to feminize society has always used the abstract concept of gender equalism as something ambient in the background of the agenda. It doesn’t have an official definition because, collectively, were supposed to take it as a given; something that should just be considered “common sense”. To be sure, feminization’s plea for a more humane restructuring of society has always been couched in terms like “equality”, which sounds comforting when spoken, even if the intent is distracting.

However, that’s not the “equalism” my computer wont recognize. I read this term in Roissy’s writings. I sometimes see it creeping in from the edges on blogs decrying some nebulous, neo-liberal social agenda, or I see it written as some corrupting element keeping conservatism from realizing it’s ‘true’ potential, but what I don’t see is a very good accounting of it. Equalism needs to be brought out of the shadows – if at least so I don’t have to see that damn red line anymore.

New Gender Definitions

I’ll admit, I was motivated to type all this because of a link that a reader, Sam, posted in yesterday’s White Knight post:

http://mariashriver.com/blog/2011/09/governor-s-spouse-s-story-6-lessons-love-and-learning-dual-career-guy

Granted, this brief article is little more than an apologetic directed toward the author himself, but this pretty much sums up the entirety of the problem – masculinity has been redefined by people (men and women) who have no concept of what its original definition is. The behaviors and characteristics that constitute what is uniquely masculine aren’t being challenged, they’ve been redefined to fit the purposes of an agenda.

In 1905 no one wrote articles on how to “be a man” or bothered to analyze the fundamentals of masculinity. Men knew from their socialization what was masculine and women responded to it.
Traditionally, women define what is masculine and men define what is feminine. The characteristics that made a man desirable were ones that presented the opposite to what men similarly found desirable in femininity. Men and their biology defines what in the feminine that arouses them, women react to this and behave accordingly (knowingly or not).

The root of the male-equalist endemic lies in the fact that as recently as 50 years ago there has been a concerted effort to “de-masculinize” society, not only in mass media, but down to how we educate and condition our youth to assume masculine and feminine roles. What is being challenged is the predisposition of males in predominantly western culture to even consider what masculinity is.

A rugged, stoic, heroic definition of masculinity is losing ground, but is that a good thing? The equalist certainly believes so. When men become feminized, are we leveling any playing fields or are we progessing towards androgeny and homogenization of gender? The equalist hails this as a triumph of a new gender paradigm. Why should masculine traits be of lower value than feminine traits? 

The very characteristics that define traditional masculinity – independence, self-confidence, rugged individualism, physical strength, risk taking, problem solving and innovation – we are now to believe are (or should be) the aspirations of women to the point that ridicule of the singularly feminine female is the order. In expecting women to be just as masculine as men, while simultaneously expecting them to still embody a feminine ideal, not only does this puts undue, unrealistic, ideals upon them, but also devalues the merits of their own femininity.

That’s not to say, given this new gender dynamic, that women are discouraged from claiming their femininity in addition to their masculinity. On the contrary they’re encouraged to “handle their business as well as any man” and “still be a sexy, vivacious woman” every man should want. Yet in opposition to this post-modern gender dynamic, men are not encouraged to embrace their masculine side We are told to “man up” for sure, and yet our mascuilinity (as we define it) is a flaw; we’re poisoned by our testosterone. Our higher aspiration ought to be becoming more feminized, sensitive, emotional, empathetic, nurturing, etc,.. We should “feel comfortable waxing our legs” stripping away the hair that is the result of our poisoning testosterone. Interestingly enough there are few cries in society to have women cultivate their leg or armpit hair.
Yet the ‘masculine’ that the Matrix would have us strive for doesn’t encourage anything resembling traditionally masculine traits in a male’s personality. In fact it’s ridiculed to such a degree in mass media and larger society that it’s literally akin to a disease.

While women are congratulated for embodying masculine traits with an acceptance of her feminine character, men are conditioned to believe that feminine traits are masculine traits and any traditionally masculine characteristics that manifest themselves in us are the unfortunate byproducts of our ‘flawed’ biology. And the true crime of this gender redefining is the real “double standard” that men should be so feminized as to loathe their innate masculinity, yet still be held liable for uniquely male, traditionally masculine responsibilities and accountabilities by virtue of them being male. It’s a gender Catch 22; hate your masculinity, but be held responsible for not “being man enough” to solve uniquely male problems, then to be shamed when a masculinized woman steps in to do so and he’s then ridiculed for not being as masculine as she is. That’s the cycle. This is self-perpetuating negative masculinity that has led to generations of AFCs.

Needless to say, all of this convolutes what masculinity was, is and is intended to be. Before you can set out a plan to live out what I call Positive Masculinity you first have to take into consideration why masculinity has value and should be encouraged as well as cultivated in yourself, your sons and society as a whole. I’m an adherent of the ‘build it and they will come’ school of thought in this regard, but understanding how traditional masculinity has been redefined by social contrivance and distilling it back down to it’s core fundamentals is imperative in getting back to masculinity as a positive.

So where do you start?

With yourself. You must change your mind about yourself as a “m”an and begin thinking of yourself as a “M”an. The first step is to unlearn what feminized conditioning has taught you to the point of it becoming an ego-investment in your personality. You need to become impervious to convenient accusations of “misogyny” or 1950’s caveman thinking whenever you assert yourself. The truly positive masculine Man sets himself apart from the Matrix in spite of a world set against him – this unconscious meta-acknowledgment is what makes a woman (and other men) attracted to you as a vibrant, responsible, but firmly confident masculine Man. You have to genuinely live it in order to set an example of it. That doesn’t mean you’re an uncaring, tunnel vision robot, unwilling to learn from anyone or anything, it means that in spite of a world calling you “egotistical”, “caveman”, “fragile ego”, “macho”, “infantile”, “Jerk”, etc., you unwaveringly, provably, live out and exemplify the positive merits of being masculine.

Enter White Knight

The following was a timely question by SoSuave member “OnTheWayUp”;

 Just wanted to find out: who do you talk to about aspects of game with off this site? I’m talking here about “game” in the broadest sense of the term, so pick-up, but also self-esteem, how to keep a relationship healthy, the roles of men and women in society etc.

My experience with voicing the views advocated on here in public has nearly always been negative. I have 3 – 4 good male friends who are interested in pick-up (one has read the Mystery Method, for example), and they love it. But these friends are the exception rather than the rule. My parents (beta dad, controlling mum) think my attitude towards women is sexist and my opinion of ONSs “disgusting.” Just about everybody I know subscribes to the Disney/ soulmate view of relationships, and some of my contemporaries (I’m 21) are even starting to settle down and get married. God help them. Talking to girls in bed about what they find attractive in a man is interesting, if only to see the extent to which they delude themselves, but ultimately counter-productive, since a woman (tacitly) expects a man to know how to express his sexuality.

Can we as men ever talk about these things in public? What are your experiences?

Before I begin, let me say that I think it’s encouraging to see such an insightful question posed by so young a Man.

Morpheus: The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. But when you’re inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of that system and that makes them our enemy. You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it.

Every random chump within earshot of your conversation about Game, about your ‘changed’ way of seeing inter-gender relations, about your most objective critical observations of how women ‘are’, etc. – understand, that chump waits everyday for an opportunity to “correct” you in as public a way as he’s able to muster. That AFC who’s been fed on a steady diet of noble intent, with ambitions of endearing a woman’s intimacy through his unique form of chivalry; that guy, he’s aching for an opportunity to prove his quality by publicly redressing a “villain” like you for your chauvinism. Even under the conditions of relative anonymity (like the internet), he’ll still cling to that want of proving his uniqueness just on the off chance that a woman might read his rebuff and be fatefully attracted to him.

This is the bread and butter of the White Knight beta. It’s best to assume that most guys who pick up on just your Game vibe, to say nothing of overtly talking about it, are going to side with the feminine imperative by default. For practitioners of Beta Game (which is to say the better part of 90% of guys) this is an organic opportunity to identify with women and engage in the same shaming conventions women use without the fear of having it seem contrived.

Now this is the mechanics of it, but the rabbit hole goes deeper than that. For the Beta Game that our noble white knight is so invested in to work, he depends on an assumed system. He depends upon reaffirming his assumed understanding of how to best achieve a woman’s intimacy (sex). He must reaffirm that presumption BY defending it and looking for opportunities to show he adheres to the feminine imperative (or the version of the imperative he’s been taught to believe). His Game, his ego-invested identity IS literally dependent upon that system. So not only is he defending his Game and his ego, be he’s also defending the social architecture that makes his Beta Game even possible.

You see, when an AFC clings to the mental schemas that make up an AFC mindset it requires a constant need for affirmation and reinforcement, particularly in light of a glaring lack of verifiable success with women while clinging to, and behaving in accordance with the mindset. AFCs are like crabs in a barrel – once one gets to the top to climb out another drags him back in. The AFC needs other AFCs to affirm his blatantly obvious lack of success. He needs other AFCs to tell him, “don’t worry just be yourself” or “she’s just not a quality woman because she can’t see how great a guy you are.”

So when an AFC finally does get a second date and then finally does get laid it becomes the ultimate validation for his mindset. “See, you just have to be a patient nice guy and the right ONE really does come along.” This is when the self-righteous phase begins and he can begin telling his PUA friends that Beta Game does work, and he’s “getting some” now without all the Positive Masculinity claptrap. In actuality he rationalizes away all of the conditions that lead up to him getting the girlfriend and the fundamental flaw that he’s settling for a woman “who’d fuck him”, but this doesn’t stop him from claiming a moral high ground. His long wait is over and he’s finally hit White Knight pay-dirt.

Playing Friends

Women have boyfriends and girlfriends. If you’re not fucking her, you’re her girlfriend.

“Rollo, how do I get out of the Friend-Zone?” Never allow yourself to get into it.

Women have used the LJBF (“let just be friends”) rejection for a hundred years because it serves an ego preservation function for her. To a greater or lesser degree, women require attention and the more they have of it the more affirmation they experience, both personally and socially. The LJBF rejection is a Social Convention that has classically ensured a woman can reject a man yet still maintain his previous attention. It also puts the responsibility for the rejection back on his shoulders since, should he decline the ‘offer of friendship’, he is then responsible for entertaining this ‘friendship’.

This of course has the potential to backfire on women these days since the standard AFC response will be to accept an LJBF rejection in the mistaken hope of ‘proving’ himself worthy of her intimacy by being the perfect ‘surrogate boyfriend’ – fulfilling all her attention and loyalty prerequisites with no expectation of reciprocating her own intimacy. I should also point out that this situation is analogous to men using women as “fuck buddies” – fulfilling all his sexual availability needs with no expectations of reciprocating commitment. Needless to say this merely positions the new “friend” into being the ’emotionally supportive’ Beta counterpart to the indifferent Alpha she’ll consistently bang and then complain about – also popularly known as the Emotional Tampon.

The LJBF rejection also serves as an ego preservation for her in that having offered the false olive branch of ‘friendship’ to him in her rejection she can also sleep that night knowing that she (and any of her peers) wont think any less of herself. After all, she offered to be friends, right? She is absolved of any feelings of personal guilt or any responsibilities for his feelings if she still wants to remain amiable with him.

Men get a LJBF rejection because of a process. These are the “friends first” mindset guys; the guys who put far too much emphasis on a solitary woman and wait her out until the perfect moment to attempt to escalate to intimacy, at which point her most comfortable rejection (Buffer) is to LJBF. This is made all the more easy for her because of the process the guy used to get to that point.

Virtually all guys who get to the point of a LJBF rejection come to it because they fall in line with some variation of what I call a Sniper Mentality. They patiently wait for their one target, to the exception of all others, constantly attempting to prove their quality in doing so – meaning they emphasize a comfort level and try to be friends before lovers. In essence they believe that desexualizing themselves will make them more attractive (by virtue of not being like “other guys”) because they’ve bought into the idea that a woman must be comfortable with them first before they initiate intimacy. Once the AFC gets to a point where he’s mustered enough courage to initiate, and he feels she ‘should’ be comfortable enough to appreciate him as boyfriend material, the Sniper takes his shot.

The problem with this process is that it bypasses essential stages of attraction and the necessary discomfort and sexual tension necessary for intimacy and proceeds directly to a warm familiar, comfortable, (and ultimately anti-seductive) rapport, the exact opposite of arousal. If you think about this in terms of sex, this is the stage right after climax when she wants to cuddle, spoon and be wrapped up in her nice, secure oxytocin induced comfort. This is the opposite of the testosterone fueled, sweaty, anxious and uncomfortable stage of arousal and intercourse before that release. So in terms of “friendship” and the Sniper mentality, you’ve skipped arousal and gone straight to comfort. You’re perceived as a stuffed animal she can hug and then put back on the bed. Thus, when that previously platonic stuffed animal uncharacteristically gets a hard-on and says “I think we ought to be intimate” her reaction is to think that everything you’ve done for her up to that point has been a grand ruse. “My God, all you wanted was sex this whole time?”

Her most predictable response is then the LJBF rejection. The field has already been tilled by you, it’s only one, very easy step for her to stay in that suspended comfort – “can’t we just be friends?” And then the cycle repeats. The AFC believes the LJBF is a genuine offer (not a rejection) and then falls back into the Sniper mentality. He mustn’t have been convincing enough to prove his worth to her and therefore returns to further proving himself as the perfect boyfriend until he once again presses his intent of intimacy after another period. All this goes on apace until she becomes intimate with a ‘real’ boyfriend and/or he acquires a new target after realizing his efforts with the LJBF girl aren’t bearing fruit.

The problem with a lot of the ‘friend-zone’ advice women tend to offer is that they cast doubt on whether a LJBF rejection is in fact a rejection and not a genuine offer of friendship. To which I’ll say, the only reason the ‘friend-zone’ is such a common issue among men & women for so long is because it’s been repeated so regularly and the outcome so predictable as a rejection. A woman’s behavior is always the only gauge of her intent, and thus when a rejection like LJBF has been so consistently met with the same outcome and behavior (as evidenced by thousands of identical stories from men) it’s only prudent for a Man to behave in kind.

A man’s default response should always be to excuse him from the LJBF situation. The reason for this is because it serves his best interest whether she is testing him or is rejecting him. If he is confident enough in himself to walk away from the sexually tense environment, he proves himself as decisive enough to put himself above being ‘played’ like this. Ergo, he leaves her with the impression that he is the PRIZE, possibly has contacts with better prospective women and is confident enough to take away his attentions from her and thus passes any shit test she might have implied, while placing the responsibility of a re-connection on her (where it should be anyway). If she has in fact had a change of heart (her prerogative, remember?) and is using the LJBF as a means to reject him, he still benefits from all of the above and plants the ‘seed of doubt’ in her about her initial estimation of his acceptability for her intimacy. And even if she is truly not interested in the guy, he walks away on his feet and not his knees, by playing “friend” with her and wasting still more time that could be far better spent with more productive prospects.

It is really one of the few win-win Game situations for a guy to make a wholesale withdrawal of his attentions when he is confronted with an LJBF. Women know all too well how an LJBF places social pressure on a guy to accept what basically amounts to an ultimatum of negative social proof, and that’s a hell of a shit test no matter what her real intent is. If the guy turns down her offer of friendship, he’s the dickhead, not her. But the guy that can do what common sense and gut instinct points out to him will be the one to succeed, with her, other women and himself.

Human being’s natural inclination is to avoid confrontation. When a man makes an approach to intimacy with a woman this becomes confrontational. If she is unsure of a man’s sexual acceptability for her intimacy she must resort to psycho-social, learned behaviors to diffuse this confrontation. Preferably these techniques should be reinforced beforehand and proven to diffuse just such a confrontation, thus the LJBF response is acted out through generations of women across many different cultures – quite simply it works more often than not. You can also apply this to the Boyfriend Disclaimer; women who not-so-nonchalantly weave into their casual conversation that they have a boyfriend in a preemptive effort to diffuse a potential suitor’s interests. It’s basically a proactive LJBF rejection.

It’s the guy who is unwilling to accept these conventions that makes the most lasting impressions of confidence with women. It goes against what our common human heritage dictates for us – avoid conflict, don’t make waves, be her friend, etc. By not accepting a LJBF you emphatically make known that you are good at confrontation, you have an understanding of her motives and you’re confident enough in yourself to make it known. Not only does this impress her with potential for security provision it also implies future confidence. The problem for most guys is enacting this and making it a default behavior when our biology would have us move away from conflict rather than engage in an unacceptable social dynamic that is subtly damaging to his own interests.

A Billion Wicked Thoughts

I’ve recently finished reading “A Billion Wicked Thoughts”  by Ogi Ogas PhD. and Sai Gaddam PhD. and I’d have to place it next to The 48 Laws of Power as a seminal work for the Game community. It statistically confirms a lot of Game principles, but at the same time it will challenge more than a few. Highly recommended.

As expected it appears that yesterday’s Women’s Physical Standards post drew a bit of consternation from both sides of the aisle. Women predictably want to cling to what’s always been a useful canard for their victimhood psychology (i.e. men fixate on specific physical perfection) and ‘community’ men, predictably, want to point out that it’s not JUST looks that gets a guy laid. One of the most sacred cows of the Game community is the ‘Game trumps Looks’ debate. Nothing inspires a more heated discourse than when making physical comparisons and drawing conclusions from observable events and behaviors in this regard. But that’s not what I was getting at in yesterday’s post.

Oh, I’ll get to that in time, but what I was driving at in that topic was dispelling the popularized notion (as lamented by the Body Shop’s and many more positive body image ad campaigns) that men have some twisted, media-fueled physical ideal that women can’t possibly attain and that, statistically, it’s really women who have a far more rigid standard for male beauty than they’ll ever publicly admit. Understandably this makes guys squirm for the same reason it makes women squirm; trying to live up to a rigid physical standard.

On the flip side of that coin, I’m fully aware that there are a host of other factors that influence a woman’s overall attraction for a man, (the classics of status, power, affluence, Game, and Alpha dominance come to mind)  but I was comparing the isolated physical standards for both genders. I also understand that attraction doesn’t happen in a vacuum, however, raw physical arousal – the precursor to a more protracted degree of attraction – often does. George Clooney and Johnny Depp are sex symbols, but Bill Gates (younger, richer and more powerful than either of them) is not. Women’s chances of marrying any of them is infinitesimal, however, when women fantasize about sex, it’s with the good looking guys, because all they’re thinking about is sex from an arousal perspective.

Now, all that makes for a good response in the comments thread, but I wouldn’t have composed any of this into a fresh post had it not been for another related issue I’ve been recently debating. And this is the issue of how easy-access contemporary pornography has become the greatest catalyst in changing the inter-gender landscape since birth-control and the sexual revolution.

Has high quality ubiquitous porn changed Generation Y men? This may seem like a stretch, but in the same way that women want to cling to the idea that men harbor impossibly high physical standards, the comparative argument holds that women also apply this template to the influence of pornography on men’s sexual appetites. Feminine-centric porn complaints generally lump all porn into the same stereotypical profile. By ignoring the overwhelming variety of porn that any given man may “consume”, the sympathetic reader (mostly concerned women and their white knight sycophantic men) are left to presume “porn” means the unattainable, blonde hair, blue eyed, perky-boobed, perfect bodied girl in nothing but high heels and ready to take the money shot in her mouth. Porn hating women love this caricature of porn because, in this characterization, it’s just as unattainable for them to live up to as it is for most men to actually experience. Needless to say the latent purpose of maintaining this opinion is ensuring a position of sexual selection based on feminine-centric criteria. Biomechanics are a bitch, and reducing the threat of sexual competitors provably outperforming them by example (in porn) is increasingly more imperative as access to the “performances” become more easily available. The logic is one of ignorance is bliss; the less exposure a man has to sexual variety the more valuable her sexual agency becomes to him.

All one need do is look at the sex category sections of any free video porn site (Pornhub, Red Tube, Tube 8, etc.) to see what a parody this really is. Porn’s not just the 80’s standard blonde and brunette in a threesome with some random guy rented from the VHS store. It’s amateurs, asians, lesbians, interracial, orgy, fatties, skinnys, matures, teens, etc. Just name the body type, sex act, racial profile, age, hair color, etc. and there is a pornographic niche for it (Rule 34). Considering the sheer amount of sexual variety available for a myriad of preferences, women bemoaning their inability to “live up to” porn star requirements is ludicrous and indicative of their complete lack of understanding the male sex dynamic. As I stated in yesterday’s post, name the niche and there’s a fan-group ready to bang you.

For the past several decades it’s been a very easy sell for women to characterize porn as degrading women, or setting an impossibly idealized standard of sexual expectation; that is until the rise of digital media and the capacity to empirically track the access to it. A Billion Wicked Thoughts admirably compiles the statistic ‘evidence’, the hard web-trend data of more than a decade, that disproves the idea that porn is ‘one-size-fits-all’. All the self-reporting and biased corollary studies on porn’s influences of the 80’s and 90’s are wiped away in one stroke with the statistically verifiable data of online porn consumption habits – leaving all of us with the question of what were they trying to prove then?

I’ll save the debate on whether porn’s influence is retarding men’s overall maturity by too easily satiating their libido for another thread, but I can’t end this without also pointing out that a great many statistics revealed in this book also contradict more than a few presumed tenets of Game theory. Among those is the same one I’ve just pointed out for women; men have a plethora of sexual tastes and fetishes, not just the “perfect 10”. You simply can’t ignore the statistical variances in men’s appetites for MILFs, Matures, Asians, Big Asses, Chubbys, etc. and come to the conclusion that there is a one-size-fits-all sexual type preference for men. You can argue as to why men opt for these variances, but you can’t argue they don’t opt for them.

Women’s Physical Standards

“Your charming personality and bulletproof Game won’t make you look any better when your shirt comes off.”

This may come as a shock to the “men have impossibly high beauty standards” gnashing of feminist teeth, but it is in fact women who have a much higher standard for an idealized male physique. For all the endless kvetching from women about men wanting “living barbie dolls”, it’s men who’ve historically displayed much broader interests in female body habitus than women ever have.

You see, men will very readily cater their physical sexual “preferences” in accordance with what has proven sexually successful for them in past experiences. In other words, men tend to return to the same watering hole they found to be plentiful in the past. These preferences of convenience manifest themselves as ‘fetishes’ for men. And you don’t even need all that extensive research to prove this.  All one need do is search the vast variety of porn available catering to the physical attributes that men will fetishize. Big boobs, small boobs, big ass, small ass, every hair color of the rainbow, shaved snatch, hairy snatch, teen girls to MILFs and older, tan, pale, ultra-thin to the ubiquitous BBWs (Big Beautiful women). Ladies, name the physical attribute(s), and there’s a fan-group just waiting to bang you. Rule 34 was never more provable than in men’s willingness to fuck damn near any physical demographic of women – just ask the female midgets catering to that fetish of porn.

On the other hand, from a purely physical perspective, it’s women’s idealized masculine form that hasn’t changed in millennia. While there may have been a rubenesque period when men loved the fatties of the 1600′s, no such era ever existed for women’s physical preferences. The classic broad chest, wide shoulders, six-pack abs and squared jaws of greco-roman athleticism are still the idealized male form that has graced EVERY romance novel cover in existence. I’m still waiting for someone to post me a link for a dating site that caters exclusively to women’s fetish of BBMs – average to good looking, fit women specifically looking overweight men. Executive Introductions caters to women seeking affluent, influential men, but women just looking for overweight men, that site doesn’t exist.

Now, with this, don’t think for a moment I’m refuting the prevailing bio-mechanical wisdom that prompts the vast majority of men towards the sexual want of a slender and archetypically sexy woman. That’s hardwired for us, but ladies, stop your bitching about men’s perception of beauty and how unfair it is to be subjectively compared in the physical as a basis for your personal worth. By historical comparison, women’ve got it easy when it comes to physicality. Unless you are an extreme outlier of physical deformity, there’s probably a niche of porn that specifically caters to your body habitus. And in terms of effort, it takes far more sweat and determination for men to build a man’s body into a masculine physical ideal than it will EVER be for women to achieve a form that men wont find sexually appealing to some degree. Try to keep that in mind when you’re complaining about the stress you’re experiencing in contemplating the social implications of getting a boob job or how expensive your next botox injection will be.

Average Frustrated Chump

In the “community” there’s a lot of want for better terms. One of the major obstacles in the average guy’s path to unplugging is really coming to terms with the ‘terms’ we use. Somewhere on the net I’m sure there’s a glossary of the common acronyms used in the “manosphere” (I hate that term too) outlining the various shorthand we use. Some of these terms have gone mainstream and I’m beginning to see even “legitimate” online journalists use LTR (long term relationship) or ONS (one night stand) somewhat regularly, meaning there’s a common perception that others will already know what they mean.

The reason this is a hurdle for a lot of plugged-in guys is because it seems almost juvenile, like a treehouse club for preteen boys. For me to draw comparisons of an acculturated, feminine social paradigm to the central plot of the Matrix movies, admittedly, on the surface that seems kind of silly. It’s an apt comparison and a useful allegory when you understand the concepts behind it, but for a guy just coming to grasp it while being immersed in a feminine-primary socialization for his whole life, it dosen’t click. And predictably, women invested in that same socialization see the terminology as little more than little boys holed up in their treehouse, throwing rocks at the girls below.

However, like any new developing science or art or technology there is always going to be a need to codify abstract concepts. We lack better terms so we’re forced to create new ones to represent new concepts.

The AFC – average frustrated chump – was coined almost a decade ago with Mystery method. It’s seen a lot of modification over the years, becoming almost synonymous the use of the term Beta (beta male) or Herb (herbivorous male). In fact, although I use it often, I rarely read AFC in PUA blogs, forums or the ‘community’ at large. Regardless of the terminology, the concept is really the crux of the term. Most AFCs, most guys looking in from the outside, can relate to the idea of what an average frustrated chump is – they can identify with it. Once they begin unplugging, the AFC idea comes into better focus and, usually with some discomfort, they realize how that term applies to themselves:

Qualities of an AFC

  • ONEitis – First and foremost.
  • Subscribes to feminine idealizations.
  • Supplication is supportive. To comply with gender equalism she must increase, so he must decrease, regardless of how subtly this is realized.
  • The Savior Schema –reciprocation of intimacy for problems solved.
  • The Martyr Schema – the more you sacrifice the more it shows devotion.
  • The ‘Friends’ Debt – LJBF and the pseudo-friendship as a means to prospective intimacy.
  • Primarily relies on dating and social skills (or lack thereof) developed during adolescence and early adulthood
  • A behavioral history that illustrates a mental attitude of ‘serial monogamy’ and the related insecurities that accompany it.
  • A belief that women infallibly and consciously recognize what they want, and honestly convey this to them, irrespective of behaviors that contradict this. Uses deductive reasoning in determining intent and bases female motivations on statements rather than objectively observing behavior. Believes women’s natural propensity is for rational rather than emotional thought.
  • An over-reliance on rejection Buffers.
  • Believes in the Identification Myth. The more alike he is, or can make himself, with his idealized female the better able he will be to attract and secure her intimacy. Believes that shared common interests are the ONLY key to attraction and enduring intimacy.
  • Believes and practices the “not like other guys” doctrine of self-perceived uniqueness, even under the condition of anonymity.
  • Considers LDRs (long distance relationships)  a viable option for prolonged intimacy.
  • Maintains an internalized belief in the qualifications and characterizations of women that coincide with his ability (or inability) to attract them. Ergo, he self-confirms the “ she’s out of my league” and the “she’s a loose slut” mentalities on-the-fly to reinforce his position for his given conditions.
  • Harbors irrational (often socially reinforced) fears of long term solitude and alters his mind-set to accommodate or settle for a less than optimal short term relationship – often with life long consequences.
  • The AFC will confirm a belief in egalitarian equality between the genders without consideration for variance between the genders. Ergo, men make perfectly acceptable feminine models and women make perfectly acceptable masculine models. Due to societal pressures he unconsciously self-confirms androgyny as his goal state.

This is anything but a comprehensive list. There are far more, but my intent here isn’t to provide you with a list of criteria that qualifies an AFC (“you might be a chump if,..”), rather it’s to give you some basic understanding to clarify the term, and round out the idea of what an AFC is. Needless to say these mental schema are some of the impediments to unplugging, or helping another man unplug, from his old way of thinking. As I’m fond of repeating, unplugging chumps from the Matrix is dirty work. Expect to be met with a LOT of resistance, but understanding what dynamics you may harbor yourself or those that a friend might cling to will help you in moving past the years of social conditioning. It’s thankless work, and more often than not you’ll also be facing a constant barrage of shit tests (from both women and feminized men) and ridicule in your efforts. Be prepared for it. Unplugging chumps is triage – save those you can, read last rites to the dying.