The Feminine Imperative

The Gatekeepers

My Services Rendered post generated a lot of response in the comments, PMs and even sparked a good debate on the SoSuave forum. All of this got me thinking about economics in the SMP.

It’s funny, I can remember a time in the early 90s when getting your GF to shave her snatch clean was scandalous. It seemed to imply that a guy’s true desire was to bang prepubescent girls. Shaved pubes was ‘niche porn’ back then and you’d have to actually seek it out in the print and VHS days. Now it’s just incidental, and hairy bushes are the niche.

I also remember when I first saw strippers with navel piercings and thinking “goddam that is hot!” Then I started seeing hot ‘normal’ girls doing it, but there was this initial stigma that only sluts, porn stars and strippers got their belly buttons pierced so it was slow to catch on at first – which of course made it all the more hotter when you got with a girl who had one. Don’t even get me started on tongue piercings.

Same thing with tramp stamp tattoos. Initially hot, now, no big deal. I think maybe nipple piercings might be the next thing, but it’s not like average girls go about getting them and showing them off as readily as other “slutty” fashion statements.

I bring all this up as a starting point to illustrate the progression of how the feminine sexual arms race evolves in the sexual marketplace (SMP). It would be very easy to simply pass all of this off as just further indications of society’s moral decline, but that’s too easy an answer. Everyone thought Elvis Presley’s hips and rock & roll would be society’s ticket to Sodom and Gomorrah too. Sexual trends and catering to men’s sexual imperatives makes today’s fetishes tomorrow’s normalized expectations. I expect there was a time when getting a hummer was considered sexually deviant; now it’s expected sexual behavior to where it’s a point of pride for women to give a good one, thus making women uncomfortable with oral sex the deviants.

I can’t think of porn clip I’ve seen in recent memory where a woman didn’t have a navel piercing or shaved snatch. Porn sets a sexual standard, but it also takes it’s cues from larger society. When women complain that they can’t compete with porn stars (dubious in an age of instant amateur porn) you’re listening to a woman resorting to men’s preferred method of communication – overt communication. Essentially she’s exasperated to the point where she needs to make absolutely sure that men unmistakably understand her anxiety, so she speaks his language. “I can’t compete.”

Ironically it’s the same women who were ‘competitors’ in their youth, are the same women who consider their husbands viewing porn to be tantamount to marital infidelity.

The Gatekeepers

Controlling access to sex (women’s primary agency) is the most important aspect of a feminine-primary reality. This reality necessitates that Men’s sexual interests are by default, deviant, hurtful and shameful, while women’s sexual expressions are normative, correct and above reproach. Men are perverts when they masturbate, yet women are so sexy when they masturbate that there’s a niche for it in pornography. The problem the feminine faces in maintaining this control to sexual access is that the same competition that drives women to restrain it is the same competition that forces them to ‘up the ante’ and allow it in order to beat their competitors.

What’s interesting, and ironic, is that women’s push to ban pornography is motivated by the same impetus that makes pornography appealing. Pornography is simply a manifestation of men’s desire for unlimited access to unlimited sexuality. Women’s desire is rooted in hypergamy, from which the best possible situation would be unlimited access to the best quality males. In order to effect the best possible sexual outcomes, both sex’s mating schemas are at odds.

In a male-centric sexual reality, most women would simply never be able to compete; in fact unlimited access to unlimited sexuality ensures they will be outstripped at some point by a sexual competitor. Even in a feminine-centric reality this is at least the mitigated situation. They certainly cannot effect their own sexual schema under these conditions, so the recourse is to use that same sexual agency to control the narrative and enforce their own sexual primacy as the correct one. His access, in fact his very exposure, to sexual competitors must be limited in order for her to select from the most, best, suitors. Limit the experience, limit the options, make her sexual schema the primary normative, inflate the value of her sexuality as a reward, and enforce it with specifically defined moralism.

From a pragmatic, power retention point of view, it makes sense that women would expect men to submit to what best fits their reality and sublimate their sexual imperatives to accommodate a female sexual imperative. This can be effected by reward and punishment. Reward in that a man is allowed sexual access for compliance to her imperatives, and punishment via shame and ridicule for noncompliance or even being critical of it.

The Morality Clause

Appeals to religion or morality are simply convenient tools of this punishment to enforce a female-centric reality. It’s hard to argue against religion or puritanism in a “gender appropriate” debate – it’s unassailable. God / Polite Society dictates that women are to be respected, protected and valued as an unquestioned default position, and even when her actions do not match her words or convictions she’s to be given the benefit of the doubt; and even when she’s caught in her indiscretions it makes a man a Man when he forgives her.

At present, all tenets of conventional morality exist to serve a feminine imperative. That may seem like a bold statement, considering that moralism can be considered a form of ‘slut control’, but think of any example of a vice or a virtue and you can link it back to a latent purpose for it being considered such that serves a female reality. Pornography and prostitution are only considered vices by society at large because they conflict with a broader female-primary reality. Encouraging virtues like temperance and honesty, still serve a female specific reality in that men believe they will be considered higher value mating potential than men who do not possess these virtues – and they help to keep men rooted in one set of social rules while they are free to operate under another set.

Workarounds

As feminism progressively ’empowered’ a more overt feminine reality, so too were methods adapted to circumvent this by men (i.e. Game). Since the sexual revolution, men have been forced into 3 camps; those who embrace and function within the feminine imperative (male feminists), those who reject and remove themselves from it either temporarily or permanently (what Jay Hymowitz calls “man-boys” or “Kidults”), or those who learn the mechanics of the female imperative and subvert it to their own purpose (PUAs, DJs, Game).

These camps, and men’s increasing refusal or abdication to play in an overt, female-centric reality, is the reason for more and more litigation intended to get men to either comply or be legally bound to the responsibilities of living in a female reality. For centuries women have relied on passively engineered social conventions that were accepted into our cultural consciousness that carried shame or some attached social stigma for a man who wouldn’t comply with them. Since the beginning of the sexual revolution however, these social conventions have become increasingly less effective as women perceive them as vestiges of a male patriarchy. Men see women eschewing these “traditional” conventions, but are themselves still expected to abide by them while respecting women for NOT abiding by them. So over the course of 2 decades men become less controlled by the old social structure, and unwilling to participate in a female-centric reality. What to do?

Now, as men are becoming increasingly aware of the raw deal they’ve gotten, and with the advent of global interconnectivity with other men, the female-centric response is to legally force men into that reality. Thus the laws enacted which pertain to a specific gender become more and more gratuitous for women and more draconian for men. If men will not respect a feminine imperative by social means, then it will be necessary to petition the state to enforce their reality upon men.

Free Lunch

“Rollo talks a lot about shaming tactics from women, and one I’m hearing now is that if the man doesn’t pay for the date, he is actually being feminine and passive, and is attracting more masculine, ball-busting like girls because he’s giving his role of pursuer up, and feminine women will be repelled by men who don’t pay for their drinks/dinner/dates etc.

To me, it just sounds like women being afraid of losing an advantage they’ve always had, free stuff.

How do you see it? First date is coffee, do you pay for that? Does she pay for her own? Do you look cheap if you buy that first cup? Do you look needy if you buy that first cup?”

Law 40: Despise the Free Lunch
What is offered for free is dangerous— it usually involves either a trick or a hidden obligation. What has worth is worth paying for. By paying your own way you stay clear of gratitude, guilt, and deceit. It is also often wise to pay the full price— there is no cutting corners with excellence. Be lavish with your money and keep it circulating, for generosity is a sign and a magnet for power.

Read this again, what has worth is worth paying for. The feminization of culture has simultaneously distorted the formality of a man paying for a date into a form of masculine control while still being a required masculine obligation. It’s a Catch 22 – screwed if you do, screwed if you don’t, and there are two conflicting perspectives for this.

As I’ve expressed on a few occasions; as a man in this life, you will ALWAYS pay for sex in one form or another. That may be buying coffee, drinks, dinner, a concert ticket, a wedding ring or a mortgage payment, but always trust that there is going to be a cost associated with you and sex. Whether it’s with your nebulous ‘Quality Woman’ or the prostitute you picked up off the Trail for half an hour – you’re going to pay.

The second perspective is the ‘Chivalry’s not dead’ approach. Nothing has served the feminine imperative better over the years than to convince the male populace at large that it’s his codified moral obligation to prove his provisioning capacity to her in an effort to qualify for her intimacy. This point of view has had a long history of perpetual requisites for a man, but the holdover, and starting point today is paying for the drinks / date / etc based on a traditional, gender specific, obligation.

In light of that, if it makes you feel a sense of completed duty in paying for a woman’s drinks / meal, then by all means continue to do so, but not because a woman’s convinced you of a moral obligation. My approach is to recognize this ‘tradition’ for what it really is. You’re a Man. Men of power despise a free lunch; not from business associates and certainly not from a woman he intends to make his pleasure.

What has worth is worth paying for. By paying your own way you stay clear of gratitude, guilt, and deceit.

You also stay clear of obligation. There can never, and will never, be an egalitarian equality between the sexes: we are different. The good news is this is the way women want it in spite of their feminization conditionings. Covertly, women want a Man who initiates, approaches, drives, and yes, pays the tab. However, when overtly pressed about ‘paying her way’, she is forced into a position of denying this because her conditioning has taught her “she is her own person” and the expectations of her day say she should at least pay half, not be afraid to approach a man, initiate a date herself, etc. Make Sadie Hawkins proud.

These are masculine expectations, and much like the “virtues” of the professional woman, feminine masculinization conditions her to equate her value on masculine terms, while still being a woman. The fallacy being that a Man ‘should’ be attracted to the same masculine traits she finds attractive. And predictably, innate gender nature continues to contradict this.

So yes, pay for the drinks, date, etc., just know what you’re paying for. What has worth is worth paying for – is she worth the payment? You are the Prince, your attentions have value, does she appreciate them? Have a plan, make the decisions, direct the course of the date. If she’s unresponsive or only luke warm in her reciprocation – NEXT! Hypergamy makes ALL women opportunists by order of  degree; accept that, it’s simply how the world works. Golddiggers are women who overtly acknowledge this opportunism in word and behavior; they’re not too hard to recognize if you want to see them.

You’ll know more about her the morning after you bang her brains out than you ever will on a casual, comfy dinner date.

I want you to want me

,..but, Rollo I want it to be because of who I am, not what I can pay for.

This is an uncomfortable truth, and a lot of guys don’t like to hear it, but your capacity to pay is PART of who you are.

Your accomplishments, your career, your passions, your aspirations, your physique, are all PART of you. There are parts of you that are more attractive than others, but the sum is what makes you who you are. There was a thread on the SoSuave forum a week ago regarding career choices and how this relates to life and women etc. I realize this may be an unpopular opinion on this, but what you choose to do as a vocation is part of who you are. It may not be your source of personal identity, but for better or worse, your vocation and it’s associations become a part of your identity. It’s similar to how you look physically is part of you. It’s a comfortable fiction to think that women are less interested in a man’s physique, or should be attracted to a guy unbiased by what he does – but these are all part of a whole.

Egalitarian Equalism is self-defeating; it leaves a vaccuum of power or responsibilities to be filled by either sex in the wrong instances; for instance, expecting a man to possess the equitable feminine qualities he’s lacking yet still holding him accountable for them. In other words, if a wife feels her husband is incapable of providing for her and the kids with the decisive, confident security of leadership she will feel compelled to assume the role of the husband and he will be relegated to the role of being the passive, submissive wife. In the egalitarian model this is acceptable, socially reinforced and passed on as learned behavior to their children. And in this generation (and perhaps the one prior) it’s not a stretch to assume that contemporary male submissiveness was in fact taught to them by their own parents.This may seem like I’m being overly analytical, but look at this framework from the perspective of paying for a date / drinks / events etc. from the beginning stages of an LTR or even just spinning a plate. This egalitarian model has filtered into the male social identity to the point that a guy thinks it common place for a woman to initiate and approach him with a date proposition. He thinks it normal for a woman to want to pay the tab, open doors for him, etc. These are traditionally Men’s behaviors that AFCs believe women think are empowering and attractive in women.

Your Grandfather never pondered whether he or your then-to-be Grandmother would get the bill; it wasn’t even an afterthought. He payed the tab and Grandma was appreciative. And that’s what’s at issue – appreciation. Feminization has stacked the deck against a guy to the point where he questions a woman’s motives. Does she appreciate his generosity or does she feel entitled to it?

Why Marriage Needs Men

I’d very much like to leave religion, at least in the organized sense, as a topic for another blog, however, as it applies to Game and intergender social dynamics it’s occurred to me that this isn’t entirely possible. Since its inception the SoSuave community has had a strict policy against threads specifically exploring religious topics. For obvious reasons these tend to get rather heated in terms of discussing theology, and most simply devolve into flame wars with no real purpose. Yet, in terms of how religion and moralism apply to the intergender landscape and sexual marketplace, I think it does a disservice to a fuller understanding of how the sexes relate to one another. In my tenure as a SoSuave forum moderator it pains me to have to delete so many promising threads because the topic strayed form “Game and religion” into “My God can beat up your God.” So my disclaimer for this blog is this; any time I delve into the subject of religion, moralism,  ethics or anything that might be construed as esoterically inspired, understand that I do so in an effort to address how it influences the social dynamics between genders. Never is it an attack on individual beliefs, rather consider it a critical analysis of how those beliefs interact with the reality we live in.

Why men need marriage.

Today’s topic article comes to us courtesy of Pastor Mark Driscoll. I briefly touched upon Driscoll’s pollyanna, socio-religious propositions in Could a Man Have Written This? and reference him in Build a Better Beta. Driscoll’s article, while ostensibly written to advertise his latest book, is really an essay in irony. This irony is literally written into the article’s title, and I’m certain that Mark is entirely oblivious to it. You can go ahead and read his very simplistic overview of modern gender relations; it will scarcely impress all but the most green of noobs in the manosphere that Driscoll is firmly planted in the world created by the feminine imperative. Even in just asserting ‘men need marriage’ we get an appetizer of the gruel of male shaming yet to be served. Sadly, he’s not covering any new ground that Kay Hymowitz and the bleatings of Kate Bollick haven’t already beat him to the punch with.

I don’t think I need to go in to too much detail about Driscoll throwing rocks at the moon to make it go away. Anyone with even a cursory knowledge of Game can see him for what he is. My concern is that HE doesn’t see himself for what he is. I’m concerned because I think his head is in the right place, but he so lacks any real-world experience with the sexual marketplace that he’s unaware of his participation in promoting a world view he’d otherwise be adamantly opposed to. Driscoll shares in the major failing of Social Conservatives in terms of understanding Game; they are the unwitting instruments of the feminine imperative.

Driscoll’s intent is to see men returned to some semblance of traditional masculinity, with all the benefits and liabilities that antiquated romanticism implies, but he employs the chief ideologies and tools of the feminine imperative to do so. The shaming conventions, implied lethargy, shirking of male-attributable responsibilities, et. al. he uses are the same clichés the feminine imperative has established as the articles of Man-Up! 2.0. Mark is blissfully unaware of the Male Catch 22:

Man Up or Shut Up – The Male Catch 22

One of the primary way’s Honor is used against men is in the feminized perpetuation of traditionally masculine expectations when it’s convenient, while simultaneously expecting egalitarian gender parity when it’s convenient.

For the past 60 years feminization has built in the perfect Catch 22 social convention for anything masculine; The expectation to assume the responsibilities of being a man (Man Up) while at the same time denigrating asserting masculinity as a positive (Shut Up). What ever aspect of maleness that serves the feminine purpose is a man’s masculine responsibility, yet any aspect that disagrees with feminine primacy is labeled Patriarchy and Misogyny.

Essentially, this convention keeps beta males in a perpetual state of chasing their own tails. Over the course of a lifetime they’re conditioned to believe that they’re cursed with masculinity (Patriarchy) yet are still responsible to ‘Man Up’ when it suits a feminine imperative. So it’s therefore unsurprising to see that half the men in western society believe women dominate the world (male powerlessness) while at the same time women complain of a lingering Patriarchy (female powerlessness) or at least sentiments of it. This is the Catch 22 writ large. The guy who does in fact Man Up is a chauvinist, misogynist, patriarch, but he still needs to man up when it’s convenient to meet the needs of a female imperative.

Mark Driscoll’s presumptive starting point is putting men in the subservient role, while expecting them to Man-Up, take control, and be better men all with the idealized goal of becoming more appropriate, more suitable men for women. Marriage is the goal and the cure to prolonged adolescence – in other words better serving the feminine imperative qualifies men to be adults. From Could a Man have Written This?:

In girl-world, what directly benefits women necessarily is presumed to benefit men, so what we’ll see is a new wave of [female] bloggers bastardizing the world-worn ideas that the manosphere has put together and repackaging it in a female context. It’s Man Up 2.0; make a token push to “re-empower” men just enough for them to idealize the romanticism of the responsibilities required for living up to women’s expectations.

Without an afterthought Driscoll titles his diatribe “Why Men NEED marriage” with the presumption that getting married will force men to Man-Up. This is the extent of his critical thought, because he has no realistic frame of reference beyond what his self-righteous Matrix-think conditioning will permit. He’s batting for Team Woman (not unlike another infamous female blogger), but would have us believe it’s for our own good.

Sanitizing Game

Recently there’s been an upswing in a social conservative push to ‘sanitize’ Game; essentially taking the drive and principles of the manosphere and converting them to fit into their doctirnal narrative:

A major illustration of this can be found in the ‘late-to-the-party’ resurgence of masculine ideals in mainstream evangelical christianity today. Like so much else in christian culture, they’re happy to use the popularity of a secular phenomenon and repackage it as kosher, the manosphere is no exception. Hacks like Mark Driscoll and more than few other “relevant” new order evangelical pastors have co-opted manosphere (MRA?) fundamentals – even ‘purified’ forms of Game – as their particular cause du jour for returning men back into their roles of accountability to the female imperative. This of course has an overwhelming appeal to White Knight prone guys, but the push is disingenuous for the same reason ‘pro-men’ female writers are – they still use the girl-world, female imperative rule book to define their outlook.

Rediscovering masculinity is the new black in ‘relevant’ church. It sells very well, and in and of itself it’s not too dissimilar from the perspectives of the manosphere about owning your gender. The similarities end in the application. While it maybe cathartic to beat your chest and pretend to fight like a UFC fighter at some ‘christian’ men’s weekend (evangelicals men have inexplicably embraced MMA fighting in the last 5 years), the takeaway message is still one of apologizing for their testosterone. They can only own their masculinity insofar as it doesn’t upset the feminine imperative.

Never take dating advice, or really any opinion of intergender relations seriously when it’s coming from moralistic guys who’ve never had the benefit of past, first hand experience with women. Evangelical understanding of gender relations is based only upon a very insular and anachronistic perspective. Consequently, what constitutes their understanding is derived from living vicariously through their unchurched friends, romantic comedies, reading statistics that agree with their perspective, all in an effort to make themselves feel better about having married the first girl they met at church camp.

Driscoll is a fantastic illustration of a guy who’s been entirely out of touch with the social changes and the sexual marketplace since he got married.

***

For further reading Dalrock has an excellent breakdown of this article here.

The Curse of Jung


The sexual revolution represents a far more significant turning point in human events than I think most people living post-sexual revolution will ever fully appreciate. I was born after it, and I would presume most of the influential participants involved in our current gender discourse today were also products of a post sexual revolution acculturation. The vast majority of authors dutifully typing away on both manosphere and feministing blogs are, for the better part, results of the social-gender restructuring that occurred in the late 60s. With this in mind I think it’s important to reflect on the era prior to this to really grasp the significance of that change, and to understand how we’ve come to take certain aspects of our new gender reality as simply matter of fact. It’s hard to believe there was a time when we didn’t need to ask why men were Men.

1950

A lot of critics of really anything pro-masculine today will always fall back on the canard that the ‘misogynist’ author would “love to return to the 1950’s”. The epithet “misogynist” is as useful as “homophobe” for the same reason that it’s an easy throw-away label to help disqualify a dissenting point of view. If it’s hurtful or forces critical thinking that challenges an ego investment it’s far easier to categorize the offender as holding to outdated modes of thinking. Make your opponent’s views an anachronism and your perspective appears more valid simply because it seems the more novel and developed. But were the 1950’s some gilded age of masculism? What about the 30’s or 40’s, or even the 19th century? Feminists and feminized men fondly resurrect the specter of the 1950’s as if the decade were some apex turning point in women’s enslavement; like the Hebrews under Pharaoh’s yoke yearning for the promised land. All the men who held any sway over society are caricatures of white, middle class boors – more Archie Bunker than Ward Cleaver, but even Ward’s benevolence and bearing would be suspect of passive-aggressive patriarchy.

What’s tragic in this silly dismissal of a masculine mindset is that it presumes any man in this, or the past three generations could ever have any realistic frame of reference for life in the 1950’s. This is doubly true for contemporary women using this shaming association, but in recognizing this we have to open up a new pandoras box. What else is the feminine imperative using (deliberate or unconsciously) as “common sense” to rise to prominence?

Modern feminist understanding of gender, and really our feminized society as a whole, is based to it’s very foundations on an anachronism even more outdated than some mythologized chauvinist era when “men had it so good, while women were their doting, unwitting slaves.”

The Curse of Jung

I go into a lot of detail describing feminine social conventions on this blog. Some people think it’s unfair to target just female conventions; there are after all many other social conventions that apply to men as well. I’d agree with this of course, and besides this blog’s focus being given to the social/psychological aspects of Game,  those male conventions have already been (and still are) the subject of, literally, centuries of analysis and scrutiny. However, I’m going to focus on one to illustrate the progression of  the cultural shift that was prompted by the sexual revolution.

Among the many archetypically masculine traits is a man’s reservations of emotion. For various biological and neurological reasons, men are the more rational of the sexes. This isn’t to deny them an emotional element. Indeed I’ve described men as the true romantics, however, classically men have to a better degree than women, been the more reserved gender when it comes to expressing emotion. What I’ve just described here is one of the base tenets of Carl Jung’s school of psychological theory. It’s kind of ironic that Freud would be so vilified by modern feminism, yet find his protege Jung would contribute so much to the fundamentals of the feminization of society.

One of the key elements Jung introduced into western culture’s popular consciousness is the theory of anima and animus; that each individual, irrespective of sex, possesses greater or lesser degrees of association and manifested behavior of masculine and feminine psychological affiliations. In 2012, when you hear a 6 year old girl tell a 6 year old boy “you need to get in touch with your feminine side” in order to get him to comply with her, you can begin to understand the scope to which this idea has been internalized into societies collective consciousness. So long and so thoroughly has this theory been repeated and perpetuated that we can scarcely trace back it’s origins – it’s simply taken as fact that men and women possess varying degrees of masculine and feminine energies. First and second wave feminism founded their psychological premises of gender on Jung’s ideas and so evolved the reasonings for a push towards the social feminization we know today. The seeds for the feminine-centrism we take for granted today were planted by a Swiss psychiatrist in the early 1900’s.

Whether or not there’s merit to Jung’s ideas, there’s little doubt of the impact they had on fem-centrism. Early feminists saw Jung’s theory as the perfect springboard to further a pretense of ‘gender equality’; thus making individual gender balance (i.e. androgyny) a new idealized goal state. Men simply needed to be perfected by exploring their ‘feared’ feminine natures, and women needed to be allowed the opportunity and freedom to masculinize themselves in order to perfect that androgynous balance. Introduce convenient, feminine controlled hormonal contraception and viola, gender equalism was born.

Dangerous Thoughts

I’m going to introduce a radical thought into the gender landscape that’s been manicured by the feminine imperative and Jungian theory for so long; what if it’s a good thing Men should be masculine and women should be feminine? What if it’s beneficial to our species survival that our very biologies are complimentary to our gender? What if we should be teaching our boys to get in touch with their masculine sides? What if gender is actually more nature than it is nurture? What if Jung got it wrong and we’ve allowed the feminine imperative to standardized our perceptions of gender for over a century based on an incorrect presumption?

The prevailing feminist wisdom clings to the Jung inspired notion that gender is a just social creation and one that sustains a Patriarchal hierarchy. All we need do is dress our children in as neutral an environment as possible and society will progress towards a more idealized, more humane, androgynous norm. But this is counter to the new data we find with ever increasing regularity, both in clinical studies as well as a better scientific understanding of neurology and endocrinology and their relation to sexuality and gender identity. In the early 1900’s Jung lacked even a fraction of the knowledge we’ve studied and proved about the human animal in 2012. In addition to this we have over 100 years of advances in fields of psychology that didn’t even exist in Jung’s time. We’ve seen the social impact of over 40 years of feminized Jungian theory – are we seriously going to continue this ideology, oblivious to the long outdated legacy it has on contemporary culture? Are we going to allow the originator of Beta Game to continue defining what constitutes masculinity and femininity in our society?

The Slut Paradox

Every man wants a slut, he just wants her to be HIS slut.

ANDREW DICE CLAY: Hey, is that your chick there?

GUY IN THE AUDIENCE: Yeah!

DICE: Damn she’s pretty hot!

GUY: Yeah,..

DICE: You been together a while?

GUY: About 6 months.

DICE: Nice. She faithful to you?

GUY: Oh yeah.

DICE: She good in bed?

GUY: *nods head enthusiastically*

DICE: She suck a good dick?

GUY: (laughing) Ohhh yeah,..heheh,..

DICE: I suppose the next question would be, “How do you suppose she got that way?”

If you had an idealized Quality Woman girlfriend who was smoking hot, well adjusted mentally, loyal, would make a good mother, came from a good family, etc. etc., but would only ever begrudgingly have sex with you, in missionary position only, never consider giving you head, and only once a month (in 13 minute increments) because she’d been conditioned to believe that sex was immoral and she didn’t want to be thought of as a slut, would you marry her?

This is the Slut Paradox that vexes contemporary man; what number of prior lovers can a woman have that would be acceptable for you? Seven? Five? How many hobby horses should there be on the cock carousel before a woman is a slut? Don’t bother answering this, because for your average (beta) man, the number – even if you could get full disclosure – is irrelevant to him.

You see, thanks to the pre-existing social infrastructure that the feminine imperative has established, the average man can’t believe his luck when he finally does become sexual with a woman – whether it’s his first time or it’s the hundredth with his wife. So high is her pedestal that it’s literally a twist of fate. The gods have smiled upon him with the sexual favors of a woman, and his good fortune is made all the better when his lover already knows how to perfectly suck his cock just like the women in all the porn he’s watched since he was twelve. No questions are asked – you don’t qualify a gift from the gods, you just accept it.

The Slut Paradox is a very complex issue because it wraps up so much social, emotional and biological importance and details. I’m using the ‘average’ man here as a starting point because he’s the social majority; he’s the benchmark for how both genders approach the paradox, because it’s his discretion to give a woman’s sexual past any kind of gravity. For as much as women will bleat on about “slut status” and double standards, it really all comes down to how the average – in this case beta – male contends with (or doesn’t) a woman’s sexual past. As enlightened Game-aware Men we’re largely exceptions to this rule, or at least blamefully aware of the mechanics of it.

In the initial attraction and arousal stages of a sexual pairing, the average guy doesn’t care about a woman’s prior sex life. It’s only after that pairing becomes solidified that it becomes a consideration.

Unless a woman is a porn actress, I don’t think it’s the number of guys that bothers Men; and I don’t even think it’s the details of how many dicks she’s had. What’s bugs men is that they want to possess her. Men want her genuine desire, but know other guys have had it already and moved on – and they’re cool with it, and she’s cool with it, but he’s not because he wants to own her. He wants to know that he’s getting the best of what she has to offer sexually and emotionally. He wants to know that HE’S the guy who brings out the slut in her that no other guy has experienced fully.

This is the root of the paradox issue. The average guy is playing by the feminine imperative’s stated rule set. He wants monogamy, he had to work at it. He had to negotiate with her for what she willingly, genuinely, desired to do with 5 other guys (assuming she’s honest). And on some level, he knows her desire for him is compromised because he had to plead his case with her so she’d warm up to him. Only now that he’s gotten what he’s idealized for so long he realizes other’s have had it before him without anything that comes even close what he invested to get.

Alpha Widows

Now before I get run up the flagpole here, I’m completely aware of the studies indicating a woman’s capacity to bond monogamously is inversely proportionate to the number of sexual partners she’s experienced prior to monogamy. I wont argue the merit of that concept, but I also don’t think that it fully encompasses the dynamic. I say this because, as Katy Perry so adequately illustrated recently, even ONE prior lover (or even unrequited obsession) can be Alpha enough to upset that bonded monogamous balance. These are the Alpha Widows – women so significantly impacted by a former Alpha (or perceptually so) lover that she’s left with an emotional imprint that even the most dutiful, loving beta-provider can never compete with. A woman doesn’t have to have been an archetypal slut in order to have difficulty in pair bonded monogamy.

So again I’ll ask, how many is too many? For an Alpha Widow, one’s enough. It’s my contention that the Slut Paradox isn’t a numbers game so much as it’s an Alpha impact game. What if your new partner has only banged a mere 2 men before you, but engaged in intense sexual experiences she feels self-conscious about doing with you? Is she a slut?

As a final thought, I should add that women have long been aware of the utility that the Slut Paradox represents in maintaining primacy for their sexual strategy. I elaborated on this in the The Tool of ASD,

A League of Your Own

“Rollo, I’m newly Game-aware, red pill guy and I’ve been meeting girls with more and more success since my conversion, but I can’t help the feeling that the really hot girls I want to get with a so out of my league. 

Any suggestions?”

Iron Rule of Tomassi #8

Always let a woman figure out why she wont ƒuck you, never do it for her.

An integral part of maintaining the feminine imperative as the societal imperative involves keeping women as the primary sexual selectors. As I’ve detailed in many prior comments and posts, this means that a woman’s sexual strategy necessitates that she be in as optimized a condition as her capacity (attractiveness) allows for her to choose from the best males available to satisfy that strategy.

This is really the definition of hypergamy, and on an individual level, I believe only the most plugged in of men don’t realize this to some degree of consciousness. However, what I think escapes a lot of men is the complex nature of hypergamy on a social scale. For hypergamy to sustain it’s dominant position as the default sexual strategy for our society, it’s necessary for the feminine imperative to maintain existing, foster new, and normalize complex social conventions that serve it. The scope of these conventions range from the individualized psychological conditioning early in life to the grand scale of social engineering (e.g. Feminism, Religion, Government, etc.)

One of these social conventions that operates in the spectrum of the personal to the societal is the idea of ‘leagues’. The fundamental idea that Social Matching Theory details is that “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 themselves.” In a vacuum, this is the germ of the idea behind the ‘leagues’. The social convention of ‘leagues’ mentality is where ‘all things are not equal’ and used to support the feminine imperative, while conveniently still supporting the principle of social matching theory.

The latent function of ‘leagues’ is to encourage men to filter themselves out for women’s intimate approval.

As social conditions progress and become more complex, so too do men’s ability to mimic the personal attributes of providership and security. In other words, lesser men become intelligent enough to circumvent women’s existing sexual filters and thus thwart their sexual strategy. These ever increasing complexities made it hard to identify optimally suitable men from the pretenders, and women, being the primary sexual selector, needed various social constructs to sort the wheat from the chaff. With each subsequent generation they couldn’t be expected to do all of this detective work on their own so the feminine imperative enlisted the aid of the men themselves and created self-perpetuated, self-internalized social doctrines for men to comply with in order to exist in a feminine defined society.

The concept of leagues is just one of these doctrines. Your self-doubt about your worthiness of a woman’s intimacy stems from a preconditioned idea that ‘you’re out of her league’. The booster club optimist idea that “if you think you can’t, you’re right” is true, and boundless enthusiasm may overcome some obstacles, but to address the source of the disease it’s more important to ask yourself why you’ve been taught to think you can’t. A lot of approach anxiety comes from your own self-impression – Am I smooth, hot, affluent, funny, confident, interesting, decisive, well-dressed enough to earn an HB 9’s attention? How about an HB 6? Our great danger is not that we aim too high and fail, but that we aim too low and succeed.

I’m not debating the legitimacy of the evaluative standards of the sexual market place – it’s a harsh, often cruel reality – what I’m really trying to do is open your eyes as to why you believe you’re only meritorious of an HB 7. Looks count for a lot, as does Game, affluence, personality, talent, etc. but is your self-estimation accurate, or are you a voluntary participant in your own self-devaluation in the SMP courtesy of the leagues mentality the feminine imperative would have you believe?

The Economy of the League

As I stated above the purpose of fomenting a stratified League mentality in men serves to autonomously filter the lesser from the greater men for women to chose from, however, it also functions to increase the valuation of the feminine as a commodity. Like any great economic entity, the feminine imperative lives and dies by its ability to inflate its value in the marketplace. Essentially the feminine imperative is a marketeer. One of the sad ironies of this, and the last, century is that the feminine imperative has attempted to base women’s SMP valuation on a collective importance to the detriment of the individual woman’s SMV. For men this is inverted; a man’s sexual valuation is primarily individualized, while men as a collective gender are devaluated in the SMP.

What I mean by this is that, as a collective entity women’s sexuality cannot afford to be perceived as anything less than the more valued prize. If all vaginas are considered the gold standard then men’s sexual default value will always be lower. By this definition men, on whole, are out of women’s league.

For further consideration lets assume that average men, most being varying degrees of beta, are blessed with the ‘miraculous gift’ of an average woman’s sexual attentions. The power dynamic is already pre-established to defer to a feminine frame, so it’s small wonder that men would be prone to ONEitis even with an objectively average woman. This is the intent of the League schema – to unobjectively predispose men to commitment with women who under objective condition couldn’t enjoy the same selectivity. Roissy once postulated that for a healthy relationship to exist the Man must be recognized by the woman to be 1-2 points above her own SMV. This is a pretty tall order considering the feminine imperative’s emphasis on women’s sexuality being the more valued as default. And this is  to say nothing of contemporary women’s overinflated self-evaluations due to the rise of social media.

Gaming the League

All of the above isn’t to say that there isn’t a kernel of truth to the notion of leagues; it’s just not the “truth” men have been led to believe. For as much as the feminine imperative would have men subscribe to Leagues, it equally seeks to exempt women from the same League hierarchy by evaluating women as a whole. Needless to say men have their own rating systems – most popularly the ubiquitously physical HB 10 scale. I should add that it’s a foregone conclusion that any rating system men would establish for women in the feminine reality would necessarily need to be ridiculed, shamed and demonized, but you knew that already.

Irrational self-confidence is a good start to circumventing and unlearning the concept of Leagues; unlearning this conditioning being the operative goal. The Game-aware Man can actually use the concept of Leagues to his advantage with enough guile. When you approach a woman without regard to a League mentality or even a Zen-like obliviousness to it, you send the message that there’s more to you than a feminine reality can control. It’s exactly this disregard for the influence of the feminine imperative that makes the Alpha attractive; he’s unaware of, or indifferent to the rules his conditioning should’ve taught him earlier. Just in the attempt of Gaming a woman obviously “out of your league” you flip the feminine script by planting a seed of doubt (and prompting imagination) about your perceived value. Doubt is a very powerful tool, in fact the very concept of Leagues is founded upon men’s self-doubt. Turn that tool to your advantage by disregarding women’s social convention of Leagues.

The Rush

For today’s post we’re going to do a little experiment. Before you press the play button, take a deep breath, and while it is work-safe, you may want to plug your headphones in or be in someplace where you can be uninterrupted for 10 minutes. Be forewarned that any women within casual listening distance will likely be provoked to indefensible, yet hysterical defense of the sisterhood after eavesdropping. Pay attention to your heart rate and do quick self assessment of your mood. As you listen to this, be aware of the chemical reaction percolating in your bloodstream as the inevitable end comes. Then be aware of how you physically feel afterwards. Ok, press play.

 

All done? How was that for you? Heart rate up?

 

I must admit, I got an adrenaline rush out of that. Kind of like watching a car wreck in slow motion. However, I find that kind of ironic since any number of daytime shows (i.e. Tyra Banks, et. al.) have been basically doing the same shit for decades now. A lot of guys acknowledge the power of the chemical rush, but it’s only episodes like this that make it real for them. I’m sure most of the guys hearing this felt it; the high of adrenaline, endorphins, dopamine, etc., this is the chemical cocktail that women come to crave. I’ve read the chemical profile is very similar to that of heroin. Indignation triggers it for women in the same way sex and death trigger it for Men.

The main reason I wanted to pick this apart is because there’s a lot of elements to the whole incident. There’s so much at play in this, it’s hard to know where to begin. It’s interesting to read the responses to gauge what impacts people first. Women naturally lean toward the guy being classless for opting to hash this out in a very public forum, yet it feel fully justified for doing it themselves for decades. White Knights will come out of the woodwork to defend the indefensible in spite of the circumstance responding viscerally to a woman weeping. How did you feel when you heard the girl cry? We can pour through the reasons why the guy was a chump to have been living with her for as long as he did, but think of this more from the perspective of the physical effect it has upon the listeners.

Funny how even when a woman confesses to her infidelity we’ll look for ANY angle available to still cast her in the victim’s role. We’ll readily analyze the guy’s history, we’ll euphemize her misconduct as a “mistake” (or she’ll do it for us), and we’ll speculate “where her heart is really at.”

 

“but, Rollo, dumping the hor in private would have achieved the same end.”


I’m not so sure about that. I’ll be the first to advocate against revenge, but for pragmatic reasons (wasted effort), not so guys can cling to some self-righteous high ground. If the guy is resolved to break it off with her, and he has the opportunity to rub it in (on valentines day, caught red handed, thinking a proposal is due, etc.), but instead holds back and discreetly pulls up stakes, does it have the same impact? Would she genuinely appreciate the gesture? How would she ever know that he could’ve resorted to publicly humiliating her yet chose not to?

The guy opting for the “high-road” would be the only one capable of appreciating what he could’ve done if he hadn’t, and even his expressing his option to do so makes him sound vain and conceited. By all rights this woman was under the impression that he was going to propose to her on-air and was utterly crushed instead. How does a woman spared from this ever make that kind of acknowledgement?

The answer is she doesn’t. I’m not saying he should’ve done it, but in light of the life-altering gravity of entering into as binding a commitment as marriage (a topic of much discussion in the manosphere), I can understand why he’d consider it. We can call him a chump for living with the woman for 5 years, but he’s a chump who’d made the decision to commit and had the ring to prove his intent. She on the other hand, knew he’d decided to enter into this commitment, and not only betrayed that, but KNOWINGLY, and happily, was ready to let him propose in spite of herself.

 

“Is justice somehow rendered as “less than justice” when it is administered by your OWN HAND?”

 

Therein lies the rub. There will always exist an element of bias (revenge) whenever one enacts what they perceive as justice. Women are almost universally absolved of this. Carrie Underwood can write a chart topping song about vandalizing the truck of a cheating lover that women (and men) will gleefully memorize the lyrics and sing along with, but let a man publicly humiliate a caught-in-the-act, cheating lover and “he’s less of a man” and runs the risk of having his personal life ruined as a result.

As far as this guy breaking Iron Rule #4; yes, the guy’s a fool for having done so for 3 years, and I’d go so far as to say an even bigger fool for being monogamous with a solitary woman for 5 years during his prime (I assume Chris was in his 20’s). My point was to illustrate his degree of commitment (he bought a ring) not to justify his having lived with her as long as he did. Contrast this incident with Tiger Woods situation: a lot has been made about commitment being tantamount to male virtue, so my emphasis was his readiness to commit and the gravity it bears on a man’s life.

There was another aspect that I hadn’t considered in this. I don’t entirely believe that reversing the roles to understand a contrast would be applicable in this case. Generally women don’t ask men to marry them. I understand it happens, but never to the degree that a man must prepare to make a proposal of marriage. Chris had resolved in his mind to marry the girl, and acted on this resolve by buying a ring and planning to propose on V-Day. Men are the True Romantics; Women simply do not have a parallel experience for this.

I understand this is a bit of a stretch, but for a moment lets assume Chris knew exactly the future liabilities of his commitment – all of those high-road, morally binding liabilities Tiger reneged on in his marriage – should his response to her deception be any less measured than what he did when you think of what he’d almost committed to?

Think of the impact his commitment to her would’ve entailed; think of how it would effect their families, his career and / or educational opportunities, their future children and their personal decisions, his finances, his psychological well being, their quality of life, and the list goes on, but essentially he was betting his future life on this girl. The guy was a hair’s breadth from making that commitment when he discovered the deception. I think she got off rather lightly.

 

*I’ve got to give props to the guys over at the BodyBuilding.com forums for rediscovering this link for me. I had originally used this audio in a SoSuave forum post back in February of 2010 and lost the audio link. Thanks guys.

Plate Theory V: Lady’s Game

I had a good amount of response on last Friday’s Plate Theory post asking for a more complete idea of women being natural Plate Theorists, so I thought I’d elaborate on this.

Female Plate Theory

For as often as I’ve mentioned women being natural plate theorists, I don’t think I’ve ever gone into detail about it. I think it’s pretty well established that I completely disagree with idea that women will only fuck one guy at a time. I could outline several women I know from experience in this, but really, observing behavior will bear this out fairly predictably. I will however agree that they are predisposed to, and are socially encouraged to, seek monogamy, but as in all things female the talk rarely matches the behavior. Sexuality is a woman’s first, best agency and even the homeliest woman know this – even when they’re just complaining about other women using it.

The principle that a woman’s first priority is to seek out security is true, and we’d be wise to bear this in mind when evaluating motives for behavior, but their methodology is what’s in question here. There is an understandable confusion for guys in this respect. On one hand women present a constant facade that the fear of being perceived as a slut (i.e. concurrently fucking more than one guy at a time) is primary to their self-respect and respectability. However, this has to be tempered with the desire to experience a variety of men in order to ensure the security/provisioning from the best among them. So in order to facilitate this women must practice a kind of calculated hypocrisy that is socially reinforced by the gender as a whole as well as some men (usually those so optionless as to excuse the behavior in order to get to her sexuality, or guys so conditioned that they overlook it as normal).

It is socially acceptable for a woman to blatantly spin plates.

Does this sound outrageous? While a woman who makes her sexual practices a bit too overt runs the risk of being perceived as a slut (which is dubious in this age as it is), most relatively attractive women covertly have a constant bullpen of starters ready to go to bat at any one time – these are also known as ‘Orbiters’. These are the attention providers, the “maybe” guys. And it makes little difference in terms of available options which she chooses at any given time, the very fact that she has five or six of them pursuing her is enough to boost her sense of self-worth, her social status within her same-gender peers, and give her the confidence to drop any one of her plates at a moments notice for any reason knowing that 2 or 3 more guys (or 20 more on facebook) stand ready to take his place, no questions asked and prepared rationalizations at the ready.

In addition, this practice is socially reinforced by women doing the same thing and the social conventions constructed to excuse the behavior. It’s the unspoken rule of a woman’s prerogative; she can always change her mind. This is a powerful tool for women –  in any situation, if a woman doesn’t choose to be sexual it is necessarily forced (or obligated), even when it’s after the fact. Either the “Jerk” forced her, physically or emotionally, or she had thought she wanted to, but later reconsidered – it makes little difference. In all social situations the default is to side with the feminine, the “weaker sex” – women, from sympathy or empathy, and men, from a desire to eventually become intimate with them. Dalrock expertly describes this convention in his “Don’t hit me, I’m a girl” post.

In either instance, the feminine prerogative is socially reinforced. That’s important to understand because even by my focusing on it here as a male, my motives for doing so become suspect. That’s how embedded this dynamic is – to question it risks ostracization. However, I also understand that for the greater part of women, this plate spinning dynamic isn’t a conscious effort on their part. In fact I’d suggest that it’s so thoroughly recognized that women default to it autonomously. Also, this is a good example of the first principle of power – when you have power, always feign powerlessness.

Free Reign

So, with a firm understanding that their behaviors will for the most part be excused, they are free to practice the feminine form of plate theory unhindered by social reprisal. The feminine plate spinning involves much more than sex though. Remember that attention is the coin of the realm in female society. The capacity to command attention determines self-esteem, peer status, sexual selectivity, and a host of other factors in a woman’s life, so spinning plates becomes more than just a “which guy am I gonna bang tonight” prospect. This dynamic and these factors are what makes women natural plate spinners. Even when a woman has no intention of ever becoming sexual with a “maybe” guy, his attention still has some value to her. It appeals to the long term prospective for security that’s a continuous subroutine running in her hindbrain. This is the rudimentary psychology behind hypergamy.

Now, combine all of this with women’s native language – covert communication – and it’s natural for a man to assume that a woman will only ever become sexual with one guy at a time. This serves the latent purpose of keeping him in a kind of stasis. If he assumes women will only be sexual under the precondition of commitment she is free to spin plates (essentially weighing options) as she pleases and sample at will what she sees as in her hypergamic best interest at the time. If the carrot looks good enough the guy will patiently pull the cart until such time as another, better carrot comes along. Either way he’s in that stasis. If a guy were to see her social and psychological machinations for what they are, he’d never pull the cart – so it serves women best that men think commitment should always be required for intimacy, even in the face of her behavior directly contradicting this.

Plate Wars

Lastly, this social dynamic serves as a very effective weapon for women against each other. As I stated in the last Plate Theory post, competition anxiety between women is something men can exploit for their own plate spinning, but the reason it is useful is because women so readily use it against each other. For a woman to say another is a “slut” translates into an overt betrayal of this unspoken social contrivance. She essentially is saying, “the rules are that women require commitment for sex, but here’s one who’ll never be worthy of any guy’s commitment because she wont play by the rules you suckers think she will.”

She is tacitly disqualified for a man’s commitment and is, at least in the accusing woman’s mind, a reduced threat in this feminine competition. She becomes exposed in the same game they’re all playing and in being so loses attention and therefore status and personal esteem. It seems petty to guys, but it’s really intra-gender warfare. Think of how many times an exceptionally attractive woman, that is completely anonymous to a group of women you happen to be with, berate her based on appearance alone. “She’s must be a tramp if she dressed like that.” These are the same women who’ll berate a man for basing his estimation of a woman on her outer appearance. This is feminine competition anxiety. Ask a woman to name the most attractive female actress they can think of. Odds are it will be a woman (who as a guy you’d never think of) who presents the least threat of this anxiety.

Gentlemen, as I’m fond of saying, women will fuck. They may not fuck you, they may not fuck me, but they will fuck someone. The girl who bangs the hot guy at the foam party in Cancun on Spring Break within 5 minutes of meeting him is the same girl who want’s you to believe that they’ll only fuck one guy at a time and then after commitment. All women are sexual, you just need to be the right guy at the right time for the job.