The Matrix

No Preference

There’s nothing like a good internet shit-storm to fire up the inspiration for great manosphere bloggery. As most of my readers are aware I cite Roissy/Heartiste often enough, if not for content then certainly for terminology. If I have one complaint about the Chateau it’s Roissy’s habit of posting a fresh topic about a half an hour before I’m ready to log off for the day and   the comment discussion ends up in becoming an epic struggle between the manospheric forces of reason versus the blathering cut-and-paste canards of the militantly Matrix plugged-in. Such was Friday’s post at the Chateau.

I’m not entirely sure, but my guess would be that Roissy wasn’t expecting the landslide of  commentary (685 responses at last count) his post provoked from the more agitated wing of social crusaders poised to defend any critical analysis of the search term: “Sexual Preference”. Oddly enough, the main thrust of his commentary wasn’t about the alleged ‘asexual preference’ of the girl in his chosen article, but rather the Beta of the Month guy who’d endure and encourage an entirely sexless monogamy to accomodate this little Pixie.

As I’ve noted in many a prior thread, Indignation is a basic requirement for the feminine psyche (and extended to the male feminine identifier’s psyches) – directly or vicariously, in the absence of indignation, women will actively create it for themselves. If you feel like sifting through 685 posts of indignation to understand this, you’ll have an easy time of it by attempting to explain ‘sexual preference’ in a rational manner to the legions of Matrix Plugins. Even when that sexual preference is “none of the above.”

Every Plugin in the comment thread had some pet interest in the orgy of ignorance: Feminists, White Knights, Sexual Preference Crusaders, Rape Culturists, etc. yet the spark of the whole debate was a little rainbow haired girl who volunteered to be interviewed by the BBC about her claims of ‘sexlessness’ and the legitimacy of asexuality as a, presumedly biological, sexual orientation (or non-orientation in the stricter sense). Oh, yeah, and some anonymous herb who chose to repress his sexuality to apease said Pixie.

Accusations of rape culture flew out in the first volley Matrix-speak:

“If she’s not into sex there’s nothing wrong with her. She doesn’t ‘owe’ him sex and if she does so against her will then that’s rape.”

Following up were the appeals to sexual preference and gender identity:

“It’s people like you who demonize and bully people who’s sexual orientation conflicts with your own. You’re what’s wrong with society, you’re scum of the earth.”

Next came the predictable White Knight contingent and their “not-like-other-guys” Beta game mantras:

“Thinking the only way to be intimate with another person is through sexual contact is not only ridiculous but incredibly limiting. I’d be perfectly fine being in a sexless relationship.”

And for the finale, a healthy dose of male shame administered by those lacking the insight to add anything novel:

“If this bothers you, I bet you all have really small cocks.”

Ahem.

What interested me most about this ‘discussion’ wasn’t just the intensity of the responses, but also how quickly and comfortably the Plugins were in their need to set the “troglodytes” straight. You see, in our disconnected lives it’s much more difficult to express our ideology without real-time social repercussions. We can get fired from a job, kicked out of our social circle, excommunicated from church or not be asked back to the lady’s bridge club when we venture a disenting perspective on a great many topics. The Buffer of the internet make that expression much more convenient, but is also fraught with the same risks, albeit more indirectly. This accessibility is also a good indicator of what provokes indignation.

In an era when critical analysis is conflated with political incorrectness it’s interesting to observe what prompts outrage, even if it’s simply token, actionless outrage. As I stated in Enter White Knight:

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.

There is such a dearth of critical thought and analysis in society at large that those willing to do so become the immediate targets for the indignation seeking majority of the Matrix. Bloggers such as myself, Roissy, Roosh, Dalrock, Ferd, and a whole host of others, must be exceptionally careful in our anonymity for fear of real-world repercussions for our ideas and our observations. We take on pseudonyms by necessity for fear of an impact to our careers, our families, our personal lives, etc. No feminist blogger need worry about using her real name – their ideas aren’t dangerous, they don’t threaten the feminine imperative’s primacy.

It’s a shock to normalcy when a conflicting idea is expressed, but it’s what the Plugins wait for. It’s their prime opportunity. They perceive it as a test of their ego investments to refute (however lamely) the observations that would challenge their comfortable world view.

Man’s Last Stand

TV is for women.

It’s that time again gentlemen, all the splendor, the fanfare, the pomp and circumstance that makes the NFL one of the last bastions of American manhood – Super Bowl Sunday! You’ve earned it boys, today is YOUR day, ordained by the divine creator himself (why else would it be on a Sabbath?) to be reserved for beer, brats and belly-bucks. A day dedicated to unapologetic testosterone fueled manhood. We are MEN hear us belch,..pshhhhhhhht,..click,….

Hey, woah! Wait a minute,.. I WEAR PANTS! What the fuck? Who are these neckbeard herbs singing to in the middle of nowhere? These aren’t men they’re,..schlubs,.. Howie, Terry, Shannon, somebody, tell Dockers that the Super Bowl is for MEN,..no more of this crap OK? We need something masculine like a car commercial, yeah hit us with a muscle car,…pshhhhhhht, click,..

Yeaaaah,..nice sound of horsepow,.. Heyyyy,..wait a minute,…what the hell was all that crap about putting the toilet seat down? Clean up the sink after I shave? Carry your lip balm? Hey, I’m starting to get a funny feeling that maybe I’m being pandered to here,…lets see,…how about another car?…pshhhhhhht, click,..

Yep, definitely being pandered to here. It’s almost as if these advertisers know my wife is watching the Super Bowl with me,……pshhhhhhht, click,..

Wow,..I can’t take it anymore,..can someone just get me a beer? Please? A beer? They can’t possibly ruin a good T&A beer commercial,………pshhhhhhht, click,..

The above dramatization, while humorously inspired, was meant to illustrate a point that many in the manosphere will already be sensitive to, but far too few men are even aware of. One, perhaps unavoidable, problem advertisers have faced since the rise of overt feminization is the difficulty in reaching a male-centric audience in a female-centric society. Women are universally known as the primary consumers across virtually all demographics that matter to modern marketing efforts.

Women buy shit, and they buy shit in such volume and with such predictable patterns and frequency that it eclipsed men’s purchasing habits – and specific marketing efforts – over 2 decades ago. There are literally generations of advertisers and marketers who’ve never known a culture that wasn’t solitarily focused on and directed by the feminine imperative.

This has created a unique challenge for advertisers in this century in tapping into that male-centric marketing. Advertisers see untapped dollars in a male market, but how do they reach the male demographic in a media culture that’s ridiculed them for the last 40 years and praised the feminine above all else in that time? The natural answer is not to market to men at all, but rather the women they’re dependent upon to make the purchasing decisions for them.

You will rarely have a more blatant opportunity to experience this female-as-male purchasing dynamic than by watching the multi-million dollar commercial buys during Super Bowl Sunday. I would caution against Men in the manosphere simply attributing these spots to an ignorant misandry rampant in the advertising world. That’s the easy answer. Even your average plugged-in guy can see the male ridicule, but what’s more important is to recognize the method in the misandry. For instance in the Dove For Men commercial, we have a uniquely male, parodied experience coupled with a call to action to purchase Dove body wash – a product few men would buy for themselves. However the target audience for this commercial is the wives and women – the primary purchasers – in men’s lives to buy the product for them. Can’t reach the male demo? Get his Mommy wife to buy him what he needs.

Advertisers are also cleverly making plays to a shame based  Male Catch 22 – Man Up or Shut Up dynamic. As in the Dodge Charger ad, men are uniquely EXPECTED to suffer through a lifetime of servile misery to benefit women, but his reward is her allowing him to drive the car of his choice. Most women aren’t going to directly purchase a car for their husbands, but the inflection in this commercial is that her influence is what makes this car a reward for him.

If you ever had doubts about the veracity of the female-centric social Matrix we live in today, pay attention to the commercials you watch during the game on Sunday. Don’t take the content of the commercials at face value; that’s what women will do. Instead, ask yourself why did the producers choose that particular type of male to play in the spot? What’s the social message behind the commercial? What gender dynamics do the producers assume will resonate with their target audience? You may think this is over-analytical, but trust me, when a company drops $2M on a Super Bowl spot, they’ve put far more analysis into it than I can cover in a blog post.

Last Rites for Joseph

Unplugging chumps from the Matrix is a lot like triage – save the ones you can, read last rites to the dying.

It’s one thing to be an Omega Male, but quite another to be an internationally recognized, Omega-gone-viral. Joseph Dobbie’s epic email has circulated around the world for 6 years now. I actually wrote a response to this on SoSuave when it first surfaced, and since that time I’ve always held it in esteem as the seminal work on the epitome of Omega-tude. In 2006 I wasn’t formally using terms like “Omega”, but on some level of consciousness I think I instinctually knew this degree of Beta Game crossed a line. It transgressed into something beyond Beta – this is the grey area of sincere belief in Disney-esque idealizations of not only women, but circumstances destined by fate, and the border of unhealthy social retardation (i.e. the creepy effect).

Defining the qualities of being Alpha is an exercise in subjectivity, but Beta pretty much reeks of Beta; you know it when you see it. Men who’s beliefs and behaviors drop them into the Omega tier of hell kind of blur the distinction between Beta and social / mental autism. So in the interests of better clarity on this distinction I submit for my esteemed colleague’s critical review, verbatim and unedited, Joseph Dobbie’s immortal classic, Lady of the Cake:

To: Kate Winsall
Subject: Lady of the cake

Hello Kate,

It?s joe – we met at Andrew?s party.

I hope you don?t mind me getting your e-mail address from the e-mail
that Andy sent to us all; it is a bit sneaky of me.

It was wonderful to meet you on Saturday, and I wonder if you would
consider meeting me for coffee sometime; maybe at the Tate Modern?

OK. This is where my common sense is telling me to stop? keep it simple
and positive joe.

And the probability of me listening to that voice? Experience has taught
me that it is not worth putting up a fight; I will end up giving in to
the part of me that never wants to find itself shaking its head and
muttering ?if only?’

This is the part where I throw caution to the wind; the part where I
listen to my heart and remember that I should live my life as an exultation and
revel in the opportunity to try; the part where I refuse to apologize

for who I am; the part where I trust that the lady I met on Saturday
night is, as I suspect, able to see sincerity where others would see
clich .

I am fortunate enough to have been able to collect a number of special
memories. They are memories of moments that made any struggle leading up
to them worthwhile. They are memories of moments when I am struck by
something so beautiful, time stands still and all of the ugliness in the
world ceases to exist.

Your smile is the freshest of my special memories.

Regardless of whether we see each other again, I will use it as I do my
other special memories. I will call on it when I am disheartened or low.
I will hold it in my heart when I need inspiration. I will keep it with
me for moments when I need to find a smile of my own.

I am unsure of all my motives for sharing this with you and, if I am
honest, not ready to examine them too closely. However, I know that it
makes me feel good to believe that maybe, if you are ever upset, knowing
that I will be keeping your smile alive might help you through.

If you are half as intelligent and aware as I believe you to be, I am
sure that you will find what I have written, in the very least, sweet.

If I am twice as lucky as I would dare to hope, you will find this note
charming and agree to contact me and arrange a date.

Either way, I trust that your reply will be candid – you told me how
much you value honesty.

One last thing, I promise that it is enormously rare for me to stray as
far from sobriety as I managed on Saturday night.

Be safe.
Joe

This reads like a Hallmark “Special Moments” abortion splattering Emo effluvia indiscriminately on any who could get past reading the first 3 ‘stanzas’.

In the interests of science, lets see if I can save the patient,..and maybe the patient is you?

Lady of the cake? Who the fuck are you, Percival? I realize AFCs think chivalry isn’t dead, and that women secretly want, and appreciate it. I have news for you, they’re the ones who killed it and all you do is telegraph your beta-ness to the 1% of the female population who would actually understand what you’re alluding to here. Relax KingArthur.

Hello Kate,It?s joe – we met at Andrew?s party.I hope you don?t mind me getting your e-mail address from the e-mail
that Andy sent to us all; it is a bit sneaky of me.

Translation: It’s me Joe, the chump who stared at you across the room for the better part of the night unable to muster even the rudimentary courage needed to ask you out, so I’m using this Buffer called email to blunt the potential for real rejection that I was too petrified to risk at the party last Saturday.

Her: Note to self – Kill Andrew for not blind copying his group emails.

It was wonderful to meet you on Saturday, and I wonder if you would consider meeting me for coffee sometime; maybe at the Tate Modern?

Translation: I use terms like ‘wonderful’ in order to telegraph my already overt interest in qualifying for your intimacy because I haven’t even the basic understanding that women prefer covert communications. So I wouldn’t want you to have any doubt about my intent, even though I copy/pasted your email from Andy’s group send. Perhaps we can meet for coffee at Tate Modern so I can show you how much I can identify with the feminine sophisticated I am in my appreciation for fine art? Oh what the hell, I’ll just show you now by writing you a sonnet,..

OK. This is where my common sense is telling me to stop? keep it simple and positive joe.And the probability of me listening to that voice? Experience has taughtme that it is not worth putting up a fight; I will end up giving in tothe part of me that never wants to find itself shaking its head andmuttering ?if only?’This is the part where I throw caution to the wind; the part where I
listen

to my heart and remember that I should live my life as an exultation and
revel in the opportunity to try; the part where I refuse to apologize
for who I am; the part where I trust that the lady I met on Saturday
night is, as I suspect, able to see sincerity where others would see
clich .

I am fortunate enough to have been able to collect a number of special
memories. They are memories of moments that made any struggle leading up
to them worthwhile. They are memories of moments when I am struck by
something so beautiful, time stands still and all of the ugliness in the
world ceases to exist.

Your smile is the freshest of my special memories.

Her: What was your name again?

Regardless of whether we see each other again, I will use it as I do my other special memories.

Translation: I’ll be masturbating to visions of you in my head – like all my special memories.

I will call on it when I am disheartened or low. I will hold it in my heart when I need inspiration. I will keep it with me for moments when I need to find a smile of my own.

Translation: I am so desperate for sex, and am such an Omega male that the pedestal I’m putting you on was reserved for Christ the Messiah. Congratulations, you’re my new religion, and only after having met you once at a party – it must be destiny.

I am unsure of all my motives for sharing this with you and, if I am honest, not ready to examine them too closely. However, I know that it makes me feel good to believe that maybe, if you are ever upset, knowing that I will be keeping your smile alive might help you through.

Translation: I would really like to get laid, but since I don’t want you to think I’m like “other guys” who only want to fuck you I’ll sweep that under the rug and desexualize myself to steer you away from that thought. Instead, contemplate how reliable, familiar and comforting I’ll be (like a stuffed animal) as your potential boyfriend, again, so unique and unlike those “other guys” who just want to fuck you.

If you are half as intelligent and aware as I believe you to be, I am
sure that you will find what I have written, in the very least, sweet.

Her: So essentially a woman half as intelligent would fill the same poetic role you’ve sickeningly cast me into after casually meeting me at Andy’s party. I swear I’ll kill that bastard.

If I am twice as lucky as I would dare to hope, you will find this note charming and agree to contact me and arrange a date.

Translation: In case you are only half as intelligent and aware as I hope, let me explain for you how you’re supposed to react to my quasi-marriage proposal – you should think I’m charming and shouldn’t give me the rejection I never risked in person last Saturday.

Either way, I trust that your reply will be candid – you told me how much you value honesty.

Translation: Lord, please, say yes. You said you liked art, poetry and appreciated honesty (like every other girl on Match.com) in a guy, haven’t I identified and qualified myself with you for your approval?

One last thing, I promise that it is enormously rare for me to stray as far from sobriety as I managed on Saturday night.

Translation: I swear I wont be an alcoholic when we’re married.

Be safe.
Translation: I’m safe

I’m sorry, we’ve done everything we could, this patient is terminal, call the Deacon to read last rites.
Time of death,..

The Feminine Reality

I think one of the basic premises I acknowledge in my essays is one that even some of the more ‘enlightened’ Men of the ‘community’ don’t entirely grasp. This is the presumption of a feminine reality. Sometimes I refer to this as the female imperative, other times I might colloquially express it in terms of it being “The Matrix” for an ease of understanding, but I always presume my readers (even of my comments on other blogs or forums) have a basic understanding of this.

I think I may be a bit mistaken in this.

Everything a man experiences, every social conditioning he receives from the earliest age, every accepted social norm and every expectation of him to qualify as the definition of a mature adult Man in contemporary society is designed to serve the female imperative. Moralist wallow in it, absolutists and defeated white knights existentially depend upon it, and even the better part of relativists still (often unwittingly) feed and serve the feminine purpose. In fact, so all encompassing is this reality that we define our masculinity in the terms of how well we can accommodate that feminne influence.

Our media celebrates it, and brooks no dissent. There is very little dissent, since to peel back the veneer is to be at odds with a reality defined by the female purpose. You feel lonely because you can’t understand it’s influence, and the conditioning you’ve been subjected to defines the objective solution to curing that feeling. You base the decisions of your future, your education, your career, your religious beliefs, even where you’ll choose to live, to better accomodate the feminine influence either in the present or in preparation of accommodating it in the future.

You get married, out of fear for not being found acceptable of it, or from social shame for not yet having accepted your role in service to the imperative. Your children are offered in tribute to it, while in turn you unknowingly perpetuate it in them. You pay tribute in alimony, in divorce proceedings, in the expected sacrifices your career demands to maintain its influence in your own life and in society at large. You exist to facilitate a feminine reality.

We can excuse it with moralisms, we can attach notions of honor and stability to it, we can even convince ourselves that the feminine imperative is OUR own imperative, but regardless, men still serve it.

Sexual Strategies

For one gender to realize their sexual imperative the other must sacrifice their own. This is the root source of power the feminine imperative uses to establish its own reality as the normative one. From this flows the rules of engagement for dating / mating, operative social conventions used to maintain cognitive dominance, and laws and legalities that bind society to the benefit of the feminine. From this is derived men’s default status as the ‘disposable’ sex, while women are the protected sex. It’s this root that the imperative uses to excuse (not apologize for) the most blatant inconsistencies and atrocities of women.

Monogamy and fidelity are only useful when paired with an optimized hypergamy. Without that optimization, they’re inconvenient obligations to the the feminine reality.

In order to effect this reality men must be convinced of a degree of more control than the feminine imperative exerts. They must believe that it is they who are the masters of a reality defined by the feminine, while remaining dependent upon the systems that the feminine reality outlines for them. So they are told they are Kings, brutes, savages, patricians, intellectuals, anything that might convince them that the reality they exist in is privileged and expressly serves their purpose. Already the ‘protected sex’, this all encourages the default presumption of victimhood for the feminine.

The crowning irony of the feminine reality is that men should be accused of patriarchy while enabling the very framework of the feminine imperative. The feminine sexual strategy is victorious because even under the contrived auspices of male oppression, it’s still the female goal-state that is agreed upon as the correct effort. Satisfying the feminine imperative, achieving the ends of the feminine sexual strategy is still the normative condition. Men’s goals are aberrant, women’s are beatific.

Forgive me if I’ve waxed a bit too poetic here, but it’s important to see the Matrix for what it really is. The next occasion you lock horns with even the most well-meaning woman’s (or mangina’s) opinions about life, relationships, marriage, having babies, religion, etc. understand that her perceptions are based in this reality. She’s correct because her beliefs line up with what the framework of her reality reinforced in her as correct. Any other frame of reference is either utterly alien to her at best, wicked and evil at worst.

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.

Bitter Misogynists

When men can be convinced to participate in women’s social conventions half their work is done for them.

One of the surest indicators of an AFC-beta mindset is the automatic presumption that anything remotely critical a man would say about women, or the feminine, is by default, equated with misogyny. All a man need do is open his mouth, in the most objective way he can muster, about anything critical of the feminine and he’s instantly suspect of sour grapes. He must’ve been burned, or is bitter and on the verge of desperation just for even a passing mention of some critical observation of women’s incongruent behaviors.

What an amazingly potent social convention that is – when a man will censor himself because of it on his own. The most successful social conventions are ones in which the subject willingly sublimates his own interests, discourages questioning it, and predisposes that person to encourage others to participate in it.

“You’re just bitter because you got burned by some bitch in the past and your misogynist ideology is just your way of lashing out.”

I hear this a lot from both men and women. It’s an easy response to parrot and it’s very useful. It foists the responsibility of confronting one’s critical ideas back on the man, all while shaming him for forming an ideology based on what he (and now a community of many other men) confirms by observations. It’s like a JBY (just be yourself) response; it sounds right, everyone uses it to the point of cliché, and it misdirects and discourages any further critical analysis.

This is a feminine social convention that’s in the same vein as shame. Any guy that has a point about the feminine, no matter how valid, can always have his argument poisoned because he’s a guy, and most guys are frustrated that they aren’t getting laid, and this is his petty way of venting. When men can be convinced to participate in women’s social conventions half their work is done for them. In presuming a default state of male misogyny, it implicitly denotes a default state of  ‘correctness’ or blamelessness of the female. In other words, you’re guilty and must prove innocence.

The protector dynamic has evolved into a beta breeding methodology. It’s like a Darwinistic version of Cap’n Save A Ho – so at the slightest critical word about a woman it’s, “See how quickly I come to a woman’s defense? What girl wouldn’t want a great protector like me? I’m unique. I’m not like those bitter ‘other guys’ so your best emotional/sexual/parental investment would be coupling with me as evidenced by my example.” Of course that isn’t their conscious, cognitively recognized reaction, but it is the subroutine that’s running in their unconscious. When this psychological schema is a practiced breeding methodology it becomes second nature; so much so that when ANY opportunity arises to display it (even under the conditions of anonymity), the guy snaps to attention. It’s really a Beta attempt to DHV (display higher value), and in and of itself it’s not necessarily a bad impulse,it just that it’s used to further a feminized social convention.

Whiners and Losers.

“Game Blogs, PUAs, MRA guys, they’re all a bunch of whiners who’d rather kvetch about feminism and real or imagined wrongs than just get up and get along.”

The problem I think most people have with the tone of what Game has, or is evolving into is that essentially Game is a masculine response to what feminism (really feminization) has evolved into.While I can empathize with the feeling that Game can assume a plaintive tone at some blogs – particularly MRA oriented ones – contemporary Game is really a countermeasure to the social conditions feminist ideology has embedded in our culture for the past 50+ years. However, the social framework has been established as such that even my pointing this out makes me suspect of complaining or “bitter”. See how that works? My belief is still, ‘don’t wish it were easier, wish you were better’, but it’s been built into feminization that to even analyze and have critical opinion of it makes you a whiner.

There is no going back.

NEO: “There’s no going back now is there?
MORPHEUS: “No. But if you could, would you really want to?”

One dynamic I encounter from guys who’ve experienced the ‘community’ in varying degrees is a desire to go back to their previously comfortable, ignorant bliss. The reality they become exposed to is too much to bear and they spit the red pill back up. They want to plug themselves back into the Matrix.

No person both frightens and disgusts me more than one who understands truth, but willfully opts for denial. It’s not the desire to do so that disgusts me, I understand the desire, it’s that there is no going back. Even if you never read another post or blog and regressed back to your old ways, you’ll still make the associations, see the signs of what others have analyzed in your own periphery, in women’s and the world’s behaviors and motivations, and you’ll be reminded (even if subconsciously) of that truth, or at least the uncomfortable push to get at the truth. You will only get what you’ve gotten if you keep doing what you’ve done.There is no going back now. Don’t wish it were easier. Wish you were better.

There comes a point of conflict (or revulsion if you want) after a guy has been unplugged from the Matrix long enough where he begins to doubt himself and what he’s seeing go on around him. All of the gender dynamics and the complex, but discreet, interplay between the sexes that’s been such a mystery for so long starts to become apparent to him. The Neg Hits he never would’ve dreamed of attempting in his AFC days become so predictably reliable at sparking interest that it becomes depressing. A backhanded compliment shouldn’t work; it goes against everything any girl has ever told him will endear him to a woman, but once he musters up the courage to experiment, he finds that they do.

What’s depressing isn’t that a well delivered neg, or C&F, or harnessing the attractive Alpha Asshole energy could actually generate sexual interest in women, it’s the principle behind them – the reason why they work – that prompts the internal conflict. Are women, generally, more like this than not? So a guy experiments a little more, and tests other theories, and discovers that with some minor variations, yes, for the most part the principles are valid if not predictable. This then becomes a real tough pill to swallow, especially when you consider ideas like the ruthlessness of feminine hypergamy. It’s very despairing, almost nihilistic, to a man fed on a steady diet of the flowery tropes of feminization for the better part of a lifetime. It’s very hard to measure oneself up and adjust to a new understanding of how women operate. He can’t reconcile what he’d been told and conditioned to believe before (the soul mate myth, pedestalize her, just be yourself, etc.) with this new paradigm. So either he learns to live with this new understanding, benefit from it and grow into a new role for himself, or he rejects it and vilifies it wholesale.

“Women are really not as bad as these misogynists, these bitter, burned men would all have us believe. They’re shallow and soulless to think women are all out to get them. They over-analyze everything when they should all just be themselves and let fate or some divine force pair them up with their soul mates. I pity them, really I do.”

I’ve heard all of these regressive rationales from boys as young as 14 to men as old as 75. It’s a comfortable ignorance to believe that things are just unknowable and beyond one’s control or efforts to really understand. And to make matters worse, there’s a long established system of social conventions ready to reinforce and affirm these rationales; ready to reinsert him back into the Matrix and tell him he’s unique and special (“not like other guys”) and will be rewarded with female intimacy for rejecting it.

The Blacksmith and the Woodsman

 

Once upon a time there was a woodsman who had an axe with a dull blade and a rough, black head. After a hard day of chopping he looked at the axe and swore to himself he would make it the sharpest blade with a head polished to a mirror of silver. The woodsman then promptly went to the blacksmith in the village and explained to him his plan. The smith then said, “Surely this axe can be as bright and sharp as you wish, if only you’ll turn the grindstone for me while I hone and polish it?” The woodsman agreed and for the next week he turned the stone for the smith.

Though it was harsh labor and the woodsman sweat enough to wet the very stone with which the smith ground the blade, he turned on. By the end of the first week the blade was a bit sharper and it’s shine still dull. “See me next week and we’ll have your beautiful axe glimmering.” said the smith.

And so the woodsman turned the stone for another week while the smith ground the axe. By this time the woodsman had grown weary, his back in stitches and his muscles aching, yet still the axe was sharper and it’s surface began to shine by the end of the second week. “I think I shall take my axe now” said the woodsman. The smith protested, “The blade is unfinished and it’s head only a bright silver, not mirror perfect as you wished. Turn the stone but a bit longer and we will have your axe bye and bye.” To which the woodsman replied “No, I am weary and besides, I think I prefer a silver axe to a polished one now.”

My apologies for going the fortune cookie route in this post, but I’d just read this story recently which was originally told by Benjamin Franklin. I began to think, how many men I know (myself included at one time) who’ve played, and yet still play, the role of the woodsman in this story. We become so fed up, weary, impatient or critical of our own failed attempts that we begin to prefer things that are inferior. In other words, we settle for less and convince ourselves that it’s what we really want.

When we do this it seems to us like success. It was still hard work, it was still character building, but not what we’d originally planned. A psychological experiment (about memory actually) once put a series of C and D student into a tutorial program to raise their grades, only the program was intentionally designed not to help them in any way over the course of 12 weeks. By the end of the 12th week all had completed the once a week tutorials and as expected none had grades any better than when they started (some even lower), but when asked if the class had helped them every one replied “Yes, it helped a lot.” The idea here is of course that we don’t like to think of our past efforts as being fruitless or a waste of time. Our own psyches will prevent us from accepting work for nothing so we’ll selectively forget the actual result against the perceived effort.

Now, to apply this to a Game mentality, how does this affect us? The easy comparison is the AFC who’s too afraid of rejection in the ‘outside’ world and withdraws into his own ‘inside’ world and “prefers” it. This is the guy who’ll readily supplicate to his GF because “that’s just how he is” or he “prefers strong willed women” while she psychologically and emotionally deconstructs him as a willing participant. The serial monogamist ‘prefers’ the safety of a relationship, any relationship, to having to confront this same rejection in the outside world. I can’t begin to count the times I’ve heard men in their 40’s and 50’s tell me that they got into a career to appease a woman or how they’d changed their majors in college to better facilitate a relationship. Their explanations are invariably, “I thought it’s what I wanted at the time”, but hindsight and the fallout from 10-15 years of ‘preferring’ one thing over another put them into the position of needing counseling.

Human beings have an amazing ability to normalize their own conditions. Anything can become normal. It’s how we normalize a condition that separates the reality of a situation from our perception of it. Now think for a bit of how this dynamic applies to yourself? What have you convinced yourself of for the wrong reasons? Are you in a situation now that began from your having settled for less that what you wanted? Do you struggle with an AFC who’s convinced himself that he prefers what he’s become?

It’s not enough to unplug from the Matrix. You have to unlearn what it’s taught you to master the new reality you find yourself in.

The Burden of Selectivity

 

You get the men you deserve ladies.

The latest hotness in feminine self-righteous indignation in the manosphere this week is the new Atlantic article by Kate Bolick (courtesy of Susan Walsh and her self-impressed 3rd page link). I generally don’t bother myself with bleating, overwritten catharsis articles bemoaning the woes of an HB 5, post-Wall, aging spinster upset with (beta) men not excusing her indiscretions by sharing in her entitlement to provide her with the loving stable relationship she maliciously turned down at 28. However, it did spark an interesting debate at SoSuave with regards to the variance in selectivity in mate selection respective to each gender.

I believe there’s an interesting misconception about the mutuality of shared criteria both men and women commonly seek in a life-partner. Women, steeped in their solipsistic ‘girl-world’ reality, tend to find it inconceivable that a man wouldn’t share in precisely the same life expectations and scheduling that women would. Their feminine imposed reality presume that men will autonomously know that what works best for women is ALWAYS the “right thing to do.”

However, I think we’re kind of assuming false equivalencies in respect to how either sex goes about choosing an acceptable mate for life. On this side of 40 (or hell, even 30) it’s real easy to reflect on our past experiences and presume we as men actually had any clue as to what qualities in a woman we knew were or weren’t deal breakers for commitment. Infidelity notwithstanding, what was really a red flag for you when you were in your mid-20s? Did you even know? I sure as hell didn’t.

Women’s hypergamous natures make them far more exacting in their selection process, far earlier in life, and their list of prerequisite attributes and characteristics more rigid than any man’s would ever be. This same innate hypergamy also makes them susceptible to a constant doubting about any selection they do commit to. Ergo, the biologically hard-wired need to shit test even after 10 years of marriage.

Not so for men. If she’s relatively hot, sexually accessible and marginally loving, we’re usually in. And you know why we’re in? Because it seems like a good idea at the time – and that’s what gets us into trouble in our youth. In fact we’re not encouraged to presume we could actually be selective. That would mean preempting women as the prime selectors for their imposed reality – men even being educated in what would account for a red flag is pretentiousness deserving of shame.. Men are far less prone to turn down a ‘sure thing’ that’s producing semi-regular rewards / reinforcement (sex) in favor of an ‘unsure thing’ that’s an unproven commodity for him. It’s only later in life, when we can remove ourselves from the game and look at things objectively that we get even an inclination of what characteristics a woman needs to possess beyond the physical and sexual for us to decide what works best for us.

And then, God forbid, a Man actually take action based on his personal assessment of the characteristics he does decide upon. From a societal standpoint men will never enjoy the same degree of social support women do for taking action in “doing what’s best for them.” Any Man with the forbearance enough to reject or break up with a woman based on his personal criteria is instantly labeled ‘shallow’ and shamed for daring to reject the poor victimized woman he was “lucky” to have had ever accept him.

The trick of women’s mate selectiveness lays in keeping men ignorant of what qualities (beyond the sexual) might make for the best LTR pairing long enough for her to capitalize on her beauty and youth, but not so long as to push past the expiration date of her hitting the Wall. This is why the 28 to 30 year mark is so pivotal to women. Her decade (or so) long window of prime beauty and selectivity is winding down. It’s not a woman’s mythical biological clock that’s prompting her to consider her maternal instincts – it’s the, now very real, actualization that she needs to lock down a commitment to provisioning from a man who, by the time he hits 30-35, should be awakening to the way women’s game is played and starts to feel more comfortable in qualifying women based on his learned experiences.

Nothing simultaneously frightens and excites a woman more than a Man who’s self-aware of his own sexual market value. This is why every effort is made via social conventions to repress him from realizing this, and every effort is made to shame and ostracize him once he’s conscious of it – and a prime example of this is the duplicitous nature of articles like Bolick’s decrying men’s unwillingness to grow up and give women the life they should know is “doing the right thing” after 20 years of berating men for not respecting them asserting their independence from men.

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.