In the “community” there’s a lot of want for better terms. One of the major obstacles in the average guy’s path to unplugging is really coming to terms with the ‘terms’ we use. Somewhere on the net I’m sure there’s a glossary of the common acronyms used in the “manosphere” (I hate that term too) outlining the various shorthand we use. Some of these terms have gone mainstream and I’m beginning to see even “legitimate” online journalists use LTR (long term relationship) or ONS (one night stand) somewhat regularly, meaning there’s a common perception that others will already know what they mean.
The reason this is a hurdle for a lot of plugged-in guys is because it seems almost juvenile, like a treehouse club for preteen boys. For me to draw comparisons of an acculturated, feminine social paradigm to the central plot of the Matrix movies, admittedly, on the surface that seems kind of silly. It’s an apt comparison and a useful allegory when you understand the concepts behind it, but for a guy just coming to grasp it while being immersed in a feminine-primary socialization for his whole life, it dosen’t click. And predictably, women invested in that same socialization see the terminology as little more than little boys holed up in their treehouse, throwing rocks at the girls below.
However, like any new developing science or art or technology there is always going to be a need to codify abstract concepts. We lack better terms so we’re forced to create new ones to represent new concepts.
The AFC – average frustrated chump – was coined almost a decade ago with Mystery method. It’s seen a lot of modification over the years, becoming almost synonymous the use of the term Beta (beta male) or Herb (herbivorous male). In fact, although I use it often, I rarely read AFC in PUA blogs, forums or the ‘community’ at large. Regardless of the terminology, the concept is really the crux of the term. Most AFCs, most guys looking in from the outside, can relate to the idea of what an average frustrated chump is – they can identify with it. Once they begin unplugging, the AFC idea comes into better focus and, usually with some discomfort, they realize how that term applies to themselves:
Qualities of an AFC
ONEitis – First and foremost.
Subscribes to feminine idealizations.
Supplication is supportive. To comply with gender equalism she must increase, so he must decrease, regardless of how subtly this is realized.
The Savior Schema –reciprocation of intimacy for problems solved.
The Martyr Schema – the more you sacrifice the more it shows devotion.
The ‘Friends’ Debt – LJBF and the pseudo-friendship as a means to prospective intimacy.
Primarily relies on dating and social skills (or lack thereof) developed during adolescence and early adulthood
A behavioral history that illustrates a mental attitude of ‘serial monogamy’ and the related insecurities that accompany it.
A belief that women infallibly and consciously recognize what they want, and honestly convey this to them, irrespective of behaviors that contradict this. Uses deductive reasoning in determining intent and bases female motivations on statements rather than objectively observing behavior. Believes women’s natural propensity is for rational rather than emotional thought.
Believes in the Identification Myth. The more alike he is, or can make himself, with his idealized female the better able he will be to attract and secure her intimacy. Believes that shared common interests are the ONLY key to attraction and enduring intimacy.
Believes and practices the “not like other guys” doctrine of self-perceived uniqueness, even under the condition of anonymity.
Considers LDRs (long distance relationships) a viable option for prolonged intimacy.
Maintains an internalized belief in the qualifications and characterizations of women that coincide with his ability (or inability) to attract them. Ergo, he self-confirms the “ she’s out of my league” and the “she’s a loose slut” mentalities on-the-fly to reinforce his position for his given conditions.
Harbors irrational (often socially reinforced) fears of long term solitude and alters his mind-set to accommodate or settle for a less than optimal short term relationship – often with life long consequences.
The AFC will confirm a belief in egalitarian equality between the genders without consideration for variance between the genders. Ergo, men make perfectly acceptable feminine models and women make perfectly acceptable masculine models. Due to societal pressures he unconsciously self-confirms androgyny as his goal state.
This is anything but a comprehensive list. There are far more, but my intent here isn’t to provide you with a list of criteria that qualifies an AFC (“you might be a chump if,..”), rather it’s to give you some basic understanding to clarify the term, and round out the idea of what an AFC is. Needless to say these mental schema are some of the impediments to unplugging, or helping another man unplug, from his old way of thinking. As I’m fond of repeating, unplugging chumps from the Matrix is dirty work. Expect to be met with a LOT of resistance, but understanding what dynamics you may harbor yourself or those that a friend might cling to will help you in moving past the years of social conditioning. It’s thankless work, and more often than not you’ll also be facing a constant barrage of shit tests (from both women and feminized men) and ridicule in your efforts. Be prepared for it. Unplugging chumps is triage – save those you can, read last rites to the dying.
Often I’ll be in the middle of some socio-psychological tear on a particular topic when I’ll come to a dead halt because I play my own devil’s advocate while I’m typing and reasoning aloud, and have to review and edit the paragraphs I’ve spent the last 2 hours constructing because I’d failed to consider how others might interpret my intent, or I’d overlooked some element and had to go back and address that issue, or at the very least have a source ready to cite for the most predictable rebuttals. Needless to say it’s an arduous process, however I’ve found that starting topics in regards to certain theories and ideas I have to see what their intent will be read as helps me greatly. So with this in mind I’m presenting a particular section of my work here to see what the consensus is on what I’ve come to call Operative Social Conventions. I had originally titled the section Feminine Operative Social Conventions, and I may still go back to that, but after you read this you’ll see how these conventions (or contrivances) need Men to play along with them for them to exist in the first place, or so I’ve reasoned.
Operative Social Conventions
In the ‘community’ we’ve become all too familiar with a standard set of problems that are commonly asked of us for advice – “Should I date younger/older women with/without children?””what about women with money/career?”etc. for example. So often are we petitioned for our take on these dilemas that we have a tendency to repeat back a standard reply for them. I count myself among those who do this as well. I’m very prone to see the forest for the trees so to speak and fire back with my stand by reply of Spin More Plates, or NEXT. And while these response are novel to those reading them for the first time (and hopefully having their eyes opened for the first time too), I’d come to realize that I was guilty of not seeing the forest with regards to why certain topics are more frequently reoccurring problems for the Beta-AFC and the aspiring Game student alike. For the most part, Plate Theory covers a multitude of AFC sins, but my concern was with understanding why these questions come up so often and what their root cause is. To this effect I’ve attempted to ‘distill’ down the symptoms (i.e. the commonly related problems) to the motivation behind them (i.e. the disease rather than the symptoms). This led me to a new theory of Operative Social Conventions.
I’ve posted on this blog and in more forum threads than I care to recall about these conventions before, but never really explored the idea in depth. Essentially all of the symptoms of these conventions are manifested as the frequent problems guys come up with, but the disease is the latent purpose of these conventions. For every guy asking if it’s a good idea to date a single mother or an older woman, there’s a single mother or older woman perpetuating the convention in order to best ensure her capacity to secure a man capable of provisioning for her. I wont ramble off into the bio-psychological aspect of why this is such an all important drive for women (and men in some cases), instead I’ll focus on certain conventions, the way they operate and their latent operative function.
Shame
Perhaps the easiest and most recognizable form of social convention is shame. Not only this, but it is also the most easily employable and the most widely accepted – not just by women of all ages and descriptions, but also by popular culture and the media.
Examples: “Men should date women their own age.”
“Men shouldn’t be so ‘shallow’ as to put off single mothers as viable long term mates.”
“Men have ‘fragile egos’ that need constant affirmation in an almost infantile respect.”
“Men feel threatened by ‘successful’ women.”
As well as being popularized myths, all of these are subtle (and not so subtle) manipulations of shame. Each is an operative social convention that places a man into a position of having to live up to an idealized standard that simultaneously raises the standard for a woman, thus placing her into a better position of sexual selection and in some instances, leveling the perceived playing-field with regard to the feminine competition dynamic (i.e single moms, older and professional women ought to be just as sexually marketable as the younger women men biologically prefer).
The ‘Shallow’ effect – The useful myth of superficiality.
I’m mentioning this as an aside to the Shame methodology since it appears to me to be the root of the Shame operative. In all of the above examples (or symptoms) the burden of expectation that is placed on a man comes with the threat of being perceived as “Shallow” or superficial. In otherwords, the very questioning of whether or not a man ought to date a single mother comes with the veiled threat of having women (mothers or not) tar the questioning man with being ‘superficial’. This ‘Shallow’ effect is so pervasive in so many AFCs, young and old, that I’ve counseled that it becomes an automatic default defense. Even under conditions of complete anonymity, the Shallow Effect becomes so ego-invested in their personality that even the potential of being perceived as “shallow” is subconsciously avoided. This is a major obstacle in transitioning from AFC to positive masculinity. AFCs all initially laugh at PUA technique (C&F, Peacocking, Neg Hits, etc.) because they carry the potential of being perceived as ‘shallow’. The truth of the matter is that individually we are only as superficial as our own self-perceprtions allow, but the Shallow Effect is a useful convention so long as it keeps men doubting their ingenuousness and self-validity as a trade for women’s intimacy.
Selection Position Insurance
Examples: Women are ‘allowed’ to understand men, but women must necessarily ALWAYS be a mystery to men.
Getting “lucky” with a woman when referring to sex.
Selection position insuring methodologies revolve around fomenting the Scarcity Mentality in men. If the value can be inflated, the value can be increased, thus ensuring a controlling frame. This convention holds fast to the Feminine Mystique or Female Intuition mythology. So long as women remain ‘uknowable’ there becomes less motivation to try to understand them. In fact this convention actively discourages any attempt to understand the feminine to the point that men have adopted it and parrot it back without being cognizant of it. This is exactly the reason why guys will ridicule men seeking understanding of women when they search it out in “how to get girls” books, DVDs, PUA seminars or on the internet. It’s also why men who profess to ‘know’ how women operate are ridiculed; it’s a perfect paradox – to attempt to understand the feminine OR to profess to know the feminine is not only laughable, but it places a man into the Shallow Effect in either case.
Social Escape Clauses – A woman’s prerogative
Examples: Women always have the prerogative to change their minds. Men must be resolute.
Proactive and Reactive Pseudo-Friendship Rejections:
LJBF rejections – “I already have a boyfriend” or “I’m not interested in a relationship right now” rejections.
Default female victimhood
Escape clause conventions always offer an OUT to a woman and absolve her of, or dramatically reduce her responsibility for personal accountability by means of social reinforcement. A stripper can complain of her self-degradation by men, but be completely blameless for her decisions to do so by virtue of her social conditions, that are, again, the perceived result of a male controlled society. The Feminine Prerogative has been an accepted social norm since the early Renaissance and the advent of ‘courtly love’. Like the Position Insurance convention, this serves to ensure that the ‘mysterious woman’ is validated in her arbitrariness by socially plausible reinforcement. The opposite of this convention is enforced for men, they must be resolute while accepting that a woman “has the right to change her mind.” This, and the cart-carrot of a woman’s intimacy as a reward, is exactly why it is socially acceptable for a man to wait hours for a woman to prepare/show for a date and the kiss of death for a man to be more than 5-10 minutes late. He must be punctual, she is afforded leniency.
I don’t think I need to go into too much detail regarding the LJBF (“lets just be friends”) esacpe clause as it’s been done to death, and aI have plans for a future post on it, but I will add that the LJBF esacpe is perhaps the single most useful convention ever conceived by women. The LJBF rejection has classically ensured that a woman can reject a man yet still maintain his previous attention. It also puts the responsibility for the rejection back on his shoulders since, should he decline the ‘offer of friendship’, he is then responsible for entertaining this friendship. This of course has the potential to backfire on women these days since the standard AFC will accept an LJBF rejection in the mistaken hopes of ‘proving’ himself worthy of her intimacy by being the perfect ‘surrogate boyfriend’ – fulfilling all her attention and loyalty prerequisites with no expectation of reciprocating her own intimacy. The LJBF rejection also serves as an ego preservation for her in that having offered the false olive branch of ‘friendship’ to him in her rejection she also can sleep that night knowing that she (and any of her peers) wont think any less of herself. After all, she offered to be friends, right? She is excused from any feelings of personal guilt or any responsibilities for his feelings if she still wants to remain amiable with him.
Sexual Competition Sabotage
Examples: “She’s a ‘slut’ – he’s a ‘fag’” and the sub-communications in the terminology.
Catty remarks, gossip, feminine communication methodologies
This convention is the reputation destroyer and it’s easy to observe this in the field. Since it also serves a woman attention needs, it is among the most socially acceptable and widely flaunted, however the foundations and latent purpose of this convention takes some consideration to understand. When women employ gossip it comes natural since it is an emotional form of communication (men have a far lower propensity to use gossip), but the purpose of it is meant to disqualifiy a potential sexual competitior. In terms of female to female gossip this satisfies the attention need, but when men are brought into the salaciousness it becomes a qualification tool. By saying a woman is a “slut”, the sub-communication is, “she sleeps with a lot of guys and is therefore inelligible as a candidate deserving of a man’s long term provisioning capacity, due to her obvious inability to remain loyal to any one, individual male.” This then becomes the ultimate weapon in influencing a man’s (long term) sexual selection.
I’ll also add that this breeding sabotage isn’t limited to just women though. What’s the first thing most men are apt to say about another, anonymous, extremely attractive male? “He’s probably a fag.” Men have learned this convention from women, they sexually disqualify a man in the most complete way possible; “this guy might be as attractive as a GQ model, but he would never breed with a woman and is therefore disqualified as a suitor for your intimacy.”
Gender Role Redefinition
Examples: Masculinity is ridiculous and/or negative with the potential for violent extremes.
“Men should get in touch with their feminine sides.” – Identification as false attraction.
Although I have a few more conventions in mind, I’ll finish this post with this, the most obvious and most discussed convention. There’s no shortage of articles dedicated to this convention, so I wont rehash what’s been stated. Instead, I should point out the latent purpose behind the popularity and mass cultural acceptance of this, the most damaging convention. The function behind this convention could be androgeny as an idealized state, or a power struggle to redefine masculine and feminine attributes, or even to ensure women as the primary selectors in mating. All of those can be argued and are valid, especially considering how prone to accepting and perpetuating this convention is among men today, but I think the deeper purpose, the real latent function is a sexual selection process.
It’s the man who remains in touch with his masculine side, the guy who, despite all of pop-culture denigrating and ridiculing his gender and the very aspects that make it a necessary, positive strength of human society, will endure and steadfastly resist the influences that want to turn it into something it was never intended; it’s this guy and his confidence that women all over the world find irresistable. He embodies the masculine arousal that their feminine has been seeking and they can’t explain it. This is the ultimate meta-shit test in sexual selection – to discover or learn what it is to be postively masculine and remain so in a world that constantly berates his gender, that tells him he’s poisoned by his testosterone while confirming the same masculine attributes as a positive for women. It’s the guy who understands that it’s gender differences, not androgynous similarities, that make us strong. It’s the Man who can see that the sexes were meant to be complimentary, not adversarial, who passes this shit test. Gender redefinition, as a social convention, serves as an Alpha filtering mechanism.
As loathe as I am about doing so, I’m forced to refer today’s post topic to Oprah.com’s essays on Sexual Fluidity. I wont do this often as Oprah is the crowned queen of feminine matrix-think. However, these articles outline a what I see as the nascent development of a new feminine social convention – sexual fluidity is the newly developing rational for late-life sexual and gender dissatisfaction for post-wall ‘New Women’ . I’ve already touched on how feminine social conventions and their latent purposes effect inter-gender relations in a few prior posts, and I have forthcoming posts dedicated to better outlining established social conventions and their functions, but I think this newly developing convention may be a great starting point in understanding how they evolve.
The most recent post over at Heartiste / Roissy’s (?) site enumerating the post-wall woes of Sinead O’Conner reminded me of an interesting phenomenon that has been gathering popular cultural awareness now for almost 4 years – the newly accepted convention of sexual fluidity. Quoting Sinead O’Conner here:
And further posts [from Sinead] brought more. Prospective lovers can be lesbian; may even, she conceded, be christened Brian or Nigel; but anal sex is non-negotiable.
As distracting as it is let’s ignore the anal sex reference for now, we’ll return to it later. Here we have an illustration of an otherwise heterosexual woman petitioning the general public for a sexual partner. Male or female, the gender is irrelevant to her, all that matters now is her sexual gratification. What we observe here is an example of what cognitive (see, touchy-feely) psychologists are terming sexual fluidity. This new concept revolves around the idea that a person’s sexuality can turn on a dime; it is essentially fluid and can change throughout a person’s lifetime and in accord with one’s conditions.
I don’t necessarily disagree with the psychology of this per se, only how popular, feminized, culture is conveniently turning this idea to the purposes of its own imperatives. Heterosexual male prison inmates can and often do resort to homosexuality during their incarceration and return to heterosexuality upon their release. This is in effect a sexually fluid response to solving a sexual release imperative under the conditions of being sequestered in a same sex environment for a long period of time. The conditions dictate the response.
Feminized culture has embraced sexual fluidity, but has rejected the underlying reasons for it. As a new social convention, sexual fluidity becomes less about conditions and more about the individual for women. For the post-wall, aging spinster, the concept of sexual fluidity is a godsend. As a rationale for her lackluster personal life it becomes a salve for her ego – homosexuality becomes a realizable, socially acceptable option. The true reason for her long term unhappiness is that she was, in actuality, an unacknowledged lesbian for all these years. And naturally, for all women, there is a wide base of emotional support from the sisterhood ready to embrace and accept the ‘real’ her. The necessity of accepting homosexuality as her only, conditional, sexual option becomes a new virtue to be proud of in Oprah-world. Never is there a mention that the choices she’s made in life had any bearing on her present condition, nor is there any doubt that the measures she’s now forced to resort to were dictated by those choices.
Now, before I get too far along on the anti-femme-train I want to point out that much of the reasons for constructing a social convention such as this have a lot more to do with the conflict between social conditions and our innate biomechanics. If you read through the article Why Women are Leaving Men for Other Women, you can’t help but notice the commonalities of the testimonies coming from otherwise feminine women being attracted to more dominant, masculine women. Often these come from long married-with-children women who’ve divorced their beta husbands in favor of a more dominant, butch, Alpha lesbian.
Ironically—or not, as some might argue—it is certain “masculine” qualities that draw many straight-labeled women to female partners; that, in combination with emotional connection, intimacy, and intensity.
“Men can’t understand why I want to be with Jack, a lesbian, when I could be with a biological man,” says Gomez-Barris. “And at first I thought it would be threatening, but I have a rebellious spirit. He’s powerful, accomplished, and appealing. And in some ways, the experience is better than in heterosexual sex.
So what are we seeing here? Heterosexual women, still crave the masculine dominance that men cannot or will not provide her. Thus, we see condition dictate response. Kind of explains Sinead O’Conner’s exceptionalism for lesbian anal sex now doesn’t it?
In 2004, after earning her master’s degree in counseling at Loyola University New Orleans, (Bridget) Falcon met April Villa, now 34, who works as a civil engineer for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. “April is a beautiful, feminine woman,” says Falcon, “yet she’s so much like a guy, analytical but not overly introspective, and, just like my dad, she likes to build things and can fix anything.”
What are the commonalities we see in each of these? Past-prime, mostly well educated women, each dissatisfied with an inability to attract and marry “powerful, accomplished, and appealing” men who attempted to ‘have it all’ by starting families with the only betas they could attract. Later in life they grow even more uncomfortable with the proposition of spending their remaining years with the herb they married and so opt out of the marriage for the growingly more accepted idea of “sexually flowing” into a homosexual relationship with a woman who qualifies as powerful, accomplished, and appealing, ergo traditionally masculine, that her former husband did not.
The advent of embracing sexual fluidity in women is an attempt by feminized culture to put a bandaid on a lingering problem. As western feminized culture progresses onward from the late 60s, more and more women are awakening to the disillusionment that the choice they made to participate as an ‘equal’ in a masculine world required sacrifices of her femininity. Sacrifices that most come to regret later in life. Between 35 and 45 women are increasingly feeling the repercussions of their attempts to ‘have it all’ or have HAD it all, yet are left wondering why they’re not satisfied in sublimating their expectations – betraying their uniquely female biomechanics – to play the role of the New Woman.
That consensus is growing, even in Oprah-world, so what to do? What feminism has always done, move the goalposts and redefine the game. Men, for any variety of shameful reasonings, are cast as incapable of living up to the standards of being powerful, accomplished, and appealing, but even if you regret having married one, and possibly brought children into the world, you can still have a second chance at ‘having it all’ thanks to sexual fluidity. It’s not him, it’s the undiscovered homosexual you that’s been repressed all this time. Never mind that those infantile men are too preoccupied with youthful sexuality to appreciate your post-wall physique, there’s a world of lesbian women out there ready to deliver on the promise of powerful, accomplished, and appealing masculinity that your man is incapable of. It’s not that neo-feminism was wrong in promising you a satisfying life, it’s just that you were really a lesbian all this time and either didn’t know it, or were a victim of the Patriarchy and were repressed from it.
The newest feminine social convention, sexual fluidity, simply attempts to patch one of the many the holes that’s sinking the New Woman’s ship. Feminized culture needs a reason for the masculine disappointment it’s systematically acculturated into society for the past 50 years.
This one is always a controversial topic on SoSuave. I find it ironic that the same guys who whole-heartedly agree with the idiom “believe what she does, not what she says”, are often the same men who really want to believe that, select, special women actually do give other men advice that has merit.
The problem is most guys simply parrot the words women have told them over the years when they asked them “What do women want in a guy?” and then think it works since they got it straight from the horse’s mouth. Unfortunately, too many guys, especially recently, have bought the same line women have been repeating for ages thinking it’s a way to put themselves at an advantage when all it does is disqualify not only them, but the poor suckers who hear ‘chick advice’ from another guy, repeat it, and the cycle continues.
My take is that the ‘chick advice’ phenomenon is a socio-evolutionary fail-safe mechanism meant to filter women’s selection process of less desirable men from more desirable (competition worthy) men. Think about this – women almost uniquely own “relationship advice” in popular media. There are a few notable feminized male exceptions (i.e. the Dr. Phils), but the ones who don’t align their opinions along a feminine-first priority are surreptitiously tagged as misogynists and marginalized or ridiculed.
On some level of consciousness women know they’re full of shit when they offer up the ‘standard’ chick advice. To greater or lesser degrees, they know they’re being less than genuine when they see this advice regularly contradicted by their own behaviors. Women (and now men) repeat in article after article how well developed the female capacity is for communication, so it follows that they must know to some, maybe subconscious, degree that they are being less than helpful if not deliberately misleading. Even the mothers with the best interests of their son’s at stake still parrot these responses. It’s like a female imperative. Why?
For the answer, all you have to do is look at the bios of single women on any online dating service. When asked to describe the characteristics they find desirable in a man, the single most common responses are confidence, decisiveness, independence. Traits that would require a man to be a Man and have the foresight and perseverance not to take things at face value. The guy with the capacity to call a woman’s bluff with a confidence that implies she is to be worthy of him rather than the other way around is the Man to be competed for. Essentially the ‘chick speak’, ‘chick advice’ phenomenon is a shit test writ large on a social scale. And even your own mother and sisters are in on it, expecting you to ‘get it’; to get the message and see the challenge for what it really is, without overtly telling you.
Most guys are natural pragmatists, we look for the shortest most efficient way between two points. The deductive reasoning that follows is that if we want sex, and women have the sex we want, we ought to ask them what conditions they require from us in order for us to get it. The problem is that women don’t want to tell us this, because in doing so it makes us less independent and and more compromising (and lazy) in our own identities in order to get at her sexuality. This is counter to the decisive, independent and masculine Man they really want and is evidenced in their behaviors. He should know what women want without asking because he’s observed them often enough, been successful with them often enough, and taken the efforts to make decisions for himself based on their behaviors, especially in the face of a world full of women’s conflicting words. This makes him the commodity in the face of a constant, overwhelming contradiction of her own and other women’s motives, words and behaviors.
She want’s you to ‘get it’ on your own, without having to be told how. That initiative and the experience needed to have had developed it makes you a Man worth competing for. Women despise a man who needs to be told to be dominant. Overtly relating this to a guy entirely defeats his credibility as a genuinely dominant male. The guy she wants to fuck is dominant because that’s ‘the way he is’ instead of who she had to tell him to be.
Observing the process will change it. This is the root function of every shit test ever devised by a woman. If masculinity has to be explained to a man, he’s not the man for her.
