The Ballad of Clark Kent

When Lois Lane met Superman he was fighting crime, could bend steel in his bare hands, stop locomotives, leap over tall buildings in a single bound; shit, Superman could fly! Then one day he met Lois and swept her away, rocked her world in the sack and fell in love with her because thats what Super-Men do. After a year of this whirlwind Lois starts to feel her relationship with Superman was lacking something, “Why does he have to always be out there fighting crime, huh? Why does he always have to prove he’s so Macho? Does it threaten his Ego? He really needs to get in touch with his feminine side. What about MY needs and why can’t he just grow up and get a real job? I’m not getting any younger you know, he’s got some responsibilities to live up to. When am I gonna see a ring?”

So eventually this wears down on Superman and he submits to Lois’ requests (demands?). After all he ‘should’ really ‘grow up’ anyway, right? It’s the right thing to do. So Superman changes his name to Clark Kent (Super-‘MAN’ was so male self-aggrandizing anyway) and lands a job as a reporter at a great metropolitan newspaper. Clark begins wearing glasses – even though he can see X-Rays, and shoot lasers out his eyes, he wears them because Lois says it makes him look distinguished, intellectual and SHE likes them.

Time goes on and Lois and Clark marry. 5 years into the marriage Lois gets bored. Same old, same old. Clark is so mundane and unassuming. She longs for the days he would fly and do that funny steel bending trick he used to do when they were dating. He hasn’t done any of that for so long; not because he can’t, but because he’s afraid she’ll get upset with him and not put out that evening if he gets ‘cocky’ with her. In fact she’s not putting out even half as much as she used to these days. Clark just doesn’t arouse her as much as he once did and she just can’t seem to put her finger on the reason for it.

Then one night Lois ran into a wealthy fellow named Bruce Wayne at a charity mixer. Bruce was dark, mysterious and in great shape! He couldn’t fly, but he made up for that in so many other ways. He fought crime! He wore a mask and spoke in short, purposeful sentences, never mincing words. He didn’t wear glasses (that was so retro!) and he came and went at the time of his pleasing, not hers. He sent tingles down Lois’ spine (and other places that hadn’t felt tingles in a while) when he began seeing her.

The weeks went by until, after a 60 hour work week at the Daily Planet (swanky apartments don’t rent cheap), Clark made his way home on the subway (since flying had been out of the question for a while now) and picked up a dozen roses to surprise Lois with (he thought she tended to put out when he showed his ‘feminine side’) when he got back to the apartment. However it was poor Clark who got the surprise upon discovering Bruce Wayne bending Lois over the kitchen table when he opened the door. Bruce propmptly toweled off while Clark, slack-jawed with horror, watched speechless.

“How could you? After all we’ve meant to each other!” Clark began to cry as Bruce excused himself from the now estranged couple. Clark was used to crying a lot now to show his sensitivity.

“What could you have possibly seen in a guy like that?!” He shrieked like a school girl.

“Well,..I couldn’t help myself” Lois said indifferently, “Batman is a Superhero.”

And that’s the danger, where do you end and she begins? The reason I wrote Identity Crisis (almost 5 years ago) was exactly this: Men tend to adopt a position of constantly qualifying for a woman’s intimacy, and understandably women reinforce this because to puts them in control of the frame and aids in their sexual selection. Most guys willingly make fundamental changes if they believe it will increase their chances of qualifying for a woman’s intimacy. Are they genuinely inspired, or are they deductively reasoned changes meant to qualify for her acceptance – A+B= sex?

The real insidious part is that the more deprived a man is of that intimacy, the more he’s likely to convince himself that the change is genuine. Whenever I hear a guy or a woman say “we’re working on our relationship” or “relationships are a lot of work and compromise”, it translates to the man changing or compromising to better fit the woman’s ideal. He’s being ‘fixed’, he’s broken and he needs to change. It often gets to the point where the guy will believe that there IS something genuinely wrong with him – it’s her reality he must conform to because the feminine reality is the ‘proper’ reality. The rude awakening comes when she discovers that the man she’s fixed her husband to be is the polar opposite of the Man she was attracted to at the start.

Wait for it?

Iron Rule of Tomassi #3

Any woman who makes you wait for sex, or by her actions implies she is making you wait for sex; the sex is NEVER worth the wait.

When a woman makes you wait for sex you are not her highest priority. Sexuality is spontaneous chemical reaction between two parties, not a process of negotiation. It’s sex first, then relationship, not the other way around. A woman who wants to fuck you will find a way to fuck you. She will fly across the country, crawl under barbwire, climb in through your second story bedroom window, fuck the shit out of you and wait patiently inside your closet if your wife comes home early from work – women who want to fuck will find a way to fuck. The girl who tells you she needs to be comfortable and wants a relationship first is the same girl who fucked the hot guy in the foam cannon party in Cancun on spring break just half an hour after meeting him.

If a girl is that into you she’ll have sex with you regardless of ASD or having her friends in the room videotaping it at a frat party. All women can be sluts, you just have to be the right guy to bring it out in them, and this happens before you go back to her place. If you have to plead your case cuddling and spooning on the bed or getting the occasional peck on the cheek at the end of the night, you need to go back to square one and start fresh.

I’m probably going to ruffle a few PUA feathers here, but I’ve never been a proponent of breaking down LMR (last minute resistance) with a woman. Maybe it’s a result of experiences in my rock star 20’s, but at some point I came to the conclusion that sex with a woman who’s turned on by me is always a far better than one where I had to sell her on the idea of sex with me before the act. Now don’t take this to the binary extreme and assume I mean the only good sex you’ll ever have is a first night lay (FNL) with some tart who can’t keep her legs closed. What I mean is that if you’re still trying to figure out what the magic words are to convince some girl that she ought fuck you after 3 dates – or longer – you’re in desire negotiation hearings counselor. You are wasting your time and limiting your opportunity with better prospective women in waiting out a woman who would defer less than 100% of her real desire to have sex with you. The sex will NEVER be worth the wait. A prostitute would be a better alternative.

Genuine desire cannot be negotiated. Once you get past a certain point in the waiting game, what once had the chance to be an organic, sexual desire becomes mitigated negotiation of a physical act. Just the fact that you’re having to make a case for yourself (even covertly) is evidence that there are other factors inhibiting her capacity to be sexual with you. As I stated, barring a physical inability, this is almost always because of an unmentioned agenda on her part. It may be due to a concurrent boyfriend, it may be a natural internal caution, it may be that your process is telegraphing ‘beta’ to her, or it may be that she’s filibustering you while waiting to see if another, more preferable guy pans out for her, however, none of these are insurmountable if she has a genuine desire to bang you. Many a cheated on boyfriend knows this is true. In any circumstance, sex with you is not an urgency for her. If  she’s perceiving your value as as high as it should be, she wont hesitate longer than a few dates to become sexual – and she certainly wont tell you she’s making you wait. Hypergamy doesn’t afford a woman much waiting time with a Man she sees as superior stock.

One of the more frustrating situations I often encounter comes from guys who’ve been OVERTLY told that they’re being made to wait for sex until some circumstance or criteria is met for the woman. The standard filibuster (or loss-leader as the case may be) usually comes with the reasoning that she “needs to feel comfortable” before she has sex with a guy. Even more distressing is the guy who was getting laid, only to be told the same thing by an existing girlfriend. If you find yourself in either of these situation there are a couple of things to bear in mind.

First and foremost, sex, by it’s nature is uncomfortable. Sex that is motivated by mutual, genuine desire is a tense affair, fueled by testosterone, anxiety and urgency. When two people get together for a first dance ( a precursor to copulation), it’s rarely if ever an intimate slow dance. It’s salsa, it’s grinding, it’s pumping, it’s heat and it’s sweat. What it’s not is comforting and familiar. It’s not a nice warm bathrobe fresh out of the dryer. Don’t take this the wrong way, but sex is threatening. It needs to be, and you need to be considered a sexualized player in her personal sphere. Overtly agreeing to wait for her to become sexual is anti-seductive. It confirms for her that you aren’t a sexualized player to her; an Alpha wouldn’t wait for sex and she knows this. Worse still, it devalues her SMV as being worth less than of your utmost urgency.

Secondly, always remember why women resort to OVERT communications (the language of men) – so there is no, or less, margin that her message will be misunderstood. If a woman, point blank says, “I’m not having sex with you until X,Y, and Z happens”, what is her MEDIUM telling you? That there is a precondition that’s more important to her than fucking you with genuine, uncontrollable passion. You want her to be so into you that she’s willing to break the rules. The ideal situation is for her genuine passion to be so uncontrollable for you that she’d renounce her religion and throw her convictions to the wind to be with you. That might seem a bit dramatic, but you get the idea. The good news now is that she’s being overt, which means she’s exhausted her reserves to be covert and, assuming you’re not so desperate as to delude yourself, you can NEXT her and move on.

Rapport ≠ Comfort

A lot of “waiters” find all that a tough road to hoe. They want to stick it out and see if things “might develop”, and NEXTing their ‘waiting girl’ seems a lot like throwing the baby out with the bath water after all the time they’ve invested in building what they think is rapport. Usually this is due to the guy not spinning (enough) other plates that would bear more fruit. However, keep this in mind; waiting for sex isn’t building rapport. There’s a lot of confusion about rapport, most of which is due to well meaning PUAs conflating rapport with comfort. It’s a pretty esoteric term, but rapport is a connection; it’s an implied trust between two acting agents who previously had never met or only have limited knowledge of each other. You can have rapport with an animal – that’s the connection, it’s instinctual.

Comfort comes from familiarity and predictability; all decidedly anti-seductive influences. And while comfort has it’s own merits in interpersonal relationships, it is not the basis for genuine, passionate sexual desire. For people (myself included) involved in a marriage or LTR, it’s serves our long-term best interest to convince ourselves that sex is better when your comfortable with your partner, however, the reality of it sings a different tune. Here’s an easy illustration: As reported by both men and women alike, which of these circumstances provokes the most intense, memorable sexual experiences ? When a couple plans and arranges a romantic “date night” to ‘keep it fresh’ and reconnect? Or is it the ‘make-up sex’ after a horrible breakup, or narrowly averted breakup, where long dormant competition anxiety is brought back into being a very real possibility again? If you said the breakup, you’re correct! One scenario is comfortable, the other uncomfortable. One has the element of predictable certainty, the other is chaotic and uncertain, however in both situations there is definitely a working mutually connective rapport operating.

Dream Girls and Children with Dynamite

“Self-love is not so great a sin as self-neglect. – Henry V

Pride is one thing that people get very confused about. It’s a healthy thing to have pride of oneself, to be proud of our accomplishments; it’s a very real source of self-confidence. Humility is an admirable quality, don’t get me wrong, but humility is only genuine when you’re confident of your own abilities. It takes a humble Man to walk away from a fight that he knows he could win, but chooses not to engage in. Generally humility is only self-gratifying, because only rarely will others appreciate it as humility (those familiar with your abilities) and not view it as cowardice, or at best a lack of confidence. Pride often appears arrogant because people of lesser accomplishments become envious, and people of better accomplishments think less of them than you do. It’s very important not to appear too perfect, but it’s equally important not to seem spineless.

It’s quite another thing to be “prideful”and this is where the disconnect comes for a lot of AFCs, particularly ones with strong ego-investments in morality, chivalry, honor, etc. My old AFC self used to struggle with this as well. The AFC sublimates himself; he self-deprecates because he believes, erroneously, that this ideology will separate him from the herd, make him “not-like-other-guys”. He mistakenly believes that he’s unique in this when actually he’s in the majority. Why? For the answer all you need do is look at the most common threads from guys just recently discovering the community.

I have no doubt that there are some guys who go from zero to PUA and then parley that into some kind of seducer-hood. I would also argue that they are the rare exceptions. Guys don’t search out community forums or blogs like this because they’re getting too much pussy. They search it out because what they’ve been doing isn’t producing the results they want. When you think about this, they’ve been doing exactly what others criticize Game for – they’re working from a script. We like to point out the flaws in autonomously adhering to a script with regards to PUA techniques; you become a social robot, not “yourself”. But from an opposite side, what you’re doing now, or have done, as an AFC (Beta Game) is equally as scripted. The only difference, and far more insidious, is that they’ve internalized these AFC “scripts” that society on whole has conditioned into them as personal investments over the course of a lifetime.

After dropping your AFC mindset for a one based on self-interest, what happened? You probably began to see results. You can hook up with women the calibre of which were previously unavailable to you before, and all it took was replacing your chump behavior and mentality with one of self-concern and self-priority. You might’ve felt like an asshole, people may have said you’ve changed or become bitter, or you’re being someone you’re not, but you couldn’t argue with the results.

One of the biggest dangers of the PUA ideal is that it does nothing to address the root problem of AFCism (for lack of a better term). AFCs don’t want to stop being AFCs. Largely, they just want their ONEitis (or their “dream girl”) to hook up with them long term and then drift back into a comfortable ‘just being themselves’. According to The Game even Mystery, with all his PUA prowess, degenerates into a simpering, borderline suicidal chump when he realizes that his PUA scripts do nothing in an LTR with Katya (his ONEitis). The most notorious PUA in modern history was still an AFC, because he hadn’t killed that mentality, that AFC internalization – he hadn’t killed his inner AFC.

Another very common occurrence is the “reformed” AFC who makes progress toward becoming more Game savvy, and as a result gets his “dream girl”, only to lose her after reverting back into an AFC frame once he’s in an LTR with her. I’m not a big Ross Jefferies fan, but he did say something very profound once, he said “teaching PUA skills to these chumps is like giving dynamite to children.” This is probably truer than he realized, because the potential for disaster is much higher. Most guys want that silver bullet, the magic formula that will get them the girl, but it does nothing to prepare them for the idyllic LTR their beta nature has fantasized about for so very long. They don’t become Men, they become children with dynamite. So are we really surprised when the guy who finally gets his Dream Girl as a result of learning Game becomes despondent and suicidal when he loses the “best thing he’ll ever have” when she leaves him? Are we shocked when his ONEitis turns out to be a BPD girl and his life’s ambitions fall into a death-spiral because he was unprepared to deal with a post-Game LTR?

The problem with just employing PUA skills to get any woman is that sometimes it actually gets you ANY woman. There’s no vetting process, no discernment, taught as part of technique. AFCs get so impressed with their new found PUA confidence and getting hotter women, getting their old friend-zone girl interested, or getting women at all, that they have no motivation to think about who they should get involved with. They’re unprepared for emotionally manipulative women, and particularly when they’re more attractive than anything they’d ever had before. They obsess. They predictably get ONEitis, but they develop a ONEitis and in such an extreme case they can be suicidal about a woman they’d previously never been able to attain.

PUA skills are tools, and valuable ones at that, but adopting a positive masculine mindset prepares an AFC for more. An AFC needs to divorce himself from deep set social and psychological schemas – he needs to unlearn the self-delusions that a lifetime has conditioned him to internalize into his personality. Giving an AFC Game skills before this transition will only condemn him to disappointment and despair in an LTR. The more important lesson is learned in the discarding of that old, beta, way of thinking, while understanding the tools and techniques to apply the new, confident, positive masculine mindset.

Musings at the Gym

Why is the assumption always that if a person is exceptionally good looking, fit, and prides themselves on the personal dedication and discipline needed for being so, that they are necessarily compensating for a lack of “depth”, personal, or emotional intelligence? Why should outer beauty necessarily imply inner ‘brokenness’? Can’t a person be both physically and emotionally healthy?

I find it fascinating that it’s often the same people who tell you “you can’t judge a book by it’s cover” in regards to a less than physical ideal (being polite) and personal merit, are usually the first people to tell you how “shallow” a person must be if they devote what they “see” as too much time to improving their appearance. I’ve been a bodybuilder for over 20 years now, my brother competed on the amateur circuit when we were younger, I’ve met a lot of fitness competitors and just average men and women who pride themselves on their physique, and I have to say the majority of them were very positive, intelligent and psychologically healthy people.

People who look good, generally, exemplify the hard work and conviction that’s necessary in staying that way. It’s not just the physical that makes them attractive; it’s the subconscious understanding of the dedication necessary to be so that’s attractive too. When you look better than the norm, especially in an era and culture where 66% of the population is clinically overweight, there’s an ambient understanding that it takes a mind for dedication and conviction to be so. That’s not to deny that some people don’t hit the genetic lottery jackpot, but largely, maintaining a great physique is the result of a focused effort.

The gym is the perfect environment for sexual equalization from a physical standpoint. In a club or at a party or any other social gathering our masks are on; we can hide deficits more easily with clothing, the lighting and sounds is conducive to giving us more appeal, our inhibitions may be altered due to alcohol, etc. But in the gym all of that is out the window. Oh, women attempt to hide their fat butts with sweat shirts tied around their waists, but everyone is sober – in fact we’re in a better than normal state of awareness from the exercise – both sex’s physical deficits and assets are out in the open.

It’s Darwinism at its finest and both sexes strive for attention in some form or another. Guys can only rely on their physical presence & prowess, and whatever Game they possess to impress since there’s generally no way to judge a man’s socioeconomic status in the gym. Women are stripped to a primal physical competition where they’re judged on their physical form which is men’s primary criteria for mate selection. This is why you commonly hear women complain about ‘hating’ going to the gym and why female specific gyms are profitable; it has less to do with the actual exercise and more to do with an inability to cope with the intense competition present on a level that most are unacustomed to in other social environments. This is why there is such a market for ‘women’ only health clubs such as Curves and Planet Fitness (yes PF gyms are for women), in fact I’ve yet to encounter a men’s only gym and I’d speculate that this is due to men experiencing far less intimidation in a gym setting.

I really wish I could type away here and tell you about all the hotties I see at my gym everyday, but that’s simply not the case. I can tell you I’ve seen a drastic change in the women who populate the “fitness clubs” now, and it’s not for the better. I’m sure I’ll read someone in the comments relate how they have gorgeous attention whores at their local gym, but that’s simply not my experience these days. The women at the gym NEED to be in the gym. Mostly overweight, mostly self-conscious, I can tell by the effort each post-Wall woman exerts as to whether they’re recently divorced (or planning to be). Just on observation, I see far more men in MUCH better shape than the sample of women present. I’d guess it at 80% – 20%, and that’s here in Florida, I can just imagine what it might be in other regions. Even the cardio and zumba classes are overwhelmingly filled with thick soccer moms, “doing it for fun”.

Positive Masculinity vs. Equalism

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

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

New Gender Definitions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So where do you start?

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

Your Attention Please.

On many a Game forum you’ll find at least one thread per week decrying the evils of the much maligned Attention Whore. In the time I’ve spent exploring Game mechanics I’ve yet to read a treatise that really analyzed the fundamentals of why men and women alike make distinctions between one woman as an Attention Whore and another simply a garden variety woman who seeks attention.

Your mother, your sister, the girl at the bar and the wife you’ve been married to for 20 years are all attention seeking. Some to a greater and some to a lesser degree, but it is an integral part of the feminine gender to seek various means to grab and hold attention. 

Yes I understand that all people, men and women, enjoy attention for various reasons, but as a gender women seek and use attention very differently from men. From a very early age attention is a primary reinforcer for girls. As I’ve mentioned on occasion, part of my psychology education included child psych and my favorite (and most convenient) subject has always been my ever-present 7 y.o. (at the time) daughter when doing case studies. To understand the feminine attention dynamic you have to go back into female childhood socialization. There are countless case studies that focus on attention-as-reinforcer being a psychological construct for women. I should also add that, from a scientific perspective, there really is no absolute nature, or absolute nurture attributed to personality or gender differences, so a definite amount of socialization and learned behavior intrinsically reinforces attention as rewarding, but the root reward of attention seeking behavior begins in female biology.

A few things to start with
In the same respect that men possess testosterone as their primary, gender-defining hormone, women’s bodies produce estrogen and oxytocin in larger volume. Studies have shown both these hormones foster feelings of nurturing as a primary feminine trait for parental caring and oxytocin is a precursor for feelings of trust and comfort. Studies have also shown that girl babies are picked up and given affection 4 times as often as are boy infants and toddlers. This bears evidence to the biological and socialization associations of female attention reinforcement. In addition, studies of pre-adolescent and adolescent degrees of attention to both genders by parents always favors the female child. Correlation of this would indicate the rewarding benefit of attetion to the female as well as a behavioral modeling influence directed towards masculine independence by socializing boys to not be dependent upon the reinforcing aspect of attention.

Female Socialization
Little girls fight in an entirely different realm than do boys. Where boys fight in a the physical realm, girls fight in the psychological. That’s not to exclude girls from actually coming to blows, but far more common is the occurrence of psychological combat, and in no realm is this more effective than the denial of reinforcing attention within a female social collective.

Little girls have a predictable tendency to form small, girl-only collectives or ‘peer clutches’ from the time they are introduced into kindergarten. This social collective progressively becomes a rewarding and reinforcing social unit, locking out those not included, and nurturing those who are. This dynamic can last through high school (i.e. Cliques, etc.), into college and into mature adulthood, but the commonality within all variations of this clutch is the qualifying influence of the affirming power of attention. Should one member of the clutch offend another, it is the hierarchy of an individual member’s ability to maintain the most attention that generally determines the victor in the dispute. The worst consequence of such a dispute being ostracization from the group – thus the absolute denial of this reaffirming attention-as-reinforcement. The clutch develops a hierarchy of influence depending upon each girl’s ability to attract and maintain reinforcing attention. This attention can be from any source; within the group, outside the group, and opposite sex attention becomes the most valuable after puberty.

Attention attraction capacity denotes social rank within the peer clutch. The more attractive the girl, the more popular she becomes and the more influence she wields. This isn’t to say that any particular female cognizantly realizes this. However, when ostracized from the collective, this capacity for attracting attention in a high degree makes her despised. The attention can still be beneficial for affirmation (i.e. realized jealousy), it’s just that the intent that has changed.

Thus, women use attention not only for their own affirmation, individually and collectively, but also to do combat with each other. Far more damaging than physical fighting is the long term psychological impact of denying this reinforcement, or better still, delegitimizing or disqualifying a girl/woman’s capacity to attract this attention. Combine this with a woman’s natural, and innately higher agency to communicate both verbally and non-verbally (i.e covert communications) and you can see the potential this has in damaging a rival. This might explain a woman’s natural propensity to gossip. When a woman attacks the respectability and character of another (“she’s such a slut”), in essence, she is assualting the woman’s agency for garnering attention by delegitimizing it.

The ticking clock
Now lets add to this complex attention need to the female understanding that, as a woman ages her sexual marketability decreases. Bear in mind that a woman’s primary agency for attracting attention is her her sexuality and physical beauty as rewarded by men. This then fosters a drive for this attention-combat to intensify as a woman ages toward her ‘expiration date’. In the last 30 years there has been a definite push through feminization to de-emphasize this natural push and/or to divert this affirmation to be pulled from other sources (i.e. career, independence, internal rewards, etc.). However it has yet to be fully (if ever) realized within western female-centric culture. All one needs do is look at the countless number of beauty products and the methods used to advertise them in popular media. 90% of advertising specific to ‘career minded’ women is still for beauty products. Irrespective of popular socialization, this attention dynamic will not be ignored.

The Attention Whore
So what exactly separates this attention-as-currency dynamic that women use in their social pecking order from the blatant Attention Whore with dozens of male orbiters and FaceBook “friends” numbering in the thousands? The answer to this is found in the methods and lengths to which an individual woman will go to maintain a degree of attention she’s comfortable with. It’s very easy to speculate about the psychological reasons why some women ‘need’ more attention than others – daddy issues, female clutch outcast issues, self-esteem issues, personality disorders, etc. – what’s not is the means by which they achieve this attention and the gender specific reactions others have to it.

What separates the behavior of the attention whore is her overtness in grabbing that attention. Consider that women’s preferred means of communicating is to be covert. There’s no subtlety in the attention whore’s methods and maintenance. Granted, women will see this as an attack in the AW stealing her ‘entitled’ portion of attention, but on a larger scale the AW is betraying the covert attention needs of the sisterhood. By seeking attention in the overt, the AW is essentially crossing over into Men’s preferred communication means to get attention. There’s no (or certainly less) art to attention whoring, so it comes off as classless and trashy.

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.

Letting Go of Invisible Friends

I’m sorry to break this to you, but there is no such thing as a long distance relationship. That’s correct, you have no relationship. An LDR simply does not meet the criteria necessary for it to be considered a legitimate relationship. There is no reciprocity of anything more than words passing over a phone line or an IM text. Understand me here – you have no relationship. You have self-assumed accountability, self-assumed liability and internalized responsibilities to be loyal to this person. You are entertaining a commitment to fidelity with an idealization, and ignoring what everyone outside of your LDR will regularly tell you is insanity. LDRs are one of the more insidious forms of ONEitis.

LDRs are the most easily identifiable form of ONEitis, and it would be laughable if it weren’t so damaging to a guy’s life progression. The LDR man generally sacrifices years of his life in this pitiable effort to pursue his ‘soulmate’ across the planet or even a hundred miles away. The very thought of refuting the idea that an LDR can work is equatable to denying his belief this fantasized ONEitis fueled idealization that he’s swallowed for the better part of his life. It’s easy to criticize an LDR in the terms of questioning either party’s earnestness and fidelity in entertaining an LDR and this is usually the tact that most people giving advice on LDRs follow. One or both parties are or will ‘cheat’ on the other over the course of time, its true, but LDRs are far more telling of a mentality that results in much more damaging consequences as a result of deeply conditioned self-expectations and fears.

I can’t begin to list the number of otherwise intelligent and ambitious men I’ve known who’ve drastically altered the course of their lives to follow their ONE. Men who’ve changed their majors in college, who’ve selected or switched universities, men who’ve applied for jobs in states they would never have considered, accepted jobs that are sub-standard to their ambitions or qualifications, men who’ve renounced former religions and men who’ve moved across the planet all in an effort to better accommodate an idealized woman with whom they’ve played pseudo-boyfriend with over the course of an LDR; only to find that she wasn’t the person they thought she was and were depressive over the gravity that their decisions played in their lives.

An LDR is akin to a LJBF, but writ large and festering in a man’s life. You play surrogate boyfriend, voluntarily accepting and internalizing all of the responsibilities and accountabilities of being a woman’s exclusive, monogamous partner with no expectation of reciprocating intimacy or sexuality in the immediate future. However an LDR is worse than a LJBF arrangement since it pervasively locks a man into a success or failure mentality with regards to the relationship actually being legitimate. After all, she’s agreed to remain his girlfriend (from miles away) and if he’s the one to falter it’s his lack of perseverance in this  ONEitis ego-investment that dooms them. Once the LDR inevitably ends he’s the one left with the self-doubt, he’s the one beating himself up over wasting time, money and effort and he’s the one feeling guilty whether he or she is the true ‘cheater’.

An LDR is like having an invisible friend with whom you’re constantly considering the course of your actions with. Consider the personal, romantic, familial, educational, career, personal maturity and growth opportunities that you’ve limited yourself from or never had a chance to experience because of this invisible friend. When you finally divorce yourself from this invisible friend, will it have all been worth it? Guys cling to LDRs because they’ve yet to learn that Rejection is better than Regret. AFCs will nurse along an LDR for years because it seems the better option when compared with actually going out and meeting new women who represent a potential for real rejection. They think its better to stick with the ‘sure thing’, but it’s the long term regret that is the inevitable result of an LDR that is life damaging. Nothing reeks of desperation or verifies a lack of confidence more than a guy who self-righteously proclaims he’s in an LDR. Women see you coming a mile off, because you are a guy without options, clinging to his one previously realized option. In fact the only reason a man entertains an LDR is due to a lack of options. If you had more plates spinning an LDR would never look like a good idea.

And finally, it’s not uncommon to see the “not in my case” defense offered about how you actually DO see your invisible friend once every 4 or six months. To this I’ll say again, what opportunities are you censoring yourself from experiencing by playing house with a woman you only see this often? Do you honestly think you’re the exception to the rule? The truth is you’re molding your lifestyle around what you hope your relationship will be in the future – that’s no way to live.