Beta males

Little Big Head

One of the dichotomies I consistently see in the manosphere is the differences in how men approach the importance (or feigned unimportance) of sex. I got a bit sidetracked in last week’s essay. I was planing on writing about this phenomenon when I saw the need to explore how it impacted a larger social narrative. So, let’s consider this essay an addendum to The New Polyandry.

How men publicly and privately prioritize sex is always something that leads to a judgement call about that particular man, how he lives his life, and what it says about his integrity. If you openly make sex a “big deal” in your life, or you acknowledge its importance in intersexual relationships, you open yourself up to men’s Beta Game virtue signaling. The presumption is that if you were a real Alpha sex is just something you should have mastery over. If sex is at all important to a man, and he expresses this, that guy runs the risk of being seen as “obsessed with sex“, a “pussy beggar” or in someway less of a man for allowing sex to control his decisions.

Why is this the perception?

Two weeks ago I had a lively debate with the producer of Pat Campbell’s morning show. While we did have other topics to hit on that morning, she and I dug in and talked about how “sex is the glue that holds relationships together.” You can listen to the full segment here if you like.

As I mentioned last week, the notion that men need sex is nothing I haven’t covered in the past. In You Need Sex I made a case for the importance of sex and how it was, until recently, something that constituted part of a man’s life experience. Now it seems that being a sexless virgin at age 40 should be considered an accomplishment by certain factions in the manosphere: 

One very common dismissal of Red Pill awareness I read from Blue Pill men is this feigned, blasé indifference to sex.

For the most part this false-indifference is really a conditioned, response couched in Beta Game. The idea is for the Blue Pill guy to promote the public perception that he’s above his sexual impulses in the hopes that any girl within earshot (or reading his comments online) will recognize his uniqueness in not letting his cock do his thinking for him. From a male deductive logic standpoint it makes sense to the feminized male – women have all told him how off-put they are with guys who only think about sex, so he’ll identify with the women he’d like to get with and “not be like other guys.”

“All that Red Pill, PUA shit is for guy’s who obsess over sex. They only go to the lengths they do to get laid and never see the bigger picture. You don’t need sex you know? You wont die from not getting laid.”

[…]Thats the Beta Game behind the “you don’t need sex” Buffer, but there’s more to this rationale than that. Technically the Beta reasoning is correct; physically, you’re not going to die if you don’t get laid. You could probably masturbate to relieve yourself or live a sexless existence due to a physical disability and live a productive life as satisfying as you can manage it. If you don’t know what you’re missing or if a sexual substitute does the job, what’s the difference, right? The line of reasoning is that if it isn’t food, water or oxygen it isn’t really a necessity for existence.

You’re All Obsessed!

Self-righteous Blue Pill men always look to make their necessities into virtues. It also helps the men who fall on the 80% side of the Hypergamous Pareto curve to convince themselves and others that their sexual strategy – one that follows enforced monogamy – is the moral one; or the logical, common sense one absent the moral context. If you cannot get laid yourself, at least you can make getting laid into an ‘obsession‘ for the 20% of men who can. By doing so you encourage the 20% of men, who women desire to fuck, to police themselves and women by adopting your own, self-superior, one-woman-per-man sexual strategy.

Pretty much every MRA I’ve listened to, most Traditional Conservatives and a few MGTOWs, like to qualify men who can get laid as being in some way obsessed with getting laid. We’re told how morally superior they themselves are for essentially thinking with the big head instead of the little one, thus confirming their own part in a monogamous sexual strategy. As I mentioned in the last essay, a majority of men tend to fall on one side of the Strategic Pluralism Theory with respect to their sexual strategy.

Low SMV (sexual market value) men are basically forced to invest in one woman at a time if they are to successfully reproduce. This is the basis of a socio-sexual order founded on enforced monogamy. The larger pool of men benefit reproductively if the majority of men can be relied upon to follow the dictates of socially accepted, socially enforced, form of monogamy.

In the past this emphasis also had a culling effect on the worst aspects of women’s Hypergamous tendencies. If all men – including the 20% who could enjoy many women – agreed to play by the old social contract and adopted monogamy as their sexual strategy (in spite of being able to reproduce outside it) then more men would have the opportunity to reproduce. Furthermore, women’s Hypergamy would also be forced to accept lower SMV men’s monogamous strategy as a buffer to worst aspects of their own.

In the past, religious and social mores used to act as a buffer against Hypergamy, but the compromise for women was that they could expect to have the Beta Bucks provisioning aspects of their Hypergamy more or less provided for by the majority of men who adopted this strategy. In an evolutionary sense, protection and provisioning are already an integral part of the male mental firmware. But all of that went out the window after the Sexual Revolution, unilaterally female-controlled hormonal birth control and the socio-sexual/socioeconomic landscape that sprang from the Fempowerment narrative.

Today there is a radical imbalance between the old social contract upon which enforced monogamy was a key element and the new social contract dictated by a gynocratic social order that places women’s sexual strategy well above that of men’s. So it’s small wonder that men would revert back to 80% of low SMV men insisting on, and shaming, the 20% of high SMV men comply with a sexual strategy that women readily confirm isn’t in their best interests. 

On the male side of the strategic equation a majority of low SMV men cannot afford to have Alpha men playing by the rules of polygyny.

That polygyny is really a form of female-directed polyandry (see last week’s essay), but to the 20% of men who enjoy the benefits of falling on the enthusiastic consent side of Hypergamy it just makes sense to go with it. As such, low SMV men are compelled to find ways of discouraging these Alphas from following their r selected sexual strategy. They realize women will want, and pursue, Alphas. And in a polyandrous socio-sexual order based on the Alpha Fucks side of Hypergamy low SMV men drew the shortest straw.

Intrasexual Combat

When Beta men shame women for wanting to fuck Alpha men it has the effect of making those Beta men seem more insecure. In a feminine-primary social order one of the highest crimes is to attempt to challenge Hypergamy in any way. Even in a religious context, to challenge Hypergamy is to be guilty of repressing women’s sexuality. Today, just this impression is conflated with ‘toxic’ masculinity.

In truth, it would never occur to most low SMV men to shame women for their sexual strategy because they know that in doing so they reduce their own chances of reproduction. Women simply deem them ‘losers’ in the SMP (sexual marketplace). They become scolds, or worse, they become men who are “insecure in their masculinity” because they confirm their low SMV status in doing so. In today’s socio-sexual environment men policing women’s Hypergamy is a lost cause.

The solution then becomes an effort to disqualify the Alpha men they compete with by changing the rules that “real men” are supposed to play by. If you can’t win the Game, change the rules to better fit your strengths.

The ‘Real Man®‘ becomes the guy who exclusively invests himself in one ‘Quality Woman‘ – just like they do.

The apex of masculinity becomes whatever definition best aligns with what they believe they represent.

The’Real Man®‘ is the guy who best fulfills a woman’s, often duplicitous, sexual/life strategy by adopting the K mating strategy of socially/religiously enforced monogamy – just like they do. Oh, and the Quality Woman becomes whatever woman whose necessity compels her to agree with and adopt that strategy (Epiphany Phase).

The Real Man®‘ is the guy who plays by the old social contract rules of enforced monogamy, so more Betas might have a better shot at reproduction. True ‘Manhood‘ becomes a title Betas now feel qualified to bestow on other men; just as women also do with men who help complete their Hypergamous life-strategies. 

Trads vs. The Playboy Lifestyle

In order for Beta men to effect this reigning in of the Alpha men women want to tame and breed with, the high SMV man must be demonized and disqualified from the SMP for following his sexual/biological imperatives. The most common way to do this is by conflating his strategy with a degenerate hedonism. he must be made to seem as if he’s not in control of his sexual nature. So the effort becomes one of building an archetype around the ‘Playah‘ – A man who would be a bad long term bet for women’s Hypergamy because he lacks self-control. For this straw man character his little head does the thinking for the big head making him unreliable as a prospect for parental investment.

If enforced monogamy defines the accepted SMP, and women are presumed to be coequal, co-rational participants in it the ‘Playah’ needs to be cast as the outsider. The latent message is the same intrasexual combat method women use with ‘slut shaming‘; the ‘Playah‘ is a bad bet for long term security even if he is the guy women want to fuck.

However, that Playboy is a cruel reminder to low SMV men that they’ll never be able to fully exercise their own masculine imperative – unlimited access to unlimited sexuality. The closest the majority of men will ever get to this is online porn; which of course is why it’s so popular. There is a reason why 68% of Christian men watch porn. They understand that it’s the only viable substitute for their sexual imperative that they’re likely to experience in this lifetime.

While MRAs and MGTOW tend to reserve a special hate for ‘Playahs‘, it’s the Trad-Con mindset that is the most vocal against the Playboy lifestyle. There’s an overarching need amongst Trads to confirm their ego-investment in locking themselves into  enforced monogamy. 

There’s two complications to this:

First, Trad men (and women) tend to superimpose their religious and social belief set on their own sexual strategy. It’s a sin if they don’t accept monogamy as the standard. Today, this belief is a vestige of the old buffers that used to guard against either sex getting too far into their primal sexual impulses and strategies. It’s much easier to impose your sexual strategy on other men, effectively policing their strategy, if it’s ‘God’s Will’ that everyone behave according to that old social contract. I should add that this is the primary reason most Trad men suffer the worst from having their belief in the old set of books destroyed by Red Pill truths. It is galling for men who’ve invested their whole lives in the old social contract to have it vividly disproved by ‘Playahs’ (and women’s behaviors that confirm it) who understand the new social contract well enough to make it work for them.

Second, there’s the self-fulfilling idea that a man who opts for the traditional monogamous lifestyle is in some way more progressive or evolved, or life-satisfied than the ‘Playah‘ with the option to enjoy his non-exclusive sexual strategy. These are the guys who play up the ‘sour grapes’ Law of Power:

Law 36 – Disdain the things you cannot have

If there is something you want but cannot have, show contempt for it. The less interest you reveal, the more superior you seem.

MRAs and Trads alike don’t like being reminded that sex has always been an integral part of a healthy life experience for the majority of men who’ve ever lived on this planet. However, to them, sex is almost always a reward for desired behavior that they believe women expect of them. For most of them sex is always transactional so they never live out any frame of reference of having sex with a woman in a validational sense. It’s likely that they will never experience sex in any other context than the transactional. This is simply one of the visceral realities of a Darwinian sexual marketplace. As such, this pretext colors all of their understanding about what is, or should be accepted as, a legitimate sexual strategy – which unsurprisingly is his enforced monogamy strategy.

“Meaningful” Sex

The low SMV majority have many contrivances to corral uncooperative Alphas to adopt their sexual strategy. However, there’s also an involved necessity to convince themselves that their Blue Pill conditioning is the best sexual strategy that would benefit everyone if we’d all just see the validity of it as they do. To effect this they apply a subjective “meaningfulness” to their enforced monogamy (K selection) and “meaninglessness” to pursuing men’s biological imperatives (r selection) or the Alpha sexual strategy.

As a result, low SMV men tend to deemphasize the importance of sex in life. I asked this in the introduction; why is there a perception that a man who enjoys many women is somehow having sex that is less ‘meaningful’ than a man whose sex live is dependent on his relationship with one woman – or, a man who is ostensibly celibate?

The tactic involved here is the control over what constitutes meaning in sex. Low SMV men need this control to direct a meta-Frame that foments their sexual strategy; sex is only valid if it’s ‘meaningful’ in a way that aligns with an enforced monogamy sexual strategy. Thus, they can disqualify high-SMV men by delegitimizing his sexual experience. The higher the notch count, the less meaningful the sexual experience – and the likelier he can be seeen as “obsessed‘ with (meaningless) sex.

“Meaning” is deliberately ambiguous to better salve the egos of low SMV men, but meaning only aligns with what better promotes the enforced monogamy strategy. This strategy conflict actually serves Hypergamy in the long run as well. Women will endorse the importance of meaningful sex since it helps to convince the r selected Alphas that they should (eventually) shift to K selected commitment and parental investment with them. To the Beta moralist, any sex that doesn’t implicitly lead to marriage, children and the formation of families it’s always ‘meaningless’.

For the less moralistic low SMV man the idea that sex is something easily had, something inherently cheap, serves in devaluing Alpha men’s sexual experience. A popular idea among MRAs is that meaningless sex is something any guy can realistically achieve in a random club on a Friday night. This also serves to debase the value of learning Game; something MRAs never seem to have any facility with. By unrealistically cheapening the process of Game the same ‘meaninglessness’ imperative is created.

If any guy can find a worthless club slut with minimal effort then the low SMV man can raise his value by appearing to have higher standards than to lower himself to doing so. See how that works? This is a variation of the ‘sour grapes’ strategy I mentioned earlier. The Alpha who can easily get women becomes common. And by enjoying what Beta men believe should be a common sexual experience that man is reducing himself to his baser instincts. They say he’s “obsessed with pussy” or a “pussy beggar” because he’s applied himself to learning, in the most marginal way, how to have sex on his terms. And if he plays by a rule set that doesn’t align with the “correct” rules all his efforts become “meaningless”.

I should add here that MRAs and some Trad-Con men also like to foment the idea that because they eschew all that easily-had “meaningless” sex that Alpha men and Low Quality women are engaging it frees him up to pursue more esoteric, philosophical and creatively productive pursuits. Again, this helps to boost their esteem while presenting the appearance of uniqueness in spite of the fact that few of them ever have anything concrete to show for it. Along these lines they also love to imply that famous celibate men of antiquity were somehow more accomplished because they had the forbearance of mind to understand sex was a hindrance. When no one believes you aren’t making your necessity a virtue it’s sometimes necessary to paint men more famous than you with the same false-virtues.

The common refrain is that they’ve reached some Nirvana state of higher purpose or that they’ve evolved above the common need for sex. They shame the Alpha’s intelligence by claiming they allow their sexual nature to dictate to their rational nature. This too is a sexual quality signaling (or they believe it should be). They hope that their coequal, co-rational, Quality women will respond to it because they presume they’re using the same enforced monogamy rule book. Most Beta moralists are egalitarian blank-slate equalists. If they are evolved above their sexuality, then evolved, rational women should be too – but only if they are quality.

Body Language

I have a feeling I’m going to get myself in trouble with this post. One thing I’ve learned from sixteen years of writing in the manosphere is that people take the issue of Looks are very personally. I think there’s something engrained in how our minds evolved to make us aware of where we fit in as far as image is concerned. I think maybe that’s the root of where we get the idea of leagues with respect to sexual market value. I’ve mentioned before that it’s my belief that everyone is keenly aware of their personal conditions on some level of consciousness and how we look to others is part of that awareness.

My friend Tanner Guzy wrote a great book this year titled The Appearance of Power and I learned quite a bit from it with respect to the, often derided, subconscious choices we make in how we present ourselves to others. A lot goes into what we think is the very simple task of dressing ourselves each day and the message we’re conveying to other men, women, our families, our coworkers, our church, etc. We all have at least a peripheral awareness of what we’re communicating with our clothes, our behaviors and our speech.

Another great book I’m presently reading is the new title from Joe Navarro, The Dictionary of Body Language. Joe was one of the speakers at last year’s 21 Convention and I had the pleasure of talking with him for a bit there. For 25 years he worked as an FBI special agent in the area of counterintelligence and behavioral assessment. Today he is one of the world’s leading experts on nonverbal communications and this book is a very good resource for a lot of reasons. I’m not sure Joe likes being affiliated with the manosphere, but there’s no doubt that what he’s studied and written about for so long can be an invaluable tool for reading the sub-communications of women in Game applications. 

Way back in 2011 I wrote a brief essay called Learn to Read. At that time my focus was on emphasizing the need to be aware of the information a guy could glean from his surroundings, understanding the social environment and also the sub-communications a woman might be relaying to him in that moment. We tend to take it for granted, but there is a lot of information our brains need to process in social settings. For the most part our subconscious minds push out the background noise and less important information to our peripheral awareness so our conscious minds can focus on what we think is most important. Sometimes the part we take for granted, the information that our subconscious processes can be at least as important as what our consciousness is sorting out.

I’m calling attention to this process (as well as Joe’s work) because I want to stress the importance our Instinctual Process plays in interpreting what we see with respect to social interactions, but more importantly for our purposes, when we see men and women interact with one another. For the past 12 years my career in the liquor and gaming industries has put me in the unique position of being able to people-watch and study the unspoken communications that goes on between men and women in settings where they’re primed to apply their interpersonal skills (or lack of). However, it wasn’t until I started contrasting what I was seeing with what I understood about behavioral psychology, evo-psych and the sexual strategies men and women evolved for.

And this, this is the part where I get myself in trouble. In that time I think I’ve developed a pretty good ability to read what men and women are communicating with their clothing, expressions, posture, physical positioning, etc. and interpreting it with a Red Pill Lens. I get in trouble with this because, like I said, people tend to take my reading into things very personally. Even if I’m reading the photograph of a couple they know nothing about they associate something in the image that with how they perceive themselves.

Most of us were taught from an early age never to “judge a book by its cover.” We were taught it’s wrong to be judgmental and it’s what’s on the inside that counts. This has never really sat well with me, but you run the risk of sounding catty when you judge a person by their looks or whatever it is they’re doing in a picture. They say you sound like a gossipy woman, or else it’s supposedly some indication that you’re projecting your own insecurities onto whoever it is you might be critical of. This is unfortunate because our Instinctual interpretive process makes judgment calls all the time in our peripheral awareness. We all make comparisons in our hindbrains, it’s just impolite to give voice to them. This does nothing to help us objectively assess what sub-communications are taking place.

So, fair warning, I’m going to make some reads on some pictures here and if what I interpret seems a little self-serving or judgmental just know that I’m doing my best to stay objective.

For the past 3 months I’ve gotten into the habit of reading the images of various couples that guys on Twitter have been sending me. If you want a brief primer for this I talked about it with Tim Wenger last August here. For the most part these guys wanted me to determine what they were seeing were Alpha Tells or Beta Tells in the body language between the couple. In the majority of these shots, the Beta male body language was fairly evident even to the untrained eye. What was less evident was what the woman’s sub-communications were conveying.

Leaning In

Of the more than a hundred shots I read, the number one most common position for men was the lean in. This posture is something Roissy once called attention to as the hallmark of a Beta subconsciously manifesting his mindset in his body language:

The lean-in is easily identifiable, and while I don’t think it is always a Beta Tell (depends on context) it’s certainly the starting point for other manifestations of men with a necessitous subconscious. What I mean by that is that the lean-in is a physical display that illustrates how a man’s subconscious has decided that his woman’s Frame is the dominant one in the relationship. He feels the compulsion to put himself into her space as his natural impulse.

It’s also important to bear in mind that when we are photographed with others, in this case women, we are, or would like to be intimate with, there is a subconscious recognition that anyone viewing the image will infer a relationship context. More on this later, but for now keep in mind that some of these inferences will be related to mate guarding behaviors.

The reflexive critique of this lean-in is usually “Well, that’s just that one shot” or “The photographer told him to lean in” to which I can only say that the predominance of couples shots, candid and staged alike, most consistently pose a man as the leaner.

Lean out

The counter to this leaning-in is a woman leaning out or away from the man. It’s almost as if there is an unspoken conflict of hindbrains going on. A (Beta) man leans in to find inclusion and acceptance in a woman’s Frame while her own hindbrain instinctively reacts and attempts to lessen any inference of intimate acceptance to a larger audience.

Above are some examples of the lean-out. In some of these the latent message the woman’s hindbrain is conveying is almost “Get him offa me!”, but with a smile so as not to be too obvious. Also notice the positioning of the free hand in most of these pictures. We’d like to rationalize this as a gesture of affection after the fact, but in the context of these shots the unspoken message is a defensive one against the man’s lean-in. Again, this is one more manifestation of a war playing out between the couple’s subconscious.

The Eyes Have It

I also want to draw attention to the facial expressions of these women. Notice the commonalities in gaze direction and the message their eyes and expressions are sub-communicating. Women are keenly aware of the permanency of an image and what that image communicates. I’ve pointed out in many a prior essay that women’s brains evolved to give them a much fuller capacity for communication and a sensitivity to nuances than men. Men prioritize the content (information) of communication while women prioritize context (feeling) of communication. This is a truth we have to consider when we analyze the expressions and physical communication of women in photos.

I joked with the guy who sent me the second image here that she looks like she wants to bang me, not the guy doting on her. There’s more than a bit of truth in that assessment. Women today are hyperaware of how an image can be used to facilitate or handicap their sexual strategy. It’s no accident or casual glance when a woman directs her attention towards the viewer. It’s not a person behind the camera that she has in mind when she knows she being photographed, it’s the potential audience – an audience that’s grown exponentially in the age of social media. 

In all these shots the woman’s attention is on how she will be perceived by any viewer of the shot. In some other images I was sent the woman’s focus was on anything other than the men whose only focus was her. In advertising there’s a presumption that when two or more people appear in an ad the one with the presumed dominance is always the one looking away or out at the viewer. The submissive party was the one whose attention is directed at the dominant person. The dominant person is the one telling the story in the ad. A common complaint among feminists about magazine ads in the 60s through the 80s was that it was women who were always disempowered as a result of being posed in subservient positions where they focused on a male in the ad image. The only exception to this was in what feminists still refer to as the Male Gaze wherein the dominance a woman was afforded was limited to her sexual viability and her capacity to hold the attention of any men in the ad and men viewing the ad. 

These concepts are an interesting contrast to the millions upon millions of photos girls and women post of themselves on social media every day. Think of the gender power dynamics in all these shots. It may seem like I’m splitting hairs here, but the reflexive impulse a majority of women default to is one of advertising themselves for potentially better options in the sexual marketplace.

Whether or not this is a practiced or unconscious tact, the latent purpose of women’s responses to their men’s Beta Tells is to advertise their sexual availability to the audience. Some guys have said that women default to these expressions as a means of ego aggrandizement and I’m willing to accept that there’s undoubtedly an element of egoism (certainly solipsism) involved. No doubt women often enjoy the envious attentions of other women on Instagram in the right context. However, these ‘ego shots’ almost universally center on the woman in the power dynamic. In each of these images the power belongs to the woman.

Mate Guarding

Another common Beta Tell is the death grip pose many men will opt for in their couple’s photos. This is a position where the man locks an arm around his woman or drapes an interposing forearm barrier between the viewer and the woman who is trying to coyly escape his mate guarding message. 

In a lot of these the woman often has her hand on his hand as if trying to pry him off to release her. It seems like a reciprocation of affection – similar to the hand on the chest pushing him away – but this is afterthought rationalization. Death grip is a clingy positioning, but again the battle between his and her subconscious centers on the guy mate guarding and her own subconscious desire to broadcast her sexual availability in spite of him.

I Love Mommy

In almost all of these images the male is focused intently on the woman. From a Red Pill perspective, I see this as a manifestation of how these men have been Blue Pill conditioned to make their women their Mental Point of Origin.  Even in the images where the man is looking at the camera his sub-communication is one of clear abasement to, or guarding of, his most important priority.

However, the most disturbing trend I’ve seen in couple’s photos is what I’ve dubbed the I Love Mommy pose. Maybe it’s my instinctual interpretation of it or maybe its’ an obvious Freudian connotation, but in these shots the Beta assumes and almost childlike position of kissing on his woman. 

Okay, so the last one is a press shot, but you get the idea. You can see the I Love Mommy positioning in a few of the prior photos above as well.  I could probably dedicate an entire essay to all of the psychological implications of this phenomenon. I had one critic on Twitter ask me if I genuinely thought this tendency was due to unresolved issues these men had with their mothers; it wasn’t until later he admitted he had a tendency to do the same and was honestly concerned. 

I’m sure the possibility exists, but more importantly I think this habit is due to men internalizing the myth that vulnerability is endearing to women. There’s this persistent lie that accompanies the vulnerability myth. That’s the lie that men can let their guard down and ‘relax’ around the woman they feel securely paired with. As a result they mentally revert to the boy who didn’t need to qualify himself for his mother’s love and they regress to a subconscious comfort in that vulnerability they believe will endear them to their woman. They sub-communicate all this in the I Love Mommy position.

I’ll have to return to this Mother Issues concept in a future essay, but for now, how do you suppose a woman’s hindbrain imperative for Hypergamy will perceive this habit, particularly in light of how image conscious women are in the Instagram generation? My first impression is that it would be one of revulsion, apprehension and resistance. Nothing turns off a woman more than a man indicating that he’d rather be her child than her lover or husband.

Alpha Tells

So, if all of this reads like the overly-critical projection and nitpicking I told you most critics will accuse me of earlier, maybe I can assuage your own judgment by presenting some Alpha sub-communications examples here. Finding these examples can be a tall order in an age where any man photographed in a position not entirely focused on his woman runs the risk of being called ‘toxically’ masculine. Today, men who are confident enough to default to body language that communicates they are their own mental point of origin get accused of ‘abuse’ or at least being self-centered. But as you’ll see this isn’t such a bad thing.

The best example of Alpha Tells in couples photos focus on the man being the center of importance in the shot. Yes, this is Vincent Cassel (51) and his wife Tina Kunakey (21). I have no doubt some hater will come up with some reason in the comments why Vince doesn’t align with whatever their interpretation of Alpha is, but for our purposes these images illustrate the opposite of a lot of the Beta sub-communications we just went through. So try to look past the celebrity and see what’s being displayed here.

First off, notice how Tina’s focus of attention is always on Vince. Women who hold genuine admiration for their men consistently make them the story in photos. Even in the shot where they look at each other her focus is on him. It’s not difficult to assess the power dynamic in their relationship, but you can also feel a genuine desire emanating from Tina.

Also, women who genuinely admire their men are unconcerned that their actions in a shot might be read as subservient or ego-abasing by women’s audience. I’d go so far as to suggest that the attention a woman receives from a man her Hypergamous hindbrain confirms as Alpha is far more valuable to her ego than any lower quality attention she might temporarily enjoy by appeasing her audience. Much of this observation is rooted in the Desire Dynamic. Hypergamy cannot afford to have a high SMV man be confused about her desire or motives. A woman who is proud of the association with man she’s paired with is less concerned about the perception other women might have of her actions – in fact, she’ll convert any disparaging opinion of them into a point of pride, if that man is above her own sexual market value.

When a little girl thought a little boy on the playground was cute her reflexive response to him was not something she had learned to consciously control at that age. That response is often reflected in the expressions of adult women when when their peripheral awareness of an attractive man connects with their Hypergamous hindbrain. The biting of the lip, the beaming admiration, the laser eye focus and the hopeful smile followed by a coy embarrassment of what she’s doing when she regains her composure are all the physical cues of a woman whose primary concern is the man she’s with.

Now, contrast these images with the earlier ones in which the men are clearly the hangers-on of the women in those photos. I’ve mentioned before that a natural Alpha man is almost never aware of his own Alphaness and that’s what really stands out in these photos – the men aren’t trying to evoke the reflexive responses of the women. They fluidly (almost Zen-like) prompt these reaction in women. There is no pretense or the obvious mugging for the audience that you see in shots where the Frame is clearly being directed by the woman while the hapless Beta tries to prove how in love he is by kissing on her while she finds something more interesting to occupy herself with. When a woman admires her man he is literally all she can think about.

In closing here I want to reiterate that I’m aware that all of this is going to come off as self-serving or catty. It’s impossible to objectively interpret body language without someone resorting to point & sputter insults about how they think you’re just being petty or you’re jealous of some celebrity’s life. Be that as it may the discouraging of anyone attempting to understand sub-communications only serves the the party that has the most to gain from a larger ignorance of them. So I hope this breakdown has provided at least some useful references to consider your own, or your woman’s, default behavior when the cell phone cams come out at a party.

But if you learn nothing else from this post, and you need one take-home message, please, whatever you do, don’t be this guy in your next couples shot.

Don’t Hate the Beta

beta_hate

A common refrain I hear from even some well meaning Red Pill aware men is that there is some degree of disdain for the “Beta” man in the sphere. There’s not so much a rejection of apparent Red Pill truths as there is a schoolyard mentality when it comes to characterizing a guy as Alpha or Beta. This is where where a lot of guys turn themselves off to the Red Pill in a community sense.

In a way I suppose it becomes reminiscent of guys having been bullied in their formative years by the guys they now have a mental image of being archetypically “Alpha”. So it follows that concepts like AMOGing or running a ‘Boyfriend Destroyer’ script is distasteful; a lot of men, that is to say the 80%+ Beta men, have likely experienced this disqualification in direct or indirect ways in their youth. Sometimes that may simply be a girl he had his ONEitis sights set on opting for a more Alpha guy after telling him she wasn’t ready for a relationship, or it may be a more direct experience of having sand metaphorically kicked in his face.

Thus it becomes a matter of course to entirely dismiss the nuts & bolts understanding of how abstracts like Alpha and Beta are used in the sphere. The default understanding goes something like this, “Those Red Pillers just hate on Betas to build themselves up” or some other version of this where the Red Pill becomes a Machiavellian free for all at the expense of other, ‘lesser’, men.

It’s either this or the abstractions of Alpha and Beta are reduced to absurd binary interpretations; Alphas become ridiculous ‘douchebag’ parodies and Betas become pathetic, simpering doormats for the world to tread upon. In either case the purpose of reducing these abstracts as such is an effort in dismissing the uncomfortable, as well as evidently observable qualities and truths of the intersexual environment that plays out around us.

For the record I think it’s important for Red Pill men to remain as objective and disinvested from making qualitative assumptions about what constitutes the Alpha and Beta abstractions. I don’t hate, pity or resent Beta men. Neither do I embrace the idea that Alpha archetypes as necessarily positive or negative. For the moment however, I’m going to focus on Beta men.

The Presumption of Control

As I mentioned above, one of the primary dismissals men have when they encounter Red Pill thought is to blow it off because “it’s all just a bunch of hating on Betas.” And that presumption comes only if a guy is willing to consider the abstracts of Alpha and Beta in the first place – most simply don’t want to recognize specific ‘statuses’ or defining characteristics of men or women, and just fall back on the “all is relative, all is subjective” mindset they’ve been conditioned to. People are People, there is no human “nature” so there is no male or female “nature”.

But for the guy who at least accepts the idea of human natures, I can certainly understand the reservations of men whose identities were conditioned to a more Beta role. There’s not much positive to characterize a Beta mindset with beyond the utility that conditioning serves to society and women’s sexual strategy. Betas do in fact get laid; the terms on which, and how their sexuality fits their utilitarian role in women’s Hypergamous plan is the real question.

I was recently asked if I thought Beta men employing Beta Game was a successful strategy in the larger scheme of things. If success means that Beta Game will get him laid, I’m incredulous about it. The presumption is that the Beta man employing that ‘game’ is in some way directing and controlling the outcome of his ‘success’. I’d argue that what he believes is ‘game’ is simply his utility to a woman coming into an optimal window for her necessity of him. So is his ‘strategy’ really successful, or is he simply the best ‘Plan B‘ a woman has available to her while her own SMV decays to the point where he’s her best option?

Is that Beta really in control? Or is he simply situationally useful?

I think a lot of what guys new to the manosphere perceive as Beta hate is simply the presumption of control they believe they should be able to exercise with women. After having been told for the the better part of their lives that the more accommodating and identifying with women they are will lead to them being accepted by women it’s a presumption that this is some means of socially acceptable control for them.

It’s very galling to have men place fault on a guy for things he knows are out of his control. I fully understand the angst and frustration that leads to things like Beta Uprising and men frustrated with intersexual dynamics taking it out on the whole of society before they swallow a bullet themselves.

It essentially amounts to victim blaming; Betas are hapless and hopeless mules brainwashed and indentured to serve not just the Feminine Imperative (which would be galling enough), but also to have the pains and strivings that society demands of them be rewarded with women’s genuine intimate interests focusing on Alpha men.

That sucks.

PUAs telling a guy it’s on him as to why women are boring to him, or uninterested in him sexually, only reinforces that angst. It’s like a pastor telling you that if you’d only prayed harder or more earnestly God would have cured your Mom of cancer. So they hate the Alpha, they hate the PUA, they hate the hotchickswithdouchebags guy, but they also hate women and the social/biological mechanics of the position they’re placed in. It presumes a control that he believes he’s never had, nor ever will.

So there comes a point where that Beta wants, sometimes adamantly insists, for his own burden of performance to be replaced, or at least handicapped, by a woman meeting him half way. This want is rooted in his Blue Pill presumption that people are people and in the equalist notion that women’s hindbrains can (willingly) be overridden when it comes to arousal, attraction and intersexual dynamics. Again, if there is no human nature it should stand to reason that a woman could potentially choose that Beta for all the reasons he’s been conditioned to believe she should choose him for. If there is a female nature, and that nature follows (with some degree of consistency) Red Pill aware truths, then his frustrations are founded on his own lack.

But these guys aren’t Blue Pill oblivious men, they are Red Pill aware. They see the truth and that leads to their awakening to the cruel reality that they’re in. So when these guys are put into that place they have a few choices: Snap and take out themselves and as many others as they can, go isolationist MGTOW and retreat to minimal societal investment, go MRA and impotently try to enact legislation that they think will even the social playing filed from the top down, or they can take a realistic look at themselves and reinvent themselves to better play the Game.

The Burden of Fault

Whether it’s fair or not, by virtue of being a man, you’re going to have to accept your burden of performance. That burden includes your liability of accepting fault even for things that aren’t your fault per se. It’s not your fault that you were born and raised into a feminine-primary social order that conditioned you to be an accommodating utility for it – but irrespective of that, you will be held liable for not complying with it or resisting it. You are a man, you will always be accountable.

Is that fucked up? Yes. So with that in mind it is up to you as a Red Pill aware Man to decide for yourself what is worth your investment. Yes my friend, women can be amazing, interesting vivacious and fun, but they can also be fucked up and stupid and absolutely not worth your time, money and effort. It isn’t your fault they are the way they are, but it is your fault for investing yourself in something you’re not enjoying or profiting by.

With all of the railing against women not being worthwhile one would think that would prompt these men to being indifferent to women – but they aren’t. Even the most ardent MGTOW and hapless Beta Red Pill denier still wants women; he simply wants her in his context and his frame on his terms – and to genuinely want to be a part of all that. There’s nothing wrong with this desire, this is precisely what I advise with regards to Frame control, but the disconnect comes in how men go about establishing a Frame women want to be a part of.

Get Out There

I may debate with other men’s takes on how the importance of looks plays in to a man’s overall Game and appeal, but one thing I won’t argue with is the importance of men putting themselves out there and into situations that will most certainly take them out of their comfort zones.

For almost 20 years I have made a living doing exactly this. I have worked in gaming, liquor and brand development ventures that have put me into venues that range from Goth/Alternative/Hipster sets to LGBT events, to mixing with men and women who have the type of wealth that most people don’t even know exists. My career, family and personal life has been my Red Pill classroom and laboratory for all this, and in all of these contexts I have found a way to enjoy myself and/or learn from these interactions.

One reason I will never look to writing Red Pill books as a career option is because it would remove me from the very source of my observations. Living it is the only way keep learning from it. On my own time, I would very likely prefer to lock myself in my studio and paint or sculpt, or to create something new to work into a brand, often to the exclusion of my wife and family and the many friends I have. I’m a very social guy, but I would probably not feel compelled to head off to a night club or any of the events I involve myself in professionally on a weekly basis.

When I’m doing a promo, I know I’m not going to hook up, so I find enjoyment in watching and learning from what I see going on around me. I can’t drink when I’m on a promo or doing a trade show, so even that can’t be a source enjoyment. So why fucking do it right? I make money at it, and it beats living in a cubicle, but I’d much rather be creating new things, new brands, new ideas than interacting with half-buzzed hipsters who think they’re too cool to be there or obnoxious 40 something divorcés ‘sampling’ vodka and hoping to drink their spinsterhood away.

I enjoy what I do and it helps me help other guys. I put myself out in the wild because it’s part of my job(s), but I honestly enjoy interacting with even the dullards and the drunks. It’s what I invest myself in. That may sound like torture to you, but it’s really contextual. I have friends I’ve made at underground Goth events who would blanch at the thought of what I do at a golf tournament. I’m not saying you need to be a social chameleon, but understand that your social education will always be domain dependent if you stay in the settings that make you the most comfortable.

Don’t Hate the Beta

As I mentioned earlier, I don’t hate Beta men. For a long time in my Blue Pill past I was one of them, and I can fully understand the want to mischaracterize an Alpha mindset in order to preserve a sense of self-worth. Beta men don’t warrant pity or disgust, but rather they need a tough harsh awakening to the reality of the situation they find themselves in.

I don’t think Beta men are hopeless, but they will remain in a state of hopelessness so long as they subscribe to a want of making things easier for their condition rather than improving themselves to better play the Game. That’s hard to hear for most Beta men and I understand the protective need for denial in this, but I know of very few Red Pill men who really despise Beta or Blue Pill men. They despise his indentured state, they despise his willful obliviousness to his conditioned uses. They despise the lengths to which Blue Pill men will go in their hope to be appreciated by the system that made them what they are.