dread game

Heirs of the Blank Slate

“Yeah, well, not all women are like that. Men do it too and they’re even worse!”

“People are people. Everyone is different, you can’t predict human behavior because we all have freewill.”

“What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.”

“Everyone is born equal.”

“If women are hypergamous, men must be too.”

“Double standards are so unfair.”

The legacy of the Blank Slate has been one of the most pivotal influences on understanding intersexual dynamics for over the last century. In the time I’ve been writing I’ve covered egalitarianism’s influence on Blue Pill conditioning on at least 5 occasions. In all of these essays I’ve made the case that what we consider the Blue Pill, and the perceptions it instills in us, is firmly rooted in a preconception that an egalitarian state between the sexes is not only possible, but eminently desirable. In fact, I would argue that the presumption that an egalitarian state between men and women is ideal is the foundational premise of a Blue Pill social order.

Since I began writing on these topics one thing I’ve experienced that underpins people’s understanding of intersexual dynamics is an established belief that men and women are functional equals – or ideally they ought to be – who exist in a state of disequilibrium. This equalism (my term) is akin to a religious belief, albeit one most people are unaware they believe in. I first encountered this belief when I was in college. Around the same time I discovered that among the most rational of my fellow students and professors in behavioral psychology, most clung to the soulmate myth, I also noticed that most of them held to the hope of an “equal partnership” with whomever their ‘soulmate‘ turned out to be. Here I had some very empirical minds who would write thesis papers on human nature according to what we knew about evo-psych, evo-bio, anthropology and sociology, yet they would revert to the Blank Slate hope that ‘people are people‘ and we’d evolved past our innate natures when it came to finding their ‘One‘.

The idea that humans have ‘evolved beyond’ our animal natures is the lynchpin in the modern belief of the Blank Slate.

What we know as the Blank Slate, as a concept, evolved from the Enlightenment era idea of Tabula Rasa. Originally it was Aristotle who came coined the term, then it passed through the Stoics, then other notable minds of antiquity, but the root of what it has become today began in the Enlightenment era with John Locke.

On paper it’s a very ennobling idea. All people are born with the same intellectual (and later spiritual) potential; we’re all the same except for what society, environment and circumstance writes on the slate that is our intellect and personality. The object of this essay isn’t to give you a history lesson, but if you’re really interested in the development of how we got to our default, equalist, concept of the Blank Slate I’ll refer you to Steven Pinker’s great book The Blank Slate.

From the time of the Enlightenment the concept of the Blank Slate has been embedded into our core cultural beliefs about human nature. It dovetails very nicely into the concept of freewill and it also satisfies the of hopefulness human beings need to combat the determinism that might lead to nihilism. It’s exactly this human need for hope that makes the Blank Slate so appealing. People who hold a belief in the Blank Slate take it for granted to the point it becomes an ego-investment, and internalized thoroughly, it becomes the subconscious point from which people begin when it comes to understanding human nature. So, challenging the validity of whether human’s have innate, evolved, aspects of their natures – and their influences having a bearing on our decisions – borders on attacking their religion or who they are as a person.

From a Red Pill perspective, proposing that men and women are different physically and mentally, and that we’re subject to evolved influences as a result of these differences, is also sacrilege. The Blank Slate ideal is what defines every aspect of what Blue Pill conditioning would have men and women believe about intersexual relations and gender ‘equality’. In fact, as James Damore found firsthand, the Village forbids even the discussion of questioning the Blank Slate. The religion of the Blank Slate is also the state-approved religion, and this has implications in social realms that go well beyond intersexual dynamics.

With the rise of feminism and a feminine-primary social order, social adherence to the Blank Slate ideal became vital to the survival of feminism’s power base. Once the modern research and understanding of human beings’ evolved nature became unignorable the social institutions founded on the Blank Slate were challenged. Today, Red Pill awareness in men is one of those challenges.

A Blue Pill, equalist, mindset doesn’t coexist well with empirical evidence that shows men and women are more different than alike on fundamental levels. Today’s Blank Slate is, as Dr. Pinker describes, a ‘modern denial of human nature‘. The Blank Slate belief set is codependent on Social Constructionism. The idea is that we are all just empty vessels that a nebulous ‘society’ builds through media, culture, school, religion, family, etc. And while all of these outside influences certainly mold us, by necessity the Blank Slate ignores the import of our mental ‘firmware‘ – the innate proclivities that come standard in males and females.

The Human System

I use the term “evolved mental firmware” a lot in my writing. I look at it like this; we have the hardware that is our biological reality, a firmware that is our in-born, evolved proclivities (and the psychological aspects of how men and women’s hardware affects it) and the software that accounts for the social programming we learn from our environments and circumstances. From the perspective of my theory on perceptive processes (Instinct, Emotion & Reason) our firmware influences all three of these processes.

Blank Slate equalism would condition us to believe that our biology (hardware) is insignificant, our firmware is non-existent or inconsequential, and our programming (social learning) is the only thing that makes us what we are. If this sounds like progressivist boilerplate you’re not too far off. Modern concepts of social justice use exactly this social constructionism to justify their positions on a great many issues – and especially gender issues.

However, it’s a mistake to think the Blank Slate is a religion only for leftists and feminists. Equalism is the starting point for the beliefs of many well-meaning Blue Pill conservatives too. Feminism depends on egalitarian ideals setting the intersexual ‘Frame‘ for selling its ideology.

“If only men would cooperate and help smash the Patriarchy we could live in an ideal state of egalitarian equalism.”

The cover story of a ‘push for equality’ all depends on the Blank Slate notion that men and women are functional equals and all this inequality is the result of social doctrines (and plenty of evil men). If it’s all about social constructionism then all that’s needed is to change everyones’ programming and thus an idealized gender neutral world ought to be possible.

Male feminists, Mens Rights Activists and Masculinity Apologist organizations all have this in common – they buy into the Blank Slate and the feminist lie that gender equality is an achievable goal based on it. Most of them don’t realize they’re carrying feminist water in their egalitarian beliefs. They just believe in the hope of an “equal partnership” in their marriages and ignore or demonize the influence our evolved firmware exerts in themselves and their wives. So even when they accept intersexual differences and the influence of our firmware, the next defense of the Blank Slate is moralism.

Moralism for Rationalists

The Blank Slate is a lie, but it’s a lie that’s pregnant with hope. Men and women are different; and our differences are too significant to ignore. But even when the Blank Slate is effectively challenged and our evolved natures are acknowledged, the next rationale is that, if we’re only moral enough, intelligent enough, or “evolved” enough, we ought to ideally be able to effect the ideals of the Blank Slate above our base natures. The appeal to rising or evolving above the influences of our evolved natures is always the path of the moralist and the intellectual. Shouldn’t we strive for Equality? Would an equal state between the sexes not be a good thing? If we were good enough, and exercising our powerful freewill, men and women should be able to be more equitable, right?

The question isn’t whether we can overcome our evolved natures – we do this all the time actually – but whether we should strive for the egalitarian ideal. In the most egalitarian societies on the planet human being still opt for “traditional” (conventional) gender roles. Given the freedom to believe in a Blank Slate ideal and choose their roles in an egalitarian social order (or its best approximation) men and women still prefer the roles we’re supposed to believe are so constraining for us. The roles we’re supposed to believe are foisted on us by social constructionism.

I would argue that much of the gender conflicts we experience today are the result of force-fitting men and women into an egalitarian ideal with the expectation that our evolved (or designed) proclivities are ‘unnatural’ creations of a nebulous society. We’re told that gender is not binary and it’s really a social construct, yet we still need hormone therapy to alter the biochemistry of children to help them ‘transition’ to another binary gender.

I find it kind of ironic that a mindset, a social force and a belief system that would otherwise call for a natural balanced harmony in life is the most disharmonious with respect to a natural evolved order among men and women. The conclusion I come to then is that promulgating the Blank Slate social religion is more about power dynamics than a real push for an equalist harmony.

In 2019, after decades of advancements in the cognitive sciences, neurological study, anthropology, sociology, etc. we can lay the Blank Slate to rest, but so much of our social and intersexual understanding of human nature (or even the denial of it) is dependent on it being an ideal to strive for.

When I make an unflattering observation of women’s nature the first response from conditioned men and women is to firing back with some equal-but opposite-reaction. Our natural, human inclination is to look for symmetry and balance in things. The default belief is to think that what’s good for the goose is good for the gander, or to distract from the observation by making value judgements.

Well, men do it too, only worse.

Deal with the plank in your own eye before you pluck the mote from mine.

If it’s true for one, there’s an opposite truth for another.

The reflexive need for a symmetrical balance – even when there is none – is a human default. ‘Men and women are different’ is a radical statement in this era, not the least of which because it contradicts the Blank Slate religion that persists in spite of itself. When people ask me whether I believe men and women are equals and I answer ‘no’, they look as if I pulled the wings from a butterfly. I believe men and women are complements to each other and we’re better together than apart, but we are not equals. We are different, with differing motives and strategies that are part of who we are. We could achieve a far more harmonious social state by accepting and embracing these differences.

The Wrong Girl

“You just married the wrong girl mate.”

“You must be attracting the wrong kind of women.”


“Not all women are like that, you need to go places where the quality women are.”

“Those girls are just damaged.”

Fortune cookie, non-comital internet “wisdom” like this abounds on Twitter and in the self-improvement sphere today.

I read a lot of these rationales from women and male allies whenever a guy makes a general, empirical, but unflattering, point about the nature of women. Even casual observations or questions about this nature are met with subjective answers that put the blame of asking back on the guy. There must be something wrong with you for even making mention of it.

As I mentioned in my last post, there’s a kind of ‘talking past’ one another when it comes to believers vs. empiricists. Notice that all of these common dismissals are based on value judgements. The nature of the conversation between these mindsets begins in the misunderstanding that both are focusing on a mutual goal.

People resort to denial when recognizing that the truth would destroy something they hold dear. In the case of a cheating partner, denial lets you avoid acknowledging evidence of your own humiliation. Short of catching a spouse in bed with your best friend, evidence of infidelity is usually ambiguous. It’s motivated skepticism. You’re more skeptical of things you don’t want to believe and demand a higher level of proof.

Denial is unconscious, or it wouldn’t work: if you know you’re closing your eyes to the truth, some part of you knows what the truth is and denial can’t perform its protective function.

One thing we all struggle to protect is a positive self-image. The more important the aspect of your self-image that’s challenged by the truth, the more likely you are to go into a state of denial. If you have a strong sense of self-worth and competence your self-image can take hits but remain largely intact; if you’re beset by self-doubt (a hallmark of self-righteous Beta thinking), however, any acknowledgment of failure can be devastating and any admission of error painful to the point of being unthinkable. Self-justification and denial arise from the dissonance between believing you’re competent, and making a mistake, which clashes with that image.

Solution: deny the mistake.

Denial, July 11, 2012

The ideology of personal responsibility is the Swiss army knife of subjectivist rationalization. “Extreme Ownership” is a lot like the “just be yourself” non-response people will give you when they don’t know what to tell you about your lack of Game. It sounds like wisdom, but it’s really based on the presumption of knowing a guy must always find fault in himself before any other consideration. Guys rarely struggle with overconfidence, but tell him the solution to his problems lies in him self-deprecating more and that he can get behind.

In this subjectivism there are no outside variables. There is no intentional maliciousness from others, or extenuating circumstances, only how you react to them and what you did to bring them on yourself. All the blame for anyone’s bad condition rests on the shoulders of the individual:

  • Your life is fucked up? Your fault.
  • Your Game/relationships suck? Your fault for tolerating it.
  • You think women are one way – a way counter to the popular norm? You’re just meeting the ‘wrong kind of women’.

Again, value judgements replace objectivity. If your life sucks it’s real easy to presume the individual is the cause of the suck. And any analysis (even the desire to objectively analyze) of other people’s will, motives or outside circumstance is always an excuse; a redirection away from owning the suck yourself.

Maybe that person was the ‘right‘ one all along, you just were the wrong one for her? Self-doubt is a key element in subjectivism.

Your Game/relationships suck? Your fault for tolerating it. You think women are one way – a way counter to the popular norm? You’re just meeting the ‘wrong kind of women’. Again, value judgements replace objectivity. There’s no such thing as a general truth when your grasp of human nature is that, subjectively, everyone is a random unknowable snowflake. “People are people, man. Everybody’s different. If you think different it’s because you’re judgmental.“

Own It

The popularity of ‘Success Porn‘ online today depends heavily on this self-evincing subjective ownership. It’s far easier to solve a person’s problems if he’s the source of his problems rather than the particulars of his circumstances. The Tony Robbins of the world have raised this to an art form. Owning your faults locks in very well with stoicism, but too much stoicism and you cancel out the emotional high that you need in an adherent to get pumped on your motivational speaking.

Guys who ‘go black pill‘ are the opposite extreme of this. Black Pill as a movement focuses on objective realities to such an extreme degree that nihilism defines it. But that nihilism is also a necessary part of subjectivism.

It gets a lot wrong in the problem solving department, but what Black Pill gets right is their understanding of the shifting of causality. For Success Porn gurus, optimism is an easy sell in an age of negativity. So maintaining the idea of an endemic negativity in the culture is a necessary part of the ‘rise above it‘ mantra. You don’t have to actually defeat anyone else today, you have to defeat the worst parts of yourself. It’s much easier when there’s no real external opposition and it’s just you against you.

All the salesmen of the “feel-good pill” have an ironclad rationale; people are the source of their own misery. ‘Own your problems’ is a go-to answer because it gets the salesman off the hook with respect to actually analyzing and solving anyone’s problems.

This is the counselor’s dilemma: Most people’s internal struggles are personal to them and require a personal understanding and interaction on the part of the counselor. That kind of personal investment is tough to do when you’ve got 10,000 people in a concert hall all begging for you to solve their unique set of problems. Thus, finding a way to convince the majority of a commonality in their personal problems with those of everyone else is necessary. Personalized subjectivism fills this need for the believers, but it has to have a common root that everyone can commiserate around – me against me.

Subjectivism, social constructionism and blank-slate egalitarianism are the -isms that have defined western cultures and their thinking for the past 60 years. Now, I know the tone of all this seems like I’m picking on Trad-Cons or the new wave of Manosphere Moralism today, but it’s also a mistake not to highlight just how this subjectivism pervades the ideologies of the Village, social justice, intersectional feminism and religion steeped in the Feminine Imperative today.

One common theme I see in researching how feminism and the Feminine Imperative are assimilating mainstream religions is where almost all of them end up – this same, all-is-one subjectivist belief set. In every instance of the Feminine Imperative assuming control of a faith, that faith is converted to unitarian tolerance, then acceptance, of elements that religion was opposed to in its prior iteration. Clear, distinct, articles of faith are replaced with an unconditional doctrine of inclusiveness that homogenizes separate faiths into one global faith based on the ‘cult of love’.

In my upcoming book, Religion, I detail this ‘cult of love’ and it’s end-goal of creating a unitary world-faith that’s dependent on the Feminine Imperative defining it. For now, its enough to consider that this push towards a one-world religion will find its foundation in the same subjectivism we’re seeing clash with objectivism in the ‘sphere today.

“The Believers” vs. The Empiricists

I’ve been meaning to do a post about this for a while now, and given the present ideological schism in the Manosphere (still searching for a better term) I thought reposting this would be relevant to the discussion. This is from an old Purple Pill Debate thread on Reddit. I was made aware of it by Rian Stone about a year ago and I’ve returned to it often enough in commentary and Tweets that I felt it deserved a post and a discussion of its own here.

Now, I understand that the definitions of what constitutes a red pill understanding versus a blue pill outlook are always going to be subjective to the individual guy. The “red pill” and the “blue pill” have become so distorted recently that as terms, as loose brands, they’ve become effectively meaningless. Anyone who reads my work or has heard me opine about these terms already grasps what my own interpretations are. However, far too many disingenuous actors have entered this community of late and all have an interest in shifting those definitions to cater to their pet ideology. In fact, converting the Red Pill to be interpreted as an ideology rather than a praxeology (or a heuristic if you prefer) founded in an objective understanding of intersexual dynamics has been their primary goal.

All this redefining has done is (deliberately) confuse the purpose of understanding gender interrelations by inserting ideology into the mix. Often this is an effort at reprioritizing how interpreting intersexual dynamics ought to discussed. Most often it’s a conflict of the ‘correct’ way of approaching the interpreting of observable facts & data. So moralists believe in one goal for the interpretation while objectivists see another. The result is we talk past one another. Then one disavows the other, goes off to broadcast what he thinks is truth – according to their origination premise – and builds a brand based on that redefinition of “the red pill” according to them.

You’ll get a better understanding here (emphasis my own):

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Red Pill and Blue Pill people end up talking past each other because they cannot even agree on what they should be debating about. The sets of values they hold are completely disjointed. They cannot even agree on what a “debate” is, and what the goals of a “debate” are.

Red Pill people generally bring the following assumptions to a debate:

  • They believe that there is exactly one reality, and that truth is what accurately describes that reality. The better a statement describes reality, the more true it is. They are factual absolutists.
  • They believe that whether something is “good” or “bad” is a matter of opinion, and that all systems of morality are things societies invented to get a result, and it is therefore pointless to argue about whether something is “evil” or not, instead of about what effect it has. They are moral relativists.
  • They believe that the goal of a debate is to establish what the facts are, and how this knowledge can be used to control outcomes. They argue about what is true.
  • They believe that debates are a cooperative process between two or more people who have the shared goal of achieving a more accurate picture of absolute reality, and that, while people may stick vehemently to their positions, they can also reverse them on a dime if new information comes to light, because the only real attachment is to the truth. They believe debates occur between theories, not people. Thus questioning someone’s character is off-limits, because it is irrelevant.

Blue Pill people generally bring the following assumptions to a debate:

  • They believe that reality is subjective, and what is “true” is simply a matter of who you ask. What is called “truth” is simply a codification of someone’s perspective, and it is therefore pointless to argue about what is “true“. They are factual relativists.
  • They believe that there is exactly one set of moral laws, which human beings have gradually discovered in a historical climb towards ethical perfection (or degeneration). Certain people are ethically better or worse based not only on what they do, but also on what they believe. They believe that different ethical systems exist, but they can be ranked from ethically worst to ethically best based on a sort of meta-ethics whereby they can be tested for degree of compliance with the one absolute set of ethics that underlies reality. They are moral absolutists.
  • They believe that the goal of debate is to establish what is morally better, and what everyone should do. They argue about what is right.
  • They believe that debates are a competitive process between two people, who each have the goal of establishing their views about right and wrong by attaining a state of moral ascendancy over the other person. They believe that anyone who changes their views is revealing a flaw in their moral character (because their previous views were not morally correct), and must thereafter relinquish the moral high ground and submit their actions to the moral judgement of others (usually the person who won the debate). They believe debates occur between people, not ideas, for the precise purpose of establishing who should be allowed to set standards for the behavior of others (because they are morally superior). Thus, questioning someone’s character is not only relevant, it’s the whole point.

This is why Blue Pill adherents think “those Red Pill guys” are “misogynists” or bad people. Because they cannot imagine an analysis that does not occur for the purposes of judgement, much less one that doesn’t include any idea about what people “should” do.

This is why the Red Pill insists that the Blue Pill are willfully blind. Because, to them, anyone who doesn’t admit the truth must be unable to perceive it. They cannot imagine anyone not caring what the truth is.

This is why Blue Pillers keep thinking that Red Pillers are trying to restore the Dark Ages. They cannot imagine any group with shared views not having one moral agenda that they wish everyone to abide by.

This is why Red Pillers think that Blue Pill adherents must be hopelessly bad at understanding human social structures. They cannot imagine anyone not wanting to do things in the most effective possible way.

Here’s an example of this kind of misunderstanding in action:

Comment from discussion Bluepillschool’s comment from discussion "So much for men’s rights".

Here we see an interaction between RP and BP regarding age of consent laws.

  • RP’s primary objective to propose an algorithm for making legal judgements about consent or lack of it, which he believes will best serve what the majority of people desire to see these laws do. He looks at the issue as an engineering problem, and he proposes a solution.
  • BP’s objective is to establish whether or RP is a bad person. If he can be gotten to agree to a statement which BP thinks of as diagnostic of “evilness”, then the debate can be won, and anything RP says can thereafter be dismissed as originating from an evil person.
  • BP says “All this so you can justify getting laid.”. BP thinks RP is trying to “justify” something according a set of moral rules, because to BP, every act has a moral valance, and anyone who wishes to do anything must at least be ready with a moral excuse.
  • RP has been arguing, meanwhile, about which metaphors best illustrate human social and mating dynamics. RP does not address the issue of right or wrong at all, and seems to believe BP is engaging with him on factual level.

Thus RP and BP cannot even agree on what the argument is about.

RP thinks right and wrong are a matter of opinion, and BP doesn’t care what the facts are.

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I imagine the discussion thread for this post is going to get pretty heated. However, I want to point out that a lot of what I’m seeing in the Manosphere at present is rooted in factual relativists attempting to establish what the “Red Pill” ought to mean to people, and thereby redefining it to suit their goals of couching any objective discussion in moralist terms.

What’s happening is that factual relativists want the Red Pill to be about what’s right or wrong according to their ideological bent. So they will bend over backwards to reinterpret what is actually an objectivist exploration of intersexual dynamics to fit their ‘interpretive headspace’ – or they will simply write off the Red Pill wholesale and say “Those Red Pill guys are just bitter, negative, misogynists” without a hint of their own irony.

Example: The realities of Hypergamy aren’t right or wrong, they simply are. In any of my numerous essays outlining Hypergamy, and for all my attempts to dispel the misconceptions about it, I’ve never once stated that Hypergamy was ‘evil‘ or that women’s nature is evil because of it. It’s simply a reproductive strategy that manifests per the realities of women’s nature and needs.

The factual relativists responds to this in two ways: First, is the nihilistic approach (Black Pill if you must) – Hypergamy conflicts with their personal interests and ideological bent. Thus, Hypergamy, or women’s inability (or choice) to police it for their betterment, or humanity’s betterment are evil. Second, is the approbation approach – “You talk about Hypergamy too much (or at all), it must be because you’re fundamentally a bad, damaged, morally compromised person.”

A debate never really occurs between these headspaces because the goals of the debate are never the same. Now, add to all this that factual relativists are appropriating the ‘red pill’ as their own “Brand of Me” and building revenue streams around their ideological interpretation of its original intent. Any counter argument proffered by factual absolutists is not only a challenge to their ego-investments, it’s also interpreted as an attack on their livelihoods.

In 2015 and again in 2018 I made this point:

It’s my opinion that red pill awareness needs to remain fundamentally apolitical, non-racial and non-religious because the moment the Red Pill is associated with any social or religious movement, you co-brand it with an ideology, and the validity of it will be written off along with any preconceptions associated with that specific ideology.

Furthermore, any co-branding will still be violently disowned by whatever ideology it’s paired with because the Feminine Imperative has already co-opted and trumps the fundaments of that ideology. The fundamental truth is that the manosphere, pro-masculine thought, Red Pill awareness or its issues are an entity of its own.

Unfortunately, this is where we are at today in the modern ‘Manosphere‘. The reason I’m attacked with accusations of enforcing some ideological purity tests for the Red Pill is directly attributable to the mindset of the factual relativists; whose livelihoods are now dependent upon the redefinition of whatever the Hell the “Red Pill” means to them or should mean to those they broadcast it to.

So, I become a ‘Cult Leader‘ because their minds can only think in terms of ideology. Again, the factual relativist never leaves the ideological Frame in which they believe the debate takes place.

Paternity, Promiscuity & “Poly”

Nature is cold and ruthless when it comes to reproduction, human reproduction is no exception. Rollo’s essay carries with it some pretty heavy implications. As has been pointed out before, monogamy is a male institution masquerading as a female institution, it ensures some level of paternity and stable bonds and expectations in order to arrive at a semblance of order among males in a community, it’s a tradeoff for order/security/reduced violence among males while at the same time providing sex at a limited scale to a majority of males, it’s a check/taming of nature invented by man that most likely allowed for the rise of civilization. This area yet again is not really about women but about a male structure to reduce intra/extra tribal violence.

We are witnessing the wholesale destruction of monogamy and indirectly the family unit. You can see the beginnings of the violence with the mass shootings by kids without a dad among whites. We see the black community in certain sectors/areas of the U.S begin to disintegrate as a stable social unit now that the family unit is absent. This is not a race issue as the black community in certain areas of the U.S remains solid/stable(the American South is one example), so it is not a race question, it’s a question of pressure brought to bear on certain sectors/areas. Any race is vulnerable to this, the Hispanic community is beginning to face headwinds among the current 18-30 generation, the number of single moms in the community is pretty high, I suspect the numbers in time will exceed that of the black community. This however doesn’t negate that the current inner city black community is the canary in the coal mine, and a picture of a possible future.

Foxguy

I thought these were some really good comments to start today’s essay off with as you’ll read in a moment. I’m going to try something a bit different in this post. There’s a lot to digest in what i’ve been working on lately with respect to evolved and social aspects of men’s innate drive for paternity. So rather than come out with a tightly packed essay on these individual topics I’m going to just throw out some of the concepts I’m working on at the moment. This will be a rare insight into how my writing process works, but I hope these topics will fuel further discussion in the comments and elsewhere.

As I stated in last week’s essay I’ve been reading my way through Tim Birkhead’s book Promiscuity. If you want to know what’s inspiring these ideas this is (still) it. I don’t want to call this book a ‘slog’, but I’m having to take my time with it in order to really digest it in a Red Pill sense. Any of my readers know that I’ve done a lot of work on Hypergamy to the point that I get criticized for being overly focused on women’s sexual strategy. I’m going to change this today and focus on men’s sexual strategies and how they fluidly adapt to women’s strategies.

The rise and acceptance of single motherhood over the past 50 years is a Reproductive Strategy

In The New Polyandry I proposed that with the rise of women’s independence from men, and the social unfettering of their sexual strategy (Hypergamy), women have shifted the prevailing social norms from socially enforced monogamy to a female-initiated form of polyandry. In a social environment where Alpha Fucks/Beta Bucks is openly embraced, what follows is the breakdown of women’s old strategy of looking for men who best embody the both genetic and provisioning qualities and focusing primarily on one or the other in separate men depending on her state of need. A state of Open Hypergamy can only result from a social shift from enforced monogamy to female-primary polyandry.

Our feminine-primary social order then (Blue Pill) conditions men, via social reward and punishment, to fulfill these roles to be serviceable to women at various stages of their reproductive and life needs. I’ve joked that today women see men as either breeding stock or draft animals, but there’s truth to this. And men fulfill these roles in an effort to effect their own reproductive strategies that they’ve been socialized and acculturated to believe are in their best interests.

In the wake of the Sexual Revolution western cultures have removed all social stigmas that used to surround single motherhood – and even elective single motherhood. This is the necessary result of transitioning from male-primary monogamy to a female-primary polyandry and social support mechanisms designed to maintain it. Men are only now learning how to maneuver and adapt their own sexual strategies to this transition.

However, in order to accept their roles in this female-primary sexual marketplace they must sublimate their evolved drive to ensure their own paternity.

Open Cuckoldry is a Beta Male Sexual Strategy

In a socio-sexual state of Sandbergian Open Hypergamy the next logical step is convincing men to repress their innate need to know paternity and teach them that cuckoldry (and in particular, self-initiated cuckoldry) is in their reproductive interests. I’ve written about this in Open Cuckoldry. The definition of cuckoldry is tightly controlled to only mean “a woman deceiving a man to believe the children she’s born are his when they are in fact the progeny of another man.” When defined this way “cuckoldry” is perceived to be rare – though even this is changing with the advent of home DNA tests like 23 and Me. However, the latent purpose of cuckoldry is to effect women’s sexual strategy in securing the best genetic material (and validational sex) from one man while procuring the best provisioning and parental investment (and transactional sex) from another man. Socially accepted Cuckoldry is how this is effected in a feminine-primary social order.

In fact, cuckoldry is only socially acceptable when it happens in a gynocentric social framework. In just 60 years cuckoldry has become an accepted reproductive strategy for both men and women. By shifting the social norms to encourage men to sublimate their innate drive to know paternity we prioritize women’s sexual strategy above mens’. By reinforcing women’s ‘cuckolding’ men via socially acceptable means we encourage men to see adopting women’s sexual strategy as their own.

We convince men that this is a “lifestyle choice” when in fact it is social engineering that selects his genetic interests out.

  • Single Mothers —> Stepfathers
  • Female Promiscuity —> Polyandry
  • Open Cuckoldry —> “Poly” Lifestyles

To better come to terms with this shift in contemporary intrasexual strategies I propose that “cuckoldry” be defined as ” The state in which a man, either by deception or being socially convinced, assumes the parental investment responsibilities of a child he did not biologically sire”. Men adopting children due to impotency, and doing so of their own volition might not meet this definition because their choice is considered first in the decision and not as a result of seeing their choosing to be a foster father as an extension of their sexual strategy.

That’s an important distinction; having the choice to adopt versus adopting a single mother’s children as a means to his own reproduction. Many men who involve themselves with single mothers initially do so as a means to reproducing with her himself; ergo, a sexual strategy.

Wifing up a single mother and adopting the children sired by another man is a Beta male sexual strategy that has developed in the wake of feminine-social primacy. The cost of his own reproduction, assuming this occurs is, is an exchange of his reproductive efforts and resources invested in another man’s genetic legacy – a choice that was made for him, via a woman’s sexual strategy, before he ever entered the picture. As reproductive stresses continue to escalate in modern (western) societies, more Beta men will see (subconsciously) accepting their own cuckolding as a necessary state if they are to reproduce at all. With 43% of children being born out of wedlock today it’s easy to see that an ever increasing number of men will chose to exchange their innate drive for paternity for reproductive access.

“Poly” Lifestyles are being socially reinforced to facilitate women’s sexual strategies

Men’s drive for paternity is more difficult to sublimate in Alpha men than Beta men. In Promiscuity Tim Birkhead details the innate drives male animals have with respect to ensuring their own paternity:

The issue of paternity is at the core of much of men’s behavior – and for good evolutionary reasons. In our primeval past men who invested in children which were not their own would, on average, have left fewer descendants than those who reared only their own genetic offspring. As a consequence men were, and continue to be, preoccupied with paternity and this has shaped not only many male behaviors but, perhaps surprisingly, some female behaviors as well. The most obvious way in which men’s preoccupation with paternity manifests itself is in jealousy – watching a partner and keeping her away from potential competitors.

Promiscuity, Tim Birkhead pg. 33-34

In my counseling I have had to deal with the constant of jealousy in every man I’ve talked to about a breakup or divorce.

“Rollo, why can’t I get the thought of her fucking another guy out of my head? The thought makes me physically sick.”

There is a physical aspect to jealousy for men and particularly so for deeply pair-bonded Beta men whose sexual strategy it is to invest more fully into one partner due to a scarcity mentality (see strategic pluralism theory). When I talked about men committing suicide in Zeroed Out I should’ve stressed the importance that mate guarding and jealousy play in a man’s physical condition when he’s had his ‘soulmate’ leave him for another man.

There are two latent purposes in men evolving a capacity for this physical distress – fomenting parental investment and ensuring paternity via mate guarding. Why is it that men take so much longer to get over a woman than women for men? For women the War Brides theory explains this neatly, but for men the long physical disconnection comes from our innate drive to ensure paternity and the confirmation of mate loss to a rival male. This is the degree of preoccupation with paternity Birkhead describes above – it is so existentially important men evolved physical manifestation for it.

Now, if you can stomach the new age sophistry and rationalizations of Dr. Geoff Miller for a “Poly” lifestyle you might want to watch a bit of this video to grasp the next concept I’m developing here:

I’ve included this here because it’s a prime illustration of the cognitive dissonance necessary today to justify a Beta male’s acceptance of his own cuckoldry and laundering it to convince himself that it’s actually in his own best interests. After all the confirmation of the importance of, and preoccupation with, male paternity, (and the sometimes violent fallout that results from it) it seems counterintuitive for a man to convince himself that sharing his woman is at all a good idea.

Have a look at the collage of images I’ve used for today’s header picture. This is a collection of relatively recent articles promoting the idea that “poly”, if not outright cuckoldry, is a positive, progressive trend. Why is poly in its various forms so important to us socially? The free love generation and 70’s swingers didn’t have anything like the impetus we see now. We have more than enough research showing that women’s capacity to pair bond with men in the long term decreases with every new sex partner. We know that (Beta) men can feel a natural, physical jealousy at just the thought of their pair bonded mate copulating with another man. Even Dr. Fleischman admits she struggles with “feelings of jealousy” in their “poly marriage”. But here we have the promotion of the idea that cuckoldry actually makes a man ‘more secure in his masculinity’. Why?

Why pretend to monogamy while openly practicing open cuckoldry? Why not simply stay single, practice non-exclusivity and honestly spin plates?

Because unfettered Hypergamy is the preeminent sexual strategy in this era. And men have adapted their sexual strategies to be contingent on it.

I believe what were observing in all this is men adapting to the changes women have installed in the global sexual marketplace according to feminine social primacy. In Strategic Pluralism Theory, lower SMV men are by necessity predisposed to investing their reproductive efforts in a single woman (K selection) rather than applying himself to spreading those effort to various women (r selection). Across the animal kingdom female sexual monogamy is the exception rather than the rule.

Monogamy can occur either because a female chooses to remain faithful to one male, or as a consequence of a particular lifestyle.

Promiscuity, Tim Birkhead pg. 43

In today’s global sexual marketplace Beta men are socially rewarded for abandoning their sexual strategy and to abandon their innate need to ascertain paternity. This is done by promoting social and status rewards for compliance with the objective roles women need men to play in their sexual strategy. We saw exactly this last Fathers Day. Step-fathers, the dutiful cuckolds, were celebrated while biological fathers are largely vilified. Single mothers who assume the role of “father” are likewise celebrated.

But (Beta) men adapt themselves to the role that they believe will best serve their reproductive interests. Thus, we have a chorus of men police their thoughts and the thoughts of other men to affirm their beliefs in that strategy.

We have men write sanctimonious, self-affirming essays about how they believe they are more “secure in their masculinity” for allowing, encouraging, the women’s they’re ostensibly bonded with to have sex with other men. Then they wait for their male peers to pat them on the back for ‘evolving above their biology’ and their naturally jealous impulses.

This is not seeing the forest for the tree though. What is the larger function of all of this? Why is the ‘progressive’ take on self-affirming cuckoldry one that Beta men are supposed to find rewarding?

Because it’s necessary to perpetuate the unilateral control over the human reproductive process men ceded to women after the Sexual Revolution.

The New Paternity

The truth is often avoided because it is ugly and unpleasant. Never appeal to truth and reality unless you are prepared for the anger that comes from disenchantment.

Law 32, The 48 Laws of Power, Robert Greene

I was reminded of this quote as I listened to a woman talk over me on the Pat Campbell show a couple weeks ago. I’ve written several essays regarding the uglier aspects of Paternity and by discussing them I’ve discovered that the evolved realities of how men and women regard paternity is always a touchy subject. I’ve given a lot of thought as to why this is recently.

Before I dig into why I want to throw out a quick caveat. I’m likely going to make people uncomfortable with this. A lot of ego investment is involved in our sexual strategies and the beliefs that underpin them. That means when someone is critical of them it’s hard not to take it as an attack. Robert Greene was right, anger does follow disenchantment when you strip the veneer off beliefs you built a lifestyle on. Just know my intent here is not to attack anyone with what follows. I only want to explore some sensitive material.

As of this writing I’m half way through reading the book, Promiscuity by Tim Birkhead. If you’re a Red Pill evo-psych wonk like me I highly recommend it, but be prepared. If you still cling to comforting Blue Pill idealism about monogamy this material will challenge your presumptions about the nature of men and women’s sexual strategies. It’s a clinical, evolutionary, exploration of the mechanics of promiscuity in animals, however, it explains a lot of unpleasant truths about men and women. What I’ve read thus far confirms a lot of what the Red Pill has been considering for almost two decades now, and this is the objectuve stuff critics like to paint as “negativity”.

If you lean towards the nihilism of the so-called Black Pill this book will give you all the fodder you need to sink deeper into your coma of hopelessness – so be warned. Personally, I’ve found it fascinating and it’s pulling threads for me that I didn’t even know needed unraveling. However, in doing so, just my voicing the mechanics of how promiscuity is intertwined with men’s existential fear of paternity is enough to get me into trouble with people who’d rather not think about such things. Both libertine hedonists and virtuous conservatives will have a problem with the questions the book asks.

Men and women’s sexual strategies are fundamentally antagonistic towards the other.

A long time ago I was asked to write a post about whether I believed Game was Adversarial. And while I don’t think Game necessarily needs to be adversarial (seduction requires a willing participant), the existential fears of men and women are at odds with the other.

Men’s biological, masculine, imperative is to spread the seed – unlimited access to unlimited sexuality. Men’s compulsion for pornography (over centuries actually) is the most obvious confirmation of this. I’ve made this observation a few times before; men’s sexual strategy, as a result of our biology, is inherently ‘r‘ selected. Because men can potentially reproduce thousands of times per ejaculation, and because men’s investment costs is far lower than women’s in reproduction, men’s most pragmatic, inherent strategy is an innate drive for unlimited access to unlimited sexuality.

Women’s sexual strategy is inherently ‘K‘ selection because women’s reproductive investment costs are so high. Gestation, nurturing, provisioning and protection of offspring are a few of the evolutionary imperatives driving women’s innate sexual strategy. Thus, Hypergamy becomes a woman’s prime directive in that strategy. For most of a woman’s life she is the sexual selector while the male is the performer. This selection priority changes as a woman’s sexual market value decays and a man’s value increases, or as defined by her circumstances, but the innate presumption that ‘men perform, women choose’ is the evolved framework in play.

But women’s sexual strategy is dualistic in nature. Women are far more promiscuous than most men would idealistically like to believe. Women evolved to consolidate reproductively on the best genetic potential in men and the best parental investment potential. In the Red Pill we euphemistically refer to this dynamic as Alpha Fucks / Beta Bucks. This is the foundation of women’s sexual strategy; ideally pairing in the long term with a man who definitively satisfies both sides of the Hypergamous equation.

The main themes in Promiscuity are sperm competition, the prevalence (and concealment) of female promiscuity (men’s is pretty well expected) and the evolutionary expediency cuckoldry. All of these themes are considered in animals ranging from worms to human beings, but also in respect to general evolutionary function in these themes. My interest in this stems from how it relates to a Red Pill understanding of intersexual dynamics.

My first consideration: sperm competition is a highly contested theory and I’m not a microbiologist. People have a variety of ego invested beliefs riding on whether theories hold up on either side of the sperm war debate. This is a contentious arena of science that’s had social influences try to cover up inconvenient truths or redirect focuses to avoid unraveling those ego-investments. I’m laying this out here because I have no doubt critics will try to dismiss even the questions that point to ugly truths that don’t align with their ideals.

That said, there are many interesting evidences that imply an evolved function in sperm competition. For instance, there are studies showing that men who return to a pair bonded woman after a long separation tend to produce more ejaculate and higher sperm count when they copulate after that separation. This then dovetails into another theory; in the case of multiple male copulations with a female, the last male to copulate with her tends to be the one to successfully conceive with her. If you’re interested in the hard evidence for why human beings are not naturally monogamous, this is your book. Monogamy is a social adaptation that has the latent function of (ostensibly) ensuring male paternity.

Most of the concepts surrounding sperm competition point to one thing – sperm competition in men evolved as a contingency to women’s sexual selection process and their need for concealed promiscuity to pragmatically effect it. As I said, men and women’s sexual strategies are antagonistic towards the other. When one’s evolved interests gains the dominant position the other adapts a contingency. In a Red Pill perspective I see the advent of Game in the age of mass communication as one of those contingencies. There are many others older than Game though.

All of this points to the fundamentals I outlined in Sexual Selection & The Existential Fear: insuring paternity is men’s evolutionary prime directive, even at the biological level. Women’s cuckoldry of men (in its various forms) is an evolutionary adaptation to insure that women’s sexual strategy – ultimately unlimited access to the best genetics and the best provisioning – supersedes men’s strategy. Socially enforced monogamy is also a strategic positioning of men’s reproductive greater good; though, in today’s sexual marketplace, that old advantage has become a crippling liability for men. Legally enforced monogamy (i.e. marriage in its various forms) has been transitioned to an insurance of women’s provisioning needs.

This is the nuts & bolts of the antagonistic nature of out competing sexual strategies. However, in later stages it is in our evolutionary best interests to parentally invest in our offspring. For men this entails the risky prospects of investing in children they didn’t sire. The antagonism between intersexual strategies is more easily observed before pair bonding (in your single days) in a couple, but these strategy conflicts persist into the formation of a long term relationship. The Red Pill adage, “Marriage is no insulation from Hypergamy” has never been more accurate.

Ideally, a pair bond would be found in a long term union of a man and a woman where the compromising of either’s sexual strategy serves to ensure the survival of the offspring created by the two. As I’ve always said, men and women are better together than we are apart, but nature, it seems, prepares us for a less than mutually beneficial union. We have evolved reproductive failsafes that are influential in our belief sets.

The Cardinal Rule of Sexual Strategies:
For one gender’s sexual strategy to succeed the other 
gender must compromise or abandon its own.

This is an important maxim to keep in mind here. Even when a loving couple consciously prioritizes their relationship, parenting and family above their visceral natures, that nature pragmatically adapted for a conflict between strategies. In The New Polyandry I proposed that in our present gynocentric social order. women’s sexual strategy is the socially preeminent one. That is to say, we are taught to consider the fulfillment and support of women’s sexual strategy to be the ‘correct’ one for both sexes to prioritize.

On the surface this seems like the most progressive, socially stabilizing strategy to follow. Who’s going to argue against family creation being the foundation of a functioning society? We’re conditioned to think that fulfilling women’s strategy should also be men’s priority because it serves this noble end – family creation – but there’s a lot more to it than what we’re expected to focus on.

In contrast, men’s sexual strategy and even the idea that men’s interests would be a consideration, is demonized in gynocentric society. As a result men’s adaptive strategies are manifested covertly in other ways.

Provider Dads

Prior to the Sexual Revolution a woman having a child out of wedlock was scandalous. The stigma of becoming a single mother was something of a deterrent against the worst effects of women’s Hypergamous nature. Social and religious mores were a check and balance against ‘illegitimate’ births and incomplete families.

Today 40% of children are born out of wedlock. All the stigma of the prior generations have been replaced with women embracing single motherhood as a badge of honor. On a social scale heroism replaced shame, and women laid claim to a right to motherhood irrespective of whether a father was present or even necessary in the formation of a family. Child rearing shifted from a marriage based model to a child support based model.

This Fathers Day the predictable denigration of negative biological father caricatures versus the noble step-father ‘manning up’ to save a single mother’s family were in full effect on Twitter. In a post-SexRev world, in a gynocentric society, the (Beta) male who consolidates and fulfills a woman’s sexual strategy by accepting the parental investment responsibilities of another man’s children is lauded as a hero.

And that’s the connection I’m making in reading Promiscuity; women’s sexual strategy is the socially preeminent one in an era that’s expanded a local sexual marketplace to a global one. Unfettered Hypergamy, Alpha Fucks / Beta Bucks free from consequence, is what has defined our gender narrative since the late 60s, but in doing so it’s cunningly raised 2-3 generations of men to seeing their participation in women’s reproductive imperatives as a form of Game. In Beta Game and the Adaptations series I outlined how men will adapt social and behavioral contingencies to improve their chances of reproduction (getting laid). Men will readily adopt new methodologies to meet new reproductive challenges presented to them by women. However, there is also an adaptive, self-convinced, belief set that results from the conditioning presented to men in that adaption.

A prime illustration of this ‘programming’ just occurred last weekend. In this era Father’s Day has become an occasion to lift up single motherhood to reinforce the idea that a mother is the only parent necessary in the development of a well rounded child-to-adult. We no longer celebrate fathers. Instead we hold up single mothers and by association the heroic men who “stepped up and became a better father than any biological father was willing to be.” These heartwarming tales of the dutiful Beta who assumed the parental investment responsibilities of irresponsible or abusive ‘biological fathers’ abound on Fathers Day.

This narrative serves two purposes; first, it reinforces the blamelessness of the single mother’s complicity in bearing the children of the horrible biological father. At the same time it builds her up as a wise matron for choosing the dutiful Beta who was willing to fulfill the parental investment / provisioning role that the biological (Alpha) father would not.

Secondly, it reinforces the social convention that prompts Beta men to see fulfilling that role as a means to his own reproduction. The gynocentric social order loudly broadcast, across all forms of media, the idea that men who assume the parental investment responsibilities of other men – men who single mothers chose to breed with – are the highest form of hero. The provider “dad” to celebrate far above that of the male who only provided his sperm is the necessary element to maintaining Hypergamy as the socially correct sexual strategy.

I’ve proposed in the past that women no longer look for, nor expect to find, the man who best embodies the ideal aspects of Alpha Seed and Beta Need. There are only two types of men in the global sexual marketplace: the man women wish to reproduce with and the men women wish to be the provider of their security with. As social media and a feminine-primary social consciousness expands this distinction between Cad and Dad becomes more defined. In response to this reproductive reality men willingly settle into these roles as an adaptive sexual strategy.

Strategic Pluralism Theory

According to strategic pluralism theory (Gangestad & Simpson, 2000), men have evolved to pursue reproductive strategies that are contingent on their value on the mating market. More attractive men accrue reproductive benefits from spending more time seeking multiple mating partners and relatively less time investing in offspring. In contrast, the reproductive effort of less attractive men, who do not have the same mating opportunities, is better allocated to investing heavily in their mates and offspring and spending relatively less time seeking additional mates.

From a woman’s perspective, the ideal is to attract a partner who confers both long-term investment benefits and genetic benefits. Not all women, however, will be able to attract long-term investing mates who also display heritable fitness cues. Consequently, women face trade-offs in choosing mates because they may be forced to choose between males displaying fitness indicators or those who will assist in offspring care and be good long-term mates (Gangestad & Simpson, 2000). The most straightforward prediction that follows is that women seeking short-term mates, when the man’s only contribution to offspring is genetic, should prefer muscularity more than women seeking long-term mates.

from Why Is Muscularity Sexy? Tests of the Fitness Indicator Hypothesis

Men today are adapting to the New Polyandry by adopting the role and the rewards inherent in accepting themselves as either breeder or provider male.

This is the new Beta Game then; forgive and absolve a single mother of her sexual strategy and the consequences of it if it means a higher likelihood of reproducing with her in the future. The price for potentially siring offspring with a single mother is assuming the parental investment responsibilities of a (Alpha) man who can exercise his own sexual strategy successfully. For some men this entails the risk of never passing on his genes to the next generation. It means the man we are supposed to hate on Fathers Day will have his genetic legacy ensured by the same Beta males who vilify him at the expense of their own reproduction.

When I’ve made these ugly facts apparent to men and women on Twitter I’m told how callous I am for viewing things so viscerally. “I think it’s noble for a guy to adopt a single mother’s children” is the basic idea. But why do we believe this is a noble, humane, act on the part of a man?

Just 60 years ago single mothers were to be avoided. Providing for ‘bastard’ children was a shame until the Brady Bunch made the idea a bit more popular. Now we hold up being a supportive step-dad above the status of an actual biological father. Why?

Because our social order has successfully convince 2-3 generations (in only 60 years) that fulfilling a woman’s sexual imperatives is the highest good a man can do in his life.

This is one example of how our feminine-primary social order effects women’s sexual strategy (and life strategies) in a societal scope. Mothers provide sexual access to the Beta Provider who completes her reproductive imperatives sometimes at the cost of his own reproductive interests.

In the next essay in this series I’ll be exploring another “new” social convention that effects women’s reproductive imperatives.

Choose Wisely

Potential vs. Struggle

“Women don’t care about the struggle. They wait at the finish line and fuck the winners.”

Rich Cooper

This is a popular belief in the Manosphere today. Hypergamous stress is so intense that women have turned into mercenaries with respect to vetting the men they’ll accept to plan a future with. I’ll admit, a lot of well-meaning Red Pill men believe women’s Hypergamous Filter is necessarily amoral if not overtly cruel. The ill-informed critics of Hypergamy believe in a binary extreme. They presume that all those Red Pill guys are self-defeated by the idea that all women are prostitutes and only “out to get theirs“. This is simplistic ignorance of the concept of Hypergamy meant to dissuade the curious from Red Pill truths that they refuse to process. But do they kind of have a point though?

Virtually every extreme of MGTOW and the Mens Rights Movement have some open variation of how Hypergamy is a straight jacket and

“Why bother with a woman for anything other than a short term fuck if her Hypergamous nature will just predispose her to jumping ship to the first guy who comes along with a bigger dick or a bigger wallet?”

I covered all of these is detail in Hypergamy – The Misconceptions a while ago in case you’re curious as to why these are unfounded, and more often deliberate, misunderstandings of women’s nature. And no, that doesn’t mean I’m backpedaling on anything I’ve ever written about Hypergamy.

A couple weeks ago I got wrapped up in a Twitter exchange about the conflict between whether women indeed wait for the winners at the finish line or they make calculated bets about a man’s future potential.

From a pragmatic point of view I’m very much inclined to agree with this assessment. Yes, it makes women seem overly mercenary with respect to Hypergamy, but I’ve said it as much myself in any number of prior essays:

Women can only willingly want to please a man whose Frame is the dominant one. You’ve got to have that world established that she wants to enter and become a complementary, supportive (of you) and willing participant in. This world-building takes time. Women evolved to seek competency in men. Hypergamy cannot afford to bet all of a woman’s genetic legacy on a guy who has “potential” – they want the proven commodity. This is one reason women look for men older and taller than they are. More importantly, you need a woman who is playing on your team, not against you. And sadly this is the state of marriage promoted by the Feminine Imperative today. Egalitarianism doesn’t promote complementary cooperation, it promotes an adversarial state of competition between husband and wife.

The Marriage Game

In a purely evolutionary context it’s true; because a woman’s sexual market value – and ultimately her only agency with men – is perishable Hypergamy cannot afford for a woman to waste her time on a ‘good bet‘. This truth is a basic, Darwinistic, rule for women’s sexual strategy.

Despite all the social conventions to make them believe otherwise, women’s hindbrains know that their sexual agency and prime fertility window in life is limited. This creates a degree of urgency in a woman as she gets closer to, or ages past, the Wall. This understanding necessitates tradeoffs, but optimally a woman would prefer not to take chances with her reproductive future – and ultimately her life’s future.

For the more nihilistically inclined men of the ‘sphere, this Darwinistic determinism seems like a reproductive death sentence. If women only fuck the winners at the finish line, and you’re a loser, you may as well give up and go jerk off, right? This defeatism is a core tenet of the Black Pill.

All that said, a lot of people disagree with this assessment:

Jack knows I love him, but he is living with a girl much younger than himself. While I think that’s cool, and proof of Red Pill concept, he is actually living out the point being made here. Statistically, women tend to prefer men who are 5 to 7 years their senior. Another aspect of women’s evolved mental firmware is the natural attraction to older men as prospective long term mates. Women know that it takes men longer to mature into the genuine value that her Hypergamous Filters test for. An older rich man is always more believable than a younger rich man. Women tend to pair with a man their senior because Hypergamy doesn’t need to wait on his potential when he’s already a proven commodity.

Most of the criticism in this thread centers on exaggerating the age of “marriageable men” to the point of absurdity, but women do look for long term security as a prime requisite of the men they hope to pair for life with. There is a root-level presumption in women, correct or not, that an older man will have established the status and resources a woman needs in a long term partner. In fact, our feminine-primary social order shames men for not preparing to assume this role of security provider for women by a certain age (usually 30ish).

Alexander is also a good friend, but I’m going to disagree with half of his assessment. Women don’t readily recognize potential in men. In fact most of them are piss poor at it. This is because they’ve been socially conditioned to focus more on themselves (and exacerbated by their innate solipsism) than be concerned with making a good assessment of men’s potential for future success.

Now, before you think I’m siding with the Hypergamous nihilists, this did give me pause to step back and assess my stance on women reading men’s potentials to provide for their future security. And that last part is the most important because women’s sexual strategy has two parts: Alpha Fucks – short term sexual needs – and Beta Bucks – long term provisioning and security needs. It’s the latter that we’re discussing in this debate.

Women want to fuck the winners in the short term, but they will also assess a man’s potential for the long term.

Hypergamy cannot afford to wait for 100% perfect confirmation of a man’s Alpha status before she has sex with him. This Hypergamic bypass is actually one vulnerability women have with respect to well calibrated Game.

The Epiphany Phase Revisited

In the essay Women’s Existential Fear I also made the following proposition:

The Existential Fear in women is that their innate, Hypergamous Filter, their Feminine Intuition, might be fooled, and by being fooled she may either die or have her reproductive potential compromised for her lifetime by bearing and raising the child of man who is a suboptimal Hypergamous choice for her – a man who exerted his will over her Hypergamous choosing filters.

Making Choices

All of this presumes that a woman is in some way testing for a man’s potential. Even women’s autonomous shit testing is a confirmation of this. So yes, women do look for potential in men. Some better than others. The Hypergamous Filter is an imperfect tool which is exactly why women needed to mystify their feminine intuition in popular understanding. Men had to be kept in the dark as to a woman’s motives because their filters have always been intuitive guesswork. This is a vulnerability that men might exploit – with good Game for instance – if women were ever honest about it.

Not all women can fuck the winners so they have to make calculated bets on men. This is also a reason women rely on social proof and the preselection cues of other women. If other women find a guy to be a ‘good bet’ it provides her a short cut to getting to intimacy. Again, Hypergamy cannot afford to miss out on a socially confirmed ‘good bet’. And yes, this is also a vulnerability in women’s vetting process that men with good Game regularly exploit.

So, the tradeoff is this: when a woman is at her peak sexual market value (SMV) she has the leisure to fuck the winners at the finish line. The more her SMV decays the fewer her options become, and the more likely it is that her necessity requires her to make a ‘bet’ on a man’s future potential. This is the primary reason women opt for the Beta in Waiting around her Epiphany Phase. Necessity forces her to go with good potential.

One of the ways feminism and female-primacy sabotages women’s ability to vet for good potential is in the mythology surrounding their sexual viability as they get older. Social conventions constantly reinforce the false idea that a woman’s SMV is indefinite – and by extension her agency over men should also be indefinite. This is why Blank Slate idealism and Social Constructionism are a preferred mythology for women. Without the Blank Slate a woman would be forced to accept the evolved realities of her sex. The Blank Slate is a prime source of women’s solipsistic denial of her own nature.

Turnkey Men

Do women care about the struggle? Do women ever appreciate the sacrifices a man must make to facilitate their own realities? I explored this topic a long time ago in Appreciation and I’m still going with my old assessment, no.

It may be that a man of Rich Cooper’s age, affluence and status only attracts the ‘finish line girls’ because he’s already a made man. He’s an attractive catch because he’s already a proven commodity. Thus, he tends to attract women who are looking for a ‘Turnkey’ man with an established world into which they want to move.

I should also add that most middle aged women, past their sexual prime and well past any long term potential they may’ve had themselves universally look for the ‘Turnkey’ man – once they’re done playing cougar immediately after their divorce. This is another illustration of women’s sexual strategy from the post-Wall side. Alpha Fucks – Beta Bucks never changes, only the context does. Post divorce women go through a second Epiphany Phase right after the divorce. Play cougar and fuck the fun college guys if they can because it’s easy, but be on the lookout for a ‘Turnkey’ winner who’s still ignorant of his Blue Pill conditioning at 45.

Whether it’s a woman in her late 20s or a post-Wall ‘mature woman‘ a man’s struggles to become her ideal is largely irrelevant to her. WHile women are speculators with respect to men it’s the end result of those struggles that’s the operative for her. Almost every woman who disagreed in the Twitter thread above all had some success story of how their brilliant feminine intuition led to them investing in the man they’re so proud to call a husband now. None of them were about how they made a horrible mistake in betting their future on a losing horse. So it’s important to see how the results skew for women.

Women will readily make claims on Relational Equity as an insurance against his leaving her later, once he’s achieved that potential. His struggle and her bearing through it with him is only important in that it produced the positive results she’d hoped for. That ‘dedication’ of seeing it through is her relationship insurance. It’s why women despise and reinforce the “trophy wife” meme. It’s prime indignation to have a man betray her speculation on him by rewarding a younger, hotter, tighter woman at the finish line.

Your struggle is her burden despite you having to bear it under duress of her abandoning you if you failed. Women will never appreciate the sacrifices a man makes to facilitate a reality, her sexual/life strategy, she believes was always her due. You just did what you were supposed to do as a man. Women believe it is their due to pair with a man who is worthy of her social media inflated ego. If that sounds harsh remember that women regularly bemoan the lack of men who are their “equal partners” in both money and education well after their prime SMV years are past.

Finally, the reason the finish line metaphor is apt is because more women than ever are postponing marriage in the expectation that ‘Turnkey’ made men will be waiting and available when they hit 31-33 years old, rather than investing in men with good potential in their early to mid 20s. Doing so would mean sacrificing their peak SMV Party Years when someone like Sheryl Sandberg convinces them to wait for the ‘Right Guy‘. It’s simple pragmatism for a woman not to bet her reproductive future on an unproven commodity so early in life. If she does, and it works out for the best, she’s practically sainted by the Sisterhood for her prudence and sacrifice for him. Behind every great man is a woman, right?

But if she chooses unwisely and her life goes to hell she’s wasted her own potential on a bad bet. Social conventions can mitigate this of course. Men can always be blamed for her downfall, but she’s still saddled with the consequences of that bad bet. And it is exactly these consequences of a bad Hypergamous choice that the Feminine Imperative will bend all its power to legally and socially insure against for women (i.e. legal abortion, child support laws, #MeToo, the Duluth Model of feminism).

All of this is why women are pushing their decision to marry, if at all, back to older and older ages. The average age of first marriage today is 27-28 for women, and the overall marriage rate has been in free-fall for decades now. This is why. This evolved dynamic is conflicting with our present age’s social imperatives for women and the falsehoods they are conditioned to believe about their sex from the earliest ages.

If you liked this topic you can also listen to my discussion about it with Donovan Sharpe here:

False Positives

A consistent criticism I’ve received over the years is that the Red Pill is so negative. Why cant the Manosphere just sweeten up? Its truth is definable and self-evident, but why can’t Rollo adjust the ‘tone’? I’ve lived and written through several waves of newcomers to the ‘sphere and in each generation the same want for a ‘kinder, gentler’ Red Pill is always there. The idea is that if you just changed the delivery of the truth it would somehow make it more palatable to a wider audience.

Who’s It For?

I want reiterate here that it’s never been my goal to write for an audience. Whether it’s writing on this blog, my books or when I’m discussing things on various podcasts my only imperative is to convey the information I think is relevant to the topic of intersexual dynamics. My obligation is to picking apart and considering as close as I can get to an objective truth. And I don’t do this by way of some sense of duty to objectivism – it’s just the way that’s always seemed most efficient to me to come to a usable truth. It’s pragmatism on my part, not dedication.

Yes, I know, true objectivism is impossible for human beings. Yes, I also know that even biases we’re unaware of will subconsciously influence our rationality. Spare me the classicist intellectualism, I’ve been at this long enough to have considered all that. But the fact that objectivism is never perfect doesn’t mean we should strive for our best attempt at it – nor replace it with moralism.

I don’t write for an audience. I write about what I see going on around me and I connect dots. Writers today, of all medias, will tell you to “give your readers what they want” if you want to be successful. Writing about uncomfortable truths that rattle people’s cages is counterintuitive to the write-for-success mindset. If you want to sell books, if you want to monetize blogs, if you want to get more channel subscribers you gotta give the folks what they want, right? That’s how most churches work today; cater the message to the congregation if you want the tithe checks to stay consistent.

And always write to appeal to emotions too. People don’t enjoy thinking, but boy do they ever love feeling something – particularly in an age when female emotiveness is the order of the day.

When I began writing regularly it was in a forum environment. We hashed out many ideas and weren’t afraid to get ugly. It was a necessary part of the process. There was no pretense of appealing to an audience for money, traffic or readership. The sole focus was debating the truth about a dynamic. That debate was always a hot kitchen, but the results were something greater than the process.

As a result my essays carried over a lot of the heat from the SoSuave days kitchen. I wasn’t writing to impress readers or increase traffic to the blog it was just to document and codify the objective truths I came to. There is no monetization and the comment threads have never been moderated (besides spam and trolls). Almost 8 years later my charter is still about the same objective debate.

The drawback to this commitment to objective truth is that it rarely appeals to emotionalism. No, it’s not the ‘tone‘ or the feel of the information being related that’s so off-putting – it’s the information itself, and how it makes one feel, that determines whether it’s perceived as positive or negative.

Feels Before Reals

Most people who are still plugged into the proverbial Matrix are living in a world that prioritizes feels before reals. The purpose of consuming really anything is to judge it by how it makes us feel; and especially so in an era defined by the female experience. Emotion always comes before reason in women’s natural, unlearned, interpretive processes. This is also extended to men who’ve been conditioned to prioritize emotions before reason. And this is exacerbated by their need to be better feelers, better emoters, than those other ‘typical’ guys if they want an emotional woman to ever bear their children at some point.

Anything that prioritizes reason before emotion will always run the risk of being perceived as negative. Even if the sum of the information is positive, the fact that you had to come to the truth by way of reason rather than emotion will make it negative.

If you used your head instead of your heart to figure something out, in Girl-World, at best it’s bad form. At worst, you’re a negative pessimists or a cynic.

Usually those designations are reserved for the men who make a habit of using reason to the exception of emotion to relate an objective truth that’s unflattering to the feminine. Again, it’s the information, not the tone, that’s offensive to the emotions-first prioritization. To the Blue Pill mind, any strong idea that conflicts with this prioritization is an affront to the personal investments they’ve made in ideas that it challenges.

So, understand, I’m not a negative person by nature. I’m an artist. Few people know that my 2nd degree is a BFA. I draw, I paint, I play four instruments, I used to do Shakespearean stage acting – I’ve even done children’s theater.

I fully embrace the emotional as a necessary part of the human experience – Hell, half of Red Pill awareness is acknowledging and confronting emotions. I’m certainly not a cynic or a pessimist. Anyone thinking so usually hasn’t read my work. I’m very much an optimist when it comes to creating a New Hope for men in a Red Pill paradigm. I don’t just stop at clinical realism and leave men hanging. I don’t subscribe to the ennui of the “Black Pill” – I’m certainly not absolutist or a determinist.

However, I also have a commitment and an obligation to objective truth in everything I write. Trust me, there are times I wish I could use my wife and my marriage as a ‘proof of concept’ example of how a Red Pill aware guy can make a relationship work today. But the objective truth would make me look like a charlatan if I tried to convince a man that marriage was at all a good idea in its present state.

That’s tough for me. I have had to hold back from posting pictures of my beautiful wife and daughter to prove something to truly negative naysayers. Ladies, you want me to write something positive about women? I love my wife dearly. She’s been a net benefit to my life for all of 23 years now. My daughter is a model. She’s feminine to a fault and she’s smart and ambitious. I would die for her, gladly.

But I never use my personal life as an example in my work for their protection, but also because I don’t want to lead men astray by in anyway implying that what I have is possible for them. And I’ve had men tell me that, “I want what you have.”

But I don’t make value calls. I consider information, I try to interpret it, and I present it in such a way that it’s useful to men where they’re at. I want to give you tools to use to build your own life, not mine.

Truth & Hustle

Admire the Hustle. We read this a lot in the Manosphere among the guys who fancy themselves entrepreneurs. I think one reason critics think the Red Pill is negative is because all they see is the Hustle. The Hustle has a way of becoming the whole point of anything.

I’m an abortion doctor, but I make six figures and I’m the best at what I do. No one will out-work me. Admire the Hustle baby.

When the selling is more important the the product itself, then you have problems. When the truth is less important than the Hustle inevitably our truth becomes the Hustle. There needs to be a balance and that’s getting harder and harder to find now.

We’re at a moment in the Manosphere where the truth is starting to get lost in the Hustle. I’m accused of it, or I’m accused of associating with ‘too much Hustle’. Well-meaning colleagues with too much perception and not enough information are feeling that salesmen care more about the sale than the product.

I hear you.

Let me finish here by reiterating that my obligation to objective truth will always be my motivation for doing anything I put my name on. It always has been. However, I have worked for amazing companies who sold things that people loved and enjoyed only to watch them crumble and die because the sales team assumed control of the ‘product’. The selling became more important than what was being sold.

My books, my blog, my appearances, every aspect of The Rational Male is my art. I craft each essay. It’s what I care about most. I will never allow the truth to be compromised by the Hustle. The Hustle is important, particularly when it’s about disseminating the truth, but it is secondary to the truth – even to the exception of the Hustle. Sometimes the truth doesn’t sell.

This Is Important

We are rapidly entering a time when our ideas will be vilified. Very soon the objective, life-saving, praxeology that is the Red Pill will be used as a label, as a synonym, for negative ideologies that never had anything to do with the Red Pill. And people who are all about the Hustle will gladly abandon the truth they’re selling now if it means the public opinion of it would compromise their Hustle. It’ll be less about what we’re discussing than how influential and how many followers the person we’re discussing it with has.

Others, those who were appropriating the ‘brand’, will throw the Red Pill under the bus to save their own necks. The coming storm is going to test the resolve of people who are all about the Hustle and all about the Red Pill. I know where my obligations lie, they’ve never changed.

The 21 Conventions – 2019

Once again it’s time to announce the dates and locations of this year’s 21 Conventions. By now I’m sure most of my readers know I’ve been getting myself ‘out there‘ a lot more and this year is no exception. The one event I’m doing with any regularity is the 21 Conventions (yes, there are others in the offing). I think I’ve been somewhat instrumental in helping Anthony Johnson reform these events into the Red Pill Summits they’ve become. There’s really nothing that comes close to the scale and comprehensiveness of these gatherings and I only expect them to grow into something the mainstream will soon be unable to ignore. The 21 Conventions have gone from what I can only refer to as Purple Pill to being the only real Red Pill event in existence.

For the last couple of years I’ve been a silent partner in these events. Many of the speakers are men I’ve had some personal connection with over the years. Most of them my readers will be familiar with from my mornings on The Red Man Group, but it’s been my mission to see that the roster of men speaking at these events are on message with respect to intersexual dynamics. While the upcoming Patriarch’s Edition is focused more on family, fathers and leadership, the two other conventions slated this year have something for every man – even the guy who’s newly unplugged.

Unlike certain Men’s Rights conferences (primarily organized by women), the 21 Convention is for men, by men.

The conventions are about men, not just “men’s issues” or a lot of top-down awareness raising. They are also not fluffy, “feel good” pep rallies with more hype than information. You get real content, not a lot of hype.

My involvement in this convention has had only one goal; to give men the nuts & bolts, actionable information they need to conceive and develop the lives they want to lead. Lives that align with the truths that Red Pill awareness represents. If you’re looking to get laid, we’ve got that covered. If you’re trying to resolve a sexless marriage, we’ve got you covered. If you’re looking to become the best version of yourself, you want to be a Red Pill father, you want to fight feminism? This convention is the only event that delivers ‘real content’ based on the difficult truths men need to acknowledge in their lives.

I get it. That seems like a hard sell. But there needs to be some kind of gathering of minds in this sphere. I will continue to put my name on this event until it ceases to be about the charter or shifts to a different message. My constant concern is ensuring that this convention stays committed to objectivism. Critics want to claim that the Red Pill is only a cult. It’s only interested in “ideological purity”. This is a false narrative. The Red Pill is obligated to objective truth. It only seems ‘culty’ when that truth clashes with the ego-invested beliefs of ideologues.

The 21 Conventions serve as a TED Talk for the Manosphere. At no other venue will you hear these topics and pro-masculine information discussed. We live in an era where free speech is limited by platform and the ideological bent of its owners. It’s long past time we developed a forum where Red Pill awareness can be discussed free from censorship – this is it. The only way to test the strengths of an idea is in the crucible of open debate. And that debate requires an open marketplace of ideas in which to test them.

POLAND – July 11-18, 2019

21 Convention – Poland

OI’m pleased to announce my first European talk will be delivered this year in Warsaw, Poland. I can’t stress enough how this venue is the ideal location for a Red Pill discourse. Given the sociopolitical state of most of Europe today, it’s probably the only country that would welcome honest perspectives on gender, intersexual dynamics, conventional masculinity and men’s personal development.

Although I’ve been to several European countries, Poland will be a first for me. This will be a personal pleasure for me also as I also have a Polish translation of The Rational Malethat I’m very proud of. I’ve been working with my Polish team for 2 years now and it will be an honor to finally meet up with these guys.

If you live in Europe and haven’t had the opportunity to come to the U.S. conventions this will be your event. At the time of this posting the registration is already moving rapidly, so please don’t hesitate to register now. Please use my affiliate link in the banner above to register. This is how I get credited for the attendees.

At the time of this posting the speaker’s list for Poland is:

  • Rollo Tomassi
  • Anthony Johnson
  • Andrew ‘Cobra’ Tate
  • Jack Donovan
  • Richard Grannon
  • Nick Krauser
  • George Bruno
  • Socrates
  • Ivan Throne
  • Jack Murphy
  • Alexander AJ Cortes
  • Kyle Trouble
  • Steve Williams
  • Johnathan (MLD)

Thats the confirmed list and it’s likely to expand before the event

ORLANDO – October 24-27

The 21 Convention Orlando

This is the main U.S. event. In 2018 the convention sold out and attendance more than doubled from 2017. 2019 will see this event is even larger. Anthony has also added independent workshops by individual speakers on a variety of relevant topics for attendees to the main conference talks. Check the 21 Convention site for more info on these workshops, but these side talks are part of the registration and an added value for attendees.

And these workshops are in addition to the offsite, after hours meet ups, dinners and extra-curricular events that will be going on over the extended four-day convention. No matter which convention you attend I make it my job to engage with every man I meet at the conferences. You will have personal time to discuss the matters that concern you most. This is my favorite part of doing these events.

Again I need to stress that the registration goes quickly for these events. The way it works is that the price progressively escalates to regular attendance prices the long you wait as the event date nears. I used to think this was a clever pricing scheme to get men to commit to attend, but now that the convention has become the ‘Woodstock of the Manosphere‘ it’s even more important that you get on these registrations as soon as possible before they sell out.

Please use the link in the Orlando banner above to get to my affiliate account. Again, this is how I get credit for my attendees.

Orlando is the main event and the list of speakers for the four-day event is truly awesome:

  • Rollo Tomassi
  • Anthony Johnson
  • Elliott Hulse
  • Hotep Jesus (Bryan Sharpe)
  • Jack Donovan
  • Ed Latimore
  • Dr. Robert Glover
  • Dr. Shawn Smith PsyD
  • Hunter Drew
  • Tanner Guzy
  • Donovan Sharpe
  • Goldmund Unleashed
  • Rian Stone
  • George Bruno
  • Socrates
  • Texas Dom
  • Ivan Throne
  • Jack Murphy
  • Alexander AJ Cortes
  • Steve Williams

And that’s the list of speakers we have confirmed at this time. As you can see, there is no other Manosphere gathering that compares to this event. It’s not just the TED Talk for the ‘sphere, it’s the friends you’ll make and the men you’ll connect both inside and outside the conference. The 21 Convention is much more than the men speaking or the workshops about the issues and topics that are important to you, it’s about the experience of sharing ideas with other men that no other venue allows for.

Finally, there will be discount codes for both events:

  • All men 25 or younger – U25
  • Military (active & retired) – MILITARY
  • Law enforcement and firefighters (active & retired) – LEO

These codes will get you 25% off the registration, including the VIP upgrades. These codes do not stack.

My goal for these conventions is enabling men to get access in any way possible. Some critics claim the price is too restrictive or it’s overpriced for what they believe is men “selling their snake oil to unsuspecting dupes”. This is also my concern. I want you to have access, but obviously the conferences can’t be ‘free admission’. A lot goes into bring together a convention of this magnitude. But “Why go at all when all the information is free on your blog Rollo?” Why indeed? If the cost is too prohibitive for you then you can always read my material here for free. I encourage you to do so in fact. I consider the Red Pill to be open source, so please, don’t put yourself into financial difficulties if attending would do so.

But also know that if the 25% discounts above aren’t enough for you, I will find a way for you to attend using one of my limited discounts, getting you on the volunteer staff, or some other way. That’s how important I think these events are for men. So if you’re struggling financially, but you really want to attend, hit me up in my email or Twitter or the comments on my About page here and I’ll make a way to make it happen.

And if you think it’s “all just salesmen hawking snake oil”, I will also find a way to get you a discounted registration on my dime so you can attend and see for yourself what these events are really all about.

I joke with Anthony that my ‘workshops’ start the moment I enter the hotel lobby. I’m guaranteed to lose my voice before the the end of the 3rd day, but it’s worth it to me to give you the most of what you’re paying for. That’s my commitment to you. I know that most men only have finite resource, and only get so many weeks a year for vacation. That is the foremost thing on my mind when I’m speaking at these conventions. I want you to get the most of your investment in a weekend that’s guaranteed to change your outlook on life. And I’m confident all my fellow speakers feel the same.