hypergamy

Intersexual Hierarchies – Part I

One of the withdrawal symptoms of unplugging from the Matrix is usually an overwhelming nihilism that results from being torn away from the previous blue pill preconceptions a man has been conditioned to for most of his life. It’s my hope that in the future red pill men will make the necessary interventions and apply what they’ve learned from their unplugging and red pill truths in general towards their sons (and daughters) as well as other men they know or are related to. Until then, the process of breaking away from that conditioning is usually going to begin as the result of a traumatic breakup, a divorce, or having had the relational equity he thought he’d built a long term relationship on proved worthless in the face of hypergamy.

It’s a sad reality of unplugging that it most often starts as a result of emotional anguish, but to pour salt in those wounds is then having to live with the harsh realities that the red pill makes men aware of – that more or less everything they’d held as an ego-investment up to that point was founded on a feminine-primary conditioning. I summed this up in The Bitter Taste of the Red Pill:

The truth will set you free, but it doesn’t make truth hurt any less, nor does it make truth any prettier, and it certainly doesn’t absolve you of the responsibilities that truth requires. One of the biggest obstacles guys face in unplugging is accepting the hard truths that Game forces upon them. Among these is bearing the burden of realizing what you’ve been conditioned to believe for so long were comfortable ideals and loving expectations are really liabilities. Call them lies if you want, but there’s a certain hopeless nihilism that accompanies categorizing what really amounts to a system that you are now cut away from. It is not that you’re hopeless, it’s that you lack the insight at this point to see that you can create hope in a new system – one in which you have more direct control over.

Try to keep this last part in mind as you read what I propose in these next two posts. I read a lot of guys in various forums getting despondent after having the red pill make sense to them, but that despondency is really a simple lack of not having a path already preset for them to follow. Instead of the easy answers and prerequisite responsibilities that the blue pill and the Feminine Imperative had ready for him to follow, now in his new awareness he’s tasked with making a new path for himself, and that’s both scary and exciting at the same time.

Love Styles

In almost 3 years of blogging and a book written, my three most popular posts have been the Love series – Women in Love, Men in Love and Of Love and War. Though my SMV graph gets the most link backs, these are easily the most viewed posts on Rational Male. Unfortunately they’re often the most misquoted and misunderstood.

One of the toughest revelations of the red pill is coming to terms with the difference in experience and concept that men and women apply to love. The core principle in Women in Love is often misunderstood. For different reasons, deliberate or otherwise, both men and women critically misunderstand the main premise of that post:

Iron Rule of Tomassi #6
Women are utterly incapable of loving a man in the way that a man expects to be loved.

In its simplicity this speaks volumes about about the condition of Men. It accurately expresses a pervasive nihilism that Men must either confront and accept, or be driven insane in denial for the rest of their lives when they fail to come to terms with the disillusionment.

Women are incapable of loving men in a way that a man idealizes is possible, in a way he thinks she should be capable of.

Most critics of my differing assessment of how either sex interprets and considers love tend to blow past this last part. They oversimplify my meaning and sputter out something to the effect of, “That Tomassi guy thinks that women can’t ever really love men, what preposterous crap!”

Of course that isn’t my assertion, but I understand the want to dismiss this notion, particularly for men and women invested in the ideal of equalitarianism. It’s a threat to the ego-investment that men and women are anything less than fully equal and rational agents who come together for each other’s mutually agreeable benefit. The simple fact of women’s innate hypergamy puts the lie to this presumption, as well as confirms the relevancy of women’s constant, qualitative conditionality for whom (really what) they’ll love. I think it’s ironic that the same people who disparage this concept are among the first to readily embrace the pop-psychology notion of Love Languages.

I get why that premise pisses off women (and feminized men); it’s very unflattering to be accused of loving men from a position of opportunism. However, it’s important to understand that I don’t make this observation to condemn the way women approach love – although I’m sure it will follow, my point isn’t to presume a ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ way for women to love men or vice versa. There are beneficial and detrimental aspects of both women’s opportunistic approach to love, and men’s idealistic approach to love. That said, I happen to believe that the differing ways men and women love each other evolved to be complementary to the other and for the betterment of our species.

For all the “OMG I can’t believe this red pill asshole thinks women can’t really love men” misdirection, I should point out that well intentioned men, especially the newly red pill, are also guilty of the same oversimplification. Theirs is an attempt to find validation in the (usually recent) trauma of having been cut away from their prior blue pill conditioning. A similar, “Rollo says women can’t really love men, of course, it’s all so clear to me now” satisfies a simplistic need for confirmation of their former condition.

And again, it’s not a right or wrong way of loving, it’s the lack of recognizing the difference and being on the punishing side of that lack. Most men will want to apply their concepts of honor or justice in assessing how ‘right’ men’s idealistic love is, while women will still see the inherent value in loving what a man is as a prerequisite for loving who a man is. Hypergamy doesn’t care about men’s idealistic expectations of love, but neither does men’s rationality make concessions for what facilitates women’s opportunistic approach to love.

Romantic Souls

From The Red Pill subreddit:

My whole life, I’ve had it nailed into me that I would be able to find true love if I was honest and hardworking. As I grew older it was, “If I’m somewhat fit and have a good job making 60k-80k a year, I’ll find that beautiful girl that loves me as I love her“.

As I’ve stated on many occasions, it is men who are the True Romantics. Granted, it’s the unthoughtful result of centuries of evolved ‘courtly love’, but in the realm of what qualifies as a true act of romance, it’s men who are the primary actors; it’s men who ‘make’ (or want to make) romance happen. And of course therein lies the problem, a man cannot ‘make’ romance happen for a woman.

For all a man’s very imaginative, creative, endeavors to manufacture a romance that will endear a woman to him, his ‘trying’ to do so is what disqualifies his intent. For every carefully preplanned ‘date night’ after marriage, there’s a college girl swooning to bang her boyfriend living in a shithole, sheets over the windows, furniture from the dumpster, pounding shitty beer and sleeping on a soiled mattress on the floor. Romance isn’t created, romance just happens, and it’s a tough, but valuable, lesson when men come to realize that a happenstance bag of skittles, or a ring made from a gum wrapper at the right time meant more to a woman than every expensively contrived ‘romantic getaway’ he’d ever thought would satisfy her need for lofty romance.

An important part of the red pill is learning that the most memorable acts of love a man can commit with a woman are acts of (seeming or genuine) spontaneity and never apparently and overtly planned (and yes, that applies to sex as well). This is a source of real frustration for a man since his blue pill conditioning expects the opposite from him, and his romantic nature – the nature that wants her to love him as he loves her – conspires with his problem solving nature, thus prompting him to ever greater romantic planning for what he hopes will be an appreciated, reciprocated love.

The Hierarchy

The true source of a man’s frustration lies in his misdirected hope that a woman’s concept of love matches his own. His ideal is a beautiful girl that loves him the same way he loves her. The presumption (a romantic one perpetuated by the myth of egalitarian equalism) is that his concept of idealized love is a universal one which women share with men in general and him in particular.

Thanks mostly to men’s blue pill conditioning, what most men fail to ever consider is that women’s hypergamic based love always considers what he is, before who he is. For a more detailed explanation of this I’ll refer you to my post Love Story. This is the root of the intersexual hierarchy of love.

Hierarchy1

Before the rise of feminine social primacy, the above ‘flow chart’ of love prioritization would hardly have been an afterthought for a man. Through any number of evolutionary and sociological progressions the base understanding of how Men’s love began from a position of protecting, provisioning for and directing of the lives of both his wife and children wasn’t a concern worth too much of his consideration. Neither was a prevailing desire for a reciprocal model of love an overshadowing concern.

To be sure, a baseline requirement of a returned love, sex, respect and fidelity were important elements, but this wasn’t the originating basis of male desire for being loved; there was no expectation of a woman loving him as he loved her (and by extension their children). To be a man was to have the capacity to provide a surplus beyond his own provisioning.

“A man provides, and he does it even when he’s not appreciated, or respected, or even loved. He simply bears up and he does it, because he’s a man.”

Gustavo’s monologue in my opening video may seem like an anachronism, especially in the light of a red pill awareness of the potential for injustice and the veritable certainty of a provisioning arrangement that will almost always be a one-sided proposition for a man – whether he’s loved, respected, appreciated, married or divorced.

Undoubtedly there’ll be men reading this bristling at the idea of a non-equitable model for love, but I’d argue that the idea of an equitable model is the result of the conditioning an egalitarian equalism has predisposed men to believe is even possible.

Before the rise of feminine primacy, a man’s expression of love through his support and guidance simply weren’t things women or children had the capacity to reciprocate. The advent of women’s independence, real or imagined, has served to strip men of this core understanding of the differences between male and female concepts of love. In the effort to feminize men more fully, and position men in a condition of confusion about what constitutes masculinity, this concept of love was replaced by a feminine-primary model for love.

While a woman’s respect, and a degree of love may flow back to her man, her primary love and concern is directed towards her children. One reason we’re still shocked by women who kill their children (pre or post natal) is due to an inherent acknowledgement of this natural dynamic. Women’s brain function and biochemistry largely evolved to predispose them to bonding with their children, and thus ensure the survival of the species. Beyond the rigors of physically gestating a child, raising children to self-sufficiency required a considerable investment of effort and resources – not to mention a constant attention. Nature selected-for women with an innate capacity to nurture and direct love primarily towards children.

The internal psychology women evolved to vet for men who displayed traits for both Alpha physical prowess and parental investment / provisioning potential are a result of children being a priority for a woman’s love. While a degree of maintaining a man’s continued commitment to the family unit requires her attentions in the form of sex and affections, a woman’s primary love focus is directed towards children.

Granted, not all women are capable of having children (or some even desirous of them), but even in these instances substitute love priorities still supersede directing her primary attention towards a man. It may seem like I’m attempting to paint women’s love as callous or indifferent, but this ‘directioning’ isn’t a conscious act, but rather due to the innate understanding that a man is to direction his love towards her as a priority.

 

This should give readers a bit to chew on for a while. In Part II I’ll detail the alternative hierarchy models prevalent for modern, post-feminine primacy relationships.

Preventative Medicine – Part II

Cougar-Cub-Curve

Navigating the SMV continues to be one of my most prolific posts. I can remember originally writing that post and plotting the graph as a one-off response to a comment (by Deti I think) made requesting a graphic representation of how both men and women’s SMV waxes and wanes as they progress through life. At the time I had no idea how influential and accurate the graph would be, but it seems that not every three or so months someone links or emails me an outside study with a graph that is so similar to my initial perception of sexual market valuation and devaluation that it kind of creeps me out a little bit.

This most recent graph comes to us courtesy of the Red Pill subreddit, linked to the Cougar and Cub Dating Study on Whatsyourprice.com.

From the chart above, we see that the perceived value of an attractive woman peaks when she reaches 25 years old, and gradually diminishes as she ages.  The perceived value of an attractive man however, starts at a much lower price when he is young, peaking only when he reaches the age of 34.  It appears from the value curve above that at least some stereotypes we often hear do hold some truth.  For example, that female models earn the most before they turn 30.  Or that men become more attractive as they age.

But no matter what some of you may read from the value curves above, it has proved a useful tool for predicting when Cougar-Cub couples get together, and when they are likely to break up.  The value curves also provide clues of what types of Cougar-Cub relationships stand the best chance of surviving in the long run.

Granted, my own parameters were slightly broader in scope (female SMV peaked at 22-23, men’s 36-38) but the base premise is astonishingly similar. As you might expect the comments are rife with “well-not-in-my-case”, “people are individuals” personal anecdotes, but the grouping of the graph plot is too similar not to recognize a consistency of form with my original SMV graph:

SMV_Curve

 

There are other studies and graphs that reflect this basic model. Some are more forgiving and project the feminine SMV decay a bit less or starting later – rarely is men’s SMV any less rigorous – and each study has differing objectives, but the form of the curves are so alike that it’s impossible not to notice the general similarities. I’ve done several followup posts in order to address the most common (deliberate) misunderstandings, as well as the most pressing questions about my SMV graph, so while we move on to the next section of the SMV timeline this week please be sure you reference the side bar category I have set up that exclusively covers the topic if you have questions. I’m prefacing this week’s continuation of Preventative Medicine with this graph because it will be an integral element to understanding the progression through the Epiphany and Transitionary phases.

 

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The Late Party Years

Although not a subsection itself, the latter third of a woman’s Party Years deserves some mention in that the end of this phase is often a prelude for the rationales women develop leading into the Epiphany Phase. As I mentioned here, some third party SMV studies will place a woman’s peak SMV as late as 25-26 years old. I’d argue that this is far too late in a woman’s life progression.

Statistically, most women express a desire to settle down, be married and start a family at or around the age of 27 to 30, and most marriages do happen between 26 and 30 for western women. The popularized, feminized ideal of a woman enjoying her prime – often excused as fulfilling her nebulous professional potential – is a primary contributor to this marriage postponement, but it’s important to point out to men dating women in this phase that the last two years of the party phase will be the stage at which a woman will begin to feel an urgency for long term commitment.

I summed this phase up in Cashing Out, however, it’s here that women, with the foresight to see it, will make their best attempts to consolidate on marriage with the man who best embodies, or has the potential to embody, the Alpha sexual-genetics with the providership parental investment that an optimized hypergamy seeks to balance in the same man. At no other time will a woman feel more urgency in capitalizing on her still prime attractiveness and sexual agency with a man she believes will fulfill the dual dictates of her sexual strategy.

“Where is this going?”

This is the most common phase in which a man will hear the words “where is this going?” from a woman, or is delivered ultimatums of withdrawal of intimacy (no more sex, or threats of break up) if no proposal is forthcoming in the foreseeable future.

Although women’s preferred method of communication rests in the covert, as she matures towards a condition of a lessened capacity to intra-sexually compete with her younger peers (competition anxiety) most men discover that women in this demographic, by necessity, lean more on overt communication. The coquetry, indirectness and blasé indifference that she used to hold and enjoy male attentions during her SMV peak years is progressively traded for more direct certainties of promised, committed assurances of future security.

Side note: Bear in mind that security for women isn’t always manifested as financial provisioning, but can be emotional investment, parental investment, physical security and most importantly fulfilling a masculine role of stability and dominance in her life.

Of primary importance is the consideration that women seek the Alpha Fucks / Beta Bucks (AFBB) balance of their hypergamous interests in the same man at this stage. That’s not to say this isn’t always the operative for feminine hypergamy, but it’s during the late party years phase that a woman (on some level of consciousness) begins to realize this time is her best opportunity to use her quick-burn SMV to consolidate on an optimized hypergamy. This isn’t due to premonitions of the Wall per se, but it is the first recognition of her diminishing capacity to sexually compete for male attention with young women experiencing their own SMV peak years.

During this period women will often make their first earnest attempts to find ways – sometimes by coercion – to ‘fix’ an Alpha into satisfying the Beta Bucks side of her hypergamy equation, or, to seriously evaluate an already committed Beta’s potential to ‘man up’ and be more Alpha, more ambitious and assesses (what she believes will be) his future SMV potential.

Lastly, bear in mind that women in this phase experience this urgency in direct proportion to what their looks, sexuality and command of male attention will afford them. It’s simple reasoning to figure that women who maintain their physical attractiveness / sexual agency and are consistently rewarded for it with male attention will prolong that state as long as possible. Thus, some attractive women may perpetuate their party years until such time as that attention abruptly ends.

The Epiphany and Transitory Phase

I’ve written extensively on these phases so please have a read of my prior posts The Epiphany Phase, Time’s Up and Cashing Out for a more in-depth understanding of what to expect from women during this stage of life.

Between the ages of 28 to about 30 (sometimes later for attractive women perpetuating their party years) women often enter into a more cognitive awareness of their personal conditions with regard to their declining SMV. This phase I call The Epiphany Phase; it is the point at which the subconscious awareness a woman has of her sexual market value in relation to her eventual date with the Wall can no longer be subconsciously repressed and ignored.

It is of primary importance to men to fully understand the significance this phase has for women. The epiphany isn’t about women hitting their SMV Wall  during this phase (though it’s possible) it’s about a woman conscientiously coming to terms with a markedly lessened capacity to sexually compete with her SMV-peak peers for the same male attention she enjoyed during her party years.

The abstract exaggeration is to think a woman necessarily hits the Wall at 30, her physical attractiveness shrivels and she magically transforms into a spinster cat lady overnight. Women absolutely (with effort) can and often do retain their looks and sexual agency past this phase; some into their late 30’s and 40’s.  However, what defines this phase is the conscious realization that their looks are no longer what they were in their prime. Combined with this is the awareness that they can no longer sexually compete at the same level as young women in their SMV peak for the attentions of men they now hope to consolidate their hypergamy on in long term commitment and provisioning security.

The Epiphany phase isn’t about women hitting the Wall so much as it is about an urgency to consolidate upon a man’s commitment of long term security with the competition anxiety that comes from realizing it’s now she who must to put forth the effort to secure it rather than having it offered to her as it was by the men in her SMV-peak years.

From The Epiphany Phase:

This is a precarious time for women where she makes attempts to reassess the last decade of her life. Women’s psychological rationalization engine (a.k.a. the Hamster) begins a furious effort to account for, and explain her reasonings for not having successfully secured a long term monogamous commitment from as Alpha a man as her attractiveness could attain for her. Even women married prior to this phase will go through some variation of self-doubt, or self-pity in dealing with the hypergamic uncertainty of her choice (“Is he really the best I could do?”).

A woman’s late party years are often the stage during which she entertains the hope that she can ‘civilize’ the Alpha Bad Boys who satisfy the visceral side of her hypergamy into assuming the providership role the other side of her hypergamy demands and is increasingly becoming more urgent for her – most Alpha Widows are made during this period. However, it’s during the Epiphany phase women (conveniently) make the rationalizations necessary for justifying this ‘fixing’ effort.

During the Epiphany Phase a woman’s inner and outer dialog is self-excusing, virtuously self-educational and self-congratulatory.

“I used to be so different in college, but I’ve grown personally” or “I’ve learned my lesson about pursuing the ‘wrong kind’ of men, I’m done with Bad Boys now” and “What happened to all the Nice Men?” are the standard clichés women will tell themselves and vocally (overtly) broadcast, directly or indirectly, to all the men with a providership potential in the hopes of signaling to them that she will now entertain their feminine-preconditioned offers of love, loyalty and dependability she had no interest in during her party years.

It’s during this stage that women will make radical shifts in their prioritization of what prerequisite traits qualify as ‘attractive’ in a man and attempt to turn over a new leaf by changing up their behaviors to align with this new persona they create for themselves. Since the physicality, sexual prowess and Alpha dominance that made up her former arousal cues in a Man aren’t as forthcoming from men as when she was in her sexual prime, she reprioritizes them with (presumed) preferences for more intrinsic male attributes that stress dependability, provisioning capacity, humor, intellect, and esoteric definitions of compatibility and intimacy.

For the spiritually inclined woman (which is to say most women) this may manifest in a convenient return to religious convictions she’d disregarded since her adolescence. For other’s it may be some kind of forced celibacy; a refusal to have sex under the hypergamic auspices of her ‘party years’ in the hopes that a well provisioning male (the ones not realizing their own potential SMV as yet) will appreciate her for her prudence – so unlike herself and all of the other girls who rejected him over the last decade.

The self-affirming psychological schema is one where she’s “finally doing the right thing”, when in fact she’s simply making the necessity of her long term provisioning and security a virtue she hopes men will appreciate. And if they don’t, then there’s always shaming them to think they’re ‘less-than-men’ for not living up to her eating her cake once she’s had it

While looks and masculine physical triggers in men are still an important attraction factor, her desire for a personal association with a man’s status and affluence begin to sublimate her physical priorities for attraction as she increasingly realizes the necessity of these attributes for her (and any offspring’s) long term provisioning. It should be noted that the appeal of a man’s potential for provisioning is proportional to her actual (or perceived) need for that provisioning.

As a woman moves into the Transitory phase (29-31) this re-prioritization also coincides with the adjusted self-perception of her own SMV. As a woman becomes more cognizant of her lessened ability to sexually compete for men who (she believes) would meet her best hypergamic balance, she’s forced to reassess her self-image. There are many feminine social conventions already pre-established to help her deny or buffer this reassessment. However, her hindbrain still acknowledges the competition anxiety that (unless, by effort or genetics, she’s a notable physical exception) she simply cannot command the kind of male attention women in their SMV-peak years do.

Note that the reality of this assessment, or realistic expectations of it, aren’t the source of this anxiety, but rather it’s what she believes them to be. An exceptionally attractive 30 year old woman may still be able to sexually select men above what most women her age can expect, but it’s what she believes about herself,  her internalized expectations for her age and party years experience has taught her. And as you may guess this self-assessment is also subject to the influences of social media and social conventions that pander to this same Transition period anxiety.

The Transition

I believe it was Roosh who stated that the only women who complain about men needing to Man Up or how men have somehow shirked the masculine responsibilities the Feminine Imperative society expects of them are always 30 years of age or older. Younger women simply have no motive to complain about what they believe they are entitled to in a man beyond his being ‘hawt’.

What I term as the Transition phase is the culmination of the Epiphany phase’s influence on a woman who’s thus far been unable to consolidate on monogamy with a male who fulfills the role of provider (Beta provider most often) that her hypergamy now holds in much higher priority order. When women in this phase complain of men’s “adequacy issues” what they’re really bemoaning is their chronic inability to find (or merit) a man who can balance the dual influences of her hypergamy.

The urgency for this consolidation is further compounded by the misconceptions most women hold about the Myth of the Biological clock, but in biological terms she’s well past the years of her prime fertility window and conceiving and bearing children becomes progressively more difficult for women with each passing year.

In the Transition phase the competition anxiety that prompted the Epiphany phase is exchanged for an anxiety that results from confronting the possibility a woman may never consolidate on a long term security. However, as always, feminine social conventions are already in place to absolve her of any real personal accountability for this incapacity.

Thus, begins the ‘Men are threatened by powerful women’, ‘Men have fragile egos’, ‘Men are shallow and only want young chippys they can manipulate instead of vibrant, women who are their intellectual equals’ and various other canards intended to simultaneously shame men into compliance with their hypergamous imperative and relieve women of any personal accountability for the anxiety the Transition phase forces them to experience.

In closing todays post, I think it’s important to consider other outcomes of personal decisions women often do make during these periods. As I mentioned in Part I, it’s not uncommon for women to already have consolidated on monogamy (LTR or marriage) well before either of these phase take place. While the experiences may differ, the underlying influences that prompt these phases remain more or less the same. I’ll elaborate more on this in Part III as it primarily relates to the later phases of women’s maturation process.

The Gift

logic

After reposting my seminal essay on Vagintine’s day last week an interesting topic arose. One of my assertions in the V-Day post was that a man ought never to buy his wife or girlfriend lingerie as a gift for Valentine’sDay, and, by extension, any other occasion, special or otherwise. As I considered the input from both Sunshinemary as well as commenter ‘Lingerie’ (odd for a male commenter, OK) I began to come to a better understanding of why I’ve always promoted this principle.

This is Lingerie’s take:

This is nuts:

“Note: Never buy a woman lingerie, she will never be happy with it. A woman has to do this on her own to “feel sexy”, make sure it fits her right, and it’s HER IDEA. When you buy it for her it’s contrived and it is overt and overt is often the kiss of death for a try-hard guy.”

Women in my home wear what they are commanded to wear. It’s not a decision left to them. In the beginning of a relationship I have to train them on proper apparel, which means taking them to the store and having them model garments for me so that I can show them what works and what doesn’t work, and why. After that, they know what clothing for themselves to buy for me so that I don’t have to go shopping with them.

This was Sunshinemary’s (albeit christianized) take:

LOL. Of course you should buy your wife lingerie. So what if she thinks it’s “really a gift for you”? Isn’t her body supposed to be a gift for you per 1 Corinthians 7:3-5? She should be happy you still want to see her in it.

In the interests of full disclosure, in the past, I have bought lingerie for both past girlfriends and Mrs. Tomassi; and I have learned my lesson. This is a lesson in genuine desire versus mitigated, obligated desire. If a woman doesn’t take the prerequisite effort on her own part to want to make herself more desirable and more sexy for you as your fuck-buddy, your girlfriend, your fiancé or your wife, you are not her first sexual or mental priority. It’s a simple as that.

Whether it’s the result of a prior ‘training regimen’ as in Lingerie’s case or the gift giving scenario Sunshinemary alludes to, the effect is the same – a genuine desire to please someone is always preferable to a coerced obligation to please them.

As I’ve stated before, a woman who want’s to fuck you will find a way to fuck you. If a woman needs to be ‘trained’ to be more sexual and less self-conscious than it takes for her to take the minimal effort to buy something to make herself look and feel more sexually appealing and less self-conscious to fuck you, then you’re dealing with a woman who (at least subconsciously) believes herself to be of a higher SMV status than yourself. In other words, if she has no desire to buy things, or prepare herself to be sexy for you, to entice you, to make your sexual experience with her more memorable than her prospective sexual competitors – you do not merit the optimization of her hypergamic interest, and her involvement with you is predicated upon something other than your genuine sexual appeal to her.

As I’ve elaborated before The Medium is the Message; when single women painstakingly prepare themselves primping and preening before a night out with her girlfriends to meet random guys – that medium is the message. When every look, every clothing option, every makeup and accessory selection is carefully considered to draw potential sexual attention to herself, the message is pretty clear – she’s making an effort to be more attractive for what she values as a reward. Women who are experiencing the hormonal changes associated with the proliferative phase of their menstrual cycle (just pre-ovulation) have a psychological predisposition to want to fuck the ‘good genes’ Alpha. This phase-condition also triggers shifts in female ornamentation; in other words, when women ovulate they dress to impress.

When a woman will put forth this concerted effort to achieve a socio-sexual reward, yet later fail to, or discontinues her previous efforts to, make the same effort to sustain your socio-sexual interests in her, that medium is also a message she’s broadcasting; she perceives your status (SMV) to be less valuable than the effort necessary to sustain your interest in her.

That isn’t to say every sexual instance you have should always be this side of professional porn, but it is to say that sexual spontaneity and her maintained effort to please you of her own volition are indicators of her perception of your sexual market value (SMV) as well as the biological dictates of her menstrual phase. In other words, (perceptual) Alphas get the ornamentation and enthusiasm of women who want to impress, Betas get the comfy, phone-it-in sex, after doing the convincing.

A Gift Must Be Given

Isn’t her body supposed to be a gift for you?

Yes, but a gift must be given, not taken by force or by due, else it’s not a gift anymore.

One principle I always suggest for Men spinning plates is that they make their attentions and interests in a woman a reward for that woman’s efforts and investments in him. From a PUA perspective this a flipping of the feminine script of qualifying for her rewards, but it’s a very important principle to understand and internalize on your own. Dread Game is founded on this principle, but it goes beyond just this utility – your merit, your attention and what it’s worth for a woman to invest herself in it will set the frame for any future relationship you have with her.

When that attention is given too liberally or a guy, as the result of his feminized conditioning, thinks women want full disclosure of feelings and a man gives his attention away without some kind of earning it dynamic on a woman’s part, his attentions become effectively worthless to her.

I’m prefacing with this because it’s important to recognize the value a Man’s attention has for women when you are assessing her real estimate of your personal value. Generally, women aren’t going to overtly give a man she’s involved with an honest assessment of his value to her. This is part of him Just Getting It and the unspoken understanding that he does get it, and on some level does understand what his value is to her. An Alpha doesn’t ask direct questions about his own status with women, he intrinsically understands it as reflected through women’s behavior around him.

However, women rarely disclose a Man’s impression on her – in fact the only time a woman is prompted to reveal ‘what she really thinks’ about a man is during or after a breakup. Rather, her continued assessment of him in a relationship (long or short term) is expressed in her attitudes, behaviors, physicality, ornamentation, and her willingness (or reservations) to want to please him.

I have a real tough time with the concept of a woman’s sexuality being a gift to give to a man. When a woman perceives a man’s SMV (or Alpha assessment) to be less than what her hypergamy could merit (realistically or not) for optimization, that is when the gifting-of-sex social convention becomes the dominant psychology for her. For a man who doesn’t merit it, or a Beta provider unused to the ‘reward’ of sex, this gifting becomes a situation of intermittent reinforcement of desired behavior (your continued Beta provisioning and comfort).

One, feminized, social indicator of this dynamic is a constant, male-psychological condition of self-deprecation. For example, I mentioned in last week’s post, most Valentines Day card’s messages from men to women is one of an unworthiness of her divine love, sex and patience with him. Essentially it’s a precondition of never meriting her intimacy. When this is a man’s operational psychology with respect to women, it only serves to perpetuate his qualifying for her gift and telegraphs his status of (at least mentally) being Beta. Men often ask me where the dynamic of pedestalization comes from and why it seems to be men’s default psychology with regard to women, its root is in this gift-to-merit social/psychological dependency.

Alpha Fucks & Beta Gifts

As with the woman in my illustration in Good Girls Do, Alpha men, or men that women preselect as possessing Alpha traits and attitudes, aren’t “given the gift’ of her sexuality, she simply has desired sex with him as opportunity and environment allow. The conditional reward, or sex-as-gift dynamic isn’t even a consideration, only sexual urgency and opportunism as buffered by the filters of her conscience, convictions or emotional barriers (or lack thereof). Alpha fucks isn’t a gift, it’s desired sex of opportunity and urgency.

I think it’s worth pointing out the obvious contrast this gift dynamic has with regards to the man who’s wife was provably more sexually adventurous in her past than she ever was with him for the duration of his marriage – Saving the Best. That post, and the 700+ comment thread that followed were cause for a lot of righteous indignation from men who’d also been on the receiving end of being sold one sexual personality, but later discovered his wife (previously or concurrently) had quite another.

As callous as this is going to sound, while I can understand feelings of betrayal at the duplicity, I also understand the mechanics behind women’s dualistic sexual strategy. The most common criticism of this husband was that he was a fool for ever having married a woman unwilling to give him her best sexually. He should’ve seen the red flags and avoided investing his life, and the life of a child, in a woman with sexual hangups,..with him.

It’s very easy to be an armchair life-coach after the fact, but I’m not sure most men realize what those red flags are when they see them. Most men, by way of a lifetime of feminine sensitivity training, take women at their word rather than see the message in her medium. They never have the opportunity to truly grasp the socio-sexual strategy women employ over the course of a lifetime to optimize hypergamy and Alpha Fucks / Beta Bucks. And even after he’s been on the sharp end of that equation, most guys still don’t want to believe her medium was ever the message.

If a woman is reserved with you sexually, if her conditions for being sexual are based on a perceived reward or a gifting mentality, that is the message. If a woman needs convincing to be more sexual with you, that is the message. If a woman is sexually aggressive with you, if she exhibits behaviors that indicate she’s planning to create an environment that would facilitates your having sex, that is the message. Women who are into you won’t confuse you. Understand the mechanics of how her sexual strategy works, how the particulars of it are manifested in her words, attitudes and behaviors, and how to leverage it to your advantage or see the warning signs in it, and you will be better prepared to see those red flags before you invest yourself in a woman worth or not worth investing in.

Tales of Hypergamy — Recursive Game

scacchiste - Fotografo: internet

Noheroes from the SoSuave forum relates this for us:

Gentlemen, do as I do and grab yourself a tuck of bourbon and throw some Keith Jarrett on the hi-fi. There’s cold, cold snow on the ground and I’m here to regale you with a story sure to convince you that there are no women immune to game, no exceptions to hypergamy. The final pixel in the matrix has blinked out of existence for me, and I see the truth. Not finally, not complete, but I’m a believer. I’m in the midst of the hypergamy chapters of The Rational Male and the light has dawned.

In late November I met a girl at my business whom I was immediately attracted to. We had a drink, made out, groped a bit, and she went home (3.5 hours away). A month later she came into town, and on Christmas Eve we cooked dinner at a place she was housesitting, spent two hours naked in a hot tub, and made love three times over the next ten hours, including, well, entrances and exits on Christmas morning. We saw each other again a couple days later, made love again, then she left town. In early January I was passing through her town, spent the night, and we again slept together three times in a ten hour span.

This girl (let’s call her Helen) is feminine, nurturing, sexy, and highly intelligent. She’s been through tougher times than any member of this board who wasn’t a combat military member. She’d make a killer mother, she’s kinky as hell, she’s emotionally vulnerable yet demure, and she’s submissive and kind. She’s an HB8 (at least by my reckoning) and has a slamming yoga body. I have tremendous respect for her and we have a great connection. The only downside is she’s 33 and is realizing that the wall is coming up.

Helen and I are constantly flirty by text, but I don’t really do long distance relationships, so my plan of action was to just hook up and hang out whenever we were in each other’s towns. However, this afternoon (this very afternoon!) we had a phone conversation in which she related that she couldn’t be flirty with me anymore and also couldn’t sleep with me should we see each other again. Not exactly LJBF, due to the fact that she sent me an underwear selfie not ten minutes after this conversation ended, but close enough. A last sexy gasp, but a rejection nonetheless. Why, gentle readers, did this kind soul state that our trysts had ended? Hypergamy.

You see, there was a gentleman (we’ll call him Chip) who met Helen last March. He was just out of a five year relationship, but he didn’t tell Helen that. He was a little damaged, but in that kind of way where Helen felt that sometimes they had a connection, and then at other times couldn’t figure out what Chip felt about her. In December, Helen told a dear family member to make sure that Helen never hung out with Chip again. It was unhealthy! She was hooked and couldn’t figure out why, and had to stay away from Chip. As of a couple weeks ago, however, Helen resumed hanging out with Chip. This, dear friends, is why Helen couldn’t be flirty or sexual with me anymore.

I talked to Helen about this man in depth. There certainly was a part of me that wanted to negotiate desire, to convince her to stay away from Chip, to continue our prior arrangement. But I knew this was a fool’s errand. So I took a deep breath and asked myself – “Self, do you really want to see the end of the Matrix? Do you want to dispel your belief in a ‘quality’ woman? If there ever was a quality woman, it is Helen. Let’s see if truly hypergamy is inescapable.”

I asked Helen various questions about her feelings towards Chip, revealing my knowledge of hypergamy and explaining each step of her own behavior to Helen as I did so. “See there, Helen? That’s push-pull. Tension. He doesn’t realize he’s doing it, but he’s driving you crazy and making you feel attracted towards him. One minute he’s accessible, the next he isn’t. He doesn’t return your texts on time, if at all. This creates the hook!” She agreed, but I could tell there was no changing her mind. For the sake of science, I pressed onward. “See how you’re basing all of this conversation on the potential of the relationship, Helen? You think you can save him from his damage! There’s nothing actual there, you’re just backwards rationalizing it to suit the hook he’s set in you.” Again, she agreed intellectually. “He’s demonstrating to you his evolutionary suitability by being unavailable, utilizing tension, and being completely non-needy. His life is the same whether you’re in or out of it, and it drives you crazy and creates attraction simultaneously!” Mental assent but hindbrain denial continued.

At the end of the conversation, she stopped me in her feminine adorable voice and said “We need to not talk about this anymore, it just seems so hopeless. I don’t want the world to be that way!” I told her that it was that way, but I do believe it’s possible for good men to harness those powers and create deeply satisfying, honest relationships. However, hypergamy is always the driving force, and to leave it unacknowledged is to invite disrespectful beta disaster or alpha cad heartbreak.

Helen, despite the truth being presented to her in the most obvious way possible, and mirrored in her every behavior towards Chip, couldn’t accept the reality of hypergamy. If she can’t resist or change her behavior based on reason and knowledge of the truth, no woman can. The lesson, kind readers, is not that you must be evil to get the girl. It’s that hypergamy is the deciding factor in attraction for EVERY SINGLE WOMAN. There are no exceptions, no “quality” girls. They all succumb. It’s our job to make them succumb to us.

After all this, she still sent me the dirty pic.

While it is of course vital for a man to internalize the various fundamental truths about the nature of women (hypergamy, solipsism, Alpha Fucks / Beta Bucks, love based on opportunism, etc.), these fundaments need to become an ambient condition for you in your dealings. This understanding needs to become an internal – under the surface – part of your interactions with women.

Too many guys think that all of this requires some endless capacity to psychologically micromanage every aspect of their interactions, not just with the women they become (or potentially become) intimate with, but also women they work with (or for), their mothers, sisters or daughters. A common reason men initially reject the practice (not necessarily the concept) of Game is due to some imagined expectation that they’ll need to cognitively account for every variable a woman may or may not be subjecting him or herself to.

When you think of Game as some act you put on or some cognitive fencing match between you and a woman it’s easy to believe it’s just too exhausting. That’s when one of two things usually happen; Game-awareness either sinks in and becomes part of his personality, or he relaxes and/or abandons what he’s learned of Game.

As you think so shall you become.

Neo: “What’re you trying to say, that I can dodge bullets?”

Morpheus: “No Neo, what I’m saying is that when you’re ready you wont have to.”

There comes a point of internalization when your Game-awareness becomes part of who you are. There is no longer a need to mentally sort out what may or may not be going on with the women you’re interacting with. One of the first resistances I usually read from men when they first pick up on Plate Theory is that they could never manage more than a single woman’s interest at one time. Usually this is due to a fear of being caught by one or more women or thought of as a Player, but the premise is one of not having some imagined resources, time and energy to keep more than a single plate spinning at once.

Do you see where this is going?

It’s all about his effort, and his time management, and his capacity or talent for juggling all the responsibilities necessary to convince and qualify for a woman’s effort towards him. He and his concerns are not his mental point of origin and so don’t factor into his concept of what Game could be for him. It’s always energy and resources flowing out, rather than even having the temerity of thought to think that a woman’s effort should come to him.

When Game is internalized for a Man, he is his mental point of origin. Game critics like to frame this self-concern as sociopathy or Dark Triad, but these distractions from putting himself as his mental point of origin have the latent purpose of keeping him extending himself outward. For as much as it’s rewarded, no one wants to be thought of as an asshole, but Game-awareness doesn’t necessitate being a selfish prick, just putting oneself as their mental point of origin.

Noheroes’ story is a lesson in the various  ways of coming to this internalized Game-awareness. I believe that Noheroes is making this transition through a lot of self-critical education. He had the foresight to keep Helen at a figurative arm’s distance. My guess is he knew her situation, being 33 and well on her SMV decline, and that single women during this phase are looking to lock down long-term commitment.

If I fault him for anything it was in his appeal to Helen’s reason when he pulled the cover off of the psychological and sociological underpinnings of what Chip actually meant to her and was (deliberate or not) doing with her. In doing so he laid all of his Game-aware cards on the table, and as has been discussed many times on RM, women may think they want the truth, but they never want full disclosure.

But perhaps (in the interests of science) this is what Noheroes intended. He essentially exposed Helen’s hypergamous (2nd chance Alpha Widow) behaviors and reasonings with the predictable results – women only want to play the game, they don’t want to know how it’s played.

For all of this, it’s actually Chip’s part that completes the Game circle. While Noheroes understands Game (and probably plays it well), and can explain it well enough, it’s Chip who’s effectively AMOG’d him without ever meeting him. I can’t say for certain that Chip isn’t self-aware of what he does, but my guess is he’s internalized Game to the point that it’s part of who he is. My guess is he’s a natural who’s had himself as his mental point of origin for so long that it’s just part of who he is – and being rewarded for it by the likes of Helen for so long that it’s naturally reinforced. Maybe he’s a natural sociopath as well, but this is immaterial to the internalizing of Game.

What were seeing here is a story of recursive Game – Noheroes even explains the process to Helen only to have her confirm her awareness of it, but still having a desire to participate in it.

Suck It Up

suck-it-up

Recently Marellus from Just Four Guys brought this to my attention:

Did you see how the womyn tore apart a commenter, by the name of Redlum, on Jezebel ?

Just because he said this :

Why does feminism have to antagonize and mock men all the time? Men are expected to have no vulnerabilities, this is an oppressive gender role. When men’s vulnerabilities are exposed, such as feeling emasculated or being insecure about women making them “obsolete”, that is a human emotion and gloating over it and mocking it is not only terrible, but also one of the big things giving feminism a bad name.

The top reply was this :

If being in a relationship with a woman who makes more money than you and/or has a higher position than you makes you feel that you are becoming obsolete, maybe you should be mocked for being silly, immature, and sexist. So now, on top of everything else that women have to deal with, we have to comfort men for freaking out whenever a woman surpasses them at something? I’m sorry – if you are in a group that has been privileged over/oppressive of other groups, you don’t get an apology and a reassuring hug every time we get a millimeter closer to some semblance of fairness and equality. Men need to suck it up and deal with life on more equitable terms like adults, without those who do just that expecting a medal for it.

Write a post on what this guy did wrong, if possible.

Redlum’s mistake was twofold. His first error was to ever overtly look for sympathy from a woman (women). We already know women lack the capacity for empathizing with the male experience, but sympathy is another side of the equation. One grave error most blue pill plug-ins make in this respect is a presumption that women owe them sympathy or that women are predisposed to sympathizing with them.

This is usually due to having been conditioned by the feminine for so long to believe that “Open Communication®”, sharing his feelings and being vulnerable will make him the ideal man. This is an unfortunate outcome of the ‘get in touch with your feminine side’ curse of Jung: in a similar respect to the myth of Relational Equity where a man expects his sacrifices and investment in a relationship will be a buffer against women’s Hypergamy, the expectation is that women will appreciate his openness and vulnerabilities. He believes the feminine identity lie that “vulnerability is strength.”

It’s a very seductive fallacy for a dyed-in-the-wool plug-in to make. I’ve read Redlum’s comments before and he doesn’t impress me as a chump, so I believe his comment on Jezebel was really more of a symbolic appeal to feminine reason. What he illustrates here is a common misgiving most Beta blue pill men subscribe to – that they will be perceived as unique, “not like other guys” in his embracing feminine vulnerability. And as you can see from the top Jezebel reply he was met with the same hostility women have for “vulnerable” men.

Hypergamy psychologically predisposes women to hold either contempt or pity for male vulnerability on a limbic level. Even in the most ’emotionally evolved’ women, by order of degree, Hypergamy is always testing for male fitness in order to assess whom she will pair with either in short term breeding availability or long term provisioning availability. When a man overtly expresses an openness to vulnerability, on a subconscious level it telegraphs his insecurity to her Hypergamous nature. Thus, she filters him out, or if she’s paired with him prior to this expression she initiates the mental protocol to leave him for a better match.

The contempt expressed by the Jezebel authoress is a good example of this.

So now, on top of everything else that women have to deal with, we have to comfort men for freaking out whenever a woman surpasses them at something?

You’re a man, suck it up, you shouldn’t be vulnerable by virtue of your maleness. It’s a conflicting message in light of the touchy-feely feminine conditioning men endure in their upbringing, but it is an honest reaction, and one that men need to understand when sorting out the reality of women and their need to unplug.

I’m not gonna write you a love song, cause you asked for one,..

The second (symbolic?) mistake Redlum makes is making an appeal for sympathy. In Empathy I outlined women’s gut-level, evolutionarily selected-for, lack of empathizing with the male experience. I defined the difference between empathy and sympathy, and while women might lack the means for that empathy, they have a very strong sense of sympathy. However that sympathy comes with conditions.

Women involved with high SMV Alpha Men can be some of the most genuinely, organically sympathetic women you’ll ever encounter. Granted, that sympathy may facilitate her own Hypergamous interests, but more so because that Alpha never petitions her for her sympathy.

Women give their sympathies of their own accord, never as the result of a man petitioning it from her. A woman must be inspired to sympathy for a man, asking for it is negotiating for her desire to be sympathetic.

A man who is intentionally vulnerable smacks of a guy who is so in an effort to qualify for her intimacy. It’s similar to the dynamic found in Play Nice, that niceness, that vulnerability that’s supposed to be strength, is perceived as a ruse to better identify with the feminine and thus be more acceptable to it. If feminine Hypergamy is fine tuned for anything it’s genuineness. That’s not to say women wont turn it to their social and biological advantages, but Hypergamy is always testing for certainty and authenticity. I’ve stated before that there is nothing more satisfying for a woman than to believe she’s figured a guy out using her mythical feminine intuition, this is a direct satisfaction of Hypergamy’s need for certainty, but I should also add that there is nothing more mortifying, rage inducing and produces more bitter tears than a woman who’s had her Hypergamy fooled by an imposter. Not only does this deception involve a loss of investment and resources to her, but it’s also an insult to her ego that her capacity to filter for authenticity isn’t as effective as she believes her ‘intuition’ actually is.

Suck It Up

The bigger picture in this Jezebel exchange is really about one of the most basic and useful social conventions ever devised by the Feminine Imperative – The Male Catch 22:

Man Up or Shut Up – The Male Catch 22

One of the primary way’s Honor is used against men is in the feminized perpetuation of traditionally masculine expectations when it’s convenient, while simultaneously expecting egalitarian gender parity when it’s convenient.

For the past 60 years feminization has built in the perfect Catch 22 social convention for anything masculine; The expectation to assume the responsibilities of being a man (Man Up) while at the same time denigrating asserting masculinity as a positive (Shut Up). What ever aspect of maleness that serves the feminine purpose is a man’s masculine responsibility, yet any aspect that disagrees with feminine primacy is labeled Patriarchy and Misogyny.

Essentially, this convention keeps beta males in a perpetual state of chasing their own tails. Over the course of a lifetime they’re conditioned to believe that they’re cursed with masculinity (Patriarchy) yet are still responsible to ‘Man Up’ when it suits a feminine imperative. So it’s therefore unsurprising to see that half the men in western society believe women dominate the world (male powerlessness) while at the same time women complain of a lingering Patriarchy (female powerlessness) or at least sentiments of it. This is the Catch 22 writ large. The guy who does in fact Man Up is a chauvinist, misogynist, patriarch, but he still needs to man up when it’s convenient to meet the needs of a female imperative.

This dualistic, conveniently conflicting, social convention is what defines a condition of ‘equality’ for today’s New Woman:

 Men need to suck it up and deal with life on more equitable terms like adults, without those who do just that expecting a medal for it.

In other words suck it up when convenient and sack up when necessary. In a sense she’s not wrong– an intrinsic part of the male experience is not to complain about adversity, not to complain about pain and not to complain about suffering – in other words, Man Up, be strong and don’t let on to any vulnerability. If that sounds contradictory to a lifetime of feminine sensitivity training for men it should, but only because it’s half of the usefulness of the Male Catch 22. Where our Jezebeler drops the ball is the other half of the con – Man up and be useful, to women, to the Feminine Imperative. The problem is that equality only applies to what benefits the feminine, anything else that constitutes a man, constitutes masculinity, is a liability.

If being in a relationship with a woman who makes more money than you and/or has a higher position than you makes you feel that you are becoming obsolete, maybe you should be mocked for being silly, immature, and sexist.

There is also the option that Men may simply opt out of involving themselves in a relationship with said woman. In this case the Male Catch 22 is used to shame him for his insecurities not only by women for not participating in their potential provisioning, but also by a chorus of plugged in men ready to mock him for his lack of manhood (also in order to convince the feminine of their unique dedication to the imperative and hopefully get laid as a result of it). It’s at this point he’s derided for his ‘fragile ego’ and his ‘being threatened by strong independent women®.”

By virtue of his maleness, he literally cannot win, and any expression of this condition, even the questioning of this situation is then perceived as his complaining about it – and overt confession of vulnerability. What I’m describing here is the core issue blue pill, plugged in men have with Game and the red pill – just asking a question or making a critical observation about the feminine with regard to the male condition is always conflated with men complaining – something men aren’t allowed to do. It comes off as “poor men”, just as our Jezebeler recounts, but it distracts and discourages real discourse about those conditions.

That is how effective the Male Catch 22 is, it kills all critical inquiry before the questions can even be asked.

Nursing Power

matriarchy_rome

Needless to say, last week’s post sparked some interesting, not to mention predictable, conversations and response. After sifting through all of the ego-invested brinksmanship by the token feminist reader of RM, the takeaway was actually a better understanding of the latent purpose of feminism.Perhaps not the understanding she intended, but certainly a confirmation of premise.

A handful of my male readers often ask why I don’t moderate comments, or that the message of Rational Male would be better served if I banned certain commenters. I’ve mentioned on several posts and threads as to why I won’t ever do that (except for blatant spamming), but in a nutshell it’s my fundamental belief that the validity of any premise or idea should be able to withstand public debate. People who aren’t confident of the strength of their assertions or ideas, or are more concerned with profiting from the branding of those weak assertions than they are in truth, are the first to cry about the harshness of their critics and kill all dissent as well as all discourse about those assertions.

That’s the primary reason I’ve never moderated; if people think I’m full of shit I’m all ears – I’m not so arrogant as to think I’ve thought of every angle about any idea I express here or on any other forum. However, the second reason I don’t censor, ban users or delete comments is that I believe it’s useful to have critics (usually women or fem-men) provide the gallery with examples of exactly the mentality or dynamic I’m describing in an essay. With a fair amount of predictability, a blue pill male or an upset woman will just as often prove my point for me and serve as a model for what I’ve described.

I never intentionally try to make rubes out of the critics I know will chime in about something, but I will sometimes leave out certain considerations I may have already thought about something, knowing it will get picked up on by a critic. I do this on occasion because the I know that the “ah hah! I got him, he forgot about X,Y, Z” moment serves as a better teaching tool and confirms for me that a critic does in fact comprehend what I’m going on about.

Take the Power Back

So it was throughout last week’s commentary about the branding of the Strong Independent Woman® social template offered and reinforced by the feminist mindset, and endorsed wholesale by pop-culture and popular media. Considering the new outside awareness the manosphere is receiving courtesy of Return of Kings these days, I expect we’ll see more of the point-and-sputter, dismissive ignorance of offended egos, or we’ll see more cathartic overwritten mission statements repeated by feminists confronted with logical arguments that contradict their comfortably solipsistic world-view.

Doctor Jeremy actually started me back on considering gender power dynamics with his comments here:

As always, your article is insightful. I get concerned with the limit to the progress the manosphere can make, however, because I think the discussions are missing a central concept – power. The goal of this branding, social engineering, and gender-role change you identify is the redistribution of various forms of power and influence within our society. For some reason, however, much of the manosphere’s writing and discussion does not seem to include that level of analysis. This is unfortunate, as feminist and women’s discourse is often focused on redistribution of power – and quite successful as a result of that focus.

As support for my point, please review the quotes I have extracted from livingtree2013′s various comments [emphasis mine]:

“But it is not because women want to eliminate men from the equation. It is because women have historically been entirely dependent on men for their survival, which gave men far too much power over us, and we have worked tirelessly to extract ourselves from that position of inferiority.”

“So why would you expect anything different from us? Its simply not going to happen, at least not until the men in power actually force us to obey their will, which truly, I can see coming in the near future.”

“Unfortunately, you guys didn’t want us doing those things because it negatively affected you in the power balance, but that didn’t stop us from needing it.”

She is not talking about independence. She is not talking about self-esteem. She is talking about who has the power to control the interaction and call the shots…

As far as power is concerned I think anyone who’s read the Rational Male for more than a few posts knows I quote Robert Greene’s 48 Laws of Power more often than any other resource here, and regularly use those laws to illustrate how they apply to intergender relations. That said, I have dedicated posts to the influence power has in personal dynamics, and I certainly recognize, if sometimes indirectly, the power dynamic in Frame, Dread, and certainly in The Feminine Imperative.

I fully understand the redistribution of power in our gender landscape from a social perspective, but the fundamental question about any form of real power isn’t about who has it or not, but to what ends they apply it.

I felt so strongly about the Truth to Power essay that I included it in the Rational Male book. The salient point in that post was this:

Real Power is the degree to which a person has control over their own circumstances. Real Power is the degree to which we control the directions of our lives.

I expect that would align with what our token, self-identifying feminist LivingTree was repeating, but the underlying question is what are women using that power to achieve?

As I stated prior, feminism as a social influence, has never been about its stated goal of egalitarian equality between the sexes, but rather it’s been about restitution and retribution from the masculine it perceives as its historical oppressors. This was the original intent of feminine independence (before it became the brand it is today), a separation from the dependency (perceived or actual) of women on men. However, the problem inherent in that separation is that in creating a new, autonomous sex role for women, the innate differences and deficits that the former complementary interdependence with men satisfied had to be compensated for.

All of the inherent weaknesses of the feminine that were balanced by the masculine’s inherent strengths had to be provided for in order to achieve this new independence from the masculine. I should also point out that in this feminist separation the masculine is also left in a deficit of having its own inherent weaknesses balanced by the compensating strengths of the feminine.

Power Slaves

I’ve quoted that feminism is the mistaken belief that a more equitable society can be achieved by focusing efforts solely on the interests of one sex.

Sarcasm aside, this is exactly the use to which women have applied the power that feminism and the feminization of society has afforded them since the sexual revolution. Feminism is not, and has never been about leveling a playing field or equality amongst the genders, it’s been about power and applying it to separating from, marginalization of, and eventual eradication of, the masculine influence that the feminine imperative wants restitution and retribution from. LivingTree illustrates this for us here:

Independence for women meant we didn’t have to tolerate abuse anymore because we had the option to leave. It meant that if you left us, we wouldn’t be completely desperate. It meant we didn’t have to cling to you guys for support. It meant we could make decisions about our own lives. It meant we didn’t have to be “seen and not heard”. It meant we didn’t have to be a slave to a stereotype anymore. It meant we could be self-actualizing if we wanted to. It meant we could pick and choose which man we wanted to mate with. And it meant we could admit we had sexual desires.

Tucked into LT’s recitation of feminist boilerplate is the true application and intent of use of the power women’s emancipation from the masculine wants to achieve – direct control of the conditions dictating their innate hypergamy.

The gist of LT’s reasoning for women wanting power, and “Independence” (as a brand or otherwise) from men is due to women’s innate need for security. This need for security and certainty is literally written into women’s DNA, their neural wiring and hormones. As the ‘nurturers’ of the next generation of humanity, evolution selected-for, and reinforced the biological and psychological mechanisms of women with the best capacity to filter for situations that would provide her and her offspring with the best possible security in a chaotic and insecure world. This drive for security is what’s at the root of hypergamy, and in all fairness has been a successful survival mechanism for the human species.

Hypergamy’s constant, limbic, survival-level question for women is “Is this the optimal condition I can secure to ensure my wellbeing and my (future) children?” Whether she’s been married for decades or is out on the town with her girlfriends, that question nags a woman in her hindbrain from childhood to death. Hypergamy’s question and doubt is at the heart of every unconscious shit-test a woman will ever deliver. Hypergamy’s unrealizable quest for optimization extends from the individual woman to women’s social influences. From the micro to the macro, Hypergamy’s constant want of an unachievable contented security defines the Feminine Imperative.

Rigging the Game

In terms of women’s pluralistic sexual strategy (Alpha Fucks and Beta Bucks) that question extends to who she selects as a sex partner to breed with, as well as whom she selects to be the provider for her long term provisioning. At the heart of it, women’s desire for independence and the perceived power they believe it should give them is an effort in controlling the conditions that they believe will satisfy Hypergamy’s question. Every popular woman’s issue you can list will find its way back to the want for control of the circumstances that dictate how well a woman can satisfy her Hypergamy.

Fat acceptance, the right to vote, child custody and paternity laws, divorce laws, slut walks, accusations of rape culture, more women in the boardroom, feminization of men and culture on whole, hell, every item LivingTree mentions in her comment, just name the issue and underneath the social or personal veneer is the clutching after of some usable power to control the conditions that will satisfy her need for security and optimize women’s Hypergamy.

LT is correct, women don’t want to eliminate men, they simply want to control them, both directly and indirectly, socially and personally, subtly and subconsciously as well as overtly when necessary, to comply with satisfying their innate hypergamy. They want independence from men’s influence in the process of satisfying hypergamy – they want to rig the game by replacing his genuine desires by forcing him to comply with her control of his conditions. Women want the power to control men’s desires, their ideologies, their sexual response, their individualism and the decisions that result from them all in order to optimize hypergamy

The problem in all this effort for control is that nature stagnates in homogeny. Androgyny, homogeny, are the first order for inbreeding. For as much as women make efforts to emancipate themselves and change the rules of the game to better fit their deficiencies, they are always confounded by the innate drives and desires of men. They get frustrated with men who wont play their version of the game, or worse, the ones who play it more poorly than they themselves do. So they jail them, they shame them, they pathologize his sexual impulse, they condition feminization into them from their earliest development, they punish them for not playing the game that should  always end with them optimizing hypergamy’s nagging doubt – in spite of falling short of it under organic circumstances. For all the delusions of independence, autonomy and the fantasy of some form of control of the process, they find men will simply not cooperate. They wont give them the satisfaction of optimizing their solipsistic hypergamy, because the Men who have the capacity to do so, the ones women want to be satisfied with simply aren’t playing their version of the game.

The Brand of Independence

independence

The archetype of the Strong Independent Woman® has been culturally reinforced over the last half century in virtually every imaginable media. Whether it’s Disney’s capable Princesses ready to save themselves from certain doom – as well as their quirky, hapless but handsome male heroes – or the now clichéd ‘tough bitch’ of action movies and video game protagonists who measures herself by how well she can kick ass and /or swear as the culturally contextual equal of “any man”. Her template-crafted character is strong, confident, measuredly aggressive, decisive (but usually only when shit gets serious so as to prove to the audience she’s ‘digging deep within herself to discover her yet unrealized resolve), judicious, loving to those loyal or dependent on her (immediate family, children and female friends), capable of solving problems with little more than the feminine intuition men magically lack – but above all, she’s independent.

As this cultural archetype is broadcast to society at large, the want then is to find parallels of this Strong Independent Woman® in the ‘real’ world. The media character is only marginally believable now thanks to endless revisions and replications, so we look for the examples of independent women equalling and exceeding the, paltry-by-comparison, achievements of the unenlightened ignorance of their male “oppressors.” High ranking company CEOs are usually the first rock star independent women to nominally shine (often undeservedly) in such a role, but then, by order of degrees, we can move down the economic social strata and cherry-pick or conveniently create the match of any mediocre man. As most men are, or have been conditioned Betas it’s not too difficult.

It really is the End of Men you see. You’re no longer necessary because, well now, there is nothing men can collectively and uniformly do that women cannot find some individual example of matching and / or exceeding. Women don’t need men anymore, they’re independent.

The Branding

If there’s one thing I know, it’s branding. The Strong Independent Woman® caricature has generously earned it’s registered trademark. I sometimes use that ® to emphasize a particularly long-evolved meme; social conventions so embedded into our cultural fabric that they literally have become their own brand. The Strong Independent Woman® is actually one the best examples of this branding. However, to really understand the gravity of so long a cultural branding, you must go to the root of how the brand of the independent woman was originally intended to evolve by the 2nd wave cultural feminists who spawned it. In a way it’s succeeded far better than any feminist of the period really had the foresight to expect.

An Independent Woman was to be independent of men.

While a lot of feel-good aphorisms like confidence, determination, integrity, and the like became associated with this desire for independence, make no mistake, the original long-term feminist goal of fostering that independence in women was to break them off into individuated, autonomous entities from men. That individuation needed to be as positive and attractive to women as possible, so a social pairing of that independence from men, with a sense of strength and respectability, had to be nurtured over time.

Since the beginnings of the sexual revolution, women were acculturated to believe they could ‘have it all’, career, family, a husband (of her optimal hypergamous choosing) and, if she were influential enough, leave some indelible mark on society to be remembered by for posterity. To achieve this she’d need to be an autonomous agent, strong, and above all independent of men. Women would embody and perfect the maverick individualism that men seemed to enjoy throughout history. If she couldn’t manifest ‘having it all’ then she was still, by male force or by personal choice, not independent enough to realize it. Of course, the irony of all this can be found in the marriages of virtually every ‘high profile’ feminist luminary of the time (all the way up to our current time) to the very powerful and influential types of men their stated independence was to emancipate all women from in order to truly be independent.

The Case Against Male Self-Esteem

Matt Forney’s lightning rod post, The Case Against Female Self-Esteem drew a frenzy of internet hate, but at the core of that post was a question that Strong Independent Women® and their male identifiers don’t like be confronted with; do they truly want independence from men? Do the men they want to be independent from even exist, or are they conveniently useful archetypes; vaudevillian chauvinist cartoons from the 50’s, planted in their heads, courtesy of the feminine imperative?

While I can’t endorse a message that would diminish anyone’s self-esteem, male or female, Matt’s post, even so much as suggesting the idea of limiting female self-esteem, uncomfortably turns a cultural mirror back on over 50 years feminist and feminized social engineering. For over the past 50 years the case against male self-esteem, with the latent purpose of emancipating women from dependence on men, began in earnest — not with some anger inducing blog post, but as a progressive social engineering that would run the course of decades to effectively erase men’s inconvenient masculine identity, or even memory of what that identity ever meant to men. The case against male self-esteem has been the social undercurrent of popular culture since the early 1960’s.

I think it’s important for red pill men to internalize the popular idea of feminine independence. The true message that the Strong Independent Woman® brand embodies is independence from you, a man.

Its latent purpose isn’t the actual empowerment of women, or efforts to bolster self-esteem, strength (for whatever loose definition seems convenient), confidence or any other esoteric quality that might flatter a feminine ego. Its purpose isn’t to foster financial or economic independence (as evidenced by ever evolving fem-centric laws, educational and financial handicaps), or religious social parity, or even efforts to achieve its vaunted social equalism between the sexes. What feminine independence truly means is removing the man – independence from men. Feminine independence’s idealized state is one where women are autonomous, self-contained, self-sufficient and self-perpetuating single-gender entities.

If that revelation seems aggrandized and over the top, it should. It’s extreme, because the purpose itself is extreme. When you consider that the sexes have coexisted in relative gender complementarity, to produce our very proliferate species, for a hundred thousand years, the idea and implementation of separating the sexes into independent and solitary entities is extreme. Obviously effecting this independence is an impossibility for a race of social animals like human beings. We’ve relied on cooperative efforts since our tribal beginnings and the species-beneficial psychological hardwiring of that cooperation is one trait that made us so successful in adapting to changing, dangerous, environments.

For most manosphere readers (especially MRAs) I don’t think I need to illustrate the many manifest ways that women are dependent upon the men; if not men’s generated resources and provisioning, then certainly their parental investment, companionship, emotional and sexual interest. We’re better together than we’ve ever been apart – even when the ugly mechanics of hypergamy, or male aggression, or any number of negatively perceived gender dynamics prove useful survival traits for us, there is no true independence between the sexes. There is interdependence.

This is what equalism makes a mockery of. In its striving for a homogenous goal-state of androgynous gender-parity it fails to account for where the species-success that the complementarity of the past 30,000 years has brought us. From a heroic male perspective we generally accept that no man is an island, but feminism and equalism disagree – a Strong Independent Woman® is an island,..or she will be just as soon as a man gives her her due to become so.

He’s Special

special

Sunshine Mary had an interesting insight about some of my analysis of Soft Dread:

It may come as a comfort for a guy who’s unused to sentimental declarations of appreciation, but it’s important to remember the why in that declaration, rather than the who in that declaration.

Although it seems mercenary, there is some truth to that. However, we are grateful because our husbands have saved us from spinsterhood. So it’s not a “rather than” situation, it’s that we are grateful to him because of what he has done…it’s both the who and the why. I wouldn’t have wanted to be saved from spinsterhood by just any man, ya know?

Mary knows I love her, and this is in no way a cut on her, but here’s a new item to add to the Hypergamy doesn’t care list:

Hypergamy doesn’t care about who you are, it only cares about what you are.

Your awesome personality, charm and any number of ingratiating personal traits are all perks – value added – that contribute to what you might consider Relational Equity, but as we’ve already observed, Hypergamy doesn’t care about Relational Equity. The problem with Mary’s estimation here is she hasn’t considered women’s Hypergamic capacity to make any man into a special man so long as he meets her Hypergamic criteria.

Chick Logic

In the past I’ve described the female sexual strategy as schizophrenic, but what it really is is pluralistic. All the jokes you read as 4Chan memes about ‘chick logic’ are only funny because we all have an intrinsic, largely unspoken, understanding of this sexual pluralism. The female sexual response is characterized by a dual nature, Alpha fucks and Beta bucks.

That’s the simplistic, distilled version ready for easy consumption and understanding, but the feminine sexual response is much more detailed on an individual level, and much more significant on a social level than just this jargon. Every stimulus bearing on the feminine, from how she’ll explain her girl’s night out to her LTR Beta, to how women in the workplace can rejigger legislature to create a society directed by the feminine imperative, all come back to the Alpha fucks / Beta bucks equation for optimizing Hypergamy.

Alpha fucks and Beta bucks is literally a biological imperative for women. I wrote in Balancing Sexual Pluralism about this pluralism describing the desire for that perfect balance of Alpha sexuality when ovulatory impulse predisposes women to it, as well as Beta comfort and security when her cycle predisposes her to it. This isn’t just my speculations, it’s a scientifically documented phenomenon common to all women. Yes, in this instance, all women are like this. It is literally in their DNA.

Hypergamy is the constant striving for an optimization of a woman’s sexual plurality. Although there may be behavioral permutations that women will use to achieve it, or the imitation of it, the underlying motivation of Hypergamy is the same for all women. It’s a hard-coded psychological survival script that’s benefitted the human race since our tribalist beginnings.

The War Brides Effect

Recently there’s been a lot of discussion on the forums I frequent about  Michelle Knight, Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus being held captive by Ariel Castro for a decade. Let that sink in a minute, a decade. That’s 10 years. That’s a lot of life to live. That’s a lot of normal to get used to. There are other cases like this; Jaycee Dugard and  Elizabeth Smart come to mind, but are all of these instances the results of a hard-wired Stockholm Syndrome in women?

As it applies to women, I think Stockholm Syndrome is a convenient term for psychology to a give a name to what really amounts to adaptive hypergamy. Granted, due to media sensationalism we may not hear about incidents where men have been taken captive for as long, but this identifying with one’s captor is far more prevalent in women than men.

Primarily I attribute this to the War Bride effect, wherein evolution selected-for women with a psychological facility to adapt to a new dominant male captor as a species-beneficial survival trait. Have a read of War Brides for the full theory, but the short version is essentially this: in early tribal societies, women evolved a capacity to accept new out-tribe (presumptively Alpha) conquering men as their masters after the fathers of their children were killed or otherwise defeated and neutralized.

This is not unfounded historically. There are documented tribal traditions in cross-culture societies where it was not only accepted, but expected of a man who’d defeated another in a challenge to assume responsibility of the slain man’s children and wife(ves). In terms of inter-tribal warring, it was common practice for the conquering tribe’s men to take (and often rape) the defeated tribe’s women. Another, more humane, version of this War Bride effect is found in Old Testament Jewish law where a dead man’s brother was expected to take his wife to bear children irrespective of the woman’s interest.

I originally went into detail in War Brides about this dynamic due to men’s observing women’s ease of transitioning romantically from one lover to another. That facility is a vestige of a psychology evolved to ensure Hypergamy is optimized with the best mate a woman’s environment (and her own physical conditions for attraction) will allow her. More often than not, in our evolutionary past, a woman’s conditions and environment were not of her own choosing, thus psychological contingencies had to evolve in order for women to maintain a mental and emotional dissonance while still ensuring as Hypergamously optimal a situation as she could.

Women lacking the mental capacity for selective, impersonal indifference to men would’ve been selected-out, either by debilitating emotional breakdown or by her new captor’s disregard for her provisioning. We can draw modern day parallels to the latter situation when we hear about how a woman might divorce her previous Beta provider husband for an Alpha lover only to regret having done so. It’s not the emotional consideration she regrets, but rather the loss of provisioning when her Alpha pumps and dumps her. Hypergamy is sated from one side of her sexual pluralism (Alpha fucks), only to create a deficit on the other side (Beta bucks).

War Brides vs. Alpha Widows

Where all this gets interesting is in considering the Alpha Widow dynamic;

 These are the Alpha Widows – women so significantly impacted by a former Alpha (or perceptually so) lover that she’s left with an emotional imprint that even the most dutiful, loving beta-provider can never compete with. A woman doesn’t have to have been an archetypal slut in order to have difficulty in pair bonded monogamy.

On the surface of it, it may appear that the Alpha Widow dynamic contradicts the War Brides dynamic, but if we dig deeper we find that they are both mutually reinforcing principles, and both are expressions of Hypergamy attempting solve the problem of women’s plural sexual strategy.

It is actually a woman’s capacity for selective indifference that predisposes her to an Alpha Widow state because the Alpha(s) she “can’t get over” imprinted an idealized state of an optimized Hypergamy for her. So the guy she banged in high school or college (the one with enough Alpha impression to take her virginity) is the idealization she harbors while married to the dutiful Beta. Even the abusive lout that a battered wife keeps returning to and refuses to press charges on, still represents that Hypergamous ideal to her.

Women will pine for the most significant Alpha they’ve experienced in life. It’s not who the Alpha was it was what he represented to her in terms of an idealized Hypergamy. That’s not to delegitimize women’s genuine feelings of love, respect and devotion for that Man, but it is to say that all of those feelings are consequences of her impression of an idealized Hypergamy.

There’s a lot being made about how women should or shouldn’t settle for ‘Mr. Good Enough’ before it’s too late. Granted, much of women’s indignation about settling for less than they deserve stems from an overly exaggerated appreciation of their true (and decaying) SMV courtesy of social media and social conventions intended to alleviate the anxiety of the approaching Wall. However, the underlying psychology of that indignation is rooted in women being forced to acknowledge that they’ve reached a point in their lives where they can no longer achieve an idealized Hypergamy.

So the stress responses are social variations of “Don’t tell me I can’t have it all”, “I deserve better than ‘good enough'” or, “Look at (insert aging celebrity’s name), she’s proof that you don’t have to settle.” All of these are pleas for a recognition of an imperfect ability to balance her sexual pluralism.