personal interpretations

Year Three

year_3

August 18th was the 3 year anniversary for The Rational Male. My apologies for not having dropped this post sooner, but I held off until September because I wanted to post the most accurate numbers I could for August. That, and I think I needed to hammer out the concepts of the past 3 weeks topics before they escaped me.

So here it is readers, three short years ago I finally decided to motivate myself to commit almost 10 years of SoSuave forum posts and all of those concepts into a unified blog – and then dare to write a book.

This has been an interesting and contentious year for me. In August of 2013 I had just returned to Nevada after living in Florida for the past 8 years. My work and living situation changed drastically, but now in hindsight, for so much the better. My relocation couldn’t have come at a worse time as I was about half through the first book I’ve ever attempted writing and had to delay it month after month as I basically rebooted my life and the lives of my wife and daughter.

I officially published The Rational Male on October 1st, 2013 and it’s been one of the best things I’ve ever done in my life. It certainly wasn’t easy and I’ve got a new edition, with better editing coming on the heels of the next volume of Rational Male.

Once the book published it allowed me to step back a bit from my blog writing to see how these core principles fit into a larger whole of where I wanted the blog and possibly the next book to go.

In just under 9 months the response has been truly humbling for me. That probably sounds like some standard bullshit an author is supposed to say – even calling myself an “author” still feels kind of strange – but when I receive emails and comments, or read reviews on Amazon about how what I’ve written in the book and blog has changed people’s lives, helped them to understand both women and themselves better, and even prevented suicides, ‘humbling’ is the only word I can muster.

I’ve had more than a few readers ask me if I’ll ever take up writing full-time, and I think the answer is always going to be ‘no’. I never set out to make a book or even writing my livelihood. I make a good living doing what I do, so I don’t need to write a book to supplement my income. I write because I feel it’s important to reveal how things work in intergender dynamics to help men avoid the traps and life altering decisions most make because they simply had no one expose what’s under the hood with respect to women and how the Game is played.

I also feel it’s important for me to stay in the game so to speak. To an overwhelming degree what I write is the result of the experiences I’ve had being long employed in various industries that keep me out in the world in a social context. I’ve had the unique experience of both being “in the field” and observing behavior while also being a married Man and father. Honestly, one of the reasons I decided to move back to Nevada was to maintain this situation. My place isn’t behind a desk (at least not Thursdays – Saturdays), it’s out in the world doing something, creating things and moments, and learning from them.

In three years I have never monetized the Rational Male, nor do I have any plans to do so. As my blog numbers have steadily risen I’ve had several opportunities to do just this, but this blog has never been just about me. I’ve always been pretty upfront with my numbers at Rational Male and as they’ve climbed I’ve always believed this was a watermark of how the manosphere on whole has expanded into popular consciousness. The rise you see in these numbers represents the growing awareness of the Red Pill, Game and men coming to understand the realities of the social and psychological landscape of intergender relations that they find themselves in.

Personally I find this very encouraging.

The Rational Male – Preventive Medicine

My most immediate plans for the rest of 2014 is to complete the next volume of The Rational Male – Preventive Medicine. I had initially planned this book to be a quick hit one-off ebook with an expanded focus on the Preventative Medicine series of posts I published this spring, but the rewriting and compiling fluidly blew up into enough material for a whole new volume.

This book, while still incorporating some past posts, has a deliberate purpose of helping men (both red pill and the uninitiated) to understand modern feminine nature so as to help them avoid the worst of the most common life-decisions with women as well as to aid them in understanding what’s happened to them in past, and what possibly awaits them in future relationships.

This will be the primary focus of the new book. The Rational Male I consider the core-work, but Preventive Medicine will build upon this core with a direct purpose. Preventive Medicine will be the answer for the men who “wished they’d had all of this information before” they made the choices they made, and to help them understand why they did.

Moving Forward

Lastly, I’d like to state now that this blog has been, and will continue to be the testing ground for red pill / Game concepts. It will continue to be an unmoderated forum, and as such, as a marketplace of ideas, sometimes this means considering blue pill dissent and occasionally outright trolling. I’ve always felt the benefits of open discourse outweigh the nuisance of simple myopic hating, and more often than not I’ve been rewarded with having my commenters make the same counterpoints to these individuals I would’ve made myself. This is a wonderful gauge of how well men (and some women) understand and internalize the ideas I’ve offered here, as well as educating me of things I may not have considered about those very same ideas.

I should also add that despite the occasional suggestion that I moderate the comments I’ve found that in 3 years my commenters really moderate themselves and others. I think this is a testament to the sincerity and genuineness of interest in those commenting over the years. I’d like to thank you all for keeping this standard of commenting. One of the best compliments I get is when a newly unplugged guy lets me know that he benefitted as much from the level of discourse in the comments as he did from a particular article that brought him to The Rational Male.

The message and purpose of The Rational Male will never be watered down, and certainly never for the sake of my personal betterment. The unvarnished, sometimes difficult truths of the red pill will continue to be this blog’s priority. The purpose of this blog isn’t affirming anyone’s relationships or dogma, or compromised by anyone’s individual circumstance; neither is it meant to discourage those relationships or foster a hopeless nihilism – the purpose is education.

What anyone takes from that education I leave to the individual. I will continue to provide my own insights and what I may think are ‘best practices’ with regard to what this education represents for men (and I encourage others to do so as well in the commentary), but ultimately what works best for myself or others may not be what works best for someone else.

As I’ve stated before, I don’t want to show you how to become a better man, I want you to show you how to be a better man. What’s discussed here will often show you solutions or give you actionable information about how to make yourself a better man, but in the end it must come from you.

Thank you all for your involvement in making this blog a better collective experience for everyone.

Here’s to another year of Rational Male.

Game Changers

game-changer

Whenever I consult teenage guys or young adult men I’m always reminded about how my ‘Game’ has changed over the course of my lifetime. The 17 year old Rollo Tomassi would be be appalled at the mindset of the 46 year old Rollo Tomassi.

Granted, much of that shock would probably be attributed to the lack of experience my younger self had with regards to female nature, human nature and, if I’m honest, I suffered from the same naiveté most young men do when it comes to judging people’s character. In fact, at the time, my belief was that I shouldn’t ever judge anyone’s character, nor did I, nor should anyone really, have the right to.

Part of that assumption was from an undeveloped religious learning, but more so it was due to a youthful idealism I held – I’d been conditioned to believe not only that you “can’t judge a book by its cover”, but also that you shouldn’t do so, and ought to be ashamed for considering it.

I’m flattered that people might think I’m some phenomenal interpreter of psychology, the nature of women, intergender relations and a model upon which men should aspire to in order to get laid and still have a great (now 18 year) marriage. It has not always been so.

If I have any credibility now it’s not due to my getting everything miraculously right, but because I had everything so horribly wrong more often than not.

One of the most valuable lessons I learned in my time studying psychology and personality studies is that personality is alway in flux. Who you are today is not who you will be in another few years. Hopefully that’s for the better after learning something and applying it towards your own personal progress, but it could equally be a traumatic experience that changes you for the worse.

For better or worse, personality shifts – sometimes slowly, sometimes suddenly – and while you may retain aspects of your personality, mannerisms, talents, past experiences and beliefs into the next iteration of yourself in a new phase of your life, rest assured, you will not be who you are now at any other time.

Game Changes

I’m sorry if this sounds all fortune cookie to you at the moment, but it’s a necessary preface to understanding how Game changes for men as their life situations and circumstances change during different phases of their lives and the shifts in their own personalities and learned perceptions change as they age.

It’s an easy step for me to assume that, were I to find myself single tomorrow, I wouldn’t approach Game in any degree as I would were I the 26 year old version of myself. Indeed, the primary reason I’ve involved myself in expanding the Preventative Medicine series into the next volume of The Rational Male is to help men at different phases of their own development understand what to expect from women (and themselves) during these periods of their life.

About two weeks ago I broached the subject of how Game should be a universal knowledge-tool for the everyman. My intent in Game and Circumstance was to shine some light on how Game and red pill awareness is (should be) a benefit for men regardless of their circumstance.

As I expected, the comparisons of Looks vs. Game was the inevitable discussion in the comment thread, because the presumption is that a man’s most evident condition is how he looks and how women are or are not aroused / attracted to their perception of him. I’ve written more about this Alpha Fucks / Beta Bucks arousal dynamic than I care to review at the moment, but suffice it to say I do place a high importance on a man’s physical bearing.

However, my intent wasn’t to engage in a debate over the importance of looks, but rather that Game and red pill awareness is applicable for men of every social or personal condition – even the short, pudgy guy who empties the trash in your office. He may not have the potential to enjoy sex with a swimsuit model, but the tenets of Game can help him improve his life within his own circumstances.

Game Beyond PUA

When I was writing The Rational Male I specifically wrote and published a post on the Evolution of Game to be included in the book in order to demystify an impression of Game which I still think people (particularly the blue pill uninitiated), sometimes intentionally, misconstrue as some magical panacea to their ‘girl problems’. My definition was thus:

For the unfamiliar, just the word ‘Game’ seems to infer deception or manipulation. You’re not being real if you’re playing a Game, so from the outset we’re starting off from a disadvantage of perception. This is further compounded when attempting to explain Game concepts to a guy who’s only ever been conditioned to ‘just be himself‘ with women and how women allegedly hate guys “who play games” with them. As bad as that sounds, it’s really in the explanation of how Game is more than the common perception that prompts the discussion for the new reader to have it explained for them.

At its root level Game is a series of behavioral modifications to life skills based on psychological and sociological principles to facilitate intersexual relations between genders.

Game has more applications than just in the realm of intergender relations, but this is my best estimation of Game for the uninitiated. Game is the practical application of a new knowledge and increasingly broader awareness of intergender relations – often referred to, for convenience, as Red Pill awareness, by myself and others in the broader manosphere. Game begins with red pill awareness and using that awareness to develop Game.

The body of infield evidence collected by 15 years of PUA is far more reliable and valid than anything social science has produced on seduction – Nick Krauser

As I’ve written in the past, everyone has Game. Every guy you know right now has some idea, methodology or system of belief by which he thinks he can best put himself into a position of relating to, and becoming intimate with, a woman.

From even the most rank Beta plug-in to the 14 year old high school freshmen boy has some notion about what he, and by extension all men, should do in order to become intimate with a girl. I described this a bit in Beta Game where I outlined the Beta plan of identifying with women’s “needs” and adopting a feminine-primary mental point of origin in order to become more like the target(s) of his affection.

What ‘formalzed’ Game comes down to is what genuinely works for the betterment of his life. Men don’t seek out the manosphere because their Beta Game works so well for them.

 

I’ll admit, this was my own Game when I was in my late teens. Like most properly conditioned young men,I subscribed to the idea that men needed to be more empathetic and sensitive to women’s experience (rather than putting priority on his own) as the most deductive means to getting a girlfriend who’d appreciate my uniqueness for being so ‘in tune’ with the feminine.

If you’d have asked me at the time (the mid 80’s), my belief was that the best way to ‘get the girl’ was to take women at their word, use their “advice“, be their friend, make her comfortable, sacrifice your own (chauvinist) self-importance and support her importance, and mold your incorrect male self into a more perfect feminine ideal. The idea was that the lesser you made yourself, the more you made of her, and the more likely she was to reciprocate intimacy in appreciation.

That was my Game up until I learned through trial and painful error that women loath a man who needs to be instructed on how to actually be more attractive to women. I didn’t understand that by my subscribing to this spoon-fed feminization Game and overtly advocating for it I was only advertising to the very girls I wanted that I Just Didn’t Get It.

This was simply the first stage of Game changing for me, and I’m fairly certain that you’d read a similar story from most of the manosphere’s heaviest hitters. I’m peripherally familiar with the early histories of the likes of Roosh, Nick Krauser and even Mystery, so I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to say that the Game they practice today would be foreign to their younger selves.

When I moved into my rock star 20’s I began practicing a new form of Game, one based on social proof and demonstrating higher value (DHV).

Of course I had no idea I was practicing any Game at the time. I had reinvented myself and my identity shifted into that of a guy who was Spinning Plates, being more self-concerned and enjoying the benefits of that social proof and DHV; but if you’d asked me what I’d done to effect that change, or how my Game was affected by it, I wouldn’t have been able to give you an answer then – Game was just instinctual for me.

Now in my married years, as a husband and the father of a teenage daughter, and my professional life in the liquor and casino world where I interact with beautiful women on a weekly basis, I still employ Game when I don’t realize I am.

However, that Game is the compounded, internalized result of what I’ve learned and used since the days I believed in the “be nice for girls to like you” teenage Game. Amused Mastery, Command Presence and a few other principles became much easier to employ as a mature man, but also a new grasp of how women’s lives have a more or less predictable pattern to them.

Thanks to my time studying behavioral psychology I understand the methods women use to prompt and provoke men (shit tests). Thanks to my red pill awareness and simple understand of how women’s biology influences hypergamy I now understand why they do so – and more importantly, how to avoid the traps of falling into the worst aspects of women’s dualistic sexual strategy.

All of this influences my ‘Game’ in the now. As before, I don’t play a constant, conscious game of mental chess in my dealings with women (and even the men in my social and professional life), I just live it.

So, in closing, it’s important to consider that the concept of Game you might be struggling with now was probably some other man’s experience before you encountered it. What is Game for me at 46, will most likely not have the exact same utility for me at 56, but if I stay sharp and learn along the way I’ll develop a new Game for that phase of life.

In Roosh’s most recent book, he has a quote in it that struck me (I paraphrase): There are a lot of men who tell me they wish they knew back then what they know now, but in all likelihood that knowledge wouldn’t serve them as well as they believe it would. They’d simply make new mistakes (and hopefully learn from them) based on the things they never had any experience of in the now.

There is always additional knowledge a man can know even when he possess the highest level of knowledge.

 

 

Separating Values

value

Every so often I’m in the midst of considering an idea, sometimes even typing away at a draft, when the internet gods hand me the divine gift of an example of exactly the concept I’m attempting to make a bit more concrete. Today was one of those days.

59 year old Robin Korth made an effort in feigned indignation on the Huffington Post last Saturday. I can’t imagine most of my readers haven’t been made aware of it already since this story is making the rounds in the manosphere; Return of Kings and Chateau Heartiste were predictably first to the punch. Please do, at the very least, skim through these posts (they’re not long); they provide many more examples of red pill wisdom than just the points I’ll make today.

These blogs have already done an admirable job in dissecting Ms. Korth’s feminist boilerplate, male-shaming efforts so I don’t really feel the need to toss another log on that fire. Briefly though, Robin was upset that a 55 year old man she met online found her body beyond his threshold of physical arousal – in other words, she didn’t pass the boner test for him.

For all her self-induced self-perceptions of what she believed men should find attractive arousing about her, the man, Dave, was completely honest with her about his evaluation of her sexual market value. But as I’ve stated in prior threads, women say they want honesty, but they never want full disclosure.

Dave went so far as to make a counter offer, by making suggestions she might better present herself in a more sexy context for him to increase her arousal potential:

We talked for some time more, my head reeling at the content of the conversation. He spoke of special stockings and clothing that would “hide” my years. He blithely told me he loved “little black dresses” and strappy shoes. He said my hair was not long and flowing as he preferred, but that was okay because it was “cool looking.” I felt like a Barbie Doll on acid as I listened to this man. He was totally oblivious to the viciousness of his words. He had turned me into an object to be dressed and positioned to provide satisfaction for his ideas of what female sexual perfection should be.

He explained that now that I knew what was required, we could have a great time in the bedroom. I told him no. I would not hide from my own body. I would not wear outfits to make my body more “tolerable.” I would not undress in the dark or shower with the bathroom door closed. I would not diminish myself for him — or for anyone. My body is beautiful and it goes along with my mind and my heart.

I’m just going to take a moment here to point out a few notable observations.

Initially I assumed Dave was attempting to establish Frame, and maybe in a Beta way he was, but in doing so Dave is negotiating desire – his own desire, and this is equally ineffective when men do it from an advantage because eventually a man will realize he’s compromised his genuine passion and the woman will grow resentful.

Also, Dave makes the mistake of appealing to Robin’s reason – an obvious Beta tell. Like a properly conditioned Beta, Dave lays everything on the table in full disclosure. Most feminized men internalize the popular notion that women want to know and discuss the sexual things “they like” in order to pragmatically and rationally fulfill each other’s “needs.”

It’s counterintuitive for men to express what they like sexually, especially when this trope is taught to them as part of their ‘open communication’ (i.e. “the key to a great relationship”®) sensitivity training. What Robin was really upset with was less about his words and more about her hypergamous filters being tricked by a guy who ‘just doesn’t get it’ that a woman has to want to please a man.

Genuine, unnegotiated desire doesn’t work rationally or pragmatically.

If Dave had read The Gift he would know that buying for, or requesting that a woman wear lingerie is a Beta push. A woman buys and wears lingerie to please a Man for whom she has a desire to please – anything else is a form of negotiating desire.

However, Ms. Korth’s example is one of a commonly solipsistic woman who’s default presumption is that pleasing anyone but herself is self-diminishing servitude.

I can’t say as this comes as a shock – most properly conditioned women now feel that just cooking for a man is a form of submitting to, and appreciating him for, his authority (cooking has become the expectation of men to prove their worth in a fem-centric role reversal). Under the doctrine of egalitarian equalism any act of anything less than mutually autonomous independence has the potential to be turned into (the perception of) patriarchal domineering.

Conflating Values

One of the major problems women have, and more than even some red pill men have, is the conflation of sexual market value with their intrinsic personal value as a human being.

It needs to be emphasized that while personal value is influential in sexual market value, SMV is distinct from your value as a human being. I’m stressing this because, in the age Disney Princess empowerment, this conflation of the two has become a go-to social convention; and not just for women.

What Korth suffers from is presuming her personal value is her sexual market value.

It’s disruptive to her self-perceptions and ego-investments when that presumption is challenged by a man who doesn’t want to fuck her for reasons based on the intrinsic value she believes she’s entitled to by virtue of maturity and imaginings of self-sufficiency. Just as women aren’t aroused by men’s own self-concepts of virtuousness and aspirations of higher purpose, men aren’t aroused by whatever ephemeral self-perceptions a woman may have.

From the Timeline of the Professional Woman:

This is the overreach of the feminine imperative – to attempt to thwart men’s biological predispositions by convincing them what they should find attractive and arousing in women. This becomes all the more ironic when you consider that the women the imperative would have men be attracted to are masculinized versions of  women.

Feminist ‘equalism’ is always shocked that evolved human biology and its feral predispositions won’t cooperate with it, but such is the frustration with any social order or ideology which fails to account for the realities of human being’s natural states and biological imperatives. There is a conceived, higher-order expectation that, through freewill, conviction or some other learned, reasoned means, people will rise above the influence of their base nature and comply with what they believe will make for an idealized existence.

What egalitarian equalisim, struggles against is basic human instinct, nature and impulse.

Sexual Market Value vs. Personal Value

After two years since publishing it, my SMV chart continues to be a benchmark for manosphere / red pill theory and it’s extended beyond whatever humble hopes I had for it. However, it’s always been very contentious because it places a valuation on men and women according to the dictates of the sexual marketplace:

[…] however for our purposes today it is important to note that these valuations are meant to encompass an overall sexual value based on both long and short term breeding prospects, relational desirability, male provisioning capacity, female fertility, sexual desirability and availability, etc. et. al.. Your milage may vary, but suffice it to say the ten scale is meant to reflect an overall value as individuated for one sex by the other. Outliers will always be an element of any study, but the intent is to represent general averages here.

When you attempt to quantify any aspect of human ‘value’ you can expect to have your interpretations of  it to be offensive to various people on the up or down side of that estimate. There is simply no escaping personal bias and the offense that comes from having one’s self-worth attacked, or even confirmed for them.

The first criticism I’ve come to expect is usually some variation about how evaluating a person’s SMV is “dehumanizing”, people are people, and have intrinsic worth beyond just the sexual. To which I’ll emphatically agree, however, this dismissal only conveniently sidesteps the realities of the sexual marketplace.

Again, sexual market value is not personal value. Personal value, your value as a human being however one subjectively defines that, is a definite component to sexual market value, but separating the two requires an often uncomfortable amount of self-analysis. And, as in Ms. Korth’s experience here, this often results in denial of very real circumstances, as well as a necessary, ego-preserving, cognitive dissonance from that reality.

Denial of sexual market valuation is a psychological insurance against women losing their controlling, sexual agency in their hypergamous choices.

You Shouldn’t Know This Stuff!

I recently read a story on the Red Pill Reddit forum about a guy who’s girlfriend discovered my book he’d been reading. She began picking through various sections and, expectedly, got really pissed off at the chapters on SMV (the chart in particular). They both discussed the parts she’d read and she admitted she wanted to read the whole thing, but from what they talked about she confessed that there wasn’t really anything she disagreed with.

Her words were, “You men shouldn’t know this stuff!”

It wasn’t that she was irritated by the sections of the book, but rather the fact that men might become aware of women’s sexual strategies as laid bare by the SMV sections and chart.

In the most visceral, biological sense, the primary value of women to men is sex. Almost a year ago I was involved in a lively blog discussion about how men sexually size up women within the space of a glance. Either a woman has sexual potential or she doesn’t. Women like to complain that this is sexual objectification, but men’s brains are literally wired to do exactly this. When we see an arousing woman it triggers the parts of our brains involved with tool manipulation – that’s a feature, not a bug, of the male sexual response.

That may seem shallow or dehumanizing, but just because sexual valuation is a prime value for women it doesn’t mean it’s their only value – in fact far from it. However, there is a distinction between the two, but there’s is a definite utility to women’s interest in maintaining their hypergamous selectivity when they conflate the two together, or deny / reject the validity of sexual market value altogether.

This is what Ms. Korth, and countless other women who share her mindset, has illustrated here. The reality is that a man, Dave, is separating her sexual market value from her estimation of her personal self-worth (inflated and exaggerated as it may be). Robin mistakenly believes her self-impression should be her sexual market value, but this simply isn’t, and never will be, the case.

Balancing Act

balancing-life

Donal Graeme had some very relevant ‘musings’ about last week’s post that summed things up and provides me with a great prelude into this week’s post. I hadn’t intended these last couple of posts (and now this one) to become another series (again). I suppose they are now, but I don’t think I’ve quite hit this from all angles just yet. In the interests of full disclosure I should point out that these last three posts were inspired by the first section of the Preventive Medicine book I’m presently working on so it helps organize my thoughts.

From Donal Graeme’s Removing the Mask:

Many, if not most, men would not be content to marry a woman whom they realize is choosing to marry them solely as a meal ticket, and effectively a sperm donor as well. It should surprise no one that men don’t like to be used in that way, and will balk at it if they realize that is what is happening. Hence the importance of hiding what is going on from them.

On the other hand, this repulsion at being used is mitigated/countered by a sense of desperation in many men in the West. Owing to the nature of the SMP, they have limited options when it comes to female companionship. Naturally, this makes them desperate, and they are willing to take on women they wouldn’t otherwise if it gets them at least some measure of opportunity with them.

What seems to be happening is that many women are now certain that male desperation in the future will be greater than any sense of male self-respect, and so they can do whatever they want and not have to hide it. Part of me wonders if women see the ability to be open about their intentions/strategy as a status symbol- a woman who can act that way is a woman of value, and therefore a woman to be envied. The problem with this strategy, though, is that it relies on male desperation not having any limits. I suspect this to be a grave mistake. This is because the average quality of women in the West has been dropping fast, perhaps even faster than male desperation has been rising. If that is the case, we will soon reach a point where most men will simply not accept the (Western) women who are available, no matter how desperate they might have become.

All of this plays into part of this subject- the looming fight between women. Women at the margins of “value” will start to feel the pinch first. The “where have all the good men gone?” articles out there seem to indicate that this has already begun. It will only increase in tempo over time as more and more women drop below the acceptable rate for most men. Combine this with many men being burned or realizing what a danger most Western women are, and you get a huge disparity in outcome between the female “haves” and “have-nots”.

This may seem optimistic coming from me, but I think it will be ‘educated’ men who are the 3rd rail in this equation.

Men at the top end of the SMV curve will always be the commodity over which women will feel entitled to. Feminine hypergamy does not seek its own level, it looks for a better-than-market optimization. Thus the ideal ‘balance’ is one where there is a greater than 1-2 SMV degree difference between that of a man and the women he spins as plates or considers to become intimate with in the long term.

The Cardinal Rule of Sexual Strategies
For one sex’s sexual strategy to become realized, the other sex’s strategy must be compromised or abandoned entirely.

One of the greatest misdirections of gender understanding over the past 60 years has been the idea that both men and women should share the same sexual strategy. A naive equalitarian ideology dictates the need for both genders to have equally similar, cooperative gender life goals, and equally similar methods to realize them. But as with most feminine-primary social engineering, Mother Nature and men and women’s biological imperatives are always at odds with this.

Generally this assimilation of a commonized sexual strategy is ingrained early on in men’s feminization conditioning. I use the term ‘assimilation’ because men are taught and conditioned to presume that the feminine sexual strategy (however most women subjectively choose to define it) is universally the correct strategy – and any deviation from what ultimately serves feminine hypergamy is met with ridicule at best, accusations of misogyny and ostracization at worst.

The goal of feminism is to remove all constraints on female sexuality while maximally restricting male sexuality.

Roissy dropped this maxim years ago, but in its simplicity it defines the Cardinal Rule of Sexual Strategies as they apply to a post-sexual revolution, feminine-primary society. Remove all constraints on hypergamy, maximally forcing men to compromise or abandon the male sexual strategy.

As I outlined in the last post, feminine hypergamy essentially revolves around optimizing (and maximally protracting) women’s unilateral sexual selection from Good Genes men and Good Dad’s men. Alpha Fucks / Beta Bucks.

From a biological perspective men’s sexual imperative is one of unlimited access to unlimited sexual availability. This isn’t to discount the very strong impulse in men to seek assurances of paternity in the children they ultimately sire, however, prior to his parental investment, the male impetus is to seek unlimited access to unlimited sexuality.

When we consider a male sexual imperative in the biological respect, and the strategies men use to effect it, it becomes easier to understand the social conventions and engineering the Feminine Imperative uses to control and maximally restrict men as sexual selectors.

Widespread ubiquitous pornography and then the social pathologizing of the male sexual response (while empowering and encouraging the female sexual response) are two very easy observations of this control. However, when we consider paternity laws, legal bans on genetic paternity testing, outlawing testosterone while making female hormones readily available and many other legal and social trends that restrict the male control not just of women’s hypergamous priority, but any degree of a man’s shadow of his own sexual strategy’s control, Roissy’s maxim becomes all the more clear.

Is Game Adversarial?

Almost three years ago I considered this question in a post. My critic at the time posed this to me:

“My biggest problem with the Ro writers is that Game is by definition adversarial. It’s us against them, don’t let the bitch win. That is most definitely Rollo’s approach, yet he commands respect from men here. I can only assume that good men read a lot of Roissy, Roosh or Rollo, incorporate some small fraction of it, and use it to improve their relationships, rather than for nefarious means.”

It took time for me to come into an understanding of the real nature of this distortion concern until May’s tragic events and the deliberate misdirections that followed it in the media and the blogosphere proper.

Game is adversarial because it has to be. I’ve gone on record stating that Game is the logical response to the changes feminism has wrought in society and gender relations over the course of the last 60 or so years, but it’s really more than that.

Game is a threat to feminine-primacy because it returns a degree of control of sexual strategy prioritization back into the hands of men. Game challenges that maximal restriction of male sexuality and leverages (however marginally) some of women’s hypergamous choice to his own purpose.

The Feminine Imperative hates Game because it’s an effective tool against its control – so anyone steeped in the conditioning of the imperative will naturally perceive that challenge as being adversarial. You’ll notice this (female) critic’s first concern was to presume men would use Game and a red pill awareness for ‘nefarious’ ends. This is a prime illustration of that terror of losing hypergamous control.

Tricks and Traps

As I mentioned at the beginning, hypergamy does not seek it’s own level. An ever pragmatic evolution drives hypergamy to seek a better-than-equal pairing. This is the evolutionary jackpot: to combine and send one’s genes into future generations with a (at least perceptually) better than equitable genetic match – and ensure one’s progeny with a better than SMV equitable provisioning.

For all of the handwringing about assortive mating recently, evolution’s capacity to adapt stagnates and stunts under conditions of homogeny. It may occur under less than ideal circumstance from a moral perspective, but assortive mating is regularly thwarted by the (usually hypergamous) drive to mate with a better than equitable sexual market value than the lesser partner.

The problem with the assortive mating equation is that hypergamy has two sides and two (often conflicting) aspects to optimizing it – Good Genes / Good Dad (Alpha Fucks / Beta Bucks). Assortive mating is not the same order as assortive pairing.

Nature has selected-for women with an instinctual capacity to satisfy and optimize the visceral needs of short-term breeding and optimizing on the genetic aspects of hypergamy. However the better-than-SMV assortive pairing aspect  relies on men adhering to and behaving within defined roles in order to optimize it.

The Feminine Imperative needs honest provider males to behave predictably in order for women to select a better than equitable provider.

The Feminine Imperative demands assurances of both better than equitable breeding and better than equitable provisioning – and it’s got a very brief window of sexual peak SMV competitiveness in which to assure them.

The imperative needs men to fulfill these roles according to calculated and defined sexual stations of each man. So any duplicity or challenge on the part of men to this defined order is a threat to the assurances that women need to optimize hypergamy. Hypergamy’s optimal window of peak SMV for women can’t afford to be tricked into presuming men are anything less or more than their feminine sexual strategies define those men’s roles as.

Hypergamy can’t afford tricks, the ‘tricks’ that Game’s breaking of their sexual strategy’s code represents to women expecting to have their sexual strategy remain unilaterally dominant. As women’s comfort level has increased with the confidence that their strategy will contain that of men’s, they are that much more offended when their strategy is figured out and read back to them by red pill aware men.

It’s an uncomfortable reminder that they’ve traded their believed capacity to intuitively filter for themselves the men who best fill their hypergamous roles; traded that is for the comfort of having men socially controlled to expect to fulfill those roles as a default.

This outrage isn’t just limited to women’s hypergamous ‘exploratory’ years in her SMV peak. Whenever you read an article or hear some 33 year old woman lament the lack of marriageable men of ‘equal’ pairing to themselves (intellectually, professionally or otherwise) know that every cry of ‘Man Up’ is really a frustrated cry over men not playing by the conditioning the Feminine Imperative assured them men would play by, before or once they got to the point of losing the capacity to attract those men.

That’s the trap.

 

Anger Management

anger-management1

If the “postponement” of the ABC 20/20 manosphere “exposé” has taught us anything it’s that the writers seeking to cast light on the manosphere are looking for crazy. They need crazy because it’s the only thing they know how, or have the patience, to confront in as minimal an effort as it takes to type a few paragraphs dismissing it as misogyny.

Writers (vichy male writers) like R. Tod Kelly are also lazy. They see an opportunity for outrage and that sells advertising. They wanted Stormfront and what they got was a global consortium of rational, well reasoned men with jobs, families and intelligence, men from all walks of life, all ethnicities, and socioeconomic backgrounds expressing ideas that don’t fit into an acculturation of feminine primacy.

If you read Matt Forney’s 20/20 interview post you’ll see the desperation for crazy in their producer’s attempts to provoke him to become what they think he should be – a frothing, angry, hate-fueled misogynist. That would make it easy for them, they know how to sell crazy. The copy gets approved, the crazies get marginalized and we move on to the next Mabeline commercial.

But they didn’t get crazy from Matt, or Roosh (OK Paul Elam looks a bit like Charles Manson in a certain light), they got well reasoned, sensibility that was hard to argue against, so they attempted to prompt the crazy by barraging Roosh with questions about rape in the hopes that he’d blow up. He wouldn’t. They wanted it to be easy. They wanted to know all they needed to know about the manosphere by sourcing Manboobz, interviewing 3 manosphere bloggers and then trot out the crazy, show off the carnival freak, demonize and marginalize him and frog march the crazy off the stage. They wanted fringe, the easy kind of fringe that their journalism, communications and women’s studies classes taught them the easy answers to confront it with.

But the manosphere isn’t fringe. For as much as R. Tod Kelly, or the producers at ABC would like it to be, the manosphere is too broad, too comprehensive, too diverse for anyone unfamiliar with it to really understand it, much less deliver an unbiased objective opinion of it. So Kelly follows formula and makes the same lame attempts at simple aspersion and misogynistic dismissal 20/20 had already failed in doing (as evidenced by their show postponement). The Daily Beast wanted its formulaic red meat, but Kelly is just dishing out ABC’s cold left-overs.

Anger is a Gift

One of the more common criticisms lobbed at the manosphere in general is that the men contributing and commenting are just angry.

It’s the easiest reaction for men and women conditioned to feminine-primacy to retort with. If men are just “bitter”, “burned” and “angry” it absolve them of really having to think critically about what those men are proposing. Anger is one of those easy answers for people who don’t want to be exposed to things that either they don’t have a real answer for (such as JBY) or are too comfortable in their ego-investments that they don’t want to be forced into any kind of introspection that might challenge them.

So the manosphere is just a collection of angry men, shaking their virtual fists and venting their frustrations about their loser status, their tough luck or being on the sharp end of the SMP.

“There’s a lot of anger towards women in the manosphere. These misogynists think all women are evil bitches out to take half their money, steal their children and force them into indentured servitude. I pity them, really I do.”

Most appeals to anger read like some variation of this. While being an easy retort, playing the anger card is also a very useful social convention for the feminine in that it’s so culturally embedded that it’s men who display the most anger and therefore more believable. Anger is the perfect disqualifier for the feminine. Accusing a man of misogyny will always be more believable than accusing a woman of misandry because men are always just angrier than women.

Beyond the quick and easy dismissal of anger about anything even marginally critical a man might say about the feminine is an underlying conditioning that prompts people to it. By that I mean, to the majority of blue-pill plugged in people, anything critical of the feminine, by default, is rooted in anger. We can link this to women’s default status of victimhood, but even relating the most objective observation of behaviors, psychology or social constructs pertaining to the feminine in anything less than a flattering light is automatically suspect of a male anger bias.

But are we angry? I can’t say that I haven’t encountered a few guys on some forums and comment threads who I’d characterize as angry judging from their comments or describing their situations. For the greater whole I’d say the manosphere is not angry, but the views we express don’t align with a feminine-primary society. Men expressing a dissatisfaction with feminine-primacy, men coming together to make sense of it, sound angry to people who’s sense of comfort comes from what the feminine imperative has conditioned them to.

Most of the men who’ve expressed a genuine anger with me aren’t angry with women, but rather they’re angry with themselves for having been blind to the Game that they’d been a part of for so long in their blue-pill ignorance. They’re angry that they hadn’t figured it out sooner.

I understand that a lot of what is written in the manosphere can certainly be interpreted as coming from a source for anger. When I (or anyone else) outline the fundaments of hypergamy for instance, there’s a lot to be angry about for a man. Women get pissed because it exposes an ugly truth that the feminine exhausts a lot of resources to keep under the rug, but for men, learning about the feral reasons for feminine (and masculine) behaviors often enough cause a guy to become despondent or angry. That impression should never be the basis for a Man’s Game, nor is it ever really an aspect of internalizing Game that will benefit him personally.

It’s easy for women and blue-pill men to discourage a Man from red-pill self-improvement by convincing him he’ll turn into an angry Jerk who no woman would want to get with, but the truth is that learning Game isn’t the positively life altering revelation it is because it begins from a root anger. It’s successful because Men have a motivation to move past the anger or despondency that comes from a better understanding of the hows and whys of the feminine. They want a better life for themselves and the women they engage with. Whether that means upping a guy’s notch count or finding a woman worthy of his attentions and provisioning for monogamy, Men realize that their betterment with women and themselves doesn’t begin with anger, or hate, or crazy.

Point, Counterpoint

For women it’s the story of Me.

As I’ve mentioned in past essays, the communicative methods characteristic of each gender primarily stem from differences in both brain function and acculturation. Women tend to rely on emotive and experiential instincts to develop an opinion or belief; men tend to rely on deductive reasoning from generalized facts to specific premises to come to an opinion.

This then is reflected in either gender’s preferred method of communication – women in the nuanced and covert, men in the blunt and overt. Using this as a premise, I’m of the opinion that the vast majority of failings to come to what should be an easy, logical consensus among both genders is frustrated by each gender’s interpretation of a problem or a social issue.

From a male perspective there is an assumption that a well reasoned, well cited establishment of point will be understood and respected as fact for a general purpose of resolving a debate. Statistics, analysis, correlation of fact and connecting related ideas and information should all serve to make a cogent argument. This isn’t to say that men wont use personal experience to illustrate a point, but the purpose in doing so is rooted in making his example an easy to understand version of his reasoned perspective. For the greater part, men’s reasonings are derived from extrinsic sources, while using intrinsic sources to embellish or illustrate a specific premise.

Women on the other hand almost exclusively rely upon personal experience and anecdotal evidence to form a premise; only using extrinsic information to support their personal interpretations when the source agrees with that premise. The innate solipsism of women promotes a self-centric primary position as the beginning of forming a premise and then progresses to extrinsic sources for ancillary support.

Case in point: Careers and Marriage. This linked article is from a 2006 opinion piece published by Forbes Magazine. Bear in mind that this is roughly six years ago; well before the current ‘Man Up’ frenzy that the Hymowitz and Bollick’s articles inspired. As you read, notice the argumentative positions each author begins with. Michael Noer’s piece begins with a concise statement of premise and then followed by reasoned extrinsic data:

While everyone knows that marriage can be stressful, recent studies have found professional women are more likely to get divorced, more likely to cheat and less likely to have children. And if they do have kids, they are more likely to be unhappy about it. A recent study in Social Forces, a research journal, found that women–even those with a “feminist” outlook–are happier when their husband is the primary breadwinner.

Elizabeth Corcoran begins her counter opinion from her own personal perspective:

OK, call me a cougar. I’ve been working since the day I graduated from college 20-odd years ago. I have two grade-school-aged children. Work definitely takes up more than 35 hours a week for me. Thankfully, I do seem to make more than $30,000. All of which, according to Michael, should make me a wretched wife.

In spite of those dangerous statistics, my husband and I are about to celebrate our 18th wedding anniversary. You’ll see us snuggling at a mountain-winery concert this month, enjoying the occasion. I don’t think I’m all that unusual–so it seemed like a good time to test Michael’s grim assertions.

Peppy, sassy, and containing all the elements of indignation that women crave to hold their interest while wrapped in a personalization that puts women (her deliberate target readership), into an associative role. Essentially she’s inviting women to live vicariously through her exceptional experience to prove a counterpoint.

Many factors contribute to a stable marriage, including the marital status of your spouse’s parents (folks with divorced parents are significantly more likely to get divorced themselves), age at first marriage, race, religious beliefs and socio-economic status. And, of course, many working women are indeed happily and fruitfully married–it’s just that they are less likely to be so than nonworking women. And that, statistically speaking, is the rub

Here Michael reasons from statistical evidence and even makes a slight point of contrition to allow for exception to those statistics. Elizabeth then opts to redirect the debate:

The experts cited in his story think that professional women are more likely to get divorced, to cheat and to be grumpy about either having kids or not having them. But rather than rush to blame the woman, let’s not overlook the other key variable: What is the guy doing?

Note to guys: Start by going to the gym. Then try some new music. Or a book. Or a movie. Keep connected to the rest of the world. You’ll win–and so will your marriage.

It’s easy to see this as the shaming tactic it is, but it’s also an attempt to reframe the debate by focusing on what women always return to as preeminent in any debate – satisfying the feminine imperative. If Michael’s pont is in fact valid then the fault lies with men, not women. And how does a woman establish this premise? By casting herself and feminine primacy as the operative goal.

Nobel laureate Gary S. Becker argued that when the labor specialization in a marriage decreases–if, for example, both spouses have careers–the overall value of the marriage is lower for both partners because less of the total needed work is getting done, making life harder for both partners and divorce more likely. And, indeed, empirical studies have concluded just that.

Again, Michael provides expert witness to fortify his premise. Elizabeth continues with the story of Me:

For us, the list starts with taxes, vacation planning and investment management. My husband likes that stuff, and it leaves me yawning. Bless him for doing it. Give me the wireless Internet system, the garden or just about any routine home repairs, and I’m suddenly the savant. Tear us apart, and we’d both be pitiful idiots trying to learn unfamiliar routines.

Michael is right that longer work hours force two-career couples to try harder to clear out blocks of family time. When we do, though, we get to enjoy a lot more. We understand each other’s career jokes and frustrations. We’re better sounding boards on what to do next. And at dinner parties, we actually like to be seated at the same table.

Feel free to pick through the entire article, but you get the illustration here. Such as it is, I haven’t drawn attention to this to put women’s argumentative approach or opinion formation into a bad light. Rather I’ve done so to give Men a better perspective of what to expect when a difference of opinion arises. There is in fact some merit to calculating personal feelings and experiences into both sides of a debate. A feminine approach may help to buffer a man’s more cold understanding of fact, while a masculine rationalism serves to buffer women’s emotionalist perspective.

The problem with appreciating both of these approaches is that in the present feminine-centric environment we find ourselves in, feminine primacy takes precedent. A woman’s feelings and interpretations are the de facto correct ones, and statistical analysis or a more rational approach is an impediment to this. You’ll see this played out in any forum or blog comment thread in which there is disagreement between genders. For Men their position comes about by objective consensus and aggregate data; for women it’s the story of Me.