women

Pro Revenge

Several years ago I wrote the essay Rejection and Revenge. Eventually this piece found its way into my third book Positive Masculinity, but I had considered it for inclusion in the first book because it covered a core principle I had discussed on the SoSuave forums years prior. A desire for revenge is something innate to the human experience. Most higher-order animals have some rudimentary sense of what’s fair. Even dogs have a sense of fairness and can experience some form of jealousy. The study of altruism in animals, to say nothing of humans, is a complex affair. However, somewhere along the evolutionary path a species did better if they cooperated and had some investment in promoting the survival of their kin.

That leads to an innate understanding of fairness and unfairness. Human’s add ethics and morality to this equation, but the root is the same; on some level of consciousness we make comparisons, and from them we evaluate what is equitable according to our own interests. It serves a species’ survival interests to evolve pattern recognition and make reasoned judgments about those patterns.

Collectivists will argue that this dynamic is proof of a need for an idealized egalitarianism to promote the greater good, while selfish gene individualists will argue that it’s evidence of unconditioned self-concern for one’s own survival. Either way, human beings are very motivated by the emotional response to a perceived injustice – so much so that we will raise those feelings to metaphysical significance. Even our gods rage over injustice; Revenge is mine sayeth the Lord. A tooth for a tooth and an eye for an eye might make the whole world blind, but it’s the foundation of our evolved sense of fairness.

And why wouldn’t fairness be so impactful for us? Our lizard brains associate that imbalance with a threat to our survival, our wellbeing and our reproductive efforts. Our limbic system detects some unfairness – usually via our peripheral awareness – we get a squirt of some hormonal cocktail into our system, and now we can’t shake this feeling that we ought to feel jealous or suspicious of someone or some environmental condition where we’re getting the short end of the stick. We are literally wired (and piped) for making judgement calls. Even when those judgement calls prove unfounded, and maybe detrimental to us, to err on one side or the other of that innate judgmentalism served our ancestors well enough to get us to where we are now.

It’s easy to consider this evaluating, judgmental nature in terms of simplistic right or wrong choices. Right being what ever benefits the individual in equal measure to another, wrong being whatever thoughts or behaviors conceal the interests of individual self-concern. The Seven Deadly Sins are all fundamentally about this evolved fairness equation. Greed might be a benefit to the individual – and their kin by association – but to our limbic evaluation it’s unfair to the greater, necessitous whole of society. Ergo, greed becomes a sin, and social conventions like do unto others as you would have done unto you becomes a counterbalance to the unfairness. However, most of the choices we make in life are not simple right vs. wrong equations. Some of the greatest stories ever told by humans are about right vs. right and wrong vs. wrong (or maybe less wrong) choices. While dogs may feel jealousy, and chimps may give a banana to another who didn’t get one, they’re rarely confronted with the nuances of justice that humans have to consider.

Why We Love Revenge

When we attach this innate sense of fairness to biological imperatives things get dicey. The purview of my work is intersexual dynamics, so I’ll be focusing on that imperative here. But remember that concepts like fairness, jealousy, revenge, rivalry and the indignation that accompany these and more are not just limited to solving one’s reproductive problem. That said, human beings love revenge. We fantasize about it. We write epics about revenge. Some invest their lives in creating fictions to find some psychological catharsis for an injustice they will never actually resolve in their lifetime. I would argue that humans enjoy the chemical cocktail, and associated emotions, that stem from a desire for revenge.

To be clear, I’m not talking about some ephemeral sense of justice. This is root-level, squirt of adrenaline, desire to balance a perceived or actual unfairness that threatens the individual’s (or associated group) survival or propagation. I’ve written extensively about women’s innate need for Indignation and the associated chemical-emotional response they derive from it. Primarily I believe this need stems from the way women (neurologically) prioritize and process emotion, but it also serves as a confirmation of their Hypergamous filtering. No indignation is more satisfying for women than the feelings they derive from thwarting the sexual efforts of a false-Alpha male. This indignation response, and the good feels that reinforce it, serves to aid (sometimes trick) women’s sexual selection imperatives and avoid their existential fear. Ultimately, what’s fair for women is whatever serves the Sisterhood’s Hypergamous best interests.

For men, and particularly the young men of this new order generation, revenge fantasies hold a similar, indignant appeal. As we’ve systematically feminized the males of the last 4 generations, we’ve also conditioned them to prioritize the same emotional responses we would expect in women. As I’m fond of saying, we raise boys as defective girls who then become parodies of defective women. Part of this conditioning is training young men to identify with the female experience, but also to want to become a part of that experience. The female experience is always the “correct” experience. So it follows that the prioritization of emotion as a peak experience is something this generation of men have internalized. Feels before reals. A common lament of women and feminized men today is that if men could be more expressive in their emotions (the emotions women are comfortable with) then the world would be a better place. Thinking and feeling like a woman makes for a better “man“, right? That’s today’s gynocentric logic.

But indignation (the result of inherent unfairness) based on reproductive imperatives works very differently in men. Men’s evolved existential fear is based on ensuring his own paternity. Determining that a child is a man’s actual genetic progeny has been an imperative evolution has embedded in men’s mental firmware. Until DNA testing arrived men had relatively no empirical way to determine if he was a cuckold (a female mating strategy) and his parental investment and evolutionary imperative had been wasted. Thus, indignation, prompted men to create social conventions to provide at least the semblance of socially enforced parental certainty. The deal is, if a man is to invest his reproductive potential in a woman and their children she should be bound by social expectations that the child is his genetic progeny. It’s only fair.

But, life’s not fair. And men and women’s reproductive strategies are inherently adversarial, so what constitutes justice in the sexual marketplace is often defined by the gender with the most social power at the time. In every age prior to the Sexual Revolution that was men, now it’s women.

Men innately process emotion, particularly negative emotion, differently than women. Again, this is how evolution wired men, but the social dictates of this time go to great lengths to condition men to believe that the way they process emotion is “incorrect”. Their natural proclivities make them bad humans when their innate way of being emotional conflicts with the “correct” female way of experiencing emotion they were taught. As a result of this conflict we have recent generations of men who seek the same indignation rush women have an innate attraction to. However, these young men get their endorphin rush from revenge scenarios that align with their innate imperatives – exposing paternity fraud, cuckoldry and exposing the duplicity of women’s innate mating strategies.

Comeuppance

Revenge is an expanding topic of interest for average frustrated young men. Closing in on almost a million subscribers, the Reddit sub-forum r/prorevenge is one of the fastest growing topics on the platform today. I was only made aware of the sub after doing some research on the popularity of tags for YouTube videos. ‘Pro Revenge’ is a Black Pill (and MGTOW) sweetheart tag for what I referred to as the Doom Pill in my video Red Meat for the Red Pill. The Pro Revenge concept is simple; guys in the forum relate stories about how ‘deserving’ people got their comeuppance. Justice or Karma is served up to cheaters, scammers, liars, thieves and other assorted attempts to offend our innately human sense of fairness. To be fair, all Pro Revenge topics are not about cheating or duplicitous women – there are loads of stories about bad employers, plagiarists and Success Porn gurus – but real-world revenge stories about women’s duplicity being thwarted by a smart Red Pill guy or just blind circumstance are clearly the most popular themes.

The popularity of young men experiencing revenge either in fantasy or vicariously through others is becoming a very lucrative profit model for agile YouTube channel hosts as well as Lifestyle Coaches. When I consider the ceaseless hunger for Red Meat topics in the Black Pill, MGTOW or just the Manosphere in general the source of that hunger always comes back to the emotional rush attendant to indignation. When a woman “gets hers” because her mating or empowerment strategy was foiled, men get a sense of righteous indignation; particularly guys who enjoy commiserating in their shared sense of powerlessness. And that commiseration has never been easier or more organized than in our new order technological world. Pro Revenge is just one of many innovations that cater to men’s desire to see things put straight and experience the endorphin rush that comes with it. It feels good to see “justice” served.

Of course, women turned the revenge fantasy into various art forms long ago. Carrie Underwood sings openly about vandalizing and destroying a cheating (now ex) lover’s expensive four-wheel drive truck and countless commiserating women (even today) can recite the lyrics verbatim. In a gynocentric social order, destruction of personal property is entirely acceptable if the perpetrator is a woman who discovered her duplicitous lover was not the man her Hypergamous instincts believed him to be. Women’s existential fear meets justice. And women and feminine-sympathetic men all nod in agreement. Essentially, Pro Revenge has been a thing for women for ages. Courtesy of centuries of bastardized Chivalry and the romantic ideal we just accept it more because Beta men reinforce it as a form of Game. Thus, we have women manufacturing their own indignation in fiction and daytime talk shows that expose an incorrigible pickup artist getting his comeuppance and confirm women’s Hypergamous intuitions. And yet, even this openly embraced double standard only serves as fuel for the Pro Revenge instincts of more young men today.

For all the hopelessness and despondency the information age has brought to men and women it’s also revealed the evolved motives beneath our want for what we think is justice. The Doom Pill is becoming the logical extension of this nihilism and the players in the Hustle Economy are now perfecting ways to profit from it. Exploiting the Gender War for fun and profit has never been easier – because this new generation of men and women enjoy the indignation derive from it so much they become oblivious to their own exploitation.

The Red Pill Path

The Red Pill, with respect to intersexual dynamics, is, and will always be a praxeology. It is unconcerned with value judgements. Issues of how one interprets the data presented by Red Pill praxeology as right or wrong is an exercise in subjectivity and personal belief. In essence the Red Pill should always be about what is – not what should be, not what seems moral, immoral or amoral. 

I knocked on about this in The Believers vs. The Empiricists back in July of 2019. The problem with adding ideology to the Red Pill is that it distorts the intent of staying as objective as possible. A Praxeology is the study of those aspects of human action that can be grasped a priori; in other words, it is concerned with the conceptual analysis and logical implications of preference, choice, means-end schemes, and so forth. In a praxeological context, the Red Pill is a ‘loose science’ concerned with the understanding of the underlying motivators of why we do what we do as men and women. It doesn’t get everything right, but it does ask the right questions. It’s these questions that make believers uncomfortable. The beauty of The Red Pill as a praxeology is that we get to write those questions and conclusions down in pencil, not ink, to be erased and edited as new information changes them. The Red Pill is not an ideology itself. Despite what many moralist critics would like to redefine it as, a Red Pill awareness is about an obligation to understanding the truth about men and women’s natures.

Yes, I know, it is impossible to be entirely objective in anything. In fact, just the thought required in asking a particular question implies a particular subjective bias. You wouldn’t be asking those kinds of questions if you didn’t subscribe to some belief-set that caused you to think about them in the first place. Even a commitment to objective truth is itself perceived as a value judgement. What’s worth your consideration is at least as important as why you think it’s worth considering. I get it. It still doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to be as objective as humanly possible, in spite of the pre-knowledge that we have underlying reasons for being curious about something.

Objectivity vs. Ideology

There. Now that’s out of the way.

What one does with the data the Red Pill praxeology aggregates, and how one interprets that information, is up to the individual. The prescriptions we create for ourselves with this knowledge are almost always a value call. The real question for men, new to the Red Pill, is are they beginning from a position of value judgement first and then seeking to find the Red Pill data that best aligns with that preconception? Or are they beginning from a neutral, objective position of interpreting this information and then forming well-thought, rational prescriptions for themselves based on that objectivity?

How we make this information useful to us is just as important as how we came to the conclusion that it should be useful to us. After having written in this ‘sphere for almost 20 years now I’ve come to see how men will use Red Pill awareness to either better (save) serve their lives by changing their minds about themselves and implementing it, or else they use that awareness to validate their preconceived belief-sets. Usually they do this by cherrypicking the parts that align with those beliefs and discarding or disqualifying the data that conflicts with them. This is how you get the Purple Pill. Accept just enough empirical Red Pill data to validate a belief-set rooted in their Blue Pill conditioning. And it’s made all the better if you can profit from pandering to those Blue Pill beliefs in others by calling yourself a ‘coach’ of some kind.

PUAs, MGTOW, MRAs, Trad-Cons, Positivity and Success Porn advocates, Red Pill Ministry Pastors, Father-Figure Fitness Coaches, Masculinity Psychologists, Female “Relationship Experts”, and a plethora of other sub-factions that reside in the ‘sphere are all belief-set prescriptions. Their subjective prescriptions either follow in the wake of Red Pill praxeology, or they find their preconceptions validated – in some part – by the data and awareness that the Red Pill brings to them.

When the information that the Red Pill presents conflicts with these belief-prescriptions, that’s when we see believers attempt to redefine the Red Pill as an ideology. When a stark empirical truth challenges an ego-invested belief, most people feel attacked. That belief is often one that people have based their lives on, so challenging the belief is challenging the way that person has lived for a long time. In terms of the Red Pill, it’s much easier to redefine or reinterpret what that empirical data really should mean to a man. And whenever we see words like should or ought we know we’re dealing with a value judgement. 

The only way a believer can protect an ego-investment challenged by Red Pill awareness is to reduce the Red Pill to an ideology. Bring the enemy to battle on your own field and on your own terms. So long as the Red Pill is just about objective observations, connecting dots and collating data, the right or the wrong of it, the value judgement of what ought to be, is irrelevant to discerning the truth. But if you can convince yourself and others that the Red Pill is in fact an ideological pursuit – not an objective pursuit – then you choose the terms of terms of the battle. If the Red Pill can be redefined as a belief-set then you can lock horns with it with your own belief-set. Then the debate isn’t about what is, it becomes about what’s right or wrong, or what that data should mean, or how it should be put to proper use in a person’s life. Hypergamy becomes less about women’s nature, and more about how women are inherently predisposed to evil as a result of it. Alpha or Beta become defined by how well a man aligns with a preexisting belief-set – “You’re not a real man if you believe/don’t believe this!” – and the Soulmate Myth might become an article of faith that wins an ideological argument.

Redefine the premise of the Red Pill as an ideology and you can fight it as an ideology. But even if you could, the data the Red Pill presents still forces a lot of conflict in the believer. That leaves the believer to reconcile that data with the cognitive dissonance he/she feels about it. It is much more intrinsically satisfying to redefine, disqualify and then re-qualify information that confounds our beliefs than it is to go into outright denial of that conflicting data. Sometimes outright denial is all that’s left.

People resort to denial when recognizing that a truth would destroy something they hold dear; and there are few things we hold more dear than our investments in what we think are right and wrong with respect to how we solve our reproductive problem. In the case of a cheating partner, denial lets you avoid acknowledging evidence of your own humiliation. Short of catching a spouse in bed with your best friend, evidence of infidelity is usually ambiguous. It’s motivated skepticism. You’re more skeptical of things you don’t want to believe and demand a higher level of proof.

Denial is unconscious, or it wouldn’t work: if you know you’re closing your eyes to the truth, some part of you knows what the truth is and denial can’t perform its protective function. This is why we say, “Once you’ve seen the code in the Matrix, once you’ve taken the Red Pill, there’s no going back.”

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

Solution: Deny the mistake or redefine the terms of the debate.

By nature men are deductive problem solvers. This is manifest in many ways, but for a Beta male who still believes solving a woman’s problems will lead to him solving his reproductive problem, more often than not it leads him to a worse life. Once a man unplugs and begins to internalize what a deeper, more accurate understanding of intersexual dynamics means to his life he’s going to look for ways to apply it to his own circumstances. This is a natural, unavoidable progression. As I’ve stated in many an essay, I’m not in the business of making better men, I’m in the business of giving men the tools with which to build better lives for themselves. I expect men, at some stage, to use what they’ve learned from what I write to change their minds about themselves and become the better men they can be with a better awareness.

I do not offer prescriptions. I do not have a one-size-fits-all formula or 12 catch-all rules that will help you live a better life. Most men want that formula, and a lot of them will pay a small fortune to avoid the work necessary to effect a real change in their lives if some coach even hints that they have the cheat codes to do it. They are sheep in search of a shepherd. I have precious few expectations of my readers, but one is that I expect you take it upon yourselves to be the artists of your own lives. If it frustrates you that I won’t hold your hand and lead you to a better version of yourself just know that going through that frustration is necessary for you to be your own man. Not an adherent, not an acolyte, but the author of your own decisions. 

A lifetime of Blue Pill conditioning has already attempted to remove that control from you long enough.

Heirs of the Blank Slate

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

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

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

“Everyone is born equal.”

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

“Double standards are so unfair.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Human System

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

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

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

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

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

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

Moralism for Rationalists

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

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

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

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

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

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

Well, men do it too, only worse.

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

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

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

The Wrong Girl

“You just married the wrong girl mate.”

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


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

“Those girls are just damaged.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Solution: deny the mistake.

Denial, July 11, 2012

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

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

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

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

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

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

Own It

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“The Believers” vs. The Empiricists

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In 2015 and again in 2018 I made this point:

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

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

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

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

False Positives

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

Who’s It For?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Feels Before Reals

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Truth & Hustle

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

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

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

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

I hear you.

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

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

This Is Important

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

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

The 21 Conventions – 2019

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

POLAND – July 11-18, 2019

21 Convention – Poland

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

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

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

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

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

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

ORLANDO – October 24-27

The 21 Convention Orlando

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Finally, there will be discount codes for both events:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Male Authority – Provisioning vs. Duty

I’ve been watching Outlaw King on Netflix recently. There’s a part where the wife of Robert the Bruce says ‘Power is making decisions, and whatever course you are charting, I choose you, my husband’ It struck me that my own wife had said almost these same words to me in 2005. When I’d decided to take a job in Orlando that would uproot us from family and friends. There was no “,…but what about my friends, career, etc.?” from her and I had no hesitation to consider anything but taking the position. She said, “You are my husband, I go where you go.”

How many men hold a default Frame in their marriage? Many women are reluctant to even accept their husband’s last name today. There’s a lot of bullshit reasons for this, but the core truth is that women have no confidence in their man in the long term. They don’t trust his ‘course’. There’s holding Frame, and then there’s establishing a long term Frame, a paradigm, a reality of his own, that defines a man’s authority in his marriage and family relationships. Women today still want marriage, but few want to defer to their husband’s ‘course’. They don’t trust him with her life.

And why would they? For the past four or five generations men have been portrayed in popular culture as untrustworthy. Either they are Beta buffoons in need of women’s uniquely female ‘reasoning’ (which is really male reasoning with breasts) to save them from themselves, or they’re malicious Alpha malcontents (or perverts) also in need of female correction to bring them to female approved justice. It’s the retribution fantasy of feminism played out in popular media, but the societal result is generations of women who have no inherent respect of men and even less trust in any beneficial course they might plot out for them as future wives.

There’s also the male perspective to consider in this. Most men approach their marriage and long term relationships from what is ostensibly an egalitarian perspective. “Equality”, playing fair, being an “equal partner” a pretense of egalitarianism, is all a cover story for a power dynamic that is truly based on resource dynamics. In a ‘modern marriage’, male authority, even just the idea of it, is ceded by default to the woman. I’ll explain why in a moment.

Today’s marriage stats and the socioeconomic variables within marriage point to a very cold truth; if you make less money than your wife, statistically, your marriage is far more likely to dissolve. In couples where a woman outearns her husband divorce rates increase. Virtually every article written about this power dynamic attempts to paint the men involved as ‘feeling threatened‘ by their wives’ success, but the visceral truth can be distilled through the process of women’s Hypergamy. As you might guess, our feminine-centric social order can never allow for an unflattering picture of women, thus men must look like ridiculous, insecure, man-babies – this is another piece of the puzzle – but the stats don’t lie, only the reasoning for them misleads us culturally.

In an “egalitarian” marriage it is actually financial considerations that imbalance that idealistic fantasy of a “coequal partnership”. Men and masculinity are made to look ridiculous, insecure, potentially violent and incompetent on a social scale. This effort to delegitimize anything male has been going on since the late 1960s. The social impact of this has resulted in several generations whose default impression of men in general is one of distrust. Either distrust based in men’s potential for abusiveness, or largely more a distrust based in a default presumption of incompetence. Women cannot trust a man with her life because a majority of men are ridiculous buffoons, no better than big children and now we add that almost 40% of them are outearned by their wives.

Is it any wonder women have no default respect for a man’s course for their lives? In fact, given these modern circumstances, fantasies of an egalitarian marriage being the ideal notion are really the only way to justify marriage at all for women. Thus, we’ve crafted a new ideal of marriage that furnishes women with legal and social failsafes to make what looks like a really horrible, life-long attachment to a buffoon or an abuser just palatable enough to have women believe things might work out for them. Don’t worry ladies, the egalitarian ideal, that any potential husband worth your consideration will subscribe to wholesale, provides you not only with options that will absolve you of all responsibility for his (and your own) failures, but you’ll never have to really do anything he says. The law is on your side, and the very premise of an egalitarian marriage frees you from ever having to go along with one of his half-baked life plans for the both of you. In fact, as long as you make more money than him, you’ll almost surely be doing the ‘course’ setting for the both of you.

Needless to say this is not conducive to women entertaining a default deference to men’s authority. If women’s baseline impression of men is one of incompetence, ridiculousness and distrust, and then you combine it with the fact that over a third of them wont be earning the same financially we begin to see the reasons for the decline in marriage today. If the default perception of men is one of expected incompetence, why would a woman ever want to get married?

This is kind of a quandary. In marriage, a man’s authority today only extends to this monetary wealth – there is no inherent authority associated with being male despite what feminist bleat about ‘male privilege’. Wealth enforces will, but women still seek to find ways around accepting that authority by assuming control of that wealth. This is one reason why “financial abuse” has been fashioned into a form of spousal abuse, but there are many other means of emotional control that mitigates male authority-by-wealth.

Even when a man is the primary breadwinner his means to authority in his marriage is still mitigated. A man’s provisioning for his wife and family has always been considered a ‘manly duty’. Even the most masculinity-confused, Vichy Males are still conditioned to assume providership as a masculine trait that is ‘non-toxic’ and approved by their teachers. In most Trad-Con thought a man isn’t even to be considered a “man” unless he can prove his competence in generating more resources than he needs for himself. The direction of every aspiration he has must be applied to providing for a future wife, their children, likely their (her) extended family and then extended to society. By the old set of books a man can’t even be given the title of “man” (or “a real man”) unless he can prove he’s prepared himself to be a good husband, father and community leader.

While there’s nothing inherently wrong with a strong desire to fulfill this provisioning agenda, the men who do accept this as their “manly duty” are conditioned to only see their sacrifices as their expected responsibility. They are actively discouraged from ever assuming any authority might be forthcoming in exchange for their sacrifices. Not even a man’s wealth is a guarantee of authority; certainly not if he’s been conditioned to believe that an egalitarian marriage is an ideal, much less a possibility.

And now we come full circle – the promulgation of an egalitarian ideal in marriage, in gender equity, in the retribution and restitution that feminism is based on, all of this and more has the latent purpose of stripping men of any concept of authority, while enforcing the ideal of male responsibility. In The Second Set of Books I made the case that most (Beta) men today live by, or would like to live by, an old social contract that on the surface seems noble. They believe in an anachronism that promises them that honor, duty, chivalry and a default respect of women will, sooner or later, be appreciated by a woman with the “quality” enough to appreciate it and show that appreciation by accepting him for her intimate attentions. Only later do they come to realize that their dedication to that anachronism is misplaced and the exchange of duty for authority is not only erased, but he’s perceived as a “toxic” monster or a ridiculous “macho” fool for ever expecting that exchange. The world is actually playing by a second set of books that expects all of his ‘honor-bound’ beliefs are his responsibility, but nothing he sacrifices grants him any authority.

Last week I hosted a Special Edition of the Red Man Group in which we discussed whether a married man today is by default Blue Pill or Beta.

RMG_Patriarchs_Title_defaultIt’s almost impossible to broach this topic without accusations of bias or personal circumstance coloring a man’s perspective of marriage – and that’s from either side of the topic. I wasn’t endorsing marriage in this; if anything I made a case against marriage based on the same questioning of men’s authority I’ve explored in this essay. By today’s standards, marriage is far too dicey a prospect for me to ever advocate for. But how far are we willing to take this abandoning of dominance hierarchies in intersexual relationships? I recently got into a debate as to whether monogamous relationships – outside formal marriage – were even beneficial for men today. In that discussion we dissected the history of monogamy and in human relations it’s at least somewhat accepted that monogamy and two-parent investment in offspring was a dynamic that’s been beneficial to our own and some other species. I think that in the past, when social circumstance was different, the concept of monogamy and the institution of marriage were instrumental in our advancement and largely beneficial. All that’s changed now and much of the second set of books I referred to in this essay is predicated on an egalitarianism that has erased male authority and placed it on the shoulders of women who are ill-equipped (and honestly not wanting) to use that authority.

This last sentence here is going to seem like heresy to those invested in blank-slate, egalitarian equalism and fempowerment, but the truth is evident and unignorable that an evolved patriarchal authority has progressed us to an age where we’ve become prosperous enough to entertain thoughts of abandoning it. Stripping men of authority while still expecting a default, and total, responsibility is a really good summation of the two sets of books – the conflict between the old and the new social contract. And yes, I’m aware of the all the arguments that this state of disempowering men is by some political design. Destabilizing the family starts with delegitimizing male authority and confusing generations of men about the aspects of masculinity. Doubt and self-loathing are key in men policing other men for presumptions of authority. It’s crabs in the bucket – when one man presumes authority there need to be ten more to pull him back down into confusion and doubt.

So where do we go with this from here? Even the most ‘Con’ of Trad-Con women will still default to their fempowerment conditioning when presented with a default male authority they are supposed to follow. Can a man be a leader in his own home anymore? MGTOWs will tell you no, and they’d be right. You can’t out-Alpha the state. But the state is still comprised of men and women with their own preconceptions and belief-sets. Our evolved firmware still predisposes us to conventional gender roles, and that predisposition is also one of women expecting  male competence, decisiveness and dominance. Women still want a man to follow in spite of their conditioning to distrust men’s competence. Maybe a new form of monogamy is in order. Egalitarianism is a dead end, it only defaults to 100% female authority and 100% male responsibility. But perhaps at some point, when things get so bad that women are forced to take a chance on the men they think are potential buffoons and abusers, a new kind of “marriage” can come out of the morass that egalitarianism has made of marriage.

How do we get back to a state of male authority based on a woman’s trust of her husband? I would like to believe I have this with my wife today, but I know that this is tenuous from the perspective of true, actionable authority. I once came down hard on a pastor who was advising the women of his congregation to “allow” their husbands to lead them. He was basically asking the women to stand down and trust God that their husbands we’re actually worthy of their trust. He didn’t know it, but his entire premise stemmed from women already acknowledging that they had ultimate authority over their husband as a given. Most pastors are pussy-whipped, so this default authority is usually presumed as a sexual threat-point women will exercise over their husbands. What he didn’t understand was that women’s authority is his default for a much deeper, more socially expansive reason. So even to ask women to allow their husbands to exercise ‘headship’ is ludicrous – it’s something even those women have no power to do because the presumption of authority is always in their favor. They can’t allow their men authority over them because the social paradigm they live in wont allow them to allow it.