To be BETA is to be afraid.


Fear is what keeps your ass in the seat and your mouth shut.  Fear of upsetting the applecart, of going against the stream, of creating a ruckus and getting yourself "in trouble".  BETAS act out of fear, moderating their behavior to fit within expectations.  BETAS don't rock the boat, they don't fight city hall, they don't go against the grain.

BETAS don't want to put themselves and what they have at risk.  They don't want to stick their necks out, because they fear the consequences of their "deviant" actions.  BETAS operate under the principal that attracting attention is a bad thing.  They fear retribution for even the attempt to take a risk.  Their fear paralyzes them into inaction and apathy, allowing the world to pass them by while they huddle down, nose to grindstone, making another dollar for the Man.

It's not that they don't want to take a risk.  They crave it, in actuality, and indulge in endless daydreams of what they WOULD have done, if only . . . and then their hamster kicks in.  There are a million perfectly good reasons why they didn't . . . do anything.  And every single one of those reasons, when you hold them up to close inspection, can be reduced to fear.  Fear of failure.  Fear of embarrassment.  Fear of losing status.  Fear of losing money.  Fear of losing your woman.  Fear of humiliation.  Fear of arrest.  Fear of what other people say.  Fear of what Authority, whomever that might be, will think.  Fear of defeat.

For many, if not most BETAS, that primal fear is that of a domineering mother.  With no legitimate authoritarian father figure to fear, testosterone-a-testosterone, then his fear revolves around that of a disapproving, shaming mother.  Their fear is not the legitimate fear of a young man who has an appreciation of his father's power and mastery approaching awe, but a fear of disappointing his mother and subjecting himself to shame and humiliation.

Men who are raised by strong mothers and weak or absent fathers don't learn the positive masculine trait of calculated risk-taking; female values punish risk, not reward it.   Women who raise boys tend to resort to shame, humiliation, and severe disappointment.  Men who are raised to endure such social controls adopt feminine, not masculine values in their interpersonal relationships.  They are trained against their nature to seek consensus and cooperate, not lead and compete.  That leaves them frustrated, in constant fear of forces that are, in actuality, far weaker than they are.

They just don't know it.  They've been told for so long that they're all but convinced that what they need to fear more than anything is the disapproval of women, not the disapproval of their fellow men.  Lack of paternal oversight has engendered a sense of disregard and disrespect for men in their minds.  They see the social and cultural weakness of masculinity, and while they yearn for a real, authentic taste of the power implicit in it, their fear of maternal rejection is far more powerful.

Betas are emotionally retarded.  The basic shame complex used as a necessary social control in childhood lingers long past its expiration date, leading to the programming that capitulates to the feminine imperative by default, regardless of his personal interest in the matter.  The result is an immature masculinity, an "extended adolescence  that can lead to permanent and often bitter BETA bachelorhood or a frustrating marriage to a gal "just like mom", in which he has transferred his social control from his mother to his wife.  All too often the BETAS think so fondly of the happiness they experienced those first few years away from Mom but before the Wife came along that they spend the rest of their emotional life in a vain attempt to recapture it.

Later in life it leads to the passive-aggressive frustration that culminates in an affair, or acting out in other "mid-life crisis" sorts of ways.   The decades of fear eat away at the remnants of his masculine soul, until the yearning for the years he lost in frustrated loneliness make him, one fateful day, weigh the cost of inaction higher than the price of action, and . . . he snaps.  The looming fear that guided his every breath since childhood grows wearisome until he cannot bear existence under its psychological oppression, and sometimes a violent or unexpected psychological trauma results: an affair, life changes, depression, suicide, or worse.  When the BETA capitulates to the feminine imperative  he capitulates to his own fear.  And when the BETA finally falls, in the end, it is often because he became a victim of his own fear.

Fear keeps the BETAS quiet.  Fear keeps them docile and controllable.  Fear keeps them . . . BETA.


ALPHAS, on the other hand, also feel fear, every bit as much as a BETA.  The difference is, they do not capitulate to it.  They see fear and risk not as warnings and punishments, but as challenges and adventures.  They live their lives not seeking to avoid discomfort and acrimony, but by consciously establishing enough adequate security and control over their lives that it limits discomfort and acrimony in the first place.

ALPHAS are not fearless, or even fear-light.  ALPHAS understand fear for what it is, and consciously choose not to be affected by it.  They understand the trap of fear and know how to avoid it.  They know the value of fear, as it is a foil by which to measure the limits of the masculine soul.  Without fear, there is no courage.  Without courage, no valor.  Without valor, there is no glory.  And we eat that glory shit up.

ALPHAS are not born, usually, they are the result of a man making the active decision to take control over his life.  "To know thyself is the ultimate form of aggression", and the ALPHA makes self-awareness the sword at his hip.  The ALPHA defines and then refines his inner Will, understands his inner-self, his strengths and weaknesses, and his potential.  The ALPHA sees opportunity in fear, not danger.  The ALPHA knows that sometimes you have to step up to the plate, take a stand, cowboy up and do what needs to be done because you know it needs to be done and you, as a conscious matter of will, make the determination or recognition that you, alone, bear the responsibility for ensuring it gets done because . . . honestly, there just isn't anyone else to do it.

You aren't born an ALPHA.  You make the decision to be ALPHA, and once you feel the sting of that commitment on every XY chromosome in your body, the rest will proceed accordingly.  That doesn't mean abandoning fear of the consequences.  That means accepting the consequences and understanding that fear is a necessary part of the process.

All this sounds lovely, truly inspirational, but it doesn't mean jack shit without a couple of real-world demonstrations of men who stepped up and took a stand when it put them at risk.  "Show me how to break my BETA!" I get in emails all the time.  I've explained to you the difference between ALPHA and BETA and their approach to fear.  Here are two examples of men who were presented with an opportunity, and instead of capitulating to fear like a BETA, they stepped up and risked themselves because they saw it as their personal responsibility to do so.

The first is this man, the neighbor who violated the usual "good fences make good neighbors/MYOB" attitude of the usual working-class neighborhood and took the risk of breaking a social taboo when he saw a little white girl trying to get out of his neighbor's house.



Charles Ramsey could have ignored it.  After all, it wasn't his business.  BETAS understand that crossing boundaries and breaking social taboos holds great risk, and they often refuse to do it even when action could mean life or death, so great is the power of that restriction.  He knew it was probably a domestic dispute, and getting involved with those is almost never a good idea.  But Ramsey allowed his intuition and his instinct guide him, and instead of folding to the fear of upsetting a neighbor, he took the risk to kick down a door, and lives were redeemed as a result.

(In the aftermath, solipsism begins to rear its ugly head already: unwilling to let the spotlight of glory shine on the dude who did the rescue, feminists have already started making this about women and domestic violence, not a man's heroism.

“In many times and places, a line like that [about domestic violence] has been offered as an excuse for walking away, not for helping a woman break down your neighbor’s door,” Amy Davidson wrote in the New Yorker on Tuesday. “How many women have died as a result? They didn’t yesterday.”

And she continues to downplay Ramsey's assistance, playfully diminishes his role by dwelling on his more "folksy" working-class idiom, and tries to focus more on the heroism of the girls.  I'm not downplaying the fortitude and patience they needed to take the opportunity -- but they were in distress.  Ramsey was not . . . and only the masculine impulse to act, and not capitulate to the feminine fear of impropriety, allowed him to act. But I digress.)

That's worthy of note . . . and of course absent from the feminist accounts, which are starting to bring up Ramsey's own colorful history with the law.  Sorry, Cupcakes, this dude rocks, no matter how you try to spin it, and he doesn't rock because of domestic violence or the sanctity of womanhood, he rocks because he was a fucking MAN who did what needed to be done. Feminism doesn't enter into it, and any attempt to make it fit is opportunistic and disingenuous   Ramsey even wants the reward money to go to the victims, speaking even more highly of his character.  I admire that, and I encourage anyone so inclined to add a little reward to his glory can donate to a fund to benefit him directly, here).

The women rescued are not the only ones saved -- their families, who have lived a tortured existence for the duration of the crime, are now free from the dread of hearing about their daughters' remains being discovered in a ditch, someday.   Because Charles Ramsey was willing to cowboy up, overcome his fear, and put his big-ass boot through a door, the ripples he creates will touch the lives of hundreds, if not thousands.  All because he saw it as his personal responsibility to overcome his fear, summon courage, and act ALPHA.

We don't encounter such horrific situations every day, but when we are presented with the opportunity to act in the face of fear, how we react defines the scope of who we are as men.  The BETA turns his head and keeps walking, rationalizing away his fear as a civil desire not to get involved in other people's problems.  The ALPHA recognizes the situation for what it is, sees himself in a position to affect change, and is willing to challenge his fear and even his own notions of his capabilities to own that opportunity.  He acts.  Usually from long practice, he allows his instincts and his intellect to conspire to inform his body what the hell to do . . . and he does it.  Boot.  Door.  Damsels rescued.  Charles Ramsey Stepped UP, broke BETA, and is hailed as a hero as a result.  As well he should be.

But sometimes the challenge of fear isn't whether or not to act, but whether or not to speak.  The Left calls this Speaking Truth To Power, but in essence it is the very Red Pill impulse to state the observable truth of a situation, regardless of the consequences.  BETAS fear this almost more than a physical confrontation.  BETAS keep their mouths shut, their ass in the seat, their head down, next problem, next question, maybe they won't see me if I'm quiet enough.  BETAS prefer hiding or running to confrontation, and those who have been habitually emotionally abused by domineering women in their childhood have been trained to do just that.

They are highly susceptible to shame and disgrace, and strongly encouraged to hand their sense of moral guidance and personal responsibility over to the nearest convenient woman.  That's very hard programming to overcome, whether you're in school, in an office, or in a relationship.  The BETA fears retribution, judgement and rejection . . . so he is willing to submit to nearly anything in an attempt to avoid it.  The last thing a BETA wants is to call attention to himself by calling attention to a problem, much less volunteering to fix it.

ALPHAS don't have that problem.  They understand that they are agents of change in the universe, limited only by their will and their situation.  They actively seek power and control, and they do not hesitate to use it when appropriate or prudent.  They learn how to use their Voice, how to assume command or control of a situation, and do not hesitate to call attention to problems that need to be addressed out of fear of retribution.

ALPHAS not only possess the self-awareness and instinct to know when and how to act, they also possess the understanding that they have the power to be a potent force in the universe, if they have the will to do so, and they assume the authority for that power along with the responsibility.  ALPHAS don't "bitch", they point out obvious and sometimes blatant flaws in the way things work.  In the absence of a legitimate structure to disseminate Authority, they assume that authority themselves, and do not hesitate to use it until a demonstrably superior Authority supersedes it.

That means that ALPHAS take a stand.  They ignore or overcome the fear of the retribution, shame, humiliation, and rejection they might suffer in taking such a bold risk.  ALPHAS are dominant in life because they are presented with situations that they deem unacceptable, and they call attention to it until it is fixed.  That is rarely popular with the established Authority, particularly if that authority has lost credibility and respect for failure to perform.  Authority without efficacy and respect is tyranny and control, nothing more.

ALPHAS speak Truth to Power, even when it could mean their ass.  That's just who they are.  That's just who this kid is. Two days ago, Duncanville, Texas high school student Jeff Bliss overcame his BETA instincts to docilely be subject to the brutal banality of his high school educational system, and instead of grumbling about it passive-aggressively on Facebook and then doing it anyway out of fear of retribution, Jeff found his ALPHA.

Jeff spoke Truth to Power, and did so mindful that the consequences could be -- personally -- dire.  When Jeff was presented with a situation he felt was unfair and ineffective, he took a stand and said what needed to be said . . . and thanks to the ubiquity of smartphones, his words have sparked a viral firestorm over the event.

Check out the balls on Jeff:

That young man needs a full ride to the college of his choice, and then a TEDtalk afterwards, as a reward for his courage and valor. He is a young man who recognized his own weaknesses, having dropped out of school for a year and experienced life as an adult without an education, and then he passionately went back once he understood its value. And when he ran up against a lack of performance, he held his teacher accountable.  He did not sit down and shut up.  He said his piece and he boldly left for the principal's office.  Now he's an internet star, and as well he should be.

Charles and Jeff both found ways to break their BETA and act.  The Red Pill recognizes the importance of action over words, but in Jeff's case his words were, in effect, actions.  Both men took responsibility for what they did, and both men are being rewarded for their courage and boldness with the glory of renown.

Of course, either situation could have ended very differently, with different variables.  But I feel that both men would have done the same thing without the cameras rolling.  Character is what you do when no one else is looking, and both of these men demonstrated their strong characters with the full knowledge of the risks, and little hope of reward.  Yet they rolled the dice anyway, took a shot to end injustice and tyranny, and found their ALPHA.  (Oh, and Jeff?  My Niece thinks you're like WICKED hot.  Just sayin'.  ALPHA = Damp panties, always).

If you want to break your BETA, that's how it's done: by embracing your fear and proceeding anyway, not fleeing it.

For all of you doubters out there, let me lay some Cosmic Wisdom on you: Love exists.


That may seem like a whacky thing to hear from a dude who prides himself on taking a Red Pill approach to life -- but the Red Pill isn't about just the harsh, stark realities of life, it's also about being honest about the good things in your life.  

Take a step back and think about it for a moment: the idea of the Red Pill is to substitute, as much as possible, an Objective perspective ("how things actually are") for a Subjective perspective ("how things seem to be through our own perception filters") when collecting data and making decisions about your life.  That means ALL things, not just the stuff we're buggin' about.

Now, I'm not running down the power of the Subjective approach to reality.  There are whole vistas of human endeavor that depend utterly on our ability and willingness to set aside the Objective facts and substitute a Subjective perspective that proves more useful.  Hope, for instance, is predicated on the idea that even though things are shitty, that things will not remain shitty . . . without any shred of evidence that is, in fact, true.

Similarly, Fortitude is based not on the idea that you can, objectively, make it through a crisis, but that you, subjectively, WILL make it through a crisis, even though the objective facts of the matter seem to run counter to that proposition.  Hope, Fortitude, Courage, and dozens of other facets of the human condition require a Subjective approach to reality in order for us to overcome our perceived weaknesses and achieve.

Blue Pill reality happens when you put all your chips on the Subjective, and discard all but the most glaring elements of the Objective.  You not only believe in the power of Love, you're willing to use it as a justification and rationalization for the most foolish and self-destructive behaviors.  You not only believe in Fairness, you assume that everyone else also believes in Fairness and is trying to promote it just as fervently as you.  You not only believe in Equality, you insist that you're getting Equality, even when you are unfairly penalized by a system or culture that determines that your group, for whatever reason, is less equal than others.

That Blue Pill overdose leads to irrational idealism.  The Red Pill overdose leads to hopeless cynicism.

Neither one of those things leads to actual happiness.  



Athol makes an excellent point when he discusses the need for the Blue Pill, despite the number of ardent Red Pill proponents who insist that Love is a fruitless endeavor undermined by the "Red Pill Reality".  The Red Pill can be a heady experience, don't misunderstand - it will open your eyes to see the social universe in a whole new perspective.  Once you understand the underpinnings of modern social/sexual behavior through the lens of the science of evolutionary biology and neurochemistry, the impulse to reduce everything to those terms is almost irresistible 

But while the Red Pill shows you the stark reality of the dating arena in this day and age, it should also point out the fact that yes, Love still exists in the world, and it's possible for any human being to find it.  Hopelessly shmaltzy?  Or pragmatic observation?  Attend:

Love, as we understand the base emotion, can be loosely defined as "the emotion of feeling another person's happiness and well-being are a precondition of your own".

Mother love, Caritas, first results when a mommy fulfills her baby's vital need for comfort and sustenance, and that emotional transaction continues to be replayed throughout our lives.

Philios, "brotherly love", first results when we are children, and we develop empathy and sympathy for our playmates.  We don't want our friends to get hurt, and we don't want our friends to hurt us.  Those who take Philios to extremes often find themselves tirelessly devoted to improving the welfare of their fellow man even at the expense of their own well-being, using the buzz of Universal Compassion as their justification.  

Agape, the love between Man and the Divine, is  exercise of self-awareness and an existential development of a total psycho-spiritual response to the Universe.  It can develop in anyone, at any time, and be either profound or fleeting or both.

Then there is Eros.



Our conception and perspectives on Eros develop at adolescence  when our child bodies are subjected to the forge of puberty and we start noticing the opposite (or same) sex in a sexual manner.  "Sex", of course, is the goal.  Sex for reproduction, sex for pair-bonding, sex for recreation, sex because the cable is out again.

But Sex is not Eros.  It's merely a component -- albeit the essential component -- for Eros.  The motivation for Eros may be Sex -- 'cause orgasms are cool and all -- but Eros encompasses a far wider field than the mindless rutting implied in hook up culture.  True Eros is the combination of Sex with a deeper understanding of the soul of the Other Person.  True Eros is the institutionalization of a mutual feeling in which each party's happiness and well-being is essential to either and both.

True Eros happens -- and keeps happening -- because our sexual feelings become entangled with our compassionate feelings, the whole thing gets washed out in a wave of oxytocin and serotonin and vasopressin, and somewhere in our neurology a switch gets flipped: we make the emotional decision, quite apart from the objective situation, that the Other Person's well-being is now essential to your own.  Every aspect of their well-being.  

The gratification we get from the experience can be completely one-sided.  I've seen cases when unrequited love, instead of turning sour, was enobled by sacrifice and higher purpose.  I'm not saying that those people went on to be happy, but they did feel the satisfaction of seeing the Other Person thrive and prosper which, to them, was reward enough.

But usually Love - Eros - the love between (for about 75-80% of the population) a man and a woman for the implied purpose of pairbonding and reproduction is mutual, at some point, in some form or fashion.  It may be unequal, it may be toxic, it may be abusive, but there is a reciprocal element there.  She loves me, I love her.  Or "My happiness is predicated on her's, and vice-versa".  That's Love.  And when that Love is Eros, then the implied responsibility for that Love takes us into some very intimate areas, places where the other forms of love - Agape, Caritas, Philios - cannot touch.

Eros implies a pairbond, a mutual exchange of compassion, fulfillment and caregiving at the most intimate of levels, an exchange that benefits both parties. The benefits may not always be equal in strength or capacity, but it is the reciprocity that is the key element in true Eros.  Following your wife around, kissing her ass and begging for sex Blue Pill style is not true Eros, because it has lost the reciprocal element. Similarly, demanding sex from your wife regardless of her feelings in the matter might be pure Red Pill, for some people, but it is not true Eros.


There is balance in Eros.  Equilibrium.  Rarely is their Equality, simply because relationships are dynamic things and the notion of "equality" is highly contextual and idealistic.  Balance and Equilibrium are pragmatic concerns: when your wife is sick, you tend to her, you don't order her to clean the house.  When you lose your job, she should tend to you, not berate you for your failure.  True Eros implies not just the willingness to put another person's well-being as conditional to your own, but the willingness to adapt and modify your personal behavior to improve the nature of the equilibrium.

True Eros means you don't kidney-punch in an argument.  True Eros means you don't call each other mean names.  True Eros means you recognize and acknowledge the vulnerabilities of your mate, and while you are not obliged to "fix" them, you are obliged not to damage them further or put them in a position where others may do so.  True Eros means you are not just each other's intimate lover, but also their guardian, defender, and protector.  True Eros means that you hold each other to a high standard of accountability, but don't dwell on failures except as they serve as learning experiences.  True Eros means withholding summary judgement, considering your partner's perspective thoughtfully before acting, and being willing to sacrifice on their behalf.


That last part usually makes people squirm.  Thanks to 2000 years of Christianity (no offense), the idea of 'sacrifice' has been kicked around so much and in so many arcane directions that we often forget what it means, at its root: to give something meaningful up to the Sacred.  It doesn't have to be your life, it can be a goat, a cow, a car, a belief, a cherished heirloom, a perspective, a prejudice, an ignorance, a purpose, a plan, a vacation, a dream.  Because of the Big Sacrifice implicit in the Passion, too often Christians (and our Christian-influenced secular culture) misunderstands the nature and utility of sacrifice, seeing it only in its most stark and mortal terms.  They often miss its pragmatic nature.

Yet if we consider our pairbonds sacred, see our marriages as holy rites implicit with sacred responsibilities, if we accept that we are the priests and priestesses serving the higher purpose of establishing Eros - the basis of the Family - in our sanctified unions, then we alone are responsible for its success or failure . . . and far too often the abortive marriages we see in our society are due to the unwillingness of one or both parties' willingness to sacrifice for the benefit of the greater entity.

Western consumer "me" culture has taught us to ask "what's in it for me?", and then reduce the answers down to the absolute most objective elements, making a relationship a cost-benefit analysis, first and foremost.  Women shop for husbands like shoes, these days, trying on one after another and then changing their mind in a fit of hypergamous indecision.  Men shop for wives like cars, finding the shiniest, prettiest model they can afford and then being all-to-willing to swap it out for a newer model if he can afford it.


Neither approach leads to true Eros, and those who seek "love" through a numbers game or based on superficial issues are almost always doomed to disappointment.  True Eros isn't just passion -- we can just about bottle and sell passion these days.  Yet true Eros is in scant supply.  True Eros isn't about "variety", it's about interest.  True Eros doesn't come and go; it's hard to start, it's difficult to encourage, it's fiendishly tricky to maintain, and it takes skill and talent to sustain over the years.

True Eros implies trust, and that's a hard thing for a battle-scarred Red Pill veteran of Combat Mating to generate, when every member of the opposite sex is viewed with automatic suspicion.  True Eros implies compassion, and that's hard for a Red Pill man or woman to indulge in without being critical - for we are compassionate when the Other Person is damaged or weak or unfortunate.  The Red Pill often reveals to us just why they got that way, and it becomes all-too-easy to dismiss their pains and anxieties as "their own fault", which is the antithesis of compassion.


True Eros implies Respect, and the Blue Pill is far too ready to lend itself to a condescending, disrespectful, or obsequious pattern of behavior.  When we are too idealistic about how things should be, we hold out unrealistic expectations for our partner, which leads inevitably to disappointment  which leads - too often - to disrespect.  True Eros implies Devotion, and the Blue Pill seeks to bury both the intensity and the commitment intrinsic to that impulse under the weight of "independence", as if Eros could exist when either party is more devoted to their own happiness and well-being than that of their mate.

Trust.  Compassion.  Respect.  Devotion.  These are the things that contribute to the Love that is true Eros: the real True Love, leading to the real Happily Ever After.  Those are the ONLY things that can get you there.  If you don't have all four, then you don't have true Eros.

But to get there, as a priest or priestess devoted to the sacred nature of their union, you must sacrifice your mistrust, your vulnerability, your disdain, and your selfishness.  That may seem contra to the Red Pill philosophy to some, but I argue that the Red Pill insists we see things as they are . . . and the objective fact is that there are plenty of people who achieve true Eros, even in our damaged and evolving society.

The Red Pill Fact is that it isn't impossible to trust, respect, love and devote yourself to a person and not be betrayed.  While we see plenty of examples of total disasters, when it comes to marriage and relationships, if we look objectively we can also see quite a few examples of folks who, through talent, trial and error, or luck, got it right.

Love, true Eros, isn't impossible under the Red Pill.  Indeed, it is the ultimate fulfillment of the Red Pill, if you have found and vetted the Other Person to the point where you trust them, feel for them, respect them, and can comfortably devote yourself to their well-being.  That doesn't mean harboring illusions about their personality, mental and emotional state, or other issues, it means acknowledging the problems, being dedicated to the solutions, and being willing to weather a tempest or two while you come to that equilibrium.

Athol says we need both the Red Pill and the Blue Pill, the ALPHA mode and the BETA mode to be in a fulfilling Red Pill marriage, and I cannot disagree.  Vox adds, cogently, 

"I don't recommend choosing illusion over reality, but it is also important to understand that the potential for doing evil is not the same as actually committing it.  And experiencing temptation is not action.  Knowing that a woman does not belong on a pedestal is not synonymous with believing that she dwells in a sewer." 

I will go one further: you cannot discard the possibility of true Eros, of Love fulfilled, even of passionate and exciting Romance, and hope to find happiness with the Red Pill.  Contentedness, perhaps, but not happiness.  

There are no guarantees, and the cynics who abound in the Manosphere desperately want some.  That's their fear talking: fear of rejection, fear of failure, fear of judgement.  They deride the idea of love because it's naturally safer for them to do so - without expectation, there can be no disappointment   Love, even the possibility of true Eros, is a very scary thing regardless of your gender, and often it seems just more sensible and reasonable to abandon the idea altogether -- hell, it's very tempting.  Athol, Vox and I get that.

But those supposedly Red Pill men who are certain that all women are secretly evil and prospective goldigging hypergamists, who don't think that love, true or otherwise, is even possible . . .y'all aren't just ignoring the objective fact that it is possible, y'all are being a bunch of pussies.

Seriously. It's implicit to a mature masculinity that good men are willing to take risks.  Hell, taking risks is the male prerogative,  it's our forte.  Yet men who would put their life savings on Black and spin the wheel with abandon won't even approach women because of the "risk" of their hearts and wallets.  Men who would gamble that they can draw just a little bit faster than the other guy don't want to risk their feelings being hurt by rejection.  Guys who are willing to borrow extravagantly to fund an enterprise with little hope of a return aren't willing to consider that maybe -- just maybe -- all women aren't there to take them to the cleaners in a divorce.  That all women aren't unfaithful.

You men who feel that love is beyond your reach due to your culture, your era, your society, or the vagaries of feminism . . . stop being such a pussy.  Take a risk.  That doesn't mean you have to be stupid about it, blinded by love and led around by your dick, but right now you sound like the whiny kid who always stands on the sideline during Dodge Ball because he's scared to get hurt.  Yeah, love is scary.  Get over it and take the hit like a man.



The Red Pill didn't promise you Love, it merely shows you the schematics.  It didn't make you divorce-proof, it merely gave you some skills to deal with the possibility.  Vox can't tell you how to find the perfect woman, and Athol can't tell you how to have the perfect marriage, all they can do is point you in the right direction.  It's up to you to take the risks, make yourself vulnerable, and open yourself to the possibility of trusting a woman . . . because there are dudes out there who have made it work, and work well.  It's not impossible.  We're not fooling ourselves.  Yeah, we're lucky . . . but we were also smart enough to know when to sacrifice what was needed for the greater glory of our union.  We have taken upon ourselves to be the priests who do what needs to be done to keep the union sacred, and part of that is the risk of being hurt.

That's why a lot of us Old Married Guys (defined these days as anyone who has made it 10 years -- yeah, we know, we're depressed by that, too) who have taken the Red Pill and are running and enjoying Married Game shake our heads at the MGTOW who are so vocally anti-marriage.  Because taking the calculated risk of finding and loving someone who will, likewise, trust, love, respect, and devote themselves to you IS a perfectly valid way for a Man to Go His Own Way.

The key is to keep an objective eye on everything, the bad and the good, and a subjective perspective in your heart that knows yourself well enough to recognize a good thing when you see it.


Look, if you really, truly aren't "the marrying type" or genuinely recognize that you truly aren't that interested in pairbond in general, if you are preoccupied by your profession or your vocational passion and you feel that splitting your focus would detract from that, if you just don't think that romance, love, and Eros are that important . . . dude, I hear you.  Quit talking about how the rest of us are doomed idiots.  Go your own way with our collective blessing secure in the knowledge that you have made a conscious, informed decision . . . for you.

But if you harbor secret longings for true love and romance and a woman who will stay steadfastly by your side, devoted, loving, capable and as respectful of your masculinity as you are of her femininity . . . then don't look at the Mating 2.0 world as a disaster.  To do that is to admit defeat and concede that you have abdicated the quest for greatness, and have clung instead to the flotsam of mediocrity.  If you look at the women of the world and recoil in fear and horror instead of preparing yourself for the challenge of finding a superior mate -- and in the process make yourself a superior mate -- then you've already lost.  You're spiritually soiling yourself in front of ancestors who tamed the wilderness, crossed the oceans, built mighty empires and defeated insurmountable foes . . . because you can't handle the idea of losing something you don't even have yet.

Now go out there, learn some Game, inform yourself, hone your skills, take a fucking risk . . . and quit being such a pussy about love.  This isn't rocket science.  This isn't a marathon.  This isn't a fiendishly clever international plot to turn you into a mindless ATM machine . . . believe me, feminists just aren't that bright about that sort of thing.  Yes, the weather conditions could be better, but a man doesn't shirk from cloudy skies when sunshine might be over the horizon.


Love is a human universal -- not just sex, but true Eros. It occurs in every human culture, and is the basis for some of our most powerful myths and legends.  Many, if not most of your ancestors knew of love, even when they were terrible at it.  This is something that men have mastered for thousands of years . . . and your whining and despair about how awful it is right now insults your ancestors and undermines your own self-respect.

That's not how a mature, masculine man reacts to danger.  He educates himself, understands the risks and the rewards, he prepares, he trains . . . and he at least makes the best attempt he can.

No Guts, No Glory: Either get in the game or quit yelling to the rest of us from the sidelines that we'll get hurt .  We know the risks, we know the dangers, but we know the rewards possible, too.  Assuming that no men are capable of managing a successful relationship just because you can't - when it's pretty clear that quite a few of us are - doesn't make you more wise, intelligent, or Red Pill-astute.  It just makes you look like a pussy who's just scared of getting hurt by the ball. So get over it.

You're embarrassing us.

We've all witnessed the unfathomable power of the Divine manifest in the Midwest this week (take your pick as to blame Jehovah, Thor, or Zeus, and there's always the possibility it was a collaborative effort) in the form of freaking massive F4 and F5 tornadoes, and the devastation and death they left in their wake.  Of course it was inevitable that someone in the Manosphere would be affected, and sure enough, my pal LadySadie, over at motivationalhierarchy, had a close brush with the full fury of Nature.


Luckily, it was a near-miss -- unluckily, a "near-miss" in tornado language is the equivalent of weathering an entire hurricane . . . in ten minutes.  That means tons of clean-up, debris removal, and repair.  How much?  Take a look at her site for a lovely pictorial review of the fun.

Now, this wasn't intended to be an attempt to inspire sympathy and assistance for LadySadie -- she's got matters under control.  As a matter of fact, she's aggressively against being a victim, even of Nature.  What really inspired me to write this post was her recognition of some key elements of the importance of gender roles, especially in a time of crisis.

The disaster sparked the usual rural-Midwest community effort of neighbor helping neighbor restore and repair (the Southern version looks very similar, except with more Sweet Tea and biscuits), and LadySadie's beau had a crew of friends and neighbors descend on the damaged farm to help with the monumental task.  This isn't raking leaves -- this is the safe dismantling of twisted metal and splintered wood, using power tools, saws-alls, chainsaws, axes, hammers . . . basically stuff most Vassar grads are unfamiliar with.  It requires teamwork, coordination, skill, competence, and clear hierarchy to get the job done.



Now, LadySadie is no wisp of silk and fluff, she's no fainting flower, and if left to her own devices I have every confidence in her ability to handle her business in a crisis better than the average dude, easily.  Indeed, the desire to actively assist in the work must have been overwhelming.  Moms hate a dirty room, and when the whole farm is dirty, well . . .

In any case, LadySadie is in a solid Red Pill relationship, and she's very aware of such things as the importance of the division of labor in a time of crisis.  So when the Menfolk showed up in trucks with implements of destruction and a determination to remove every scrap of debris in sight, she didn't grab a chainsaw and try to join them . . .

. . . she went into the kitchen with her daughters and made sandwiches.

Now, while the few feminists who happen across this blog recover from your head exploding, Lady Sadie is not a mindless little domestic drone.  As she tells me herself,

I found it fascinating to watch the work take place, and the efficiency of the whole operation was just short of breathtaking.  There wasn't any reason for me to by in the way, and while I can use a chainsaw and a saws-all, I am far more effective at being the care-taker.  Now that the major debris is removed and [the Beau] is back at work, I can go with my girls and rake the splinters, pick up glass and nails and replant the garden where it was damaged. 

She's highly competent, and highly capable.  And she's so intelligent that she recognizes when female interference in a masculine endeavor is counter-productive to the goal.  Sure, she wanted to help.  But she's been around farms, around men, all her life, and she knows how men work.

And men work best when there are no women around.  Further, Men work best when there's no women around . . . until lunchtime.

That sounds trite and misogynistic, but the Red Pill observable fact of the matter is that when men self-organize to do a job of work, they typically assume a highly-efficient hierarchy based on experience and competence, reduce communication to a casual banter designed to advance the work, and default to the "dudes-crudely-bullshitting-while-they-work" mode designed to increase strength-building testosterone and reduce thought-provoking estrogens.  The presence of even one female in such a group can and usually does disrupt this vital element of masculine culture.

Sometimes you can "overlook" a woman, ignoring her presence to the point where you almost forget she's there -- if she's quite.  But even then the feminine presence can be felt by the group, and while they might approach the male-only level of efficiency, even having a woman watch them slows men down.  If a woman is talking to them, no matter how efficient they might appear they have actually slowed down their work.  If a woman is attempting to help them, unless they have worked in that capacity before and she knows her shit about tools and tool safety, and how to work in a male-oriented work party, then the efficiency is broken along with the concentration on work.








There's a reason that the meme of construction workers whistling at passing women is a part of our culture . . . and has been since the Pyramids were built.  When men are involved in a male-only, masculine exercise like construction, demolition, defense, or hacking code, then they revert to the base-level of masculine culture in an effort to find common language and streamline efficiency.  As such, group objectification of passing women not only encourages genuine bonding among the men (sorry, ladies, we're really just that way), it also allows a brief emotional break from the intensity and focus of the work . . . and a natural point at which to resume.

That seems like a minor thing, but taking that away from men (as feminists want to do in pursuit of a "non-sexist" world) would be the functional equivalent of allowing women to work together without being able to discuss their relationships with each other.  No, really.

Instead of trying to "help", LadySadie and her daughters went inside and prepared food and other refreshments for the Menfolk.  And they stayed the hell out of their way.  That wasn't a humiliating demotion to domesticity on her part, it was a conscious and appropriate decision to contribute to the effort in the most powerful way she could: by supporting the existing masculine organizational structure both materially (food) and emotionally (Caritas-lite, Cheerleader variety).

As LadySadie related to me in a private email,

I don't know exactly how to state this, but there seemed to be a big boost of respect for [the Beau] from the other men because I was there doing the meals and staying quiet and out of the way. 

The respect that LadySadie detects is genuine, and it's not because her Beau is adept at keeping his woman quiet and in the kitchen.  The respect is the honest tribute due a man who has managed to build a relationship strong enough with a woman so that she respects HIS need to handle his manly business, with the implied reciprocal agreement that he respects HER need to handle her womanly business.  They aren't giving him respect because he's being oppressive, they are paying him respect out of admiration for his ability to build a sturdy House.

If the issue was stuffing envelopes or making signs for an event -- social organization and promotion being usually more in the feminine realm than the masculine -- then those same men will further pay the Beau respect when he has to bow out of boy's night because "LadySadie needs my help to get ready for the parade tonight."  They won't rag on him one bit: he has established his mature masculine credibility by demonstrating the strength of his relationship in public. After that, when your woman requires your aid, not providing it at need is going to get you a lot more crap from your friends than handling your relationship business.

Most women in the post-feminist era are scornful of such gestures, seeing them as an inherently demeaning assumption of traditional gender roles.  The first time a young Mrs. Ironwood asked Papa Ironwood what she could do to help work on her car, she almost had a fit when he told her calmly, "Just stand there, be quiet and look pretty." But she learned quickly enough.

LadySadie, being wise and understanding of the Red Pill, knew that the visible support of women for men while they are working adds both incentive and validation of their effort.  Men thrive on female gratitude for honest, hard work done on their behalf.  Indeed, if it is lacking in quantity . . . then so will the man in question be.

LadySadie points out that while she and her girls were being helpful and supportive, a couple of the men who had graciously donated their time, tools, talents, and trucks to help were repeatedly harassed by text or phone by their wives.  Each text or call doubtlessly slowed down the effort.  When men are working, we like to WORK, without interruption or distraction.

As annoying as the telebitching was, I've personally experienced even worse female forays into the masculine realm in the wake of a disaster.  I live in Hurricane Alley.  I'm the veteran of over fifteen major storms, including rockstars like Fran, Bertha, Andrew, and Floyd.  When shit has fallen out of the sky all over the place, a Man with a Chainsaw and a Truck is suddenly the most important man in town.  

The amusing thing about post-disaster cleanup in my town is the number of "strong, independent" women who are "perfectly capable" of doing "anything a man can do".  When the feces hit the fan, these women tend to divide into two rough groups: the larger "Oh, God, why isn't anyone helping me?" victim group whose answer to the crisis is to try to call a commercial tree-removal service and then complain bitterly when they can't get out there in a timely fashion, and the "I can handle this myself!" group.  In most cases, they demonstrably cannot.

(I'm not talking about lesbians here, for the most part.  My town has a HUGE number of lesbians, I'm proud to say.  The vast majority aren't man-hating feminazis or radfem Third Wavers, most are just women trying to live a normal life in a safe place . . . and my gods, the power tools . . .   The lesbians I've worked with and had as neighbors have generally been broad exceptions to this rule, and most are knowledgeable enough of masculine modes of work that they can blend almost seamlessly in a job.  I love lesbians.)

The objectionable women are the heterosexual dominants, usually divorced or married to Beta/Gamma schlubs, who feel that "if a man can do it, I can too" . . . and then they actually try, with little or no idea of what they are doing.  I saw this repeatedly after Fran.  I saw one woman rant, outraged, at the local Lowe's store because they hadn't stocked enough chainsaws, and actually insist on talking to a manager and filing a complaint with Corporate (which had also been hit by the storm) . . . on a store without power, without a roof, and which had graciously decided to open up in the parking lot to help with the crisis.

I watched another (sorry, Yankee) woman I knew dealt with her frustration of having a 150 year old pinoak tree neatly bisect her garage and her minivan during Fran by screaming first at the insurance adjuster, then at her husband, over why they couldn't "just call someone to deal with it!".  They tried to explain that the destruction was so wide-spread that there was literally no one available to answer a phone in any shop because everyone was already out in the field, and the phone lines and power was down.  She said that was ridiculous - it was business hours, wasn't it?  Her entire attitude was that it was up to the rest of the world to fix her problem, and that she was inherently entitled to action on her behalf, regardless of the situation.

The adjuster fled -- the husband should have.  She had steadfastly intervened in his developing any close friendships with other guys over the years, instead inflicting her own circle of divorced harpies and bitter, unmarried girlfriends on him.  When she angrily demanded that he "call some friends to help", he had to admit - in front of me and a couple of other neighbors - that he didn't have any dudes he could call.

Don't look at me.  I had shit to do myself, and there was no way I was getting in the way of that woman.

This is the funny part.  In the end, the woman decided that she could handle the tree herself, because "none of you damn men are competent enough to do it!".  After hacking her way through the branches to the minivan door, she got the car successfully started.  The tree was suspended between the back of the crushed van and the garage, so she felt she didn't even need to secure it, since it was "attached naturally".  Several of us tried to talk us out of it, but she dismissed us all as being both incompetent and attempting to undermine her "independence" as a woman.

So we watched with a mixture of amusement and horror as she drove the minivan forward twenty feet, pulled the pinoak canopy off of the garage . . . and caused the deadfall suspended within to take out her kitchen and about half of her dining room. Insurance didn't cover it, of course -- it happened after the adjuster she'd just pissed off had left, and she caused it.  Because she was strong, independent, and didn't need a man's help.

If there is justice in the universe, that dude has gotten divorced by now.

She wasn't alone.  Single moms and corporate spinsters are virtually helpless in the aftermath of disaster, dependent on menfolk for aid and assistance.  All they can do, it seems, is beg, cry in frustration, and complain bitterly about the unfairness of things.  The manual labor and tool-using ability they sneer at during good times suddenly becomes vital, but they have a hard time attracting it.  Those who disparage men and masculinity during good times cannot expect to be subject to their masculine grace in bad times.  Those who discourage masculine pursuits and solid male relationships in their husbands' lives have no right to expect their "males" to sudden become Men, just because the power is out and the roof is leaking.  

Men built this civilization.  Men can wreck it.  And only Men can rebuild it.

Over and over again our modern world has shown how fragile it is in the face of such disaster, or terrorist attack, or random force of chaos.  The sophisticated post-industrial civilization that allows women the luxury of feminism can be wiped away in moments, especially in an era of festering police wars and global climate change.  How many feminists were running toward the Twin Towers on 9-11 when they were burning and collapsing, and how many were running away?  How many former Boy Scouts were running toward them . . . and how many were running away?

We're all one meteor away from a paleolithic existence or worse -- and that's an inevitability, not a possibility.  When the sky gods war or the earth goddess dances, when the human curse of zealotry or simple stupidity lays waste to our delicate civilization, it takes Men, doing Manly things, to bring us back from the edge of barbarism.  Despite all the hoopla about the "civilizing" force of femininity, we'd all be holding our book clubs in mud huts, if women were in charge of building Civilization.

Gender roles are important at such times.  When men are willing to toil and labor for the common good, they don't do it for money. Beyond their inherent altruism and civic spirit, they do it for the respect and honor they get from their male peers, and the affirmation and admiration they get from the women in their lives. If your dude has been out tearing apart the twisted remains of a barn in your yard, ladies, don't offer to "help".  Instead, smile, ask if there's anything he needs, thank him and his buds for what a good job they're doing, and get the hell out of there.

And if he calls to you, "Hey, Babe, how 'bout fixin' me a sammich?", I can assure you that that's his way of saying "I love you, thank you, I aim to do you proud."  He just doesn't want to say that in front of his dudes.  It will break their workflow.  He'll tell you later, when you're alone . . . and you can really thank him for his herculean efforts properly.


A man at work is always a hero in his own mind, and a Red Pill woman can impel him to even greater heights of heroism and dedication just by expressing gratitude, respect, and appreciation in a way he understands.  You can criticize his efforts, or you can inspire him to go fight dragons on your behalf.

And hell.  What woman could ask for more than that?

One of the most frustrating and infuriating things about the on-going Gender War is the wholesale male-shaming that occurs when a feminist gets a bee in her bra about something -- anything -- and then tells a man (or, usually, all men) to grow up.  Case in point: this morning's CNN Opinion piece by Pepper Schwartz entitled, condescendingly enough, Can Men Evolve? in the teaser and Soldiers and Sex: Can Men Grow Up? in the article.

The very title is an attempt at wholesale male-shaming, and while the subject matter is very, very serious -- sexual harassment and rape in the military -- the perspective and attitudes Dr. Schwarz espouses show both a stunning naivete about the function and nature of the military and an appalling and misandrist opinion about men and masculinity in general.

Let's start with the issue of shaming: Any time a woman tells a man to "grow up", unless the woman in question gave birth to the man in question this directive is the moral and semantic equivalent of saying "stop being such a bitch" to a woman.  It is openly disrespectful, makes dramatic and erroneous assumptions about the nature of men and masculinity, and more often than not demonstrates the ignorance and evident unsophistication of the woman in question.

Men, that is, mature men who have assumed adult responsibilities (like, say, carrying an M-16 and killing people on behalf of the US Government for a living) should be accorded a level of respect commiserate with that responsibility.  When a woman says "grow up", she is deliberately trying to shame and disrespect a man by assuming a superior moral posture . . . when upon close inspection, that posture is rarely deserved. 

 "Grow Up" implies that the woman in question has a right to judge the actions and behaviors of men -- and in this case, men in a male-originated, male-dominated, and male-oriented profession.  The idea that Dr. Schwarz, for all of her journalistic street cred, is somehow by nature of her gender entitled to judge male maturity without considering the context of the complaint paints the misandrist, sanctimonious condemnations of my daughter's 11-year old friends, not a thoughtful adult perspective.

I'm not denying that the sexual harassment and rape of our women warriors is a tragic and unacceptable situation; it was also quite predictable.  Feminists in particular and women in general see our vast military as just another civil-service job with a really strict dress code, not the organized and institutionalized tool of projecting violence and death anywhere in the world at need that it is and must be.  Minor but important difference.  We take young men who barely know how to eat with a fork and knife and turn them into killing machines . . . so that feminists can have the freedom to condemn them wholesale.

The military is a uniquely male-dominated field for obvious reasons.  Men banded together for mutual defense and to protect their mutual holdings since the Paleolithic, and after agriculture that tribal warrior culture blossomed into the sophisticated and regulated -- and highly efficient -- military system we have inherited today.  Remember 300? Have you read Anabaxis?  Do you know who Alexander the Great, Sun Tzu and Julius Caesar are?  They are the roots of the modern military culture. And the needs and necessities of military life - brutal efficiency and absolute discipline - have given similar form to the institution of the military regardless of whether it sprung from the Mediterranean Basin, the Indus Valley, or the Yangzte.  When men organize to kill other men and destroy property, there's a right way to do it.  The ARMY  (or NAVY) way.


Notable exceptions aside, women do not fight in armies or navies, and women do not form armies of women.  There's a reason for that.  Men who are trained to overcome their socially-conditioned hesitation to take a human life, and then be able to do it upon command and live with the psychological aftermath, can only do so through a very strict regime of conditioning their natural aggression into a highly-controlled tool.  That process is military training, in which not just women, but all human beings are by necessity objectified.  If a terrorist in Fallujah can be a woman, then assuming special exceptions to that rule in some misguided application of chivalry is a ticket to a dead soldier . . . and that's not the ARMY way.

Objectification is a requirement for the military, a psychological requirement.  Not just of the Enemy, but of your subordinates, your superiors, and your peers.  If you attempt to subjectify the military experience more than absolutely necessary, the psychological protections military training instilled in you falter.   You cannot -- cannot -- see female soldiers any differently than male soldiers, despite the obvious disconnect implicit with that statement.  The idea that some "girls are special" course is going to work -- or that we'd be happy with the results if it did -- is ludicrous and naive.

Of course, there have always been problems with that process, because men are individuals and the military works best when individuality has been de-emphasized.  Some individuals are just not psychologically capable of accepting that process, and some are perfectly fine until the extreme stress of military life causes a mental switch to flip.  If the most basic human prohibition -- do not kill other people -- can be so summarily removed by the process, there is a natural danger that some will consider this all the psychological rationalization their subconscious needs to abandon others.  Switch flipped.  In some cases, that switch, unfortunately, leads to sexual assault on fellow soldiers or sailors.

This, too, has been a problem that has been around since the Paleolithic.  And it did not start being a problem when women were allowed into the military. The tie between sex, aggression, domination and submission is well-known, if not well-understood.  The military, by necessity, controls aggression and uses domination and submission implicitly in its organization and culture.  But you can't ignore the sexual component of the equation, like Dr. Schwarz wants to do, or gloss over it with "That's disrespectful!" . . . just because the soldier or sailor who was the victim of the assault happened to be female this time.

It's easy to look at all the fancy equipment, the drones, the planes, the artillery and tanks and all the other ways we've made mass destruction efficient and impersonal and decide that modern military life doesn't need more character or discipline to carry off than, say, that needed to design and produce a video game.  But that mistakes the nature of the military and its job, and glosses over the ugly reality: all of those fancy toys are still just the spear in the hand of one man who is about to slay another . . . and who himself may be slain in turn at any moment.

That kind of constant existential crisis needs release, or tragedy beyond the planned tragedy of war occurs.  Traditionally, wise military commanders made certain that ample camp followers or prostitutes were available to keep this relief at hand.  But even then, when sex was easy, cheap or free, still the mix of aggression, domination, and submission led to abuses.  In the final analysis, the gender of the victims matters less than the issue of sexual abuse over-all; where were Dr. Schwarz's cries for "men to grow up" when an Army sergeant in Korea abuses young men for years before getting caught?  Only when women's virtue is at stake is Dr.Schwarz bothered.  Only when women's lives are affected does Dr. Schwarz see a problem.  Our young men can get butt-raped by their peers and superiors all day long, and Dr. Schwarz and her equivalents are silent, more preoccupied by issues of diversity and equality and finding the perfect match than righteous rage at such offences.

What Dr. Schwarz is doing here is similar to what almost all feminists (with a few gallant exceptions) and most modern women do when it comes to considering the military: they don't hesitate to take advantage of the aggression of our young men when there are Bad Guys around, but otherwise they treat the men who have sworn to protect her First Amendment rights to disrespect them to the death, if necessary, and classed them all as rapists and discriminatory thugs.  She has, like almost all feminists today, exploited the idea that young men are disposable in our society, and she treats them accordingly.


I make frequent exception here because I know many women soldiers who don't feel a bunch of "girls are special!" classes are the answer to the problem.  Indeed, there are many who feel this approach is precisely the wrong way to fix the problem, and since they have more direct experience with it than Dr. Schwartz, I think I'd trust their judgement more.  Coincidentally, NONE of these brave women warriors (some of whom were rape victims themselves) ever made the childish and irresponsible demand that "Men just grow up!".  Because they understand men and the military a whole lot better than Dr. Schwartz does, apparently.

They know that the basis of this behavior isn't a lack of role models, proper instruction, or sufficient diversity training classes.  The men who assault (and despite Dr. Schwarz's contention female perpetrators of sexual assault are "rare, and not systemic in any institution", I would venture to say that it is actually far less rare and simply far more under-reported, due to a number of factors, based on anecdotal evidence) are not "immature", they are not being "puerile", they are not "boys being boys" . . . the men who commit these crimes are under herculean pressures, inadequately supported, and frequently under-supervised.  While rape and sexual assault are tragic results of this problem, they are mere symptoms.

Dr. Schwarz's snit over sexual assault seems trivial and trite when one looks at the suicide statistics for our active military and returning veterans. In 2012, there were 349 suicides among our active-duty military, and around 22 a day among our veterans -- that's around 8,000 suicides last year.  And the vast, vast majority of those suicides were men.

According to the Pentagon's own stats, that means that there were about two and a half rapes for every suicide in 2012.  I suppose depending how you valued the two issues, one could make the argument that
sexual assault on serving female military personnel VASTLY outweighs the petty little problem of our returning veterans chewing on their guns.  At least, that's the argument Dr. Schwarz seems to be making.

I would remind her that for the majority of the history of our republic, much less the histories of other nations, for centuries our young men were subjected to these outrages and indignities without their original consent to even join the military, subject to conscription due to their gender alone.  As tragic as the stories of military rape survivors are, they chose to join the military of their own free will, a luxury generations of young men before them did not have.  Once again feminism overlooks conscription as incidental to the male-female equation, devaluing the lives and free will of men by dismissing an inequity that outlasted slavery and male-only voting rights.  It's bad enough to volunteer to fight and get raped.  To be conscripted against your will to fight, and then get raped, is a horror piled upon a tragedy.  Not a single American woman can complain of that.

Some of the conclusions she makes are correct.  We cannot go back to an all-male military, despite the number of problems we are going to have.  We can't even go back to an all-straight military.  But you
cannot attempt to fundamentally alter a process of psychological conditioning developed over 10,000 years with a couple "girls are special!" classes.  The process of finding a comfortable balance between the necessary aggression needed to fight and win a war and the socio-sexual reality of the mixing of the genders is going to be long, tedious, and fraught with difficulties.  But just as we have (eventually) managed to establish a base-line of behavior in the workplace, it will happen with the military . . . eventually.

Beyond the foolishness of "girls are special!" classes, the notion that male sexuality needs "instruction" from any quarter is offensive.  Do women need "special instruction" about their sexual values, or would Dr. Schwarz see that as a paternalistic attempt to control the sexual lives of women?  Would they be required to challenge and confront whatever ridiculous notions of sexuality they had when they signed their enlistment, and perhaps be forced to change their beliefs and practices to "fit in" with everyone else's?

Somehow I think if the Pentagon started telling women that they needed to be considering what kind of housewives they needed to be after their term of service was up, some folks might get upset. Telling a young man that he has to be a "gentleman" (without defining the term) or "evolved" (when there is no logical basis equity feminist should be justly angry about.
for the idea that such a change in belief would indeed be an "evolution", and not a "devolution") is an unfair and unacceptable attempt to re-program his sexuality, something any

Part of the problem, ironically, is the very code that once kept such things from occurring in abundance, the Code of Honor or Chivalry commonly adopted by all men in the West over the last few centuries, was sufficiently trashed in the eyes of most men by feminism as to have little or no power, now.  It was a "tool of the patriarchy", and therefore a fair target of feminists over the years.  Now that they have brought down a deluge of disdain and disrespect for the masculine codes of honor, they complain that they are no longer protected by it . . . but apparently Dr. Schwarz considers a couple of classes and some shaming language is sufficient to replace a millenia-old masculine code of conduct.  Indeed, the military is one of the last refuges of such thinking . . . and Dr. Schwarz and her feminist allies seem determined to eradicate it even there.

Of course feminists can't invoke honor or chivalry - because that would empower men to be better men.  And that would be sexist.  Feminism cannot abide anything that empowers men.  Instead of appealing to our better nature and attempting to raise us with respect and admiration by invoking our honor and chivlary, the way her foremothers did, Dr. Schwarz seeks to castigate, demean, and denigrate the masculine impulse toward a warrior code and favors replacing it with an H.R. lecture.  Just the thing to inspire a man to die for
his country.

The idea that men need to "grow up" -- the same men Dr. Schwarz depends upon to defend her -- is inherently disrespectful toward our gender and our military men in particular.  While she states her goal is to turn men into "safer colleagues and partners" -- that is, more useful to women --  one would think that someone with a doctorate in sociology would recognize the inherent problem with attempting to make our highly-trained trained killers "safer".  Her stated desire to "change the hearts and minds" of men in the military -- ALL men -- is condescending and disrespectful to the memory of what we all owe to that institution.

Finally, the most galling thing about Dr. Schwarz's proposal is that it assumes that changing men is even within her purview.  Does she likewise favor any male proposals to "change women"?  Or is she operating from the basic operating principal -- like so many feminists -- that men are inherently broken because we aren't just like women? 

That men are the problem just because we are men?  She bandies about the idea that our sexuality and aggression are tied into dominance and submission, and perhaps someone with a greater background in psychology wouldn't be so naive, but the fact of the post-feminism world is that feminism broke the bonds of gender expectations . . . of both genders.

You can no longer "expect" us to be "gentlemen" anymore than we can "expect" women to be "warm, friendly, and faithful".  Just as women got busted out of their awful gender role of domestic drudgery, men were liberated from the expectation of going and dying on some beach because of some girl back home.  Or treating everything with a vagina as worthy of protection.  And you can expect that the next time you suddenly want to see a lot of young, strong, disposable males ready to line up and keep harm at bay . . . you can send your daughters to face the threat instead.

With this kind of insulting and demeaning attitude prevalent among feminism and women in general, there's just not a lot of reason our boys should pick up a rifle and die to protect the very people who treat him like a retarded child while he does so.  And if that seems somehow unfair, that men would shirk their responsibility to kill and die on your behalf, Dr. Schwarz . . . Welcome to the Manosphere, Cupcake.

Pinterest, if you are unaware - and let's hope to Zeus Pater you are - Pinterest is a website devoted to . . . well, putting up pretty pictures of stuff you want.  It's a point-and-click coveting scheme, a means of displaying conspicuous consumption of things you wish you had, to demonstrate your good taste.  Needless to say, the site is packed to the gunwales with women who want to impress other women with stuff they don't actually have.

In other words, it's essentially a scrapbooking site . . . for people too lazy to actually take the trouble to scrapbook.  You just point, click, and BAM!  Instant taste and charm.

Now, it's easy to see why this site has a great appeal to women - it's a function of the Female Social Matrix, in which women are positioned in part by the admiration they get from other women.  In the Olden Days, a few years ago, ladies were forced to do this by actually going out and buying things and arranging things and painting things -- remember Trading Spaces?

No more.  Now you just point . . . and click.  Instant taste.  Instant admiration.  Instant gratification.   Of course there is a social marketing component -- you have to share your taste in order to receive gratification.   Your friends, colleagues, neighbors, and strangers on the internet can inspect and approve and compliment you on the stuff you would have bought, if you could have, or wanted to, or had the energy or . . . you know, do anything but sit on Pinterest and mindlessly point and click their way into demonstrating an independent sense of style.  But women actually brag about the "pins" they've acquired and shared.  Think of it as the feminine equivalent of fishing . . . on the Wii.

While I enjoy a good estrogen-fest as much as the next dude who watches porn all day, there comes a point where the chiffon prom dresses and the stylish patio sets with the perfectly-matched picnicware and the luxurious bedroom suite that cost more than your present home just gets to you.  I know it got to me.

So I went down to the dungeon of Stately Ironwood Manor and put the Flying Monkeys on it.  And being bored, and tired of attempting to recreate the complete works of Shakespeare banging on the one sorry typewriter I have, because, c'mon, Amazon?  So they came up with a few small little tokens ("pins") related to the Red Pill and the Manosphere.  Because, y'know, Pinterest should really be introduced to the Manosphere.  I'm sure we'll get along famously.  

Trade 'em, collect 'em, make your own, share them all over the place and watch some folks squirm.  Because a subversive Puerarchy is an effective Puerarchy.

So . . . if you have a Pinterest account, or just want to piss off a bunch of prissy girls who think a pink and teal granite countertop is worth damp panties, then start "pinning" these things and make some of your own.

Really.  The Monkeys assure me it is quite therapeutic. Enjoy.

Back in my Blue Pill days, I went through my Gamma phase.  I'm not proud of it.  It only lasted a couple of years before I snapped out of it.  But it happened.  I can admit that now.  In fact, snapping the Gamma was one of the first steps on the road to Breaking Beta.

If you're not down with it yet, go study Vox Day's brilliant Socio-Sexual Hierarchy, listing social descriptions of all manner of men on the hunt for women.  Gammas are the "male feminists", the manboobz, the "I can be manly while I hold my wife's purse at a party while she talks to another guy" dude.  Gammas, in their evolved form, become self-loathing White Knights like Hugo Schwyzer, professional Mangina.  Essentially, Gammas have come to believe that all things male are inherently bad, and that all things female are inherently good -- sacred, even.

Typical presentations of the Gamma include low self-esteem buttressed with a "if I kiss enough female ass I'll be accepted!" attitude that can be pathological in its intensity.  Gammas are the true "Beta Orbiters".  When they do mate, it's usually with the female equivalent or lower -- except in those hilarious cases where a low-number Gamma inexplicably marries a higher-level woman.  Those things tend to be short and painful.

But this guy over at Salon is pitching a particular bitch-fit over the lustful thoughts he has about strange women, and how he feels genuinely offended on behalf of his twin daughters and his Tiger Mom, MD wife.  As he pathetically confesses the righteous indignation he feels at his own penis' mindless objectification of women (let's ignore the fact, for the moment, that a dude usually only gets in such a state when his sex life is in "IV drip mode") his tone is clearly pleading for affirmation and acceptance.

It's the Gamma Rabbit Trap: capitulate to the idea that women are superior to men, in all important ways, under the theory that such sniveling capitulation will gain you acceptance, love, and pussy.

Brother Rabbit, it don't work that way.

The Gamma Rabbits are like Black Republicans: you can't figure out how anyone would labor and advocate for a position so blatantly -- proudly! -- against their best interests.  You see, this obvious ploy of appeasement is designed to make him feel better about his "lustful, sexually objectifying" thoughts, because feminism has told him since birth that such thoughts are evil. Andy has voluntarily confessed and repented of being part of "rape culture", and fervently desires a non-sexist, non-threatening world.  A Blue Pill world, where words like "hypergamy" and "infidelity" never exist.  Where "regular sex" is timed by the moon, not by the clock.

 So . . . this guy should be crawling with feminist support and admiration, right?  Because that's clearly what he expected: affirmation for his progressive feminist views and the acceptance of him as a man because of his recognition of the inherent evils of owning a penis.

Only . . . not so much.  Poor bastard.

Not just one, but two scathing reviews of his Gamma-laden posts were made by feminists.  The thing is, they didn't take issue with his political perspective.  They took issue with . . . him.

In New York Magazine, in an article entitled, "I'm a Woman, I read Slate, I Write Violent Thoughts About A Man Who Writes About Being Horny.  How Can I Stop That?" (when, clearly, she has no desire to stop), Maureen O'Conner conflates her hatred of male sexuality and fatherhood in a screed that - if the genders were reversed - would land her in anger management counseling or fired and escorted from the building by security. In part Ms. O'Conner's violent misandry over male feminist Andy Hinds' admission that yes, he too has a penis (although he's very ashamed to admit it) goes something like this:

". . . deep in the vaginal recesses of my female imagination, I fantasize about tearing Slate writer Andy Hinds limb from limb. "

"If I had more respect for Andy Hinds, I might indulge my fantasy about punching him in the gut so hard that he doubles over in pain for a moment. "

"Unfortunately, like Andy Hinds, I too am but a prisoner to my instincts, no matter how hypocritical or rude. The heart wants what the heart wants, and my heart wants violence. "

"Sure, I may want to throw Andy Hinds and [professional Mangina] Hugo Schwyzer into a tank full of hungry sharks, but  . . ."

This, Andy, from your feminist "allies".

Oh, but it gets worse.

From Jezebel, the Industry Leaders In Organized Misandry, in a post entitled: "Daddyblogger Controls His Boner With 'Imaginary Burqas'" by Katie Baker, which goes beyond the violent imagery above and just resorts to humiliating, shaming and effectively destroying this man for sharing his confusion about his sexuality in the feminist-approved way:

But it's not sexist to think about boning strangers, and it's horrifying, really, to resort to mentally censoring women so you don't have to consider the possibility that you're not actually as much of an "enlightened" feminist as you think but a dude with a latent Madonna-whore complex (Hinds could ask his wife how she feels about all this, at least?)

This is actually worse that O'Conner's piece, because not only does she emasculate him for self-emasculating, she further emasculates him because he doesn't have his wife's permission to think these thoughts.  And then she goes on to state that she agrees with all the violent misandrist crap in O'Conner's post.

Way to go, girls.  Another win for our side.

See, Gentlemen, when the poor Gamma Male Feminist Rabbits do try to talk about how proud and dedicated they are to non-sexist culture and gender equity, the moment they poke their head up out of their hole the feminist lawnmower rolls over it.  Andy is an almost complete Scalzi, but he's already getting hammered for his "enlightened" attitude by the very feminists he's trying to identify with.

In his own blog, he frets over the comments from the "Men's Rights Movement" and being misunderstood, not quite understanding that it wouldn't matter how clear and concise he had been, any time a "male feminist" says something out loud, he will and is always castigated roundly by a plurality of female feminists.

It's like a law of nature.  Just see how much respect professional Mangina Hugo Schwyzer has in their circles.

Andy, what you have to realize (and probably wont) is that regardless of the kicking-around you feel in the Manosphere among "Men's Rights Movement" and "Right Wing" trolls, the fact is that we're a lot more forgiving than the feminists are.  We're always willing to help a brother out, if he's willing to admit that the bullshit disguised as political theory known as "feminism" has less to do with equality as it does with female entitlement.  The ladies at Slate and NYMag feel utterly entitled to bash you and your life, your lifestyle, even your wife and kids with impunity, because they know you won't defend yourself.  Even that "What I meant to say" pieces will be ridiculed . . .  if it's even noticed.

Here's the thing, Andy: you will never be accepted as a "feminist" by feminism, because you are Male, and therefore part of the "Patriarchy" and oppressive "Rape Culture" that you, yourself, have been trained to loathe.  Fear, guilt, and early indoctrination convinced you that male sexuality was "bad", and feminism has compounded that feeling by publicly ridiculing your sexuality even as you struggle with it.  On the other side, your unwillingness to admit and embrace the fact that a) you have a penis b) there's no inherent shame in that fact and c) any group who espouses equality and then indulges in such nasty bits of misandry is so intellectually dishonest at its core that your "alliance" with them resembles more a prostitutes alliance with a pimp, not the honest and equal intellectual partnership.

Read these posts again, Andy.  Feel how much they scorn and despise you?  You are contemptible to them . . . because you propose to agree with them.  If they were truly dedicated to a non-sexist world they would have applauded your admission, not condemned it.  But they treated you like a thuggish rapist for admitting that you had illicit thoughts.

Here's the Red Pill truth, Andy: illicit thoughts about random women are part of your evolutionary heritage, and attempting to eschew that so you can make a couple of bitter feminist bloggers happy (when they are predestined not to be happy) with you is just stupid.  You really area Beta Dad, and no, I don't mean that in a "good" way.  In fact, you're less Beta and more Gamma.  A White Knight.  Just the kind of dude feminists love to throw under a bus until you howl . . . which they then point to as proof that they were right all along.

Look, I'm sure you have a spiffy marriage and your kids are adorable.  But Andy, if you don't clue into some stuff real quick, I prophesy a divorce or estrangement within a decade, and then you'll be here, bitter, and wishing you had listened to us.

First, ditch the fear of women.  As much as you love your wife and daughters, that does not extend to the millions of women that would be happy to falsely accuse you of rape, take advantage of your gender in the workplace, or yawn with boredom when they hear of your death in an industrial accident on the news.  The idea that feminists have any male's rights or issues in mind is demonstrably false.  Your continued adherence to this self-destructive, genocidal ideal is going to bite you in the ass even bigger than it has, mark my words. (Go ahead.  Mark them.  I'll wait.)

The Red Pill Truth, Andy, is that your wife earns more than you do, which means (if the stats are correct) that despite everything else, you have at least a 40% chance of divorce in the next decade if it continues.  The truth is that feminists will never accept you, they will always reject you no matter how "nice" you are, and in fact the nicer you are, the more they will despise you.  Gamma Rabbits don't fit into their program unless they need votes or someone to take out the garbage.

It kinda sucks you have daughters, because you're all awash in "girl power" feminism.  If you had sons, then you'd have a much different perspective.  One in which you would see your son's achievements and performance retarded and belittled because of his gender.  One in which your son would not matter even in the abstract to most feminists, because he's "part of the problem".

If you're smart, you'll start reading the Manosphere, Andy.  Not the PUA stuff, but the Married Man Sex Life Blog/books/forum by Athol Kay.  No More Mister Nice Guy.  And my own humble blog.  You'll discover that being Beta -- or worse, Gamma -- gets you respect from neither gender.  The only ones who love Gammas are other Gammas . . . until you stop acting like a Gamma.  Then they turn on you and devour you.

Seriously, dude.  You're a good dad, that's obvious.  You want to be a good husband.  Feminism will help you with neither of those things.  Don't believe me?  Count the number of feminists you know who have been in long (15+ years) happy marriages to the same man.  Go ahead.  I'll wait.

Didn't take long, did it?

That's the dirty little secret feminism doesn't want you to know.  Feminism is not a reproductive strategy designed with a long-term relationship, much less marriage, in mind.  In fact, it celebrates divorce and the estrangement of children from their fathers as a matter of course.  You might disparage the "MRAs" as a bunch of bitter boobs, but the chances of you being there someday, if you keep doing what you're doing, are better than hitting the Pick 6. Ever.

So Andy, I invite you to seriously reconsider your position.  In fact, just to be a good guy about it, I'm going to send you a review ecopy of the Manosphere book as an introduction.

But for the love of Zeus and Hercules, stop acting like you raped someone because you popped a boner over some babe.  It's embarrassing, harmful to your fellow men, and even your wife -- as sympathetic and empathetic as she's likely being about it right now -- isn't going to find you any more attractive because of this.  Quite the contrary.

Welcome to the Manosphere, Andy.  Learn how to Break your Beta. We can help you be a better man.  Hell, it might just save you.

Finally.

The Manosphere book went live on Kindle last night, just before midnight.

The story of how the book came to be, came to be written, and then how it went through a gazillion editions before, alas, I was forced to publish it myself (it wasn't rejected, exactly . . . it's complicated) is freakin' epic.

If I promised you a review copy and you haven't received one, email me.  I'm a little out of it.

The book is not intended to be exhaustive -- it's an intro and a survey, not an in-depth study, even at a robust 270,000 words.  The number of bloggers and experts on various things I mention is vast, yet there is still so, so much more of the perpetually-evolving Manosphere to chart.  This is intended as a place to begin the journey, not end it.

Among the notables quoted within are:

Hugh Hefner
Robert Bly
Camille Paglia
Dalrock
Ferdinan Bardimu
The Society of Phineas
Dr. Albert Mohler
Kevin Deride
William Bennett
Christy Krumm
The Private Man
Hailey of Hailey’s Halo
Deti
TakenInHand.com
Sexo Grammaticus
Cath Eliot
Warren Farrell
The Spearhead.
Manboobz
A Voice for Men
Roger O. Thornhill
John the Other
Jack Donovon
Michael Kimmel
Sam Keen
George Lucas
Badger
Peggy Noonan
Rollo Tomassi
Hugo Schwyzer
Susan Walsh
Dr. Andrea Doulcet
Sara Ruddick
Suzanne Bianchi
Good Men Project
National Organization of Women
Joe Kelly
Jenny Thalheimer
James Poniewozik
Emily Goulding
Chloe Angyal
Neil Shyminski
Dr. Roy F. Baumeister
Average Married Dad
Erik von Markovic
Roissy
Roosh
Neil Strauss
Jonathan Frost
Liza Mundy
Kasey Edwards
Andrea Dworkin
Dr. Philip Zimbardo
Nikita Duncan
Joe Francis
Victor Assange
Tucker Max
John Gray, PhD
Dr. Helen Fisher
Dr. Emily Nagoski
Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam
Dr. Vicki Levkoff
Bill Powell
Marina DelVecchio
Athol Kay
And many more!

Wanted to give a shout-out and point out a review (first!) of the Manosphere book, over at stagedreality by blogger Leap of Beta. I won't add too much to what he's said -- it stands on its own -- but I accept the criticism as eagerly as I do the praise.


While we both come from different backgrounds and we're at different stages in our lives, with different values and different perspectives, we're both men in this century, and by participating in the Manosphere we help bring other men to wisdom and maturity.  And how to get mad poon.

The book really grew out of the 2011 debate that tried to define the Manosphere as either a MRA phenomenon or a PUA phenomenon.  While both had outstanding claims to the role, the fact is that the Manosphere is bigger than both of them, and is inclusive of both of them, plus plenty of other dudes who were some mixture of both of those and more.  The Manosphere exists, and will continue to develop, as a 21st century vault of wisdom and debate about masculinity and a means of the un-fathered to help initiate themselves into the company of mature men.  Or just get mad poon.

Thanks again to Leap of Beta, whose own blog is worthy of checking out regardless of what he says about me.

I've discussed the Red Pill in terms of marriage, relationships, and a general approach to life.  During the last two years or so I have rarely extended the metaphor or the practice into the realm of parenting.  That has been by design - I take great strides to keep my children's childhood happy, that being one of my Wolf Alpha Prime Directives, and discussing them overmuch on my blog endangers that.

However, things have changed in the last few months.  Thanks to some you-wouldn't-believe-it-if-it-didn't happen-to-you events, Mrs. Ironwood and I have been devoting our "abundant free time" to a special project.



No, really.  The long and short of it is (and about all our lawyers will let us say at this point) is that back in late February, my 13 year old son was abducted by his 23 year old female teacher.  He was safely returned, and was unmolested, but the consequences for my entire family have been fairly profound. The loss of trust and the loss of security was devastating, and we're still dealing with the aftermath.   If you recall my PLEASE STAND BY post in late February, that was due to the immediate aftermath of the event, and the "Demon's Run" post dealt with the first of several confrontations with various legal and official authorities.

While that battle rages on, another issue was dropped on our doorstep.  The Niece who has lived with us for over a year and acted as our nanny at Stately Ironwood Manor fell in love with a worthless boyfriend with an addiction to that faux canniboid mixture known as "Spice".


Unlike the fairly benevolent weed cannabis, Spice is essentially some mildly euphoric herbal base like Marshmallow Leaf or Damiana . . . sprayed or soaked in a number of organic solvents and caustic chemicals.  Touted as being "legal" (it's not - most jurisdictions don't have specific laws making it illegal, but the FDA has - so yeah, it's illegal at the Federal level, but most people don't know this and feel helpless to keep it out of their communities.)and sold as "incense", labeled "not for human consumption" (the Spice industry's equivalent of "For Novelty Purposes Only" or "For The Prevention Of Disease Only")  Spice has become extremely popular in middle schools and high schools because of its lack of regulation and how easy it is to get.

The problem is, unlike pot, Spice (sold under a variety of brand names including BIZZARO and Neutronium) is not only easy for them to get, it's also HIGHLY addictive.  Like crystal-meth/heroin/ levels of addiction, plus a violent change in personality that can resemble schizophrenia. Violent schizophrenia.   Some kids smoke Spice once . . . and just never come back.

My Niece's boyfriend got her and a number of other girls to steal for him from their families and friends to support his Spice habit - and of course he got them hooked too.  In just a few months my Niece dropped out of college and began exhibiting all sorts of other classic addict behaviors.  And then our stuff started going missing.  I'm still pursuing the matter . . . and him.

Since then, Mrs. I and I have been collecting data on local Spice vendors, using our Niece (who is in rehab for it at the moment) to inform on her ex-boyfriend's MO and dealers, and we've turned that information over to local law-enforcement, along with the applicable FDA statutes and potential charges.   Believe me, ask anyone in your local law-enforcement agency about Spice, and they'll be happy to tell you what they've seen.

To quote one cop I've spoken to, "If you catch your kid with Spice just once, go find a way to buy them a big bag of weed.  Kids on weed go to the convenience store at 3:00 am with the munchies. Kids on Spice go to the convenience store at 3:00 am with a pistol.  Weed makes you unambitious.  Spice makes you viciously ambitious in a very negative way."

Spice can destroy you.  It essentially "embalms" your lungs, producing a nasty and distinctive hacking cough, it eats holes in various parts of your brain, and it often leads to seizures and violent psychotic episodes.  If there was ever a case to be made for legalizing pot, Spice makes it.

Why am I bringing all of this up?  Because as the Mrs. and I have been hacking our way through this (and I've been trying to hack my way through getting the Manosphere book out) it has occurred to us, over and over, that in interviewing all the teens we have who are addicted to Spice, in just about every case the kid lacked a strong, compelling father figure.  In many cases these kids were raised by grandparents or single moms who just didn't know or didn't have time to watch and supervise their kids adequately . . . and then their jewelry goes missing, and all the Christmas presents she got her kid are in a pawn shop somewhere and their little girl is having inexplicable seizures at school.

The lack of strong, involved fathers contributed to this problem. When feminism threw down the Patriarchy, they also threw down the moral authority of paternalism with it, allowing the next several generations of kids to be, as a culture, Fatherless.  Paternal authority is unlike Maternal authority.  Maternal authority can get you to clean your room out of guilt and do your homework.  Paternal authority tells you to stop seeing that boy if you value his life. When we lost the Paternal authority of the Patriarchy in this culture, we also lost its ability to order and regulate our social affairs and expectations.

With the erosion of "patriarchal", traditionally-male values like Family (as opposed to individualism), Duty (as opposed to irresponsibility) and Honor (as opposed to entitlement) feminism broke the shield that once protected our children from such things as Spice and abduction and tried to replace it with Social Workers, Diversity Training, and "Self-Esteem" lessons.  

And I've fucking had enough of seeing our kids' lives get wasted because of such things.  My son told me instantly when he got home what his teacher did, because he knew he could trust me and trust me to do the right thing, whatever that was.  I'd like to think I haven't let him down on this.  Four months into his crisis, we're still grinding away at the various bureaucracies to see justice done, accountability accorded,  and our children protected.  It hasn't been easy, and it's far from over, but he's watching me give it everything I've got, so even if we lose, in the end I've won . . . and so has he . . . just by not giving up.

As we men collectively face the social horror of the 21st century, therefore, it occurs to me that the re-establishment of those sorts of masculine values can only be affected if we re-found the Patriarchy.  

Not the way it was - the pre-Industrial patriarchy won't work anymore, and the post-Industrial model got crippled before it really was firmly developed - but in a new way.  We need "rule of the fathers" if we value our children's lives and futures . . . because the alternative is abandoning them to the whims of what feminism has wrought.  And I ain't got not time for that.


So this Father's Day, I'm officially re-founding the Patriarchy in honor of Papa Ironwood and all the other dads who made it through the Feminist Interregnum successfully.  True, most dads out there today feel unempowered and helpless against the giant bureaucracy that has evolved to keep them from influencing their own children, but that doesn't mean it can't happen. They may feel impotent in the face of domineering wives or baby-mamas who feel that they and they alone have an active say in parenting.

They are Beta dads, and it is because of their inaction and their unwillingness to stand up to their wives or the system on behalf of their children that stuff like Spice happens to our kids.  Only strong fathers can provide the kind of no-nonsense direction and order a developing kid needs.  Mothers compromise, seek consensus, worry about their child's feelings before the other elements of their lives.  Dads Lay Down The Law.  And if you are incapable of that, you need a dose of Red Pill parenting, stat.

Those men who have, by accident or intention, brought another human being into this world have made a pact with their fellow fathers whether they understand it or not.  I've seen, up close and personal, what happens to a kid who is raised by just a mom, or by a strong mom and a weak dad, and the results fill our psych wards and juvenile detention centers.



Patriarchy 2.0 isn't the broad-based Patriarchy of yore; it is the quiet forging of strong bonds between all fathers, local and national, to act as a collective defense of our children. It has fuck-all to do with marriage, as the shattered landscape of our social system has amply demonstrated that marriage and fatherhood are now well-estranged, in general.  Patriarchy 2.0 is smarter, leaner, and more pissed off.  Patriarchy 2.0 isn't pushing for the return of the Traditional Family as much as it is striving for the survival of the families we have.  

Patriarchy 2.0 is a 21st century response to the problem of child-rearing, with the understanding that the Diaper Years are, actually, the easiest for a dad to navigate.  Patriarchy 2.0 implies a spirit of activism on behalf of all children, not just your own, and a willingness to ignore the "better" approach of feminism and HR departments.  Patriarchy 2.0 is not opposed to MGTOW, PUAs, or any other aspect of the Manosphere.  We're all just Dads, who are worried about our kids, and we need to look to each other for support and guidance because if we rely on the women in our lives to navigate such treacherous waters, then we are risking the lives of our children and abandoning our duties as fathers.

I'm not saying that Fathering is superior to Mothering, or that Dads are better parents than Moms.  What I am saying is that Fathering is important to both boys and girls, and that Dads can do things, say things, and teach things to children of either gender that Moms cannot.  Most Beta dads are content to back whatever their wife decides; Patriarchy 2.0 insists that Dads get to contest that decision if they don't agree with it, and will step in and take charge when they see the need.  Patriarchy 2.0 says dads deal with their business, and get other dads to help if they need it.  Patriarchy 2.0 says if you see a dad in trouble, you help any way you can.  It may take a village to raise a child, but it takes a Father to drag their ass into maturity.

Fatherhood is a universal male value, and a universal masculine issue.  Feminism has tried for years to destroy the Patriarchy by eroding or eradicating the father-son relationship, and poisoning the father-daughter relationship, the removal of family planning decisions from male hands, assorted other attacks on the very institution of fatherhood, and that's what has given us the mess we currently stand within.  We can either accept it or we can fight against it.  I have some ideas how to fight it, and over the next few weeks I'll be sharing some of them.

Father's Day is about honoring fathers, specifically our own, but henceforth I wish it to reflect on the debt we owe to all Fathers, in all times, in all places.  Fatherhood is such a rare and special commodity, thanks to feminism, that when it does genuinely appear these days it needs to be nurtured, protected, and encouraged like a nascent flame during a storm.  And like that flame, it may become the only light and heat we have in the future to get us through the storm.

To this end I am launching the Ironwood Initiative: a series of pro-active instructions and information on what dads can do to help protect their kids - and all kids - from the dangers they face, and how to bring them into manhood or womanhood successfully.  Patriarchy 2.0 needs guidance, and I encourage all fathers out there to join me in giving the advice and support that all other fathers need.  Patriarchy 2.0 is about Red Pill fathering, and while that's still a nascent and nebulous concept . . . it needs to be done.

And the essence of the Red Pill isn't "what can I do?", it's "what needs to be done?"

Happy Father's Day to you all.  Call your dad.  Ask him what he thinks.  Listen.  And then start approaching the entire idea of Fatherhood from a perspective of masculine strength and tenacity.  Raising a kid ain't easy, but it's helpful if you have a couple of other dads around to help.

People often look with scorn on the attempts by the MRA community to affect meaningful change.  Considering most of the issues they deal with -- divorce, custody, visitation, alimony -- tend to be narrow and in reaction to their personal experiences, there isn't a lot of room in there for dudes who didn't have a bitter divorce and custody battle.  So while these brave men are hurling themselves at an unyielding system and howling in their frustration, the rest of us who are sympathetic to their cause have little we can do save offer them our moral support.

But there is an issue which MRAs and non-MRAs in the Manosphere can find common ground upon, and, further, it's an issue that affects all men, regardless of their status as parents.  Even better, it's one that men, acting together, can actually have an effect upon without being labeled sexist misogynists just for having a dick and speaking their mind.

Keep in mind that for the last 100,00 years, the physical security of the human race has been the responsibility of men.  Whether we were driving off a cave bear incursion or using million dollar drones to bomb hundred dollar tents, our job has been to first build civilization, and then defend it.  Of course picking up a rifle and standing a post is one traditional way a man can do that, but the fact is that most of the dangers we face aren't from unfriendly strangers with AK-47s.

In the tribal era, in the Time Before Writing, things were simple.  The sacred and biologically-derived division of labor mandated that women stay in the collective safety of the village while men stood on the periphery to guard, hunt, and defend if necessary.  To women was bequeathed the "life magic" that kept the food supply and children supply running, while men held "death magic", the power to take the lives of animals or other men in service and defense of the village.

Agriculture changed that by making violence more efficient through technology and organization, but the same basic division-of-labor remained.  Only when we hit the post-industrial era did this primal element of our masculine souls take a hit.  Military service is now a specialized and highly developed skill, not a basic skillset of every man.  We are discouraged from learning the arts of violence by nearly all women, from our choice of video games to practicing tactical skills during paintball.  Our modern society does not empower us to protect and defend, unless it's in uniform at the behest of the government.  The feminine imperative finds this to be a good thing.  The masculine imperative finds this to be a highly frustrating and angst-producing thing.

A man can see this frustration fester if he does not find other ways to allow his natural impulse to defend and protect to flourish and express itself.  When the most a man can do to protect his family is pay a hundred-dollar-a-month alarm service and stock up on his homeowner's insurance, the psychic frustration implicit in his inability to protect would be as profound - if not moreso - than a woman who was deprived of any opportunity to express her need to nurture. (And yes, I know just like there are men who would rather die than defend . . . anything, there are women who would rather die than nurture . . . anything.  I'm not talking about those contra-survival clowns, just the rest of us.  Our descendants' future ancestors.)

This masculine frustration with the modern age and its limited ability to allow us to feel protective and express our guardianship over what we value is not just a wistful, bitter, "loss of male privilege", it's as tangible as the women who wait at church for thirty years for Jesus to send them a man, when the man never comes.  Men need to feel protective of what they value; it is part of how they assesses and express value.

Many people from outside of the US express confusion over the fierce manner in which we Americans defend the Second Amendment, when we so clearly suffer from its abuses with gory, bloody regularity.  The key to the matter is understanding that the 2nd Am. institutionalizes and ordains with especial protection the masculine need to feel secure in his person, family, and property.  The importance of owning a firearm in America is not the idea that you will be able to protect yourself from a criminal or fend off invaders; it is the feeling of sovereign security such ownership brings.

It was elevated to the status of a "right" by our founding fathers for much the same reason that Roe v. Wade rightly elevated a woman's control over her own body as a sacred right by the Supreme Court: because such a thing is essential for an individual man or woman to feel control over their own destiny.  A woman who cannot freely control whether or not she has a child, or be forced into marriage against her will, is not truly  free.  The man who cannot freely control whether or not he can protect his child is likewise not truly free.

The other Western Democracies guarantee the right to due process, personal security, and (within various limits) private property.  The United States is the only nation in which, thanks to the 2nd Am., those rights are assured.

But the Ironwood Initiative is not a scheme to get dads to buy guns.  The issue isn't gun rights.

The issue is school safety.

Let me begin by saying that I'm not advocating armed guards, militias, etc. patrol our schools -- that's neither reasonable or effective.  In fact, let's take the Lone Gunman totally off the table for the moment and just look at general school safety.



That sounds like a fairly mild issue to most men . . . until you're a father.  Before fatherhood, you think of "school safety" as crossing guards and school buses stopping at railroad tracks.

Once you realize you're going to be a Dad, your entire perspective shifts.  Every news story involving a child getting injured sends a chill up your spine.  Really, your first year of fatherhood is a full-time freak-out.  Once you're a dad, you realize just how vulnerable your children are in a school system long before they ever get there.  School shootings get your attention . . . but so does every child abduction, missing kid, Amber Alert, and savage tale of criminal acts against children.

Your feelings of inadequacy to protect your kids from all manner of dangers when they are supposedly safe at school can lead to insomnia and ulcers.  If you are divorced and your kid is in another state . . . well, that's a kind of persistent hell.

School safety is getting a lot of press, but that's because the spectacular failures end up in the news.  Once you take school shootings out of the equation, then bullying and drugs get the exposure.  My suburban kid learned all about the Crips and the Bloods and how to gang tag an area in elementary school.  He came home terrified the Latin Kings would come creeping through our neighborhood after him for a drive-by.  Gang activity is a serious issue, don't misunderstand me - but your kid isn't nearly as likely to get jumped in or jumped on by a gang in middle school, despite what the Gang Resistance Education program might suggest.

The fact of the matter is, for boys "school safety" isn't just having a good place to hide when the shooting starts.  It isn't just avoiding bullies and telling a teacher.  It isn't saying 'NO' to drugs or watching after-school specials.  When we send our kids to school, the dangers there are real, persistent, and can come from unexpected places.  While we anxiously scan the horizon for armed gunmen and gang lords, we rarely take the time or emotional energy to consider the people who are far more likely to be in a position to hurt your kid: the teachers and staff.

Want to know an ugly Red Pill truth?  If you want to be a child molester in this nation, the easiest way for a free ticket to your fondest dreams is going to college and getting a teaching certificate.  Crimes that would get a crowd with torches and pitchforks on your lawn if you were a mechanic or a systems analyst are heavily protected from prosecution and the consequences of their crimes by the educational and legal bureaucracy.  If you are a child predator, having a teaching license is the equivalent to having a half-price coupon to a strip club.

No one wants to think about that ugly truth.  It's Blue Pill thinking that a teaching certification and an apple on a desk are enough to verify the security profile of the person who's teaching your kid.  Yet every year hundreds of public school teachers are quietly shuffled from school to school after various "incidents", anything from sexting a hot 8th grader to getting grabby during PE, up to and including rape of a child.  I was shocked when I learned just this week that there are dozens, if not hundreds, of child predators in my state that hold valid teaching certificates.  The way that most public school systems are set up the bureaucracy involved is designed to protect the teachers, not the students.  It's designed to protect the teachers FROM the students.

But rarely does the school do much to protect the students from the teachers.

"Passing The Trash"

That doesn't sound like a very big deal, but that's because when there is an "issue" with a teacher and a student, and the police aren't involved, the school's first institutional impulse is to obfuscate, protect, and deny.  If you have a legitimate issue, the bureaucracy is designed to make it go away quietly, bury the parents in pointless paperwork, have a lot of conferences that result in little or no action, and generally protect the teacher, the principal, the counselor, and the school board from any pesky accountability.

Any father who has had to deal with this understands just how frustrating and dangerous to our children it can be.

The Ironwood Initiative is designed to empower men, fathers, and the occasional Black Knight with the knowledge and support to make the issue of School Safety clearly a masculine interest and a goal of Patriarchy 2.0.  The Patriarchy 1.0 was founded on a man's ability to defend his home and family from a threat.  Mature masculinity implies the power to protect and defend with your strength, and no subject will make a father more vicious and angry than the idea that his children are being sent into jeopardy every day.  Patriarchy 2.0 is in part a paternal response to the subtle dangers our children face today.  Everyone does tornado drills.  No one does Child Predator drills.

The dangers faced by our kids are manifold: while everyone dreads the horror of a school shooting, those tragedies are, thankfully, few and far between.  The fact is, your kid is far more likely to be molested by a teacher at his/her school than getting shot by a lone gunman. But while millions of dollars are being dedicated to the study of how to turn our elementary schools into impregnable fortresses, virtually NOTHING is being done about the potential child sexual predators they get locked into that fortress with.  If you're a Dad it should terrify you to know that if your kid is molested by a teacher, then you can pretty much count on the school system covering for them completely unless they got beyond Third Base.

School systems know this is a problem.  If examined in aggregate, the number of reported and unreported cases of sexual impropriety and molestation in our public schools DWARFS the Sandusky affair on an annual basis.  It makes the problems with child predators in the Boy Scouts and the Catholic Church In terms of shear numbers, the number of kids who get molested or preyed upon in public schools is vastly higher than those who suffered that fate in Catholic schools.  The reason you don't hear about it is because the public school system's policies are designed to keep things from being reported to appropriate law-enforcement authorities and handling things quietly "in house" as "personnel matters".

And as "personnel matters", they are naturally cloaked in the kind of secrecy that allows criminal child predators to go on molesting indefinitely . . . and then retire at the public expense.

That is, they use the privacy issue in Human Resources to cloak and obscure any chance of accountability you might have.  "I'm sorry, we can't release that information, it's covered by Privacy laws" is the standard reply . . . which demonstrates, if nothing else, just how unwilling most public school systems are to even deal with the issue.  School systems can feign that they are afraid of being sued over violations of privacy and personnel records by their teachers . . . because they make the process of demanding accountability so complex and obscure, and many such issues are covered by statute that grants schools immunity from liability in a lot of cases.

No one wants to admit that this sort of thing happens.  The fact is, it happens constantly, and the public school system in this country goes out of its way to conceal and obfuscate it.  And because of their unwillingness to keep their own house clean, serial molesters skip quietly from one school to another with the tacit permission of and often a glowing recommendation from their administrators. This happens with such frequency that there's even a an industry term for this transference of child predators from school system to school system: Passing The Trash.  The teacher resigns quietly, the parents are paid off or buried in bureaucracy, and the teacher moves to another school system with a fresh start and a whole new crop of unaware victims.

Unless a child is violently raped on campus in front of a camera, securing a conviction through the auspices of the school system is going to be nearly impossible.  

Even if the offender is caught and prosecuted, in the cases where the offender is female the sentencing tends to be light, and in some cases the teacher doesn't even lose her license, she just goes on "probation".  In fact it horrified Mrs. Ironwood and myself when we learned from an inside source that in our state alone there are around 100 convicted sex offenders who still hold valid teaching licenses in my state, who have managed to hang on to them even while they are in prison, thanks to the rules of the State Board of Education.  Some of these "educators" are even getting continuances on their ethics hearings while they are actively serving prison sentences for their crimes.

Since public school systems get state and federal funds based in part on their reporting of violent crimes and serious issues, the principals involved have a vested interest in burying and under-reporting serious criminal offenses by teachers.  Any time a principal can avoid issuing a police report and treat even serious sexual and criminal offenses by teachers as "internal disciplinary affairs", they can keep their numbers low and their reputations intact.  And if some teacher does get busted en flagrente delicto, then usually the family is quietly paid off through a "secret" institutionalized binding arbitration, and the teacher is not only allowed to resign, they are often given a glowing recommendation by their principal to help get them established in a fresh school system.

No record of the offense or any ethical problems are ever revealed.  Unless the teacher has a criminal conviction and the new school system is willing to check their criminal background history, the child predator can continue with their pursuit in a fresh district with a fresh crop of victims.  Meanwhile, the teacher's previous employer quietly buries all record of it as a "personnel matter", keeping it forever out of the light of day.

There's even an education industry term for the practice: "passing the trash".

This has to stop.  We can stop it.

How?  Here's a list of stuff you can do to help make YOUR kid's school a little safer from the teachers:

1) Run your own criminal background screen on every teacher and staff member at your kids' schools.  It might cost you a couple of bucks, but it's worth it. Call any violations out in writing to the school principal and the school system's HR department.

2) Start attending school board meetings and start putting non-agenda items on that revolve around Passing The Trash.  For instance, ask that the school board require annual criminal screens and fingerprinting of all employees.  They often do it for parent volunteers, but at least in my state they only do them on teachers at the date-of-hire, and then never again.  Or ask for teacher's CVs to be publicly available.  They might say 'no', but other parents and local press might be very interested in their reasoning.

3) Identify possible "passed trash" that has landed at your school.  Common indicators are suddenly leaving in the middle of the semester, frequent moves from school to school, etc.  Often these teachers are extremely popular with their students, as that is part of their MO, so resistance to the very idea is going to be strong.  Remember how many folks were willing to come out in support of Sandusky?

4) Also at the school board meetings, move that the board require special annual instruction of all teachers and staff in the warning signs and indicators of a potential child predator, as well as the laws and criminal penalties involved for failure to report.  The Boy Scouts of America has a twenty-minute video presentation and test online that would suffice, but I suggest you check out parenting.org's list of child predator indicators.  If every employee in your kids' school system isn't required to know this stuff, make it your mission to ensure that they are.

5) Demand accountability.  School systems will bury as much as they can under the obfuscatory blanket of "personnel privacy laws".  They will hide behind policies and pointless grievance procedures.  Teachers are smart, they have protected themselves pretty well from the consequences of their actions.

6) Most schools have an "open door policy" that they love to talk about at the beginning of the year.  Something along the lines of "any parent is welcome to visit our school at any time".  Take them up on it.  Make "surprise inspections" where you essentially walk around the school, recording anything you suspicious you see.  If nothing else, it will make potential child predators nervous.  They work best with inattentive parents (particularly single moms) and often seek out "troubled" kids.  If they see a couple of Dads wandering through, looking stern and menacing, then they might think twice.  And it makes principals nervous, which is never a bad thing.

7) Know the Regs.  Both the local school board policies and the state and federal regulations that regulate your local public school system.  There's nothing a bureaucrat fears more than someone who knows the regs better than they do.  In this case that includes the Safe Schools Act, No Child Left Behind, and FIRPA.

8) Make friends with local law-enforcement over the matter.  Most local law-enforcement agencies already have a touchy relationship with the school system, as "School Resource Officers" or "School Safety Officers" are often stymied in enforcing ANY laws against teachers.  They're there to keep the kids in line, not the teachers.  They see plenty of stuff they'd love to act on, only that's difficult without a parental complaint.  Find a cop who has kids in the same school system, let him or her know your concerns, and be vigilant to any attempt by the school administration to stymie your efforts.

9) Record EVERYTHING.  Check your state's laws for legality, but in many states it's perfectly permissible to record evidence of wrongdoing.  Even if it isn't admissible in court, often it's enough to justify "probable cause" for further legal action.

10) Network with other concerned Dads over the matter.  Not moms.  As much as moms want to be involved and feel strongly about student safety, they're often overly-concerned with public perceptions, reputation, and "making waves".  When the Female Social Matrix is involved, most moms don't want to be "one of those parents".  Dads don't mind making a few waves if their child's safety is at stake, and they are a lot less likely to compromise to the reasonable-sounding suggestions of the school administration.  Dads are also more personally intimidating, in most cases, and while any violent language, threats, or even a raised voice can get you in trouble, being quietly menacing is perfectly within your rights. Dads in groups are even more menacing.  Moms are too willing to "be reasonable".  Dads can get away with being assholes, and aren't nearly as concerned with what the neighbors think.


Now, should the worst-case-scenario occur and you do discover  potential child predator at your kids' school, then the school system often feels smug because they've been through this before, and they feel "protected".  Local DAs often won't prosecute an "internal matter" in a school even if there has been felonious criminal conduct.  State laws often protect local school systems from all liability, or at least most liability.  But there happens to be more laws written about schools than most schools can successfully obey.  Here's a few suggestions about how to put pressure on the school system to make changes:

1) The Press.  There's usually some local newspaper in search of a scandal, some local TV station looking for good stories.  If you can give them one, they might run with it.  "Five Local School Teachers Face School Board Ethics Inquiry" would be too juicy for most to ignore.  There are limits to what the press can do, and "going to the press" doesn't have the same potency that it used to, but raising awareness of an issue is almost never a bad thing.

2) The State Police.  If the local police or sheriff is unwilling to "shit where they eat", involve the state police, highway patrol, and state Attorney General in the case.  They don't have the same vulnerabilities, and busting local corruption is what they're there for.  And no matter how much a school system tries to wiggle around and obfuscate, "Obstruction of Justice" is a lovely one-size-fits-all charge for such maneuvers.

3) Read their email.  Most states provide legal access to all state employee emails with a simple request.  Feel free to request as much email between the school administration and the system administration as possible.  Most teachers and principals never think anyone will read what they write, but unless the email in question is part of an ongoing lawsuit, or it has student names or grades in it, there should be no legal impediment to you seeing them.  And they can be quite revealing.

4) Get the school board to create the position of Omsbudsman.  If you aren't familiar with this obscure legal term, it bears investigation.  An Omsbudsman is basically an official third-party to whom a consumer or stakeholder can register a complaint.  The Omsbudsman then investigates on your behalf, even though they are getting paid by the school system.  Usually an attorney, the Omsbudsman has certain limited powers that can often get things done in the absence of a cooperative administration.  Omsbudsmans can be very specifcally focused, too: a school board can, for example, create the position of School Security Omsbudsman, ADA Omsbudsman, No Child Left Behind Omsbudsman, etc.  School boards don't like to do this, as it takes up time and money when the school board is supposed to be doing everything just perfectly on its own.  But it adds a layer of accountability to the system that most school boards lack utterly.

5) Sue their ass.  It's hard to sue a school system over liability, but there are a number of ways to sue them through proper channels, all good and legal.  Consider a Title IV suit, which involves school security or safety, or if the alleged victim is male you may well have grounds for a Title IX suit, considering the gender disparity in prosecution and sentencing.  Remember, segregation didn't end in the South because of legislation, it ended because of Brown v. Board of Education.

And if you want to be really sneaky . . . you can sue them under the False Claims Act.

This is a little-known provision of law that was written during the Civil War to cover government agencies and contractors who were knowingly providing low-standard equipment (originally blind mules) to a federal agency, essentially defrauding the government.  These suits are usually known as whistleblower suits, or "Qui Tam" suits, from the Latin phrase "Qui tam pro domino rege quam pro se ipso in hac parte sequitur", or "[he] who sues in this matter for the king as [well as] for himself."

Qui tam suits have recently been used against colleges and pharmaceutical companies, and they have a lot of specific restrictions: the plaintiff (called the "relator") must have personal knowledge of a violation that is not general knowlege or discovered through an official audit, they must inform the appropriate authorities of their finding before they file, and they must give the Attorney General the opportunity to investigate and take over the case.  That happens about 20% of the time.  Many states also have False Claims Acts, so the same filing will often work with both state and federal attorneys general.

Now, this might seem a little far-fetched, but the fact is that while local school boards are institutionally prepared for direct legal action against them, the beauty of a Qui Tam suit is that it obligates the state and/or federal Attorney General to investigate the matter automatically to determine the veracity and standing of the relator.  Personnel privacy rules are suspended during an attorney general's investigation.  An attorney general's investigation can go anywhere, look at any document, interview anyone they want without the school system (whom the AG is usually supposed to protect) being able to do anything about it.  Even if you are not granted Qui Tam status as a Relator, the investigation is likely to turn up something . . . or at least make some folks in the school administration mighty uncomfortable for a while.  It's worse than an IRS audit.

But since all public school systems take both state and federal money, they are subject to the provisions of the False Claims Act.  Just as discovering that the school motor pool is paying premium prices for sub-standard gasoline for its buses is grounds for a Qui Tam suit, so is under-reporting violent crimes such as abduction, child endangerment, harassment, etc.  It constitutes making a false report in most cases.  And if the suit does go forward without the State or Federal AG intervening, then the Relator is usually entitled to $10,000 per offense plus up to 30% of all recovered funds.  That's right, you can sue your local school system for fun AND profit!

While no one wants to be the dickhead who lost a couple of million in public funds for a school system, no one wants to be the father of a child who has been preyed upon, sexually abused, and damaged by some trash passed on to your school by another.  Remember, schools didn't do jack about segregation until the courts forced them to.  That's really the only thing they respond to.

MANOSPHERE APPLICATIONS

Now, for those of you non-fathers out there who see this as the impotent pussification of the Manosphere, let me call to your attention a couple of salient details about the Gender War:

1. The teaching profession (K-12) in America is predominantly female, and largely feminist in orientation.

2. The school is where the first serious feminist indoctrination begins for both boys and girls.

3. The feminist-oriented, female-dominated education industry is clearly (by all objective measures) designed to empower girls and punish boys.

4. Elementary school is where the first elements of blanket male disrespect are formulated -- it's a freakin' BETA incubator.

5. The teaching profession (K-12) is the secure backbone of the liberal voting bloc in this country.  Teamsters might change their votes if it's in the interest of unions.  Teachers won't change their votes from a liberal or progressive candidate without divine intervention.

The public school system in this country is where feminist ideas and attitudes get disseminated, largely because feminist teachers understand the Byzantine network of special laws and protections available to them in defense of their "teaching style".  By putting a lot of pressure on them institutionally and administratively, especially in the name of student safety, then they have a very hard time defending themselves.  No one, not even the teachers' unions, want to be on the "pro-child predator" side of the argument.

These are just a few suggestions.  If you have more, please make them.  We all have a stake in this, and as fathers we have a gender-based determination to protect our young . . . even from those to whom we entrust their care.

Let me know what you think.

As I promised, I point out bad reviews as well as good ones.  This one at the venerable Matt Forney's site is mixed, but doesn't recommend the book for reasons he points out in the review. Essentially, sloppy scholarship (particularly in the MGTOW section).

As I said in the comments section, I'll cop to that.  If I could have, I would have spent another year on the book and refined it, annotated it properly, and had it meticulously fact-checked . . . but when your choice is "publish it now or abandon it altogether", you go to print with the book you have, not the book you want.

That being said, Matt's criticisms are well-taken.  The biggest one (besides sloppy scholarship and some editing issues) is the supposed failed take over of The Spearhead by white supremacists, and I do feel this needs some note of explanation: after I'd written the MGTOW section, it became clear that the Southern Poverty Law Center was investigating various Manosphere sites, and ultimately listed Roosh as some sort of thought criminal because, well, his kung-fu works.  But they apparently (from what I understand) became aware of the whole 'sphere while tracking white supremacist trolling, and that's what led them to The Spearhead.  And that much activity was enough, apparently, to rationalize a full-scale "investigation" of the Manosphere.  So from the interior perspective I can see how this would be a glaring error, but as I was examining the movement from an exterior perspective and this alleged fact was used to attack the movement, I felt it was worthy of inclusion.  A second edition may see the section re-written as events unfold.

And that brings me to the other point I have in response to Matt's cogent review: as he says, trying to define the Manosphere is a big task.  What he doesn't emphasize is just how fast the Manosphere changes, and how difficult it is to pin down a "history" or even a helpful survey of something that is evolving so rapidly and in so many different directions.  A book is a static thing, just as a blog is a plastic one.  Worse, you can be focused on one section and miss important developments in others.

For example, when I started the book In Mala Fide was the ex officioNew York Times of the Manosphere, and Return of Kings hadn't been launched.  My first version of the MGTOW and MRA sections was based on that.  By the time I came back around to a re-write, I had to include RoK because of its obvious importance in the 'sphere . . . but my editor thought we'd covered MGTOW and MRA exhaustively and didn't think we needed to include "every new blog that pops up".  In fact, it was one of the issues leading up to the decision to publish on my own, instead of abandoning the effort.

When a writer tackles a subject like this it can be difficult to separate his personal perspective from the objectivity needed to do a subject credit; while Matt's criticism is well-taken and deserved, his perspective is skewed in the sense that he is part of the thing I was attempting to describe; I'm guessing that being at the center of it, he doesn't see the popular reaction to the idea the way I do, or how the basics of the MGTOW movement have been co-opted and mixed with other ideas and sprouted new hybrids.  That's perfectly understandable, from Matt's position.  I'm not arguing I got some of the facts wrong (or didn't relay them well), but the fact is that MGTOW has grown beyond the ideals of the original movement, it has influenced a lot of other ideologies and responses, and it has inspired thousands of men to do things with their lives that perhaps the originators of the ideal hadn't considered.  

Other issues:

I know there are gay men lurking in the Manosphere because they have written to me, ostensibly because I'm less homophobic and judgmental than other areas in the Manosphere.  In fact I'm working on a post about the nature of masculinity and homosexuality, and the role gay men can and should play in the Manosphere, but as that subject is still fairly nascent I may wait until it develops further.

I chose the term PUA because terms like "Game Artist" or "Game Theorist" get confusing.  The common perception of Game bloggers is that they are "PUAs", and since that's how they are commonly (if erroneously) referred to, that's the term I used.  I can see Matt's point, but I can see my own as well.

Yeah, politics always comes into it, and it could be argued that mine have gone more conservative over the years.  On the other hand, I'm still just as pro-2nd Amm, as I was when I started, and I'm no less enamored of the corporate ruling elite, the tax system, the federal bureaucracy, and all sorts of other issues.  I am one of those surprisingly common dudes who fits into neither Left or Right when my aggregate politics are examined.  While I'll be the first to insist that the Democrats are the Party of Women and Women's Issues, for example, I cannot in good conscience say that the Republicans are the Party of Men and Men's Issues, because the fact is they really aren't.

All in all, it's a good, thoughtful, intelligent review that ultimately doesn't recommend the book for dudes in the Manosphere.  Hell, I can live with that.  I wrote this book to be an introduction, a survey, a place for the man ignorant of the Manosphere to get an idea of where to go to find what he needs.  Dudes who are already neck-deep in the Manosphere know most of this stuff already, as Matt points out.  This is for the guy who heard the term, was curious, and wants to know more.

Believe it or not, this is a Game post.


I rarely talk about my kids here, because I don't want to drag them unnecessarily into anything that might be considered sordid, but this bears repeating.  For those of you just tuning in, Mrs. Ironwood and I are raising three precociously brilliant kids.

The eldest is a 13 year old boy who is intellectually brilliant but struggles socially -- think Sheldon from Big Bang Theory, only with far more interest in boobs.  My daughter (let's call her "Kitten", because she would like that) is 11, artistically gifted to the point of commercial consideration, is hyper-aware socially, and loves her Daddy more than life itself.

Then there is my 9 year old.

While he's almost as intellectually smart as his older brother and almost as artistically talented as his sister, his most impressive talents lie elsewhere.  Not only is he cute and smart . . . the boy has serious Game.  Like, better Game than most grown men.

Let's call him Bob, because he'd like that and it's the name of his favorite dog, not because it's anywhere close to his real name.  Bob has Game far beyond his years.  A recent episode demonstrated just how much Game he had, and I think you might find it instructive.

Mrs. I and I took the kids to a rare social event in which we reconnected with many old friends, some of whom had children about the same age as ours.  One couple's daughter, let's call her Sophia, is just a few months older than Bob.  Bob recognized that fact at once, took an interest, and began to plot his moves the moment he arrived at the party.

I tried to warn Sophia's dad, Seth, about Bob and his interest in his daughter, but Seth dismissed it with a wave and a chuckle.  "They're kids," he insisted.  "I'm not worried."

I was on "kid duty", which meant I stood out on the deck and talked and smoked cigarettes and watched the kids play in the backyard while Mrs. I was inside catching up.  I watched with fascination as Bob examined his environment and chose a comfortable porch swing.  As twilight fell, he claimed a spot at one end and made the rest of the cushions into a comfortable nest.

Then he waited.

When Sophia next ran by, he caught her attention by calling her name.  She turned to look, and he gave her a  stare.  Then he patted the space next to him, and with supreme and utter confidence he told her "Join me."

He didn't ask.  It wasn't even quite an invitation.  It was a politely-worded instruction.  Sophia balked, in response, and said something catty, because his 11 year-old sister was in earshot.  Bob ignored his sister.  He just patted the seat again, twice, very deliberately, and kept looking at her.  Within sixty seconds she was sitting next to him.

For the next ten minutes I vicariously witnessed my youngest presenting as The Most Interesting 9 Year Old In The World.  He asked about her school.  Her pets.  He told her about his, and discussed the differences.  Then he asked how she was feeling, and made sure she had a drink within moments when she admitted she was thirsty.  His arm landed just behind her shoulder when he sat down.  She laughed at a joke (it was genuinely funny, but even Bob knows when a woman is trying too hard) and he knew she was hooked.  Then he started talking about the full supermoon, and how it was larger now than ever, and why it looked that way, and how pretty it was, at which point his sister exclaimed a loud "Aw, Come ON!" in disgust in an effort to c-block him.

Bob was nonplussed.  After his successful approach and his hook, he used his sister's reaction as an excuse to invite Sophia to go inside and watch a movie.  Isolation.  The kid is a natural.

That's when I reminded Seth about Bob's interest in Sophia.  Seth looked up and saw them walking back into the house together and laughed.  "Aw, it's sweet!  They're just kids," he reminded me.

He didn't know Bob. But since he was inside, that was out of my zone.  he was Mrs. Ironwood's problem now.

Half an hour later, Mrs. Ironwood came out for a kid-check and head count.  The older two were still chasing fireflies with the big kids, but the younger two were absent.  I told her they were inside.  Alone.  Together.  Her eyes got wide.

"Seth, come with me, now," she demanded, and he reluctantly got to his feet to follow her.  They went down the hall to where the "kids room" was only to find the door shut.

"Uh oh," whispered Mrs. I.

"It's nothing," assured Seth.  "Sophia shuts her door all the time.  It was probably just too loud out here."

 Then he tried to open the door to find it locked.  He turned around and looked at Mrs. Ironwood in horror, as it struck him for the first time that he had a daughter, and just what that meant, as a father. I couldn't help but sympathize.

"I warned you," Mrs. Ironwood said, shaking her head.  "Now turn around, Seth, and start being a Dad. You have a daughter, and when it comes to this sort of thing you need to be that dad."  It took him a moment - he was reluctant to acknowledge the truth of the matter - but he was banging on the door in seconds.

"Sophia, you come unlock this door RIGHT NOW!" he demanded.

"We're just watching the Incredibles!" she called back, saucily.

"Unlock the door . . . NOW!" Seth insisted.  It took far longer than it should have.  Seth aged visibly in the duration.

When the door finally did open, Bob was sitting back on the futon, cool and at ease, while Sophia indignantly confronted her father.  "Daddy, we were just watching a movie!" she dismissed with her little girl sass.

"I'm sorry the door got locked, Sir," Bob said politely and earnestly.  "I think it was my fault."  He wasn't acting guilty, he wasn't even acting busted.  He was acting as if this was an expected and completely cope-able interruption of his evening.  "It won't happen again, Sir."  (and yes, my kids really are that polite.  There are some very good things about raising a kid in the South).

Sophia wasn't having it, however.  She was used to running over her father.  "Daddy, it was MY idea to shut the door and MY idea to lock it, so we could have some privacy."

Before Seth could err and find that a reasonable and rational explanation for their behavior, my wife intervened.  She knows better.

"ALL RIGHT," Mrs. Ironwood said, knowing that Seth was about to crumble before the onslaught of cuteness.  Seth just has the one girl to contend with.  We have three brilliant heathens.  "Both of you, OUT OF THERE NOW!" she bellowed like a drill sergeant.  Sophia was unused to being spoken in that way, but trooped out, dutifully followed by Bob.  Bob didn't look fazed at all.  "I think it's time we leave," Mrs. Ironwood sighed.  "It's getting late."

"Thank you for a lovely evening," Bob said to Sophia, solemnly.  "Maybe we can do it again sometime."  Sophia, of course, was enchanted.  Mrs. Ironwood was determined.  Seth was attempting to adapt to the fact that his daughter had just had the moves put on her for the first time.  I just got the keys and started rounding up the older two. Quickly.

We said our goodbyes with good humor, and made it out of the party without further incident.  Once we'd all piled into the minivan, Bob's Game was a hot topic of conversation.  His older brother was speechless in admiration (he has a hard time talking to girls about anything but comic books or computer games).  His sister was indignant and jealous.  Bob was . . . thoughtful.  And utterly unapologetic.  Apparently he'd seen his foray with Sophia as merely his opening move.

"Why did you go there?" I asked him in a private moment, later.  He shrugged and looked thoughtful.

"She was cute, Daddy," he replied.  "She was nice to me.  She likes Minecraft.  Besides, when she was running around, I saw her tattoo and I told her I liked it."

"Tattoo?" I asked, confused.  I didn't remember a tattoo.

"Yeah, she had one of those temporary tattoos of a cat or a flower or something, and I told her I liked it."

"Where?"

"At the party? Don't you remember?" he asked, exasperatedly.

"No, no, where on her body was it?  I didn't see it."

"Oh, it was on her back.  Way far down, just above her pants."  He indicated the region.

Bob had been allured by her temporary tween tramp-stamp.  I was in shock.

"Girls who wear tattoos," he said, shaking his head.  "You just know they want you to talk to them."

"Weren't you scared when Mr. Seth banged on the door?" I asked, thinking of all the angry fathers in his future.

"Nah," he dismissed, casually.  "It was all her idea, but I was ready to take the blame.  He's not my dad.  He can't spank me," he reasoned.  I couldn't argue with that.  It did set a dangerous precedent, though, and I couldn't help but worry.  "Besides," he said, philosophically, "she's having a birthday party soon.  Almost all girls are going.  I'm so in," he said, confidently.  He had every reason to be.

He was . . . The Most Interesting 9 Year Old In The World.

I don't often call out other folks' blogs, mostly because I'm lazy, but I had to overcome my usual summer inertia this week for the honor of being the godfather to a new blog focused on the Puerarchy.


The blog is helmed by Morpheus Manfred, the brain behind The Red Pill subreddit and various and diverse other contributions to the Manosphere.  Morpheus finally drank the Kool Aid in a big way and started his own blog devoted to the Puerarchy, an important and valuable component to the Manosphere that deserves proper celebration.  From the first few posts, it looks like it's got a great start.  Morpheus invited me to do a guess post, so I broke my unintentional summer hiatus and gave the blog a proper welcome. As its fairy godfather, I felt I could do no less.

Good luck to the Puerarchy.  There are a lot of young men out there looking for an age-appropriate expression of masculinity.  Short of joining the Army or taking up deep sea fishing, the Puerarchy promises a method of doing so which has the dual benefits of honing valuable Game skills and scaring the hell out of feminists.

Revel in the glory of that youthful surge of testosterone that makes you brave, stupid, and (eventually) humble.  Respect your respectable elders, reject ideologies that punish you for the crime of being male, defend your brothers even as you steal their cigarettes, beer, and occasional girlfriend, and be true to your selves, because no one else is going to do it for you.

Living well is the ultimate form of aggression, Gentlemen.  Do so with style, sophistication . . . and volume.

I've taken a good chunk of the summer off from the blog to write and conduct Field Work, and I'll be getting back to regular posts shortly.  Until then, here's a little something I've been working on I thought y'all might get something out of.  It's another Girl Game post, but it's equally useful for men to use on women, slightly tweaked for gender differences.



One of my long-time readers came to me with a problem: after working with her husband to overcome some BETA issues and ALPHA him up a bit to generally good effect, the dude back-slid after an argument into nearly full Blue Pill BETA supplicant mode, much to her dismay and mild disgust.  But as she is committed to the relationship, she wanted to know how to repair that damage.

So I discussed it with Mrs. Ironwood for a while and she pointed out that it can be difficult to be assertive from a submissive position without coming across as the typical "bossy bottom" (a term borrowed from Lambdaworld to describe the submissive partner in the relationship who is actually in charge, usually through a multitude of passive-aggressive and emotionally manipulative actions).   No one likes a bossy bottom.

But that doesn't mean a wife is powerless to affect change in a nascent Red Pill relationship, nor is she automatically at the mercy of her husband's whim.  When a Red Pill husband accidentally shifts into reverse, a Red Pill wife has a chance to give him a way back, if she is bold enough.  You don't do that by bitching, nagging, whining, or pleading.  You do that by issuing a challenge.

Just like a woman in a relationship can impel a man toward the Red Pill and a more dominant presentation by Extending an Invitation, when a Red Pill dude really screws up, instead of letting him twist in the wind while he figures out where he went wrong, it is often in a wife's best interest to forget the issue that started the argument/crisis and focus on building a way to repair it. You do that by Issuing a Challenge.

Now, every man wants to feel like a heroic knight in shining armor in his relationship, and while that implies plenty of dreary damsel rescuage, it also implies a dedication to a quasi-mystical quest.  So when things are amiss in the usual ALPHA-BETA, Male/Female equation to the point where your dude starts whining or moping instead of manfully handling his business, not only do you as a Red Pill wife and First Officer have a responsibility to the ship to point it out in a respectful way, but you have an agency to restore that equilibrium.

Just as you can Extend an Invitation to give him a nudge in the right direction, creating the space to impel him toward a more ALPHA presentation, when he fucks up you can give him a way back by Issuing A Challenge.

Now, you have to be careful about this, because it has the possibility of blowing up on you if you aren't.  You must make your dude understand that this isn't just an ordinary hysterical shit-test, it's a very deliberate and calculated Shit Test.  Indeed, it isn't a classical Shit Test by virtue of its restorative power.  Traditionally, by acceeding to the Shit Test you lose no matter what: even if you do what she wants, she loses respect for you for caving in when you really should have stood your ground.

Issuing a Challenge is more involved.  First, it should be well-established just WHY you are issuing the challenge in the first place.  Let's pretend, for example, that Mrs. Ironwood and I had a fight, and instead of being all ALPHA like she wants me to be, I cave in and go into obsequious BETA mode until she's ready to strangle me.  The first part of Issuing the Challenge revolves around identifying the behavior you wish to correct.

"Ian, you're being a spineless bastard.  I'm sick of this BETA attitude of yours, and I'm calling a flag on that play."  Okay, so she really wouldn't talk like that, but I've reduced a twenty-minute conversation to the headline.  "I really don't feel as attracted to you when you're like this, and I'm not happy about it."  She doesn't need to add the insulting "Man Up!" because that's, well, insulting when it comes from a woman.  "I'm not happy about it" is sufficient to demonstrate the limits of his behavior.

Second, once you've established WHY, you need to establish HOW.  "Ian, I know you didn't mean to go all Blue Pill Beta on me, so I'm going to assume you just had a bad day and got sand in your panties.  However, you did hurt my feelings, and yeah, I'm a woman, so that's important.  I need to feel like you're in charge again, or we're going to start fighting again.  So . . . I'm going to give you a week to think about it, and while you're thinking, perhaps you could do something to demonstrate both your contrition at being a pussy and your devotion to your own masculinity.  If you can't come up with something creative in a week . . . well, let's not dwell on such an unpleasant possibility."

(Again, severely reducing the convo.)

When setting the goal of the Quest, it is important to keep it a) achievable and b) challenging.  I'm a writer.  If Mrs. I challenged me to write . . . well, pretty much anything, that wouldn't be much challenge.  The English language is my bitch.  I've written everything from menus to major novels.  Poetry?  In my sleep.

But if she challenged me to, say, sing her a song in front of a crowd that would stretch my meager vocal talent to the limit . . . and be an impressive feat if I could actually follow up on it with less than four beers in me.

Don't make the Quest about tangible gain or reward ("I want an emerald bracelet!") because that is both unimaginative and ignoble; the point of the exercise is to get your dude's creative juices flowing in a positive direction. You want to inspire him, not discourage him.  Reducing the challenge to his ability to shell out cash is banal and pointless.  "I want an emerald bracelet . . . that you design and build yourself, down to mining and cutting the gemstones" is an achievable and challenging goal.

A week and a Quest, as well as some parameters: both manly AND contrite.  And, I know up front, the more it references my devotion to her and my family, the crazier the reward when I'm done.  The woman issuing the challenge must understand that the juice has to be worth the squeeze, i.e. Herculean effort deserves Dionysian reward.  If you're gonna be ballsy enough to issue a challenge to your man,you'd better be woman enough to fulfill the reward appropriately.


Once you've established What you want changed, and given him some idea of How you'd like to see it . . . step back.  Don't harp on it.  If possible, do something or establish something that is a visible, silent reminder of the challenge, but don't mention it again.  The Mission has been given.  The Quest has begun.  The Challenge has been issued.  A simple reminder, a token of that ongoing mission, is helpful to keep the matter present in both of your minds without it becoming a point of contention.

To that end, don't let him talk about it with you.  That spoils it.  Part of the magic of this is that after you have set the parameters, your biggest role in this should be that of observer and audience.  You've given him an opportunity, now it is up to his masculine whiles to fulfill it.  If he consults with you, asks your advice, etc. then he's falling prey to Solomon's Dilemma, and you should politely feign not understanding what the hell he's talking about.  If he needs clarification, that's one thing, but the point of the exercise is to give him an opportunity to impress you, and if you're holding his hand the whole way, that ain't gonna happen.  The token should be enough reminder of what he needs to do.

Then give him a while. It might be a long while.  You might find it hard to cultivate patience.  But don't give up hope, not until he admits defeat.  That should be a crushing blow to his ego, and if he truly cannot rise to your challenge after giving it his best, then either the challenge was too hard or the man was too soft.  Re-think it, re-issue it, and give him another shot.

The goal here isn't to make your dude into a limp-diked Beta.  The goal is to give him something tangible to aspire to, a quest to perform, a mission to accomplish.

Here's an example: A few years ago, Mrs. Ironwood was standing in front of her highly-disorganized closet trying to get ready for work, and despite the cubic miles of fine textiles on display for her, she declared that she couldn't find anything to wear . . . and blamed her shitty closet.

"I would give just about anything to have a decent closet!" she declared.

"Anything?" my penis asked.

"What do you think?" she asked, her eyes narrowing.  It was a casual mention, and she briefly told me what her ideal would be like, but that was the extent of her direction.

Challenge accepted.

I let her forget about the conversation for a few weeks, made some secret sketches and preparations, and then the next time she went out of town on business I descended on Lowe's like an avenging horde.  I put all three kids to work, and spent all weekend completely gutting and redesigning her closet.  There was a light inside, a shoe rack, three tiers of clothes racks (one full one for dresses, two demis for tops and pants), lingerie drawer, baskets for dry-clean only and delicates, hooks for bras, the works.  I didn't have to tear out any walls or doors, but when she got home for the reveal, well, she was impressed.

Impressed enough to do Anything.

At the time it wasn't a conscious thing, but the whole idea of issuing challenges became a part of our marital culture.  Most recently, as Mrs. Ironwood has taken up her new role as stay-at-home-wife-and-mother (!), I've turned the tables on her a bit, issuing a few challenges of my own.

She's been doing almost all of the cooking, which is a HUGE departure for us both.  I've been cooking for twenty years, and approach the subject as an art.  She's far more literal, has little natural talent or intuition with cooking, and approaches the matter as a science.  So asking her to cook anything is a Big Deal.

But I wanted to encourage her pursuit, as reluctant as she was, without being either condescending (which would sap her confidence) or preachy (which would piss her off).  She's done magnificently, thus far, and can now turn an omelette as well as the children.  But I wanted to give her something a little more confidence-building than bacon-and-eggs.  So I issued her a Challenge.

I didn't expect a quick turn-around, but since our anniversary (22 years) rolled around August 1, she decided to act on it.  My challenge was for her to cook me lumpias, a kind of Filipino fried egg-roll I became enamored with, due to a strange series of circumstances involving moonshine and a huge cast-iron kettle and a cute little Filipino woman, back in the mists of time.  I've only had them a half-dozen times, but they're exquisite.  Papa Ironwood still recalls his first experience with them at Subic Bay fondly after 40 years, although he never fails to mention that the ones he tried likely had monkey meat instead of pork.

If you've never had them, they're a treat.  They're somewhat like traditional Chinese egg rolls, but instead of a lot of cabbage or bok choy, lumpias are often made with pork and sweet potatoes or carrots.  It's not a difficult dish, exactly, but it is time-consuming, takes a lot of prep work, and involves a deep fryer.  It was, in other words, a worthy Challenge to my wife's nascent cooking abilities.

She surprised me Anniversary night when I got home with a whole assembly-line of lumpias.  I hadn't given her more than "I'd really love it if you'd learn how to make lumpias", and she ran with it.  And yes, I was impressed, so impressed that I broke out the Third Anniversary Present that night, made us both cry, and proceeded to the more sweaty and sticky portion of the evening.

Ladies, if your dude is lagging, then consider Issuing him a Challenge.  It's an opportunity for him to impress you, surprise you, delight you and astound you . . . without you chewing him out for screwing anything up.  It gives him the opportunity to demonstrate his competence and ingenuity.  And it gives him a tangible, achievable goal toward which to work.  And sometimes that's all we need to get us out of our own heads.

I got this comment on my blog recently, and after a lot of thought I decided it deserved its own post.  Since I'm slowly breaking out of my summer hiatus (don't worry -- I haven't been sitting on my ass eating bon-bons, I've been writing 15-20k word a day) I thought this would be a good way to ease back into more regular blog posts. So, let's begin:

I'm a late 20's woman, in a very young relationship (under 2 years). In reading this post and thinking back to things my bf has said, I can see now that this communication "disparity" you explained is a problem present in our relationship. 

It is leading me to feel unappreciated, and though I know there will be phases like this from time to time, this feeling shouldn't be as pervasive as it has been for me. 

The thing that gets me about this post is that you're saying men aren't aware of these "other channels" of communication....yet you are describing an awareness of them very articulately in this post. My bf has stated things or responded to nonverbal cues enough for me to know that he is aware of more than one layer of communication when we're talking with each other.

OK, so far this is fairly straight-forward: the lady has recognized the problem of a communication discrepancy in her relationship and acknowledges that it's causing problems - at least on her end.

But there are a few errors in perception that the commenter makes that I'd like to point out.  First, the fact that I, a 45 year old man who has been on a solid Red Pill diet for a few years is aware of the role subtextual communication plays and your 20-something boyfriend is not shouldn't surprise you.  Expecting a man to understand that before he even understands his own sexuality is a stretch, and one that assumes far too much about men and how they communicate.  Just because he has responded to nonverbal cues doesn't mean he's aware of them . . . or understands them in context.

It's one thing if a person is unable to understand or is unaware of these other channels, and quite another for a person to have awareness and just choose to ignore it or tune it out. In my experience the latter is what a lot of men do. 

Uh . . . no.  Again, you are assuming that your boyfriend is both aware and able to understand these channels like a woman does, and that's as unfair as assuming you know who's in the World Series this year just because you went to a baseball game once.  He might be vaguely aware of them, but he doesn't understand them and he's not cluing in to them the way . . . well, the way one of your girlfriends would.  Your dismissal of his lack of understanding as him "choosing to ignore" it is as unfair of you as it would be of him if he looked at you like an idiot when you didn't know who was playing in the World Series.

You are expecting him to react to your non-verbal cues as a woman would.  That's just wrong of you to expect.  Let's examine the next part, and I'll show you why.

I find it insulting on my part to assume that a man can't understand what I say if I don't put it in words. 

Let's look at that again: "I find it insulting . . . if a man can't understand what I say . . . if I don't put it into words."

There's a cognitive disconnect here that underlies most couple's failure to communicate effectively.  You are expecting him to understand what you're saying . . . when you aren't saying it. Essentially, you are asking your boyfriend to read your mind.  And then getting pissed off when he doesn't.

Would you be willing to subject yourself to that same pattern?  Should he find it insulting if you don't understand everything he doesn't say?  Think about that.

Because men are intelligent too, and most have plenty of social and emotional intelligence, more than enough to pick up on all that women are communicating when they're conversing with them. A prime example of this is when a man pisses his woman off, and even if she hasn't said anything, the man knows when she's mad, knows he's "in trouble", and gets proactive about trying to fix the situation. 

And here is where you are utterly off-base - not about how most men react to a woman being pissed off, but about their understanding and motivations.

Men can tell a woman is upset if she's not saying anything, but that doesn't mean he knows the details.  It's a common danger sign, and we know it: when you stop using your big-girl words, we know you're pissed off.  But a man in this situation isn't being "proactive", as much as you'd like to think that.  He's being reactive . . . and he's guessing.  Let's see how you view his "proactive" approach to a woman being pissed off at him:

The man starts cleaning up around the house, or buys the woman flowers, or tries to treat/appease her in some way, even though she never said she was mad. If she didn't say anything, how'd the guy know to take action? He knew because he understood the non-verbal communication. So guys know how to read more than one method of communication......they just pick and choose when to act on that awareness. 

If he's running a BETA program, sure.  Let's assume he's not a Red Pill dude, for a moment.  And then let's follow your logic: So that means that because you've seen a baseball game, and know you're supposed to cheer when everyone else stands up and cheers, that you understand the subtleties of the infield fly rule and the designated hitter issue, right?  Really?  Or are you just standing up because you see everyone else do it and you think that's the proper response?  

That's the difference between "proactive" and "reactive".  More, it demonstrates an appalling lack of understanding about how men communicate.  Men are far less contextually-dependent in communication, and rely far more on, y'know, actual words.  Words that mean things.  In and of themselves, without layers of context that add noise to the signal-to-noise ratio.  Because your silence may mean you're pissed off, and he might get that, but since you haven't given him any other real data he's going to flail around trying to figure out what got sand in your vagina this month.  

You could just tell him, get it out in the open, and discuss it.  But then your house wouldn't get cleaned and your vanity wouldn't be flattered with flowers.  And you would feel like he "failed", if he doesn't figure out your subtle cues on his own -- he would if he loved you, right?

(That's the moral equivalent of the dude who's upset because his woman still doesn't sleep with him when he knows she knows just how badly he wants it . . . you'd do it if you really loved him, right?  That's what's going through a dude's head, even though you may have a thousand legitimate reasons for not wanting to have sex.  Fair?  No, of course not.  But it's the same level of un-fair as you are putting on him with this complaint.)

So instead of just saying "hey, you fucked up and forgot X", you sit back, stay silent, and let him emotionally twist in the wind without additional input, waiting for him to read your fucking mind about what is bothering you . . . because you'd rather use a female mode of communication (non-verbal) that doesn't give him the data he needs.  Because when it comes to relationships, women find the ability to screw with a dude's head by making him guess and act like an idiot terribly empowering.  

Why?  It's a shit test.  If the dude can read your mind and know why you're mad, he must somehow be more "in touch" with you . . . which is bullshit.  Your subtle silence and non-verbal communication might be great for a conversation over Sunday brunch with the girls, but when it comes to your relationship you are purposefully communicating with your man for the purpose of putting him at a disadvantage. You are giving him a test you know he'll get wrong.  You are screaming at him in a language he does not know, and then getting angry at him for not knowing it.  He might know it exists, like I know Mandarin exists, but that doesn't mean he understands it or knows how to speak it. 

And you know this.  Coming right out and telling him unambiguously means (in estrogenland) that you have FAILED, because he didn't read your mind the way he would if he truly loved you.  The problem is, if he could handle the non-verbal communication you are throwing at him at a conscious level, then he'd be a great girlfriend for you, not a good boyfriend.  You are holding his masculinity against him and punishing him for not knowing.  It's unfair and myopic of you.

It's unfair for you to put down women for how they communicate when as men you can understand those multiple channels and just choose not to expend the effort to communicate in that way/those ways. 

Firstly, I'm not putting down women for how they communicate.  I'm calling out women who, like you, are under the impression that awareness means understanding, and lack of understanding means willful ignorance and deliberate rudeness.  Men do not communicate in a multi-channel system.  They are "WYSIWYG", and all of your wishes to the contrary won't change that.  Assuming he's being willfully rude by ignoring you is actually you being willing to be pissed off at your man because he's a man, and he's acting like a man, and nothing less.  

If I'm misunderstanding something about the communication thing you explained, I'd really appreciate you clarifying that misunderstanding for me. I want to be fair to my boyfriend - he is wonderful in many ways and I voice my appreciation for what he does as often as possible. 

Do you?  Or do you just believe you do?

I'm not being facetious, here, or purposefully insulting.  I'm calling this out because plenty of women feel that they are being "fair" to their men, when they are not.  Plenty of women feel that they "voice their appreciation in many ways", but the fact is men only know a few ways to communicate, and if you aren't on that wavelength then your appreciation is missing him as much as a love poem in Mandarin would.  

Men understand straight-up words: "I appreciate you doing that for me, thank you, that was very thoughtful," and men understand actions: dropping to your knees and worshiping him, for instance.  Men do not understand how you telling your sister what a wonderful guy he is on the phone because she's in a bad relationship and you aren't is "appreciation".  To us, it sounds like bragging, pure and simple.  The fact that I understand that that's how women voice their appreciation doesn't help -- I'm exceptional.  The poor schlub you're with certainly doesn't, and even if he was aware, he would not be understanding.  Why?  Because he's a dude.  Which, apparently, you aren't happy with:

But there are a lot of times when he pulls this "I don't understand what you're saying because I'm a guy" crap on me. I'm trying to understand if he's really incapable of understanding or just choosing not to. I have more evidence of the latter than the former and your post just reinforces the latter. In which case...my bf's only half listening when it's convenient for him, and why shouldn't I feel unappreciated when someone's choosing not to invest the effort to listen to me? 

Actually, I think you probably think you have more evidence, but when examined from an objective and impartial perspective you probably would find that he really is incapable of (or at least unfamiliar and likely uninterested in) your non-verbal communication.  And since you are using it to compel him to read your mind (read: guess about your feelings until he gets it right or you give up and actually speak real words to him on the subject) he sees it far more as manipulation, not communication.  

And this is where you start to fuck up your relationship, like so many women do.  Because they're in relationships with men, and "only half listening" means that they are, indeed, being men and communicating like men, not paying attention to the thousand subtle clues, cues and context-dependent hints you enrich your communication with like your girlfriends do.  

So go ahead and feel "unappreciated" because your dude isn't a woman.  When a woman feels unappreciated, she issues shit tests to force a man to "appreciate" her.  And when you issue shit tests, the only valid way for a man to respond is to ignore them . . . which is what you're complaining about. If you continue to feel "unappreciated" enough, you'll talk yourself out of the relationship . . . or he'll find a less complicated, less demanding, more understanding girl.  


And then you can turn instead to the thousands and thousands of men who are sensitive enough to understand your subtextual cues . . . and like dick as much as you do, if not more.

(Actually, I have to re-state that: most gay men in relationships communicate like men do, not like women, in my experience.  Despite the stereotypes, the rank-and-file gay relationships I am familiar with tend to be far more signal-focused than female communication.  While a few gay men do, indeed, understand the female art of subtextual communication implicitly, they also understand why it's utterly lost on even most gay men.  And why most men, even gay men, see it as "manipulative".)  

Fellas, when you're considering a relationship -- or hell, even a quickie behind the bar -- with a woman, it is wise to know at least something about her attitudes towards men and relationships and love in general. But dudes have an uncanny tendency to overlook important warning signs that a relationship with a particular woman might give you because you're too busy staring at her boobs.

I know.  Boobs.

If finding a good Mrs. is important to you, though, then sifting out the wheat from the chaff is essential, and identifying potential relationship disasters before they happen is vital, no matter how big the rack.  And if you aren't inclined to search for a foreign bride from a more traditionally-minded country, then pay careful attention to these key phrases and actions.  Consider them Red Pill Alerts.  When you hear them, they are indicators of red flags that should give you pause.

1.  "Rape Culture"

If a woman uses this term in casual conversation, end the conversation at the earliest possible moment and do your best to avoid her in the future.  This phrase is used as a blanket term by feminism for describing all male sexuality, far in excess of the actual crime of rape.  Use of this term indicates that a woman is suspicious and fearful of male sexuality, even if she finds herself attracted to it.  That's not to say that women who use the term aren't themselves drawn to strong male sexual displays, despite their political protests to the contrary, but it is also indicative of her level of respect for male sexuality in general.

Porn is "rape culture" to these women.  So is the music video and lyrics for this summer's pop R&B hit "Blurred Lines", because it expresses raw masculine sexuality unapologetically.  Women who use the term "rape culture" casually are giving you a shit test, whether they understand it as such or not.  By using it they are challenging your sexuality.  But the only proper response to a shit test is to ignore it.  And her.  A woman who uses this term does not respect men or their sexuality, and you can expect some rocky times ahead if you ignore this Red Pill Alert and plow ahead.

Good response: "You know, I think I'll go talk to some women who actually like men." LEAVE
Better response: "*Snort* What, are you eleven or something?  Time to find some grown-up girls." LEAVE
Best Response: "I've always preferred my victims to have bigger tits." LEAVE

2. "Delicate Male Ego"

Another shit test.  When a woman uses this term, she's deliberately challenging you and your response to her.  She's thinking she's displaying her strength and independence.  What she's actually doing is revealing her contempt for masculinity and her ignorance of its subtleties.  Yes, dudes, we have subtleties.

The male ego is oft bashed, particularly by ignorant feminists, because they really do lack any clear understanding or insight into it, insisting solipsistically that men should behave the way women do.   By implying anything about a man's ego without understanding it, they are betraying their inner frustrations with male-female relations, frustrations that are likely to blossom into brutal, heated arguments or even infidelity in a relationship.  A woman who throws around "delicate male ego" is calling herself out as being disrespectful of masculinity in general.

Sure, women don't like to see weakness or other BETA traits in a man . . . but men don't like to be reminded that we have those weaknesses, and a woman with the tactlessness to mention any man's ego to another is one to watch out for.  She might be a High Alpha female with exceptionally grand tastes . . . or she might be a scornful Gamma woman who thinks she can verbally abuse a man and expect him to find her attractive.

Either way, the wise Red Pill man will step around this indelicate flower and pursue worthier women.  Women who understand that verbally kicking all men in the balls is not the best way to find a worthy man.  Indeed, by calling out all men's egos, she's demonstrated herself as poor wife material.

Good response: "My delicate male ego is going to go talk to the pretty girls, now.  Thanks for the fluff, Cupcake." LEAVE
Better response: "My ego isn't delicate.  It's just highly discriminating." LEAVE
Best response: (LOUDLY) "Why no, I don't think you need a boob job!  A lot of guys like it when one is so much smaller than the other!  You shouldn't be so sensitive!"  LEAVE

3. "I deserve . . ."

Women who talk about what they deserve -- in work, in life, in romance, and especially in a man -- are best avoided as poor wife material.  Feminine entitlement is frequently a problem in a relationship, as women rationalize just what they "deserve", usually without much in the way of supporting data.

My ex sister-in-law is a case in point.  She left my brother and her son to go shack up with a richer dude because she "deserved to have nice things in her life and a man who can provide them".  This brutal assertion had no evidence to back up the claim that she deserved any such thing.  Indeed, if she actually got what she deserved, I don't think she'd be bragging about it.  In a way she did -- her new dude dumped her two months later, after he tired of her, and now she lives with her parents and her daughter from another relationship and her grandson . . . because the nut doesn't fall far from the tree.

Women who use this term almost uniformly DON'T deserve whatever it is they think they do.  A lot of the dichotomy between male and female ideas on the subject of entitlement are due, I believe, to the fact that women get handed the bulk of their sexual capital early, while men must earn theirs slowly and painfully.  That gives women an incentive to indulge in this kind of entitlement.  If you encounter a woman who uses "I deserve . . ." you can bet that she's going to deserve a second husband someday.  Avoid.

A woman with good wife potential won't discuss what she deserves; she'll discuss what she aspires to and what she hopes for . . . and most importantly, what she's willing to earn.

Good response: "And I deserve a more interesting conversational companion.  Have a good evening."  LEAVE
Better response: "On what basis do you deserve that?  Oh, wait, I'm not that interested."  LEAVE
Best resposne: "And I deserve a blowjob in the parking lot.  We gonna help each other out?"  LEAVE . . . FAST (or get a blowjob in the parking lot, if things go that route).

4. "I don't believe in marriage . . ."

This is such utter hamstereese bullshit that it should be sold by the pound.  Despite all the rationalization in the feminist media about how their thrilling careers and corporate ambitions are personally as fulfilling as a solid loving relationship and a family, the Red Pill fact of the matter is that MOST women believe in marriage.  Declaring that they don't, especially on short acquaintance, is a clear sign of one of two things: either she is so commitment-phobic that she will leave you for the next pair of pecs to ponder her panties, or she is clearly bullshitting because getting married is on her mind so much that she's desperate.  They're playing to the well-touted idea that men are the ones who don't want marriage, and think that by declaring their lack of desire to commit they are making themselves more attractive.

To a certain extent they are correct . . . but they are also setting themselves up for disappointment or duplicity, and either way a wise man will avoid them.  A good future wife isn't going to sell the idea of matrimony short -- she's going to protect it like a cherished treasure.  Declaring that she doesn't believe in marriage is probably the best indicator that she's either working an angle to lure you into one while you're looking at her boobs or she's been so badly hurt that her long-term prospects are tainted.  Move along, there's nothing to see here.

Good response: "That's too bad.  I do.  I think she does, too.  I think I'll go talk to her." LEAVE
Better response: "I think some people are just destined to be alone for their entire lives, until they die alone and forgotten.  Thankfully, I'm not one of them."  LEAVE
Best response: "That's a relief!  I don't either.  That's what gives me the mental clarity I need to sleep with as many women as possible behind my wife's back."  LEAVE

5.  "I want to work on my career . . ."

Hell, any mention of her career or job, outside of the basics, is a Red Pill alert.

That's not to say you should be looking for a woman with no career prospects, it just means that a woman who sees herself as a professional first will only see herself as a wife and mother second.  That's great, for some women.  After all, with fewer men working these days, it's going to require a lot of women filling the taxation gap, so that their brilliant careers can subsidize other women's children in the future.

But you should not reward such dedication to a job with your allegiance or commitment.  Because talking about her job is probably the best way she can let you know that you, regardless of what a worthy dude you might be, are going to stand in the shadow of her aspirations.  Feminists and ignorant dating advice columnists call this "being threatened by her success", and treat it with scorn.  They see things in terms of competition between men and women, with the women aspiring to elevate themselves to "respectability" in society's eyes through their dedication to their job.

But do you really want to marry a woman who will leave your ass if she gets transferred to California for "a golden opportunity"?  Either you are her "golden opportunity" or you need to find someone who sees that.  A good wife cannot be a _____________ first and a wife second.  If her career is more important than making a life with you, or even going to be challenging to your relationship, then move along to more fulfilling prospects.  The "strong, independent career woman" tends to be abysmally poor wife material.

Again, that isn't to say you want a woman who can't earn a living for herself.  Unless she's a gorgeous nymphomaniac, an expectation of you to financially support her is likewise a Red Pill Alert.  You can expect demands for alimony in your future.  But find a woman who is willing to be devoted to her man and her family, not her job.  Jobs come and go.  Careers rise and fall.  Marriage should be more durable than an employment contract . . . and if she doesn't agree, then she's self-selected out of the pool of potential good wives.

Good response: "Wow.  Your parents must be very proud.  I'm sure they've got your resume in a frame where they expected to put pictures of grandchildren."  LEAVE
Better response: "I like strong and independent career women.  I expect I'll have plenty of them working for me and my wife some day."  LEAVE
Best response: "Unless you work in a strip club, I'm gonna go focus my energies on the girls whose ambitions are longer and harder than yours, if you know what I mean."  LEAVE

6. "Why can't guys just . . . ?"

This is an expression that clearly predicates ignorant male-bashing.  In most cases women do know why guys can't just ______________.  They just don't like the answer, and want someone to change it for them.

A woman who has so little knowledge and experience with men as to not understand their basic motivations (Sex, food, shelter, entertainment, companionship, in that order) is an unwise choice.  A woman who is so willing to express her ignorance so quickly is announcing herself as a future ex-girlfriend, if not a future ex-wife.  Women who use this phrase are taking issue with the entire masculine experience.  They are insisting on measuring the men they meet against a yardstick used for women.  They are virtually screaming that they are going to question your motives and motivations and express dismay, contempt, and resentment when there's a future issue in your relationship.

Avoid this woman.  If she can't figure out why guys like pretty girls, sports cars, beer and baseball -- or she actually feels a burning desire to know why -- then this woman is not going to be a good relationship risk.

Good response: "Because we're not chicks."  LEAVE
Better response: "You know, I'm kind of insulted by that question.  Ask yourself this: why can't guys just listen to my stupid bullshit instead of leaving me to talk to prettier and more interesting girls?  Discuss."  LEAVE
Best response: "Because we have penises.  Want me to show you mine?" LEAVE

7. "...feminism..."

Yep.  Pretty much any mention of feminism in a positive light, beyond the basics of equity feminism, is a Red Pill Alert for stormy seas ahead.  Women who invoke feminism are shit testing you.  Women who self-declare as feminists are challenging your masculinity right up front, and no clearer sign of a life of torment and abuse in a relationship with them is available.  No more should be needed . . . but some dudes think they can either "tame" a feminist (and it can be done) or that they can use her feminism against her to drop her panties (which is done with such frightening regularity it's humorous).

Feminism is a danger sign.  I haven't been able to find any official facts-n-figures on the subject, by my apocryphal, unscientific study into the manner is telling.  Of the 37 self-declared feminists in the Womens' Studies Club of my university who graduated the same year I did, after 20 years their numbers are telling, as my alumni association has it.  Fifteen never married.  Of the 22 who did, 18 were divorced. Eleven had two or more divorces under their belt.

As I said, that's apocryphal, observational data without scientific merit.  But it's also enlightening.  That means that only 4 out of 37 feminists in my class managed to get married and stay married.  That's just around 10%.

Which means, anecdotally, that marrying a feminist gives you roughly an 80% chance of getting divorced.  Not the comfortably awful 50-50 coin flip of most marriages, but eight times out of ten saying "I do" to a feminist is going to lead to divorce, by my calculations.  If folks have real data on this, I'd love to hear it, but feminism is decidedly NOT a precursor to a happy, fulfilled marriage.  And a self-declared feminist has embraced the idea that a feminist can be anything she wants to be . . . except a good wife. 

So listen to them.  Don't marry them.  Don't even fuck them.  It's just too dangerous, and you do your fellow men a discourtesy by encouraging them.

Good response: " . . . " LEAVE
Better response:  "I'm sorry, did you say something, Cupcake?  I was staring at your boobs."  LEAVE
Best response.  "I like feminists.  I can usually talk them into a little bi-sexual exploration, if you know what I mean.  They love bullshit like that."  LEAVE

8. "Men feel threatened and intimidated by me."

A woman who honestly believes this is confused or has a couple of hamsters in her bra.  No matter how loudly she protests the contrary, most men don't feel "intimidated" by her.  Most men are merely annoyed by her, and she chooses to see that as "intimidation", because that little rationalization means it's THEIR fault, not hers.  Behold the power of hamsterization.

The fact is, men are intimidated by beautiful women . . . period.  A powerfully attractive woman who understands she's attractive and knows how to turn that into incredible social capital very rightly intimidates the lesser men among us.  She is Alpha, and she is searching for a stronger Alpha, and most dudes just aren't going to measure up.

But be "intimidated" merely by a woman's intelligence and ambition?  Not so much.

Many otherwise intelligent women make this mistake, dismissing a snub or a lack of attention as the result of the men around her being "intimidated".  In fact, it's likely that she's just annoyingly direct, argumentative, and bossy . . . not the sort of thing you want to cuddle up to after a three-hour cunnilingus marathon.  These women mistake their clumsy social stumbling as being "strong and independent", and then fault the men around them for not being attracted to them.

These are the same women who feel that they are in a perpetual competition with men -- it's always 'us' vs. 'them' in their minds, an eternal struggle that they are determined to 'win'.  They feel intimidation, usually in the workplace, and they respond how they feel the workplace demands: with hardcore competitive drive.

That's great if you're on the same sales team.  It's lousy if you want a happy marriage.

That stumps a lot of women who just don't get this subtle fact of male sexual psychology: the vast majority of men don't want to fight with their wives for the rest of their lives, and a woman who is willing to argue about stupid stuff to demonstrate her intellectual superiority to the man in her life is ultimately going to shit test her way out of a relationship.  Not because her dude feels "threatened".  Because her dude feels marginalized and diminished for being forced to compete with the woman who is supposed to be a loving support.

A woman who claims men are intimidated by her is almost always a poor matrimonial risk, and she's going to be trouble in even a casual relationship.  Her unwillingness to acknowledge the idea that in the romantic realm competition should be with other women FOR men, not AGAINST the men, is the keystone in her temple of solipsism.  She walks around with a chip on her shoulder, demanding masculine prerogatives without accepting masculine responsibilities . . . and then wants to be valued for whatever shreds of femininity she has left.

The "intimidation" that these women feel they exude is mere bossiness.  Men don't like bossy wives, in general, and therefore a woman who feels "intimidating" is self-selecting out of your marriage pool.  That's not to say that intelligence and ambition aren't factors in the equation -- I found Mrs. Ironwood's ability to demonstrate her great intelligence one of the things most attractive about her.  Thing was . . .

. . . she didn't feel like she had to beat me over the head with it. As Vox has recently stated, "The fact that a man is capable of having a substantive intellectual discussion with a woman doesn't mean he wants to do so every time he makes a simple observation."  Intelligence is a valued factor in a wife . . . but so is the social understanding to know when displaying that intelligence will be seen in a negative light.  Thinking that the dude who you just crushed in the monthly sales contest is going to like and respect you for your victory is foolishly ignorant of a woman: she simply cannot earn the same kind of masculine respect a man's male peers would, in the same situation.  

And even if he does show that he respects your intelligence and your acumen, your drive and ambition . . . that doesn't mean he wants to have to face that challenge every day for the rest of his life.  A man wants to come home to comfort and security after a hard day's struggle, not face an even fiercer competition that he cannot hope to win at home.  So when a woman mentions that men seem intimidated by her, and she's not drop-dead gorgeous, pay the bar tab and move on.  This one is trouble.  She's not threatening, she's just really obnoxious and annoying . . . and doesn't have the sense to recognize it.

Good response: "I can see why."  LEAVE.
Better response: "You poor girl.  How awful for you.  Count me among them."  LEAVE
Best response: "Intimidated?  By you?  Miss Bossypants?  That's HILARIOUS!" LEAVE . . . laughing.

9. "Women can do everything just as well as a man can."

Well, no.  

Don't get me wrong -- in about 80% of the cases, that's a correct assumption.  Men and women are fairly on par in aggregate when it comes to everything from long division to programming Javascript.  But if a woman thinks that the gender differences stop at the physical, then she's not wife material.  In the slightest.

Men and women have traditionally sub-specialized in various tasks as our society has progressed through various economic fields.  The roles have changed as the economy has -- I rarely make Mrs. Ironwood go out and glean the wheat fields or field dress and skin a deer -- but the fact of gender specialization has remained constant.  Men and women do different tasks, in general, because men and women are different.  We have different goals, aspirations, measures of success, drives and ambitions.  We have different strengths and weaknesses. We have different areas of interest.  

The problem with the idea that "women can do everything just as well as a man can" is that it encourages the idea that the same abilities necessarily stem from the same font of motivations.  For instance, a woman who enrolls in an all-male workout group just to prove that she can work at the same level as the men can isn't demonstrating her competence . . . she's demonstrating her willingness to mess with your masculinity.

I'm happy to admit that there are some tasks that women, in general, are just better at.   Networking, likewise.  Most social situations, actually.  But the belief that women are equally equipped and educated for any given task as well as a man is can be poison to a relationship.  I've also noted how short-lived this is once a couple is wed, too.  It seems within months of the wedding, the number of things a new bride can do - even if she's the same gender as she was before the ceremony - drops dramatically as she basks in the accomplishment of her marriage.  She no longer needs to prove that women can do everything just as well as a man can.  She has a husband to take care of that now.

But gods help you if that poor schmuck is you.  You just bit into a massive shit test.  The proper response was a bold retreat.  This woman is NOT wife material.

Good response: "Really?  Then you don't mind giving me a few pointers on lactation, for instance -- I suck at it." LEAVE (while her eyes glaze over)
Better response: "Yeah, Cupcake, show me your draft card, THEN I'll take you seriously." LEAVE
Best response: "Are you ready to prove it? Otherwise, shut the hell up about it.  That's what I'd say to a man."  LEAVE 

10. "I don't need a man."

This is a feminist classic . . . and the best evidence yet for the rationalization hamster becoming the dominant life form in America.  Women who proudly declare that "they don't need a man" are trumpeting a competence and independence they mistakenly feel men, in general, admire.  And while most of us can't stand a truly helpless woman, a woman who doesn't need a man shouldn't get one.

Marriage is a partnership -- that much hasn't changed.  While the specifics and the conditions have changed around, that much hasn't changed across history, economies, or cultures.  We get married because we have a need to -- economic, sexual, social, or personal -- and we need to fulfill that need.  Just because I can masturbate doesn't mean I don't need a woman as a sex partner.  Just because Mrs. Ironwood can now cook doesn't mean she doesn't need a man as a husband.  People in general are interdependent, particularly in the institution of marriage. 

When a woman proudly proclaims her independence in these terms, she is revealing her attitude toward men and marriage in general, right on the box.  Few couples who have been married longer than 10 years will say that kind of bullshit, because they have established that yes, indeed, part of them DOES need to be married.  That's not to say you can't survive without a man, obviously, but making your lack of need known so early and so proudly demonstrates that a woman does not understand what marriage truly entails.  

Often a woman proclaiming her independence in this manner is actually thinking she's making herself more attractive, not the target of the pump-and-dump humpsters.  The thing is, the kind of man she most hopes to attract is likely to be appalled by such a declaration and the wise ones will quietly move on.  Declaring your independence from needing a relationship isn't a statement of strength to a man, as are most of these Red Pill Alerts it's a defiant and insulting attempt to emasculate.  

Stay the hell away from her.  She's trouble.

A wife who doesn't need her husband won't have him long.  Without a compelling reason -- besides love -- for them to stay together, the odds say (and Married Game backs up) that a marriage will implode or explode, depending upon the principals.  Wiser couples tend to realize that men in relationships need to be needed, and wise women allow themselves to express that need in a way he can accomodate.  A man who doesn't feel useful in a relationship will find someplace where he can feel useful, if he is any kind of quality at all.  

It's not an admission of incompetence to admit you need a man in your life,  ladies.  It's an expression of general desire that men find hopeful.  "I don't need a man" is essentially your declaration that your heart is closed to the prospect of a real union, in favor of the roommates-with-slowly-decreasing-benefits model that feminists are trying to pass off as happy marriages these days.  Feminists see any other admission than "I don't need a man" as a capitulation to the stereotype of feminine weakness, and have spent the last 40 years attempting to ensure that their daughters, indeed, won't need a man when they grow up.

Of course, now that many of them have grown up . . . they discover that while they may not need a man, they want one more than the breath of life. Yet they can't understand why their declarations of independence and strength aren't getting the dudes lining up any faster than when she kept mentioning her resume. 

Good response: "Oh, thank goodness - we were starting to think you weren't going to leave without one tonight.  I'll spread the word that we're safe." LEAVE
Better response: "I just wanted to thank you on behalf of all the men in the room."  LEAVE
Best response: "Don't worry, Cupcake -- with an attitude like that, you're in no danger of getting one."

So there you go, fellas: ten Red Pill Alert danger signs that the woman you are talking to is NOT wife material.  There are others, and more subtle signs indicating more insidious dangers, but if you pay attention and raise a red flag on the play when you hear one of these statements, you will save yourself a tremendous amount of grief with your future wife.

There have been some murmurings around the Manosphere about the conundrum of Romance in a Post-Red Pill relationship.  The argument on the one side is that Romance is blue-pill propaganda designed to obfuscated the stark, cold reality of male/female intersexual relations and our respective reproductive strategies.  The other side says that the Red Pill simply means a re-definition of romance.


This should not be an issue, but I understand why it is for many men. You see, I'm a die-hard romantic, and one of the hardest things I had to do was rectify my new Red Pill perspective with my innate desire to pursue romance.  I like romance.  I'm a writer, it's kind of my bread-and-butter.

The problem is that most men have an imperfect understanding of "romance" in the truest sense.  Like "chivalry", the term is oft-misused, sometimes damnably so.  For our purposes, consider "romance" to be the cultural context surrounding the desire and attraction involved in mating.

Undoubtedly there are those who will take issue of such an unromantic definition of romance.  But that's what the Red Pill truth is. Game is Romance.  Of course, the flirtation and infatuation implicit in Single Game is usually what is meant by the term -- a cursory inspection of romance literature will reveal a poverty of married heroines -- and almost always, culturally speaking, our common conceptions of romance are wrapped around the rituals and enterprises associated with that electrifying first meeting.


If one were to distill the impulse for middle-aged women to read romance novels like teenage boys watch porn, then one could reasonably draw the conclusion that their addiction is to the novelty of the infatuation experience.  That also explains why a woman's devotion to romance literature is usually in inverse proportion to her happiness with any given long term relationship.

But if Game Is Romance, then Married Game must have -- and does have -- a romantic component.  Indeed, it is essential for the satisfying and nourishing fulfillment of a long-term committed relationship.

 Mating without romance is possible, and it's done all too often, but it is an imperfect and unfulfilled expression of the art.  Married couples in a "sexless relationship" are watching their marriage die as much due to the lack of cultural context to provide meaning, structure, and enjoyment to their mating as lack of physical sex.

What the Red Pill man must understand, if he is to have a successful Red Pill marriage, is that romance is the essential lubrication that eases the emotional communication involved in mating. Married Game-style romance involves dating your wife (see my Red Pill Date series for details), understanding and communicating with your wife, and -- perhaps most importantly of all -- enjoying your wife.


Enjoying her company.  Enjoying her conversation. Enjoying hearing her perspective and engaging her intellectually and emotinoally.  Looking forward to seeing her at the end of the day and appreciating seeing her as the first thing you see every morning.  Enjoying your sexual relationship.  Enjoying your cultural relationship.  Enjoying those interests you have in common and appreciating those interests you have separately.

Romance is how you do that. It's how you build attraction that culminates in sex, and sustain attraction through those times when stress and real life make sustaining attraction (or even finding the time to indulge in attraction) challenging.  Romance is what you do to engage your spouse's passion.  People aren't romantic.  People do romantic things.

Think of it this way: Romance is a verb. It is something you do.

Just about all of the Alpha Displays I've discussed are romantic in nature, even if they are subtle.  When a man displays a dominant presentation to his wife, demonstrating his value as a partner, and projecting the confidence and desire he feels for his woman, he is being romantic whether he understands it or not.

When a woman indulges in an Alpha Display and invites a man's attention through her presentation, she is being romantic whether she knows it or not.  Romance is the expression of your desire and attraction in a manner in which your partner understands and appreciates it.

That means that romance occurs as the common denominator between the two of you.  Romance is your mutual cultural context for mating.

While you might think waving your penis in her face is romantic, unless she understands it for the sincere symbol of desire and attraction that it is (and, let's face it, that's highly unlikely), it ain't romantic.  While she might see buying you three new shirts and two new sets of underwear as a heartfelt demonstration of her attraction and desire for you, unless you really understand what that symbol means, you just got new underwear.  It ain't romance.  

Of course, everyone wants to be able to experience that first blush of infatuation again -- that's why both men and women crave novelty in their relationships.  It's Nature's way of keeping things interesting.  Romance, in a Red Pill relationship, should ideally be a way to revisit that delightful sensation through novel experience . . . or re-investing old experience with new meaning.  In a Red Pill marriage, romance should be a reflection of the enjoyment that has gone before coupled with the stability and emotional security you have mutually established, and charged with a jolt of novel experience to re-invigorate the feeling.


Going to the same old place for dinner on date night is moderately romantic.  Going to the same old place for dinner on date night . . . dressed as if you were going to prom is romantic.

Getting her flowers "just because" is low-level romantic.  Getting her an exotic orchid you grew yourself in secret is much more romantic.

Giving him a note saying "I Love You!" in his lunch is low-level romantic.  Giving him a note that says "I Love You!  Skip lunch and meet me in the parking lot!" is much, much more romantic.


And that brings us to an important point: ladies, to dudes, sex IS romantic.  That becomes harder to pull off the longer your acquaintance, as the desire for novelty and the familiarity with your partner make it difficult to turn "boring married people sex" into something exciting enough to be romantic.

There's an unfortunate willingness to separate sex and romance in marriage as women get comfortable with their husbands.  A man with enough ALPHA is going to find this distressing and up his dominance to counter -- which means upping his game, and increasing her excitement level.

But the poor dude who's mired in BETAland is going to think that Romance is the same thing as Ass Kissing. He's going to make the tragic mistake in thinking that if he just gives a woman what she says she wants, she's going to reward him with her love, affection, and sexuality out of pure gratitude.

He doesn't understand that the vibrant, ALPHA component of sexual dominance MUST BE present, that the spark of excitement and novelty necessary to re-awaken those feelings of infatuation, no matter how many times she's backed over them,  MUST BE engaged if you want to engage her feelings of romance.


In short, you can't be a romantic pussy.  Real romance, in a Red Pill marriage, requires thoughtful consideration, understanding, and a willingness to dare to push the emotional and physical boundaries of your relationship. It's part of the years-long subtextual conversation you and your spouse enjoy -- and you had better be enjoying it -- and the need and desire for this context doesn't go away over time.

Your wife won't suddenly decide she doesn't need to be flattered and complimented any more when she's 40 -- quite the contrary.  Your husband isn't likely to decide that exciting, exotic sex is just too adolescent for a man of his maturity.  Nothing could be further from the truth. You both want passion, excitement, and enthusiasm to compliment your stability, commitment, and security.  You both want romance -- sexually charged, lust-building, will-be-thinking-about-it-when-I-masturbate-later ROMANCE -- in your life.

All you have to do is make it happen.

It may be helpful to think of it this way: Romance, in a Red Pill marriage, is that cultural context that makes your spouse feel loved, cherished, appreciated, and genuinely excited about still being with you.  Do those things, whether it's a love sonnet or a blowjob, and you will be tapping into the vital vein of romance you desire.

Romance is a verb.  Go do some.

Here's something a little less serious and heavy-handed than the last couple of posts - a quick and dirty way to buff your ALPHA with a little ingenuity and foresight involving nothing more serious than some left-over Christmas lighting.

You see, the Master Bedroom at Stately Ironwood Manor is lovely, with a skylight over the bed and everything.  But the natural lighting that fills the room during the day turns into a gloomy bedscape of lamps along the perimeter of the room after dark.  While adequate for our needs, nonetheless the process of getting up and turning off each and every lamp every night was tedious, and a constant source of resentment and friction between the Missus and I.  Just one of those little things in your marriage that annoys, irritates, and eventually you come to greet with a kind of dread.

I got tired of it.  I was sick of letting one little chore become such a big deal -- especially since I usually was the one that got stuck with the task.  So when Christmas came and went last year, I snagged a goodie out of the box of ornaments and solved the problem.

That night, when the Mrs. I and I were snuggling in, the inevitable "who's turn is it to get up and turn off all the lights and make the other person cold?" question came up, I raised a hand and casually waved at each of the three lamps.

One by one they turned off.

Mrs. Ironwood was impressed, but at this phase of our relationship she's unwilling to consider my magical powers to be that profound or useful.  So of course I had to reveal the three-button remote control device (Wal-Mart, $9.95), originally intended to command inflatable armies of snowmen, that now gave me control of the very photons, themselves.  One for the rope light around the perimeter of the room (great for indirect lighting, the kind you use in conjunction with Barry White), one for the lamp on the dresser, one for the standing torch light.  Hang the remote on the bedpost, get comfy, put your cold hands somewhere warm, and then hit the lights

And no one's feet get cold.


Sometimes it can be the smallest, thoughtful little thing that can improve or strengthen things between a Red Pill husband and wife.  No one likes an annoying chore, whether it's cleaning a toilet or changing the oil.  Something as basic as turning out the lights without getting out of bed can become a token of thoughtful consideration and love, if you do it right.  And now every night, after I tuck in the wife, I can crawl in beside her knowing I don't have to get up.  The Star Trek-y remote control of the bedchamber also plays up my masculine problem-solving and ingenuity, something that always impresses.

“Show me a goddamn metric of what I ‘seem’ to be doing, give me one concrete example of me discriminating against a woman, let me hear one employee demonstrate where I have been improper in my conduct in this office, bring me one instance of me violating company policy concerning gender discrimination, or get the fuck out of my office.  I’ve got a department to run, and all this ‘seeming’ and ‘feeling’ doesn’t do a goddamn thing to help me do my job.”