The Red Pill Room

Riffing on a great post over at Just Four Guys, today's lesson, Gentleman, is about your potential bride's Warmth and her Disposition. Those are two elements of the female character which are strongly indicative of her suitability to the job, and all too often they are overlooked by the lovestruck or overshadowed by a busty figure. Your wife's appearance and attractiveness may wax and wane over time, but her warmth and her disposition is a constant in your life. It should therefore be highly weighted in your determinations.

"Warmth" is one of those difficult-to-define terms that has a strong subjective component. You might not be able to tell what it is, but you know it when you see it. It is among the most enduring of feminine characteristics, sometimes not fully emerging until motherhood. It is also frequently attacked by feminism as a gender-based stereotype, therefore decreasing its value among the adherents of this ideology. Disposition, likewise, has been lambasted as a weakness by masculine-oriented feminists. A traditionally feminine disposition, pleasant and attractive, has been called into question by corporate feminists who see it as a needless departure from their leaning in.

But warmth, and a pleasant disposition can be a key factor in both initial attraction and ultimate mate selection. Both attributes depend largely on that most valued of female traits, a woman's Receptivity.

Distinguished from her willingness or ability to be submissive, men value receptivity in a woman. That is, her willingness and ability to be open to his ability to order and invite. A woman who is not generally receptive will rarely be receptive, suddenly, to her husband's leadership, no matter how strong a leader he is. By abandoning her receptive nature, many modern women have unknowingly also abandoned a key feature of their allure. "Warmth", as a characteristic, is the expression of a woman's social receptivity; being "warm" means that she is receptive to casual social interactions, including the comfort and ease of those around her. A Pleasant Disposition, on the other hand, is a token of a woman's receptiveness to establishing harmony in her environment through answering verbal and nonverbal calls for support. If either one of these things is missing in a given woman, the prospect of her being a good wife goes down dramatically.

Such receptivity isn't overtly submissive or self-effacing in nature. The strongest, most feminine women I know manage warmth and a pleasant disposition through even trying times, mustering a grace and charm through difficult circumstances that is the epitome of mature femininity. Neither is it martyrous self-sacrifice. It is born of a woman's deep compassion and care for the others in her life, and her desire to maintain an admirable social position. It is quite possible to be warm, pleasant-natured, and still maintain strong hand in the relationship.

A woman communicates her warmth in part through her level of attention: eye contact, verbal cues, appropriate questions, understanding of the social context, etc. And it is not just a good idea to pursue this test for the prospect of a peaceful marriage, it can also indicate the strength and stability of your union. And therefore its durability.

The JFG posting points out a fascinating study in which men and women in relationships were observed making verbal and non-verbal "bids" for attention and intimacy. Those partners whose "bids" were answered with a corresponding acceptance of intimacy or interaction tended to do better as long-term prospects for marriage. Couples who ended up divorced after 5 years had a bid ratio of less than 40%, whereas couples who seemed to have solid, stable relationships tended to answer each others' bids more than 80%. How accurate was the theoretical prediction of a couple's success in a LTR - that is, not get divorced? How about 94% accurate?

The study demonstrates just how important warmth and pleasant disposition really are in a Red Pill marriage. Women who can cultivate their personal warmth are making themselves more receptive to their husband's bids. While some of those bids are going to be sexual in nature, inevitably, women who have warmth are likely to return the bid with a counter-bid or at least an acknowledgement that can often soothe her partner's desires for intimacy and validation without any panties coming off. Women who lack warmth won't bother to look up when their men give a casual interpersonal bid on a favorite activity for him that bores the hell out of her. Women who lack a pleasant disposition often won't answer a bid for attention that doesn't immediately gratify them in some way.

So how do you determine a woman's warmth and disposition? You count it. Just like in the study.

Carefully observe your interactions with your candidate woman over a period of, say, two hours of alone-time. Mentally track the number of interpersonal "bids" you offer her, as well as the nature and degree of her response. Try to work in a set number of bids for the period: ten, twenty, or twenty-five. They don't have to be all that involved - "look at that cool car!" or "what do you think of my new boss?" or "I'm feeling like Mexican for lunch" are all decent bids. Try to keep them somewhat neutral, not inviting either a summary dismissal or lengthy response. Just simple, straightforward conversational invitations.

For each bid, observe how she reacts. Eye contact, verbal acknowledgement, open validation, or at least rapt attention (with her body language clearly turned toward you) are all "wins" of your bid. Noncommittal grunts, blank stares at her cell phone, inattention and stony silence are all "lost" bids, as are bids that fail because of her closed or turned-away body language. Insulting, vulgar or degrading language subtracts a point.

Don't let your reaction to her answers color how you offer the bids. Nor should you allow one poor performance be the sole determiner of a woman's warmth and pleasant disposition. Try this several times and keep track of her averages.

As far as scoring, simply give her a point for every "win" and no points for a lost bid. Within a two-hour time period, if she responds positively to fifteen of the bids and negatively to ten others, you can assign her a Warmth and Receptive score of 60%. If she responds positively to 20, then she's starting to move into the Warm category. But that's why you repeat: everyone has bad days. The problem is when those bad days start piling up, and that warmth you once felt from her keeps falling.

Likewise you can test how pleasant her disposition is by observing her reaction to unfortunate news. Women who make every misfortune (whether it happens to them or not) into a tragic crisis worthy of a blow-up are failing the "pleasant disposition" test. So are those who ride the emotional waves of other people's baggage. The willingness and ability to consciously be receptive to negative stimuli and provide positivity in return is the essence of "pleasant disposition" - and it doesn't mean a woman is an ineffective communicator or leader by doing so. On the contrary, the very best women leaders I've known and followed have excelled at being pleasant, no matter the circumstances.

Consider her scores in a variety of situations, too. Observation of her warmth with others gives you perspective into her character. See how warm and pleasant she is in a formal setting, a casual setting, a semi-formal setting, with your kin and your friends, and among complete strangers as well as her score in your private interactions. Every time she responds openly and receptively, she gets a point. Every time she ignores or snubs a conversational bid for no good reason that you can see, no point. Every time she says something insulting or derogatory about someone, subtract a point (unless it's someone you don't like, in which case praise her for her keen insight.).

Again, this test is highly subjective, but it allows your direct observations of her behavior to influence your decision to commit to a relationship, not a "feeling" or "just knowing". A warm, pleasant wife leads to a happy, pleasant life. Thinking you can transform a cold shrew into a friendly, receptive mate is most often an exercise in futility. And if it takes her a few drinks to really "warm up", that, too, is telling.

This exercise is helpful for gauging your own interactions as well. Most men aren't conscious of the cues and bids women constantly offer them in their non-verbal, contextual multi-track communication style. We prefer the more direct and simplistic single-signal communication styles that develop between men. But being mindful of her body language and linguistic mannerisms makes you more sharply attuned to when she's offering subconscious commentary on her mental-emotional state, including her current level of attraction to you. If she's been warm and open to you all afternoon, and you know sex could be on the table, then when she offers a bid for sexual intimacy maybe you won't miss it the first few times around.

It also makes you aware of your own responsiveness. While male dominance is the preferred remedy under the Red Pill, remember that that doesn't mean domineering. A good captain is always receptive to constructive input from the crew, particularly his First Officer, and giving proper attention to sincerely-delivered bids from her helps deepen her own attachment and attraction to you. Grunting might be manly and Alpha, but subtle transactions of attention work in both directions. Acknowledging her bids and participating in what seems like mindless, pointless discussion is actually re-affirming and validating your interpersonal attachment to each other. This exercise will help hone your ability to be responsive to her perspectives, even if you don't agree with them, and make her feel more secure in the strength of your interpersonal bond - without demanding control of the relationship.

It's quite possible to maintain hand and take a strong leadership position and still accept enough of your wife's bids so that she feels the flow of emotional intimacy, even when you're being strong and silent. Indeed, compounding the two tends to work very well. Mastering the art of responding to those bids is the responsibility of both parties, but the importance of this cannot be understated:

“There’s a habit of mind that the masters have,” Gottman explained in an interview, “which is this: they are scanning social environment for things they can appreciate and say thank you for. They are building this culture of respect and appreciation very purposefully. Disasters are scanning the social environment for partners’ mistakes.”

Contempt is the number one factor that tears couples apart. “It’s not just scanning environment,” chimed in Julie Gottman. “It’s scanning the partner for what the partner is doing right or scanning him for what he’s doing wrong and criticizing versus respecting him and expressing appreciation.”

Take a good, hard look at your potential bride, Gentlemen, and give her an honest, sincere examination of her warmth and disposition . . . and thereby her receptivity. Warmth and a pleasant disposition: two essentials for any lasting Red Pill wife, and both springing from the feminine fountain of receptivity. If she can't or wont accept your bids (or you hers) at least 80% of the time, it's probably not a good match.

I know I’m going to take some heat on this post, particularly from my more-conservative readers, and that’s . . . OK. I’ve given this subject a lot of thought – hell, I’ve been working on this post for about a year now – and after much deliberation I felt it was time to do, partially in response to a comment I got today.

I want to talk about homosexuality.

That’s not an easy thing for a straight man to do, particularly in the Manosphere, but I think it is important, if not vital, that this issue be addressed reasonably, rationally, and cogently, not with a lot of over-the-top hype one way or the other.

For the record I’m proudly straight (and really good at it) but also unashamedly “pro-gay”. I have plenty of gay and lesbian friends, always have, and I’ve supported gay-marriage rights and the protection of gay civil rights pretty consistently. As I am not an adherent of a radical monotheism that proscribes homosexuality, I have no good spiritual reason for objecting to gay marriage or to the existence and prosperous, happiness-pursuing efforts of anyone based on their sexual orientation.

Indeed, for the most part I like gay people. Gay men in particular – not because they are gay, but because they are men.

And that,gentlemen, is the important factor here.

I understand both the squeamishness and the religious prohibition against homosexuality in many faiths; and while I don’t share it, I do understand that in a pluralistic society it is important not just that everyone have the freedom to do what they will, within reasonable social guidelines, but that freedom implies the freedom to dislike, for whatever reason at all, anyone in particular. Just because I don’t agree with your position doesn’t mean that I think you automatically “hate” gay people. That’s an overblown and frequently overplayed position on the Left.

But putting aside such emotional responses to homosexuality for a moment, I invite the Manosphere to consider the current state of gay-straight relations from another perspective. The Lambda Factor is invaluable to the evolution of both the Manosphere and the re-definition of masculinity on our own terms. Allow me to explain.

Before the 1960s, homosexuality was a crime in most jurisdictions. Then the famous Stonewall Riots happened in 1969. If you aren’t familiar (and not many straight folk are), the Stonewall Riots occurred when a local police department tried to raid an underground gay club . . . and the gay men there fought back. Since that point, gay men have been resolutely fighting the system, both legal and social, that would make their desires and orientation a crime. Lesbians and transgendered folk have joined in, but gay men were the leaders of the early LGBT movement.

Why is that important? Because “Gay Liberation” – the social and legal acceptance of gay men, in particular, as open and functional members of our society was, perhaps, the biggest boon to masculinity during what was the period of its greatest decline.

Now, that’s going to make a lot of fellas shake their heads in confusion. After all, traditional ideas about homosexuality are rooted far more in what sets a gay man apart from a straight man than what binds them together. Yes, there are definitely low-masculine, high-feminine men out there who challenge our ideas of masculine behavior. There is a part of gay culture where the raging, effeminate queen, as embarrassing as he is to more mainstream, masculine-acting gay dudes, will always be the symbol or stereotype of gay men.

But while the stereotype of the highly-effeminate gay man is imprinted indelibly on our culture, the fact of the matter is that overly-effeminate gay men are likely the minority of the homosexual community (but it's hard to get a good metric on that). Most gay men I know – and I know a few – are not swishy, overly-sensitive, and secretly desire to be women. In fact, most gay men I know are, in every other way, just like the straight men I know. They just dress better for dates, have more sex, and prefer Muscle and Fitness to Maxim.

But apart from their predilection for hairy man ass, they’re just . . . dudes. They read all the other masculine publications out there, they just tend to skip over the straight parts. That doesn't make them less masculine, it just places their masculinity in a frame where the slavish devotion to femininity our masculine drive is tuned to is absent. They are men free to be men without the advice or consent of women.

You see the raging metropolitan queen as gay and can spot him across the room. But the bearded dude in the flannel and the pick-up, who spends all of his time camping, hunting, fishing, and going to NASCAR races? He's just as gay, but he hasn't let the stereotype of his orientation define his masculinity. One of the more amusing times I've had at a redneck bar was watching a Duke student come in, get hammered, and start shooting his mouth off about "faggots".

Turns out two of the beefy gentlemen at the bar were gay, on a date, and also half-drunk. About the fourth time the idiot says something degrading the masculinity of all gay men, the gentlemen took exception. Apparently, it doesn't matter how straight you are, if you piss off a 250 pound redneck about where he chooses to put his dick, it doesn't matter if he's gay or straight, it's gonna be your ass. Two rednecks? Who possibly saw the act as a pair-bonding moment?

I'm hoping that getting his ass kicked by two gay rednecks may have encouraged that young man to reconsider his ideas about masculinity that evening. I certainly hope so. If nothing else, it taught him a valuable lesson in discretion and moderation.

Why is this important? Because by legitimizing homosexuality, the Stonewall Riots and the Gay Rights movement allowed a masculinity unfettered by sexual preference to develop. In other words, it allowed openly gay men to express their masculinity without the needs, wants, or desires of women entering into the equation.

It’s a subtle point, but a vital one. Why? From an intellectual perspective gay men allow the rest of us a “control group” of male sexuality, containing within a wide range of masculine expressions, one which refutes or repudiates a lot of the feminist sexual ideology. After all, you can’t say “society makes straight men do this” without checking to see if society (which has mostly ignored gay men, culturally speaking, except as two-dimensional stock characters to be trotted out for laughs) also makes gay men do it, too.

Case in point: the oft-touted feminist maxim that “men only go after hot young girls because our rape-culture tells them that’s the ideal they should be shooting for.” Feminism has always taken issue with the masculine preference for youth – and I think we all know why – but blamed it squarely on “the Patriarchy’s” efforts to take power away from older women. If it wasn’t for our screwed-up youth-worshiping culture, the feminist myth goes, men would get just as hard over saggy tits and cottage cheese thighs as they do perky tits and a tight ass.

But if “the Patriarchy” is the one dictating what men should and shouldn't be attracted to, culturally speaking, then one must also assume that a group like Gay Men, who “the Patriarchy” has traditionally had an antipathy toward, would therefore not be subject to the same “artificial rules” that straight men are.

But it turns out gay dudes like young stuff, too. A lot.

The term “twink” is used to describe the young, vital gay man in the prime of his youthful sexuality. If men in general were not naturally attracted to youth, then this shouldn't be the case. But the fact is dudes like youth and find it sexually attractive, regardless of sexual preference. There is no “evil Patriarchy” telling gay men to lust after young hunks – they just do. As much as the rest of us lust after young babes.

Further, apart from their sexual orientation, gay men share far, far more in common with straight men than they do women of either orientation. Gay men can get drafted, falsely accused of rape, creamed in family court, and accused of sexual harassment, just like straight men can.

(Funny aside: during my long clerical career, one gay man I worked with – not in the closet, but not exactly public about his orientation – got accused of sexually harassing an allegedly batshit nuts female co-worker who was not aware of his orientation. Hilarity ensued. So did a lawsuit – against her. For intentionally "outing" him to his co-workers.)

But that’s not all. Science tells us that around 10-15% of the human population is gay or bisexual in orientation – the exact number shifting depending upon just how you determine whether someone is gay. That means that for centuries closeted gay men have been marrying women to cover their sexuality. In most cases the wives in question were not aware of their husbands’ activities, or if they did learn, they turned a blind eye to them and just started drinking.

But post-Stonewall, men who determine their orientation is gay do not feel the same social pressure or filial compulsion to marry a woman.That means that 10% or so of the "eligible" men – who were often more handsome, dapper, and had bigger dicks than their straight neighbors – are no longer on the straight marriage market, for good or ill. That’s a good thing for everyone . . . except women who want to get married.

Suddenly a healthy chunk of the dudes who looked great on paper (except for their passion for fellatio and anal sex) were no longer available in the hetero-SMP. That forces the straight women out there to contend directly with us straight men, without the hope of finding a sensitive gay husband to fulfill their dreams of a high-status sexless marriage. Gay dudes are marrying other gay dudes now. Straight men are not marrying straight women. . . not nearly as much, anyway.

Feminism has attempted to co-opt the gay rights movement as another victim of “the Patriarchy”, and it can’t be argued that the oppression and rejection gay men have felt in the past (and still struggle against in the present) was motivated in large part by traditional social prejudices. But that doesn’t make them natural allies of feminists, just as it doesn’t make them natural allies of the black civil rights movement. Once you get past the marriage rights issue, most gay men seem to line up on other political issues more or less in line with straight men.

Gay men (who did not realize their orientation until late) get divorced, they lose custody of their kids, they get fired and discriminated against because of their gender, just like straight men. Gay men have lost the same economic power that straight men have. Indeed, the vast majority of their non-gay-oriented interests and issues are identical to those of straight men. If it wasn’t for the current political climate on the Right, I think we’d see a flood of gay men supporting male issues and interests. The very existence of the Log Cabin Republicans bears this out.

And if you think YOU get pissed off about your taxes going to support entitlement programs for single mothers, you should just hear a table full of angry gay men discuss the subject. Ouch.

Apart from political expediency, there’s not much reason why gay men and feminists should find common ground, philosphically. Remember, it was gay men who refuted radical Third Wave feminist Andrea Dworkin’s insistence that deep throating was unnatural and inherently dangerous, and that anal sex was an unhealthy perversion that could not be practiced without imperiling your health.

When a raging queen stood up and offered to demonstrate just how easily it was to deep throat in front of a crowd of other gay men, it pretty much deflated Dworkin’s anti-porn argument. Indeed, the comparatively large amount of gay porn out there belies the argument that “straight men only look at porn because they were taught to”. No one taught my gay friends to look at gay porn. No one pressured them into watching young, muscular, good-looking dudes have sex. They figured that out on their own without any help from the “evil patriarchy”.

Deriding gay men in general for a lack of masculinity is disingenuous and unfair. Some of the most masculine men I know are gay. In fact, I could argue that no one understands masculinity – what it is and what it isn’t– as much as a gay man. They are attracted to it as much as straight men are attracted to femininity. If the definitions of masculinity are restricted to purely heterosexual standards, not only are you being intellectually dishonest about the subject, you are ignoring and alienating some powerful allies in the struggle against feminism. And some damn good caterers.

Gay men see the ugly side of feminism even more frequentlythan straight men do. While rarely put in the same “evil patriarchy” category with us, gay men suffer the same broad brush feminism uses to paint all men . . . and when they are in groups with women who know they are gay, these women frequently and foolishly decide that being a gay dude is JUST like being a straight woman.

This amuses the gay men to no end.

It’s often been said that the slutathon that is Sex In The City is the attempt by straight urban women to live the fabulous gay lifestyle of gay urban men: easy sex with strangers, focus on interpersonal relationships instead of romantic ones, and an obsession with quality footwear.

The problem is that only gay men can live a fabulous gay lifestyle . . . because they’re men. They don’t have ticking biological clocks, fears of pregnancy or aspirations of the traditional Happily Ever After in the suburbs. They don't care about failing their mother's expectations or what their friends think if they start dating a much younger dude. They just want to get their dicks sucked after a delightful date with an attractive partner – something I think every man can understand.

When women try to adopt the fabulous gay lifestyle, they run into the issues that have always been a factor in heterosexual society, including judgment and social expectation. A gay man who has had three dozen partners in the course of his life isn’t considered particularly promiscuous not because he’s gay, but because he’s a dude. A straight woman who does the same doesn’t have the same excuse.

A gay man who doesn’t marry by the time he’s 35 isn’t in danger of a life of sterility and a lonely dotage surrounded by cats, he’s just entering his prime. He's a silverback, often with a more mature masculinity that attracts younger dudes by the dozen. A gay man who goes from one relationship to another every six months isn’t unusual – a woman who does the same is quickly going to get a reputation for being unable to commit.

And if you every want to hear some truly misogynistic shit, sit around with a bunch of drunk gay dudes and discuss the women in their lives. Only lesbians can be as judgmental . . . but they don’t have the vicious streak of an irate queen.

Nor do gay men universally identify with women before men – quite the contrary. The most effective Black Knight I ever knew was a middle-aged gay black man who just didn’t particularly like working with women. Not because of sexual preference, but because he preferred the quiet efficiency of an all-male team to the chaotic cluck-fest he saw in female-dominated departments. When the female HR director tried to get in his face about it, he was quick to hit back, brutally and viciously, with a deep understanding of the regulations and policies to refute her assertions that he was being sexist in his operations.

When it came down to it, the HR director couldn't come up with anything more concrete than “it seems you have a poor attitude toward your female co-workers, and some people have been saying they’re uncomfortable with it.” While a straight dude might have backed down, this Black Knight went on the offensive:

“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.”

HR steered clear of him after that. If he had been straight, it would have been his ass. It was one of the best temp jobs I’ve ever had. Not only did we get our work done without undue interruption, it was a congenial and productive environment. And no, he never hit on me. Even when I look this good.

It is time for the Manosphere to back off the homophobia and start recognizing our legitimate allies in this struggle. Gay men are not the enemy. They don’t want to see every man turn gay. They don’t even want to encourage more men to be gay, necessarily – they just want to ensure that it is safe for men who are gay to be so without undue hardship. (The rest of us could stand to work out more . . . eye candy . . .) Their alliance with the Left is almost solelybased around the single issue of gay rights, and once gay marriage and military service is off the table most are happy to get involved in issues of more interest to all men.

This just scratches the surface of what is a deeper and more meaningful subject, but it was time this was discussed in the Manosphere. Pushing away 10-15% of our brothers, just because they get more blowjobs than we do betrays the 21^st century goal of defining masculinity as inclusively – and as unabashedly male – as possible. Gay men have powerful perspectives to add to the Manosphere, and have seen the ugliest faces of feminism in ways straight men cannot conceive of.

They have been victim of a double-bigotry, treated with mistrust and hostility from misguided straight men and organized religion, while they have also been co-opted by women often without their consent as “one of the girls” . . . when they are, in fact, decidedly not. The attitudes and perspectives of most straight women toward gay men can be obnoxiously cloying. Fag hags abound, and despite their genuine affection for the gay men in their lives, they rarely accord them the masculine respect they would a straight man. In fact some of the most misandrous shit I’ve ever heard has been from the mouths of stalwart straight female friends of gay men.

As I said, I do understand the general hesitancy of straight men to embrace the idea of gay men being inclusive of masculinity in general, but as uncomfortable as that makes you, approached objectively it’s a net win for masculinity, over-all. It doesn’t make you gay. It doesn’t even make you a tiny bit cuter. But it does give you a position to advance to in discussions with ardent feminists who often conflate masculinity and heterosexuality to our detriment. If they say something rotten about the masculinity of “rape culture”, look for a cognate of the behavior or presentation in gay subculture.

Or, to paraphrase a struggling blue pill friend of mine who’s trying to talk his otherwise-liberal wife into anal sex, who objects on the grounds that it is objectifying, debasing, and degrading, unnatural and a violation of both biology and moral values: “Well be sure to mention that to the millions of gay men who take it in the tailpipe every day, honey. Like all of those gay friends of yours you’re always so supportive of. And by the way? I hear they swallow regularly, with no serious adverse reactions.”

That's my opener. Your perspectives?

As I've often noted, Feminism and True Love are both mating strategies. The former relies on social control to reduce competition for the highest valued women by discouraging active mate selection among the rank-and-file. By reducing the social impetus to permanently mate, otherwise-dangerous competitors devote their most fertile (and attractive) reproductive years to a career, or a string of failed relationships due to their lack of investment. True Love, on the other hand, promises "Happily Ever After" (HEA) for the woman who relies on traditional feminine allure to seek out the highest-value male she can attract, promising wedded bliss and masculine comfort (tall, broad-shouldered, seethingly Alpha masculine comfort) for ever middle-aged pudgy office manager with a Kindle, on the basis of their imaginary virtue alone.

The two would seem diametrically opposed: the feminist perspective is an ideology which de-emphasizes marriage and family altogether, while the mystical True Love seeks nothing less. One would assume, based on the ideology, that feminists would eschew romance novels for the context-dependent female pornography they are. Ditto the celebrity pages, Huffpo's incessantly mindless fawning over fashion, "supernatural romance" and soap operas. Yet feminist-oriented organs almost inevitably cave to the pressure of HEA, as a guilty-little-secret or as a (utterly rationalized) bit of "feminist empowerment". When you get past the rhetoric about rape culture, the patriarchy, and misogyny rhetoric, it appears that what hardcore feminists dream of, fantasize about, even obsess about is . . . marriage.

The delicious irony should escape no one. While feminists play Beat The Beta in the cultural arena, condescendingly blaming regular dudes for everything from wage disparities to sexual assault, their mouths may say More Beta but the secret fire in their loins is only inflamed by Mythical Alphas. Only the profound power of the Rationalization Hamster can heal this devastating rip in ideological reality. Only by denying its importance and playing off the inherent element of wish-fulfillment in the genre, near-desperate apologies such as this (from a column entitled "Feminism, Y'all") by blogger Alison Piepmeier can the Hamster possibly keep heads from exploding.

Don't mistake me: I am not opposed to romance novels. They fulfill a vital role in feminine sexual psychology, providing data, suggestions, and accessories to the constant demand for context a women gets from the Female Social Matrix. Just like porn, in the weak-minded they can provide too much data, feeding
deep-seated feelings of entitlement and dooming the viewer/reader to perpetual disappointment with reality. But for most women they are mere fantasy jilling material, grist for the mill of their imaginative sexuality - despite the never-varying plot/character structure. Ms. Piepmeier sums up the appeal nicely, but incompletely:

The novels feature female protagonists who initially may seem to fit the stereotype of the helpless woman, but who ultimately save the day — or play a very significant part in saving the day. They have fun plots with twists and turns, controversy and conflict, moments when you hold your breath because it's clear that everything is going to fall apart. But everything doesn't fall apart, because these novels always have happy endings. And the happy endings are crucial for me.

Ms. Piepmeier doesn't mention the fact that the "happy ending" invariably involves (expressed or implied) permanent commitment for the plucky heroine with her perfect-but-flawed Mr. Right. In other words, Marriage. Feminism's sworn enemy.

Rationalization Hamster to the rescue! Indeed, Ms. Piepmeir not only dismisses the rational disconnect, she enlists the aid of other apologists to lend weight to her rationalization:

Conseula Francis, a professor of English and African-American Studies at the College of Charleston, studies romance novels. "Here's why the happy ending matters," she told me. "These novels force us, whether we know it or not, to take joy seriously. Literary fiction often asks us to consider the pain and angst and ennui of human existence. Romance asks us to consider the pleasures."

"Joy" and "pleasures" in this context mean a ring and a June date with Mr. Right, after the heroine has rescued him from himself by virtue of her Magical PoonTang. The essence of every successful romance novel is the heroine's ability to use her femininity and sexuality to change Mr. Right's destiny, saving him from his own base emotions and desires by the simple virtue of Being Together. Married. Not independent fuck-buddies who pursue different careers and take a week off together every Spring - but honest-to-Hera Husband and Wife (with hyphenations, natch). Mr. Right is inevitably brimming over with Alpha, but with the heroine's influence he becomes a domesticated Alpha, content with whatever charms her Magical
PoonTang may hold.

The fun plot twists and turns cited are nominal, at best, and require the special knowledge or skill the heroine alone possesses in addition to her Magical PoonTang, but in the end the decision for Mr. Right's precious commitment is lies almost exclusively with his unrelenting devotion to her personal abstract femininity . . . the same quality that 3rd Wave feminism despises as "masculine entitlement". When a feminist woman "takes joy seriously" in a romance novel, the joy she is taking is is that of a woman submitting herself to an Alpha under the pretext of "taming" him.

If nothing else, studying romance novel structure and tropes strongly reinforces core Game concepts. More importantly, discovering a woman is a reader of this jillfodder gives you keen insight on her inner psychological approach to her nether regions, key areas where leverage can be easily applied. Most women who read such novels are wearing their Hamster out in the open where anyone who knows Game can see it. It's a cry for more Alpha in her personal life, more shirtless billionaires and misguided oil barons with muscles like spring steel, more ruggedly handsome strangers with exotic accents or chilling pirates with an inexplicable gentle side.

Articles like Ms. Piepmeir's serve to cautiously make a stab at reclaiming some kernel of femininity from feminism's crushing jaw. In admitting to the allure of brazen cis-hetero sexuality and the longing for the Alpha feminists who read romance novels betray the secret behind feminism's ham-handed approach to a mating strategy: as an elaborate shit-test designed to weed Alphas from Betas-and-below, wrapped in a thick layer of rationalization. None of these romance heroines are leaving their men behind to pursue their careers, they aren't abandoning Happily Ever After for the prospect of making partner, they are all graciously accepting the masculine commitment at the end of the book. Oh, they'll agonize about it the whole way - that's the fun - but if they don't succumb to the commitment with Mr. Right at the end of the book, then there's no "joy". "Joy", it seems, means succumbing to marriage, and nothing less.

Ms. Piepmeier has a different take. But put through a Red Pill filter, one may translate:

The female protagonists get to have adventures. ["They get to be stimulated by danger and excitement but without real consequence, thanks to Mr. Right"] They get to be competent. ["They get to demonstrate the characteristics that make them acceptable mates, other than the Magical PoonTang, which overrides everything else"] And they get to have great sex. ["They get to have great sex with a perfect dude willing to offer them commitment, enjoying the infatuation stage of the relationship without addressing the pesky realities of sustaining a relationship or criticizes them on their performance or approach in the slightest"]. Reading them is a fully feminist act.

You bet it is, Cupcake. That's the feminist take on romance novels: Lean in until you catch a ring for yourself. Then repeat as necessary. There are plenty of Alphas to go around for everyone. And gosh, you deserve one, even if you don't need one.

The flip side of this of course is the female Omegas, those poor women who use these novels like internet tube sites. Perpetually invested in the True Love strategy, which doesn't account for real-life attractiveness or the scantness of shirtless billionaires, these poor women have hamstered themselves into a level of

entitlement that screams defiantly at reality. When they do embrace feminism, it's usually out of a sense of sexual frustration. Feminism offers them the opportunity to rationalize their own personal failings and past humiliations as the fault of the misogynistic patriarchical rape culture, which oppressively doesn't realize the obvious advantages of the Magical PoonTang of the bitter, pudgy middle-aged single mom and awarded the Alpha accordingly.

These women are waiting in vain for their Mr. Right, because they foolishly took feminism at face value, when it came to the war on sexism/sexuality/male sexulity/rape culture. Feminism told them that a real Mr. Right wouldn't care what a woman looked like, just as True Love told them that her personal femininity was enough to ignite the fiery passion of every big-dicked Alpha who was worthy of her.

Like the fat 30 year old bronies who just know that they are entitled to big-boobed supermodel heiresses who will realize what a cool and witty dude they are, these female Omegas have been tricked out of even showing up to the Sexual Market Place. Nor is their misery wasted: feminism uses it to confirm their solipsistic belief that The Patriarchy is what is hiding all of the Alphas away from them, not their own failure to compete. Guys would be nicer, more gentle, less judgmental, and just more accepting of cats, aging, and Teen Wolf binge marathons if it wasn't for the darn ol' Patriarchy and its misogynistic minions. Romance gives them the personal ideal, feminism provides the finger to point the blame for their disappointment, while smart women skate between the two, run female Game, and snag up the marriage-minded Alphas.

The difference between porn and romance novels isn't just the genre and medium, however. There's a contextual difference that many forget. The 30 year old schlubs who are whacking it daily to the tubes still have time to learn Game and free themselves. Thanks to their biology, their sexual capital in the SMP is about to mature, even if their personalities don't. A year spent in the gym, learning Game, and applying themselves to their lives can make even the most unredeemable Omega dude acceptable, perhaps even impressive. I've seen it happen.

The Omegas' romance-reading female equivalent, on the
other hand, is at the end of her shelf-life as a viable commodity. The Wall loometh, and all the feminist theories in the world aren't going to change that. Men will always be attracted to youth and beauty over age and plainness.

By the time your average feminist woman's hamster accepts that, and she's grudgingly willing to admit that yes, she might like to be married someday . . . she's usually devalued herself heavily in the SMP. Heavily enough so that in the brutal competition for quality mates she's severely handicapped. Neither feminism or romance can offer her a solution, not one that she can stomach.

While a 30 year old male geek who discovers Game can re-invent himself fairly easily, a 30-year old short-haired feminist Omega has to make severe compromises of her ideology and her approach if she's going to stand a chance, even for a desperate Gamma. She's starting fifteen years too late, at the last gasp of her natural talent in an area of expertise she's been taught to despise. Her best hope lies in capitulating utterly,

becoming a Red Pill woman and embracing her femininity while eschewing feminism. Dreams of even mild suburban fulfillment are elusive as the men she thinks are in her league realize their own growing value. In the end, she's as likely to have an empty home and cats to read her novels to than even a poor quality commitment.

But perhaps her story will prove to be a warning to younger generations before they repeat her mistakes. Happily Ever After has to be earned. You can't depend on luck and access to your Magical PoonTang to give it to you. The real Mr. Rights of the world have more discriminating eyes than that. The smart ones aren't going to marry avowed feminists, anyway.

Everyone knows what the female birth control pill did to our society, and while everyone also knows that reliable male contraception would be a boon, the general effectiveness of condoms and the difficulty in regulating male fertility at the hormonal level without also impairing male sexual function has made "The Male Pill" an elusive goal. Pharma companies are interested, of course - considering their profits on female birth control, opening up a huge market for exploitation on a monthly basis is just too good to pass up.

But the best proposed method for reliable male birth control isn't a hormone-based therapy. It's a minor surgical intervention that renders the patient effectively sterile for a ten-year period of time. RISUG, or Vasagel, has proven effective and safe in initial clinical trials in India.

Because it's a surgical intervention and not a drug, there isn't much corporate support for the procedure, but its promise has attracted individuals to contribute to the incredible expense of funding FDA testing. And the promise is fantastic. Essentially, a microscopic device is injected into the vas deferens, where its crystalline structure effectively shreds the sperm before ejaculation. After ten years the structure breaks down and the patient returns to normal fertility. Or the device can be flushed away surgically with another minor procedure.

But for ten solid years you don't have to worry about getting anyone pregnant accidentally. The power to conceive is under your control, as a man. You are no longer a potential victim of reproductive coercion.

That's not a term you hear often enough, although the effect is widely known. When a woman gets pregnant (or pretends to, or convinces herself she is) in order to extract a commitment from a man without his knowledge or permission, that's reproductive coercion. It's the other side of "using sex as a weapon". Unfortunately, things rarely work out well for either the man who has been coerced or his off-spring.

In the discussion about sexual violence the issue ofreproductive coercion rarely comes up. The talk begins and usually ends centered on rape and violent sexual assault, acquaintance rape and sexual entitlement. But the issue of sexual violence is not complete without putting reproductive coercion on the table for discussion. If rape is morally wrong - and it is - then extorting an unwanted commitment from a man is equally wrong.

It's a Red Pill fact that a goodly portion of marriages are the result of a little blue line on a plastic stick and a True Love rationalization, not the careful vetting and examination they should be. The status quo tends to run like this: Jack and Jill go off to college, hook up with a bunch of people before getting thrown together for a weekend at the beach, knocking boots out of boredom and opportunity, and six weeks later, after both have moved on, Jill shows up at Jack's dorm with a wet stick and a blue line. June wedding and married student housing, or perhaps a semester off, if they elect to make a go of it.

Of course it really could be True Love - or boiling hormones - that provides the chemistry that turns that little line blue. Or it could be a calculated ploy on the part of an ambitious or desperate girl, pure reproductive coercion. Or it could be a simple mistake that neither of the principals feels ready to contend with, but because of moral obligation or their own youthful optimism they dive in anyway.

Whether inspired by a belief in True Love, a genuine mistake, or a cynical and calculated ploy to secure a given man, the result is the same: a child has been conceived without the father's knowledge or permission. His conscious right to choose his reproductive future has been usurped. While it takes two to tango, he is not the one leading the reproductive dance. A woman is ultimately responsible for what happens to her body, one way or another, and a man is at her mercy at even telling him about the child. He is not in control of his own reproductive freedom.

So . . . what would happen if he was?

Imagine, for a moment, a world in which a sixteen year old boy went in for his summer camp physical, and while he was getting his vaccinations caught up they took twenty minutes to put his reproductive life on pause. With no chance of getting anyone pregnant until he was 26, what different kind of future does he face?

Imagine a world where a young man has a leisurely amount of time to cultivate a career, pursue a degree, develop a skill or master a profession, without the looming, lingering danger of unwanted pregnancy. Imagine the shift in power as the ability for a woman to have a child comes under male review and approval.

The procedure is not expensive - around $1000 - and it appears to be perfectly safe. If one assumes that any teenage boy with a brain in his head and a future ahead of him would take advantage of such a procedure, then only the very low-status, low-quality males would be casually fertile. Competition for high-quality males would be extremely high among women, forcing even more competition for the Big C-Commitment of an engagement ring. When a woman's ability to conceive is reduced to her ability to attract a man who finds her worthy enough to flip the switch and have a baby with her, the rules of the SMP change dramatically.

The"I can always get knocked up by a handsome stranger" fall-back position offers great consolation to women unable to master the intricacies of a heterosexual relationship long enough to have a baby. Most sexually-active women go out of their way to avoid pregnancy with an essential random, for fear of his real status and the social consequences of reproducing without a reliable mate. But if the majority of decent dudes are voluntarily sterile, then even that possibility vanishes. But that would not be the boon to women you might imagine.

As the Wall inevitably approaches, the reproductive instinct, combined with generous contributions from the Rationalization Hamster, allow a given woman to rationalize lowering her standards to take advantage of the large pool of dudes who want a regular piece of ass and possibly a relationship, muddle through with Beta Bucks and start looking around for some Alpha on the side while soon-to-be ex-hubby raises the kids. That's the status quo for all too many poor Beta dudes who think they've found True Love when what their wives are thinking Starter Husband. As long as she's got a few good eggs and a willingness to go wild for an unsuspecting Alpha, she has a potential escape hatch and the rationalizations and legal remedies to use it.

But what happens when that option is, for all practical purposes, off the table? When any hypergamy-inspiring hot Alpha who walks into her life is in control over his own reproductive destiny, the biological escape hatch is closed. And when she has to ask her husband's permission to have a baby, she has lost the innate power of her feminine reproductive biology.

It goes beyond that, of course. When the Betas-and-below can effectively control their reproductive freedom, the ability for a woman to secure a reliable provider with her reproductive biology without his consent . . . vanishes. She must rely on her sexuality and her (shudder) personality to convince a given man that she is worthy enough to bear his children. The burden of proving herself falls to her, as mother, not to him, as father and provider.

The result: teenage pregnancy drops, and accidental pregnancies of all types plummet. Male fertility - a commodity so plentiful it's currently essentially free on the SMP - suddenly has value. Men of quality get the procedure as a matter of course. Most of the middle class, naturally. Any smart boy on his way to college would certainly do it. Same thing for the military forces - who wouldn't? No need to worry about pregnancy if you don't have to, right?

And then the power in the SMP shifts. When women have to compete, really compete for a man's commitment, not just for provision and protection but for access to hisgenes, then the social pressures change and the idea of commitment becoms a lot more clear-cut. Marriage becomes re-entwined with reproduction as it becomes clear that a solid marriage is the best guarantee of quality children raised in a reliably stable family. Men who are able to demonstrate that kind of ability by their late 20s suddenly gain huge capital in the SMP, and they will be quick to re-write the rules of commitment. Without the potential of "Guess what, honey? You're gonna be a daddy!" looming over them they are free to insist on a far stronger commitment than the drive-by matrimony that persists today.

Of course the Puerarchy explodes with horny young dudes who can't get a girl pregnant, thus obscuring the future good family men from being easily identified in the competition altogether. When "extended adolescence" means being sterile until you're 26-28, life for a young man becomes one long pussy-party. Even having a steady girlfriend doesn't mean as much. The moment she brings up the idea of a serious commitment without the biological bond of a child, the youth in question is forced to look just at her, not at their offspring, when making that decision. And let's face it, ladies, many of you just won't measure up under that kind of scrutiny.
The process of conception requires his positive approval, not just his passive cooperation. Without that bullet to dodge, the Puerarch is able to really enjoy his youth in ways that make feminists everywhere shudder.

RISUG gives men the chance to really plan and execute their life's ambitions without concern for premature distractions. With the smug knowledge that our sexual capital only improves with our age, instead of depreciating like a woman's, such control over our genetic destiny gives men the room to make far more intelligent, informed choices about where and when they want to father children, and with whom. It puts a premium on the Dad skills and abilities, and makes the stakes in Combat Dating much, much higher for women. It puts the balance of reproductive power in masculine hands, and increases the competitive drive among women.

Suddenly fatherhood becomes a hot commodity, not a wellspring for sitcom jokes. A man who has elected to be a dad would first secure his rights and ensure he has made a choice in the mother of his children that he can live with before he has the reversal done. Without the biologic pressure of unexpected pregnancy, he has the time to vet - and, if necessary, discard - unsuitable mates before they lure him into marriage and divorce. He also has the time to develop a career and financial standing to support children when he's ready to, not when that cute girl he met in the quad presents him with a freshly-peed-upon stick. By the time your AFC Beta boy is ready to become a Dad, he'll be in his late 20s, moderately successful, and ready to make some serious decisions about his life - and his choice of wife.

Of course that also frees up his dating life, too. Without the danger of unexpected pregnancy, he just has the minefield of STDs and batshit crazy to navigate, and that's not nearly as fate-changing, usually, as bringing a kid into the world. With a modicum of Game knowledge, the Dad-to-be can sow his oats like an Alpha for a decade. That's likely to make him generally less commitment-happy, and genuinely instruct him on the nature of women. And that's going to be very frustrating to the Beta-girl who suddenly fines herself desperately

competing for male attention when she wants to be out protesting wage inequality.

And most importantly, it makes responsible fatherhood a valuable commodity. The worse the Puerarchs behave in their cock-sure shenanigans, the more the stability of a well-seasoned male will be valued by women who want to be mothers. Watch the age of first marriage climb for men, and over-all marriage rates fall yet lower.

The blowback against feminism would be severe. When femininity is valued, feminism loses force. Arguing for a lean-in career path which almost certainly dooms your chances of reproduction loses credibility in the face of observable truths.

Revalorizing marriage and family by re-valuing fatherhood and paternalism - and, yes, Patriarchy - leaves women with stark choices when it comes to their futures. They would either have to commit to a childless future as a corporate drone, dying lonely and covered in cats, or they will play the game that gets them pregnant, by the rules made by those who control the tap. Feminism will be a hollow ideology. When men hold their future children hostage to their will, women will reflect more deeply on the whole issue of equality. And we'll see a lot less emphasis within the Matrix on conquering the corporate world, and more emphasis on escaping it . . . by becoming a wife and mother to a worthy man.

Also, capitulating to popular demand as a test I'm letting folks take a look at a Red Pill Primer for Boys, set up as a Google Presentation. Here's the intro. Let me know what you think.

When the dichotomy between ideology and cold hard fact is just too great to ignore, it can create some interesting observations. When Martin Luther nailed his 95 Thesis on the door of a church it outlined some of the stark and ironic contradictions between the ideology of the RCC and the practice. While it's no 95 Thesis, this little gem from Forbes proves that the irony of feminists fighting against marriage for the good of women is just too delicious for even a feminist to miss.

Entitled "Dear Feminists: In The Name Of Fighting Poverty, Can We Call A Truce About Marriage?"writer Carrie Sheffield defends the institution of matrimony not on ideological, religious, or moral grounds, but statistically. Citing several figures that show that marriage improves women's lives as both wives and daughters, Ms. Sheffield takes 3rd Wavers-and-beyond to task over their wholesale condemnation of marriage as a plot of Teh Patriarchy.

Ms. Sheffield correctly identifies several key points about how single mother families are dragging us down economically and socially, and she calls out key factos like globalization and the social acceptability of illegitimate children as culprits. She quotes stats aplenty when it comes to why the traditional two-parent household is superior to the one-mommy-and-Uncle-Sam model. And she does, indeed, chew out feminism in general for smacking marriage around.

But in doing so she's ignoring some other pretty fundamental factors in the equation. The fact that we don't properly educate young women on the pragmatic reproductive choices they will face, for example, or our young men on the folly of young parenting without marriage. She wants feminism to put unwed mothers "in their crosshairs", but she's unwilling to follow the logic down the rabbit hole from where that leads. She's placing all the pressure on feminism, thankfully, instead of blaming the "victim" of the young man whose reproductive future was coerced, but she doesn't address feminism's essentially anti-male basis for its anti-

marriage message.

Ms. Sheffield also sees this as a class issue - but doesn't identify the harmful marxesque ideology ("man as eternal oppressor", regardless of class) that underpins and informs feminism's perspective on marriage. She proposes feminism "lay off" the topic of marriage, but doesn't say anything helpful about it laying off the general misandry that motivates feminism in the first place. At best, she says "marriage is good for women and children", and brazenly leaves men sitting, unsurprisingly, by the side of the road.

I suppose that's par for the feminist course. Identifying a real and valid method of improving the lives of women at risk for poverty sounds like it would be something feminism would be all over - but to do so they would have to abandon the victim mentality, the uber-rationalization that single moms are "men's fault", and then open up a rational and cogent discussion about the subject with actual men.

That's going to be problematic. Men are generally soured on marriage in our culture for good reason, and marriage to feminists is just masochistic. The social incentives available under agricultural culture and early industrialization evaporated with the rise of the welfare state and liberalized divorce law. There just is no compelling reason for men to get married any more (saving women who have made demonstrably poor choices doesn't cut it) and that fact alone should shine brightly through any article about marriage and feminism. I know guys who would be thrilled to be husbands to some decent woman, but who are so brow-beaten and terrified of divorce that they won't even consider it. Hypergamy is an existential threat to a man considering a commitment. Promises of better health and longevity do not compare to the apparent sacrifices and personal risks a man makes when he extends that commitment to a woman.

The feminist version of "marriage" implies no permanent commitment, no surety of a man raising or even seeing the offspring he is financially responsible for, and a permanent resignation of control over the family to his wife under pain of dissolution. There is no respect, here. There is no appreciation for the masculine contributions to the institution. Indeed, they are regularly denigrated and bashed, as are the husbands who contribute them. Feminist "marriage" is a transitory, temporary thing designed to fail and - in the process - humiliate and emasculate the husband.

He exists within the bonds of feminist marriage as a provider and protector, the "good" elements of marriage that feminism wants to keep, but is denied the respect and admiration a husband should receive (that would be a betrayal of the sisterhood) and he is vociferously forbidden from the patronizing, paternalistic, patriarchical practice of expecting sex from his wife and having full parental rights over his children.

For the feminist husband, marriage is an elaborate shit test he can never win, an invitation to hypergamy and divorce. The more obsequiously he praises and defers to his wife, the lower in status he descends among his male peers and the less attractive he is to his wife. Any opportunities for displaying his value as a man are mitigated or destroyed by his basic posture, and undermined by a preconception of masculine values as negative.

So why, then, would a man be drawn toward a situation which clearly doesn't have his interest in mind?

Marriage is a very particular institution, and feminism's attempt to re-write the nature of the beast have been disastrous for men.

Ms. Sheffield needs to realize that feminism won't let up on marriage because it cannot. To do so would betray the ideology that is the foundation of feminism, and more pragmatically it would force feminists, and women in general, to begin to talk to men, not at them. They can't do that because they are afraid: afraid that they will be held accountable for their past misandry, afraid that they will have wasted the time and energy invested in that misandry, and (worst yet) they would have to admit that the enemy, Teh Patriarchy, for the last 40 years or so.
maybe wasn't quite so bad as they made it out to be

Feminism can't support marriage, because then it would have to face the inconvenient truths about human sexuality, marriage, divorce, hypergamy, and other gendered issues that keep us from being "equal". Further, feminism can't support marriage for the rank-and-file working class single mom because to do so would, indeed, make the lives of those women better . . . and happy women make lousy feminists. Irate, sleep-deprived single moms who can't get a date are great feminists. Happy, fulfilled wives and mothers who can manage themselves in a real cishetero long term relationship are lousy feminists, even to other feminists. When outrage and anger are the coin of the realm, actually expecting an ideology to encourage people to be happier by compromising their ideals is futile.

So good luck, Ms. Sheffield, but understand that convincing women that they need to marry after you have spent two generations telling them that they are better off without - and that they do not need - a man has poisoned the well irreparably. As men we're not inclined to go into a relationship where we are not "needed". Modern technology and economics has made it possible for us to live comfortably and inexpensively with all the wonders of the world a click away, nearly all the comforts of a traditional home without the intense time and money investment required to sustain that traditional home.

More importantly, it can all be done without a wife . . . and until women can overcome feminism's war on wives, husbands, and marriage in general, millions of men are and will be content to live their lives without marriage. And if that somehow hurts single women and single moms, then that's a reflection on feminism, not on the men who refuse to go against their own best interests.

I haven't spoken much about the success of my 2012 book The Manosphere: A New Hope For Masculinity. Commercially, it's been moderately positive. Critically, it took an early but well-reasoned hit from Matt Forney, who called it a noble failure. I copped to his legitimate concerns - the book is flawed in execution, I freely admit. Real Soon Now I will be publishing an update or new edition, whenever I find the time. A lot has happened in the Manopshere since that book came out, and it needs to be covered.

But occasionally something comes up that brings me back to that "noble failure", like an Amazon reviewer who appreciated the book in concept and what it was trying to explain. When this review came up on the site I was gratified by the reviewer's insights. It would have made an excellent forward to the book. So I'm going to present it in full, here, because I'm lazy and I think that the observations about the culture he makes are well worth the space to repeat.

(BTW, I'm not doing this to amp up book sales. But I'll see about putting the beast on sale soon, just for giggles.)

4.0 out of 5 stars An illuminating and potentially empowering tour of male subcultures, June 30, 2014
By Ben Hourigan, author "Ben Hourigan" (Melbourne, Australia)

This review is from: The Manosphere: A New Hope For Masculinity (Kindle Edition)

After failing to be interested in it at university, I’ve been discussing gender politics with friends online since early 2013. Check out the “gender” category on my blog (benhourigan.com) for some examples. To sum up, I find much of contemporary ‘feminist’ discourse sexist, poorly reasoned, censorious, and contemptuous of the facts—a discredit to the name and to the people who rally behind it.

When I disagree with a thing, I make sure I do my research, and in the past twelve months I’ve read rather a lot in a feminist vein and in opposition. Ian Ironwood’s The Manosphere! A New Hope for Masculinity falls into the latter category.

Agree with them or not, contrarian thinkers often seem fresher and are more fascinating than adherents to the current orthodoxy. “The manosphere” is an after-the-fact grouping of a range of men’s subcultures, from those of men’s rights activists (MRAs) and pick-up artists (PUAs) to gay men attempting to create a masculine identity amid a culture that expects their feminization. I first came into contact with the term through a friend with an interest in the broader ideological movement called “neoreaction”—which some consider the manosphere to be a part of.

Writing in the manosphere is often unruly, raw, and confrontational, even downright offensive. This is not the realm of New York and London big-5 publishing, but of group blogs and self-published e-books. I hope we are beginning to move on from disdaining such work: as it was back in the mid-2000s when I was a videogames researcher, many writers with the best feel or most interesting take on the available material are doing their work outside of big-name journals, sites, newspapers, and publishing houses.

The rise of independent publishing helps the emergence of such movements and writers, giving them retail exposure without a publisher as gatekeeper and intermediary. As thriller novelist Michael MacConnell writes, there is an indentifiable left-wing bias among writers on average. It is tempting to speculate that this is entrenched by the ability of left-biased publishing-house staff to deny authors who do not share their prejudices access to the channels they control.

Ironwood’s is a self-published book, and its rawness comes in the form of several repeatedly misused words, and a range of other not-too-prevalent mistakes. I’ve come to accept this sort of thing as part of the indie publishing landscape, provided that it doesn’t compromise readability—and this is by no means unreadable or poorly written. Further rawness comes from its sources: the aforementioned blogs and e-books rather than academic journals and the canonical texts of gender politics. Ironwood also anticipates that readers of a feminist bent will take offense to the material, and makes little apology for that.

The book is less Ironwood’s own statement, though, than it is a summary of the different subcultures within the movement, the bloggers that represent them, and the ideas that they hold. Here we see MRAs and PUAs covered, as well as Christian conservatives, “old married guys” (OMGs), alpha dads, puerarchs, and “men going their own way” (MGTOW). All of these are identified as part of “red pill” culture. The term is taken from the original Matrix movie, and here signifies a willingness to accept and act on the basis of uncomfortable truths rather than the myths of a politically correct orthodoxy, which are intended to subdue you.

Such “truths,” in the manosphere, tend towards:

* ideas from evolutionary biology
* a belief that men and women are different by nature as well as nurture
* skeptical views of the claim that we live in a patriarchy, that men possess male privilege, and of claims about sexual assault incidence that hinge on a redefinition of “rape” and surveys where the researcher, not the subject, decides whether they have been victimized
* observations that women are attracted by displays and exercises of male dominance in and out of the bedroom, including the accumulation and dispersal of wealth, and the exercise of physical strength

Dismiss all this as misogyny if you like, hopefully with an awareness that the word now means “counter to feminist orthodoxy” more often than it refers to genuine hatred or denigration. That dismissal is so predictable it can be taken as given. What’s more interesting here are some of the other discoveries to be made:

* The manosphere includes gay men trying to recover their masculinity from a feminized culture.
* Lots of manosphere talk is about good health and eating, career planning, the benefits of travel, self-employment, and education, valorizing blue-collar work, and trying to stay happily married.
* “Men going their own way” are about recovering their independence not only from a culture that sees their primary value as being their ability to support women and serve their interests, but also from the institutions where they are expected to seek employment, and the consumer culture where they are expected to spend what they earn at the office or factory.

Let’s sum this up as simply as we can: the manosphere is about men being comfortable with their own gender identity and sexuality while pursuing good health, prosperity, and independence.

Given this, it’s somewhat inevitable that manospherians spend time criticizing feminism and feminists, which feminist commentators accuse them of spending too much time on. Why? Because manospherians’ view of feminism is that it means women serve their own interests while men also serve women’s interests.

I’m in broad agreement with this, and also in broad agreement with earlier strains of feminism. Health, independence, and a positive view of one’s own sexual identity are important for human wellbeing. Feminism’s claim is that women have been denied these goods, and it has sought to recover them for women.

The problem is, much contemporary gender feminism attempts to recover these goods while denying them to men—particularly the assertion of a positive sexual identity. Just one loathsome example of contemporary comment, written by a man, insists that modern men are trained to hate women. Really? I never was, and I never did.

In fact, I have since childhood been exceptionally comfortable with women and interested in them as people, and regarded them as my equals, a situation I’ve viewed as totally compatible with my interest in them as sexual partners. Precisely because of this, and the apparent necessity of mentioning it in my defence, the repeated insistence that, I and my male peers must in some way hate and fear women, be oppressing them, or be constantly enjoying a privilege that we are obliged to apologize for, has made me decreasingly sympathetic to contemporary feminism and calls for attention to women’s interests.

Magnify that for confirmed manospherians. Against a feminism that pursues specifically female interests to the exclusion and detriment of men’s interests, the manosphere’s subcultures raise their banner: “we are men pursuing our own interests and valorizing our own sexual identity.” And they will pursue those interests against the interests or claims of women if necessary.

If feminism is reasonable in calling for female self-determination, it then seems reasonable that men might attempt to do the same.

Though I don’t recall that Ironwood says this explicitly, one of the tantalizing offers that the manosphere makes to men is this:

"Men don’t have to do what women want them to do. Or, for that matter, what anyone else wants them to do."

And not only can you do what you want, but, so the red pill observation goes, you will get laid more if you do, because women are attracted to assertive men who are in control of their own lives and don’t submit excessively to external demands or goals that others have set. And not only that, but it’s fine to view getting laid more as a goal. It looks like that’s what male sexuality is about, and it’s fine to be a man.

In the manospherian view, men don’t have to:

* be feminists or feminist allies
* crusade any further for sexual equality
* wash the dishes using the exact method that their wives or girlfriends or mothers-in-law prefer to see them use when they are looking over their shoulders (yes, this happened to me—it was a mother-in-law)
* wonder if they are rapists because the willing girl who came home with them was tipsy when they went to bed, or because they hadn’t filled out a consent form, or if they are sexual assault victims because they really wanted to sleep but had sex with their insistent girlfriend instead (yep, that’s sexual assault according to some survey methodologies)
* commit to a relationship and have or support children
* pander to a culture of discourse that views emotivism, faulty logic and rhetoric, personal attacks, and unwarranted extrapolations of personal experience as a praiseworthy counterpoint to the supposed masculine use of reason as a tool of oppression

Through his survey of the manosphere’s subcultures, Ironwood repeatedly gave me this kind of lightbulb-over-the-head moment where I understood that there is actually no deep moral or rational obligation for me to be on-board with the contemporary gender-feminist project, or to make apologies for my sex, sexuality, or rationality.

This should all sound hauntingly familiar: it is a mirror of some feminist outlooks. And it should be viewed as perfectly logical and defensible that, in a world where women make these assertions, men will make them, too. If we don’t like what is in the mirror, we should also look critically at what it is reflecting. In contemporary feminist and masculinist culture, there is a lack of concern for the other, and for society at large, that some (myself included) may find disconcerting.

Similar in this regard to Neil Strauss’s The Game, Ironwood’s book is an illuminating tour of male subcultures, albeit with an identity-political bent. It will fascinate most, offend many, and empower others.

Once upon the time, during the glories of the old Patriarchy, one of the astute measures of a woman’s worthiness as a wife was her ability to be a “good worker”.

That rankles the tender ears of feminists who see traditional matrimony as little more than chattle slavery (though quite a few have entered into the institution themselves, although not always successfully or gracefully), but at one time it was recognized that a woman came to a marriage to work, and part of her value to her husband and his family was her willingness and capability to do so.

Understand that at the time agriculture reigned supreme, and that before the Industrial Revolution the sheer amount of labor required to keep both farm and home running was impressive. It required the combined and complementary efforts of both husband and wife to keep it going. As this was usually done in the context of a greater community of kin, such labor could be shared commonly. That meant that a woman who came to her husband’s family’s farm would not only be expected to tend her husband, but join in the general work-pool of his female kin. Therefore a woman wasn’t judged as much by the men in her life on her ambition and industry, but by the women.

When industrialization and urbanization transformed the role of farm wife to urban housewife, she retained the need for industry merely because urban living before electricity still mandated a lot of labor. Add to that the social expectations implicit in urban life, and the wife as “homemaker” became the 1920s standard that hardened into the 1950s ideal.

As electricity and innovation and pre-prepared foods reduced the amount of time required for actual housework, that time was frequently filled by an increase in social obligations. She continued to be judged, but no longer on how hard she worked, but how effortlessly and tastefully she decorated and entertained.

As the ideal shifted away from wife as a “good worker” and toward wife as “homemaker”, the social pressure increased. Nascent feminism sneered at the bourgeois ideal of suburban living and attacked the traditional wife as a slave and a prostitute. Seeking to “liberate” these women, the successfully changed divorce laws and family courts into social weapons – against their own “oppressive” husbands.

In the 1960s and 1970s calling a wife a “good worker” in an admiring, Old World agricultural sort of way was to invite an estrogen-filled savaging from all corners. Feminism dictated that a woman have value outside of her sexuality in a marriage, yet they riled when hearing praise a given woman’s industry because such views were seen as “patriarchal”.

Men who ignored that Old World advice in the post-feminist world have reaped the consequences of their folly. Ignoring a woman’s capacity and willingness to work has frequently been a tragic mis-step in a marriage, and usually one of many on the road to divorce. Yet to verbalize a desire for a woman who is ambitious about her life without being arrogant and industrious without succumbing to career burnout or workoholism is to invite just such an attack by misguided women and feminists. If we even think such things – as too few of us do – then we keep them to ourselves.

But the truth is we value ambition and industriousness in a woman, among other traits. A woman who won’t work is a curse on a hard-working man. Far from being an “equal” relationship, a wife who suddenly becomes unemployed, under-employed, or unemployable after the wedding is going to hang around the neck of the marriage like a boat anchor. Unfortunately, such lack of industry usually comes in tandem with a higher desire for material signs of her “success”, almost always at her husband’s expense.

On the other side of the coin, a woman who doesn’t know when to stop working, or forgets sight of why she is working, is also a danger. Pledging your life to someone who is already married to their job is a recipe for marital disaster. And some women feel about their jobs the way they do about their relationships and treat them with similar gravity. If she’s unwilling to shift her career to accommodate the needs of the marriage, then that’s a serious down-grade.

Being “a good worker” isn’t just an evaluation about her employment status and potential, it’s an evaluation of her character when you broaden your scope to include old-fashioned housework and industry in general. If she cannot plan, start, persevere through and finish a job, and then clean up her materials, then that is not a good sign. If she is unwilling to learn or display this skill, doubly so.

It is hard to judge how good a worker your prospective bride is without significant acquaintance. The fact is, it’s as easy to fake the perception of being a good worker in the short term, but after a few months of hanging around you should be able to spot some trends one way or another.

Here are a few things to look for:

Does she ask for help even if she doesn’t need it?

Does she try to get you to do her work for her?

Does she have a hard time planning the project?

Does she have a hard time starting the project?

Does she have a hard time finishing the project?

Does she clean up after herself?

Does she take breaks . . . and how many?

Can she stop the job short of perfection?

Can she do the job without invoking nasty self-criticism?

Does she take pride in the work she does?

Does she seek your approval for her work?

Does she doubt herself and look for validation from you?

Can she accept constructive criticism when it is invited?

Does she need you to watch and/or act as a cheerleader for her efforts?

Does she know when to stop, or does she insist on continuing long after she was finished?

Does she work efficiently? How long did it take her?

There are other things you can glean about a woman by the way she works. How ambitious she is, for instance. If she's not ambitious enough to even want to impress you, then she's unlikely to be ambitious on your behalf. You should not judge her the same way you would judge a man, for women and men take different approaches to work, in aggregate. But you can judge her on demonstrating her mastery of the basic elements of work and prosecuting a project through to its conclusion.

So how do you judge how well a woman works? Have her paint a room.

This is the simplest method of determining how she approaches the mundane but necessary tasks of normal life. Painting does not require a high skill level, it has a very common-sense set of instructions, it has a definite preparation and clean-up, and unlike the challenge to bake or clean, it is safely gender-neutral.

But you can tell a lot about a woman by how she paints a room. To conduct this test, pick a fairly small room, select the paint, and acquire the tools. The next time you have some time to “hang out”, instead of rewatching Walking Dead on DVD, pull out the bucket, brushes, rollers and tarps and ask her to paint the room. If she tries to plan something, tell her that you plan to paint that day and invite her over to help. If she tries to avoid the work all together, then she's not serious - a woman who wants to spend time with you won't care much what you will be doing.

If she looks like you are crazy, tell her that you want to see if she can do it. Be honest that this will be an assessment. If she presses, admit that it is a test, and if you feel confident enough to pull it off, go ahead and call it a Wife Test. Sure, it will put her on her guard, but she will also – hopefully – understand the utility of the test, and jump to the question of why you might be evaluating her for such a position. If she doesn’t, that, too, is valuable data for you to have.

Don’t judge her too harshly on the ultimate job. The test is not of her painting ability, but her ability to start and finish a job, preferably without your help. If she needs you to do everything from open the can to showing her how to use the brush, then you know she will likely not work diligently without oversight.

If she tries to bribe you into doing it, or tries to change the plan to do something else, then you know she isn’t eager to tackle a real bit of work. If she complains bitterly about it every step of the way, sloshes paint on everything, does a half-hearted job and tries to make it everything else’s fault – from the brush to the roller to the kind of paint you selected – then you know that you will be bearing the brunt of the responsibilities for the rest of the relationship.

If she doesn’t think painting a room is indicative of her wifely skills, and acts indignant about it, then she doesn’t understand what marriage is about yet. She might not ever.

But if she presents you with a well-painted room without any splashes of paint, a cleaned-up work area and put-away tools, then you may just have a winner. If she does so without complaint or the need for direction or hand-holding, then move her to the head of the line.

It’s the little things like this that make proper vetting so vital. A man who knows what he’s getting has no excuses later on. A man who thinks that his “helpless” girlfriend will suddenly transform into a hard worker with the application of a little wedding cake is a fool.

Ambition & Industriousness are two of the most important elements that a man looks for in a woman, according to recent polls. That doesn’t mean he wants a corporate warrior who never has time for a husband, but it also doesn’t mean he wants a fainting flower who can’t make the bed without management. Good wives know that a working on their relationship implies a fair amount of good, old-fashioned work.

If they aren’t willing to do that, what makes you think they’re going to treat their husbands right later on, when he’s the only one who knows how to work?

Any other ideas about how to judge a woman's industry and ambition?

I get a lot of mail from men who are desperately looking for a way to Alpha-up, break their beta, and submerge themselves in the sweet balm of masculine culture . . . but have no freakin' way how to get there.

That's understandable. After forty-plus years of denigrating everything of masculine value, the institutions that once provided the stable and reasonable introductions into the world of masculinity have been tarnished, bruised, and battered in our society. Even seeking out a place to cultivate your masculinity will make you the object of derision and scorn among the women and gammas in your life. Tell a feminist you want to go someplace and learn how to be more manly, and you might as well tell her you're signing up for an "Intro To Patriarchal Oppression And Rape Culture" class. Our culture has derided the traditional masculine to the point where manhood itself has become a tired old joke in our popular culture. I don't need to tell you this stuff. You see it all the time.

But what if I told you that there was an organization of men who specialized in the cultivation of masculine virtues? What if I told you that there was a society dedicated to the improvement of men by adherence to masculine virtues, not mere pick-up lines or metrosexuality? Where competence and the ambition to learn were valued over social status and SMV? Where achievement and accomplishment were not just acknowledged, but were celebrated and lauded as they should be? What if I told you that there was an organization that values the contributions your masculinity can make without reproving you for your sexism, your desire for order, or your dedication to masculine ideals?

I know of such a society.

When I talk to men about cultivating their masculinity they despair of not having a good group of male friends. Of not having the opportunities to explore their character through challenge and trial. I see men who desperately want the discipline and the camaraderie of male society, who crave the opportunity to contribute their own talents and resources and be recognized for those contributions. The want a place where they can go and be men without recourse to a locker room or basic infantry training. A place who will accept them for who they are, and help them grow into who they want to be.

I know of such a place.

The Boy Scouts of America.

Scouting has taken a lot of heat from liberal and progressive factions over its stance on homosexuality. While it is now permissible for Scouts to be gay, there is still a ban on openly gay leaders. There are many complicated reasons for this - gay Scout leaders do now exist and have served with distinction and honor for decades in Scouts - but because of the number of religious conservatives and the perceived liability, as well as some cultural issues, openly gay Scout leaders are forbidden by the BSA. And that little point has been the wedge that progressive feminist organizations have used against the Scouts for years.

But that's not really what bugs them. What bugs them is that Scouting has been, and is still dominated by men and masculine values. When men congregate to discuss anything without the benefit of female supervision, the Matrix goes nuts. The feminist Matrix in particular recoils in open horror, assured that the Patriarchy is conspiring to oppress the wimmins the moment their backs are turned. When men gather together to discuss how to become better men - which is the fundamental and unchanging focus of the international Scouting movement - feminists freak the fuck out.

The matter of homosexual leadership is just the excuse. The moment that the ban on gay leaders is lifted, there will be yet-another issue the feminists will level at the Scouts when their current one is no longer valid. Truthfully, that day cannot come too soon - not only is this a minor issue for most groups, but it would be nice if gay Scout leaders didn't have to hide. For the most part they have no "gay agenda" beyond raising their sons to be good men. Using homosexuality as a wedge to divide men against each other does a disservice to us all.

But if you're looking for a place to freebase masculinity, you can't ask for better without joining the French Foreign Legion. Just look at the Scout Law to see the bedrock masculine values that Scouting teaches:

A Scout Is

Trustworthy
Loyal
Helpful
Friendly
Courteous
Kind
Obedient
Cheerful
Thrifty
Brave
Clean
Reverent

There is not a single thing there that conflicts with the Red Pill praxeology. Indeed, it is a celebration of masculine values unsullied by feminism.

Boy Scouting began a hundred years ago on Brownsea Island, in southern England, the product of Lord Baden-Powell's vision. He was a soldier in the later British Empire who served in Africa, India, and other places in the Empire. Most notably, he lead a mostly-civilian defense of a town in South Africa against Boer insurgents. It was during this siege that he employed 11-13 year old boys as "cadets" to handle non-violent military responsibilities that would otherwise use a soldier who could be on the lines. After the siege he expanded his exploration of youthful participation, writing a few field manuals on military scouting and reconnaissance. Upon retirement, he discovered his military books were enjoying huge popularity in British schools when it came to being trained in observation and deductive reasoning.

Seeing the inadequacy of the quality of manpower the British Empire was dealing with (a by-product of the industrialization of England) Baden-Powell decided to do something about it. He re-wrote his books on scouting as Scouting For Boys, and laid the foundations of the Scouting movement with a camp-out at a small off-shore island in the English Channel. He took twenty boys from various socio-economic backgrounds, took them camping, taught them knots and other useful stuff, and generally began a tradition of male self-improvement that has influenced millions of men today.

Scouting is perhaps the best, easiest, and most cost-effective route to self-improvement in which a man or boy can enlist. It distills the patriotism and discipline from the military - long the essence of male-oriented organizational culture - and removes the violent component, leaving just the plethora of skills and the path to achievement. Scouting organization is replete with ranks and levels of achievement. No one ever got an Eagle for "participation".

That's one of the feminists' issues with Boy Scouts: they encourage actual achievement, not artificial self-esteem. If you want the 50-mile hike badge, you have to hike 50 miles. You don't get a patch to celebrate your ability to show up and eat pizza. The Scouting program is designed to challenge and encourage a boy to be the best man he can be, not feel good about himself for no particular reason. Scouting carries the essence of masculine values in its basic tenants, and reinforces them through masculine-oriented rituals. There is no equality, no equity, no consensus. There is a Program, and there is accountability.

While you may have missed Scouting in your own youth (if you're over 18, there's no way you can make Eagle), the fact is that the culture and the environment of Scouting is perhaps even more beneficial to grown men. Scouting is always looking for good, responsible, committed leaders, and there's no rule that says you have to have a son to participate. Indeed, in our troop we go out of our way to include men in our community who might not have a child themselves, but still have something to contribute. Anyone who can pass a criminal background screen and takes the Child Protection course is welcome.

You might be asking yourself, "how can I help a bunch of 12 year-olds become men when I'm not sure how to do it myself?" Scouting offers plenty of training (the Wood Badge course is legendary for corporate leadership training) and the fact is that once you have to start breaking down basic masculine skills to a youth, you learn them better yourself. By being responsible for someone else's struggle with achievement and education you gain significant confidence and esteem yourself. Really.

Nor does the emphasis on basic scouting skills deter from the larger education the boys - and the men who lead them - gain from the experience. Sure, you might not need to know how to tie a bowline in an emergency situation, but the security and confidence you gain from just possessing that knowledge can't be purchased at a weekend seminar. Scouting deals with all manner of achievement and skills, not just the woodsy outdoorsy stuff. Learning how to speak in public, learning how to lead, follow, organize, plan, execute, and follow-through is key to success, as you will learn. And the very act of mentoring a group of boys eager for decisive, knowledgeable leadership forces you to improve yourself so that you do not disappoint their expectations.

You want a workout? Strap on a 60 lb. backpack and lead a bunch of testosterone-poisoned teens on a rugged ten-mile trek through the wilderness. Iron is great, in its place, but the kind of robust, constant-workout you get by camping can't be beat. And Scouting's High Adventure component is like masculinity on steroids. No one who has returned from Philmont Scout Reserve in New Mexico has done so unchanged. A new Scout reservation is just opening in the East, north of Beckley, West Virginia, that promises to provide even greater opportunities for the men of our nation. It's like the biggest Man Cave in the world, complete with ziplines, STEM center, white water rafting and BMX park.

But if you are looking for a low-cost way of improving yourself, a tried-and-tested method of masculine empowerment, a crash course in basic maleness, you can't beat Scouting for the experience. Sign up to be a merit badge counselor or committee member at first. Scouting is great at taking advantage of volunteer talents - if you can't handle camping, there's plenty of other stuff for you to do. But nothing improves your own masculine self-image more than helping a boy recognize his own. There is nothing more Alpha than helping a boy become the best man he can be.

This would be a great place for any former or current Scouts to detail how Scouting positively informed the men they are today. You want a quick way to break your Beta and re-introduce masculinity into your life, Scouting is your best bet.

The other Sex Nerd, Dr.Emily Nagoski has been informing the dateless male public the proper Blue Pill/Feminist-approved ways for men to approach women and, as you will see, her advice is designed to be ineffective and failure-driven. Worse, in the name of combating "male sexual entitlement" it turns the entire process of flirtation and seduction into psychotic train-wreck of masculine humiliation.

Let's start with her posting on how to pay women compliments, presumably about her body, as a means of approach. She uses the Facebook-delivered example of a dude who plays some Rude Boy Game by slapping at a woman's shoe on the train before complimenting her, then calling her on her irritation. While most Red Pill dudes will see this as a bold and rough opening that will a) get him remembered and b) definitely start a conversation, Emily's delicate sensibilities were offended by his presumption. Her position was that a man should not start a conversation with a compliment on a woman's appearance before first complimenting her on her personality and/or other attributes, and that NO compliment should be forthcoming unless that man was in a socially acceptable position to also tickle her (with her consent).

This is why feminist men don't get laid, and why Gammas and Deltas turn bitter.

Blue Pill dating advice is almost an oxymoron. According to Emily's attempt to "help guys out", the primary consideration any man should have in an approach situation is the fact that every woman he meets is a neurotic body-phobic mess of insecurities that should be catered to at all times, lest he be labeled an Asshole and tarnished for all time.

This non-approach method of approach is basically telling men NOT "you aren't entitled to women's bodies", as Emily suggests, however; it's telling them "you aren't entitled to your own expression of sexuality because it is inherently offensive". With that kind of foundation to begin upon, is it any wonder that the liberal and progressive young males out there are ending up with their own neurotic, scalzied insecurities about their sexuality?

Under feminism, there is NO authentic way for a man to approach a woman for a date without it being inherently offensive. If a man follows Emily's advice then he is to check his libido and his masculine boldness at the door in deference to delicate feminine sensibilities - which screams GENDER ROLES. While the sneaker-slapping Rude Boy Game might turn this anonymous dude into an internet meme for a few moments, when viewed with the Red Pill eye you can clearly see that while his approach failed, the blow-back for him is actually quite minimum. Sure, he's an anonymous asshole online, but Emily ignores two fundamental truths about human mating in the age of Combat Dating:

1) Women are Fungible - he may have not successfully approached this particular woman, but consistently playing Rude Boy game will inevitably pay off with a sexual success because Emily ALSO ignores the fact that

2) Women respond to Rude Boy Game far more than they ever want to admit. And they respond a LOT more positively to it, on average, than the standard Gammarabbit "game" of obsequious deference. The whole "chicks dig assholes" meme is regularly discounted by both feminists and Gammarabbits as patently untrue, yet any objective consideration of the data reveals that yes, indeed, in aggregate "chicks dig assholes".

Emily's advice isn't designed to improve a man's success with women. It's designed to make rejecting men easier and more comfortable for women. While that's just dandy for all the delicate wisps of silk and fluff who get offended if a man DARES compliment her sneakers, it doesn't help men at all. Indeed, in closing Emily gives these two "rules" of Blue Pill approach advice to men that basically say "Don't Approach":

Talk about something substantive. Something you have in common. Something that clearly gives you a reason for talking to her other than the fact that you want to talk to her.

Which, alas, means that very often there will be no reason for you to talk to someone you want to talk to, and therefore you don't talk to her.

Sorry.

Two more guidelines:

(1) You can say something positive about a person's body or belongings ONLY AFTER you've said something positive about their personalities, their knowledge, or other attributes that you can only know about by, like, having a conversation with them. That means that a compliment about a person's body or belongings is never how you START a conversation.

(2) And if she's wearing headphones, she's saying, "I'm really hoping no one talks to me." In that case, the way to be the guy she likes most on that train or bus or elevator or in that coffee shop is to be the guy who DOESN'T approach her.

"Sorry", she says.

This isn't helpful to men in the slightest. It's a recipe for catering to feminine insecurity in the public sphere. While men are not entitled to sex or women's bodies, they are entitled to express their masculine sexuality in a socially-approved manner that does not violate the law or common sensibilities on the subject. Noticing a woman's shoes is utterly acceptable, as is calling it to her attention. Her reaction to the approach was instructive: she rejected, and demonstrated a lack of femininity and social graces in her response that gives the gentleman some indication of the quality of woman he was dealing with.

Emily continues the madness by conducting an unscientific internet survey designed to allow women to explain all the ways they prefer to pre-reject men, and then draws the following conclusions from the results:

BLUE PILL DATING ADVICE:

Lesson #1 is: Touching a woman you don't know well is a great way to squick her out.

Conclusion: You really, seriously, genuinely, absolutely, positively MUST GET PERMISSION before you touch.The permission doesn't always have to be verbal, but it always has come BEFORE the touching. When there is uncertainty or ambiguity, ask explicitly or else don't do it.

This is, of course, seriously, genuinely, absolutely, positively going to get you labeled as UNEXCITING TIMID GAMMA RABBIT who fails their initial worthiness test. Follow this advice and the only women you will get are the ones you don't want. Any woman whose insecurities about her body are this tightly-wound is highly unlikely to be a worthwhile pursuit for love or sport, and if she squicks that easily then throw her back. This also points out how Blue Pill/Feminist-approved dating advice for men is designed to get men to REJECT THEMSELVES BEFORE THEY EVEN APPROACH. Hardly the "help" most men need.

Red Pill Dating Advice:

Lesson #1 is: Casually touching a woman in a non-sexual way during approach is an acceptable risk; while it may squick her out, it also helps determine her level of emotional and mental security and stability. Likewise, approaching a woman with a compliment on her physical appearance may run the risk of squicking her out, but that is also an acceptable risk. The cost-benefit analysis implicit in initial approach is designed to investigate the quality of the woman in question, and a woman whose insides "curdle in repulsion" to a genuine and sincerely-delivered compliment from any man and demonstrates that in her response is indicates poor potential for any kind of relationship, not to mention a profound lack of social grace. MOVE ON. You can do better.

It's hard to imagine a professional sex educator doing this much of a disservice to the male sex, but that's feminism's way. Masculine sexuality is a beast to be feared, not contended with, and the more frightened they can make men of their own sexuality (and convince them to feel guilt and shame about it) the more men can be used to facilitate feminine imperatives, not pursue masculine ones.

In other words, in the dating realm the reality is that

**It Doesn't Matter What Women Like, Don't Like, Or Say They Like And Don't Like; The Only Thing That Matters Is What Women Respond To.**

And that's why feminists suck at giving men dating advice.

I'm not piling on the criticism of the Spreadsheet Man, considering the amount of public abuse his passive-aggressive behavior earned him. The issue isn't the spreadsheet - the spreadsheet was a good idea - the issue was one of how to use this tool. Unfortunately, the Game-ignorant, Blue Pill Average Fucking Chump (AFC) husband has no idea how to take this very valuable data and leverage it into a more fulfilling sex life.

There comes a point in every married man's life when his unofficial numbers drop below the threshold he can comfortably stand. Sex is an incentive reward system, and when his rewards drop so do his incentives. Spreadsheet Man was batting a dismal 11%. That is, for every hundred dedicated attempts at initiating sex with his wife, he successfully had sex just 11% of the time. That's just shy of the Numbers Game ploy that novices at Game employ, before they have any social skills or practical knowledge of approach. A man in 11% territory has every right to be alarmed at the state and direction of his marriage.

Most of the ire directed at Spreadsheet Man from the Manosphere has focused on the poor Gamesmanship he displayed, or - in the case of a few hopeless romantics - the temerity to consign something as sacred as marital relations to the cold, hard medium of Excel. But if a man is to complain about something as serious as his sex life to his wife, he had better have objective data to give him some context. Not that he could or should use the spreadsheet to try to bargain his way back into her panties - as Rollo has brilliantly demonstrated in his analysis of this case study in AFC sexual management, "you cannot negotiate attraction." That's a mistake a lot of poor AFC Beta husbands make: thinking that he can use logic and reason to break the dismal numbers he's getting.

Let's set aside for a moment the issue of his use of this tool, this spreadsheet, and investigate instead just what would compel a man to create one. That's the question I keep hearing women ask about the subject: "Why on earth would a man do something like that?"

Accountability. The short answer is that he created one because there was a stunning enough lack in his marital sex life that he felt compelled to measure the subject. When his wife responds to his complaints with the inevitable "But we have plenty of sex - I don't reject you!" in order to salvage her bruised ego, Spreadsheet Man wanted to know if that was a factual statement or not. You don't go shopping when there are plenty of groceries in the cupboard. When the cupboard is bare enough, you suddenly need to take stock to see just how dire things actually are.

Let me break it down for you.

Most women use a variety of subjective measurements to determine their level of satisfaction with a relationship, a position that can wax and wane with the lunar tides sometimes. Men, on the other hand, use the frequency and variety of sexual relations in their relationship as a rough metric for their satisfaction with it. Simple of us, I know, but that's just how we are. For most of us, if we're getting it good and regular, and with sufficient enthusiasm and imagination, then we can put up with anything form mothers-in-law to zombie apocalypse. But if the nookie dries up, it doesn't matter how well everything else is going in the marriage, there's a problem.

A Note To the Wives

How much of a problem is the real question. If your husband has ever produced a document or kept track of your sex life, yes, you have a problem, but the problem isn't with your dude. When a dude starts running the numbers, yes, he's already invested some energy into the idea, so dismissing it angrily is not going to help your marriage. It might seem unromantic, ladies, but that's our practical masculine approach to the problem. Indeed, "running the numbers" is a Game fundamental. The fact that you get uncomfortable when your man starts looking that carefully at your sex life should tell you something.

Look, ladies, try not to take this personally, although I know that's difficult. No one likes to think that their intimate life is under a microscope. But the fact that there is a problem in your husband's mind is the important thing, here. It doesn't matter how often your girlfriends and sisters have sex, your married friends or your divorced friends, it doesn't matter what Cosmo says the national average for married couples is . . . if your husband thinks that there's a problem, then regardless of all other factors, there's a problem.

The feminine imperative and feminist dogma both encourage you to ignore this problem or - better yet - blame it on him. But the sexually "Thirsty Husband" has a far higher chance of committing infidelity than the sexually-satisfied husband. I know dudes who blew up their whole marriage and family over their wife's inability or unwillingness to give blowjobs. It might sound petty and immature, but that's just how seriously we take our physical sex lives.

At the very least, consider it an exercise in practical mate guarding. No matter how boring and ordinary you may think the dude you married might be to you, to a woman five to ten years younger he's a mature, sophisticated man who has his shit together - and there is no end of the women who are willing to poach him out from under you. If your man is making spreadsheets and complaining about the nookie, that's an early warning sign that he's at risk.

The remedy is NOT to chew him out, castigate his morals or demean his sexuality, make excuses or blame him for the problem - on the contrary, the remedy is to take his complaint seriously, without taking it personally. He's not saying he doesn't love you - he's saying he wants to love you more, and the frustration in that matter is becoming intolerable. But he doesn't understand how (thanks to Blue Pill thinking) to articulate that in a helpful and meaningful way.

The Spreadsheet As Tool For Transformation

The Average Fucking Chump (AFC) married man who feels sexually rejected by his wife under the Blue Pill method approaches the beginning of Red Pill wisdom. If he gets so far as to start charting the results of his encounters and rejections, he's starting to appreciate the magnitude of the problem. Most wives hate to admit how many times they gently reject their husband's advances, preferring to see such tactics not as rejection but as "anticipatory teasing", as one female colleague called it. The problem arises when that anticipation goes unfulfilled, and the affection the husband harbored starts to spoil.

Most Blue Pill husbands will reluctantly accept their wives' sexual excuses, as long as they hit often enough to make playing the game worthwhile (anywhere from 25-33%). That is, as long as they have some sort of sex every 3-4 times they initiate, they'll generally accept that as reasonable, rather than imperil even those meager rations. It's when you start getting rejected four times out of five or more that the AFC starts to get the feeling the game is rigged.

Charting out your rejections is unromantic, but then so are rejections. Before you can understand the need for good Married Game, you must first understand the scope of the problem, and a spreadsheet over a given period of time (say, 90 days) is a good, rational, reliable, utterly pragmatic way to take stock of your status quo. If you're a husband who is looking for a way to get your wife to have more sex with you, then this kind of data gathering before you take action is essential.

The AFC Spreadsheet Challenge

So I'm proposing any man who is toying with the Red Pill, but remains unconvinced of its potential effectiveness in his own marriage, take the AFC Spreadsheet Challenge. Starting August 1st, start charting the number of times you initiate sex with your wife and her response. Do this for 90 days, ending on Halloween, October 31st.

A few ground rules:

1. You may not inform your wife of what you are doing, lest you spoil the objective nature of the observations.

2. Only legitimate, sincere efforts of initiation, clearly and unequivocally stated, are counted as "real" initiations. Mumbling "babe, can we tonight?" as she's running out the door to work doesn't count. Neither does proposing a lunch-time blowjob when you know there is no possible way to make it happen. There has to be adequate opportunity and reasonable conditions, as well as unmistakable communication of intent, to count an initiation.

3. You may display no negative recriminations, whining, or complaint with her rejections. You merely note them in the log and detail the context and circumstances. As a corollary, do not attempt a serious initiation more than once per day, unless the original rejection was redeemed later as a "raincheck".

4. You should also note the state of her menstrual cycle in your notes in order to make this exercise the most helpful. Most AFCs don't believe or really understand the importance of the menstrual cycle on their success ratios. See if a higher success rate corresponds to her most fertile period, when the data is analyzed.

5. Also to give this exercise the most benefit, note any scheduling issues, interruptions in normal routine, or other factors that might impact the normal flow of marital bliss.

6. Note time of day and location. Likewise note exceptional response, including increased enthusiasm, novelty, and general interest in sexual relations. You might be batting low numbers, but if you're hitting home runs frequently enough it can make up for it. Or your regular at-bat means a walk to first, perhaps with a lonely walk back to the bench afterward.

The point of this exercise is no more and no less than to collect empirical data on your ACTUAL sex life. It isn't to instantly start improving it. Indeed, what you are doing here is establishing your control data as a benchmark for improvement. Being able to look at a representation of your personal sexual history can be rudely informative. Knowing what your real numbers are, instead of the vague and subjective arguments your wife may propose about your sex life (do these sound familiar? "We do it all the time! We did it just the other day! I don't reject you, you just want it all the time! Is that all you think about? Is that all I am to you?") is the first painful step on the road toward improving your sex life.

What you do with that data is key. DON'T email it to your wife in a passive-aggressive snit, else you, too, may end up on Facebook or Reddit. The point isn't to shame your wife, as Spreadsheet Man apparently tried.

But after 90 days of careful record-keeping, if you run your numbers and discover you're batting worse than you did picking up skanks in college bars, then you have a good reason to go to your wife with the reasonable complaint about your sex life. NOT the spreadsheet. Try it. (We'll go over this again in November, but this is where we're shooting - and I'll put it in nice Blue Pill Non-Offensive language, to help you get started).

"Honey, we need to talk. I'm concerned about our sex life. I don't feel that you're taking my sexual needs seriously, and I thought it would be best if we discussed it."

(Start in a non-accusing, reasonable, rational way. See if she agrees if there is a problem. See if she reacts emotionally. See if she reacts violently. How she reacts will give you at least some insight into the nature of the problem you face. Let's assume for the moment she's going to be only slightly offended at your temerity, but curious enough to continue the conversation without an immediate appeal to emotion):

"Don't be silly, dear. We have sex plenty - all the time. How can you think I don't take your needs seriously? I love you!"

Continue:"I've been paying close attention to how often we have sex lately. That is, I've been looking at how often I bring it up and how often you turn it down. I didn't want to come and talk to you if I was just blowing things out of proportion, after all - that wouldn't be fair. But I kept track of just how often we've done it, lately, and just how often I tried to talk you into it."

(Using terms like fairness, equity, and equal are all helpful terms to hold frame and keep the discussion focused and in-context. Let's assume she doubles-down on her position in the face of the realization that her husband is serious - and she's in danger of being held accountable. Common female tactics in this case are to a) Blame the Male, b) Cause a Scene c) Appeal For Support d) Deny. Let's assume she goes with Option D.).

"That's just not true! Not only do I say yes most of the time, I even initiate sometimes! You know that!"

Continue: "I'm sorry, but that's not what I see. I've tried to initiate ___ times in the last three months - serious, real attempts to get your attention and try to be intimate. During that time you actually initiated only twice, and most of the time you turned me down."

(This is where things get hairy, because the fact that you are checking so sincerely belies her stated position: that you have plenty of sex and that she doesn't reject you very often. Worse, you've kept track and that makes her accountable for her actions. While she likely believes that you are correct, her feminine pride and her horror at being held accountable risks seeing the situation blow up before it can be effectively dealt with. This is where she might go to a) Blame the Male)

"I can't believe you took our sex life and made a spreadsheet out of it!"

"This isn't about the spreadsheet (maintain frame), this is about the health of our marriage. I'm not trying to lecture you. This is an item of concern for me, and I wanted to call it to your attention. But if I'm getting results like this, I must be doing something wrong, don't you think?"

(No, this is not at all ALPHA - but your Blue Pill wife isn't expecting ALPHA demands. Nor are you going to be able to make any - you don't have any Game yet. Just bear with me)

"Honestly, I don't know where you get this stuff. Of course you're not doing anything wrong! It's just that we've been married for a while now - you can't expect us to act like newlyweds anymore."

"No, I expect us to act like a happily married husband and wife. I could get rejected most of the time when I was single. Why do you think you turn me down as often as you do?" (This also holds frame, and puts the ball back in her court. If she has a problem with your approach, this is where it will come out. Likely possible responses include:

"I just don't feel like it sometimes."
"When you just pop up out of the blue and initiate, it takes me by surprise. I'm not always ready."
"I don't like the way my body feels anymore."
"I don't know, I'm just not that into sex anymore."
"I'm just too tired - you know how much I work."

Etc. Etc. This is the Excuse Wagon, pulled by the Rationalization Hamster. No doubt you've recorded all of her given excuses already, but go ahead and take the time to write down her issues. The goal isn't to negotiate desire, but to call to her attention the fact that this is a problem that you are now devoting your time and energy to. Do it gently. She's not going to tell you the real reason she's not responding sexually to you.

She's bored.

She's uninspired.

She's complacent.

She feels that married women aren't supposed to have as much sex.

She feels unattractive.

And all of those things, you poor AFC Beta Boy, are the REAL reason why your numbers are low. There's only one way to raise them, and that's not doing dishes and a spiffy job on the lawn. The only way to get your wife to have more sex with you is to Game her. That is, study her sexual responses and understand them well enough to invoke them. And then make yourself into an instrument to do just that. The Spreadsheet is a tool toward that goal, nothing more. But after 90 days, you should have an adequate baseline to tell you just how much work you have to do before you reach your goal.

The ongoing kerfluffle over the site #WomenAgainstFeminism, displaying selfies of a number of attractive young women who are all holding placards declaring why they don’t need feminism, has gone beyond the usual shame-and destroy tactics that the feminist establishment usually employ. Instead what has happened as these women quietly but publicly disagreed with the status quo ideology and dis-identified themselves as feminists is remarkable. Some have likened it to the feminist Berlin Wall crumbling, or an anti-feminist Arab Spring.

It is telling that it took young women rebelling against feminist ideology in a public sphere to get prominent (and obscure) feminists all over the world to listen – if only for a moment – to the same things that most folks in the Red Pill/MHRA/MGTOW/PUA/OMG community have been saying, some of us for decades. But when opinions that issue from the mouths of men are ignored or discounted simply because of our gender, when feminism refuses to engage in any meaningful dialog with those it purports to change, then its own unwillingness to participate in a debate it claims to want demonstrates the disingenuous nature of your ideology.

The shock and disgust displayed toward these young women by feminists is appalling. They are treated as vapid and ignorant, young, dumb, and desperately seeking male attention by those who would dismiss their well-articulated positions. The irony of this escapes not even thefeminists, themselves. Some are even leaving their association with feminism.

But ladies, this is what the problem is. Let me mansplain something to you, because you clearly missed something. I’ll go ahead and do it in patronizing and patriarchal tones, so that you have an opportunity to scoff derisively as you read it, desperate for a hint of misogyny – us white male dissidents understand our role in your ideological drama, and I would hate to disappoint.

Over and over in these face-palming critiques I keep reading of your utter horror as you saw one young woman after another (apparently) mis-understand what feminism “is about”, I hear you complain bitterly that these women are getting it wrong. Feminism isn’t about (insert tragic misdiagnosis here) it’s about equality. You quote the dictionary, chapter and verse, you quote great feminist minds of the past, inspirational voices who led you to realize what feminism “is about”.

Only, not everyone agrees with you. And that’s making you batshit crazy.

There’s an understandable amount of schadenfreude in the Manosphere over this, but believe it or not, I’m not gloating. I’m just vindicated. Many of us predicted this sort of thing would happen, and gosh darn if it didn’t.

You see, the thing that is driving you crazy is that feminism is an ideology, but it also functions, in many social ways, like a cult or religion. And while your intellectual inner circle has been preaching equality for years, regardless of the strides or gains you may have made, the fact is that your ideology’s public image has been tarnished badly in the meantime. Not to put too fine a point on it, but you made the same mistake Republican candidates traditionally make. In an effort to appease the loudest voices, and maintain the appearance of unity, you have allowed those voices to dictate the direction of the entire group – or at least its perception by the public.

There’s a reason that only a small minority of women identify as feminists these days. The ideology has become so loaded with baggage from the culture wars of the past that adherence to it involves picking up that baggage . . . and that’s something that most women just don’t want to do.

Worse, two decades of systematic targeting of masculinity, in all of its guises, has managed to alienate nearly all men from your banner. There was a time, in my fuzzy youth, when I may have identified myself as a “male feminist”, because I believed in equality too . . . but I believed in full equality: draft cards, equitable sentencing, and equal custody and all, and those were issues that feminism, alas, did not see as germane.

They sure as hell were germane to me. And to a lot of other guys.

Over the years, individual feminists and feminist-oriented groups made it quite clear that men were not welcome – we were part of the problem, and the more we tried not to be, the more you lashed out at us as individuals and as a class. Whether you intended to or not, feminism as a movement became associated with the callous disregard of masculine values and the blanket disrespect for male issues. You couldn't even let a bunch of guys get together and talk about male homelessness, suicide, and social issues without protesting and making death threats. Classy, feminism.

We were supportive, once upon a time. But what did we earn from that support? You called us part of the Patriarchy, taunted us for our perceived privileges, and never spared the opportunity for shame and guilt about our gender. We supported your reproductive freedoms and your right to own your own bodies, and you called us participants in “rape culture”. When we threw up our hands and realized that there was no way for you to be happy with us, you called us “misogynists”.

So we left. There’s a reason that “male feminists” of any note are as scarce as hen’s teeth any more. No one wants to be a male feminist. You savage them with particular delight, when they persist in being male, and no man wants to be seen publicly working against the best interest of his gender. Congratulations, ladies. You’ve made “male feminists” an endangered species.

Like the Republicans, you’ve played to your base and alienated the mainstream. People don’t associate feminism with positive values, anymore, and it’s not just Red State hicks and Southern politicians who feel that way. Feminism was the ideology that spurred millions of women to divorce and break up their families, and many of us carry the scars of that decision. Feminism made men fearful to even speak to women, much less relate to them in a professional manner. While you may see the resulting domination of women in corporate positions of power as gratifying, understand that it was done at a price.

You may see feminism as responsible for great strides in American and World history, and I can’t deny that. So was Marxism, the ideological model feminism chose to co-opt – the one that equated men with the oppressing class and validated some feminists’ need to hate men as a class. A lot of us take that personally. Feminism’s unequal treatment of gender issues across the board has grown so egregious that protecting the virtue of 200 little African girls results in a global awareness campaign, while the brutal deaths of hundreds of boys in the same conflict earned no attention by feminism.

You can claim that feminism isn’t about hating men and punishing boys, Ladies, but the fact of the matter is that this is precisely how feminism is viewed by a broad plurality – if not a majority – of the men in America. Not the progressive pals you keep around you to remind yourself you don’t technically hate all men, but the dude who changed your oil, mowed your lawn, stocked your groceries and passed you on the freeway, all of them have a disdain for feminism, as an ideology, that they would likely never speak to you about.

You've attacked male sexuality with bloodthirsty abandon, belittling the "male gaze" and objecting to "objectification" - without understanding that objectification is as important to male sexuality as emotional context is to female sexuality. Your relentless fight against "rape culture" has put you at odds with every heterosexual man in the country, as you rampage for the right to only be approached by attractive men, and demonize unattractive men by their "misogyny". Feminism has been responsible for more male sexual guilt that the Catholic Church. But you don't know that, because we stopped talking to you a long time ago.

Because speaking to feminists about feminism when you disagree with the culture that has sprung from the ideology is akin to speaking to a cult member. Every stay-at-home mom who decided to spend her best reproductive years making a home and building a family with a loving husband has been called to task for her choice – “you could be so much more”, “why are you letting him keep you isolated?”, “don’t you want to prove you can make something of yourself?”, these are all the catty, snide little ways feminists have promoted your ideology.

In seeking equal opportunities for women, feminism has denigrated the role of wife and mother that so many women desire. Voicing a preference for Blue’s Clues over Black’s Legal Dictionary gets a woman pilloried in our post-feminist society, as you well know. By placing careerism over the desire for a family, feminism has inadvertently doomed hundreds of thousands of successful career women to childlessness, as the “good” men they plan on settling for after they’ve established themselves in careers seek less-driven mates to be the mothers of their children. The frustration among the professional class of feminist is palpable. Yet feminism teaches them that it is men’s fault, or the fault of the Patriarchy, or ageism, or whatever rationalization is in vogue at the moment.

Those rationalizations, as thousands of women are discovering, don’t keep you warm at night.

But not only has feminism alienated men of good will and mothers, feminism has consistently besieged one of the most hallowed areas of femininity: marriage. In its efforts to protect women in abusive relationships, feminism has waged an unrelenting war against one of the pillars of femininity. No, not all women want to get married – but for those who do, and there are a lot of them, feminism has successfully weakened the institution to the point where feminism has become the antithesis of a happy marriage.

Just watch how apologetically a feminist announces her engagement. I had that pleasure, recently, and watching this woman squirm while she had to admit to her equally-feminist friends that she wanted a husband – not that she needed a husband, but (like a handbag or a new car) she wanted one – was an awkward moment. Of course, she could not bring herself to actually say the word, “husband” – she said “partner” – and she instantly declared that she would not take his name. Go girl. I felt humiliated and emasculated on her bridegroom's behalf.

But while I quietly congratulated her on her marriage, the fact is that feminism, regardless of its vaunted goal of equality, has consistently tarnished and weakened an institution that a majority of women hold sacred . . . and they have muddied the waters of non-feminist women considerably by their approach. That hasn't garnered feminism any positive public relations.

Men are reluctant and fearful to marry now, thanks in part to feminist-inspired pro-divorce culture, alaEat, Pray, Love. Feminism’s successful war on the patriarchal expectation of sex in marriage has removed the insulation married women once had from the Sexual Marketplace, making their husbands prey to predatory women and devaluing their own sexual contributions. When feminism made it clear that a husband had no native right to his wife’s body, it also undermined the marital exchange to the point where she can no longer be certain of his fidelity. Feminism is synonymous with divorce, not happy wives, in the real world beyond the ivory tower.

(It might be helpful if feminism stopped treating the term "wife" like a death sentence. Requiring a woman to apologize for her marriage and her husband, and then imposing a lot of humiliating restrictions that are going to be harmful to the marriage, doesn't win you many allies. Feminism has made it possible where a little girl can grow up and be a great feminist anything . . . except a good wife.)

Feminism did itself no favors by encouraging the sassy self-esteem of two generations of girls. While claiming white men had unearned privilege, feminism pushed the unearned privilege of white girls to the breaking point. Many folks are anti-feminists not because they object to the ideals of feminism, but because they object to the conduct of feminists. Young women who feel that they are entitled to pretty much anything they want, who trade on their feminism with threats of legal action or scandal to get their way, these women aren’t ‘empowered’ – they’re ‘bossy’. That would be one thing if they were also highly competent and productive, but those are not qualities feminism has emphasized in its application.

The writings of the Women Against Feminism are telling: to them (and to the rest of us) feminism is a bunch of angry women screaming shrilly about how the rest of the world needs to pay attention to them and give them what they want, in a judgmental, demanding way. The rest of us don’t dislike feminism because we hate equality, we dislike feminism because for many of us some of the most unpleasant and difficult-to-work-with people we know are feminists.

We see them not just as unhappy people, but people who have invested in their unhappiness to the point where they will only be happy when the rest of the world is just as unhappy as they are. You want to see feminism perceived in a positive light again? Create a way for a woman to be a happy feminist. That’s going to be difficult with an ideology that, practically speaking, sees half of the human race as an enemy, but give it a shot. Y’all are creative.

Start by trying not to insult and demean anyone whose opinion you don’t like. Feminism loves to call people names, from ignorant to backwards to stupid – and feminists excel at invective. Tearing someone down verbally is a high feminist art, and most of us have been the object of that scorn at one time or another, deserved or not. When you cannot have a discussion with a feminist without her snorting about your perceived privilege, or having her try to shame you into working against your best interest, then engaging in any kind of productive dialog is challenging. And demanding. And usually self-defeating.

So mostly we just . . . don't. We ignore you. We turn our backs on you and mostly we just don't entertain a feminist perspective in any sort of positive way anymore.

As a man I have been called a plethora of vile names and had my character attacked by feminists, even what were supposed to be reasonable, academic discussions. Feminists have a kind of argument cycle that they go through, I’ve observed, in which my intelligence, education, upbringing, and decency are first brought into question before they launch into outright misandry and emasculation. At least half of such discussions end with them questioning my manhood – when I know for a fact how they would have reacted had I questioned their womanhood.

I’m a big boy. I’m not intimidated by shrill women who think their ability to “be strong” and “compete” lies in their willingness to insult another human being. They have said things to me that, had we truly lived in world of equality, would have required them to settle the matter through seconds and over pistols. But because feminists tend to hide behind "don't hit me, I'm a girl!" when they decide to engage in such verbal bloodsports, most wise men just . . . walk away. We're men. We know feminism hates us.

But the things that you’ve called these Women Against Feminism have been nothing short of vile. This is what you have to say about these beautiful, intelligent women who disagree with your political ideology. Women with three advanced science degrees are called “stupid and uneducated” because they dare to disagree with feminist ideology. Women who have made conscientious choices about their lives are being castigated and threatened. Women who have made up their own damned minds are being called idiots by other women in a fit of misogyny the Manosphere could never muster.

It is in your reaction to #WomenAgainstFeminism that you reveal yourselves, collectively: Feminism has hit the Wall. No one is responding to your "nice" voice anymore, because you've burned all your bridges. Now your very daughters are rejecting your ideology and recoiling in horror from the idea of a "feminist" life. Yes, feminism is associated with misandry and reactionary man-hating, female entitlement and anti-male ideology in the minds of most people.

But like the 35 year old woman who is still trying to rock a miniskirt, you still think feminism is about equality. No, it is not about equality, and hasn't been for a long time. What you think feminism is and what it does in the real world are two entirely separate things, and your association with an ideology that is, in effect, anti-male, anti-marriage, and anti-freedom of thought is not doing yourselves any good.

There's some hope that feminism will redeem itself - plenty of women are offended at the things being done in the name of their gender, and want to re-claim the now-poisoned title of feminist. But until feminists collectively take a good, long, hard look into the mirror and hold themselves accountable for the sins of their sisters in the name of their ideology, don't count on a hell of a lot of support from the victims of feminism. We're not inclined to be charitable about that sort of thing.

Today marks a special day for the Ironwoods. Twenty-three years ago today, the future Mrs. Ironwood and I were introduced to each other by a mutual friend. It wasn’t a carefully-designed attempt to get two like-minded people together. We were both on the rebound from less-than-stellar long term relationships, and our mutual friend was a bartender. She thought it was an exercise in simple rebound expediency.

The result was the present Ironwood family. The result of a one-night-stand gone horribly awry.

The reason why our twenty-third anniversary is so important (to me) is because it also marks the point in my life in which Mrs. Ironwood has been in it more than she has been out of it. As of this point, we have both spent the numerical majority of our lives enjoying each others’ company. That’s a massive accomplishment in this day and age, one that we are both appreciative of.

I rarely counsel a man to marry, in our present circumstances. The odds are not in his favor, and barring exceptional circumstances he risks far more than he gains out of the transaction. The differences between divorce, marital misery, and domestic contentment represent the difference between failure and success, and most men marrying most women are throwing all their chips on black and hoping for the best. In most cases, the payout is a mediocre marriage to an ambivalent woman undermined by the knowledge that she has clearly settled for her husband.

Every relationship is different. But the success or failure of a good one is dependent not just on the level of commitment each party demonstrates, but on whether or not they possess the skills needed to negotiate the minefield that is marriage. “Husband” and “wife” are not just commodities on the MMP, they’re learnable skills and cultivated abilities. One fault of feminism is its antipathy toward marriage as an institution and its disparaging of the cultivation of those skills that inform a woman’s contribution to the functioning of the marriage.

In pursuit of corporate achievement or “changing the world”, the women of the last two generations have been woefully unprepared, practically, for the realities of participating in a long-term, committed heterosexual union. Indeed, any such suggestion – that a woman spend her time and energy preparing for domestic life – has been met with scorn and derision by the feminist community at large. “Wife” is a title of shame and capitulation to feminism, regardless of what individual feminists may declare. Cultivating a skillset contributing to a successful marriage is therefore ridiculed by the feminist establishment.

Meanwhile, husbands have gotten a hell of a lot better in developing their skillsets. The man entering marriage in 2014 (if you can find such a rare and special creature) does so with a much greater depth of experience than his grandfather had. More than likely he’s mastered (or at least been exposed to) the

domestic chores and childcare responsibilities that the Second Wave feminists complained so bitterly about.

Modern husbands are more hands-on fathers than their sires, more involved in the housekeeping duties and household purchasing decisions, and more socially aware and better-informed than their ancestors. Men who feel inclined toward marriage and family early have little trouble learning the things they need to, in order to be an effective husband and father. While that desire is limited to a few, compared to generations past, the men who wish to be good husbands go out of their way to ensure that they can handle whatever might get thrown at their families. That dedication comes across early on, if you know where to spot it. There’s a reason that the “good ones” get snatched up early.

My continuing series on discerning the potential of a high-quality wife, Wife Tests, wouldn’t be complete without exploring one of the fundamental factors in the success or failure of a marriage: loyalty.

I do not mean mere fidelity. Simply not cheating on you is not the best metric for determining a woman’s loyalty to you. Loyalty, in the marital sense, means unwavering support for your spouse. That can be difficult, in the face of tough times, and the weak-willed, poor-quality women will quickly start looking around for a more-immediate better deal. Thanks to feminism, marriage is no longer sufficient insulation from the SMP, which makes it easy for a woman to entertain such ideas at the first hint of trouble.

But you’re going to have trouble in a marriage. It’s inevitable. In the process of knitting together two families and two family cultures, establishing proper boundaries and protocols, there will be problems that will challenge the fortitude of any couple. Until you do, there’s no real way to assess the strength of your union, sadly, and for some whose emotional constitutions are brittle, it doesn’t take much to hit the “this isn’t working” button. More than one man has been shocked and surprised to hear these words after even a moderate challenge to the marriage. Another failure of feminism to modern women: the inflated and often unreasonable expectation of marriage. Marriage is hard work. If you care about it, you don’t take it pass/fail.

So how does one determine a woman’s loyalty to you before you encounter that Big Event that’s going to give you problems? It’s difficult. I’d say a telling factor, however, is just how loyal a woman appears to be to you in a casual circumstance. It’s hard to construct a situation that tests that, you must rely on observation and pay attention to subtleties. With Mrs. Ironwood, I can pinpoint the exact moment when she passed the Loyalty Test.

We had been going out for a little over a year when we had the opportunity to go out with another couple, friends of mine from college. Nothing fancy, just a sit-down dinner in a chain restaurant with a bar. Bob and Karen had been friends and neighbors of mine for a couple of years during my undergraduate career. He was a Religious Studies major at Duke, and she was studying Medieval and Renaissance studies. At that point they were engaged, with Bob having aspirations of a career in law. At that point, I saw them as the Perfect Couple.

But when the subject of parenting and fatherhood came up, Karen – who I’d been crushing heavily on since I’d known her, and who knew me as a fairly hapless Beta – was surprised at the future Mrs. Ironwood’s

willingness to “let” me take charge of our future children, if any. At the time it appeared that she would be the primary breadwinner – my writing career had taken off, but paying gigs were still few and far between. Therefore our plan was that I would be primary childcare, should we have kids. That early in our relationship we had already begun seriously evaluating each other for suitability, and had discussed the possibilities even if we hadn’t committed to them.

“What? You’re actually going to trust Ian with your babies?” Karen asked, aghast at the suggestion. That was more than a little insulting, on a personal level, but my attraction for her and my respect for Bob had kept me firmly in Beta position. I was about to joke my way out of it when the future Mrs. I leapt to my defense.

“Are you kidding? Ian will make an outstanding father! I’ve never met a man better-prepared emotionally or practically for taking care of his children. He’s responsible, intelligent, and caring. Whether or not we’ll stay together or have kids together remains to be seen, but I know for a fact that I would not have any reservations about Ian raising our children!”

Bob quickly changed the subject away from the awkward subject, and dinner continued. Afterwards, as we were walking back to the car the future Mrs. I reiterated just how upset she was at the suggestion that I was unfit to raise babies with. It wasn’t just Karen challenging her choice of boyfriend, a catty standard of the Female Social Network, that she was responding to, I realized. She was genuinely offended that anyone who claimed to be a close friend of mine would make such a horrible (and to her mind unearned)

pronouncement.

It wasn’t a big deal to either Karen or Mrs. Ironwood, but it was to me. It was at that point that I checked the “loyalty” box on the Wife Test. When your wife defends your character to your closest friends, that’s a pretty profound statement of her belief in you. I watched more carefully after that, and I was gratified to see her stick up for me in similar situations. She knew enough not to get entangled with the rough teasing between my brothers and I, but when she told my mother that she was wrong about my inability to handle household finances, for instance, I knew I had a potential keeper.

While loyalty gets tested in the strangest of ways, but they all revolve around a woman’s unprompted reaction to a perceived attack or injustice on you. Ideally her response should be independent of her interests, perhaps even against them, in some circumstances.

If you had to engineer a situation artificially to test her loyalty, consider having one of your (good) friends speak poorly about you behind your back but in her presence, and report what she says. If she plays along with his downgraded assessment of you, you might have a problem. If she sticks up for you, you’ve got a loyal one.

But even that isn’t the ideal test of her loyalty. Even better if you can hear one of HER good friends launch a catty attack on you. If she can tell her BFF to shut the hell up because she doesn’t know what she’s talking about, you’ve got a winner. The woman who will endure someone speaking badly about her mate is one whose loyalty is questionable from the beginning.

The true test, of course, will be when the world is falling down around your ears; your very self-identity is challenged as your life is wracked with the inevitability of misfortune. A loyal wife will remember that she bet on the horse, not the race, and support you. If she’s skilled enough she might even know how to do that. During a true loyalty test, she has a clear choice of a life in support of you and a life not in support of you, and she freely chooses the former not out of obligation or a sense of duty but because she has genuine respect for you in sufficient quantities to invoke her loyalty.

Twenty three years after she saw me reading a book in a bar one night (The Two Towers– I’m a hobbit-head) Mrs. Ironwood is still fiercely loyal of me, and I have taken great pains to vindicate her on the subject of fatherhood and husbandry. But understand that such loyalty is not monolithic. It’s a laminate of countless small acts and quiet statements made in support and appreciation over the years, an aggregate of pride and love stronger than the petty forces of fate that conspire to tear it down. The end-result is a cultivated Oneitis, wherein your mutual loyalty and support give you the personal security and belief in your marriage you need to go out and slay dragons on a daily basis.

Twenty-three years. It’s not impossible to marry a Western woman and still have a fulfilling life as a husband and father. But you have to start with the right woman, carefully nurture the relationship, and avoid the sinkholes that Marriae 2.0 inevitably throws at you, and disloyalty is certainly a big one. But . . . twenty three years.

And from now on, she’ll be in my life more than she’s been out of it. That, gentlemen, is what happens when you’ve properly constructed Happily Ever After.

While some of you are, indeed, taking the AFC Spreadsheet Challenge, one of my readers pointed out that we're missing an opportunity to instruct the rising class of freshmen college men in a prophylactic dose of the Red Pill. These poor bastards are about to walk into a tempest of dangerous collegiate pussy, dark times and potentially disastrous choices. My own nephew, Cal, is headed off to a party school for his freshman year this fall, and I've done my best to inoculate him to the dangers of college-level pussy. If you want to see a run-down of what I covered, most of it is in the Red Pill for Boys section at the top of the page. Basic stuff.

Of particular mention should be the issues of Hypergamy, the Fungability of Women, Maintaining Frame, Male Dominance in Sexuality, Alpha Fux/Beta Bux, Don't Stick It Into The Crazy, Female Sexual Psychology, the Rationalization Hamster, and Covering Your Ass.

Recommended reading would include everything from Rollo Tomassi's The Rational Male, to Roosh V's library, to Athol Kay's Married Man Sex Life Primer (best intro to Red Pill and Game I've run across) to Bachelor Pad Economics by Captain Capitalism to . . . well, if you're at all familiar with the Red Pill and the Manosphere, you'll know where to point them.

But guiding our young men through the minefield that is campus sexual politics is vital, particularly now. Campus feminism is a driving force in our cultural debate, and the young men at its mercy are particularly vulnerable to its savage nature. Giving them the armor to defend against it is our duty. Giving them the weapons to counter it is in our best interest.

Imagine, for a moment, what would happen if the men of the Class of 2018 made an unofficial pact not to have sex with feminists? That is, at the first whiff of feminist rhetoric, these young gentlemen make a point to "next" the confused young lady? And then spread the word about her? What happens when all of those young, horny college women who are so indignant about the terrors of male sexuality can't get laid on campus? When the first mention of "rape culture" or "misogyny" or "The Patriarchy" ends in an amused smirk and the dude walking away? What happens when men on campuses across the country start maintaining the frame that feminism is an unacceptable risk in a sexual relationship for a young man?

If it becomes understood that feminism is a severe negative factor in a young woman's social life, that it is damaging to both her SMV and her MMV, then regardless of the screeching rhetoric, the female imperative will override the ideology of feminism. If you examine the social lives of young feminist women in college, once they get through their flirtation with lesbianism they stalk frat parties and off-campus keggers on the prowl for cute soccer players and tall Alpha upperclassmen with cool stories about Amsterdam before they go back to their dorms to call their orbitors and girlfriends. What if that stopped? Women make their sexual decisions opportunistically, and by denying young feminist women access to the carousel they've come to college to enjoy, or at least encouraging our young men to make mating decisions which do not reward a feminist mindset, the enthusiasm for such excesses will die down dramatically.

Sure, there will always be the progressive fringe element, strong, independent feminist women and their dickless Beta boy lackies. Hell, the Red Pill young men would be doing those chumps a favor by choosing not to favor their feminist overlords with the back room drunken Alpha Fucks they crave. They might actually have a shot in those desperate late hours when their female peers in equality come back from a cattle call rejected, dejected, and increasingly desperate. Even a broken clock is right twice a day.

We need to teach these young men to maintain the Frame of Masculinity and hold to it steadfastly. The seductive nature of the campus environment allures them into tempest of hormones. Putting them on the path to manage their reproductive and mating strategies effectively, with the help of the Red Pill, could be a turning point.

So I challenge each of you who reads this blog to look out for the young men in their life. Queitly - ever so quietly - take them aside and explain that there's some . . . hidden knowledge that it is time they learned.

And that's a key point as well: the first rule of the Red Pill is that you don't talk about the Red Pill. Except in certain key situations. This is one. Make certain that they understand that rule. The goal here is not to start a bunch of derpy campus organizations for men to counter the feminist inclination to do so, get their names in the news, and start a nasty op-ed war in the campus newspaper. The goal is not to organize our demands and insist that they be met.

The goal is much more insidious. Far more important than establishing equal access to tampons or whatever the gender war du joure may be, the goal of the Class of 2018 Challenge is to quietly inoculate as many young college-bound men from the allure of Blue Pill thinking, and transform them into an army of horny, Game-aware, self-confident young men who understand and appreciate the actual life choices they have in front of them. An army of Red Knights, secretly seducing their way into the student body until it's writhing in tingly ecstasy.

That's the Masculine Frame we can build. Knowledge is power, and we have a shit-ton of it here. Impressing on them the need to cultivate strong male bonds, investing in their bodies and their educations, seeing themselves as strong, independent men in their own right, unbeholden to feminism, women or the feminine imperative.

So what Red Pill advice would you give an 18 year old college freshman today?

I love visiting the Red Pill Women reddit (and the venerable Red Pill reddit) to wallow in the trenches, so to speak, and see what the biggest concerns various folks have might be. In RPW there were so many posts concerning how a wife could coax a husband to break his Beta and be more Captainy that they declared a moratorium on that type of question. Fair enough - that's not the venue for that.

This is.

I’ve been asked the question “what can I do to encourage my man to be more dominant/Alpha/Red Pill?” repeatedly over the years. That’s a serious question, because (thanks to Solomon’s Dilemma) coming out and demanding dominance from their dudes just isn't going to work for either party.

But ladies, you aren't without influence over the man in your life. Just going utterly passive is NOT the answer – it communicates your helplessness, not his ability to lead. So I turned to my resident expert this morning (Mrs. Ironwood) and asked her to lay out what she did, back in my Blue Pill days, when a rousing chorus of “I dunno – whatever you wanna do” was far too frequently heard around our digs.

If you want your man to lead you, says Mrs. Ironwood, you have to encourage him thusly:

1.Establish expectations:“I want to know what you want for dinner tonight.”

Not “what shall we have?” Not “what do you feel like?” Tell him you want him to decide. By establishing your reasonable expectations for his leadership by directly or tacitly communicating an expectation of leadership, you give him the permission he needs to be decisive without worrying about encountering an argument about his decision.

If you make being decisive unequivocally HIS responsibility, he will eventually do it right. But if he doesn't know that you expect him to lead, he will be more likely to defer honest leadership in the interests of "equality" or respect for your autonomy.

2.Communicate by GIVING HIM CONTROL of the situation in no uncertain terms.

Men act tentatively when they are uncertain of themselves. Once you’ve established the expectation of his leadership, make certain that he understands that there are no wrong answers. You have abdicated any responsibility for the decision-making process and you will be content and supportive of his leadership regardless of the results. If he asks what you want to do, volley back. Anything from “I have every confidence in your ability to decide” to "I trust your judgment"to “You got this, babe.”

3.BACK THE FUCK OFF.

Once you have ceded control of an issue, do not be tempted to revisit it to check his “progress”. Do not offer “helpful suggestions”. Do not inform him that he’s “doing it wrong”. Once you have told a man that he’s responsible for making a decision, doing a task, planning a policy, or what have you . . . don’t try to take the wheel out of his hands. If you were smart, you included a deadline in your original establishment of expectations. If his performance is lacking, you can observe that without interfering and perhaps even offer support to the process without making yourself involved in it. This is sometime known as the "make sammiches" phase. Sometimes the most effective thing a woman can do with her man is to back off and let him figure it out on his own.

And sammiches are always a boost to morale.

4.Avoid criticism after the fact.

This can be very hard for some women, so be mindful of your own tendencies to second-guess or criticize a man’s performance after he’s made a good-faith effort, and keep your criticisms to yourself. He is not your employee or your child, remember, he is your husband. Give him an adult level of understanding about his performance. And if it needs improvement, which it undoubtedly will, provide the assistance he needs to improve without being tempted to direct the course of that improvement.

Keep in mind that the process of encouraging him to take initiative is a slow one. He has, in all likelihood, been steeped in a culture in which his initiative and decisiveness have been penalized, and it takes a while for a man to re-learn that confidence. If he fucks up any particular thing, don’t harp on it; he knows he fucked up. If you can gently encourage him to do a post mortem of his fuck-up, you might be able to suggest some ideas for doing things differently, but DO NOT re-assume control. Failure is part of the process. It is from our failures that we learn. When men fear failure more than they desire success, they stop trying. Your job, as his First Officer, is to ensure that his failures are not so painful, so distracting that he fails to learn and withdraws from his own ambitions. You encourage him to always be trying, because the sweet reward of success is far greater than than the thoughtful balm of comfort in defeat.

It’s a hard job, I’ll be the first to admit. Particularly as women have been encouraged to “speak their mind” and “communicate” exhaustively for the last forty years. It defies your training to withhold criticism and offer suggestions – that’s what you would do for a good girlfriend if she failed at something, correct? But not with your husband. He doesn’t need your advice.

He needs your Caritas. Desperately.

5.Reward and Support

Victories should be celebrated and generously rewarded. Defeats and failures should not be rehashed and examined to the point of humiliation. If you have a job as his First Officer in relation to your husband’s happiness, it is to bolster his emotional support at such a time. If he wants your specific advice (and he may) he will solicit it. If he has had success in leading and accomplishing, then rewarding that achievement improves his perspective tremendously. If he fails, knowing that you still have his back, uncritically, is more important than the fact that you know EXACTLY where he went wrong.

Encouraging your husband to lead without taking the wheel yourself can be frustrating, but ultimately highly rewarding. Sometimes the most frustrating moments end up being the most instructive. Sometimes the worst fuck-ups end up being turning points toward a better man. But you can’t FORCE him to lead, and you can’t DEMAND he lead. Quiet, thoughtful encouragement, strong loving support, creating the space and giving the permission, and enthusiastic follow-through give him the ingredients he need from you to be the kind of Captain he’d like to be. Hopefully one that you want to follow.

As I deconstruct the process of De-Betacization, it occurs to me that, after dealing with and conquering your fear, one of the hardest elements of breaking Beta is understanding your own power to affect change in your own life. This one is subtle, fellas, so you might want to read with both hands for a minute.

One of the lessons I teach my religious students (disclaimer: no demons were consulted in the composition of this lesson - it's pure Earthly Wisdom, usable without risk of damnation by all denominations) is that one of the fundamental ways in which we can exercise personal power is by recognizing our role in the context of the universe, and then recognizing that the absolutely easiest way for them to change the universe at large is by changing themselves and/or their context.

I illustrate this point with the exercise of having my students try to sink a basketball in the hoop with a tree in the way. (Thankfully, just about every home in the South, especially around Tobacco Road, comes equipped with a portable basketball goal of adjustable height, along with a couch for display on the porch of your choice)

Of course they try mightily to do so, at first, using bank shots off the trunk or hurling the ball into the canopy and hoping a Plinko-like descent manages to get it in the basket. I tell them to "move the tree with their minds" and they try their very hardest to literally do this for a while. It sinks in pretty quickly that magic doesn't work like on Harry Potter. It's a lot of fun to watch, and after a while they focus so much on the difficulty of the exercise they forget why they're doing it. Think about that.

At that point, I come back and demonstrate that simply by taking two steps to the left or right, the seemingly insurmountable obstacle of the tree no longer obstructs at all. They have "removed" the tree, for all practical purposes, by literally changing their perspective. Sinking a basket at that point is as easy as making a free-throw. Then I smugly tell them "the power was within you, all along!" in my best Glenda The Good Witch voice. It's highly annoying. One of the perqs of being a spiritual teacher.

The lesson, of course, is that by changing your own perspective you have, by definition, changed the nature and expression of the equation. Schrodinger's Cat and it's various kittens have demonstrated the observable truth that the observer by the act of observing affects the destiny of the observed -- how much more does an agent in the equation affect the course of events?

Too often, we forget that we have that power: the power to change our own perspective. Especially if we have suffered Betacization, we come to feel trapped by our circumstance or our nature, doomed to our fate with no hope of escape. And often that captivity must become unbearable before a Beta decides to cast aside his cherished rationalizations for his lackluster behavior and even consider making a change. Otherwise it's just too easy to play it safe, keep your mouth shut, and do what she tells you to do.

But you don't have to hit "rock bottom" to make this realization. Often you can do so just by changing your perspective. That could entail something as simple as an unexpected flirtation, a road trip, a meaningful artistic or literary experience, a chance meeting, an unlikely opportunity, a birth, a wedding, a death, a crisis situation, or any other sudden departure from the normal, expected, mundane course of your daily life. At some point, in order to start Breaking your Beta, you have to gain the perspective that you have, indeed, the innate power to Break your Beta.

From the Betacized perspective, the fear of losing what you have outweighs the fear of losing what you might win. You make a cost-benefit analysis and decide that it's just easier to maintain the status quo, and not take the risk. Plus, your fear has often convinced you that you are, indeed, incapable of being successful . . . often because you've been criticized and condemned for your perceived failures in life so much and so often that you've accepted the opinions of others over your own honest self-assessment.

Maybe it was your mother who started it, comparing you to a weak or absent father. Maybe it was a shrewish girlfriend who started it, and you never quite recovered. But we rarely self-betacize.

In my religious tradition, one of the spiritual technologies we use is ritual. I'm not talking about the wand-waving-candle-burning-dancing-around-a-bonfire kind of ritual (although, honestly, as religious services go it beats the heck out of Sunday School), I'm speaking here of ritual in the psychological sense. From a technical perspective, when properly performed, a rite or ritual will affect a psychological change on the subject by creating an artificial psychological crisis in a safe and controlled environment.

While such a crisis is ideally guided and led by someone experienced with such things, i.e. their priest/shaman/psychologist/druid/pastor/preacher/guru/celebrity, the fundamental element is giving the subject the opportunity to voluntarily change their perspective when faced with such a crisis as a means of coping with that crisis. Sure, it's the "throw 'em in and see if they swim" method of psychological care, but it has the twin virtues of being highly effective and cheaper than extended psychotherapy.

Now, I'm not suggesting you ladies burn down your house to see how hubby Alpha's Up - that's not
the sort of "crisis" we're talking about. While tornadoes and tragedy can certainly provide the needed kick in the ass for the change of perspective in a man, more often than not Fate will kick a few helpful crises in his direction to provide the impetus.

For example, a friend of mine -- a howling Progressive, hyper-liberal scholarly hippy -- was biking home from his low-paying job at a book store one day when he got mugged. It was a simple exchange: gun, wallet, and gone. While unusual, such things are not unheard of in my gritty burg. But the effect this brush with mortality had on my friend was profound.

Understanding for the first time that another human being had the power of life or death over him, regardless of the Law or Rights or Community Spirit, and he was utterly helpless in the face of that, was enough change in perspective to institute a massive personal lifestyle shift, with accompanying shift in attitude and direction. He's a lawyer, now. And while I wish that story could have ended more happily, it points out that one little existential or moral crisis can be enough, if a man is ripe, to begin the process.

And a process it is. You cannot merely flip a switch (in most cases) and see the Alpha emerge, fully-formed. Betas are broken, remember; the crisis experience begins the healing process, but it's a long and difficult journey. Painful. Unpleasant. Permanent. If you don't keep your eyes on the prize - becoming a Better Man - then it's all too easy to backslide into comfortable mediocrity, once-a-month IV drip sex, and never making plans for yourself because they might conflict with your wife's calendar. Changing your perspective can remove the tree from the process . . . but you still gotta sink that free throw.

Being faced with death can do it. Being faced with birth can do it. Even something as simple as looking at old photos can trigger it. A man has to see himself, and then see himself differently, and then be able to compare the two to be able to challenge his thick Beta coating. He has to be able to envision a better life, a better man to be, a future in which happiness is possible and regret isn't a daily indulgence, or he can never get out of the dungeon he's put himself in.

Some people think the essence of Breaking Beta is challenging the role of your wife . . . and it's not. If you're in a Blue Pill marriage, then your wife's power over you is not actually a result of her natural domineering nature . . . it's a result of your failure to assert yourself properly, because of your fear. Challenging your wife's role becomes a by-product of the transformative experience of changing your perspective, because once you get that damn tree (your own tepid rationalizations for your crappy masculinity) out of the way, it might take you a couple of shots - but eventually that's a basket you can make.

Some things to consider, Gentlemen, that might help you find the courage to do this:

1. Yeah, it really is your fault . . . because if it isn't your fault, then you can't change it. You CAN change it, so suck it up and own it. That's a sign of mature masculinity, not a capitulation to guilt.

2. As bad as you think your relationship with your wife/woman might be right now (if you have one), the fear that they will somehow become worse if you challenge her dominance in the relationship is wrong. They might get real interesting for a while, but usually you'll see a change in HER perspective in reaction to your change in perspective pretty darn quick. Don't believe me? Check out the Field Reports at the r/theredpill and r/RedPillWomen subreddits for testimonials. It's like they're . . . responsive or something. Remember, you can realistically challenge her position if you are in a place of strength.

3. What she says doesn't matter one tenth as much as what she does. Basic Red Pill truth. Engrave it on your XY chromosome where you won't forget it. Let her say whatever she wants. Just do what you have to do to make yourself right, and she'll either deal with it, or she won't. That's known as Holding Frame. Also known as Not Being A Pussy. This takes practice, but it's an essential part of your recovery. She will respond by her actions. And if she doesn't . . . you can find one that will.

4. Lose the baggage. If you don't currently have a woman and are the "victim" of a past actually ahead of the curve. You don't have a real woman to contend with, which means that all of your issues are the Ghosts of Relationships Past. You aren't the same person you were then, you're the person you choose to be now. If this describes you, then a) forget every past girlfriend and her expectations and shrewish criticisms you ever had because, like, she was a real bitch anyway and b) realize that you won't put up with that shit from your next girlfriend.
Betacization, then you are

5. Evaluate your relationship with your mother. Often if a betacized male has been beaten into submission by a girlfriend or wife, his mom spent years making him vulnerable to that . . . and his dad wasn't able to instruct him how to avoid it. If your mother still has more of a presence in your life than she should -- even psychologically -- then challenging that relationship is going to be essential to progress. I've seen men who appear to be solid Alphas collapse like little girls when their Mama starts yelling. If you can't respectfully stand up to your mother and keep her from exercise undue influence over your life, then it's going to be orders of magnitude harder to stand up to your girlfriend or wife.

(Note that you don't actually have to get into a fight with Mom, you just have to realize that you're a grown man and while you might appreciate her advice, she is not the infallible Mother Goddess she was to you when you were six. She might have been an expert on potty training and table manners, but when it comes to being a man, expressing your masculinity, and living as a mature adult male, she knows jack shit about how to cultivate that. Love her for her unconditional love and flawless Tollhouse cookies, but ignore her bitching, complaints, and criticisms. Hell, if you don't have a girlfriend at the moment, you can even Game your mom, in a non-sexual way. It's great practice.)

6. Come to terms with your own mortality. Yes, you're going to die. That's inevitable. Life is funny that way -- no one gets out alive. One of the most fundamental signs of a mature masculinity is the ability to accept your mortality, and live your life anyway. If you haven't really thought about death because it's creepy and scary and you're not that old yet . . . then you have some catching up to do. If you have kids, this will take you down one psychological road. If you don't, and don't want to, then that takes you down another. And if you don't, but do want to, then that in and of itself may give you the perspective you need to change your perspective and therefore your life.

7. Quit worrying what other people think. Seriously. If you only value the opinions of the people who value your opinion, that simplifies your perspective dramatically. The fear of mis-perception (or worse, accurate perception) is almost always far, far more potent an agent in your life than the actual condemnation you might ever get. My brother, Andy Ironwood, came to terms with this by being scrupulously honest. By being utterly truthful, he never fears other's perceptions of his behavior, because he feels capable of defending his actions before the throne of any convenient divinity . . . because he doesn't try to lie or rationalize his way through life. (BTW, he's decided he's going to put himself back on the SMP. Fair warning).

We worry about what other people think because we are fearful of their judgement, and worried that they will reject us. Often the people we fear this from the most are the people least entitled to render judgement on our lives, or be in a position to meaningfully reject us. By understanding that the power of their judgement and rejection is limited to that which we, ourselves, choose to grant them, we can take that power back from them by ignoring even the possibility that their judgement or rejection is important to us. That can be a hard perspective to change, but it's one of the most profound you can make.

8. Change Who You Present As. This is a biggie, and a hard, hard thing for most Betas to contend with. Betas have been trained to play it safe. The thought of going all ALPHA all of a sudden is just too shocking, and they fret that other people will judge them (see: 7, above). But one of the basic ways in which we can affect our own perspective is by making a visible or nominal change and demanding it be accepted by the rest of the universe.

I've got two examples of this. In college, one of my bosses at my work-study assignment had signature muttonchop sideburns which he'd had since he was in college . . . back in the 70s when they were cool. Now, this dude had always been a "Super Nice Guy", everyone loved him at work, but he was constantly having problems at home, it was rumored.

Then one day he showed up to work for the first time in 20 years with his cheeks shaved. The signature muttonchops were gone. I passed him in the hallway without recognizing him, at first, and when I asked we talked about personal transformation and human fulfillment and such (Religious Studies major, so I was professionally intrigued) but the upshot was, he'd realized that his sideburns had become a symbol of the preconceptions and history he had bound himself with from his youth. By getting rid of them, he was symbolically walking away from all of those years of folly.

(After that, interestingly enough, all the ladies who worked with him and thought he was such a "Nice Guy" started talking about the disturbing change, and how he just wasn't the same "Nice Guy" anymore. The dudes he worked with thought he got a LOT cooler, once he shut up about the Human Potential Movement. Yeah. It was like that.)

The second example is a kind of Uber-BETA I knew at one of my many, many temp jobs. Also in middle-management, this guy, Bob, was the typical White Knight Gamma who spent most of his time doing other people's work . . . and he just could not say no to a woman to save his life. But he was a "super nice guy" that none of the office women were willing to date. "Get Bob to do it" was office shorthand. He had the Gamma Curse bad.

Then (and I honestly don't know what inspired it) Bob came to work and started to stiffly correct anyone who called him "Bob" anymore, asking instead to be addressed as "Robert." He started signing himself that way on his correspondence, had his nameplate on his cube changed, and sharply corrected anyone who slipped. If they slipped more than once in a conversation, Robert would have a brief, intense conversation about how he preferred to be addressed that left most of the recipients uncomfortable.

That freaked out several of the women in the office, including his supervisor, but after a consultation with HR she was forced to concede that Bob could, indeed, choose the name by which he was addressed and they had to go along with it. Some women actually complained that they didn't feel right calling Good Ol' Bob "Robert" because (and I quote) "it's like treating him like a grown-up or something".

It was a very, very small change. But it led to others. Over the next eight weeks or so, Robert lost weight, started working out, grew a beard (which further freaked out the office ladies - one almost demanded he shave it because it "made him look sinister") and quit being asked to do other people's work . . . and when he was, he politely declined.

What I was witnessing, had I known it, was Bob de-betacizing, or at least beginning the process. I was only at the job for about eight weeks, so I don't know how it turned out, but five weeks into his journey the visible change in Bob - Robert - was startling. The social change was just as pronounced. The many, many women in the office started complaining that they missed "the old Bob", and how Robert just wasn't nearly as nice. Some even had the nerve to ask him why he had "stopped being nice". He held frame and didn't give them any answers. There were even murmurings about talking to HR about Robert again, since some women in the office felt that his changes were bad for morale.

Nothing came of it, to my knowledge, but there was something intermingled with that sudden distrust, suspicion, and anxiety about Beta Bob's transformation toward Alpha Robert: respect. Once Robert quit agreeing to take on extra work and responsibilities out of a misplaced desire to be "a nice guy", they may have missed Bob's utility but they respected Robert's new boundaries, after he established them.

And it all started because he told a room full of Chatty Cathys "My name is Robert, not Bob. Please refer to me that way in the future" one rainy Tuesday morning. Not quite "Get your hands off of me, you damn dirty ape!" but as far as betacized Gammas go, it was about as close as you can get.

Changing your perspective is one of the first invaluable steps on the road from betacization to realizing your full masculine potential. Figuring out which tree is in the way of your goal is the first step. Figuring out which way to step around it is the second. And sinking the shot is the third. But you have to start by making a gentleman's agreement with yourself about rationalizing in favor of your Beta and taking that first, significant step . . . around the goddamn tree.

Red Pill men, what was your "Alpha Moment"? What did you do that changed your perspective and began your journey?

I got this comment on my "Feminism: This Is What's Wrong With You" post, and my response was too long for the comments, so I decided to post it here.

Here's the comment:

I know I'm late to the party here, but having just been shown this post I want to make one thing absolutely clear: the fact that many of us are now *against* what mainstream feminism has become absolutely does not mean we're *with* the likes of you.

We're not against feminism because we disagree with its purported goal of true equality of opportunity among the sexes, or our absolute right to self-determination and bodily autonomy, or with dismantling gender roles and the expectations and assumptions they impose on individuals.

We're never going to stand with anyone who believes anything, ever, gives a person the "native right" to use another's body sexually without their ongoing enthusiastic consent. Or dehumanises men by insinuating that they are such slaves to impulse that if they can't rape their wives they'll inevitably cheat on them. Or generalises the nature of individuals' sexuality based on their sex alone. Or does not support an individual's right to end a relationship on their own terms. Or espouses the sexist view that marriage is somehow a pillar of femininity more than one of masculinity. Or implies women (but not men) must choose *either* a career or a family. Or believes that when partners each choose to keep their own names in an equal relationship this is somehow emasculating.
We're "against feminism" because yes, the mainstream feminist movement ignores and derides male issues, because it adopts stances that are fundamentally sexist, because it fails to address intersectionality with issues of race and gender identity, and because it manufactures victimhood and fear, among other things.

But we're still for true equality. Not for tired old sexist bullshit like using women who don't wear what you think they should wear as a simile for being clueless and out of touch.

Sincerely,

A woman with three advanced science degrees.

And my response:

I think you characterize our position. Please allow me to rebut.

Let's look at what "the likes of us" have actually been saying here, not what feminism has portrayed us as saying. At no point have I (or most in the Manosphere - I understand that there are some exceptions) endorsed or espoused any denial of equal opportunity or equal treatment under the law. Nor has their been any serious suggestion of impairing any of the rights women currently enjoy under our liberal democratic system of government. I myself am politically a Progressive, meaning my political philosophy stems from Humanism. Most folks in the Manosphere are adherents to this philosophy, which advocates the legal, moral, and ethical equality of all people.

With me so far?

Let me be blunt: the Red Pill does not advocate anyone ever doing anything non-consensual, sexually or otherwise. It never has, and to say so is a gross mis-characterization of the praxeology. What you portray as a "native right" is actually a biologically determined pattern of mating behavior that belies the feminist perspective on sex and sexuality. When idealism collides with the realities of science, idealism usually suffers. Just ask the Marxists in Eastern Europe.

Far from "dehumanizing" men, the Red Pill approach to positive masculinity acknowledges the deep importance of sexuality to the average man's life and attempts to help him realize his goals in that regard. It is the feminist perspective, that all men are aggressive sexual predators, that dehumanizes men. The Red Pill uplifts them to a more profound understanding of their own masculinity. And yes, sex is a valued part of that equation.

But some of your other issues demonstrate a lack of regard for masculine culture and masculine behavior - as men determine to define it, not women. For example, the refusal of a wife to take a husband's name IS emasculating, and indicative of her eventual desire to end the marriage. It's a legitimate warning sign men who fear divorce (and what man doesn't?) need to be aware of before marriage. That's a pragmatic, not idealistic perspective. Nor does the Red Pill demand that women choose between career and family or ask that men do; Mrs. Ironwood, and most other RP women, do have careers of their own. The difference is that they have demonstrably put their family life ahead of their career goals in a way that makes feminists cringe. Most RP men would also say they share that perspective: their careers are a means to support their families, not the other way around.

The fact that marriage does advantage women more than men - and that divorce punishes men more than women - makes it a far more desirable goal for women than men, nor is the burning desire for wedding cake a common discussion in male circles. Men control commitment in our species, however, so marriage and commitment are important issues for us . . . just as they are highly important to a large number of women.

If we generalize sexuality, that's because we look at science, for which generalities - that is, aggregate data - show patterns at work from which useful data can be used. Knowing such "generalizations" can steer men away from dangerous and unproductive relationships. If that means a few innocent girls get dumped along the way, I think greater femininity can take the hit.

But refusing to acknowledge the scientifically-studied biological truths that underlie the patterns of human mating in our society, namely the prevalence of Hypergamy and Polygamy as the primary mating strategies of humans in nearly every human culture, is seeking to place the rosy ideal of equality above the brutally pragmatic reality that most people face every day. Men do cheat. Women do cheat. We explain why, and what to do to avoid it. Post-feminism, marriage is bad for men. We explain why and how to deal with it. Divorce is very bad for men. We explain why and what to do to avoid it.

Marriage used to be the negotiated exchange (yes, by any scientific definition) of sex and security; without the security of consensual sex and real authentic commitment, men are simply better off avoiding commitment altogether. It's not a matter of ideals or ideology, it's a simple, pragmatic fact. Women are more aroused by more dominant men, therefore teaching men how to be dominant gets them more of what they want, sex. There is no oppressive ideology here. There is only a praxeology of how to fulfill a man's vision of his own masculinity.

You see, while you celebrate the ending of gender roles, you fail to appreciate all of what that entails. Not only did it liberate women from the expectations of pursuing family instead of a career, it also liberated men from the social obligation of verbally pandering to an ideology in the hopes of social acceptance. Once you add the sexual element into the equation - and you cannot NOT add it in - and men start pursuing their issues and interests as THEY define them, then all ideology falls by the wayside. One thing we know about the Red Pill is that desire cannot be negotiated. Ignoring what men and women find arousing and/or attracting in favor of pursuing an abstract ideal and allowing that to determine your personal course is the road to folly, misery, and divorce.

We may deride the flood of bitterly-unhappy women who are discovering that their ideology, which promised that there would be a long line of decent dudes waiting around for them when they were done "exploring themselves", but that's because they are a product of their own self-inflicted ideology. We snicker at those women who discover, to their horror, that the intended future involving a good caring man and children (sometime after 35 and, say, 3 degrees) utterly fails to materialize, because she was more inclined to believe feminism's promise than the "patriarchal" system of assortative mating that insists you lock down a dude before you're 25 or get what's left over.

We snicker when we hear feminists and other women talk about "true equality", and then dismiss the fact that Selective Service registration is mandatory for one sex but not the other as "men's fault". We laugh when we hear about our "male privilege" and then read how yet-another friend blew his head off, or ended up on the street, or got assaulted by his girlfriend again but no one will take him seriously because he's a dude. Or a pal who hasn't seen his kids in 8 years because his wife thinks he's a danger to his children - and he's a Quaker. These men will never have "equality". They live in a system that lauds their "privilege" while demanding yet-more sacrifices of them, then subjects them to the emasculating humiliations and shame that feminism dumps on them for the crime of having a penis.

I understand your anger against feminism, and I share it. But you're right, we aren't approaching the matter from the same place. You are determined to fight for a world of equality. I understand, because of the nature of my gender, that we will never truly achieve it. I don't think that women will allow us to achieve it. If you truly understood what social and cultural responsibilities and expectations men are subjected to that women are not, you would not be so eager to press for "equality", for that is a dreadful burden that most women would reluctant to "share".

Feminism has denigrated and derided masculinity and male-ness for so long, no number of perky pop princesses lecturing us about it at the UN are going to change the fact that when our culture and civilization are in peril, it is men, not women, who are expected to give their lives, liberty, and property up for the common good. Men are expendable, and we know it. We're told that from the time we are boys. While feminists fret about "male privilidge", that priviledge includes baggage that most women just choose not to see. Yet it is a burden that must be borne, if by an ever-decreasing number of us.

You can thank feminism for that.

Sincerely,

A man with plenty of useless degrees, twenty-five books, three kids, and a wife who understands and supports him because he's a great man, not because of the ideology of "equality".

Feminism has made a lot of "male sexual entitlement", the demon responsible for everything from catcalling and beer commercials to sex trafficking, according to the Cathedral. Indeed, the feminist attack on male sexuality stems from its constant battle with "male sexual entitlement"; the feminist theory goes that if a man feels that he has a decent shot at having sex with a woman under nearly any normal circumstances, he's actually oppressing her with his patriarchal entitlement to her body, or something like that.

Because feminism can't wrap it's frizzy little head around the concept that the male desire for sex - which crosses all sexual preferences in our sex - is such a powerful force in our lives that we would willingly give up, say, a fulfilling platonic relationship with a woman if there wasn't a sexual component. Despite the propaganda about gender equality, when it comes to dating and mating, feminism still jealously guards the female imperative to control sex in the SMP. Feminism feels assured that if it shames and browbeats enough men, they will cease pitting women against each other in competition for the highly-valued mates ("Alphas", though they never use the term) and allow feminine society to determine which women should end up with which men and for how long.

Of course that's ludicrous, for many different reasons, but that's the feminist M.O. on mating: male sexual entitlement (male sexuality) is BAD, while female social entitlement ("Let's just be friends", or LJBF) is seen as some gracious gift nearly as valuable as the one she keeps between her legs.

Female Social Entitlement is the ugly dark side of the feminist equation. You won't find it spelled out specifically in the literature, exactly, but it implicitly enshrines the AF/BB concept as an institution, when accepted. And this, not coincidentally, is where many poor Beta boys start the inevitable downward spiral.

When a woman rejects a man, but doesn't want to lose access or support she can casually pick up from him at no personal cost to herself, using LJBF is a way her Rationalization Hamster can assuage her guilt for rejecting a dude who, on paper, is a Perfectly Decent Guy. It's not that she dislikes the Beta Boy - she just has no tingles for him, and her hypergamous instinct tells her to shelve such a pristine dude for later, when her sexual capital starts to wane.

By attempting to make a social connection with an undesired male permanent with a LJBF, the woman is staking a kind of claim on his time and energy that she does not necessarily deserve . . . but she rationalizes it through her sense of social entitlement. Why wouldn't a decent man want to be her friend, after all? Why would he allow base sexuality to come between him and what she just knows in her heart is a fulfilling future of platonic social interaction? Why wouldn't he want to introduce her to his circle of handsome and successful friends? Is he that threatened by her?

Heh.

That's what Female Social Entitlement is: the expectation of an alliance based on an unreciprocated sexual interest. It's a shit-test of the highest order, and women know it. Indeed, to her mind, rejecting a LJBF shit-test is both a criticism of her worthiness and - as a result - her hamster must reconcile such a rejection with her own sense of self-worth (usually hyperinflated) by denigrating the male who dared reject her gracious offer of friendship.

But for the Blue Pill Beta Chump, LJBF is an insidious trap. Not seeing it as the shit-test it is, they blindly stumble into the heart of female social expectation with their dick in their hands and end up frustrated, angry, and resentful. If they do stick around long enough to witness the woman's unceremonious and inevitable impact with the Wall, they might just pick her up in a moment of weakness . . . still seeing her for the highly-valued potential she once had, not the last dregs of her sexuality she's reserving for him . . . or whatever Alpha she can scare up one last time.

Women who use the LJBF rejection don't understand the implied humiliation they are heaping on the recipient - they see their friendship as a valued consolation prize, perhaps ultimately more valuable than their own sexuality. Friendship, to women, implies an alliance . . . with other women. With men, it's decidedly a one-way street. Of what value does a platonic female friend have for a dude? Unless she's actively trying to get him laid, she's represents a waste of resources unlikely to pay any significant dividends. She will expect her orbiting chumps to help her move, help her with work or school, bail her out of jail or trouble, come to her defense, and even loan her money without any sexual expectation because the concept of "friendship" varies so differently between men and women.
Yet if you attempt to challenge a woman on this, in most cases she will become rightously offended. If of a feminist bent, she will attempt to shame you for your inability or unwillingness to control your sexual desires, degrade you for being shallow, and otherwise respond more or less as she would for rejecting any other shit test.

I've seen a number of adept players spin LJBF into something more productive, but it takes iron-clad holding of Frame and a cultivated insensitivity to female feelz. The acknowleged master in my day was a pre-law Duke student named Trevor, who was the kind of short, aggressively-Alpha dude who made up for a lack of looks and build by utterly dominating Game.

When Trevor would hear LJBF, he'd get a concerned look on his face. He could play it a couple of different ways, but usually the conversation went something like this:

SHE: "Look, I really like you, you're a great guy, but I don't want to be in a relationship right now. Can't we just be friends?"

TREV: "My friends help me get laid. Are you going to do that?"

SHE: "I beg your pardon?"

TREV: "I'm highly selective about the women I sleep with, and I'm even more selective about the people in my circle I call my friends. They have one thing in common: they all are actively trying to get me laid."

SHE: "That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard!"

TREV: "True nonetheless. They find it a rewarding pursuit - I can be a very, very good friend, (This was true - Trevor was highly appreciative if you found him a promising lead). But if you aren't working in my best interest, you're not really my friend, are you?"

SHE: (Confused) "Uh, I guess so . . ."

TREV: "I mean, if you're my friend, are you going to introduce me to your slutty good-looking girlfriends?"

SHE: "No! I mean, yes! Maybe! I . . ."

TREV: "See how conflicted you are about that? Suddenly you're my friend, and you've promised to try to get me laid. But you don't really want to let me screw your slutty friends. Where does that leave us? You keeping me from hitting on your friends? The only reason to do that is if you want me yourself."

SHE: "You wouldn't really hit on my friends . . ." (preparing for another shit-test, now that she realizes that Trev is not your AFC)

TREV: "Honey, I'd fuck your two best friends on your bed while you watch, just ask any of my friends. I'm in this to get laid, and either you're with me or against me." (it was the 1990s . . . I actually heard him use the line "if you don't blow me in the parking lot, the terrorists win" successfully once).

SHE: "That's so . . . crude! Why can't we just be friends?"

TREV: "I've told you why, darlin'. My friends look out for my pecker. That's their defining characteristic. Now if you want to be my friend, that's what you're signing up for. Conversely, if you want to look out for my pecker by yourself, well, I'm open to that possibility as well."

And on and on it went. By steadfastly holding Frame and denying the legitimacy of her Female Social Entitlement, he could turn a LJBF into a fast close in the space of three minutes.

Not everyone is so masterful. Trev is now a very successful patent attorney, and he had natural charisma the way Sinatra had pipes. But there are some strong lessons to be pulled from his Game.

First, of course, is that LJBF is a bona fide shit-test under any circumstances. If you accept it, you lose.

Second, women have a natural feeling of entitlement to your friendship, alliance, and good will based entirely upon your sexual attraction to them (and their lackluster assessment of you as a mate). This is not a bad-faith move, as it appears, it's just the residue of feminine hypergamy at work. Stacking up a few orbitors is good insurance for BB later on down the road, post-Wall. But if you don't want to be BB, then you have to disabuse them of the notion that your friendship - which serves as a diminished form of your commitment to her - is free for the asking.

What that does, in effect, is to de-value your own friendship while inflating the value of her sexuality. She does not really mean to be a supportive friend, and you both know it. But that does not mean that she will not impose on that friendship, if she has the need and opportunity, and you both know it. It also means that her sexuality is more-or-less permanently off the table, regardless of your feelings on the matter. And you both know it.

Beta chumps will get suckered on this play. Alphas won't. They don't cooperate with Female Social Entitlement any more than a feminist cooperates with Male Sexual Entitlement (unless he's really cute or has a motorcycle or something). An Alpha will shut that shit down the moment it comes up.

A Beta aspiring to break the vicious, ugly cycle of LJBF often discovers that rejecting a woman's Female Social Entitlement - and dealing with the resulting ugly consequences of her hamstering - is often the first step on the road to breaking his Beta. By valuing your interpersonal relationships and actual friendships as much as a woman values the sexual power of her vagina, you establish hand in any relationship you indulge in. Keeping the idea of "female friends" as a capitulation to Female Social Entitlement, and a genuine disservices to the interests of the man in question, is vital to cultivating the masculine mindset that keeps your Game fresh and effective.

There are ways to use the "LJBF" cynically, of course. Agreeing, ala BB, to "just be friends" and then using that friendship to get close to her own circle of female friends is one way to go about it. I've seen a hardened player go through three or four girls in the same social circle by trading on the "Oh, I'm good friends with Julie, but she's not into the same sorts of kinks I am" line and make it pay off handsomely. Of course, he left a trail of broken hearts and bruised hamsters behind, but that's the nature of the beast.

Lastly, for those of you genuinely offended by the idea that a man and a woman can't "just be friends", your idealism does you credit . . . but it's going to damage your social life. The painful LJBF meme is openly acknowledged on both sides of the ideological spectrum, although the perspectives on it are different. Feminism and its allies want you to believe that men are secretly noble and good and can "control their sexuality" enough to be decent to women without their sexuality becoming an issue, but that nobility is hidden under a thick layer of culturally-derived and artificial baggage about "gender norms" and stereotypes.

The Red Pill, on the other hand, acknowledges that men are sexual creatures whose primary goal in life is expressing that sexuality with as many women as he comfortably can - and that sexually non-productive relationships are an unnecessary drain on his resources.

Now the more Beta Boys we can get to recognize the reality of the latter, and start answering LJBF with the acid it deserves, the better.

I was hanging out over at Feminist Sex Nerd Dr. Emily Nagoski's blog, The Dirty Normal today, and I came across this post about how to make responsive desire (which most women possess most of the time) "awesome".

Problem is, Emily's answer to it falls somewhat short of "awesome". But she does invite her readers to tell how "spontaneous desire" people (i.e. most men, most of the time) deal with "responsive desire" people (i.e. most women, most of the time).

The responses that followed tended to be straight-up Blue Pill methodology, i.e. the "responsive desire" spouse still maintains the sexual control in the relationship and the "spontaneous desire" spouse is advised to "self regulate" (i.e. masturbate).

While I'm all for a good wank, the plain fact of the matter is that men don't get married so that they can masturbate. Our desire for sex is paramount to most other considerations. Open, honest communication, which Dr. Emily suggests is the winning strategy, tends to flow out of our mouths as "I'm horny and I'm bitterly disappointed that you rejected me again", to which the RD spouse usually says "deal with it."

So . . . no win for Emily, there.

Most of the following (my comment, too long not to turn into a post and in danger of being deleted in moderation) will not be a big surprise to most of you, but might be instructive to those who are new to the Red Pill. Here is, in a nutshell, how I got here and why:

I'll bite.

My partner (wife of 23 years), like most women, falls into the standard 70%/30% responsive/spontaneous category, dependent primarily on her place in her menstrual cycle. I'm about 80% spontaneous, 20% responsive. For the first eighteen or nineteen years of our relationship we followed the Standard Model of post-feminist marriage, with hit-or-miss sexual encounters involving a large number of initiations on my part and a large number of rejections on hers. Once we matured as a couple, things got a little better, but we were still largely depending on random variables and crappy timing. Attraction was high, arousal was not. That's mostly because we didn't truly understand the functioning male/female cishetero dynamic, until I started studying the potential for Female Viagra, which (among other areas) led me to this blog and Emily.

Emily's work has led me to conclude that the Standard Model used by most married couples post-1965, depending on the ideal of presumed equality of sexual experiences and outcomes between the genders, is highly flawed and works in a minority of cases at best. It ignores the essential gender differences between cishet men and women, and depends on a range of low-return strategies that lead, eventually, to divorce. It discourages, rather than encourages, pairbonding and long-term relationship survival, and encourages infidelity, socio-sexual polygamy, divorce, and the dissolution of families. As sexuality is the root of marriage in every human culture, and as "married sex" is highly denigrated by both popular mainstream culture and feminist subculture, using the Standard Model as a workable theory is a recipe for failure.

In breaking down a workable replacement for the Standard Model, Emily suggested to me the SIS/SES mode, which makes far more sense and fits with the observable reality of cishet LTRs. And when examining the Context Dependence elements of the SES, it became clear that no amount of chemical monkeying around with female sexuality is going to increase a given woman's over-all sex drive and satisfaction. Pink Viagra doesn't exist. Female sexuality is, as Emily has explained, just far too complex and sophisticated to respond to cheap neurochemical theatrics.

So . . . what's a standard model, spontaneous desire-driven husband to do?

Current literature on the subject includes lots of "helpful" advice which falls into two categories: Treat Your Wife Like A Princess (let's call it Mode A), essentially using your resources to decrease her SIS until she's just so darned relaxed that she has no real reason to say no to sex; and then there is the much-smaller Mode B, which, among other things, does not advocate treating your wife like a princess.

The problem is, Mode A doesn't work. Oh, it can have a few short-term positive effects, but if the goal is to increase your sex life (as it is with most husbands with strong spontaneous desire) then Mode A involves expending a lot of resources for very little return. It will make your wife feel good, no doubt, but . . . well, anecdotal evidence demonstrates that subservient, attentive husbands just are not having the crazy amounts of sex with their wives suggested by the Treat Your Wife Like A Princess model. Quite the contrary. There are so man Very Good Men who are doing everything under the sun for their wives, and their wives are still divorcing them for no particularly good reason. It's a big enough deal that major news outlets are writing about it.

So, just how does your standard cishet married couple learn to deal with such issues? For one thing, I educated myself about the difference between arousal and attraction. Mode A emphasizes trying to build desire by fueling attraction - being supportive, communicative, and other stuff to work on the SIS. All well and good . . . but it does jack to build desire. As studies have shown repeatedly, doing laundry and housework does not actually lead to more sex for a married couple, despite two generations of feminist rhetoric to the contrary. It might make the wife happier, but it actually decreases the amount of sex. So Mode A is a fail, for this purpose. Waiting around for her to ovulate so that you can take advantage of her brief spontaneous desire window is not the kind of sex life most husbands signed up for. Indeed, once-a-month sex is the clinical definition of a "sexless marriage".

If Mode A builds attraction but not arousal, then . . . what? Emily has little to say about stimulating the SES, in any helpful fashion. And there's a reason for that. Because the one thing that DOES consistently (and scientifically) tend to build arousal in women, as opposed to attraction, is dominant male behavior. That's Mode B. That's the mode that Emily and the rest of the current crop of sex educators doesn't want to delve into, for two reasons. One, it's dangerously close (ideologically speaking) to nasty ol' patriarchy, denies women's agency, encourages male sexual "entitlement" (because men wanting to have sex is "entitlement") and otherwise contradicts the feminist narrative about How Sex SHOULD Work. All that consent stuff Emily wrote about, after this post, for instance.

It's good stuff, don't get me wrong . . . but it ignores (as much of Emily's writing on the subject does) the ugly reality that regardless of what genderless pronoun constructions you try to use to describe it, generally cishet men and cishet women are very different in generalizable ways, when it comes to their approach to sexuality. And while those generalizations do not describe every situation adequately, the do so well enough for most folks to be of use. The fact is, if a man wants to learn how to invoke reactive desire in his wife consistently, then the only certain way to do that is to cultivate a male-dominant attitude and approach to both his sex life and his personal life.

And that really damages the whole "equal partner" construct that modern marriage is supposed to reflect. Problem is, modern marriage is coughing up blood trying to swallow that particular pill. That's not an issue for folks who view marriage as a temporary thing, as most modern women often do, but for men who value their commitment and wish to establish a permanent relationship, being an "equal partner" in a marriage seems about the surest way to kill it beyond criminal charges or an unemployed live-in brother-in-law. The "equal partner" dynamic insisted upon by Mode A does not encourage female arousal. It discourages it. Husbands working under the "equal partners" mode do not initiate often, they do not persist after an initial rejection, and they are so mindful of their partners mental-emotional state that they will fail to initiate even when circumstances present themselves, leading to frustration on the part of both parties.

Mode A "equal partnerships" do not encourage male-dominant behavior, they discourage it. And in doing so, they discourage the arousal triggers that allows a man and a woman to properly function as a sexually-fulfilled cishet monogamous couple. In short, the wife grows less and less aroused by her husband, even if her attraction for him waxes, and eventually an opportunity or a growing sexual dissatisfaction encourages her to seek for sexual novelty outside of the relationship to make up the lack. Equal partnerships lead far more frequently to infidelity than male-dominated marriages.

That's the uncomfortable truth that Emily, and the other feminist-oriented sex researchers (and that's the vast majority, these days) don't want you to really understand. There is no Pink Viagra, because women's sexual psychology is too complex to respond to a drug. The drug it craves is psycho-sexual stimulation brought on by the context or observation of male-dominant social behavior. Every time a wife exercises her "independence" at the expense of her husband, socially, she is sabotaging her own arousal for him, and her own possible sexual fulfillment as a result. Every time a husband defers to his wife’s judgment, presenting a submissive side to her, he squashes his own hopes of a fulfilling sexual experience.

You want “concordant desire”? You want “enthusiastic consent”? You want “joyful succumbing”? Feminist sexuality has no practical route to that for cishetero couples. Not one based in reality and demonstrating any kind of success. While bashing the shaming nature of our culture when it comes to sex – and quite rightly – the feminist-led sex education and research establishment in our culture has done little to rectify that. Indeed, instead of decreasing the amount of shame, feminism has encouraged the wholesale shaming of male sexuality and male social dominance to the point where it has had a profound and widely-observed deleterious effect on men in our culture. Men being socially dominant at work are told to “check their privilege’ by well-meaning feminists. Men being socially dominant at home are told to beware of patriarchy creeping into their lives (without any explanation about why patriarchy might, in fact, be a good thing).

The feminist sex education industry has done some remarkable things when it comes to improving the understanding and sex lives of women. But when it comes to improving and understanding the sex lives of men, or the practical functioning of an actual cishetero relationship, the political ideology of equality runs smack into the hard, cold science of sexuality. Women dig dominant men, and are aroused by them.

Feminism discourages men from becoming dominant, and actively struggles against a culture that encourages men to be dominant. Once Emily convinced me that feminism was just the wrong way to run my marriage, things got a LOT better.

By establishing a regime of socially-dominant and traditionally-masculine behaviors, the kind of stuff that leads directly to female arousal, not female attraction, I’ve managed to work with Mrs. Ironwood’s responsive desire and escalate the number of sexual encounters while reducing the number of rejections. We went from once every 2 weeks or so under Mode A to five or six times a week, sometimes more, under Mode B. Male social dominance, confidence (which is more than just knowledge and understanding of your body) and applied charisma did more to increase reactive desire and improve sexual joy than any amount of dishes, backrubs, and flattery.

Nor am I alone. Thanks in part to Emily’s work, thousands of couples are now taking a second look at male dominance in their marriage, and end up saving and improving their marriages as a result. Without, I might add, recourse to marriage counseling and other crutches. While this is by no means a silver bullet, it is a far, far more productive strategy when dealing with a woman with strong reactive desire than anything I’ve seen come out of Emily’s work, yet.

That may be in part due to her feminist identification, which precludes advocating masculine dominance in any setting, no matter how effective. Or, she might surprise me and propose a workable and practical way to make the Mode A “equal partners” approach work in a way that invites the happy fulfillment of both parties, not just the woman, and a way that doesn’t encourage infidelity or presuppose the temporary nature of “commitment”, when it comes to marriage.

But the science is there. The practical application is there. The peer-reviewed exchange of information is happening. Techniques are being refined. And the current surge of suspicion of feminism that’s surfacing in the popular culture is indicating that there is fertile ground for this approach to fall on.

I’m not tempted to believe Emily will respond to this comment, or even read it – she doesn’t, usually, considering our opposition on several points, and her unwillingness to read comments longer than her original posts. But I leave this here to help inform any other poor husband desperately searching for a way to make his marriage work again. You won’t find the answers here. You will find some good information, but Emily won’t tell you how to make your wife aroused for you again, she’ll only be able to convince your wife that there isn’t anything wrong with her lack of desire for you.

If you want the real answers, you’ll have to seek them elsewhere. But that’s how one spontaneous desire husband dealt with his reactive desire wife. He rediscovered his masculinity, honed it into a helpful tool, and applied it wholeheartedly to his marriage. Now he’s getting laid like a teenager and his union has never been stronger. Hold that up to a 50% divorce rate and declining marriage rates, and see if you can find anything in feminism that promises better.

If you recall, a few months back I issued the AFC Spreadsheet Challenge, inviting all married men who were curious about the Red Pill to track their sex lives with their wives over a 90 period, starting August 1 and ending October 31. As that day draws to a close, I encourage all of you to make that final push to get your numbers up or, conversely, begin the painful process of data analysis with the data pool that you've assembled.

How many times did you approach? How many times did you initiate? How many times were you successful? How many times were you rejected? What reasons/excuses/rationalizations did your wife give you?

Remember, there is no right answer, except in the sense that you are evaluating raw, hard, objective data about your sex life. Every relationship is different, so don't feel competitive with other men about your stats. What's important is what you feel when you look down at those raw numbers, and realize what they say about you, your wife, and your relationship. Without real data, it's impossible to spot a problem, much less fix one.

Feel free to share your results here (Anonymously, if you like), because while this isn't a competition, the whole secondary purpose of this exercise is to share data with your peers for review. If you're working a Red Pill strategy, how does it stack up to the Blue Pill strategies? Let's see what the data says. And no embellishments, Gentlemen.

I'll probably leave this post up awhile. As a brief programming note, I'll probably be neglecting this blog for a few months, thanks to one of my projects being green-lighted (could be an Ian Ironwood-written porn movie coming out, it seems) along with some other writing projects I need to focus on. I'll still be lurking, don't get me wrong, but if I'm not as active on Twitter, here, and Reddit for awhile, don't get worried. This is one of my most productive times of year.

Lastly, Happy Hallowe'en, and to my Pagan brethren, may you have a productive and reflective Samhain!

I was expecting to break my blog silence with one of my traditional wall-of-text posts, which is still in the works and forthcoming. But as I was flipping channels, after the last of the mid-season finales aired, I came across one of those unscripted reality shows featuring one of those super-huge, I-can't-believe-I-ate-the-whole-box-of-fertility-pills families. The scene showed the brood enthusiastically participating in the rituals of Christmas, and frequently cut from shots of cute kids doing horrible things to gingerbread to the husband-and-wife post-mortem interview.

The husband was bravely trying to put a good face on the Christmas-gone-awry, and in typical adoring Blue Pill fashion he gave all the credit to his wife. In fact, he said something along the lines of

"...and none of it would have come together without the hard work of my wife."

But, apparently, such a self-deprecating and humble bit of praise wasn't adequate. Instead of smiling thankfully and gratefully of his acknowledgement of her hard work and planning, she grimaced and growled:

"Don't call me that!"

Ouch.

He didn't call her a bitch, a cunt, a whore, a slut, a goldigger, or any number of other bits of borderline misogyny to cause offense - the thing she objected to was being referred to as "his wife". Blue Pill Boy immediately corrected, restating the latter half of the sentence using her proper name, but the look on his face said everything. This, clearly, was a woman who did not value either her husband OR their marriage enough to embrace the title.

This would be shocking, if it wasn't also so abysmally common. One of the most insidious cultural factors eroding the support and strength of modern marriages is the post-modern equal-partnership model (Blue Pill Standard) popular amongst the college-educated and forward-thinking. This model evolved following the Great Divorce-a-Thon in the 1970s, in which newly-empowered wives took Second Wave feminism to the end-zone, essentially re-writing the script on men without their consent or consideration.

The BPS marriage emphasizes equality, of course, but in doing so it neutralizes those gender-based traits that actually help a marriage survive and thrive. Women who insist on keeping their maiden name or hyphenating are sending a clear signal to the world - and their husbands: "I'm more concerned about my own aggrandizement than I am the success of this family". Women who refuse to be called "Mrs.", and who even get angry if you refer to "her husband", as if such a dirty secret should be whispered in hushed tones, have helped denigrate the cultural underpinnings of marriage.

And then we come to those who actively eschew being called "wife". After all the struggle for the dress and the ring and the party, they don't actually want the title. Or, as far too many poor idealistic men have discovered over the last two decades, the job.

If the current Sexodus of men from marriage is disturbing to women, feminist and non-feminist alike, part of that reluctance for men to marry or even to commit is due to the injury feminism has made to the institution. Feminism de-valued marriage from a monumental life-altering event in two people's lives to an aggrandized cohabitation agreement. Feminism sees marriage as a temporary condition, a perspective at odds with most men's conception of marriage. And the reluctance to embrace the idea, much less the term, of wife-hood has in turn given men little incentive to marry and every incentive to reconsider the entire topic of marriage.

"Don't call me that!" is an acid blast of feminine imperative to the masculine solar plexus. When a woman openly - publicly - repudiates her union with her man by treating the title "wife" as an insult or slur, then that woman is demonstrably unsuitable for marriage.

Nor is this the first time I've noticed this. I watched a feminist friend of mine almost have a mental meltdown when she had to refer to her former fiance as "her husband". She looked guilty and ashamed . . . of him, not the ring. She waved that sucker around like she was trying to land a jetliner.

I've seen other women admit to having husbands like they'd admit to having herpes. There's an almost apologetic air to the admission, as if they have lost a bet or assumed an unfavorable mortgage. In conversation they may even go so far as to praise their husbands for some little thing, but this is almost inevitably followed with a disclaimer, as if a husbandly achievement is so remarkable for its own sake that no further elaboration is necessary. "He actually got the kids up and off to school on time. Even made lunches."

Seeing a woman openly bridling at being referred to as a wife by the ONE PERSON ON THE PLANET with the right to do so is brutally telling. As a means of psychological control in the relationship it is almost ideal. In rejecting the idea of "ownership" feminism considers implicit in the patriarchal oppression of matrimony, feminism also poisons the well for non-feminists by devaluing their own service and devotion to family. When "wife" becomes a curse-word, you can just bet men will be glad to use that as a rationalization to further avoid commitment.

The Red Pill approach to this matter is very straightforward. For single men, believe it or not it is actually in your best interest to respect the institution of marriage in your speech and actions, no matter how galling the expression. Treating husbands as the de facto heads of households during social events will infuriate feminist wives, as will being referred to as "Harry's wife." Denigrating marriage almost never gets you laid - even if you're looking to spin her into a plate, every woman looks for that impossible ideal of the bad-boy-turned-super-dad.

That doesn't mean you have to be vocally enthusiastic about marriage, either. By cultivating the idea that marriage is a rare and special privilege reserved only for the most elite among women, you establish by your attitude the context you need to inject Preselection into your Game without actually having another woman around to do it for you. By expressing your great reverence for marriage along with your cynicism that you will find a worthy-enough woman to become your wife, you set up a high bar that any woman of your intimate acquaintance is going to pay attention to, regardless of whether or not she is actually entertaining thoughts of a commitment. Being pro-marriage earns you feminine respect, and being inherently reluctant to spend that precious coin on anything less than a unicorn makes you exceptional.

In fact, it's a single dude's benefit to point out bad marriages, and bad marriage practice to the women in his circle . . . if he can simultaneously point out good marriages, and marital practice to be emulated to his women. It can't help but make them try harder.

The other advantage to being pro-(good) marriage is that it can cultivate you allies among married men. While a number of single dudes rightly suspect marriage in general, when they do meet someone who does it successfully the last thing you should do is try to pick apart a man's relationship. The code among gentlemen has always been to support a man, once he has made the decision to commit. It may have been the last free decision he ever made, but once made it should be respected, not denigrated. When some young buck calls you an idiot for the sacrifices and hard work you've made over the course of your marriage, the inclination to intervene on his behalf with the police later that evening when things get out of hand will be far less compelling.

Similarly, when an old girlfriend shows up to the party and you can hook your solid, single pal up, you're going to be a lot MORE inclined if he didn't talk shit about your marriage.

There are those who maintain that marriage is essentially a Blue Pill sucker's game. I disagree. The growing number of Red Pill marriages (plug for r/marriedredpill and r/redpillwomen) prove that there are ways to do it right . . . and they don't involve shying away from calling your wife by her title. Indeed, the embrace of "outdated gender roles" and the glorious acceptance of a complementary approach to matrimony based on equilibrium, not equality, are hallmarks of these marriages.

Call your wife "your wife". It's helpful social mate guarding and yes, it does imply a sense of ownership. You do have papers on her, after all. Go further, if you wish, and call her by title: "Wife! Can you fix me a cup of coffee, please?"

Similarly, for Red Pill Wives calling your husband "Husband", as a proper title of address, helps reinforce not your chattel property status, as feminism claims, but your mutual roles and areas of responsibility in the common enterprise of running the ship.

"Husband" and "Wife" are job titles, and by referring to them you help shape a family culture that emphasizes the dual and complementary nature of the endeavor. And yes, that implies a lot of "baggage": preconsent (in general) to sex, common property, inheritance, differing gender-based responsibilities to house and home.

A woman who shuns the term doesn't deserve it, A woman who embraces it should be celebrated by having the title used as it was meant, as a term of social respect. Men socially ennoble women by virtue of our commitment, and it's rude of you not to re-affirm that commitment publicly by not using it.

So this holiday season don't shy away from using the terms - instead, help combat the rising tide of anti-marriage propaganda by treating the institution with the respect it deserves. When most men make it clear to most women that wedding cake is only for the very best among them, then you will inevitably see a shift in perspectives. And when you make it clear that the title you respect most isn't "CEO", "CFO", "President" or "Director", but "Mrs.", you will begin to see some erosion on the other side of the river. Because when feminism runs afoul of the Feminine Imperative (which prizes male commitment), feminism inevitably loses.

Wife Test: Warm & Pleasant Disposition

The Lambda Factor

The Feminist True Love Hamster

Why Male Birth Control Will Change Everything

Why Feminists Won't Surrender The War On Marriage

When The Review Is Better Than The Book

The Wife Test: A Good Worker

Proven Low-Cost Masculine Self-Improvement

Why Blue Pill Dating Advice For Men Sucks Scissors

In other words, in the dating realm the reality is that

**It Doesn't Matter What Women Like, Don't Like, Or Say They Like And Don't Like; The Only Thing That Matters Is What Women Respond To.**

The AFC Spreadsheet Challenge: Run Your Numbers

Dear Feminists: This Is Why You Are In Trouble

Wife Test: Loyalty

Class of 2018 Challenge: Building The Frame

Girl Game: Encouraging Your Captain To Lead

Breaking Beta: Removing The Tree

Response To A Comment On Anti-Feminism

Breaking Beta: Ending Female Social Entitlement

"Making Responsive Desire AWESOME": Feminism still has no answers.

AFC Spreadsheet Challenge Ends This Friday!

Red Pill Marriage: "Don't Call Me That!"