Breaking Beta: Step Up And Take A Stand

To be BETA is to be afraid.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Check out the balls on Jeff:

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

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

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

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

Catherine MacKinnon, Title IX, and the Great Rape Bomb of '86

Sex Nerd Emily Nagoski has a post on the oft-misquoted work of Ms. Catherine MacKinnon, and how her legal work affected the interpretation of Title IX.  I felt so strongly about it, I replied, and following the write-more-than-2000 words-and-it-should-be-a-post doctrine, here is the slightly edited reply.  

You see, Catherine MacKinnon is, indeed, an incredibly important feminist that all men should know about.  She is the one responsible for the great Rape Bomb that signaled the beginning of Third Wave feminism, and that, eventually, led to the creation of the Manosphere. 

 The issue Dr. Nagoski posts about is how MacKinnon and Dworkin never actually said "all heterosexual sex is rape", which might be technically correct, and she blames the "creators of sexually explicit media" for unfairly and tragically pillorying these brave women in popular culture.  The fact that M&D aren't particularly liked or respected in feminist theory outside of the Third Wave, and have been seen as intellectually divisive forces in the movement isn't really my beef.

My beef was with the Great Rape Bomb of '86.

As one of the “the creators of sexually explicit media”, I have to take issue on this, from a historical perspective. From “our” perspective, (and I respectfully asked that Dr. Nagoski properly identify which pornographers, specifically, were behind this effort so they may receive the proper credit), the sex industry was an early and passionate advocate for feminism, as it was understood at the outset of the Sexual Revolution (Second Wave). Indeed, some of the most passionate voices about women’s liberation at the time were in the adult industry.

So when MacKinnon and Dworkin and the other late-80s Third Wavers started systematically attacking all male sexuality as “rape culture” and demonizing the adult industry in particular, it came as quite a surprise to “us”. 

(Of course I wasn’t “us” back then . . . but I do distinctly remember reading the MacKinnon interview in Playboy my senior year and feeling a strong sense of antipathy based on her unabashedly negative view of all things XY). The “antifeminist” creators of sexually explicit media had been - up until then - actively promoting feminism, the exploration of female sexuality, and the liberation of all types of sexuality from the bonds of 19th century flatheadedness ... when M&D dropped the Rape Bomb on them.

You see, it wasn’t what she precisely did or didn’t say. She was repeatedly interviewed in the aftermath of her appearance in popular culture, and while “all sex is rape” maybe didn’t fall out of her mouth, her intellectual equation of heterosexual male sexuality to rape, and the subsequent demonization of masculinity and its conflation with violent rape in general by the feminists of the Third Wave fundamentally altered the debate about gender in this country.

EQUALS

The problem was, that wasn't how we saw it.  At all.  Regardless of the subtle intellectual point behind MacKinnon's argument, the sensational nature of the subject and the willingness of the Christian Right to join her in support of the suppression of male sexuality and free expression is what influenced the popular media at the time.  Larry Flynt was out.  Andrea Dworkin and Jimmy Swaggart were in -- I was there, I saw it.  The alliance that launched a million divorces and the anti-pornography industry.

The practical fact of the matter was that MacKinnon was the face behind the argument that male sexuality was "rape culture", that male sexuality inherently degraded women, that the participation in male sexuality was morally and socially equivalent to rape, and that therefore all men who did participate in the culture of male sexuality were rapists-in-waiting.  Sex is rape.  Men are rapists.  That may not have been what she said . . . precisely . . . but that was damn sure what we all heard, loud and clear.  

Dr. Nagoski celebrates that as a good thing, and I can respect her perspective. For women who had felt like their vaginas were targets in a shooting galley every time they went to work, it was a good thing.

But the inclusion in sexual discrimination/harassment law in Title IX of such memes as “hostile workplace” and “sexually suggestive” also gave an entire generation of career-oriented women a fatal one-sided gender-based weapon they could use as a tool against men in the competitive business environment, while simultaneously insisting on “equality”.    Beyond that, the Third Wave began attacking all dating, insisting on such ludicrous standards in the name of consent that it put a chill on dating all across college campuses and beyond.  It also was the impetus of the great porn drive of the early 1990s . . . because if you went to college in 1987 or after, every encounter your penis had with a woman made you a potential rapist, no matter what other factors were involved.

The intellectual pretzel that arose out of "date rape" took a very real problem and extended the solution to demonize not just actual rapists, but any man who didn't fill out the proper paperwork in front of a notary.  ALL male sexuality was suspect.  In the late 80's and early 90's you could be called a rapist in front of a crowd of people on a college campus just for having a dog-eared Farrah poster from your youth on your dorm room door.  You could be accused of rape if she had been drinking.  If you had been drinking.  If you hadn't obtained clear and unambiguous consent.  If you hadn't stopped periodically and re-certified her consent.  If you had group sex and did not explicitly obtain consent from every person involved (don't ask me how I know this one).  If you had sex and the girl decided -- afterward -- that she really wasn't into it, so you must have forced her.  That was rape.

Of course pornography was "rape culture", because while a specific woman wasn't violated against her will, since the pornographers did not obtain consent from the collective womanhood before hand.  Being offended was equated with rape.  If your husband watched Pizza Girls on Betamax at night and whacked off because you wouldn't put out, he was participating in the mass degradation of women and guilty of rape "culture".   

So why the hell would any sane man choose to risk being accused of being a rapist for the chance at tepid, unskilled, unenthusiastic pussy when you could get porn from your corner videostore . . . or by mail? 

Pay attention, ladies:  When you use or hear words like "rape culture", you are demonizing male sexuality and disrespecting the masculinity that built and protects your civilization.  Using "rape culture" or "patriarchy" in casual conversation is brutally disrespectful to men, in general. To the extent where most in the Manosphere have so identified you with the Third Wave that you just don't exist any more.  When women use terms like that, we feel branded and defensive.  It's not about "strong women" it's about disrespectful women who assume that just because a dude has a penis he's a rapist.  There is nothing strong in casually using "rape culture" or "patriarchy" pejoratively.  It's the moral equivalent of calling women "bitches and hos".

You don't see a problem with that, ladies?   Don't misunderstand, real sexual harassment is wrong.  Real rape is horrific.  But it is an observable fact that this new element in the law gave rise to thousands of frivolous or false sexual harassment claims against men and Ally McBeal.  It took the majority of men who were, albeit clumsily, trying to make a good-faith effort to integrate women into all areas of the workforce and turned them into patriarchal rapists whose very existence as part of the human race was now open to question by the Third Wave.

I’m not surprised that many of you aren't aware of how MacKinnon influenced how Title IX has come to be interpreted; as I've said many times, often in discussions of feminism with women, after the assertion “I’m a feminist! I believe in equality!” is made, the conversation quickly grinds to a halt if the gentleman in question actually has an acquaintance of feminist thought and theory.  Few understand how proudly saying “I’m a feminist!” allies them intellectually with MacKinnon and Dworkin and even more radically misandrist voices. Most mainstream women see feminism merely as an issue of Equality, without seeing how it also now implies, thanks to MacKinnon and Dworkin, an irrevocable and permanent betrayal of good faith in gender relations.

Men now view women automatically with suspicion in the workplace, see them as forces of opposition and professional peril by the very fact of their gender. While we have clearly managed to work with women, the gender-identity politics implicit in the M&D interpretation of Title IX has forced men to adopt a default position of mistrust and suspicion in the presence of any and all female colleagues and co-workers.

Men know about Title IX. It’s the sword that daily hangs over us, ready to viciously cut our dongles off and get us fired at the first available opportunity. Thanks to M&D’s Rape Bomb, every dude in the industrialized world knows he now has a target on every XY chromosome in his body.  Every man is now viewed automatically with suspicion by so many women that they have tainted the waters of the entire SMP for over 20 years with this.  We went from being the nation of strong and innovative men who defeated Hitler, tamed the Atom, and went to the Moon and were transformed -- thanks to MacKInnon and Dworkin's efforts -- into lecherous, dirty old men just waiting to spring on every nubile maiden in sight.

Whether or not you see that as an “advance in gender relations” really depends on your gender, I suppose, and whether you feel the juice was worth the squeeze. But from the male perspective (and I’m speaking of the actual general male consensus, not the squeakings of apologetic self-loathers like Schwyzer who couldn't find their masculinity with both hands)  MacKinnon’s/Dworkin’s Rape Bomb was no less than the declaration of war on all men and all masculinity by the feminist Third Wave . . . a conflict that is ongoing and shows no signs of ending.  Modern feminists who claim that feminism is just about pay equality and such are providing aid and comfort to the women who want to see their husbands, fathers and sons eventually erased from humanity.  Such is the stain of masculinity in the mind of the Third Wave.  They would rather destroy it than learn how to live with it . . . so they started with the Great Rape Bomb.

The issue isn't just the Rape Bomb, though that’s where it started.  It's not just porn.  It's not just radical feminism.  The Rape Bomb of '86 was the start of the overt war on masculinity, and within a few years masculinity had begun to strike back, in a passive-aggressive way, through the Puerarchy that arose when the Patriarchy fell . . . right around the time Title IX passed.

I appreciate Dr. Nagoski calling this to my attention. Too many men just aren't aware of the full extent of MacKinnon’s intellectual influence in modern feminism and its effects on them and their sons, and they really, really should be.

Breaking Beta: The Challenge Accepted

One of the things I didn't anticipate about starting a Manosphere blog was the number of chicks I'd meet.

One of my readers is the growing number of women I call Red Pill Wives.  For those of you in the hairer parts of the Manosphere, the MGTOW, MRA, PUA, and Puerarchy in particular, the idea of women in the Manosphere is abhorrent or laughable, I remind you that there are plenty of women just as pissed off and disgusted at the present intergender situation as you are, and are seeking resolution.  So in the interest of good faith and positive growth, I ask that you chillthefuckout about their motivations and such.  I mean it.  I'm invoking the Patriarchy card, here. Don't make me stop this car.

Red Pill Wives are women who are desperate for the kind of ALPHA in their marriage that impels most EPL divorces.  They love the men in their life - or devoutly want to find a man to put into their life to love.  They are the Real Deal.  And they are just as confused as we are over all of these issues, but theyare making a real good-faith effort at trying to figure them out.  I'm not saying they're perfect little Stepford wives, either.  They're real women with real issues and real problems, and they fuck up ALL the time.  Just ask them.  They are mothers and ex-wives and veterans and some of them have been as abused by feminism as we have.

But they learn from their mistakes, share their results, and encourage us to be the manly, masculine men we aspire to be.   They aren't shoving us up on a pedestal . . . but I don't think they would mind it too much if I referred to them as the "Manosphere's Cheerleading Squad".

Among the newest of these ladies who blog is a reader of mine who just began her blog, Motivational Heirarchy, with essentially a challenge:

 Can you guys in the Manosphere knock off the chick-bashing a few minutes and tell us how to encourage our dudes to ALPHA up?  Pretty Please?  Because our BETA men need some guidance on issues of confident, positive masculinity and a few words of wisdom might, y'know, give them a good solid shove in the right ALPHA direction?  

And she asked really nicely, so I told her I would.

Consider this a plea on the order of Leia's hologram: "Help me, Manosphere, you're my only hope!" and I'm a sucker for that sort of thing.

I've started a book on it, already.  Indeed, I want to build the ultimate guide to Breaking your Beta, with suggestions of how specifically a devoted woman can help get her man more manly.  I've already mentioned the importance of knowing how to Extend an Invitation as part of your girl game, and if anyone needs advice on practical humpiness, feel free to write.  But there seems to be more a woman can do to get her man to lead without directly telling him.  That's Solomon's Dilemma -/if your woman has to ask you to take charge, then she's the one initiating and you're just doing what she says, so it doesn't really count.

But you can't just up and decide one day you can go from buttery-soft Beta to lean, hard Alpha.  It takes work, it takes time, it takes patience, and it takes a Plan.  I personally recommend Athol Kay's Male Action Plan.  If you're new to the concept of the Red Pill, Athol's books, blog, and forum are the Muppet Labs of the Married Manosphere.  The forum in particular is generating quite a community of people who are more or less in the same boat: trying to save their marriages without paying a fortune to the divorce industry.

If you need remedial assistance, then read Married Man Sex Life Primer first, which outlines the concept of Game and Married Game, as well as giving the most comprehensive and meaningful Sex Ed a dude will ever get. It's the Introductory Dose of the Red Pill that you need, and it will help you begin down the road of the MAP.  It will be strangely like having superpowers for a while.  Seriously, if we knew this shit in high school, we'd be . . . well, thinking far more pleasantly about high school.  Also commonly recommended is Robert Glover's No More Mister Nice Guy.

We'll likely explore all sorts of methods of getting your dude to Alpha up, but there is one thing you have to understand, right at the outset: the Red Pill is a personal, not political response to the issues of a twenty-first century, post-industrial, post-feminist marriage, and if all of this sounds scary to you because it goes against everything you've been told . . . well, you're going to have to re-examine some of your personal sacred cows and decide if you think political consistency and what your college roommate thinks about you is more important than your marriage.

Think really, really hard about that one before you go down this road with us, because once you take the Red Pill, well, there are things you can't unsee.  Things you can't unlearn.  You will be forever changed, even if you reject it utterly.

But if you want to strive for a happier marital life and get your dude to break his indecisive, limp-ass response to life, then start reading.  And check back here periodically.  This blog is also a laboratory of sorts, and even if you find the politics wonky, the practical advice on Married Game will be worth the effort, I think.  We all work too hard at our marriages to give up lightly.  The advantage of the Red Pill marriage is that it's relatively cheap.  All it takes is a couple of bucks for some cheap e-books, some sort of gym membership, and a willingness to dare a challenge to your preconceptions.  Pretty much for the price of a single marriage counseling session you can re-learn what it is to be husband and wife.

But here's a few caveats about how this is going to play out:

YMMV: everyone's situation is different, and no one plan works for everyone.  What you are doing is collecting information that you may or may not use in your own Marriage Action Plan, which you can think of as an outgrowth of your personal Male Action Plan.  That's the thing that starts to get rid of the Beta.  But like sex advice, only about 30% of it is likely to stick solidly enough to be of use.  That's fine.  Your Mileage May Vary means you take what you need and leave the rest, no regrets and no worries.

Implicit in Breaking Beta is the redemption of you or your man's masculinity.  And while you think you know what masculinity is, ladies, I'm afraid we're the experts on this stuff.  Listening to women for advice about how to be men is how we got here.  I know you think you're helping when you make valuable suggestions, but there are large parts of Breaking Beta that are going to have to be your man's responsibility alone.  He will either fail or he will lead.

If he fails, there are things you can do.  If he succeeds, there are things you will have to do.  But don't offer him helpful advice on Man Things unless he directly solicits your perspective.  And even then, it's a perfectly reasonable thing for you to decide, "You know, that's really outside of my feminine comfort zone.  I have every faith in your ability to figure it out though."

The path toward redeeming his ALPHA masculine profile is going to involve a lot of things you will initially feel uncomfortable with.  That's fine.  The stuff you are comfortable with is the stuff that's fucking up your marriage.  You need to be willing to change your approach, or you can't expect results.  And you have to be willing to discard your rationalizations and risk trying something new.  It's hard, just ask the Red Pill Wives out there.  But that's why we're all here.  Our failures are the laboratory, that is where we learn.  Share what you find works, and what doesn't.  It adds to the over-all data pool.  But you can't have illusions.

The Red Pill, at it's core concept, means that you have to perceive your world how it actually is, not cloaked in the subtle exaggerations  rationalizations, and outright lies we tell ourselves to make ourselves feel better about our failures.  Like telling your dentist "I brush and floss twice a day" when you know damn well you remember to brush your teeth maybe every other day if you're lucky.  The only one you're fooling you.  You feel guilty, you rationalize it so it won't be your fault.  Man or woman, when you take the Red Pill, you have to own up to the fact that, yeah, it really is my fault.  Accountability is key.  

Sometimes you have to be able to stare your dentist in the eye and say "I don't floss.  I hate flossing.  I know I should floss, but I don't, and I can't think of a damn thing that will motivate me, so we should really find some other way or just stop talking about it."  It's like that.

Along the way you or your dude are going to experience friction as you find your way.  It's expected and normal.  As a dude, for example, you may have to learn to embrace what it is to be Strong, the way our grandfathers were strong when they jumped out of leaky boats to storm a beach or strong the way they were when everything in the world saw Man as either predator or prey.  You Must Get Stronger.  No excuses.  That could mean working out, that could mean adjusting your diet, and that could mean being assertive in ways that make you uncomfortable.

Some ladies may be put-off by the crudity of the our approach.  "Why can't you guys work out your stuff without all the name calling and homophobic stuff?" is a common complaint.  But the fact is, men need profanity in their lives in order to become men.  It is part of our social networking system, a means of establishing dominance and hierarchy   We don't compare shoes, we talk about our junk and how that fucking moron needs to drop the Nice Guy shit and bend his woman over his knee.  Profanity is male subtextual language. Try not to faint.

"Swearing like a sailor" or "Cussing like a trooper" are apt phrases because both the military and the maritime vocations were almost exclusively the province of Men, built on Male values and Masculine principals.  So was hunting.  Therefore you can consider a scalding command of invective to be an implicitly male style of communication.

We know how this stuff works, you don't.  Cutting out the cussing and crude metaphors doesn't help.  It hurts.  Our verbal abuse is how we learn to toughen up, detach, and objectify things, and that is going to be part of the process.  If you have to pretend not to have heard something that sounded horrifyingly misogynistic or sexist or homophobic, well, that's how dudes talk and the focus of the Red Pill is getting dudes back on track.  Deal with it.  When men talk to other men, this is our language, like it or not.  We can't change it just to please your sensibilities.

Because that's what got us here in the first place.

Some would argue that the goal should be "building a better BETA".  That is, a Nice Guy six days a week and then Conan on Saturday night.  The problem is, you cannot convincingly fake ALPHA over time.  Your presentation eventually has to be assumed, and you can't pussy-out about it. If your milquetoast husband suddenly tried to give you a spanking and be dominant one night, out of the blue, you might not laugh . . . but you wouldn't be convinced, either.

 Let's be clear, we don't want to build a better BETA because regardless of how nice that sounds masculinity doesn't work that way.  If you want your dude ALPHA, then you have to work ALPHA.  You can cultivate plenty of great, comfort-building BETA skills and emotional support and still be a bad-ass.  You just have to be the bad ass first, or it doesn't work.  If you truly want a Leading Man, the only way to get one is to let him be masculine, in all of its ugly glory.  Despite what you think, you'll be happier that way.  Promise.

And dudes, you men who have found your way here and are considering the Red Pill Marriage seriously, you're going to have to escape your comfort zone.  A lot.  Do dangerous things and think dangerous thoughts.  Develop self-discipline and social mastery.  Learn about a lot of shit you never thought you'd think was worth learning.  Go to the damn gym even when you don't feel like it . . . because dedication and resolve are sexy and discipline, the art of doing stuff we don't want to do, is hard.

Betas, you're going to have to tell your woman NO and be able to handle the consequences.  You may have to tell your woman off, even, if things get out of hand but we'll teach you how to deal with that.  You may even have to tell your mother NO or tell her off or otherwise push back against the women in your life so that you may have the space to cultivate your masculinity.

You can't do that with just your wife.  This process involves cultivating solid relationships with other men, establishing masculine zones where feminine proprieties are ignored.  Such places seem alluring to you ladies, because it feels like that's where we hide all the Macho.  You have an almost irresistable desire to invade, to listen in, to overhear and inject yourself into the equation in such Man Caves.  Some of you may even wonder why you can't hang out there as well.  It seems like so much fun!

And it is.  Because there are no women there.

That's not a misogynistic statement, that's a Red Pill Fact.  Men need zones of exclusive masculinity the same way you need feminine spaces, and while your suspicions about what we're talking about are normal, they are also immaterial.  Men need the company of other men to first be initiated into the culture of the mature masculine, and then periodically it needs to be refreshed with our dudes.  When we do invite you in, consider it a rare privilege and treat it with the respect it deserves.

Which brings me to the issue of respect.  That's a big one.  You wanna know why we have this bumper crop of Betas on the market?  Part of it is disrespect.  Women in general have developed an active disrespect of the culture of masculinity as "silly" or "antiquated" or "obsolete", and tend to ridicule masculine memes.  That's part of the problem.

The Betas of the world have a hard time respecting themselves because they get little respect from the women in their personal lives.  Mothers, sisters, teachers, girlfriends, all his life he's had women with the "Boys are stupid! Throw rocks at them!" mentality of our popular culture, where husbands are portrayed as bumbling fools and incompetent without female attention and guidance.  When women disrespect masculine memes, that detracts from our ability to find strength in them.  We're struggling against forty years of such disrespect, and it has taken a toll.  You want to know why the Manosphere seems so soaked in misogyny?  Being equated to rapists for having a penis or being called "creepy" or even ridiculed for our desire to be men sucks, and after a while it will piss you off.  

That brings me to the Anger issue.  There is a common complaint among women that the Manosphere is an angry place, and if everyone would just stop being so angry and talk to each other in a reasonable fashion, maybe it wouldn't be and we'd all get along or something.

Stop it.  Stop disrespecting our legitimate anger.  Yes, our anger makes you uncomfortable -- that doesn't mean we aren't entitled to it.  Male anger doesn't make you less secure.  Yes, anger can lead to violence.  But usually it doesn't.  Men get angry, and sometimes we get angry at you for damn good reasons.  Part of the Red Pill process is letting your man get angry without berating him or warning him to back off.  Unless you are feeling physically threatened, the mere fact your dude is PISSED OFF, perhaps about you, is a healthy sign that things are working.

Being asked to suppress our anger has been one of the prime motivators toward BETAhood.  Being told "Don't be mad!" or "Don't get mad about this," or "I'm not going to talk to you if you're angry" or otherwise suggesting that our anger isn't a perfectly legitimate and understandable emotion that needs to be expressed, not suppressed, is disrespectful of our masculinity.  Next time you want to "cool" your dude down and convince him not to be mad . . . Stop.  Bite your lip.  Do not say a word.  Stand there and experience the righteous fury of his anger, because as painful as that might be, it has to happen if you want this to work.

Anger is part of our masculine power.  It's where the ALPHA comes from, our ability to generate huge amounts of emotional energy - say, enough to attack a saber-toothed tiger single-handedly or run into a burning building.  We need our anger and we need our detachment and our objectivity, otherwise we would not have the capacity to consciously slay another human being.  For the last 100,000 years that's what we've needed to do to survive, and just because it's inconvenient and hurts your feelings, we need to be able to express our anger to your face and have you just sit there and accept it without judgement or criticism.  We have the right to be angry, and if you want your man to ALPHA up, you have to let him.

There's more you can do.  Don't hang around women to trash-talk men.  Don't hang around women who abuse and disrespect their own men.  Hit the gym yourself, if you need to or want to encourage him.

And be pretty.

Wow, I almost heard that groan it was so loud.

But yeah, we want you to be pretty.  Not obsesses about your body parts and constantly ask us for affirmation and then demand that we don't know what we're talking about.  We don't want to be your fashion or makeup consultant.  We don't want to give you advice about shoes.  We don't want you to put on makeup all week for work and then slob out on the weekends because that's your 'me' time.  In actuality, that's your 'we' time, and when you sit around in sweats and complain about how much effort it takes to do all that stuff, you kill the ALPHA.

You want a more masculine man?  Be a more feminine woman.  Don't try to make your husband your "best friend", unless you fuck your best friends.  Don't think that it's "just him", and he won't mind if you go in jeans and a t-shirt.  Don't think that he finds your casual attitude and "earthy" functionality of your wardrobe impressive.  Don't include him in the intimate discussions of your menstrual cycle without cause.  Don't ask him his opinion on someone's relationship.  Don't treat him like a girlfriend, in other words, because he's a fucking man.  Your husband.

Wear skirts.  Try to be pretty.  Try to be alluring.  It helps.  When the women in our lives make that effort to be feminine, it makes us want to make a greater effort to be masculine.  Sex helps, of course, so quit using it as leverage.

The fact is that you cannot compel a man to ALPHA up.  But you can impel him: make conditions as ripe as possible, extend invitations, accept his leadership when it is given and give him respect and honor in return.  Learn to cede control to him . . . and responsibility to him.  Don't treat him like another child.  He's your husband.  If you demonstrate that you expect his leadership, then that will impel him towards leading.

There's a lot to this, and I'll be returning to it more in the future.  But I've accepted the challenge.  I want to help the Betas out there revolt against their programming and start acting like the real men both they and their wives want them to be.  Learn to be real men from other men, and learn what that means.

It's not the same thing as the prefeminist, preindustrial masculinity, of course, as market conditions have changed dramatically.  But it is a masculinity forged pragmatically, and with a little more forethought than our grandfather's masculinity.  Its a masculinity that takes into account the essential differences in post-industrial culture and adjusts accordingly.  Its a masculinity that looks not for equality with femininity, but equilibrium.

I guess I should get started.

HOUSEKEEPING!

I've been writing like mad for weeks now, had a really nasty week-long Noravirus outbreak at Stately Ironwood Manor, and I'm in the middle of two different catalogs and a package.  Plus I'm trying to finish a couple of books.  Therefore I haven't been doing much blog houskeeping lately, and it shows.  I do want to call your attention to a couple of things:

Ian wrote another book.  It's called Playground Rules, and it is essentially a collection of my blog postings regarding male and female socialization patterns.  Longtime readers of the blog have probably read most of it already, but if you're looking for a good guide for someone to navigate the Female Social Matrix, this is a great place to start.

I also want to call your attention to the tab at the top of the page listing Revolt of the Goddesses.  It's a mythopoetic attempt to chronicle the issues of feminism and masculinity.  It features the Greek gods, so think of it as a kind of political Percy Jackson.  This was actually part of the Manosphere book until Athol quite rightly pointed out "A bunch of dudes reading about masculinity don't want to read about goddesses! (duh!). I couldn't really argue with that, so I took it out and put it up here because, well, I wrote the damn thing and someone might like to read it.  I'm a fiction writer at heart.

Thanks for reading, stay tuned, and let's help the whole country ALPHA UP!

Men 2020: The Real Story

Noted research psychologist and gender scholar Dr. Peggy Drexler released a post at Huffpo recently entitled Men 2020. In it she tries to portray the struggles of men in our society - a point in her favor - while attempting to dismiss most of the current crisis as mere "growing pains" as we accept our new, diminished lot in life - minus half a point.

But it did suggest that a look ahead might be in order.  Since I am also, in addition to being a humble pornographer, sex nerd, author, bon vivant, old married guy, also a science fiction writer and futurist, I thought I would give some thought to the subject of the Future of Men.  Dr. Drexler gets some parts of it right, but she relates it in a slightly patronizing (matronizing?) manner, and I don't feel her conclusions are taking in the scope of the problem.

Luckily, I did a chapter on this very subject for the Manosphere book, and this looks like a good place for an excerpt, of sorts.

Let me begin this way: the situation is both more dire and less dire than Dr. Drexler reports. First, while the
 "confusion" she talks about men suffering in contemporary society is real, that's not quite the right word for it.  More "confusion, anger, resentment, and suspicion".  Everywhere men look, the misandrous pronouncements of media are throwing us under the bus.  We're obsolete, we've been told.  We no longer matter.

Bullshit.  We matter quite a bit, and you ladies are about to learn just how much we can matter.  More, the people we matter the most to is you, and you are, collectively, fucking things us.  We're not happy about it, but like Dr. Drexler said, we're adapting . . . just not in the ways you want us to.

She tries to hold out the Millennials as examples of men "bettering" themselves.  She gives several examples that seem to rate that measurement purely in terms of how much Millennial men are willing to make themselves more useful servants to womankind . . . but very little that considers the innate masculine values.

True, she points out the increase in time spent fathering that the Millennial men seem to display as a sign of progress, and I cannot disagree.  My heart is warmed with the number of young men I've seen take an active hand in the fathering of their children, largely (in my observation) due to the utter lack or estrangement of fathering in their own lives.  

These young men are, indeed, committed to family, as they have seen (despite its innate fragility in our era) how family is one of the few constants in our lives.  They want kids.  They want wives.  They want wives . . . who won't divorce them.  And they want wives they can stand.

So you can expect them to be a bit choosy.  Hell, we should encourage them to hold on to that C-Card as long as they can, hold out for the best deal possible, the highest quality woman . . . and not settle for less.  Teach them how to make the mommy-wannabes come to them, and demonstrate what they bring to the table.

But as I said, the future is bright.  The Millennials are still young.  They are still impressionable.  And they haunt the internet like ghosts.

And the internet is where the Manosphere is.  For the young men of the Millennial generation, things are looking bright, believe it or not.  If they play their cards right, everyone will learn Game, the future fathers of America will use their pump-and-dump Puerarch palls to weed out the poorer specimens of femininity, and focus on the few high-quality future wives in the bunch.

Do it, dudes.  Be PICKY.  Don't settle for less.  And you can afford to be.  You know why?  Because when I said you were in high demand, I wasn't tugging your jockstrap.

You see, within the Sexual Market Place, Dads are more highly valued than Cads, but around the time you're getting married few of you know which one you are, and the women in your lives are banking a lot more on your potential return than on your present value.  If you decide to go the Cad route, then your best bet is to get a vasectomy, learn Game, and hump everything in a skirt for the rest of your life.

But if you decide to go the Dad route, and are serious about it, then you build your value and your potential value now . . . and focus on searching diligently for a woman worthy enough to match your level of commitment.  And that ain't easy.  Luckily, thanks to this bit of light-hearted banter, your value is about to skyrocket.  Next, she tells us that men of the future . . .

They will be androgynous followers of a new and superior model of female leadership.

She says that like its a good thing.  It's not, for either gender.  If you want any indication of where the status quo will actually lead us if we go down Dr. Drexler's happy, testosterone-light path, we need look no further than Japan.  And the Herbivores.

If you want to see what Dr. Drexler's "new and improved Millennial men" look like, here's a perfect example. See if you really want to face this future, ladies.  And fellas, this is what you'll have to compete against in the future if you want to be even a mediocre dad.  You might be the worst bull in the herd, the roughest-looking pup in the pack, the puniest bear in the den, but at least you, Gentlemen, are carnivores.  This is what your sisters have to look forward to.

Excerpted from the Manosphere book:

The Sōshoku-kei

In Japan, you have the phenomenon of the herbivore, the sōshoku-kei.  This is a whole class of Japanese men who shun marriage and even girlfriends in favor of an austere lifestyle that includes indulgence in personal hygiene products, like the American Metrosexual.  Only the herbivore takes the idea to the extreme . . . and has absolutely no desire for any kind of romantic commitment whatsoever. 

A 2010 survey in Japan revealed that over 1/3 of Japanese men viewed themselves that way.  Among men in their 20s and 30s, over 70% do. 

Philosopher Masahiro Morioka redefined sōshoku-kei danshi as men who are "the nice guys of a new generation who do not aggressively seek meat, but instead prefer to eat grass side by side with the opposite gender."  A nation of docile, non-aggressive men completely content not to ogle women in public, but do it in the privacy of their cubes on their iPhones. The feminist utopia.

 So how are the women of Japan greeting this phenomenon?  According to traditional feminist ideology, they should be welcoming it with flowers, relieved that, at long last, the power of the hated traditional Japanese patriarchy is broken and women can assume their proper role as co-rulers over the placid island domain.  Right?  Women should be in a rape-free, utterly fearless state of gender freedom.

Only . . . not so much.

Japanese women are not amused by the sōshoku-kei danshi.  In fact, they’re pretty pissed off.  Instead of leaping for the golden opportunity to achieve and succeed in one of the biggest post-industrial economies in the world that this should be providing them, as feminism said they should, Japanese women are bitter about the fact that they have virtually no hope of having children. 

And you thought Western women are having a hard time finding decent husbands. 

The men they meet might be interested in a platonic date, but trying to get them to initiate sex is difficult, if not impossible.  Sōshoku danshi are the ultimate Beta orbitors . . . only they don’t really ever want to land. 

Why are the sōshoku danshi instructive? Precisely because Japan is one of the biggest post-industrial economies in the world.  Japan has pioneered much of what we can expect socially, in the context of the post-industrial economy.   You can look at the metropoli of Japan and see the way things will eventually look in America.  And while it might be an ideological victory for feminism, it would be really, really bad for women in general.

The herbivores have taken the Puerarchy to its logical conclusion.  They grew up as the sons of the 1980s salariman, the loyal and hard-working company men who built Japan into the financial, industrial, and technological powerhouse it is today.  They also spent the vast majority of their time at work while their lonely wives browbeat their children into preparation for the all-important college exams.  For cultural reasons, the sons got the lion’s share of this attention.  And the pressure.

The sōshoku danshi have withdrawn their participation in greater Japanese society, because they see no incentive to pursue the traditional marriage and family.  Their distant, overworked fathers provided no guidance or impetus for having a family.  Their economy and the spoiled, entitled nature of Japanese girls have given the sōshoku danshi no incentive whatsoever to procreate.  None. 

The extra demands a wife and children place on a Japanese worker are tremendous, and social expectation mandates that he work his ass off to support them.  The sōshoku danshi is utterly disillusioned with the highly structured, highly gendered achievement, the high expectations of Japanese women, and far more content to pursue quiet hobbies and masturbate than actually go on a date.

That’s a bigger deal than it might seem.  The Japanese have been the leaders in masturbation technology for decades – we had a short-lived dominance due to the Fleshlight, but after that Japan blew us away with the Tenga.

The Tenga, for the uninformed, is a disposable egg-shaped plastic male masturbator that you can buy in a vending machine for a couple of bucks, use a dozen times and then throw away.  The Tenga egg comes in many different styles, offering different types of stimulation, but one thing is agreed among all who use them: it’s a better blowjob for a cheaper price than you can get anywhere.

The Tenga allows the sōshoku danshi – or any man – a way to slip away, knock one off, and get back to work without the necessity of a woman involved.  It’s cheap, it’s convenient, and it won’t insist on wearing your sweaters.  And it’s getting more sophisticated every iteration.  The device has such an appeal that the government is considering regulating them, to help encourage the birthrate. 

That’s important.  Japanese women aren’t the only ones upset with the sōshoku danshi.  The phenomenon is having real social repercussions.  It’s such a big deal, in fact, that the Japanese government is actively trying to discourage sōshoku-kei behaviors, because it’s leading to a dramatic decline in the birthrate. 

And if they can’t sustain the birthrate, then the weight of caring for the Japanese elderly will fall to a smaller and smaller number of working Japanese.  So the Japanese government has offered generous cash rewards and tax incentives for young couples to marry and have babies. 

Which puts the average young Japanese woman in the unenviable position of having to work to pay taxes to subsidize some other woman’s ability to have kids.  

Think about it: you have to do overtime to keep your expensive apartment, but the girl down the hall gets time off and extra money to raise her new baby, since she actually found a husband.  And you’re paying for it.  Bitter, yet?

The sōshoku-kei are particularly instructive because they have, for all practical purposes, totally invested in the feminist ideal of true equality between the sexes.  They have institutionalized Betadom.  They have done their best to remove the complicating influence of women from their lives.  And they have succeeded, regardless of what it does to Japanese society. 

In the ultimate passive-aggressive protest against the social expectations, the sōshoku danshi are doing the bare minimum of what is required of them and spending the rest of the time playing video games or whacking off to porn or watching tv or on the internet.  Anything but going out and talking to girls.

So what’s a girl to do?  Go to a prostitute.

Well, kinda.  While the Japanese hostess bars are pretty well-known to Western businessmen, they’re specific to that clientele.  Native Japanese men go to similar places, but reserved for Japanese only.  It’s not personal, it’s not racist, it’s just . . . well, it’s just Japanese.  Some of these parlors are merely entertainment, some are involved in some kind of paid prostitution.  But recently a new kind of hostess bar has arisen, one designed to cater to desperately horny and romantically forlorn young women.

These bars hire well-built Alpha studs to linger and play “host”.  For a fee a woman can have the “boyfriend experience”, an attentive man who listens to her and flatters her and pays her attention.  And she buys champagne.  A lot of highly overpriced champagne.  Between the fees and the drinks, a young woman can drop a thousand dollars in a night if she isn’t cautious.  If you feel outraged by the cold manipulations of American PUAs, ladies, consider these fellows. 

They’re handsome, they’re hunks, and they usually grow to despise the girls they’re paid to flatter.  American PUAs have nothing on the brutally cold way these men abuse the affections and expectations of vulnerable young girls.

It’s not unheard of for these girls, many of whom think it’s hopeless for a real, regular boy to find her attractive with the lure of the sōshoku kei on the horizon, to run up debts to these bars in the tens of thousands of dollars.  Often they must become prostitutes themselves to have any hope of paying off the debt. 

Ironically the girls who needed to pay to get a handsome boy’s attention end up getting paid to give head to sweaty old businessmen their fathers’ age.   

The next generation of Japanese will be much, much smaller, and the result of the few “carnivores” who managed to have kids.  Think about it: really smart, really aggressive, really rich Japanese kids who suddenly have twice as much room on their island as their grandparent's generation, giant robots . . . and a lot of aggression to work out.

(I'm sure that will end well.)

End Excerpt

So that's what's in store, Ladies.  That's the androgynous utopia you envision, one in which women are so entitled and demanding that men would rather avoid them altogether rather than procreate with them.  One in which men check out of the active progress of society in favor of selfish and self-interested pursuits.  One in which your daughter's chances of getting married will actually be worse than yours, and her chances of staying married will be comparable to dying in a plane crash.  And her chances of actually reproducing, thanks to the USIRIG device, will be even less.  No husband for her.  No grandkids for you.

Will Americans and Europeans go the same route?  Perhaps . . . but I think the unique cultural attitudes in both places will mitigate the problem.  That's good news . . . for men.   The downside is that unlike Japan, there is no strong cultural provision against marrying outside of your culture in America or Europe, which will allow those dudes who do want to tie the knot to do it . . . just not to European or American girls.  

Of course I take issue with this:

If we stopped there it would indicate that we are headed toward a new improved model of males -- kinder, gentler, more accepting and more attached to home and family then men of the past.

That "new and improved" model she's talking about is, again, one in which the value judgement is being made is done so only using female criteria.  What constitutes a "new and improved" male, in Dr. Drexler's opinion, is one who is better able to serve women.  His own desires, values, interests and issues (with the exception of fatherhood, previously discussed) are unimportant to her.  "Kinder and Gentler" are not masculine traits.  "More accepting and More Attached" sure look like code words for "enslaved".

That's key.  That demonstrates what feminist expectations of men are for the future: men who are of service to women are "good", men who aren't are "bad".  Men who pursue their own interests, rejecting a corporate culture in which they are forced to work for the benefit of women, will be told off as slackers and underachievers and shamed for their languorous stay at the Puerarchy.

But honestly, Dr. Drexler, can you blame them?  There is virtually no incentive for young men to achieve, to perform, to dance like a monkey in a game that's rigged against them.  Where they are seen as the "lowest difficulty setting" and ridiculed for their masculinity.  Where the respect their forefathers had is forever denied them because of their gender.  Where they are seen as a constant threat on the street, suspect in the workplace, and punished for every attempt at true achievement.  Where their wives will leave them and their children can be stripped away without their consent.  

That is feminism's legacy to young men.  Blame it on economics if you like, but its as much ideology as income.  

As you have noticed, "It also appears younger men are shying away from relationships."    Further, 

Pew research says that the desire to marry among young women is rising -- with high importance increasing from 28 to 37 percent since 1997. For young men, it dropped from 35 to 29 percent. Theories abound. 

Why yes, yes they do.  I'd have to favor Venker's interpretation here, despite my distaste at doing so (I'm still a progressive, she still works at Fox) but she's dead on: men are avoiding marriage because women have lost touch with their feminine side.

That's it, in a nutshell.  When a woman wants to get married as much as these ladies do, one would think that their interest was in the marriage, not the wedding.  Yet plenty of evidence demonstrates that they just don't know how to be married, thanks to a healthy dearth of plausible role-models and the utter derision the idea is met with among feminist authority figures.   The pages of HuffPo don't celebrate Wives, Dr. Drexler, nor do the articles posted their glorify the idea of being married to a man in the slightest.  Indeed, more often than not they condemn and deride the idea of focusing on marriage, not a career, as if being a corporate drone was the dedicated end-game to the feminist plan.

Y'all can have it.  We're dropping out.

Not all of us, of course.  But the good ones.  The ones who have the understanding to see how badly the deck is stacked against us.  Just read some of my comments from last post.  See the derision the idea of marriage has inspired from my younger male readers.  I hear it often.  More often than I like.  But that's the reason they aren't marrying, Dr. Drexler.  There is no incentive in it for them, not just legally, but emotionally and spiritually.  They have lost faith in relationships over-all, marriage in particular, and largely because what they see in terms of potential mates turns their stomach.

What do you have to say to them?  "No, really, if you marry that woman you're thinking of, then she'll discover her true inner femininity and encourage your masculinity in a self-sustaining system of eternal nuptial bliss!"  That ain't true, and we all know it.  If a woman doesn't start out her marriage in a feminine frame of mind, then she's not going to suddenly grow it, just like she's not going to suddenly become a nymphomaniac if she's been low-sex for her entire life.  

Despite your apparent preference for androgyny, Dr. Drexler, the girls out there hate it in their boyfriends.  Dudes certainly don't find it appealing.  It's humiliating and against our masculine nature.  Only feminism has taught us what happens when a man tries to lead in a relationship (as the 45% of the women, according to your article, apparently want him to do), so we'd rather withdraw and distract ourselves, forget the relationship, and play XBox or whack off rather than pursue a relationship with a woman.  XBox doesn't try to get us to wear make-up . . . oh, sorry, "tinted sunscreen" and want us to pretend we like it.

The fact is, the Millenials are the first generation to have the capacity to liberate themselves from social expectation.  With new reproductive options opening up, a globe full of feminine women eager to have a marriage and a family, not ashamed, and with more means to make a living underachieving outside of the corporate structure, I think you will find more and more Millennial men are going to be checking out and doing their own thing by 2020.  And that "own thing" doesn't involve a suburban ranch, two kids and a future ex-wife.  

It involves a tiki bar/surf shop in the Caribbean somewhere staring at bikinis, or teaching English in Taibei with a hot Chinese girlfriend, or grinding code for the next great generation of software, or building and

racing antique cars, or spending endless hours playing WoW or guitar or just watching YouTube or any number of other "fun" stuff we like that doesn't involve a complicated, demeaning relationship with a Western woman who, in the final analysis, does not have his best long-term interest in mind.

If we have our way, the Millennial men will finally start understanding their own value, to themselves, even if society doesn't value them.  We shall encourage them to drop out, go adventuring, and leave the dreary office life to their sisters while they go in search of a feminine wife or a string of pretty girlfriends.   They will find some fulfilling career that pays them squat and we will encourage them to contribute not a damn thing to the gleaming corporate structure men built and that we are now forever locked out of, to the society who sees them as disposable and valueless, to the culture who treats them as dangerous and stupid, not worthy of respect. 

For women the fall of gender boundaries has meant freedom, choice and opportunity. For men it has meant confusion. The expectations and assumptions that formed the superstructure for manhood for generations has fallen away, with nothing yet emerging to take their place.

Ah, but that's not quite true, Dr. Drexler.  There's not confusion -- there's frustration.  So now these men will do what you encouraged two generations of women to do:  defy gender expectations and steadfastly NOT marry.  NOT reproduce.  NOT achieve.  The current system is not their friend, so they should take their ball and go home.  Men Going Their Own Way, with only a very, very few dedicated future family men expending the effort to wed and breed on purpose.  

And what's this?

Most are adjusting nicely to the withdrawal of past entitlements. They will form the core of 2020 men who compete and win without privilege.

"Outta here!"

 Ah, no.  That's wishful thinking, I'm afraid, Dr. Drexler.  If that is your assessment of modern young men and their attitudes toward the future, I suggest that you are not looking closely enough.  What you see as "adjusting nicely" is just the parts you want to see.  The parts you don't want to see are still there, and WE sure as hell see them.

"Mediocre or Average?
Just what do I want in a future ex-wife?"

If young women today want to get married but have no interest in being wives, the young men today don't want to be their husbands.  Nor do they want to commit to a society where they will STILL be accused of using privilege in competition in 2020, STILL be given unfair handicaps to overcome said "privilege" and then STILL be considered undervalued, atavistic, disposable.  Young men will not "compete" in the future, Dr. Drexler, because women in aggregate (which you feel will be dominating the leadership positions, due to their inherent superiority . . .) do not value competition.

Therefore they will seek to further handicap the men in the office with competition-reducing measures and consensus-building organizations that are designed to keep achievement from happening or male leadership from being valued.  No glory, no value, no honor, not in a system where the rules are set one way for women, another for men.

We will not compete with that.  We might show up, work 8 hours, and take home a paycheck, but compete?

Fuck that, boys.  Save it for something important.  Like building your own fighting robot.  

That's the proper response to the whole "decline of men" meme.  Demonstrate to the women gloating about their "victory" that they won through forfeit, because we just don't want to play in a game that's fixed, so we didn't show up to play.  While they re-defined femininity to involve corporate achievement and team-building exercises, we will re-define masculinity to involve the issues and interests that are ours, and ours alone.

And that doesn't mean sitting our fat asses in a cube farm so that our female boss at work is happy and our female boss at home is happy and we're fucking miserable.

The time for that has passed.  Now we live in the time of the Manosphere, where clues to every man's masculine destiny are just a click away.

My prediction is that we will see the rise of Gamma and Delta and Omega "herbavores" arise, but not quite like in Japan.  But we will also see a lot of those boys ditching their fears, learning Game, hitting the gym, dropping their responsibilities and catching a ride someplace interesting to go meet a girl who's not so complicated and do something a lot less permanent than marriage.  While I agree with Dr. Drexler that going back is not happening, her vision of "going forward" is not a happy one, even for the male Progressive.  But that's not the only way forward, fellas.  Androgyny and female domination aren't necessarily in your future -- there's an escape clause!


Dr. Drexler says:

Others will struggle: some to the point that they simply choose to opt out of the competition -- in education, careers, even relationships.

I maintain that this is not a struggle, Gentlemen: the answer is powerfully abundant.  This world does not have your interests at heart, nor do the women around you.  You will NOT be rewarded for being a good and diligent employee.  You will NOT be rewarded for being a loving and capable husband.  You will NOT be valued for being an attentive and involved father, no matter what they say.  And you will NOT see an over-abundance of marital comfort as a result of your dedication to laundry and dishes.  It's a lie, a damnable lie.

So prepare yourself to drop out.  Roosh did.  Jonathan Frost did.  There is a world of adventure beyond the jaded vaginas of the UMC white college-educated woman.  The corporate feminists who insist that a career can come before family, leave them alone.  Pretend they have dicks.  They might as well have -- they damn sure aren't going to be the kind of wife you can rely on.

Cede her the "power" implicit in a 70 work week, let her revel in making partner before she's 40, let her sneer at how she "beat" you "fair and square" and gloat how you just weren't competitive enough.  Let her languish in her glass-floored office and soak up the thrill of running something she didn't build . . . let her think she's won.  Let her gloat.  Let her feel superior.

Then bang her 23 year old sister and her best friend instead.  

No, it's not responsible.  It's not sensible.  It's not mature.  But that's fine -- you aren't looking for a wife anyway.  You're looking for a choice piece of ass or two to enjoy before you have to open the shop in the morning - aren't you happy you dropped out of school?  The woman close to your own age who keeps pressuring you for a date/commitment?  A career woman?  Don't date her.  Don't fuck her.  Don't commit to her.  And DAMN sure don't marry her.  It just isn't in your best interest.  She's not going to want to stay married anyway.  So leave her alone . . . it's one of the things she fears most in the world.

This is an opportunity for you to use the leverage you have (and it is little enough) to free yourself from the idea that you gotta do college, gotta get a career, gotta make some money and marry some chick from college and gotta get a divorce ten years later when "she's not haaaapy."  Use your leverage to build each other into strong, unassailable men, men for whom the self-important rationalizations of their female peers are beneath them utterly.  Approach every new relationship with a huge degree of caution.

The real look at Men, 2020 is like this: seven years from now, the median age for marriage will go up.  The divorce rate will continue to decline as the marriage rate does (GIGO).  Women will be bitterly complaining about the lack of "good" men, while feminist decry the number of dudes who are getting a temporary vasectomy, ditching college, and heading for the beach for an extended adolescence.

Meanwhile, the Manosphere will be going crazy as the Red Pill philosophy grows . . . and younger Millennial women start catching on to the bullshit implicit with "co-equal partnerships" and start reconsidering their futures.  But they had better not take too long.

Our sperm is viable until we're 70, and our attractiveness grows while yours fades.  Our sons have plenty of time.  If you haven't wised up to the idea that men like feminine women and won't settle for less by 2020 (and that does put almost all the Gen X women beyond the safe age for procreation - sorry!) then you really do deserve (for once) what you'll get: increasing frustration and hopelessness is one of your biggest fears - "being alone" - comes true for you, one by one.  No True Love.  No Happily Ever After.  Your best bet will be sex tourism and finding a foreign dude who needs a green card.  Good luck with that.

But if you ladies aren't willing to learn how to be a wife, then you can forget about our boys becoming your husbands.  We won't let them.   We've been down that road and know where it leads.  Our boys deserve better than that.  If you won't let them become the men they want to be, then we'll find them wives who will, wives who will be devoted, warm, comforting, respectful and appreciative - all the things we are finding lacking in the women growing up today.

And don't think we can't find them wives like that.  We don't mind Asian or Latino grandchildren.  They're adorable.

Hopefully, by 2030 y'all will get your collective head out of your collective ass before you ruin another generation of young women by advocating the disrespect and derision with which you see men today.  But if not, that's not the fault of men for not shaping themselves to be compliant to women.  That's women not being able to themselves see past their own privilege in our society long enough to see the damage they've done to it.  And if they don't . . . well, it's not because we didn't warn them.

The fact is, there are plenty of things a man can walk away from, despite what John Wayne said.  The social expectation that he must marry and reproduce and become a productive and driven member of society is one of them.  Without any kind of incentive of having any kind of good wife out of the equation . . . why should we bother going out with you, much less marrying you?