Monday, February 6, 2012

The Red Pill Isn't Pandering, It's Power

A fun little expedition into Emily Nagoski's blog last week led to another blogger, 30soemthingandbreakingup, to post a short little cry of dismay at the idea of "changing himself" in order to get more sex.  He clearly misunderstands the Alpha-Beta dynamic, so I thought I'd set him straight.  His post went like this:
“He (Ian Ironwood) seems to be implying that in order to gain success, we all need to became an “alpha male”.
Hang on a moment, if I attempt to change to become something (the bad boy) in order to get more sex, am I not then pandering to women’s demands and falling straight into the trap that he seems to be insisting we must climb out of?”
Not exactly. Let me break it down for you, my brother:
Alpha and Beta are not in-born absolutes.  They are two sliding controls, like bass and treble, not one knob. The two sides focus on different aspects of masculinity, the ability to attract and inspire a sexual response (Alpha) and the ability to comfort and protect a mate (Beta). Both sides are equally important to the mating process, but you have to know which one is appropriate, and you (even more importantly) have to be self-aware enough to understand just how you, personally, measure up in both realms and adjust accordingly.


In our youth, we rely on our Alpha skills first and foremost to do the stupid thing that attracts some girl’s attention. Then we get into a relationship, have sex, and start settling into a Beta mode (unless we’re unhappy with our selection, in which case we stay Alpha and keep looking for fresh poon). The problem is feminism has encouraged us to downplay the Alpha totally, and accentuate the Beta until it becomes mindless deference to anything with a vagina. Sounds like a feminist dream, no?
Well, no. Instead a woman in a relationship with a Beta starts craving Alpha, and if she doesn’t start getting some she starts agitating for it with shit-tests and demands and disrespectful behavior, ultimately culminating in “I love you but I’m not in love with you” while she’s starting a relationship with a dude with a hot car and a nine-inch tool.
 That is, your subjective sex rank has fallen (she doesn’t think you’re hot any more) and she’s no longer interested. If you’re a Blue Pill dude, you keep giving her Beta in a desperate attempt to appease her, and she either doles out the sex just enough to keep you in the relationship as her willing slave or she stops all together and starts shopping for a more Alpha solution.
So no, not everyone needs to become an “alpha male”, any more than every woman needs to become some pornstar model “alpha female” in order to get laid. But without a well-developed sense of your own Alpha characteristics, and the understanding of Game that allows you to buff either Alpha or Beta at need, you’re going to repeat the Blue Pill cycle until the divorce attorneys start to pile up. If that’s your thing, enjoy.
If not . . . consider the Red Pill.
The Red Pill isn’t a path to becoming a Bull Alpha, it’s the path to balancing — and invoking — the Alpha or Beta at need, in response to her shit tests and genuine requests for assistance. Since most dudes in a relationship suffer from low Alpha and high Beta, the Red Pill usually — but not always — means learning how to demonstrate more Alpha. “Demonstrate” being the key word.
You see, it’s not about necessarily being an Alpha, it’s about triggering a subconscious Alpha response in her. You do this by making DHVs (Displays of High Value — the stuff that proves to her Body Agenda that you’re worth fucking) and taking a subtextually dominant position in your interactions. You aren’t bullshitting her at all. You are revealing your Alpha side to her.
Now, you might consider that bullshitting if you’re a true blue Beta and just can’t manage to do anything but care, share, and go antiquing every Sunday. But if you do occasionally like some poon — and most of us do — then you have the capacity within you, someplace, to access your dormant Alpha characteristics enough to incite her loins. How is that bullshitting?
You aren’t “pandering to her demands” at all. She’s a biological machine, just as you are. If she asks you for a favor while taking off her bra in front of you, regardless of what the hell she’s saying or how pissed you might be, your brain is saying “hey, free boob!” and altering your responsive thinking by pumping you full of lusty hormones. In much the same way, you putting a dominant hand on her shoulder, kissing her aggressively, and standing up to her bullshit invokes an in-born biological response in her that she has no conscious control over. It’s biology, not bullshit. Feminism is the bullshit. And I mean that in the nicest possible way.
So quit your moaning and whining about how you’ll reserve your virtue for only women who can “accept you as you are”, because the cold fact of the matter is that if you were that great of a prize as you present yourself to be, you’d be accepted as you are already
And change?  You aren’t the person you were five years ago, and five years from now you’ll be different yet — yet you complain about the need to “change”. You’re gonna change anyway, Bub. The Red Pill just gives you some guidance about how to change in such a way as to have a fulfilling sexual relationship at some point in the future. Remember, growth is change.  You can embrace both sides of your masculinity, find the RIGHT woman, one who is a worthy match for you, and you can spend the rest of your life making her happy while she righteously fucks you, OR you can keep taking the Blue Pill, obsess about “being yourself” and “treating her as an equal” and have a string of lackluster relationships that only grow more complicated and frustrating as you repeat the same mistakes over and over again. That way leads to a long, lonely life of masturbation.
Since I work in porn, I’m cool with that. Stroke away.
But in your own best interests, you might want to consider giving the Red Pill a more thorough examination. I’d recommend you start with Athol Kay’s remarkable The Married Man Sex Life Primer 2011. It costs about the same as buying three drinks for three girls who aren’t going to be impressed enough to give you their digits, or the price of a nice dinner for a “nice girl” who isn’t going to give you any play because you respect her too much.
And for Goddess’ sake don’t whine about the “near impossible demands of the modern woman”. It’s unmanly. That’s the WHOLE FRACKING POINT: taking the Red Pill means ignoring her demands (what she says she wants) and instead giving her what you know she needs. And once they get what they need (at least three or four times a week) then it’s amazing how their “demands” become highly optional politely-worded requests.
You’ll get there. Don’t give up.

11 comments:

  1. Why do you say for Goddess sake instead of for God's sake?

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  2. Because I am a polytheist who worships the Great Goddess, as well as the Great God.

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  3. Simplistic.

    For one, it ignores sexually dominant women. What about them? They aren't one in a million, or even one in a thousand. I'd say they are at least 1 in 100 and possibly as many as 5 in 100. Mind you, I'm not talking about women occasionally willing to be dominant or play toppy games in the bedroom (as a switchy guy I'm relieved that I think 25 percent or thereabouts of females can occasionally domme for fun), but women who really do want the relationship to mostly go their way and actively seek out submission from attractive men.Where do they fit into this scheme?

    For two, while its true most men have some alpha and beta traits, and I'm even willing to go with your definition of "alpha" as only being in terms of sexual selection, the fact is you don't give much practical advice as to which traits to select to display to "your " woman and when. Of course thats because it
    A. Varies from woman to woman
    B. Varies depending on what so-called "alpha" traits a man can display without totally putting on a fake show, which no self-respecting man should do. Not all men are bigger or stronger than their woman, we don't all have deep voices, not everyone is comfortable or natural playing Mr. I -Don't -Care, Mr. Threat, Or Mr Jerk, and quite a few females seem to respond best to those types of men.
    C. One can then blame men for ANYTHING that goes wrong in the relationship. I've seen PUA's that literally insist that anytime some woman does something bad in a relationship or something goes wrong it's the man's fault. He wasn't "alpha" enough, he wasn't "alpha" at the right time, or he excluded his "beta" too often.

    Yes, women are attracted to certain traits in men and most women like their men to be mostly sexually dominant but beyond that both men and women are expected to be able to control their sexual impulses to some extent, esp when they are adults. Whatever a man did or didn't do in his marriage or LTR (short of total neglect or abuse) that doesn't often excuse what the woman and a family court or divorce lawyer does or did.

    Don't get me wrong, I think game in relationships can be a good tool, but its not fool proof and has to be calibrated to the emotional needs of both the man and the woman and getting it wrong should NOT - in any sane society - have the consequences it currently often does. Furthermore this naive reductionism totally ignores the complexity of human females. I have yet to see a real guide to "gaming" dominant women ( I've seen a very very few suggestions that seem useful) and of course asexual women and asexual men might as well not exist.

    Clarence

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  4. Of course it's simplistic -- it's a blog post addressing one of the most complicated issues in human social interactions. It's going to be simplistic by definition.

    That being said, I would argue that female sexual dominants (that is, women who initiate sex with their partners a majority of the time and maintain control of the sexual initiative throughout the experience) are in a decisive minority according to most commonly-accepted statistics on American sexuality, far less than 30% and possibly as small as 15%, depending on how you limit the definition. Since that leaves a powerful majority of women who tend towards submissiveness, not domination, I'll let my post stand with the caveat that if your woman is dominant (and you are too) then counseling beyond my meager assistance is in order.

    There is no one-size-fits-all solution of course, and following Athol Kay's 30% principal ("Only 30% of anything you try in bed is going to work for you") one can safely assume that any one particular technique (being physically or verbally dominating in a particular way, for instance) is only going to work for your personal couples-culture a fraction of the time.

    That doesn't mean that the underlying principals of Married Game are wrong. It means that there is plenty of room for individual variations on a theme. Remember, while it's based on science, Game isn't a science -- you get no guaranteed results. It's a methodology informed by science designed to achieve a particular goal within a wide variety of potential subjects. As such, it is understood that the execution is going to be dependent upon the dude being able to successfully determine which particular technique or approach will work with a particular woman.

    As far as gaming dominant women . . . I'm not going to write a guide, because my best guess is that a truly dominant woman would not submit for anyone but a stronger Bull Alpha. So if you find yourself in a relationship with one and you aren't a Bull Alpha, then concede that you are sexually submissive and investigate any of the wide volume of literature on the subject. As for me, I'll continue to pitch well within the strike-zone, about the average hetero married couple, because that's where my readership lies.

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  5. Don't worry, Ian, I wasn't calling you stupid, nor do I think your advice here is worthless. Indeed, I said myself that game within relationships is a useful tool, and I've been reading Hawaiian Libertarian for at least 3 years now and Married Man sex life (as well as Susan Walsh's blog Hooking Up Smart) for at least two. Clearly, I think they, and you have something to say (I've been to this blog two or three times before, but never commented), and unlike the type of PUA's I was talking about they aren't big on defending bad behavior by women or blaming men for all the problems.

    As far as it goes, I'm a male switch, which I will clarify (because not everyone is familiar with BDSM power exchange terms)means that I get sexually attracted to both "topping" and "bottoming" in the bedroom - in my case with women only, just in case anyone wondered. The reason I'm explaining this is that the BDSM "subculture" is truly huge - I'd say around 40 to 50 percent of the population engage in some form of intimate power play - yet the social shaming of this (esp.towards submissive men. Some MRA's think switchy and subby men are all Fem Supremacist believers, most "mainstream" people think a sexually submissive male has to live in a "gimp" costume)is tremendous. So much so that for the first 25 years of my life I thought I was around 1 in 1000 or less, and thus no woman would ever love me. Though I was glad to discover I was wrong, the fact is mainstream sexual advice (including PUA which, by the way, is FAR and AWAY the best sexual advice ever delivered to men in general, so please don't think I hate on it like some MGTOW's do)does tend to have many assumptions all woven together about power dynamics, who initiates, etc, which can be problematic because they are stated in such absolute terms and often packaged together. The man MUST do this, this, this, the woman this, this, this. Most couples relationships (as I'm sure you know) break at least one or more of the "rules" anyway. On top of that is our current Divorce and Family Law /Domestic Violence/ Sexual Harassment legal situation between men and women in work and personal relationships which (and forgive me if I'm wrong) I assume you fully agree needs to be dealt with.
    *continued next comment*

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  6. The only part of your essay I really disagree with is this last part -

    "And for Goddess’ sake don’t whine about the “near impossible demands of the modern woman”. It’s unmanly. That’s the WHOLE FRACKING POINT: taking the Red Pill means ignoring her demands (what she says she wants) and instead giving her what you know she needs. And once they get what they need (at least three or four times a week) then it’s amazing how their “demands” become highly optional politely-worded requests."

    Two issues with this:
    1. The current legal regime places you under direct threat if you "give her what she needs" and you get it wrong. Thats why, if you can rely on your woman's honesty (and if not, why are you with her?)direct communication is sometimes necessary. Not always necessary mind you, but sometimes it most certainly is - which means, sometimes your girl is going to have to "woman up" (maybe we should call it: act adult, since we are doing the shaming language thing) and actually state what she wants or is having a problem with. And also a naive PUA who believes a dominant woman is just going to meekly roll over because you pulled her hair and smacked her ass... lol.

    2. Maybe you deal with a red pill, but, much as I often hate his blog ( I think he's a real misogynist and I do NOT say or use that term often or lightly), I think the "black pill" also has to be swallowed by men. I'm referring to he who used to be Omega Virgin Revolt. Men need to stop caring so much about what women think of them, and while its fine to have sex with a billion women if its consensual, one shouldn't have to surrender one's self in order to score more tail. Game, at its best is a form of honest advertising, at its worst its either a soul-killing mechanistic world view of human actions or a form of horrible manipulation (I have NEVER learned NLP for instance and if I ever do I can assure one it would not be for "dating" purposes. I don't want to hypnotize women, I want to attract them) where the whole goal is to "score" as much as possible and honesty and empathy be damned. He's also correct in that systematic problems cannot be solved individually. I feel advice such as yours and Athols can overall increase the happiness of both men and women , but it can't solve what is killing marriage or the other more destructive aspects of our current laws and societal expectations.


    Clarence

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  7. 1. Then do your due diligence before you go there -- that's a tasty piece of wisdom the OMGs need to hand down to the rest of 'em. But there are means of incrementally testing the waters without leaping into anything that could be misconstrued. I understand what you're saying, but there are means and methods to mitigate the danger.

    2. I'm not trying to save marriage or even re-construct what our society has become. Quite simply I'm trying to help more men have more and better sex. Period. Sex is an essential male interest, and I see nothing untoward about honing skills in the Crimson Arts regardless of marital intentions or status. That's it: sex. We can't put the genie back in the bottle, but by Gods we can stop helping feminists work against our own best interests. If more dudes know Game, then that rising tide will lift all of our boats.

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  8. Well:

    Quickly then!
    No, nothing wrong with learning the "crimson arts". But please for the sake of your readers, every once in awhile remind them of the legal and financial risks. You can be the best PUA in the world with a 99.9 percent "leave em better than you found them, leave a smile on their face and wistfulness in their eyes" success rate, and all it takes is that one woman to a poke a hole in your condom, or that one crazy or jealous woman to make a false accusation - and your life is ruined (even if you don't end up in jail) and maybe even socially you are known as an abuser, deadbeat dad, or creep of some type.

    Personally, one thing I always try to do (even though its illegal in most states it can save you from worse charges) is get at least the initial sex (and anything such as BDSM that can even be construed as abusive) on some sort of recording. I also flush condoms myself, and I usually don't hop in the hay on the first date. I do other things but I'll assume that somewhere on this site you link to or have a post that tells men some of what they can do to protect themselves so I won't waste any more of your space.


    Anyway, it's been nice talking to you and I thank you for your courtesy, and taking the time to reply. I'll be back from time to time I'm sure :)

    Clarence

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  9. I've noticed that Red Pill men often decry the end of the traditional fatherhood, due to high rates of divorce. The high rates of divorce are often blamed on feminism. However, if being faithful to one's spouse, not actively pursuing other options is considered 'Beta', doesn't that behavior in itself promote infidelity and an increased rate of divorce...leaving yet another generation of boys fatherless?

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    1. There is nothing un-Alpha about fidelity, if the woman is of quality. As 70% of divorces are initiated by women, the issue of hypergamy, not polygamy, is more likely to be the cause of divorce.

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