The Great Hamster Manifesto: "It's A Trap!"

I'm taking a quick break from the Masculine Powers series -- don't worry, the next installment is in the pipe. But I wanted to take an intermission.

I never tire of Jezebel’s take on dating and sex – it’s quaint and entertaining.  Today there was quite the rant from regular contributor Lindy West, presented as a “dating manifesto”. 

Allow me, on behalf of the Manosphere, to respectfully rebut.

Ms. West is saying, basically, “Girls, quit torturing yourself to make yourself pretty because all men want to do is fuck you, and if you capitulate to their stupid whims about being fuckable then you’ll miss out on the chance to find a “real” guy (as opposed to all of the manufactured copies, apparently) who likes you for you and doesn’t want to fuck you unless you want him to fuck you first.  Oh, and he’ll spend all of his money on you and let you get fat and not mind one bit.”

Anyone see the error in logic in this idea?  Let’s break it down, shall we?

First, let’s look at her basic premise, from the article:

“No matter what or who we (hetero) women are, we are always too something for men. Isn't that just fucked? Because to be "too" something implies that there's a something else out there to aim for.”

Well, yeah.  When your gender is part of a polarized dyad requiring social interaction as a prelude to reproduction, then your ability to mate (“have an emotionally fulfilling long-term relationship” in feminist-speak) is by definition dependent upon the desires of the other gender, regardless of your personal feelings on the matter.  If it wasn't  then all of those overweight male Omegas in their mom’s basements would be getting laid as much as the studly Alphas, on the strength of their great personalities alone.  

But the cruel fact is that women’s desires don’t run to the miserable and unsuccessful tub of lard, sadly.  So it should be fairly obvious that yes, men have a say in just what they find attractive in (hetero) women.  And if women are frustrated with the idea that they are always “too something” for men, then let’s examine just why that might be.

When feminism stormed the barricades in the 1960s and helped push through liberalized divorce laws, it was reacting in part to the fact that since WWII women have been able to support themselves without dependence on men.  Thanks to industrialization and urbanization there was no need for the old Agricultural Age division of labor anymore.  Women could make their own money, thank you, and they didn’t need to marry to sustain themselves.  In addition, they got almost complete control over their reproductive systems, allowing them to indulge in sex without the consequence of accidental pregnancy.  Those two factors were empowering enough in the minds of feminists to re-write the traditional marriage contract – upon which dating and courtship behavior were based.

Fair enough.  You ladies can marry whom you chose, divorce them when you get tired of them, and don’t have to worry about whether or not he can support you, because you can support yourselves.  You’ve struck a blow for feminine liberty and independence, allowing you to pursue happiness and a bulging 401k just like any man.  You can push aside the cold calculations about how much a prospective mate might earn or how successful he is in favor of finding that perfect emotional connection that blossoms into pure, blissful romance, complete with True Love and Happily Ever After (neither of which, if I recall correctly, are mentioned in many feminists manifestos).  Good for you.

However, by forging ahead with this revolutionary plan feminism failed to take a few important factors into account.  Firstly, it missed the fact that men have brains and feelings and emotions and desires and drives too, and that those are FAR DIFFERENT from the drives, emotions and desires of women, at least in terms of priority and intensity.  Feminism indulged in classic psychological projection when it inferred to two generations of Americans that if women would just do what they wanted to, men would just naturally accept it, regardless of how it affected them or whether or not it was in their best interest, and then fall meekly behind women by being  supportive and loving, until it was time for their wives to divorce them and trade up.

Indeed, West even points out that

“Fundamentally, men are attracted to the exact same thing in women as women are in men: Confidence. Self-assuredness. Agency. Knowing who you are.”

And that’s true as far as it goes – but it doesn’t go very far.  West projects what women like in men on what men like in women, and she gets it maybe 30% correct.  Because men do like confidence and self-assuredness . . . but they like femininity more.  Sexualized femininity.  We always have, and we always will.  

Further, as so many 30-something spinsters are starting to discover, much to their terror, men are not turned on or attracted to your resume, your earning potential, your romance novel addiction, your devotion to Glee, or the cute names you gave your cats.  All of those things that West says a woman should cultivate instead of beauty and attractiveness, those things that make her a “real” woman?  Here’s a newsflash: they aren’t inherently attractive.

Now for some women who really could care less if they ever have a boyfriend for longer than two months, that’s no big deal.  They have developed themselves into fully realized people, with no more need for a man than a fish for a bicycle.  They have self-selected out of the mating pool, the dating pool, and the gene pool, and for all practical social considerations they are no more or less the equivalent of gender-light drones with a predilection for non-fat yogurt (because they like the taste).  

These lucky women have eschewed the evil patriarchy’s plans to sexually subvert feminism by wisely keeping their legs closed, their cats well-fed, and their dreams of love safely buried.  I have the utmost respect for these women – they are taking West’s advice and are bagging True Love and Happily Ever After for a slow, secure, lonely decline into dotage.  These are the women who have truly arrived in the Feminist Utopia, the women who, as West advises, “have to quit defining ourselves solely in relation to dudes.”  Congrats, ladies: you’ve arrived!

But for a few other women, who can’t quite seem to get rid of the idea that an intimate relationship with a man might be a good thing, y’all are screwed.  Because if you keep following advice like West’s, then you’ll become the lady described above by default.

Let’s keep reviewing where she’s going with this:

“Any man who is a person wants to be with a woman who is a person.”

While I can’t help but feel a little thrill that West is willing to concede that men can actually be persons, as opposed to, y’know, just MEN, this is an utterly simplistic and singularly unhelpful piece of advice.  Yes, men do want to connect with women on an intimate, emotional level (which we also understand is a Big Deal to women, in aggregate).  But before we feel comfortable doing that, we want to know if they’re going to be able to fulfill our sexual desires, because just as a deep emotional connection is a primary Big Deal to women, an entertaining sexual connection is a Big Deal to men.

What?  You didn’t realize that?

Really, ladies, sex is a major priority for a dude, and if there’s no chance of sex or sexual attraction, it doesn’t matter what you name your cats or who you think is going to get knocked out of Dancing With The Stars next week, you've already missed the cut.  Does that sound harsh?  Oppressive?  Sexist?  Chauvinistic?  So sorry.  Now you know what if feels like when a dude hears “so what do you do for a living?” knowing that if he doesn’t wave his metaphorical tits around and they aren’t big enough, he’s missed the cut.  Women, as feminists who look at romance, sex and love often tell us, have standards.  Standards that shouldn’t be lowered, out of respect for themselves and their self-esteem.

But y’all really don’t like it when you find out that Men have standards, too, and that some of y’all really just don’t measure up to them.  Oh, some of you do – at first – and a very few of you are doing outstandingly, but the rank-and-file office drones who felt a career was more important than babies, y’all are working at a severe handicap to begin with.  You have placed yourselves in the “strong, independent woman” category and then wonder why no one emails you back on Match.com.  Because feminism told you that men liked strong, independent women, and if a man didn’t, then he wasn’t worth loving.

Only it didn’t work out like that, did it?

This is the brutal fact of feminism, ladies: it lied to you.  It has become the Great Rationalization Hamster, handing you darn good reasons for why you are so miserable, and guess what?  Feminism says it isn’t your fault!  That's what West's piece says.  It's not your fault.  It's teh Mens.

Sure, men will lie to you about how hot we think you are, how interested we are in what goes on at work, and whether or not we’d ever leave you if you got fat and bitchy, but we rarely lie to you about anything important.  We’re quite clear about what we like – it’s no mystery.  But feminism lied to you about what we would do when you went and altered the balance of power in the dating realm.  Feminism thought it had a lock on what men really wanted without, apparently, consulting any actual Men about the issue.

Look at what kind of man West says is going to find you:

“Attraction isn't intellectual, it's involuntary—and if men really only wanted to squirt their penises inside of silent supermodels, then regular people would be extinct. But look to your left. Look to your right. Regular people in the house!”

That is, “there are gullible Beta dudes all over the place willing to lower their standards for a chance to sleep with you and fake the Happily Ever After thing!”  Only West can’t quite bring herself to say that, because then she would have to acknowledge the reality of the situation, that the “regular people” who just happened to be male who these “regular people” who just happened to be female want to mate with are fed the fuck up with what the regular female people have put them through for the last few decades.  I mean, if men were happy with the way the feminist male-female paradigm was working, then there wouldn't be a need for the Manosphere.  

Yet here we are.

And West can’t resist taking yet more misguided potshots at teh Mens – after calling us liars, she decides to soothe our hurt feelings by emasculating us if we don’t capitulate to feminist whims about who we should want to fuck.

“…because confidence is also the opposite of helplessness, and a lot of men (insecure men) need women to be helpless, because helpless people aren't in charge. And people in charge want to stay in charge. And the people in charge are men. (To be clear, I'm talking in broad, sloppy, systemic generalities here—not saying your dad is secretly trafficking lady-slaves from Belarus or something. You know what I mean.)”

Gosh, that’s noble of you, Ms. West.  So teh Mens are insecure and need women to be helpless, right?  Because we want to re-establish the patriarchy and get y’all barefoot and pregnant again?  Because we can’t handle strong, independent women and we’re afraid of them?

In reality . . . not so much.  

The real fact is, Ladies, that women’s sexuality in aggregate (and I hate to use broad, sloppy, systemic generalities here, but…) is designed by Nature or evolution or God or whatever to be reactive or responsive in nature.  Women tend to have responsive desire, most of the time.  Men have spontaneous desire most of the time.  No, really.  This feminist sexologist says so.  And while she qualifies her theories by making all of her statements gender-neutral (“some people have responsive desire, some people have spontaneous desire”) the plain fact of the matter is that most women have a responsive desire as the basis of their sexuality, while men have spontaneous desire.

And the problem with that is that it challenges the whole ideological basis of feminist theory when it comes to sex and gender relations.  Women, feminism says, are naturally sexual creatures who have every right to enjoy their sexuality to the fullest extant possible, and rightly so.  But it also assumes that male and female sexual desires are (pardon the expression) equal in composition and expression, and that’s very much pre-WWII scientific thinking.  Feminism has assumed that men want the same things out of our sexual and romantic lives as women, and anything beyond that is blatant, oppressive Patriarchy, not the healthy exercise of (whisper it)  masculine sexuality.  Feminism says that men and women should approach each other sexually on a level, equal playing ground.  The problem is, that equal playing ground is a myth, it doesn’t exist, and it can never exist while we remain slaves to our own biology.

It wouldn’t be the first time a powerful 20^th century ideology fell when its fundamentals were challenged by the reality of the world, or else we’d be living in a Marxist Worker’s Paradise by now, Comrade.  Feminism wants to cling to the beautiful humanistic ideal of all people being equal, which is great when it comes to the law and civic responsibility and such, but when feminism further says that women’s issues are more important and of greater weight than men’s (and there is no place where this is more pronounced than on the subject of dating, sex and romance) then it has lost any intellectual credibility it may have had.  When feminism uses its ideology to validate the idea of the eternal feminine victim and the eternal masculine oppressor without acknowledging the underlying differences in male and female sexuality which may underpin these memes, then feminism goes from being a noble attempt at humanistic equality to a gynocentric ideology dedicated to promoting the exclusive interests of women, regardless of the consequences.

If West’s bitter cry against teh Mens and their nasty penises seems filled with irony, that’s because it is.  The current perspectives of men in the dating world were informed first and foremost by feminism.  It’s the environment in which we grew up, the standard by which our entire lives were judged.  If it’s painful that men in aggregate are now recoiling in horror from everything associated with feminism, then you can assume it’s because we feel deeply wounded by it.  After all, feminism has done very, very little for the lives of men (outside of hypergamous divorce and bitter custody battles, the systematic denigration of masculinity and fatherhood, and the overt war on men and male sexuality...but the easy pussy is nice).  But it has affected us, in a very negative way, and y’all are just going to have to take that into account in your Happily Ever After calculations.

West continues,

“because attraction is involuntary, admitting genuine attraction to the people we're really attracted to relinquishes a huge amount of power. It's terrifying. And when the people you're so terrifyingly attracted to don't even give a shit about you? QUICK, TELL THEM THEIR CALVES ARE TOO HEAVY.”

Of course that goes for dudes, too – if an Omega or a brave Beta screws up the courage to ask an attractive woman out and gets scorned, it really is terrifying.  Soul-crushing, even.   Suicides and lone-gunman tragedies have sprung from the font of such rejection.  So the perfectly normal, natural, and appropriate response for men in that situation is to distance themselves from the source of the wound and objectify the person who wounded them so badly.  

Sorry if that makes us seem “insecure” in your eyes, but as West pointed out attraction is involuntary.   We dudes like hot women, pretty much universally.  When we get rejected by them, then pointing out their physical flaws is the moral equivalent of a woman telling a girlfriend “he looks like an axe murderer, anyway” after being snubbed by a dude.  

And which would you prefer to be referred to as, “thick calves” or “axe murderer”?

Since West can’t realistically argue in favor of women lowering their personal standards, she goes the other direction and discredits the idea that physical attraction really matters to dudes:

“All the faux-evolutionary excuses people give for modern beauty ideals (gigantic boobs means more milk for cave-babies! A tiny waist means a bigger uterus!) are garbage.”

That’s it.  Garbage.  Evolutionary biology, the incredible amount of work that has been done by biological anthropologists and sociologists, anatomists and sexual psychologists, all that grant money and books and  brilliant ideas about how men and women got to be men and women . . . garbage.  The evidence she cites?

Third-wave feminist Naomi Wolf’s book The Beauty Myth, the premise of which is “that "beauty" as a normative value is entirely socially constructed, and that the patriarchy determines the content of that construction with the goal of reproducing its own hegemony.”

See?  That evil ol’ patriarchy, at it again.  Teh Mens. 

The problem with this theory is that ignores something fundamental to the “beauty myth”: the role of the Female Social Matrix in the construction of this “myth” that dudes are attracted to attractive women.  Even those lucky ladies who have checked out of the dating game still dress up and wear make-up and do all of those other things that they complain are supposed to attract men even though they aren’t trying to attract men.  They do it out of a sense of social pressure, not from their male colleagues but from the intense pressure of the Female Social Matrix. 

The Third Wave feminist argument is that the only reason women have to do that is because they are, indeed, still fighting the patriarchy’s powerful hegemony.  But the cold, obvious, and plainly observable fact is that after forty years of heavy female involvement in the workforce, including their ascension into management roles in business and power politics, if women wanted to change the dominant female culture away from catering to the Female Social Matrix, they would have already.  Just like if trickle-down, supply-side, low-government involvement policies made everyone rich and prosperous, then the Bush II years should have been the greatest economic expansion in American history.  

Only . . . not so much.

Feminism doesn’t want to acknowledge the power of the Female Social Matrix because then they would have to take responsibility for it, and that betrays the essential foundation of feminism: “It’s not our fault!” and they can’t have that.  Instead they rationalize the powerful pressure that women put on each other as a result of the evil patriarchy, and that excuses pretty much anything without all of that pesky accountability. Go Great Hamster, Go!

This is where Game comes in.  Those who have taken the Red Pill recognize immediately Ms. Wolf’s hamhanded attempt to summarize natural female attraction to men:

“Here is what I will cop to in terms of our primordial human standards of beauty. To bag an early-man, you probably needed:

1.       Most of your limbs.
2.      Minimal open sores.
3.      A baseline level of health and robustness to be able to care for a child and/or defend it from lions.”

Talk about high standards . . . basically she’s saying “if you’re alive and have a functional vagina, you’re gonna be a catch to the primitive mens!”  All ideas of beauty and attractiveness follow from that basic premise, apparently. And if that’s the basic assumption that feminists are using in trying to date, I suppose that it’s no wonder that they’re railing against the unfairness of it all.  Aren’t dudes supposed to think you’re hawt just because you got ladyparts?  Regardless of whatever else they're attached to?  What the fuck is THEIR problem? 

And then West goes here:

“We, as women, go our whole lives believing this lie that all we have to do is to stop being too fat and too flat-chested and too bitchy and too uptight, and then the perfect dude will finally love us forever.”

Well, at least she gets that part right.  That IS the lie.  Because the Perfect Dude’s standards are going to be much higher than “skinny, boobs, laid-back and polite” (although that isn’t a bad place to start).  As any serious student of Game will tell you, the actual standards the Perfect Dude uses to decide if you made the cut for the “love me forever (until I get bored and divorce his ass)" category are far, far higher than women, particularly feminist women with delusions of allure, ever want to admit.   (Hint: they rarely include "feminist activist" in the criteria--ever known a feminist to celebrate twenty-five happy years of marriage?)  And this is where West finally decides to at least mention the Female Social Matrix that is the real evil she’s railing against:

“But chasing that stupid phantom doesn't make us necessary—it makes us disposable. It makes us powerless. Because we're not people anymore, we're holes. Miserable, back-stabbing holes.”

That’s right, ladies.  That’s the Ugly Secret.  That's the gift of the feminist utopia: once feminism and industrialization gave you a means to support yourself independently - thus removing the requirement of a husband for procreation and support while simultaneously turning potential suitors into mere professional business competitors - once your willingness to make “a permanent commitment” turned into serial monogamy fueled by hypergamous divorce, once you had total control over your reproductive freedom, while empowering you to become centers of power and influence in society in general, feminism placed you in a position where your only real value to men anymore as a woman was your sexuality.   

You want the Happily Ever After and the True Love, and boo-hoo when you can't find it on your doorstep, but the sad fact of the matter is y’all killed that, not us.  When you made yourselves independent worker drones competing for the same income as we, with no desire to form a lasting, working interpersonal partnership, you pretty much made your vaginas the only reason to engage you in any conversation beyond office gossip. 

 West’s suggestion – that you give up on the idea of love and a commitment with a quality man in favor of self-indulgence and a fear of “settling” – is a noble one.  Of course your feminist sisters want you to do that, because within the frame (and according to the rules) of the Female Social Matrix, if they can convince you to do that, they have therefore decreased competition for the few decent males out there... and all in the name of Sisterhood.

Red Pill folks know exactly what’s going on here, of course: it’s the same female-sabotage used so often within the Female Social Matrix, like when a girlfriend helpfully suggests that cutting all of your hair off will make you “cute”, or that you should dump your boyfriend because he isn’t good enough for you (but two months later he’s suddenly good enough for her).  It is the Female Social Matrix, not the evil patriarchy, that makes them “disposable”, “powerless”, “miserable, back-stabbing holes.” 

West quickly compounds her misdirection with this:

“There's this dumb, deathless stereotype that women only chase men who don't need them—but, um, that's because everyone wants someone who doesn't need them.”

Again, Ladies, recognize the Great Rationalization Hamster in your feminist sisters.  She’s trying to get you to rationalize away your desire for the Perfect Dude by telling you that if you pursue the Perfect Dude, you’re just hurting yourself and all womankind.  She’s trying to tell you that you and your peers aren’t really trying to get the hunky billionaire with the kinky BDSM silver tie fetish, you just want a nice Beta dude who will dote on you and not mind how fat you get. 

Only it’s not a “dumb, deathless stereotype”, it’s an easily observable fact that we’ve all seen over and over again.  It's been a staple of the human condition going back into prehistory, from what our myths indicate.  But she's not quite right: it's mostly women who want someone who doesn't need them.  Men need to be needed.  It enhances their masculinity.  If you don't need a man . . . you probably won't get one.

THAT'S what West is not telling you (because she either doesn’t know, doesn’t want to believe it, or doesn’t want her readers to know): most men really do want a woman who needs them, without being needy.  

Important distinction.

Men don’t want “helpless”, despite West’s hyperbole.  Helpless sucks.  Helpless equals "high maintenance".  Helpless might be attractive for its vulnerability (to which we are, indeed, attracted) but if that "helplessness" is sustained over time then we know we're going to spend our relationship wiping your ass for you, and we certainly don't want that.  "Helpless" means "flaky", and to the 21st Century man, Ladies, "flaky" is the new "fat".

There is a whole continuum between helpless and hyper-competent, and as men we both expect and understand that you probably fall somewhere between those two extremes.  We don't want you "helpless" so that we can rule your every thought and action -- and West does a disservice to you by putting it in those terms.  We want you to need us, or we don't see much point in a relationship.  That's different from wanting you helpless.  Feminism has always done that, encouraging you to develop the skills you need so you don't need a man.  Competence brings independence, and the more competent you are, the more independence you enjoy.  

But if you’re so damn competent and independent, why the hell do you need a man?  Entertainment?  “Emotional support?”  Combat dating fodder?  To use the status of having a relationship to improve your position in the Matrix?  Sex?  Just to get your mother off your back? Be honest, now.

Because that’s what all those guys who have been rejecting you have been thinking, and frankly those reasons are all in all an insufficient basis upon which to base a lasting partnership (although we're still interested in the sex, if it's decent).  Feminism tells you that men are (or should be) attracted to competent, independent women, and that by demonstrating your competence and your independence you are demonstrating your value as a mate to that man.  

However, once again feminism has failed to take teh Mens into account.  

Because we don’t see a sharp resume, owning your own condo, and making partner by 35 as droolworthy or even particularly attractive.  On the contrary, when we’re thinking “who do I want to spend the rest of my life with?” our highest priorities are not financial security – that’s y’all’s bugaboo, not ours.  Nor is it your pleasing personality and agreeable disposition, although that is a factor.  West mistakes a male desire for an agreeable, exciting and respectful woman who genuinely needs him for a desire for “helplessness” – and the plain fact of the matter is that MOST men cannot STAND a helpless woman. 

But if you don’t need us, that's a problem because . . . well, men need to be needed.  We're not in a relationship to be an accessory or a side-kick.  If you’re that independent we know that you’ll make a great co-worker, but a lousy girlfriend or wife -- we know that up front, thanks to forty years of observational data.  That’s the current conventional male wisdom.  You might even be a decent lay, but if we try to make it permanent, what compelling reason outside of children and our ability to entertain you is there for us to marry you?  Or make any commitment, really?  

Men are not accessories, Ladies, and after forty years of treating us as such, we’ve figured out that the less you need us, the more likely we are to find ourselves on the wrong end of a divorce suit.    We’d rather just keep hooking up with random desperate chicks for casual sex than risk that, thankyouverymuch.  

I’m guessing West doesn’t explore this idea too carefully because it would derail the Great Hamster of feminism.  If she admits that teh Mens have a role in this equation that feminism cannot control, then she has to start examining why, and then the whole house of cards that is the intellectual underpinnings for feminist ideology would have to be examined.   If the Creationists have taught us anything it's that when ideology collides with Reality, Reality is rarely the damaged party.  

So West just ignores the fact that maybe men should get a say in the whole thing, and snorts in disgust at both teh Mens’ awful insistence on having their own standards and her fellow feminist sisters’ willingness to sacrifice their personhood for the chance of not dying alone, childless, and unloved. 

What West is doing in the post is no less than advocating a perpetual Betahood among both men and women, one in which actual sexual competition disappears under the bland promise of the contentment serial monogamy is supposed to grant.  And while she disguises it as a rallying cry around a “dating manifesto”, it’s really not all that hard to see what she’s doing from a Red Pill perspective.

She wants her fellow women to essentially "let themselves go" and quit trying so hard, because if they do just relax and “be themselves”, then Mr. Perfect Dude will see the “real” woman under the make-up and stylish-but-affordable fashions and fall madly in love with her despite her lack of . . . well, anything that actually makes her attractive to him. 

Here's what feminism tells these poor ladies:  

Feminism says that he’ll love her just for HER, just like in the romance novels; that all of her flakiness and idle whims and shit tests and unreasonable demands will be considered adorable little idiosyncrasies by this mythical Perfect Dude, not the male-repellent they actually are.  

Feminism says that he’ll love her and want to marry her and he’ll be happy to clean house and do laundry and heck, he’d even have the babies for her, if he could.  He’ll love her AS A PERSON first, and as a woman second, and as long as he does the former it won’t really matter that the latter is highly dependent on a number of factors.  

He won't want to have sex with her unless she wants to have sex first and has her ass properly kissed to her heart's content.  Feminism says he will stay faithful to her (despite the fact that it has never been easier for a man to cheat or have more compelling reasons to do so) purely out of respect for her as a person, and that if she cheats then it was probably his fault, too.  

Feminism says that because he’s a (Beta) PEOPLE that he should and will love her because she’s a PEOPLE.  And PEOPLE, you see, just naturally love each other without any conditions, preconceptions, logic or reason, says feminism with no rational basis for drawing that conclusion.  

Feminism says that men will love you when you boss them around, get fat, and systematically emasculate them.   That makes sense, doesn't it?  

Suspicious yet?

And this is the kicker: Why should you ignore the reality of the Sexual Market Place, ladies, and wait for Mr. Perfect Dude to fall in your increasingly shrinking lap?  Here’s what Ms. West suggests:

“Do what you want and you'll get what you want. Giving up on other people's expectations isn't settling—it's demanding what you fucking deserve.”

That's why, ladies.  Because you deserve it.  You are entitled to Mr. Perfect Dude.  Prince Charming.  Billionaire Vampire BDSM Necktie Fetishist.  Not because you have meticulously worked on your presentation and actually given a fucking thought to the fact that teh Mens, despite our evil natures, cruelty and lack of intelligence (according to feminists) are the ones who decide who gets married or committed in a long-term relationship.  You just deserve it because, by Goddess, you have a vagina and you ALL women deserve Prince Charming on that basis alone.  You can just let yourself go, phone it in, and the dudes will be panting at your door for the merest glimpse of your alluring mediocrity.  All you have to do is Follow Your Heart.

Thus sayeth feminism.  

And if Mr. Perfect Dude doesn’t land in your lap because you’re doing what you want, instead of what will attract a decent man, then it’s not your fault!  It’s his fault!  It’s the Patriarchy’s fault!  It’s society’s fault!  ANYBODY but you!

Spin, Great Hamster, spin.  Responsibility and accountability are something teh evil Mens thought up, after all.  They don't apply to empowered feminist women.

Ms. West’s appeal to inherent female entitlement is a ruse, at best, Ladies.  It would be like someone coming along and telling a fat Omega dude who lives in his mother’s basement that if he just keeps “being himself” then eventually some hot pornstar is going to throw herself at him.  Or the lead girl in the pack telling you that you shouldn’t try so hard because you do deserve the Prince Charming you’re attracted to . . . and then poaches the very dude you were interested in (partially because you liked him first).   

Oh.  I'm sure that sort of thing has never happened to you, has it?

Feminism publicly loathes the idea of sexual competition among women and usually casts it as mere catering to the whims of teh Mens evil patriarchy.  It has promoted the ideal of sexual freedom to break the old hidebound traditions of marriage, dating, and sex to fit the new economic reality, yet has rarely had the metaphorical balls to examine the consequences of the revolutionary ideas in the lives of the women it purports to liberate.  It puts all problematic issues of sex and love and dating firmly at the feet of men, because it doesn't want to acknowledge the power of the Female Social Matrix it is trying to hide, or its fundamental role in human social interaction and mating.  Nor does it want to acknowledge the role that men play in pursuit, courtship, and mating.

When confronted with the reality of the new paradigm, where independent workers who just happen to have boy or girl parts spin around in a cycle of hypergamy and serial monogamy, what does feminism have to offer for the sexual reality it has itself created?  It casts the brutal reality of the current Sexual Market Place as a male plot to enslave women, and encourages desperate women to raise their mating standards and blob out because they will have True Love and Happily Ever After just because they deserve it. 

  Feminism, as it has evolved, has become in part the means by which the dominant figures within the greater Female Social Matrix can persuade and bullyrag their competition out of the market.  It pretends instead that all women are created equal when it comes to how men are equally attracted to them, in an attempt to influence the standards of the Matrix within the SMP, and then viciously uses the ideals of dignity and independence to talk the more gullible nodes of the Matrix (that would be you, young, idealistic fourth-wave feminists) out of the competition or into an indignant inaction which freezes their power within it. 

See, if single women can be convinced, in the name of sisterhood and solidarity, to raise their standards and lower their presentations, then the theory goes – mistakenly – that the combined action of many women in concert will somehow affect the entire SMP, wholesale.  That is, if men only have women with low appearance and high standards to choose from, then they will have to forget about things like boob size and hotness and how quickly they think they will be able to get you in bed and they will have to get to know the real you before you permit them access to your heart and your ladyparts.  That’s the plan.  

The leaders of the Female Social Matrix know that controlling access to sex by setting the sexual standards is the cornerstone of their power within the Matrix.  Women control access to sex.

In the past, that’s been a big deal.  During the Agricultural Age, when you had only a few dozen girls in the village to compete with for the best possible fathers for your children, holding control of the sexual standards allowed those at the top of the Female Social Matrix to control who married whom, ensuring their dominance and perpetuating their power within the Matrix and within the greater society.  If they were particularly adept at such social manipulations, they controlled not just the women in the village, but the men as well, all through maintaining discipline about sexual standards.  Only one “loose woman” providing an alternative sexual outlet in the village could destroy their power, so slut-shaming and adultery laws helped enforce that power.  

The Matrix has always tried to control the SMP.  Its leaders would use any means, from the classiest idea of “proper society” to blatant social ostracization to the threat of disease to the judgement of religion, as social leverage to keep the rest of the Matrix in line.  And they would not hesitate to use their influence over the men in their lives to enforce the sexual standard, even if it meant destroying one of their sister nodes in the Matrix, if it meant enforcing sexual discipline.  Just ask Hester Prynn about sisterhood.  

The Sexual Revolution emphasized women’s control of sex – with birth control and liberal marriage laws, the hypergamous impulse could run wild and generally free of lasting consequence (miserable broken-hearted men and the children of divorce don't count).  Women control access to sex, and throughout the 1970s and 1980s men pretty much just dealt with that fact, kept his mouth shut, did the best he could and hoped their next wife would work out better than their last one.  The Matrix was in control in a big way.

But then porn came along in a big way and threatened the Matrix’s control of sex.  So feminism was able to get behind anti-porn voices like Dworkin and McKinnon, even if it meant allying with Falwell and the Religious Right.  And it almost worked, back in the Reagan/Bush I Years.  

But just when they thought they had sex under control again, internet porn was suddenly everywhere, Bill Clinton was getting blowjobs from chubby interns in the Oval Office, and dudes just weren't paying attention to them anymore.  Just when they started realizing that maybe dudes really did like watching Girls Gone Wild more than thoughtful, sensitive rom-coms, the other internet shoe dropped.  

Dating sites.  

Craig’s List.  

Internet Escorts.

Doom.

You see, the real reason why West and her spiritual siblings are freaking the fuck out right now is that the Matrix is losing control of sex again . .  only this time it’s likely to be permanent.  When the SMP is limited to the dudes and dames in your town, and you have only a few dozen realistic competitors, a woman has a decent opportunity to compete within the limited confines of the Matrix for a chance at a decent mate.  But when the competition pool includes every single woman on the planet who can get an email account, and the number who will do anything in the name of competition is embarrassingly high, the Female Social Matrix is in trouble. 

Think about it.  There’s a reason that the median age for marriage is going up, and why a growing number of men have elected to either eschew marriage and commitment all-together, or have decided to pursue a bride from another culture instead of “settling” on what the American SMP has to offer.  Entitled American feminist career women with both an active disdain of and an undeniable attraction to raw masculinity?  MMMM!  Gimme more of that? 

Sorry, Ladies.  They're just too much work.  All of that “play hard-to-get” advice you’re getting?  What the FSM doesn’t want you to realize is that when presented with a mating situation dudes will take the path of least resistance nine times out of ten.  And that tenth case usually means the chick in question is extraordinary in some way that appeals to that particular dude.  That is not going to change.  The feminists in the FSM know this.  In case you hadn't clued in to this yet, “playing hard-to-get” is what the popular chicks tell the Beta chicks to do to keep them in line and under control.

Whether you view Ms. West as a cynical leader of the Female Social Matrix who is using an appeal to feminism and solidarity as leverage against her competitors in the dating market, or if she earnestly believes that women will be happier if they raise their standards, let themselves go, and give up on love in the name of female empowerment, either way is a Blue Pill perspective on the universe.  Swallow that thing, if you must, if you dare, if you think it will make you feel better over the next several decades of lonely nights.  It’s your choice to do so – and feminism has fought for you to have that right.

Or you can shatter your illusions and hold up the ideals feminism wishes you to believe in against the reality of the Sexual Market Place and see which one promises a clearer road to happiness.  That’s the Red Pill perspective.  Just as Ms. West is warning you (and rightly so) that teh Mens lie, understand that – whether she realizes it or not – feminism is lying to you, too.  Feminism is trying to rationalize you out of competing for high-quality men.  It’s trying to distract you from the fact that, while Women control Sex, teh Mens control Commitment. 

You can decide whether or not you want to have sex with us, but only we get to decide whether or not to keep you in our lives longer than a weekend.  You get to determine whether or not we get access to your ladyparts, and I utterly respect your right to do so.  But we decide whether or not to invest in a ring for your finger, your big party, your dream house together, wedded bliss, a kid, a dog, or other symbol of commitment, and frankly we’re starting to realize we need to raise our standards after what we've seen.

And here's the fun part that's driving West and her sisterhood nuts: we can – the competition for decent dudes is steep, and the competition for The Perfect Dude is staggering.  And we know it.  We've seen what happens when a handsome, single, affluent man gets tossed into an environment full of single women with "baby rabies" -- it could be a hardcore feminist rally with fifty percent of the women being lesbians, and you'd still see them fall all over themselves for his attention and approval.  Y'all know it too -- but feminism's only expectation is that it's the patriarchy's fault, and you should just ignore it and let things happen naturally (which is feminist subtext for "back the fuck off, sister, he's MINE!").  

Only it’s just not every girl in the office you're competing with, anymore, it’s every girl (and maybe a couple of dudes, you never know) on the freakin’ Internet, thanks to feminism.   

That includes women in countries where marrying an American man, any American man, say Bob, that schlub from IT you thought about because he was nice but maybe he was a little too nice, and you can always come back to him if things don’t work out with Dave—yeah, THAT dude can be married to a 20 year old Asian girl who is willing to endure just about anything for a shot at the American Dream (and if that includes fucking a pasty-fleshed Beta IT guy rotten and keeping his nice house clean while raising his kids in suburbia, gosh, that might not be too much of a sacrifice for her).  And Bob can arrange that within two months, if he has the cash and the willingness to do so.  In two months, you might decide to hit him up again on Facebook after Dave stops returning your calls and you recover from the ice cream binge -- and discover Bob is on his honeymoon in Maui with Ling Su and don't they just look so happy together?

Or perhaps there’s a poor Central American girl who is tired of working her ass off at a dark and dangerous sweat-shop twelve hours a day making stylish-yet-affordable fashions for norteamericanas to brag about getting on sale, failing to dodge non-consensual sex with her managers, and enduring a bleak future of abject poverty who might just decide that having a family with a decently-employed American man who respects her traditional values might be better than one more week of industrial-powered feminist empowerment?  And all she has to do is put out, work part-time and keep house in the most advanced technical culture on the planet?  

Nah, it would never happen.  Not your Latina sisters.

(Oh God, what if she’s really HOT, too?)

And that’s not even counting your younger, and somewhat-wiser contemporaries who are hearing their bosses and big sisters FREAK THE FUCK OUT about their biological clocks and the conspicuous lack of decent dudes , and therefore have more realistic and achievable aspirations than their more mature single peers.  

The 23-to-25 year old women out there are starting to  realize that their best chances to reproduce with the best-possible quality male mean postponing careers and focusing on finding their own Prince Charming or Perfect Dude – in direct competition with the thirty-somethings who are now suddenly trying to do the same thing.  And when you add in the competition from the thrice-divorced MILFs who are only out to get laid, things start to look grim.

That’s what you are competing with now, Ladies.  You can accept it, take the Red Pill and recognize what your situation really is and handle it, or you can continue to ignore it because it hurts your feelings and lowers your self-esteem.  Allow yourself to by mystified into complacency and inaction in the SMP by your feminist sisters, and consign yourself to a long life of lonely solitude and romance novels while your reproductive and romantic future slips through your fingers with every passing period. 

Because what feminism didn't tell you was that women don’t control commitment in our society, they merely control sex, and sex is now available everywhere. 

Commitment . . . not so much. In fact, feminism has successfully made it endangered. Hell, it's near extinction.

Want us to “like you for you” and not force you to learn about all of those stupid things that we like?  Tough.  That kind of intimacy is now reserved for the women we find worthy, and now that the Beta males out there who you're used to stepping on to boost your self-esteem are starting to wise up, learn Game and appreciate their own value, things are only going to get harder for you.  

You’re going to start seeing a whole lot more men asking “so what do you bring to the table?” (and here’s a hint: your resume doesn’t count) before they even consider sex with you, much less a relationship.  You’re going to see more men not call you back when you flake-out or shit-test them, when you play hard to get or let a perceived slight give you a reason not to call him back.  You're going to find discussions of your "number" coming up earlier and earlier in the courtship process, and an indignant "that's none of your business!" is going to get you dropped. 

You’re going to hear a lot more sympathetic girlfriends urge you to cut your hair short and wait for “the right one” to come along, while they secretly scheme and plot to keep you around in your pitiful state to make them look so much better by comparison.  And its going to leave you emotionally bruised and personally battered, disillusioned and hollow because while feminism may have prepared you for life in the workforce, climbing the corporate ladder and empowering yourselves to live without teh Mens, feminism is not a productive mating strategy anymore.

And if mating is on your agenda . . . you should consider that.  While a perky pair of pumpkins or a well-developed feminine allure or a public demonstration of respect towards a man might seem shallow things upon which to base a potential relationship from a feminist perspective, the fact is that those things are what attract us to you first and you cannot rationalize that stupid fact away without demonizing us.  Not how nice a person you are (if you are), not how much money you make (we don’t care), not how much success you have (we don’t want to feel like we’re competing with our lovers -- sorry, that's just how we are), and not how much “fun” you are when you're spending our money or where you went to school or what your 401k looks like or how many friends you have on Facebook. 

It damn sure isn’t dependent upon your independence.  The “strong, capable woman” might be a feminist ideal, but she repels men like a paternity suit.  If you like men, and want them to like you, being strong and capable isn’t going to get you shit.  Being feminine, respectful of our masculinity and admiring of our character, will.  

If you find that's beneath your dignity as a woman, well, good luck to you.  That young chick over there looks feminine and admiring and respectful of me being a man, and she doesn’t look pissed off all the time.  Best of luck to you and Mr. Snuggles at the cat show.

You see, Ms. West has told you ladies that you can demand Prince Charming and get him, just because you deserve him (and note that somehow she gets to decide what women deserve from men, not men).  

The Red Pill fact of the matter is that feminism only knows how to demand, and teh Mens, in aggregate, are sick to death of it.  We've heard feminist demands our entire lives until they fall out of our ears on arrival now, and we've stopped paying attention to them because they are never satisfied, and honestly we have better things to do with our time.  Feminism has always been about demands . . . never about dialog.  It has always been solipsistically  focused on what Women could demand, what they deserved (without any explanation of just why they deserved it apart from having vaginas), but never a dialog about what would be in our mutual best interest.  Feminists will scream at us, make demands of us, treat us like children, treat us like idiots, treat us like monsters, try to shame us, emasculate us, attack us and our masculinity, but they wont try to fucking talk to us Mens.  

And until they do, and y'all can re-negotiate the greater sexual contract in a manner that satisfies both genders, then we're going to keep not calling you, not committing to you, not proposing to you, and we're going to keep playing video games, whacking off to porn, making jokes about you behind your back, and marrying sexy un-feminist women for whom family, and not career, are the highest priorities.  

And y'all can't do jack shit about it, save rationalizing away our disinterest and growing animosity as us just being evil patriarchs to soothe your own bruised feelings and make it our fault.

'Cause feminism's Great Hamster says that it can never be your fault, and you should take some comfort in that.  

I mean, really, for some of you that's about all you have left.