Monday 2 March 2015

What’s Wrong Over At The Rational Male

let me unequivocally footnote here that women are absolutely capable of a learned empathy and sympathy for men. However those sympathies, like genuine desire, cannot be negotiated for. Whatever your misguided concept is about how Relational Equity should merit a woman’s sympathy or respect, those are only valid and genuine when a woman freely gives them to a man she perceives as Alpha, never as something he’s due.

That comment from this post made a rather large impression on me that it’s taken a while to understand. I feel the same way as the commentator who sniffed “seems a self-defeating statement to me”, but I still didn’t know why it got under my skin.

Then I re-read the Iron Laws of Tomassi and got it.

1. Frame is everything. Always be aware of the subconscious balance of who’s frame in which you are operating. Always control the Frame, but resist giving the impression that you are.
2. NEVER, under pain of death, honestly or dishonestly reveal the number of women you’ve slept with or explain any detail of your sexual experiences with them to a current lover.
3. Any woman who makes you wait for sex, or by her actions implies she is making you wait for sex; the sex is NEVER worth the wait.
4. NEVER under any circumstance live with a woman you aren’t married to or are not planning to marry in within 6 months.
5. NEVER allow a woman to be in control of the birth.
6. Women are utterly incapable of loving a man in the way that a man expects to be loved.
7. It is always time and effort better spent developing new, fresh, prospective women than it will ever be in attempting to reconstruct a failed relationship. Never root through the trash once the garbage has been dragged to the curb. You get messy, your neighbors see you do it, and what you thought was worth digging for is never as valuable as you thought it was.
8. Always let a woman figure out why she won’t fuck you, never do it for her.
9. Never Self-Deprecate under any circumstance.

Compare these to Roissy / Heartiste's Sixteen Commandments of Poon (edited text):

I. Never say ‘I Love You’ first. Women want to feel like they have to overcome obstacles to win a man’s heart.
II. Make her jealous.
III. You shall make your mission, not your woman, your priority
IV. Don’t play by her rules. If you allow a woman to make the rules she will resent you with a seething contempt even a rapist cannot inspire.
V. Adhere to the golden ratio: give your woman 2/3 of everything she gives you.
VI. Keep her guessing. True to their inscrutable natures, women ask questions they don’t really want direct answers to.
VII. Always keep two in the kitty. Never allow yourself to be a “kept man”.
VIII. Say you’re sorry only when absolutely necessary
IX. Connect with her emotions
X. Ignore her beauty: the man who trains his mind to subdue the reward centers of his brain when reflecting upon a beautiful female face will magically transform his interactions with women. His apprehension and self-consciousness will melt away, paving the path for more honest and self-possessed interactions with the objects of his desire.
XI. Be irrationally self-confident: no matter what your station in life, stride through the world without apology or excuse.
XII. Maximize your strengths, minimize your weaknesses.
XIII. Err on the side of too much boldness, rather than too little
XIV. Fuck her good
XV. Maintain your state control: you are an oak tree. You will not be manipulated by crying, yelling, lying, head games, sexual withdrawal, jealousy ploys, pity plays, shit tests, hot/cold/hot/cold, disappearing acts, or guilt trips. She will rain and thunder all around you and you will shelter her until her storm passes. She will not drag you into her chaos or uproot you. When you have mastery over yourself, you will have mastery over her.
XVI. Never be afraid to lose her: you must not fear. Fear is the love-killer.

Rollo is all about the warning. This is the advice of a man who has seen too many bad things happen, and doesn’t trust women, or the law. It’s all about avoiding the downside. And Iron Law 6 is just utterly bleak - unless it’s a point about men wanting something unrealistic from women. When we dig into the details, however, it isn’t. He really is saying that men love romantically, and women love opportunistically. Which is a fancy way of saying that the love a wife has for her husband is the same as the love a shepherd has for his sheepdog. Every now and then he has to issue a remark like the one at the start of this post. Which convinces exactly no-one.

Roissy the player who loves the game. He thinks women need to be treated in a certain way (twenty-five words or less: “treat ‘em mean, keep ‘em keen”) and will respond with sex and affection for the men who do so. His post on the different types of game needed for women of different ages is a masterpiece in its analysis of white Anglo women-with-jobs-in-large-urban-areas, and the tone it adopts. There’s nothing about marriage, children, birth control or anything else here, because it’s quite clear that Roissy is just not in the long-term relationship business, and given that, certain things are just simple consequences.

Rollo is “you can’t trust them, and all your love is in vain”, while Roissy is “love them, but don’t commit”. For Rollo, being in a relationship is a constant fight against her attempts to diminish and control a man: for Roissy, being in a relationship is until she gets tiresome. Rollo’s women are scheming, opportunistic, contingent, calculating, relentless and inexhaustible in their campaign to reduce their men to sexless servants. Rossy’s women are confused, emotional, game-playing, sexual and contemptuous of men who lack confidence and purpose. Rollo’s is the world of the failed marriage, the unfaithful wives of serving soldiers, the gold-digger and the manipulative shrew. For Rollo, women are a burden to be borne: for Roissy they are a pleasure to be enjoyed while they last.

There is a miasma of distrust of women in The Rational Male. It’s never obvious, from the pages of that blog, why men would bother getting married or even have short-term relationships. It’s an endless recital of the thousands of ways that women can behave like assholes, ungrateful bitches, shrews, deceivers, liars and traitors. And that’s just ugly. However true all the examples may be.

And there’s not an element of resistance about it. It’s always about how the Feminine Imperative and hypergamy are protean and invincible, never about how to trick it, avoid it, or generally fight back. And I have to think that part of the reason for this is that Rollo is married, and married men are, unless they can afford the divorce (and from what he’s said about his job, Rollo would get reamed by the Family Court), pretty much hostage negotiators for life and limited to damage control. As a single man, Roissy can walk away. As can all the single men. It's why you will never hear an older lifetime bachelor regret his decision to stay single.

What got under my skin is that the quote is way too bleak, and way too inaccurate. It just doesn’t describe the situation of a lot of people. And that’s for the next post.

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