The Androgynous Feminine-Virtue Veil

Swallowing the Red Pill is coming to grips with human nature, the acceptance of how things are, the recognition that A is A.  What I abbreviate as A is merely correctly assessing what is.

Because of the internal framing I described here, it was exceptionally difficult for me to recognize the A of inter-sexual relations.  Any evidence that supported my vision that women were sexually attracted to goodness I accepted and emphasized, whereas anything that violated my pre-conceived notions I discounted, rationalized away, or failed to even notice.

However, I’m not a total fool.  Eventually, I couldn’t help but recognize that I wasn’t getting something right.  If I wasn’t quite convinced that women found acting like an asshole attractive, I was starting to realize that there might be some sort of intrinsic connection between such behavior and male attractiveness (even if it were only that successful guys became cocky, thus reversing cause and effect).  I had to face up to the fact that they didn’t like these guys despite their lewd behavior, even if I wasn’t ready to accept that they liked these guys because of it.

But soon enough I had to acknowledge the intrinsic relationship between the male behaviors I frowned upon and female excitement.  This is the turning point for lots of men, when they swallow the Red Pill.  Such men are those who’ve adopted beta behavior for strategic reasons; they’re nice guys not because any particular moral conviction, they’ve just been conditioned to think that that’s what works.  Once they recognize the error of their ways, their false interpretation of A, they modify their behavior accordingly so as to get better results.

For me, it took more than that.

The part of blue-pill thinking I overcame more readily (and the only part some guys ever need to reject) was it’s erroneous A-frame, meaning that I had a fairly decent grasp of what turns women on before I could actually unplug.

But there’s another erroneous frame at work that ensnares some of us, and unfortunately it’s those of us with a strong conscience who find this one the hardest to shake off.  The A-frame of blue-pill thinking is that acting like a man is the opposite what women want, the erroneous G-frame of blue pill thinking is that acting like a man is morally wrong.

What I abbreviate as G is the ideal (G applies to infinitely more than sexual relations), not what is but what should be, not what works but what should work, not what actually gets women hot and bothered but what should get them hot and bothered.

And I was ready to swallow the red-pill A of what works much more quickly than I could swallow the red-pill G of men and women are fundamentally different, they want different things, and that’s good.  Genesis 1:27, some of the rules, our desires, our hopes, talents, and turn-ons are fundamentally distinct.

Of course, all of us believers (and even most secular folk) recognize that A is not enough.  Yes, there is what is, but there is also what should be.

But faulty notions of A will usually skew our beliefs of G.  Feminist culture convinced me that men and women are fundamentally the same.  The genders’ respective desires, needs, communication styles, and virtually everything else differed only insofar as how we had been trained to view these things.  Sure, there were differences like the physical traits we sought in a mate, a bit more aggression for males, a stronger nurturing sense for females.

Nevertheless, I believed that we’re fundamentally the same.

So when I had my quasi-red-pill awakening, it inspired not an alteration of behavior but instead sense of indignation at how we’re not living up to my falsified G.

I had internalized an androgynous ethic, filtered through the Feminine Imperative.  If a male friend of mine were to announce that we’re eating at Applebee’s, I would become indignant.  We’re equals here, what right does he have to tell me where we’re eating?

So I projected such threats to my dignity onto the women in my life.  I knew that she would prefer I just lead her and tell her where we’re going, but I believed that as my equal she should respond to my “taking charge” the same way I would respond if a friend tried to “take charge” of me.  (After all, isn’t that what feminists say they actually want all the damn time?)  I assumed that women who expected such “degrading” behaviors from me had been improperly socialized and suffered from low self-esteem.  I knew what she wanted but refused to give it to her out of principle.  I believed it was wrong.

I saw the assholes winning their hearts, but whenever a male friend described the nasty stuff he did to some chick in the bedroom, I didn’t see biology at play, I saw injustice, a man taking advantage of how an unfortunate maiden had been trained to hate herself.  Although I’m currently of the opinion that women need to listen to more than their tingles (just like we’re sometimes supposed to disregard our boners), I no longer see that tingle itself as evil.  She’s got to sublimate it to other concerns, but there’s a reason she likes what she does.

Indeed, my ethic was not entirely androgynous.  I thought men should be more sensitive and women less inclined towards wanting a man to take charge of their relationships being victimized by men, but I could never quite accept that women aren’t necessarily programmed to see every sexual encounter as a potential relationship.  A guy bangs a random babe and he’s just being a guy, but a woman banging a hot guy was probably tricked into thinking it might lead to something more meaningful.  Part of the reason I was so much more successful when traveling was that I knew that I wasn’t deceiving anybody.  She’s from Edmonton, I’m from Detroit, we’re both in Budapest, and she leaves in two days.  She knows I’m just a fling.  Conscience clear.

(I was able to reconcile the fact that they were having one-night stands with me with my belief in their virtue by being such a “good guy” with them.  I’d often say things like “I really wish this could last longer” and frame myself as a fantasy lover that she’d love to have a meaningful relationship with if only circumstance would allow it.)

But women were having sex with all these other guys who weren’t doing that.  This meant that despite the virtue inherent to the fairer sex, they still wanted to degrade themselves.  Therefore, damn the men who took advantage of them, and damn the women for thinking so little of themselves so as to let them do it.  Did any of these women truly and naturally want this stuff to happen?  Not a chance.

The belief in gender equalism leads to ridiculously ineffective tactics on the part of men trying to impress women, for it exemplifies a frame of A is not A.

Yet the parallel (if contradictory) belief that women are uniquely virtuous can be far more difficult to overcome.  Men who adhere to it quash the positive aspects of their masculinity right along with the negative.  Simultaneously, they pedastalize all that’s wonderful in Woman and rationalize away everything She does wrong.  It’s always his fault and never hers.  I cringe when I think of how reflexively I sided with the woman almost every time I knew a couple having a fight.

In one sense, men and women are equal, for all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.  To believe that men have fallen but women have not is to believe that G is not G.

Thinking that women and men are fundamentally the same renders a man tactically powerless, but to believe also that men are uniquely evil renders him delusional.  Such a man will forsake his own strength, wisdom, and God-given potential to lead.  In his powerlessness, women will take advantage of him.  He either believes that she should be the one teaching him, or if somehow he finds himself in a position of strength, he owes her whatever he can do to help by nature of her virtue.

The man who buys only into the mistaken A-frame will help a girl with her homework and feel taken advantage of or confused if she refuses to reciprocate with some sort of romantic affection.  Once he learns she won’t “pay him back”, he leaves.  The man who also accepts the mistaken frame of G will expect no such reciprocation; he’ll feel grateful for the very chance to help the precious little goddess.  God wants him to serve her.  If she doesn’t see the value of his efforts, so much the worse for her.  It’s the right thing to do.

Only it’s not.

It’s anything but “gender balance”.  It’s the second Red Pill some of us have to take, and it goes down harder than the first.  Sadly, it’s the religious, the noble, the men who want to do what’s right who need it most.

It’s time we learn that if we train men to act in such a way that their virtue works against them, we’ll soon find that no men have any virtue left to train.