My readers usually get to the chapter about the aging dating pool and (if they are single) come back with questions: “Is that really true? Most of the good ones are taken??” And I have to answer, “Yes, that is the reality. There are always some people out there who would be good partners for you, but the older you get, the harder they will be to find.”
One woman (the BitterBabe) wrote of her investigation into the statistics she faces at 40, even in a big city. In the comments to that post I found an excellent summary of one of the men’s movements I’ve been encountering:
As you may have noticed, the Militant Red Pill is a postmodern networking movement that uses economic models as its primary narrative structure. It masquerades as conservative insofar as it lays claim to objective truth.
The Militant Red Pill attracts a lot of high I.Q. STEM/business types, because in the main, modern-day STEM/business types tend to be vocationally educated but not classically educated (i.e. you won’t find a Wittgenstein or a Newton there). Western culture at the moment rewards this type of education materially, ergo, these men, possessing a big piece of the pie, have internalized that such material rewards signify that they are superior and “know everything.”
The married ones simply cannot abide the notion that a masculine man could be married to a high-value woman that he does not have to manipulate (i.e. “game”). Unhappy in their own marriages (often for legitimate reasons), they seethe with resentment at the notion that other men have what they most deeply desire. Ergo they avoid most mainstream social interaction, preferring instead the company of other likeminded men (and a few women), whom they spend much of their free time soclalising with on Militant Red Pill blogs. It is a subculture that has many of the benchmarks of a cult, and it needs to be viewed this way in order to be understood.
I recommend all women become fluent in Militant Red Pill. Militant Red Pill has arisen in response to legitimate social problems. It is Feminism for Men and eventually it will go more mainstream, just as Feminism did. As I have posted elsewhere, there is a lot to learn from the Militant Red Pill about male attraction triggers. Furthermore, understanding their philosophy, techniques, and tactics will enable you to protect yourself from these men should you encounter one IRL.
This explains the “red pill” reference one of my reviewers made, which I thought referred only to The Matrix. There’s another story on the movement here, at Business Insider. Now I don’t think any of these comments are completely fair to the red pillers, but that is what their movement looks like from the outside.
The bitter divorced fathers we have all encountered have similarly organized, and they overlap. The entire online men’s grievance movement is called the Manosphere, a shorthand term for the interconnected web sites where these guys hang out. The trouble with dismissing them as reactionary anti-feminists is that they do make some valid points and ask some good questions. As a not-directly-affected observer I can see that, so I’m trying to engage and understand what they are saying — because I suspect angry tribes of men and women talking past each other are just harming us all and not resolving any of the serious problems of fatherless children, crumbling middle-class families, and aimless young people kept out of stable career-path jobs by economic stagnation and corporatist government regulation. In a time when women are the majority of college students and increasingly dominate important institutions, we still have an unwillingness to confront a reality that young men are now stunted and damaged by control-based public schools who try to force everyone into a college-bound straitjacket. We need to strive for a diverse society where all skills and roles are valued — women who want to stay home with their kids are doing a great service, and so are men who do the same thing. Parents who want the best education for their children and are prevented from escaping bad public schools are being damaged. The politicians who want to force equality of outcome on the sexes are just increasing the sense of grievance to get votes and retain power; meanwhile, the economy slows as people are blocked from pursuing their best opportunities and have their subsidies taken away if their income increases.
None of this political wrangling should stop young people from finding the right human being for them. I have to guess that much of the bitterness and anger comes from people on all sides who haven’t found a good, reliable, empathetic partner. It won’t solve all the problems of the world, but it will make it easier to be kind and generous when you encounter these angry souls.
And in Jimmy Carter’s immortal words, “Life is unfair.” We all start out with a bag of advantages and disadvantages. Women even in supposedly patriarchal societies have always had power, even when their roles were constrained; and almost all men have always had to serve someone to survive. Nearly everyone has a talent or characteristic they can be proud of, and some to be ashamed of. But it’s wise to remember the point from both most religions and recovery movements: you will be happier if you take account of the good and are grateful. Dwelling on the injustices and slights that everyone, without exception, suffers at one time or another won’t make your world a better place.
Death by HR: How Affirmative Action Cripples Organizations
[From Death by HR: How Affirmative Action Cripples Organizations, available now in Kindle and trade paperback.]
The first review is in: by Elmer T. Jones, author of The Employment Game. Here’s the condensed version; view the entire review here.
Corporate HR Scrambles to Halt Publication of “Death by HR”
Nobody gets a job through HR. The purpose of HR is to protect their parent organization against lawsuits for running afoul of the government’s diversity extortion bureaus. HR kills companies by blanketing industry with onerous gender and race labor compliance rules and forcing companies to hire useless HR staff to process the associated paperwork… a tour de force… carefully explains to CEOs how HR poisons their companies and what steps they may take to marginalize this threat… It is time to turn the tide against this madness, and Death by HR is an important research tool… All CEOs should read this book. If you are a mere worker drone but care about your company, you should forward an anonymous copy to him.
The Latest from Jeb Kinnison:
Death by HR: How Affirmative Action Cripples Organizations
[Death by HR: How Affirmative Action Cripples Organizations, In Kindle and trade paperback.] The first review is in: by Elmer T. Jones, author of The Employment Game.
Corporate HR Scrambles to Halt Publication of Death by HR
Nobody gets a job through HR. The purpose of HR is to protect their parent organization against lawsuits for running afoul of the government’s diversity extortion bureaus. HR kills companies by blanketing industry with onerous gender and race labor compliance rules and forcing companies to hire useless HR staff to process the associated paperwork… a tour de force… carefully explains to CEOs how HR poisons their companies and what steps they may take to marginalize this threat. For it is now fairly impossible for any company not to erect an HR wall as a legal requirement of business with the sole purpose of keeping government diversity compliance enforcers as well as unethical lawyers from pillaging their operating capital through baseless lawsuits… It is time to turn the tide against this madness and Death by HR is an important research tool… to craft counter-revolutionary tactics for dealing with the HR parasites our government has empowered to destroy us. All CEOs should read this book. If you are a mere worker drone but care about your company, you should forward an anonymous copy to him.
More reading:
Divorced Men 8 Times as Likely to Commit Suicide as Divorced Women
Life Is Unfair! The Militant Red Pill Movement
Leftover Women: The Chinese Scene
“Divorce in America: Who Really Wants Out and Why”
View Marriage as a Private Contract?
Madmen, Red Pill, and Social Justice Wars
Unrealistic Expectations: Liberal Arts Woman and Amazon Men
Stable is Boring? “Psychology Today” Article on Bad Boyfriends
Ross Douthat on Unstable Families and Culture
Ev Psych: Parental Preferences in Partners
Purge: the Feminist Grievance Bubble
The Social Decay of Black Neighborhoods (And Yours!)
Modern Feminism: Victim-Based Special Pleading
Stereotype Inaccuracy: False Dichotomies
Real-Life “Hunger Games”: Soft Oppression Destroys the Poor
Red Pill Women — Female MRAs
Why Did Black Crime Syndicates Fail to Go Legit?
The “Fairy Tale” Myth: Both False and Destructive
Feminism’s Heritage: Freedom vs. Special Protections
Evolve or Die: Survival Value of the Feminine Imperative
“Why Are Great Husbands Being Abandoned?”
Divorce and Alimony: State-By-State Reform, Massachusetts Edition
Reading “50 Shades of Grey” Gives You Anorexia and an Abusive Partner!
Why We Are Attracted to Bad Partners (Who Resemble a Parent)
Gaming and Science Fiction: Social Justice Warriors Strike Again
Culture Wars: Peace Through Limited Government
Perfect Soulmates or Fellow Travelers: Being Happy Depends on Perspective
Mate-Seeking: The Science of Finding Your Best Partner
“The Science of Happily Ever After” – Couples Communications
As a not-directly-affected observer I can see that, so I’m trying to engage and understand what they are saying
It’s a noble effort, but not one I’m sure they’d appreciate. As you’ve probably found out already, those guys hate “outsiders” regardless of whether or not they’re well-intentioned.
I don’t think it’s such a big deal, though. It can be edifying to watch those cats from a distance, and sometimes one will even be tempted to sympathize with them, but I’ve found that actually interacting with them is rarely helpful for either side.
I’m reading up. They have a lot of interesting ideas and speculations on evolutionary psychology, all in service of a grievance bubble just about as annoying as the feminist-theory, social-justice-warrior one we’re all familiar with. Actually talking to them seems unwise unless it’s at certain reality-based sites.
“… angry tribes of men and women talking past each other…” Doesn’t that sound like Congress?
Kinda! Though gridlock in Congress is less harmful than a decline in families and well-adjusted children….
When I first encountered the red pill philosophy my first take was that it was a bunch of angry guys who hated women. While there are some guys in the manosphere like that no doubt after reading along for awhile I found many actually had some good insights into what some of the problems contributing to the breakdown of stable marriages and families in our culture. Worth exploring with a thick skin and an open mind as its also like an uncensored locker room w some rough language and in your face ideas. As a woman I have learned a lot from them, actually, and would by no means dismiss them all as “men to avoid.”
That’s my view, too. The uncensored, un-PC, rough speech allows men to bring out grievances and vent in a safe space (which makes it sound like some feminist sites!) There’s a lot of excess theorizing from anecdote and ev-psych ideas, but a lot is worth considering and learning from. Understanding both sides is valuable perpective for everyone.
Red pill man here, sorry for the delayed response. Without going into an overlong exposition, “the red pill” is simply a figure of speech; it means different things to different people. In terms of the relations between the sexes, the main message is that women utilize a mental filtering process to determine how she perceives a man’s utility to her. Like feminists, we acknowledge that women love sex, but HOW MUCH they love it is largely determined by this process of evaluating a man’s value as breeding stock. Obviously, we acknowledge that women also place some (overstated IMO) value on marriage, but they qualify it with an assumption that a man’s duty in that arrangement is to jump through hoops and keep a man on his toes, by utilizing subtle psychological games that typically go unnoticed or benevolently shrugged off.
This is the disconnect our critics are unwilling to admit. What we call “Game” is in fact a countermeasure to the relationship strategies women employ on a regular basis. The primary aim is to flip the script back on women, to keep them guessing, keep them on their toes, and keep them jumping through hoops. This is not done out of cruelty or a desire to “even the score”; it’s done to demonstrate that we recognize their games, and are willing and able to play along. Through whichever means the individual finds most useful to him, he eventually develops an awareness and an ability to do his own filtering.
Put bluntly, the woman’s job is to drive up the price of sex to insure exclusivity, the man’s job is to covertly hold the woman in a state of low-level fear of loss in order to insure sexual and emotional dedication, for as close to free as is possible. It’s not meant to be manipulative, because applied correctly, it’s an organic process. If the woman fails to perform, she’s replaced. It’s not for everyone, especially a man with no innate value. It’s merely a strategy; it takes the stress of the “happy wife, happy life” social convention and turns it on its ear. The happiest woman is the one whose happiness derives from pleasing her man.
That’s your entire problem. You only value women as sex items and servants and think women should strive to have your approval,mane you think men should lord over women. You think a woman’s entire purpose is to please her man and a man’s job is to get laid and rule a household. That’s why your philosophy doesn’t work. That’s just the Bronze Age all over again.
How’s that working for you?