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Notes -
Just to make a general observation about the gender war as a followup to my comment on the Promise Keepers organization:
I think we can generally observe is that women’s main complaint about men is that desirable hetero men are unwilling to exclusively commit. If we accept this, we can also see that this is actually two complaints rolled into one. 1. The men that are willing to commit are undesirable (icky, clingy, lame, “chopped”, entitled, toxic, porn-addled, skinny fat etc.). 2. The men that are desirable are unwilling to commit. (On a tangent I’d argue that most of the lipstick feminist complaints made in the mainstream media by middle-class women about men in general do usually boil down to the rather similar complaint that 34-37-year-old successful, well-paid, charismatic, tall, ambitious etc. urban men are in no rush to marry 31-34-year-old college-educated middle-class office worker women.)
If we look at this logically, to the extent that it even makes sense to try doing so (which is a valid question in itself), there are two potential remedies for this problem. 1. Focus on the undesirable men that are willing to commit and somehow transform them into desirable men i.e. alphaize the betas 2. Focus on the desirable men and incentivize them to commit i.e. betaize the alphas.
Now I don’t know about you but to me it seems self-evident that #2 has more potential for success no matter how you look at it and yet virtually everyone who makes any sort of recommendations regarding this entire issue (and that does not only include Red Pillers) is promoting #1. No, really – I’ve never seen anyone advocate for #2, not even the Promise Keepers or, for that matter, any other similar group that does not claim to be feminist and is at the same time pushing the nebulous concept of a new positive masculinity.
Am I seeing things that are not there or is this really not the case? Because as far as I can tell, it is. It seems like there is a general unspoken consensus in society that trying to compel sexually successful men to commit to women is a completely impossible, pie-in-the-sky idea that deserves no attention at all; that, in other words, expecting modern women to elicit commitment from the men they are attracted to is laughable lunacy.
The fundamental problem is that female desires are inherently impossible to fulfill. Each woman wants to be the exclusive wife of an alpha male, but there simply aren't enough alphas to go around. If Chad has a soft harem of five girls, and you force him to settle down, then he can only settle down with one of them, leaving the other four in the lurch. Whichever girl that dated Leonardo DiCaprio before turning 25 gets to keep him, deprives all other girls of Leonardo DiCaprio.
From Sexual Utopia in Power: The Feminist Revolt Against Civilization:
Alphaize the betas? Not going to work. Much of what makes men alpha is zero sum; fame, status, leader of men, etc. We are all richer and taller than we were 2000 years ago. Doesn't mean women are suddenly much more attracted to the average man; it just means they keep looking for the top 20%.
Women's wants cannot be satisfied, and we are going extinct trying. Since they are going to be unhappy no matter what, we might as well go back to what worked for the last 8000 years; forcibly pair off each woman while she still young, virginal, and fertile, to a beta who is willing to do the work of building and fighting to support his civilization.
I salute you for quoting Devlin. At some point I probably 'd have done that here myself, but I wasn't sure of the probable reception.
But one is still more than zero.
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I basically agree with you, but I think it's worth noting that male desires are similarly impossible to fulfill. Most men would instinctively like to have a harem of women, adding in a new, young one every few years kinda like the king of Saudi Arabia does. Obviously this desire is mathematically unreasonable.
The difference, of course, is that society does not take this sort of desire seriously. If a man said that his girlfriend/wife should accept him dating others while still remaining faithful, he would get rebuked. If he said that every man should be able to build a harem in this way, he would be laughed at. But fundamentally, this is no different from the situation where an average woman has a fling with a highly desirable man and complains that he won't commit to her. Except of course in terms of society's reaction.
I’ve come across two witticisms on Manosphere blogs regarding this issue.
Plate-spinning / soft harems = promiscuity, as preferred by men; serial monogamy = promiscuity, as preferred by women.
And: the woman’s ideal is a strong man who’s a frightening menace to everyone except her; the man’s ideal is a virgin bride who turns into his personal slut. Neither is one bit more realistic than the other.
Agreed, but I think that again it's worth noting society's reaction. Imagine male and female online dating profiles which expressed these sorts of preferences. Which one would get laughed at by society?
Similar question with male versus female promiscuity.
True. As far as society is generally concerned, serial monogamy is not promiscuity.
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