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In my post, A Guide to Entering the Manosphere (For Women), I touched on how women these days, whether they identify as one or not, are feminists. We are so steeped in our current culture that even though we may not be a strident equalist or believe in feminine superiority, we believe many of the things feminism taught us without even realizing it. I touch on it a bit in my last post in where I believed when I was first married that the wife was usually right in any argument and the husband wrong. I had a great difficult in discovering this was not actually true (at least it shouldn’t be). I actually remember thinking of TV shows like The Cosby Show and Home Improvement and wondering what I was doing wrong.(!)
One of the more common themes I see from women (and not a few men) upon first entering the manosphere is this idea that the bloggers too often write in generalities and that, of course, Not All Women Are Like That. So much so that it has become a joke and has it’s own acronym, NAWALT. What typically happens is they will get angry, say some form of NAWALT, deride the men there and their masculinity and either leave or snottily continue it. It has happened so many times that what will be said is nearly entirely predictable. They are typecasting themselves into the very generality they were railing against.
Generalities and stereotypes are used by human beings for a reason. It is a natural thing we do that helps make our world more simple by breaking different people into different categories (There is more here if you are interested) Stereotyping can be used for good or bad, but either way it is something that we all do. Children of my generation (Gen-X) and later have been inundated with this idea that generalities are evil things and that we should all learn to be utterly tolerant and understanding of everyone. This, I think, is one of the things that has lead to so many womens’ sense of entitlement today. Yet, to even say so many women have this sense of entitlement is considered wrong, even if it might be true, because there will be some women out there who do not have this. Or, they will be different from whatever the generality of the day is. It doesn’t really matter.
What so many women don’t seem to understand is that, first, in so many base ways, they are exactly like the other women out there. We are solipsistic (to varying degrees), hypergamic (to varying degrees), emotional thinkers (to varying degrees) and competitive with other females (I’m not going to say it again). This does not make us bad, it makes us female. Second, the minute they come out and say they are not like other women, they are demonstrating exactly the point that they are, just like so many women who have come before them, especially when they become angry and start to put down the men there for employing those generalities. Third, most of the people who partake in these forums are well aware that NAWALT, only a great many of them have never seen anything different, or they have seen so few different women than the norm that for some, it basically becomes meaningless.
Women need to learn that it will do them no good to become upset at the men (and women) in these parts for lumping them into varying stereotypes. It does no good to blame the men for their life experiences, the experiences of their friends and almost every man they might know. If women want to get angry at someone, they need to be angry with those women that are actually perpetuating these stereotypes. (Vox Day writes about this today specifically regarding men opening doors for women.) Men are simply reacting to the way that so many women act and yet women are angry at men for their reactions. If a woman does not want the men around her to react in a certain way, the onus is on her to change. It is not on the men here to bend to women to make us happy. If we want to be happy in the company of men it is up to us to show that we are different or making an effort to be different. It is no longer enough to say, “hey, I’m different than those other girls” (This makes me wonder if hating generalities is steeped in female competition). We need to demonstrate it. That means that we need to listen, we need to internalize what we read here even if we don’t agree with it, we need to ask questions and we need to be nice. Don’t come to these parts expecting to be treated any differently than your average woman out there today. Demonstrate that you are Not Like That and you won’t be treated like that.
A Caveat: At some point in your travels around the manosphere, no matter how nice you are, you will be derided. It comes with the territory. My advice is to ignore it or continue to be nice about it and ask politely what might be going on. The times that it is appropriate to come back at the person in the same manner are very few and far between.
Paying careful attention to wording is a must. There is no inflection or facial expressions on the net and it is far too easy to mistake and be mistaken, especially in the heat of a discussion. And things can get heated. Isn’t that what this corner of the net is about sometimes.
Great post again, Stingray. This is one of the most difficult concepts to digest, but the most important to understand.
I actually remember thinking of TV shows like The Cosby Show and Home Improvement and wondering what I was doing wrong.(!)
One must always remember that TV and movies are not real and more than likely contain a leftist propaganda message. Many, many people imitate what they see on TV because they believe it is real. On the recent online article about the parents of a boy who let him wear dresses, some comments justified the parents by referring to a movie.
It’s funny you mention the door thing.
Last Friday i went to the department of motor vehicles to renew my sticker for my license plate. A severe generational thing occurred.
As i was leaving the building, i noticed a short elderly woman coming towards the door. I held it open and waited about 10 seconds for her to get to the door. When she noticed i was holding it open she quickened her pace, put a big smile on her face and threw about 3 or 4 thank you’s my way. This little woman of about 60-70 years brought a smile to my face and i proudly told her ‘my pleasure mam’. A throwback to a golden age.
Feeling good about it, but not willing to step out into the sunlight and burst into flames due to the high noon sun (i don’t sparkle), i decided to stand by near the entrance to the mall and read over my receipt to make sure i crossed my t’s and dotted my i’s.
Wouldn’t you know it.. a middle aged slightly gutted, balding man was leaving the mall and did the same thing, held the door open for a mid 30’s woman, a pudgy soft creature that labored like a penguin towards the door. I mentally timed it, and think he held the door open for 4 seconds. The woman practically stormed past him, contorting her body in a manner that presented as little room for pleasantries. If she got any closer, it would have looked like a body check in hockey.
No thank you, no acknowledgment.. pure revulsion. I couldn’t tell whether or not it was disgust on her part for him holding the door for her, or entitlement in thinking he didn’t hold the door back far enough to grant her girth a wider berth to proceed through. In any case i was thinking to myself.. “wow.. that’s the 35-45 year gap in action”.
But i also have to wonder if looks have anything to do with it. I wonder if it was someone like Tom Cruise, Magic Mike or myself (hehe) that was holding the door open for that land beast, would her attitude have differed?
For myself personally i open doors and hold them for all strangers. 95% of the time i get thank yous or acknowledgements. 4% of the time i get silence, to which i loudly proclaim ‘YOU’RE WELCOME’ as they walk away, just to drive it home. 1% is where i get the snootyness, and that’s when i tell the person to kindly walk back out the door and close it on them to let them experience the joy of opening the door for themselves as i watch with the biggest $#!7 eating grin on my face. Some lively debates have ensued 🙂
I’ll only hold the door open for groups I know, for the elderly, people with arm loads of things, and attractive women. Otherwise it isn’t worth going out of my way for someone that I don’t know and have no investment in.
Stingray, if you haven’t seen it yet, my newest post was on the kind of silly Rom Com generalities people make. I was kind of thinking of the discussions you’ve had here about irrational behavior when I wrote it, but not specific enough to link.
Then you go and mention the Cosby Show and Home Improvement. Haha.
(by the way, if you like Tim Allen and home improvement type shows, his new show on ABC is hilarious in watching him deal with a household of women instead of all boys)
Also, I will say that this is why I love the midwest and living in Chicago. There are relatively few women that get angry at you treating them like women in small ways like this.
Now, as to the bigger ways…. Well, feminism has sunk its teeth into that piece of meat. Tread with caution.
” It is no longer enough to say, “hey, I’m different than those other girls” (This makes me wonder if hating generalities is steeped in female competition)”
Some writers (Rollo Tomassi, I think) are of the opinion that men do this as well, to impress the girls 🙂 “I’m different from most men, who are jerks as you say, date me!”, not realizing they are one of the many niceguys. This is where white knights and manginas come from. Now I wonder if there is a female manosphere version of those.
“For myself personally i open doors and hold them for all strangers. 95% of the time i get thank yous or acknowledgements. 4% of the time i get silence, to which i loudly proclaim ‘YOU’RE WELCOME’ as they walk away, just to drive it home.”
i’m glad i’m not the only one. i held the door for a younger woman once(20’s) who was slurping down a frappe’ or whatever the hell they are, and as she scurried past me in silence, i yelled, “HEY!!” she stopped and looked at me and said, “yeah those make you fat.” and walked away. lol.
Thank you for saying this. I meant to in the post and forgot to put it in. This is so very true. Editing posts for how someone else might read it is important. I know a lot of people don’t like smileys. They’re not my favorite either, but I will use them. I am a playful person with a wicked sense of humor. The smileys let me mess around and let others know I’m just poking fun.
Also, when trying to figure out a concept that might sting a bit, be very careful. I have rewritten comments 3-4 times because I’m upset about what was written. Me being upset doesn’t mean it’s untrue. In these cases I always try to ask questions to get more information. It doesn’t do anyone any good to be angry. When in complete doubt, say in the comment, “this may sound angry but I am truly wondering about this. Will you please explain further.” I’ve never been met with anything other than politeness and it’s the same for the other commenters I have seen do this.
That is why when I first realized what was going on I wanted to bang my head against a wall. I have always been taught that TV and movies are not real. However, these little messages still made their way in. It’s not enough to tell kids and others that TV is not real, one has to point out the little ways and the bigs ways it’s fake. The little messages slipped right past my radar. I think that is the case for the majority of us.
I sit down with my girls and tell them how some of the things they watch aren’t real and they HATE it, but they understand.
… keep this up, and you’re gonna be real competition for HUS …
Thank Goodness. I hate sparkles. 😉
Wow. I would love to have seen some of those debates. I imagine the joy that they felt upon opening the door for themselves palpable, right?
Heh, we don’t have cable (do we even call it that anymore?). I do like those shows but haven’t watched anything like them in years. I tend to get bored quite fast with most TV lately. I will check it out though. Is it on Netflix?
It seems as if there is a female/male version of nearly everything, although it is not always easy to pinpoint what the counterpoint might be.
I was rolling!
“I was rolling!”
this was my go to line in san diego when a girl acted up.
“i yelled, “HEY!!” she stopped and looked at me and said, “yeah those make you fat.” and walked away. lol.”
*trigger warning* saying this can make you shart with laughter.
“Wow. I would love to have seen some of those debates. I imagine the joy that they felt upon opening the door for themselves palpable, right?”
hehe i embellished a tad… it only happened twice with real b*tches. i could only coax one to go back through the door and when i pulled it shut and smiled she walked back through and called me an a$$hole. no debate, but internally i was laughing like crazy.
the one that didn’t go back through after admonishing me for bothering to hold the door open for her because she was completely capable of getting the door herself, replied to my asking ‘So i shouldn’t hold doors open for ladies?’ by saying ‘No’. I think i responded with something to the effect of ‘So why are you so upset that i held it open for you? You’re about as unladylike as they come…’
I think her language after that became decidedly unladylike as well confirming my hypothesis.
“hey, I’m different than those other girls” (This makes me wonder if hating generalities is steeped in female competition).
I think so.
Private man has written about how most men are invisible to women. ST once pondered that most men see women “as the same”. So, I think men and women try to do things that set them apart.
“So, I think men and women try to do things that set them apart.”
As far as I can tell, that’s true for any group of animals, humans included. Most group based, socializing animals perform in ways to attempt to stand out from the group as an individual to mates while balancing that against not being so independent to warrant expulsion from the group.
Humans are just weird because we have many possible groups and ability to switch back and forth. Or move. Or change our social standing upwards or downwards enough to warrant a switch in groups.
M3,
You and Danny are on a roll!!
I agree and I also think that women becoming more masculine was an attempt at this. It used to be a woman who could do manly things would bring shock to the men around her. I was/am a tomboy and I still get this look of shock from men sometimes. I got a small dose of it at the gym today and it surprised the heck out of me.
This good look of shock makes women want to work harder to bring around that look on a man’s face again as it very rarely has a bad connotation behind it. It is validating. When that look from a man is a look of disdain or even disgust it’s crushing.
What did you do at the gym today, Stingray? I gotta know!
“Third, most of the people who partake in these forums are well aware that NAWALT, only a great many of them have never seen anything different, or they have seen so few different women than the norm that for some, it basically becomes meaningless.”
This is hard to fathom. That there are some people who have never closely known someone genuine and caring. It makes me truly, truly, sad when I place myself in their shoes.
ps: I always find your reminders to mind my manners helpful:)
Kate,
When the man walked by and looked at me I was doing squats in the squat cage. Did you mean you wanted to know my whole workout? I have been planning a workout post because I love it and really enjoy talking about it.
Regarding manners, I have to remind myself all the time, too. 😉
The part about almost all women coming in and saying NAWALT and then belittling the men in the exact same ways thus proving almost all women are at least like THAT was great. That almost all women will react like that is actually one of the most predictable things I know.
It is weird for me getting those kinds of reactions from people because in my mind when I state something general I am usually acutely aware of an abundance of variations and sub points and exceptions and could probably lecture them for 10 minutes on those variations. I have a very visual mind and will often literally see statistical graphs I`ve read or my mind will make them up as I think as illustrations in my thought process so it is kind of absurd for me when people protest against my generalizations. Although men can tend to take generalizations too far and miss some important individualization we are usually aware of the fact that what we are saying IS a generalization that does not hold 100% in all cases. When I talk in generalities with men I usually feel like it is understood as a matter of course that we are generalizing to a degree that does not hold in all cases. I certainly trust that most men are aware of this when I talk to them. Life has taught me that they very much are.
What we are doing is trying to get to the essence of the thing we are talking about. When I write something about women or men I am trying to say something about “the feminine” and “the masculine” rather than all women or all men. When I read about behaviors of women with extra high levels of estrogen and estradiol (an estrogen) I find that those behaviors match more so with the generalities I try to come up with about the feminine than the average female which has a more blurred hormonal profile with lower female sex hormones and somewhat higher T. I try to figure out the way the feminine energy works and so will try to find a principle that is almost decoupled from all the ways in which women can curb that with reason or will power or habit etc. Having found the way the essence work first, I later will see how it is moderated by other influences and how it varies in various people. David Deida always talks about feminine and masculine essence and feminine and masculine energy (which can be had in varying degrees by people and by both genders) and this lets him get away with generalizing to an extreme degree and still being loved by women who try to get their husbands to come to read his books and take his workshops.
I think men NEED the general. We need to make rules and to have linear clear courses of actions based on generalities. It is just how we function. If we don`t get that because society brakes down the possibility of talking in generalities men become weakened. We also need the generalities because our sphere has been the public sphere and we have had the task of making the law and enforcing it which requires generalities and principled thinking, realism, fairness etc. which are all tied together. By being the gender with the task of making harsh choices about how to set up incentives and punishments and of acting brutal in war we need to be able to ignore the individual cases and say they don`t matter. We need the ability to have a sometimes harsh consequencialist ethic and not give a shit about about individual cases to get done what has to be done. This ties in strongly with the general and generalizing.
Roissy had a post about a study that found sex differences in moral styles. Women had a more empathy/antipathy ethic more willing to forgive someone who according to a principle should be punished if they felt sympathy for them and was more willing to have them punished despite the principle or rules saying they should not if they felt they deserved punishment anyway. The men where more willing to punish according to the letter of the law and to let people off who had done wrong if the the law stated they should get off. A clear case of individual case based morality vs generalization based morality which ties in with the thinking styles and public private spheres. When men say women don`t have a sense of fairness they are talking about such differences. In the spirit of NAWALT I`ll mention that my stepmother has possibly the best developed most consistent sense of fairness of anyone I know and my mother comes close.
I find it highly interesting that in yoga the heart chakra is naturally considered the love chakra and it is considered to be feminine and more predominant in females while the crown chakra, resting on top of the head, is considered the center of universal impersonal love for everyone and is considered a male chakra in its essence and more predominant in males. It seems to me that we have all but forgotten that there exists or ever existed a male moral style. It also seems to me that we have little ability to understand that a morality that cares about everyone and everything and the whole is also based in love albeit an impersonal one that is expressed through how a man feels about convictions concerning fairness/justice, honor, sacrifice for his group or beliefs or higher causes etc.
Note that in all of those the individual is set a side for the general. They are all about putting a side the consideration of particular persons for something larger. Fairness will lead to letting someone of the hook for being mean as long as they follow the rules because following the rules are fair. Honor will lead a man to put aside his own considerations of not experiencing pain or gaining something for what he invests his honor in. Sacrifice for a higher cause obviously means sacrificing yourself for something that reaches broader, something more general.
The failure to see the male pole of morality as essentially male leads the view of males as morally backwards compared to women who have more empathy and love. So she becomes a higher more moral and worthy person he should emulate and learn what is moral good and right from because she feels more for other people. That belief alone is enough to subtly put men under the indirect control of females because men will then take their behavioral cues from women and feel that fundamentally the woman is probably right when there is a disagreement in what is right to do because she is the good and moral one.
People also fail to see male morality as connected to love because it seems logical, dry and head based and so void of emotion and hence of love. Men are also burdened with being the bad cop in their morality having to be brutal towards those who just have to be sacrificed for the greater good for life to go on and so seem like beings of lesser morals even when they are doing good. (The same brutality a man directs towards himself when he sacrifices himself for the greater good). But the fact is that a man will often feel very strong emotions connected to these moral choices. A sense of honor that compels a man to stand for his principles in the face of harsh consequences to doing so can generate intense feeling and a man will often feel intense meaning in doing brutal things like going to war. And intimately connected to those feelings will often be a form of love feeling that is directed towards the higher purpose be it family, the tribe, nation, humanity, sacrificing for women etc. It is also the case that mystics of all traditions in describe experiences during deep prayer or meditation of both feelings of more conventional heart based love and of a more universal impersonal love and the latter is associated with experiences in the head (spreading down throughout the body though) rather than the physical heart where individual love is felt). So when you go deeply into the male pole of morality, there is LOVE although an impersonal general one.
There is a weakness in the male moral style and that is that is that it does not come as easily by itself as empathy and love does. Although there are general dispositions for styles of seeing what is right and wrong one needs a particular moral code, a particular purpose to sacrifice for etc. to really bring this forth. So in the absence of clear way of thinking about what is right to do, about what should be the code for a man men might end up with very little to guide them and so realize very little of their moral potential. Empathy for individuals is more fluid and spontaneous and does not require to the same degree specific guidance.
THe male moral code requires the general and so by making generalizations “bad” the foundation male morality is built on disappears. By making casting judgement in itself and immoral act large parts of male morality is made impossible because so much of it is about judging behavior in order to uphold morals from the top down on a broad societal level. By undermining the general rules of justice and fairness male morality is further weakened. In Norway we have had a bunch of cases in the later years of female politicians using their influence to push bureaucrats and judges to bypass the rules in individual cases the politicians felt strongly about. Rape laws in Australia have removed the possibility for a proper defense because the defense can not question the accuser properly. This undermining of justice attacks the last standing part of male morality.
When men are robbed of their moral code they become drift-less and easy to manipulate, they feel a lack of meaning, they become weak because there is little to stand tall and strong for, they become nihilistic and seek selfish pleasure and immediate gratification etc. etc. Alphas are particularly vulnerable to this process because they have lower empathy but higher potential for male honor based and meaning based and consequence based and principle based morality. People think alphas are inherently less moral and less good than betas which is bullshit. Their genes where formed as hunters in packs that killed mammoths with sharpened sticks. In order to do that every man in the pack had to be willing to sacrifice his life for everyone else. Same thing in war. This ability for the ultimate self sacrifice runs on testosterone and increases as it increases IF!!!! a proper code is provided to give meaning. Think about Japanese Samurais who would kill themselves for failing to live up to their ideals or for having let down others. Those guys where super alphas and the same can be achieved with alphas in the west as well, we just have to relearn how to mold them. In order to do that male morality must be resurrected and in order for that the attack on generalization and judgement must be stopped and then we have to figure out what we actually value that can lay the foundation for male moral codes.
An interesting paradox about the general vs individual is that they both stand above each other in some a sense. The general is more important than the individual because it concerns more people but the general only matters because the individual matters because if the individual did not matter the general would`t be any more meaningful by including more of the individual. So in a sense “male” morality must predominate (in certain spheres) in order for the common good to be served and life to go on but it is because of individual “female” morality that it even exists and so it ultimately is set up to serve the feminine view because without the feminine morality there wouldn`t be any point to the male morality.
Sorry for the monster post but I had a ton to say about that.
“I was doing squats”
I love squats. The energy I get from it feels great.
A squat cage sounds a bit like a medieval torture device, but, sure, I’m interested in your workout! 🙂
@Wudang: That was a very insightful comment for women to get an idea of how men think about morality and love.
Wudang,
Wow, fantastic comment. The timing is a bit odd as well as just came here after watching a video with Maritus about how niceness has corrupted our society and it is the decline of the masculine (specifically in the Church) that has propagated this. I think I feel a new post coming on . . . thank you.
Kate,
Nah. No medieval device. It is simply a cage that holds the bar when you are finished with adjustable (sometimes) bars near the bottom (the part that says powerlift) that are there to catch the bar should you reach failure before you anticipated. That way you are not stuck on the floor in a squat position unable to stand up. You can just drop the bar and stand. It eliminates the need for a spotter should you not want/have one.
Wudang,
So. Do. I. Squats and stiff legged dead lifts are two of my favorites.
@ Wudang
You’ve addressed something that I’ve been thinking a lot about. I might have it backwards from you though. I’ve thought of feminine energy as generalist and male energy as specific. You’ve given me a lot to think about.
I wonder….there’s an interesting article over at No Ma’am. It’s by Chesterson. (Click on the picture of Al Bundy in football uniform and scroll down until you get to the article called “The emancipation of Domesticity.” I think some of the concepts brought up would compliment what you have written.
Wudang,
That’s something to think about. I also remember some study saying women, more than men, comply with what authority wants, even if it means hurting somebody (it was posted on one of these sites.. Will post a link if I remember and find it), although humans in general like to do it.
Still, all morality has emotions at the bottom of it (if it wasn’t, we’d be able to logically deduce from facts about why it is wrong to kill), what you call male morality just seems to be more structured and consistent. The female one is all over the place.
“The part about almost all women coming in and saying NAWALT and then belittling the men in the exact same ways thus proving almost all women are at least like THAT was great. That almost all women will react like that is actually one of the most predictable things I know.”
i don’t even bother with feminists anymore. they ALWAYS have the same argument, same rhetoric. for me, i roll my eyes at them and say, “oh….i’ve had this debate enough” and walk away. they go ape shit.
i refuse to lump either gender into generalities. both men and women are of different mettles. some good, some bad. the women that post here show me that there are still VERY decent women out there. and i’d fight tooth and nail to protect them.
and they KNOW i fight.
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@ Danny
Yours and Dogsquat’s comments on blogs were the only reason that I stayed in the sphere back when I first stumbled upon it. Even though I’m red pill, the contempt and bitterness of a lot of commenting back then turned me off. I suspect that a lot of women who were not red pill took a second look and stuck around to learn because of seeing the positive outlook the two of you have. Otherwise, to a newcomer, they could get the impression that red pill ideas create miserable men and women.
JV-
you know me girl.
and thank you. i appreciate it.
I must say that the generalitites slapped me in the face at first. I think there was one last part of an old me I needed to let go and finding the manosphere helped me do that. I’d already figured out something didn’t seem right just needed to put all the pieces together.
@SR-
I know what you mean about the looks at the gym. When I was working with a trainer for a bit he told me once that I was lifting weights that some of his male clients couldn’t lift and doing some things he couldn’t even ask of his female clients. That was when I began to pay more attention around me. Now that I am doing squats, deadlifts and clean and presses the subtle glances are a little more. I just do it because weight training is how I lost the weight I have so far and I still have a bit more to go. I like the way I feel after a workout, I don’t feel masculine nor do I feel like I’m being masculine. Mr. D likes very much that I work out and I still have a feminine look.
just visiting wrote:
And do think on it! What Wudang writes is the essential difference between the masculine and the feminine forms of cogitation.
Men think in abstractions, universalities, and the categorical. Women think in specifics, proximities, the concrete.
I remember this all the time whenever I am off on an abstract tangent (as is my wont) head in the clouds, the view from 50,000 feet. And for the girls to keep up, they continually try to relate it to themselves or their experiences. “I did this” and “I did that” and “I remember when that principle affected me.” It is the chief obstacle to communication between the sexes.
There is a very good reason for this difference, which relates to the maternal point-of-view. The woman is designed to look out from the household, to regard her charges as the most important things in the world, from self/family to tribe to nation to people to principle to God. Whereas male love begins from the furthest out of the concentric circles, from God to principle to people to nation to tribe to family. The first and best expression of this comes from Plato’s Symposium in which the distinction is made between “love of the good” and “love of one’s own.” Fatherly love versus motherly love. “Let justice be done though the heavens may fall” versus “My country, right or wrong.”
Indeed this corrupted amour-propre turns on the self, which provides the foundation for female narcissism, which is without natural limit, bounded only by force of male will (and his institutions of modesty) and thereby the chief reason for female dependence on men. The game community has a word for this irrational attempt of woman to accrue the infinite to herself: “hypergamy.”
A masculine loyalty to the truth external pulls the feminine love-of-self out of an inevitable solipsism. The tension between the two loves — of the good and of one’s own — is resolved into a golden mean, a tug of war between father and mother.
Mom says, “I will never allow my babies to go off to war! Their safety and survival is paramount!” Dad says, “We must risk our progeny for principle, so that our kids’ future will be free; for a life that ‘survives’ ‘safely’ in bondage is no life at all.” A healthy resolution has the man respecting the feminine love of the specific with the woman ultimately deferring to the masculine love of the general, guided by thumos and healthy conscience. This also explains the feminine propensity toward irrational attachment and a woman’s lurches into emotionalism. (Note that my example mom above gets the exclamation-points.)
I suspect you believe “male energy” to be “specific” because it is direct, whereas the feminine is passive, and therefore seemingly dispersed into generalities. But once you understand as Wudang does that not only are men and women physically different but just as different mentally and psychologically, you will better understand how to get along with men and your fellow women.
Our culture went haywire when we decided that the most fundamental distinguishing characteristic of our nature — our sex — was nothing more than a cocktail of hormones, an accident of reproductive parts, and a merely physical selection of secondary characteristics (one of the consequences of Darwinist faith taken to its unavoidable conclusion). Feminism is predicated on a lie, that the sexual différence is merely physical and therefore able to be transcended through force of cultural will. Watch as children of different sexes grow into their sex: when they are prepubescent, the différence is much more accidentally physical, but even then their divergent essences manifest themselves in behavior — a girl playing with dolls in lieu of family, a boy playing with soldiers in lieu of war.
I trust I don’t have to offer preemptive NAWALT disclaimers here. I am speaking of the feminine and the masculine, not of any specific woman or man, each of whom display greater and lesser sexual characteristics. Of course. Again, the very idea of “NAWALT” is of feminine origin, deriving from a focus on the particular when a general point is to be made.
Matt
Hey Matt,
Off topic for here, but I’m gonna be buying the majority of books on my reading list in the next couple days. I have the whole thing posted on my blog and would love to get some impute/suggestions from you on it.
I must say that the generalitites slapped me in the face at first.
They did me as well. I wouldn’t allow myself to comment for quite some time at the blog where I first discovered game. The people there are VERY unforgiving of women doing the NAWALT and not understanding generalities bit. However, they are all also VERY patient with women who come in and ask questions in a polite way. I didn’t post until I knew I could do so without getting ripped apart. Waiting taught me a lot.
WOW. Good for you. I haven’t learned how to do these but I am always impressed whenever I see people working on them. It’s is amazing to me.
Maritus also loves that I workout and we often go together. I probably have bigger shoulders than some men would find attractive but I am very lucky in that Maritus likes it. He likes it a lot (I have made sure to ask him so that I can back off if it stops being feminine for him). He used to think that toned arms and shoulders were too much for a woman, until he started lifting himself. Now he admires it as he understands the discipline in the diet and lifting it takes to achieve it. I still have some work to go as well, and it gets frustrating at times as the closer I get to my goal the longer it seems to take, but I love it. It makes the journey more fun.
Women worship harmony.
Men worship order.
It’s the woman nagging the man away from the television to go and sit down for a normal dinner … gently asking him to set the table … which makes the guy wonder, not inappropriately, where she hid the bloody table cloths NOW … and he knows he’d better find the bloody things (before she does), or else she’s gonna make him move the bed to look for that squidgy thingy she ‘lost’ behind the headboard.
… and he knows he can retaliate by waltzing into the bathroom … and pour some ‘frothy-salts’ into the bath while she’s bathing, but first he has to call the church secretary to make sure that any faxes from her are intercepted ….
… because the last time it wasn’t intercepted … he got a phone-call from the pastor congratulating him on becoming a deacon, and the meetings are once a week right at the time her favorite show is on television, and he will lead the 5-am prayers at the church for the following week …
… but he realizes his odds aren’t that good in such a venture … so what remains is The Nuclear Option …
He must make a phone-call to Brooklax …
… and Brooklax is a noisy-next-door-11-year-old-kid (with a 12-year-old-cellphone) that screams thirteen decibels over going to school …
And this phone-call must be made while she’s having her beauty sleep :
“Brooklax, this is the school calling ; you must report for remedial maths classes tomorrow”
“Waaaaa Waaaa Waaaaa Waaaa !!!!!”
Hahhhhhhhhhhh
And hopefully she’ll not catch onto this, because then she’s gonna employ Her Nuclear Option :
… and Her Nuclear Option lasts for a month, and once a week Her Nuclear Option pulls a roasted sheep-head from the oven, and then Her Nuclear Option carves me its lips for me in such a way … that the animal is grinning at me …
Her beloved mum.
So he must find those bloody table cloths before she does … but at least he knows he can go to sleep with a wide grin next to her tonight … because she won’t find the place where he has hidden the cigarettes, and then flush it down the toilet …
… it’s hidden in that box of Tampax that she never uses … because it’s from the wrong manufacturer … ha …
Primary suggestion, Leap: buy an electric-ink Kindle, non-back lit. When you have completed reading them, then buy the physical parchment as objects of semi-sacramental worship, to feel paper in your hands as you luxuriate over its tangible wisdom.
I think Robert Greene is a charlatan, but maybe he can be a good gateway into the authors he cites.
Throw all of the evo-psych stuff (Sperm Warz, Red Queen, Meme Gene Jelly-Bean Dawkins) in the trash until you can make your own case against their presumptuous authority, using philosophy and the “queen of the sciences,” theology, to establish sovereign preference in your thinking. Otherwise you will be tempted to set a corporal’s on-the-ground knowledge against the general’s view from 50,000 feet, the perspective that establishes a Wisdom Chain of Command and through which the strategist derives his absolute authority over the NCO’s important but deferential handbook of tactics.
Be careful of translations. In the end you are better off going with the more literal ones and becoming used to their clunkiness, rather than subject yourself to a lesser mind’s interpretation of what constitutes “flow” at the expense of wisdom.
There is not enough theology in your curriculum. If I could correct one facet of my world-class undergraduate education, it would be to study the great Doctors — Ss. Paul, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, et al. — in the proportion that they deserved (commensurate to Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle) while my mind was more impressionable.
Your autodidacticism will only take you so far. You require a learned mentor. Lots of luck, there simply are not many who combine all the necessary qualities. At the same time, you will learn from osmosis just by earnestly diving into these repositories of eternal wisdom.
I composed something of a great books list in a Roissy post some months back:
Lao Tzu Tao Te Ching
Sophocles’ Oedipus Trilogy
Aristophanes’ Lysistrata
Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War
Plato’s Republic, Symposium, Gorgias, Laches, Apology
Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, Politics, Rhetoric, Poetics
Sun Tzu’s Art of War
Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations
Plutarch’s Parallel Lives
Augustine’s Confessions, City of God
Aquinas’ Summa Theologica
Thomas à Kempis’ Imitation of Christ
Ignatius of Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises
Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy, The Prince
Hobbes’ Leviathan
Milton’s Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained
Pascal’s Pensées
Rousseau’s Emile
Smith’s Wealth of Nations
Goethe’s Faust, Maxims and Reflections
Hamilton/Jay/Madison’s Federalist
Tocqueville’s Democracy in America
Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov
Austen’s Pride and Prejudice
Baltimore Catechism, No. 2 (1885)
Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Kipling’s Collected Poetry
Conrad’s Heart of Darkness
Boy Scouts of America Handbook (1911)
Catechism of the Catholic Church (1992)
United States Marine Guidebook of Essential Subjects
Mansfield’s Manliness
Bowman’s Honor: A History
… which was an addendum to the widely acknowledged essentials:
Homer’s Iliad, Odyssey
The Ignatius Bible (RSV)
Virgil’s Aeneid
Dante’s The Divine Comedy
Collected Works of Shakespeare
Matt
P.S. What’s the matter with you? Put Stingray on your blog roll, above Susan Walsh (if not in place of).
Stingray wrote:
Which blog was this? Roissy’s?
Matt,
Vox Popoli. By the time I got to Roissy’s, while I was a little gun shy of the men who ripped apart all women, I wasn’t too worried overall. They is a stark difference between the ripping at Vox’s (alpha game is not as close even) and the more juvenile ripping at Roissy’s.
“Women worship harmony.
Men worship order.”
These two posts by Krauser has some very interesting things to say about that:
http://krauserpua.com/2011/04/13/the-fundamental-basis-of-attraction/
http://krauserpua.com/2011/10/27/order-and-disorder-subtext-to-a-pickup/
Note that there is a link in the first post to a book that he got his idea from.
I`ll be back with some comments another day. Awfully busy right now.
Stingray, can you please remove the email address from the last post. You can put in Sibirian instead as a poster name.
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Haha Matt, I hadn’t read your comment yet but did just that by adding Stingray and taking off Susan. Did an introduction of some of the posts I love of Stingray’s to any of my readers that aren’t familiar with her work, which is why you’ll see the comment section spammed with links from my site right now – though I forgot that this kind of post does that.
Already have the Kindle, as you suggest. I hate back lit screens for reading, which is why I’m actually purchasing most of these texts instead of just finding online, free versions of them. Plus, as much as I’m a starving artist and I’ll take things for free if I need to for monetary reasons, I enjoy actually earning and owning the things I use and value. If I didn’t move so constantly as a 26 year old man working in theatre, I’d buy the actual, physical books used. But if I have to lift more boxes of books for my already bulging library every time I move, I’ll either break something or be the most built man ever.
I hadn’t thought of the clunkier, more literal translations being more true to the spirit of what he was trying to discuss, and thus better at expanding my thinking, so I’ll try and find some versions of those to go with instead.
I’ll probably cut back a bit on the evo-psych stuff, or at least order it after some of these classics.
I am both proud and humbled by the combination of books that I’ve read on your list and those I haven’t. It’s a very weird feeling.
@Leap
Here is my list.
1) How I made $2,000,000 in the Stock Market by Nicolas Darvas.
2) The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara (…it’s a Civil War novel … )
3) The Song of Troy by Colleen McCullough
4) Any book written by Terry Pratchett
5) Any book written by Peter F Hamilton (this link is a story of his.)
6) The Lion of Macedon written by David Gemmell
@Wudang @KingA
So what is the best example of thinking in generalities then ? Perhaps this one ?
… and yes, Stingray … if you can give me a very good example of the specifics of feminine thinking … I shall undress … immerse myself in peanut butter … and then take a swim across the Apies River … where the rush-hour traffic just 50 meters away …
@Sibirian
Those two articles by Krauser was enlightening.
Hat-tip to you sir.
If you are thinking a youtube video or book, I’m drawing a complete blank. If you are wanting written examples, I am going to have to ask you to be more specific about what you are looking for.
“(This makes me wonder if hating generalities is steeped in female competition).”
I believe so. This has to be the reason why snowflaking female commenters in the manosphere so often claim NAWALT but rarely assert, “Most women aren’t like that.” They instinctively seek to maintain a socio-sexual advantage by distinguishing themselves from a large pool of competitors for male commitment.
Great point. *I* am totally, but unwittingly, guilty of that 🙂
It’s essentially the same tactic used by white knighting men: “I’m not like those other (more masculine) guys.”
Houston,
Welcome.
It’s essentially the same tactic used by white knighting men: “I’m not like those other (more masculine) guys.”
Thank you for this comment. That makes perfect sense. There has been another meme along these lines that I have read a couple of times around lately. I can’t remember where I first saw it but another commenter, Just Visiting, has said it. It is something along the lines of “A woman being a slut and giving her self to many men is very much like an overly emotional man giving his emotions to many women”.
JV, you said it much better than I just did, would you correct me if I am wrong? The more time I spend reading the various sites the more I see how men and women are complimentary. We are complimentary in our strengths and in our weaknesses.