A little over a year ago, Dalrock asked me to write a guest post for his site. It was a bold move from the Christian Men’s Sphere’s rising star, and drew a good amount of criticism from some people. To be fair: Most of that was not angry, or felt I was a real threat to their collective wisdom in any fashion. In fact, a good deal of that criticism was not heated anti-Cane rhetoric, but just generally dismissive. I think the threatened ones were right, but the dismissive ones can be forgiven on account of the incoherency of my post.
At it’s root, most folks don’t know how wrong they are. Many of those who claim to be T-ruth-seeking Red Pill-ers have only scratched the surface. They are, by and large, fine with that. The enjoyment they get for feeling more “in the know about what’s really going on” makes them complacent. More than that: They really don’t like the caverns and dark skies and war going on outside the Matrix. They prefer to pretend that they are free thinkers–as if they are outside the Matrix–, but have the additional benefit of getting the spoils within the Matrix. You can’t. If you’re able to code and Game the world and those around you, then you’re still in the Matrix, and there is no freedom within.
For over a year now, I’ve been asking: “Considering that the Christian man is called to marriage alone for sexual release, and that the world is full of sluts (there aren’t nearly enough virgins to go around), how is Game anything but a round-about method of telling Christian men to Man-Up and Marry These Sluts?”
The responses were mostly pathetic. I don’t just mean wrong, here. Wrongness–failure–itself is not pathetic. It can even be noble, and some of the responses were. See: aside from the obvious wrongness of abject fornication, spinning plates, etc. there is the fact that Every modern date, every romantic kiss between people who are not married is essentially a slutty act. Those wives out there (You know, the one’s we think are the good virgin ones?) the chances they didn’t engage in slutty behavior before marriage approach zero. This is how it can be that one man says, “If you marry a virgin you’ll avoid these problems!”. Another man responds, “I did, and she still divorced me!”; while a third is rambling, “Neither of us were virgins, and we’re fine. You need to get some Game like me!”
They’re all wrong because they all married sluts. Anyone not raised in some fringe culture like the Amish or Mennonites is going to be quite sexually perverted. Actual sex acts involving the sexual organs make this worse, and certainly more stark, but, folks: French kissing is a real sexual act. If you don’t think so: Go french your dad and then tell him it’s just a kiss. Watch your wife tongue another man, and then play it off. Take a moonlit walk with the neighbor lady with your arms around each-other’s waists and see if your wife minds.
Sexuality begins in the heart, long before sex. Game writers know this, and teach it to an extent. They coach men to always be looking for the sexual relevancy of every interaction with a potential object of their desire. Then they lie; scoffing at the idea that romantically holding hands is sex, you prude! It sure is. It is the beginnings of sex. It’s like saying that your toe is not you. It’s not the toetality totality of you, but if I step on it, pain signals will shoot all through your body, along your nervous system, and to your brain–which is where the heart is. It is you.
The bottom line is: Christians who promote Game (beyond understanding women’s sinful nature in general, and his particular woman’s overall nature) don’t know what they’re messing with, and don’t like it when you tell them. They call you unreasonable, with a monotonous and unreasoning regularity.
Let’s look at this problem of unplumbed wrongness from another conundrum: If you don’t question why it is that in our society–not just women–but children go to work fully expecting to keep all their earnings themselves–and wonder when and why did this change–then you haven’t yet begun to wonder if we are doing it right.
A good exercise is to try to unpack that, and understand all the implications if we were to revert to a system where unmarried children’s wages went to the family. What incentives does that create? Which are destroyed? How would that affect our job-prepatory system? What would college campus demographics look like? How long would a public school day be, and how many years?
Things that We have Heard and Known 
re: The last two paragraphs
I’ve actually been having similar thoughts. Our entire social structure is so thoroughly corrupted with self-centeredness instead of family- and God- centeredness (even in Christian homes) that we don’t realize that what we are calling good is evil. I notice it most with children, including my own. Every couple of years, I read aloud the entire Laura Ingalls Wilder Little House series to the girls, and I’m always struck by how family-focused Laura was. She never would have kept her teaching salary for herself; instead, she used it to send her blind older sister to a special school. Would our children think to do that? Would they do it gladly if asked? In fact, it would be seen as dysfunctional to even ask such a thing of one’s children now. Therapists would want to talk to you about “appropriate boundaries”, I suspect, if one tried to have such a close-knit family now.
Yep but since the women are all sluts what are we to do? Marry foreign women or go celibate?
@Infowarrior
I think most foreign societies where one could find a wife are as bad as ours. Going celibate is something that not a lot of men are going to do. What do I think men (red pill or not) will do? I think they’ll marry the sluts.
There is a reductionism in Game that makes all men cads, and all women sluts. If you subscribe to Game, women are all sluts because their insides are dirty just like every man’s. They do want bad boys for their badness. They do want to manipulate men for their own ends. They do want to reject authority just because they’re bored. They do want to be deceived for pleasure. “No rings for sluts” is then impossible to the Christian man who wants to marry.
I’m often misunderstood when I say things like this because most people don’t really get Game. This isn’t surprising when we consider that they don’t know what these words mean either: faith, forgive, spirit, or love…many others.
The Game narrative is that there are Alphas and Betas; loosely: winners and losers. If we deny this, then we destroy the main thrust of Game; which is the imitation of Alpha traits to be more socio-sexually successful.
There is also the equally authoritative idea that Alpha and Beta are actually just two different strategies for wooing women; establishing social dominance; etc. There are, in fact, women who respond to pedestalizing; at least for awhile. PUA’s use this strategy all the time; usually in the form of: “Hey, we’re all equals here. Let’s all just have an equally good time banging each other for fun. It’s what cool progressive people do when they’re not afraid to just be real with each other.” It’s the same old hippie-dippie lines and attitude that worked on flower-power girls, beatnik chicks, pink-o babes, suffragettes, and on and on all the way back to Eve.
The reconciliation of these two ideas (winners/losers vs. different strategies) is that all men, are–by nature–cads, and all women–by nature–sluts, but some are “better” at it than others, and most of those who are better at it we call Alpha, and those less so Beta. This is nihilism. It is materialist. It is the worlds’ view of human nature… It’s the Adversary’s view of humanity. The crux of Game is condemnation. And, it’s perfectly reasonable in a godless world. It also works because we’re all aware that we’re all sinners, and we also all want to see sinners punished; to see justice.
But it’s not a godless world. It’s God’s world. Yes, it’s full of fallen creatures who are sinful and dying to commit of slutty and caddish behavior, but they were not meant to, and God means to rescue them if they will allow themselves to be rescued. We don’t believe in “born-again virgins” we believe in born-again life. We believe in a phoenix-like destruction of the flesh that gives rise to a new creation altogether. But we don’t believe in ignorance or stupidity, either. If someone has shown bad behavior, we are to correct it, and call out their sin for their sake; even casting them out that they might be shown the error of their ways.
Christian marriage is not about picking the perfect woman with whom to blissfully spend the rest of your life. It’s about committing to wash this one particular dish because you just really like this dish, and you want this dish to be spotless on the important part of dishes: The inside. So you better value the inside more than the outside.[1]
Likewise, the Christian view of men and women is not of cads and sluts of various degrees of success. It is of either rebellious men and women, or repentant men and women. Like the Game/Materialist/Nihilist/Adversarial perspective: There is acknowledgement that we are all sinners who deserve death, and bad treatment in general. The Christian though must transcend this mud-bound view and by faith accept that–whatever the condition of a person–that person is loved by God, and therefore must be loved by us. That means doing them good. It can never mean doing them evil. (“Forgive us our transgressions as we forgive those who transgress against us.”) From this perspective, a Christian never marries a “slut”, but one of the Master’s vessels that is in need of washing and TLC. That would be all of them.
Where people like Roissy have been useful to Christians is by pointing out that their fear and shame to condemn women’s sins, and that capitulation to progressive ideas on gender equality, independence, niceness, immodesty, hedonism, and self-esteem is wholly UN-Christian. They are not the teachings of the Church or Scripture, and it is evil to enshrine these godless concepts into spiritual law; that is: Into idols.
[1] That’s not to say that the outside can’t give us a clue about what the dish is like on the inside. Cups that are caked in mud on their shells are likely to be so within.
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Yes! I’m really happy somebody addressed this. Kissing is sexual. Period. People think I am from Pluto when I say that a woman should only kiss her husband (meaning no, they can’t kiss their boyfriends…whatever that is suppose to mean…).
“Sexuality begins in the heart, long before sex.”
Yes, “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.” (Proverbs 4:23)
Those last two paragraphs gave me something to think about…Thank you.
Cane,
I wanted to thank you for pointing out the inherant philosphical and spiritual poison of Game. I have only recently stumbled into the “manosphere” and must say that, while there is a tremendous amount of food for thought, I find many of the underlying assumptions/goals repugnant. I recently dove in to the discussion at SSM on her recent post discussing the capability of women to love. My comment was addressing much of what you discussed here. I dont think many read it for what it was due to the length of the comment but hope that some found it enlightening or it steered them toward a more righteous understanding
I think I’m starting to understand your perspective and where you’re coming from.
That said, I think you’re wrong.
Game is an acknowledgement of the mechanics behind social interactions that will attract women to men or signal a man as charismatic. Honestly, I hate calling it game, I’d rather just call it being socially adept and charismatic. A well rounded, interesting, confident man.
However, I’ve come to have huge issues with dating culture. Dating culture sets both men and women up for failure because it is structured in such a way to appeal to the weaknesses of each of the sexes in tempting them towards sexual sins. It encourages men to get a physical as the woman will allow them, and women to shop around for the most attractive (not best husband) she can find. With this set up, it isn’t surprising to see such rampant falling into moral degeneracy. I’ve been there, I’ve done that, and guilty of that sin. I’m trying to find the moral, Christian alternative and it’s much closer to the old courtship rituals that had been in practice for generations.
‘game’ as it is called, still works in such situations.
@Leap
From your overall comments, I think we’re largely in agreement.
First, I really don’t think I’ve ever said Game doesn’t work. Under whatever halcyon patriarchy we want to imagine, women were still sinful, and that sin nature was still attracted to bad boys. Game is about preying upon that.
I’m not mad at the label “Game”, and I don’t think it’s fair for me to come along and say to those guys who have collaborated on Game to say: “You should call it something else.” I can cut out half of Roissy’s 16 commandments, and what is left is true, and good to know. What I don’t get to say is that the rest are “bad Game”, or “not necessary to Game”. Game that does not include seducing women is not Game. Game is a result of, and thrives among, the dating culture you hate. It is part and parcel of it; using women’s “liberation” against them. You said it best:
This IS Game–what I just quoted you saying–THAT is Game. It is using the information of women’s nature (what you wish was called “socially adept”), within the the current dating culture, for the effect of seducing women. The Game that does not result in sex is–in this target-rich environment of skank after slut after ho–simply just bad Game. This is textbook Roissy, Roosh, and Rollo. It’s not me who wants to parcel out the parts I like, and the parts I don’t like. These triumphant stories of omegas who are getting a girl to talk to them? Roissy wrote of a Russian model asking him to sodomize her. That’s Game. And if that’s what you want, then Game is the only way to go.
I want to be very clear about this, because I keep being misunderstood: It’s not that Game and Christianity are two different ways of finding the truth, or that Game is false in that it doesn’t align with what we can discern from our senses. I’m saying Game and Christianity are fundamentally at odds with each other. Christianity means to save cads and sluts. Game means to confirm them to their lusts. It says, “This is a cad and slut world, and it is doomed. It is foolish to not be the best cad you can, and get the best slut you can. “Develop irrational self-confidence. What do you have to lose? The world is going to Hell anyways.” No one who has seen this world, including myself, can argue with that logic if we pay attention to all the evil we see going on around us.
The Gospel though, is from someone not of this world. He said: “There is more to this world that what you can see with your eyes, and deduce with your mind. It belongs to God, and He does not want you to behave this way; no matter how just it seems to you now. You are to repay evil with good, as He who built and owns this world does for those who repay Him evil for good. Lean not on your own understanding.” We Christians believe this person because He fulfilled many prophecies that were given to a people who had witnessed and recorded many, many miracles. Most importantly, He was publicly executed in front of a large crowd, came back from the dead, and this was all witnessed by over 500 people.
“Sitting poolside enjoying the decline” isn’t an abstraction from Game; it’s at the core. Without the decline Game does not exist. It’s the Liberal Revolution’s bubble;. a sexual market anomaly of death and destruction born of unprecedented wealth and comfort, and indulgence.
Game only seems like a box of amoral tools to an immoral people, and this trope is most often repeated by those who have never used most the tools in the box.
I’m saying Game and Christianity are fundamentally at odds with each other.
Yes, this is my husbands assessment. Women use men’s nature against them, men return the same. Lose/lose.
As for game, and plate spinning, etc., I’ve never understood the idea that bedding countless low value (to borrow their term) women somehow makes a man “better”, or higher value. I was certainly no monument to purity, but even on my worst day I didn’t see a human dipstick as anything other than a health hazard, nor did I know anyone who did. Something in that equation doesn’t add up.
@SV
Are you telling me that neither you nor your friends were attracted to George Clooney-type guys? (Don’t get hung up on the guy’s name: Pick an entertainment star whose looks you find attractive.) Part of the appeal of these guys is the fact that they show up in new, exciting locales with a beautiful women on their arms…a woman that is not you, but yet you imagine you would enjoy the experience. The trick that women pull on themselves is choosing not to consider the sexual aspect. (“Oh, I wouldn’t do that! I’m just here for the experience.”) They focus on the environment of the fantasy (movie stars, Cannes, Italian villas) and then allow themselves to be swept into it. After all: How bad an experience could sex with a movie star in an Italian villa be?
At the local level, this might look like guys with names like “Jake”, who drive motocycles/big trucks/rollin-on-dubs, and hang out at the coolest digs in town. It’s not a problem for girls to see Jake with a new girl every three months; as long as they don’t see Jake mugging-down with the girl of the quarter in public. Until he makes that mistake: He cuts a very romantic figure.
If this does not sound like you or your friends, then you all are rare creatures.
“mugging-down”
What does that mean, exactly?
[CC: Making-out; swapping-spit; slap-n-tickle…you know: mugging-down.]
Ah, thanks for the explanation.
Part of the appeal of these guys is the fact that they show up in new, exciting locales with a beautiful women on their arms…a woman that is not you, but yet you imagine you would enjoy the experience.
I thought about this some Cane, and no. Was I in love with the idea of being in love? Yep. But I can speak to this a bit in relation to my own husband.
The first time I laid eyes on him I was actually in the car with a girl I grew up with in church (our fathers are friends to this day). In the car were two other girls. The young woman in question was actually going to SAM’s house. He was a shade tree barber (LOL) on the weekends when he wasn’t on his weekday job so taking her nephew to get his hair cut the Saturday before the first day of school was her pretense to take the other two girls besides me in the in car with her because they wanted to get in good with him.
I had never been in that part of town before and although I knew of the family name, I didn’t know him personally. And frankly I was a little put off by the fanfare, which I thought was overly ridiculous. Not that I didn’t know he was attractive (I’m not blind), but I was put off a bit by all the silliness.
Yes, I recognize the irony. Trust me. But it was a long windy road and I wasn’t chomping at the bit to be with him at first.
There really are some women who are somewhat removed from a bit of that. Not every woman is after the guy who gets all the girls. We all have our romantic weaknesses, but they can be more varied than you might think.
How bad an experience could sex with a movie star in an Italian villa be?
Well, if he’s using you like a cheap whore then I would imagine that’s as bad as sex anywhere with anyone who is using you like a cheap whore.
I was a few years younger than most of the people I was around in that particular phase of life, so it could be that I watched and learned from all the young women who had been carelessly casual only to find that Jake was destined to replace them with another volunteer, early and often. I distinctly remember, though, the young men we tagged as man-whores, and avoiding them beyond a cordial hello. Maybe it’s generational – that was like 25 (gag) years ago.
lol, no to George Clooney. Had one of those, traded him in for a Ben Affleck – who, like my husband, offloaded a hot but flaky Latina chick for the average girl who was hot to have his babies.
@Elspeth
Let’s…back this truck up, and I want to suggest an exercise. Before you judge whether I’m right or not, or whether what I’ve written applies to you: Pretend my description of how women view men with female admirers and positive social/attractive reputations. Also pretend that you’re reading the story you just related, but from an outside perspective. That means ignoring the internal noise of emotions…of how you remember feeling at the time. Just examine what actually transpired in the story, and then reflect upon the facts of where the characters in this (pretend) story ended up. Then, compare that to what I said, and see how it matches up.
I think this is important because you are widely respected (including very much by myself) and if you actually are “like that” (as I’m saying nearly every woman not raised in an Amish/Mennonite/closed community is) then your refutation is a misunderstanding of yourself and your motivations…or a lie. This give cover to those other women who, also, don’t want to consider themselves “like that”.
Likewise, if I am misunderstanding, then I don’t want to misrepresent someone whom I respect as much as you.
@SV
My other favorite female blogger.
That could be.
I absolutely believe this. The question is: Who gets designated as a man-whore, and under what circumstances? Do I think a lot of women look at Russell Brand, and think, “No way! He’s dirty.” Yes, I believe they think this. I’m not talking about abjectly sex-positive skanks.
Do I think those same women look at men who are lower-profile with their sex lives (but who are also still trading around good-looking women on a regular-but-not-one-night-stand-basis) and think, “Somebody needs to snatch him up.”? You bet.
Would this be to what you were referring when, the other day, you said you traded in a rich ex-fiance for a reputation for a man who had a reputation with nail-inch nails? I could not tell whether you were being sarcastic or not, and if so about which part you were being sarcastic.
No special snowflake here, CC. The lie would be to say that I wasn’t very attracted to my husband from the first. I was, but I was also a little put off by the groupie mentality. That’s a fact .
I have accepted that AWALT. I’m simply positing that this thing you describe manifests itself in a few different ways.
@Elspeth
I believe you. But…this is the snowflake mentality: “I liked him for him despite what those other girls thought. The fact that other girls liked he didn’t factor into my thinking at all.” You wouldn’t register a sensation of liking him more because other girls are interested in him. It’s automatic; like pheromones, or ovulation. It can only be deduced by inspecting the facts, and noticing the patterns. I don’t remember thinking, “Wow! That girl’s ph-balance really triggered my libido.” My recollection is, “I don’t know what it is, but there’s something special about that girl.”
“I liked him for him despite what those other girls thought. The fact that other girls liked he didn’t factor into my thinking at all.”
No, no, no. When did I ever say that, LOL? Of course I liked him for all the obvious reasons. We already covered that, didn’t we? Still, the obvious reasons weren’t enough to get him where it took him nearly a year to get. You may think it bull that this is because I knew him better than most other people who knew him at a surface level, but that did play a part. So yeah, grab your parka since I’m sure you’re forecasting snow at this point, LOL.
Like Velvet, I don’t claim to have been a monument to purity, and you know enough of my story to know that I was no where near circumspect or cautious enough, but there are varying degrees of the kind of foolishness you describe, and it’s not always cut and dried.
Okay I’ve thought this through some, Cane. I hate that I got distracted by my own experiences. Here is what I think you fail to recognize. Yes, all women are “like that” to some degree. But the idea that almost all women are moved solely by the fact that other women do or do not desire a man is not true.
The fact is that certain things are attractive universally, so it just seems that way. And all slutttery is derived from the same place: desire for what we want, when we want it, and trying to sate our selfishness. But women are moved by different things.
Some are like I was, in love with the idea of being in love.
Others want to be perceived a certain way by virtue of the fact that they are able to secure a certain man.
Still others are so messed up that they would do just about anything to feel desired, even if it;’s just for an hour.
Some women women like projects, messed up men they can save. Or worse, men they can lead around- at least until they realize that this s absolutely no. fun. at. all.
This last group I have never understood, but they exist: the sex positivists who think it’s cool to sleep with as many men as possible, thinking the are conquering when they are in fact being conquered.
Outside of a deep faith conviction, we almost all fall into one of those categories. all emotion driven, all sinful, but not all exactly the same in the way they feel or the wa they manifest themselves.
Does that make more sense?
@Elspeth
Ok. Now that you’re back on course; let’s go back to the beginning. You quoted this from me:
And you replied:
Now, if you’ll look in the two quotes above, I highlighted the operative words in each.
We are very close, here. If we change the “you” to “I” then we are in agreement.
That’s what I meant by the word “Part”. I knew we’d find agreement!
This is true, and I for one am glad I never said so, you snowflake. 😉
Yes, and we would even say that we fall into more than one category. In the bit that you latched onto, I was just talking about one aspect of attraction; not the whole panorama of reasons for sexual desire. I know the issue is not cut-n-dried when it’s being lived. This here, though, was a postmortem where I cut and dry things to examine individual aspects. I didn’t set out to evaluate Elpseth (or SV’s) life-story according to the George/Jake principle. You guys hoisted yourselves up on the cadaver’s table, and I obliged based on what was revealed.
but who are also still trading around good-looking women on a regular-but-not-one-night-stand-basis
Unless you have a very inflated sense of your attractiveness as a woman, or you’re really not just another pretty face, like an 8+ with a trust fund or something, serial monogamy is almost a bigger turn-off than man-slut. Man sluts, you can lie to yourself, just haven’t met the right girl/matured/sown his wild oats, whatever. Some women will try to “rescue” this type, on a one and done basis according to his interest, but other than ONS shame, it’s not a real investment. Serial Monogamist has overt commitment issues, by choice. He’ll waste your time in a more destructive manner, because it’s not his ability to care that you question, they’re often quite kind and lots of fun, but rather his lack of sustained interest and ultimately leaving you in the dust that results in damage. You today, her tomorrow, is very confusing, and I don’t really know a single woman who believed in her ability to convert that type to the marrying kind.
Would this be to what you were referring when, the other day, you said you traded in a rich ex-fiance for a reputation for a man who had a reputation with nail-inch nails? I could not tell whether you were being sarcastic or not, and if so about which part you were being sarcastic.
Ha, busted. Yes, I had a bit of a George, he was much older and it was something of an arranged thing. I was being sarcastic about the Nine Inch Nails.
“Are you telling me that neither you nor your friends were attracted to George Clooney-type guys?”
All women are like that, but it’s an immature position. Of course we all wanted the cool guy in school to look our way. I was definitely that way @17; but by 19, not so much. My eyes were opened. To me, a woman who is still acting on those impulses past a certain age is immature.
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Elsbeth I’ll have to agree with Cane. Its pretty clear from your own description that the herd’s evaluation of your husband resulted in positive effects. In fact your descriptive language of “turned off” isn’t clear. It reads, if one reads slowly, as being turned off to your _friends_ reaction. It is obvious that you weren’t turned off to _him_.
Mr. GKChesterton:
I will concede that my ultimate end might indicate that I was more influenced by the herd than I am willing to admit. I am still unwilling to admit it, 😉 .
I found my future husband very attractive at first sight. He is an attractive man, and has grown more attractive over the past 2 decades. I have acknowledged that. But as Amanda noted, I was not an immature 17, but a fairly focused 21, highly concerned with doing anything foolish, and yes “turned off”. Not by him, but by the idea of being bothered with a guy whose attention I had to compete with other so many women for.
It was especially off-putting because they all knew he had a girlfriend (of sorts) and didn’t care. The whole thing seemed madness to me. I was trying to muster up interest in a far more suitable suitor who had come calling anyway.
The insistence that our eventual union means that I was moved by the herd is not necessarily true. Now, had I jumped at his initial indicator of interest and pulled out all the stops to nab him, I might agree with you. But to this day we still laugh at how long it took for us to get on with it already. And the fact that I was the one holding him at arm’s length, not vice versa.
Is there any room for acknowledgement of the possibility that a woman can give pause or turn it down rather than simply falling headlong into the arms or bed of any guy simply on the basis of his broad appeal to other women?
@Elspeth
Of course there is room. All I stipulated was that there is a sort of attraction multiplier effect in women; not that they must act on it, or even that they (you) did. “Giving pause” is an option that should be taken more often, and one I fully expect you to advise.
I never had any question that this was the right call, so I’m not sure how bold a move it really was. One thing I didn’t take into account though was the spot I placed you in. Guest posts are inherently more difficult than posting on your own blog. I didn’t fully understand this until I did my guest post at the Orthosphere. When you or I post on our own blogs we know we can follow up with more posts later, and this makes it easier to focus our thoughts. When guest posting this is (or at least could be) your one and only bite at the apple. Making your first blog post a guest post raises the difficulty level greatly. Either way, you opened a dialog on an important topic and ended up deciding to create your own blog. Wins across the board.
I think you are making the error of thinking of Game as if it were sentient. It isn’t. Game is a toolbox, or if you prefer a form of applied psychology. With or without Game, our moral options as Christians are either to marry or to go without sex. Game doesn’t change this, and it doesn’t change the (overall) available pool of women to marry. To a degree Game can help an individual man attract a more suitable wife (if that is his goal). But it can’t make the overall pool of wives more suitable to marry.
I know there are many who after seeing Game wish to use it to change the very nature of marriage, and make Game the glue which holds marriage together. I believe Game can have much value in marriage, but I join you in arguing vehemently against the idea that Game should be the glue of marriage. Likewise virginity (or church attendance) aren’t the silver bullets so many would like to claim they are. But these are errors in logic made by men, they have nothing to do with the efficacy of the form of applied psychology we call Game.
Brilliantly put.
I think the problem is that marriage is too fundamental to walk away from, so any tool which potentially can help us 1) Deprogram from our unconsious feminism and 2) Have a better shot at first attracting/selecting a wife and then remaining married potentially has great value. So repeatedly telling people “watch out!” “Danger!” without offering more clarity is likely to either frustrate people or (more likely as time passes) cause them to ignore the warning. I write this as one who appreciates that there is danger here. With this in mind, and given how broad the concept of “Game” is, I think the best way to proceed is to break it down into manageable chunks and try to offer more meaningful warnings. Our goal here shouldn’t be to create doctrine around game, nor to definitively catalog all of the potential risks. Our goal should be to help Christian men appreciate the potential risks and practice approaching the issue with serious consideration. Along the way we can also hopefully mark out some of the worst potential traps. I think as we do this we will find that there are reasons to be cautious, but that many of the categorical assumptions about evil Game are unfounded.
For example, take the widely hated Dread Game. Dread Game involves the use of fear to cause a woman to better appreciate her man; typically this involves instilling a deep fear that the woman will end up alone while another woman takes her man. With this in mind, is Dread Game evil, or at least sinful? Or is Dread Game like pretty much everything else, from spatulas to handguns, and it depends on how you use it and why you are using it.
Keep in mind to categorize Dread Game in the latter category, we only need to find one example of appropriate use. You may recall Mentu writing about his mother’s warnings to his married sisters:
Behold: Dread Game.
Was Mentu’s mother sinning when she instilled this fear in her married daughters? Or was she acting with Christian motherly love?
@Dalrock,
And tools can be immoral.
@Elsbeth,
To Elsbeth, I completely agree with Cane. Saying that you were influenced by the herd is not a bad thing any more than when I first caught sight of my wife she struck me as “hot”. God gave us that wiring, the trick is using it correctly. If you found out he was a thug or a satanist (to pick two obvious examples) then your job is to overcome your wiring via right moral action. This is the same as me not dropping my pants for a lusty blond who is not my wife.
In fact you _should_ be influenced by the herd because in _good_ conditions this indicates a mature man who is marriage material (approved of by the local elders of the tribe, to which indication flows to their daughters, which further flows to the rest of the female group).
In fact you _should_ be influenced by the herd because in _good_ conditions this indicates a mature man who is marriage material (approved of by the local elders of the tribe, to which indication flows to their daughters, which further flows to the rest of the female group).
Agreed, Mr. GKChesterton. Except in the group in question I was “the sane one” (I can read your mind as I type that Cane LOL). Following the herd would have been a terrible idea. I guess when all was said and done, it could be said that I did follow the herd. I was just lucky(?) that there was more to my man than his broad shoulders, aloofness, and sexy smile.
I often wonder if I wouldn’t make a good Calvinist when I consider this, 😉 .
@GKC
Is Dread Game immoral?
I’d prefer rephrasing that as, “a display of your authority with strong negative consequences for the abuser of said authority” immoral. And in that case “no” would be the answer. But Game as written is problematic for Christians. I see Game as a corruption of good patriarchy. It sounds awesome because it steals so many good classic ideas. I like that it has woken people up but I don’t like the Rules of Poon that define it.
@GKC
You are more generous in your answer than I had in mind. I was thinking of the example I offered of a mother instilling dread in her married daughters. In that case she isn’t referring to her own authority at all, although part of the power of the message no doubt stems from the mother’s position. Your argument speaks more to a husband using Dread Game. This is a more interesting question from my perspective but either way I won’t argue with agreement, and in this case we are in agreement that Dread Game isn’t inherently evil, but how it is used and why it is used are critical in understanding if its use is sinful.
To the extent that Game is merely a rediscovery of what was already fully understood, then how can the fact that it was later discovered by men like Roissy be a valid reason to not use once noble knowledge we foolishly lost? Either way, you give Roissy too much credit. He didn’t discover Game, he is just the blogger who first managed to bring it to a wider audience.
Moreover, the specific focus on Roissy’s 16 Commandments of Poon is in my view a straw man. I haven’t seen anyone seriously suggest that Christian men should simply go read Roissy’s 16 Commandments of Poon and have at it. Some of them are clearly no go areas for Christians, or at the very least of the “do not steal” sort, where someone might find an extreme corner case similar to the one on Zippy’s recent comboxes regarding stealing food to avoid starvation. But others are (once accounting for Roissy’s language) I would argue good advice and not morally problematic. Not being the first to say “I love you” strikes me as quite sound, to avoid as I believe you once put it being an “emotional slut”. What I think would move the conversation forward (since they seem to be such an outsized sticking point on Game in general) would be to go through them one by one, and discuss the question from a Christian perspective. We should as I argued above be careful not to craft something like doctrine around Game, but charting some of the more serious/obvious hazards and practicing a frame of probing for issues would be of great value.
I’ll just reiterate that a repeated vague but earnest warning without moving forward is worse than no warning at all. It would be better to remain silent until someone ready to address the details is ready to fill the space. Many years ago on two different occasions I lived in apartment complexes with faulty fire alarms. The first few times the alarm went off we dutifully mustered outside to find out what was going on. But as the alarms continued to go off on a weekly basis (sometimes 2-3 times per week), we eventually recognized that they didn’t mean anything. A fire alarm going off was no more a signal that the building was on fire than say a sunny day. If the goal is to warn people of real risk, continuing to pull the fire alarm does the opposite of that.
Point taken on the fire alarm. When I first started this blog, I started out to go through Roissy’s list one-by-one and refute, reaffirm, and redirect as I saw necessary, but by then I had already decided that it wasn’t helpful to just edit someone else’s work to my satisfaction.
I have a post coming out very soon that will change/further this discussion (at least my part), but I wanted to put a couple things out there.
You mean now; in the last six months to a year? No, there aren’t many. Were there? Yes. I think the way you state this is a bit cavalier (and cavalier is my line, pal!). Vox has the 16 Commandments of Poon listed as the “16 Core Maxims”. I have never seen Roosh, Rollo, or Krauser say anything against even one of them, and while Game isn’t sentient; personification sort of cuts through the rigamarole; cavalierly.
That being said…well, I’ll just go finish the post.
The most important thing about Game to see from a Christian perspective is that there is truth contained within it, even if it is mixed up with un-Christian stuff. It’s easy for dogmatic Christians to cast out the whole shebang just because of its source and its mix with un-Christian ideas. However, it’s important to Christian men to be able to parse what is okay from what is not because of the truth about the nature of women is so vitally important to acknowledge. Especially if we are to attempt to pick one to wash in the Word. Which is the point of the whole exercise if men are to take up marriage after all. Think this is another way Cane is trying to get at it.
The very concept of Game has been unpalatable for most Christians almost solely because it took decidedly non-Christian bloggers to open the discussion on a wider basis. IMO, ignoring that germ of truth does Christian men no good and can result in miserable marriages that may end in frivorce.
Now am wondering if some adventurous Christian blogger might take a whack at Roissy’s 16 Commandments and come up with an abbreviated list of those that are acceptable and why as well as why not for the rest. Dalrock threw out a hint about the first one. Myself, I like the third one. Since Cane so objects to the word “game” and I understand where he’s coming from, I suppose what we might better call it for Christian men could also be another subject of discussion.
cross posted with CC… ok looking forward to your take
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Excellent. I look forward to it.
I hadn’t noticed Vox’s link before you noted it. I don’t think his intent is to give moral approval, but to note it as a source to understand the basics. Vox is pretty clear in his writing that he isn’t aligned with Roissy from a moral perspective, but I understand the concern there. Roosh and Krauser are on the pickup side and are living the pickup lifestyle, so I wouldn’t expect them to offer a moral warning about Roissy (just like I wouldn’t expect Roissy to include a moral warning about them). Rollo is married but generally advises the pickup lifestyle for men who aren’t; he had a recent post advising that spinning plates is as good as it gets. I don’t think any halfway serious Christian man would mistake the advice coming from Roissy, Roosh, Rollo, or Krauser for Christian moral advice.
Your raising this had me curious how I handled this when I compiled my Game resources for marriage three years ago. I didn’t make a specific Christian moral warning but I did note that many of the resources weren’t pro marriage and flagged them with an asterisk:
@Dalrock
The forecast post is up; called “On Tools”.
I probably should have been more specific in that while I know the authors I mentioned are non-Christian (except Vox) they fundamentally drove the conversation on all the little blogs, and plenty of those were written by people who would identify here and there as Christian. I noticed it first when way back when I used to read Haley’s Halo (where I found you); whom I had found from Roissy. It was interesting to compare the comments of the same people on the two blogs: Bashing Churchians on HH, and talking about how much tail they pulled on Roissy…but more importantly how they did it.
People keep referring back to pick-up and sex as my primary concern; as if I’m afraid good little Christian boys are going to have sex and ruin themselves. Because the churches have put such an outsized emphasis on sexual purity above all things we reflexively assume that every Christian criticism (including mine) is primarily concerned with sexual purity. I think any fair reading of my criticism of Game has been against those habits and frame of mind that are meant to develop Dark Triad traits.
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