The essence of femininity is desire. A woman’s primary mode of operation is to answer the question: “What do I want?” Her primary mode of understanding others is to ask “What does he want?” Desire is to women like physical strength is to men. Most men are much stronger than all but the strongest women, and the strongest women don’t come close to the strongest men. Likewise: Most women want everything more than most men want anything.
For women, two desires that are in conflict or whose satisfactions are divisive, do not cause problems of choice, but problems of encompassment. How to get them both? Men often misinterpret women’s non-prioritized desires is when they have been subjected to the desire encompassment schemes. One way this is expressed is that men accuse women of not capable of loving their men. Of course that’s not true. A woman focused on her desire to help or please her man will do great and terrible things for him that few men would (or even should) do for a woman.
Men who misunderstand what they see in women also routinely accuse them of being irrational, or even thoughtless. That’s wrong. Women can be–and often are–extremely rational in the pursuit of their desires. We lack knowledge of those several desires which they are trying to satisfy at the same time and at the same speed.
Pursuit of multiple wants does cause chaos in their lives and to those surrounding them–especially men. Other women understand the encompassment of desires process even as they might dislike dealing with the chaos. But it is not the result of a lack of thinking. Their brains are always working to solve the problem of how to acquire Desire A, Desire 16, and Desire *. What they have the authority or capability to do is usually irrelevant to them except as obstacles to overcome, subvert, or sidestep on the way to satisfaction. This is very unlike men [1] whose primary concern revolves around what they have the authority to do.
As a comparison example to the ones in Manliness is Authority: If a young woman wants a car she will do whatever she can to get one. And whether she works for it, is gifted it, or never knows how to do anything with it but drive: No one will ever accuse her of being unwomanly. Satisfaction of desire is the measure. She could sell her body for a car. While we would scorn such behavior we still wouldn’t say she hadn’t acted like a woman.
The essence of manliness is authority. It’s the need and ability to make decisions, to pronounce those decisions, and to act upon them. Strength, power, command, competency, respect, courage, assertiveness…these are all parts of authority, but they lack the spoken component. Good and right speech is indivisible from authority.
When men succeed, they succeed along the paradigm of authority; be it wise decisions, strength, assertiveness, achievement or any of the other forms of authority. The classic example is the Battle of Thermopylae; which is especially poignant because they all died. Because they died in paramount expressions of wise decisions, strength, courage, assertiveness, respect, and achievement we call them manly, and even though they died we mean that with very high respect because of what went into that fight. They were mighty.
A modest modern example is a young man who decides to get a car. He gets a job to pay for a car and buys it. He learns how to maintain that car. That is manly.
We also count men’s failure along the paradigm of authority. Adam listened to the voice of his wife and ate the fruit instead of acknowledging the authority that was given him, acknowledging the authority that was kept from him, and for at least speaking the truth to Eve when she gave him the fruit. We’re still stinging from that one.
The young man who is given a car, doesn’t take care of it and can’t be bothered to learn how: We call him girly. He is not manly even if that car is a $50,000 vehicle.
People have wrote some things that I thought were flat-out silly and worthy of heckling. The problem with heckling in the comments is that it’s easy to read as harsh and snarky instead of good-humored ribbing. Much of that problem evaporates in audio. What if I recorded comment responses that were like mini bits; would that be interesting to anyone?
RPGs are lousy with SJW crap. Just like a converged company, the games suffer from a series of problems which cause them to be bland, unbelievable, and uninspiring. To combat these problems game publishers have adopted coping strategies which are even worse: Some are full of un-fun nonsense that they hope no one will find offensive. Some have the idea of rules suppressed (rules actually provoke creative responses). Some just inflate character progression as if it didn’t rob from the future fun. I think I could do better, but I’m not a position to write out a whole setting or rulebook right now. And honestly I’m here for the feedback. I’m not writing to hear myself as some others do. Would anyone be interested in reading Cane’s RPG blog?
You’re pretty much on your own. Make it happen, if you want to be married.
If I understand his own story (It’s the second half of his post, check it out.): Two women connected him with the woman to whom he is now engaged. It’s catchier than “make it more likely” but the truth is that others play key roles in making it happen. Making and keeping friends is time well-spent.
This isn’t to denigrate the specific advice he gives to “make it happen”. It’s actually pretty good. But I want to add that cultivating a group of friends–with whom you are seen by women–not only improves one’s chances and one’s choices, and it not only speeds the whole process along: Friends and their respect also help maintain a wife’s attraction even when one is not on his A game.
There is a connection between the sportsball and RPG surveys, and the law of female attraction. I titled it as The First Law, but the respect of men[1] is so important to attracting females that a man could consider it the only factor and still improve his available pool of women in ways which he could not by focusing on his other attributes.
Sportsball–particularly team versions of sportsball–teach a man how to operate in a social performance context. That’s obvious. But it also teaches him the importance of respecting his teammates. It also confers on him some of the overall respect given to the team. That respect is not zero-sum.[2] A quarterback does not get 80% of the respect while the other 20% is divided among the other players. The distribution of respect is not equal either: Each player does not get the same amount of the team’s overall respect. I could describe the distribution of respect in a few different ways. Keep in mind this is to describe a dynamic; not to define it.
Imagine a simple 1-10 scale of respect. Let’s further imagine a football team with an overall respect (GR) of 8. The quarterback is conferred a personal respect (PR) of 4 when viewed in isolation, e.g., walking around in a crowd while no one has any idea who he is. If he is recognized as the quarterback though–because of the effect of being on a team with a respect of 8–he gets 5 additional points for a total of 9 in situations where he is known as the quarterback of the football team.
A lineman gets a similar kind of boost, but lesser, and he also starts off further down the scale. Most linemen are fat because it helps them do their job. He starts at a personal respect of 2. He’s on the team, but he’s not as integral as the quarterback so only 3 points of the team’s overall respect are conferred upon him for a total of 5 in situations where he is recognized as a member of the football team. Even so–and this is the point–the fat, known lineman’s rating of 5 is more than twice as good as 2, and is even better than the fit, unknown quarterback’s rating of 4.
RPG groups function in the same way, only with lower numbers. You can learn social dynamics in a RPG group even though the social aptitude of the people is likely to start at less. As one YouTuber put it: “D&D is the most fun you can have with your brain.” There is no end to the skills and knowledge which can be applied to a RPG; writing, drawing, tactics, strategy, acting, history, conflict resolution, math, abstract thinking… And like sportsball, RPGs are a social performance activity, and even though the activity itself is done by “dweebs“, there are residual respect effects conveyed upon members of the group if the members of the group known are known as a group; even if the group’s specific activity is hidden… a secret which I might recommend in the case of RPGs.
You aren’t in control of what is cool, but even activities which are less cool can provide benefits. Five dudes hanging out to discuss their RPG is only going to attract a few nerdy girls, but it attracts girls at all it’s because there is a group. (Yes, there are girls out there who want to invade RPG groups. If you don’t like sports: Marry one of those.) And the gamemaster is going to get a greater share of the overall respect (PR 1 + GR 2) than a player (PR 1 + GR 1). A lone guy reading a RPG book or planning a campaign isn’t going to attract even one girl; hardly ever, because he remains a 1. As dorky as RPGs might be, 2 is twice as good as 1.
My example answers to the surveys were my actual answers. I played baseball (I was good.) and basketball (I was terrible.), medaled gold and bronze on the Academic Decathlon team, and played RPGs at least once every two weeks with my friends…and we never–ever!–told anyone–especially girls!–that we played D&D.
We all played sports and went to parties and absolutely ruled the sand volleyball courts at the park. We never discussed D&D at school. We were not the trench-coat-n-fedora guy muttering over a rulebook in the cafeteria during lunch.
The main thing is we were seen as a team of friends who respected each other and that group dynamic attracted girls. At the same time: We didn’t shoot our own wheels off by telling the unprivileged about our nerdy activities. (I didn’t talk about Aca-Dec much, either.) Later, as girls became girlfriends only then would we nonchalantly let it be known in an organic situation. “Hey babe. Yeah, I can’t go tonight. Me and some guys are going to hang out, watch a movie, and maybe play some D&D.”
[1] I prefer respect to status because the latter has a rhetorical effect in that it conjures up rankings in a way that can mislead. A commissioned officer has more status than a noncommissioned officer, but he doesn’t necessarily have more respect. A king has ultimate status in the kingdom, but a respected general can usurp him.
[2] Professional sports as practiced in the the US perverts team sports into something close to a zero-sum game because of the amount of money involved, and because of formal sports journalism.
Hey Cane, have you given much thought on how immigration, the war on tribalism/ entho nationalism, integration/ desegregation etc has played a part in destroying traditional folk ways/ lead to smaller families and the like?
I have. The restriction of association does play a part in destroying cultures and subcultures. We speak of restriction of association–when we speak of it at all–as if one could only limit it within an ethnicity or other homogenous group. But when the government uses taxes and regulations to shove a business towards hiring a brown woman instead of a white man: That’s also a form of restriction of association; one that erodes the value of men’s labor.
Another way this restriction is done is by low-income housing programs which encourage poor minorities to move into white neighborhoods. Poor minorities bring their pathologies with them; blaring stereos, poor school performance, deteriorated houses, crime, etc. In turn this encourages whites to leave that neighborhood; taking with them their own pathologies of trust, neatness, and quiet. Spare me the equivocations, please. Old Man Jones’ overgrown and dilapidated property is nothing compared to the favela Senor Cardenas has piled up for his wife, kids, parents, Primo Javier, and Tia Rosa.
A similar thing happens in schools, too.
But I believe the main thing that drives social atomization is the mass production of cars. Cars seduce a man into believing that if he moves across the country, then later he’ll drive back to visit. He won’t, or at least he won’t visit often.
This past weekend I was reminded that I still have not posted the basic concept which I am about to write, but which I have stated over and over since my first (guest) post in the Men’s Sphere. It also prompted me to come up with the category Economy of Respect . I’ll call it “Cane’s First Law of Female Attraction”.
Women are attracted to men who are respected by others; especially other men.
Some of you introverts may be skeptical so here’s a dead-common real-world example. The quarterback has a girlfriend because he’s the quarterback of the football team. Without the team he’s still talented, athletic, and so forth…but he’s not nearly as popular. It greatly matters that he is the leader of a team of men. But even better: Fat white lineman have girlfriends, too.
Everything else–looks, money, power, etc.–does its real work by gaining the respect of men. The women follow that. So:
If you want to find a woman: Get friends who respect you, and be seen with them by women.
If you want to help a man find a woman: Be a respectful friend to him, and be seen doing it.
Single woman: Look for groups of respectable men. You will be attracted to most of them. Give an eligible one your number.
Married woman: Encourage your husband to spend time with his friends. I bet you get jealous.
Feminists say that prostitution was a tool of the patriarchy used to oppress women. Some didn’t get the memo. Hulu has divined that period pieces of ass will be a hit with women.
In the comments to previous post on Traditionalism Oscar astutely posted video of Jordan Peterson, whose talks further spurred me in this direction of thought [1]. It’s one of many in which he talks about his theory that–mythically–it is the duty of a “son” to resurrect a “dead father” by rescuing tradition from irrelevance. I’ve listened to his theory over a dozen times in various videos and podcasts, and I understand him to mean something like synthesis. Emotionally, it is a pleasing concept to think that the son–The New–has a duty to salvage the father–The Old–, yet put his own spin on it.
But it strikes me as trite…and also that the symbolism is fundamentally misleading. The father isn’t tradition. The father is the source of truth and goodness and love and authority. Tradition is no more a father than the buildings I grew up in are my dad.
[1] I can’t say where I’ll end up. These are my thoughts, and implicit requests for conversation.
Same drill; different social activity. Leave a comment saying whether you played any role-playing games, and if so which game or games. Something like:
Things that We have Heard and Known 