No doubt you’ve heard or read about the Red Pill movement. It’s a phenomenon on YouTube, Facebook, Reddit and elsewhere. Red Pill gurus are rushing to get their message out in books, its de facto leader Rollo Tomassi on his fourth. Roosh and Roissy are two other prominent names in the manosphere who espouse the ideology.
Red Pill itself comes from a scene in the science fiction movie The Matrix, where rebel leader Morpheus played by Laurence Fishburne, offers Neo, played by Keanu Reeves, the choice of swallowing a blue pill which allows one to believe what they want to believe, or the red pill which offers truth. Neo takes red.
This truth is what the red pill leaders say is what is required to navigate the relationships between men and women. Tomassi uses the term “hypergamy” to describe a woman’s prerogative to choose a partner of higher status. Of course, that choosing in the first place is a woman’s prerogative is not questioned. Of course women choose, I say. She is the more precious carrier of eggs and maker of life. Should she choose a weak partner? How would that serve her pact with the universe, especially if she intends to have children one day?
I like Tomassi and I like Donovan and the rest of the guys who used to appear on YouTube’s 21 Studio each week to discuss Red Pill practicalities. These guys have sliced and diced the subject to deep levels… with no end in sight.
However there’s an elephant in the room: In fact, it’s this obsession with women which makes me think the approach overall is weak. It’s why I listen or read or even tolerate Red Pill sparingly at best. Not at all if I can avoid it. This is just my personal view, but I think our Red Pill brothers leave the masculine and visit the feminine too frequently for my tastes as they obsess about women’s “feral nature,” among other things. To me that is just contempt.
Solipsism, the view that the self is all that can be known to exist, and which I agree is very much a feminine energy trait, is often an overriding feature in Red Pill discussions.
It says, “I think it therefore… it is.”
It’s the incredible ability of the overthinking woman to believe her own bullshit. Men need watch for that in themselves occasionally, for they are far from immune, especially if they are gathered around drinking coffee discussing the opposite sex on a YouTube channel for money.
Note too, the coffee date is typically something women do, not something men find themselves habitually involved in at any level. We are more shoulder to shoulder over a task types than… coffee daters. It is not lost on me that under the guise of helping men get “valuable truths,” these men are sitting around bitching about women.
That’s not to say there isn’t some truth to Red Pill. And, to many guys it’s a Godsend of information. In the context, Blue Pill is real, and every man needs that wake-up call. It’s easy for a man to go into relationships with blinders on, with family of origin programming and unmet needs dictating his expectations.
Before I left a marriage just shy of 25 years in the early 2000s, I was devastated. Nothing I’d tried worked and I was facing complete failure. My parents were married sixty-two years (before my mother died some time ago). Like many men, marriage was forever for me, and I couldn’t broker it any other way.
In the end, I knew if I stayed it would kill me, while leaving made me feel like dying.
You may recognize the bind.
Some days back then, I’d have flashes of crashing my van at top speed in a train overpass or just letting it fly off a bridge as my thoughts turned to self-harm in frustration and despair. Oft, I’d have to take a knee to recover a moment from the pain I was carrying.
That’s when one of our managers mentioned he listened to Tom Leykis’ radio show every day. I began to do the same. It exposed a whole other side of women my blinders prevented me from seeing. I don’t need to thank Tom for his show, I’m sure he was paid well. Blow Me Up Tom made a difference in my life at that time, if only to knock the gender off the pedestal I had them on. I later figured out that pedestal derived from a projection of my need for my own mother’s love, and that pursuit would keep me in weaknesses forever. It would keep me immature.
Once, a female caller announced on his show she had gotten drunk when out with the girls and fucked some guy, who happened to be black, in a car in the parking lot of a club. She was Hispanic, and so was her husband. She was about to give birth and she suspected the baby was conceived the night of her low class debauchery.
Tom implored her to tell him, and to spare the man the indignity of having his relatives see his shame in the hospital as a little black baby arrived instead of his own.
She refused, and Tom immediately asked his listeners to help. “She said he works at a casino in the Pacific North-West, if you know a guy in the gambling business expecting a baby, LET HIM KNOW IT MAY NOT BE HIS.”
As shocking as this was, I knew it was reality. I know women cheat, just as I know men cheat in the right circumstances.
People do horrible and underhanded things to each other sometimes. I am not naïve. I lived as a gangster. I know what power imbalances, intimidation, cruelty and retribution are all about. Red pill seeks to skew women as especially endowed with an antisocial and vindictive side which has themselves as the center of their universe, and to which you as a man are but an expendable force to be used and discarded. The problem is anyone who becomes your enemy becomes expendable to you. That’s what survival calls for. How about some equality here…
That period of my life launched me into a search for greater truths about men and women. My mind was opened by Tom and his alternate views. I got even more interested in sex differences, doubling down on my review of the literature, taking an about turn intellectually at the height of social constructionist influence. Although I’d retreated from it a decade or more before during the “Everybody Loves Raymond” period of television, eventually I turned my back completely on feminism.
The “women are wonderful effect” was coined in 1994 by sociological researchers Alice Eagly and Antonio Mladinic, who found that both men and women tend to assign more positive traits to women, with women showing a far greater propensity to do it than do men. The sisterhood is real, we should be aware of this.
I don’t listen to Tom anymore—one season was enough… and since those days, never did again. And, while I drop in on Rollo and his cohorts on YouTube every once in a while to see if there is anything new, I don’t listen or read them as a matter of course either. I have found my own balance of truths between the genders and it works for me and for the men I am privileged to share my message with.
I have a new family with two wonderful kids and a gal I’ve been with for 13 years. She won’t marry me: says if we never get married, we’ll never get divorced. I can’t argue with her, and it’s a moot point because I know what makes her tick. I know what my role is and I take to it with my eyes open and full enthusiasm. A man’s relationships should come from his power as a man and never be his power. That’s my rule.
If I had to criticize the Red Pill movement or Tom Leykis’s approach, I’d say it is far too negative of women in general. Some of it is deserved but based on inklings of truth (that’s the way things like this go, there’s always some truth to it). It’s just that listening to too it fails to impart balance, for women have some pretty darn good aspects to them too (as do men).
I heard Rollo say he can’t advise for marriage now because of the risks to men. Fair enough, but a little sad too. Instead Tomassi suggest men “spin plates,” a version of two-timing which to me is callous and antisocial. It is unlikely we will flourish as a culture under polyamory. Deceit in general is dishonourable.
The disconnect for me is men complaining about The American Psychological Association’s recent guidelines, or the subject of rape culture, or discussions around “toxic masculinity,” or the Gillette commercial, but yet, allowing for a full dive into Red Pill philosophy and it’s inherent contempt for women.
Doesn’t anyone else see the problem with that?
Men sometimes do terrible things to women, and women sometimes do terrible things to men. Men tend to compete overtly, while women tend to maneuver covertly. Men smash you in the face, women get everyone around you turned against you so that eventually someone smashes you in the face.
Simplistic? Sure. Of course, it is. It’s always an oversimplification. The problem with generalities is they all fail on the backs of exceptions. Talk and tease out the possibilities just the same. Exceptions don’t always disprove the rule.
The reasons I’m no longer a feminist and aligned with those well-intentioned but misguided idealists, is that I’ve lived out the course of its resurgence these past fifty years. I did that as a man who has depended on good women as allies, coming as I do from a family where I had a mother and four good sisters (as well as four brothers, and a troubled father). Feminism is a weak agenda, offering as it does a one-sided dissection of problems but little in the way of realistic solutions or an accounting of the existing healthy symbiosis of masculine and feminine energies.
It’s my view equality of opportunity is fine to an extent, but that equality in general between the sexes is a wrong-headed metric because we are generally too different to be equal. I also think, in context, a full accounting of strengths and weaknesses from each side of gender would go a long way to reconciling one with the other.
If men and women have always banded together to meet the challenges of time, the environment and each other’s natures as they go about creating a life, don’t you think it’s worth knowing the plus and minus variables of each? Red pill leaves out the good stuff, just as discussions of toxic masculinity does the same.
To use a sports analogy, wouldn’t you want to know who can run with the ball? Who can catch the ball with two defenders on them? Who can kick an accurate field goal? Who is better left on the line to block and tackle? Who possesses the skill to orchestrate play under duress? Or who can pinch-hit or run in what situations? Who is a starter and who can come off the bench and bat clean up?
I ask that we have those discussions because that’s what men and women do when they are left to their own devices while they find ways to live and work and raise kids and love each other. We figure out what each is good at and operate as a team toward common goals. Not Team Male or Female, rather Team Human.
It’s not enough to throw dirt at an entire gender and then complain your dates don’t go as planned. This to me is wrong-headed.
Or, that your life isn’t unfolding as you desire with your partner so it must be something about her “feral nature” which leaves you disadvantaged. You poor thing.
I think that’s weak-ass bullshit and I’ll tell you why. We need compassion for each other and the greater compassion we have for others the greater compassion we have for ourselves. That’s how it works.
All of us have an inner self, a Divine Child within we’ve perhaps stuffed over the early years as we sought to conform with the adults around while adhering to our interpretation of their rules and expectations.
How can we ever hear our own essential voice if we don’t listen for the voices of others?
Our eyes see out, and the easiest way to train yourself to hear the good in you is to attune yourself to the good in others. Not blindly, not as a nice guy sacrificing your needs for others while holding secret anger; but compassionately, with a sense of being part of humanity’s meaningful whole.
Find it early, find it late, we must all find love.
Where’s the love in finding the extreme faults in an entire gender? Where is the love in calling women bitches and sluts and cunts as a matter of course as they do on the 21 Studios red pill segments? Where is the love in finding fault with half the world’s population, and enacting rules to safeguard yourself from their worst aspects without an appreciation for the incredible good in their capacity to love and share a life?
From what I can tell, Red Pill is a lot like feminism in that it focuses almost exclusively on delineating the excesses of women’s pragmatic side and encourages a defensive and almost paranoid stance in men who are still interested in women.
If you need a good term to reference the young gals teasingly, call them wenches. It means young lady in old English my father told me. It raises eyebrows but no one gets mad at you. I’d say to my gals over the years, “wench, more ale for me and my friends!” and they all thought it was cute. Missus has a growling stomach, I call her my borborygmus wench. I think she’s impressed that I even know the word (that’s my story and I’m sticking to it).
Fact is, most men will marry and most of them will have children.
Here’s what typically happens: a woman bets on a man when he has nothing, not a pot to piss in, and hopes like hell he turns into something. Hypergamy is just not reality or whichever woman you landed would likely never ever have chosen you. Isn’t it better to help men and women negotiate that dynamics between them with an appreciation for each other’s needs and desires without falling into weakness?
Not only that, men should learn to not take it so personally. A woman with children will put ANYBODY to work for her on her mission to keep her children alive and well. This is consistent in the literature the world over and likely is your experience if you think about it. Parents, grandparents, siblings, neighbours, governments, girlfriends, friends, neighbours, churches, husbands and anyone else she knows is either an ally or competition. She cuts competition loose fast and only has time for allies.
Women mature faster emotionally than do men. Ask any sixteen year old girl what she wants in life and she will lay out a plan. Guys? Ha!
Women self-assess at a young age by measuring themselves up against peers. When they are ready, they take that self-assessment and look for a partner who matches well-enough or is slightly above the value she places in herself. Then, she usually orchestrates things, often with the collusion of her sisterhood, so that her choice of possible suitor notices her. If she catches his eye, she will then encourage him in so many ways using body language, laughter, smiles and gaze. Thus interested, he chases her until she catches him. But it is she who is betting on him given her much shorter fertility potential and much greater risk.
Should a man face that his woman is not his mother? Yes! It’s one of women’s greatest complaints. “I’m not his mother!” Additionally, to expect unconditional love from his partner is a leftover trait from his family of origin? Yes, he should abandon this immediately.
Should he realize his wish for unconditional love is projected upon his partner and is a burden she can never, ever meet? You’re damn straight he should do all these things… or remain a boy forever.
A man should also realize his gal’s archetype for love is her father, or the masculine energy around her, and that this means she requires a powerful man in her life.
It also means she knows the difference between a man and a boy.
Women are pragmatic souls, bent on survival. The female is far more precious in nature, you have only to look a window at bird feeder. Most of the colourful birds are males, while the females are camouflaged and discreet. If a Sparrow Hawk arrives on the scene, it’s the male Grosbeak or Cardinal who dies first.
It’s not so different in humans, where she carries the eggs which permit life. Her best fertility lasts two decades whereas a man’s is triple that period or more.
She is attracted to a man for his power and tolerates his vulnerability in service of her care-giving because it signals that he has the sensitivity to be kind and not harm her children.
Hypergamy is a negative and dishonest term which saddles a man with self-pity and an idealized over-estimation of his worth. That’s pain that can be exploited to sell books and run traffic to YouTube channels.
As a man, you are attracted to looks—a certain hip to waist ratio—and you stay for loyalty. A man with a loyal woman by his side has the wind at his back—but you better God-damned well stay out in front of her to feel it.
You betcha.
That’s not blue pill for fuck’s sake, it’s how nature put us together to survive.
Men lead, women command. Men build cultures, women stress-test them.
Rather than focusing on the divisions inherent in Feminism on one side, or Red Pill, MGTOW and Incels on the men’s side, my advice is to focus on the essential truths: Power and Loyalty.
Women can’t stand weak men as partners. Men can’t stand disloyal women as partners. It’s that simple. Hence, women do well with a powerful man; men do well with a loyal woman.
How can you make yourself powerful to earn her loyalty? How can she show you loyalty, so you’ll want to be her powerful man? This where all the fun is. We train the people around us in life. We get what we accept.
You get the life you believe you deserve…
Red Pill has been around for a dozen years. Feminism for a hundred. Nature has been here forever. Humans are smart at coming up with answers even when we don’t fully understand something. It’s our rational brain, living emotionally and then explaining things after the fact. You want to be careful about frustrated male marketers exploiting your confusion to sell books and monetize internet views. I’ll bet on nature.
What we need to do is see the much bigger picture. Men and women were made to live and work together to create life. Don’t let all the talk detract from this essential truth about our existence together.
Anything other than a Team Human approach is doomed to fail and cause suffering…
Stay powerful, never give up
Christopher K Wallace
©June, 2019, all rights reserved
