There is an incredible amount of confusion and misrepresentation out there about what exactly the red pill is. There are those who simply dislike it and thus misrepresent it and there are those whom are new to the philosophy who among all the chaos of differing opinion, spam and plethora of theories and content are just left scratching their heads. I hope here to communicate the fundamentals of what the widely encompassing philosophy entails, and dispel many of the misconceptions that have formed around it.

First and foremost, the red pill is about giving males direction in order that they may fulfill their innate potential, in a culture which gives the male gender little to no guidance on actualising their sense of innate and biologically driven masculinity, where society has ignored male needs The Red Pill takes centre stage, a reaction to a societal problem, it attempts to give men of all ages the tools they need to introspect (take a look at themselves) and address their shortcomings in order to overcome them.

No rites of passage, a common prevalence of absent fathers and a feminised gynocentric culture has essentially robbed fathers of agency over their children, with a lack of fatherly input into the raising of children in modern western feminist societies men are becoming increasingly lost. These are the same feminist controlled societies which shame masculine norms and values left, right and centre and resultantly has left a lot of teenage boys, young men, fathers and divorced men feeling disillusioned because society simply just does not care about their existence, their growth or their needs. They feel invisible because society focuses purely on the needs of the feminine and ignores masculinity outside of a negative context.

When broken homes and single parent families are the norm there’s a lot of children out there growing up without the direction they need to succeed in life. Young girls are hurt by the feminist destruction of the family unit too, however The Red Pill’s main focal point is the male perspective of the fallout that institutionalised radical feminism has created and what we, young boys, young men and older men can do in the paradigm our ancestors left us by successfully adapting to it. There is a female branch of The Red Pill philosophy which can be found over at /r/redpillwomen on Reddit, however it’s viewpoint and aims differ from the main philosophy, it is a complementation of the philosophy from the female perspective for women who also recognise the inherent negative effects feminism has had upon society.

Let’s start with the name “The Red Pill”, the red pill is a metaphor taken from the movie “The Matrix”, for those who have not seen or do not understand the premise of the movie, allow me to break it down for you.

The Matrix is a movie about humanity living in a state of automated delusion, a world of fabrication devoid of meaning beyond the superficial. The protagonist begins to expect “something is not right with the world” and becomes increasingly suspicious, there is a turning point where a character named Morpheus offers the protagonist an ultimatum, he states “You take the blue pill – the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill – you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes. Remember, all I’m offering is the truth – nothing more.”

The protagonist opts to take the red pill and begins to see the numerous facades, elaborate illusions and deceptions around him shatter, he then goes on a personal quest of actualisation until he reaches a point where he is able to directly influence what happens around him because “he understands how the system works.” This is what red pill philosophy is about at its core, being able to identify the things in society which are simply outright bullshit and seeing past the illusions to be free of the restrictions of which they impose on you as an individual.

That’s brings me onto the next point, Feminism. The Red Pill is extremely critical of feminism and most definitively, anti-feminist. As feminism has become institutionalised and a social norm within western democracies, society has begun to take on more and more feminine values which have been enacted into legal legislation and it’s for this reason that the philosophy takes a lot of heat, why it has detractors, why it is lambasted, why simply, so many people love to hate it.

Many people are feminists, or identify with it due to their social programming and do not take kindly to any criticism of the ideology that they hold dearest. This is the core of the philosophy’s controversy, it is, since the normalisation of feminism from the first wave, one of few philosophies which has openly challenged, ridiculed, defamed or otherwise called out feminism on its weaknesses. Notice I have underlined the plural of philosophy, that’s what The Red Pill is, a philosophy.

The Red Pill is not a social movement, movements attempt to fight for change based upon their wants and needs, such as the Men’s Rights Movement (MRA) or first wave feminism. The Red Pill does not look to change the status quo, it looks to understand it, call it out for what it is, and leave you with consciousness, a sentience to evaluate your options so you can the use the knowledge you have discovered to live your life to your utmost best by learning to manage the innately deceptive nature of women and carve out a life for yourself on your own terms; and should you choose to make a life with a woman, you will be well equipped with the knowledge and experience to adequately handle her sufficiently to the betterment of you both.

On the point of “the deceptive nature of women“, The Red Pill rejects the mainstream narrative that women are the fairer sex, the so-called innocent victims of everything masculine in nature, The Red Pill identifies that whilst males are naturally physically superior, women have the manipulative edge, an innate proficiency in machiavellianism.

The Red Pill is a hybrid of self-improvement and anti-feminism. It embraces traditional masculinity and rejects feminist ideas of what masculinity is. It follows the premise that a woman does not know what it is to be a man and thus she is incapable of teaching boys how to be men. A woman of intelligence knows what specifically makes her happy, but not the inner workings of that, and how to communicate to a male how to internalise and embody the successful traits required to be successful with women, this is crudely summed up by the popular red pill idiom “a fish can’t teach a fisherman how to fish.”

Mainstream wisdom dictates a man be chivalrous and supplicating, but countless testimony from thousands of men shows that this ill advise fails in practice. The Red Pill takes away the de facto feminist hegemony over gender politics and places the discourse firmly into the hands of the masculine viewpoint, a viewpoint which is all but ignored within the increasingly gynocentric public space, be it the mainstream media, a conversation in a coffee shop or within the modern day feminist bastion known as the higher education system.

The Red Pill realises the importance of masculinity in society and how a decline in traditional masculinity since the 60’s and 70’s has led to a decay in society’s moral fiber, ever-increasing public hysteria and delusion (fat acceptance, affirmative action, biased family law etc) as well as an acknowledgement of the shift from political conservatism to radical liberalism which has accompanied and facilitated the rise of mainstream hegemonic feminism.

Unlike feminism which believes in either gender equality or female supremacism (depending on which niche of feminism you’re looking at), The Red Pill rejects that women are equal or supreme to men, it believes traditional gender roles were the optimum roles for raising a family and continuing the genetic lineage of the species. It believes women need men to take charge, to bear the burden of responsibility and essentially “man up”, though not “man up” in the way feminists use the term to shame men, but in the essential essence that men need guidance which they’re not getting and that they need to overcome the effects of feminism by rejecting it, improving themselves and ultimately rising above it.

On the self-improvement front, The Red Pill philosophy advocates fitness, being physically healthy and in shape, in order to teach discipline and a sense of self-worth (it’s evident from people who have only just turned up in the community that a lack of self-worth is often endemic in men who have yet to “take the pill.”) The mantra of the philosophy is “to build value” in order to respect yourself and get respect from those around you. There is a large element of “game” which essentially amounts to devising successful sexual strategies in order to be successful with women. As men have been culturally charged with the responsibility of instigating sexual liaisons with women, the philosophy attempts to help men increase their proficiency in this area of their lives. This “game” manifests in different ways, it can be used to have sex with lots of different women, maintain relationships with a lover or take control of a rocky marriage, simply it is the teaching of wisdom which can help men become more romantically successful, how the knowledge is applied and practiced is essentially up to the individual.

Detractors of the The Red Pill attempt to conflate the philosophy’s anti-feminist element with the concept of misogyny, that is to say, that disagreeing with feminism automatically means one hates the female gender, this is a false assumption (or if we’re to identify the fallacy – a hasty generalisation resulting in a strawman), where anti-feminism is affiliated with a hate for women, an idea which is not only logically unsound, but factually incorrect.

One does not need to be a feminist to be female, but it’s this trick of trying to make the terms synonymous, that being female and feminist are the same things which creates the perfect veil of protection for the feminist ideology, by using women as a psychological human shield they protect their ideology from intense scrutiny by shutting down the debate, so that when one decries feminism they are simultaneously perceived to despise women and thus silenced on grounds of intolerance.

This mental manipulation which is embodied in the very fabric of western society only serves to promote the interests of the architects and torch holders of the feminist ideology, therefore it is safe to assume that it’s in their interest to keep you believing that it’s oppressive of women as a whole to simply disagree with their doctrine. Radical feminists have ruthlessly hijacked feminism post first wave and attached their extremist ideology to both the concept of civil rights and the feminine identity when these things are in all actuality things which are innately and fundamentally separate, women had existed for thousands if not hundreds of thousands of years completely independent of feminism, feminism has been around for just over a hundred years, and the ideology only became powerful within the last 50 or so years, I think this safely qualifies that the biological state of being female can be independent totally and utterly of feminist ideology which is why it is incorrect to dishonestly associate a rejection of feminism as being synonymous with a dislike of women (misogyny.)

Interestingly, this is where feminism sees a clash with the women of Islam, but that’s a whole other can of worms for another post, the newsflash here is that one can disagree with feminism and love women all at the same time, which is an important distinction to be made if one is attempting to be intellectually honest when attempting to scrutinise The Red Pill and not simply misrepresent its existence due to an ulterior agenda.

Ultimately as /r/theredpill surmises itself, it is the: “Discussion of sexual strategy in a culture increasingly lacking a positive identity for men.”