Summary: An expert discusses men’s solutions to the gender wars – individualism, Game, and MGTOW. It is a follow-up to yesterday’s post, lifted from one of the best discussions ever among the 50,000+ comments on the FM website. He speaks about the experience of young men individually trying to cope with the gender revolution. Part one; part two goes up tomorrow.

Introduction

Enough analysis. This series is about solutions men are devising to the revolution in gender roles as the gender wars continue with no end in sight. My first two posts were about men as individuals finding their own solutions. Some learn Game to get casual sex. Some Men Go Their Own Way (MGTOW). Both feel good for a while. I doubt either will work for men or America over the long-term.

Here is the first of Dalrock’s reactions to those posts. He is a married man living with his wife and two kids in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. He uses his website to explore how the post-feminist world impacts him and his family. It is essential reading for anyone interested in these issues.

(1) Dalrock’s comment: Game’s utility for many young men

One thing I would encourage everyone to keep in mind about Game is that as a society we are obsessed with generating sexual attraction in women. We see this ability as the most pure test of goodness in a man. A woman’s feelings of sexual attraction are a mystical force, godlike for non-Christians, and God’s message for Christians. We can’t see how incredibly crass this is because we call it romantic love, but romantic love is far more intertwined with sexual desire than we are willing to admit. To truly seduce a woman is to make her fall in love with you.

Generating the tingle is an obsession with our society, and you can see it in our popular films. The Fifth Element is over the top in this regard on the secular side, as is Fireproof on the Christian side. {Ed. See Dalrock’s amazing posts about Fireproof: The endless courtship fantasy and How Fireproof lowers the boom.}

We believe that good things should happen to men who can generate the tingle. This is why we reserve our daughters’ most sexually attractive years as a reward for such men. Our greatest fear is that the woman might become confused and bestow her gift of sex on the wrong men. Hence the “True Love Tester” (see the video).

This is also why we need no fault divorce. What court in the land could overrule the woman’s holy vagina? If she no longer tingles for him, he deserves to be ejected from his children’s lives and have a more sexy man take his place. Think of the vitriol we heap on such men who dare to complain when this happens to them. They are the lowest of the low in our society, except perhaps for those most detestable men of all, the omegas who can’t attract a woman at all.

All of our sexual morality is directly anchored to the tingle. The #metoo movement doesn’t object to women trading sex to get ahead, it objects to the fact that in doing so such women are enticed into having sex with unsexy men!

Our society is obsessed with how to make women tingle. It is our most fundamental test for goodness in a man. Game teaches men how to be good (in our society’s view). I mention it because for nearly everyone their first response to reading about Game is to laugh at the men learning it for being obsessed with seduction.

Editor’s note.

See these posts by Dalrock for more info: If she has enough self esteem she won’t tingle for Harley McBadboy. and especially Why Game is a threat to our values (an expanded version of this comment).

My reply to Dalrock

I agree on all points. But that’s not the point of this series. As I said in the first chapter, “enough analysis!” What should men do in response to the evolution of gender roles? More accurately, the revolution in gender roles?

The first chapter said that a return to “traditional values” was not feasible. This post questions the effectiveness of Game and MGTOW, saying that for men they are useful short-term but probably ineffective or destructive long-term — and damaging to America. The third looks at social reforms, aka group or pack responses. Any thoughts?

(2) Dalrock’s comment: see men finding their own solutions

I think for the foreseeable future individual solutions are a man’s best bet, no matter how thin they are. Understanding reality will help men make better informed decisions.

Think of the Christian author I wrote about last week who married a woman who was repulsed at the thought of holding hands with him, and then was shocked that he had a 20 year sexless marriage that ended with her cheating on him. It may seem trivial, but teaching men about the mechanics of attraction helps a lot compared with teaching them lies.

Men should be clear about marriage and sexual morality. The most common view (including from men) is that if a wife becomes unhappy she must be permitted to divorce, and her ex-husband must provide moral cover for her immorality. If a man isn’t perfectly clear that this is wrong he shouldn’t marry. Also, teaching your children this reality from an early age will at least put a damper on her temptation to try to live out the Eat Pray Love dream.

Social reform is an interesting topic, and I very much look forward to your upcoming posts.

Editor’s note.

Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia is a best-selling memoir by Elizabeth Gilbert (2006), made into a 2010 film starring Julia Roberts . It is the Bible for modern women. Gilbert became dissatisfied with her husband, dumped him, and traveled around the world for a year — as any working woman would. She spent four months in Italy (“Eat”), three months in India (“Pray”), ending up in Bali, Indonesia — falling in love with a rich Brazilian businessman.

Aimee Levitt described it as written in the “voice of a person who knows she is better than you are, but is trying really hard not to let it show because that might hurt your feelings.” The women reviewers loved it beyond the ability of words to express. Also impossible to describe is her gushy NYT profile. Although it is beyond parody, Andrew Gottlieb tried in Drink, Play, F@k: One Man’s Search for Anything Across Ireland, Las Vegas, and Thailand .

The Daily Mail ran a story about the 10-year anniversary of this epochal story, with examples of women who followed in Gilbert’s footsteps. Oddly, they did not manage step #3: marry a rich hunk (as Julia Roberts does in the film). The others in the article are still single. But then, neither did Gilbert. Her second husband was 17 years older than her, balding, and shorter (a major factor for most women). But he was rich!

Update from Dalrock in the comments. I am still too naive. Of course these awesome feminist empowerment stories are often fake.

“Even the rich part seems to have been fiction. From what I’ve read, it sounds like he sold his cottage in Bali to move in with her, and then she bankrolled a small shop for him to run with the earnings from the book/movie. In one interview they describe him calling her for permission to buy something for the shop, and she says he doesn’t need permission.

“The truly hilarious part is that like the other blockbuster book/movie about a divorcee finding an exotic hunk overseas, he married her because he needed a visa. The other divorce fantasy book/movie I’m referring to is How Stella Got Her Groove Back (made into a film of the same name ) in which a hot young stud swept the divorcee off her feet. In reality Stella’s exotic new man was not a stud but instead quite visibly gay, and according to her allegations only married her for her money and to obtain a visa: ‘Epilogue for ‘Stella’ author: a messy divorce.'”

My reply

I agree. An effective group response will take years to take hold. By “group response” I mean those that occur by collective action by groups — tribes, packs, etc. They need not change society, or even be beneficial for society. For example, Christianity in the Roman Empire was a group response to its problems. Gibbon said “the introduction, or at least the abuse of Christianity” was a major contribution to its fall.

As for ending the gender wars, rebuilding the system (in whatever form) will take many years – or decades, or generations, or forever (i.e., it might prove impossible in our current system). Each of us must live in the present. We cannot wait for some future Great Day When good stuff happens.

But I strongly believe (guessing) that neither Game nor MGTOW (Men Going Their Own Way) will work over the long-term for most men. I believe discussing this is the most important subject for the “manosphere.” Now most of its leaders are selling solutions that for most men will prove to be somewhere between “snake oil” (ineffective) and coke (fun but self-destructive).

(3) Dalrock’s comment: see MGTOW (Men Going Their Own Way)

One thing that I think is a misconception is the idea that we are seeing a “marriage strike”. What I think we are seeing instead is a breakdown of incentives due to the ever increasing delay of marriage (and the pre-marriage girlfriend). I don’t think men are on strike, or (for the most part) consciously going their own way. Instead, as we have reworked the incentives for men, the culture of young men has drifted away from the old order. I think nearly all of them would still very much like to marry the washed out party girls who are complaining about a lack of good men.

The problem is these men can’t go back and focus their teens and 20s on education and hard work any more than the women can go back and devote their most fertile years to marriage. The coin is already spent. So you can’t bargain with men to win them over, because (for the most part) they never really were on strike.

I’m not saying the men you encounter who identify as MGTOW aren’t sincere (although not all are). I’m saying when we look at the stats and see an ever increasing group of men working enough to support themselves and devoting their remaining energy to hobbies –Tinder, online porn, video games, pot, etc. – this isn’t coming from a deliberate intent to “strike”.

My reply

That nails it. The key drivers include not just the delay of marriage until the late 20s, but change in the rules governing marriage. The incentives for men to marry have broken down. They were patriarchy; their destruction has been a public policy goal for five decades.

Now many women sensibly exploit the rules to get the party-of-her-life, marriage, and children – followed by divorce, division of community property, receipt of child support, and independence (vivid details here). It works for lower class guys who have little property to divide (especially if they can escape into the cash economy). It works for the rich, where prenuptials are effective and child-support is a trivial expense. Marriage is a risk for middle class men, and increasing numbers refuse to play.

See feminists explaining the importance of marrying with the awareness that divorce is always an option. Doublethink (from 1984) is an essential skill in the new era of marriage!

See the other posts in this series

For More Information

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Some great books that can help us understand our situation

Sex in History by Reay Tannahill.

Survival of the Prettiest: The Science of Beauty by Nancy Etcoff.