Summary: Here are some insights, seldom seen, essential for anyone interested in the gender wars. We sail in strange seas, without a map, without goals. Disaster is likely for America unless we do better.
“First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. And then they attack you and want to burn you. And then they build monuments to you.”
— Speech by union leader Nicholas Klein (1918).
Dalrock’s important comment: Game is toxic to feminism
This series has been a great primer on the topic. It has been interesting to see how you were able to use our comment exchange to walk through the concepts, blending both of our thoughts.
I don’t think that men are for the most part responding via Game and MGTOW. I think a handful of men are consciously thinking this through and opting for one or the other, but for most men I think it is more about a slow cultural drift that is rational given the new incentives.
Also, I think the most profound threat Game poses to the feminist status quo is not the risk that men will master and practice it, but the different thought processes it encourages. At the risk of oversimplifying the topic, feminism relies on a fanatical devotion to chivalry, and Game is the chivalry destroyer. This was for example Robert P. Murphy’s objection to Game in his “An Essay for Single Christian Men”.
We have a system that requires fanatical devotion to chivalry, and says that the ability to seduce women as the ultimate mark of virtue in a man. Enter Game, which teaches how to seduce women. How can you stop men from learning how to seduce women, when seducing women is your highest virtue? The KGB couldn’t have stopped such knowledge from spreading!
Even worse, you don’t have to actually learn how to seduce women to see that Game is right. This is an existential conflict for feminism.
Editor’s note.
Dalrock wrote a brilliant post expanding on this comment. Why Game is a threat to our values. It is essential reading for anyone interested in learning about the gender wars.
My reply to Dalrock
Thank you for posting these enlightening comments. I’ve learned much from them, as I’m sure readers have.
(1) “Game is the chivalry destroyer.”
I have never before seen that insight. It is beyond brilliant. To feminists, Game is toxic masculinity. It is an expression of masculinity that is literally toxic to modern feminism. To use another metaphor, using Game on feminism is like putting salt on icy roads.
(2) “I don’t think that men are for the most part responding via Game and MGTOW.”
I agree, that’s true today. But what about the future? Social trends tend to grow like bacteria, in an “S” curve. The first phase of the curve – the first stage of the counter-revolution – feels like serious growth to us. If young men turn away from marriage in the next decade, we will be on the vertical part of the “S” curve. Then women will look back at 2018 as the good old days.
(3) “I think a handful of men are consciously thinking this through”
I agree, and will state that more strongly: social changes often result not from people’s rational thought but from people reacting as a group on a “subconscious” level. First, we are pack animals (like wolves). This ability to work together made our species powerful before the inventions of fire and the wheel. Second, we are not, as some economists believe, a collection of analytical engines. We act on what we know, beyond facts and logic.
“Man is not a rational animal; he is a rationalizing animal.”
— From Robert Heinlein’s Assignment In Eternity(1953).
(4) “The KGB couldn’t have stopped such knowledge from spreading!”
Exactly! Dark knowledge consists of insights denied by society that once learned, change how one sees the world. Such as those Machiavelli gave in The Prince
As you said the KGB, with all its skill and power, could not prevent knowledge of the West’s success from spreading thru the Soviet Union — washing away its foundation.
Dark knowledge about the nature of modern women and the risks of marriage is spreading among young men. They see the revolutionary words by leading women to others: party hard with bad boys, then (when the bloom is off) settle for a nice beta provider (e.g., by Sheryl Sandberg (COO of Facebook) in her best-seller Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead
They see how many women logically play the game even more aggressively: 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).
This dark knowledge is washing away the foundations of the western family system. Game and Men Going Their Own Ways are early stage reactions to this. The most common reaction is men’s decreased interest in marriage; see Dalrock’s observations below.
Nothing can stop its spread. I believe it will spread until society radically changes. This series is about that process.
Dalrock’s comment about the first sign of the counter-revolution
From the data I’ve been able to gather, nearly all white women are still able to marry. The carping we see now is based on very small numbers of women not being able to marry. …
Almost all white non-Hispanic* women still manage to marry by their late 30s early 40s, but a steadily growing minority of women are reaching their late 30s without ever marrying. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to get the same data set since 2014, so I haven’t been able to look and see how this translated for women in their early 40s. My last look at the data is here: 2014 Never Married Data. Someone on Reddit made a fascinating chart here: Percentage of US Women Who Have Never Married by Age – 1980 vs 2015.
* I broke it out this way as a quick and dirty way to avoid changing demographics from mixing in with other trends. Also, nearly all of the mainstream media figures freaking out about the lack of husband prospects are white UMC women.
My reply
“The carping we see now is based on very small numbers of women not being able to marry.”
That’s a foretaste of the future. In the past decade, increasing numbers of women were unable to marry in their fertile years. The trend is significant even if the numbers are small. The resulting loud screams of pain and rage show the importance of this trend.
My series focuses on today’s young men and women, those who are (roughly) 18-24 years old. What happens to this generation might be an inflection point in our history — if large numbers of these young men refuse to marry when their generation’s young women decide to settle.
What comes next? Will those young women in response change their dress and behavior to attract men into marriage? My wife says that many of them will be unable to do so. Previous generations of women began practicing these skills at 12 years old; she says many of them will be unable to master them at 32. If so, that generation will be train wreck.
See the other posts in this series
- A return to traditional values.
- Men finding individual solutions.
- Part 1 – An expert discusses individual solutions.
- Part 2 – Discussing women’s responses to men’s solutions.
- Part 3 – An expert sees wonders ahead!
- Part 4 – An expert: respect is a key battleground in the gender wars.
- Part 5 – An expert’s insight: Game is toxic to feminism.
- Part 6 – An expert describes the road to respect for men.
- A counter-revolution in society.
Ideas! For shopping ideas, see my recommended books and films at Amazon.
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More insights from Dalrock
- About serial monogamy: One at a time, please.
- Embracing no fault divorce is the natural result of elevating romantic love to a moral force.
- Courtly Love: The origins of cuckchivalry.
- Cowardly cisgendered men forcing heroic transgendered women to fight in their place.
Books about the new era of marriage
Men on Strike: Why Men Are Boycotting Marriage, Fatherhood, and the American Dream – and Why It Matters
The Privileged Sex
