Summary Notes: (1) Women don’t want to feel pressured, guilt tripped, emotionally manipulated or cornered into liking you. It is on them to like you even though you have to show them who you really are and be fine with “rejection”. Don’t see rejection as a sad thing but just another chance at freedom and possibility (2) We often put ourselves into situations where we projected our own expectations onto others, and when hurt, we have a tendency to blame others unilaterally rather than weighing the possibility of mutual or even self-blame. Yet, even if we are to blame, we have to find healthy outlets at coming to self-actualization rather than self-destruction, i.e., avoiding self-medicating, self-harm, lashing out at loved ones just to test their tolerances, etc. (3) Men often get hurt when they are rejected because it is about their utility (use, function, form, status, etc.), whereas women seem to get hurt because the female’s “power of appraisal and selection” is challenged. Men have to be self-aware and able laugh at yourself (4) Many women simply want a somewhat fun or engaging life with positive thinking, so a man having interests, thoughts, ideas, and dreams are central. Women like interesting men but being “too deep” can often scare women away for a platitude of reasons such as A) many women may think that thinking is their territory or B) thinking can come off as self-doubt. Yet, many men actually want women who are intrigued by things as well and who are interesting rather than simply wanting women who just want to “fit in” and conform, i.e., women can’t just sit back and expect people to entertain them, because men too get bored. In a world awash with beauty, beauty isn’t always what attracts a man. Loyalty and the ability to sense feelings and empowering his leadership is what a man often responds to. Men like to strategize, and woman are key forces in consulting men to be feel empowered to make decisions. (5) You don’t have rush into sex, even though that is the “love language” many need to express their feelings towards another. Even though we live in a world where it seems you need sex to vet a person, the truth with age is that emotional, lifestyle and mental connection matters more, because “the mysteries” of woman aren’t that big of a deal to a grown man. Connection is true “aphrodisiac” than the simple physical act of rubbing body parts until release. Would you rather have a few orgasms here or there or…. have a person who gets you, understands you, respects your insecurities, but also have a good love life? (6) check yourself to ensure you’re not being a hypocrite and don’t always gaslight others as the problem (7) never lie to a woman yet don’t asks questions always where you may force a person to reveal something they aren’t quite ready to reveal or talk about since they may have moved beyond something. There’s a difference between being snoopy and invasive rather than wanting honesty when an actual issue affecting both parties arises, and (8) bodies can change, get healthier, etc., so the grass isn’t always greener. Men and women will always respond to physical attractiveness of others, and this often can’t be avoided, or people simply enjoy admiring beauty. As long as a person is being respectful to their partners and not using this to force an image or lifestyle on another, or belittle their partner, then I think people have to be confident and mature in what they have and not read too much into things. Sometimes people look but don’t touch just to appreciate what they have or to get over feelings of what it is they think they are missing out on. (9) Many women are conscious to the fact that they are operating in a patriarchal system, so this is why women often like or find humorous things that subverts the status quo. I can’t define feminism, respectfully so, but if I had to simply describe it, feminism is the study by biological or gender assigned females to determine what it is to be a woman in absence of patriarchal overlordship but also within it and determining value by themselves and for themselves. Though many women wear the supposed “male gaze” version of femininity with honor (I say supposed because I can’t say for example that a voluptuous woman wearing a revealing dress is necessarily forced by the “male gaze) as a means of owning it themselves/re-appropriating power (the sexualized woman, the synthesis between the “Madonna – Whore” complex, etc.), they are too aware that this what they are doing, and that this is all possibly absurd, and they, i.e., women, are actors within the male created system who are simply playing their part as we men project our insecurities onto the world. This is why women sometimes find it attractive when men subvert gender expectations since it shows they are aware of what women are on to and find it partially or equally as silly, which is that men are often operating as bots within a system they created and to their, well — our, own demise, but it also shows a sense of self confidence. Many women see men as boys playing boys game in a manufactured boy’s system where we are ironically killing ourselves as we worship our own cult of masculinity. In this regard, women are certainly smarter because it is us men who often lack self-awareness.
The biggest thing I would tell young men from my experiences would be that women don’t want to feel pressured or cornered into liking you.
A lot of men were trained that “good ole fashioned” “romantic” “can’t eat, can’t sleep” “waking her up with a radio with both of yours supposedly favorite song” “running through a rainstorm” type-of-effort somehow equates to the automatic commitment by a female. This is a reductionist view to female agency, i.e., women are simply machines where if given simple inputs will naturally guarantee intended outputs. The dangerous part of the other side of this coin is that many men find is acceptable to treat women horribly, and sadly some women do respond to this, but that is more so out of a woman’s own self-esteem issues (i.e., many woman have self-esteem issues so I suspect in an unhealthy way that woman seek men that treat them badly, hoping that the man sufficing for their own feelings, will actually venerate them from these emotional lows). Yet, women when they snap out of these self-hatred and self-esteem issues will resent you. Don’t be the guy they end up resenting because they feel like you tricked them into being into some sort of “emotional matrix” full of gaslighting, manipulation, etc.
In other words, the guys who think they are good guys but expect something in return by thinking pre-packaged gestures will equate to romance, and the men who purposely treat women badly to manipulate a woman’s tendency to self-criticize are the same type of man, just using different strategies to control women.
But good men do exist, and it should be a goal for everyone man to aspire to. Yet, the delicate art of being a good man is to just be one, and not “think about being one”.
The goal is to be the man who just is, respects others, makes his intentions known but is cool if they are rebuffed, and to be the man who hopefully finds someone who respects you, gets you, and doesn’t see your vulnerability or openness as weakness but rather a virtue in a world that often lacks virtue.
The sad truth about “Men’s Rights” advocates is that they will…die alone. They like to poke fun at woman by alleging they will be “cat moms who need to invest in cat food stocks”, but many of these men can only achieve transactional relationships where they will never feel of the joy of being their true, nerdy, nice selves (which I would argue is most men — nerds intrigued by things that woman may find trivial like history, strategy, philosophy, etc.). Women are more likely to have social bonds and connections since women often are charged with caring for family members, organizing gatherings or birthday parties, going to churches, shopping, etc. Men’s Rights type of men live within a shell and are likely resentful on the inside, often secretly reflecting on the mechanization of their emotions, where they constantly try to rationalize and even fetishize their own dehumanization, often attaching themselves to surrogate antisocial pop culture figures (Patrick Bateman from American Psycho, Tyler Durden from Fight Club, Trent Reznor in the song “Only” — it is a good song even though Trent was being ironic I think to point out what I am talking about, etc.). You can tell they are hurting because their first tendency is to lash out, insult (call others simps, cucks, etc.), etc., as a means of shrouding their true self, no different than how the Wizard of Oz was a shell of a man behind the veil.
Things can be confusing for men because many of the stories or narratives where romantic tropes such as what I referred above are often liked by many females, and maybe in previous generations, such as our parents, i.e., Baby Boomers, the Silent Generation, etc., did respond to mass media differently, i.e., they copied verbatim what they saw on screen even though the messages may have been absorbing were regressive or at least patriarchal (as opposed to our modern hyperaware, self-referential, recycled and often cynical gaze towards pop culture).
Not only are men getting covertly toxic messages, they are also being told that they are toxic by females and social scientists (which has a large degree of merit considering the world is defined largely by patriarchy so men will naturally be criticized when analyzing structural issues — i.e., a possible type of Catch 22), but… there’s no real outlet for men to reach healthy self-actualization (that isn’t political for example – i.e., many modern men simply think the opposite of masculinity is progressive but this is a logical fallacy, yet a lot of feminist leftist thought does argue that masculinity is not progressive…), and this is why in part opportunists such as the Man-o-sphere (Men’s Rights movement) were able to take up social market-share and partially swing the gender dynamics pendulum back to a regressive place.
We need more of a school for progressive masculinity where there is healthy debate, but the central goal is self-reflection.
It is my personal belief that the Man-o-sphere is the actual outgrowth of actual Right-Wing funding of social sciences with the intention of bolstering the capitalist classes (I am not here to argue that capitalism is entirely bad) but then found itself gaining traction on the coattails of figures such as Jordan B. Petersen (a plant), yet the truth about the Manosphere was never about making the world a better place but rather reinforcing the top-down, elitist, hierarchal forces of market-capitalism and emboldening the status quo of the quasi-liberal bourgeoisie class (who need force often typified by the police-militaristic notions of masculinity and coercion to disrupt class consciousness to dissuade the reappropriating of one-percent’s assets). In other words, masculinity has been reduced to being a natural product, tool and commodity of capitalism and needed to reinforce capitalism’s tendency to be coercive to get what it wants and keep people as sheep within this system that requires a small amount of people to profit the most off of the majority of people exerting their labor energy, “economic caloric output”, etc.
Thus, we need more men to be honest about who we are rather than putting on a front, and help steer men into healthier outlets of self-criticism, but also being firm that men do deserve respect to, just like woman demand it. Respect is a balancing act, a seesaw, which should be fun to ride.
Yet, many women were also indoctrinated by society (movies, Instagram posts of supposedly perfect couples, pastiche of previous pop culture, air brushed beauty standards, etc.) that they are the prizes who should be competed for.
In other words, there’s toxic expectations on both sides, yet, exerting effort isn’t bad, nor is having expectations about how one feels they should be treated is bad. It only gets toxic when either gender uses the efforts of others to lead a person especially when they know there’s nothing forming there (i.e., women have to “woman up” and say they aren’t interested as of now), or if a person forces their way into another person’s life where the other people may feel their boundaries are being violated, even if the party forcing things are thinking they are doing the right thing (men have to realize no means no or get the message).
But, to make things less confusing, if a woman likes you, she likes you. You as the man got to take it slow, even though the “hunt” is hard, i.e., we’re tempted to feel overly ecstatic because men often don’t get as much attention as females do. Females often get so much unwanted attention they have to naturally reject men for their own personal safety, whereas many men get little to no female attention and often read too much into female communication.
But, from experience, a woman will make it easy for you if she likes you. It’s a hard pill for men to process because while she appraises men, you may be beat out another suitor, so this explains why men feel the need to be a little pushy and pitch themselves. It’s a damned if you, damned if don’t situation where you simply have to accept as a man and be cool with. If you don’t try, you’ll never know. Thus, being comfortable with rejection is a good thing, so that’s why you never sell yourself too hard, so the fall isn’t that detrimental.
To re-state, if a woman is interested, she’ll give cues such as a simple…asking you questions back and inquiring deeper about things, asking you for your name again even if she forgets initially (it’s oddly ruder when men forget a woman’s name, but somehow acceptable when women forget a man’s name), accepting and appreciating whatever awkwardness you give off. You just sort of know because he’s giving direct indirect signals. Since women don’t get reject as much, they seem to have a subconscious habit of being indirect and not always forward. I am no love guru, but one thing I used to do is if I met a woman who seemed cool, but I was in a rush, if I had noticed her a few times and vice versa (familiarity is a central), then I would give her my number and say “feel free to text me, no pressure. if not, and we see each other again, everything will be cool and no awkwardness”. This actually worked a few times. I was honest, I tried, and I didn’t push unnecessary pressure on her and disarmed myself that if rejected I wouldn’t be weird, especially at a place of employment where she’s just trying to get by. She may not be ready now, but she may remember (file) you for later. The more “genuine non-expectational interactions” you have, the more of a decent person you seem.
But back on course, women don’t like to feel cornered, or guilt tripped into liking a man.
Many women don’t want to hurt people’s feelings, but the unfortunate part of the “game” is rejection. If rejection didn’t exist, then there wouldn’t be special relationships, there would be no order, no one would know whose children are who’s, etc.
If the guy seems too clingy or emotionally fragile, then a woman might shy away for fear that she’ll be put in a position to “break a person’s heart” and then ruin a person’s life for a given amount of time. Or, even if a woman does give in, she may end up resenting the person who she felt emotionally manipulated her by essentially making her feel sorry for them.
Let’s be real, how many men feel they got their heartbroken by a female, but used that female rejection to make themselves into a better person? Many. So, in theory, who really hurt who? Who was using who? Did we not have the conscious choice to enter into a relationship or shoot our shot? Did the other person hurt you or did you put yourself into a situation where you didn’t get the message or signals and then when brutally shutdown or ghosted, you internalized this as being unilaterally the other person’s fault? It’s a possibility. Sure, maybe you have right to be angry, but all I am saying you have to be able to look into the mirror. Even if you feel you got screwed over, why let the other person still haunt you, hurt you? Don’t even give them the benefit of your inspiration, poetics or artistic abilities.
Yet, we teach men to be “stoic” as a means of hiding emotion rather than controlling and understanding emotion, but the problem with hiding emotion is that emotion isn’t being dealt with. Instead of finding light through the existential struggle of finding purposes and meaning as a “being”, many use stoicism to become…dark. Assholes, jerks, predators, etc. A man being “emotional” isn’t bad, but rather a man has to be aware that he’s being that way, ask why he’s feeling that way, and then determine if what is going on is a “you problem or them problem or a combination of both parties problem”. Many times, but not always, often, it’s a both parties problem, i.e., a misalignment of expectations, poor translation of communication, etc.
As a guy I know too well that many “alpha men” are really just emotional ticking timebombs, whereas many men that society may have called “beta males” actually have a better understanding of their own emotions. I have seen it time and time again and at nauseum. Men trying to live these simulated HBO Entourage fantasies (good show by the way if you get the hyperreality of the show) yet interestingly morph into these sorts of urban dwelling, catty, gossiping, sexually degenerate, drugged up, materialistic, pop culture trivial knowledge having people who can very rude and judgmental of others, because pretending to be a jerk is the laziest way of pretending to be superior. And it’s easy to blame this on “liberalism” but most of these guys are beef jerky Joe Rogan listeners at best and “Fresh and Fit Podcast” listeners at worst, anyways. These men were never intellectually “liberal” in our modern conception of the word (even though the term liberal is a shell-game word anyways considering it spreads the gambit of what we consider to be both Democratic and Republican, e.g., both base on liberal, i.e., enlightenment ideas) but were often clout chasers, going with whatever the wind blew, yet, exhibiting internalized toxic masculine (yes, I said it) traits, once society got tired of “wokeness”, they jumped ship to the nearest surrogate masculine ideology they could.
Yet, many women go after these men which are emotional time-bombs, and what I am saying is, don’t even entertain it. The modern issue with stoicism in men’s rights movements such as the notion of “Sigma Males” is that it’s not teaching men to understand emotion through self-reflection and being analytical about the hypocrisies of society – which includes but is not limited to patriarchal ideas or notions – but rather to make men into “productive emotionless drones” who seem to not care about fitting in, ironically on the grounds of being seen and respective for not caring, i.e., fitting in.
Women don’t to be cornered, guilt tripped, etc.,
However, to move on, women I think have a slight toxic trait which is them thinking they have a unilateral ability to observe and psychoanalyze things, and they are impervious to this themselves. In other words, women want to see everyone else, but don’t really want to be seen for who they are, hence they can put on a mask. Women are people watchers (and, yes, men are too, but I am saying it seems more a female characteristic).
It sounds childish, non-academic, non-intellectual, etc., but from experience, the less a woman realizes you notice them, they sort of notice you. The busier or engaged you are (I mean genuinely doing your thing rather than flaunting that you’re always busy to seem important — women can read through that), the more they seem to notice you, because…they can…observe you. They want to observe your raw emotions, reactions, how you interact with others, how others view you or don’t view you, how you deal being alone, around others, etc., and how comfortable you generally feel in your own skin. They want to see that you aren’t overthinking yourself. I remember playing football and a coach grabbed my helmet and said, “I was thinking too much” rather than “reacting”.
Why do women do this? I don’t know. A person who seems guided by a mission or purposes, even if it means doing the most basic things, i.e., working, taking care of yourself, catching up with people, etc., means a person isn’t really dwelling on life, thus they have survival characteristics. Women want to feel safe, and a way they do this is by observing and vetting your interactions, yet the only issue is women think this is a one way lane or power they have, so I am telling young men to let women have their powers, doing your thing, treat them with respect, but don’t get too hung up on them if they can’t interpret your value…but you have to have value, but having value doesn’t mean superficial, glib, materialistic things, but more so having a sense of being, striving to learn a skill, saving money, learning to appreciate life, finding joy, etc.
On an extreme end of this idea, it plays into the notion that a woman notices you once you get a woman or attention from others. Women use other women to vet men, i.e., if she thinks he’s good enough, then he must be. I joke it is how women wear or sometimes take each other’s clothes. Men seem to operate differently. Even though men may lust after the same women, once that woman is taken, i.e., used, then a male’s tendency to be competitive over women sort of kills off the attraction, and even more so if the woman is seen as being “passed around” by a group of men, it’s not necessarily that she’s sexual but indecisive in herself and emotionally not independent, i.e., she may be more of a headache to deal with and unstable herself. Also, the more partners a woman is seen has having to me doesn’t have to do with sex with age (feeling sexually insecure others “had her”) but more so safety, i.e., the more men she deals with more instances of possible hostility or even violence, especially if previous men from her past disrespect her. I am not saying this is right or wrong, or fair, but I am saying it is a social phenomenon, which can be triumphed over, but for the sake of this section I am appealing more often than not to base human reactions, desires, feelings, etc.
Why do women get hurt?
Women from my experiences get hurt when they get rejected too, but whereas a man gets devastated because his effort, utility, etc., were rejected, thus is being, a woman gets hurt when she realizes her “power of appraising, vetting, and observation” didn’t work out. How men are betting on their effort, women are betting on their ability to have selected right.
This power is so central to females that when a relationship goes sour and the man she wants is no longer interested, she sees it as something wrong with her ability to have appraised correctly. Women are the shoppers of the species. The are the “genetic furniture arrangers”. I say this because shopping requires consent, i.e., in order for a woman to be happy and for the species to consensually procreate, the woman ultimately has to choose, even though the product, the man, has to pitch himself. Imagine being rejected by your own clothes, the furniture in your house, i.e., the things you purposely put into your life to doll up your life (control it) to make into the vision you had for yourself.
In a way, a woman getting rejected, just like men getting rejected can be a growing experience, especially if one looks into the mirror and doesn’t put all the blame on the other but takes ownership of their own mistakes. The same way how Incels on the extreme fringes, all the way to the normal everyday aggrieved men try to paint women that hurt them as femme fatales, many women likely do the same with what I like to call the “Billie Holliday broken female” musings.
The same way how men can set up women to be the villains of their “glow up” “get back into the gym, eat beef jerky or protein powder” “triumphant story arc”, women can do the same thing with men, i.e., using men as the villains to get back to their “little black dress, hoping a random stranger buys you a drink at a bar” “Stella got her groove back” moment.
So, this goes back to what I was saying about irony previously. Who really hurt who?
Maybe we are all using people as objects to test our own realities/challenge our own ontologies, selfishly (where selfishness is in part a natural part of existence, i.e., self-preservation, self-comfort, etc.), but we often but not always make this mistake without realizing it (since we were indoctrinated to think certain behaviors guaranteed success), yet, when our realities and expectations are challenged, we either internalize the hurt in a purely narcissistic way of being unilaterally aggrieved, or we can positively use this existential situation to check our own behavior, and that of the other person, yet hopefully come to a sort of balanced situation.
A healthy person can put themselves on trial (a very healthy person may come to the verdict that in some cases he or she alone were at fault), whereas the opposite points fingers at others, blames others, and instead uses the hurt to encase and reinforce their potential toxic tendencies (note: I am saying toxic as opposed to “anitsocial” because antisocial is an actual clinical designation framework that I feel is personally misused by the general public as means of pointing to behaviors an individual subjectively doesn’t like).
But I am not saying don’t blame others if blame is actually due, but rather just don’t jump to automatic conclusions all the time that how you feel is someone else’s fault. Sometimes the people we think hurt us don’t even realize it and once confronted with it, they don’t know how to handle it. But you do have legitimate sociopaths out there who simply want to see what other can do for them and then will hurt, triangulate, etc.
As a disclaimer, throughout this post I am talking mostly about situations where people have choice to enter and leave, and where there was no sort of physical force or detrimental emotional manipulation involved. For example, if a person is physically attacked or assaulted, it is never the victim’s fault. I am speaking purely from non-criminal, awkward, daily interactions between men and woman (however, I am not trying to be exclusionary to any same sex or non-binary people who may resonate with any of the words I am talking about, but I can only speak from a straight viewpoint, i.e., Westernized, biologically male, cisgender heterosexual perspective).
Before I end this, I want to say never lie to a woman.
It’s tempting or maybe even a knee jerk reaction to embellish our lives a bit to seem more interesting, tough, cool, important than what we are, but genuine honestly will always serve you best.
If you don’t know something, say I don’t know.
However, you are entitled to your privacy. For example, there’s certain questions I just wouldn’t ask my partners because what does it matter anyways? I am not one to ask about “body count” or past relationships because A) why make your partner relive the past and possibly relive a romance or trauma? and B) sometimes prying too much just to set up a person with being forced to tell you the truth is a little…rude. Somethings are just left unasked for. As long as things from a person’s past aren’t criminal or public to the extent of affecting the present of future in a detrimental sense, then I find it best to leave things in past.
For example, I wouldn’t ask a woman what her body count is, however, let’s say a woman was…a porn actress. This hasn’t happened to me, but it seems to be a trope recycled through men’s talk shows, but to me is, if it’s public, i.e., something that will affect our future or require me to defend her honor or social standing or even job (even if I accept her past) then I should know so I am prepared, but I don’t need to know about private encounters. You just have to hope that the person you’re with now is a decent human being who didn’t do things in the past out of pure selfish indulgence knowing they could bury things and then lead a boring life that neuters or domesticates you, where you as the partner are on the hook for conforming to overly conservative standards and denial of your legal desires.
Summary to the fellas. Be cool, be chill. Come in peace. Learn to live with rejection but also don’t beat yourself up. Realize sometimes we have the blinders on and try to force things and we set ourselves up for being hurt, etc. Don’t corner or guilt trip women, but also don’t unnecessarily pander to them either. Sympathize when sympathy is due.
Mitchell Research Group 