The Rational Male - Rollo Tomassi 2013

The Feminine Imperative

I think one of the basic premises I acknowledge in my essays is one that even some of the more ’enlightened’ Men of the ’community’ don’t entirely grasp. This is the presumption of a feminine reality. Sometimes I refer to this as the feminine imperative, other times I might colloquially express it in terms of it being “The Matrix” for an ease of understanding, but I always presume my readers (even of my comments on other blogs or forums) have a basic understanding of this.

I think I may be a bit mistaken in this.

Everything a man experiences, every social conditioning he receives from the earliest age, every accepted social norm and every expectation of him to qualify as the definition of a mature adult Man in contemporary society is designed to serve a female imperative. Moralist wallow in it, absolutists and defeated white knights existentially depend upon it, and even the better part of relativists still (often unwittingly) feed and serve the feminine purpose. In fact, so all encompassing is this reality that we define our masculinity in the terms of how well we can accommodate that feminine influence.

Our media celebrates it, and brooks no dissent. There is very little dissent, since to peel back the veneer is to be at odds with a reality defined by the female purpose. You feel lonely because you can’t understand its influence, and the conditioning you’ve been subjected to defines the objective solution to curing that feeling. You base the decisions of your future, your education, your career, your religious beliefs, even where you’ll choose to live, to better accommodate the feminine influence either in the present or in preparation of accommodating it in the future.

You get married, out of fear for not being found acceptable of it, or from social shame for not yet having accepted your role in service to the imperative. Your children are offered in tribute to it, while in turn you unknowingly perpetuate it in them. You pay tribute in

alimony, in divorce proceedings, in the expected sacrifices your career demands to maintain its influence in your own life and in society at large.

Men exist to facilitate a feminine reality.

We can excuse it with moralism, we can attach notions of honor and stability to it, we can even convince ourselves that the feminine imperative is our own imperative, but regardless, men still serve it.

Sexual Strategies

For one gender to realize their sexual imperative the other must sacrifice their own. This is the root source of power the feminine imperative uses to establish its own reality as the normative one. From this flows the rules of engagement for dating / mating, operative social conventions used to maintain cognitive dominance, and laws and legalities that bind society to the benefit of the feminine. From this is derived men’s default status as the ’disposable’ sex, while women are the protected sex. It’s this root that the imperative uses to excuse (not apologize for) the most blatant inconsistencies and atrocities of women.

Monogamy and fidelity are only useful when paired with an optimized hypergamy.

Without that optimization, they’re inconvenient obligations to the feminine reality.

In order to effect this reality men must be convinced of a themselves having a degree of more control than the feminine imperative exerts. They must believe that it is they who are the masters of a reality defined by the feminine, while remaining dependent upon the systems that the feminine reality outlines for them. So they are told they are Kings, brutes, savages, patricians, intellectuals, elites, anything that might convince them that the reality they exist in is privileged and expressly serves their own selfish purpose. Already the ’protected sex’, this all encourages the default presumption of victimhood for the feminine.

The crowning irony of the feminine reality is that men should be accused of patriarchy while enabling the very framework of the feminine imperative. The feminine sexual strategy is victorious because even under the contrived auspices of male oppression, it’s still the female goal-state that is agreed upon as the correct effort. Satisfying the feminine imperative, achieving the ends of the pluralistic feminine sexual strategy is still the normative condition. Men’s goals are aberrant, women’s are beatific.

Forgive me if I’ve waxed a bit too poetic here, but it’s important to see the Matrix for what it really is. The next occasion you lock horns with even the most well-meaning woman’s (or feminized man’s) opinions about life, relationships, marriage, having babies, religion, etc. understand that her perceptions are based in this reality. She’s correct because her beliefs line up with what the framework of her reality reinforced in her as correct. Any other frame of reference is either utterly alien to her at best, wicked and evil at worst.

Fem-Centrism

My intent with all this is to illustrate how the reality in which we find things “normal” is rendered by fem-centric influence. Across ethnicities, and encompassing all manner of social diversity, this influence is so insaturated into culture, laws, media, entertainment, from our collective social consciousness to our individual psyches that we simply take it for granted as the operative framework in which we live. I realize this is a tough pill to swallow, because the male imperative does in fact intersect with the female imperative depending on mutual goals. However, the point is that the operative framework, the

reality we function in, is primarily defined by the feminine.

I can remember first becoming aware of just the hints of this the first time I watched a popular sit-com on TV with a critical eye. There simply were no positively masculine actors or roles on any show, and rather, every male was ridiculed for his masculinity.

This then led into other aspects of society and media I was just starting to become aware of. The allegory of taking the red pill is one of an awakening. Feminization was everywhere, but my inner, conditioned guilt for even considering the possibility of

feminine-primacy was hindering my unplugging from it.

I remember at first feeling guilty about feeling offended by just my noticing this. I felt ashamed of myself for thinking that maybe things weren’t as ’normal’ as women would like me to think. What I didn’t understand was that this was part of my conditioning; to internalize a sense of shame for questioning that ’normalcy’. A lot of men never get past this programming and never unplug. It’s just too embedded in “who they are”, and the resulting internal conflict will prompt them to deny the realities of their condition and sometimes actively fight others who challenge the normalcy they need in order to exist.

Once I’d gotten past the self-shame, I began to notice other patterns and interlocking social conventions that promoted this fem-centrism. From the macro dynamics of divorce laws and legal definitions of rape, to the gender bias in military conscription (drafting only men to die in war) and down to the smallest details of mundane water cooler talk in the work place, I began to realize just how overwhelming this influence is on our existences.

Observing the Framework

Recently I listened to an advice radio talk show where a woman called in emotional distress with her husband’s actions. Apparently she’d dated the man for a year or two before marriage and they talked about how neither wanted children from the outset. Prior to the marriage both agreed, no kids, that is until about a year into their marriage the wife had secretly gone off the pill and made deliberate efforts in her sexual activities with her husband in order to conceive. Trouble was she wasn’t getting pregnant. Only later did the man confess that he’d had a vasectomy so as not to risk having kids with any woman he paired up with.

The ensuing indignation wasn’t directed at the woman’s admitted duplicity and covert efforts to deceive her husband into thinking she’d had an accidental pregnancy, but rather all the fires of hell were concentrated on this man’s alleged deception of her.



This serves as a prime example of how the feminine reality frames the directions of our lives. Publicly and privately, not even an afterthought was spared for the woman’s motivation and desperate measures to achieve her sexual imperative because the feminine imperative is normalized as the correct goal of any conflict.



A woman’s existential imperative, her happiness, her contentment, her protection, her provisioning, her empowerment, literally anything that benefits the feminine is not only encouraged socially, but in most cases mandated by law. Ironically, most doctors require a wife’s written consent to perform a vasectomy on a married man; not because of a legal mandate, but rather to avoid legal retaliations and damages from a man’s wife. By hook or by crook, her imperative is the correct one.

Some will argue that it hasn’t always been thus, and that in certain eras woman have been reduced to property like cattle. While that may have some merit I would argue that the perpetuation of this notion better serves the new feminine reality in promoting a need for recognition of victim status and thus a need for restitution. The truth is that even the most ardent supporters of reconciling a “patriarchal past” are still operating in the feminine realty in the now. Other than sultans and emperors, very few men born prior to the dark ages have ever really ’owned’ a woman.

Sexual Revolution

I got into a hypothetical debate with an online friend as to what it would mean to humanity (and masculinity in particular) if a new method of birth control was developed with the specific and unique ability to allow men to control conception to the same degree women were given with hormonal contraception in the mid-sixties. I thought it interesting that human effort could create reliable contraception for women in the 60′s, yet in 2013 we can map the human genome and yet not figure out how to afford men the same degree of birth control?

Put simply, the feminine imperative will not allow this.

Imagine the social and economic damage to the feminine infrastructure if Prometheus gave such fire to Men? Imagine that balance of control veering back into the masculine; for men to literally have the exclusive choice to fulfill a woman’s sexual strategy or not.

The conversation got heated. Men could never be trusted with such a power! Surely humanity would come to a grinding, apocalyptic end if the feminine sexual strategy was thwarted by reliable male contraception. Societies would be sundered, population would nosedive, and the nuclear family would be replaced with a neo-tribalism dictated by men’s sexual strategies. Honestly, you’d think the discovery of atomic weapons was on par with such an invention.

The ridiculous, pathetic endemically juvenile and perverse masculinity that 50 years of systematic feminization created could never be trusted to further humanity in pursuing their sex’s inborn imperatives.

Yet, this is precisely the power that was put into the hands of women in the 1960′s and remains today. The threat that male contraception represents to the feminine imperative is one of controlling the framework of which gender’s sexual strategy will be the normative.

Prior to the advent of unilaterally female-exclusive hormonal birth control and the sexual revolution that resulted from it, the gender playing field was level, if not tipped in favor of masculinity due to men’s provisioning being a motivating factor in women achieving their own gender imperative. Latex prophylactics were available in the 40′s, and this may have afforded men a slight advantage, but both parties knew and agreed to the terms of their sexual activity at the time of copulation.

Once feminine-exclusive birth control was convenient and available the locus of control switched to feminine primacy. Her imperative became the normalized imperative. His sexual imperative was only a means to achieving her own, and now the control was firmly placed in favor of feminine hypergamy. Whether in the developing world or in first world nations, the onus of directing the course of humanity fell upon women, and thus the feminine reality evolved into what it is today.

The Feminine Reality

Perhaps the single most useful tool women have possessed for centuries is their unknowablity. I made that word up, but it’s applicable; women of all generations for hundreds of years have cultivated this sense of being unknowable, random or in worse case fickle or ambiguous. This is the feminine mystique and it goes hand in hand with the feminine prerogative — a woman always reserves the right to change her mind — and the (mythical) feminine intuition — “a woman just knows.”

While a Man can never be respected for anything less than being forthright and resolute — say what you mean, mean what you say — women are rewarded and reinforced by society for being elusive and, dare I say, seemingly irrational. In fact, if done with the right art, it’s exactly this elusiveness that makes her both desirable and intolerably frustrating. However, to pull this off she must be (or seem to be) unknowable, and encourage all of male society to believe so.

The feminine mystique appeals to the feminine psyche for the same reasons ’chick crack’ works so well in PUA technique. It appeals to the same ’secret power’ dynamic that makes meta-physical associations so attractive (religion, superstition, intuition, etc.) One need look no further than women’s innate love of gossip to understand; There’s power in secrets for women. It’s hardly a surprise that connections with witchcraft have been

associated with the feminine for so long. In an historically ’male dominated’ culture it follows that the power of secrecy and mysticism would need to be cultivated into the feminine as a resource for influencing the men in control of it. Sometimes that may have ended with a woman burned at the stake, but more often it was a means to becoming the ’power behind the throne’ by order of degrees, and depending upon the status of the man she could enchant.

Combine that mysticism with sexuality, and you’ve got the true feminine mystique — the most useful tool the feminine imperative possesses in its quest for optimal hypergamy.

The feminine mystique permeates inter-gender communication. On every forum

response, on every blog comment, on every Facebook post and in any article ever written by women with a personal, feminine investment in the subject, there is a residue of recognizing the feminine mystique. When a woman retorts to an observation of female behavior that betrays female intent, the standard misdirection is always saturated in the unknowable, unpredictably capricious, feminine mystique.

The first (and second) rule of Fight Club for the feminine imperative is to protect the mystery of the female — and the sisterhood has no mercy for those who would betray that. The closer you get to truth the louder women screech.

For years I’ve striven to breakdown confusion and common problems by observing behavior. Women are human beings with the same basic motivations that men are subject to with some greater or lesser variation in their reasoning and methodologies. The point being is that women are every bit as subject to being as mundane or as extraordinary as men are, but the difference is that men don’t enjoy a masculine mystique.



With rare exceptions, we don’t generally cultivate this sense of mystery because we’re not rewarded for it to the degree women are — and honestly, we haven’t needed to. But for a woman, if she can cultivate this mystique, her attentions become a reward unto themselves for the guy who is ’lucky’ enough to tame her. Rest assured, when you think a woman is crazy, she’s crazy like a fox; she’s crazy with a reason. Women are every bit as calculating as men, in fact more so I’d argue because they have the mystique to hide a multitude of sins behind. They’re not irrational, they’re calculated — you just have to develop an ability to read a woman’s actions and behaviors and see the latent purpose behind them.

In contemporary times, men are far too ready to write off women as irrational agents. Even Freud was fooled by the hysterics of women’s responses and wrote them off as largely incapable, random and duplicitous to their own interests. I can’t begin to tell you how frustrating it is to hear an elderly man say “women, I guess we’ll never really understand them, huh?” adding a nervous laugh.

How many times have you been asked by a friend, “so, did ya get lucky with Kristy last night?” We don’t think much of this passing question, but it’s framed in such a way that men autonomously perpetuate the myth of this mystique. It’s not luck that gets you laid. I understand that circumstance and being the right guy at the right time most certainly plays a part, but that’s not the operative here. However, if due to our preconditioning, we feel as though we got lucky, we won the lottery, or walked away with a rare and valuable prize, it doesn’t help us to understand what it is we did correctly in a given instance. It perpetuates women as the mysterious prize-givers and ensures they maintain an indirect, primary power role in embodying the prize that is feared to be lost. You were lucky to have gotten sex with this mysterious woman so it must be something rare and valuable indeed.

The feminine mystique discourages questioning the process or the motives involved in inter-gender relations; men are just happy to have had the chance of experiencing the unknowable woman they scarcely understand. When mixed with sexual deprivation, the lucky fate element makes the sex that much more absorbing. It’s this luck precognition for men, fostered by women, that leads to the scarcity mentality and often (but not exclusively) ONEitis in men. It serve the feminine if men willingly adopt the feminine mystique mindset with regards to their intimacy. Sexuality is a woman’s first, best agency and any social mechanism that contributes to the value of it will always be encouraged.

The Feminine Mystique

Throughout this book thus far I’ve made references to the Wall — the point at which women lose their competitive edge in the SMP to younger rivals. The following was contributed by a Rational Male commenter ’S’. Her comment regarding The Wall made me aware that I hadn’t yet gone into too much detail regarding the Wall and its socio-psychological effects upon women:

Yeah, it’s a term I have seen before arriving at this blog but have never heard in reality. I always attributed it to a woman losing her looks but to place it at exactly 30 seems to me to be too precise a calculation…as there are many variable to be taken into consideration I would imagine. For example, a party girl, serial tanner and smoker could probably lose her looks long before she reaches 30, whereas a clean living late bloomer might not even realize her potential until her mid to late twenties. I’ve seen women from my school..the most popular girls (with guys) changed the most in a negative manner and the nerds or

just the most unexpected girls have become more attractive over the years. It’s freaking odd.

Technically the Wall was a sports term used for athletes who had reached an age where they’d lost their competitive edge. The infamous Wall a woman reaches (or slams into as the case may be) is somewhat of an ambiguous term that was actually coined by catty women long before the manosphere came into existence. It used to be a relatively less combative term that women used for one another in an effort to disqualify an intra-sexual competitor. A woman implying another woman had “hit the wall” was marginally more polite than calling her an old slut, but the latent purpose is still the same — disqualifying a sexual competitor from men’s mating considerations.

The Fear of Decay

Underneath the obvious utility of the Wall as an epithet is a more painful truth; the inevitable decay of women’s sexual appeal — their first, and for most, only, real agency of power they’ve ever actualized over men to ensure their long term security needs.



In the heyday of 2nd wave feminism, the sisterhood’s message was all about collective empowerment and solidarity, but beneath that was the intrinsic hypergamic need to compete for the best mate their looks and sexual availability could attract. As I’ve written before, women prefer their combat in the psychological and there are few fears women harbor as deep and as long as losing their sexual agency with men. They know the Wall will eventually come, and they don’t like to be reminded of it.

Women’s intra-sexual combative use of the knowledge and fear of the Wall did not go unnoticed by men. Therefore the feminine imperative found it necessary to make the truth about the Wall as socially and individually subjective as possible. As with most uncomfortable truths unique to women’s weaknesses, the feminine creates social conventions and ambiguities to misdirect men from becoming aware of women’s eventual powerlessness over them (i.e. the progressive loss of her sexual agency). The threat of having men become aware of women’s Achilles’ heel before they could consolidate long-term commitment with their best hypergamic option was too great a risk not to form social conventions about the Wall.

Implications of the Wall

Thus, in an inter-gender social context, the Wall became individualized and subjective for women, and it’s within this framework that women like ’S’ are most comfortable in addressing the reality of the Wall. “Not all women are like that” (NAWALT), the go-to mantra of feminized subjectivity, is a direct result of subjectivizing the inevitability of the Wall. In fact, virtually every operative social convention women rely upon for empowerment and self-esteem finds its root purpose in avoiding the fear of the Wall. The Myth of Sexual Peak, the Myth of the Biological Clock, the social convention that Women are just as Sexual as Men, are all very complex social rationales with the latent purpose of

convincing the majority of men and women alike that post-Wall women can still be equally effective sexual competitors with pre-Wall women.

It’s important to bear in mind that all of these complex social conventions are rooted in a fear of the Wall. I’m repeating this point to emphasize the importance this has in a feminized society that’s subjected to feminine hypergamy as its most operative doctrine.

When enough women, through cultural forces or personal circumstance, can’t capitalize upon what they think is their due, optimal hypergamic male option, then society must be acculturated to believe that women past their Wall expiration date can and should be just as desirable as those in their prime. Think of it as a retroactive social moving of the feminized goalposts. This is the gravity and extent that the fear of the Wall plays for women — feminized society is literally structured around avoiding it.

Defining the Wall

When I wrote Navigating the SMP, the reason I used 30 as the general age women typically hit the ’Wall’ is really a combination of factors. Most importantly it represents the threshold at which most women realize their lessened capacity to sexually compete with the next generation of women in their ’actualized’ sexual peak (22-24).

However, there is a male part of the Wall equation that needs to be understood. 30 is also the general age at which men (should) become aware of their own, longer-lasting sexual market value and potential. This affects women’s interpretations of the Wall. Once a Man is aware that he has the capacity to attract the sexual attentions of the younger women he’d previously had limited access to, and understanding of, his actions and imperatives then begin to define the Wall for women who are approaching that threshold. And unsurprisingly this is the point at which Wall-fearing women begin their accusations of men’s infantile ego issues, shaming, etc. for preferring younger women than themselves.

When we (and as women in particular would have us) view the Wall in terms of just physical attractiveness we don’t see the full picture and relevancy the Wall has for women. It’s just as much a psychological issue as it is a physical one. It’s very easy (and often fun) to compare pictures of girls we knew in high school with their current FaceBook profile shots at 40+ years old and get a laugh at how bad she hit the Wall. It’s also easy for women to point out the notable exceptions to the rule and find a hot 38 year old

woman with 3 kids competing in the Ms. Fitness USA pageant. It gives them a sense of hope about their own decay.

However the Wall is much more than just the physical; it’s the conditional that accelerates or decelerates a woman’s date with the Wall.

Single mother? Acceleration.

Consistent, bad personal habits? Acceleration.

Careerist obsessive? Acceleration.

Obesity? Acceleration.

Do notable exceptions to these exist? Of course, but they prove the rule. And that rule comes in the form of such an overwhelming fear that contemporary society needed to be restructured to help avoid it. The 38 year old, careerist, single mother of 3 competing in fitness pageants is only a hero because of the fear of the Wall.

The Wall

Nothing is more threatening yet simultaneously attractive to a woman than a man

who is aware of his own value to women.

My use of the word “threat” here isn’t to imply malice. I’m sure more simplistic associations with violence or conflict is the natural one, but a “threat” is a challenge — how one deals with it is what’s at issue. As I stated in Wait For It?:

Women’s sexual strategy is very schizophrenic — ideally women want a Man that other women want to fuck, but in order to assess his sexual market value to other women he’s got to have exercisable options for her to compete against, or at least display indirect social proof to that effect. So, she needs to limit his options while simultaneously

determining he has those options.

This internal conflict between a want for security and provisioning, and a need for the ’gina tingles that only the excitement indignation, drama and Alpha dominance can stimulate is the fundamental root for women’s shit tests. From Plate Theory VI:

Essentially a shit test is used by women to determine one, or a combination of these factors:

a.) Confidence — first and foremost

b.) Options — is this guy really into me because I’m ’special’ or am I his only option?

c.) Security — is this guy capable of providing me with long term security?

Women’s shit testing is a psychologically evolved, hard-wired survival mechanism. Women will shit test men as autonomously and subconsciously as a men will stare at a woman’s big boobs. They cannot help it, and often enough, just like men staring at a nice rack or a great ass, even when they’re aware of doing it they’ll still do it. Men want to verify sexual availability to the same degree women want to verify a masculine dominance / confidence.

For a woman, to encounter a man with a healthy awareness of his own value to women, this constitutes a threat. Here is a man for whom’s attention women will demonstrably compete for, and he knows this. This is the most basic affront to the feminine imperative; to be unplugged, of high sexual market value and to derive a sense of confidence from being consciously aware of it.

Therefore, in order to promote and actualize her own sexual strategy, his self-confidence must be challenged with self-doubt, because if such a man were to use this knowledge to his own benefit he may not select her from a pool of better prospective women. Thus, in various ways, both consciously and subconsciously, she must ask him “Are you really sure of yourself? You think you’re so great? Maybe you’re just egotist? Don’t tempt fate.”

In this example we can see the conflict inherent in women’s sexual strategy; she wants the Alpha dominance of a confident Man, but not so confident that he can exercise his options with other women well enough to make an accurate estimation of her own SMV.

Ambiguity in men’s assessment of a woman’s true sexual market value is the primary tool of the feminine imperative.

The same characteristics that give him his confidence and acknowledged sense of worth are exactly the same things that women want to be associated with. Even the most controlling, domineering wife still wants to tell her friends that the AFC she married is a “real Man”, and even after privately berating him, will defend him as such because anything less is a reflection on her own self-image. She wants to be with a Man that other men want to be, and other women want to fuck, because it confirms for her that she’s of an equal or higher value to attract and be associated with such a Man.

Women don’t want a man to cheat, but they love a Man who could cheat.

That is the threat and the attraction. Women want a Man that has confidence in his own value; that’s sexy, but the more he self-realizes this the greater the anxiety is that she’ll be found wanting as he better understands his options. So it becomes necessary to develop social conventions that are standardized across the feminine gender that limit the full recognition of masculine self-value. Thus masculinity is ridiculed, men become characterized as slaves to their sexuality, and masculinity becomes doubted by virtue of itself.

In a global sense, the feminine imperative relies on the same ambiguity women will individually employ to confuse the efforts of men to assess their true SMV. By means of social conventions, the feminine imperative psychologically forces him to doubt his own SMV and women become the arbiters and definers of it to suit their own sexual strategy.

Race to Awareness

Because of women’s relatively short window of peak sexual viability it is imperative that men be as unaware of their slower, but progressively increasing SMV for as long as possible in order for them to achieve the prime directive of female hypergamy; realize the best genetic options and the best provisioning options she has the capacity to attract in that peak window. If Men become aware of their SMV before a woman can consolidate on her options with monogamous commitment her sexual strategy is defeated.

The mistake (and the binary retort) is to think this need for contrivances was concocted in whole as some grand sisterhood conspiracy. This just proves an ignorance of social constructs. For a social convention to be such, it necessitates being repeated by society without a formal conception — meaning we learn the contrivance from seeing it, internalizing it and repeating it ourselves without forethought.

The best social contrivances are inconspicuous and rarely questioned because they’ve been learned without having been formally taught. This is why I think encouraging men not to bother trying to understand women is in itself a social convention. Don’t look at that man behind the curtain, just accept it for what it is, enjoy the show, you’re better off that way, the Mighty Oz has spoken.

This is the threat that Game represents to the feminine imperative. Widely shared, objective assessments of Men’s SMV and how it develops is the antithesis of the female sexual strategy. Women’s greatest fear is that they could become the ’selected’ instead of the ’selectors’.

The Threat

If you type the word “equalism” in a blog’s text box you get that annoying little red line underneath it indicating that you misspelled something. In other words, the English

language doesn’t officially recognize that word in any dictionary (yet). I suppose this is apt since for the last 50+ years the effort to feminize society has always used the abstract concept of gender equalism as something ambient in the background of the agenda. It doesn’t have an official definition because, collectively, were supposed to take it as a

given; something that should just be considered “common sense”. To be sure, feminization’s plea for a more humane restructuring of society has always been couched in terms like “equality”, which sounds comforting when spoken, even if the intent is distraction.

However, that’s not the “equalism” my computer wont recognize. I sometimes see it creeping in from the edges on blogs decrying some nefarious, neo-liberal social agenda, or I see it written as some corrupting element keeping conservatism from realizing it’s ’true’ potential, but what I don’t see is a very good accounting of it. Equalism needs to be brought out of the shadows — if at least so I don’t have to see that damn red line anymore.

New Gender Definitions

Masculinity has been redefined by people (men and women) who have no concept of what its original definition was. The behaviors and characteristics that constitute what is uniquely masculine aren’t being challenged; they’ve been redefined to fit the purposes of an agenda. In 1905 no one wrote articles on how to “be a man” or bothered to analyze the fundamentals of masculinity. Men knew from their socialization what was masculine and women responded to it.

Traditionally, women define what is masculine and men define what is feminine. The characteristics that made a man desirable were ones that presented the opposite to what men similarly found desirable in femininity. Men and their biology defines what in the feminine that arouses them, women react to this and behave accordingly (knowingly or not).

The root of the AFC endemic lies in the fact that as recently as 50 years ago there has been a concerted effort to “de-masculinize” society, not only in mass media, but down to how we educate and condition our youth to assume masculine and feminine roles. What is being challenged is the predisposition of males in predominantly western culture, to even consider what masculinity is. A rugged, stoic, heroic definition of masculinity is losing ground, but is that a good thing? The equalist certainly believes so.

When men become feminized, are we leveling any playing fields or are we progressing towards androgyny and homogenization of gender? The equalist hails this as a triumph of a new gender paradigm. Why should masculine traits be of lower value than feminine traits?

The very characteristics that define traditional masculinity — independence, self-confidence, rugged individualism, physical strength, risk taking, problem solving and innovation — we are now to believe are (or should be) the aspirations of women to the point that ridicule of the singularly feminine female is the order. In expecting women to be just as masculine as men, while simultaneously expecting them to still embody a feminine ideal, not only does this puts undue, unrealistic ideals upon them, but also devalues the merits of their own femininity.

That’s not to say, given this new gender dynamic, that women are discouraged from claiming their femininity in addition to their masculinity. On the contrary they’re encouraged to “handle their business as well as any man” and “still be a sexy, vivacious

woman” every man should want.

Yet in opposition to this post-modern gender dynamic, men are not encouraged to

embrace their masculine side We are told to “man up” for sure, and yet our masculinity (as we define it) is a flaw; we’re poisoned by our testosterone. Our higher aspiration ought to be becoming more feminized, sensitive, emotional, empathetic, nurturing, etc,.. We should “feel comfortable waxing our legs” stripping away the hair that is the result of our poisoning testosterone. Interestingly enough there are few cries in society to have women cultivate their leg or armpit hair.

Yet the ’masculine’ that the feminine imperative would have us strive for doesn’t

encourage anything resembling traditionally masculine traits in a male’s personality.

In fact it’s ridiculed to such a degree in mass media and larger society that it’s literally akin to a disease.

While women are congratulated for embodying masculine traits with an acceptance of her feminine character, men are conditioned to believe that feminine traits are masculine traits and any traditionally masculine characteristics that manifest themselves in us are the unfortunate byproducts of our ’flawed’ biology.

The true crime of this gender redefining is the real “double standard” that men should be so feminized as to loathe their innate masculinity, yet still be held liable for uniquely male, traditionally masculine responsibilities and accountabilities by virtue of them being male. It’s the male Catch 22 again; hate your masculinity, but be held responsible for not “being man enough” to solve uniquely male problems, then be shamed when a masculinized woman steps in to do so and then be ridiculed for not being as masculine as she is. That’s the cycle. This is self-perpetuating negative masculinity that has led to generations of AFCs.

Needless to say, all of this convolutes what masculinity was, is and is intended to be. Before you can set out a plan to live out what I call Positive Masculinity you first have to take into consideration why masculinity has value and should be encouraged as well as cultivated in yourself, your sons and society as a whole. I’m an adherent of the ’build it and they will come’ school of thought in this regard, but understanding how traditional masculinity has been redefined by social contrivance and distilling it back down to it’s core fundamentals is imperative in getting back to masculinity as a positive.

So where do you start? With yourself. You must change your mind about yourself as a “m”an and begin thinking of yourself as a “M”an. The first step is to unlearn what feminized conditioning has taught you to the point of it becoming an ego-investment in your personality.

You need to become impervious to convenient accusations of “misogyny” or 1950′s caveman thinking whenever you assert yourself. The truly positive masculine Man sets himself apart from the Matrix in spite of a world set against him — this unconscious

meta-acknowledgment is what makes a woman (and other men) attracted to you as a vibrant, responsible, but firmly confident masculine Man.

You have to genuinely live it in order to set an example of it. That doesn’t mean you’re an uncaring, tunnel vision robot, unwilling to learn from anyone or anything, it means that in spite of a world calling you “egotistical”, “caveman”, “fragile ego”, “macho”, “infantile”, “Jerk”, “misogynist”, etc., you unwaveringly, provably, live out and exemplify the positive merits of being masculine.