[2Wycked]

I haven't been posting my reviews in Arts & Letters about this book and part of that is Chapter Eight of this book, which is the title of this thread. It is a chapter that I think every so-called red-pill man or woman should read, but it really is some deep, next level analysis. Not for the faint of heart.

Now, I was going to do a full-on summary, but I think mixing my ideas and his is the best approach.



Consider this quote he leads the chapter with, from the "Liberated Bridegroom"

Quote:

I think more and more. . .that there is no such thing as rationality in relationships. I think you just have to say okay that's what you feel right now and what are we going to do about it. . .I believe everybody should really be able to basically do what they want to do as long as it's not hurting anybody else.

Do you see why I peg modern liberalism as inherently narcissistic? If people, generally, were self-aware and psychologically healthy, a liberal society could potentially survive. However, liberal principles fail in modern America because most people have a very difficult time understanding where other people are coming from, thus tossing a very large wrench into the above quote. Most people don't really understand how their actions are affecting the people around them.

Take the concept of tolerance. To be a tolerant person, you should be respectful of people who are not you. To a narcissist, all there is "me" and "not me." That is what an infant thinks of the world. To an adult with an infantile mind, it becomes racism, sexism, etc. Breaking the artificial strictures of narcissism - social narcissism, here - is to understand and appreciate people who are not you and see they have different desires, experiences, etc. than you. That means everybody, not just white males. However, the most explosive consideration of this is between men & women.

First off, I think men need to understand a few things that have bolstered women psychologically in probably most cultures. First off, is the idea that all men are beasts. Lasch recognizes this, and that feminism fucks this up. In the past, women could simply write oppression up to the inevitability of male domination. Fellas, if you believe that societies, like ours, weren't male dominated, you are dead wrong. Sure, women exerted much power behind the scenes as wives etc., but society was a male controlled endeavor. I will 100% agree that feminists have completely ruined this observation, but it is true. However, unlike feminists, Lasch recognizes that in order to counterbalance this, women had been afforded primacy in certain areas. Child-rearing, moral observations, etc. were considered to be female strengths in which men had to at least admit equality or submit to her perceptions. Lasch calls this demarcation fiction, but he notes it was necessary to balance out men and women. Men and woman accepted these differences of the opposite sex as limitations - i.e. women are stupid and men need female moral guidance. It allowed society to exist - far healthier than it is now.



Second, which is tied to the picture above, is the failure of men to meet female emotional needs. Like the concept that all men are beasts, it is a fiction that women invent to explain away hypergamy and betahood, especially in narcissistic societies. Now, it must be said that women very much have emotional needs that men don't have that they want men to fulfill. We, as men, can never fully appreciate this. The twist is that, in order to avoid this existential disappointment, they double down on pursuing sex, assholes, etc. They pursue men that are sexually attractive but emotionally off-putting to avoid creating real, substantive relationships. Hearing from their mothers about how men are all assholes, emotionally unavailable, etc. passes this trait down to their daughters and creates a situation in which women actively avoid emotional commitment and seek sex, fuck buddies, etc.

The problem, for us, is that feminism has lead women to make demands of men that can't be met. Early feminists complained that lower-class women didn't have the same expectations of their men, as their "gendered" relations were less complicated because of clear roles and diminished personal contact. Lower-class women, in studies, were 100% fine with what feminists would call gendered oppression. Feminism is, truly, a middle-class+ movement because only a privileged woman would demand her husband be a life companion and equal. The concept of "togetherness" is a middle class fiction. With greater interchangeability of roles, women demanded equality in the form of more intimacy. It might seem counter-intuitive, but narcissistic societies place great social weight on relationships, as individuals are seeking others to heal their emotional wounds.

Reconsidering the demands women make, they create them in order to make men fuck up - they want and need men to not meet them so they have men to blame for their emotional isolation. Read any so-called left-wing feminist on her relationship with her man. It will always be about her inability to truly lust after him, not realizing it is her fault for expecting too much out of love and his inability to be a real man. See what happens here? Women like Jessica Valenti and Sandra Tsing Loh marry betas precisely because they know their husbands will never be men, allowing them to perpetuate their fiction that all men are going to disappoint them.

Frankly, just writing this so far has caused me to question more than I understand.

I will push through will some random thoughts. First, is the idea that women thought marriage to be the ultimate trap before men. It is true. Now that women completely control the engagement process, the marriage and it's dissolving, it makes sense women are pro-marriage. Feminists bitch about wedding magazines and the whole industry, but what narcissist would bitch about a convention all about them? Women are upset that men regard marriage as a trap and a bad investment, but they only have themselves to blame for opening that can of rotten worms. Women can try to put the fag back into the closet, but by bitching about their issues with men in marriage, they allowed men to complain about women.

Since women don't understand men and how we think, they think that marriage truly IS the best it has ever been. They really don't think how bad it might affect us. That being said, men use fucked up divorce laws and terrible social perceptions of men against pursuing relationships with women. See how horrible social narcissism is? Both men and women are looking at each other, flipping each other off. Media can keep siding with women, but that can't force men to do what women want.



Consider Lasch's observation that American society "mystified" female sexuality. He is right, but he is wrong about what female sexuality is. He seems to have some vague "equalitarian" observations, but what he doesn't realize is that every stable society will have some myths about female hypergamy. Sure, men are mystified with women in order to not truly understand them, but that sounds like blue-pill betas ignoring what women truly want and desire. "Putting women on a pedestal" is a defense against understanding women on a certain level. Feminists call this misogyny, but it is simply a way of avoiding true emotional understanding of women.

Finally, consider Lasch's observation that women can either completely withdraw from society and men or admit that male privilege doesn't exist and learn to engage with men on an emotional level. It might seem contradictory, but what he observes is that most assertions of male privilege come from women seeking the flight from feeling - with men. These women hyper-emphasize rape, domestic violence and male misbehavior in order to perpetuate the divide between the sexes. For their part, they perpetuate (what they would call) gendered expectations of women (not violent) and those pesky men. What they don't truly understand is their ideological positions reflect what they would deem patriarchal norms AND furthering divides between men & women.

He observes that desires to destroy "gender" are little more than calls for androgyny to drown out sexuality. The complete disavowal of sexuality and, basically, putting it back into America's closet is a narcissistic approach. He notes that the new paternalism - reliance on experts - is porting out of the concept of the husband as the expert. Funny, isn't it? Feminists bitch about concepts like "father knows best"....only to seek out new authority figures in media. That is change we can believe in.

What is most salient about this chapter is that Lasch nails, on point, the idea that both men and women are fleeing true feelings for one another and are becoming much more self-absorbed. Men double down on physical attractiveness of women and women double down on hypergamy. Feminists and women bitch about beauty standards but have little care, personally, for their own expectations of men. It is all about the flight from real feelings. Real observations that men prefer random sex and women preferring relationships to random sex are completely blurred as androgyny tries to win the day. Yes, men do enjoy relationships and women can and do greatly enjoy one-night stands. Yet, they are not even close to being one-in-the same.

However, this chapter has some truths that transcend the book. I just re-read it and it hit on some real points we talk about on red-pill sites. However, I don't want to spend all night hashing them out, so a few final points. First, is the idea the every society hides, to an extent, female hypergamy and male obsession with youth. Media denigrates the latter while exhorting the former. Tells you who fuel media dollars in America.

Second, and finally, is the modern American woman. Pushed, cajoled and forced into roles they don't want, American women are some of the most oppressed women in the world. I absolutely hate to see some feminist/social justice type female give birth to another female. I know that young girl will be a blank-slate onto which the mother can project everything they didn't accomplish as a woman. Come on female narcissists, having kids is your way of ensuring you never die - the greatest fear of the narcissist.

Please, post your thoughts. I highly recommend you read the originating chapter, but this debate is wide-open and very much open to new thoughts and observations.