Flirtatious Signals, the Lack thereof, and Consequences

In "Reading Women Correctly," Robert Lindsay discusses the kind of flirtatious signals women give when they are interested in a man. At the end he notes how some commenters complain about not getting any signals at all. These guys, known as involuntary celibates or incels, are basically invisible to women sexually.

Robert describes instances where women are almost literally attracted to him in a carnal sense- in one case, a girl was staring at his chest hair as if it were a prime rib. This type of animal sexual attraction is rarely experienced by incels, and is a huge stumbling block for them because it's very difficult to flirt with to a girl when she isn't putting out any signals of interest to begin with.

Furthermore, this lack of interest prevents an incel from fine-tuning his attraction radar, so he can better piece apart when a girl is flirting or not. This causes the incel to stumble badly whenever an opportunity arises, if it ever does. In the best case, the incel ends up broadcasting his sexual inexperience, and the consequences can be far more severe. These types of outcomes only reinforce the incel's sense of inadequacy,  as he is already suffering from a lack of affection and validation to begin with.

I consider this phenomenon to be the core problem of incel. It is a vicious, self-reinforcing circle, that only gets harder to break out of with time. Poor attractiveness (for whatever reason) leads to a poor reading of signals, if any are sent by girls to begin with, which often results in harmful psychological repercussions.

I will discuss ways to break this vicious circle in a future post.

Problems with the "Don't Generalize" Dogma

Say a man somehow manages to get out of a toxic relationship with a woman. This may be a sexless beta-orbiter type situation where he was subjected to emotional manipulation, or it may be something more serious like an acrimonious divorce. The man is aware that this particular woman is toxic, and should be avoided. Without any exterior guidance or warning, however, he is bound to get into a similar situation again. Why is this?

The oft-cited example is of men who are brutalized in divorce court, only to line right up for marriage again. Some of these men have multiple strings of child support and alimony obligations. Other less extreme examples include the eternally-clueless beta, who keeps getting "lets-just-be-friend"-ed over and over again, without learning. Heartiste recently had an admittedly good post on this very topic, attempting to distill why it occurs.

Of course, what Heartiste doesn't mention is how many "alphas" are caught up in the same type of thinking. I know of very few "alphas" who do not get into emotionally abusive relationships with women. The core problem seems to be a societal hegemony of the "don't generalize" dogma. How many times have you been shut down by the armies of "don't generalize" people, also known as the NAWALT people, both male and female, every time you mention harmful female tendencies?

It's a problem of frame. Of course one shouldn't assume that all women are abusive because one woman is abusive. But somehow this gets twisted into seeing every new woman as a blank slate, and not remembering  the warning signs from previous experiences. I think society encourages this unhealthy attitude, which is why you see men falling into the same traps over and over again. The whole "this time it's different" belief is a natural tendency in humans that needs to be fought, not encouraged.

Feminism and the fuel that it runs on

Feminism is all about freeing women from men and giving them as many choices as possible. Seemingly absent, however, is an analysis on how these choices affect men. For instance, take the example of the single feminist career woman who remains single and doesn't settle down until late in life, if ever. The gender ratio is very nearly 1:1; nature has made sure of it. This means that for every woman who is single and not in a relationship, one guy is forced to be alone, regardless of whether he wants to be alone or not. It may be a good guy, it may be a bad guy, but numerically, some guy has to eat the shit sandwich of not having a woman available to him if a woman refuses to date or decides to chase after a small number of high status men along with many other women at the expense of average men.

When feminism liberated women from the expectation that they should settle down with a guy when fairly young, it necessarily created involuntary celibate men. Of course, a large number of these men will find a woman later on in life, but that is only because the women are deciding to settle down. The choice has been completely ripped away from men. Many men are suffering as incels in their late teens and possibly during their entire 20s because of this, a time when they are arguably the most sensitive to adversity and need companionship the most. (As an aside, this could be partly to explain for the meteoric rise of suicide among young adult men post-feminism.)

Feminists, and sadly nearly all women, seem to fail to understand this. It's not fair to men that women get to satisfy their urges, while men are completely left alone with no choice at all. It's not even being left to fend for themselves in an unbalanced system; it's being completely shut off from the market.

And what's the response that women say to men suffering from this? "You'll find someone someday," "be patient," "look at the good sides in life," etc. They're basically expecting men to be ascetic monks with no companionship or sex needs for years, even decades, while women are allowed to freely do whatever they want. Whatever happened to the concept of ones freedom ending where the others begins?

Now how could women justify this? Well, they could just be plain clueless as to its harmfulness. And in a lot of cases, that's exactly what's going on, especially since this has been going on for several decades and has plenty of cheerleaders from both sexes. But the original women who came up with this had to have known what was going on- or did they? I feel they just had a hatred of men and wanted to gain a leg up on them at whatever cost, and didn't think through the consequences. Sadly, they had (and still have) so much support that the ill effects have been completely swept under the rug. Even many men who have themselves been screwed over and forced into celibacy cheer for the system, incapable of putting the pieces together.

And it's complicated by the fact that not all men are screwed over by it equally, or even at all. Indeed, it serves men on the top of the totem pole very well, by giving them sexual access to women who would have previously been less willing, as they were already partnered with a man. Men on top are in power, and willingly support this, so it keeps proliferating. These guys could generally care less about whether the average man has to go through long periods of celibacy before he gets anything, or that they're throwing tons of men under the bus with the decisions they make, so the problem remains unsolved.

Of course, the problem is, when you screw people over, they tend to be less willing to work for the system. Even many manginas who still buy in to the system, but have gotten screwed over by it, don't put as much into it. How, you ask? Don't they enthusiastically support it? Well, it doesn't need to be a conscious thing. Sure, they've been brainwashed into thinking this system is forward-thinking and progressive, but deep down they have been hurt by it on some level, so they lack the motivation that reasonably well-rewarded men have. These guys tend to get less hard-charging jobs, tend to not innovate as much, and tend to not earn as much as well-motivated men. They tend to channel their resultant rage into an endless variety of ridiculous causes, wasting time and energy. Ultimately, this slows societal progress down to the point where another saner society is allowed to grow and either makes it insignificant, forcibly subjects it or destroys it.

Feminists are basically eating the seed corn of society, and the behavior they espouse is ultimately the kiss of death if men don't wake up and resist it en masse.