Over the years I’ve read many comments and articles with the Manosphere that about the agency of men and women. Searching the archives, I found thousands of references to agency at Dalrock and Sigma Frame. Most of the debate centered around the binary question “Do women have agency?”
Then I searched for the term “limited agency.” I found four matches across four different sites:
- A comment from 2016 at Dalrock by Artisanal Toad[1]
- A comment from 2022 at Sigma Frame by feeriker[2]
- A comment from 2024 at Spawny’s Space by the Pseudonymous Commenter[3]
- An article from 2025 by Deep Strength[4]
The idea—at least when expressed in those precise terms—is almost entire absent from the Dalrockian Manosphere. By contrast, it has been mentioned on this blog at least 10 different times.
So why is this relevant? Here, see for yourself:
woman literally begs men to have sex with her, is recorded saying she consents to sex…and Canada still charged 5 NHL players with rape
what a ******** country
If you think this was the incorrect[5] outcome you don’t understand agency.
All societies that have ever been have determined that women have limited agency. In some countries this leads to rape being allowed. In others it leads to rape being condemned because of all sex being rape. Regardless, the central theme is limited agency.
In a feminist society, all sex is rooted in power dynamics, so it is up to men as the primary agents not to avail themselves of women’s bodies. Whether she consents or not doesn’t matter. This is why post hoc regret counts as rape. The man is fully expected to know ahead of time if she will regret it later after the fact.
No society holds men and women to the same standard. Men receive greater punishments for the same crimes. Women are favored by family courts. This is entirely normal.[6]
Prior to 1974, some women couldn’t even have their own bank accounts. We’re not talking ancient history here.
The men were guilty of rape because they were men. That’s the only reason. If the sexes had been any different, even completely reversed, only the men would have been guilty in those alternative scenarios as well.
I don’t contradict your point at all, but young men should learn that if a woman starts masturbating in front of you and all your friends and calls you a pussy if you don’t gang bang her, you need to run as fast as you can out of that room and drag your friends with you.
Equality has always been a lie, and everyone knows it. The people who get burnt by it are the naive men who don’t acknowledge the truth. Teach your boys this fact, so they won’t get burnt too.
To be honest with you, I don’t know. I wasn’t there so I don’t know what degree she had real consent and what degree she didn’t. It sure seems like it was consensual, but courts don’t seem to be all that good at figuring that out What I know for sure is that you don’t wake up the day after one of these experiences and say “well that was a good idea”
Marc is demonstrating the concept of post hoc regret, a term which Scott Greenfield coined here back in 2014. To wit:
It strikes me that that avoids the thrust of the problem: “rape culture” holds that men rape women, and therefore men, and only men, are culpable. In the extreme, feminist nutjobs contend that all sex is rape by men. Less extreme is the view that consensual sex can occur, but is subject to post-coital regret. If the woman decides afterward that it wasn’t a great idea, then what would have appeared to be consensual sex at the time becomes rape after the fact.
In Biblical terms—as blogger Artisanal Toad used to argue—a woman’s vows (including the decision to have sex/marry) is subject to later revision by her father. This is just one basis for the idea that women have limited agency. You can find these ideas in every single culture, just adjusted to match said culture’s norms.
In modern times—with the rejection of patriarchy—we just amend this by placing ultimate agency for women onto the state rather than men. The state has the agency to decide whatever it wants to decide.
“My body, my choice” is an expression of limited agency, not an expression of personal power. That’s why men didn’t get a “my body, my choice” regarding covid masking or vaccinations. If these were allowed they would have been expressions of a man’s full agency.
“My body, my choice” is a shedding of personal responsibility. It’s couched in the view that a woman should not be required to have responsibility over her offspring. It’s an expression of limited agency. By contrast, a man is responsible for the child he fathers no matter what. He’s got to pay because there is a genetic match (and occasionally even when there isn’t). His body, no choice.
If you don’t like where feminism leads, but you also don’t like where patriarchy leads, what stable-over-time third option is there? Can you think of any example that has actually been tried?
Prior to its implosion, were you horrified by the woman-only “Tea” app? Did you note that there was a double standard where such an app was socially acceptable for woman, but not for men? After the data breach, I saw men comparing the looks-based attractiveness of the women complaining with those they were complaining about. There was a noticeable double standard.
So, what is the third option? It is Christianity. Christianity is, IMO, the only framework which assigns equal agency to men and women and can actually pull it off in practice.
If it wasn’t for Christianity, nobody would care if an underage male had sex with his female school teacher. People already have trouble manufacturing outrage over it. It mostly gets a “ho hum” response. But if a male teacher does the same to a female student? Hang him!
People have to cope and seethe trying to come up with some plausible rationale for why this double standard shouldn’t be. But, nobody who isn’t a Christian actually thinks that the two situations are morally equivalent. To the world, Christian morality and ethics[7] are, at best, quaint and, at worst, sheer bigotry. This is why women have limited agency and always will.
Women have limited agency in the realm of politics too. See here.
At this point everyone probably knows that if you switch male names for female names on resumes, the response rate goes up.
Men are judged more harshly than women. Every society does this. Moderns lie to themselves about it constantly, but it happens nonetheless.
The girlboss phenomenon, for example, represents the childish view that women should be praised for doing things simply because they are women. We are just supposed to politely ignore the fact that this extremely condescending behavior reduces female agency to a token ceremonial position.
If you really want a good read that demonstrates society’s enforcement of limited female agency, check out my two part series: “The Icons of Feminism, Part 1” and “The Icons of Feminism, Part 2.” If you read those two articles, you’ll see the length that people will go to try to hide the severe discrepancy between how males and females are treated, and—in a massive show of irony—end up thoroughly demonstrating that discrepancy.
If you wanted to prove that women had full agency, you’d cite examples of women who have actually done amazing things with their agency. Instead, women’s achievements are fabricated, demonstrating that they need someone else to look over them.
The TV/Movie/Book girlboss trope is the same. It’s a pure myth with no basis in reality. Rather than portray women as they are, they are portrayed as they are not, with little room for character development (i.e. exercising agency). The girlboss arrives fully formed as-is and is not expected to change in any way in response to trials and difficulties. The world is expected to change around her.
Someday I’ll write about another Icon of Feminism, Katherine “Katie” Louise Bouman, and her black hole “picture.” If you think the two Icons above are insane, her story is even more so. I wrote about it last year on Twitter, but there is more to the story.
A fun thought experiment is to imagine if instead of a 20 yo woman begging them to **** her it was a 13 year old girl begging them to let her go and instead of 5 white dudes it was 5 Pakistani immigrants
Most people are not ready to hear this, but the outcomes in both scenarios are the culturally expected ones. Outside of Christianity, there is no inherent contradiction between these two scenarios. They simply reflect two different ways for a culture to implement limited female agency while still maintaining the central precept.
Because the governing principle is limited female agency and this is the only outcome that maintains that principle.
Because men have the full agency to take a life. Remember when men had duels?
Because men have full agency, they are more culpable for crimes.
Without factoring in agency, you might conclude that these scenarios are irrational contradictions. They are not.
But what about the Dalrockian Manosphere? The most common belief, by far, is that women have full agency, but society is dropping the ball by letting women get away with murder (literally and figuratively). To wit:
Dalrock, operating from a purely Christian perspective is theoretically correct. But, otherwise, he is dead wrong.
It is not cope. No society has ever agreed that women have full agency compared to men. None. Not a single one. Society is behaving 100% rationally—per its own standards—when it demands that men take full responsibility for females. This is essential to both feminism and patriarchy (including the Christian headship model). Outside of Christ, there is no reason at all to grant full agency to women and no one does.
It’s not about what should be, it’s about what is. Without a fully egalitarian Christian nation, women will always be assigned limited agency, no matter what culture it is. Trying to change this is as dumb as trying to hold back the tide while wielding a plastic beach shovel.
Men have to step up because they are men. There is literally no other reason. Outside the church, what men are required to do cannot be farmed off onto women. It has nothing to do with excusing female behavior or anything else besides the simple fact that men have full agency and women have limited agency. Everything else follows logically.
If you attempt to make them understand this, most of them think you are telling them to overtly cold approach men, and they hate this idea, because it’s not natural to them, either.
Blank slatists, who don’t think humans have mating rituals, or at least don’t want them to, will insist that men “man up” and do all the work of solving this problem by cold approaching a steady stream of women until something clicks.
Or they will try to get women to do the approaching by building a dating website where only women can make first contact.
Doesn’t work.
Because mating rituals aren’t just “things you’re afraid to stop doing”, they are “things that make you feel attracted at all”.
When I was in my 20s, I would certainly cold approach women. But only for sex. If a woman didn’t make some sort of ‘come-hither’ signal to me, sex was all I was in it for, and sex was the highest level of commitment she could expect from me.
I often get accused of making “man up” arguments because I think men have enough agency to solve cultural problems on their own. If I were a blankslatist, these accusations might make sense. But I’m not a blankslatist. A so-called “man up” argument coming from a blankslatist is a very different thing from a “man up” argument coming from me.
Here is something I have said in the past:
“Man up” is what you would expect a patriarchal man to do if all authority and responsibility was, in fact, his.
Men and women are not interchangeable cogs. The fact is, men and women in society do not have equal agency. Men will always be held to a different standard from women because society has assigned them greater agency.
Consequently, it is impossible for women to solve a secular society’s problems. They simply do not have the agency to do so. And so, if you put women in charge, nothing will be resolved.
If you happen to be a proponent of patriarchy, headship, or feminism, you believe that men have greater agency than women and should not complain when society assigns limited agency to women. It is hypocritical. For the Christian men for which none of those describe you, I’m not talking to you.
That Alexander Grace video is a good one. He’s delved more into what’s going on with men and women, and how men relate to each other. Grace included in there the exchange between Andrew Wilson and Tomi Lahren, where Lahren just came out and said it: essentially, that men are required to protect and provide for women; and men should not expect to get anything in return for it.
Yes, this requirement is absolutely correct. Complaining about this is the height of pointlessness.
What men get (or don’t get) out of a relationship is not tied to his (or her) agency unless two things occur simultaneously:
- He is granted agency on her behalf.
- He decides what it is.
In a feminist society the first is never the case, so the second is irrelevant. He’s given no choice in the matter. I’m not sure that there will ever be a society that doesn’t require men to protect and provide for women, regardless of any expectation of return.
That notion is just abhorrent and counterintuitive to me. It makes absolutely no sense at all when I hear it. I wonder sometimes if Lahren really believes this, or is saying things like this specifically to create controversy or rage bait. I hear things like this from women and I have to ask if they really believe it. Grace, for his part, thinks women really believe it, and analyzes why pretty well.
It’s not just women. Except for a few outliers, everyone believes this. Deep down every single person believes that men and women should be held to different standards. This is why every society, no matter what relatively contradictory ethical or moral principles it is founded upon, will still assert this basic principle of limited female agency.
Where the discomfort comes is not in the fact that women have limited agency, but in how that limited agency is implemented (e.g. feminism vs. patriarchy vs. some other system). But, and this is key, just because your preferred culture isn’t the one in charge (e.g. patriarchy; husband rule) does not mean that the inherent instinct for limited female agency magically goes away. It does not. In a feminist society, women have the same limited agency, but now it’s within a completely different framework, like the one in the picture above.
What most dissatisfied people want is just a different system of limited agency, not equality. You can’t fix the current culture by trying to give women more equal agency, by insisting that they utilize agency more fully. That’s not how it works, and it never will. Men cannot magically cause women to have greater agency, they can only change the system in which limited female agency operates.
Thus, if feminism is ever overthrown—and the feminist version of limited agency with it—it will be replaced by another system of limited female agency (e.g. Islam), not a system of equal agency.
This idea that men should just get nothing from society – I don’t get it. This idea that men should just get nothing from their relationships is frankly ridiculous. I should marry a woman and protect her and give her all my money, and I get… nothing. I am obligated to her; but she has no obligations whatsoever to me.
Correct. That is the only possible logical outcome in a feminist society that maintains limited female agency. No other option is available.
Are you women serious right now? Do you seriously think this? That your husbands get nothing at all? You don’t owe them anything?
This is not about women. This is about men. Men want this. They have wanted this for all of time. Men do not want women to have full agency. By and large, men want to rule over women and want women to submit to them. Men who don’t want this—who want women to have full agency—are often described as egalitarian Christians. But, most of those are only egalitarian on paper, not in reality.
Because, well, I very much did this with my wife when we had our blowup. I very much said to her “you do owe me things, and you will provide them, or you will not be my wife anymore.” That’s a discussion I probably should have had about 3 months into the relationship long before marriage ever happened; but that’s another story. The point is that men do very much need to say “yes, you do have obligations to me” and “yes, I do have preferences – I want this and not that; I want X and not Y” and “yes, I have standards and I expect you to meet them. If you cannot or will not meet them, then we need to end this relationship.”
Exactly. Here the Commenter shows that he believes that men have full agency and women have limited agency, and he demonstrates exactly what is one possible way to achieve that. Men are expected to take full responsibility, and they must do so or problems with ensue. And if problems ensue, it will automatically be their fault because they are the ones who had full agency.
As for “men” owing things collectively to “women” – those days are gone. This video is why chivalry is dead – because women are equal. This is the equality they asked for and demanded. So now women get to stand on public transportation while men manspread; get brutalized and murdered by drug addled psychos on public transportation; change their own flat tires; do their own work; carry their own heavy groceries; do their own lifting, moving, carrying, and reaching; and put their own carryons in the overhead compartment.
Those days are far from gone. They never went anywhere. Only the system built around limited female agency changed. Whether women get brutalized and murdered by drug addled psychos in a feminist society, or raped on the streets in an Islamic society, they still have limited agency. That’s why when men exercise their agency to stop changing women’s flat tires and carrying their groceries, you hear all the calls by women for men to fix it. To wit:
Women are not equal and they never have been. This…
…is just PR. It’s never been real.
Feminism is about the inequality of men and women, as I said years ago:
Which, in the frame of agency, is this:
They are two ways to say the same thing.
If you’re not banging me, related to me, or paying me, fuck off. Do it yourself. Move it yourself. Or pay me or someone else to do it for you. If you will not give me something I want or need, you get nothing from me other than my refraining from torturous and criminal conduct. I don’t owe a woman anything. I don’t owe it to her to give up my seat on public transportation. I don’t owe her help or protection. I don’t owe her even so much as common courtesy. The only thing I’m required to do is not commit torts or crimes against her. That’s it.
That’s why we are where we are today.
The reason the NHL players were charged with rape is because they believed that a woman would be allowed by society to exercise full agency and they paid the price for their assumption. Men are required by society to exercise full agency at all times. If they do as the commenter does, they get this: “Family lawyer says he’s seeing a new trend of the ‘manosphere’ leading to divorce.”
…
“I got used to it. I got used to the condescension,” she said.
…
She thinks the online content he consumed — including Joe Rogan podcasts — weren’t a good influence, while “manosphere” creators like Andrew Tate may have shaped his outlook.
She got negged, hated it, and eventually ended her relationship. Another relationship killed by the Manosphere!
Byers said these men often want to represent themselves during divorce proceedings, animated by a perception that the family court system is biased against husbands and fathers.
“They see this as the fight of their lives, and they’re fighting the good fight on behalf of men and boys everywhere,” he said.
Yeah, that sounds like the Manosphere all right. But, as I stated above, the bias of the family courts towards women is all about maintaining limited female agency. This can never change by trying to change the level of female agency that a culture expects. It doesn’t matter how unfair it is. It’s not about fairness, it’s about agency and it always will be.
Radical feminists believe that all sex is rape, and the UK believes that rape is fine, but so long as limited female agency is maintained, it isn’t about what is fair, good, or right.
The only way to change the status quo would be to keep limited female agency while eliminating feminism and replacing it with something else (like with Islam in the UK). Christianity won’t ever work because it is trying to alter female agency, and that will never fly in a non-Christian society. Not even Christian nationalism could work, because every historical instance of Christian nationalism has been the version of Christianity that maintains limited female agency.
Paraphrasing Alexander Grace at 11:40 am: Women don’t like men to apply standards to women because standards imply accountability. That’s dangerous because accountability implies reciprocity which in turn implies equality.
standards → accountability → reciprocity → equality
This is an astute observation.
Feminism enforces standards and accountability on men only.
There is no such thing as female reciprocity.
Therefore male equality is impossible.
So… FEMINISM IS INEQUALITY.
Exactly. This nails it. While the Pseudonymous Commenter was fooled by the PR—”This is the equality they asked for and demanded”—Cill correctly sees through that to the underlying reality: inequality.
The only nit-pick I have with this comment is that it applies not just to feminism, but to patriarchy and every other culture throughout history. Standards and accountability only apply to females to a limited extent, so much so that it appears that they are held to no standards at all compared to men (though this is not really the case).
Now plunge with me, if ye will, from the worthy levels of Alexander Grace down to the primeval gloom of my own hick musings:
Feminism is an a priori absolute which, in human female minds, transcends nature. Feminism uber alles. It’s insanity in my book.
Feminism = Inequality x some constant factor or other… Bigotry will do. Bigotry squared. Hmmm… F = IB2
How much hate does F convert to? (Man I better quit these ramblings while I’m still in possession of me marbles)
Feminism does not transcend nature, it is merely one system that coexists alongside it.
Outside of an explicitly Christian context and an explicitly Christian marriage—and one that explicitly rejects Old Testament patriarchy and the Curse of Eve from the Fall of Man—there is little chance that men and women will ever have equal agency. The secular culture simply will not allow it. It’s best to get used to that fact and adjust accordingly. Don’t waste your time attempting a cultural revolution. Don’t try to turn women into men, it will never work. Just be a man.
Footnotes
[1]
…1st Corinthians 7:39 does not apply to what I was talking about because the woman in 1st Corinthians 7:39 is not a virgin, not under the authority of her father, not under the authority of her husband and thus has limited agency.
[2]
I’m inclined to agree with this as well, based solely on the knowledge that God designed women for a very specific and limited purpose and that to demand of her that for which she was not designed is both unfair to her and unrealistic in general. The problem that arises is in the acknowledgment of woman’s limited agency while at the same time not demanding / ensuring that her conduct conforms to God’s limited role for her. The result is an acknowledgment of her limited agency while letting her off the hook as she runs wild and unrestrained. This is pretty much where our society is today.
[3]
There’s something to this idea of women having limited agency.
They become wives. They’re unhappy with that.
They become mothers. They’re unhappy with that.
They eschew marriage and motherhood, and instead go to college to get educated to “work” at “jobs” and “careers”. They’re unhappy with that.
They blend the two, and work flex jobs where they work part time. Surprise surprise, they’re unhappy with that.
Maybe BtM was right all along: Repeal the 19th so that we’re not making US policy based on women’s unhappiness and dissatisfaction with literally everything about the world. Maybe we should stop asking women what they want, and saying “A or B. Work or marriage/motherhood. Pick one, and shut up.”
[4]
1. In the case of the taphas it seems likely that like Potiphar’s wife grabbed hold (taphas) of Joseph but the woman was in her right mind to assent like if Joseph assented but the genders were flipped. God upholds the virgin woman’s limited agency in this case much like we uphold shotgun marriages to prevent the shame of the woman (equitable solution), but the offender is punished by being forced to not only pay the bride price but never being able to divorce her.
[5] Notice I said “incorrect” and not “morally wrong” or “abhorrent.” It’s possible for an outcome to be the logically correct outcome but still potentially be the morally wrong one.
[6] Notice I said “normal,” I didn’t say “good.”
[7] And not all flavors of Christianity think that women have full agency. A number teach that wives should be under their the authority of their husband and the men at their church.
Ive noticed since I first read about Game / PUA stuff almost 25 years ago (proto red pill):
“women cannot help who they are. they’re women. they’re cannot help who they fall in love with, have sex with, what they do. attraction isnt a choice for them”
This giving the usual lower 80% of loser / Beta men a “cope” and “hope” that all they had to do was just learn the secret language, cues and codes that women use to get them to date you, like you, have sex with you. Its very simple and of course if you fail…..you didnt put the work in, you are blinded by blue-pill thinking and only a mass deprogramming and hard work will save you and make you a real man!
Millions upon millions of us men were duped. Not in the exact way that Feminism duped women, but there are some striking similarities of how this happened.
Remember, men just had to learn “game” and then be a “PUA” and then it was “become and be red pill” and all the other catchphrases of the week or year and all of them were rooted in the same base or root.
The Red Pill (and ardent Feminists, lol) keep saying what a success their stances have been and how millions and millions of people have been helped (saved?) because of them.
Yet, the pink elephant in the room is never addressed.
More are single. More are unhappy. More are frustrated. The rift of hate and anger (of women and men) has widened and seems almost impossible to mend. Indifference has grown to frightening proportions (MGTOW, Hot Girl Summer, and now Bossbabe*) and the Black Pill has even pushed a deeper divide (yes, women get Black Pilled too)
Both sides still “double down” on how successful their “philosophies” are. Red Pill demands women be accountable while telling men “they cannot help who they are”
This just didnt happen one fine late 1990’s day and men decided they wanted to “be better” this was a reaction to feminism in the end and it goes back decades to a broken dating / courting system that in the end probably worked too well………and since women cannot “help what they do” it was allowed to be broken by the same men who benefitted from the “free love” birth control and abortion on demand.
Then telling the rest of men who didnt get this “aww shut up! quit whining! Women are cute, funny, amazing, playful, sexy….you guys just need to man up and be a boss!”
Its a tangled fishing line of so many trends, cultural things. Feminists will go back to “ancient times” to pinpoint when women started being oppressed. Men do the same today of when our culture “got cucked by women” (except them of course)
More are now more frustrated more than ever. More and more have given up and they (Red Pill and Feminists) are still scrambling to create new lies to uphold their failed stances. Inventing new words, polls, using psych-babble to justify their “science” and “studies”
*BossBabe. Lol. I remember when the Feminists and “big business” was trying to BAN the word “bossy” because it gave negative connotations of women-in-the-workplace! And this wasnt too long ago!
For what its worth, agency is not necessarily about whether or not someone is able to choose. Women absolutely can and do have the ability to make choices, both good and bad, just like men do. They absolutely can help who they fall in love with and who they form relationships with. It’s just that their peers, churches, governments, and societies have declared that they mostly not be held accountable or have specific duties to uphold. There is always that underlying safety net ensuring that the ultimate freedom to choose is taken away.
And it doesn’t matter what you or I think about it, at least outside of our own relationships. You and I may view everyone with a measure of equality, but you can’t force everyone else to do the same.
As the professor notes, some things will get a man put in prison while that same thing will result in winks and cheers if the sexes of the participants are reversed.
ONE MORE TIME!
thedeti says:
2023-06-09 at 1:10 am
Oh my God. Seriously.
No wonder the manosphere is dead.
Is that (obvious to so-called ”mastermind architects” who just pray for as was said, his husband Trump, to institute Patriarchy-which his overlords would NEVER allow )Manosphere troll above Derek or i, or someone else, perhaps Mister Contrast(keep pulling that cr@p on him Pseudonymous Commenter and any others that come along and you’ll find out how much the manosphere is dead?
https://sigmaframe.wordpress.com/2023/06/06/divided-we-fall/#comment-50334
Oh, that was back when Scott took the time out to explicitly insert himself into my discussion with Jack and my blog post…
…and then complained to me that I wasn’t being sufficiently empathetic. Nor was I responding in the way that he demanded I respond to his critique of my own post. So the topic is my conversation with Jack and my blog post, and somehow he manages to make it all about him. But keep in mind that what started the whole thing was Scott’s personal attack and intolerance:
And this is his comment that I was responded to in my reply:
The entire thing is an attack. It’s completely false. I had never insulted Scott (unless accurately describing him, as in this comment, is an “insult”). As for gaslighting, everything I have said has either been my real opinion or something I’ve shown to be true through logic, argument, and reason. Plus, his accusation was completely unsubstantiated.
But, I guess because Scott is an alpha male, he’s immune to criticism and so can say whatever he wants about others. I’m not allowed to defend myself from such slander.
Then he used his personal sob fest to emotionally manipulate the group. Well, I’m not a pushover “beta” and I’m not going to back down from personal insults just because someone is willing to use their own personal tragedy to score points on the internet.
Of course, no one has ever criticized him for emotional manipulation. It was all hugs and kisses. After all, if you are going through marital and family problems, you are absolutely beyond criticism and you can attack anyone you want without any retaliation (especially when they had no idea what you were going through and you only revealed it just in time to win a stupid argument on the internet!).
The irony is that he just got done preaching about social capital. That was the part of his comment that I didn’t respond to because I thought Wikipedia’s “social capital” thesis was dumb. In his response, he demonstrated precisely how much he could care less about social capital when it comes to his own words. The way to build social capital is to avoid empty attacks against your own people, and that’s the one thing he was most definitely not avoiding!
Here is the definition of a Sigma: “a personality archetype characterized by independence, self-reliance, and a preference for operating outside traditional social hierarchies.” I, a Sigma, was posting on a website called Sigma Frame, and they were all ganging up on me for being a Sigma. The irony is overflowing.
But, I’m definitely the bad guy for refusing to stoop to his level, and that’s why the Manosphere is Dead: no empathy.
What a silly thesis. I’ve spent my time informing men about harsh realities and to shed the imaginary wishful thinking so prevalent in the Manosphere. But what men want, apparently, is therapy.
So it turns out the Manosphere is Dead because it uses the same kinds of emotional manipulation tactics of the people it criticizes most.
Look at this classic:
I can hook you up with some good autism therapists if you like.
Sure, that’s great. Implore empathy and concern for suffering and then insult someone by calling them autistic and in need of a therapist. Very tender and empathetic, that.
This is masterwork emotional manipulation:
Of all the paragraphs of my comment to zero in on you missed the one that would make you come across as an empathic Christian brother and human being
A huge chunk of my ability to provide for my family was sacrificed on the altar of truth that we have burning here.
What the hell is wrong with you?
I’ve had to abandon the nation of my birth. The only place I’ve ever called home for the entire 52 years of my life to scrape after money in another country. A form of financial exile so I can feed my children. I only hope my cancelers don’t find where I’ve run to. And I still post here to help the men make sense of this.
What are you concerned about? What your legacy on Wikipedia means.
All I did was respond to the “wrong” portion of his comment, as if the world revolves around him. And of course, because I decided on the internet that I wouldn’t respond to whatever he thinks should be discussed that this means I’m not even a human being, let alone a Christian.
But to top it off, just throw in that emotional bomb to really try to twist the dagger.
Can you imagine being married to such a person?
You know what’s funny? Scott took issue to my comment:
Leaping on me as if I’m some sort of braggadocio for simply stating the simple reality: what I did there had an impact on millions of people, and yet I regret a lot of what I did at Wikipedia because of the severe bias contained therein. My legacy is…mixed at best.
The point of my comment was that the Manosphere is largely irrelevant, and if I wanted to make a world changing legacy (as the Manosphere seems obsessed with doing), I would have done almost anything else.
But, you know, those empathetic men can only see people they disagree with as autistic freaks.
https://sigmaframe.wordpress.com/2023/06/06/divided-we-fall/#comment-50334
Link for the above pseudonymous comment.
Yes, I remember that. Funny Oscar didnt suddenly appear and “lecture” EoS about
“how come you were not saving X ammount of every paycheck / you should have invested x ammount since you started working in this or that index fund and portfolio, and in seven years you would be a millionaire / you were living beyond your means, that’s your problem (insert some scripture about living within you bounds) not ours / the sign of a real provider is a man who knows how to steward his income”
Of course he wouldn’t 🙂 Anyone else would have been told what a “bad” husband or man that they were
I was recently at a doctor’s office complex, and a buxom(I’m guessing that’s where she thinks MEN will obey and jump at her command primarily comes from), strong Independent Woman started complaining about how long she had waited for her appointment ”I’ve been waiting two hours!” and then her phone fell on the floor,”I bet the screen is broken!”
I thought to myself ” who is this 35-40yo woman-child and where is her Father at as he’s not stepping up for her-since she’s his problem, NOT mine?”
Or as Pseudonymous Commenter said recently
”Men will not be “stepping up” for anyone other than themselves; since they are responsible for themselves and themselves only. We will not be “stepping up” for “society” when we get nothing for doing so. Men are doing the only thing they can do – severely limiting or eschewing contact with women, and earning their own money. I’m not taking responsibility for any woman other than my wife. I’m not helping you; I’m not doing anything for you; and I’m not paying for you. If you need something, ask your father, your husband, or your sons. Oh, you don’t have a husband? That’s not my problem. ”
It’s like Pseudonymous Commenter, Roissy, GBFM, Dalrock, and various others used to say ”Chivalry is dead as strong Independent sistahs be doing it for themselves now supposedly!”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drGx7JkFSp4
Sisters Are Doin’ It For Themselves [Ft. Aretha Franklin] (Official Video)
{That is what i was expecting the buxom, strong Independent Woman to start singing in the doctors office complex}
As we should know, chivalry originated when most of your neighbors in your village/small town were either blood-related to you or in-laws, or both, as in first or second-cousin marriage, which was standard even in the West up until the 1800s/1900s.
See herehttps://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1dgfagj/when_did_cousin_marriage_become_a_taboo_in_the/
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1 yr. ago
Porchie12
When did cousin marriage become a taboo in the West?
Marriage
From what I understand, marriage between cousins was quite common and seen as normal across most of history, and in some parts of the world it’s still very widespread. But nowadays, especially in the West, it’s generally frowned upon as something weird, and even morally bad.
As such even in Western countries where it’s legal it’s quite uncommon. How and when did this shift happen?
mimicofmodes
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1y ago
Moderator | 18th-19th Century Society & Dress | Queenship
This is a tricky one, because to my knowledge, nobody has really written anything definitive on this shift. But I’ll do my best, as someone who studies social history over the period where it seems to have taken place.
Yes, throughout history and in many cultures, marriages between cousins of varying degrees were understood as normal. I’m going to discuss the (Christian) European paradigm, which is what I’m more familiar with, and there I wouldn’t say that it was common, however. It was, in fact, prohibited. In the early Middle Ages, church law prevented people within four degrees of consanguinity of each other from marrying, counting up from one to the common ancestor and then back down to the other (so no first cousins); this was later raised to seven degrees, counting only from the common ancestor, and then set back at four (but still only counting from the common ancestor) with the fourth Council of Lateran in 1215. In 1300, you were therefore not allowed to marry a first or second cousin. The only way around this was to petition the pope for a dispensation to allow the rule to be violated.
It was common among royalty, as that was a very narrow social group with fairly strict requirements for marriages in terms of political utility and alliances – a royal person could only find a marriage partner in the royalty of countries friendly to their own, unless they were specifically being married to forge a link with a previously unfriendly country; if your father’s sister became the queen of a neighboring country, that would definitely put the neighboring country on your list. It’s also likely that because a royal marriage meant one spouse leaving their familiar surroundings forever for another country, having at least some previously-existing tie to the new family would make a cousin marriage more attractive. And, most importantly, because of the necessity of these marriages and the high social standing of the people involved, popes would generally give dispensations when requested.
European aristocrats also historically favored it for the way that it helped keep property under the control of one family, as well as the fact that both spouses would be well-known to each other and to their immediate families, and they would also have had the means to get dispensations with ease. In general, you don’t have to worry that your daughter’s suitor comes from unsuitable origins if he’s your brother’s son, and he probably won’t mistreat her. In England, however, the split from Rome meant that cousin marriages were impossible, as the pope was no longer an authority. Cousin marriages were declared legal there in the 1660s, but it took some decades for people to really become comfortable with it. Still, even then it was more admired in theory than practiced. The Rise of the Egalitarian Family: Aristocratic Kinship and Domestic Relations in Eighteenth-Century England explores how first and even second cousins among the English elite were treated as potential marriage material, required to keep a certain distance to preserve a young lady’s reputation, while the actual incidence of such marriages was vanishingly small. (It appears to have caught on more among elite Americans of the period; it’s tough to generalize, though, as legalization and bans were done colony by colony and later state by state.) The middle classes, however, tended to be staunchly against the marriage of cousins during that period.
But the acceptability of cousin marriage increased in the nineteenth century, around Europe and in America. We can attribute some of this to a normal trickle-down of elite attitudes, but also the practical reason that the nineteenth century saw an increase in wealth among the middle classes, which meant that the potential to protect family property was now of more interest. I’d also note that at the end of the late eighteenth century, affection between family members and especially spouses became more important, which could certainly help lead to individuals being more likely to look at collateral family members as potential spouses. In a sense, this period represents a high-water mark for ordinary cousin marriages that shouldn’t be projected backward.
It’s also worth noting that at the same time, relationships between men and their deceased wives’ sisters, and women and their deceased husbands’ brothers, were taboo and sometimes illegal under the same religious prohibition – despite being affines (related through law and not by blood), this was considered incest. In England, people arguing for a repeal of the ban on marrying your deceased wife’s sister highlighted the inconsistency between the lack of blood tie in this barred relationship and the genetic relationship between first cousins. (I’ve written a past answer about the issue of marrying a deceased wife’s sister in the UK.)
But, okay. How did this change?
To some extent, it didn’t. There are a lot of countries today where first cousins still sometimes get married: the idea that marrying a first or second or even more distant cousin is absolutely disgusting and akin to incest within the nuclear family is very American. We (Americans) often justify this as a fear of birth defects, but in reality the incidence of birth defects from a marriage between first cousins is just a couple of percentage points higher than it is for unrelated couples – there’s only real danger in the case of repeated cousin marriages through multiple generations. There’s a strong ableist subtext to the birth-defect argument, the idea that children with disabilities are a punishment sent by God/nature to parents who violate the social taboo through either a wrong kind of lustfulness or a pride that keeps them from mixing with others, especially the “lower classes” (the progressive version) – I’ve also written about this before, and I wish there were a way to broach the topic with people that didn’t immediately get you mocked for obviously wanting to bang your cousin. But I do think that this view helps to point us toward where it comes from, because the decline in acceptability of first-cousin marriages also goes along with the rise of the eugenics movement, which began in the US.
(continuing in next comment)
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mimicofmodes
•
1y ago
Moderator | 18th-19th Century Society & Dress | Queenship
This is a big topic. I can’t do full justice to it here, but I will link you to a past AMA on the topic. Basically, middle- and upper-class white people in the west became focused on the reproductive habits of the poor, especially but not only members of the poor who were part of other ethnic groups than themselves. It took the new ideas of “survival of the fittest” and the actual mechanics of genetic inheritance, and used them to justify the idea that the poor were breeding themselves into having lower intelligence and higher criminality, while also outbreeding the genetically superior wealthy, which you might recognize is actually the entire point of the movie Idiocracy. A very readable book on the topic is The Orphans of Davenport, by Marilyn Brookwood; it specifically deals with one institution where researchers studied “feeble-minded” children and found in the 1930s that children who’d been written off as having deficient IQs could improve when given actual love and attention rather than being entirely ignored by their caretakers, but whose research was mocked and ignored by the leading figures of psychology at the time, as they were all adherents of eugenics. One of the seminal works in the field of eugenics was The Kallikak Family, a “study” of descendants of one man who had children with two women, one of whom was his wife and the other of whom worked in a tavern and was “feeble-minded”. The children of his wife continued to be socially successful, while his illegitimate descendants were poor, criminal, and “feeble-minded”. Where today we would look at this as a study of wealth disparity, social class, and possibly the generational trauma of poverty, it was received as proof that the successful should breed with the successful, and the unsuccessful should be stopped from breeding. I cannot estimate the devastation the eugenics movement wrought on the world – all of the people confined to institutions and/or sterilized without their consent because upper-middle-class doctors deemed it beneficial to society at large.
Eugenicists didn’t care so much about cousin marriages between upstanding members of society (where it would only magnify good traits, after all), but they certainly saw them as a social ill when done by the poor. A dissertation by R. L. Snetzer on the topic of “Eugenic Marriage Laws”, written in 1914, sums up one family practicing cousin marriage studied by Charles B. Davenport, a leading eugenicist:
A man married his first cousin and had five children one of whom married his second cousin and had seven children. Five of these married, each consort being cousin. The produce of each of these last five cases of cousin marriages are as follows. Of the first there were eleven children of which number seven survived infancy; all were slow in movements, unambitious, unable to learn at school, and except one, reticent and shy. With one or two exceptions, all are alcoholic and licentious.
Of the second, six children, four surviving infancy. All slow and for most part alcoholic and licentious.
Of the third, nine children, four surviving infancy. The parents are both of better quality than in the last two cases. Two children are slow, indolent, unambitious, alcoholic and licentious; the other two are industrious, neat, and temperate.
Of the fourth, seven children, of whom one died at three and another is only two years old. On the basis of school work, all of the others are feeble minded and two already are licentious.
Of the fifth, two children, both feebleminded and licentious.
This shows the due consequences of inbreeding of cousins with weak strains. Cases of this kind might be multiplied indefinitely and no doubt the bad results which develop from most cousin marriages has placed a stigma upon that practice and has led most states to legislate against its practice.
Immigrants were also of concern because they came from countries where cousin marriage was more frequently practiced, or married cousins more often once they’d emigrated because the pool of available spouses with the same language and culture was lower, and of course (to the turn of the century eugenic mindset) had had to leave their homes because they were genetically inferior and incapable of succeeding where they’d been. They were also typically not Nordic, Germanic, or “Anglo-Saxon”, an inherent strike against them. Wealthy white people whipped themselves up into a frenzy over the possibility of these problematic immigrants outbreeding “natives”, leading to social ruin (a theory now known as “white genocide”). Cornelia James Cannon, a feminist eugenicist of the period, was once a believer in the idea of the US as a melting pot, but came to fear “racial decay” as “the pot seems full of ugly and menacing lumps”. (Check out Cornelia James Cannon and the Future American Race by Maria I. Diedrich for more on the intersection of the progressive movement with eugenics and racism.)
It’s impossible to divorce the eugenics movement from the modern cousin-marriage taboo – there’s simply too much overlap between the concerns. While people aim it upward with jokes about aristocrats and royalty breeding themselves into being less attractive and physically unfit, they also aim it downward at poor rural families, just like the “reformers” of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
{All that info is for those who have not been in these discussions for as long as i or MOD has}
If it wasn’t for Christianity, nobody would care if an underage male had sex with his female school teacher. People already have trouble manufacturing outrage over it. It mostly gets a “ho hum” response. But if a male teacher does the same to a female student? Hang him!
What if the female school teacher was an alcoholic(which explains her actions, and she’s a victim too, as she wouldn’t have had sex with an underage male otherwise) and agreed to go to rehab?😉
https://www.southparkstudios.com/video-clips/yrtpf9/south-park-mel-gibson-defense
Case? Case closed as everyone cheers!
Right, there is a significant portion of the population that not only can’t muster outrage, but actually applauds.
The Red Pill (and ardent Feminists, lol) keep saying what a success their stances have been and how millions and millions of people have been helped (saved?) because of them.
Yet, the pink elephant in the room is never addressed.
More are single. More are unhappy. More are frustrated. The rift of hate and anger (of women and men) has widened and seems almost impossible to mend.
Indifference has grown to frightening proportions (MGTOW, Hot Girl Summer, and now Bossbabe*) and the Black Pill has even pushed a deeper divide (yes, women get Black Pilled too)
Has anyone else noticed that most so-called ”red pill” is essentially black pill now(as in just tend to yourself and forget ”self-improvement”?
Q.What is the ”red pill” w/o self-improvement?
A.Just talking about ”chads”,”tyrones”,”beckys” & ”stacys” while saying ”redpill ”, I didn’t even know those terms until redpillboomer at Sigma Frame kept saying them, and then i found out they were essentially blackpill terms for alphas & Hot babes 6?-10. All i knew of blackpill (the original version not the after ER version& incels before that was from 2011-16 mentions of them.
But what about the Dalrockian Manosphere? The most common belief, by far, is that women have full agency, but society is dropping the ball by letting women get away with murder (literally and figuratively). To wit:
Dalrock
The problem is that the most ridiculous things are being claimed as male responsibility in order to deny reality and therefore shirk [women’s] responsibility. Feminists openly and methodically marched through all of our institutions for decades. Conservative Christians responded to this by simply denying that it was happening. Changing the subject to men, no matter how ridiculous, is the go-to coping mechanism here.
Dalrock, operating from a purely Christian perspective is theoretically correct. But, otherwise, he is dead wrong.
It is not cope. No society has ever agreed that women have full agency compared to men. None. Not a single one. Society is behaving 100% rationally—per its own standards—when it demands that men take full responsibility for females. This is essential to both feminism and patriarchy (including the Christian headship model). Outside of Christ, there is no reason at all to grant full agency to women and no one does.
It’s not about what should be, it’s about what is. Without a fully egalitarian Christian nation, women will always be assigned limited agency, no matter what culture it is. Trying to change this is as dumb as trying to hold back the tide while wielding a plastic beach shovel.
Dalrock was more of an ”egalitarian” Mens Rights Activist(to the suprise of many new comers to the manosphere)who believed in womens agency more than most feminists or any women ever have, or as you said here:” That’s why when men exercise their agency to stop changing women’s flat tires and carrying their groceries, you hear all the calls by women for men to fix it. To wit:
Dalrock’s Law of Feminism: Feminism is the assertion that men are evil and naturally want to harm women, followed by pleas to men to solve all of women’s problems.
Women are not equal and they never have been. This…
Feminist’s Law of Feminism: Equal opportunity for all; not being stopped from trying because of gender. Treating everyone the same.
…is just PR. It’s never been real.
Feminism is about the inequality of men and women, as I said years ago:
Feminism: the promotion of gender inequality favoring women, that is, female supremacy.
Which, in the frame of agency, is this:
Feminism: the promotion of gender inequality where women have limited agency and men have full agency: duties, responsibilities, and blame.”
What proved this in recent years? The U.N.!https://qz.com/1812802/un-study-finds-almost-90-of-men-and-women-are-biased-against-women
UN study finds almost 90% of men and women are biased against women
The world is sexist. No country—not Iceland, not Denmark, none—has achieved gender parity, and women continue to face enormous struggles in large parts of the world to see their basic human rights recognized.
But i thought equality existed now?Acording to the United Nations?”Even more worrying, the UN found that while it may seem as if the situation is improving—given all the recent discussion around gender equality—things are actually getting worse. According to the index, the percentage of men with some bias against women grew from 89.4% between 2004 and 2009 to 89.9% between 2010 and 2014. Women with some bias against women also increased, the study found, rising from 83.4% to 84.6% in the same period.
Women’s attitudes towards women have worsened the most among people who hold moderate to intense gender biases. The percentage of women in this category grew three percentage points between 2004-2009 and 2010-2014, from 56.6% to 59.7%. The share of men harboring moderate to intense gender bias, meanwhile, grew from 70% to 70.8% in the same period. ”
With the “Female teacher / underage male student thing” I have seen posts on Red Pill sites and comments on these sites (not our friends at the other blog, but on Dal and others)
“Lucky kid!”
“Hot for teacher is alive and well”
“Bet he really hated being used that way by his teacher, I saw her picture, she is hot!”
“Teen boys are not affected the same way women are when it comes to that”
“An Alpha in the making!”
It goes on, and its under the premis that boys cannot be raped or “forced” or “coererced” sexually by a woman.
These same men will absolutely “have kittens” if the woman gets pregnant and decides to abort, or then takes that teen boy for “child support” the second he turns 18. Suddenly “he was just aboy, how dare an older / mature / legal standing women do this! She needs to be held accountable! He used / manipulated that poor boy! he was a minror!!!!”
And
If it was THEIR own son who was held prey by a woman who did this, they would be out to sue the school district, that woman and even “The State” for not protecting their “poor innocent boy who-was -taken-advantage-of”
Anyone else’s son? Wink-wink……”yeah, the poor kid…he got to have sex with a real woman. He’s got serious braggin’ rights now!”
As for your reply to me Derek. Red Pill believes that women do not have agency. They cannot help what they do
AS for Scott. “Puttin my ass on the line” I hear daily from veterans, and all of them are “dsiabled” now (PTSD) and are getting diability checks running on average of 2-4K per month. While the WW II generation walked out of horrid POW camps. Saw horrific real fighting, half a million fellow soldiers felled in that war. They came home, went to work and got on with their lives.
And todays vets…….they had a CHOICE to sign up and “put their ass on the line”
And frankly, I’m tired of hearing “America does nothing for its Veterans”
Scott did say once offhand in a cmment about his advanced schooling being PAID for by the government because “Well, I served and I’m a hero…” kind of statement.
It took me 25 years to pay back my student loan from RPI
sigh…….
Hey, my son is going to apply to RPI this fall.
I’ve always suspected that the Manosphere largely believes that women have no agency, even though they claim the exact opposite. But since I can’t read minds, I have hesitated from making such claims. I’ll just say that I agree with your opinion, but cannot substantiate that claim.
Would be happy to sign the application to waive the fee if there is one. Class of 1994 MS Technical Communications!
RPI is a good school, one of the better Polys for undergrad especially. One of the oldest in the USA as well.
I wasnt in some of the more serious “hard science” programs. Their architecture program…….wow! I was astounded as a grad student there by the intellect and gifted people in that discipline.
RPI! “Why not change the world?”
I bartended at a small bar near Russell Sage (women college) while I was in grad school on weekends for my spending and book money. Their grad student housing on campus was actually good when I was there.
Troy is a dump (we called it ‘The Troylet’) when I was there. lol!
It was A LOT of money for those two years (70k) when I went, room board and tuition. I didnt enjoy it because it was actually HARD for me and I was WAY above my head there intellectually (I got in on my interview, Im convinced…my GREs were okay and my undergrad was average)
Anyway, its a beautiful old campus overlooking the dump called Troy and the views of The Hudson River and nearby Albany are…..I must saw breathtaking!
I’ve always suspected that the Manosphere largely believes that women have no agency, even though they claim the exact opposite.
You mean like Jack saying this?:
“Men and women conditioned by Feminism and its counterpart, Chivalry, don’t understand their own wants, needs, and desires. There is some sort of spiritual blindness prevalent in modern culture that prevents them from realizing that there is an aspect of themselves (i.e. Desire) that they are ignorant of, and which they haven’t taken ownership of. Instead, Desire is permitted to roam free and unexamined, and it seems unreasonable that they should be expected to accept responsibility for this unknown part of their own nature. Therefore, when a person with Charisma stimulates those desires, they find it easy to jump to the conclusion that they are being “manipulated” or in some cases, “raped”. As a point in case, if you were to ever ask a young woman how she ended up in bed with so and so, the default answer would be, “I don’t know… It just happened!” Only after many encounters does she understand the mechanics of how it happened, yet she still doesn’t understand her own Desire as a motivating factor.” from https://sigmaframe.wordpress.com/2020/02/10/the-dalrock-route/
&
https://sigmaframe.wordpress.com/2019/12/09/why-does-game-work/
”, yet she still doesn’t understand her own Desire as a motivating factor.”
This is supposedly (he got) game/ ”redpill” Jack?
He sounds more like country bumpkin/blue pill Jack there.
Or like this sheltered person living in a bubblehttps://www.reddit.com/r/TrueChristian/comments/l2pose/women_struggle_with_lust_too_why_isnt_it_talked/
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•
5 yr. ago
pumpkinspicelatte96
Women struggle with lust too, why isn’t it talked about a lot?
I find discussions about lust center around the male perspective. I’m a single woman in my 20s and I go through times where I really struggle with lust and trying to stay “pure” (even though regretfully I’m not a virgin), I watch things I shouldn’t be watching, and I have urges and desires. Is there any women out there going through the same thing that can share their experiences?
{they really don’t know why it isn’t talked about?)
Like Jack believing a ”woman doesn’t understand her own Desire as a motivating factor.”?
No wonder Pseudonymous Commenter said ”No wonder the manosphere is dead.”!
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