>This, of course, creates a problem: should women reward unrealized potential?
It’s a valid strategy imo, high variance but can work, especially for younger people who haven’t gotten started in the world.
On a philosophical level, everything people evaluate is appearance — the appearance of good character, competence, and health. It doesn’t mean the underlying variables don’t matter, though.
Women do not regard low status men as men at all. So they don’t see potential.
When women look at the world of males, they see what they think of as “men”, that is high-status men, and they also see an indistinguishable mass of vaguely humanoid blob people.
So the good news for the low status man is that you can improve yourself, and no woman ever really gave a shit about your past.
Largely true IME . This is especially true for pursuing younger women with no memory of men’s past at all. IMO this is part of what’s behind the age gap outrage these days, that women are furious their rejections/value judgments of men didn’t stick forever, that other women judged differently outside of what they perceive as a hive mind.
I think big 5 personality traits and intelligence are fairly easy to discern. At least, whenever I played the game where i guess people’s score on the big 5, I’m usually not far off from their actual scores. The modal woman wants a man (in addition to physical fitness or potential-frailty and shortness are generally not valued) extroverted, conscientious and low neuroticism. Maybe mildly disagreeable. Openness is YMMV but insofar as it’s correlated with intelligence, it’s worth thinking deeply about. But most women, especially younger ones, seem to evaluate the outcome of these traits instead of the traits themselves. Instead of evaluating for, say, extroversion and mild disagreeability, which tends to produce confidence and swagger, they evaluate the swagger itself. Instead of the trait that produce money (intelligence plus conscientiousness), they evaluate the appearance of having money. Etc.
I once read a woman reciting some advice from her relatives to find a college dude with good prospects and stick to him. Kinda applies here except good prospects are already high-value.
It's actually an issue of framing women love Sk8er Boi. They just hate that another girl will have gotten guys she passed over. Like if you sold a stock and it goes up 400% you feel grief for missing out.
Also you underestimate that women want to participate in the game, they want to be selected. Being a selector is awful, many women envy that their value is fixed, set in stone by their born beauty. A lot of feminism is them trying to claw against nature a way to be selected themselves, where they can earn and work for better mates.
I think you understand things better than the author. Walt seems to feel as if men are passive participants in the dating market, and all the selection is being done by women. But women want to be the pursued not the pursuer. I think what's more likely going on is that as a man gains status, in his own mind, he becomes more confident in pursuit, and therefore attracts more women as a result. For sure, already gained status is a factor, but a man who expresses confidence projects a likelihood of future success, even if he is low status. What turns women off is when a man seems sort of a pathetic victim of his station, waiting around for some woman to choose him and bestow happiness upon him, instead of going after it.
Obviously men are the pursuers--this is an entirely different role from the *selectors*. I foreground this specifically by noting it's men who are the causally embedded agentic actors. Also cover this at considerable length in the general theory.
I also just disagree with the opening claim that women dislike male ascension narratives. I have never noticed this, at all. I like a good rags to riches story as much as anyone and it's never been a point of annoyance for me, nor have I noticed women complaining about them, in any context. Maybe there's a few radical feminists out there on the internet who think this is an issue, but it's basically not a thing among normal women.
It's not rags to riches women object to. It's an ascension story that narrates increasing sexual access in a mechanistic way that makes female desire seem algorithmic or predictable. Listen to my recent pod with Katie O'Connor and you'll see a good example of how it comes up.
So your complaint is that women apparently don't like stories where women are portrayed as coldly calculating social climbers.
Ok, I can think of an example - 'Better off Dead'. But then, doesn't the male protagonist NOT choose the hot popular girl at the end and instead chooses the French exchange student? Do you think he should have chosen otherwise? Do women dislike Better off Dead ? (Never heard that).
No the idea is that women dislike stories where a woman's choice is narrated as incorrect or shallow and need it to be framed not as a story of status acquisition but one of moral discovery or something
I remember the few times when I me and my wife briefly discussed the fact of me having been undesirable years before I put in work to become desirable enough to date and enter the relationship with her. Every time, it seemed like she either rejected, dismissed, didn't believe or understand the idea.
Huh, this is the same reason why advice to men is commonly "just be yourself" when they ask how they might get girls to like them. What the answer is precognitively very literally saying is "don't try to change yourself because that feels like a trick to me. I want to see the Real You so that I can set my judgement accordingly"
It's an interesting answer to a suite of questions.
I always like hoe maths' answer. "When they say 'be yourself' what they mean is 'be attractive' "
“be yourself” directed at girls seems to be actually saying, “don't be a people pleaser.” Because the last thing you want to see is your daughter trying really hard to impress people you dislike or distrust.
For guys the advice always seemed bizarre to me because it's obvious we all have selfish urges that we hide. So yeah, “be the exceptional person I think you are deep down” makes sense.
When a parent tells a daughter “be yourself”, they aren’t trying to help her maximize the quality of her offspring. They are trying to help her avoid heartbreak from guys who don’t aren’t loyal to the “real version” of their daughter.
I think this is the best thing I've read from you.
P.S. The 1998 2D animated Rudolph is the best example of a male ascension narrative in action, down to the love interest allegedly seeing the good inside Rudolph the whole time, even when she was with Chad, but conveniently only switching to Rudolph once he became high status.
And yet, do women dislike the 2D animated Rudolph? I think the authors basic claim that "woman hate male ascension narratives" is simply false. Women like these stories as much as anyone else. This is not something I've ever noticed being a topic of annoyance among women. Everyone loves a good rags to riches story.
If you want to know a narrative I find annoying - it's the "manic pixie dream girl" type. I could get into that.
Women like such stories only when they're framed moralistically in a way that minimizes sexual access as the goal of ascension. The version most men tend to identify with which foregrounds causal mechanisms of ascent (esp in regards to female mate choice) and treats the moral aspect as incidental tends to leave most women cold.
Give me an example of a male ascension story which women dislike where sexual access is the goal of ascension. I'm honestly not sure what you are talking about.
I still don't know what you mean. Fight Club maybe? I like Fight Club. I don't really hear women complain about Fight Club either. Some people dislike Fight Club, but it's mostly progressive men who think it's fascist.
Well in fight club, Marla doesn't approach the Narrator sexually. Everyone acknowledges that everyone involved is some kind of unstable. Tylers activity isn't a rags to riches story, Marla doesn't suddenly see the narrators involvement in the movement and say he's more valuable now. And the narrator doesn't reject Marla now that he's the movement leader (not that it makes a difference. He was leader all along). There is a surprising lack of sexual focus in fight club.
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Have you seen Family Matters? As Steve Urkel was on the path to eating the whole show, besides being a nerd he was best known for his affection for Laura. Laura explicitely rejects him. However, occassionally, Steve presents his alter-ego, Stefan. Slicker, cooler, deeper voice, and manlier. Its explicitely aimed at attracting Laura, and it works. But, Stefan also reveals himself as a bit more sociopathic. Suddenly, Laura wants the old Steve selfless and kind back. One wonders why she never saw that in him when he was just nerdy, awkward Steve. One also wonders what the audience would've thought if she just laughed along, or was rejected for someone Stefan considered more interesting.
He's not saying that women dislike male ascenscion narratives. The whole article lays out that women have to re-frame the narrative so that it frees them from any responsibility for the man's ascenscion based on her rejection of him.
It's not about "liking" or "disliking".
Holy fuck, why am I arguing with women online, again??!! 🤣🤣
Yeah, they hate *male* ascenscion narratives, not "male ascenscion narratives". As in, the narrative from the male's point of view, as in when males narrate their own ascenscion. Not an ascension that happens to include a male.
Holy shit I did it again. Just can't help myself, can I?
Notice the converse--the female ascension narrative (classically, Cinderella) they're quite fond of. But it makes sense. Their interests are opposed to our own!
They tend to get very angry when I describe how my 'market value' increased with my actual net worth. I actually had one feminist pivot from calling me an incel to trying to convince me the divorce thing was overblown and I could still find someone.
"This, of course, is why successful male ascension narratives are often laundered with varying degrees of sincerity through some less embarrassing and more impersonal purpose, be it God, art, craft, mission, discipline, fatherhood, beauty, excellence, survival, or destiny—really anything except the desire to escape feminine rejection. The more a man’s ascent appears organized around women, the lower it reads."
From the female perspective one can see why that would be...if he improved for female attention what's to keep him from either continuing to expect attention from other women, this undermining loyalty in provisioning or from turning back into a frog once she has commitment.
In Christian contexts, I have in several cases heard men use meeting their wife as a pilot-light, igniting the self-improvement narrative that then gives way to newfound religious devotion and the continuing motivation. "I started going to whatever church because the girls were pretty". Not often among Millennials but certainly among Boomers and Gen Xers. Allegedly, Jerry Falwell Sr. took half the public positions he did to convince his wife he genuinely was a Christian. (Ditto Von Rippentrop and National Socialism)
Again, a woman in that situation probably wants to ensure that the father of her children will continue provisioning them like a prince should she pass. A man who improves nakedly for female attention runs the risk of provisioning multiple women's children.
A male who truly decoded a universal (enough) formula for attracting women has no incentive to stop at one. Men know this. Women intuit this, even if they don’t want to believe it. It would take someone truly unusual to have the power and not use it.
Great essay, and it maps neatly onto the core aspects of each gender’s self-image.
To men, it’s about honor, which is rooted in agency and honest evaluation. What are you worth? You don’t know until it’s proven, and there’s a lot that’s variable in you but the way you respond to your environment is key and of course your rise is going to be exhibit A in your understanding of yourself and your place. You respect this even if your instinctive response to another man is negative. You don’t trust this guy? Prove why. If you can’t, he’s probably good and the problem is you. Then you can adjust.
For women, the narrative is still a victim’s narrative. The world happens to them, and while they select, they don’t want to face up to the reality that their selection, and their judgment, can be gamed. But it can be, and on a deeper level, they know it. The process of knowing and not knowing this is massively relevant to their sense of personal security and is basically the underlying theme of the Great Gatsby: he doesn’t belong in this class, and you’d better hope the world shows it to you before you get suckered in by him.
Because you can’t change your choice. Or at least, in this culture, it would be shameful to need to.
Men lock in their choices: their agency, if it’s real, will see them through. It’s why they always think they can save their relationships, by doing something differently, and that’s why divorce isn’t male coded. Divorce is failure. For women, divorce is failure but as long as they’re still attractive, they can use divorce as a fresh start, which comes down to them having been manipulated.
I think women miss the stability of aristocratic class differences. It’s easier to be a princess. But what’s very obvious in this is that they see men as a means to a lifestyle end and they absolutely can’t be honest about it. They will never grok honor, or the struggle from nothing that is being a man. And they don’t want to.
People must not be reading this far down the comments, because it’s a travesty that you posted this two days ago and I’m the first to hit Like on it.
Your example of the difference between how men and women perceive divorce as failure was a great illustration of general sex differences. Men often see divorce as a personal failure on their own part, whereas for women, it’s more that the relationship failed, or her husband failed, or the ambient conditions weren’t right. The woman wasn’t an active co-creator of the deteriorating situation; it was something that happened to her and she was a victim of it.
What a weird take. Firstly, I don’t really see how women hate male ascension narratives - those are everywhere in entertainment and often quite commercially successful, which they rarely could be if women as a collective boycotted them wholesale. Secondly, to the degree that some women might object to this narrative, it’s often not to the narrative per se, but its ubiquity, the comparative dearth of female ascension narratives (a Cinderella story has some elements and is consequently beloved, who doesn’t like ascenion? - but there’s less of a focus on how everyone who underestimated the heroine now has to eat crow; the evil stepsisters are punished, but more for their pretensions towards the prince then for underestimating Cinderella; I think that’s what Pretty Woman got right, in the iconic scene with the snobby shop assistent. Everyone loves a bit of vindication!). Personally, what bores me most about most male ascenion narratives is how the woman is so blatantly reduced to a trophy; there’s just no juice at all in the relationship dynamics, because you can’t have dynamic relationship with an object.
As to actual dating behavior, I've known a girl or two in my days who liked to go in early on a fixer-upper, to uneven results. Some women love a project. Once in a while it pays off. But that kind of woman has no place in most male-ascension narratives, because the central fantasy of the male-ascension narrative is the entirely self-made man. The whole point is that he got to where he is without any support! There's no one he owes anything to and nothing he has to be grateful for. And if there were, the whole story would feel less satisfying.
There's a deeper point in here, which I agree with though - the way in which everyone who had to fight for their place (be it due to gender, race, class or whatever) tends to get accused of having a chip on their shoulder. Every girlboss a potential Karen, every nerd who made good still seething with incel ressentment. I think the deeper problem is that hard-won self-confidence tends to be perceived differently. People just won't read it at face-value - they're quick to suspect overcompensation of still lingering inferiority issues. If you're born to privilege and throw your weight around, well, that's just what everyone expects - they suppose it comes naturally; if you had to fight for your seat at the table, clearly you've got something to prove, and isn't that tiresome. Very unfair.
'Better Off Dead' contradicts everything Walt's arguing. It's a male ascension narrative in which the man's ascension is explicitly based on prior rejection (his girlfriend dumped him for a higher status male). The love interest expresses an attraction to him despite his low status and gives him a hand (invests in his potential), helping him to rise in status. At the end. the woman who spurned him gets her comeuppance after he rejects her when she tries to take him back. Do women hate it? No, they love seeing the fickle Beth get her due and see Monique be rewarded for choosing the protagonist even though he was down on his luck at the beginning of the story.
The reality is there are plenty of women who date low status men based on perceived potential, not based on actually having looks or status at the outset. It's common enough that you can base the plot of a movie on it pretty frequently.
Almost every 80s movie is some version of this theme, all almost the complete opposite of what Walt's writing here. Plenty of them involve the guy "ascending" in status and ignoring the heart-of-gold helpful girl next door or best friend to pursue the hot bitchy cheerleader. It's probably the biggest trope. Teen Wolf, Can't Buy Me Love, it is practically the plot of every teen movie in the 80s and 90s, how he ascends and turns into a egotistical dickhead who starts abusing his friends and the the good girl who really loved him, til he gets some comeuppance and realizes the error of his ways. They do the reverse plot too with the same story for girls ascending popularity and forgetting her real friends, but it was much more common for boys.
There's even "Revenge of the Nerds" where the "nerd" gets the high status girl at the end and everyone cheers. With the implication being he was a better lover than the jock she was dating.
Better Off Dead is an interesting example because after beating Stalin, Lane chooses Monique despite Monique being very low status herself. That low status is no fault of her own — she’s nice, pretty, loyal, apparently a talented auto mechanic at age 17, and a Dodgers fan — but she’s a foreign exchange student with no friends who is tainted by association with the ultra-low-status Ricky, not by choice but because he never leaves her side in public.
It would be a very different movie, one I suspect women would not like nearly as much, if in the end Lane chose some girl who was higher status than both Monique and Beth. Part of the goal of male ascendancy, whether stated explicitly or not, is for the ascendant male to be able to attract high-status women. If Walt’s thesis that female dislike of male ascendancy narratives is true, one reason for that dislike that I’m not sure was mentioned, although I may just have missed it, would likely be that mid and low status women don’t like losing things to high status women, even if those things were things they previously rejected because they used to be low status.
But the plot of the film is that the low status woman *does* choose the low-status man. Monique see's Lane's potential and supports him. This is a story line that low-status women relate to because they do, actually, date low status men that they think have some sort of potential. Yes, most low status women don't want to have their guy dump them for a higher status woman after they "ascend". It's not that they are mad because they rejected the guy. It's that the guy rejects them because *he* only wants to date high status women.
It seems like in Walt's fantasy the natural thing is for the man to ascend so he can dump all the low status women and then only date the high status ones. But isn't that the view he is projecting onto women - that actually they always reject the low status men and only want the high status ones?
I'm a medical doctor who spent my mid-thirties bald. I speak five foreign languages well, I'm good conversation, well-travelled, healthy weight for my height, no serious mental or physical health problems. I live in a country where income in this profession is very healthy.
I don't know for certain why my ex-wife treated me like dogshit on her shoe, and it doesn't matter since I want children and given my close acquaintance with her, I did and do not want them with her, but my best working guess is that it was because I became progressively more bald in our relationship (and embraced it, shaved my head).
I got a hair transplant because I work in a female-dominant specialty (that was not always female-dominant), crushed all the written specialty exams, repeatedly failed in-person exams until I showed up to them in quite a good wig. My current fiancée and the mother of my child does not believe that my hair loss *could* have been a reason for the breakdown of my marriage; and she nine-tenths does not believe my reasoning about the in-person exams, despite that I am the person in the conversation who was in the previous relationship and has the best insight into the circumstances of the exams. She in general trusts my judgement on everything else. I am in full agreement with Walt.
Slightly relatedly, life is just easier with hair, women (more so) *and* men treat me better; I had two complaints (from patients) when bald, zero with hair (yes, I have more experience with time), and dating was much easier with hair (in retrospect, I shouldn't even have tried anything with women who had known me bald,)
Recently I have read that the Manosphere is a rebellion against the "just be yourself" narrative. And that is such typical mother-talk! Fathers always talk like "there is more potential in you".
But the "rich, jacked and socially ruthless" is so stupid! Do you really believe it? Have you ever seen a Nespresso advertisement with George Clooney? He just radiates kindness and warmth and women absolutely love that. And he is not jacked, looking more like a runner. Just don't be fat and have nice clothes.
You can be nice if you have Clooney's money and looks. If you're a fat loser (as you say)...not so much.
Women's forebrains say they like 'nice' because intellectually they know they don't want to get beaten (like, seriously) or cheated on. The hindbrain, on the other hand...
And being a socially ruthless fat loser is somehow more attractive? Socially ruthless is a status move, and people who pretend higher status than their actual status generally come across as fake and ridiculous.
The clash of interests here is like the clash of interests between the people who create the SAT and the people who take it. The creators want to test for natural aptitude; the takers want to score as high as possible. If someone scores high on the test and then talks about how he practiced and learned test-taking techniques and raised his score, the SAT creators won’t like to hear that. What’s the saying about how as soon as you start using one particular statistic as a measure of a broader phenomenon, it becomes a bad measure, because people start optimizing for that one number instead of the broader phenomenon?
Well there’s pretending and there’s pretending. Borrowing your friend’s sports car: cringe. Learning an upper class accent and style of dress (which need not be expensive): less fringe Getting upper class degrees at upper class institutions: minimal cringe
I can be nice and well dressed all I want, but if I'm not a millionaire movie star with international fame and top-0.1%-follower-count then I won't be on the Nespresso advertisement. Or conversely, I can have my essence be nice, but if I don't have a job I am not attractive.
Well, mothers are hardwired to love a wrinkled, ugly, screeching newborn and see the best in said creature. Grown sons are significantly less abrasive that that. They might be a bit biased when it comes to their own sons. A part of them will always remember the cute lovable cheeky child their sons used to be. And they (wrongly) expect the world to see it too, given time.
Isn’t it more because it represents something impossible for women?
In terms of sexual market value, women don’t ascend. They acquire their full beauty at the age of 15 or 16, and then it lasts for maybe 25 or 30 years if they are careful, and then it’s gone forever.
Men on the other hand can keep on accumulating status for almost their entire lives.
Idk I think men are actually way more likely to believe in "essence" narratives and to simply not believe that a high status/beautiful woman wasn't always that, or to be profoundly disturbed if they find out she really wasn't. Watch a guy who thinks he found the one learn that actually she used to be very fat and only lost the weight with glps, or through lots of plastic surgery. He's likely to be grossed out, disturbed, and rethink the whole thing. I think that's just some part of the brain going "wait a minute this person is going to give me fat big nosed ugly babies, not the naturally beautiful ones I thought".
Whereas waiting for teenage boys to grow up and stop being retarded and/or grow into their masculinity is pretty much par for the course.
It's not at all unusual that some boy comes back from summer break in high school and has grown 6 inches, developed shoulders and a neck and a man voice and bearing, and suddenly everyone realizes he's hot. No one thinks oh he was always hot and we just discovered his real essence, they think damn he grew himself a body, now he's hot, and he wasn't before. No one punishes him or cares that last year he looked like a scrawny kid. I suppose this sometimes happens with a girl who has a glow up, but it's very, very common with boys.
It's also not unusual for women to spend a lot of time waiting for (or disregarding and ignoring, for the time-being) testosterone-induced young guy retardedness, self-centeredness, and uncontrolled aggression, waiting for it to calm the fuck the down a bit with age. The young, dumb, and full of cum 18 year old military recruit or kid regularly throwing himself off cliffs for a sport, for example, is not going to be that appealing to women (even though he's probably looked up to a lot by his bros), while the 28 year old who comes out the other side with discipline and maturity, and no longer being a lunatic with no control of himself bc his adolescent test surged has calmed down, is much more appealing. You think a lot about the more undeveloped type of guy who takes years to mature into manhood, but just as often there's also a problem the other way around with guys who are far too reckless, aggressive, retarded etc when they're younger and becomes much more appealing later, when they chill out and grow up and stop breaking their hands punching walls and shit.
I don't think *anyone* likes or wants to be around someone whose success was purchased at the cost of bitterness and resentment. I worked with a woman who, back before GLPs existed, had gastric bypass surgery and lost 100 lbs. She went from hugely obese to suffering through a terrible surgery to become slim and pretty. And I have never in my life met a more resentful, enraged woman, at men. She HATED them. She was now pursued and thought attractive for the first time, saw the enormous discrepancy in how men treated her, and hated their fucking guts. It was tragic. The black resentment and fury honestly rolled off of her, she was miserable. I don't think anyone wants to be around a friend, colleague, mate etc who has that issue, it's disturbing.
If you're rich and you meet someone who grew up poor and made it to become very rich themselves, and because of all the shit he had to eat and go through, he harbors burning hatred for rich people and fantasizes about a guillotine-led commie revolution, do you think you'd want that person as your friend or employee? No your would not. You'd see them as somewhat tragic, risky, unpleasant, and dangerous. Which isn't different from what you're saying, I just think these are universal principles. Of course everyone would prefer that success comes via pro-social motivations and not anti-social and vindictive ones. No one wants to be with the woman who is now beautiful but might cut your dick off while you sleep, or the guy who is so angry about his past he will never stop trying to prove to himself that he's arrived at everyone else's expense.
1) it isn't symmetric across the sexes given women display far lower variance in essentially all domains of life, are selectors instead of pursuers, and are valued for what they are versus what they do. Moreover the womanly self-concept is usually a lot more static than the male one which foregrounds the importance of ascension, which means if what you're saying is true it's just a lot less existentially violative on some level than the reverse as most chicks don't tie their sexual worth to a bildungsroman story like 90% of men and will probs on some level agree with a man that her past self is highly pertinent information.
2) you seem to be conflating masculine ascension with puberty, which is sort of adjacent but a lot less so for late bloomers + basically all young men today compared to several decades ago. Male ascension isn't about getting shoulders and a growth spurt--it's about agentically increasing one's station in life as an adult and getting that broadly ratified by society.
3) note that after just a few days this is already my most popular article since Slutty Women, and has received overwhelmingly positive feedback from men including glowing praise from both Fake J and Drunk Wisconsin who I think you'll agree are very reasonable arbiters on gender topics not at all prone to bad faith grievance. Are all of these men mistaken?
I don't think anyone is mistaken I just think all these principles are a lot more universal than you do.
For instance, I disagree a woman's self concept is static, just the opposite. It's men who are more likely to believe in some type of objective unchanging platonic ideals. They think they can rank a woman's appearance for instance, and that it's some inherent property of the universe. Literally no woman thinks that, they all know for a fact they're a 3 and a 7 in the very same day depending on what they're wearing, whether they have makeup on, whether their hair is down and they got a good night's sleep etc, and also we all know we have hot and not hot months and years and phases and that shit is all very changeable. It's men who insist that no it isn't, everyone is some hard and objective figure....and yet they are also the ones constantly flipping out and screaming starting viral trends on Twitter whenever they see a pic of the celebrity they had a crush on in bad lighting or without makeup, bc they can't stand for things to change. Like this is actually crazy to me, it is guys who insist on these objective stable categories and rankings and who get very upset when anything intrudes on their system to change it.
I think the point of the text is that male ascension through self improvement is frowned upon by women as dishonest. And what you say is true that women's beauty enhancement is frowned upon by men as dishonest. It's just that the first I have not considered, but "men are pigs" is kind of old news.
Hard disagree here. I think you’ll find that if Tony Robbins could do for everyone what he did in the movie Shallow Hal, guys would be lining up for his services.
Your story about the woman who lost weight is interesting because while I’m sure it was not dramatic a change, I had a similar experience in how women treated me before and after I passed the Bar. I’ll admit it offended me the first couple of times, but it was more of a lightbulb moment that my mental model of female attraction needed adjusting.
Anyone who holds onto rigid ideas of what other people ought to care about is going to end up making themselves miserable.
Hers was extremely dramatic, she literally went from hugely obese to slender, and she did the surgery at a young enough age that she didn't have a bunch of extra skin, she looked like an entirely different person. Also suffered and constantly had to be in the bathroom and could barely eat anything without her system going into full revolt. I bet she's even more pissed now that GLPs have come out, that she has a permanently shot-glass sized stomach.
You can also transform without inhabiting the soulless frame of acquiring technical know how. I kinda think you can get nearly all the benefits of being high status simply by knowing your mind and getting used to speaking it.
"A discovery narrative says: “He was always attractive, and then I finally realized it.” Or: “The context changed, and then something became visible.” A transformation narrative, meanwhile, says: “He was not desirable, then made himself desirable.”" I fail to see these as contradictory. As to make yourself desireable means you had the spark to do it, in that way the man who can do it has an essence that is of inherent greater value than he who does not have the faith and resolve to do so. I mean these narratives selvdom involve fakeness. I was not aware women did not like these storries, never really met any that does not myself.
>This, of course, creates a problem: should women reward unrealized potential?
It’s a valid strategy imo, high variance but can work, especially for younger people who haven’t gotten started in the world.
On a philosophical level, everything people evaluate is appearance — the appearance of good character, competence, and health. It doesn’t mean the underlying variables don’t matter, though.
Women do not regard low status men as men at all. So they don’t see potential.
When women look at the world of males, they see what they think of as “men”, that is high-status men, and they also see an indistinguishable mass of vaguely humanoid blob people.
So the good news for the low status man is that you can improve yourself, and no woman ever really gave a shit about your past.
Largely true IME . This is especially true for pursuing younger women with no memory of men’s past at all. IMO this is part of what’s behind the age gap outrage these days, that women are furious their rejections/value judgments of men didn’t stick forever, that other women judged differently outside of what they perceive as a hive mind.
I think big 5 personality traits and intelligence are fairly easy to discern. At least, whenever I played the game where i guess people’s score on the big 5, I’m usually not far off from their actual scores. The modal woman wants a man (in addition to physical fitness or potential-frailty and shortness are generally not valued) extroverted, conscientious and low neuroticism. Maybe mildly disagreeable. Openness is YMMV but insofar as it’s correlated with intelligence, it’s worth thinking deeply about. But most women, especially younger ones, seem to evaluate the outcome of these traits instead of the traits themselves. Instead of evaluating for, say, extroversion and mild disagreeability, which tends to produce confidence and swagger, they evaluate the swagger itself. Instead of the trait that produce money (intelligence plus conscientiousness), they evaluate the appearance of having money. Etc.
I once read a woman reciting some advice from her relatives to find a college dude with good prospects and stick to him. Kinda applies here except good prospects are already high-value.
It's actually an issue of framing women love Sk8er Boi. They just hate that another girl will have gotten guys she passed over. Like if you sold a stock and it goes up 400% you feel grief for missing out.
Also you underestimate that women want to participate in the game, they want to be selected. Being a selector is awful, many women envy that their value is fixed, set in stone by their born beauty. A lot of feminism is them trying to claw against nature a way to be selected themselves, where they can earn and work for better mates.
I think you understand things better than the author. Walt seems to feel as if men are passive participants in the dating market, and all the selection is being done by women. But women want to be the pursued not the pursuer. I think what's more likely going on is that as a man gains status, in his own mind, he becomes more confident in pursuit, and therefore attracts more women as a result. For sure, already gained status is a factor, but a man who expresses confidence projects a likelihood of future success, even if he is low status. What turns women off is when a man seems sort of a pathetic victim of his station, waiting around for some woman to choose him and bestow happiness upon him, instead of going after it.
Obviously men are the pursuers--this is an entirely different role from the *selectors*. I foreground this specifically by noting it's men who are the causally embedded agentic actors. Also cover this at considerable length in the general theory.
I also just disagree with the opening claim that women dislike male ascension narratives. I have never noticed this, at all. I like a good rags to riches story as much as anyone and it's never been a point of annoyance for me, nor have I noticed women complaining about them, in any context. Maybe there's a few radical feminists out there on the internet who think this is an issue, but it's basically not a thing among normal women.
It's not rags to riches women object to. It's an ascension story that narrates increasing sexual access in a mechanistic way that makes female desire seem algorithmic or predictable. Listen to my recent pod with Katie O'Connor and you'll see a good example of how it comes up.
So your complaint is that women apparently don't like stories where women are portrayed as coldly calculating social climbers.
Ok, I can think of an example - 'Better off Dead'. But then, doesn't the male protagonist NOT choose the hot popular girl at the end and instead chooses the French exchange student? Do you think he should have chosen otherwise? Do women dislike Better off Dead ? (Never heard that).
No the idea is that women dislike stories where a woman's choice is narrated as incorrect or shallow and need it to be framed not as a story of status acquisition but one of moral discovery or something
Interesting.
I remember the few times when I me and my wife briefly discussed the fact of me having been undesirable years before I put in work to become desirable enough to date and enter the relationship with her. Every time, it seemed like she either rejected, dismissed, didn't believe or understand the idea.
Huh, this is the same reason why advice to men is commonly "just be yourself" when they ask how they might get girls to like them. What the answer is precognitively very literally saying is "don't try to change yourself because that feels like a trick to me. I want to see the Real You so that I can set my judgement accordingly"
It's an interesting answer to a suite of questions.
I always like hoe maths' answer. "When they say 'be yourself' what they mean is 'be attractive' "
“be yourself” directed at girls seems to be actually saying, “don't be a people pleaser.” Because the last thing you want to see is your daughter trying really hard to impress people you dislike or distrust.
For guys the advice always seemed bizarre to me because it's obvious we all have selfish urges that we hide. So yeah, “be the exceptional person I think you are deep down” makes sense.
When a parent tells a daughter “be yourself”, they aren’t trying to help her maximize the quality of her offspring. They are trying to help her avoid heartbreak from guys who don’t aren’t loyal to the “real version” of their daughter.
I think this is the best thing I've read from you.
P.S. The 1998 2D animated Rudolph is the best example of a male ascension narrative in action, down to the love interest allegedly seeing the good inside Rudolph the whole time, even when she was with Chad, but conveniently only switching to Rudolph once he became high status.
And yet, do women dislike the 2D animated Rudolph? I think the authors basic claim that "woman hate male ascension narratives" is simply false. Women like these stories as much as anyone else. This is not something I've ever noticed being a topic of annoyance among women. Everyone loves a good rags to riches story.
If you want to know a narrative I find annoying - it's the "manic pixie dream girl" type. I could get into that.
Women like such stories only when they're framed moralistically in a way that minimizes sexual access as the goal of ascension. The version most men tend to identify with which foregrounds causal mechanisms of ascent (esp in regards to female mate choice) and treats the moral aspect as incidental tends to leave most women cold.
Give me an example of a male ascension story which women dislike where sexual access is the goal of ascension. I'm honestly not sure what you are talking about.
Literally anything Red Pill adjacent
I still don't know what you mean. Fight Club maybe? I like Fight Club. I don't really hear women complain about Fight Club either. Some people dislike Fight Club, but it's mostly progressive men who think it's fascist.
No.
I mean the Red Pill movement online specifically and how women tend to react to and narrate it.
Well in fight club, Marla doesn't approach the Narrator sexually. Everyone acknowledges that everyone involved is some kind of unstable. Tylers activity isn't a rags to riches story, Marla doesn't suddenly see the narrators involvement in the movement and say he's more valuable now. And the narrator doesn't reject Marla now that he's the movement leader (not that it makes a difference. He was leader all along). There is a surprising lack of sexual focus in fight club.
.
Have you seen Family Matters? As Steve Urkel was on the path to eating the whole show, besides being a nerd he was best known for his affection for Laura. Laura explicitely rejects him. However, occassionally, Steve presents his alter-ego, Stefan. Slicker, cooler, deeper voice, and manlier. Its explicitely aimed at attracting Laura, and it works. But, Stefan also reveals himself as a bit more sociopathic. Suddenly, Laura wants the old Steve selfless and kind back. One wonders why she never saw that in him when he was just nerdy, awkward Steve. One also wonders what the audience would've thought if she just laughed along, or was rejected for someone Stefan considered more interesting.
He's not saying that women dislike male ascenscion narratives. The whole article lays out that women have to re-frame the narrative so that it frees them from any responsibility for the man's ascenscion based on her rejection of him.
It's not about "liking" or "disliking".
Holy fuck, why am I arguing with women online, again??!! 🤣🤣
The title of the essay is literally "Why Women Hate Male Ascension Narratives"
Yeah, they hate *male* ascenscion narratives, not "male ascenscion narratives". As in, the narrative from the male's point of view, as in when males narrate their own ascenscion. Not an ascension that happens to include a male.
Holy shit I did it again. Just can't help myself, can I?
Employee of the Month starring Dane Cook. I can pretty much guarantee you'll hate it.
Well, it does have a 20% on Rotten Tomatoes.
More great Walt writing.
Notice the converse--the female ascension narrative (classically, Cinderella) they're quite fond of. But it makes sense. Their interests are opposed to our own!
They tend to get very angry when I describe how my 'market value' increased with my actual net worth. I actually had one feminist pivot from calling me an incel to trying to convince me the divorce thing was overblown and I could still find someone.
"This, of course, is why successful male ascension narratives are often laundered with varying degrees of sincerity through some less embarrassing and more impersonal purpose, be it God, art, craft, mission, discipline, fatherhood, beauty, excellence, survival, or destiny—really anything except the desire to escape feminine rejection. The more a man’s ascent appears organized around women, the lower it reads."
From the female perspective one can see why that would be...if he improved for female attention what's to keep him from either continuing to expect attention from other women, this undermining loyalty in provisioning or from turning back into a frog once she has commitment.
In Christian contexts, I have in several cases heard men use meeting their wife as a pilot-light, igniting the self-improvement narrative that then gives way to newfound religious devotion and the continuing motivation. "I started going to whatever church because the girls were pretty". Not often among Millennials but certainly among Boomers and Gen Xers. Allegedly, Jerry Falwell Sr. took half the public positions he did to convince his wife he genuinely was a Christian. (Ditto Von Rippentrop and National Socialism)
Again, a woman in that situation probably wants to ensure that the father of her children will continue provisioning them like a prince should she pass. A man who improves nakedly for female attention runs the risk of provisioning multiple women's children.
A male who truly decoded a universal (enough) formula for attracting women has no incentive to stop at one. Men know this. Women intuit this, even if they don’t want to believe it. It would take someone truly unusual to have the power and not use it.
We're only in it for the gear and the groupies!
Great essay, and it maps neatly onto the core aspects of each gender’s self-image.
To men, it’s about honor, which is rooted in agency and honest evaluation. What are you worth? You don’t know until it’s proven, and there’s a lot that’s variable in you but the way you respond to your environment is key and of course your rise is going to be exhibit A in your understanding of yourself and your place. You respect this even if your instinctive response to another man is negative. You don’t trust this guy? Prove why. If you can’t, he’s probably good and the problem is you. Then you can adjust.
For women, the narrative is still a victim’s narrative. The world happens to them, and while they select, they don’t want to face up to the reality that their selection, and their judgment, can be gamed. But it can be, and on a deeper level, they know it. The process of knowing and not knowing this is massively relevant to their sense of personal security and is basically the underlying theme of the Great Gatsby: he doesn’t belong in this class, and you’d better hope the world shows it to you before you get suckered in by him.
Because you can’t change your choice. Or at least, in this culture, it would be shameful to need to.
Men lock in their choices: their agency, if it’s real, will see them through. It’s why they always think they can save their relationships, by doing something differently, and that’s why divorce isn’t male coded. Divorce is failure. For women, divorce is failure but as long as they’re still attractive, they can use divorce as a fresh start, which comes down to them having been manipulated.
I think women miss the stability of aristocratic class differences. It’s easier to be a princess. But what’s very obvious in this is that they see men as a means to a lifestyle end and they absolutely can’t be honest about it. They will never grok honor, or the struggle from nothing that is being a man. And they don’t want to.
People must not be reading this far down the comments, because it’s a travesty that you posted this two days ago and I’m the first to hit Like on it.
Your example of the difference between how men and women perceive divorce as failure was a great illustration of general sex differences. Men often see divorce as a personal failure on their own part, whereas for women, it’s more that the relationship failed, or her husband failed, or the ambient conditions weren’t right. The woman wasn’t an active co-creator of the deteriorating situation; it was something that happened to her and she was a victim of it.
What a weird take. Firstly, I don’t really see how women hate male ascension narratives - those are everywhere in entertainment and often quite commercially successful, which they rarely could be if women as a collective boycotted them wholesale. Secondly, to the degree that some women might object to this narrative, it’s often not to the narrative per se, but its ubiquity, the comparative dearth of female ascension narratives (a Cinderella story has some elements and is consequently beloved, who doesn’t like ascenion? - but there’s less of a focus on how everyone who underestimated the heroine now has to eat crow; the evil stepsisters are punished, but more for their pretensions towards the prince then for underestimating Cinderella; I think that’s what Pretty Woman got right, in the iconic scene with the snobby shop assistent. Everyone loves a bit of vindication!). Personally, what bores me most about most male ascenion narratives is how the woman is so blatantly reduced to a trophy; there’s just no juice at all in the relationship dynamics, because you can’t have dynamic relationship with an object.
As to actual dating behavior, I've known a girl or two in my days who liked to go in early on a fixer-upper, to uneven results. Some women love a project. Once in a while it pays off. But that kind of woman has no place in most male-ascension narratives, because the central fantasy of the male-ascension narrative is the entirely self-made man. The whole point is that he got to where he is without any support! There's no one he owes anything to and nothing he has to be grateful for. And if there were, the whole story would feel less satisfying.
There's a deeper point in here, which I agree with though - the way in which everyone who had to fight for their place (be it due to gender, race, class or whatever) tends to get accused of having a chip on their shoulder. Every girlboss a potential Karen, every nerd who made good still seething with incel ressentment. I think the deeper problem is that hard-won self-confidence tends to be perceived differently. People just won't read it at face-value - they're quick to suspect overcompensation of still lingering inferiority issues. If you're born to privilege and throw your weight around, well, that's just what everyone expects - they suppose it comes naturally; if you had to fight for your seat at the table, clearly you've got something to prove, and isn't that tiresome. Very unfair.
'Better Off Dead' contradicts everything Walt's arguing. It's a male ascension narrative in which the man's ascension is explicitly based on prior rejection (his girlfriend dumped him for a higher status male). The love interest expresses an attraction to him despite his low status and gives him a hand (invests in his potential), helping him to rise in status. At the end. the woman who spurned him gets her comeuppance after he rejects her when she tries to take him back. Do women hate it? No, they love seeing the fickle Beth get her due and see Monique be rewarded for choosing the protagonist even though he was down on his luck at the beginning of the story.
The reality is there are plenty of women who date low status men based on perceived potential, not based on actually having looks or status at the outset. It's common enough that you can base the plot of a movie on it pretty frequently.
Almost every 80s movie is some version of this theme, all almost the complete opposite of what Walt's writing here. Plenty of them involve the guy "ascending" in status and ignoring the heart-of-gold helpful girl next door or best friend to pursue the hot bitchy cheerleader. It's probably the biggest trope. Teen Wolf, Can't Buy Me Love, it is practically the plot of every teen movie in the 80s and 90s, how he ascends and turns into a egotistical dickhead who starts abusing his friends and the the good girl who really loved him, til he gets some comeuppance and realizes the error of his ways. They do the reverse plot too with the same story for girls ascending popularity and forgetting her real friends, but it was much more common for boys.
This kind of proves my point though--such movies are pandering to a moralistic womanly/normie repudiation of male ascension narratives.
Also you putting ascending in scare quotes kind of suggests you yourself dislike the idea of male ascension ;)
There's even "Revenge of the Nerds" where the "nerd" gets the high status girl at the end and everyone cheers. With the implication being he was a better lover than the jock she was dating.
Better Off Dead is an interesting example because after beating Stalin, Lane chooses Monique despite Monique being very low status herself. That low status is no fault of her own — she’s nice, pretty, loyal, apparently a talented auto mechanic at age 17, and a Dodgers fan — but she’s a foreign exchange student with no friends who is tainted by association with the ultra-low-status Ricky, not by choice but because he never leaves her side in public.
It would be a very different movie, one I suspect women would not like nearly as much, if in the end Lane chose some girl who was higher status than both Monique and Beth. Part of the goal of male ascendancy, whether stated explicitly or not, is for the ascendant male to be able to attract high-status women. If Walt’s thesis that female dislike of male ascendancy narratives is true, one reason for that dislike that I’m not sure was mentioned, although I may just have missed it, would likely be that mid and low status women don’t like losing things to high status women, even if those things were things they previously rejected because they used to be low status.
The Great Gatsby and The Fountainhead in a nutshell.
But the plot of the film is that the low status woman *does* choose the low-status man. Monique see's Lane's potential and supports him. This is a story line that low-status women relate to because they do, actually, date low status men that they think have some sort of potential. Yes, most low status women don't want to have their guy dump them for a higher status woman after they "ascend". It's not that they are mad because they rejected the guy. It's that the guy rejects them because *he* only wants to date high status women.
It seems like in Walt's fantasy the natural thing is for the man to ascend so he can dump all the low status women and then only date the high status ones. But isn't that the view he is projecting onto women - that actually they always reject the low status men and only want the high status ones?
Isn’t ‘Better Off Dead’ a fictional film?
So are most “male ascension narratives”, presumably.
Well...ELVIS, James Brown, The Beatles, and pretty much entertainment of the last 160 years.
I'm a medical doctor who spent my mid-thirties bald. I speak five foreign languages well, I'm good conversation, well-travelled, healthy weight for my height, no serious mental or physical health problems. I live in a country where income in this profession is very healthy.
I don't know for certain why my ex-wife treated me like dogshit on her shoe, and it doesn't matter since I want children and given my close acquaintance with her, I did and do not want them with her, but my best working guess is that it was because I became progressively more bald in our relationship (and embraced it, shaved my head).
I got a hair transplant because I work in a female-dominant specialty (that was not always female-dominant), crushed all the written specialty exams, repeatedly failed in-person exams until I showed up to them in quite a good wig. My current fiancée and the mother of my child does not believe that my hair loss *could* have been a reason for the breakdown of my marriage; and she nine-tenths does not believe my reasoning about the in-person exams, despite that I am the person in the conversation who was in the previous relationship and has the best insight into the circumstances of the exams. She in general trusts my judgement on everything else. I am in full agreement with Walt.
Slightly relatedly, life is just easier with hair, women (more so) *and* men treat me better; I had two complaints (from patients) when bald, zero with hair (yes, I have more experience with time), and dating was much easier with hair (in retrospect, I shouldn't even have tried anything with women who had known me bald,)
Recently I have read that the Manosphere is a rebellion against the "just be yourself" narrative. And that is such typical mother-talk! Fathers always talk like "there is more potential in you".
But the "rich, jacked and socially ruthless" is so stupid! Do you really believe it? Have you ever seen a Nespresso advertisement with George Clooney? He just radiates kindness and warmth and women absolutely love that. And he is not jacked, looking more like a runner. Just don't be fat and have nice clothes.
You can be nice if you have Clooney's money and looks. If you're a fat loser (as you say)...not so much.
Women's forebrains say they like 'nice' because intellectually they know they don't want to get beaten (like, seriously) or cheated on. The hindbrain, on the other hand...
And being a socially ruthless fat loser is somehow more attractive? Socially ruthless is a status move, and people who pretend higher status than their actual status generally come across as fake and ridiculous.
I think that's a good way to put it, actually. You have to have the money and looks, whether being a jerk is advantageous or not depends on the woman.
The clash of interests here is like the clash of interests between the people who create the SAT and the people who take it. The creators want to test for natural aptitude; the takers want to score as high as possible. If someone scores high on the test and then talks about how he practiced and learned test-taking techniques and raised his score, the SAT creators won’t like to hear that. What’s the saying about how as soon as you start using one particular statistic as a measure of a broader phenomenon, it becomes a bad measure, because people start optimizing for that one number instead of the broader phenomenon?
Well there’s pretending and there’s pretending. Borrowing your friend’s sports car: cringe. Learning an upper class accent and style of dress (which need not be expensive): less fringe Getting upper class degrees at upper class institutions: minimal cringe
I can be nice and well dressed all I want, but if I'm not a millionaire movie star with international fame and top-0.1%-follower-count then I won't be on the Nespresso advertisement. Or conversely, I can have my essence be nice, but if I don't have a job I am not attractive.
Well, mothers are hardwired to love a wrinkled, ugly, screeching newborn and see the best in said creature. Grown sons are significantly less abrasive that that. They might be a bit biased when it comes to their own sons. A part of them will always remember the cute lovable cheeky child their sons used to be. And they (wrongly) expect the world to see it too, given time.
This is one of the reasons men correctly fear disclosing if they’ve been sexual assaulted. If it can happen once, it can happen again.
Isn’t it more because it represents something impossible for women?
In terms of sexual market value, women don’t ascend. They acquire their full beauty at the age of 15 or 16, and then it lasts for maybe 25 or 30 years if they are careful, and then it’s gone forever.
Men on the other hand can keep on accumulating status for almost their entire lives.
Idk I think men are actually way more likely to believe in "essence" narratives and to simply not believe that a high status/beautiful woman wasn't always that, or to be profoundly disturbed if they find out she really wasn't. Watch a guy who thinks he found the one learn that actually she used to be very fat and only lost the weight with glps, or through lots of plastic surgery. He's likely to be grossed out, disturbed, and rethink the whole thing. I think that's just some part of the brain going "wait a minute this person is going to give me fat big nosed ugly babies, not the naturally beautiful ones I thought".
Whereas waiting for teenage boys to grow up and stop being retarded and/or grow into their masculinity is pretty much par for the course.
It's not at all unusual that some boy comes back from summer break in high school and has grown 6 inches, developed shoulders and a neck and a man voice and bearing, and suddenly everyone realizes he's hot. No one thinks oh he was always hot and we just discovered his real essence, they think damn he grew himself a body, now he's hot, and he wasn't before. No one punishes him or cares that last year he looked like a scrawny kid. I suppose this sometimes happens with a girl who has a glow up, but it's very, very common with boys.
It's also not unusual for women to spend a lot of time waiting for (or disregarding and ignoring, for the time-being) testosterone-induced young guy retardedness, self-centeredness, and uncontrolled aggression, waiting for it to calm the fuck the down a bit with age. The young, dumb, and full of cum 18 year old military recruit or kid regularly throwing himself off cliffs for a sport, for example, is not going to be that appealing to women (even though he's probably looked up to a lot by his bros), while the 28 year old who comes out the other side with discipline and maturity, and no longer being a lunatic with no control of himself bc his adolescent test surged has calmed down, is much more appealing. You think a lot about the more undeveloped type of guy who takes years to mature into manhood, but just as often there's also a problem the other way around with guys who are far too reckless, aggressive, retarded etc when they're younger and becomes much more appealing later, when they chill out and grow up and stop breaking their hands punching walls and shit.
I don't think *anyone* likes or wants to be around someone whose success was purchased at the cost of bitterness and resentment. I worked with a woman who, back before GLPs existed, had gastric bypass surgery and lost 100 lbs. She went from hugely obese to suffering through a terrible surgery to become slim and pretty. And I have never in my life met a more resentful, enraged woman, at men. She HATED them. She was now pursued and thought attractive for the first time, saw the enormous discrepancy in how men treated her, and hated their fucking guts. It was tragic. The black resentment and fury honestly rolled off of her, she was miserable. I don't think anyone wants to be around a friend, colleague, mate etc who has that issue, it's disturbing.
If you're rich and you meet someone who grew up poor and made it to become very rich themselves, and because of all the shit he had to eat and go through, he harbors burning hatred for rich people and fantasizes about a guillotine-led commie revolution, do you think you'd want that person as your friend or employee? No your would not. You'd see them as somewhat tragic, risky, unpleasant, and dangerous. Which isn't different from what you're saying, I just think these are universal principles. Of course everyone would prefer that success comes via pro-social motivations and not anti-social and vindictive ones. No one wants to be with the woman who is now beautiful but might cut your dick off while you sleep, or the guy who is so angry about his past he will never stop trying to prove to himself that he's arrived at everyone else's expense.
a few things
1) it isn't symmetric across the sexes given women display far lower variance in essentially all domains of life, are selectors instead of pursuers, and are valued for what they are versus what they do. Moreover the womanly self-concept is usually a lot more static than the male one which foregrounds the importance of ascension, which means if what you're saying is true it's just a lot less existentially violative on some level than the reverse as most chicks don't tie their sexual worth to a bildungsroman story like 90% of men and will probs on some level agree with a man that her past self is highly pertinent information.
2) you seem to be conflating masculine ascension with puberty, which is sort of adjacent but a lot less so for late bloomers + basically all young men today compared to several decades ago. Male ascension isn't about getting shoulders and a growth spurt--it's about agentically increasing one's station in life as an adult and getting that broadly ratified by society.
3) note that after just a few days this is already my most popular article since Slutty Women, and has received overwhelmingly positive feedback from men including glowing praise from both Fake J and Drunk Wisconsin who I think you'll agree are very reasonable arbiters on gender topics not at all prone to bad faith grievance. Are all of these men mistaken?
I don't think anyone is mistaken I just think all these principles are a lot more universal than you do.
For instance, I disagree a woman's self concept is static, just the opposite. It's men who are more likely to believe in some type of objective unchanging platonic ideals. They think they can rank a woman's appearance for instance, and that it's some inherent property of the universe. Literally no woman thinks that, they all know for a fact they're a 3 and a 7 in the very same day depending on what they're wearing, whether they have makeup on, whether their hair is down and they got a good night's sleep etc, and also we all know we have hot and not hot months and years and phases and that shit is all very changeable. It's men who insist that no it isn't, everyone is some hard and objective figure....and yet they are also the ones constantly flipping out and screaming starting viral trends on Twitter whenever they see a pic of the celebrity they had a crush on in bad lighting or without makeup, bc they can't stand for things to change. Like this is actually crazy to me, it is guys who insist on these objective stable categories and rankings and who get very upset when anything intrudes on their system to change it.
I think the point of the text is that male ascension through self improvement is frowned upon by women as dishonest. And what you say is true that women's beauty enhancement is frowned upon by men as dishonest. It's just that the first I have not considered, but "men are pigs" is kind of old news.
Hard disagree here. I think you’ll find that if Tony Robbins could do for everyone what he did in the movie Shallow Hal, guys would be lining up for his services.
Your story about the woman who lost weight is interesting because while I’m sure it was not dramatic a change, I had a similar experience in how women treated me before and after I passed the Bar. I’ll admit it offended me the first couple of times, but it was more of a lightbulb moment that my mental model of female attraction needed adjusting.
Anyone who holds onto rigid ideas of what other people ought to care about is going to end up making themselves miserable.
Hers was extremely dramatic, she literally went from hugely obese to slender, and she did the surgery at a young enough age that she didn't have a bunch of extra skin, she looked like an entirely different person. Also suffered and constantly had to be in the bathroom and could barely eat anything without her system going into full revolt. I bet she's even more pissed now that GLPs have come out, that she has a permanently shot-glass sized stomach.
You can also transform without inhabiting the soulless frame of acquiring technical know how. I kinda think you can get nearly all the benefits of being high status simply by knowing your mind and getting used to speaking it.
"A discovery narrative says: “He was always attractive, and then I finally realized it.” Or: “The context changed, and then something became visible.” A transformation narrative, meanwhile, says: “He was not desirable, then made himself desirable.”" I fail to see these as contradictory. As to make yourself desireable means you had the spark to do it, in that way the man who can do it has an essence that is of inherent greater value than he who does not have the faith and resolve to do so. I mean these narratives selvdom involve fakeness. I was not aware women did not like these storries, never really met any that does not myself.