But for those of us swimming in the third-world slop fountain of Twitter dot com, Louis Theroux’s carefully curated cast of clowns in the documentary barely raised an eyebrow.

This is because the “outrageous” opinions expressed by the dusty-hued foreigners in the documentary have long since become mainstream in online spaces. Spearheaded by the “Trad Cath” and “Theo Bros” of Twitter, there is an entire conversation about what should be done with women to fix society. Western societies specifically. Despite being framed largely by nominal Christians, the prescriptions bear a striking resemblance to Islam.

Weird.

The prevailing Twitter advice for women is often as follows:

1. Marry young. As young as possible. On your 18th birthday if you can

2. Do not go to college

3. Do not work outside the home

4. Do not vote

5. Have babies as soon as possible and as many as possible

6. Be pleasant, thin, and beautiful. Always

But really, it’s for their own good. If women would only do this, they would be better off. Dare we say… they would be happy. All of them. And society would, at last, be as it should be.

It’s possible (even likely) that many of these gender-slop commenters say these things not with sincerity but to maximize post impressions and, by extension, maximize their profits. And it works.

Women roll into the comments like clockwork, calling names, citing themselves as exceptions to female stereotypes, and of course, invoking the specter of male violence as a rebuttal to this and all prescriptions for female behavior.

The anger from women surrounding these types of conversations is always most baffling to me.

My sisters in Christ, surely you realize that when these Very Online Men talk about women… they’re not talking about YOU.

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When “Women” Doesn’t Mean Women

The sole non-foreign-born clown in the Manosphere documentary was Justin Waller, a genuinely successful construction magnate who came from the worst parts of Louisiana. He was already wealthy and successful, truly a picture of the American dream, when he started posting internet gender slop content alongside his friends Tristan and Andrew Tate.

Cousin Justin has prompted much anger for his takes on women due to his high-profile appearances on the Whatever podcast, the Daily Wire, Tate content, and most recently, the Netflix documentary. To be clear, he is not my first cousin, but looks as though he ought to be, so here we are.

Because he makes appearances on “normie” shows, he is the most known among non-terminally-online people and most likely to be sharply criticised for his misogyny.

If you want a good metric for how thoroughly normie women revile him, check out Galatea’s TWO-HOUR takedown of him:

HOWEVER… unlike his bestie Andrew Tate or the bestially stupid Sneako, Cousin Justin has a ready defense against accusations of misogyny. And in all seriousness, it’s a good one.

The leadership of the highly profitable construction business he owns is all women.

Yes, that’s right. His right-hand woman is a middle-aged, stocky built, highly competent woman, and his respect of and affection for her is palpable. He also employs younger women to liaise between leadership and construction teams because “there’s less friction there.”

This might seem like a contradiction from a man who says on camera that he does not participate in household chores or tending to the children; these are his wife’s domain. He also asserts the right to sleep with other women, even as his wife must remain faithful.

But his rules for “women” (and there are many) do not seem to apply to any of the women in his employ. Or even employed women in general.

He’s not alone in this seeming contradiction, as noted by :

So a weird thing has happened, where in the past few months I have discovered that multiple clients I have worked for for YEARS are either hardcore right-wing ultra MAGA types…

… these are people who post as if women should be chained to a stove and are too emotional for business…who are also willingly paying me a lot of money per hour to give them advice about their business. They don’t have to do that, that’s what they choose to do.

And they’re all unfailingly polite and kind in dealing with me directly, and talk me up to others. I also know for a fact that ALL of these guys also have a female CPA who runs all their finance and accounting stuff, and half of them also have a female general manager who basically runs their operations.

So basically these are dudes who are telling the world on a daily basis how women should all be trad wives, yet are paying tons of $$$ to mostly women who are actually running their business empires.

So what is up with that?

… A ton of the supposedly ultra conservative and right-wing public figures out there spouting off about the evils of women working are paying hundreds of thousands of dollars every year to women who are running their legal, accounting, ops, and business management. Now that I’ve realized it, I can’t stop seeing it.

Don’t believe the hype. For guys who talk a big game about how women should be at home and never weigh in on business or politics, they sure have a lot of women on their payroll.

I’ve abridged her quote, so I recommend reading the whole thing (and following her cuz she always has good stuff), but her main point stands: many, if not all, of the “women shouldn’t work” types are only speaking about a specific subset of women.

In their minds, there is no contradiction.

When these men talk about “women” and what they should do and how they should look and act, they’re only talking about females between 18 and 25 who are probably white (possibly Asian), thin, bubbly, with long flowing hair, and rock the “clean girl” aesthetic.

Basically, only the girls they want to fuck. It’s horny posting cleverly disguised as life advice, driving the women who don’t meet the fuckability criteria to anger. “I can’t get a rich husband who lets me do pilates and shop all day! Not for long, anyway. How dare you suggest I leave myself vulnerable!”

And they’re right. But not for the right reasons. If you want to be mad at these posts and the men who make them, there’s an excellent reason to do so.

The Different Categories of Women

Being the disagreeable, freedom-above-all woman I am, allow me to woman-splain why these trad-man posters should be chastised: They actually think people, women specifically, can possibly exist in one specific category.

Like the factions in the Divergent series, somehow these fellas have so little experience with women that they think the foids come in one of five non-overlapping flavors:

• The Wife: Dutiful, beautiful, domestic. A status symbol.

• The Mistress: Beautiful, highly sexual, yet still devoted until it’s time to replace her, then she goes away quietly and with dignity

• The Whore: A collection of body parts and a repository of sexual knowledge; designed to teach young boys the ways of men with women, an outlet for frustration and backed-up rage. Not really a person at all.

• The Servant: The competent woman. Smart, skilled, sexless. Age is irrelevant. The servant woman is well-kempt, often a “handsome woman” but not wife material. She makes a man’s life possible and as easy as possible. She is paid for her time and knowledge, gladly. As long as she stays in her place.

• The Nanny: The elder woman, past childbearing potential. Ready with encouragement and a soft smile, generous with back pats and humorous stories from days gone by. Nanny can be an employee, a relative, or a highly treasured volunteer.

This is how we get the advice of “women should be virgins upon marriage, but men should be experienced.” Like clockwork, the feminists will pipe up: “Who are the men gaining experience with? You’re obviously all FAGGOTS!”

Remember kids, homophobic slurs are okay if you do it wokely.

But what the nose-ring-wielding feminists don’t see, or what they pretend not to see, is that no, these men aren’t gay. At least not most of them. It’s just that the women who must remain virgins are an entirely different population than the women they pay to “gain experience” from.

Those women don’t count. They’re not wife material. If we’re being honest, they’re not even people. Not to these types of men.

And that is why they’re wrong, annoying, and stupid in their prescriptions for societal healing. “If only women would just…” No. You’re dumb, and it’s embarrassing. If you’re going to be an online misogynist, I must insist you do it correctly.

The “Good” Misogynists

Luckily, there are male creators who do “misogyny” correctly.

I put misogyny in quotations because the nature of internet discourse dictates that any man who criticises the behavior of any individual woman or group of women, even once, must ever-after be described as a misogynist.

If you think female child molesters should be put to death alongside their male counterparts? Misogynist. She needs therapy, not judgment. After all, she was probably abused by some man.

You think a woman who is unfaithful in her marriage should be cut off from any money from her husband’s assets? Misogynist. The husband was obviously emotionally abusive and drove her into the arms of another man.

I’m not exaggerating. And if you are as unhealthily online as I am… you know I’m not.

The right kind of internet misogynists are the men who devote themselves to the “manosphere,” that is, to helping men in their dating life or their existing marriage, and in their self-image, whether women approve of their methods or not.

Strangely, none of these men, who have been at it for years, some from the beginning, were not interviewed for Louis Theoroux’s documentary. Nor were they asked.

They have their fair share of haters though, especially among women. They are merciless to online female personalities they perceive as nags, for instance. They are blunt in their rebuttals of Christian virtue signalling. And sometimes they’re downright mean.

But they’re also balanced in how they view women. We are not one category of person, and part of their coaching is to help men realize that women are not just one thing.

We’re people. And unlike the third-world-inspired “manosphere” creators who fuel the outrage clicks, these guys aren’t mad at the fact that we’re people… with all the good and bad that implies.

A woman is both slut and angel at different points of her life and is neither to be condemned nor pedestalized. This refusal to abide by the ideological binary is what earns them the majority of their haters.

I’ll occasionally have female mutuals rage at my interview with or send me a tweet from one of my male mutuals: “How are you friends with him? Why don’t you call him out?”

Why would I? It’s not my job to correct men. It’s definitely not my job to teach them how to be men. Somehow women have gotten it in their heads it's our job to fix men, all men, collectively.

It’s not. And that assumption of a role that was never ours has driven us to some insane places.

It’s men’s jobs to sort themselves out, and I am giving you permission to hand that burden back to them.

Whenever you feel tempted to type a scathing comment to a man because he wished for an apocalyptic event so he can acquire grateful wives from the wreckage, don’t. Drop a link to one of ’s videos instead.

It’s men’s job to do the hard work of becoming someone a woman would desire.

Our job is to be a prize worthy of that great feat, in beauty and in virtue.

Of course that’s also no easy task… which is probably why nagging is the more popular option.

Submissions Open

Our first PRINT EDITION of Black Market Fiction will be released in June. The theme? “No Man’s Land.” This is the issues of Westerns and their spiritual successors (Space Westerns etc.)

If you want to be a part of this issue, you can submit your short story or article/essay by April 30th.

The primary female in SoA was Dr. Tara Knowles, a gifted surgeon who returned to Charming and fell back into a relationship with Jackson “Jax” Teller, the club’s vice president and eventual president. Tara was smart, ambitious, and increasingly aware that her love for Jax was pulling her into a life that would eventually consume her. She knew this. She stayed anyway. The show never pretended that was simple.

At the hospital where she worked, Tara’s boss was Margaret Murphy, a prim, stuck-up administrator played by McNally Sagal. Immediately, Margaret is set up as an antagonist. The audience cheers when Gemma Morrow threatens her with physical harm in an elevator). She’s the worst kind of HR harpie, so we don’t feel bad for Margaret. We certainly don’t think her obvious disdain for Tara’s involv…

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Stock made the most of her moment. When Seder asked about immigration, she leaned forward with the confidence of someone who had practiced this in a mirror. “What’s the problem with xenophobic nationalism?” she asked. “Don’t you think that’s better for Americans in general?”

Seder was struck dumb, shocked Stock had actually said it out loud. The pretty white woman in a sundress was casually advocating for an ethnostate and not bothering with a dog whistle.

“We already …

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Many of the arguments are just exchanging mean-spirited barbs, but those aren’t the ones that interest me. The ones that make me sigh, shake my head, and wonder how grown adults can be so stupid are the attempts to inspire lifestyle change in an obese woman.

The following is an entirely fictional, made-up conversation between a beautiful, stylish woman (W) in her early 30s (Close-up pfp of her very full face) and an anonymous man (M) who indicates he is also in his 30s. But because his pfp is an anime character and he keeps his real identity hidden… who knows? This made-up conversation is indicative of how these dialogues usually go:

W: I am single and unhappy because men are trash. Where are the good men? I want a husband and babies. I’m a good cook!…

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That a lie which is half a truth is ever the blackest of lies;

That a lie which is all a lie may be met and fought with outright;

But a lie which is part a truth is a harder matter to fight.

― Lord Tennyson, Alfred

“Believe all women” was a preposterous command from the start.

Not even the staunchest of feminists actually believe that women are uniquely honest, have no guile, and are more virtuous in comparison to men.

Of course rancid bitches lie about being raped. They always have. Sometimes to destroy the man they accuse (as in the bitter stripper of Duke Lacrosse team fame) and sometimes just for clout (as in Rolling Stone’s A Rape on Campus article).

But last week’s article, which used Lauren Southern’s rape accusation against Andrew Tate as a kickoff point, revealed a widespread blind spot when it comes to false accusations.

Most everyone thinks that truth is binary. If a person’s statement is proven to be untrue, then that person was lying. Intentionally being deceptive. Maliciousl…

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She seemed to take it in stride, but I sat at my work computer, mouth agape at what I’d just watched, wondering, “Why the hell is that pretty girl there?”

Doesn’t she know that she is uniquely vulnerable, even in comparison with other women?

No. She didn’t know that. But she sure as shit found out.

Lauren Southern announced the release of her memoir last week by dropping a bombshell on Twitter: she was raped by Andrew Tate.1

She is far from the first to make such an accusation, and for those following the case, the M.O. was startlingly familiar.

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But they’re only effective if both parties know what is being said in the subtle silence. If one (or both) parties is, for instance, a slack-jawed zoomer without even a hint of social couth or knowledge, then you can’t be genteel about it. You just have to slap the little weirdos in the face with a brusque, direct sentence and endure the emotional fallout.

Which is where I come in.

Actually, that’s a lie. Andrew Tate, the internet’s toxic ex-boyfriend, came in with this take:

Wretched man though he is, Tate has at least three takes a year that hit the mark. In this case, he has accurately called out (in aggressive and overly simplistic language) why many men face rejection from women over and over and over.

Because they suck.

And despite their glaring suck-itude (which every woman can clock at a distance, btw), they still have the nerve to approach a woman and ask her:

1. to accompany him to a secluded location, behind a locked door, out of screaming distance,

2. take off all her clothes,

3. and allow him to stick his body inside her body.

4. All while positioning his superior body mass atop hers, knowing she lacks the strength to dislodge him if she so pleases.

Remember what I said about brass tacks?

That’s the request you’re making every time you ask a woman on a date. Every time.

But there’s a second request you’re making, one that is just as outrageous. You are asking her to consider making you a reflection of who she is and her status in society for the foreseeable future.

Remember this guy?

Colloquially known as “Tinder Guy,” this man, who I know nothing about, made the news for swiping right 2 million times on Tinder, and securing only one date out of it. Men on the internet used his case to illustrate why dating apps are useless for finding relationships (true), that they favor women who are seeking attention and simps (true), and how only a tiny fraction of highly attractive men can expect success (also true).

But some commenters got very angry at the women attempting to explain why they would have swiped left too. I won’t list them all because only one is important for this conversation.

This man will embarrass any woman he’s with.

And no woman will willingly sign up for that. No matter how “looks-matched” you say she is.

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You Can’t Negotiate Desire (Or Status)

I’m not a psychologist, evolutionary or otherwise, so I won’t bore you with any science-based opinions I gleaned from other, smarter writers. But there are reasons why girls are so picky. Deep, inborn reasons. Yes, even the fat ones. Yes, even the butter-face mids. They’re picky for good reasons, and no amount of silly fantasizing about violent theocratic revolution will stop them from being picky.

Instead of wondering how you can bend half the population to your will, perhaps you should activate those analytical skills I keep hearing you excel at.

Society has changed, but what women value hasn’t.

Consider a short scene from the 1997 movie Paradise Road about women interred at a Japanese POW camp during WW2. Early in the movie, wealthy English women are being evacuated from Singapore aboard a ship and must bunk four to a room. None of these ladies is accustomed to sharing or giving way, so two of the ladies snidely duke it out.

Mrs. Roberts: The conditions are somewhat unusual, but this is my cabin.

Mrs. Tippler: Your cabin? It's my cabin.

Mrs. Pargiter: I understood that Marty arranged this cabin for me.

Mrs. Tippler: My husband is an engineer with coastal traders.

Mrs. Roberts: [Smugly] Mine is the head of the P.W.D.

Topsy: [Exasperated] Mine's in pineapples. Look, girls, we're just going to have to get along.

You see what happened there? All these gals are rich but they didn’t whip out their net worth to try and assert dominance. They used their husband’s position. His status. Topsy, the American, is somewhat apart from this particular hierarchy, which is why she is the one to play peacekeeper. Her husband’s self-made fortune holds no sway here, but his respectability does.

Do you think Topsy would have spoken up and squashed the argument if her husband was, say, a weird, eccentric tycoon who made others uncomfortable with his mumbling and poor hygiene? Would she have felt comfortable asserting herself in this female group if her husband had gotten sloppy drunk at last night’s party, and was seen groping the band singer?

The answer of course, is no.

Yes, sexual attraction is vitally important (as I emphasized in my guest post on Femlosophy) in a woman accepting your initial approach. But so is a woman’s pride in being associated with you.

Topsy is able to parlay with other, more influential women because her husband is respectable, successful, and esteemed by other men. Do not imagine that in the days of girl bosses and power couples, women are any more okay with the idea of an embarrassing partner than they were in generations past.

It is well remarked upon that women are more invested in group consensus than men, less willing to endure dissent. So why do so many men express confusion that women need their friends, family, and colleagues to approve of their partner before they will become serious about him?

A woman choosing the wrong man, even if she’s crazy about him, can mean being ostracized from her social group. And if the man in question doesn’t have a whole new, better network for her to slip seamlessly into, then his request for her allegiance to him is unreasonable.

We all get sensitive about our physical appearance. Some of it can be changed with a good lifestyle; but not all of it. So maybe it is a comfort for you to know the wild-eyed search for an escape route that befalls a woman’s face when you try to pitch woo isn’t because of your looks.

It might be because you are someone her father would hate. Her friends would mock. Or she would, in general, be shamed to be seen in public with you.

And most of those things are fixable, if you have a mind to.

Because yelling at single ladies that they’ll be sorry for rejecting you once they turn 30 is not an effective strategy. It’s simply not true.

There is still a stigma for the never-married over-30 woman. But it’s nowhere near as bad as the stigma of being the woman with the humiliating husband. If her friends hate her husband/LTR, if her coworkers are uncomfortable around him… that’s a death sentence. For her social life, for her career, maybe even for her relationship with her family.

So when you ask out a woman, carefully evaluate what you are asking her to submit to. Because it is a request for submission, however genteelly phrased.

Make sure your request is a reasonable one.

I was lucky enough to find the one awesome guy with a rockin bod before the other girls snatched him up. “I got the only good one, ladies! Pack it up!”

Silly, I know. Much of my ideological shift away from feminist nonsense came slowly, over many years. But my first and biggest step came shortly after I got married.

My new husband’s coworker was murdered by his wife.

Joe Stutzman was not good friends with my husband. Actually, they didn’t get along AT ALL. But when Joe’s wife asked several teen boys to stab him to death in his own damn house, it hit b…

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A woman who uses her sexuality to prey on a young man is often called a cougar or, more generally, a jezebel. But what of the female predator who targets other women—specifically to usurp the role of her husband? We don’t have a name for her.

Maybe because most people don’t think such women exist. Or, if they do, they’re rare.

But are they?

The Book That Warned You

What Was She Thinking? Notes on a Scandal by Zoe Heller came out in 2003, followed swiftly by a movie version starring Cate Blanchett in 2006. The story follows Barbara Covett (Judi Dench), a lonely veteran teacher who becomes obsessed with Sheba Hart (Cate Blanchett), a new art teacher at their London school.…

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At least, according to the other girls in the class. Just ask them. They’ll tell you.

Odder still, at the high school level, the prettiest, most popular girls are all not only sluts, but afflicted with rancid sexually transmitted diseases. All of them.

Just ask the other girls. They’ll tell you.

Even into adulthood, this troubling pattern continues. Beautiful women—ALL OF THEM—are gold-digging, immodest, whores.

And to make it worse, they’re ackshually not even beautiful. They’re just good at makeup.

Just ask the other girls. They’ll tell you.

There are some things that just can’t be socialized out of us—some instincts that run too deep. Intrasexual competition appears to be one of them.

We all read Are you There God, It’s me Margaret. We all saw how Nancy told those nasty lies about Laura just because she had boobs.

That book has been…

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People who think humans are merely highly intelligent, sparsely-haired primates can explain the way women are and what we’re for any number of ways, coming to a far more flattering conclusion than I have.

But if you believe in an omniscient, all-seeing creator who formed humans in His own image with great care and purpose, then it simply isn’t enough to shrug and laugh. “Women, amiright?”

I am not in a good place as I write this, and it was probably a mistake to think deeply about what anonymous males on Twitter say about women. But there’s just so many of them and they all say such similar things.

And what they say so closely matches what I have seen myself. Maybe the bile they spew bears closer examination, even if it hurts.

Even if you end the night with Googling: “Catholicism, do women have souls?”

You Know You Like It

We really do like it, don’t we? Being stepped on. When you think about it, there simply isn’t another explanation when you look at the global, historical behavior patterns of what we seek out and what we tolerate, even after the thrill is long gone.

From a Christian perspective, submission and obedience is the right and proper way of the female, meaning the role of the male is one of dominion. Anyone raised in any kind of Christian church knows that. It’s not even controversial.

Men lead, women follow.

Men give, women receive.

Men impregnate, women become pregnant.

It’s not the dynamic I’m questioning. It’s the reasoning behind it, mostly because of the sexual aspect of the male-female relationship, less so for the child-rearing part of it.

The sex, the desire for it (primarily from men) is the main driver for relationships to even exist.

There have been so many men who have said right out loud that if it were not for the sex—and their all-consuming thirst for it—they would have nothing to do with us at all.

And yet we still seek them out, looking for the one man who likes us, actually. It sounds simple. But it’s not.

Because we have desires of our own.

A healthy sexual dynamic between a man and woman will generally include his desire to possess or conquer her, and her desire to be possessed or conquered. However, this desire is very specific... he wants to conquer a woman who wants to be conquered by HIM, and she wants to be conquered by a specific man because she believes he deserves her. Their desires align.

The degenerate man desires to conquer a very specific category of woman: the woman who rejects him.

He has no interest in the woman who desires him. He has no desire to be worthy of anything or anyone. He delights in the core practice of his degeneracy: imposition. It is seeing her repulsed but helpless is what excites him because he is a sadist. That is the core of male sexual degeneracy: sadism. (@Dvorstone on X)

That sounds so nice. And it makes sense.

The majority of men, after all, do not prefer to buy prostitutes and disdain those who subscribe to an OnlyFans cam-whore. That’s not a conquest; it’s a transaction. It’s not manly.

And deep down, they know the hooker doesn’t really want them, cheapening the experience even more.

The conquering is only fun, only worth it, if she wants him. If she wants what he plans to do to her.

The degradation of women during sex is baked into the process, a fact that neither men nor women likes to admit. We all agree on the lie that actions like expelling body fluids onto someone's face and/or into their mouth, pinning a person so they are immobile, and sticking foreign objects into someone's throat until retching occurs are not behaviors indicating respect or esteem.

They are actions of domination, of destruction--yet they are actions that women desire.

But why do we want it? What exactly went into our construction to make us want, NEED, to be ruled?

It sure as hell wasn’t sugar and spice.

What is it that makes us, in the millions, read books that feature these tropes as a means of sexual arousal:

• Stalking (Hello, Haunting Adeline)

• Cheating/infidelity

• Serial killer

• Nonconsensual/Dubious consent

• Bully

• Mafia

• BDSM

• Knife play (seriously wtf)

• Kidnapping (Oh, hey 365)

• Primal play

• Somnophilia

Those are the most popular tropes in dark romance, something I’ve talked about before.

I have to. I’m compelled to talk about it. Mostly because I like it too and I don’t understand why.

The Sixth Day

It would be a mean thing, a cruel thing, to make a creature for servitude while giving them a drive for conquest.

Luckily, it seems the Almighty spared us this cruelty. He even gave us an inborn psychological defense mechanism against the subjucation--arousal at acts of domination.

As I said in the beginning, things would be easier if I were an atheist, or could even fathom being so.

I know there are other religions with other origin stories. But they don’t count. Not to me. Sorry.

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Most of the time.

The one instance that does strongly trouble me is in the way young men and women seemingly have no idea how to interact with one another IRL.

We take a lot of our cues for how men and women behave from popular media. Troublingly, a lot of discourse from younger people is based solely on staged skits for TikTok and YouTube clicks and those stupid “men with microphone” podcasts. You know, the ones featuring young men who have never had a successful relationship?

It’s not helpful, not even a little.

The kids aren’t interacting in real life. Boys aren’t walking up to girls to ask them out. Often they won’t do it over text either. The risk is too great. What if they’re recorded getting rejected and subjected to internet mockery? What if their screenshots are posted for the same?

Nah, forget that. Better to sink into porn. Less risk.

The result of this is that y…

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Andrew Tate. You know who he is. You’ve been hearing about him nonstop for a while now, especially since last week when he and his brother Tristan were arrested again for charges relating to human trafficking, this time with girls who were underage.

But if you’re not terminally online, you might be confused about why you are constantly hearing about him.

Why is EVERYONE obsessed with this guy? Everyone? Dudes want to be him, especially the younger ones. Women want him with a ferocity usually reserved for professional athletes and A-list movie stars.

But why? Especially when you consider that his brother is objectively better looking by every metric. Just as rich too. But it doesn’t matter. It’s Andrew we’re obsessed with.

There are people out there who just have “it.” They can draw you in, make you want their attention and affection, to the point that you’d sacrifice your own wellbeing to get it.

By all accounts, Andrew is one of them. Longtime, experienced podcasters (straight males) have often remarked that he has a presence, that he fills the room.

With the new batch of charges and the years-old but still damning videos circulating social media, you’d think the clamor for him would cool off. But it hasn’t. If anything, it’s stronger than ever.

I can think of no better real-world phenomenon to point to when it comes to explaining the popularity of dark romance to people (men, specifically).

“I don’t get it. This is abuse. The guys in these books are HORRIBLE. Why are women obsessing over these books? Especially the feminist ones?”

Let me tell you.

Female Status

Sorry, Redpill bros, I need to debunk something real quick. It’s not attention that the female craves. Well, not JUST attention. It’s status.

Status for a woman comes from being chosen over all the others. Specifically chosen by a man who COULD have others. Many others. But he chose HER.

It’s that status that is the aphrodisiac in these books, fellas. And it only comes from being chosen by a man with endless choices. Even if he’s a bastard.

Fifty Shades of Grey doesn’t cut it as an example, I’m afraid. We’re going straight to the good stuff: The 365 series by Blanka Lipinska. In the first book, Laura goes on vacation in Sicily and is kidnapped by the smokin hot Massimo, who is in a powerful crime family. He basically says he’s keeping her for a year and if, at the end of that year, she hasn’t fallen in love with him, she can go. Ah, romance.

If you want to get a thorough, and humorous, rundown of the whole series, check out Amanda the Jedi’s videos detailing the whole sloppy mess.

Basically Massimo is a cartoon-villain version of Tate. He is overtly sexual. Good looking, yes, but makes a point to be shirtless, behaving in a sensual manner, flexing wealth indictors, flexing access to females. ALL the females, specifically the ones that all the other men covet and can’t have.

He’s powerful/aggressive and makes sure everyone knows it, male and female alike. This is where we get into the sticky part. Lack of agreeableness, physical strength, confidence and surety are all universally appealing. But turn those up to 11 and you get a criminal.

These dominance indicators are exactly why Laura chooses to stay with him at the end of the book (and the Netflix adaptation). But there’s also something else.

She gets status from this powerful man desiring her. A status she didn’t previously have.

In the books, like most romance novels, Laura is described as pretty, but not breathtakingly so. Yet somehow she has a dangerous man deeply invested in her. It’s sick, but the appeal is there and it’s undeniably reflected in real life.

That’s why the “Touch her and you die” trope is so popular. The status of a man being willing to violence on your behalf—You are powerful because HIS power is at your disposal.

He protects you from others. But who protects you from him?

No one.

But if you’re a good girl, then it’s a moot point, right?

Male Status from Females

Many other commenters have noted that the hot male protagonists get away with this grotesque behavior because they ARE hot.

If they were ugly and/or poor then they’d be on an episode of Dateline, not in a romance book.

Look at a street pimp and you’re hard pressed to find anyone who likes them. Our lip curls just looking at a mugshot of such a gross creature. These degenerate thugs with delusions of grandeur abuse girls who are from equally unfortunate circumstances. No one thinks they’re cool. No one subscribes to their newsletter. Definitely girls don’t send them love letters in prison.

Men get their status from women. Yeah, I said it.

Why is it a bad thing when you go to a night club or party and it’s all dudes? Why is being known as a sausage fest the kiss of death for a venue?

Because being able to acquire attractive, quality women, preferably more than one, equals male status. Tate’s girls, whatever else you want to say about them, are gorgeous. And by all accounts, they seem to be emotionally bound to him, even after they have gone on to other things. They write letters to the authorities defending him. They continue to text him long after they have been dismissed from the harem.

These are the girls that most men would wife up in a second.

But you can’t. Because they won’t have you. They are beautiful, quality girls, and they want HIM.

The girls the street pimp traffics in wouldn’t be welcome at a country club, at a restaurant in a nice part of town. They’re trash. And as a result, the street pimp is too.

In the books, Massimo makes a point of giving Laura a makeover. She is actually beautiful with the right styling and her confidence intact (derived from him). She is a prize, she is a good look for him.

He also wins status by winning Laura’s love AFTER brutalizing her. “See fellas, I don’t even need to be nice to her. I don’t have to give her an option. She’ll do as I say and thank me for it.”

That’s the sicko side of male status.

Walking Away from the Man with “It”

This potent mix of mutual status and cocaine-like dopamine highs can be near impossible to walk away from, even if it leaves bruises.

The 365 books are a good example of this and it shows what it takes for a girl to truly walk away from a guy like that.

1) It took Massimo killing her PUPPY to finally make Laura leave him, and

2) She had a different, less psycho (but still hot and mafia-affiliated) alpha male right there waiting to be Massimo’s replacement.

Would the books still have been as popular as they were if Laura decided to remain single and celibate for the rest of her life?

Maybe… but somehow I doubt it. Relationships like this are a zero sum game. And the one who ends up single, alone, and unwanted at the end is the one who lost.

What that says about female desire and our nature in general, I won’t say here. It’s so dark that I don’t think I’ll ever release the article about it I wrote one late night.

What I will say is that having “it”— that special quality that draws you to a person— is not, in itself, a red flag.

Just be careful with it. That warm glow you get from being in their company can turn on a dime.

And, real talk, the Dark Romance girlies might be best equipped to spot the danger signs early.

So read up, girls. Your life might depend on it.

So ended an awkward conversation with a (perhaps former) friend of mine who asked for my honest opinion.

Dating and marriage have become landmines of hostility, with each sex lobbing hateful generalities at the other.

• Women withhold sex as a weapon!

• Men are selfish and lazy!

• Women get fat the second you put a ring on it!

• Men are emotionally abusive!

• Women file for divorce over nothing!

• No, MEN abandon the family and the WOMAN is left filing the paperwork!!!!

And on and on it goes. I have been married nearly 15 years and, as a I detailed in an earlier post, married my husband after only a few months in a somewhat untraditional manner. As such, my single friends sometimes ask me for advice on how to find “The one.”

My friend didn’t like the advice I gave her, and maybe you won’t either. But I got some questions about what I said to make her not want t…

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“Why do we fall, Bruce? So we can learn to pick ourselves up.” -Thomas Wayne, Batman Begins

Last year, one of the viral clips from the Whatever podcast featured a flame-haired cam girl named Nala. Her behavior was outrageous, as was her attire. An unrepentant sex worker, one who seemed immune to the criticisms of her line of work and to the toxic effects her work had on society and on herself.

“For shame,” said conservatives online. “Lord, please show her the truth and call her to repentance.”

Let the record show that the Lord did exactly that.

This year, Nala publicly repented, was baptized, and nuked her extremely profitable OnlyFans account.

Now she is preaching the dangers of porn, the goodness of God, and selling (modest) clothing. Obviously with her previous income-generating activities gone, she needs to replace the income, right?

Well, not according to our “righteous” Twitter brethren.

And also our entirely UNRIGHTEOUS Twitter brethren.

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Mad Max: Fury Road was an objectively good movie, and one of the best times I’ve ever had in the theater. The story, the acting, the sheer audacity of it… all wonderful.

The movie was also remarkable in that it gave us something we don’t often see (then or now): Middle-aged and old women, a whole group of them being portrayed positively AND realistically.

There’s no shortage of perfect girl bosses in film and TV. Collectively, we’re all rather sick of them. The Many Mothers—bad asses though they were—were not given super powers. They were women, with all the frailty that implies, though they powered through those frailties to make a difference. They identified themselves, first and foremost, as mothers. As caregivers. As people who make things grow. And in their brief time with the young women under their care, they were able to pass on that wisdom and steer the girls away from cynicism.

Even in the most wholesome of Hallmark movies, we don’t get a lot of this from older women on the screen.

Instead, we are more often confronted with meddling mothers and mothers-in-law, conniving women like Gemma Teller from Sons of Anarchy, who are hellbent on ruining the joy of younger women.

Bitterness is a common theme in older women (We all remember the mom from Titanic). Worse, we’re now being confronted with a slew of “cougars,” who behave like desperate, oversexed predators, all while complaining about similar behavior when displayed by men.

If you have never heard of MILF Island, consider yourself lucky.

Who are Young Women Supposed to Look Up To?

These pervasive archetypes seem to set up a weird combativeness between older women and younger women. Like we’re competing.

In my post about older men, I mentioned Don Draper taking a young Peggy under his wing. It was a positive interaction, despite Don’s…. questionable behavior.

A male character is often seen as a mentor to both sexes. It works and it’s realistic. Females generally do not mentor males—at work or in their personal lives. Only in very rare cases. Get mad if you want. Point to the one case in a million. It’s cool.

But as a rule, it doesn’t happen. And if you think it does, ask yourself, is it the young man pointing to the older woman, saying “Yep, she’s my mentor.” Or is it the woman taking that title for herself?

Women mentor other women. Or at least they used to.

TV has been better at this than movies, at least in my own limited experience. If any true cinephiles out there disagree, feel free to let me know.

Sheldon’s Mom on The Big Bang Theory is an excellent example. A loving southern woman who cares for her unusual son and takes the time to help mentor Penny, her son’s neighbor. She visits only occasionally, but her warmth shines through her sternness to the point that even young, liberal Penny doesn’t get defensive when Sheldon’s mom advises her to wear less slutty tops on a first date to communicate she’s looking for something serious.

Going back farther, Marilla Cuthbert from Anne of Green Gables has to be the pinnacle of female mentorship. Far from the badass heroines of Mad Max: Fury Road, Marilla is an old maid who lives with her brother. She and her brother adopt an orphan, wanting a boy to help with manual labor around the farm. Instead, they get the ginger tornado, Anne Shirley.

Anne is in need of some mentorship. How to hold her temper. How to apologize. How to be a regal lady even with limited means.

Marilla is stern and won’t put up with any nonsense. But she’s not hard and she’s not mean, which is rare in TV these days.

Often when a female character says something like “I don’t take any shit,” what she truly means is that she is an awful person and is pleased by that.

Letting Women Grow Up

While TV has done right by older women, it can commit the sin of keeping their women characters in a perpetual state of 20-something immaturity. Comedies in particular are bad about this. Think of Friends.

Yeah, they entered relationships and had kids. But look at their behavior. Did they grow up? Did Monica or Rachel really mature in the ten years the show was on the air?

Or Gilmore Girls. That was even more egregious. The show ran for seven seasons, but came back with a mini-series thirteen years after the fact. Lorelei, the mother, was just as childish and silly as she had been on season 1 of the show and Rory, the daughter, was WORSE. So much worse!

I will give the show props for its treatment of Emily, Lorelei’s mother. Though insufferable and snooty, her arc was the most satisfying in my opinion.

This broad-scale infantilism wasn’t done as a plot point. I suspect it was unintentional. The writers just kept them this way and I think it has a lot to do with our collective fear of acting OLD.

I previously wrote about how the word “Matronly” has become a slur, though it didn’t use to be. Instead, we now have the expectation for women in their 50s to adopt the same look, lifestyle, and mannerisms as girls in their 20s. Why? Is that progress?

Teens Listen to Media More than Real People. Deal with It.

Rather than complain about the fact that young women will listen to other idiot Zoomers on TikTok while ignoring their mother’s sage advice, I’d like to make fictionalized woman mentors more available to them.

TV in general needs to improve in our current entertainment season, but the representation of older women as mentors is especially in need of attention.

Older women sharing their hard-won experience protects younger, more vulnerable women. Not only from predatory men, though that’s a big part of it.

They also serve to protect younger women from our accommodating nature. And it IS our nature to be agreeable. Don’t let anyone tell you society made us this way. There’s a reason women with autism don’t fit in with girl groups. The natural agreeableness and consensus-seeking found in females is diminished or entirely absent in girls with autism. They see the pervasiveness of this quality among women because they themselves lack it.

Average young women don’t see it because a fish does not perceive the water in which it swims.

Older women, especially those well past dating and childrearing, are the ones who can point out what girls cannot yet perceive. Ideally it would be a real-life woman to do this. But not every girl is so lucky.

Let there be more Marillas in film and TV. Let a girl see what it looks like to have an older woman be badass in ways that have nothing to do with throwing a grenade or saying mean things without provocation.

And not to be selfish about it, but as I reach a certain age… maybe I’d like someone to look up to as well.

Battleship (2012) is hardly cinematic gold. But I love it for one reason. Or should I say one scene.

After alien ships demolish young Lt. Hopper’s ship, and all the other ships in the area, he needs a new one. But all there is left is an old one. Specifically the USS Missouri. The problem is that none of these young sailors know how to operate this floating antique.

Lucky for them, the Missouri is a museum. One staffed by veterans who DO know how to operate it.

Alex Hopper : You men have given so much to your country, and no one has the right to ask any more of you... but I'm asking.

Old Salt : What do you need, son?

The old WW2 and Vietnam vets then proceed to help the youngins whip some alien ass.

They can’t figure out the debit card machine at the grocery store. But they sure as hell remember how to operate the ship they cut their teeth on forty or fifty years ago.

It’s glorious.

I started thinking about this thanks to copywriter extraordinaire Nabeel Azeez. In his newsletter, he pointed to the gender dynamics of women in male-dominated fields. In fiction and in real life, these women excelled because an older man took the woman with promise under his wing:

Midge (Mrs. Maisel) owes her career to Lenny Bruce (one of the pioneers of stand-up comedy as it's performed today.)

In season one, Midge gets blackballed right as she's getting started and can't book gigs anywhere in New York.

During a set, Lenny invites Midge on stage to do a short set before he does his own.

He sees something in her and his endorsement lifts the ban and starts her career for real.

Her innate talent then allows her to rocket past other comedians in success and stardom.

Something similar happens between Peggy Olson and Freddy Rumsen, and then Don Draper in Mad Men.

Freddy “discovers” Peggy has an innate talent for copywriting and mentions it to Don.

Don, as creative director and a copywriter himself, is astute enough to give her a shot and mentors her until she becomes a Copy Chief and manages her own team.

Behind every strong independent wahmen is a man who gave her her shot, or one who pushes her to achieve her potential.

As a former female Marine, it struck a cord. I was lucky enough to have an older man and an older woman team up to act as my second set of parents in my first duty station, kicking my ass in gear and teaching me how to be a professional.

Boomers, both of them. Both from hard-scrabble, working-class backgrounds. Both rose to excellence because they had mentors of their own. They both went on to be high-ranking Pentagon officials after they turned in their uniforms.

They are the ones who looked at my work and said: “Not good enough. Do it again.” They said it over and over again until I did it right the first time.

The Mentorship Gap

As the eldest of Millennials (b. 1981) and seeing the crop of kids coming up behind me, I have to wonder… who will we ask for help when the Boomers are gone?

Are we in a position to guide the next crop of adults?

Millennials take a lot of guff for the fact that our younger members use the verb “adulting” like it’s an accomplishment. But for all our flaws, we are the last generation to have been raised without social media, constant access to the internet, and being filmed everywhere we went.

It is obvious by now that distinction makes a difference in our development, our capability, and, of course, our attention span.

The online learning economy is booming, and many of the courses out there are far more useful than what you find on university campuses these days.

But I’m worried about actual mentorship vs simple skill acquisition.

In order to listen and apply the tough love of a mentor, the criticism that makes you truly excellent at what you do, you have to respect and care about the person giving it to you.

If someone yells at you, “This is crap! You’re better than this; you’re just being lazy!” In order to take that critique to heart, the person has to matter to you.

• You must care about their opinion.

• You must want to live the type of life they live

• You must believe they want the best for you

If those elements are not present, then any sharply-worded statement, no matter how true, will be discarded.

That’s why anonymous commenters on Twitter get told to pound sand. I don’t know you, I don’t like you, and I don’t care what you think. Kindly piss off.

Unfortunately, for young people today, “Twitter friends” might be the deepest level of relationship they ever form, which is bad news for all of us.

True excellence always requires struggle, and taking heat from someone who knows better than you. A coach, a boss, a teacher.

Unfortunately, the overarching mantra for Zoomers seems to be, “It ain’t that deep, bro.”

But it is.

Whether you’re an engineer or a music composer (do those even exist anymore?) we as a society need those truly great talents to come along and change the paradigm every once in a while.

Without the guiding hand of a mentor, a trusted teacher who you obey when he says “Put down the TikTok and get back to work,” we will be left with a world of bland mediocrity, one that will have long-lasting implications.

Fifty years from now, when the Zoomers are old and the next generation calls on them for help from the olden times, will they have any help to give?

I’m not sure. But if they are to have a shot at rising to the potential within them, it must be the Millennials who help them reach it.

The Boomers have done their duty.

I think it’s time we stepped up.

Usually, the last Friday of the month has been devoted to fiction. This month, by popular demand, we’ll be having a personal essay instead.

The way I went about marriage was a cause of concern for my family.

In September of 2009, I posted my profile on Match.com, had my first date with Eric in October 2009 and we were married in March 2010. I like to say I arranged my own marriage, something that is not at all in line with my culture, or at least it hasn’t been for a few hundred years.

“Why be so clinical about this?” my mother asked, genuinely panicked at how fast I was moving and the checklist system I had for the progression my relationship should take.

Her concerns were understandable, but I would not be swayed. I wasn’t willing to explain my rationale either, as few people would believe the conversation I had had years earlier that prompted this way of doing things. Even fewer would believe the conversation was indicative of most or all men.

I knew that it was. And I didn’t want to f…

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Now I won’t be seeing the new Scream because *spoiler alert* it’s yet another instance of movie makers insulting and castigating their own viewers, but that’s an issue for another blog.

Despite my irritation with the film itself, I was happy to see Courtney in the trailers… looking like Courtney. She does look older, make no mistake. But she looks like herself, and is, as she has always been, a beautiful woman.

Why is that not enough?

We see such disdain for older women in the US. And yes, it is primarily in the US. Turn on any show filmed in the UK and you’ll see women of varying ages and levels of attractiveness creating wonderful, engaging s…

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