The Rational Male - Positive Masculinity by Rollo Tomassi
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Hypergamy.

**The act or practice of seeking a spouse of higher socioeconomic status, or caste status than oneself.**

Let me be very clear here. There are a LOT of interesting ideas rolling around within this book and almost all of them have *TM* words associated with them, but Hypergamy is one of the biggest takeaways I've seen.

So what's the context? I mean, other than the fact that about a million women want to murder Rollo Tomassi for speaking his mind. What could be so damning?

The term of the Red Pill. In general, it's taken from the Matrix and it always blows your mind and it can be applied to just about anything, but in this context, it's about waking up to the fact that women have different sexual agendas than men. Specifically, it's the double standard of women's agendas with respect to men.

Let's keep it simple here without going into actual history, tons of studies, evolutionary psychology, legal precedence, massive observational correlations, or the gut feeling that most men nowadays have that SOMETHING IS VERY WRONG.

I'll just lay out the idea of Hypergamy. It can apply to men as well as women, but in general, the tables have been flipped. The last sixty years have given us a nearly unending stream of media that celebrates female sexuality in any of its forms, telling them to get their rocks off when they're young and then settle down with the *dependable* man when their sexiness declines. A perceptive person would note that this was the male ideal BEFORE that time period, and aside from a brief macho period in the '70s that quickly became derision for men in the '80s, the tables have turned.

Hypergamy, in the vernacular, is "always trade up when the opportunity presents itself".

Men who know what they want and plan for success are generally regarded as alpha males. They are the ones who ignore verbal narratives and act and behave in ways that are aligned with observable reality. They tend to eschew talk of soul-mates, softness in relationships, cuddly-feely emotionality.

Since biology predisposes women to feel heavy sexual attraction to males who know what they want and who plan for success, alphas are the ones who always tend to get the most women for practically no cost in terms of investment, intellectualism, emotionalism, or even care. These are the truly sexy ones and they always tend to ignore the feminist narrative that SAYS men should put in tons of investment, intellectualism, and emotionalism, and care in order to appease a woman.

Note, this statement is backed up by science, massive observations of real people, and (almost universally) in popular media.

The other kind of male is the beta male. These are the men who have grown up in an obviously feminist-dominated society, who were caught in the feminist narrative as children and bought it, hook, line, and sinker. The author notes that 80% of men are betas. These are the men who bought the idealized version of what they thought women wanted out of men. The ones who believe in soul-mates, true friendships, true equality, and believe (mostly because they are told to, repeatedly,) that women are smarter, stronger, and more capable than men.

Does this sound familiar? I think most men will agree -- if pressed -- and definitely not in the presence of anyone who might let it slip -- that something is very wrong. Men are collectively demonized as a whole sex.

And this is reasoning is used as justification for demonizing a whole sex.

Why would women do this? It's simple: it protects them from having to look at the things they believe about themselves.

Have fun in your youth and then settle down used to be the narrative of what men were taught to believe.

In this case, specifically, have fun with the bad boys (the ones who refuse to get down with the feminist narrative), and then dump them because they don't provide long-term stability. Marry the beta-choice, the one that doesn't truly stimulate you, and make sure he knows that he's a second-class citizen and that you always have someone else lined up on the sides if he doesn't stay cowed. Fortunately, most men are thoroughly indoctrinated to accept this. A man's self-worth is determined by how well he can provide for the family. The expectation is that he gets all the sex he wants within this stable arrangement. But here's the thing: women's behavior, in general, doesn't align with the narrative.

They drop the alphas that don't magically become subservient to the narrative once women are beyond their sexual prime. They actively start looking for the men who will be able to tow the narrative line, provide for them (despite being told constantly that they are just as good as men in everything, or better). This happens between ages 29-32. The second-best choice is beta men.

How many times have women complained that there aren't any good men out there?

Here's the breakdown, adjusted for an idealized equal playing field where both the men and women are otherwise equally desirable. Women are turned on by the anti-feminist narrative men but these same men are not good marriage material. The ones who ARE good marriage material don't turn them on. Just look at the dominance fantasies in romance literature if you don't believe me.

Of course, once you get beyond this point, it's in a woman's best interest to double down on the feminist narrative and make sure that this beta man is completely cowed and accepting of any and every decision you make, or he might wake up one day to realize that he was always the second-best choice.

Maintain the power differential. He must provide, he must defer all parenting decisions, and he can't even dissent in an argument. How many "Yes, dear" men are out there? It is not a small number.

Laws are designed to always side with the women. One example: 1 million men in the USA are forced to provide for children who aren't theirs. Let's get real here. That's called cuckoldry. There are very few support groups for men who have either been raped, need mental health assistance, who need pro-bono legal support in bad divorces, and the law even supports keeping genetic-data sealed from men on the assumption that it would be "bad for the children".

This is only one facet of a much larger problem. Of course, men know there is a problem. It's obvious when you see that men are 4-6 times more likely to commit suicide than women. The problem is REAL, it is PRESSING, and it is tragic.

The real issue, described here and with multiple resources within this book, (and others I myself could name), is whether or not we are able to SEE that there is a problem. Tomassi uses the term Red Pill constantly for this very reason.



And all of this is mostly just an aside within this particular book. It is an important aside, but it's still an aside.

What did I think of this book, aside from the important ideas inside it?

I love the insistence that the whole subject should remain apolitical. I agree with this. It affects all men and should not be conflated with any other designation EVEN IF it disproportionally condemns, say, black men, more intensely than it does white men. The problem is becoming more universal every single day.

THAT BEING SAID. The way this particular book is written reminds me of Tom Cruise's character in the movie Magnolia. It does bring up a ton of interesting and/or valid points, but it does not and frankly cannot capture the spirit or the scope of the problem. And while I DO believe it brings up some excellent points against egalitarianism in favor of complementarianism, the WAY it is written makes it sound like it's trying to sell something... which, of course, it is.

Even Trinity and Morpheus needed to seduce Neo into taking the Red Pill, and he backslid quite a bit.

Suffice to say, while this book is not perfect, it is still a very important kind of book to be reading.

And I mean that for both MEN AND WOMEN.

Not all women buy into the feminist narrative. And by this, let's be very clear: I don't think anyone alive has a problem with first and second wave Feminism. It's the third wave we should all be very skeptical about.


Let's open discussions! No name-calling, no shaming, no dehumanization, please.



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