“I don’t have to look at you to see it in your eyes…”
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Almost five years ago to the day, I gave one of my most controversial, misunderstood (innocently or willfully) and quoted (both sincerely and sarcastically) pieces of advice.
It was simply this:
► “When it comes to women: It’s best to put your worst foot forward.” ◄
Needless to say, the sentence itself was what ended up most tightly clutched.
Many seemed to miss the brief yet comprehensive explanation beneath it:
Show them the rage/pain/turmoil within you poetically, incrementally, unashamedly and, most of all, unapologetically.
To make it even more plain here:
Be yourself.
In the darker sense.
It’s not to suggest you engage in abusive, acerbic, anti-social behavior.
It’s to advise you to let others (women) know you have vulnerabilities, the capacity for righteous anger, and – in short – boundaries that you will show tooth and claw to defend.
This is important to do (to reasonable degrees) around most of the people in your life, regardless of their sex.
However, around women it’s exceedingly important.
Understand, women always look under the surface, regardless whether the surface is good or bad.
They are always reading subtext.
Subtext is their default language; overt exchange is not.
It’s a major reason why males find females so aggravating/frustrating.
Such things are difficult for men to grasp because men, on the whole, do not navigate a web of lies.
Women do.
Men will lie for sex; women will lie to sabotage, undermine and outright destroy one another in competition (since they lack the capacity to do so physically).
Thus, subtext as primary communication is a feature, not a bug.
Hating women for such is akin to hating the dog for barking.
The communication method that served it best, the longest, has won out.
Accept it.
Now to tie it all together.
Remember, women are always on the lookout for danger (again, due to their weaker physicality)
The search to uncover lurking threats is constantly active.
Add that fact to the web of lies they must traverse, strand by strand – every day, and it’s a given that females will rarely (if ever) trust what is right in front of them for fear of hidden danger.
At this point, take a moment and recall your own observations
My guess is they add up to:
“Nice guys” are labeled “creepy” and avoided or joked about as being serial killers or some such nonsense.
While cads, thugs and deadbeats always seem to have a heart of gold that only women can see.
Thus, I say to you:
Put your worst foot forward—
So that the ladies eagerly, optimistically await the other shoe to drop.
9♣
80-Proof Oinomancy 
February 20, 2018 at 2:58 am
The trail of clues you lay is so obvious* that you might actually lead a horse to drink.
Excellent fucking song, by the way.
*It’s one of those things that’s so obvious you miss it, as its axiomatic once one understands the underlying mechanics (http://bit.ly/1S3GBI1). Of course, we were all told the wrong playset (and our parents gave us an out-dated one).
Funny how women deal with negative space in a way that men do not.
No doubt, that’s a huge reason you’ve got some serious female fans and you’re less popular with men than you might otherwise be – it’s natural for them to look for the subtext to the point that they don’t see your writing as cryptic.
If you wrote plainly, they’d wonder what you weren’t telling them till judgement day.
Wald
February 27, 2018 at 5:49 am
Wald,
Yes, it’s an outstanding song.
While I hate calling “sexism”, there are rare moments it’s true.
This band was an actual example of it.
Were it composed of ugly men, they’d have been a juggernaut.
Being all smoking hot women, they weren’t taken seriously.
Which was a tremendous mistake.
Great observation re: female readers here.
All the best,
A♠
February 20, 2018 at 10:41 am
“While cads, thugs and deadbeats always seem to have a heart of
gold that only women can see.”
A few years ago I was at a house party, hosted by an older lady who was also a karaoke DJ. (Love to sing, and good at it). One summer it was on weekly so living in the middle of nowhere it was good to get out.
At one point she said to me “don’t take this the wrong way, but you look like the kind of guy who would cheat.”
I laughed out loud and asked her why she would say that. She said it was something in my attitude. (She also dropped a couple of sideways hints about being my girlfriend over that time. I still laugh about it.)
Guess some things have sunk in.
I don’t dally with married women or coworkers but over this time a few have made it plain that playtime was available if I wanted it.
This knowledge is dangerous. It can make you look like the ‘dirty secret’ guy without really trying. As thrilling as that sounds, not a woman alive would mourn you if you lost your job or a jealous spouse shot you. It’s even more important to develop your value so you’re not just a ‘throwaway’. TL:DR
February 27, 2018 at 6:37 am
JD,
“This knowledge is dangerous. It can make you look like the ‘dirty secret’ guy without really trying. As thrilling as that sounds, not a woman alive would mourn you if you lost your job or a jealous spouse shot you. It’s even more important to develop your value so you’re not just a ‘throwaway’.”
I’m a tremendous fan of the balance you’re suggesting be struck here.
All the best,
A♠
February 26, 2018 at 10:06 am
This topic is the heartstone for every man’s self-awareness.
Our ‘nice guy’ personas are mainly artificial, implanted primarily by our mothers when we were growing up. Mothers call this ‘good manners’ but really it’s a control mechanism over male energy. The words ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ wouldn’t exist if there were only men in the world. Manners are a polite form of shaming.
Men are the apex predator on the planet. There’s no match for an orca in the ocean, we could have them extinct in less than a decade if it was our desire to do so. We almost reached that point with 100 ton blue whales. A 700 lb. tiger or 900 lb. grizzly can be easy prey. EASY, because we don’t fight fair. A man wouldn’t face a Bengal tiger one-on-one in an open field. He’ll bring a gun. A dozen other men with guns. We’ll ride elephants, use bait, lures, cotton bolts and noise to control the path of the tiger and drive him towards the barrel of our rifles. When men cooperate with each other, it’s unfair how easy it can be. We are so successful the only time the outcome is unpredictable is when men prey on other men.
Women are the second most dangerous predator on the planet and their primary prey is men. Likewise, they don’t fight fair. She’ll use lies, half truths, deception, emotional bondage or any other tool to control the resources of the men around her. She’ll fully cooperate with other women when a man’s the target. You are the Bengal tiger here, incredibly powerful in your own right, but helpless if you don’t understand the intentions of others. Many men go half their lives before they realize they’ve been hunted by both genders since the day they were born.
Go one step further. A matriarchal culture trains its males in the behavior of women, which is then applied to all relationships and business. In small doses it can be incredibly successful. The limitation of a matriarchal culture is it doesn’t work on a vast scale. Like women, it has no off switch, so once it’s dominated all competition, it will prey upon itself until collapse.
Be your true self, not the dilution they want you to be. When you’re aware of the rules of the hunt, you cannot be hunted.
February 26, 2018 at 5:30 pm
Myopia, please comment more. This is excellent.
Wald
February 27, 2018 at 6:36 am
Myopia,
Yet another fantastic comment.
While it’s excellent in its entirety, the final line really resounds within me.
All the best to you,
A♠
February 27, 2018 at 3:42 pm
Myopia,
Well done. Far too many women and far too many hucksters believe they’re clever because of the things their victims simply don’t know. When those intended for plunder know the deal they’re suddenly not so clever.
All we need to win, really, is to simply stop losing. The hustle, the scam, the shuck-and-jive, the fast-talking runs into a brick wall when the answer is ‘No’.
That’s the Revolution.
March 2, 2018 at 10:09 pm
http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1995/11/15
This may seem an odd diversion, but bear with me.
As Old World societies moved past the bartering stage and into the creation of money, balances changed. In a New World Culture of currency and private property, asset accumulation was now possible. Consider an average North American Plains Indian before the Europeans arrived. Their primary diet was bison. Men had to travel dozens of miles on foot to get to the animals. Groups of men had to expend considerable energy just to kill one animal.
With an Old World culture there was no incentive for a hunter to kill 50 animals, because he didn’t have the means to benefit from killing any more than for personal needs. It made no sense to kill 50 buffalo if you could only butcher and bring home one. In this barter system, a tribe had no class structure based on wealth, no rich or poor. And no path to aspire for more.
With the existence of money came New World cultures. With the existence of money you could now kill and butcher 50 buffalo, sell them off and carry home the currency in your coat pocket. What was constituted as success had changed. The man willing to risk debt to buy horses and wagons to bring 50 animals to market had an advantage over the man unwilling to take the risk. The man willing to sail across unknown oceans in search of silver, spices and pearls had an advantage over the man unwilling. The man who was successful could carry in his wallet the equivalent labors of hundreds of men.
While the cliché says money is power, the underlying truth is that money is collectible time and energy. Every dollar that exists represents a unit of labor that was performed to create it. Accumulated wealth is a depository of past production, and the more you have, the more you can purchase current or future production. It’s possible now to kill a lifetime’s worth of livestock in a day, and hold that value in one hand. Economic disparity was born. The community tree now has more than one branch, and now has height. Both male and female eyes have looked higher and higher to see how far they can climb. Male power and female hypergamy are parts of the same greed, innate to our species as survival mechanisms.
Every political “ism” that is, has been and shall be: feminism, socialism, Marxism, totalitarianism – are just footpaths taking us to the fields where we hunt currency. The key is the labor pool (men). The money creators have a vested interest in controlling the behavior of men, in order to control the hunt and to have access to their (considerable) cut of the prize.
There’s good reason why Jesus Christ took a bullwhip to the money-makers in the Temple. It wasn’t because they were doing business in a sacred place, it’s because of the business they were doing. A Comanche wouldn’t have tolerated losing 3/4 of his buffalo to village middle men, lawyers and administrators who didn’t participate in the hunt. He’d have put an arrow through them the same as his game animal. For any New World culture to survive, lies are necessary to convince the productive that’s it’s in their best interest to give up most of their efforts for the greater good. The degree of Truth suppression is in direct proportion to how much money’s at stake. The greater the wealth, the greater the social engineering in play to placate the productive members from rebelling against their overlords.
So be nice. Be tolerant. Be obedient. Give up your guns for the greater safety. Your very nature—your masculinity—is toxic. Be ashamed for who you are. You’re far easier prey this way.
September 19, 2018 at 1:40 pm
More wisdom stored in C&H than most university philosophy courses, I’d wager.
Excellent points.
I’d take it back further than “money” to agriculture – the advent of long-term crop-growing strategies, the accumulation of land, the currency which is seed and harvest, and the representative power of both.
The power of a visible harvest to convey a message is immense, and the harvests of the Farmer and the Hunter could not be more different. Immediacy vs. patience. Violent action vs. grueling labor. Aggression vs. passivity.
What’s more, the precursor to agriculture is what? Gathering. And who primarily did the gathering*, for 94% of human evolutionary development? Women.
The entire process of moving from hunter/gatherer to farmer societies is, in part, an emasculation of humanity. Why do you suppose steppe/plains peoples have traditionally scorned those that tilled the land? There is something decidedly less manly about weilding a sickle rather than a spear, isn’t there?
None of this is to denigrate farmers, or to imply that they are not/can not be masculine – that would be a ludicrous statement. To be a good farmer for the vast majority of the past 8-12,000 years required grit, determination, physical strength and endurance, a Stoic nature, etc.
My point is merely that the shift from hunters to glorified gatherers was also a move towards something not altogether harmonious with masculine nature.
*As a side note: it is also my belief that the primary reason that gathering was traditionally and almost universally the female role (until agriculture took over and women’s work became that of maintaining previously nonexistent permanent homes) had as much to do with competency as anything else. Where did most of the calories to feed a hunter-gatherer band come from? Meat. Who do you want responsible for most of your calories? The most capable people. Who are they? The men. There’s a reason that once we cracked the code of agriculture (which may have actually been done by women, according to some anthropologists, though I don’t think that this means what they think it does…) men put down the bow and picked up the hoe – whatever your society is most necessitous of to survive, you want men procuring.
July 21, 2018 at 11:42 pm
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