But I do not expect a man to understand this.
And what's more, I would not like to see a man play the victim along with me.
I have female friends for that.
I did not know this about myself before I stepped into the Manosphere jungle.
I invite the males in my entourage to 'play the victim' with me all the time without even realising it. But now I know I would not want them to take the bait. For them to do so would be to lose serious credibility with me. I know this now.
None of them has ever taken the bait so far.
Good boys.
They are not all 'alpha'.
And yet, they are consistently men I can look up to.
Because they have never failed a fitness test of mine. At least, not this particular one.
The concept of 'fitness testing' is one that I notice is bandied about in the Manosphere a lot.
I asked myself, 'why is this?' a lot, before I began to see a few patterns.
Fitness testing is very much a part of feminine behaviour. Like 'tossing men back out into the parade', it is a necessary part of a woman's life. Femininity is all about fulfilling this function. Women who accept 'all and sundry' and do not do any fitness testing are worse off than those who do a little 'filtering'.
This is something I would not expect a man to understand, but full marks to him if he does.
In one of Bellita's posts, she recounts a Muslim man trying to convince her that her 'reward' for converting to Islam would be 'a thousand men' or something to that effect.
Bellita's response to that is typical of a woman's reaction to this: absolute horror.
That man was projecting his own standards to a woman. It doesn't work. Because men and women are different. A woman is never truly interested in more than a few men in her entire lifetime. Of those few, she must still do some filtering. There are always outliers, sure. But for now, we concentrate on the inliers.
I think life is hard for a woman these days (playing the victim :-) but I also have more sympathy for men these days (snapping out of it :-)
Why?
Life became hard for women when they had to go out there and fend for themselves in the same way that men had been doing since time immemorial.
Life became hard for women when they had to kill their own snakes and take care of baby as well. All alone.
Life became hard for women when the big ugly troll commonly known as feminism stepped into the picture.
But the big ugly troll was not content to ruin womens' lives.
In fact the big ugly troll's intended target was men.
To bring a man to his knees, you don't go for him directly. That would be the stupid strategical move.
To bring a man to the jaws of defeat, you get his woman. Gangsters know this principle well.
In this respect, so it would appear, does feminism.
Except feminism hurt women more than men in the process.
In the old days, a man would go out there and bring home the bacon.
Home to an equally hardworking woman who loved him and was suitably grateful for the bacon.
Home to male children who looked up to the hero and wanted to be just like him when they grew up.
Home to female children who wanted to snag a man just like their hero incumbent when they grew up.
Fast forward fifty years and the picture is very different.
Nowadays, a man will still go out there and get the bacon, but in order that he is not taken for a fool, he has to step into another role.
Relationships have always been a woman's domain. Nature designed it that way. Nature also aids and abets women in this role.
My grandmother knew more about men than I will ever know.
Her mother and grandmother probably knew even more than she did about men.
These women spent their whole lives learning about men.
Because their whole life depended on that knowledge.
If they didn't know men enough to choose one well, to the best of their abilities, they would literally die of starvation. Or at least, figuratively speaking.
Feminism removed this skill from women starting fifty years ago.
A woman does not have time to 'learn about men'.
For a start, she is out killing snakes.
So now, there are many more clueless women than there were sixty years ago.
A man can see now that he cannot afford to blindly follow in his grandfather's footsteps.
To do so would be to run a 'fool's errand' as someone described on a previous post.
So now men have to learn what their grandfathers never had to. All about women.
Pick Up Artistry is about understanding women and their psychology.
Know the enemy, so to speak.
The LTR/marriage-minded man has to do the same in order to avoid the traps his father fell into.
But he is up a creek without a paddle somewhat.
Because women are much more complex than men.
Stephen Hawking has finally figured this out, aged 70. And he ain't dumb :-)
So a man is more likely than a woman to make mistakes in the dating arena. It is not his fault. He is trying to scale a greasy pole.
One common mistake men make is to see everything a woman does as a 'fitness test.'
In general, men do not 'fitness test' women. They have 'frames'. He is who he is. If a woman wants to step into his frame, fine. If she doesn't like his 'frame', she is free to walk. He usually has no need to 'test' anything.
It is women who do the 'fitness testing'.
Because women have every need to.
If the 'king' is a rogue in disguise, or a weakling, she and her children are in trouble.
So she will test and test and test until she is satisfied he is the real deal.
She is supposed to.
Which is why the red pill men who have figured this out talk about fitness testing a lot.
Women don't talk about this because men traditionally do not fitness test women. (But times are changing, fast).
Moreover, because women do not realise they do it, and because they never have it done to them, they often do not even know about this until it is pointed out to them.
There are a few exceptions to a woman's 'fitness tests'.
Certain things are actually a sort of 'frame'.
Her 'non-negotiables'.
A man has to accept it or not.
She is prepared to really walk if he is not a good fit for this 'non-negotiable'.
For every woman, this 'non-negotiable' is different.
A man interested in a woman needs to know what this 'non-fitness-test' is for her.
And then acquiesce to that if it works within his frame too.
In other words, fail this one test if it is not worth losing a special woman over it.
But pass all the others.
It is not easy being a man these days (back to playing the victim, but now on behalf of 'the other side').
Because 'the other side' is not allowed to be a victim.
It's a horrible job, but someone has to do it ;-)
Before I ventured out into the Manosphere jungle, this was my idea of a fitness test.
How long ago it all seems now.
And how odd my vocabulary has become.
