The harem - a niche view

Confession: I am was an involuntary member of a 'soft harem' in my online life.
Involuntary because I don't like harems on principle and I am therefore not exactly sure how I ended up belonging to one ('it just happened' :-), and especially as the male involved is not even human :-)

Note to all you MGTOW types: This is your fault. When you turn your backs on women they are forced to look into 'other' options...
:-)

 Just kidding...
This post is dedicated to my Top Spot Online guy, Brody from 504, aka Danny's dog who is not only my countryman but who is also undeniably alpha supreme :P
Welcome to The Sanctuary, Brody.



I recall a conversation I had with a former colleague from way back, when I was very young. She was much older than I and was in a relationship that was clearly going nowhere, but she was the only person who could not see that. Even I in my naivety knew this.
This woman was in a relationship with a man who was the local 'don juan'. You only had to have a pulse and breasts and he would be after you. It was embarrassing to say the least.
All her friends were beginning to avoid the pair of them, because you couldn't so much as step into their company as to have Mr. Randy make a pass at you - sometimes right in front of her.
I don't know if he was actually sleeping with all the women he was making passes at, but it was clear he was at high risk of doing so if presented with the opportunity. What's more, everyone around them knew what he was like. Everyone.

The conversation we had was round about end of february. She was clearly upset about something and was becoming a little impossible to work with. I asked what was the matter, and after a bit of coaxing, she came out with it: she was upset because Mr. Randy hadn't got her a Valentine's day gift.

My jaw hit the floor.
Huh? That was her problem?
Not the fact that he was busy chasing skirt all over town?

I am ashamed to say I did not exactly sympathise with her position.

That was then. Now I think I was perhaps rash in my astonishment at the reason behind her upset.
I guess  I was 'projecting' my own values/standards on her. I have since learned that this is perhaps immature.

Every woman has her own 'non-negotiables'. Hers was clearly getting a gift on Valentine's Day. She was ready to 'close her eyes' to his embarrassing flirting and possible infidelity.
There may have been a good reason for that, I don't know. Perhaps he was very good at something else that she liked, like making her feel special. Maybe he was the love of her life and she had chosen him as the No. 1 man, come what may.
I, like everyone else was only seeing things from the outside. I did not know what she herself was seeing from the inside, or indeed if she was seeing anything at all.


For many women, a harem of any kind is a 'non negotiable'.
It is for me personally, but could this be simply a cultural issue? I was quite amazed to realise that I am not anti-polygamy per se. If I had been brought up in a polygamous society, I would have had no problem conforming. Because if that were the tradition of the land and things worked out fairly well for everyone concerned, why rock the boat?
Even in some parts of America where you see communities in which there are polygamous families, like in religious sects, etc., there is a certain 'order' which is at best or at worst (depending on how you see it!) tolerable.
I would not wish to be part of that sort of arrangement, but each to his own. At least the women themselves in these sorts of communities do not seem to be complaining too much. So who am I to complain on their behalf?
Things seem to work out fairly well with this situation. Every woman is well catered for. No-one is left out in the cold. There are mutual benefits.

Throughout history, there have been harems. The Romans, Greeks and Turks were particularly erm, talented at this :-)
The women were often housed in a specified part of the man's house, with eunuchs to guard over them.
Harems were not always 'legitimate' of course.
During the various slave trades in history, the womenfolk among the enslaved were often used as involuntary harem members. This practice of course still continues today with human trafficking.

True polygamy was an established part of many old traditional societies, such as in Africa, the Middle East and North American 'Red Indian' cultures. Islam still encourages true polygamy to this day of course.
Does the practice of polygamy cater for a masculine biological need (to experience 'variety) or is this just a manifestation of the insatiable and uncontrollable 'need' of a privileged few?
I dunno.

But something else interests me on the topic of harems.
Specifically one which involves a married man who has mistresses.

See, it's one thing for a woman to belong to the 'soft harem' of an unattached man where she may not know about the other women and where none of the parties involved is married.
That's fair enough in many ways.

But what happens where a man is clearly married, and the peripheral women know he is married, ala Tiger Woods?
Why is this scenario so common?

We all know about the sins of men.
That's all we've heard - all our lives.
So much so that it fails to register anymore - it's simply not 'news' anymore.

Tiger Woods was heavily penalised for his sins.
Rightly so.

But what about the women who were in his harem?
Were they innocent victims of this man's out of control libido?

One of them got married shortly after the incident (yes, there was a man willing to wife up this woman) and recently had a baby.

This woman (neither her cronies, I would venture) did not 'love' Tiger Woods as she claimed.
If so, she wouldn't have found it so easy to disengage from Tiger and marry another man so quickly...

Sure, there is the money...
But apparently the Tiger was a bit tight-fisted with these women.

No. These women were out to hurt another woman.
They were out to hurt Tiger's wife.
And they succeeded.
Another marriage broken.


Tiger, like most men, may have had a 'roving eye'. Another victim of The Coolidge effect.
But he could never had achieved what he did without the cooperation of women.

An honourable woman never wants to break up another's marriage.
No matter how much she is under siege by her own ovulatory hormones.
A one-off mistake... sure, it happens.
A full-blown and utter disregard for the rights of another woman to her own husband however is crass and unacceptable.
Not the popular view, I am sure, but nonetheless true.

This makes me wonder why we don't hear so much about harems involving one woman and many (single) men.
Notice the phrase we don't hear so much about.
Of course these types of 'harems' occur all the time.

But there is nothing to be gained from them if all the men are unattached. No-one is hurt, afterall.

But I am willing to bet that we surely hear about them if one or more of the men is or becomes attached sometime in the future, where it becomes a case of 'look at me, I am so hot I was able to steal this man from his less attractive woman'!

Female competition of the lowest kind...
And dare I say it, these women do know that what they are doing is gravely wrong.
But they hide their shame with 'And I am not ashamed to say it!' knowing jolly well they are...
Because 'empowered feminism' eggs them on.
And they know only too well that they are hurting another woman, possibly several children, and a whole community who were witness to the union of a man and his wife.

But these same women when challenged will play the victim:

She was needy and he threw the bait at her. (In this, by the way, I do not include women who were duped into believing that the man was single. But even so... I think it is usually clear on some level if a man is married, but I am willing to stand corrected on this. And I believe any man who deceives a woman in this way is the worst kind of man there is).

She was lonely and someone gave her his company.

She was in need of validation and someone showed her some attention.

She was in some sort of trouble and someone bailed her out.

Note that in all these type of cases, the man is fulfilling what usually turns out to be a temporary need of such a flighty woman.
Once that need is fulfilled, she is gone.
And the unwitting man thinks the woman loves him: It's all about him. This woman cares about him.
Unlike his wife who doesn't understand him.


Wrong.
The truth is, she pictured his wife and she said to herself: 'I'll have what she has'.
And not only that, but 'I'll destroy what she has'.


Any woman who is willing to help a man break his marriage vows when she knows he is married is one with low impulse control at best and a highly dangerous one at worst.

In this sense, a woman like this is just using an unwitting man like this as a stepping stone on her 'hypergamous' journey.
Using the 'preselection' his wife provides as her artillery.
Once the wife is ditched, or she leaves, the man is now worthless to this type of woman.
For she is always on the hunt for an illusion. Not the real man behind said illusion.

This should not surprise any man in this position.
The signs were there all along...


Addendum:
Reading all the above to myself once more prior to publishing, I empathise with anyone who might conclude that even where the sin of a man is blatantly clear, I will still find a way to blame a woman.

Yes, valid point.
I don't disagree, actually.
But as ever with me, motive is everything.
And my intent here, is less about the culpabilisation of women and more about seeing the world with fresh eyes...to see what I may have missed in order to avoid making the mistakes I could easily make were I not looking for the pitfalls.
In other words, look for possible sins that no-one is willing to, or knowledgeable enough about, to point out to me, so that I don't make them one day.

Yes, this type of thinking does require a certain willingness on the part of women to fall on our collective swords.
But mea culpa is not a foreign concept to me :-)


I find that the best teacher is the one who won't teach you but will sit back and watch you teach yourself.

When is a fitness test not a fitness test?

I love playing the victim just as much as the next woman. When done within certain boundaries, it is actually quite comforting. It feels great.
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.