Be wise as serpents…
Readership: All
Theme: Problems with The Red Pill / Misunderstood Models
Length: 4,000 words
Reading Time: 22 minutes
Be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.
Matthew 10:16 (ESV)
Introduction
After the Great Persecution of 2018, the Secular Manosphere petered out, and then MGTOW and the Christian Manosphere were, for a brief time before secular Red Pill 2.0 swept YouTube in 2020, the only Manosphere communities left standing. Those were the days when American Dad, Christianity and Masculinity, Dalrock, Dark Brightness, Fabius Maximus, and Σ Frame hashed through the topics of Chivalry, Complementarianism, marital authority, and the centrality of respect; IGTBAM, Warhorn, et al. locked horns with Dalrock over The Dalrock Route; and Σ Frame and Derek L. Ramsey took a few writers at Patheos to the philosophical cleaners.
Immediately after Dalrock hung up his hat in early 2020, Biblical Gender Roles (BGR) methodically attacked a complex multivariate question that had sat on the back burner for a long time — Is the Red Pill Biblical? This important topic was smoking hot for a brief time until secular Red Pill 2.0 kicked in later that same year. BGRs work on this topic indirectly sparked The Great Schism of 2020, in which the Christian Manosphere distanced itself from what was left of the secular Manosphere.
In this essay, I’ll return to one topic that was repetitively brought up by BGR in this series — the difference between Christian Frame and Worldly Frame, specifically the question of whether a Christian man’s frame should be covert, and if so, then what exactly, and how much?
First, I’ll quote a few passages from BGR to bring readers up to speed on this topic and offer some parallel commentary along the way [quotations reordered and punctuation added for ease of reading].
Covert Methods — Secular vs Christian
The author of BGR wrote,
“[The secular] Red Pill encourages men to use covert and subtle means to bring women into their frame while the Bible discourages craftiness for Christians (2 Corinthians 4:2). The Bible tells us in Proverbs 27:5, “Open rebuke is better than secret love”. Men should speak plainly and establish the parameters of their relationship early with potential wives. And after marriage, they should use instruction, rebuke, and discipline to keep their wives within their frame (worldview).
Red Pill sees the entire reason for men trying to get women into their frame is to invoke “genuine (unnegotiated)” sexual desire toward them. But as Christian men, the only “LTR” we are authorized to enter into with a woman is marriage. And our purpose for entering into marriage is more than getting a woman to genuinely desire us sexually.”
“Red Pill makes the entire point of a man’s life to covertly cause women to genuinely desire and want sex with him. But that is not the point of a man’s life from a Biblical perspective.”
Biblical Gender Roles: Is the Red Pill Concept of Frame Biblical? (2020/1/21)
Yes. This is one of the primary differences between the secular Manosphere / Red Pill and the Christian Manosphere / Red Pill. The former seeks to extract male needs from women (i.e. sexual congress), whereas the latter views women as a responsibility or a joyful burden. The former is not hesitant to employ deceptive means to achieve their ends, while the latter is questioning the moral rectitude and propriety of secrecy. Concerning the latter, we might phrase the issue in terms of the following questions.
- Should women / wives have full knowledge of, and need they be in full agreement with, a man’s / husband’s methods and motivations in his interactions with her? (I’ll call this Esoteric Masculinity.)
- Should men / husbands have full knowledge of, and need they be in full agreement with, a woman’s / wife’s methods and motivations in her interactions with him? (I’ll call this Esoteric Femininity, AKA The Feminine Mystique.)
We know that women cherish and will swear allegiance to the Feminine Mystique with their dying breath, and therefore will never permit enough transparency for the second situation to transpire, but the first is still on the table and will be explored in the next section. Altogether, I’ll call this the question of Intersexual Complicity.
The Futility of Intersexual Complicity
In the comments under this post, Jack and BGR had an exchange in which BGR wrote,
“But from what I have seen of the Christian Red Pill folks elsewhere (maybe you are not included in this) is they think much like Rollo that Red Pill is a covert philosophy. In other words, it is all about a man’s influence and him just pulling in a woman through covert and subtle means. Do you agree with that?”
Secular Red Pill gurus (e.g. Rollo Tomassi, et al.) habitually frame Red Pill knowledge as esoteric — but NOT because it is a carefully kept secret. They’ll say only men can comprehend it, and if a man tries to explain it to a woman, then she’ll reframe it from the female perspective, misunderstand, and jump to a femcentric conclusion that casts a bad light on the man (as in e.g. controlling, domineering, manipulative, etc.). They’ll say trying to explain Red Pill concepts to a woman doesn’t help in any way by any metric. It only decreases trust and respect, and makes her more difficult to deal with. They conclude that a man should not reveal his hand for these reasons.
Jack and many others in the Christian Manosphere believe this is true, especially when dealing with immature, self-centered wimmin. Deti’s post, On Red Pill Awareness (2021/7/23), and the comments below it brought out some useful insights on this topic.
Feeriker commented,
“DO NOT talk about The Red Pill to spaced out girls and W0ke cucks who will run screaming from the room because they lack the courage to face the truth.”
“More generally, NEVER waste time and effort trying to reason with people who are incapable of reason. This is a moron’s errand, as both Scripture (Proverbs 1:7) and multiple secular philosophies make clear. Avoid such people if at all possible. If it’s not possible, gear up for battle, not negotiation.”
Those “people who are incapable of reason” may very well include women, and… ahem… beloved wives.
Oscar wrote,
“The world can prevent men from talking about their preferences (mostly by punishing the few who do), but no one can stop men from exercising their preferences.
Even when men “go their own way”, they’re still exercising their preferences. They’re basically saying that they prefer to stay single than marry a debt-ridden, inked-up harlot, to cite one example.”
Yes. Talking does little good, much less trying to explain this to women. It won’t make any difference and will only create unnecessary offense.
Rontomlinson2 said,
“…my point is that, when it comes to relating to women, there’s a loophole. It’s possible to judge a woman privately and signal that judgement to her without rejecting her: via a scowl, a growl, or a frown, in context. This seems to me like a valid imposition of standards in a way that she can accept.
Another way is by the Red Pilling of men. By encouraging men not to judge each other by women’s standards, per Jack’s recent post, we indirectly influence women, since they rank themselves according to the male-perceived status of their husbands (assuming that they have husbands!)”
Yes. Women do not respond to words as well as they respond to actions (Proverbs 18:2; 23:9; 29:19). For the most part, words are only immediately effective on women when they are laced with fantasies, lies, and mythos.
RedPillBoomer described an example of what this looks like in reality.
“The number one symptom of Red Pill going mainstream is men walking away from marriage, men not preparing for marriage, and men going their own way (MGTOW). That’s Red Pill.”
“That is the ONE thing that seems to be getting their attention. I’ve noticed in the last couple years, certainly since the pandemic began, an increasing number of female clips being unpacked by RP content creators. Yes, the ladies on those clips engage in shaming behavior towards men in all sorts of ways (standard fare); however, they do seem to be getting that ‘something’s not right’ on the MMP side of the SMP/MMP and they appear increasingly unsettled and worried about it. The sheer intensity and elevation of their voices on these clips, bordering on shouting at times, seems to be a symptom of the ladies beginning to see an increasingly gloomy future as they age into their mid-thirties and forties — a future of being alone with no marriage partner in sight, and they have a good four or five decades of living left.”
So we do see discipline being enforced on women, passively and en masse, but only the Christian Manosphere recognizes the value of men actively enforcing discipline on individual women, that is, fathers on daughters and husbands on wives.
The reason why the Biblical concept of a husband disciplining his wife for failure to follow his leadership or failure to follow God’s commands is foreign to much of the secular Red Pill community is because seculars are myopically focused on what men get out of women, i.e. sexual conquest and dominion. Only the Christian Manosphere / Red Pill takes the next step of stipulating that a man must assume responsibility for a woman under his domain of authority, including her moral agency and spiritual maturity. This is a responsibility that secular men wish to avoid if at all possible.
Misinterpretations of Covert Methods — Secular vs Christian
In addition to the confusion surrounding the practical reasons why secular Red Pill voices advise men NOT to expect intersexual complicity, as mentioned above, there remains a lurking suspicion of their underlying motives for not divulging too much information to women. Many normies, and especially Christians, have the idea that the Red Pill and Game and such are some kind of esoteric secret dark arts that are mainly employed for dark purposes by Dark Triad types. So when they hear secular Red Pill gurus suggest that men should NEVER use overt methods to try and influence or modify their wife’s behavior, instead of receiving this as a word of wisdom in recognition of the reality on the ground, they’ll take this as a confirmation of their assumption that the secular Red Pill, Game, etc. is deceptive and manipulative. This is a feminine perspective at best, and rather quәәr* at worst.
* Quәәr: Viewing normal male-female intersexual relationships and interactions with visceral disgust, fear, and/or suspicion.
Over and again, I see commenters in the Christian Manosphere label charismatic Game / Rizz as ‘craftiness’, ‘deception’, ‘guile’, ‘spellbinding’, ‘toxic’, ‘witchcraft’, and whatnot. It only becomes such when the man intends to seduce and defraud the woman and the woman is careless, foolish, or immature enough to fall for it. It is NOT a sin to exude charisma / Rizz as an individual expression of one’s personality if done with joy and/or as a social grease. Women getting turned on by this is properly regarded as a side effect, NOT the main purpose (which is essentially creating temptation). It is NOT a sin if a husband employs Game / Rizz to increase heart trust and humility and to squeeze some fun and joy out of his own marriage, nor is it a sin for him to utilize the side effect of her arousal to pleasure his own wife and wow her panties off! Instead, this should be seen as a normal and regular part of a good marriage. In fact, it may be necessary if the wife is emotionally immature, excessively libidinous, or spiritually unregenerated.
Actively Creating Joy
Continuing BGR’s comment,
“While I certainly think Christian men should be men of good character, be examples and live their lives in a way that attract good Christian women I do not think a man’s authority over his woman is by passive influence only. This is what most complementarian teachers teach and they are wrong. I believe a man’s call to rebuke and discipline his wife is God’s call to him to use overt, not covert measures to consistently keep her in line with where believes God wants her to be. He is to be continually and actively washing her with the Word of God as Ephesians 5:25-27 commands.
I agree with Rollo that a man should mold his woman, but he would only see that done through passive influence. I believe a man’s molding of his woman involves direct and overt means.”
Active and direct, yes. Overt, no.
Molding should not only include discipline and rebuke, but also fun and games. In fact, there should be more fun and games than discipline and rebuke in order to maintain a positive spirit of enthusiasm in the relationship. This is an essential element of “washing her with the Word”, not only spiritually but also emotionally. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. This is one point that the secular Red Pill gets right.
Furthermore, if a man explains all his tricks for creating fun in the relationship and exposes his ploys too overtly, then the medium becomes burdened with mental tedium and self-consciousness and thereby chokes off the fun of it all. Maintaining a good humor, and the elements of surprise and unpredictability are essential for creating this impact. This is another point that the secular Red Pill gets right.
The Fulfillment of Joy
Continuing BGR’s comment,
“Certainly, Red Pill teaches men to be confident and cool under pressure, to know who they are, what they believe in, and to not live one’s life to fit and please the crowd. It certainly teaches men not to live for the approval of women. And those are good things as I have said in this series. But a primary part of Red Pill is man’s drive to sow his seed. It is his imperative. If you divorce the male imperative to sow one’s seed, to evoke “genuine desire” in women and so get sex do you know what that is — it is MGTOW which is a Red Pill off shoot. Is it not? Please correct me if I am misunderstanding that.”
Yes. This is one of the two primary differences between MGTOW and the Christian Manosphere. The latter includes women and the former does not. The other difference is that MGTOW is Black Pill / Libertarian / Nihilistic and the Christian Manosphere is Christian. (This difference suggests that women DO have a civilizing effect on men, via motivation.)
Actively creating trust, humility, and joy in a relationship, as I described in the previous section, inevitably leads to sexual congress. It is unfortunate that men and women discover this dynamic by chance outside of marriage, and fail to implement this dynamic inside marriage. Worse, men and women do not prioritize marrying someone with whom they can share this dynamic, as St. Paul advised widows to remarry “only in the Lord” (1 Corinthians 7:39). From this viewpoint, a lot of marriages occur between two people who perhaps never should’ve gotten married in the first place and are just ‘odd’ or ‘wrong’ together. This might explain, in part, why so many marriages, including those between two Christians, end in divorce.
Sin or Sanctification?
Continuing BGR’s comment,
“My point in this series is to show something that Red Pill and Blue Pill both miss. Both praxeologies seek to only to evoke the desired emotional responses from women which will then lead to desired actions from women. They simply differ on HOW to evoke the desired emotional responses.”
To expand BGR’s last sentence, Blue Pill assumes a man must seek to prove himself worthy of a woman’s love to win her heart and thereby receive her favor, whereas Red Pill employs Game tactics and theories of intersexual dynamics to inspire feelings of attraction and limerence in women.
Many voices in the Christian Manosphere, as well as BGR (if I’m not mistaken), take the stance that a man doing anything to evoke a desired emotional response from a woman or to elicit a desired action from her is ‘dancing monkey’, or gynocentric, or ‘love bombing’, or peacocking, or pedestalizing, or preening for poon, or what not. I disagree.
I take the view that men employing Red Pill knowledge and Game on women is entirely natural, and there is nothing wrong with it under two conditions.
- The dynamics of the relationship determine whether it leads to sexual congress.
- Whether this appears in the context of marriage determines whether it is sin or sanctification.
I’ve written about this many times before.
- Σ Frame: Against The Naturalistic Fallacy (2018/2/12)
- Σ Frame: Rebranding the Natural Order as “Misogyny” (2021/8/9)
- Σ Frame: Is Our Fallen Nature as God Designed it? (2021/10/4)
- Σ Frame: A Volitional Model of Cascade Courtship (2021/11/15)
- Σ Frame: The Mystery of Glorifying a Provision for the Flesh (2023/6/20)
- Σ Frame: Natural Affection (2023/10/18)
Adding Agency
Continuing BGR’s comment,
“From everything I have seen of Red Pill, it completely rejects a man appealing to a woman’s sense of duty and honor as if women are incapable of having any such sense. So for Red Pill — a father teaching his daughter that it is her duty to give her body to her future husband and her duty to cultivate a desire for her future husband — is utter absurdity and a fool’s errand. For a husband to appeal to his wife’s sense of duty to God and her faith in appealing to her to willingly give her body to him as well as cultivating her own desire for him is also seen by Red Pill as a fool’s errand.
But we know from history that women, when properly trained in their faith, can actually have a great sense of duty and honor. In other words, if a woman truly loves God and his Word she can and will love her husband. A woman can learn to give her body, even when she does not desire it, from a sense of duty and honor. This is all foreign to Red Pill from what I have seen.”
Here, BGR is describing spiritually regenerated women who have learned to exercise moral agency. This is an important distinction that changes both the context and what can be reasonably expected. The secular Red Pill generally assumes that women are NOT spiritually regenerated and have little to no moral agency. The Christian Red Pill assumes that women DO have agency, but it has to be taught and trained.
In essence, BGR is asking how women can mature and become fit for marriage. Since then, this question has been answered by several authors (e.g. Jack, Red Pill Apostle, Thedeti, et al.) — a man must discipline her, hold her accountable, and teach her to exercise moral agency.
Contextual Appropriateness
Jack wrote a response to BGR’s post at Σ Frame: Do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing. (2020/1/27), in which he addressed the contextual appropriateness of actions within an intersexual interaction, namely these.
- Active vs. Passive
- Overt vs. Covert
- Covert vs. Crafty
Under this post, BGR responded,
“This is a great article you have written and I don’t see anything that pops out to me that I would disagree with. I don’t disagree with all covert action or a husband doing passive things to influence his wife. In fact, I think it is absolutely necessary for a husband to sometimes take covert action, act in passive manners toward his wife or keep some information from her.
What I was getting at is that the non-Christian version of Red Pill I have seen (aka Rollo) seems to say husbands should NEVER use overt methods to try and influence or modify their wife’s behavior. In other words, the Biblical concept of a husband disciplining his wife for failure to follow his leadership or failure to follow God’s commands is foreign to much of the Red Pill community.”
The Question of Intersexual Complicity
Now to the crux of this essay.
The question that BGR brings up again and again (explicitly in boldface above) is one of intersexual complicity. That is…
- Should wives have full knowledge of, and need they be in full agreement with, the ways of a man with a woman?
- Can women develop moral agentic capacity such to be (or become) a companion and helper to a man?
- Is intersexual complicity a defining and/or a hallmark characteristic of Christian intersexual relations / marriage? If so, then is this aspect methodically or purposefully rejected by secular Red Pill?
Cane Caldo and Deep Strength answered the first question in the negative. Wives do not need to know, understand, or agree. They only need to follow and submit.
The second question has been answered in the positive. Wives can learn and grow, however a man (father or husband) must shoulder the responsibility of disciplining, guiding, and teaching her.
I’ll answer the third question as follows. Assuming or expecting intersexual complicity necessarily presumes an egalitarian or allyship relationship structure, both of which are inferior to Headship. Another possibility might be the Peaceful Unity structure, which is a union of two very mature individuals. Intersexual complicity IS a defining hallmark characteristic of a Churchistanian / Complementarian intersexual relationship, in which it is generally assumed that the man must agree with the woman more often than not. But this is NOT an ideal Christian relationship structure. In general, egalitarianism IS methodically and purposefully rejected by the secular Manosphere / Red Pill, and it should also be rejected by the Christian Manosphere in favor of Headship Dominion. The way this plays out is complex and varies on a case-by-case basis, as I described here.
Conclusions
Four years have passed since BGR’s exposition, and most of the questions he brought up have been answered, and yet there is still much confusion about this topic. This essay is intended to summarize and wrap up these areas of doubt.
Also during this time, the Red Pill has gone mainstream, and yet it is still regarded as diabolical, hidden, secret knowledge. Instead of being regarded as debased / esoteric, The Red Pill should be common knowledge espoused as wisdom. Ironically, the secular Manosphere is reaching this conclusion faster than the Christian Manosphere.
Furthermore, the secular Manosphere is using Red Pill knowledge and Game to further their mastery of women. Christian marriage is not any different in this respect. Men should be using this knowledge to strengthen their marriages and exercise Headship Dominion over their homes and families. Christian Red Pill Game should be something we see regularly between happily married couples. This is one way in which God is glorified in marriage relationships.
BGR wrote,
“God created man to image him and thereby bring him glory (1 Corinthians 11:7). A man’s powerful driving sexual desire is certainly a part of his God given nature and man displays certain aspects of God’s nature in his sexual desire for woman. But man was created to image God in far more ways than just his sexual desire toward woman.
God created the woman for the man (1 Corinthians 11:9) so that man could image God as a husband in marriage and father to his children. God says in 1 Timothy 3:4 that a man must be “One that ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection with all gravity”.
Biblical Gender Roles: Is the Red Pill Concept of Frame Biblical? (2020/1/21)
What Christians are finding very difficult to accept is that love can be expressed in the form of Game / Rizz, and that this expression, when done in love, can cover a multitude of sins in marriage (1 Peter 4:8).
Charismatic Game / Rizz is called evil and sin by both the church and the clown world for the same reason that the secular Manosphere has celebrated it — simply because it has been successfully used to seduce and debauch women. It’s time we recognized that it can also be successfully used to build godly unions within or leading up to marriage.
As long as we condemn the Red Pill, Charismatic Game / Rizz as debased, esoteric, and evil, the knowledge of God is cut off from younger Generations.
Almost! Some of them are discovering this for themselves, outside of church and without sanctified parental marriages. It’s a miracle! Praise God for not allowing Himself to be moralized and rationalized into obscurity.
Related
- Σ Frame: Do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing. (2020/1/27)
- Σ Frame: Men’s Fantasy of Emotional Intimacy (2021/6/23)
- Σ Frame: Secrets (2021/8/18)
- Σ Game: AI Explains the First Rule of SSH (2025/8/8)
