Another Piece Of The Puzzle

I had an online exchange yesterday that, I think it's fair to say, blew my brain.

There is a dark corner of Reddit called "The Red Pill". Its denizens are self-proclaimed "pick-up artists" whose misogyny would be comical if it weren't so frightening. Their guiding philosophy is that, contrary to, well, pretty much everything you've seen and heard in society, men, not women, are an oppressed group. How can this be? Simple. Women have the power to withhold sex, which they view as a fundamental right they're too often denied.

They've dressed this up and made it look less self-serving by citing (cherry-picking, really) all sorts of statistics and situations they say prove a societal bias towards women. For instance, a woman can fabricate a rape out of whole cloth and ruin a man's life; seventy percent of divorces are initiated by women (obviously and for no other reason to deprive a man of his hard-won wealth!); and then, of course, there's this:

The goal of Red-Pillers is to assert their fundamental masculinity, which can only be done by dominating females. This is called "being an alpha". As a man who has had "beta" spat at him several times online over the years, I figure I'll wear that label proudly if it lets me maintain my humanity...

Interestingly, the man who actually fleshed out 'alpha' philosophy says this:

My definition of an alpha is someone who wants to become the best version of themselves so that they can best serve the world.
--Mike Romaniello, author of MAN 2.0: BECOMING THE ALPHA

I like that definition. A lot. It fits with one of my core beliefs: not power over, but power with; becoming better is always good, but not better than others, better than I was before.

In short, Red Pillers are dedicated to improving their self-confidence, a worthy goal and one I share for myself But rather than building it up, they focus on tearing everyone else's down. Trust me, I've considerably sanitized their belief system. The actual forum is frightening. Indeed, Elliott Rodger, the man who murdered six people and spawned #YesAllWomen....was a Red Pill community member.

Anyway, all that was necessary background to the conversation I had elsewhere on Reddit yesterday The discussion started with someone's much-less-than-pleasant experience in The Red Pill forum, and it quickly got around to self-confidence and its relation to being rejected. A forum member with the handle TheIcelander said this:

"Hey, maybe she just wasn't into me. And that's okay because I'm able to feel good about myself and be confident without positive outside feedback."

That second part is where a lot of people really need work. For me I needed to feel safe opening up and being accepted by people. It's all well and good to like yourself, but if nobody else likes you you're going to be pretty lonely

That prompted me to condense ten years of Breadbin personal posts into sixteen lines:

I've always told people you have to be loveable before you can be loved. And I really, truly believe that. BUT...
I fall in love with people from the inside out. If you are kind, intelligent and above all empathic, I'm going to be attracted to you. By the time I get to know you, provided you have those qualities, I will find you beautiful...regardless of what you actually look like, within standard humanoid parameters. (My loves have run the gamut from willowy to pixie to morbidly obese and everything in between.) Think of the best Christmas present you ever got. Now, what was it wrapped in? That's how I feel about bodies.
That's not normal. Most people do not think like this.
So while I know I have lots of qualities to overcome my euphemistically "plain" appearance, it is bloody hard to forget the insults hurled by the hundreds through school and later, the seemingly endless parade of people who viewed me as a shoulder to cry on (so long as they didn't have to, you know, actually touch the shoulder). Having experienced plenty of both, I can tell you that "I love you, but not in that way" stings far worse than "I hate you". You get to the point where any person who can look past your outer layer, (even though she's a treasure beyond price for so doing)...has got to be crazy on some level.

Which in turn gave me this...and caused my mind to melt.

My problem is that I'm a traditionally attractive person. I've got the tall, dark, and handsome thing down to a science. I don't have to really work to get people to be into me. Until they start talking to me. Then I don't really have much to say unless we get on the topic of space exploration or economics or the analysis of old TV shows. I'm terrible with emotions. I'm learning empathy and romance but I'm still, frankly, terrible at it.

My biggest problem has been that people project onto me what they wish me to be. Which is usually empathic and romantic. So they get disappointed when I don't text them because I don't have anything to say and don't want to bother them.

So, like a crappy Christmas present, I get tossed in the corner and ignored once my wrapping paper is off. And it still results in the "I love you, but not in that way" reaction.

I sat and stared at that for an unknowable length of time, trying to make the words make sense. Here was a 'tall, dark, and handsome' man claiming earnestly to have heard "I love you, but not in that way". That wasn't possible...was it?

(Ken, was it not just three blog entries ago you copypasted Richard Cory? Do you not remember having the ever-loving fuck scared out of you when your best friend--the very handsome man who leads a seemingly charmed existence--mentioned to you in passing that he thought of himself as Richard Cory? Do you actually pay attention to the shit you write?)

Apparently not.

I still have trouble feeling good about myself without that positive outside feedback. Sometimes even with it. Drives Eva batshit crazy. I've been wrestling with that for a couple of months now, because I really need to conquer my social anxiety if I'm going to take the next step, personally and professionally. But shaking a lifetime of self- and other-inflicted social conditioning is hard mental work. The bad feelings are wickedly persistent, like those weeds you can't kill with anything short of fire.

I feel like that conversation yesterday gave me another piece of the puzzle: that handsome men struggle with self-confidence issues too. I'm trying to figure out where that fits into this new awareness I'm cultivating. I'd like to think it means that confidence actually is completely independent of appearance. If that's true, then I can let go of this weight that's been crushing me for so many years...just put it down and walk away from it with my head held high. And I could go...anywhere.

But if that is true, then where does that sense of self-worth that "alphas" have come from? For Red Pillers it's easy: they steal it from other people. For those of us with a conscience and a soul...not so much. I've been trying for many many years to raise confidence in others, on the principle that the only way to experience something is to give it away. And I feel fantastic doing it. But the payback is not self-sustaining. It's like an engine turning over and over, trying to catch, never quite managing. If I could get this damned thing started, I could drive it somewhere, and never you mind my driving phobia.
I'm missing one critical piece of information. Does anyone know what it is?