The following was written as a reply to Stingray’s excellent post, here.  I’ve been tired lately, so I don’t want to post this to her blog as I wrote it originally, but I do feel the need to put it up SOMEWHERE.

Then again, I don’t really know what else to say, how else to say it.  So I guess I’m going to post it just the same, here and there, because I can’t help myself.  Brat.

Thank you for this.  I struggle similarly.  My particular bent is that I love learning and researching so much that…  I neglect the more practical and relational aspects.  The intellectual side is just so much easier for me, but then, even the great and intellectual church fathers I read stress the importance of prayer and acts and devotions.  It’s very frustrating!  It’s like I’m more Facebook stalking God, reading and learning more than relating.

Between mdavid’s comments about works, and seeing SSM’s recent post about the prodigal son, at least I have a starting point to get back to it.  But, if I can, I’m going to shamelessly ask if people will offer a prayer or two for me, to help me get the momentum going.  XD  I know it’s not just me, it’s the Spirit too… but as you say, it’s hard, not having the <I>feeling</I> of God…  Even though I know better, it still feels like it’s all on me, that I need to do this, that, be more disciplined, be more holy…  I need to go back and reread the Gospels and Romans again…  I’m crushing myself under my own expectations, I think.  T.T  I don’t want to cut myself too much slack and just be a “Churchian”, but I just <I>can’t</i> do it all either.  But then, what if that’s just me holding back?  What if I just need a little more faith?  I don’t know, and I’m so wary of any reassurance, afraid that I’m just rationalizing things when I should know better…  Sorry to flood your combox like this.  It kind of boiled up, and even though I don’t post much, I feel like I can trust the people who hang out here.  I’ve just been exhausted lately.

A note, before I begin:

The first part of this, strictly regarding what I want in a devotional, was a thought I had and believed worth keeping.  So I sat down to type it up and save for later.  As I continued typing, it became more of a desperate plea.  And I think that’s worth keeping too.  And since I hardly post here, I thought, perhaps I should put it out there, in case someone else might be helped by it, or simply for my own vanity, or as an additional measure against losing it.  I don’t really know.  But whatever, for whatever reason, here is my little scribbling:

When I say I want a daily devotional, what I don’t mean is motivational speech packaged with a few Christian words and the odd Bible quote.

I want a Christian, Catholic Theology that is so beautiful, so moving, so inspirational and aspirational that I can’t help but to be motivated. I want a sign of a love so grandiose and so gratuitous as to be absolutely whimsical. I want a truth that shakes me right to the core, a love that takes my hand, justice that leaves me breathless, wisdom that reverberates in my soul, knowledge that transcends what I thought I knew – I want a glimpse of God. Please, Lord, let me but glimpse you. Let me love you, worship and adore you. Let me be counted as but the least of Your saints, that I might have some crumb of their glory, Your glory. Lord, help me to love You. I am so painfully aware of my lack of proper love for You. I give You short shrift; I fail to set aside the time. Let me have but a taste, keep me folded close to Your side, for I fear to wander, yet know I shall.

Lord, I am the most foolish of Your sheep: the one that knows how much it needs and relies on You, yet wanders about nevertheless. I need to surround myself with Your devotions, lest I otherwise fall away. God, grant me the grace to pursue you with determination, that I might finish the course set before me, to run with endurance the race to Your side.

Even in my weakness, I am so proud as to make myself superlative, echoing after Paul.  If Paul was the worst of sinners, how can I dare to be better?  But if Paul was the worst of sinners, how dare I equate myself to him, to make a claim for myself as to being, in fact, the worst?  Do I know better than Paul?  If I can get myself to but the edge of pride, I will be a million times closer to God than I am now, obsessing over whether ’tis vanity to make myself out as the “worst” when I know there are others objectively worse, or the beginning of a real search for humbleness, to esteem myself “worse” despite others, because what does it matter if others are worse if we’re all destined to punishment just the same?  Or all destined to be saved just the same?  All I know is I need to focus on cleaning up my own act as much as possible, and try to be a light to everyone I come in contact with.

And I want to be a light so much.

Maybe my motives are wrong?  Maybe my motives are bad?  I want the fruit of the Spirit: I believe life will be happier and more worth living in light of God’s timeless wisdom, and I rejoice to think one day, perhaps, I will stand at my Creator’s side and have the privilege of learning everything, about everything.  My love is for knowledge, and I know there is a better way, but my motivation is for a life lived in peace and joy, and a search, and endless thirst for knowledge.  God, grant me your grace.  Amen.

So, apparently there’s a whole thing going on now between RooshV and TRP subreddit.  And I guess Rollo has chimed in against Roosh now, and we’re probably looking at some further Balkanization of the manosphere as Roosh abandons TRP and creates Neomasculinity, aiming at a more holistic approach.  I don’t know all the details as I never followed Roosh and haven’t recently followed Rollo.  Nothing against either, but as a woman, Roosh’s primary focus on PUA (at least, in the past) has not been useful to me.  And while I loved Rollo’s more psychological approach (which helped me learn what to guard against, what to encourage, what to accept as temporarily uncomfortable but ultimately healthier for my relationship with my husband, etc.) I have learned a lot from him and felt it was time to move on.

That’s not really what I want to talk about now, anyhow.  What I want to riff on is this comment, left by Bastiat’s Ghost on Alpha Game:

20 bucks says RooshV is about to slip into a long term relationship and is going to use this as a springboard to rationalize it. I’m MGTOW because I have many more profitable uses of my time than chasing tail. I don’t have the patience to maintain a harem and I’m done looking for unicorns.

So what if he wants an LTR?  Either his new Neomasculinity concept has something valuable and truthful to it, or it doesn’t.  This is an interesting sort of ad hominem attack, and what makes it particularly ironic is that it wasn’t so long ago there was a situation where the folks of the ‘sphere blindly followed when they ought to have considered emotional motivation, and now and emotional motivation is being suggested where I don’t understand there to be any evidence for it.

The incident I think of is the brouhaha over Mark Minter.  I was still new enough to the ‘sphere when Mark Minter first gained notoriety, so I mostly kept my mouth shut because I didn’t want to risk either being brushed off as a woman protesting “bitter!” or making things worse.  But it seemed obvious to me that Mark was, at that time, suffering extreme emotional duress.  He was very angry, frustrated, and, yes, I daresay somewhat bitter.  This is NOT a dismissal of him!  Far from it!  From what he exposed of himself, he had every right to be angry, frustrated, bitter!  What I think he needed at that time was the understanding of other men, similarly situated and otherwise.  He needed people who knew what he’d been through, to commiserate and heal.  His emotions were as justified as emotions ever are.

But the lionization and the platform he received?  These were gross oversights.  The kind that I suspect are brought on by a community of young men desperately wanting their own experience validated by a man “old enough to know.”  Mark is certainly older than most of the men in the parts of the sphere he was active on (not the sphere as a whole, of course).  And he had a way of writing that could get the blood moving!  So, somehow, he was held up as a hero and a martyr, when it should have been plain for all to see he was a wounded veteran, in need of help.

It ought to have been plain that he was not a man acting based on cool, detached logic, but a man acting in the fury of a primal pain.  By no means should he have been dismissed because he was angry and suffering, yet by the same token he should have been shown understanding by the community.  Listening to a man who has been recently divorce-raped talk about women is as fruitful as listening to a violently raped woman talk about men.  They may well have insights that are useful and valuable and their experiences should not be hand-waved away because “emotion,” but they just can’t talk about these things reasonably until they have dealt with the emotion.  To the extent they speak truth, they genuinely speak truth, but what they say ought to be carefully scrutinized to determine if they are, in fact, speaking truth, or speaking pain.

Or, as Minter might have put it:  “Angry, heartbroken old man?  Duh.  Desperation to be validated?  Duh.  Finds a community which revels in and exalts his pain as the voice of reason?  Duh.”

I wish Mark and Kate Minter all the best.  I pray that he can find the healing he needs.  I hope that he is able to find a community of men that truly supports him, where he can work out his pain, where he can learn the truths he did not know before, that he might live a better life in the future.  I think the men who gave him a platform did him a grave disservice by elevating him rather than empathizing with him.  His was a case where a little “ad hominem” would have been appropriate, not that he should have been argued with, but that people should have seen he was in no state to be a part of an argument.  His suffering was real, and it did point to truths that are taught in the sphere, but it lead to exaggerations and distortions that went unresolved, due to people’s eagerness to be affirmed.

So, what about Roosh?  If Minter’s circumstances meant that we ought to have taken his words with a bit of understanding, then would the possibility of Roosh going into an LTR invalidate what he has to say?

Well, no.  Because Minter’s circumstances didn’t invalidate his words, it just meant his words ought to have been tempered by understanding.  His experience does support the ‘sphere notions about what the pain of divorce is like, about the risks inherent to marriage, about the base inclinations of some women.  Truth is truth is truth, period, end of story.  It cannot be handwaved off because of the source, but the source ought to be reasonably considered to determine how likely a supposed truth is actually truth before field testing, depending on the nature of what’s proposed.  For example, if I want to build a house, I would be more likely to get good advice from a contractor than from someone I met on the street.  That doesn’t mean the person on the street couldn’t possibly give me good information.  I would just need to be a little more careful and evaluate their words a little more than I might otherwise.

So let’s say, for the sake of argument, that Roosh is just an official declaration away from the news that he’s in an LTR, maybe even marriage!  What does this mean for what he has to say?  Men should evaluate his words as carefully as ever they should have, determining whether he is sharing truth or just an emotional experience.  And if it is both, then men reading ought to carefully sift for what is valuable to their life experience, instead of throwing the baby out with the bath water.

Just another post that would probably be buried otherwise. Italicized portion is a quote from another commenter, to whom I am responding as briefly as I know how. (Not very.)

In any event, my point is close to the topic. The reaction of most commenters to this essay is to advocate for men to date younger women who are more traditional. Women in their late 20s who have followed Christian sexual morality, but not yet married, are another option. They are also much less “damaged” than the average 30-year-old woman.

This has been discussed before, although I don’t recall where (I don’t think it was at Dalrock’s, sorry I don’t remember the venue!) I will just try to sum up what I recollect for you.

As has already been stated, women who remain virgins into “old” age do exist, but are pretty rare. ANd, as with all women (indeed, all potential spouses), should be vetted carefully. There are simply different concerns to look out for. On the one hand, you may have a woman who is truly committed to chastity, and purity with a future spouse, and eager to lay some love on a husband once she finds him, and has just been REALLY UNLUCKY dating/courting-wise. This was admitted to be possible, but pretty unlikely. It was more likely to be a sign of one of two things (as I recall): either she’s totally frigid, or she has turned her chastity into a virginity obsession. Third option which comes to my mind: she is a “technical” virgin, virgin-in-vagina-only 😛

The “frigidity” case is rather similar to a recent post of Dalrock’s wrt “true love doesn’t wait” – basically, she is able to keep her virginity so late (and through such a hormonal, sexual stage of life) because she has very little or no sex drive, and is a dangerous bet for marriage on account of the fact that she will be less likely to want to fulfill her marital duties. Even if she didn’t start frigid, and was once eager to marry, battling and stamping out her sex drive for so many years could easily leave an indellible mark.

The viriginity-into-an-idol was also sorta-kinda discussed recently, in the “slutting made her a better Christian” article. Essentially, the girl has devoted so much thought an energy into maintaining her virginity that it becomes a major part of her identity, and transitioning into non-virgin, sexual and willing wife is difficult or impossible: bad marriage material for essentially the same reason, slightly different rationale.

And the third option (which may have been discussed, I don’t recall) and is probably not what you had in mind, but just to be thorough, is that she is a “virgin” only insomuch as she has never had P-in-V sex, but has done plenty of other things. These are perhaps worse than a regular slut, in that they will likely have all the baggage of a high N, while still claiming the moral high ground.

A la: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfpVY_ZHGDg

In any event, there’s still a high risk for 27+ year old women virgins to be pretty damaged, although they may be damaged differently than the high N gals that are their peers. Best bet continues to be a young girl with a low N, ideally 0. Screen carefully, and be aware that there are still risks.

Here’s one I posted to a video by atheist Jaclyn Glenn, on her video . As a nota bene, I watched a few of her other videos, and so make references to them in an effort to be more persuasive. I believe the comment can stand on its own (just ignore personal references) so here it is.

Hello Ms. (?) Jaclyn Glenn! I am sorry to hear you didn’t sleep well the other night. I think we can all sympathize!

I absolutely understand the frustration in hearing a smart person say dumb things. I would like to point out, as I am sure you know, that all people in all camps are prone to this sort of behavior, but it is especially grating coming from people of whom you have reason to believe should know better. May I suggest that this is the best time, then, to consider avoiding an amygdala hijack and ask the person to clarify their meaning? (Obviously Twitter isn’t a great forum for that, so I’m not trying to fault you, just being rhetorical ^-^)

These catch phrases about “Atheism requires Faith” are just as silly as the atheist catch phrases, which you rightly pointed out (in your recent video on converting Christians to Atheism) are bad form in a genuine debate or outreach effort. While both sides think that their catch phrases are a true, if exaggerated, characterization of each other, I think if we could all calm down, we’d realize that we both know the issues are more complicated than “God has no more evidence than the FSM” and “Atheists have blind faith.” Let’s just unpack these two examples:

With regards to the “God has no more evidence than the FSM (or fairies, or Santa, etc)” I would hope most atheists are well aware of the distinctive differences, so I will briefly point out the long tradition of belief in God vs. FSM, a long history of rational argumentation in favor of a God (argumentation which you may consider to be flawed in aspects, but it nevertheless exists, and is convincing, and was sufficient proof for many men of substantial intellect and experience) vs FSM, and the relative lack of evidence we would expect to find of fairies etc. vs. what would expect to find of God (I recognize this last one is controversial, but I am simply trying to illustrate differences, not engage in the debate as such – I appreciate everyone’s understanding, and perhaps we can debate some other time).

As to unpacking the “Atheists have blind faith,” meme, I think most Christians (and religious people) will intuitively recognize that the “faith” they here accuse atheists of is of a mightily different character than that practiced by religious folk. I think no religious person is confused enough to think that atheists are praying to Not-God that He doesn’t exist, as you and others have parodied. I believe most people, when questioned on this, would suggest the “faith” (perhaps better termed “acceptance”) displayed by average Atheists that creation could come ex nihilo, or by random, indescribably unlikely chance or by some mechanism that we have no understanding of – anything BUT a Creative God. Moreover, the “faith” (again, perhaps better termed “acceptance”) that the average atheist has that anything worth knowing or understanding can be “seen”, measured, quantified, and known empirically. This, I believe, is more the position of “materialism” than strictly defined “atheism” but there has been significant overlap of the two in my experience, and I imagine many people would agree. In this respect, atheists are “blind” to the existence of all unquantifiable, immaterial phenomena. As a brief example, you described in a recent video (about religion and bad relationships) your feelings vis a vis security, love and heartbreak. But materialism would tend to indicate that these are merely chemical phenomena, evolutionary adaptations, and nothing more. While atheism is not strictly the same as materialism, most Christians recognize the two often go hand in hand, just as you rightly indicated in your video about Feminism that, while the dictionary definition of feminism says one thing, the practice of feminism is often quite different.

Now, I might personally add another element to that of the “blind” nature of this claim, but I am not sure my correligionists would agree, so please take this as simply one person’s perspective. It has been my experience, particularly with regards to PopSci, that many people, atheists and theist alike, will “take on faith” any claim made with reference to science, without taking the time to verify it. So, when one reads on article on About.Com, HuffPo, USAToday, or whatever popular source, it is rare they will then go on the check and verify the citations, see that what the article claims “studies show” is, IN FACT, what the “studies show,” consider the methodology, the quality of the study, the sample size, the quality of the study and its peer reviews, etc. I have been guilty of this myself.

Please consider, how is accepting such studies, based on the overarching claim of “It’s science!” after they have been “translated” for common consumtion from the original information, to technical scientific journals, to less technical scientific publications (i.e. “popSci” materials and shows) and finally to general materials, which are then posted in summary form to your facebook wall, where you read half the original article – how is this vastly different to the criticism that Christians are dumb or misinformed for accepting their Bible on faith? Both these scientific claims and the Bible are “peer-reviewed”, both circumstances trust “wiser” authorities to have already gone through the arduous verification process for us, to have “done the math” and “checked the details” for us, and we generally trust that the translations of science and the Bible have been made faithful (ie with respect and fidelity to) the original source, and both are based on claim to supreme authority (the authority of God, which has been misused by people seeking power, and the authority of Science, which has also been misused by people seeking power).

I say this with no intention to “debunk” science: it is abundantly clear that science has been effective in many of its claims. I only wish those on the “science” side of the fence could be equally generous in recognizing the vast civilizing and stabilizing force that many, if not all, forms of religion have been.

Atheists are right in pointing out that many (not all) religious people have been very lax in their understanding of their world and their faith, but I have seen the same sort of willful avoidance of truth or reason in atheists as well. Many atheists, whether they mean to or not, hide this with a smokescreen of claims to greater rationality or IQ, but the fact of the matter is that many of them are arguing the same old points that philosophers going all the way back to Plato have wrestled with, without making any reference or acknowledgement of this history – they act is if no one has ever considered the “problem of Evil” before they brilliantly suggested it, and, to our great shame, most modern Christians have not been properly equipped to handle these ancient, but by no means unconsidered philosophical questions. We ALL need to be better educated on our own history and the nature of our world so as not to stumble against these challenges.

TL;DR: Christians should stop being dumb! Atheists should stop being dumb! There are answers out there to hard questions if you would just take some time to look!

Love is kind, and patient, and we all know the verse.  But one thing love isn’t (always) is nice.  We often conflate love with niceness, because being nice is, well, nice.  Nice is pleasant; nice is agreeable.  However, nice is not a virtue, and while love should be kind and gentle, it should not always be nice.

The thing about love is that truly loving behavior sometimes requires us to become uncomfortable, and to make other uncomfortable, because not to do so would be far worse.  

As a very simple example, say you were to see a young child reaching their hand out to touch a hot burner.

You would not likely think to yourself, “well, it wouldn’t be nice to say no.  He probably has a perfectly good reason for doing that.  It’s not really my place to interfere.”

No, it’s far more likely you would immediately stop the child, and scold him for the attempt.  It would not be fun for you, and if questioned, the child will certainly say he would never have wanted to be scolded.  Scolding for bad behavior isn’t “nice”, but it is surely more loving than allowing a child to burn himself.

And so, when we witness others in sin, lovingkindness means that we should, gently, compassionately, but nevertheless firmly call them out on it.  For while confrontation can be painful, and no one “enjoys” an intervention, it is better to help out brothers and sisters in Christ extricate themselves from sin than to allow them to continue, at great cost to themselves (though they may not recognize the cost). 

It’s not that I wrote a single post for this blog, and then got bored, or tired, or forgot about it. No, my reason for starting, then abandoning this poor, lonely wordpress site is far from that. The truth is, I was (am) a young woman, who was full of ideas. I was convinced that I was full of good advice and could help a ton of people: all I needed was to get my voice out there. Then, as I read more and more in the manosphere, I realized I didn’t know jack shit, and what I did know was either wrong, or misguided, or completely elementary.

So, I decided it was best to lurk for a good long while, and post the occasional comment to my favorite sites only when I felt I truly had something new to offer. My goal was not to become the commenter everyone knows from constant comments, but to slowly gain respect by commenting only when I had something to say. I didn’t want to word-vomit on other people’s blogs, nor did I feel confident in starting my own after I realized how little I knew.

However, I recently read Matt Forney’s article “Why You Should Start a Blog”, and, well, here I am. I’ve always been a voracious reader, and, for my age, a talented writer. Of course, looking back on things I wrote in junior high and even most of high school can now make me cringe (and cringe SO HARD), but, for my age, it was pretty good. Still, I like writing; I’d love to be able to publish my writing one day (that is – publish in a way that I can make money from it). If I’m ever going to do that, I need to keep practicing, rather than wait for “the perfect story” to come to mind.

That’s why I will endeavor to post regularly on this blog now. I no longer have any pretensions of knowing it all, or even providing anything new. I expect much of what I post here, at least for a while, to simply be reactions to other bloggers, or out and out ramblings. If anyone can be helped by anything I have to say, great. I love helping people, and, well, my original ambition may be tempered by my lack of knowledge, but that doesn’t mean the desire to help is not there. I’ve merely realized it will take more than armchair psychology to be effective.

And on a side note, I had not realized that pop “literature” was really so bad. I knew Twilight was crap, and that the Fifty Shades books were fanfictions of crap, dressed up with new names, but, not having read them… Well, I just assumed that the authors at least had a basic sense of flow and pacing, so on. Having just read a few excerpts, however… I mean, wow. If these people can do it, I sure fucking can. When a coworker asked me what I thought of Fifty Shades, I jokingly replied that I was writing better porn in high school. Now that I read some of it… I think my “joke” was entirely accurate. I’ve got the cheesy romance down. All I need is a plot element, and I should be in good shape to cash out.