Ride the Female-Brain Egregore

A new day, a new way of talking about discourse. This time, we will be talking about the differences between masculine and feminine discourse online.

Please forgive me, reader. I promise that this is not an attempt to return to the “gender slop” conversation that I so thoroughly explored last month. Nevertheless, we need to talk about how men and women process information differently, and how this difference shapes and, many times cripples the transmission of necessary ideas online.

It seems that today, no matter where I look, dno matter what controversy I am examining, the growing divergence between men’s and women’s worldviews lurks in the background, defining the controversy and making its rectification impossible.

Now more than ever, women and men are divided politically, the rate of family formation is declining, and women in particular are increasingly expressing an unprecedented level of contempt for their male counterparts. Civilization can survive many disasters. But it cannot survive men and women generally hating each other. Families will crumble. Trust will collapse. Communications will break down. The center will not hold.

The ultimate culprit for this crisis between men and women is obviously the internet, or at least the internet as it existed post 2012. After the smartphone became a thing and the social media revolution solidified, women started defining themselves through online profiles, and the great cultural shattering commenced. Females became insane, males became bitter, and the institutions became sclerotic, doubling down on old bad ideas, totally unable to course correct. Now we are wandering around in the ruins of what once was, wondering why nothing works, slowly realizing that there is no way to argue ourselves out of this shitty situation.

The great irony of our age is that the internet was designed as a medium for communication, yet we can’t seem to communicate our way out of problems that originate online. On the surface, the reasons for this are not obvious. Considering that nobody wants society to collapse, it seems we could just talk about our issues until we reach a conclusion. As imagined, the internet was supposed to be the perfect place for discourse, a mechanism for the free exchange of information, and the arena of reason where good ideas could triumph. But as everyone pretty much understands, in 2026, discourse is dead, at least as a dialectic between two competing ideas. As such, it seems that the internet, as a tool for advancing human well-being, is broken.

But perhaps we are thinking about the problem the wrong way?

For all my other disagreements with the man, Walt Bismark understands two critical truths about the modern online world. First, that social media is fundamentally a feminine space, where victory is conferred by perception, appearance, and being on the right side of drama, rather than by strength, winning arguments, or getting things done IRL. Second, since this feminine nature of online space will never change, we are using the internet incorrectly. Instead of lamenting the fact that people online are unreasonable, and social media doesn’t work like the Harvard faculty lounge, we should be trying to game the politics of the mean girls’ lunch table. Grabbing a surfboard to ride the feminine tide of online opinion rather than swinging futilely against the waves.

Too few people understand that the internet is a feminine place. Fewer yet grasp the implications and ask how such a female social space might be manipulated to good ends. Even Walt, after noticing this state of affairs, does not take the next logical step and ask how a moral actor, stuck in a female-dominated environment, might use this knowledge to reach a higher end. Like gamblers, these people know that the house always wins, but then just ante up again for a straight game instead of trying to count cards.

What is stranger still is that this is not a new problem. As many great men have said, the collective public mind behaves like a woman. People think that the movement of this collective will is irrational because it doesn’t follow the form of “question-analysis-conclusion”, but it has its own internal logic that can be mastered, just like flesh-and-blood women.

Despite what some red-pillers might say. Women do indeed have a process for validating ideas, just in a different way. In female spaces, proof is established through social acceptance, submitting subjects to tests, and determining how they win approval in the eyes of the powers that be.

As someone once said online,

“When women (or weak men) encounter a new idea, they don’t ask ‘is this true?’ but rather ‘Am I allowed to believe this is true’ or ‘would high-status people like it if I said this was true?’. Their understanding of discourse is entirely consensus-based and status-oriented. It doesn’t map strongly to truth.”

As usual, this sentiment was offered as the end of a conversation when it should have been the beginning. We can see what doesn’t work but also what does.

So why don’t we use what works to make sure that truthful ideas prevail in the long term?

For this reason, I think it might be helpful to formally describe the process by which female social spaces evaluate new ideas, outlining how they gradually develop their perception of what is good and true, discarding one perspective in favor of another over a sufficiently long time frame. With some insight, it might be possible to discern a general pattern in feminine discourse that favors certain modes of engagement over others. Perhaps one might even understand such systems well enough to promote good ideas inside feminine spaces, rather than constantly just calling those spaces “irrational”.

However, before we begin this thought experiment, it might be useful to clarify the terms. In this article, we discuss “female spaces” characterized by feminine incentive structures and dominated by people who think in feminine ways. These concepts don’t map exactly onto women qua women. And almost no one who talks about such differences implies that they are categorical. Nevertheless, there will be comments accusing me of pigeonholing “All Women,” so I should clarify here.

Hereafter, we can refer to people who think in a stereotypically female way as “Female Brained Persons (FBPs), and people who think in a stereotypically male way as “Male Brained Persons” (MBPs). Female-Brained Persons are social-status-oriented; they think in terms of vibes and emotions, they understand power as an extension of social approval, and truth as an extension of social consensus. Male-Brained Persons are object-abstraction-oriented; they think in terms of action and consequence, they understand power as an extension of strength and circumstances, and truth in terms of observation and prediction.

There is nothing inherently good or bad about being an FBP or an MBP. A lot of male humans are actually Female-Brained-Persons, especially in this era of female-dominated education. Occasionally, one encounters a female human who is, in fact, a Male-Brained person. It’s not as common as it used to be, but it happens. Each type has its strengths and its domains of dominance.

However, one area of Female-Brained Dominance is the online ideas space. So, for those interested in the transmission of ideas, it makes sense to understand how dialectics works inside of it.

For general purposes, we can write out this process like a template, calling the intrusive new ideology the <NEW THING> at odds with established orthodoxy that everyone believes, called the <CURRENT ORDER>. This way, we could talk about the flow of ideas inside a feminine discourse through an “FBP discourse template”, which can be applied to any set of new ideas from “gay-marriage”, “Civil Rights,” or “Transgenderism” to any of the edgy things that the dreaded “Dissident Right” talks about regularly.

So imagine a typical group of Female-Brain-Persons (FBPs), conservative by nature, and defenders of the <CURRENT ORDER>. <CURRENT ORDER> is the best way. <CURRENT ORDER> is just the way we do things. No special action is needed to defend the ideas of <CURRENT ORDER>; it’s just common sense, the way good people have always done things.

Well, perhaps not exactly. FBPs are aware that ideas have changed. They know about the “bad old ways” that existed in the before times. FBPs don’t like to admit it, but a large amount of their mental energy is spent reflecting on the righteous victory of <CURRENT ORDER> over the “bad old ways”; such ruminations make the FBPs feel secure and happy, so their media diet tends to focus on stories about how the <CURRENT ORDER> defeated the “bad old ways” either as history or as fiction. It sure is good that all that bad stuff is restricted to the past, and all future changes will simply be extensions of <CURRENT ORDER> along the principles of <CURRENT ORDER>.

But then one day, the FBPs encountered something different. They are exposed to <NEW THING>. It is decidedly not like <CURRENT ORDER>, but also not entirely dismissible as the “bad old ways”. This idea needs to be processed; hence, the Female-Brained-Person Dialectic commences.

FBP - “I am a firm believer in <CURRENT ORDER>, <CURRENT ORDER> is just how things are. If this <NEW THING> is going to be entertained, then it needs to COMPLY with the rules of <CURRENT ORDER>.”

Now it’s important to understand that, before any contention is introduced, FBPs emotionally see a world where <CURRENT ORDER> is the only living idea. There are no active debates or controversies that have a moral dimension, not really. All other ideas have been defeated by <CURRENT ORDER> and therefore arrive in the world pre-disqualified.

Stable mono-moral societies are safe and have clear status hierarchies, which FBPs enjoy participating in. So, naturally, almost all FBPs are big public supporters of the <CURRENT ORDER>, and new ideas are judged on the basis of the <CURRENT ORDER>. If there are no contradictions between <CURRENT ORDER> and <NEW THING>, or if <NEW THING> is simply an extension of <CURRENT ORDER>, then the FBPs are free to ignore it or integrate it into their lives as an eccentric accessory. However, if there is some conflict between <NEW THING> and the < CURRENT ORDER>, then there can be no debate. The <NEW THING> is an enemy and must be destroyed.

Once <NEW THING> is identified as oppositional, it will not be entertained or even tolerated. It will not be examined in terms of truth; it will not be given a chance to argue its cause. As with any vector of disease or corruption, the only rational choice is to cast it out and exclude it from the community and home before it can harm anyone further.

FBP - “This <NEW THING> isn’t complying with <CURRENT ORDER>. Therefore, <NEW THING> is BAD, and the people associated with it are BAD also! In fact, those BAD <NEW THING> males are making me feel unsafe!”

Exclusion is the first reaction of FBPs once they realize that <NEW THING> is, in some sense, incompatible with the reigning old thing. The <NEW THING> is therefore bad. It’s icky. It’s a disease vector. It could contaminate us. People who spread it are literally hurting us and are bad and need to be stopped!

There is no understanding that <NEW THING> could contain partial truths or that examining its strengths and weaknesses might have benefits for the community. The <NEW THING> is bad and dirty. It’s icky. It’s creepy! How could you even BE the kind of person who talks about it or brings it into our home? Drop it instantly! Repent! Now go wash your hands!

For those Male-Brained Persons who believe in the <NEW THING>, leaving this stage can be difficult. You are instantly going to be labeled as a “bad person” by the FBPs and excluded from everything. Also, any other MBPs who believe in the <CURRENT ORDER> have no incentive to engage in dialogue with the <NEW THING>, and, to the extent that your <NEW THING> luminaries have any intellectual concepts that the <CURRENT ORDER> men think are useful, those ideas will be copied without citation for the benefit of strengthening the <CURRENT ORDER> status quo.

The only way things change, from this position, is through the slow process of attrition against the reigning order. Presumably, there is something about the <NEW THING> that is appealing; otherwise, there would be no need to guard against it through exclusion. Most of the time, this <NEW THING> either resolves some internal contradiction in the <CURRENT ORDER> or otherwise touches a piece of the truth that the <CURRENT ORDER> considers anathema.

Therefore, despite its total social exclusion, the <NEW THING> provides some benefit to people who at least partially adopt it privately, especially to Male-Brained Persons, who are typically more responsible and more concerned with the real consequences of ideas than with their social acceptability. The <NEW THING> may very well provide an advantage for MBPs by eliminating contradictions and allowing them to operate more confidently, or by making them aware of an aspect of reality they can capitalize on. Soon, other MBPs, less encumbered by social expectations, will notice and become interested in <NEW THING>. In very private settings, the Male-Brained-Persons will begin debating the merits of <NEW THING> versus the <CURRENT ORDER>.

At first, interested MBPs will voice appreciation of <NEW THING> only in secret. But sooner or later, MBPs who just don’t give an F*** will start openly adopting <NEW THING> to the chagrin of almost all the Female-Brained Persons around them.

Initially, the public adopters of <NEW THING> will be low-status MBPs (high-status MBP believers have too much to lose from exposure to disapproval). However, as the support for <NEW THING> grows, more higher-status men will slowly become quiet defenders of <NEW THING> as the social consequence for doing so wanes.

Finally, a set of undeniably strong and good MBPs will “come out” as being believers in the <NEW THING> and make a very reasonable plea for acceptance from a position of power. Not being able to deny these otherwise powerful males a reasonable request, the Female-Brained-Persons attempt to exclude the <NEW THING> entirely from the social sphere will fail.

Total containment is broken, and so the FBPs will reach for the next tool in their toolbox: Isolation.

FBP - “Alright, so some non-bad people believe in <NEW THING>, but that’s just them being weird. Don’t you think it’s weird to be associated with <NEW THING>? It’s just weird. I know people do <NEW THING>, but you really shouldn’t, it’s just not a good look. I mean, I know some people do it, but still, it’s just a little creepy!”

At this stage, some Male-Brained Persons are adopting the <NEW THING>. However, for the most part, the high-status MBPs are only discreetly entertaining <NEW THING> out of necessity. Some low or mid-status MBP autists are embracing <NEW THING> in a way that is conspicuous, so it is now impossible to ignore that <NEW THING> is now part of the social order, despite its ostensible conflict with the <CURRENT ORDER>.

This state of affairs is becoming increasingly stressful to FBPs. After all, isn’t <CURRENT ORDER> just the way we do things? There is no way <NEW THING> could change that without disrupting the polite social order. After all, if <CURRENT ORDER> isn’t the way, how can Female-Brained Persons enforce the rules against the Male-Brained Persons?

But maybe <NEW THING> isn’t supposed to challenge <CURRENT ORDER>. Maybe <NEW THING> is just supposed to be kind of a weird side show kept apart from polite society. After all, Most Female-Brained Persons have a very special Male-Brained Person in their lives who does weird things all the time, from building Warhammer armies to disassembling household appliances to discarding essential hygiene practices when they are “roughing it” outdoors. None of these things is strictly “good,” but they are tolerable, because the MBP who do them are good for other reasons.

So the <NEW THING> can stay as long as there are ground rules to keep its impropriety separate from public spaces where FBPs operate.

Keep <NEW THING> out of the house; only talk about it on your own time; don’t let the Joneses hear about this little indiscretion. After all, what would the neighbors say? <NEW THING> isn’t a good look for us, so keep it on the down-low, please? I am only putting up with this because of you.

And, of course, it goes without saying that, at this stage, MBPs can’t argue about the virtues of <NEW THING> with FBPs, no matter how high-status you are otherwise. They aren’t interested because <NEW THING> implicitly conveys low status. They are tolerating these deviations because of the other things they like about some male; they are certainly not entertaining them for their own sake.

Ultimately, unlike exclusion, Isolation is a much more stable response because it proposes a boundary that is, in theory, respectable. Each team has its own space, a respectable social world that fits its needs. The FBPs uphold traditions in socially respectable spaces with the <CURRENT ORDER>. Then there is a separate seedier space for the MBPs to discuss the <NEW THING>, with its associated social penalty factored in as just the cost of doing business. Each type has its own space of non-intersecting magisteria that reflects its unique charism.

Unfortunately, these magisteria do interact, and the barriers of isolation between them are eventually overcome. Ironically, though, these barriers are typically torn down by the very FBPs that erected them in the first place.

Again, the issue is that there are advantages to adopting <NEW THING>. The new idea is either less contradictory or truer than the <CURRENT ORDER> in some respects. Therefore, rules made with <NEW THING> in mind will work better, and <NEW THING> will start exerting influence. Sure, leaders will dress up their decision-making and swear up and down that they are only following the strictures of <CURRENT ORDER>. However, it will become obvious that influential people are aware of <NEW THING> and are using it to wield power.

As such, it will become increasingly apparent to the Female Brained Persons that those yucky grungy spaces where the males discuss <NEW THING> are, in fact, more influential on the levers of power and matter more than the upstanding social circles they run. Pretty soon, the FBPs feel like they are sitting at the kids’ table (which they kind of are) or otherwise being patronized.

Generally, Female-Brained Persons find this situation humiliating and unacceptable, and therefore campaign to end the social isolation. <NEW THING> is no longer just weird; it’s a threat. The Female-Brained Persons must have access to spaces where important ideas are being developed. They still don’t like <NEW THING>; in fact, they hate it. But they hate being excluded more. Thus, the FBPs will inevitably disrupt the peace separating the two camps. They will forcefully enter the spaces where <NEW THING> is discussed and then figure out any way they can to make sure it follows the rules of <CURRENT ORDER>, even though that defeats the entire point.

Naturally, this invasion might take many forms, from explicitly trying to stigmatize <NEW THING> or even passing anti-<NEW THING> laws. But often, the FBPs attempt to address the threat of <NEW THING> by subverting it.

FBP - “Ok, so this <NEW THING> is part of our public conversation. But good men must ALSO comply with the rules of <CURRENT ORDER>. So why aren’t you complying with the <CURRENT ORDER>? Are you one of the bad ones? Show me that you aren’t one of the bad ones by complying with the <CURRENT ORDER>!”

One thing that needs to be said, until this step in the process, this Female-Brain pattern has not differed greatly from the standard Male-Brain understanding of dialectics, save for aesthetics and emphasis. Even in classic Male-Brained discourse, new ideas don’t go immediately from being anathema to being debated just because they show up on the scene. Most ideas are bad, and if a society debated every proposition, including the ones that were outright suicidal, that society would soon collapse. Even inside an entirely masculine space, there is a period where new ideas are excluded and later restricted to an isolated group of early adopters, albeit in a less passive-aggressive way.

However, once ideas escape isolation in Male-Brained discourse, it’s time for debate and conciliation. The same is not true for Female-Brain discourse.

What the FBPs fear, more than anything else, is confrontation and humiliation. As such, their nightmare scenario is a situation in which the <CURRENT ORDER> is put on trial and loses, leaving the socially acceptable strong faction on the wrong side of what is obviously true. Such circumstances then force the FBPs either into a confrontation with power if they choose the side of truth, or a humiliating admission of their own sycophancy if they choose the side of the powerful.

Therefore, in the minds of the FBPs, there needs to be some intermediary stage to subtly test and refine the objection before any public debate occurs. Hence, the need for subversion to front-run any possibility of humiliation through open public discourse. No one wants to be in this place; it’s fundamentally inappropriate that either men or women have to deal with this dynamic. However, subversion is the natural turning point in any dialectic that largely involves Female-Brained Persons, so all of us have to deal with it in some form.

Subversion is the final boss of the FBP defense against unwelcome thoughts. This is where things get real, and the shit tests come out. It is not a pleasant place to be, least of all for the FBPs themselves. Here, the Female-Brained Persons start getting mean and irritable. They start using “bird hands”. They reach the point of peak neuroticism as the conflict between <NEW THING> and <CURRENT ORDER> grows in their mind, becoming untenable. They are hurting, and they will make their pain the MBP’s problem.

Nothing that the Female-Brained Persons are doing is working. They tried to exclude <NEW THING> to no effect, and then they tried to isolate it, only to find themselves on the outside of all the important conversations. Now that the barriers have come down and <NEW THING> is awkwardly coexisting with the <CURRENT ORDER>, there needs to be some resolution about which system is actually in charge.

FBPs operate within ordinary moral status hierarchies. They need rules that tell them which end is up and which is down. Having those rules challenged by controversies is jarring for the Femal-brain Person. Worse yet, and still more humiliating for the FBPs, the existence of <NEW THING> in the social space allows for low-status males to flaunt the rules of <CURRENT ORDER>. After all, in this new social space, <NEW THING> falsifies the rules of <CURRENT ORDER>, so it can’t be universally bad to break its rules. So suddenly the FBP’s scolding just stops working, and coarse, uncivilized males are free to mock them with little or no consequence. Only consistent cultural norms can prevent these situations, which is why it’s so important for FBPs to uphold the <CURRENT ORDER> in the first place.

Certainly, in order to think properly, all humans, Female and Male-brained alike, must have a moral center that is constant. Moreover, as a religious man, I firmly believe that there is an eternal notion of “Truth, goodness, and beauty” that creates a consistent, broad set of morals across time.

However, the kind of sensibilities that Female-Brain Persons rely on are not the abstract eternal fixtures of “goodness and truth” that theologians and philosophers describe. Instead, FBPs typically organize their lives around more local and transient understandings of goodness pertaining to status, manners, and propriety, which are deeply linked to the specific cultural and political status quo of <CURRENT ORDER>. In stable times, the <CURRENT ORDER> tends to endure, but as chaos rises, the ground shifts, and the cultural substrate that keeps ordinary manners and customs in place quickly falls away. This is very distressing for Female-Brained Persons, because often the process of <NEW THING> disrupting the <CURRENT ORDER> is a necessary disruption for the long-term good of society.

Nevertheless, disruption is underway, and the ordinary tools FBPs use to navigate their social environment are failing. Therefore, stress rises, cortisol spikes, and the FBPS deal with this <NEW THING> by confronting it in the most natural way available to them: scolding.

What do you think you are doing? *bird hands* We have rules here that you need to follow! *bird hands* Why are you always bringing up <NEW THING>? *bird hands* Don’t you know how offensive this is to good people? *bird hands* I don’t care about your arguments! Why do you have to be like this? *bird hands* How can you even be like this??

Things aren’t in a good place. Society has decided that the important conversation is exactly the conversation that the FBPs do NOT want to have. The first reaction to this negative situation is a negative emotional response. However, when the scolding doesn’t work (and, at this stage, it almost never works, the FBPs eventually move on to much more effective passive-aggressive tactics: shit tests.

Do I need to define “shit test” in 2026?

For the uninitiated, a “shit test” is a passive-aggressive dominance game, most often played by women (or men who think like women) to test men. The tactic involves the female party insisting on a bad idea or subtly insulting the male party to gauge his reaction. The way you fail a shit test is either by disagreeing in anger or agreeing in deference, both of which signal weakness. You pass a “shit test” by rejecting the frame and applying your own, insisting on what you think is fair for both parties.

In the context of dialectics, Female-Brained Persons use shit tests to determine whether <NEW THING> is actually a new dominant political force in public life or just a poser ultimately subservient to the <CURRENT ORDER>. This uncertainty is what is causing their stress. Therefore, the contest of which force is stronger needs to be determined in the most passive way possible, usually taking the form of one of two subversive shit-tests.

FBP Subversive Shit-Test #1:

“So obviously we all believe in <CURRENT ORDER>, and we don’t want to be divisive. So why don’t we just change the meaning of <NEW THING> to comply with the <CURRENT ORDER? You can still like <NEW THING>, but we need to make it less offensive. Specifically, we need to remove the ways that <NEW THING> is different than what we previously believed so that <NEW THING> is just another version of the <CURRENT ORDER> with a different skin.”

FBP Subversive Shit-Test #2:

“The <NEW THING> has gone too far! It’s mean! It’s embarrassing! It’s just a bad look! Worse yet, it goes against everything <CURRENT ORDER> stands for! The only course of action is to denounce the <NEW THING> and declare that all the people who believe in <NEW THING> are bad and need to be entirely excluded! Now, we know many of you MBPs liked this <NEW THING> before it went too far. But considering the circumstances, the best option for you is to get a <NEW NEW THING> so you can discuss that <NEW NEW THING> in your own separate spaces, far away from the upstanding social circles we occupy.”

Now, from the perspective of the <NEW THING>, these requests are, well, subversive. If you are a party that cares about the <NEW THING> and wants to see it adopted at a large scale, agreeing to these shit tests is an instant fail state. Such subversive proposals will halt the <NEW THING>'s progress and send you back to earlier stages, with very little to show for it. By submitting, the <NEW THING> failed the shit test, and it will therefore suffer the consequences.

However, if you are an ordinary intelligent man who cares about things other than just advancing <NEW THING>, agreeing to either of these subversive requests might be very enticing, for several very different reasons.

The prospect of giving in to “Subversive Shit-Test #1”, while not very intellectually satisfying, is very appealing to MBPs who are opportunists and social climbers. In the process of moving from the fever Swamps of stage 1 to the near heights of stage 4, a lot of low-status MBPs who couldn’t hack it when promoting the popular <CURRENT ORDER> have glommed on to the <NEW THING> during its ascent.

Now is the perfect time for socially ambitious MBPs to step off the <NEW THING> bandwagon and become part of the high-status mainstream of <CURRENT ORDER>, this time as ambassadors of a provocative idea, the deracinated version <NEW THING> with its content stripped down and its edges sanded off. Sure, this gelded version of <NEW THING> doesn’t contain any of the critical truths or utility that it had in its original form. But for many low-status MBPs, this is a lesser concern. Much like FBPs, social climbers’ understanding of the value of ideas corresponds to the status those ideas confer. Ideology is a fashion statement, a meal ticket, or a stock designed to be sold when prices are high and the market is ready. And the price will never be higher than selling out at this stage.

On the other hand, the prospect of giving in to “Subversive Shit-Test #2” might yet be appealing to those of a more academic persuasion. Look, as someone who spent too long in academia, I know how this works. Academics love ideas. They see them as more than a portal to status. But they also dislike dealing with unhelpful people, and one of their greatest fears is being dragged down to the lowest common denominator. Certainly, these types liked <NEW THING> when it was fresh and underground. But as <NEW THING> has become marginally more mainstream, things are less exciting. There is less new ground to cover, and the more academic MBPs who adopted <NEW THING> early have to contend with lower-status and lower-IQ people incorrectly repeating their ideas back to them. So, perhaps a rebrand is in order?

At a personal level, changing brands and reverting back to the isolation stage of the dialectic is pure upside. The high-status MBPs get to wash their hands of their uncouth contemporaries, and working in spaces isolated from the mainstream actually has some advantages. For example, working with knowledge of a truth that the mainstream rejects means that you always have an endless number of interesting things to notice. If you are the only intellectual who believes in heliocentrism, your astral predictions will always beat those of the mainstream astronomers. If you are the only writer aware of human bio-diversity, you can make an entire career around noticing things. If those core truths that motivate your predictions become mainstream, however, no one is going to be impressed that you pointed out the obvious.

Moreover, on a social level, there are many benefits from the rebranding and de-mainstreaming of the <NEW THING> for its more academically oriented followers, especially if they have a very special Female-Brained Person in their lives. After all, this stage of subversion is much more uncomfortable for all parties than back when people stayed isolated in their own spheres. Now that <NEW THING> is in the public eye and causing problems, the FBPs are socially uncomfortable and will make their discomfort everyone else’s problem.

On this specific point, I can attest to some extent. It’s way easier to be the guy who “writes an obscure blog about thinkers no one else ever heard about” than to be the guy who is “the biggest popularizer of the man that the New York Times claims is the new anti-Christ!” It may sound subtle, but the FBPs respond to this reality on a deep level, and, as a husband, it’s way easier to have a wife who looks like the picture in Stage 3 than the picture in Stage 4.

Naturally, this is why collective shit tests work. They separate an individual’s interests from the interests of the ideology and the collective. Ultimately, the involved MBPs must decide how important it is for <NEW THING> to be publicly accepted. On one hand, people understand that truth is important and that falsehoods hurt society in the long run. On the other hand, people have limits on what they are willing to sacrifice to promote an idea.

For this reason, subversion can often seem invincible inside of a society dominated by feminine dialectics. But subversion is not invincible. It just takes some confidence, courage, and commitment brought to the public square

Subversion works perfectly against beliefs that are lightly held or that otherwise exist as hobbies or side projects. It is nearly invincible when brought to bear against identitarian labels that are adopted because “that’s what is happening now,” with the expectation that they will be discarded when the “new new thing” comes out in another month. No one is going to die for their hobby. There isn’t a man alive who is going to go to war for their latest fashion statement.

But in a world where only hobbies and fashion statements and fandoms exist, subversion is the ultimate power. In other words, Subversion works against every type of thing that is properly native to the internet. In fact, this is the primary reason why the internet is an inherently Female-Brained dialectic space.

However, outside of Female-Brained dialectic spaces, subversion is by no means invincible. When the buck finally stops and subversion encounters hard reality and hard beliefs, the FBPs' favorite last-ditch strategy suddenly falters. Social pressure is powerful, but it has its limits. Once the attempt to subvert meets with a will that doesn’t give in, the act can no longer be sustained. When an effective state of war is threatened, subversion ends, and that war begins when men stand up.

After all, as Sam Hyde said: “The reason we have free speech is that at pivotal times in human history (mostly Christian white) men decided that, yes, it would be worth it to die to prove a point.”

This is the kind of will that can break through subversion and actually reform even an entirely female-dominated public ideas space.

So, as the followers of <NEW THING> must make a choice. Do they believe in <NEW THING> enough to fight for it, suffering the slings and arrows that may come?

Once believers decide to take a stand and make the <NEW THING> part of their solid identity, ready to stand and fight with it, the shit tests end. The FBPs either get other Male-Brain Persons to use hard power against the dissenters, or they get out of their way. All tools of the FBPS have been exhausted, and no further meaningful resistance can be brooked from here forward.

Eventually, if the believers in NEW THINGS> are successful and their cohort starts growing throughout the mainstream (provided that it averts attempts at physical suppression brought on by other MPS), the <NEW THING becomes normal, fully part of the kind of things discussed in mainstream polite society. The subversion has failed, the culture has shifted, and publicly talking about <NEW THING> is just “something that we are all doing now”.

FPB - “We see now that <NEW THING> is good. We previously thought <CURRENT ORDER> was good. So maybe they are both good at the same time? Let’s all try to get along and resolve our differences with friendly conversation. In fact, it’s time for everyone to have THE CONVERSATION about <NEW THING>!”

Finally, we get to a state that feels like a neutral contest between <CURRENT ORDER> and <NEW THING>. What Male-Brained Persons might otherwise consider optimal conditions for a public debate?

But not really.

If your society is dominated by FBPs, the <CURRENT ORDER> was already defeated by <NEW THING> back in Step 4 when it refused to be subverted and therefore demonstrated that it was stronger.

Remember, always, that for FBPs, somebody has to be making the rules, and the rules cannot contradict. Therefore, whenever two ideas exist together in public in opposition, one must be pre-judged as dominant; the other must be on its way out, slowly subverted until it can be isolated and excluded. The FBPs know that they can’t eliminate <NEW THING> this way; they have already tried and failed. Therefore, by elimination, <CURRENT ORDER> must be on the way out. The public debates at this stage of conciliation serve only as exhibitions to reify this predetermined conclusion.

This, perhaps, is the most infuriating part of the dialectic process for MBPs, especially if they are adherents to the <CURRENT ORDER>, because, regardless of whether you have the better arguments or more people on your side, you have already lost the debate in any space dominated by FBPs. Moreover, if you are an MBP, it’s not even clear why you have lost the argument.

In masculine spaces, mainly occupied by MBPs, this period of conciliation is a stable state. A multi-moral society, where both <NEW THING> and <CURRENT ORDER> coexist, can persist almost indefinitely. Boundaries might be drawn, and a purely logical discourse could be used to resolve disputes. People might have abstract conversations about the contentious issues and try to draw away converts at an individual level without heading into total war.

However, such an ambiguous state of affairs cripples the natural moral consensus that FBPs need to function as rule-followers and rule-enforcers. Therefore, constant progress must be made to solidify the supremacy of the dominant <NEW THING> and replace the defeated <CURRENT ORDER>. At this stage, the defenders of <CURRENT ORDER> are arguing from a conservative position that impedes progress towards moral consensus, and for the FBPS, the barriers to consensus must be eliminated.

The most pertinent example of such fake, post-hoc discourse (at least during my own lifetime) was the infamous New Atheist debates of the early 2000s, with each of its many instances playing out as the picture of futility. At any of these “debates”, ostensibly over the existence of God, the discourse played out the same way. The Christian side would arrive at the podium with any number of theological arguments for the existence of a Divine Supreme Being, from ontological to teleological to cosmological. The Atheist side would arrive with nothing. But they didn’t need to have a theological case. They have a much stronger, almost indefeatable case: the existence of modern secular society itself.

Whatever else Christians said about why their worldview was true, they never could get past the fact that they existed in a society that embraced an atheistic understanding of its own values.

Ok, sure, so let’s say you Christians are right: there is a God who exists, and the most important thing is to do His will.

How do you explain the modern world?

Why isn’t our society organized around this reality?

Why aren’t our most prestigious institutions (occupied by the most intelligent people) based on Christian values?

Why don’t we teach Christianity in schools? In fact, why is Christianity expressly prohibited from being taught in schools?

And if we need an understanding of God to justify morality, why is religion not central inside our state’s moral apparatus, the legal system?

Moreover, if Christianity is true, then isn’t atheism the worst thing ever? Spreading atheism would be the equivalent of transmitting a disease? Why isn’t being a public atheist a criminal offense? Or even stigmatized?

After all, we kick smokers out of bars for vague health reasons, but here an atheist is a guest of honor at our society's most prestigious university.

The Christians story does not add up. They should be rebels raging against our Godless society that constrains their vision of the Good. Yet most have adopted modernity’s secular frame and support it as the status quo.

Under such circumstances, any modern audience could clearly see that the claims of secularism were treated as more true than those of religion. Secularism, therefore, must have more truth, or at least more strength. As such, an atheist debating religion in 2005 didn’t actually have to argue his side’s truth from a common first principle; he just had to point out the existing contradictions between Christianity and the secular morality that already dominated the Western world, and everyone thinking in a feminine mode would consider them the victor in the debate.

The same pattern will hold for the ascendency of any <NEW THING> in public contradiction with a <CURRENT ORDER> that cannot remove it. The <NEW THING> arrives on the scene pre-approved by all FBPs; its presence is its own proof of social power.

Thus, public debate is perfunctory. The conclusion has been predetermined. The debates themselves are less a contest than a “Public Service Announcement” in which various FBPs can align themselves narratively with the new normal. And the result is infuriating for any MBPs who actually want an exchange of ideas. You sign up for what you think is a faculty lounge debate, and what you get is an HR seminar.

I am sorry, but this public conversation is not actually a conversation. This conversation is a post-hoc exercise in imagination where the parties develop a story about “why we believe different things now” in a way that is maximally conducive to their vibes and self-image. The ultimate goal of this conversation, naturally, is to lead to a new state of normalization.

FBP - “Of course, everyone knows that <NEW THING> is the best, and soon everyone will just believe in <NEW THING>. There are some people who haven’t quite caught up yet and still believe in <OLD THING>, and we still need to be nice to them.”

At this stage, <NEW THING> has obviously won, and any reasonably intelligent FBP who isn’t otherwise obligated has implicitly abandoned the old <CURRENT ORDER>, presenting that they had always supported <NEW THING> all along. In fact, at this stage, the label “Current Order” doesn’t properly apply to <CURRENT ORDER> since it is now just part of the “bad old ways” and <NEW THING> is the new “Current Order”.

Now most of the FBPs spend their valuable mental energy ruminating on the glorious ascent of the <NEW THING> over all the other “bad old ways,” including the old <CURRENT ORDER> they all supported until like a week ago. In fact, their only positive concern about the old <CURRENT ORDER> is to ensure that their conservative friends aren’t treated poorly. Of course, if the FBPs are young or otherwise don’t have conservative friends, they will likely be interested in excluding or punishing followers of the old <CURRENT ORDER> as sadistically as possible.

This social dynamic naturally creates numerous social-climbing opportunities for the MBPs who were early adopters of <NEW THING> or (most often) are pretending they were early adopters of <NEW THING>. There are careers to be made now, talking about <NEW THING> and expounding on its virtues, even sometimes defending <NEW THING> in phony debates that are entirely performative. Ironically, there is a sudden demand for apologists and “populizers” for <NEW THING> right at the moment where it needs it least. And most, if not all, of these apologists would be the very types of males who would have given in to “Subversive Shit Test #1” back in Stage 4.

Now, obviously, disagreeable people like myself hate popularizers, but they are a natural part of the process. People need to be reassured about the rules and their justification in the grand scheme of things, and without such pop pseudo-intellectuals, society wouldn’t function. Moreover, through their efforts, the full dialectic cycle finally closes; society fully embraces <NEW THING> and hardly remembers the time when it didn’t.

Sure enough, I think this rather lengthy narrative describes the process through which ideas are introduced, come into conflict, and eventually displace the reigning order around them. Using various values for <CURRENT ORDER> and <NEW THING>, almost all of the big ideological shifts across the last 30 years can be fit into this template.

In the late 1980s, we might set <NEW THING> of “LGBTQ Rights” that defeated <CURRENT ORDER>= “Ordinary Sexual Norms> completing a full cycle of the template in 25 years.

In the early 2000s, <NEW THING> = “New Atheism” defeated the <CURRENT ORDER>= “Implicit Cultural Christianity” again completing a full cycle of the template in 15 years (at least in Blue State).

Moreover, in the mid-2010s, the <NEW THING> of the“Post-Liberal Right” attempted to displace “Civil Rights Centered Liberalism” and stalled out at Stage 4, where we find our current culture war in 2026.

Perhaps this is a pretty straightforward process. But remains simply a question of how to ride the tiger that is the Female-Brain Egregore, as a person who cares less about the social consequences of ideas than about their ultimate impact on humanity's fate.

First, perhaps we should get some perspective. As might be implied by the previous examples, the dialectic described is just an organic process; there is nothing necessarily good about <NEW THING> or bad about <CURRENT ORDER>. Anyone who cares about ideas has to be prepared for bad things to appear in either position: as part of the status quo or as the next cool new thing.

Moreover, Female-brain Persons (or women generally) are not the adversaries in the contest of ideas; they are simultaneously the contested battlefield and the environmental conditions under which the struggle is fought. And, Sun-Tzu reminds us, the belligerent who understands the terms and conditions of the war will likely be victorious.

Those otherwise interested in truth and the survival of their societies, therefore, must engage in this struggle as shepherds, allowing in the good and denying the bad.

So, how does one fight a battle of ideas on either side of the dialectic from stage 1 to stage 4?

We can review each step in turn.

As alluded to previously, if you are a supporter of <NEW THING> in the Exclusion Stage, you have to manage your expectations. Debate, especially public debate, is futile. Your goal is simply entry, and for those purposes, your only objective inside an ideas space dominated by feminine sensibilities is to develop a coterie of covert believers of the <NEW THING> who are attracted to its truth, the higher status the better. To this end, privacy is your friend, as are any societal norms that allow dissent based on conscience. Similarly, during the isolation step, public discourse is unhelpful, since the coterie’s objective remains to manage public perception of the <NEW THING>, putting forward the group’s best, most elite foot to encourage public acceptance.

During later attempts at subversion, when the group of believers in <NEW THING> is larger, and the idea is now fully in the public eye, the main concern is less about privacy or public relations than about solidarity. Ultimately, neither the specific benefits of <NEW THING>, nor appeals to privacy, nor the individual virtue of its believers, are useful to overcome subversion, since the entire point of subversion is to separate the interests of quality believers from the support of <NEW THING> itself. Instead, subversion is only ever overcome by a collective belief that resists social pressure, a belief fully incorporated into an identity as the basis of group solidarity.

The early stages of exclusion and isolation are a little more complicated to deal with if you are a responsible party aligned with the <CURRENT ORDER>. No doubt the temptation, always, is to lean on conservatism and appeals to the status quo. Naturally, you have the advantage of supporting <THE CURRENT ORDER>, so why not just make supporting the status quo your entire argument? Status quo support might even sound intellectual if you talk about Edmund Burke enough, and your FBP allies will be on your side, excluding, isolating, and subverting your opponents as they are wont to do. Such conservative tactics are tempting but lazy, and you pay for them in the long term when the tide turns.

Instead, any responsible defender of the <CURRENT ORDER> concerned about a bad idea needs to side-step the siren call of conservatism and get to the bottom of the problem. The root cause of why there are people who want to believe the <NEW THING> even though it is bad. Typically, there are two reasons for believing in a bad <NEW THING>. First, people might believe in <NEW THING> because of indulging a desire that they otherwise want at the expense of society (see something like the sexual revolution or drug legalization). Second, people might support <NEW THING> because it contains a kernel of truth or resolves a contradiction inside the <CURRENT ORDER>, even though said truth comes packaged with lies and other bad things.

Dealing with each of these core problems can be difficult for the righteous defenders of the <CURRENT ORDER>. If <NEW THING> is popular because it essentially is a degenerate indulgence, then the goal is to appeal to the elite supporters of <NEW THING> and get them, as much as possible, to put what is good ahead of their personal interest. If total exclusion is not possible, honorable isolation should be attempted and maintained indefinitely. Things are obviously much harder, though, if <NEW THINGS> popularity stems from an internal problem in an otherwise good <CURRENT ORDER>. If this is the case, defenders of the <CURRENT ORDER> have work to do, correcting the internal contradictions of the status quo and delaying the emergence of the <NEW THING> such that once <NEW THING> gains traction, the status quo can stand on truth and not just the sensitivities of Female-brained persons and appeals to “the way things are”.

Now obviously, the dynamics of this situation change radically once Stage 4 is reached and the social dynamics between <NEW THING> and <CURRENT ORDER> reverse. Most of the time, for defenders of the old <CURRENT ORDER>, such later stages are challenging because they are still operating in a conservative mode. They are still defending a status quo, rooted in tradition, that has already rejected them. Their time would be better spent repairing the foundations of <CURRENT ORDER> to make it more internally consistent and aligned with reality. Otherwise, the best the followers of the old status quo can do is to shore up their identity as ideological minorities, then wait for the <NEW THING> to overreach in order to effectively attempt a restoration.

On the other side, these later stages of the dialectic can be treacherous for the believers of the <NEW THING> on the ascent. Everything feels like it's coming up roses as the once-stigmatized idea becomes normalized, but problems for the <NEW THING> emerge as it attempts to build a new order. As stated previously, when <NEW THING> is in the ascent, opportunists will naturally jump on board. This increases the likelihood that people who don’t care about truth will decide how the <NEW THING> is discussed and managed, introducing rot and falseness into whatever else is true about the new way of doing things.

Moreover, as the profile of the <NEW THING> grows, there will be an increasing temptation among many of its low and middle-status followers to rhetorically punish the old <CURRENT ORDER> in entertaining and vengeful ways. Such exercises are cathartic and titillate the FBPs who find such spectacles affirming, but the practice encourages overreach, weakens the basis of <NEW THING>, is ultimately effeminate and spiritually deleterious, and makes people who indulge in it think (and probably look) like Matthew Yglesias and Noah Smith.

Rather, remember always that, while morally policing ideas is in some sense necessary, ideology is not an entertainment product to sell to the insecure. People should feel good about the virtues that they have cultivated in their own lives, not about the righteous ideas their society holds that others don’t. To the extent that bad ideas need to be defeated or otherwise removed from the public space, the task must be approached in a mode of neutral education, a duty carried out in the name of truth.

Ultimately, whether you play offense or defense, a responsible actor in a space dominated by Female-Brained thinking must never succumb to the frame of Female-Brained thinking.

Remember always:

1. Earn status, but don’t lean on it. Status will not tell you what is true. It won’t even tell what will be high-status in the future

2. Never attempt to wield power you don’t have, just because the current order says you should have it.

3. Don’t mistake catharsis for fact, and don’t mistake status for actual power

4. If you want power, ask for it, and be righteous in your certainty to use it

5. If you win, move fast, ascend magnanimously, rule decisively, govern stoically

6. If you lose, keep your bearing, look for what is constant, and try to re-establish boundaries you can trust before you start again

7. Finally, across all parts of his process of discourse, remember to always focus on Truth.

That last point is the most important. Because isn’t losing sight of the truth where our problem with modern discourse began?

Really, while it might be the case that the public will has always been, by its nature, effeminate, the modern developments and incentives introduced by the internet have not helped. We now live in an informational ecosystem entirely dominated by status games posing as the responsible pursuit of wisdom and political well-being. As such, we have to play these status games and ride the waves of female perspective, but in doing so, we cannot become part of that perspective. The shepherd needs to think like a sheep to guard his sheep’s well-being, but the moment he starts following the flock, all is lost.

So, sure, perhaps seeing dialectics from the female mind's perspective is useful for navigating the eternal minefield of online politics. Or perhaps this is just another internet perspective piece talking about discourse in a different way. So use this model if it helps you steer your own ship and make sense of the madness around you, but remember that it is probably less valuable than focusing on why we are all engaging in discourse in the first place.

Just look at what is true, good, and beautiful; secure it for yourself, then bring it to others. Everything else is just theory.