I remember when I first started reading about inner game, a lot of the concepts were really hard to swallow.
One in particular that I never really believed was "you are the prize (and act accordingly)".
One reason I think guys have trouble accepting this frame is because it's hard to believe you're the prize when reality is giving you ample evidence to the contrary.
Men are logical creatures and we look for real-life evidence and reasons for taking a given position.
The evidence seems to run counter to you being the prize.
After all, YOU are out there pursuing chicks, YOU are actively learning game and struggling to upgrade your lifestyle and working out and building a career, and so on and so forth, ALL for the end result of getting more girls and hotter girls.
If that doesn't make girls the definition of a 'prize' I don't know what does.
That's on the one hand...
But let's fast forward almost a decade, hundreds of girls, and countless experiences later.
And let me assure you with full confidence that you, the man, ARE the prize in the battle of the sexes.
Consider a few things:
1. We live in a matriarchy masquerading as a patriarchy.
Women, taken as a whole, do jack shit and men do all of the hardest and most demanding work (including warfare, man's unique privilege).
A woman's luxury is almost always paid for in blood and sweat by her man (or men).
Her jobs of childrearing and housewifery require minimal effort and mental exertion, and that's precisely why they appeal to women.
2. Ask yourself a question: if a man blithely follows the conventional path of marriage and kids, who stands to benefit, and who stands to lose the most...?
Of course we all know the answer to that, especially in the Western world.
With Marriage, the woman has 'trapped' the man in the most literal sense.
She can now put her dumbass meandering career on temporary pause (to be extended indefinitely once she "accidentally" forgets to take her birth control, with the ostensibly legitimate excuse of having to be a mother and housewife).
While the husband now has to work twice as hard to satisfy his increasingly unattractive and more demanding wife (and kids), he also slowly starts to realize that all along he, himself, has been his wife's accomplice in putting his own damn self between a rock and a hard place.
And now with a wife, kids, a houseful of crap and on average, tens of thousands of dollars in debt, his best choice is to slave away and slave away some more.
The wife drives him mercilessly by guilt tripping him that he's always working and never has time to spend with her and the kids, knowing perfectly well that this encourages him to actually spend *less* time at home and more time earning the money that finances her lifestyle.
She further manipulates him using the children as leverage, playing on his sense of decency and fear of disapprobation and being a bad father/bad man, which she, and his mother before her, have trained him to dread more than anything.
His second best choice, which is no choice at all, is to file for divorce.
In this case, the wife is 'entitled' to enslave him for a long time to come, even though now she's withdrawing the reciprocal services which the marriage CONTRACT provided for.
And if there are kids involved, he's really up shit's creek without a paddle.
3. Most men enter into some variation on this theme of slavery with glee.
They suppose women to be powerless, weak, helpless, stupid, and desperately in need of saving by a REAL man.
And women exploit a man's protective instinct in the same manner that they exploit his sex instinct, by exaggerating the characteristics which trigger this protectiveness.
The more imbecilic, frail, clumsy, inept, ditzy and utterly incapable of self care a woman can portray herself to be, the more likely she can snag a 'daddy'.
So:
- if the man is taking care of the woman
- if he is slaving his life away for her comfort
- if he is going to war for her
- if he is defending her honor in public disputes as befits a proper gentleman (who was raised by his mom precisely in anticipation of this,his wife's exploitation of him)
- if he is decreeing from positions of power to give more of his fellow man's hard-earned money to women under all kinds of dubious circumstances, and threatens his fellow man with loss of liberty, property and life for violation of these edicts
...then one really must ask, WHO is the prize?
Does any slave stand proud and consider himself lucky - no, blessed! - when he's been purchased by a nice looking massah?
A buffalo may be big and strong but it doesn't take but a little girl of 8 to lead him around by the nose plowing the field for her.
Form follows function in nature.
Woman's function isn't hard physical labor or fighting, thus the forms that her power takes aren't readily visible, and are thus quite erroneously dismissed as not existing.
But female power is very real and very jiu-jitsu-esque.
It operates by subterfuge, manipulation, guilting, shaming, ego-attack and other subtle means that use the man's own instincts and energies against him and to her benefit.
If men can be convinced, as they have been, that they are oppressors (guilt), sexual predators (shame), big and strong (ego inflation), not strong enough (ego attack), bad husbands (guilt), or any of a million other things that can be used and contradicted as convenience necessitates, to ruthlessly manipulate them without lifting a finger, then it makes perfect sense that women would spend so much time on the business of their business: subterfuge and manipulation.
Their chief outward subterfuge consists of what Chinweizu calls 'glamour' in his awesome book The Anatomy of Female Power (must read book for any man).
This is the manufacturing of sexual attractiveness via makeup, clothing and various optical illusions.
A littler earlier, before sexual maturity devolves upon them the task of glamorization, they begin their practices of manipulation as taught to them by their mothers and grandmothers.
So precocious are little girls in this domain that by the time they're 10 they've got the grown up males in their lives wrapped around their little oscar meyer weiner fingers, just like their mommies.
They hyperbolize their ineptitude, their physical weakness, their dodo-headedness.
They learn to skillfully shed tears, pout, act standoffish, call upon an authority figure, create guilt, withhold attention.
While boys are busily rehearsing for their roles as beasts of burden, girls are learning the basics of puppet mastery.
It should be clear by now that it is the female who engages in predatory behavior, seldom the man.
Some translations:
He's a hard worker and a good man ::: he will make an excellent slave and rarely give me grief
He's a man's man, a real macho guy ::: he has an overcompensatory ego and will be incredibly easy to exploit
He's a gentleman ::: his mother removed all friction for his transition to my personal slave; too easy
I want a man who makes me feel safe ::: I want a man who is unaware of my manipulation of his protective instinct and how I erroneously conflate it with sexuality to get what I want from him
I want a man who can take care of ::: I want to engage in mindless idiocy for the rest of my life on his dime
He'll be a good father ::: once I manage to get pregnant, he ain't goin' nowhere
No matter where you are in your level of game, to say that women are the prize is absolutely ludicrous by all accounts and all available evidence.
All you've got to do is open your eyes and see through the bullshit.
To call a woman the prize, no matter how hot she is, and even if it's just in the context of casual sex, is like a diver saying to a hungry great white shark "whew! I'm so glad I finally found you."
One in particular that I never really believed was "you are the prize (and act accordingly)".
One reason I think guys have trouble accepting this frame is because it's hard to believe you're the prize when reality is giving you ample evidence to the contrary.
Men are logical creatures and we look for real-life evidence and reasons for taking a given position.
The evidence seems to run counter to you being the prize.
After all, YOU are out there pursuing chicks, YOU are actively learning game and struggling to upgrade your lifestyle and working out and building a career, and so on and so forth, ALL for the end result of getting more girls and hotter girls.
If that doesn't make girls the definition of a 'prize' I don't know what does.
That's on the one hand...
But let's fast forward almost a decade, hundreds of girls, and countless experiences later.
And let me assure you with full confidence that you, the man, ARE the prize in the battle of the sexes.
Consider a few things:
1. We live in a matriarchy masquerading as a patriarchy.
Women, taken as a whole, do jack shit and men do all of the hardest and most demanding work (including warfare, man's unique privilege).
A woman's luxury is almost always paid for in blood and sweat by her man (or men).
Her jobs of childrearing and housewifery require minimal effort and mental exertion, and that's precisely why they appeal to women.
2. Ask yourself a question: if a man blithely follows the conventional path of marriage and kids, who stands to benefit, and who stands to lose the most...?
Of course we all know the answer to that, especially in the Western world.
With Marriage, the woman has 'trapped' the man in the most literal sense.
She can now put her dumbass meandering career on temporary pause (to be extended indefinitely once she "accidentally" forgets to take her birth control, with the ostensibly legitimate excuse of having to be a mother and housewife).
While the husband now has to work twice as hard to satisfy his increasingly unattractive and more demanding wife (and kids), he also slowly starts to realize that all along he, himself, has been his wife's accomplice in putting his own damn self between a rock and a hard place.
And now with a wife, kids, a houseful of crap and on average, tens of thousands of dollars in debt, his best choice is to slave away and slave away some more.
The wife drives him mercilessly by guilt tripping him that he's always working and never has time to spend with her and the kids, knowing perfectly well that this encourages him to actually spend *less* time at home and more time earning the money that finances her lifestyle.
She further manipulates him using the children as leverage, playing on his sense of decency and fear of disapprobation and being a bad father/bad man, which she, and his mother before her, have trained him to dread more than anything.
His second best choice, which is no choice at all, is to file for divorce.
In this case, the wife is 'entitled' to enslave him for a long time to come, even though now she's withdrawing the reciprocal services which the marriage CONTRACT provided for.
And if there are kids involved, he's really up shit's creek without a paddle.
3. Most men enter into some variation on this theme of slavery with glee.
They suppose women to be powerless, weak, helpless, stupid, and desperately in need of saving by a REAL man.
And women exploit a man's protective instinct in the same manner that they exploit his sex instinct, by exaggerating the characteristics which trigger this protectiveness.
The more imbecilic, frail, clumsy, inept, ditzy and utterly incapable of self care a woman can portray herself to be, the more likely she can snag a 'daddy'.
So:
- if the man is taking care of the woman
- if he is slaving his life away for her comfort
- if he is going to war for her
- if he is defending her honor in public disputes as befits a proper gentleman (who was raised by his mom precisely in anticipation of this,his wife's exploitation of him)
- if he is decreeing from positions of power to give more of his fellow man's hard-earned money to women under all kinds of dubious circumstances, and threatens his fellow man with loss of liberty, property and life for violation of these edicts
...then one really must ask, WHO is the prize?
Does any slave stand proud and consider himself lucky - no, blessed! - when he's been purchased by a nice looking massah?
A buffalo may be big and strong but it doesn't take but a little girl of 8 to lead him around by the nose plowing the field for her.
Form follows function in nature.
Woman's function isn't hard physical labor or fighting, thus the forms that her power takes aren't readily visible, and are thus quite erroneously dismissed as not existing.
But female power is very real and very jiu-jitsu-esque.
It operates by subterfuge, manipulation, guilting, shaming, ego-attack and other subtle means that use the man's own instincts and energies against him and to her benefit.
If men can be convinced, as they have been, that they are oppressors (guilt), sexual predators (shame), big and strong (ego inflation), not strong enough (ego attack), bad husbands (guilt), or any of a million other things that can be used and contradicted as convenience necessitates, to ruthlessly manipulate them without lifting a finger, then it makes perfect sense that women would spend so much time on the business of their business: subterfuge and manipulation.
Their chief outward subterfuge consists of what Chinweizu calls 'glamour' in his awesome book The Anatomy of Female Power (must read book for any man).
This is the manufacturing of sexual attractiveness via makeup, clothing and various optical illusions.
A littler earlier, before sexual maturity devolves upon them the task of glamorization, they begin their practices of manipulation as taught to them by their mothers and grandmothers.
So precocious are little girls in this domain that by the time they're 10 they've got the grown up males in their lives wrapped around their little oscar meyer weiner fingers, just like their mommies.
They hyperbolize their ineptitude, their physical weakness, their dodo-headedness.
They learn to skillfully shed tears, pout, act standoffish, call upon an authority figure, create guilt, withhold attention.
While boys are busily rehearsing for their roles as beasts of burden, girls are learning the basics of puppet mastery.
It should be clear by now that it is the female who engages in predatory behavior, seldom the man.
Some translations:
He's a hard worker and a good man ::: he will make an excellent slave and rarely give me grief
He's a man's man, a real macho guy ::: he has an overcompensatory ego and will be incredibly easy to exploit
He's a gentleman ::: his mother removed all friction for his transition to my personal slave; too easy
I want a man who makes me feel safe ::: I want a man who is unaware of my manipulation of his protective instinct and how I erroneously conflate it with sexuality to get what I want from him
I want a man who can take care of ::: I want to engage in mindless idiocy for the rest of my life on his dime
He'll be a good father ::: once I manage to get pregnant, he ain't goin' nowhere
No matter where you are in your level of game, to say that women are the prize is absolutely ludicrous by all accounts and all available evidence.
All you've got to do is open your eyes and see through the bullshit.
To call a woman the prize, no matter how hot she is, and even if it's just in the context of casual sex, is like a diver saying to a hungry great white shark "whew! I'm so glad I finally found you."