It started last summer when I had too much time on my hands due to an injury that kept me from my usual activities. I was feeling insecure about my relationship so I sought advice from the internet and no, it was not on Reddit. I landed on YouTube and ROK to find out how to be a better girlfriend...and that was exactly the wrong direction to take it. I soon learned about the Red Pill and the manoshphere and how terrible I am for being female and how little men think of women in general. Since I had wanted to know what men really want from us gals I figured my enemy would be more honest than my friend, and so I waded though the mire to find nuggets of wisdom. Waded and waded through podcasts and articles and videos on how women are lesser beings, hard wired to use men and incapable of reason. My logical brain told me this was a lot of crap but my insecurities drove me to seek more advice on painting my nails and wearing sexy heels and being more submissive. If that is what men really want from us, why not play along? My boyfriend could not comprehend why I was spending so much time reading this drivel, but he did appreciate the effort I put into my appearance so I deduced that Red Pill advice had some truth to it. And here we go. YouTube is where is all went haywire, and you can probably guess why: Unlike on ROK or Roosh forum I was allowed to comment. All these confident big-name gurus with their Red Pill channels made it easy to interact with actual adherents and my user name was obviously female so I thought I might enlighten them. Mistake. No matter how sweet and rational my comments, kindly pointing out that NAWALT and there are plenty of good gals out there, I was called "ugly" and a "liar" and told to leave. There were other female commenters who would suck up to the men and agree with all the misogyny and they would get patted on the head. But when I even quoted Jordan Peterson (oh boy) the boys club flipped out at me and labeled me a c&*t. Nothing short of full capitulation would appease these twerps. I had to hide my YouTube account.

But oh, there is always more Manosphere. Despite all logic, it got into my head. Why had my boyfriend not wifed me up yet? Must be because I am not attractive or submissive enough. It was widely accepted that any woman my age (over 30) was a withered hag who had no real prospects but this did not match my life experience. In fact almost nothing they said matched up with my reality: where were all the slutty harpies who trick men and marry them only for the bucks? Where are these children in adult bodies who cannot think except with emotions? And who marries someone they do not even love? None of it looked like Planet Earth but these RPers seemed so confident that this was how men saw things. Their contempt for womankind was broken only when they began clamoring for a wife, and of course they all became unicorn-hunters in foreign lands since the West is so "degenerate" and dried up. Something did not add up. If us girls are so wretched and incapable of loving men, why would they WANT a wife? Enter the MGTOWs to solve the world's problems by giving up. There was no optimism anywhere I searched and yet I felt compelled to try. I even watched Roosh's live call-in shows to decipher these men and their true level of hatred toward us...and well, the emperor had no clothes.

I had assumed that these men were who they said they were. I believed them that they were successful Alphas who held society's standard of masculinity like some Ayn Rand heroes. They were not. Instead a parade of sheepish nobodies presented themselves, tremulous of voice and full of insecurities. What what? So I did little searching and learned that surprise surprise, many of the manosphere gurus were liars and frauds. It made sense for their fans to be all bark and no bite, but the very leaders who preached Alpha-ness were themselves pulling one over? Aha. Now the irony hit me: I had been feeling weak and vulnerable so I turned to what I thought was a position of strength, however hateful, to help me out. And the whole time it was no Wizard of Oz behind the screen, just sad lonely fellas with lots of time on the internet. No chads, no plates, no hot model girlfriends. I felt pity and compassion.

Until I read the Married Red Pill subreddit.

That... was the darkest depth of human ugliness on the whole of the web. Holy crap. Instead of poor kicked puppies posting out of loneliness I found the Dark Triad masquerading as husbands. Men who hated their wives and called them "disgusting" and men who urged eachother to have affairs, all from a combat style relationship which made it hard to picture them ever standing up in a tux and saying their wedding vows. Post after ugly post. That was it for me, that was the end goal of Red Pill. The mask was off.

There is no pill. There is only the human condition.