A frequent topic of discussion on here is what TRP calls "blue pill conditioning" or "the feminine imperative." In short, it's the idea that the whole gestalt of Western society is not-so-subtly aimed at promoting women's interests, often at the expense of men's. TRP will point out how behaviors that benefit women are usually viewed as good, how behaviors that could in any way impede women are usually considered bad, and how the range of acceptable discourse is generally tilted in a pro-women direction.

A great example of that final point can be found in a recent article in the New York Times Magazine: "Is an Open Marriage a Happier Marriage?" Ask yourself what it means when this sort of relationship is viewed as acceptable enough to be discussed in the mainstream:

Elizabeth did not announce that the friendship was turning romantic, but she did not deny it either, when Daniel, uneasy with the frequency of her visits with Joseph, confronted her. That she intended to keep seeing Joseph despite Daniel’s obvious distress shamed him: He was suddenly an outsider in his own marriage, scrambling for scraps of information and a sense of control... “It wasn’t like we had a conversation about it,” Daniel said the first time I met him, in April 2016, when they were just starting to put that painful period of their relationship behind them. “It was more like: This is what I’m doing — deal with it..."

Daniel, who is tall and dark, has mass to him, and strong features; Joseph has blue eyes and is more compact, a former high-school athlete who still, like Elizabeth, works out with discipline. Daniel’s ideal day entails relaxing around the house or hearing live music; Joseph relishes yardwork and is fastidious about his car. Daniel is a processor, a philosopher, a talker; Joseph is, as Elizabeth often says, “a simple guy.”

...

Kevin: “I don’t have many jealousy triggers. But I don’t like it when someone my wife is seeing takes the parking spot in front of my house.”

...

Tim: “When we told friends our situation, the guy friends were not that intrigued. But the women friends were like, oh, that’s interesting.”

...

But of the 25 couples I encountered, a majority of the relationships were opened at the initiation of the women; only in six cases had it been the men. Even when the decision was mutual, the woman was usually the more sexually active outside the marriage. A suburban married man on OkCupid told me he had yet to date anyone, in contrast to his wife, whom he called “an intimacy vampire.”

...

At Poly Cocktails, the wife who was watching her Brooklyn husband flirt said that although they had opened their marriage a few months earlier, she was the only one of the two of them who was seeing anyone: a wealthy entrepreneur, and a soccer player... Her husband told me he had little interest in putting in the work necessary for even casual flings. “If I could meet someone for sex once a week with no emotional obligation, like a regular tennis game, I would do it,” he said. “But I already wooed someone, my wife,” he said. “I don’t want to have to do that again.”

Clearly these relationships benefit women at the expense of men. Women initiate them far more and find sexual partners with much greater ease. And like clockwork, we start to see them normalized via positive attention in mainstream publications.

Can anyone imagine the reverse? What if there were some small trend that saw men freely seeking out extra-marital partners while their wives de facto had little-to-no opportunity to do so themselves? What if men were suddenly opting out of traditional marriages for more attractive partners, largely leaving their wives lonely and jealous? Somehow I doubt the Times would be covering that story in such glowing terms.