In this post, I'm going to put forth a theory which I think fixes many little shaky bits of RP wisdom, reorganizing them into a cohesive system that should produce more fruitful insight. I hope to start some significant discussion and I very much invite all to reply with their observations both theoretical and experimental.

Aggression

Aggression is one of the great taboos in our feminized culture. From the very earliest age we're bombarded with propaganda, both direct and environmental, that shames and demonizes aggression into an inherently negative, destructive force that should ideally be expunged.

The results of this are astonishingly evident if one compares the behavior of the contemporary males to that of men from even just 50 years ago. The modern-day man is soft-spoken, polite to a fault, unassertive, non-confrontational. By contrast, men from the mid-century look positively hot-headed.

In fact, I think this process went so far that men can't even articulate what aggression is. And a dictionary, reflecting today's safespacified culture, won't help you either. So here is my definition: aggression is behavior intended to achieve a goal regardless of opposition. Whenever you act to get something you want and you're willing to step on toes or defeat opposition to get it, you're employing aggression.

Now this definition seems very mild compared to the demonized cultural understanding of the concept. One would expect a definition of aggression to speak about harmful behavior or violence, but I think that's fallacious thinking: the key psychological mechanism is the willingness to act regardless of opposition, and violence is only relevant if said opposition manifests in physical form, and harm only where one's goal coincide with a loss for another, which isn't a given. Modern-day sociology makes the distinction between assertiveness and aggression, which I think is equally fallacious: assertiveness seems to be this sanitized PC version of aggression where you pretend you're willing to face opposition, but in reality won't really do anything substantial in case there is in fact opposition. "Assertiveness" is PC garbage.

So, first conclusion: "aggression", not one of the PC alternatives, is the key concept that should be kept in mind. It doesn't imply violence or harm, although it can certainly involve those, and runs the spectrum from behavior that would simply be considered assertive to outright violence.

Where aggression stands within RP theory

There are several bits and pieces of RP theory which evidently work, more or less, but which have always left me unsatisfied in their explanation of why they work and the precise mechanisms in which they act.

The first of these is the famous Don't Give A Fuck attitude. I've always found that it is a contradiction in terms: you're adopting this attitude because you very much do give a fuck, you're changing your behavior to get better results. Yet the advice works, which is why it gets repeated, so something in there must be correct despite the apparent contradiction. The key, I believe, is to be found in aggression: consciously adopting a Don't Give A Fuck Attitude allows men, who are completely unused to being aggressive, to act at least assertively, by pretending they don't care about the consequences and thus acting regardless of them. Once a man has unlocked this mechanism, he no longer needs DGAF as a conscious mental crutch.

Then we come to what I think is the most important, distinctive element of this theory of aggression:

Aggression and dominance

"Dominance" (and derived words) must be some of the most common in RP lingo. If you've been reading here any length of time you can't have escaped maxims such as: women find dominant behavior attractive, dominance is fundamental in the bedroom, etc etc

Yet this has always left me slightly baffled. While I couldn't deny the practical effectiveness of this line of thinking, it irked me that two things didn't completely add up:

  • dominance is a state of affairs more than a behavior, and "dominant behavior" is a circular definition: behavior that is intended to assert dominance

  • displays of "dominant behavior" ends up being attractive even if the man in questions doesn't actually have dominance of a particular situation; for example, a man asserting himself in a social situation will, in my experience, engender attraction even if he ultimately decides or is forced to back down

What I'd like to propose is that the key psychological/behavioral characteristic is not so much "dominance" or "dominant behavior" as it is aggression. It's aggression that wets panties: the willingness to go for what a man wants and fuck anything standing in his way. Dominance can be a consequence of aggression, but it's aggression itself which is attractive. This fixes the semantic point (which helps with further developments, avoiding mental short-circuits between a behavior and the result it's intended to produce) and explains why even failed or withdrawn aggression can be sexy.

Evolutionarily, this makes quite a bit of sense. If we're being realistic, an alpha male would not win every confrontation and have perpetual dominance over every situation he found himself in; but the willingness to be aggressive in pursuing his interests was an evolutionarily advantageous trait, because it would mean a higher probability of getting his way be it socially, with women or in combat. It would thus be a trait that women would evolve to prize for reproduction, a sexually attractive trait.

Aggression and sex

When it comes to sex, the line between aggression and dominance becomes more blurred, because generally aggression results immediately in establishing dominance, and dominance requires the use of aggression. Yet I think a distinction remains: a man can attempt dominant behavior without acting with the necessary aggression, in which case he'll fail. The pathetic stories of betas attempting to slap a woman's ass because that's "dominant" while feeling awkward as fuck doing it are, I think, precisely a reflection of this distinction.

Conclusion

This is already a wall of text, so I'll stop here, but I won't apologize: the subject merits, in my opinion, all the space I've given and more. I think aggression might be an underutilized concept, which might be more fundamental than several ones we've used so far, and the history of thought teaches us that raising to more fundamental concepts typically results in new productive discoveries. I have some ideas in mind, and I'll put them in future posts, but for now I very much want to hear your thoughts on what I've written so far. Thank you for reading.