Alone
So, yesterday I drove away my last friend.
She was someone I met online, playing World of Warcraft. We became good friends after a rocky start, helping each other in our trials both in and out of game. She’s responsible for re-introducing me to feminism, at a point where I still thought feminism was equivalent to misandristic hate speech. When I really began to struggle with it, she backed away. Finally, she responded to my pain by informing me that she took pleasure in seeing a man feel what she’d felt for so long. Her last words to me were a dart calculated to wound.
So now it’s down to my dog and I. That’s the great thing about dogs – no matter how bad things get, they’ll always be by your side.
Still, the pain never seems to stop these days. Even moments of pleasure are just faint things overlaying the pain, not replacing it for an instant. The dryness of it seems to have a purifying aspect, and I’ve given up trying to hold onto my identity, and just letting it burn down. Here, with no direction, no goals, utterly alone, this is the time to retreat from life for a bit, and let the pain and solitude do their work.
Ta Aphrodisia 
Something I’ve realized in my interactions with feminists is that you can never be half a feminist. I see a lot of my thinking about gender as descended from feminism. As you saw in my post about the tools of feminism, I could even call myself a feminist on this account. But I don’t, because if I did, I would have to spend all my time defending my status as a feminist; I would be seen as a fake feminist, rather than as a feminist who was introspective about some of the problems with feminism and trying to espouse an alternative version. It is feminists who have shaped me as a critic of feminism.
I am sad to hear what happened with your “friend.” I put friend in quotes, because I don’t think she was your real friend, as she attacked you as some as you raised some questions about her ideology. I think what you are finding out is that some feminists see people as members of gendered classes, rather than as human beings.
I wish you luck. I think studying seduction will help you eventually. It did for me, but it took work (and there were some aspects of it that I’ve had to unlearn later, which involve negative attitudes to women or practices/attitudes that weren’t consistently with my goals). If you like, I can discuss some of things that helped me and point you to some resources.
Hugh,
In my friend’s defense, I did go a little crazy for a bit. That’s not to say I agree with the way she handled the situation, though.
And I see your point about being half a feminist, as you say. I’m beginning to think that some of the problem lies in the fact that feminism is foremost a political movement, and the gender theory is the intellectual support for that particular political program. I suspect this is why the way feminists relate to men, for example, sometimes seems inconsistent with their philosophy.
And I’d love to hear more about your experiences with the seduction community, as I’m still trying to sort things out in my mind. For the record, I’ve read Magic Bullets and spent some time on the Attraction Forums.