Paul Elam’s reflections on the XY Crew Jamboree ’24 (Des Moines, Iowa)

Paul has just published this, full text here:

“You’re hosting a hate group here,” she said, pointing to the sign. “I don’t feel comfortable coming out of my room.” That line, an unmistakable threat narrative, was delivered to the front desk of the hotel by a twenty-something woman, referring to the welcome poster for XY Crew that rested on an easel in the lobby.

At least that’s what happened according to hotel management, who had earlier welcomed us openly and graciously, but who were now being put in a no-win situation. To their credit, they found another hotel for the woman, away from the danger she imagined was lurking outside her door. On our end, we were made to remove the poster, lowering our profile. And once again to the management’s credit, that was the last we heard of it. We were treated well and kind for the duration of our weeklong stay.

That’s how XY Crew’s Jamboree ’24 in Des Moines, Iowa began. And despite the minor disappointment, it didn’t dampen spirits in any significant way. After all, we were red pill men. We’ve become accustomed to that kind of damseling, to manufactured threat narratives, to demonization, hatred, and lies. So, we didn’t take it to heart. It was sad, but not shocking; just more of the blue pill world, revealing its trademark insanity whenever men dare to congregate around their own interests.

It did cause me a moment of consideration, though. I don’t know if I’d ever stopped to really consider what the average red pill guy was like.  I mean, I always knew we weren’t the melodramatic caricatures of evil that the blue pill left is so fond of creating.  We’re not the monsters of the twenty-something woman’s paranoid fantasies. Nor are we the snickering, moustache twirling bigots that the SPLC has conjured up to raise money from highly disturbed and ironically bigoted people.

But who is the average red pill guy, really? What’s typical? Well, I just spent a week hanging out in a group of them from breakfast to bedtime every day. I’d like to give you a summary of what I experienced and observed over that week, and what it meant to me as a man, in particular a Christian man.

And trust me, I know, I’m singing to the choir here. That’s kind of the point. One of the many things I got out of this gathering was badly needed time with the choir, some casual and relaxed time with likeminded men who had removed the socially imposed muzzle and spurned the life of fawning over women.

And at first blush, that would seem to be the primary common attribute in the men at our gathering. We were all men with a unique and unifying worldview. We understood terms like gynocentrism, romantic chivalry, and their profound influence on the life of average men. We shared an understanding of the actual nature of women, not the sugar and spice fairy tale of mainstream sensibilities. And regarding women, we had long since ditched the idea of finding our worth in their service. We were men who understood, perhaps too well, that romance was a lot more than infatuation and sexual passion. We’d been on that train, and had ridden it right into the distorted, carnivalesque freak show of the western woman’s hypergamous desires.

Men in our lot, red pill men, usually aren’t moved to sit around and discuss these concepts. We’ve already lived through them. We got the t-shirt and wore it out and replaced it many times over. So, we did the kind of things men will do when they gather without women in the mix, fouling things up. We shot large caliber weapons, competitively, of course. And we threw axes, competitively, of course. We smoked cigars and grilled copious amounts of meat. We rented a cabin and sat around a fire pit at night, talking for hours on end, little of it about women.

There was something about men being gathered around the fire talking as a perfect moon lifted above the horizon into the cloudless night sky. It was something primal and deeply familiar, though I lack the words to describe it fairly. It was as though with each crackle and pop, each dancing flame, you could feel the history in it. Men around a fire, bonded in healthy tribalism, a picture that stretches back far into the deepest recesses of antiquity.

It was a scene that invited conversation and connection, as though those things had always been as much a part of the fire as smoke and glowing embers.

Now, you’d think with a bunch of red pill men, there would be some trashing of women; some relentless critique of their selfish, unaccountable nature, and of course some well-deserved hostility for the society that allows and enables their destructive ways. I suppose there was a bit of that. Honesty demands it. And the men around that fire were honest, if anything.  

But those things, the grievances of living as a man in a gynocentric world, weren’t the focus of our connection to each other. Instead, the revelation of our innermost selves came out in bits and pieces, in poignant, often painful vignettes, as the fire cast its red glow on our faces. And what those things revealed didn’t point to a group of angry, bitter or hostile men of the twenty-something woman’s fearful imagination. Rather what emerged was a sense of loss so profound, so utterly crushing, that it is rarely uttered, even in a group of men who trust each other to listen.

Aye, it wasn’t anger or resentment that connected us to each other. It was grief. Men still mourning the loss of children; children who would not even acknowledged they were alive, courtesy of the mother’s alienating scheme. Men who had dedicated their entire lives to marriages and families, only to feel the sting of betrayal as the knives were slipped into their backs. Men who had loved, as deeply and intensely as any woman, only to be discarded with casual ease when they failed to elevate her sufficiently, or when they dared to inject their own needs into the marriage.

We were all connected by our grief over the romantic lie. Like all men, we had invested in the belief that romance, which elevates women to a near divine status, would ensure their loyalty, dedication, and affection. We were a gathering of Sir Galahads, flattened by reality and quietly licking our wounds out of the blue pill world’s judgmental sight. We were men who had once believed that, like us, women were bound to a romantic ethos of enduring, reciprocal love. That formed, I dare say, a core component of our identity as men. Being disabused of that romantic myth was a gut-punch that we were still contending with around that fire.

So, what did I make of these men? Well, truth tell I saw a bit of Jesus in every last one of them. They were truthful, loving men, demonized by the world around them, men whose love was returned with hate and scorn, men whose honesty and truth-telling was considered dangerous, men who the world would gladly nail to a cross, but will settle for calling them part of a hate group.

I can’t say we were a Christian group. Though we had Christians among us, we also had secular men, non believers. But I saw more Christlike qualities in them all than I’ve ever seen in the average Christian man that I’ve met in a church. More compassion, more humility, more forgiveness, more patience and indeed, more love. And I saw and abundance of the kind of sadness that Jesus must have felt about the world He was sent to die for.

It reminded me that it’s not your alleged beliefs that define you. Your actions in life are your legacy, not your words.

So, what is the average red pill man like? Well, you’re welcome to form your own opinion. As for me, the red pill man is the only brother I’ve got left. And right now, that feels just fine to me.

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