Matt Forney Archives

Thoughts on Visiting Lviv, Ukraine

Last week, I was required to leave Hungary temporarily and had to pick a city to visit while I was away. I settled on Lviv, Ukraine, a small tourist city located a stone’s throw from the border with Poland. While I’d originally intended only to visit for a couple days, I enjoyed Lviv so much that I extended my stay through the end of the week, enabling me to see much of the city.

Here are my observations on what I saw…

1. Ukraine is a third-world country.

I’ve written about the deteriorating political and economic situation in Ukraine already, but it’s entirely another thing to have it thrust in your face. Ukraine’s poverty is evident the second you cross the border. I traveled to Lviv via train from Budapest (there are no direct flights between the cities), and rural Hungary doesn’t look that much different from the rural northern U.S.: lots of farms, rustic villages and mountains in the distance. The only things that puncture the illusion are the occasional nuclear power plant, cow grazing on railroad property, or horrifying grey communist-era apartment block.

Rural Ukraine is run-down and decaying. The Tisza River (delineating the border between Hungary and Ukraine) is a filthy creek. Chop, the border town where I cleared customs, is a dirty, crumbling dump. Roads have moped-sized potholes, houses are in shambles, and people are burning trash everywhere or setting forest fires for the hell of it. I’m not kidding: Ukrainians love setting things on fire. On the train from Chop to Lviv, I saw so many fires that they lit up the night sky. There’s also a stark class divide; you’ll often see nice, new houses with steel gates and stone fences right next to run-down farmhouses with broken windows and rusted-out cars on the front lawn.

Lviv is in better shape than the other parts of Ukraine I saw, but even there, things are coming apart at the seams. Once you leave the Old Town area of the city, the roads start getting shabbier and the buildings more poorly maintained. Even the sidewalks themselves, which are all cobblestone, are in a state of disrepair. All of the girls I saw wore boots when they were out and about because it was the only way to protect their feet.

2. Lviv is the the cheapest city I’ve ever been to.

I’m not exaggerating when I say that Ukraine is the white Philippines. Thanks to the poor economy, you can live large on the smallest of budgets.

For example, a first-class train ride from Chop to Lviv is about $7. A fully furnished apartment in the center of Lviv is $10 a night… the absolute lowest that Airbnb allows landlords to charge. Eating out at nice restaurants is about $5; in fact, they’re so cheap that I started ordering multiple courses, which I never do anywhere else. Taxi rides will run you less than $4, not that you need them since everything important in the city is within walking distance, and there’s also a robust tram system that costs about $.15 per ride. Ukraine has become so poor that a waiter actually got mad at me for paying for a 130 hryvnia (UAH) dinner with a 500 UAH note because it was the only one I had.

For reference, 500 UAH is about $18.

If it weren’t for Ukraine’s political instability, Lviv would be an ideal place for budget-conscious travelers to settle down. While the city lacks the nightlife and amusement options that bigger cities have, its low cost of living, quiet atmosphere, cute girls and proximity to major European cities such as Krakow, Budapest and Kiev make it extremely appealing.

3. Ukrainians are outgoing and curious about foreigners.

Unlike Russians, who can barely be bothered to do their jobs when you ask them to, Ukrainians will go out of their way to help foreigners, particularly Americans. Due to the State Department scaring everyone away from Ukraine due to the war in Donbass—which is happening clear on the other side of the country, in a place no one would ever want to go—visitors from English-speaking countries are a novelty. Even in Lviv, the only tourists I encountered were from Poland, the Czech Republic or other eastern European countries.

For example, I attracted attention at the Chop border crossing because I was the only non-Hungarian or non-Ukrainian on the train. While I was staring at the timetable trying to give myself a crash course in Cyrillic, one of the border cops on duty came up and asked me if I needed help (despite barely knowing English). In Lviv, I would regularly get stares from girls walking down the street, though the fact that I wore a suit whenever I went out was probably part of the reason why.

The only area where I was even remotely hassled was at customs itself.

When the Ukrainians were searching my bag, they held me up for ten minutes after finding a packet of phenibut. The officer doing the search asked me if it was hashish; I told him no and explained what phenibut was, and he and his colleague spent ten minutes Googling it on their phones before figuring out that it was legal and sending me on my way. I was likely saved in part by the fact that I was wearing a suit and my passport lists my birthplace (New York), so the guards assumed I had money and were more likely to shake me down for a bribe than arrest me.

4. Lviv is the least Americanized city I’ve been to in Europe.

In a week’s visit, I saw exactly one outpost of American consumer culture: a lone McDonald’s near the Opera House. Everything else is either local, Ukrainian or a Russian chain. Even American brands of junk food are hard to come by; supermarkets are dominated by regional equivalents. The atmosphere is also extremely conservative, with none of the meat market anarchy of Budapest’s party district. Girls here tend to be conscientious and don’t sleep with men until the second or third date at least.

The downside to all this is that English fluency is rather low. In Chop, the only people who spoke any English were the customs officials. In Lviv, young people speak decent English, but their overall proficiency is lower than Hungarians in Budapest. Settling down in Lviv for the long-term would require me to learn some Ukrainian (or possibly Russian; however, Lviv is the most nationalist part of Ukraine and Russians are widely disliked there).

5. Ukrainian girls are the most beautiful I’ve ever seen, and the easiest to approach.

While American trends such as obesity and social justice have made a tiny amount of headway in Hungary, they’re completely stopped dead in Ukraine. Just about every girl between the age of 18 and 30 in Lviv is head-turningly gorgeous and dressed to the nines in skirts and boots. Beyond their physical attractiveness, the average Ukrainian girl oozes femininity and carries herself with an energy that radiates beyond her looks.

Ukrainian girls are also stupidly easy to approach, far easier than Hungarian girls. On my first day in Lviv, I fired up Tinder while eating lunch and started swiping right. In less than five minutes, I immediately had three matches, a far better response rate than I’d seen anywhere else, and I ended up going on a date with one of them. Later that day, while touring the city, I just started going up to girls and talking to them. As an American wearing a suit, girls were curious as to why I was in their city, and they didn’t attempt to play stupid games or act cliquish. (I’ll write more about the girls later.)

Overall, I really enjoyed my stay in Lviv. If it weren’t for my work in Budapest, I’d seriously consider relocating there for a spell. As it stands, I plan to come back in the near future.

P.S. If you’re ready to start meeting Ukrainian girls now, click here.

Brief Thoughts on Living in Budapest, Hungary

Last Thursday, after navigating the twin threats of American land-based public transportation and surly Russian airport employees, I arrived in Budapest, Hungary. It might just be the fact that I was elated to get out of the deteriorating cesspits known as Chicago and New York, but it’s wonderful here and I don’t want to leave.

Here are some of my observations on what I’ve seen so far.

1. Budapest works the way large cities in the U.S. are supposed to work.

I was admittedly somewhat nervous about the move, considering that I wasn’t as familiar with Hungarian culture as I was with Philippine culture when I moved there. The fact that I’d lost my ATM card at a duty-free shop in Moscow—a fact I didn’t discover until I went to get money at the Budapest airport—didn’t help my mood. These fears literally evaporated when I got on the bus to downtown.

As it turns out, Budapest is so pleasant that not even losing access to my bank account could ruin my mood.

Unlike Americans, Hungarians can keep the basic infrastructure a city needs to operate running. The Metro here runs on time, without the horrendous delays that the New York City Subway, Washington Metro and Chicago L have. The elevators and stairways are clean and don’t smell like piss, and railways don’t smell like diarrhea (as Penn Station did when I arrived there last Tuesday). Buses and trams are clean, pleasant and safe. Despite supposedly being a “second-world” country, Budapest’s infrastructure is just as well-developed and maintained as any Western city.

Moreover, the city’s lack of ethnic diversity makes it more welcoming and safe than American cities. Riding the public transportation system down to where I was staying, I counted exactly two non-whites: a pair of fat black girls outside a hostel. There are no black guys trying to hustle you for bus fare, no gangs of Mexicans leering at you and your girlfriend on the sidewalk, and no bums passed out in front of train stations with needles still jammed in their arms. While District VIII (where I was staying) supposedly has a bad rep due to its Gypsy population, I felt perfectly safe walking around there at night.

Unlike in the U.S., racial minorities don’t get to cry “racism” or “bigotry” when they get caught committing crimes, so they behave themselves.

The cost of living is also far more reasonable than anywhere in the West. A “comfort class” (midway between economy and business) Aeroflot ticket to Hungary cost me only $750. In Budapest, a one-bedroom apartment will run you about $300 a month. Eating out at a decent restaurant is $5-6. A beer is $1. A one-way Metro ticket is $1.20. Absent the raft of leftist regulations that are choking business in the U.S., Budapest’s standard of living is where it should be, where everyone can afford a decent lifestyle. While I’ve yet to explore some parts of the city, I have yet to see the stark poverty that defined the Philippines, or the deepening gulf between rich and poor that defines America’s major cities.

2. The people are welcoming and pleasant.

Perhaps it’s just my eastern European genes coming to the forefront, but I feel more welcome in Hungary then I did in the Philippines. For that matter, I feel more welcome here then I did in California. While Hungarians have a rep for being distrustful of foreigners, I’ve been treated with politeness and respect by everyone here, aside from one supermarket security guard who accused me and my friend of stealing because we had a bag full of groceries from another store.

The obsequiousness that defines Filipinos’ (and southeast Asians in general) attitude towards foreigners doesn’t exist here.

The locals also don’t have a predatory attitude towards foreigners, so I don’t have to spend my mental energy fending off hookers and grifters. For example, before I left, my friend, Arktos CEO Daniel Friberg, warned me not to ride with any taxi drivers in the Budapest airport lobby, because they were likely to cheat me. I fully expected that as soon as I stepped in the door, I’d be assailed by eight million hustlers trying to get my money. Instead, I was all-but ignored in the lobby, aside from one driver who asked me if I needed a ride. On the way to where I was staying, I didn’t have to deal with a single beggar, shoe-shine boy or ugly fat girl offering me “boom-boom” for 5,000 forint.

The pleasantness of Hungarians extends to how they interact with each other. In Budapest, people still have normal social lives. While smartphones are ubiquitous here, Hungarians don’t hover over them constantly like Americans do. In public, you’ll see men holding hands with their girlfriends and daughters holding hands with their mothers. The social dysfunction of major American cities is nowhere to be found.

3. The women are gorgeous.

In four days here, I’ve yet to see a girl between the ages of 18 and 35 that I would not sleep with. Feminism and social justice are all-but nonexistent in Hungary. I’ve seen exactly two girls with cotton candy-colored hair: a pair of lesbians I saw at the mall. I’ve seen one guy with ear gauges. While there are a fair number of tattoo parlors, almost no one openly displays tattoos or piercings aside from earrings. While some girls are chubby, almost no one is obese.

Trigglypuff-style freaks simply can’t be found here, and there are no flaming homos either.

Additionally, Hungarian women tend to be more conservative than Western women. Girls who openly sleep around are punished for it.

4. For all of Eastern Europe’s supposed “fascism,” I feel freer here than in the U.S.

When I boarded my flight in NYC to Moscow, I had to take off my shoes and belt and disassemble my laptop bag in order to go through the TSA checkpoint. After I got zapped with their cancer-inducing radiation scanner, I got a patdown from a black agent because there was a nonexistent “anomaly” on my lower back.

When I reboarded my flight to Budapest in Moscow, I merely had to put my wallet and phone into a bin, stick my bag in the scanner, and walk through a simple metal detector. The lady running the scanner asked to look at my microphone, but when she was done confirming that it wasn’t a bomb or a gun, she actually helped put my bag back together.

This was in Russia, a country that leftists claim is literally Hitler.

When I actually arrived in Hungary, I didn’t have to fill out any immigration forms or answer any questions: the customs officer just looked at my passport, stamped it, and handed it back. Again, this is a country that responded to the migrant crisis by building a border wall and telling the E.U. to get fucked, and they didn’t feel the need to put me through the rigamarole that the “liberal democracies” of Canada and the U.S. do.

I’m planning to spend most of the next year living in Europe, possibly returning to the U.S. around November. If you’re in the neighborhood, be sure to stop by and say hi.

Aaron Clarey Watches 2 Girls 1 Cup

Earlier this week, when I met up with him in Chicago, Aaron Clarey promised me he’d watch 2 Girls 1 Cup for the first time and let me film him. (He didn’t know what it was.) Today, he made good on that promise.

Video directed and edited by Davis Aurini. (Apologies for the audio; Clarey’s lapel mic wasn’t working properly.)

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Why I Use Kratom

In this video, I explain why I use kratom, how it benefits millions of Americans, and how you can help fight the FDA’s kratom ban.

To sign the White House petition against the kratom ban, click here. To join the Kratom March on D.C., click here.

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Free Speech Isn’t Free by Roosh V

While reading Free Speech Isn’t Free, Roosh’s harrowing account of how the left has tried to deprive him of his right to speak his mind and share his ideas, I thought of a story from the life of Irish independence leader Michael Collins. During the latter stages of the Irish War of Independence, when Collins was orchestrating an insurgency against the British, his niece was hired as a secretary to an official in the occupying British administration. When he got the news, he spat out, “How the hell did these people ever get an empire?”

That’s what I have to say in regards to the Trigglypuffs and AIDS Skrillexes of the world: how the hell did these people ever get any power?

Roosh’s answer: they’re useful idiots. Free Speech Isn’t Free is more than a memoir: it’s an examination of Roosh’s evolution from hedonistic playboy to neomasculine patriarch. The book’s focus is on how Canadian feminists—in concert with the media and government—sought to shut down the final two stops on his world tour last year through shaming, lies and physical intimidation. However, Roosh also discusses his political awakening, as he pieces together the last pieces of the cultural Marxist puzzle.

Because of this, I wholeheartedly recommend Free Speech Isn’t Free to anyone who cares about preserving Western, white culture and freedoms.

The book opens with Roosh discussing why he launched his world tour and the process by which he prepared. Much like in his previous memoirs, we see a personal side to Roosh that he doesn’t present in his blog writing, as he talks about his stuttering problem and his efforts to overcome it. The chapter also discusses the logistics involved in organizing the tour and the mistakes he made along the way:

The biggest job, by far, was preparing the speech. My experience in Toastmasters showed that it takes one hour of preparation for each minute of a speech. At a planned time of 45 minutes, I knew I was in for a serious commitment. First, I edited the speech’s written draft into its final form. Then I read it out loud about ten times to get a feel for how it comes across when spoken, continuing to edit along the way. Then I began reducing the speech to an outline, where I’d take a sentence of the speech and replace it with a short phrase. When I came across the short phrase in the next practice run, my mind would hopefully remember the longer sentence it represented. This process took about three weeks since the speech was so long, until I eventually reduced the 6,099 word speech into a 734 word outline.

Free Speech Isn’t Free is written in the same didactic style as Poosy Paradise, Roosh’s previous book, but because this book is more philosophical and less literary, the tone actually works. The only real weakness is in some of the book’s dialogue: Roosh reveals that it was a number of conversations with friends of his that led him down his current political path, and these sections read like Socratic dialogues instead of discussions between actual human beings. However, given the heady stuff that Roosh discusses in the book, this is forgivable.

The book goes through Roosh’s six stops on his world tour—Berlin, London, Washington, D.C., New York City, Montreal and Toronto—in sequential order, building to the crescendo of what happened to him in Canada. Reading about minor incidents during the first stops (for example, Roosh hired a hostess for the London event that turned out to be a feminist double agent) steadily prepares the reader for the five-alarm fire down the road:

Mark said, “The Bible will help you resolve that. The more that a society goes away from God’s word, the more it will suffer, and so you’ll inevitably see Christianity’s resurgence in some form. It makes sense if you look at how the United States was started by the Pilgrims, who wanted to get away from what they thought was decadent British society. History will repeat itself, and we won’t have long to wait to see it.”

The book’s emotional center is in the Montreal and Toronto chapters, where Roosh details the trials he went through and how he fought back against the angry horde screaming for his head. As someone who was tangentially involved with Roosh’s pushback via Return of Kings and his forum (I couldn’t be more involved because I was dealing with a more serious personal crisis), these chapters shocked even me. Part of me was left wondering how Roosh is even alive after what happened:

After shaking their hands and instructing them to sit down, I said, “We’re going to the venue in teams of four. Only thing I ask is to turn off your phone until 6pm, just in case there is a mole on the list. Make any calls or texts you need to now. From this point on, if you see anyone using their phone, you need to confront them and ask why since everyone will have agreed to turn them off.” Then I made a mistake: I didn’t verify that their phones were turned off.

While reading Free Speech Isn’t Free, I kept thinking back to the alternative right cucks who spastically smear Roosh as a “rapist” (based on out-of-context book excerpts or a clearly satirical post he wrote) and laughing. It’s easy to talk shit when you’re a 19-year old NEET who’s never gotten your dick wet: when you’ve actually had to pay a physical price for your free speech, you develop a more mature outlook on life.

While I haven’t gone through the hellish ordeal that Roosh has, I’ve had to pay my own price for my free speech. I was physically threatened by #BlackLivesMatter flacks for daring to “infiltrate” their protests; I was booted off of Twitter due to false reports from said flacks; I’ve been doxed and my parents have been harassed by radical leftists, all because I dare to speak my mind and oppose the lies of the day. The wages of honesty used to merely be social exclusion and unemployment; now they include imprisonment, violence and murder.

Unpopular people will always accuse popular people of saying things solely to get attention because it makes them feel better about the fact that nobody cares what they have to say. All writers—indeed, all creators—want attention, it’s just that some people are better at getting it than others, and those people are better at winning hearts and minds than others. This corner of the Internet is as close as you’re going to get to a meritocracy in this world, so don’t hate the player, hate the game.

You may not like some of the things that Roosh and I say, but the reality is that we have skin in the game and you don’t. Until you’ve had to report a stalker to the police or physically disguise yourself to keep leftist thugs from spotting and attacking you, you have no idea of the enormity of the evil we face. This is why whenever some permavirgin with an anime avatar claims I don’t “belong” in the alt-right, I just laugh in his face.

Free Speech Isn’t Free is a punch-to-the-gut reminder of what the forces arrayed against us are capable and willing to do. Carl the Cuck may be an impotent weakling on his own, but he has the media to amplify his voice and the government to back him when the fists fly. We are facing an organized machine that will do anything to maintain its power: lie, cheat, steal and kill. While I’m not half as pessimistic as Roosh is—I believe this is a war we can and will win—his experiences show that we cannot afford to be lazy or apathetic.

My biggest criticism of Free Speech Isn’t Free is the book’s structure. Roosh clearly intended it to be a self-contained volume about his world tour when he began writing it, but roughly a third of the book is dedicated to a lengthy appendix on the Return of Kings tribal meetup outrage that occurred earlier this year. While the book is a riveting read from beginning to end, it would have been stronger if Roosh had rewritten it to better incorporate this story instead of tacking it on.

But this is a minor point. Free Speech Isn’t Free is by far the best book I’ve read this year, and one that you absolutely need in your collection. As hokey as it sounds, freedom isn’t free: we get it by fighting for it. Roosh is fighting for his freedom, I’m fighting for mine, and you need to know how to fight for yours.

Click here to buy Free Speech Isn’t Free.

The Real Right Returns: A Handbook for the True Opposition by Daniel Friberg

The Real Right Returns is one of those books I still recommend despite feeling a little mislead by the title.

A political manifesto-cum-how-to guide from Daniel Friberg, a founder of Arktos and Right On (the latter of which I write for regularly), The Real Right Returns serves as an interesting primer on New Right/alt-right politics as well as a good articulation of first principles. However, the book’s brevity combined with its somewhat scattershot layout limit its effectiveness as a complete work.

Part of the problem with current events-focused books like The Real Right Returns is that they have a short shelf life. The news cycle is like HIV: you can treat it with retrovirals, but it never stops. Best-selling political cheerleader books by Ann Coulter or Michael Savage are worth less than toilet paper six months after publication. You’ll often find them piling up in farmhouse bookstores or in the Amazon “used” section for a penny a piece.

Friberg’s book, while not a straight regurgitation of the headlines (complete with patented solutions), is steeped in the currents of the news cycle. The Real Right Returns opens with a dissection of the situation in Sweden (the book is Europe-focused, seeing as Arktos is based in Europe and Friberg himself is Swedish) and an articulation of what separates the New Right from the old right:

This development is ongoing across Europe, even in notoriously ultra-liberal Sweden. Although Swedes have lagged behind in this regard as a result of the Left’s disproportionately strong grip on our opinion-forming institutions, we are beginning to catch up. New political players have appeared and given renewed courage to those disheartened social critics who, after years of ruthless persecution, are now able to voice their opinions in the fresh air of a new political dawn. Overall, this has created optimal conditions for a broader impact of our ideas—something that is mainly visible in Sweden with the rise of the Sweden Democrats, accompanied by a rapid growth of favourable public opinion towards them.

Friberg writes in the simple, direct fashion of an intelligent man for whom English is a second language: lots of erudition but little flash. While nothing about The Real Right Returns will grab you in an emotional way, the book’s straightforward diction conveys Friberg’s points easily.

The Real Right Returns’ brevity (only 117 pages) prevents it from delving too deep on any one of its subjects, which helps keep the book moving at the cost of leaving me wanting more. While I didn’t expect the book to be a New Right Theory of Everything, Friberg would have done well to go into detail on some of the topics he touches on. For example, his essay “Brief Advice on Gender Roles” is one of the book’s standouts:

Learn basic gentlemanly virtues. This is especially important for those of us who live in the decadent postmodern West, for two reasons: firstly, because these virtues are worth preserving and passing on to coming generations; and secondly, because internalising these virtues will give you a massive competitive advantage over other modern men—spoiled and feminised as they are.

Even adding just a little more detail to these sections would have improved the book immensely. It’s no coincidence that the best portion of The Real Right Returns is its longest: the chapter “Metapolitical Dictionary.” It provides a Mediocracy–style list of definitions of concepts frequently discussed in the alt-right, such as “cultural Marxism” and “political correctness,” and also serves to wrap the book up nicely.

Overall, while The Real Right Returns fails to live up to its subtitle—the book’s short length and somewhat unfocused content make it difficult to call it a “handbook”—it’s still an interesting read. Those who are not as well acquainted with the alternative right will get more out of it than seasoned veterans, however.

Watch the companion video to this review below:

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Click here to buy The Real Right Returns.

Men Aren’t Fighting for Women Anymore, and Why Should They?

This is a guest post by Kyle from This is Trouble.

As refugees continue to flood the European borders, the number of rapes occurring to local European women are rising at “alarming” rates. Perhaps alarming for the liberal movement determined to let these invaders take over Europe, but certainly not alarming for any of us who live in a world of reality. Yes, the idea to allow thousands of young men with high sex drives, who come from a a cultural with a history rich of rape and violence, into Western countries with no real plan or ability to enforce the law is brilliant.

Nothing could go wrong.

The same people preaching about open borders and catering to help refugees (even at the expense of their own people) are somehow the same people who advocate for gay rights. They want to allow the refugees whose culture routinely kills homosexuals into the country.

Do they not know that Muslims throw gays off of roofs (warning: graphic photos), or shoot them in public?

Again, how they thought that allowing all the brown refugees in would result in a peaceful situation is beyond me.

Meanwhile, after the Cologne attacks—in which a thousand refugees were connected to assaulting German women—people have been calling on German men to stand up and fight for them. In times of need, note that all cries of gender equality, we-don’t-need-no-man, and other blatant feminist propaganda have been silenced. When it comes to a matter of life, death, and protection, men are now needed. German men are being shamed to think that it is their duty to dive headlong to protect the women of the country.

And the German men are silent.

Now, don’t get me wrong: this is still their homeland, and there should be a certain pride in defending that. They are going to need to do something if they want to avoid Germany becoming the next base of ISIS. But the fact of the matter is, they are hesitant to lift a finger to “save” women from these situations with the refugees, who were let in by the political leaders who campaign for the liberal movements.

The same women that have preached the feminist movement, shunned men in favor of careers, and forced men to learn game just to have a small chance at them are now demanding that German men lay down their lives for the cause.

The German men have every right to be silent.

Which brings me to my question…

Should You Fight for the Women of Your Country?

Fifty years ago, this question wouldn’t even be a debate. Most men worldwide would not hesitate to jump to the front lines to defend children, women, and country. The sheer fact that I can ask this question and that many, if not most, Western men will stop to ponder it just shows how far Western culture has gone downhill since the inception of feminism and the culture wars.

I think back to my grandfathers, who both willingly served in our armed forces to protect their wives and loved ones.

Because people will inevitably call me a coward, scum, and a plethora of other nice names, I think I need to simply say this: I would not hesitate to defend my loved ones; i.e. mom, sister, and (maybe) someday, a wife.

But then I think… would I fight for American women? Can you blame German men for their reaction? My path of self improvement was loaded with being treated poorly by women, as well as taking their terrible advice. While I’ve moved past the bitter and angry phase of this, and moved on with my life, the fact of the matter is that I have yet to meet an American woman worth dying for.

If there were a large supply of women that were worth dying for, it’s very likely that I would have married one of them (or been close to it) by now. I’d be thinking about starting a family and how to best raise my children. I certainly wouldn’t be writing a blog and teaching men how to improve their lives through my own struggle, because the odds are stacked against every young man born in the West these days.

But I, and many other American men, have never had that chance at a traditional, strong family. Frankly, we never will. It saddens me that if I want to find a good woman to raise a family with, I will likely have to migrate to the harsh winters of Eastern Europe, or the hurricane-prone Southeast Asian islands and leave America behind.

I don’t want it this way, but it’s simply the harsh reality of the situation. In today’s age of shunning men, extreme female promiscuity, and generally degenerate culture (celebrity worship, obesity, rape culture, etc.), why would men rush to jump in front of a bullet for a Western woman?

So I ask: why should German men be expected to now rush to defend the German women who have scorned them for so long?

For so long, us men of the West have been shamed into relenting to women’s needs and demands. This is just the next step of it: the liberal movement is now raising expectations that all men are to white knight and defend all women.

Defend women at all costs, including with your own life. On a subconscious level, humans are all aware that eggs are quite a bit more valuable than sperm. It’s why men always did fight and die for their women and children: it gave the best chance of their tribe’s survival. However, this is the first time that the feminist movement has ever been so blatant with their message: a woman’s life is infinitely more valuable than a man’s, and a man should not hesitate to give his for hers… even a complete stranger.

To prove the absurdity of their logic, let’s imagine this scenario:

If you are walking down the street one day, and a woman is being raped by a dozen refugees, the liberals would have you believe that trying to defend her is your duty as a man.That you should jump in without a moment’s hesitation and save her.

Never mind the absurdity of the situation: jumping in to defend her in a 12 on 1 situation (and at least a couple of them are likely armed) is sure to result in your death, and then her continued rape.

SJWs would shame you for “avoiding” that situation.

I’m not saying you should be an awful enough person to simply walk away and leave a woman to her doom like that (like this woman did to the man who saved her), because that would be awful. Call the cops, run them over in a car if it’s feasible: do whatever you can. But to jump into that situation with fists raised would be a suicide mission.

So no, I wouldn’t give up my life for a random woman on the street just to be a white knight hero. Why would I do that for the women of my country? The entire feminist way of thinking has worked against me my entire life: am I suddenly supposed to switch my way of thinking to “women now need a man” when it comes at the time of greatest benefit to women, and puts myself in moral peril?

It’s simply foolish, and that’s why I wrote this post.

Do Not White Knight for Western Women

If you’re a man in modern America reading this post, there is no pride in white knighting.

Sure, you may get your name in the papers and your family will get a medal of recognition of some sort. But within a week, people will forget who you are. You are just another number in the system of men who died fighting for women of your country. Liberals will sing your praises, but only until the next man dies who they can paint as a new “hero”.

Feminism has made it pretty clear that men are not important; that female life is more valuable than a man’s, and a man should throw away his own life at a moment’s notice for any woman. It doesn’t matter how many men die as long as women are saved. Again, the feminists blatantly preach that they want to have their cake and eat it, too. With all the benefits of gender equality, women are just as strong as men propaganda, and treating men like dirt, it is always desired for men to get out of the way of more capable women.

Until... it’s time to die.

They say that in the moments before death, you will see your life flash before your eyes. If you’re an average Western man, you’ve probably had your struggles. You may have been drugged as a child in school for having too much energy, when in reality, boys are just being boys. Perhaps you took the terrible advice that women gave you about women; brought them flowers, never pushed for sex, always put their needs first, and it probably resulted in you feeling alone. Or even worse, maybe you’ve been through a divorce, and had your beloved children yanked from you for no reason other than your now ex-wife simply pointed her finger and said, “He did it.”

The point I’m getting at is, don’t throw your life away for a random Western woman. If you decide to jump into the mix to white knight for the now helpless woman, when your life flashes by, the last thing you’re going to feel before your eyes close for a final time is that you were made for a fool by feminists.

Kyle blogs at This is Trouble. Check out his book, Cracking OkCupid.

Poosy Paradise: Matt Forney’s Do the Philippines

This is a guest post by William Rome. William originally published this review of Do the Philippines at his blog Smoking While Rome Burns, but he deleted the site a few days ago so he could focus on other projects. I asked him if I could re-post his review on my own site and he said yes.

Since Adam busted his first nut, men have been searching for the mystical Poosy Paradise. The land of boobs and blowjobs; where tits taste like honey and lips part like the Red Sea. Byron thought he found it in Regency-era Venice, while Jack Nicholson thought he found it in 1960’s Hollywood. But Matt Forney has found it today on the far side of the globe.

In his entertaining and informative new book Do the Philippines, he lays out the blueprint for you to carve out your own slice of Heaven in this sexual Shangri-la. Forney covers it all from accommodation and airfare to avoiding diarrhea and lady-boys. And of course, the main thrust of the book is the girls. In the pages of this book are lessons to be remembered, whether you want to spend your time in the Philippines recreating your favorite squeaking Asian porn or experiencing the type of summer romance you thought was only possible in old movies. Hell, if you want a good wife, Forney has written this book for you.

That was the most encouraging thing about Do the Philippines. In our Aspie society, the only choices you’re often given are being a total cad or a sputtering pussy. In the Philippines, you can indulge both your decadent Byronic side and your hopeless romantic Gatsby-esque side. Matt gives tips on what types of girls and where in the country you give in to each aspect of your personality.

The biggest thing I took from Do the Philippines is that femininity is not extinct worldwide. Just because cultural Marxism-inspired feminism has all but quarantined it in the West doesn’t mean you’ll never know what it feels like. This is the biggest reason the book has encouraged me to go to the Philippines. I want to know what it is like to be with an actual girl, not inferior males seething with resentment cause they were born without a penis that feminism has created. I think many men are booking their plane tickets now that they know those girls do still exist.

So get online and buy this book. Matt has told me to get to the Philippines since he was there. Do the Philippines has encouraged me to do it. I can’t wait to go.

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If you liked this post then you’ll like Do the Philippines, my 102-page book that teaches you how to sleep with Filipino women during a visit to the Philippines. It contains tourist tips, game advice, and city guides that give you all the information you need to bang Filipinas, with exclusive information I haven’t published on my blog. Click here to learn more.

The Matt Forney Show, Episode 117: Finding Poosy Paradise in the Philippines

On this episode of The Matt Forney Show, I talk about my soon-to-be-released book Do the Philippines: How to Make Love with Filipino Girls in the Philippines. I discuss Philippine society, how to cope with culture shock, how to deal with the games Filipinas play, why the Philippines is a strong contender for poosy paradise, and a lot more. I also talk about masculinity, writing and my public image in the context of DT and the Man sneak dissing me for ten minutes on their podcast.

Listen and download the MP3 below:

To subscribe to The Matt Forney Show, check out the following links:

To support the show, click here.

Links

The Matt Forney Show is presented by Davis Aurini. Visit his website here, subscribe to his YouTube channel here, check out his SoundCloud page here, and follow him on Twitter here.

Intro song “You Done Me Wrong” and outro song “Gwo’in the Back Door” by Matt Baldoni.

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Will I Ever Be Good Enough? Healing the Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers by Dr. Karyl McBride

Roosh V Forum member AnonymousBosch has often argued that men can better understand modern women by boning up on personality disorders as opposed to evolutionary psychology. Because Millennials are so damaged as a generation—their hypersensitivity to criticism, lack of social graces, and conditioned narcissism being prime examples—traditional precepts about courtship (as well as a lot of game advice) don’t apply as well as they used to.

It took reading Will I Ever Be Good Enough? for me to fully realize why.

I bought this book because I was trying to solve one of the biggest problems in my life: why I keep ending up with the same kind of women. Ever since I was a teenager, the majority of the girls I’ve been involved with have exhibited similar behavioral patterns: they have poor self-esteem, are needy and clingy, are supine to the point of absurdity, are self-sabotaging, and had histories of being involved with narcissistic men. The degree of their dysfunction varies, from girls who are more or less normal to ones who have what Sam Vaknin describes as “inverted narcissism,” but the same patterns are still there.

Not only that, the girls I’ve met ever since I began writing under my real name have been even more codependent and clingy. It’s tempting to pull an Aaron Clarey and just blame it on general societal decline, but when you keep encountering a specific brand of damaged girls, you’d have to be a fool to ignore the pattern. After comparing notes with a friend of mine who was encountering similarly dysfunctional women, I started researching the issue more thoroughly.

However, it took my stenographer Eve Penman’s guest post on narcissistic mothers before it all finally clicked. In the post, Eve details her experience dealing with her mother’s abuse, how it warped her self-image and self-esteem, and how she’s coping with it as an adult. When Eve initially offered to write the post for my site, I had an epiphany: the majority of the girls I knew (and my friend knew) all preferred their fathers to their mothers, either because they were straight-up daddies’ girls or because their mothers were openly abusive.

While I don’t want to go full Stefan Molyneux and claim that child abuse is the root of all evil, it was clear I was one puzzle piece closer to solving the mystery.

One of the primary sources Eve listed in her post was Dr. Karyl McBride’s book, Will I Ever Be Good Enough? Healing the Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers, which I snapped up almost immediately. While the book isn’t targeted at my demographic, I was hoping to better understand the kinds of women in my life, as well as reverse-engineer their minds so I could predict their future behavior.

Will I Ever Be Good Enough? is an absolute must-read not only for women who’ve had to deal with abuse from narcissistic mothers, but the men who have to deal with those women. The book lays out the mindset of women who’ve suffered from maternal abuse in such a clear-cut fashion that reading it was an intensely depressing experience. However, McBride’s book also lays out steps that these women can use to rebuild their self-images and live happy, successful lives.

And if you’re a man, Will I Ever Be Good Enough? will help you understand where these women are coming from and how to predict the ways they’ll act.

Will I Ever Be Good Enough? is separated into three parts: identifying narcissistic mothering, explaining how it ruins a woman’s life, and advice on overcoming parental-induced dysfunction. A therapist by trade, McBride was spurred to write the book after noticing that the bulk of her female patients had one thing in common: a narcissistic mother. McBride herself grew up with a narcissistic mother, but was able to overcome her origins and get her life together, lending her advice additional credibility:

A narcissistic mother sees her daughter, more than her son, as a reflection and extension of herself rather than as a separate person with her own identity. She puts pressure on her daughter to act and react to the world and her surroundings in the exact manner that Mom would, rather than in a way that feels right for the daughter. Thus, the daughter is always scrambling to find the “right” way to respond to her mother in order to win her love and approval. The daughter doesn’t realize that the behaviors that will please her mother are entirely arbitrary, determined only by her mother’s self-seeking concern. Most damaging is that a narcissistic mother never approves of her daughter simply for being herself, which the daughter desperately needs in order to grow into a confident woman.

Narcissistic mothering is a problem for girls not only because it’s a violation of the bond between parent and child, but because girls rely on their mothers to provide a model for how they should act. By treating their daughters as extensions of themselves instead of separate human beings, narcissistic mothers deny them the ability to form their own identities. Sons of narcissistic mothers also suffer different but related forms of abuse; I haven’t read any books that focus on this subject, but this site recommended by Eve Penman looks like a good place to start.

I’ve written extensively about narcissism in the past, so I don’t need to rehash the basics, but it’s worth looking into narcissistic parenting. Narcissists have children out of a desire to feed their own ego and have someone else to push around. It’s a more malignant manifestation of the phenomenon of poor black and white teenage girls choosing to get pregnant (despite knowing about and having access to birth control) because they want to have power over someone else:

Mary sadly reported, “Mom tells me I’m ugly, but then I am supposed to go out there and be drop-dead gorgeous! I was a homecoming queen candidate and Mom acted proud with her friends but punished me. There’s this crazy-making message: The real me is ugly, but I am supposed to fake it in the real world? I still don’t get it.”

Narcissistic mothers constantly work to tear down any attempts their children make to develop a unique identity. They do this by belittling their children, by demanding constant attention, by violating boundaries (one of McBride’s patients talked about how her mother would try to sleep with her boyfriends), and a variety of other tactics. Some narcissists will even fake illness or injury in order to get attention.

The daughter reacts to her mother’s manipulations by constantly trying to please her and never quite succeeding. Dealing with a narcissist is like living in the world of Kafka’s Trial, in which a man is arrested and thrown in prison for a crime that he is never told about, by an authority that he doesn’t understand and which never reveals its motivations. If you’re particularly vulnerable to a narcissist’s predations, entering their reality is like being trapped in a house of mirrors, and there’s no one more vulnerable than children:

Oftentimes when Mother is narcissistic, she may be able to do some of the earlier nurturing because she has control of the infant and small child and can mold the child to her wishes. But as the child grows older and develops a mind of her own, the mother loses control and no longer has the same kind of power. This causes the mother to begin her demeaning, critical behavior with the child, in hopes of regaining that control, which is crazy-making for the daughter. Even if she learned a modicum of trust as an infant, she begins to unlearn it as she grows older. As she makes natural, reasonable demands on her mother, who is unable to meet them, the mother becomes resentful and threatened, and projects her inadequacies onto the daughter. She begins to focus on the daughter’s failings, rather than on her own limited ability to parent effectively.

What kind of woman does maternal narcissism create? That’s where things get really interesting.

Will I Ever Be Good Enough? lays out two extremes that the daughters of narcissistic mothers gravitate towards: the High-Achieving Daughter and the Self-Sabotaging Daughter. The High-Achieving Daughter overcompensates for her inner pain by throwing herself into her career or work, obsessing over external validation. The Self-Sabotaging Daughter is the exact opposite, constantly screwing up her life through self-destructive behaviors such as substance abuse:

While it is common to find the high achievers living in nice homes and working in well-paid careers or professions, it is just as common to find the self-saboteurs living in an aunt’s basement, in prison, on welfare, and collecting unemployment checks. When children are not allowed to be dependent on their mothers, they search for substitute caretakers as they get older. They attempt to get friends, relatives, lovers, partners, even society to take care of them so that they can finally feel cared for and secure. This may be a way to fool themselves into believing that because they are being cared for, they are finally being loved or cared about. Yet they never really feel cared about.

Reading this was like a punch to the gut. If you’re in a relationship with a Self-Sabotaging Daughter, your life will be constant misery. They instigate constant drama, they abuse drugs and alcohol, they threaten and attempt suicide; they do everything in their power to infect you with their unhappiness. And as McBride discusses in her chapter on the kinds of men that daughters of narcissistic mothers end up, they gravitate towards those who will abuse them the same way their moms did:

Many times the adult daughter will choose a partner who can’t meet even reasonable emotional needs because she unconsciously wants someone who cannot be emotionally intimate or vulnerable. This is what is familiar to her and what she feels is safe and predictable. Until she enters recovery, she is not especially in touch with her own feelings and therefore needs to partner with someone who is not “into” the feelings realm either.

The narcissist and the codependent form a feedback loop of pain. Narcissists seek out prey to provide them with narcissistic supply; codependents offer themselves as prey. If you don’t treat a codependent in the predatory fashion that she expects, she’ll drive you to abuse her through her antics (much in the same way that BPD women will push their boyfriends/husbands to batter them) and reject you if you don’t conform.

I realized that a big reason why these types of girls are attracted to me is because I give off narcissist vibes. However, I’m not a narcissist; I’m egomaniacal, though it’s easy to confuse the two. Because I’m incapable/unwilling to give these women the emotional roller coaster they expect, they eventually get bored and try to detonate the relationship. This is not to claim that I’m some kind of angel; I’ve done horrible things to women in the past, some of them unforgivable.

But at the end of the day, the only thing that can satisfy a codependent is a narcissist.

Can the daughters of narcissistic mothers be healed? Will I Ever Be Good Enough? says yes, but McBride also stresses that healing will only begin when the women themselves want it. As I learned a long time ago, trying to get people to mend their ways on your own never works; they have to want to change of their own volition. Trying to save women who don’t want to save themselves will always be a losing proposition.

There’s no point in helping people who insist on being self-destructive.

Overall, Will I Ever Be Good Enough? Healing the Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers is one of the most eye-opening books I’ve read all year. If you’re a woman suffering from maternal abuse, you need to read it, because no other psychology book will so thoroughly explain your plight and how to undo it. If you’re a man who is close to a woman who’s suffering from maternal abuse, you need to read it, because it will give you a roadmap to her mind.

Narcissism is one of the greatest maladies of our time. We need to fight it in any way we can.