An interesting thing about redpill thought–and something its adherents would probably tell you distinguishes it from bluepill thought–is its focus on personal responsibility. Complaining about your husband on RPW is forbidden; your posts have to be about ways that you can improve as a partner. And I think if you commented on a PUA blog that the reason you can’t get laid is because women are bitches you’d get laughed at: regardless of whether women are bitches, the reason you can’t get laid is because you aren’t trying hard enough.

I think that mindset is part of what I find appealing about these communities. I’ve had several frustrating conversations with social justice-minded friends/acquaintances that go something like this:

me: *shares a problem I’ve been experiencing at school or work*

them: oh wow. clearly your classmates/boss/colleagues/industry is/are incredibly sexist. I’m so sorry you have to deal with that!

me: uh actually, I don’t really think that’s the issue here? I think that there are some ways I can grow as a person and I’m trying to figure out how to do that–

them: don’t blame yourself honey! this is structural oppression!!

And obviously, the “you are responsible for your own life” and “your problems are other people’s fault” narratives are both right sometimes. I think the response above would be correct if, say, I were experiencing workplace sexual harassment. Sometimes keeping a positive attitude toward your husband and becoming less demanding and more pleasant to be around is exactly what you need to make your marriage work, and sometimes he’s just an asshole and you need to dump him.

So what divides those attracted to the narrative of personal responsibility from those attracted to the blame-others narrative? Well uh, just speaking for myself, I’m an extremely privileged person. If it’s true of anyone, it’s probably true of me that most of my problems are kind of “my fault,” rather than the result of unavoidable external circumstances. And I’d guess based on any SJ-approved metric of privilege, the people in redpill communities are more privileged than those in SJ communities–in other words, the people for whom the personal responsibility narrative is most accurate/helpful.

(Of course, I’m sure both sides would object strongly to being characterized as coexisting communities for competing access needs. Either sexism isn’t real and those who claim to be held back by it are brainwashed, or all women are oppressed by sexism and those who claim otherwise are brainwashed.)