@thesotiris 11 November 2025 more from that month

Red Flags in Women #1: Defined by what and whom she's attracted to

Kicking off the ‘Red Flags in Women’ series with this major warning sign: A reliable predictive marker of a low-quality woman is her attraction to the wrong male traits. This article is of interest to women, just as it is to men, because the dynamic is the same: a man attracted to deleterious female traits is himself deleterious. **Quality attracts quality, and vice versa** I’ve met women in whom I completely lost interest the second I realised they were attracted to nonsense faux-masculine traits, traits whose idea of possessing myself appalled me. I felt bad about myself that those women saw weakness in me, and were misguidedly attracted to it; weakness which they naively mistook for strength. ***Weak females go after weak males, and weak males go after weak females — it’s perhaps a projection or a need for validation of an identity of internalised weakness.*** No judgment or condemnation; just observation… This type of woman shows admiration for abusive, over-dominant, insecure, and begging-for-validation males, compelled by their desperate **need** to one-up everyone, otherwise they wouldn’t be able to live with themselves. **Weak males** disguise their lack of **self-esteem** with a cutout version of masculinity, a misunderstood, cartoonish caricature of **manhood**, since they don’t know **what real masculinity is**. And when they can’t one-up someone, they become faithfully subservient dogs for that someone. These are the “**macho**” males, the thugs, those loyal to arbitrary “**authority**” structures, those who respect circumstantial status more than integrity. https://sotiris.substack.com/p/need-versus-want https://sotiris.substack.com/p/why-arent-men-masculine-anymore https://sotiris.substack.com/p/confidence-vs-arrogance https://sotiris.substack.com/p/what-makes-a-man https://sotiris.substack.com/p/how-to-be-the-most-alpha https://sotiris.substack.com/p/your-warrior-archetype https://sotiris.substack.com/p/authority-is-a-bluff By their admission, such women found attractive in me my boyish insecurities, the macho performance, the whole biker **uniform** attitude of weak males who deludedly take themselves too seriously. This made me feel ashamed to have felt the need to own a big motorbike, and to play the thuggish part, solely for cheap, meaningless validation from cheap, impressionable people. And then **I presumed to wonder why quality women were appalled by me**. https://sotiris.substack.com/p/the-military-is-gay-part-3 **Attraction analysis** Ever notice how thugs embrace the thug lifestyle because apparently it is being rewarded by a certain type of woman? The fast, cheap, easy sex-bot, the kind of female who respects herself so little that she sees her entire worth as nothing more than her ability to provide objectified sexual gratification... Women who objectify themselves will naturally be drawn to males who also objectify themselves, males who self-define, not by the **virtues of masculinity**, but by the superficial features of a male object: insecure and needy antagonisms, physical aggression, and the obsession with physical appearance. https://sotiris.substack.com/p/what-makes-a-man Logically, **females who lack depth will be attracted to superficial male traits**: they will actually like weak, abusive males because they **never learned the difference between thuggery and class, between needy belligerence and true strength, and between bravado and masculinity**. Gangsters, druggies, fast-and-furious retards with loud exhausts vibrating profusely beneath their rectums… You can bet they were motivated by skanky women’s validation and attention. **Virtue over vice** We are defined as individuals by our **principles**, **ideals**, **virtues**, and **values**. What we value is part of our identity. What a woman values in men is that to which she finds attractive, for whatever reason. I won’t analyse here why we find attractive the things we do; that doesn’t matter in the scope of this article. However, regardless of explanations and psychodynamics, the fact remains that **what we are attracted to says something about us**. https://sotiris.substack.com/p/on-morality-part-1 https://sotiris.substack.com/p/the-shaming-fallacy-part-1 https://sotiris.substack.com/p/on-virtue https://sotiris.substack.com/p/what-are-western-values-anyway Note that, while I write this article from the male perspective, the same principles apply to the same perspective: what men find attractive in women defines them also. Yes, almost all of us are attracted to objective beauty. That’s a no-brainer. But what about virtues, character traits, and spiritual aspects of the human psyche? Attraction to superficial traits is easy, but when you possess depth, you can see beneath that. I know it sounds vapidly cliché, that “we should look at inner qualities”. But it’s true: ***Inner qualities are the qualities that matter because they are earned and they come at a cost, which makes them all the more meaningful.*** Women are typically attracted to men with steadfast self-esteem, integrity, and control over their environment, but what if women **confuse self-esteem with arrogance, integrity with popularity**, and **control with cowardly violent dominance** using arbitrarily circumstantial power structures, like the perceived **“authority” of the state** and its corrupt lawmaking that favours the corrupt? https://sotiris.substack.com/p/how-government-kills-masculinity The things that a woman finds attractive in males betray her moral, intellectual, and spiritual height or corruption? **Bravado vs. masculinity** So, if you’re a man, before you invest emotionally in a woman, here’s an undeniable, non-negotiable red flag that you should always keep in mind: She’s attracted to **bravado instead of masculinity**. Bravado: A swaggering show of courage, confidence, status, or strength, often masking insecurity. Bravado is the caricature of masculinity, a needy desperation, a narcissism masking an intense and suppressed lack of self-esteem. Its nature is performative and defensively oversensitive. An example is the desperate need for constant validation through passive or overt antagonisms, needless and unprovoked aggression to assert meaningless dominance, childishly loud performance that begs for attention, self-centeredness, the petty persistence of grudges, and other psychotic, obsessive, abusive tendencies. Masculinity: A sense of calm and control over oneself, unaffected by petty provocations and challenges. **Masculinity is integrity** most of all — faithful adherence to one’s definitive principles, even (especially so) in the face of adversity. Masculinity is not physical strength, because that is beyond our control, and is reliant upon age, genetics, and randomness. Masculinity is true courage, the **strength to be humble without compromising self-esteem**, rather than the **insecure arrogance of bravado**, which cannot accept one’s limitations out of fear of surfacing one’s bottled-up self-loathing. https://sotiris.substack.com/p/how-to-be-the-most-alpha Bravado is the opposite of masculinity. Where a masculine man is self-reliant, and thus free from the desperate need for meaningless validation of manhood, a male afflicted with the lack of masculinity (bravado) is desperately reliant upon constant validation of his masculinity. A male insecure about his manhood masks this affliction with an overacted theatrical performance of manhood that can’t fool anyone… except those who don’t know what true masculinity is. And these are the weak males and females who are drawn to this swaggering circus show. Bravado is flamboyant showmanship by weak, insecure males uncertain of their manhood, who thus become needily aggressive in their cognitive dissonance, their confusion between deluding themselves that they are men, and their inability to shake off the lingering suspicion that they aren’t. Masculinity is being unwavering in your self-esteem, and confident in your ability be be a man when you have to. And being a man is not about performances no one asked for. Masculinity is about integrity: staying true to your principles when you have to, especially when doing so comes at self-sacrifice. Bravado cannot do that. Bravado is a theatrical performance by actors who, in real life, and when the chips are down, cannot live the part. **Conclusion** And what does it say about a woman when she confuses bravado for masculinity? It says that she cannot identify nor appreciate true masculinity, that she will always go after weak, asshole males: either the passive-aggressive, begrudged, better-than-thou nerds, or the abusive, desperate-for-status jocks. And if she is attracted to you, it’s beneficial to recognise what aspects of you might have given her that impression — that you possess bravado rather than masculinity. This is your cue to do some self-reflection, **not to punish yourself with self-loathing**, but to gain purpose in taking full **accountability** towards improving yourself from the core. https://sotiris.substack.com/p/excuses-vs-explanations-part-2 https://sotiris.substack.com/p/the-source-of-all-evil Why is she that way? She probably had extremely bad male role models or none of her female role models actually taught her what true femininity is, because **it takes a true woman to recognise and appreciate a true man**. **My suggestion** Do not waste any time or emotion on women who aren’t appalled by the weak males of superficial faux-strength, those **brandishing bravado instead of embodying masculinity**.