Down with Movember, says Brendan O’Neill

Writing at the Telegraph, he takes a dissident view of the whole ‘Movember’ phenomenon.

Don’t be fooled by the manly moustaches – Movember is all about turning blokes into sad, sober, simpering wrecks

By Brendan O’Neill

It’s Movember! Yes, the month previously known as November, until it was hijacked by health-obsessed hipsters with ‘taches, is upon us. This means that for the next 30 days, your Facebook and Twitter feeds will be clogged up by blokes imploring you to check out Instagram photos of how their pencil ‘tache, handlebar or Fu Manchu is progressing. The aim of Movember – a hilarious mashing together of the words “moustache” and “November”! – is to get guys around the world sprouting facial hair in the name of charity, specifically as a way of raising awareness about male cancer. The idea is that fuzz starts to form atop your gob, someone asks “why are you growing a ‘tache?”, and then you tell them all about Movember and its various prostate and testicular cancer initiatives. So you get to look dashing and be totally socially responsible all at the same time. Win.

God, I hate Movember. And not only because growing a ‘tache for cancer encourages men to make a big, hairy, public display of their caring, charitable side, which overlooks the wise advice of historian William Hutton: “The charity that hastens to proclaim its good deeds ceases to be charity, and is only pride and ostentation.” No, even worse than that is what Movember has done to the moustache. It has completely ruined it. It has single-handedly reversed the entire meaning of the mo’. In the past, men grew ‘taches to demonstrate their masculinity, to let the world know they were strong and virile and maybe a bit mental: think bushy Burt Reynolds or ‘tache-tastic Tom Selleck. Now, courtesy of Movember, we’re invited to grow ‘taches to show that we’re “in touch” with our bodies and feelings, that we’re “health aware”, that we are willing, in the words of the Movember website, to imitate “the efforts of women, who proactively and publicly address their health issues in a way not traditionally seen with men”. In short, where growing a ‘tache was once about saying “I AM MAN”, now it’s about publicly advertising one’s effeminacy.

Don’t be fooled by the seemingly manly ‘taches – the true aim of Movember is to remake men as permanently panicked navel-gazers who never smoke or drink or eat junk food and instead have interminable conversations with their mates about their testicles and prostates. The overseers of Movember complain that young men are “indifferent towards their health”. Apparently blokes have a problematic “‘it’ll be alright’ attitude”, which leads to a “reluctance” to openly discuss “health issues”. Men need to be more like women, says the Movember website; we are currently “trailing the women’s health movement” and thus lots of “established taboos and barriers relating to men’s health [must be] broken down”. Movember aims to do this by encouraging men everywhere to regularly examine their testicles for lumps, get prostate check-ups, go to the doctor whenever they feel remotely unwell, and stop being “embarrassed to discuss health issues”.

Movember has lots of health tips for us dumb, I’m-alright-Jack blokes. First, of course, “Don’t Smoke”, because that’s really bad for you. Also, you must “Know Your Body” – that is, feel yourself (no, not like that!), look for lumps, gawp at yourself in a mirror, and “if something seems out of the norm, alert your doctor”. We must “Eat A Healthy Diet” – “fill up with fruit, vegetables and whole grains!” “Stay At A Healthy Weight”, too, because being overweight “poses a major risk for chronic diseases”. And here’s a biggie: “Drink Alcohol Only In Moderation.” Ideally we should “not drink more than 3-4 units of alcohol each day, the equivalent to a pint-and-a-half of 4% beer”.

Here, we can see the New Labour-like petty authoritarianism and health freakery that lurks behind the super-ironic veneer of the Movember campaign: what presents itself as a jokey, blokey international sporting of hilarious ‘taches is in fact a drive to make men, especially young men, into smoke-free, sober, fruit-chomping, testicle-checking bores who should never drink more than a pint-and-a-half of beer in a day (are they serious?). What this uber-patronising campaign overlooks is that if young men really do have an “‘it’ll be alright’ attitude”, that’s because it probably will be alright: young men, and young women too, are healthier than they have ever been, and are less likely than any generation in history to die in the workplace or contract a serious illness or fail to make it to middle age. It is perverse to encourage young men who have the privilege of living in a safe, medically advanced society to spend more of their time panicking about their health and darting off to the doctor’s at the merest hint of a cough or ache. They surely have better things to do, like eat steaks, get drunk, have casual sex.

If anything is bad for our health, it is the demand that we become ever more health-obsessed. What good can come from making men panicky, insecure, freaked out every time a bit of their body looks a bit different to how it looked last week? Indeed, studies suggest that the constant promotion of the cult of testicular self-examination among young men, which Movember fully supports, is leading to more and more “false positives”, with blokes having chemotherapy and even surgery that they don’t actually need. This is the irony: Movember – or at least the hectoring, health-obsessed thinking behind it – can make you sick. Don’t fall for it, lads. Don’t cave in to the demand that we should be more “aware” and constantly on alert for ailments and troubles. Screw Movember. Shave off the mo’. Be a man.

 

On ‘bro’-ness

The word ‘bro’ is an obvious abbreviation of ‘brother’, and to the extent that I use it, which is exceedingly rarely, that’s how I’ve always used it; whether to denote a male friend one is close to, or just as the equivalent of saying ‘man’ or ‘dude’ or ‘guy’, etc. to a male acquaintance (as in the well-known phrases “Don’t taze me, bro!” or “U mad bro?“)  Wiktionary defines it similarly, too, as does UrbanDictionary in the first part of the first definition.

However, UrbanDictionary also supplies some other definitions which affix certain characteristics, interests, fashions, tastes, and personal hobbies to the term ‘bro’.  I have encountered this in other places, too; if one Googles the term ‘bro’, one comes across the site Brobible, which is a site dedicated to various male interests: girls, sports, partying, music, entertainment, ‘gear’, etc.  Then there’s also the term ‘bro code‘, to which a number of sites are dedicated to explaining as a set of principles to live by…

Recently, the Atlantic’s new channel “The Sexes” featured an article by some chick named Eleanor Barkhorn, entitled “Toward a Working Definition of ‘Bro’“, which examined a recent Craigslist posting from the Washington, D.C. area, which has since been pulled, but of which they got a screencap before it disappeared.  The Craigslist posting was entitled “$800 Seeking Renaissance Bro to Assimilate into Existing Bro Community” – the posters were apparently looking for a roommate who meets their definition of what a ‘bro’ is, hoping no doubt to find someone quite similar to themselves in terms of interests, and one might even say, worldview, so they’d have not just a roommate but a new bud to hang out with, etc.  The chick journo from the Atlantic quotes a portion:

Let us define the term bro. We’re not the “bro” you see on MTV, or any “bro” you see wearing Ed Hardy/Affliction T-shirts. We’re not bros with Nantucket red shorts, boat shoes, and croakies. We’re not the Magic The Gathering/D&D Bros. We are just sensible guys that enjoy immature forays on weekends and intellectual box socials on weekdays. We enjoy the outdoors and traveling. We read a lot of books and discuss the best way to layer the contents of a BLT. We’re not all fart jokes and dildo-hats though. We both have legit 9-5 jobs, graduate degrees, and high levels of general awareness. We have a strong group of bros (approx 30-45 across the eastern seaboard) that come in and out on a regular basis throughout the week/weekends for Monday/Thursday night football, movie night, or bro dinners at sick steakhouses. I know this is a lot, and there is no way I can cover all areas of our bro community, but I hope this weeds out some of the unsavory “bros” out there.

And then she snarks:

So, bros are immature, intellectual, jet-setting, social-butterfly foodies. Got it.

The posters also seem to act as if ‘bros’ should talk in a certain way, given the wording of their ad (some of it just strikes me as bizarre, even if in jest; for instance, when the guy says “My roommate and I are 29 years old, have known each other since freshman year of college, and can basically describe each others’ taints with our eyes closed.” WTF?  That comes across so gay, even though I highly doubt they are; guess I’m just too ‘old-school’ to talk like that.).

So what the hell is a ‘bro’ / what are ‘bros’?  Just a term to denote a fellow guy? Just guys who are close friends with similar interests?  Or does it describe a somewhat specific subculture of sorts, to which one doesn’t belong if one doesn’t meet certain criteria?  (If so, no doubt no ‘theater fags’ or non-sports-fans need apply…)  Or is it all or none of these things?  Or is it beyond precise definition?  And just what the hell exactly is ‘bromance‘?

What do y’all think?

 

What’s wrong with the word ‘manosphere’?

Here at Patriactionary, we consider our blog to be more or less at the intersection of the manosphere and the tradosphere / orthosphere, in terms of our interests and foci (‘focuses’ for the Latin-challenged) as ‘Red Pill’ patriarchal reactionary traditionalist Christian men.

Apparently, some people in the manosphere have tired of that name (see here and here), finding it somehow ‘gay’.

Really?  How sad, that sodomites have so captured the word ‘man’ that any association with it somehow seems homo in the minds of some.

As for the supposed replacement ‘cocktagon’, actually referencing the male organ sounds way more queer than just referring to our common masculinity in the term ‘manosphere’, no?  It does to me, as does ‘cockosphere’…

I agree that neither ‘androsphere’ nor ‘homosphere’ are suitable (they’re both worse, and even more queer-sounding)…

Why not just leave well enough alone?

Stop being over-sensitive, you ‘manosphere’-term haters!  We’re men; why not acknowledge that in our name?

Sheesh.

While I’m on the subject, are men who take an interest in dressing well, cooking, the arts, etc., any less manly than those who prefer professional sports?  Because the fear of the term ‘manosphere’ strikes me as the sort of hyper-masculine bullshit that gets people who like the arts labelled ‘theater-fags’, even if they’re straight.  Why can’t straight guys like theatre, the arts, even dancing, the way true ‘renaissance men’ did in times past?

Why let the outside world dictate what is and isn’t ‘masculine’?  Why can’t ‘real men’ eat quiche or drink wine?

Really, that attitude is all a case of realmannspracht, and if the manosphere is to be about anything, shouldn’t we free ourselves from allowing outsiders to tell us what constitutes a ‘real man’?  Especially, shouldn’t Christians take their cue from Scripture?  All men are real men, simply due to being created in the image of God, thus bearing the Imago Dei.  That’s what a real man is, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

Or tell you we shouldn’t identify as men, in terms of that phrase ‘manosphere’, nor like things other men don’t.

Fuck that.  I’ll like what I like, and not like what I don’t like (e.g. I’m not much for sports), and I don’t care what others think of me for my tastes / preferences.  What could be more manly than not caring what others think?

Why not NOT let queers capture terms like ‘man’, NOR let others dictate what is and what isn’t ‘truly’ manly?  Why not tell both of them to get stuffed – and go your own way…

(Like me using emoticons, or linking Cracked articles in my linkfests; not toeing any party line, am I?  Hmmm.)

 

Manliness and Civilization

Feminist Claptrap about Masculine Hormones

Mangina Alan Alda is credited with inventing the phrase “testosterone poisoning.” Wikipedia tells us that in an article in Ms. Magazine (man card permanently revoked!), he wrote:

“Everyone knows that testosterone, the so-called male hormone, is found in both men and women. What is not so well-known, is that men have an overdose… Until recently it has been thought that the level of testosterone in men is normal simply because they have it. But if you consider how abnormal their behavior is, then you are led to the hypothesis that almost all men are suffering from testosterone poisoning.”

The theorized link is between male hormones and aggressiveness. Does the link hold? Well, Wikipedia further down tells us that “Neuroscientist Christoph Eisenegger at the University of Zurich has conducted a study and concludes that the evidence debunks the myth that testosterone causes aggressive, egocentric behaviour, suggesting instead that the sex hormone can encourage fair play, particularly if it improves a person’s status.^[5] According to a study published in Nature, ‘a single dose of testosterone in women causes a substantial increase in fair bargaining behaviour, thereby reducing bargaining conflicts and increasing the efficiency of social interactions. However, subjects who believed that they received testosterone—regardless of whether they actually received it or not—behaved much more unfairly than those who believed that they were treated with placebo.’” (emphasis and italics added)

The Ultimatum Game

Also from Wikipedia:

“The ultimatum game is a game often played in economic experiments in which two players interact to decide how to divide a sum of money that is given to them. The first player proposes how to divide the sum between the two players, and the second player can either accept or reject this proposal. If the second player rejects, neither player receives anything. If the second player accepts, the money is split according to the proposal. The game is played only once so that reciprocation is not an issue.”

It is a model for social interaction. As the book Priceless tells us (page 120):

“The ultimatum game has become an ur-experiment, the scientific equivalent of a catchy riff that lends itself to endless sampling and remixing. It has been played with members of the globe’s diverse cultures; with children, the autistic, the high-IQ, and men having exceptionally high levels of testosterone; with players who have been given a hormone that increases trust in strangers; even with chimpanzees splitting a prize of ten raisins. The game’s continuing fascination rests on how behavior changes, or doesn’t change, with context. Like a well-oiled weathervane, the experiment’s archetypic economic choice is sensitive to subtle pressures that affect us all the time yet usually go unnoticed.”

Different cultures react differently:

“‘My Israeli game theory professor was proud to note that Israel is one of the few places where low offers were given and accepted’ in the ultimatum game, economist Presh Talwalkar wryly noted. For what it’s worth, the ‘Israeli myth’ owes to a 1991 study comparing behavior in Pittsburgh, Ljubljana, Jerusalem, and Tokyo. The most common proposer offer was 40 percent among Israelis, versus 50 percent for Americans. That’s not much of a difference, really (as we will see). But it led to a mystique of Israelis as the chosen rational people—or else it played into the old Shylockian stereotypes. One of the four-city study’s coauthors, Hebrew University’s Shmuel Zamir, recalls a young Israeli coming up to him, ‘visibly upset.’ He complained, ‘I did not eam any money because all the other players are stupid! How can you reject a positive amount of money and prefer to get zero? They just did not understand the game! You should have stopped the experiment and explained it to them.’

When Colin Camerer described this ‘crosscultural’ study to UCLA anthropologist Robert Boyd, Boyd objected that it was no such thing. ’Pittsburgh is not a culture,’ he said, ‘it’s a place on a map.’”

It is interesting that some cultures are less inclined to an even 50-50 split. Other research showed that what Fukuyama called “high-trust” cultures are more given to the even split. This leads to an intriguing question: what happens in a culture of low trust? Does such exist?

“To an anthropologist, all four cities were part of the same homogenized global culture. The story got more interesting when one of Boyd’s grad students, Joe Heinrich, performed ultimatum game experiments with the Machiguenga people of eastem Peru. ‘He came back and said, can you come and look at my data?’ recalled Camerer. ‘So I went over to UCLA, and Joe said, “I think I made a mistake because they made a lot of low offers, and they were all accepted. Except for one, and that was even suspicious because I had a Spanish-speaking assistant with me who spoke the local dialect, and that guy kind of bullied him into it: ‘I don’t think you should take that.’ So I think they all were accepted.” ‘

The Machiguenga are among the most asocial peoples on earth.” (emphasis added)

Punishing cheaters is the basis for civilized society

The Israeli who was annoyed at people who wouldn’t accept even token amounts when he would get the lion’s share was doubtless sincere in his confusion. We have moved from a society that valued social cohesion and group progress to one of a “winner-takes-all” mentality. As the Ultimatum Game shows, however, there is an inbred cultural meme in most successful cultures to punish narcissists who profit at the expense of others. This is necessary to social peace and societal advancement. Where does the meme arise, and how is it enforced?

Terence Burnham has also played the Ultimatum Game:

“The ultimatum game is a simple negotiation with the interesting property that people frequently reject offers of ‘free’ money. These rejections contradict the standard view of economic rationality. This divergence between economic theory and human behaviour is important and has no broadly accepted cause.”

He wondered at the effect of that violence-causing, society-destroying androgen, testosterone.

“In a variety of species, testosterone is associated with male seeking dominance. If low ultimatum game offers are interpreted as challenges, then high-testosterone men may be more likely to reject such offers. In this experiment, men who reject low offers … have significantly higher testosterone levels than those who accept.”

So, as this experiment shows, high testosterone men will go out of their way to punish “cheaters” who violate accepted social norms, even if it means foregoing personal gain in the process. That our society has grown less just as it has become more feminized, and that more and more people have a cavalier disregard for established social norms, is part and parcel of the same syndrome. Restoration of Patriarchy, led by manly men, is essential to justice and social harmony.

 

Guest Post: Preserve thy Soul in Self-Control, a Review of Willpower

Free Northerner writes:

The Bookshelf: Willpower

Electricangel recommended I read the book Willpower, so I did, and he mentioned a possible guest post on it, so here it is.

Right off the bat, I’ll say that the book was excellent and I’m glad it was recommended to me.

Essentially the book is a discussion of willpower, how it works, how to use it to your advantage, and how to strengthen it.

It’s written in a typical self-help masquerading as popular science style. Introduce an issue, show some studies, show some real life examples, and then show the practical applicability of the previous. The writing style is solid; its engaging, accessible, well-written. Not quite as engaging as, say, Malcolm Gladwell, the big player in the self-help as popular science genre, but it’s also much more in-depth and informative than Gladwell’s breezy style (gentle mockery here), so overall I think it functions better.

The book argues that willpower exists and, along with IQ, is the strongest universal predictor of success. Levels of self-control as a child are tied to future life outcomes. Willpower is biologically based and is dependent on your glucose levels. The biggest lesson of the book is that you have only a limited amount of willpower, which is steadily depleted as you resist temptation and make decisions, and is restored through eating and sleeping. Your available willpower is somewhat innate but can be strengthened. So, you should try to avoid depleting willpower unnecessarily and conserve willpower for when you really need it.

The various chapters explain how to use to-do lists to optimize your productivity, how making decisions and will power effect each other, how to apply willpower to your spending, strengthening willpower, how belief in higher power/values can strengthen willpower, raising children with willpower, and that perennial self-help favourite, dieting.

There’s too much in the book for me to go through all of it here, so I’ll highlight some manosphere-related things that stood out to me.

As mentioned, there’s a discussion on glucose and willpower, and the book recommend eating low glycemic foods such as meats, veggies, nuts, and fruits rather than sugary foods and refined carbohydrates. In other words, eating paleo/primal can help build up your willpower. Although, in times of decision/willpower fatigue a quick boost of energy from something sugary can be a good temporary willpower pick-me-up.

Also, on diet and health, the authors conclude that, contrary to popular opinion, self-control has only minimal effect on physical health. They recommend heavily against “dieting”, saying that dieting itself causes long-term weight gain and unhealthiness as it overrides your body’s natural hunger signals. There’s some advice on how to increase your odds of becoming healthier.

There’s a discussion of the SMP. Essentially, your brain is reluctant to forgo options, so as you’re given more choices you become more reluctant to choose. So, as your mating choices expand you are more likely to increase your criteria for a potential mate, increasing the likelihood of ending up with no mate at all. This explains why some women (and men) can have long, impossible criteria for potential partners.

One section discusses the “hot-cold empathy gap”, where in peace you can not appreciate how you’ll behave in the heat of the moment. So, when in the heat of temptation you are much more likely do something that you would not consider otherwise. This is applied to men; when aroused men were a lot more likely to be willing to engage in sexual activities they would not have considered in a “cool” state. Not surprising, but something to for aspiring patriarchs to keep in mind.

The self-esteem movement is excoriated as it causes narcissism while not actually providing the promised benefits.

There’s a discussion of how single-parenting is heavily detrimental to children as children in single-parent homes are monitored less and monitoring is essential to the development of self-control.

On the topic that led to EA’s recommendation to read this book, video games are encouraged in this book for children as they exercise willpower. There’s further useful advice on raising children to have willpower and self-control.

In other words, the science of willpower more or less validates the arguments of the manosphere/alt-right at very turn.

The book concludes with some helpful and practical advice, such as know your limits, pick your battles, monitor yourself, use a to-do list, and reward yourself. This advice is not stunningly original, but it’s good to have it provided along with the backing science.

Recommendation:

This book is excellent. If you ever desire to improve yourself or accomplish something difficult, Willpower is a must-buy. It will explain to you how to better harness your willpower to succeed. I can not recommend this book enough.

If you don’t ever plan on accomplishing anything, you might enjoy the science but the book’s not for you. Also, you should really consider why you have resigned yourself to mediocrity and failure. Upon consideration you should choose to improve yourself, then read the book to help do so.

 

Father Knows Best: Homage to Quiplinks Edition

HL has used QuipLinks for a while in the style of annotated version of the late, lamented Ferd’s “LIGFY” posts over at InMalaFide. I started reading the manosphere in 2009, and have been saving pithy quotes for a while, usually with links to the original thought. I call these items “Aphorisms of the Manosphere,” and they capture in one or two lines an essential nugget of masculine wisdom. I invite all readers to leave their own Aphorisms below, and I will add them to the collection, where pithy and insightful enough.

Many of the Aphorisms originate with the Dark Lord, Roissy/Heartiste. I have not linked back any of the Maxims, all of which originate with him. I have assigned categories to other links..

Philosophers

Men have always been the leading thinkers; this is due to the wider spread on the Bell Curve, which leaves more male geniuses than female geniuses out of the same population. (If you’re nature, you don’t play games with the sex primarily responsible for the care of the next generation.) Men as a sex pay for this higher rate of genius that causes the effect of the “glass ceiling” by the invisible “glass floor” that all of society stands upon: that very large mass of men where nature’s genetic experiments have left behind the mentally defective, the morally retarded. Some Philosophical quotes picked up in reading:

• All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident. Arthur Schopenhauer
• “The wise man is never busy, and the busy man is never wise.” Lin Yutang
• The true man wants two things: danger and play. For that reason he wants woman, as the most dangerous plaything. Nietzsche
• The graveyards are full of indispensable men. Georges Pompidou
• “The free man creates himself.” Goethe
• “”I have done that,” says my memory. “I cannot have done that” — says my pride, and remains adamant. At last — memory yields.” Nietzsche, describing the hamster
• Civilization is a compact that each sex will agree not to use its most effective weapon in the battle of the sexes: men abjure the use of force, and women will not use their youth and beauty to get their ways. All major religions understood this, restraining feminine beauty under modest dress in exchange for male passiveness. Slutwalks are the herald of the return of male violence to the societies in which we live. (My summary of a few arguments)

On Male Nature

• I am not a guy, a dude, or a boy.  I am a man.  I will refer to myself as such and demand others do the same. Solomon II
• “I love to see them squirm.” 15yo Bobby Fisher’s answer when asked why he loved chess.
• When “Leadership” is challenged, Logic can be used to defend the decisions. When “Authority” is challenged, Logic has little place in defending. You must assert and hold to your precepts, enforcing them at whatever cost is necessary. Looking Glass
• Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin to slit throats. H. L. Mencken
• Men prefer to improve themselves by focusing on strengths, women by fixing the areas where they are weak. By urging women to take on many more responsibilities than they did in the past, feminism gave women more areas to be weak, and this has helped lead to the decline of female happiness over the past 40 years.
• “When a man has not had a good father, he must create one.” Nietzsche
• I was made more disappointed by my success with women than by my failures. (Read somewhere, commenting on the disappointment that women were not, in fact, special snowflakes, and that his success had led to disillusionment and depedestalization.)
• Maxim #7: Your girl will thank you for your steadfast devotion to your belief in yourself.
• The most powerful word in a man’s vocabulary is “no”.  Learn how to say no to a woman without hesitation, reservation, or explanation.  Solomon II

Politics

In the time of Democracy in Athens, things worked pretty well, but then democracy, which means rule by the Deme, one of the tribes of Athens, expressly did NOT mean rule by any women. A few quotes on politics:

• Marxism is “the opiate of the intellectuals” French journalist Raymond Aron
• “Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.” Henry Kissinger
• Feminism: women gained power, and lost influence.
• “If you can’t eat their food, drink their booze, screw their women, and then be prepared to wake up in the morning and vote against them, son, you don’t belong in politics.” Jesse Marvin Unruh, California Assembly Speaker

Hypergamy

This is the defining characteristic of female sexuality. It’s not slur, it’s not sin, it’s how women ARE. Ignore it as you will, but as Ayn Rand wrote: “You may attempt to avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality.” Just so with men who will not address and understand how the female reproductive imperative drives the feminine nature. Some quotes:

• Women are not naturally polygamous, they are naturally hypergamous. Like Oscar Wilde, they are always satisfied with the best.
• “The feminist triumph has deprived women of an essential element of their erotic lives. By raising women’s status and emphasizing “equality,” feminism has performed the psychological equivalent of a clitoridectomy on our society’s women. Rather than objects of lust and passion, they are now competitors, rivals and colleagues — their erotic capital is significantly diminished.” Bill Price
• “Women get more of what they sleep with, and less of what they friend-zone. Then they complain about ending up with what they slept with, instead of what they friend-zoned.” Retrenched
• Of the seven deadly sins, lust is most often paired with gluttony. Both reveal an inability to control appetites. (From an article linking promiscuity and obesity, talking about the Carousel-riding of the obese)
• “Dads who vamoose make girls who are loose.” Roissy
• Maxim #51: For most women, five minutes of alpha is worth five years of beta.
• A key that opens many locks is a master key. A lock that can be opened by many keys is a weak lock.

Women

Not specifically about hypergamy, this includes observations on women in general. Some choice quotes:

• Women can keep a secret just as well as men but it takes more of them to do it. Sacha Guitry
• “Roughly speaking, a woman’s tendency to flake is proportional to her options and inversely proportional to her age.” John Ross
• “Women stay with the status quo, even if the status quo is bad for them.” The Fifth Horseman.
• A misogynist is a man who views women the way women do.
• “Never argue with a woman. They’ll drag you down to their level, then beat you with experience.” Zed, substituting “woman” for “fool.”
• Maxim #54: When a woman has incentive to lie, she will choose lying over honesty EVERY SINGLE TIME.
• Maxim #25: NO girl wants to be thought she isn’t a special little snowflake.
• Maxim #11: Calling a girl out on her lie accomplishes nothing.
• Having an internal filter is the hallmark of anyone with good character, especially a woman. A woman who speaks her mind is simply too lazy emotionally to check herself before uttering something hateful or rude. The Private Man

Feminism

Many’s the man who has complained about this toxic outgrowth of Cultural Marxism. I have surprisingly few quotes here:

• “When you can’t be beautiful, be difficult: Feminism is where penis envy meets cargo-cultism.” J
• If liberation for women meant liberation from accountability to men, liberation for men mean(s) liberation from responsibility to women… these are two sides of the same coin. Brendan/Novaseeker
• Feminism is a great way for Alpha males to control Beta males by proxy. Solomon II
• The mixture of feminism and pedestalization … has produced the mess in America.… It may be the rejection of Mary in the American Christianity (so the eternal feminine is embodied in actual women instead of a religious figure). But the reverence that American men put on American women is the (reason) feminism has been so harmful. Imnobody

Relationships

• Maxim #28: The more experience you have with women, the more you’ll know which women have experience with men
• Maxim #49: The rare older woman-younger man pairing is like a lab experiment gone wrong. It violates the natural order of things, and leaves its practitioners emotionally twisted and in a constant mental race to hyper-rationalize their sub-par mate choice.
• Maxim #45: Women will screech louder the closer your words get to damaging or exposing vulnerabilities in their sexual market value.
• Maxim #32: Commanding women to do your bidding will give you a bigger beta margin of error when needed.
• Maxim #19: Withholding sex is the tactic of a woman who has already lost. It is mutually assured destruction.
• Women are the guardians of access to sex; men are the guardians of access to commitment. There is no sex unless she says yes, and no marriage unless he asks.

Relationship Advice from Women

I added this one-quote category for its stunning hamster effect. For those of you who wondered why Roissy went down in late 2009 for a few days, gaze upon the creature who wreaked havoc on all our lives:

• “Powerful and quality men take women on dates, adore her, make her the center of the universe, and puts in his time proving he truly likes her in a genuine way before he he even thinks about pawing her up… Only women with serious emotional and psychological issues want to be treated like a dog, told what to do, insulted, or treated as anything less then (sic) a princess.” Lady Raine, single-mom exposer of Roissy, on how “men” can be “successful” in relationships.

Marriage

The big kahuna of relationships. A life-destroying potential minefield for men. STILL the best way for a Patriarch to proceed, but do so with great caution:

• You do not owe a traditional wedding to any woman who cannot offer you a traditional honeymoon.  Solomon II (I think this is the ultimate aphorism of the Christian Manosphere)
• The problem with Christian marriage as portrayed in the movie Fireproof is that “marriage is about love, not vows, and it is the sole job of the husband to keep his wife haaaapy.” Dalrock
• Women want to GET married; they don’t want to BE married.
• Maxim #50: Marriage is no escape from the sexual market and the possibility that you may be outbid by a competitor with higher value.
• Maxim #22: You have to make marriage an attractive alternative for MEN — not women — if you want the institution to thrive.
• Marriage available today is a sick, powerless, emasculating hoax specifically designed to destroy men (and therefore society). When injustice becomes law, rebellion becomes duty. Samuel Solomon
• (A cheating wife) needs a man who can stand up even to her, because if her man cannot stand up to a woman who is clearly in the wrong, how could she trust him to stand up to bigger threats? Brent
• You cannot turn a whore into a housewife. Anonymous Guest

Family

The only reason to GET married in the current environment. Some choice quotes:

• (A)ny woman who couldn’t get around to prioritizing children until she’s too old for them is probably better off not procreating. … I’m glad that she doesn’t have kids to screw up. Kai
• “(It’s) Easier to start a career at 40 than to attempt to start a family at that age.” Uncle Elmer.
• “The future belongs to those who show up for it.” (Commenting on the low-childbirth rate of feminists)
• “It remains to be seen which program will cause greater societal damage: China’s one-child policy or America’s one-parent policy.” PJ O’Rourke

Divorce

The tragedy that enfolds so many of America’s men and children (and women, too; they often don’t know how bad the effects will be.). My wake-up call was reading Stephen Baskerville’s book that details the “work” of the moral monster Robert Williams. Read, and weep:

• “(There was) a long term study of children born in the 1920′s in the US, the Longevity study. One fact stood out starkly: ‘divorced parents’ was a very strong indicator of shorter lifespan in children. (I)f there was a disease, viral or bacterial, that did to children what divorce &/or single parenthood does, an entire month would be set aside to raise money to find a cure.” Anonymous Reader
• When a man steals your wife, there is no better revenge than to let him keep her. Sacha Guitry
• “The bachelor is a selfish, undeserving guy who has cheated some woman out of a divorce.” Noted by JJ

Payback

Many men, divorced or simply deprived of the pleasures of wife and family by the culture of divorce and unrestrained hypergamy, are angry and seeking justice because of the nature of divorce. I have a small category called payback that outlines some of these thoughts:

• If I didn’t have the kitten, I don’t want the cat. Revered Wisdom
• I will sail the boat of my old age on a sea of spinster tears. – Jack
• The catcall or wolf whistle is the lower-status man’s defensive weapon against attractive, unattainable women’s assault of flaunting their sexual goods in the men’s faces. Giovanni Dannato, “Provocative Female Attire is an Assault Against Men”

Humor

Men, with a larger number of geniuses, also have a larger number of simply FUNNY people amongst them, as humor is correlated with intelligence. Some classic examples:

• “I never got around to nailing a volleyball player, but any babe with long legs who has multiple sets of knee pads can’t be all that bad.” EvilAlpha
• “Confucius say: Never date woman who already know divorce lawyer.” Arch
• “You don’t pay a prostitute for sex; you pay her to leave afterward.” Donald Trump
• “This blog frequently gets lady commenters proclaiming to the high heavens that they would never date an asshole. After a leetle prying, it is usually revealed that these howling anti-game termagants are north of the Matron-Vixen line.” Roissy/Heartiste
• “If I’m not fucking you now, fucking you soon, or using you to fuck other girls, you’re useless to me” Squared.
• “I cannot use your abuse. You may have it back.” Jack Kerouac
• Advice to Feminists: Quit trying to tie the MRM to psychotic mass murderers…The fact that a couple of crazed killers said they didn’t like feminists only proves that being crazy doesn’t necessarily make you stupid. Paul Elam
• A London trader on the economic crisis of 2008: “It’s worse than a divorce. I have lost 50% of my assets and I still have my wife!”
• “You cannot have ‘happiness’ without ‘penis.’ Anonymous
• (On the origins of Beta in men) “Maybe he’s born with it; maybe it’s Betalline.” Professor Mentu
• I hate every bone in her body, but mine. Legendary Country Music title

I look forward to readers’ Aphorisms derived from reading the most fertile intellectual environment, the manosphere.

 

On the ‘mancave’ phenomenon

“Down with the mancave!”, argue Peacemaker and Jack Donovan (HT: Ferd).

Peacemaker:

Man caves are bullshit. The concept is ass-backwards and the word’s popularity subtly exposes how low men are on the totem pole. It implies the rest of the house belongs to the wife, as if he’s sequestered to some dank dark region. She has “the house,” he has his “man cave.”

[...]

What other time in our lives have we been relegated to a small corner of the house? When we were in trouble as children. A domineering parent (in many cases, a mother) punishes us through ignoring us. “Go to your room!” It’s the same scenario, only we willingly submit.

[...]

Abandon the man cave. Train your woman. Reclaim your house and position.

Jack Donovan:

The modern “man-cave” is probably the result of two main phenomena. As men did less physical work together outside the home, middle class suburban men had to try and find some way to maintain their masculine identity. Intuitive marketers tapped into this and advertised all kinds of “manly hobbies” in mid-Century men’s magazines, responding to this sense of loss. Then women demanded access to every space that men had reserved for themselves, and…well…men caved.Over and over again. We should make that a folk etymology for mancave.

Mancave – “The room men got to keep after they caved and caved and caved.”

I see their point, but at the same time, as Donovan admits:

Men have always had spaces to gather with other men. It’s likely that in prehistory, men spent at least as much time with each other as they did with women. In high society, men have long had men’s only clubs to recreate this experience on some level.

Just so.  Donovan also mentioned “the idea of the assigned male space as a “redoubt,” or, ”a place of retreat”“, which of course it is.

I am a single man, and so my living space has always been my own.  I understand and appreciate that this changes when one is married, necessarily.  Most space will be shared space, and so, in my opinion, ought to be space where both husband and wife can feel ‘at home’ and comfortable in; art and decor around the house ought to reflect the tastes of both of them, IMO.  I have seen homes where the women decorate all the rooms of the house to their personal tastes, and it’s over-feminine; it’s clear who wears the pants in such families, and alas, it’s not the men…  On the other hand, if a man loves a woman, he will appreciate her femininity, which will include a feminine decorative style, which she will wish to give expression to.  So he should tolerate some degree of that; just not let her overdo it.

Even under such an ideal circumstance, I think it’s reasonable to expect that a man will want some time to himself, and a space to do so; maybe a workbench to do projects on, etc.  Just as a woman might want a sewing room, to give her time and space to herself, to work on things like sewing, knitting, etc.  I don’t see anything wrong with either.  And if a husband and wife might have different tastes in T.V. and music, why not have some separate living rooms for them to separately indulge their different tastes, as they see fit?  Husbands and wives don’t need to spend every moment at home together…

So, my feelings are mixed.  I hate the idea that, with the rise of the ‘mancave’, that women have effectively banished men to one part of their house as solely their own; on the other hand, surely husbands and wives alike need their personal spaces, to have time to themselves, to do their own things.

 

Many women hate men’s pastimes and ‘vices’; feminists simply encourage the age-old prejudices

Carrie A. Nation, the infamous hatchet-bearing teetotalitarian fanatic bitch who smashed bars to bits

 

Thanks to bskillet, I came across an excellent blast by David French against another of those endless, annoying ”guys are wasting their lives on porn and video games” articles, in which he noted:

Look, I know that many, many men and boys spend too much time gaming.  There are also many, many men and boys who spend too much time watching television, playing golf,  or obsessing over sports (and sometimes all of the above) — you name the diversion, and you’ll find people who indulge in excess.  But it’s a category error to equate games and porn.  To do so exaggerates the danger of games and minimizes the evil of porn.  So if I stay up too late Saturday night playing Diablo 3 (and I probable will!), is that remotely comparable to downloading porn?  Simply put, overuse of video games is destructive.  Any use of porn is sinful. What’s next?  An article proclaiming that women are ruined by adultery and Pinterest?

Of course, men don’t attack women over their pastimes, typically; they may tease them, sometimes, but it is highly rare to hear men go on a tear at their wives or girlfriends about liking various womenly pastimes and hobbies.

But many women, on the other hand, have often disliked things men like to do without them, and I think these ‘Man up, and stop playing video games!’ diatribes are another manifestation of such age-old female tendencies.  (Obviously, from a Christian perspective, porn is evil, and French is right to distinguish between porn and video games.  But all too many non-gaming women seem to see the latter as being as evil as the former…)

Hunting and fishing are prime examples of male pastimes women attack; I suspect part of the reason that the animal rights movement has gotten as much traction as it has, is due to female opposition to hunting, less out of caring for ‘Bambi’s being slaughtered than out of annoyance with men for doing something with ‘the boys’, i.e. that doesn’t involve them – but ending up cloaked under the self-righteous, moralistic rubric of ‘animal rights’…

Sports is another, of course.  Why do feminists attack football (esp. the Superbowl) so virulently, if not because (a) they do hate men’s sports, and (b) they know less radical women will sympathize with them, so it’s a way to influence them.  Sadly, Christian women buy into the whole anti-male-sports thing as much as anyone else; I know a pastor’s wife who always gets on a rant if the subject of golf comes up; she hates it with a passion…

And there are many others, from poker, to racecar-driving, and more, all of which come in for much condemnation from the opposite sex.

Then there are male ‘vices’ which women are less interested in / not interested in, which are commonly attacked by many women purely because men like them.  I put vices in quotation marks there, because I’m not referring to actual sins, like pornography, but habits and practices women consider vices.  The biggest example is alcohol; women in North America are less inclined to imbibe as much as alcohol, and as a result, they often razz their boyfriends / husbands about their drinking, and in pietistic evangelical and other Christian circles, often try to manipulate them into quitting, threatening to not marry them unless they give it up.  And most married North American men can forget about going out to the pub with their mates, all that often; many of them get shamed into largely quitting doing so; pubs and bars are typically dominated by young singles and divorcees / unmarried folks; sports bars still have enough married men, but you can bet their wives are largely unhappy they’re there.

Tobacco is another, to a lesser degree, because many women smoke cigarettes.  But I’ve noticed, even amongst those that do, some have a visceral hatred of other forms of tobacco that are more common with men, like smoking cigars, or chewing tobacco, and moist snuff, and the like.  Interestingly enough, through the 19th century up until the early 20th century, the most common form of partaking of tobacco in North America was chewing tobacco.  But as Alex Jones noted in a video 7man linked here, in the ‘flapper era’, companies making cigarettes began especially targetting women, esp. the flappers, and now, cigarette smoking has largely replaced chewing tobacco, as the most common form of tobacco consumption, worldwide.  And pipe-smoking has almost died out, while cigar-smoking has waned, compared with how widespread it was previously.  And only a smattering of men still do dipping snuff or chewing tobacco, and lesser still, nasal snuff; most women today find such practices disgusting, if and when they hear of them, in my observation.

I’m not sure whether women’s habit of attacking men’s pastimes and ‘vices’ is just shit-testing, or jealousy over time and attention not spent on them, or a combo thereof.  But it’s been around forever, and probably always will be.

To return to the topic of the shaming over video games, I think it’s part of the same dynamic at work, but with a difference, of course: the men in question aren’t actually with the women doing the bitching about them; they’re being scorned for foregoing dating such women in favour of other activities.  But still, strikes me as part and parcel of the same age-old complaints; the unfortunate thing is, because of bitching about video games, or attacking football, etc., feminism gets much traction amongst ordinary women, even Christian women, because in bitching about such, they tap into the age-old anti-male-pastimes tendencies of many women.

 

Response to Mentu II: The Tale of El Gordo y El Hombre

Mentu and Ashur are engaged in the business of running a University of Man. I do not know what tuition they charge (well, actually, I do: it’s the most expensive tuition you can charge, your God-given time on Earth, and your pride, if you’re not Alpha), but I wonder if they have a mission statement that I have recently adopted: the goal of a Man is to make more Men, and everything he does is towards this purpose. I suspect that they are pursuing the same end; shame the beta month, however, is undergraduate studies in that business, and Patriactionary is here to offer the graduate level.

I promised them the following: “I will illustrate this point with another patented generalization from personal experience: the tale of El Hombre and El Gordo.” Let us now review the two categories of alpha, in the person of two acquaintances of mine.

El Gordo

El Gordo is the second-funniest man I know. This is because, even though he is a man of great wealth and high status in position and learning, he is in touch with his inner twelve-year-old. Gordo and I, when a moment of sadness overcomes us, will view the funniest minute of video ever created (ironically, I brought the video to him originally, but his analysis of it, a philosophical and scientific tract, is why we can enjoy something so crude OVER and OVER again. Really, you can watch that video 100 times in a row if you’re a man, and it will be funny EVERY SINGLE TIME.), and all will be right again with the world. Gordo has that effect on me: his boyish enthusiasm and unbridled fearlessness in life are infectious. I recall here the time when he and I were observing a product demo from a manufacturing rep of room scent enhancers. Gordo picked up one product, took a sniff, cocked a quizzical eye at me, and asked: “Pussy?” I only escaped by picking up my cellphone, holding it out prominently as if viewing a text message, and leaving the room in tears. If laughter is health-enhancing, (and it is) then Gordo has added years to my life, and they are quality years.

Gordo’s fearlessness is an adolescent quality, the sort of thing that gets boys of 17 to sign up for war, like President GHW Bush, and fly planes at 18 with real life and death risk. But his fearlessness is even greater than that. Gordo will approach ANY woman, any one. He is not a handsome man by any measure: beefy faced, thinning hair that has reached the thin stage, relatively short. He has all the handicaps that could allow a man to remain meek and fapping, but he has the greatest courage any man can have: the courage to look rejection by any woman in the face, and spit in it.

And the women respond. Since reading on body language, I have set myself apart from him as he pulls his approaches. One young woman, a butterface, shit-tested him directly. He bent her to his frame, and I mean that literally. Playful teasing, and she actually contorted her body into a shape reflecting a submissive posture to him. He could have done anything with her, despite being 30 years her senior. Another example will also illustrate. Having worked in a large company together, we had been through all the beta-izing sexual harassment trainings. Not a week after one of those, Gordo met a full-figured gal whom I had known for three years. Within 30 minutes of meeting her, her had leaned over to her and asked permission to ask a personal question. Granted, he proceeded: “How large are those puppies?”

Gordo has mentored my own approaches as well. Here I recall the one feminist woman in the office who I knew would be the hardest challenge. I was combining manosphere philosophy and mention of evolutionary psychology and she read where I was taking the issue. She rose with a shit-test to me, in front of Gordo: “Oh, so you think we should just go around barefoot, in skirts, and serving men?” I froze ever so briefly, long enough for Gordo to chime in: “You’d do that for us? Thanks, you can start tomorrow.” Classic Agree and Amplify. The woman remained in my frame, and has ceased testing me, and she and I have been much better satisfied with our working relationship. Two weeks after, she began to bring me offerings of food.

El Hombre

El Hombre is a handsome man in his 60s. Twinkling blue eyes that can go to piercing at a moment’s notice will focus on you intently. Hombre is the master, when needed, of the alpha stare. But there is also a manic quality about the man, a half-cocked crazy shit-eating grin that suggests that he’s insane enough to try something, and man enough to do it. It is corporally pervasive with him: it is not an adopted persona, it is part of every particle of his being.

Like Gordo, he is fearless in approaching women. And I have seen him get hot (8-9 class) women to bend to his will, and be willing for him to have them; I think he does it in front of me as a Professor does for a promising protege. I recall scenes from restaurants best, but the dynamic is exactly the same as in the classic Seinfeld episode “The Stall.” Watch this short clip, and see how Elaine understands female attraction where Jerry does not. Tony, Elaine’s boyfriend, is what Jerry calls a Mimbo, a male bimbo. Tony is attractive to men and women around him, as an unrestricted man pursuing his own way. Jerry says it is because he is so handsome (a classic rationalizing tactic that betas use), and Elaine insists “I would be going out with him no matter what he looked like.” Elaine is correct, because Tony’s attraction IS physical, but also because he is a Man, or at least closer to that archetype than Jerry. (In this category, consider the dialogue from the episode the cabin. George: “It’s a cabin. So what. We could build a cabin.” Jerry: “Well, two men could build a cabin.”)

George is accused of having a male crush on Tony. He acts a bit like a little girl describing Tony, and he takes on a wifely role of preparing a picnic basket and sandwiches that of course ends in disaster for Tony. When describing what Tony is like to Jerry, George talks about Tony’s interaction with the waitress: “He gets free pie!”

El Hombre has this exact quality: men want to be seen with him and bask in his power, and I have seen more than one waitress bring him free dessert or free appetizers. They do it not for the extreme tip he leaves (because they do not know he will do so), but to gain the approval of a man of clear distinction and learning. Hombre is wealthy, and has the easy manner with wealth of a man whose family has long held a high status in society; he holds the highest possible degree; he speaks three languages with the grace that I struggle with to produce in English. He leaves every person who comes into contact with him better off, or at least leaving smiling.

The Psychology of Alpha

Freud described a three-part mental system, identified as Id, Ego, and Superego. His more scientific protege, Jung, described how these three mental components are merged into the Self. In Civilization and its Discontents, Freud

enumerates what he sees as the fundamental tensions between civilization and the individual. The primary friction, he asserts, stems from the individual’s quest for instinctual freedom and civilization‘s contrary demand for conformity and instinctual repression. Many of humankind’s primitive instincts (for example, the desire to kill and the insatiable craving for sexual gratification) are clearly harmful to the well-being of a human community. As a result, civilization creates laws that prohibit killing, rape, and adultery, and it implements severe punishments if such rules are broken. This process, argues Freud, is an inherent quality of civilization that instills perpetual feelings of discontent in its citizens.

Freud’s theory is based on the notion that humans have certain characteristic instincts that are immutable. Most notable are the desires for sex, and the predisposition to violent aggression towards authoritative figures and towards sexual competitors, which both obstruct the gratification of a person’s instincts. Human beings are governed by the pleasure principle, and the pleasure principle is satisfied by the instincts.

If this description seems familiar to you, it should: it is Mentu’s view of alpha. The Alpha envisioned by Mentu is a man who ignores the restrictions on his Id-driven impulses that society demands. What Mentu calls a beta we can now explain: this is a man whose Superego so thoroughly overwhelms his Id and Ego that the primitive impulses of the Id never come to the surface. Mentu is correct about this: Alpha REQUIRES Id, and a man with a suppressed Id will never be alpha.

But Mentu is wrong about Id: it is a NECESSARY, but not a sufficient, condition for Alpha. The alpha Man is not just an unrestrained Id. He is a complete self, with a superego governing and modulating those impulses of Id that do not lead to long-term success, or are at conflict with the interests of the group or tribe, where a Man holds his status. The Man has conquered his most difficult opponent, himself, and fears no lesser foe. He is a Man in full.

Gordo, Hombre, and the Alpha Man

Gordo is Id, personified. His fearlessness in approach is matched by his lack of restraint in the other areas. In deadly sins, Gluttony is the sibling of Lust: both are excessive expressions of what are fundamentally good drives created by God for man’s happiness. Gordo is fat, but he makes no bones about it. He will tell you that the most dangerous place to be is between him and a salad bar. He will eat a large dinner of factory-farmed grain-fattened beef, follow it a large dessert, and then tell everyone how he is going to cruelly send down one overmatched Lipitor to deal with the whole mess. The day he does get in to the hospital for the onrushing heart attack, he will nevertheless leave each doctor laughing.

Hombre is slim for his age, with good posture. He likes his whiskey and will smoke a ciggy or two, but he can take either or leave them. In table manners, he will order what he wants, but will leave large amounts of an oversized American portion on his plate. He has control over his food and his cravings: he will take a drink, but will avoid drunkenness.

One last comparative example. Gordo will literally approach any woman, and he does not believe in a fat girl jihad. He dispenses the privilege of his male gaze on the deserving and the undeserving alike. Hombre is polite to all, but only turns on the charm to women whose ability to control their eating shows that they, too, are in control of their bodies, and that they are worthy of pursuit and long-term relationship.

In looking over these two men, I would call both Alpha. But Gordo’s Alpha is a different kind. He might best be termed an aloof asshole. Hombre, by contrast, epitomizes amused mastery, a higher level of alpha. An aloof asshole doesn’t give a f*ck, but an amused master has moved past that stage. He knows not to let the little things bother him, and that the job of a Man is to make more Men, and to radiate that masculine power through the society around him to his benefit, and that society’s benefit. It should be no surprise that Hombre’s wealth is derived from his entrepreneurial activity, improving the lives of his once thousands of employees. He epitomizes the alpha behavior of the Patriarch, the end goal of all men.

 

The Flawed Idea of Male Leadership in Churchianity

Great insights and wisdom is written in comments at various blogs. Often this gets lost in obscurity unless pulled out and featured.

Brendan writes an excellent analysis on Dalrock’s post: What, Me Worry?
(links added and embedded for clarity)

I also think that a significant aspect to what you are talking about, empath[ologicalism], has to do with a very flawed idea of the notion of male leadership.

There is a tendency to argue/believe, in a rather sloppy way, that because men are supposed to be the leaders (in churches, in families and so on) that anything that is amiss is primarily the fault of the men — women are the designated followers, and so any shortcomings they may have are also the fault of the men for being imperfect leaders. The idea is that if the men were simply leading properly, we wouldn’t see the women behaving the way they do — so the way to “address the issue” is to get men to lead better, and the women will just magically fall in line.

This is a pervasive mindset among American Christians, especially among self-described “conservative” Protestant Christians. It’s also present, to a lesser degree, among conservative Catholic (and unfortunately Orthodox as well) clerics. You see this reflected in guys like Driscoll and Stanton. You also see it reflected in the more general and pervasive idea that people have (as slwerner talks about above) that if a woman is “acting out” in some bad way, ultimately the man must have done something to cause this, even if that “something” was not being the ideal leader to be followed perfectly.

If you have this mindset that everything women do is derivative of male leadership, then you’re going to view “fixing” the problem as primarily a matter of fixing what the men are doing — the women will magically “fall in line” if you do this. (This kind of magic wish thinking also pervades the Game community, by the way, but that’s a topic for a different comment). So, if you see problem with female promiscuity, you immediately look at what the men are doing in the picture, and woodshed them to act differently — because if they do, you believe that the women will stop behaving promiscuously, simply because you see their behavior as derivative of male behavior — i.e., that they “follow the man’s lead”, whether he is leading well or not. In other words, this interpretation of male leadership always finds the locus of any problem in the man — women have a lesser degree of moral agency, in effect, under this view — and even though when it’s expressed that way almost none of these guys would admit that, in effect it is nevertheless what they are doing and saying.

This is very far removed from what we see in Genesis. In Genesis, by contrast, we see God making both Adam AND Eve own their own shit. God doesn’t say to Eve; “Well, we know Adam was being a shitty leader, and therefore we don’t really blame you for what you did, even though it was technically wrong” — no, he berates her for her own sin. Of course, he berates Adam for *listening* to Eve and following her into her sin, rather than leading her out of it, but this admonition and penalty does not obscure or understate the admonition and penalty issued to Eve. Both are sinners, the sin is in some ways the same and in some ways different due to the different situations of each. The American Christian God of today simply does not want to hold Eve to account for her sins — he wants to hold Adam account for his own sins and also for those of Eve. Quite simply, he doesn’t want to make Eve responsible for her own shit.

This is a foundational heresy, in functional terms, that has infected pretty much all of American Christianity — the only difference is the degree of the infection, which differs depending on one’s “Brand” of Christianity. It is, however, a fundamental moral heresy which is destroying the church from within. The social conservatives and traditionalists are just as guilty of this as are other Christians due to their tendency to magnify male responsibility while diminishing female responsibility. There are many reasons for this — Victorianism, longstanding pro-female sympathies due to chivalry and the ancient regime order between men and women in the West, the influence of feminism — all of them mingling together to make for a distinctly toxic brew. But the fact remains that they do this, they do it almost reflexively, because it “feels right”. This is the fundamental problem.