When I first became aware of the various online outlets of the manosphere four years ago, I was struck by an inexplicable rhetorical contradiction frequently on display.
For a group ostensibly dedicated to combating the ills of cultural misandry (that is, the nearly ubiquitously socially enforced, gynocentrically-inspired loathing of all aspects of traditional masculinity), there was an underlying implication to the effect that it was in fact important, even needful, for men to strive to please women. In fact, the assertion was frequently made that, since women in truth adore “alpha” badboys and despise “beta” niceguys, it was therefore incumbent upon men to practice “game” in order to give the ladies what they want (and thus be enabled to score frequently, since chastity is apparently for suckers).
I first critiqued this perspective in my 2012 piece "In Defense of Squares," a response to an article penned by Jack Donovan. Later, manospherian Francis Bardamu (an earlier incarnation of the man we now know as Matt Forney) weighed in, and I responded with another piece at Counter-Currents. In both of my articles, I stressed three essential points:
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In the past four years, much has changed. A broader critique of manospherianism has emerged from within the burgeoning ranks of the alt-right. The recently-recorded dust-up surrounding Roosh testified in part to this new paradigm. Although in Roosh’s case much of the sound and fury was due in some degree to a spasm of collective oleaginous white-knighting over the prospect of some exotically swarthy Lothario seducing "our women," the more substantial objection regards the entire notion of pick-up-artistry as a skeevy practice, unworthy of men who aspire to virtue and nobility.
Instead, it is said, we must look for a wife. It’s time to settle down, son. Time to begin reproducin’! Get on it, already, young man! Etc.
Now, rather than talking about the best way to get a woman to go home with you for the night, advice is instead being dispensed on how to win the woman of your dreams for life. If you play it right, a comely Aryan princess will come along with whom you can sire a gaggle of wholesomely white, “23 and me”-genetically sanctioned children, and start a family over which you may reign as a proud and lordly patriarch. Indeed, an entire podcast series on Soundcloud has now been given over to discussion of how to move up in the world, from a presumably “lowly” bachelor to a real man, the sort whose notch count consists in more ostensibly “mature” social attainments.
Put differently, the ego-appeal has thus shifted from revering the man with the highest “notch count” on his bedpost, to worshiping the man with the hottest wife and most lovely and obedient kids, the sort of man who commands respect from everyone he meets, who takes care of business, kicks ass, and generally doesn’t mess around. While young men visiting the manosphere sites of four years ago were enjoined to thrill to the Don Juan-esque exploits of one claiming to have "banged" entire countries, young men of the alt-right today are informed that if they really want to be of any value whatsoever, they need to become so-called "shitlords," a vague but potent notion, originally derived from derisive feminist rhetoric, connoting raw alpha male strength and power: a pimp, a playa, a high roller, a Gordon Gecko, a Donald Trump, a Jabba the Hutt.
There is progress of a sort on display here. Certainly it is more honorable to strive to become a husband and father than it is to dedicate oneself to serial womanizing. However, in a crucial way, the new gospel of "striving for shitlordery" isn’t terribly different than the old gospel of "gaming for 'gina." Both prescribed pursuits are ignoble in conception, in that each amounts to a base appeal to the masculine ego and a brazen sop to male vanity. Both in fact degrade men by asking them to strive for status and acclaim, rather than dismissing such ambitions as vain and silly. Just as the manospherian pick-up-artists encouraged guys to envy and admire the “studs” who manage to bed beaucoup women, so the would-be mentors of alt-right youth now train their charges to adulate and idolize those supposedly high-and-mighty "shitlord"-tier men.
Moreover, the new gospel, like the old, again ironically pedestalizes women. The notion is once more floated that one should set out to attract the opposite sex by becoming the sort of man they want. Shitlord-striving, like pick-up artistry, counsels that a man ought not a worshipful "beta-orbiter" around the fairer sex; rather, he should be aloof and defiant, because women don’t like men who are wimps or pushovers.
This commonality between the two approaches is striking and significant in this sense: the "negging" is, in each case, a mere act. A man "negs" a woman (that is, he intentionally slights her), because he wants to arouse her interest by convincing her that he isn’t needy, when in truth, his neediness has in no sense been expunged; instead, it only masquerades as its opposite, for merely tactical purposes. That is to say, he only “negs” her to obtain the “poz” result of ultimately winning her over.
Is that not, in truth, quite egregiously “beta” behavior? Wouldn’t an actual "alpha" actually not care, as opposed to merely pretending not to care?
Concomitant with the heralding of shitlordery has been a proclivity to mock, jeer at, and poke fun at the antics of "autists." (Ironically, many of the mockers are admirers of Adolf Hitler, an aspie weirdo if ever there was one, and a childless bachelor to boot, who might well have died a virgin.) Just as the manosperians ridiculed "betas" (i.e., those with low or nonexistent notch-counts) as pathetic losers, so the new alt-right would-be mentors savagely satirize men who display little ability or inclination to attract women. The unstated (or sometimes stated) assumption is that a real man pursues the company of women—whether for the night or for a lifetime, while non-“ladies men” are silly and inconsequential wastes of space, whom it is perfectly proper to treat with contempt and derision.
For the new alt-right's self-appointed would-be mentors of men, this anti-bachelor stance is no doubt partly connected with concern about the current low white birth rate in the face of “the rising tide of color”; the admonition to pursue shitlordery is thus no doubt in part motivated in part by an anxiety to reassert Western fecundity by encouraging white men to marry, in order that more white babies will be born within wedlock. But however legitimate these concerns might be in a broad sense— and I can’t help but observe that a good deal of unhelpful alarmism always seems often to creep into demographic discussions lately—the notion that men are of no worth unless they marry and reproduce is highly objectionable on its face.
Those inclined to marry should marry, of course. And it should likewise go without saying that no one should be inhibited from having as many children as they want, if they indeed view child-bearing as part of their mission in life. But there is a place for the childless (male and female), too.
Traditionally speaking, the institution of celibacy has long been held in high regard in the West, equaling, if not surpassing the institution of marriage in perceived importance. Today, even dissenters from modernism tend to be blinded by materialism and carnality, convinced that nothing of value exists beyond the genitals, the womb, and the passage of genes. But culture and civilization are made up of more than genetic reproduction and fertility rates. For this reason, and also for the sake of basic decency, bachelors, virgins, and so-called “autists” ought to be given their proper due.
For a group ostensibly dedicated to combating the ills of cultural misandry (that is, the nearly ubiquitously socially enforced, gynocentrically-inspired loathing of all aspects of traditional masculinity), there was an underlying implication to the effect that it was in fact important, even needful, for men to strive to please women. In fact, the assertion was frequently made that, since women in truth adore “alpha” badboys and despise “beta” niceguys, it was therefore incumbent upon men to practice “game” in order to give the ladies what they want (and thus be enabled to score frequently, since chastity is apparently for suckers).
I first critiqued this perspective in my 2012 piece "In Defense of Squares," a response to an article penned by Jack Donovan. Later, manospherian Francis Bardamu (an earlier incarnation of the man we now know as Matt Forney) weighed in, and I responded with another piece at Counter-Currents. In both of my articles, I stressed three essential points:
- A man should not alter his personality, his set of interests, or anything about his essence in an effort to become more appealing to women.
- It is ridiculous for a group of supposed anti-feminists to tell men to change who they are so that they can be better enabled to attract women, instead of encouraging them to be true to themselves (as goes the overused but still quite useful saying, minted by Shakespeare’s classic scheming busybody Polonius), and generally to refrain from catering to what women want.
- Broadly speaking, changing oneself in an effort to enhance one’s appeal to others (absent a morally compelling reason to change) amounts to committing a fearful degradation to one’s soul, a selling out of one’s integrity, a contemptible capitulation to conformism.
************************
In the past four years, much has changed. A broader critique of manospherianism has emerged from within the burgeoning ranks of the alt-right. The recently-recorded dust-up surrounding Roosh testified in part to this new paradigm. Although in Roosh’s case much of the sound and fury was due in some degree to a spasm of collective oleaginous white-knighting over the prospect of some exotically swarthy Lothario seducing "our women," the more substantial objection regards the entire notion of pick-up-artistry as a skeevy practice, unworthy of men who aspire to virtue and nobility.
Instead, it is said, we must look for a wife. It’s time to settle down, son. Time to begin reproducin’! Get on it, already, young man! Etc.
Now, rather than talking about the best way to get a woman to go home with you for the night, advice is instead being dispensed on how to win the woman of your dreams for life. If you play it right, a comely Aryan princess will come along with whom you can sire a gaggle of wholesomely white, “23 and me”-genetically sanctioned children, and start a family over which you may reign as a proud and lordly patriarch. Indeed, an entire podcast series on Soundcloud has now been given over to discussion of how to move up in the world, from a presumably “lowly” bachelor to a real man, the sort whose notch count consists in more ostensibly “mature” social attainments.
Put differently, the ego-appeal has thus shifted from revering the man with the highest “notch count” on his bedpost, to worshiping the man with the hottest wife and most lovely and obedient kids, the sort of man who commands respect from everyone he meets, who takes care of business, kicks ass, and generally doesn’t mess around. While young men visiting the manosphere sites of four years ago were enjoined to thrill to the Don Juan-esque exploits of one claiming to have "banged" entire countries, young men of the alt-right today are informed that if they really want to be of any value whatsoever, they need to become so-called "shitlords," a vague but potent notion, originally derived from derisive feminist rhetoric, connoting raw alpha male strength and power: a pimp, a playa, a high roller, a Gordon Gecko, a Donald Trump, a Jabba the Hutt.
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| Shitlord of Tatooine |
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There is progress of a sort on display here. Certainly it is more honorable to strive to become a husband and father than it is to dedicate oneself to serial womanizing. However, in a crucial way, the new gospel of "striving for shitlordery" isn’t terribly different than the old gospel of "gaming for 'gina." Both prescribed pursuits are ignoble in conception, in that each amounts to a base appeal to the masculine ego and a brazen sop to male vanity. Both in fact degrade men by asking them to strive for status and acclaim, rather than dismissing such ambitions as vain and silly. Just as the manospherian pick-up-artists encouraged guys to envy and admire the “studs” who manage to bed beaucoup women, so the would-be mentors of alt-right youth now train their charges to adulate and idolize those supposedly high-and-mighty "shitlord"-tier men.
Moreover, the new gospel, like the old, again ironically pedestalizes women. The notion is once more floated that one should set out to attract the opposite sex by becoming the sort of man they want. Shitlord-striving, like pick-up artistry, counsels that a man ought not a worshipful "beta-orbiter" around the fairer sex; rather, he should be aloof and defiant, because women don’t like men who are wimps or pushovers.
This commonality between the two approaches is striking and significant in this sense: the "negging" is, in each case, a mere act. A man "negs" a woman (that is, he intentionally slights her), because he wants to arouse her interest by convincing her that he isn’t needy, when in truth, his neediness has in no sense been expunged; instead, it only masquerades as its opposite, for merely tactical purposes. That is to say, he only “negs” her to obtain the “poz” result of ultimately winning her over.
Is that not, in truth, quite egregiously “beta” behavior? Wouldn’t an actual "alpha" actually not care, as opposed to merely pretending not to care?
*****************************
Concomitant with the heralding of shitlordery has been a proclivity to mock, jeer at, and poke fun at the antics of "autists." (Ironically, many of the mockers are admirers of Adolf Hitler, an aspie weirdo if ever there was one, and a childless bachelor to boot, who might well have died a virgin.) Just as the manosperians ridiculed "betas" (i.e., those with low or nonexistent notch-counts) as pathetic losers, so the new alt-right would-be mentors savagely satirize men who display little ability or inclination to attract women. The unstated (or sometimes stated) assumption is that a real man pursues the company of women—whether for the night or for a lifetime, while non-“ladies men” are silly and inconsequential wastes of space, whom it is perfectly proper to treat with contempt and derision.
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| The Austrian autist |
For the new alt-right's self-appointed would-be mentors of men, this anti-bachelor stance is no doubt partly connected with concern about the current low white birth rate in the face of “the rising tide of color”; the admonition to pursue shitlordery is thus no doubt in part motivated in part by an anxiety to reassert Western fecundity by encouraging white men to marry, in order that more white babies will be born within wedlock. But however legitimate these concerns might be in a broad sense— and I can’t help but observe that a good deal of unhelpful alarmism always seems often to creep into demographic discussions lately—the notion that men are of no worth unless they marry and reproduce is highly objectionable on its face.
Those inclined to marry should marry, of course. And it should likewise go without saying that no one should be inhibited from having as many children as they want, if they indeed view child-bearing as part of their mission in life. But there is a place for the childless (male and female), too.
Traditionally speaking, the institution of celibacy has long been held in high regard in the West, equaling, if not surpassing the institution of marriage in perceived importance. Today, even dissenters from modernism tend to be blinded by materialism and carnality, convinced that nothing of value exists beyond the genitals, the womb, and the passage of genes. But culture and civilization are made up of more than genetic reproduction and fertility rates. For this reason, and also for the sake of basic decency, bachelors, virgins, and so-called “autists” ought to be given their proper due.
