About two weeks ago I came across the above video (h/t Tom Leykis), but only recently have I watch it in its entirety. At first I’d thought it was yet another endorsement of the “expatriate and find a feminine wife” set of the manosphere, but it’s a much deeper documentary than this.
Although this video is directed towards the African-American demographic, what these men and women describe is reflective of the greater endemic that feminine social primacy has wrought in society on whole. Overall I think the video illustrates some strong points in regard to the reality of the imbalanced dynamic between men and women today, but it doesn’t really account very well for the causes of these imbalances.
The overarching narrative comes from the mistaken idea that egalitarian equalism is an achievable ideal between the sexes. So within this context when a man describes his need to be the leader in his family, to be the provider as well as the teacher of his children and the person with the answers in his marriage, his characterization becomes (conveniently) one of an outdated masculine insecurity.
In an equalist ideal state it shouldn’t matter to him that his wife is more educated or earns more money than he does. As Sheryl Sandberg has once again illustrated, men should be reprogrammed to feel more comfortable in traditionally women’s supportive and submissive roles – and any discomfort with that is evidence of an antiquated masculine insecurity or “feeling intimidated” by a Strong Woman®.
I covered this reprogramming effort in Vulnerability:
The Masks the Feminine Imperative Makes Men Wear
To explain this second problem it’s important to grasp how men are expected to define their own masculine identities within a social order where the only correct definition of masculinity is prepared for men in a feminine-primary context.
What I mean by this is that the humanness that men wish to express in showing themselves as vulnerable is defined by feminine-primacy.
For the greater part of men’s upbringing and socialization they are taught that a conventional masculine identity is in fact a fundamentally male weakness that only women have a unique ‘cure’ for. It’s a widely accepted manosphere fact that over the past 60 or so years, conventional masculinity has become a point of ridicule, an anachronism, and every media form from then to now has made a concerted effort to parody and disqualify that masculinity. Men are portrayed as buffoons for attempting to accomplish female-specific roles, but also as “ridiculous men” for playing the conventional ‘macho’ role of masculinity. In both instances, the problems their inadequate maleness creates are only solved by the application of uniquely female talents and intuition.
Perhaps more damaging though is the effort the Feminine Imperative has made in convincing generations of men that masculinity and its expressions (of any kind) is an act, a front, not the real man behind the mask of masculinity that’s already been predetermined by his feminine-primary upbringing.
So within this context a man is already hamstrung for ever expressing the idea that he feels he needs to be the Man in his marriage. That ridiculous need shouldn’t matter to men because in an equalist framework it shouldn’t matter to women that he’s not out-earning her or is more educated.
Of course the problem with this fantasy is that it does actually matter to women that a man leads and a man performs. Women resent supporting men. No matter how an equalist mindset sells it, humans evolved for a complementarity that will always confound equalism.
Pay close attention to the sentiments of the women in this video. Every one of them embraces the empowerment meme that equalism has them internalize, yet all still feel that pairing with a man they deem less than themselves is a compromise or “settling” for him. They’re doing him the favor by compromising their Hypergamy with a suboptimal man.
What this illustrates is the inherent conflict between equalism and complementarity. In spite of men’s reprogramming for accepting a “supportive” role, and despite women’s empowered aspirations of self-sufficiency, both still have an innate need for a gender-complementary relationship that they cannot reconcile in an equalist social framework. Women still want to pair with a man they can be aroused by and respect. They still want that +1 to +2 SMV differential that promotes a strong attachment to him. Men, in contradiction to all known risks and in contradiction to any expectation of appreciation, still want to pair with a feminine woman who idealistically supports him, follows his lead and willingly nurtures him with her body and spirit.
What this equalist vs. complementarity dichotomy presents to men and women is that it fundamentally places both sexes into the Subdominant model of intersexual hierarchies. In that model the man is perceived as another dependent ‘child’ for her to support while he wonders why the supportiveness his equalist conditioning has taught him women need isn’t appreciated for what it is. Not only this, but again within that framework, a woman feels indignant for having to apologize for the ambition and education that equalism has convinced her she should be empowered by and men should appreciate by default.
Love Interests
Within this egalitarian framework the difference between men’s idealistic concept of love and women’s opportunistic (Hypergamy based) concept of love are placed into distinct contrasts. For all of the obfuscation about imbalances in education, a man’s idealistic concept of love predisposes him to believe the equalist lie that his performance shouldn’t be the basis of her opportunistic concept of love.
When you listen to the sentiments of both the men and particularly the women in this video you’ll see this played out. When a woman assumes the dominant role in a relationship her provisioning becomes the benchmark for that dominance. Of course, this is a reversal of the conventional, complimentarian model, but when women are put into that reversal the reality of their opportunistic concept of love becomes uncomfortably obvious to love-idealist men. While Open Hypergamy is becoming increasingly more obvious on a social scale, it’s far more poignant on a personal, in-your-face scale within a modern marriage or relationship.
Predictably the documentary veers away from this intergender conflict and places the blame for that conflict squarely on the shoulders of characteristically irresponsible men not being the fathers they should be – blaming an individualist mindset for men’s absence from the family without addressing the glaring individualism the women display in the first half of the video. The equalist narrative has to be reset and in order to do that it’s got to conveniently dip back into the conventional complementarity well and appeal to the traditional sense of duty to family and compliance with exactly the responsibility equalism would otherwise chafe against.
However, what equalism and the Feminine Imperative can’t sweep away is men’s overt contingencies for Open Hypergamy. One of those very deductive contingencies is moving to another country where the environment favors men’s sexual strategy, not to mention a refreshing sense of being appreciated by conventionally feminine women. If Game isn’t appealing and going your own way makes you lonely, it only makes sense to go fish where the fish are.
I recently read Bachelor Nation on CNS News, and once again it predictably foists the responsibility for men’s reluctancy to marry on irresponsible ‘kidult’ men.
“Far too many young men have failed to make a normal progression into adult roles of responsibility and self-sufficiency, roles generally associated with marriage and fatherhood,”
Nowhere will you see a woman lay claim to the social fallout feminine primacy has effected on themselves. Female importance is the socially correct narrative, thus the failings of that narrative, the failings of feminism, and the failings of the agenda of equalism are due to men unwilling to cooperate in seeing it succeed. 70% of men aged 20 to 34 are not married and the default presumption is that it’s men who are unwilling to accept their adult responsibility and marry a woman who will statistically earn more than him and resent his inability to measure up to her performance standards – the standards made glaringly evident in this documentary.
In a feminine-primary social order to be a ‘responsible’ man is to comply with dictates of women’s sexual strategy while accepting her dominant and counter-feminine role and demeanor. To be a ‘real man’ he must accept being relegated to being her dependent while still being expected to be a good father. To be an ‘adult’ he must accept the doctrines of equalism while still being beholden to the responsibilities of conventional complementarianism.
