Posted this morning, Obsidian at Just Four Guys had an excellent 10 question interview of Professor Michael Kimmel who has been so concerned about the male anger simmering in the manosphere that he was distracted from his professorship of Sociology and Gender Studies and executive directorship for the Center for the Study of Men and Masculinities at Stony Brook University that he was forced by academic passions to write such titles as Guyland and Angry White Men (not to be confused with Stupid White Men).
The open format interviews of semi-mainstream authors are starting to carve out a missing manosphere niche for J4G, so I don’t want to steal any of that thunder with this post, but since “angry manosphereans” was the topic du jour at Aunt Giggles’ echo-chamber (“Oh my stars and garters! Tindr is really a hook up app populated by men and women who just wanna fuck?”) I thought I’d riff a little on a few of his answers and what I think are the esteemed Professors’ most glaring problems.
But the real answer to your question is not “why am I so different from other men?” but rather how am I so similar to other men? I grew up breathing the same air, and drinking the same water as you did. I believe firmly in the ideals of American democracy, and so I feel compelled as a citizen to speak out against inequality and injustice. Supporting gender equality is right, fair, and patriotically American.
He is correct, he’s JUST like the majority of ‘other’ men – suffering from a lifetime of thorough social feminization conditioning to become the champion of feminine-identification Game. His Beta mindset is easily recognizable, but his Game is still the same ‘like attracts like’ mentality that’s characteristic of a solid insaturation in blank slate equalism. Hugo Schwyzer left a vacuum, Kimmel is just stepping into it. Be more ‘like’ a woman and they’ll appreciate your efforts in supporting and understanding them, and you’ll be rewarded with reciprocal sexual interest.
It is a compassionate look at the lives of young men, and especially the things that those young me are being asked to do – by other guys – to prove their manhood. And the argument of the book is that proving masculinity becomes a sort of relentless test for guys, and that THAT is what we have to pay attention to. The book is a sort of catalog of how guys feel they have to prove it — video games, porn, sports, binge drinking, hooking up, initiation and hazing. All of it. It’s not about how awful guys are because they are doing it. It’s about how awful it is that they often feel they are being forced to do those things they don’t want to do because if they don’t other guys will call them pussies.
This is the hallmark of a feminized Beta mindset – to believe that “guys being guys” is inherently aberrant. It’s something other guys do. I could go into detail about how men giving each other shit is an evolutionary (and useful) vestige of tribalism and how men would use this “challenging” to ensure the strength and survivability of the collective, but this will only grate against his ‘gender-as-social-construct’ belief.
Why do men think they’re so great? Because that’s the kind of men women love.
This discomfort with ‘being a guy’ is the root disposition of many high-functioning Betas, and particularly those seeking to better identify with the feminine in the hopes it will pay off in sexual dividends. These are the guys who never ‘got it’ that shit talking and locker room jabs (the same male space invaded by the feminine) are intended not just to determine masculine fitness, but to foster living, building and measuring up to a better masculine standard that benefits both the individual man and the collective of humanity. Risk taking, physical aggression (constructive and destructive) and physicality in general, ambition, team reliance and individualism are all part of this masculinity. That potential for violence scares the shit out of men like Kimmel, but that potential is also precisely what’s need for survival and success of a species.
Betas like Kimmel who grew up in fear of Alpha aggression instead of embracing and matching it directly, see bullying in every marginalized form of boys being boys, to say nothing of Men being Men, when they reach adulthood and still haven’t figured out how to relate to men and the masculine beyond what the easy answers feminization has provided for them. These are the men who’ll explain their feminine identification Game as being a personality issue, “I’ve always related to / better with women.” For feminized male apologists anything resembling an intrinsic understanding of masculinity is indistinguishable from Hypermasculinity.
Because of this embrace of feminine-primacy, the Professor is probably not the best equipped to educate men on issues of anger. As such, my guess is he cannot discern the difference between aggression born from anger and aggression as a vetting and honing mechanism of the male psychology.
Kimmel, presumes that men don’t want to participate in this vetting, but as always, want’s got nothing to do with it. It’s easy to characterize this vetting in the context of Bro Culture, but the fact of the matter is that it exists in every masculine subdomain from Frat Brothers and the football team to coders, gamers and 4Chan /b/rothers.
What’s “wrong” with the pickup seduction manuals is not so much that they treat women as objects, the means to get laid, notches on belts etc., and not as whole people. That’s pretty silly in the modern era.
Apparently Kimmel’s has yet to discover Tindr in this modern era. Someone ought to link Kimmel and Aunt Giggles to @Tinderfessions on Twitter – don’t say I didn’t warn you. It may be silly, but it’s reliable in the context of reality. If women have to be “warned” about this or that PUA tactic, it stands to reason said tactic will be effective. It also stands to reason the technique was based on a provable, intrinsically valid, female dynamic to be effective.
But what bothers me about these books is that they treat men as pathetic losers, utterly incapable of honest conversation, genuine affection, and authentic emotion. So they male-bash. They treat men as such losers that they have to be inauthentic game players in order to be successful with women. I have a much more sanguine view of men than that. I believe that when men are honest, communicative, and authentic, they will have great relationships.
What if these pathetic losers could become ‘authentic’ Men by learning how women actually relate to them on every level; from sociological to psychological, from evolutionary perspectives to the underlying biology that motivates women’s behaviors not only sexually, but emotionally, pragmatically and sympathetically? Would they still be pathetic losers?
What if these men could be ‘authentic’ in their understanding the nature of women and how women solipsistically and subconsciously institute their own Game socially and psychologically to ensure optimizing hypergamy to their best benefit?
What if these men could “Just Get It” and leverage that understanding not only to improve their own lives, but also the lives of other men, their sons, their brothers, and the lives of the women they involve themselves with? Would they be pathetic losers then?
What if these men’s genuineness in honesty, conversation and emotion were the result of red pill truth and having the blinders removed that a feminized acculturation fitted them with for the better part of a lifetime? The nature of that honesty, conversation and emotion might be something quite different than what your own feminine conditioning would have you envision Professor Kimmel. So are they pathetic losers because their genuineness derives from the red pill, or are they genuine because they buy into what you and a feminine-centric culture tells them they should adopt and internalize in order for women to love them? In other words, what are you selling that’s any different?
I agree, if men could be honest, communicative, and authentic, they will have great relationships, but how a guy comes to being honest with himself after shedding his blue pill programming, how he learns women ‘actually’ communicate, and how he becomes ‘authentic’ after having internalized Game-awareness and red pill truth is a far different prospect than telling men to just be themselves and trust in the alleged rationalness, equalism and zero-sum goodness inherent in ‘most’ women today.