The sexual catastrophe: who’s really to blame for it, and how it can be ended

Ian B. writes:

I thought I’d throw my own two cents into the whole debate over Roissyism and the socio-sexual disaster, and offer my diagnosis of the problem and how to solve it.

The Roissyites, and Mark P. [see Mark’s explication], do share one profound insight: the ones who are most proximately to blame for the social chaos are women, not men. While men do the wooing, it is women who make the choice to accept a relationship.

Typically, when a woman throws herself at some “alpha male” and gets burned, society places all the blame on the guy for being such a callous, uncaring cad as to sleep with a poor innocent woman and not commit to her. But who is he supposed to commit to? Her, or one of the several other idiot women throwing themselves into his path?

And consider this: For every stupid woman throwing herself at the same jerk that several other women are throwing themselves at, there’s a guy who is probably responsible and quite willing commit, but who is being ignored by the tramp. So who is really being more callous, the “alpha male” being enabled by the women, or the vain, selfish women ignoring the decent guys? The problem here is not the existence of a few cads (a few cads, unfortunately, have always and will always be with us), but rather the behavior of women towards them.

So, I’ve just said who I think is at proximate moral fault for this mess (the women), but I haven’t said what the root cause of it is. That is, what changed that allowed this mess to happen? These are two different things. For instance, imagine a town in which all the policemen pack up and leave one day. Subsequently, the town falls into a morass of violent crime. The ones to blame for the crimes are the criminals, but the root cause of the mess is the cops leaving. The solution is not to hope that the criminals will suddenly start behaving responsibly, but rather for the cops to come back.

With that distinction out of the way, let me say that the cause of the disaster is that the cops, by which I mean the majority of masculine men, have left town, and this was caused by the acceptance of feminism.

You may have noticed a common thread in these discussions. The term “alpha male” is used interchangeably to refer to both worthless, no-count cads, and to the men that women find most attractive. The term “beta male,” on the other hand, is used interchangeably to refer to both the responsible men, the builders of society, and to the men that women find less attractive. [LA replies: Thank you for summing these different definitions; I have found this contradictory and confusing from the start.]

This might seem strange. There is no necessary logical link between these things. In fact, you might tend to assume that the responsible builders would be stronger, more authoritative, and hence more attractive in general. However, there is a contingent link between these two things within current society.

The problem is that because of feminism, men have been taught for decades that they ought to be sweet, sensitive doormats, attentive and deferential to women’s needs, seeing women as goddesses on high pedestals. This message has been preached by the schools, in the media, and even by their families. Unfortunately, this is precisely what turns women off. Regardless of what they think or say they want, most women are actually attracted to (and happiest with) a strong, independent, assertive man who will dominate and lead them.

And since this is what is taught everywhere, only the sociopaths and renegades—that is to say, the unteachable cads who scorn the wisdom of everyone else—manage to avoid absorbing this lesson, and hence end up being the most attractive to women. The potentially responsible leader types are instead conditioned into being feminized squishes by the time they reach adulthood, and so end up being “beta males.”

So, here’s my two step solution:

1) First of all, men need to be taught to be strong and independent again, from an early age. They need to be taught that women are attracted to assertive, dominating guys rather than suckups. They also need to be taught to see women for what they are: fallen and flawed humans, possessing merits, but also emotional and emotionally manipulative, to be led, and not shining goddesses of wonder to be appeased. This would at least put these men on an even playing field with the cads and the Roissyites, in terms of attracting women, which is half the battle.

Of course, the idea that we should just start teaching men differently is easier said than done. There is one place where it is possible, however: Within the conservative Christian community. There is Biblical precedent for men as leaders, and the conservative Christian community has shown itself surprisingly capable of coming alive and quickly embracing a new movement when it is clear that Scripture is on the movement’s side. Witness their rapid mobilization with slavery and abortion, for instance.

What about the secular “beta” males? Well, there’s really no hope for them. But really, it’s no big loss. There’s really nobody more pathetic and shameful than a person who both rejects Christianity and gets immersed in and emasculated by feminist dogma. Like the contraceptive-using cads, Roissyites, and slutty women, they will die childless and alone, and be outbred by the Christians even more than they already are.

2) These newly-minted masculine men need to start engaging in shaming, to establish societal order again. right now, when a woman gets burned going after a bad boy, most sweet, sensitive “beta” males sympathize with the poor besotted woman, and blame the heartless jerk who did it to her, hoping that they can get her affection with their sensitivity. It doesn’t occur to them that while she was throwing herself after the jerk and being subsequently left high and dry by him, other men were being left high and dry by her.

A man who has been trained to see women for what they are will recognize and shame the primary guilty party: the woman. Rather that join her in her pity party, he will blame her.

Honestly, step (2) isn’t really a separate step, and should come automatically with step (1). The shaming doesn’t even have to be overt. It simply has to take the form of attractive men rejecting women for being sluts.

Women already insult each other all the time for being whores, but that doesn’t really bother them. What really shames a woman, what really frightens her deeply enough to modify her behavior, is the prospect of being rejected and found unattractive by desirable men.

If women think that being slutty will make them generally less attractive to desirable men, they will be shamed into not being slutty. And if there are a good number of desirable men out there that happen to be Christians, this should start to take care of itself.

LA replies:

You write:

“They also need to be taught to see women for what they are: fallen and flawed humans, possessing merits, but also emotional and emotionally manipulative, to be led, and not shining goddesses of wonder to be appeased. This would at least put these men on an even playing field with the cads and the Roissyites, in terms of attracting women, which is half the battle.”

Excellent. You’re showing how the restoration of balance that the Roissyites seek, can be sought in ways that are in conformity with the restoration of a good social order, rather than in ways that accelerate society’s path to destruction.

- end of initial entry -

Will C. writes

Ian B. is really getting to the core of the value of game to the traditionalist movement. As Ferdinand Bandamu puts it:

“The goal of game is to make it possible for a man to attract women, and what he chooses to do with this ability is up to him.”

That’s it. Game is just the theory of what makes a man attractive to women, and it’s a theory that requires rejection of that basic tenet of liberalism, feminism. Generally speaking, rejecting other tenets of liberalism, while beneficial to society, has no obvious benefits to the individual who chooses to reject them, other than what satisfaction can be gleaned from knowing that you are right and everyone else is wrong. Game, on the other hand, provides distinct, individualized benefits to those who decide to reject feminism, and with it, liberalism. And that is why it could lead to the restoration of the social order that conservatives desire. Incentives matter.

Steven Warshawsky writes:

Ian B. says that “men need to be taught to be strong and independent again, from an early age.” Sounds fine, but how is this going to be done in today’s cultural-legal environment? One of the points that Roissy repeatedly makes is that the rules of the game—the respective rights and duties of boys and girls, men and women, husbands and wives—are being tilted ever so strongly against males. At school, in the workplace, in the family court, everywhere in organized society. Roissy argues that only “beta chumps” agree to play by these rules, voluntarily enslaving themselves to the system. Ian’s simplistic proposals do nothing to address this larger political context that is undermining male power, confidence, and virtue.

But Ian inadvertently raises a critical point with his analogy about cops. Indeed, cops are the people who, ultimately, enforce the established order. Not congressmen or judges or teachers or whoever. This includes police officers, federal agents, military personnel, all of whom I call “the men with the guns.” Organized, lawful violence is the heart of government and social order. Without it, all of the lunacy coming from our government would be just that, lunacy. It’s only “law” because a powerful man carrying a gun makes you obey it. Despite generally being opposed to the liberal, socialist, feminist agenda, the men with the guns enforce it nonetheless. They are the ones who “enable” our liberal overseers to impose their distorted and harmful vision of human life on the rest of us. They are the ones who enforce—through threat of imprisonment, physical injury, and death—the myriad laws, regulations, and court orders that advance the leftist agenda.

Conservatives need to open their eyes and recognize that the persons to whom we usually offer our deepest gratitude and respect—the men with the guns—ultimately are not on our side. They are on the side of their liberal bosses. As I like to say, if you don’t believe me, just try not paying your taxes or registering your guns or paying your alimony. Heck, try smoking in a bar in Manhattan. So long as the men with the guns continue to remain loyal to the established order, good luck opposing it. Roissy’s argument, that the only rational choice is not to play the game by the existing rules (at least in the sexual sphere, which is his analytical focus), should not be dismissed as the selfish musings of a sexual predator.

LA replies:

Steven Warshawsky, who among other things strongly supported Rudy Giuliani—the ultimate cop figure enforcing the liberal order—for the presidency, seems to have suddenly been radicalized. I am very surprised—no, shocked—by his comment.

Philip M. writes:

Ian B. writes:

For every stupid woman throwing herself at the same jerk that several other women are throwing themselves at, there’s a guy who is probably responsible and quite willing commit, but who is being ignored by the tramp. So who is really being more callous, the “alpha male” being enabled by the women, or the vain, selfish women ignoring the decent guys

I have always found the self-pitying song by Janis Ian annoying for this reason.

I learned the truth at seventeen
That love was meant for beauty queens

Of course, there were plenty of spotty, nerdy boys Janis could have found. The problem was that she only wanted the kind of boys that the beauty queens got. So she is the shallow one.

Philip M. (bitterly remembering being 17)

Ian B. replies to Will C.:

That’s … interesting, but I don’t buy it. Attracting women has been going on for, oh, a few years longer than the “Game” movement. If “Game” is simply synonymous with attracting women, then it seems to me that we already have adequate vocabulary for it, and we don’t need to go around coining new terms pointlessly.

It seems pretty obvious to me that “Game” refers specifically to a practice and a movement organized around manipulating women into bed for a quick “pump n” dump” within the context of our current chaotic social environment. It’s not particularly surprising that many of the behaviors and personality traits used to get women to do this are the same ones that attract women in general, and there are some genuinely useful things a decent and naive guy could learn from members of the “Game” movement, but it’s a pretty big stretch from there to say that “Game” is simply coextensive with attracting women everywhere and at all times.

Also, the term “Game” implies precisely what it’s meant to: a method of playing, ie gaming, women into thinking you’re something you’re not. I’m recommending that men be taught from an early age actually to be strong, independent, dominant types with a sober, not-overly-rosy view of women. The main reason for this is that men are supposed to be strong, independent, and dominant. That those happen to be the same traits that attract women, and that cause them to tailor their behavior to attract men, is a not-incidental secondary reason.

Steven Warshawsky replies:

Yes, my perspective on how society works and, in particular, on the role played by “the men with the guns” has become more “critical,” shall we say. However, I think the cheap shot at Giuliani as “the ultimate cop figure enforcing the liberal order” is seriously misplaced. During his tenure as mayor, Giuliani confronted, defeated, and/or reformed the liberal order on many fronts. New York City is a much better place today for it. The liberal order was represented by Koch and Dinkins, not Giuliani. There is a continuum in politics, certainly, but to consistently place Giuliani on the far left, as your comment suggests, reflects in my opinion a stubborn failure to appreciate the bourgeois (and, dare I say it, pro-white) heart of his agenda.

LA replies:

Fair enough. When I made the remark, I was thinking (1) of his brutal tactics as a federal prosecutor in the 1980s, and (2) of his general penchant for expansive executive authority.

Ian B. writes:

Steven Warshawsky said:

Ian B. says that “men need to be taught to be strong and independent again, from an early age.” Sounds fine, but how is this going to be done in today’s cultural-legal environment?

Perhaps Steven missed it, but I explicitly said that it wouldn’t be impossible to do this for the feminized “betas” of the secular world. They are a hopeless lost cause. Like I said, such a movement to remasculinize boys can only realistically take place within the Christian community, which already has Scriptures commanding men to lead and wives to respect and submit to them. It would require a concerted movement of a few to point these things out to the Christian community, together with the research showing that these traits are what attract women, that they are being used by “Gamers” for ill, and that there is a pressing need to raise Christian men in such fashion to beat them and reduce female promiscuity.

The orthodox Christian community has, in the past, shown an ability to reorient themselves and become activist with amazing alacrity when a few people make a compelling and convicting case that Scripture obligates them to a particular course of action, even and especially when it goes against the politically correct grain of the time. Again, the rapid Christian organization around anti-slavery and pro-life causes are a case in point.

A successful movement would result in Christian men being disproportionately attractive to a lot of women, which, since they pursue women for the purposes of reproduction, would simply boost their reproductive advantage over the sterile Pick-Up Artists, female sluts, and secular betas even higher than it already is. My recommendation for the secular betas was and is: Let them go extinct along with the other seculars. There’s simply no way they can be helped within today’s cultural-legal environment, nor is there much reason to help them.

August 21

Ian B. writes:

Laura says:

Masculinity has lost one of its most significant functions. It will not recover until men regain economic primacy. In one-fourth of married couples, the woman earns more than the man.

I think this gets things backwards. Men’s economic primacy won’t recover until masculinity recovers. The drops in wages and other things were triggered and allowed by the loss in masculinity, and can only be undone by reversing that. She basically admits as much when she says “They have to lose their timidity and say, These jobs belong to us.” Well, obviously for men to do that, they would already have to be masculine.

She also says “They … have to explain and defend why they were once favored in the workplace.” Actually, I don’t think they have to explain anything. It sort of goes without saying. If a woman is having children in her younger years, her husband is almost surely going to be making more money. If we restore the former, the latter will follow.

See, women may have changed culturally, but they haven’t changed biologically. They’re still attracted to an assertive, dominant man, and are quite willing to change themselves, even debase themselves, in order to catch and accommodate one (as their self-destructive behavior with Roissy’s “alphas” demonstrates nicely). The strong, independent, modern-day woman is a myth. They’re every bit as insecure in need of male validation as they’ve always been.

If there’s a good number of confident, assertive, dominant type guys out there, and those guys only want women who will settle down and have kids, lots of women will do just that to attract them. It won’t matter if feminists try to shame them and tell them they shouldn’t. Just like they ignore it when other women call them sluts, the shaming of women by other women is pretty ineffectual when it comes to attracting a man that they are attracted to.

Karen writes from England:

Laura’s comments focus too much on economics. Female careers and female promiscuity are not related. Female promiscuity is a Western phenomenon and unrelated to education or income. In fact the poorest and least educated women are usually the most promiscuous in Western society. I lived in Asia and Europe and worked with many European, Asian, Arab and African professionals both male and female. (There are more professional women in India than in the USA and even Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Iran have 50 % female medical graduates.) Within Asian and Arab societies there is no female promiscuity. Life continues as it has for centuries with marriage and family life unchanged.

Many Asian and Arab women are more careerist and ambitious than Western women and increasingly more successful than British women in Britain. It does not make them promiscuous or stop them marrying in their 20s. The traditionalist nature of their own societies and arranged marriage system makes life considerably easier for them than for Western women but it demonstrates that the education of women and their subsequent development of careers does not make them promiscuous. That remains the case even when they are living in degenerate Western societies.

Some examples of educated women who did not become promiscuous—Gro Harlem Brundtland, Margaret Thatcher, Indira Ghandi, Golda Meir, Corazon Aquino, Chandrika Banderanaike, the list could go on.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 20, 2009 04:00 PM | Send