Alpha Male (Bull) Shit

A guy once announced to me that he was "an alpha male." Ironically, I had really been attracted to him up to that point because I thought he was funny, honest, clever, kind, and bore more than a passing resemblance to Iggy Pop, and I inwardly cringed to hear this. Not only have I never been attracted to "dominant" men, he had diminished himself in my eyes by revealing his massive insecurity. Men who describe themselves as "alpha" or "dominant" are unfailingly anything but.

If I saw a man with such a claim emblazoned across his chest, I would automatically assume he was not only a moron, but completely deluded. And now I would also wonder if he were capable of beating a woman within an inch of her life.

Smotherin' Mothers

Over at ROK there is a review ("How to Build a Beta Male") of a short 2007 Danish film called "Dennis" (link to the film here).  It depicts an evening in the life of a stolid, hypertrophied body builder who lives with his clingy, emotionally incestuous single mother.  He asks a girl from his fitness club out for pizza.  The evening doesn't end well, as the girl's friends make fun of him and he runs back to his mama's bed (literally).  A little disturbing, a little sad, but I like to think that this was only Dennis' first attempts to strike out on his own.  (In fact, the director Mads Mathiesen took Dennis on an extended and more upbeat adventure to Thailand in a feature length 2012 film called "Teddy Bear").

The character Dennis, and his enmeshed relationship with his tiny terrifying mother, seems to have struck a chord even with Roosh, and the discussion on ROK focuses on "beta/omega" males and how women create them.  The whole concept of alpha vs. beta men is rubbish, of course, which is why the manosphere spends huge amounts of time just trying to define what these distinctions are.  However, that there are a lot of lonely single men out there with undeveloped social skills is self-evident by the very existence of a PUA/game industry.   

I hate to admit I recognize the Evil Mother in this film, but sadly I do.  I know a few mothers, both married and single, who have turned their sons into their proxy "boyfriends," and it ain't pretty.  Very close to home is my partner's ex, who has been undergoing a kind of emotional meltdown as their son (now nineteen) begins to flex his wings.  The youth, whom I'll call Kirk, is still living at home, still cooking and cleaning for mom, still accompanying her on holidays, still tucking her in to bed when she's polished off the nightly bottle of wine. 

I see hope on the horizon though.  Unlike "Dennis," Kirk has great social skills.  As a result, he has a lot of close friends, both male and female.  In fact, he has recently acquired a girlfriend whom he texts constantly, much to his mom's dismay.  He has a part time customer service job that he is good at and he goes to school part time.  

Kirk and his dad (my partner) spend regular time together, sailing, attending musicals, cooking, building stuff, flirting outrageously with everyone they meet.  Both are the gregarious sort for whom the expression "He never met a stranger" was coined.  Kirk also seems to have inherited his dad's sunny resilience and unflappable self-confidence.   From his father (a M2F transsexual), he has developed a spirit of tolerance and all-embracing compassion.  It seems a bit ironic that it is his transgender parent's qualities that already make Kirk his own man. 

I'm not really worried about Kirk even though I am sympathetic with the prolonged and often painful separation process he is undergoing.  I stay on the sidelines, of course.  We encourage his growing autonomy, but never disparage the attachment with his mom.  He's going to be fine (and eventually, I hope his mother will be too).

Don't Get Me Wrong, I Love Dogs!

Whenever the topic of gender came up, my old boyfriend, Paul, used to assert that,  "Men are dogs."  Our ensuing argument always followed along the same lines, with me protesting, "Not all men are dogs!  You're not a dog."  "I am a dog," Paul would counter, "because I am a man.  And all men are dogs."  (By insisting that men were dogs, Paul was claiming men were slaves to their dominant, hormone-driven instincts.  Or something like that.)  After a few rounds, I gave up trying to convince Paul to take a more evolved stance on the matter, and after a couple of years, boredom and frustration with Paul's distorted logic and lack of sophistication took its toll, and I broke off with him.

Whether comparing men with dogs (or rabbits), or women with hamsters (or chickens or snakes), barnyard analogies render any argument meaningless.  They are simply ways to "dehumanize" the other so that you don't have to treat them as individuals with unique qualities and experiences worthy of consideration.  While it's true that humans, like wolves, are pack animals, as any (reputable) social scientist will tell you, to understand the origins of our own behaviors, we are better off studying the higher primates, i.e., chimpanzees. (I'm a bonobo myself.)

And yet-- and yet--

Today I found myself wondering if Paul wasn't right.  Men in groups can certainly act like dogs in packs.  I have four (male) dogs myself.  Each dog, on his own, is a sweet and distinct individual.  As a group, however (Anyone say "kibbies?") they form a howling, snarling mob bent on chaos and destruction, impervious to either reason or protocol.  

Roosh recently got a couple of e-mails which he reproduced in part in his forum.  Apparently they were from a male friend of one of the "conquests" Roosh had described in a book.  What the sender's messages lacked in coherence and literacy, he made up in sincerity.

Sample of what the "white knighter" wrote to Roosh:

"I hope you [Roosh] feel bad for what you did. You betrayed her.... Do you ever think of the consequences you create when you do this? What pain you create?...  I believe this is a form of terrorism towards other countries and to the people you have hurt already. Terrorism is defined as creating terror in people and that is what you do when you write about your conquest. It is the woman's fault too, to fall for your game and they have had a choice to sleep with you, but it is not fair to them that you write about it without their permission...What you did to her was uncalled for.  You scared her... When you write your books, please warn them or at least send them a book so that way they can take steps to prepare for the shame you might bring them. .. to be published in your books of accomplishments with women would make any woman feel cheep, used, and disgraced..."

These tidbits are the bones that Roosh throws to his troops, who slavishly leap into the fray like... well, like a pack of dogs.  A grindingly predictable thread follows, in which the Roosh's minions deride the "beta orbiting" e-mailer's masculinity and dignity (for protesting the treatment of his friend), and lavish praise on Roosh, All Hail to the Chief, etc., ad nauseum.  In this way, Roosh uses a "threat" to the Group Think to reinforce his own authority.  He's very shrewd that way (part of why he's scary).

Ironically, the "hive mind" of females is a persistent trope among misogynists.

I can only hope that on some level, some of of these Rooshites realize:  Hey, he [the victim's friend] has a point...  Maybe it's not very manly or heroic to exploit women that way...  I wouldn't like it if it were my sister / my friend / my daughter Roosh was exploiting sexually and monetarily. .. 

(While some manosphere bloggers do concede that Roosh isn't the type of guy they'd want their sisters to marry, they don't seem able to take empathy any further.)