Oh, Just Breaking Down More Male Bullshit…

I’m Tired of the Nonsense Lies…

It seems like everywhere I turn these days, perverted gaze here, sexual harassment there, abuse tactics gurus over there — misogyny is one thing that isn’t in short stock in our contemporary culture. It’s everywhere, ubiquitous, pervasive — it pickles the aisles and shelves at the grocery store, it’s on the internet everywhere we turn, it’s even showing up in my Instagram feed advertised on Audible and other platforms. A whole culture of books and videos have sprung up to teach men how to be more horrible versions of themselves. They promise to let men in on some sort of black arts of covert manipulation tactics that they guarantee to work. I suppose where there’s a buyer there shall be a snake oil salesman. I think most of these men just need a hug from someone who isn’t their mothers.

Leaving alone The Selfish Gene, let’s move onto some other currently popular books such as Confessions of a Sociopath, Trust me I’m Lying, The Psychopath Whisperer, and yes, even Donald Trump’s book (that he characteristically didn’t even himself write) The Art of the Deal are all touted as guru Jedi mind tricks that can give you the competitive edge in life. Yes, those are actual titles. And, of course, there’s my personal favorite, a book is actually titled Women Who Love Psychopaths. Such is the devolution of rat-race neoliberalism and it’s more male bullshit for me to shoot down out of the sky with a pointed pen and a few choice words.

First of all, nobody, and I mean nobody should be taking advice on how to get a competitive edge from the ghostwriter for Donald Trump. Ever. Especially not when it comes to sex and dating which I know is the market for this kind of hot garbage. Trump is a multiple-accused sex offender who cheated his way into the White House, let’s not be taking ethics advice from him, shall we not?

Second of all, what in the hell is a “psychopath whisperer” and why is it actually on the internet? Really? Do these people actually take themselves this seriously that they’re in search of becoming a psychopath whisperer? And who the hell buys this stuff? Oh, right, the INCELs. Maybe that’s why they’re INCELs. Somebody’s got to tell these guys who can’t science your way into making people like you, it doesn’t work that way (unless you’re Bill Nye).

Even more ridiculous, on the site called “the power moves” dot com (I left it lowercase here to emasculate it and no one can stop me), there’s a free course in apparently Machiavellianism, with a photo of the statue of Machiavelli on the front. Oh, great, just what I’ve always wanted! Courses on how to be a complete douchebag that nobody likes written by some rando on the internet. I’m going to stop for a minute and highlight the ridiculousness that is the fact that the site is actually called “the power moves” because I think it’s telling of what grinds my gears like a drunken mechanic. But it’s not my gears that are breaking down, it’s society’s at large and much of this has to do with male selfishness and unbridled egotism.

It’s almost as if — gasp — just like I said before, the pickup artist movement is slowly morphing into the alt-right and has been over the last decade. Angry, pissed off, bitter, and sexless men have grown weary, tired, frustrated, and even furious at the fact that our culture sold them — and continues to sell them — a bunch of bullshit in the form of lies that pretend to they’ll help them sleaze their way into a life of sex-filled abundance! Their dreams of abuse and being worshipped by women all over haven’t panned out and now they’re really, really pissed off. These men wanted personal harems regardless of how women would feel about such a setup, which is the weird, bizarre, gonzo step in consumerism that I just can’t help but laugh at and not even pretend to take seriously. The audaciousness, the silly distortion of reality, the far-fetched idiocy that is the belief that women are subservient to men, especially men who’ve barely grown up beyond boyhood.

To be clear, men themselves aren’t solely on the hook for this but the men who subscribe to this sort of garbage certainly are and the men who create and distribute it are even worse.

The thin veneer of wannabe style and superficial charm is now slowly melting away and being replaced by outright manipulation-worship and pathetic sadism, but not in a good way. Not sadism in a sexy, romantic or even Marquis de Sade way, but more in the weird, creepy, school shooter kind of way. This is why women are afraid to go places in our culture. This is why women clutch their wallets and purses when these dudes come around, meanwhile, these dudes (who the rest of us can just ‘sense’) are all sitting around wondering, “Why don’t any women like me?” They gather in internet forums to discuss manipulating and, honestly, abusing women; and then they wonder why women don’t want to be around them. Imagine that.

And if you think I’m being harsh, here, stop and think about the fact that these people are people who’ve chosen to become abusers. They’re working at it, tirelessly, in the hopes of getting a little play and feeling like a big, tough man.

This is all going in the wrong direction, all of it. Trust me, guys, this is not the route you want to be taking. How about trying to become stand-up guys, instead? How about trying to put that focus, time, and energy into more productive things that women, ummm, actually want, like a good listener, a responsible person, someone willing to endure hardships with them, a non-judgmental stance. Is it just me, or if guys want to become undeniably more attractive to women, shouldn’t they be reading works by the Dalai Lama? Inner peace is the key to likeability, not inner conflict and turmoil.

I don’t know how many times I have to say this, guys, women aren’t attracted to violent, hostile, unhinged men. If you want to know what I tend to think, it’s that women don’t date total toxic clump of man-mess because they like them so much as they’re just in abundant supply. In truth, good men are extremely rare. It’s hard to find a guy who has it all, take it from me, a guy with very few male friends because I observe red flags and don’t put up with any bullshit, guys who aren’t totally into themselves, selfish, and out for only themselves are hard to come by…extremely hard to come by. So, that means the onus is on us (see what I did there?) to become better men every single day. It’s your challenge today to become a better human being, but not for yourself, for those around you. That’s the magical ingredient that I’ve learned, to be honest, that women find magnetic.

No matter who you are, if you become that kind of warm, caring, compassionate soul who just carries your radiated joyousness with you everywhere you go, people will love you and want to be around you more often than not. When we stop putting expectations of sex on women, when we stop demanding affection before we’ve even proven that we’re a decent human being, before we’ve even become a decent human being who can prove anything, when we stop acting like the whole damn world is about us, that’s when the magic happens. Because this world is a shared world, it’s one that we all live in together, guys. I think the men who subscribe to this stuff are following some occultist sense of obscurantia, feeling like they’ll unearth some long-hidden secret from a site titled “the power moves” of all places, and suddenly, everything will just click — no more pain, no more hurt, no more rejection, no more anxiety. The bad news is, the world doesn’t work like that. Becoming a loving, loveable, respectable person takes time, effort, and dedication, it takes risk and exposure to loss and rejection, it takes absorbing hits and rejections and continuing down your path to becoming the great man that you can be.

I honestly, for all my complaints, believe in you guys — you men out there who don’t quite have it together, I believe that someday we’ll move past this hiccup and to a world where the sexes can get along much, much easier and perhaps even someday understand one another deeply.

One last thing before I go and I swear I’ll let you get back to your well-ordered lives, it’s okay to be fragile. It’s okay to be vulnerable. It’s okay to admit that you’re hurting. It’s okay to admit that you’re failing hard and you need affection and you need to learn how to become more affectionate in order to do just that, as long as you’re willing to be open to suggestions and learn from others. Not all of us were born with a silver spoon of luxury (or love) in our mouths and some of us have to overcome severe deficits from our childhood, but I know that it’s absolutely possible. I’m one of those people. But I’d be lying to you if I didn’t tell you it took a lot of work and soul searching in order to come out on top. It’s not okay to be toxic and hostile because you’re fragile and don’t know how to trust other people and grow.

And now, for some serious reading advice, forget all the crap at the beginning of this story, the most indispensable book in anybody’s canon of literature for understanding love in all of its beauty, form, and splendor is The Art of Loving by Erich Fromm. Trust me, this book is approximately seventy years old but it’s as eye-opening and life-changing as it was the day it was published. It doesn’t promise any easy shortcuts but challenges you to undertake an investigation into what love is, what love means, and most of all, how to be loving. It can be found through an affiliate link on Amazon here. Full disclosure, I may make a small commission from any sales made.

Thank you for reading. Here’s another story you might be interested in…