The American Alpha Male Myth is Yet Another Sad Relic From the Slave Era
Quit boasting about how you can beat everyone up
We’ve all met these guys. They’re usually overweight, half-drunk, and when they aren’t bellowing about how they can “lick every man in the room” they’re scrambling around looking for their heart pills and blood pressure medication.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, we’re all impressed. Now sit down and shut up.
It’s always white guys who go on unprovoked tirades about how tough they are. They hook their thumbs into their belt loops so they can kind of flex, and speak around a blade of grass or a matchstick which makes them mumble incoherently.
The fact that they can “beat everyone up” is their personal identity, and they are able to maintain it because nobody ever calls them out. Nobody calls them out because what’s the point? What’s the point in beating up an obese, divorced, alcoholic? Besides, if you did call them out you can guarantee it wouldn’t be a one-on-one fight. The second blows started falling it’d be you against all this guy’s aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, and cousins.
We need to make it clear that the tough guy routine is getting old. It makes you look stupid. It’s just one of the many implied threats that permeate our society and help to maintain white supremacy. Take note that when somebody is sitting around in a bar talking about how tough he is, he’s almost always white, and he feels confident to boast because he knows institutionalized racism has got his back.
Trump vs Biden
The only way that I could root for the detestable Logan Paul to win a fight is if he ever got into the ring with Donald Trump. Even then I’d feel cheated unless the fight was an agonizing beat-down that went the distance.
Both Biden and Trump are examples of ignorant, old, pathetic men who are guilty of shooting their mouths off about how tough they are. Trump’s a thousand times worse, but they both do it.
At a campaign rally on Sunday in Opa-Locka, Florida, Trump referred to a comment Biden made in March 2018 that he would have “beat the hell” out of Trump had they been in high school together.
Biden is “a weak person, you know,” Trump told the audience. “He challenged me. Do you remember? A year and a half ago. ‘Huh, I’d like to take him behind a barn.’ And I said, you know — I said, ‘Of all the people in the world that I could fight, that’s probably the one I’d like to most fight.’” — Thomas Colson, Trump says he wants to have a physical fight with Biden as ‘those legs have gotten very thin’
In reality, if Trump and Biden got into a ring together, it would be a pitiful display that would have both men wheezing within a few seconds (assuming they even made it up the steps to the ring). When a politician starts shooting off his mouth about how tough he is, he needs to be laughed off whatever podium is propping him up.
The unspoken truth is that in reality, neither Trump or Biden would be the ones doing the actual fighting. They’d get their unhinged gang of ghouls to do the dirty work.
The myth of the American alpha-male
You hear a lot of white men toss around words like “alpha male” or “beta.” On the crazy fringes of the right, the word of choice is “cuckold” or “cuck.”
The assumption is that every man in American society wants to be the “pack leader” or “top dog.” But the reality is that men who fall into this thought pattern are cowards and idiots. Human beings have the benefit of thousands of years of advanced scientific and philosophical thinking to form the basis of their social structure. We can do better than strive to replicate the behaviors of a pack of wolves.
“Alpha male” talk is the equivalent of preschool. Kindergarteners are equipped to come up with an exponentially better system than the wolf pack concept. Yet alpha male language persists in politics and in most social settings.
Masculinity is often defined by the “alpha male” concept. The alpha male is full of physical power and have the need to control situations with stoic strength. They make things happen, they take what they want, and they force their will. They are powerful and dominant. The problem with this is that the strongest man making all the rules results in a lot of people suffering. They strongly point out the limitations of others. They create egotism and allow manipulation and dominance of others. They lead to the problems of dictators, slavery and oppression — Joe Leanza, MD, Masculinity
Dictators and slave owners represent the alpha male model. Doesn’t that provide enough of an indication that it’s not a positive idea?
The constant threat of punishment
Slaves in the antebellum south had to hear a constant barrage of tough talk from white people as the incessant background noise of their entire lives. It almost seems as if these speech patterns became so instinctive that they’ve carried on to modern society.
The implicit threat is such a part of the American language that people say things without even knowing the violent origins. One phrase that seems harmless but was conceived to convey the threat of punishment is “Cat got your tongue?”
If this phrase conjures images of adorable kittens swatting at your mouth, you’d be off the mark by about a mile. Sadly, its roots are in slavery where a person (usually a person of color, but really anyone in forced servitude) is whipped (cat meaning cat-o’-nine tails) so hard that they cannot physically speak — 15 Common Phrases With Horrific Pasts
The implied threat of that statement is that if you do not provide a prompt answer to a query, you’ll be whipped. It’s not too difficult to imagine slave owners muttering this phrase with a smirk on their faces in anticipation of the imminent brutalization.
The mechanism of a disciplinary system
Corrupt systems require a constant show of force. That’s done both through demonstrations and spoken threats. “Do as I say or else!”
This kind of authoritarian attitude is commonplace, it has even been the fundamental concept of teacher classroom management in our educational system.
Too often, teachers are encouraged to expect and create classroom cultures based compliance. “Learning” is characterized by productivity and output, less than actual student engagement in a topic of interest. “Respect” is often unilateral, as teachers are allowed to shame and berate students, sometimes subtly, sometimes not. Meanwhile, students are expected to never talk back or argue — Ruben Abrahams Brosbe, Can Teachers Give Up Power and Keep Their Authority?
A more obvious form of the rigid power structure that still defines politics, classrooms, and work environments can be seen in the functional mechanism for how slavery was maintained.
The drivers, overseers, and masters were responsible for plantation discipline. Slaves were punished for not working fast enough, for being late getting to the fields, for defying authority, for running away, and for a number of other reasons. The punishments took many forms, including whippings, torture, mutilation, imprisonment, and being sold away from the plantation. Slaves were even sometimes murdered. Some masters were more “benevolent” than others, and punished less often or severely. But with rare exceptions, the authoritarian relationship remained firm even in those circumstances — Conditions of antebellum slavery, PBS.org
To this day, Americans seem to be disinclined to question the propriety of forcing somebody to do something, or pressuring them to behave a certain way through the threat of force. When Donald Trump says he wants to take somebody “behind the barn” and an audience cheers, it’s a fundamental reminder of how much the institution of slavery continues to poison the American mindset.
Never agree to a fight
Keep all of this in mind the next time somebody challenges you to “step outside.” The American myth is that tough guys fight their battles themselves. The reality is that they get all their friends and relatives to hold you down, and then they rewrite history and claim an unassisted victory.
White guys know that they can talk tough at a bar. When the cops come to break up a fight, they see it as the arrival of reinforcements. Essentially, any form of white guy tough talk is the most cowardly act possible. All they’re trying to do is lure you into a conflict you can’t win. When people say they can “beat someone” they have absolutely no intention of it being a fair fight.
Collectively, we have to work together to deconstruct the absurd myth of the American alpha male. Instead of men sitting proudly on horses, the more appropriate image would be cheap-shot artists punching their restrained victims in the back of the neck. Bragging about being able to win a fight is a threat. Such language has no place in a decent society.