Alphas v. Herbs: Via Audacious, I learned about Roissy's parody of modern fathers. "Herbs" they're called. Pretty damn funny, even though I'm guilty as sin.
I was tempted, myself, to write a little parody of Bad Boys--too easy, really (and I see myself heading in a direction that would be labelled racist)--but instead I'll be direct and say that in my experience there is no comparison between the two, at least for someone with my personality.
When I was single, I never had any trouble finding attractive girls to hang out with. During the years I was an atheist, being a playboy seemed pretty appealing, but I really couldn't pull it off most of the time because I have a conscience. Maybe I'm too beta to attract girls who just want to have sex, but for me to have casual sex, I would have had to deceive the girls into thinking I was interested in something more. Girls wanted to have sex because they saw it going somewhere. If a woman wants nothing more, fine, but guys who steal a copulation through fraud, to my mind, are not much better than those who get it by force. They're basically sociopaths.
Now, the experience of raising a child is gold compared to that mess. I'm not even going to attempt to describe it. You'll have to do it to see what I mean. But you know the intense love that moms feel for their kids? Sure, there are biological differences between the sexes, but much of the affection comes through interaction. Dads and kids are often not close because Dad is annoyed by kids or is interested in other things. For guys with that kind of temperament, fine, but for the other type, you have missed a great deal if you go childless, or aren't involved with your kids. And I don't mean to romanticize it, because it is hard, but it makes me feel like a man like chasing tail could never do.
Let me put it another way. Those in favor of gay marriage have neglected a strong argument for guys like me. Most would agree that kids ideally should be raised by married parents. All the rights talk doesn't grab me, but this does: "Mr. Guhname, just like you, I want to have the chance to have a son and raise him to be a man. You know how rewarding and meaningful that is. Let me do the same."
Sentimental, I know, but there it is.
Are gun owners mentally ill?
Some anti-gun people think owning a gun is a sign of some kind of mental abnormality. According to General Social Survey data, gun owners ...
Nice post. I think Roissy is a sociopath, by the way. I don't think he speaks for most people, men or women. I don't think he knows women the way he thinks he does. But I'm just a woman, so what I think doesn't count.
ReplyDelete"Mr. Guhname, just like you, I want to have the chance to have a son and raise him to be a man. You know how rewarding and meaningful that is. Let me do the same."
Problem is, gay marriage would legitimize a child being legally motherless, or fatherless, as the case may be. I don't want to go there.
Most would agree that kids ideally should be raised by married parents.Um, duh. Maybe the gay marriage movement didn't realize they had to spell out the obvious societal benefits of marriage to social conservatives. You should read Andrew Sullivan on gay marriage. It's a very conservative argument.
ReplyDeleteJewish Atheist,
ReplyDeleteI see you a lot in these and other blogs comments. Whatever you call yourself, you are a libertarian, that is, "what suits me is right." Since I think you are insane, I have no desire to tangle with you. But you have given me the opportunity to offer my favorite quote about libertarianism:
"Libertarians, hearing such a description, run gagging to the sink. There are no nations, no communities, no families. Only self-seeking individuals exist, and the "common good" is a term invented by fascist oppressors. This is the only answer they have for any social question, from drugs to pornography to fast food. This shopworn and counterintuitive platitude from the Enlightenment is so self-evidently stupid as to require no refutation, though David Hume supplied one in his great essay on "The Original Contract." Nonetheless, people such as Ayn Rand—and the nerds and geeks who cling to her in the naive belief that her rotten novels will turn them into supermen—could never understand the fact that human beings are social animals. This is a part of human nature which no libertarian theory can eradicate, and my advice to them is to find another planet where they can all live in solitary caves, where they can snort coke and watch porn videos to their hearts content. Their ideas are irrelevant, not just to present circumstances, but to the human condition."
As for Andrew Sullivan, life's too short to continue to reading his drivel, but I remember from back in the day when I did, he's a big believer in ceremonies without substance. What he wants is the social approval of being married, with the private freedom to advertise his glutes on Manhunt.
Diana:
ReplyDeleteWell that's a new one. I've never been criticized for being too libertarian before. :-)
I don't go by other people's labels or for that matter, self-identified labels. From what I gather you have all sorts of libertarian notions of "rights." IMO anyone who defends the right to incest on (pseudo)utilitarian grounds is a libertarian. "Gay" marriage is another libertarian right issue.
ReplyDeleteFact is, marriage wasn't invented by this or any other state. It's a universal human construct, there never has been a society without, and although I cannot predict the future, likely never will be. The state simply regulates what is, on behalf of the defenseless: the children. That it does a bad job of this is quite irrelevant.
Now go back to trying to reconcile the irreconcilable: being a self-identified Jew, and an atheist.
Diana,
ReplyDeleteBeing Jewish is an ethnic/cultural thing for many people. There is no contradiction.
Also, most of the people I know who support gay marriage are big-government liberals.
Diana:
ReplyDeleteI'll happily "admit" to being something of a social libertarian. I just don't think the state has the right to tell consenting adults what they may and may not do.
Fiscally, I'm a liberal. I'm all for welfare, social security, universal health care, anti-trust laws, labor laws, etc.
I think the state's main purpose is to protect people from each other. When it tries to protect people from themselves, it's gone too far.
"Those in favor of gay marriage have neglected a strong argument for guys like me. Most would agree that kids ideally should be raised by married parents. All the rights talk doesn't grab me, but this does: "Mr. Guhname, just like you, I want to have the chance to have a son and raise him to be a man. You know how rewarding and meaningful that is. Let me do the same."
ReplyDeleteThat's what leading a Boy Scout troop and coaching Little League is for.
Maybe it's a strong argument for "guys like you" because you yourself are a homosexual. You sound like a Grade A faggot to me after reading this post.
"During the years I was an atheist, being a playboy seemed pretty appealing, but I really couldn't pull it off most of the time because I have a conscience."
By "conscience" you mean homosexual urges.
"Maybe I'm too beta to attract girls who just want to have sex, but for me to have casual sex, I would have had to deceive the girls into thinking I was interested in something more."
By "too beta" you mean too gay. Yeah, you would've had to deceive the girls. Deceive them into thinking that you're not a flaming queer.
Man, you're a big disgusting fag. I'm never reading your gay ass again.
Jews. Women.
ReplyDeleteShite day to be a white man.
"Being Jewish is an ethnic/cultural thing for many people. There is no contradiction."
ReplyDeleteThere's never a contradiction when people happily delude themselves. Self-identifying as Jewish is admitting a mystical connection with a nebulous group of people whose identity is almost wholly self-constructed. An atheist Jew may not believe in God, but it's a sure bet he believes in "the Jewish people."
"Also, most of the people I know who support gay marriage are big-government liberals."
Not all, many supporters of SSM are self-described libertarians. And many of the self-identified liberals end up doing so using a libertarian argument.
"I just don't think the state has the right to tell consenting adults what they may and may not do."
Yeah, yeah, the usual. Any sensible person will admit that "the state" is a blunt instrument that often does harm when it means to help. Even so, the state is a proxy for the sum total of moral behavior of one's peers.
Deal with it, dude. What consenting adults do can and does have have ripple effects that go far beyond what the two adults in question do to one another, such as the children that may issue from an incestuous relationship. But I don't have to go so far. Thousands of couples fuck and breed without being married or gainfully employed. These kids are dumped into our school system. Is this good? Bullshit it is. Something should be done to disincentivitize this behavior. I really don't know what should be done - but I have no problems in saying something should be done. It's killing our country.
In other words, your right to golden showers stops where the defenseless get pissed on. The children of people who fuck and breed are defenseless. So are the victims of the crimes they commit.
In any case, the consenting adults argument doesn't wash for SSM, any more than Guhname's gay man who wants a son without having emotional ties to the mother does. (If that's not sociopathic, I don't know what is.)
No one has a right to have a baby. Having a kid really should be an earned status.
No, Jewish Atheist, I'm not saying you should have to pass a state-administered test to reproduce (something that, by the way, used to be suggested by liberals back in the day, before such an idea took on a racist tinge), but this nebulous thing called society should frown on and shame people who haven't gone thru certain hoops before they breed. (My standards are laughably low: get married, stay married a year or two, keep a job, and pay a few bills.)
Salisbury: Let's clear up the confusion: you think I'm gay?
ReplyDeleteI do enjoy my fair share of showtunes.
Ron,
ReplyDeleteI wish you would explain further how your example of gay marriage doesn't involve cutting a child off from his biological mother. How is this not a form of sociopathy?
Diana: I appreciate your comments. You're right that a gay couple goes against nature in that they cannot produce a child. They could adopt an unwanted child, but using a surrogate mother seems wrong. I don't think I'd go as far as sociopathic, but the child of this whole affair does seem to be victimized since he is a pawn in this Frankenstein-like experiment. Children seem sensitive to the way parents act toward them. Being the child to a rent-a-mom seems abusive.
ReplyDelete"If a woman wants nothing more, fine, but guys who steal a copulation through fraud, to my mind, are not much better than those who get it by force. They're basically sociopaths."
ReplyDeleteI don't believe in God, but for what it's worth, God bless you.
My pleasure, Ms. X.
ReplyDeleteI was tempted, myself, to write a little parody of Bad Boys--too easy, really (and I see myself heading in a direction that would be labelled racist)Racism is a perfectly tenable intellectual position, imo far superior to the alternatives. For someone claiming to be moved by "data not doctrine," well, the hypocrisy is rather glaring, let's just say.
ReplyDeleteGays don't want to get married. They really don't. Mark Steyn points out Toronto has had Gay Marriage for over ten years. Metro area is 6 million. It's self-described 14% gay, largest concentration of gays in the Western Hemisphere, outranking even San Francisco, at 648K.
ReplyDeleteLast year, only ONE gay couple from the Greater Toronto Area got married.
Gays want marriage to move straight society to gay norms. To make marriage "gay" culturally -- a big gay narcisstic party for them, after which both parties continue sleeping around (gay promiscuity is legendary).
The openly gay couple (not married btw) that created "Big Love" admitted this was their goal. They did not wish to get married, only make marriage "gay." Which included by their minds legalized polygamy, a "benefit" found in every jurisdiction that has legalized gay marriage. Indeed, welfare for each wife is the norm.
As for Roissy, well he has a point. Fatherhood is just obsolete. At best most men can look forward to raising another guy's (one more assertive, socially dominant, and with higher status) kid, either openly or admitting it to themselves.
Marriage is an "at will" employment with instant termination by the woman whenever something better comes along, as it always does, for younger women, and nothing but an accessory for women in their thirties or older.
It shouldn't be that way, but that's the social reality nowdays. It's just the way it is.
Diana, Roissy's view of women is quite accurate. Sad to say.
Well said Ron.
ReplyDeleteMost bloggers and commenters are young and unattached, and therefore - probably through no fault of their own - have a radically incomplete world view (as they may recognize later, if they are fortunate).
Personality is also at its peak of neuroticism and extraversion, and agreeableness and conscientiousness are low - so young adults biologically tend to be more moody, sociable, impulsive, and selfish than they will later become.
This 'adolescent behaviour' is also socially encouraged and perpetuated (I call it psychological neoteny - http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/10/magazine/10section3a.t-3.html).
But this does mean that most blogs portray a rather distorted - indeed ignorant - perspective, to put things mildly.
It is good to see you restore some balance.
And another thing - this nonsense about alpha and beta males is used in a way totally without biological/ evolutionary reality: mere hooray-boo words.
ReplyDeleteThere are various ways in which alpha and dominance are used - the main one relates to reproductive success, not frequency of sex or numbers of partners. By this account the alpha males are ultra- religious groups such as ultra-orthodox Jews, Amish, Islamicists and Mormons.
Or, the alpha male is the dominant males (to which others defer) in a specific situation - so the alpha male in a business meeting is different from that in a football team etc. This is how life is for hunter gatherers - different dominance for hunting, storytelling, medicine, religion etc. Dominance is fluid and context dependent.
Or, if we are talking a worldwide scale - then there is only one alpha male - from 1992-200 it was Bill Clinton, for example.
There are other biological usuages of the alpha dominance terminology - but none correspond to the blog usage among people promoting the advantages of a society based on a higher level of short-termist, selfish, dishonest and aggressive promiscuity.
What this most resembles biologically is the Orang Utan 'sneak' or 'cheater' strategy by which _beta_ males steal copulations from the alpha by creeping-up and raping the females then running away before the dominant male can get at them.
Diana,
ReplyDeleteYou brought up some extremely good points, especially your ripples argument. I will have to consider this some more.
Underachiever
Ron,
ReplyDeleteI'm gay and plan on having 2-4 biological kids eventually. I want this for the same reasons as anyone else, including the reason you mentioned. There is no doubt in my mind that watching my kids grow up will be the most satisfying part of my life. My dad probably won't mind having a grandkid to play chess and backgammon with either.
First though I need to find a guy who is attractive, hardworking, very intelligent, and nice. I mean "nice" not in the usual feminine, gay way of nice. I want to be with someone with high morals, who is a stand-up guy in the traditional sense.
Also, I need to wait for the technology that would allow me to have a biological child with that person. I realize you referred to this as "Frankenstein-like", but it would really only involve removing the genetic information from a woman's egg and inserting my and my husband's DNA in it instead. In this effect, it isn't very different from using a surrogate "mother". Yes, the woman who is pregnant with my kids would not have anything to do with it, but it wouldn't be hers in the biological sense. She wouldn't actually be the child's mother.
Also, I don't think a kid would be hurt by having two biological fathers instead of one mother and one father. At least the studies suggest that being raised by same sex parents doesn't harm the child. If studies ever did show that, I would reconsider my plans.
As a sidenote, I personally would love to get married at some point, but only with a good prenup or different marriage laws. I don't want to be financially raped like the men Roissy writes about.
Also, I share your moral revulsion about tricking people into sex.
Underachiever
Reading Roissy is like driving past a particularly nasty wreck: you know it's not right for you to look, you further know that if you do look you're likely to see something you'll wish you hadn't seen, yet it is impossible not to look.
ReplyDeleteMy main objection to the concept of Game, as expounded by Roissy and others, is that it is largely useless for the men who most need it. To apply Game without coming off as a complete idiot, a man has to have a clever, witty personality, or at least the ability to fake such a personality in a very convincing manner. The point is, men who have those types of personalities, or such good acting skills, in most cases already will do okay with women. Introverted, nerdy men are the sort who most need help relating to women, unfortunately they'll have a difficult time applying Game.
Peter
"As for Roissy, well he has a point. Fatherhood is just obsolete. At best most men can look forward to raising another guy's (one more assertive, socially dominant, and with higher status) kid, either openly or admitting it to themselves.
ReplyDelete"Marriage is an 'at will' employment with instant termination by the woman whenever something better comes along, as it always does, for younger women, and nothing but an accessory for women in their thirties or older."
This is a incorrect, and sounds like an obvious rationalization. Slightly more than one-half of marriages never break up now, and research indicates that fewer than 5% of babies have a biological father different than the father of record. Infidelity is a fairly common cause of divorce, but more often it's the man. It looks I need to post some stats.
Ron,
ReplyDeleteInspiring. It makes me eager to become a father. To equate successful reproduction with homosexuality, as Salisbury does, is silly. Alpha behavior is much more similar to male homosexuality than it is to the behavior of heterosexual herbs.
Men who have only had one partner since the age of 18 are the most fertile. The Herbs are outproducing the alphas. This holds not just for whites, but for NAMs as well.
BGC,
Well said. Seems to me that maximizing alpha-ness is probably a function of high conscientiousness--most men will take control of a situation when they are able to do so. Those with low conscientiousness might try to walk over their bosses, but that's generally not an effective strategy. Know when the situation lends itself to your own leadership and be leader. Conversely, know when it is costly to fight a battle that cannot be won.
Wow, who knew there were so many nice guys in the world? (I did.)
ReplyDeleteMy theory about the Roissy "game" is that he'll get married himself, and pass his genes to posterity, leaving all the nerds and shleps who believe his line to die sterile. The game really is on the guys who drink his Koolaid. Most women are a step ahead of him in "gamesmanship."
Clever, eh?
Regarding sociopathy, Ron, I think any form of conscious & willful deception is one form of it. And what could be more deceptive than to tell a kid that he has two mommies? Or two daddies? He has no such thing. There was a heartbreaking article in the NY Times (where else?) about a girl who had been raised by two lesbians in Greenwich village, and how she met her gay father once before he died of AIDS, and how her "two mothers" had put every obstacle between father and daughter. Of course, this being the NY Times, the article was all about what a triumph and a great thing it was, for "two mothers" to have children. Well, I wonder what that girl feels about her late father now. What issues does she have?
ReplyDeletePS about Roissy, he doesn't even seem to know the proper anthropological definition of the phrase "alpha male." Virtually all alpha males are married.
Wow, this thread is great. Sorry I missed it until now.
ReplyDeletePersonality is also at its peak of neuroticism and extraversion, and agreeableness and conscientiousness are low - so young adults biologically tend to be more moody, sociable, impulsive, and selfish than they will later become. - BGC
Those traits indeed add up to a potent brew. Per my limited understanding of the five-factor model, the two types that combo can result in are:
Narcissist (low openness)
Compensatory Narcissist (high openness)
In other words, young adults are typically at the most narcissistic stages of their life (not the same thing as saying they are all narcissists, just that they are closest to it at that point). Roissy may be a sociopath, but I think narcissist may be a more accurate term for him.
There are other biological usuages of the alpha dominance terminology - but none correspond to the blog usage among people promoting the advantages of a society based on a higher level of short-termist, selfish, dishonest and aggressive promiscuity.
Well said. Thank you. Lots of people have been buying Roissy's argument that he's the archetypal alpha male. The same is true of the arguments of salisbury and the like that men unlike them are obviously gay. They get away with it because, odd though it may be, the stream of insults they deliver to everyone they consider beneath them seems to have an intimidating effect on the web just as it does in person.
"Faggot" is as much a term reflecting bigotry against non-promiscuous males as it is an anti-gay term. Maybe guys like salisbury really believe everything they shovel regarding the dogma that all straight men act just like them, or want to, but I'm not sure.
--I just don't think the state has the right to tell consenting adults what they may and may not do.
ReplyDeleteFiscally, I'm a liberal. I'm all for welfare, social security, universal health care, anti-trust laws, labor laws, etc.--
What you have presented is a complete contradiction. You say that the state has no business telling consenting adults what they may and may not do, yet you support welfare and universal health care. Surely you must see the complete fallacy of holding these disparate positions. The only way the state is able to impose welfare is via a universal currency. Thus, if you support consenting adults exchanging in voluntary ways, then you support any effort to develop private currencies for private exchange. To enable the creation of private currencies is to ensure the death of welfare; for few would exchange in a currency open to taxation.
You claim you are for labor laws despite your aforementioned commitment to freedom of mutual exchange. Labor laws, focused on adults, cannot co-exist with a system of true voluntary exchange. If someone voluntarily agrees to work a dangerous job, with intermittent pay, then they would fall under your decree to leave alone all consenting adults.
Clearly, you wish to claim the position of morality on every position. Unfortunately, it is men such as you, men of contradiction, who have proven most dangerous.
--My main objection to the concept of Game, as expounded by Roissy and others, is that it is largely useless for the men who most need it. To apply Game without coming off as a complete idiot, a man has to have a clever, witty personality, or at least the ability to fake such a personality in a very convincing manner. The point is, men who have those types of personalities, or such good acting skills, in most cases already will do okay with women. Introverted, nerdy men are the sort who most need help relating to women, unfortunately they'll have a difficult time applying Game.--
ReplyDeleteYou miss the marketing niche. Roissy is great for men of high IQ who are verbal oriented, who are good looking and who should be landing girls, but aren't. There are millions of men in that position. To have a successful service or message you need only appeal to enough people, not all the people.
Many of you are overlooking the general pint presented by Roissy: the world is screwed, women in big cities are running wild on emotion and pretending they are rational, the end is near, so fuck it all and fuck as many of them as you can.
He has a point; especially about the supreme unlady-like crassness that is the urban woman. I will never forget the bitch who was my student guide on an MBA visit. I was visiting a great school and spent the day with a student to determine if the school was a match. During the course of the day, I was included in the class lectures, where I made some impression. I will never forget how, during the afternoon reception, my guide told her fellow classmates that, "yes, he did so well, but it was because of prior knowledge." What a bitch.
I would not agree with someone tricking her into sex, then ruthlessly never again calling her. However, I might not object too loudly. For women eager to slam those who are clearly superior, rather than shutting the fuck up and taking a lesson like the rest of us, I cry not for their sexual exploitation. Now women who are kind, yet assertive, talented and successful, that is a different story; I cannot tolerate their suffering. Roissy knows what many are afraid to admit: crass, resource seeking women running free, and even earning a special place in society, are the enemy of civilization.
He [Roissy] has a point; especially about the supreme unlady-like crassness that is the urban woman..
ReplyDelete.
.
Roissy is from Washington, where as I understand it, crassness of this sort is perhaps more common among young women than anywhere else in America. Most parts of the country aren't nearly so extreme.
Peter
Zylonet: I will never forget the bitch who was my student guide on an MBA visit...
ReplyDelete...I will never forget how, during the afternoon reception, my guide told her fellow classmates that, "yes, he did so well, but it was because of prior knowledge." What a bitch. [emph. added]
That's it? One stupid slight from some gauche chick is something you will never forget? Some minor quotidian specimen of rudeness from a stranger and you're still all "bitch din' show me the propuh respec'!" about it? Christ, talk about feminized.
That's it? One stupid slight from some gauche chick is something you will never forget? Some minor quotidian specimen of rudeness from a stranger and you're still all "bitch din' show me the propuh respec'!" about it? Christ, talk about feminized.Maybe he's just go a good memory. Often events are remembered because they are a classic example of something, not because they were that important in and of themselves.
ReplyDeleteI remember once being accused by an eight-year-old girl that "I didn't think girls can kick!" I was seven or eight years old as well. We were on a co-ed intramural soccer team and my crime was ... playing too hard. Apparently, had I had faith that "girls can kick", I wouldn't have been playing as hard.
This is indeed a classic example along the lines of "talk about feminized". It was not a major thing at that time. I was mildly annoyed, and I think I told my mom about it, but it wasn't nearly as big a deal as the witch who lived under the bed, or being worried that Rudolph and Santa would run into power lines. It was memorable early on because it was odd; it remained memorable because it fit in so well with the rest of my gender training.
I learned from women to be "assertive, not aggressive". One of the strategies here is phrasing things as concerns instead of criticisms. Instead of saying:
"Look, you neurotypical maggot, every time you tell me a rule is or isn't important, you reverse yourself two days later. Your poor recall shelters you from cognitive dissonance. Get your own regime figured out and get back to me - then I'll start trying to obey and/or help you enforce your rules."
I say:
"I'm concerned because I'm not sure which rules matter most. Sometimes I realize that I might have it all wrong! Is there a time when we can go over exactly which rules are just guidelines and which ones carry real weight. I don't want to muck anything up."
When you're a boy, this makes women think you're admirable and mature. When you're a man, this makes women think you're an utterly negligible piece of human filth. But due to their "assertiveness", instead of saying:
"Fuck you, faggot!"*
They say:
"Don't worry."
That's it. Nothing matters after I say, "I'm concerned...." The training starts good and early, and showing that a guy is "feminized" rather supports this argument.
* Of course, Whiskey would say that, on the contrary, gay men are quite popular among urban American women, and that it's hets that really piss them off. I'm inclined to agree.
Blode0322: Maybe he's just go a good memory. Often events are remembered because they are a classic example of something, not because they were that important in and of themselves.
ReplyDeleteYeah, like I noted this because it's a classic example of something - in this case, the endless personalizing and girly grudge-holding about run-of-the-mill encounters with stupid annoying people who happen to be female, endemic among certain blog denizens who pretend to know better.
The training starts good and early, and showing that a guy is "feminized" rather supports this argument.I don't think Zylo was arguing that he was feminized. I'm pretty sure it was me who was arguing that Zylo was behaving in a feminized way, so I'm not quite sure what in my remark you're responding to. (Unless you're just digressing here - which is OK. Your anecdote was pretty funny.)
Of course, Whiskey would say...
I'm thinking of adopting whiskey's MO of posting monomaniacally around a single notion, on every thread and blog it can be shoe-horned into. Suggestions for obsessive topic welcomed.
--That's it? One stupid slight from some gauche chick is something you will never forget? Some minor quotidian specimen of rudeness from a stranger and you're still all "bitch din' show me the propuh respec'!" about it? Christ, talk about feminized.--
ReplyDeleteSo having a good memory = feminized? Or is it remembering the personality of someone from a past event = feminized? Or it both of them together that = feminized?