Breaking Beta: Play Tag

My brother Andy clued me in to one of the most innovative and thoughtful efforts at masculine bonding I think I’ve ever seen.  This report on CBS Sunday Morning on a group of guys who have maintained a close friendship since high school . . . through an annual game of Tag.

Essentially, these ten friends from a Catholic high school used to play Tag . . . and they never stopped.

The rules are simple: The game lasts for the entire month of February.  If one of the members asks if you are “it”, you must answer honestly and promptly.  And you can’t tag-back.

It sounds juvenile, and it is.  It's supposed to be.

Tag is one of two human universal games, that is, every human culture plays tag (the other one is Hide N Seek).  It’s likely left over from our Paleolithic forebears, a hunting exercise that helps children develop the skills to both stalk and evade, both important things for a young human in the wild.  The fact that these men haven’t given it up for all of these years has transformed the simple game into a complex, sophisticated exercise in male bonding and friendly competition.

That's a key point to a man trying to break his Beta.  If he's suffered in a relationship with a domineering woman, or even just one that keeps him too busy to cultivate good male friends, then he misses the kind of refreshing masculine competition and camaraderie implicit in play.  A friend of mine has a pick-up basket ball game he's gone to pretty much every Wednesday for the last ten years.  It's where he forgets about his stress and renews himself through sweat, competition, and tactical thinking.  When he gets home he's sweaty and nasty and his wife can't keep her hands off of him.  

Many of us have launched the Paleo diet to one extent or another, but while we’re usually pretty good about the bacon-and-eggs portion of the diet, when it comes to the recommended one daily hour of play, we either burn that off in the gym or postpone it for a more convenient time.  Yet the emphasis on play in the Paleo diet isn’t merely to encourage you to exercise the way that Alley Oop did . . . it’s to remind you of both your need for child-like indulgence in pure physical entertainment and your need to hone the vestigial warrior/hunter skills we gave up with agriculture.

Tag fits the bill for this in a lot of ways.  The men of the Tag Brothers are clearly dear friends, even if they are separated by continents, family, and employment.  That does not stop them from being hyper-competitive about the game.  No one, of course, wants to be “it” on the last day of February, and therefore bear the shameful title for the other 11 months.   So they scheme, plot, stalk, and spring.  They dress in drag.  They dress as homeless bums.  They dress as old ladies (for the coveted  “hag tag”). 

There is no shame or regret or dignity involved – these men are playing to win, and they’re playing hard.  Juvenile?  Perhaps . . . but who really gives a shit?  In our electronics-focused world the idea that you can play a sophisticated game without the use of anything but three rules and your ingenuity is a huge challenge to your masculine abilities.  And it doesn’t give anyone hard feelings, one of the perpetual issues with most competitive endeavors.   

Tag is a beautiful game.  In its purest form on the playground, we see children playing it as a means to improve their speed, stamina, hand-eye-coordination, alacrity, endurance, and all of those other skills that were so important to the pre-muffin world.    Of course over time we lose both the willingness to run around like a fool and the desire to submit to such base entertainments when civilization has provided so many more sophisticated outlets. 

But starting a game of tag among a dozen or so of your friends in your town, or from your old unit, or from that really cool job you had where everyone got along great before everyone got laid off could be an exciting and important way to re-energize a flagging sense of masculinity.  It has the manifold masculine virtues of being strategic, competitive, and – clearly – a huge amount of pure good-natured boyish fun.  It emphasizes stealth, surprise, intelligence gathering, and quick-thinking.

The specifics and variations which you could add to this are infinite.   Perhaps “it” for the year has to buy everyone dinner.  Perhaps they have to keep charge of some particular trophy if they are unlucky enough to be the last one tagged in the month.  But the game suggests an opportunity for the formation and maintenance of some close and strong masculine relationships. 

So . . tag.  Find a group of guys, figure out the rules . . . and go play with your friends.

It beats playing with yourself.

Alpha Move: Change Your Underwear

“If you were a man who loved sex . . .”

That statement sounds oxymoronic, I know . . . but I threw it out there for the express purpose of making you snort.  A similar phrase, “If you were a woman who loved sex,” was recently used by a feminist sex blogger to elicit interesting metaphors.  I found the exercise interesting because it a) validated pretty much everything I’ve learned about Game and female sexuality and b) the fact that she had to phrase the question with an IF demonstrates quite a lot about the state of American female sexual psychology. 

But like many things in the murky frontier of feminist sex advice, I thought I’d turn it around a little and, indeed, ask the same question of my male readers.  Why?  Mostly for giggles . . . but also because I think one major component of Betacization, both generally and in marriage, is the point at which a man stops thinking of himself as sexy – which means both “attractive to others” and “comfortably aware of his own sexual desires”. 

Athol touches on this a lot, as part of the Male Action Plan (and the Mindful Attraction Plan).  But I think it bears a post on its own, because it is such a prevalent issue.

Men are not trained to think of themselves as sexy, the way women are.  There are reasons for that.  They are not always good reasons, especially in a post-industrial society.

Female sexuality remains context-based, and female attraction runs toward a context that pulls her toward both security (during menstruation) and excitement (during ovulation).  Indeed, one could say female sexuality is fulcrum between security and excitement.  While that fulcrum moves with occasionally-predictable regularity, it is constantly moving.  What a woman finds “sexy” is going to wax and wane like the inconstant moon.  And it’s going to change as she ages.

One thing that isn’t going to change, however, is that her sexuality will always be primarily responsive in nature.  As in, ‘she’s responding to you’.  And as we all know, the fawning, begging-for-sex-because-I’ve-been-a-good-boy Beta play in marriage leads to bed death and eventual divorce or misery.  If you want sex with your woman, you have to be sexy.

Unfortunately, that tinny little word has some negative connotations in the masculine world.  Women are sexy.  Men are attractive.  Women use their sexuality to attract high-quality men.  Men use their context – their social status, position, and charisma – to attract sexy women.  If you want to bang a bunch of hot babes, being cute and well-built never hurts.  But a Ferrari can close a deal even if you look like John Lovitz.

What men forget is that the “sexy” component that they shy away from as “unmanly” is one of the things that women respond to.  And while women are attracted to context, being adept at recognizing which end of the see-saw her fulcrum is situated and responding accordingly is vital.  To do that, a man has to recognize, cultivate, and appreciate the value of his own sexuality, and the effect it can have on the woman in his life.

And that’s just not something we usually encourage in our young men without the aid of ethanol and cannabis.  Even then, there is a lingering sense of shame that sometimes accompanies the idea that Yes, I’m A Sexy Dude. 

As men, we rarely invest in valuing our sexuality – we spend most of our lives trying to give it away.  By the time we get married or settle into a committed LTR, we walk away from whatever tentative appreciation of our own sexuality we’d cultivated by accident, because we make the mistake of thinking that wedding cake is an aphrodisiac.

All too soon the reality sets in.  Hence the need for Married Game.

A big part of breaking that Betacization is getting back to that I’m A Sexy Dude attitude that manifests itself in confidence.  Allowing our own insecurities and fears of rejection to take over the joint without the validation of sex creates a horrific self-fulfilling prophecy. 

In essence, if you don’t think of yourself as sexy . . . why should your wife?

The MAP is essentially a roadmap back to Sexyland, but it begins by breaking the bad BETA habits of a lifetime.  Diminishing your own sexuality or undervaluing it, for instance.  Mistaking your wife’s jealousy over the attention other women sometimes pay you into an excuse to let yourself go.  A desire for masculine conformity that ends up keeping you from distinguishing yourself – from the Beer Shield of extended adolescence to the corporate and casual uniforms that shroud our aggressive sexuality.

Think of it this way: being sexy is scary.  You have to step out of your comfort zone and be willing to be dangerous . . . and for a Betacized OMG, that can be a daunting prospect.  Yet a man who isn’t willing to consider himself sexually valuable is going to have a hard time achieving his objective, i.e. more and better sex.

What’s worse, your wife uses your lack of appreciation of your own sexual value against you, if you let her.  It starts in subtle ways, as you attempt to establish long-term dominance in the relationship.  But in the process of mutual-domesticization, she starts undercutting your masculine displays.  When she buys you clothes, she’ll start buying more conservatively after a few years.  She’ll tell you how cute she thinks your belly is.  She’ll assure you that you’re sexy when, in fact, she’s actually thinking ‘adorable’. 

What she’s actually doing here is a form of mate guarding.  She wants to decrease your physical attractiveness, the sort of thing that might attract the raw animal passions of an opportunistic stalker (or her sister), while playing up your contextual attractiveness – your success in business or career.  For the first few years of marriage, being married to a dorky-looking over-achiever is a good way to keep her marriage safe.

Unfortunately, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.  As she becomes less physically attracted to him, and starts to crave novelty, the Betacized Dude mistakenly thinks that she wants yet more comfort and stability, because that’s what she’s been playing up.  So he makes sure the lawn looks extra-spiffy, he watches Dancing With The Stars with her, and he stops initiating sex as much . . . or stops pushing sexual boundaries as the supply starts to dry up.

From this stage, it isn’t long before she’s totally un-attracted to him, stops putting any effort into sex, and has to start taking over the reins of the relationship by default.  He’s too confused about why he’s not getting laid as much anymore to assert himself, and while she loves the control she feels in the relationship, it’s a hollow victory.  He’s folded up, ready to concede to whatever she wants. 

Of course, what she really wants is a lot more ALPHA in her diet.  The comfort and security of a good BETA dude has made her complacent, and that’s made her restless.  And when her man stops being ALPHA, she starts to resent him.  No matter how supportive he is of her, it is a woman’s nature to find fault with the BETA in ways that an ALPHA-presenting man won’t stand.

Cultivating an active and potent sexuality is part of that presentation.  That’s very, very difficult for a Betacized man to accomplish without some guidance.  If he listens to the advice of the women in his life, which he is likely to do under the mistaken assumption that they know what they’re talking about, then he’s going to get a nice haircut, dress up more, do more housework, and essentially kiss her ass until she’s forced by the power of expectation to reward him, often un-enthusiastically.  He dresses up, takes her out, spends a lot of money, and yeah, she feels obligated to put out for him.  Not wildly fuck him, like they were teenagers in heat, but she’ll do her wifely duty and he’ll assume that things are grand because, hey, he had sex.

But he knows the difference.  When you are quietly laying there thinking of something else other than him and your mutual passion, he knows.  It’s not that it isn’t enjoyable, but there is a difference.  And that difference starts with his presentation.  This poor Betacized man has stopped thinking of himself as sexy, stopped thinking of himself as having sexual value, because his commitment to the marriage and its security, coupled with the subtextual messages his wife has been sending him, have convinced him that that’s not what she wants.

When in fact that’s precisely what she wants. 

How do you break the bad BETA habits and find your mojo again?  The MAP will give you the practical answers to that, but philosophically it starts when you start valuing your sexuality enough to invest in it.  That means moving out of the marriage-of-appeasement that eventually turns into a bad sitcom, where you’re constantly looking stupid while she makes sarcastic comments about your masculinity and you whine about sex.  It means creating a marriage in which the power of your masculinity, particularly your masculine sexuality, can continue to elicit delight and surprise, not boredom and anxiety.

Where to start?  A new suit a threads can help, as can a good haircut, but that’s window dressing any reality show could tell you.  Being a well-dressed dork still means you’re a dork.  You need to up your Married Game, which means you need to change your approach from the ground up.  

So start with your underwear.

No, really.  Men rarely (only 30-40% of the time) buy their own underwear, and they will hang on to beloved pairs far, far in excess of their expiration date.  Most of the underwear they get in their lives will be a present from one woman or another.  Or if you’re a die-hard tighty-whitey fan, you can get your undergarments in packs of three at Walmart . . . not exactly an Alpha Move.

So before you rush out and invest in a new suit, start with your drawers.  Spend some dough on some quality, and experiment with styles and fabrics. 

Does that make you sneer in contempt at the thought of something so unmanly?

Get over it.  That’s the point.  Unless your preferred style is Commando, then stuffing your junk into something you like, instead of what someone else thought you should like, is going to be empowering.

I was a tighty-whitey man for decades, largely out of necessity and habit.  In a working-class house with three boys, the one-size-fits-all approach to undies was understandable.  It wasn’t until I followed some advice and tried on a pair of boxers that I realized I’d been in the wrong underwear for years.  Boxers were manly in a classical sense and they came in endless fabrics and styles and designs. 

To each their own, and it’s quite possible you may decide to go the other direction, from boxers to briefs.  But regardless of the change, try a change.  Buy some new, different, underwear on your own, without consulting your wife.  Don’t even mention it afterward.  Just start wearing them.

This will have a couple of effects: first, it will call attention to your nether regions, never a bad thing in a relationship.  But second, it will raise a few alarm bells in her mind, based on the fact that every woman’s magazine article for the last fifty years has listed “buys new underwear” as one of the unmistakable signs that your man is cheating on you.  Dudes don’t buy new underwear when they are in a secure, stable, happy relationship.  They do buy new underwear when they’re trying to impress someone.

When she does notice, she’ll make a comment either in favor or against it.  If she makes a comment in favor, chalk it up as a success and segue into initiating sex.  She’ll be on it for the novelty, if nothing else.  If she makes a critical comment, listen very carefully to just what and why she objects to the change.

First, if she demands to know why you changed, merely shrug and say “I needed new underwear.  These make me feel sexy.”  Grin boyishly.

If she asks you point-blank if you’re having an affair, not only do you have her worried, but you’ll be backing into a little Dread Game.  Assure her you aren’t, but that you wanted to try something new. 

If she makes a disparaging or emasculating remark . . . shove it in her face.   A wife who is willing to cut down her husband’s sincere attempt at cultivating his sexuality – for her benefit – in a way that’s designed to undercut his confidence is well on her way to shrew-hood.  Making a crack about your new shorts is designed to hurt your feelings for no other reason.  It's a micro shit-test, and the only way to deal with it is a strong counter, along the lines of, 'Criticize much?  What if I said your new bra made you look like your mother?" or something similar.  Then walk away, fuming.

Unless it is made in a teasing and openly sexual way (ladies, here’s a hint: if you aren’t smiling and giggling, we’re not going to see it as teasing or sexual, but as critical and hurtful) then you know that she’s trying to dominate the relationship from the bedroom.

Buying new skivvies is a very small, very minor way to assert your ALPHA, but it puts her on notice that you, not she, is in control of your business.  When you actively pick you what kind of cloth you want next to your junk, and don’t depend on her to decide that for you, you’re establishing some territorial bounds.

That isn’t to say that she can’t buy you new underwear, too, or that you shouldn’t wear them.  But a brand-new pair of underwear that you selected for no better reason than you liked them lets her know that you have establish a boundary to your masculinity, a boundary she should be wary of crossing.

Now, if you’re worried about her not liking them . . . don’t.  It doesn’t matter if she likes them.  Indeed, it might work better if she doesn’t.  That isn’t to say you should stop wearing them; on the contrary, wear them often and proudly.  But it will get her attention and it will get her notice.  It’s novel, it’s vaguely sexual, how could it not?

But “if you’re a man who loves sex” (duh) then you should invest some time and attention to what you wrap your ass in.  Remember, your sexuality is a gift, and it deserves an appropriate wrapping.  One that reminds you that you are, indeed, not just a sexual creature – but that your explosive male sexuality has value.  Value that only increases over time.  

And if she is unwilling to see that . . . there are plenty of ladies out there who will.

The Lambda Factor

I know I’m going to take some heat on this post, particularly from my more-conservative readers, and that’s . . . OK.  I’ve given this subject a lot of thought – hell, I’ve been working on this post for about a year now – and after much deliberation I felt it was time to do, partially in response to a comment I got today.

I want to talk about homosexuality.

That’s not an easy thing for a straight man to do, particularly in the Manosphere, but I think it is important, if not vital, that this issue be addressed reasonably, rationally, and cogently, not with a lot of over-the-top hype one way or the other.  

For the record I’m proudly straight (and really good at it) but also unashamedly “pro-gay”.  I have plenty of gay and lesbian friends, always have, and I’ve supported gay-marriage rights and the protection of gay civil rights pretty consistently.  As I am not an adherent of a radical monotheism that proscribes homosexuality, I have no good spiritual reason for objecting to gay marriage or to the existence and prosperous, happiness-pursuing efforts of anyone based on their sexual orientation.

Indeed, for the most part I like gay people.  Gay men in particular – not because they are gay, but because they are men. 

And that, gentlemen, is the important factor here.

I understand both the squeamishness and the religious prohibition against homosexuality in many faiths; and while I don’t share it, I do understand that in a pluralistic society it is important not just that everyone have the freedom to do what they will, within reasonable social guidelines, but that freedom implies the freedom to dislike, for whatever reason at all, anyone in particular.  Just because I don’t agree with your position doesn’t mean that I think you automatically “hate” gay people.  That’s an overblown and frequently overplayed position on the Left.

But putting aside such emotional responses to homosexuality for a moment, I invite the Manosphere to consider the current state of gay-straight relations from another perspective.  The Lambda Factor is invaluable to the evolution of both the Manosphere and the re-definition of masculinity on our own terms.  Allow me to explain.

Before the 1960s, homosexuality was a crime in most jurisdictions.  Then the famous Stonewall Riots happened in 1969.  If you aren’t familiar (and not many straight folk are), the Stonewall Riots occurred when a local police department tried to raid an underground gay club . . . and the gay men there fought back.  Since that point, gay men have been resolutely fighting the system, both legal and social, that would make their desires and orientation a crime. Lesbians and transgendered folk have joined in, but gay men were the leaders of the early LGBT movement.

Why is that important?  Because “Gay Liberation” – the social and legal acceptance of gay men, in particular, as open and functional members of our society was, perhaps, the biggest boon to masculinity during what was the period of its greatest decline.

Now, that’s going to make a lot of fellas shake their heads in confusion.  After all, traditional ideas about homosexuality are rooted far more in what sets a gay man apart from a straight man than what binds them together.  Yes, there are definitely low-masculine, high-feminine men out there who challenge our ideas of masculine behavior.  There is a part of gay culture where the raging, effeminate queen, as embarrassing as he is to more mainstream, masculine-acting gay dudes, will always be the symbol or stereotype of gay men.

But while the stereotype of the highly-effeminate gay man is imprinted indelibly on our culture, the fact of the matter is that overly-effeminate gay men are likely the minority of the homosexual community (but it's hard to get a good metric on that).  Most gay men I know – and I know a few – are not swishy, overly-sensitive, and secretly desire to be women.  In fact, most gay men I know are, in every other way, just like the straight men I know.  They just dress better for dates, have more sex, and prefer Muscle and Fitness to Maxim. 

But apart from their predilection for hairy man ass, they’re just . . . dudes. They read all the other masculine publications out there, they just tend to skip over the straight parts.  That doesn't make them less masculine, it just places their masculinity in a frame where the slavish devotion to femininity our masculine drive is tuned to is absent.  They are men free to be men without the advice or consent of women.  

You see the raging metropolitan queen as gay and can spot him across the room.  But the bearded dude in the flannel and the pick-up, who spends all of his time camping, hunting, fishing, and going to NASCAR races?  He's just as gay, but he hasn't let the stereotype of his orientation define his masculinity.  One of the more amusing times I've had at a redneck bar was watching a Duke student come in, get hammered, and start shooting his mouth off about "faggots".  

Turns out two of the beefy gentlemen at the bar were gay, on a date, and also half-drunk.  About the fourth time the idiot says something degrading the masculinity of all gay men, the gentlemen took exception.  Apparently, it doesn't matter how straight you are, if you piss off a 250 pound redneck about where he chooses to put his dick, it doesn't matter if he's gay or straight, it's gonna be your ass.  Two rednecks?  Who possibly saw the act as a pair-bonding moment?  

I'm hoping that getting his ass kicked by two gay rednecks may have encouraged that young man to reconsider his ideas about masculinity that evening.  I certainly hope so. If nothing else, it taught him a valuable lesson in discretion and moderation.

Why is this important?  Because by legitimizing homosexuality, the Stonewall Riots and the Gay Rights movement allowed a masculinity unfettered by sexual preference to develop.  In other words, it allowed openly gay men to express their masculinity without the needs, wants, or desires of women entering into the equation. 

It’s a subtle point, but a vital one.  Why?  From an intellectual perspective gay men allow the rest of us a “control group” of male sexuality, containing within a wide range of masculine expressions, one which refutes or repudiates a lot of the feminist sexual ideology.  After all, you can’t say “society makes straight men do this” without checking to see if society (which has mostly ignored gay men, culturally speaking, except as two-dimensional stock characters to be trotted out for laughs) also makes gay men do it, too.

Case in point: the oft-touted feminist maxim that “men only go after hot young girls because our rape-culture tells them that’s the ideal they should be shooting for.”  Feminism has always taken issue with the masculine preference for youth – and I think we all know why – but blamed it squarely on “the Patriarchy’s” efforts to take power away from older women.  If it wasn’t for our screwed-up youth-worshiping culture, the feminist myth goes, men would get just as hard over saggy tits and cottage cheese thighs as they do perky tits and a tight ass.

But if “the Patriarchy” is the one dictating what men should and shouldn't be attracted to, culturally speaking, then one must also assume that a group like Gay Men, who “the Patriarchy” has traditionally had an antipathy toward, would therefore not be subject to the same “artificial rules” that straight men are.

But it turns out gay dudes like young stuff, too.  A lot.  

The term “twink” is used to describe the young, vital gay man in the prime of his youthful sexuality.  If men in general were not naturally attracted to youth, then this shouldn't be the case.  But the fact is dudes like youth and find it sexually attractive, regardless of sexual preference.  There is no “evil Patriarchy” telling gay men to lust after young hunks – they just do.  As much as the rest of us lust after young babes.

Further, apart from their sexual orientation, gay men share far, far more in common with straight men than they do women of either orientation.  Gay men can get drafted, falsely accused of rape, creamed in family court, and accused of sexual harassment, just like straight men can.  

(Funny aside: during my long clerical career, one gay man I worked with – not in the closet, but not exactly public about his orientation – got accused of sexually harassing an allegedly batshit nuts female co-worker who was not aware of his orientation.  Hilarity ensued.  So did a lawsuit – against her.  For intentionally "outing" him to his co-workers.)

But that’s not all.  Science tells us that around 10-15% of the human population is gay or bisexual in orientation – the exact number shifting depending upon just how you determine whether someone is gay.  That means that for centuries closeted gay men have been marrying women to cover their sexuality.  In most cases the wives in question were not aware of their husbands’ activities, or if they did learn, they turned a blind eye to them and just started drinking.

But post-Stonewall, men who determine their orientation is gay do not feel the same social pressure or filial compulsion to marry a woman. That means that 10% or so of the "eligible" men – who were often more handsome, dapper, and had bigger dicks than their straight neighbors – are no longer on the straight marriage market, for good or ill.  That’s a good thing for everyone . . . except women who want to get married. 

Suddenly a healthy chunk of the dudes who looked great on paper (except for their passion for fellatio and anal sex) were no longer available in the hetero-SMP.  That forces the straight women out there to contend directly with us straight men, without the hope of finding a sensitive gay husband to fulfill their dreams of a high-status sexless marriage.  Gay dudes are marrying other gay dudes now.  Straight men are not marrying straight women . . . not nearly as much, anyway. 

Feminism has attempted to co-opt the gay rights movement as another victim of “the Patriarchy”, and it can’t be argued that the oppression and rejection gay men have felt in the past (and still struggle against in the present) was motivated in large part by traditional social prejudices.  But that doesn’t make them natural allies of feminists, just as it doesn’t make them natural allies of the black civil rights movement.  Once you get past the marriage rights issue, most gay men seem to line up on other political issues more or less in line with straight men.

Gay men (who did not realize their orientation until late) get divorced, they lose custody of their kids, they get fired and discriminated against because of their gender, just like straight men.  Gay men have lost the same economic power that straight men have.  Indeed, the vast majority of their non-gay-oriented interests and issues are identical to those of straight men.  If it wasn’t for the current political climate on the Right, I think we’d see a flood of gay men supporting male issues and interests.  The very existence of the Log Cabin Republicans bears this out.

And if you think YOU get pissed off about your taxes going to support entitlement programs for single mothers, you should just hear a table full of angry gay men discuss the subject.  Ouch.

Apart from political expediency, there’s not much reason why gay men and feminists should find common ground, philosphically.  Remember, it was gay men who refuted radical Third Wave feminist Andrea Dworkin’s insistence that deep throating was unnatural and inherently dangerous, and that anal sex was an unhealthy perversion that could not be practiced without imperiling your health.  

When a raging queen stood up and offered to demonstrate just how easily it was to deep throat in front of a crowd of other gay men, it pretty much deflated Dworkin’s anti-porn argument.  Indeed, the comparatively large amount of gay porn out there belies the argument that “straight men only look at porn because they were taught to”.  No one taught my gay friends to look at gay porn.  No one pressured them into watching young, muscular, good-looking dudes have sex.  They figured that out on their own without any help from the “evil patriarchy”.

Deriding gay men in general for a lack of masculinity is disingenuous and unfair.  Some of the most masculine men I know are gay.  In fact, I could argue that no one understands masculinity – what it is and what it isn’t – as much as a gay man.  They are attracted to it as much as straight men are attracted to femininity.  If the definitions of masculinity are restricted to purely heterosexual standards, not only are you being intellectually dishonest about the subject, you are ignoring and alienating some powerful allies in the struggle against feminism.  And some damn good caterers.

Gay men see the ugly side of feminism even more frequently than straight men do.  While rarely put in the same “evil patriarchy” category with us, gay men suffer the same broad brush feminism uses to paint all men . . . and when they are in groups with women who know they are gay, these women frequently and foolishly decide that being a gay dude is JUST like being a straight woman.  

This amuses the gay men to no end.

It’s often been said that the slutathon that is Sex In The City is the attempt by straight urban women to live the fabulous gay lifestyle of gay urban men: easy sex with strangers, focus on interpersonal relationships instead of romantic ones, and an obsession with quality footwear.  

The problem is that only gay men can live a fabulous gay lifestyle . . . because they’re men.  They don’t have ticking biological clocks, fears of pregnancy or aspirations of the traditional Happily Ever After in the suburbs.  They don't care about failing their mother's expectations or what their friends think if they start dating a much younger dude.  They just want to get their dicks sucked after a delightful date with an attractive partner – something I think every man can understand.

When women try to adopt the fabulous gay lifestyle, they run into the issues that have always been a factor in heterosexual society, including judgment and social expectation.  A gay man who has had three dozen partners in the course of his life isn’t considered particularly promiscuous not because he’s gay, but because he’s a dude.  A straight woman who does the same doesn’t have the same excuse.  

A gay man who doesn’t marry by the time he’s 35 isn’t in danger of a life of sterility and a lonely dotage surrounded by cats, he’s just entering his prime.  He's a silverback, often with a more mature masculinity that attracts younger dudes by the dozen.  A gay man who goes from one relationship to another every six months isn’t unusual – a woman who does the same is quickly going to get a reputation for being unable to commit. 

And if you every want to hear some truly misogynistic shit, sit around with a bunch of drunk gay dudes and discuss the women in their lives.  Only lesbians can be as judgmental . . . but they don’t have the vicious streak of an irate queen.

Nor do gay men universally identify with women before men – quite the contrary.  The most effective Black Knight I ever knew was a middle-aged gay black man who just didn’t particularly like working with women.  Not because of sexual preference, but because he preferred the quiet efficiency of an all-male team to the chaotic cluck-fest he saw in female-dominated departments.  When the female HR director tried to get in his face about it, he was quick to hit back, brutally and viciously, with a deep understanding of the regulations and policies to refute her assertions that he was being sexist in his operations. 

When it came down to it, the HR director couldn't come up with anything more concrete than “it seems you have a poor attitude toward your female co-workers, and some people have been saying they’re uncomfortable with it.”  While a straight dude might have backed down, this Black Knight went on the offensive:

“Show me a goddamn metric of what I ‘seem’ to be doing, give me one concrete example of me discriminating against a woman, let me hear one employee demonstrate where I have been improper in my conduct in this office, bring me one instance of me violating company policy concerning gender discrimination, or get the fuck out of my office.  I’ve got a department to run, and all this ‘seeming’ and ‘feeling’ doesn’t do a goddamn thing to help me do my job.”

HR steered clear of him after that.  If he had been straight, it would have been his ass.  It was one of the best temp jobs I’ve ever had.  Not only did we get our work done without undue interruption, it was a congenial and productive environment.  And no, he never hit on me.  Even when I look this good.

It is time for the Manosphere to back off the homophobia and start recognizing our legitimate allies in this struggle.  Gay men are not the enemy.  They don’t want to see every man turn gay.  They don’t even want to encourage more men to be gay, necessarily – they just want to ensure that it is safe for men who are gay to be so without undue hardship.  (The rest of us could stand to work out more . . . eye candy . . .)  Their alliance with the Left is almost solely based around the single issue of gay rights, and once gay marriage and military service is off the table most are happy to get involved in issues of more interest to all men.

This just scratches the surface of what is a deeper and more meaningful subject, but it was time this was discussed in the Manosphere.  Pushing away 10-15% of our brothers, just because they get more blowjobs than we do betrays the 21^st century goal of defining masculinity as inclusively – and as unabashedly male – as possible.  Gay men have powerful perspectives to add to the Manosphere, and have seen the ugliest faces of feminism in ways straight men cannot conceive of. 

They have been victim of a double-bigotry, treated with mistrust and hostility from misguided straight men and organized religion, while they have also been co-opted by women often without their consent as “one of the girls” . . . when they are, in fact, decidedly not.  The attitudes and perspectives of most straight women toward gay men can be obnoxiously cloying.  Fag hags abound, and despite their genuine affection for the gay men in their lives, they rarely accord them the masculine respect they would a straight man.  In fact some of the most misandrous shit I’ve ever heard has been from the mouths of stalwart straight female friends of gay men. 

As I said, I do understand the general hesitancy of straight men to embrace the idea of gay men being inclusive of masculinity in general, but as uncomfortable as that makes you, approached objectively it’s a net win for masculinity, over-all.  It doesn’t make you gay.  It doesn’t even make you a tiny bit cuter.  But it does give you a position to advance to in discussions with ardent feminists who often conflate masculinity and heterosexuality to our detriment.  If they say something rotten about the masculinity of “rape culture”, look for a cognate of the behavior or presentation in gay subculture.

Or, to paraphrase a struggling blue pill friend of mine who’s trying to talk his otherwise-liberal wife into anal sex, who objects on the grounds that it is objectifying, debasing, and degrading, unnatural and a violation of both biology and moral values: “Well be sure to mention that to the millions of gay men who take it in the tailpipe every day, honey.  Like all of those gay friends of yours you’re always so supportive of.  And by the way?  I hear they swallow regularly, with no serious adverse reactions.”

That's my opener.  Your perspectives?

Alpha Move: Lord of Light

Here's something a little less serious and heavy-handed than the last couple of posts - a quick and dirty way to buff your ALPHA with a little ingenuity and foresight involving nothing more serious than some left-over Christmas lighting.

You see, the Master Bedroom at Stately Ironwood Manor is lovely, with a skylight over the bed and everything.  But the natural lighting that fills the room during the day turns into a gloomy bedscape of lamps along the perimeter of the room after dark.  While adequate for our needs, nonetheless the process of getting up and turning off each and every lamp every night was tedious, and a constant source of resentment and friction between the Missus and I.  Just one of those little things in your marriage that annoys, irritates, and eventually you come to greet with a kind of dread.

I got tired of it.  I was sick of letting one little chore become such a big deal -- especially since I usually was the one that got stuck with the task.  So when Christmas came and went last year, I snagged a goodie out of the box of ornaments and solved the problem.

That night, when the Mrs. I and I were snuggling in, the inevitable "who's turn is it to get up and turn off all the lights and make the other person cold?" question came up, I raised a hand and casually waved at each of the three lamps.

One by one they turned off.

Mrs. Ironwood was impressed, but at this phase of our relationship she's unwilling to consider my magical powers to be that profound or useful.  So of course I had to reveal the three-button remote control device (Wal-Mart, $9.95), originally intended to command inflatable armies of snowmen, that now gave me control of the very photons, themselves.  One for the rope light around the perimeter of the room (great for indirect lighting, the kind you use in conjunction with Barry White), one for the lamp on the dresser, one for the standing torch light.  Hang the remote on the bedpost, get comfy, put your cold hands somewhere warm, and then hit the lights

And no one's feet get cold.

Sometimes it can be the smallest, thoughtful little thing that can improve or strengthen things between a Red Pill husband and wife.  No one likes an annoying chore, whether it's cleaning a toilet or changing the oil.  Something as basic as turning out the lights without getting out of bed can become a token of thoughtful consideration and love, if you do it right.  And now every night, after I tuck in the wife, I can crawl in beside her knowing I don't have to get up.  The Star Trek-y remote control of the bedchamber also plays up my masculine problem-solving and ingenuity, something that always impresses.