Since in or around about the mid-2000s a verifiable cottage industry has sprouted up on the web to advise men on how to game women. And its not just men who are providing these services – even women are getting in on the act. Over time, this part of the internet, known as the manosphere, has transformed into something bigger: advice how on how to become a man, various critiques of feminism, a bastion of paleo-conservatism and at its most darkest, an insight into the darwinian female psyche.
I’m not here to run the ringer on all the various topics and points of discussion of the manosphere (what makes an alpha, is marriage a good idea, etc etc). My curiosity as a frequent reader of the manosphere leads me to think about something more fundamental – why is there a demand for this stuff in this day and age?
I am only guessing here, but I sincerely doubt, young Middle-Eastern, African, Latin American or Asian men in their countries are asking these questions. I say this because as I’m about to explain, being a ‘man’ in these places is relatively straightforward compared with being one in the West.
Thus, the proposition that I’m going to put forward is that there are a lot of men in the West out there that are simply searching for an answer on what it means to be man in the 21st century. They may find some of the answers they want in the manosphere. They may search elsewhere. Getting a girl is becoming almost incidental. The holy grail is to become a man worthy of a woman’s affections (or an ‘alpha male’ in the lexicon) and have girls come to you.
So what’s rotten in the state of Denmark?
Traditionally, before we had the internet, a young man’s reference point for becoming a man and what it meant to be a man has come from two sources: the male role models in his life and society at large. These two sources of male inspiration are rapidly diminishing.
The main male role model a man will have in his life is his father. For many young men in the West, a father is becoming an unfortunate absence. Single parent families have exploded over the past 50 years in nearly all Western countries. The vast majority of single parent families are headed by women. And its not just the number of families anchored by fathers (or lack thereof) that is a problem, but I would also argue the quality of fatherhood being provided. How many fathers have the time these days or the aptitude to teach their sons about life?
Other male role models in a young man’s life are similarly becoming thin on the ground. In the education system in the US and UK, 87% of primary school teachers are female. Organisations like the boy scouts in America and the YMCA worldwide are becoming anachronisms. Rightly or wrongly, compulsory military service has been ended in most countries. The decline in the participation in sport by young men also comes to mind. Many young men of a bygone era looked to their coaches or senior athletes as male role models. Now most young men play video games.
Then there are the broader societal trends.
From an sociological point of view, the traditional provider and protector role that men have by default defined themselves as throughout human history is disappearing. Families like the one I grew up in with a stay at home mother are almost considered quaint. 4 in 10 American households with children under the age of 18 have the female as the primary breadwinner. I expect this trend to get even more pronounced in the future as women continue to excel academically in relation to men – by 2012/13, women were more educated in every single age group than men in the United Kingdom. As for protection, crime has been falling steadily for decades. In any case, all modern rich societies punish severely violence against women or children.
From a economic point of view, the work activities of men, the things that mould and define their minds and their bodies throughout their lives has changed considerably over the past 100 years. For example, in EU countries, agriculture makes up single digit percentages of the economy, manufacturing 16%, with the vast majority of economic activity and therefore male employment being in services. This rich world structure of the economy is almost identical in North America.
Think about that for a moment. That vast majority of men will simply not be doing physical work any more like they have been doing for thousands of years or as they do in less developed nations today. Instead of chopping timber, tilling a farm, or building houses many men today consider a hard day’s work stocking shelves at the supermarket, filing forms or manipulating an excel spreadsheet. There is no question the second set of activities is objectively worth more to the economy and society in value added. Yet, this presents the idea of ‘maleness’ with two problems:
- Women can also easily do this type of work and so men have no unique input by which to define themselves to society
- Men have no objective extraneous reason to be in good physical shape while women do (almost every woman derives her self-esteem from her attractiveness to males and so is motivated to be in shape).
Predictably, this change in the nature of work has been a disaster for male sexual market value – 74% of men in the US are considered to be either overweight or obese. Combine this with a typical Western junk food diet and lack of exercise and you’re looking at a 15% decline in testosterone levels over 20 years. Modern service sector work is a lot of good things, but one thing it ain’t is masculine.
Its increasingly likely therefore that your work will not define your manhood. Even the military has females doing the same work as guys.
Ultimately I have no definitive answer on what a man should or should not be. There are people more qualified with life experience to weigh in on that topic. What I am suggesting here is that its simply a lot harder, if not impossible, in the West to be what a man has been traditionally defined as in most cultures. You can’t just sleepwalk into being a man and a decent amount of it will entail deprogramming yourself from certain feminist principles.
Those in the manosphere that have been wailing on feminism as the sole culprit however have been ignoring fundamental technological and economic advances that have allowed feminism to thrive in the first place. The invention of the washing machine probably had more to do with getting women out of the kitchen that any imagined feminist takeover of society. Rolling back feminism won’t change the fact women can do most men’s jobs these days either thanks to technology.
What we’re looking at is uncharted waters for Western men. Whether this precipitates a redefinition of manhood in light of the changing structure of an advanced society or a renaissance in the essence of a man is to be seen.
In my second post on this topic, I will explore the reasons for the cry of the beta from the female/sexual market’s point of view.
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