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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 18, 2023

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I am not who you're responding to, but I would probably rather sit in dull silence than read a book titled "Become the man women want." And I would expect to be mocked ruthlessly by my friends for doing so. Having said this, I admittedly have not read it and cannot comment on its contents.

If what you are doing to find relationships and sex has already worked out successfully to your satisfaction, then you are unlikely the intended audience who'd benefit from some Tucker and Dan.

If what you're doing is not working, entertain the notion that your impulses and assumptions when it comes to this area of life don't have a good track record and the solutions are likely to come from outside of your current comfort zone.

Without a doubt, every word of what you write is true according to my own experience. However I would suggest that "outside my comfort zone" takes many, many (probably for me more than most) forms. I would further suggest that in this particular circumstance, considering the issues at hand (namely, how to negotiate one's way through what can seem at times like an absolute maze built in a foggy quagmire known as "How to interact with women so that you can have some sort of sex life (but also adhere to some sort of moral standard)", then following some Procrustean rulebook to adhere to the Wants of Women is, perhaps counterintuitively, not the way to approach it. For an abundance of reasons, none of which I would argue have anything to do with misogyny or even lack of concern for women.

Mind you my issue is with Tucker 's title, which I think needs reworking. Maybe he means "the man women want viscerally without knowing why" as opposed to how I took it, which is "the man you think a woman feels is a good match." The former is doable within reason. The latter is a pathway to nowhere, and reminds me of those who deride what they call "toxic masculinity" and suggest a certain passive docility is what would heal us all.