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Society vs Male Radicalisation II - Male Role Models/Surely This Time Our Plan Will Work
I was on the internet this week, and I found this:
Labour to help schools develop male influencers to combat Tate misogyny
It is interesting to note that there is an increasing shift towards talking about "role models" for young men and boys as a means of cooling the gender kerfuffle, rather than by repeating feminist talking points at males until they concede as was the case when I was a teenager. The Labour Party, the UK's apparent next government, has come up with policy to reduce the influence of Andrew Tate among schoolboys with the intended aim of safeguarding women and girls. It means to do this by creating counter role models to whom boys can look up to. This would not even the utterly embarrasing 30 year old boomers trying to guess what resonates with children, but would consist instead of older volunteer boys taken from within the same school. This if it is implemented, will have educators select the real life version of Will from Inbetweeners as its senior male role model and think themselves of sound mind for doing so. You are only ever going to get uncool loser types volunteering, and it is the fear of becoming an uncool loser (or worse) that motivates young men to go and consume manosphere content.
Feminism's defenders will counter that there are many existing role models available for men, often listing real or fictional people like Ryan Gosling, Marcus Rashford or Ted Lasso. These men are either fake or literal one percenters whose lifestyle an average young man has no hope of to attaining. This betrays a complete lack of understanding about why men choose the role models they do and how they attempt to emulate them. These role models are deliberately or implicitly chosen as role models for young men by people who aren't young men often because they display qualities that are useful, rather than valued, to society. This is because almost all policy dreamt up by institutions concerning Men and Boys is not to their benefit, but instead to neuter a perceived threat against Women, Girls and the wider society. For every Marcus Rashford, there are multiple Mason Greenwoods or Kurt Zoumas who continue to receive all the signifiers of male success and receive no punishment for any of their transgressions.
It is clear that what educational and social institutions want are meek, inoffensive and productive men who do not question the rules of society. This is in direct contrast to what young men want, which is to be outspoken, to be popular with women, to be socially and economically successful. No role model ever produced or selected by the state could manage this, particularly not when operating under the notion that it must maintain women's liberation, which itself requires the stifling of men. I question for how much longer this approach will be kept in place. There are hundreds of people like Andrew Tate across SM, each ready to teach boys what society is unable to teach them. Educators can more easily dispel Tate because of the sex trafficking offences and because Tate himself is a clown, but people like Hamza, whose lived experience is much closer to the boys he is trying to proselytize to than that of Tate's, they have no counterargument.
"Unrealistic standards" is a feminist complaint. Most men will never be like Tate either. Every kid on the football pitch wanted to be Ronaldo, down to the overpriced boots and free-kick pose, even though it was obvious that he was a 99 percenter in looks, before we even get into athletic talent.
Don't disagree with the general point that (progressive) women seem to be the target for a lot of this, which is what stops many of these efforts from being effective, though. EDIT: Norms are also enforced bottom-up, regardless of your idol, but that's harder when no one can agree what they are.
Feminists view of a positive male role model is an attractive man that's mouthing off feminist talking points. An actor like Gosling that women love a lot for his role as maybe the most insidiously tragic example of a man in movie history is the perfect fit.
Andrew Tate isn't that. It's a bald weirdo with a lot of money that's telling young kids that if they want girls and cool cars now rather than in 10-20 years, they should sell drugs now instead of being a loser that wastes their youth studying to be an electrician.
Of course not. Thing is that they (and OP) accept that he is a role model, but even his non-exaggerated history isn't something most men are actually going to replicate. Most guys aren't becoming even passable kickboxers, though they might let one sell them NFTs. So why do their rival idols need to be "relatable"?
It reminds me of the complaints that skinny stars reinforce "unrealistic beauty standards" . There were local role models in my life who were reachable I suppose. I don't recall any kid being turned off from their favorite celebrity because they were on a totally different plane. That's kind of the point?
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The thing is, Tate sells something even if it's degenerate behavior and a short thrill. Who actually sells studying to be an electrician?
Nobody is lining up to tell you the low time preference alternative is how you get girls, money, family, respect, etc. Everyone can plainly see that is not allowed to work anymore. They're all telling you you should do the hard work and be happy to be a loser on top of it, you uppity bastard.
No wonder people turn to scoundrels if joyless slavery is the alternative. Men will go through hell for the most flimsy of rewards, we'll blow each other up to become names on a monument. But there has to be at least something.
Whoever manages to offer this something and is neither weak nor a petty thief will be the next Caesar.
Mike Rowe, Mike Homes and a few dozen youtube people will quite happily sell you the hard work (as an electrician or otherwise) as getting money, family, and respect. To the extent they gloss over the girls, it's mostly because they can imply it pretty aggressively with the 'family' bit and any Tatian sale would be far less appealing to the people they actually want to work with.
Of course, the complicated part's that quite a lot of mainstream society will treat aiming for this with nearly as much distrust as someone trying to take the Tatian bargain.
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I'd argue that liberal leftists usually couldn't even give useful dating/relationship/lifestyle advice to single heterosexual men even if they wanted to, which the mostly don't, or it's something they don't consider relevant/necessary.
Anecdotal: I have a look recently at women playing Super Seducer. I thought it might be an insight into how at least some of them think of seduction and dating. Plus, Richard La Ruina operates in an interesting borderland of acceptability, where e.g. the woker girl gamers feel like they should demonise him but keep on saying "Huh, that's actually good advice."
Where they tend to fail is that their basic plan for a man to pursue a woman is to try and make them his friend. This makes sense: for straight women and even lesbians, befriending is their main interaction with other women. Many women, even seemingly "awkward" women, are actually very good at this task. They know how to flatter women, find common interests, make women feel comfortable around them etc.
While these skills can obviously be useful for dating women, it's not surprising that a lot of these women's advice are textbook paths to the friendzone, because that's what they're designed to do.
Also, even if a woman thinks "How do guys seduce me?" it's hard to answer that honestly, because a woman being seduced is potentially a status loss, so it's necessary to say things like "He has to know me for months and be kind and just treat me like any other friend" etc., because something like "His best strategy is to be confident, asserive, push things forward, one step ahead, and stand out from all my other guy friends in some way" suggests that she's prone to manipulation, and nobody likes to admit that. Men too: I have seem men been obviously lured into a relationship and hate to admit that the woman was actually the one coordinating the interaction. Never me, of course...
How does this square with the other online sexual politics assertion that ‘looks are everything’, though? For example, I could just as easily say that an attractive man who makes close friends with a single woman before hitting on her probably will be able to successfully seduce her with this method. And that’s not even wrong! Pretty much all my relationships have started like this, so have those of many of the people I know well.
A lot of men who advocate this ‘don’t get into the friend zone’ approach have a strangely esoteric view of female sexuality. It’s not that they’re wrong, it’s more efficient to make your intentions clear by all means. But if you’re close friends with a straight, single woman and hit on her and she says no, it’s not because you somehow got ‘too close’ to her and she just ‘doesn’t see you as a sexual being’ or you’re ‘like a brother’ to her, it’s because she doesn’t find you attractive and probably never did.
I’ve literally never heard of a woman becoming close friends with a very attractive man and deciding not to date him because they were friends. That doesn’t even make sense. The problem seems to be that guys who the woman was never attracted to blame their sexlessness on the ‘friend zone’ rather than that she was never into them.
IMO discussions about avoiding the friendzone mostly apply to men in the border region of whether or not they're attractive enough for a given woman to date. In that case I think such analysis can be pretty valuable. Using my own experience as an example, I've never managed to get a date with a woman I've known/been friends with for a while but I've been much more successful with asking out women after only meeting and chatting to them once or twice. This is obviously anecdotal and any number of other factors could play a role here but it makes me inclined to take seriously this whole area of dating advice.
It's important to remember that most of this dating advice is aimed at men in this category (average-looking and below) anyway - attractive men tend not to need it. As you said, becoming friends with a woman and then making a move will generally be a solid strategy for a guy like that.
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I don't know, but I think that that assertion is generally wrong, especially if we're talking about women's evaluations of men, where "chemistry" and "personality" are if anything more important than looks.
So your argument is "In my experience, when A is true, B is always true, therefore, generally, if B is true, then A is true"? Or do you have other evidence to think that this is a highly successful ("probably"!!!) method for seducing women?
I agree that there's no guaranteed way to avoid the friendzone. I do think there are reliable paths to the friendzone, or at least behaviours that increase that chance.
Note that the friendzone is different from not being seen as a sexual being or seen like a brother. I have women whom I regard as purely friends, but also as hot, and definitely not as "like a sister" (ew).
Right, but that's very far from what I'm talking about. After all, nothing I have said rules out the existence of women who only date men who are already close friends; I've dated a few, and I know even more.
In general, your comment doesn't conflict with what I said, so I would have liked it if it was either been more interrogative (if you wanted to criticise what I said) or made it clearer that you weren't disagreeing with me (if you were just following up with further related thoughts).
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I know this is an excellent appraisal because I had never thought of it before yet it's so obvious once spelled out. This tracks fluidly with the fact that all people, when asked to give advice, often give advice calibrated to themselves, their circumstances, and their experiences. It's why billionaire tech bros say "take big risks and skip college", supreme court justices say "be diligent and patient in your studies", and broke boomer beach bums say "just keep on living, man."
This also tracks with something I've noticed over the past five years - young women today have ZERO game. I won't speculate on causes. I would state firmly, however, that mid 20s - 30s women of 10 years ago knew how to flirt (i.e. express interest in a masked way so as to promote escalation while mitigating the possibility of direct rejection) and otherwise be a complement to the strategies that men used to pursue them (if they were, in fact, willing participants in the seduction).
In fact, a lack of flirting was a pretty good signal to perceptive men that she wasn't interested. Nowadays, apparently, a blank stare and monosyllabic responses can mean everything from "you are the most repulsive creature in the galaxy" to "please take me away to the magical love castle on your sex unicorn now."
I agree. I was thinking about that when watching some videos of younger youtubers reacting to pickup lines. I know it's always been a popular genre to laugh at bad pickup lines. But they seemed to think the entire idea was a joke. Like, the entire idea of walking up to a stranger and saying something cool to start a flirtatious conversation was just ridiculous. That could never happen, it's as old-fashioned as challenging someone to a duel or a race-around-the-world.
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This has always been somewhat of an issue (hence the Family Guy joke from years back about 23 year old girls: "Here's the first three digits of my phone number, email me") but I can't imagine that social media has helped, since it gives girls and young women less experience of interacting with people, including older women who have more experience.
Related: https://youtube.com/shorts/pdrG2xhnFc8
Related related:
"It's hard to analyze which guys are spies; be advised, people.
We recognize who lies, it's all in the eyes, chico."
-- Big Pun, "You Ain't a Killer"
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To be fair, I don’t think anybody has much ability to give useful relationship and dating advice these days(hookup advice, yes).
Hard disagree, this is a too-online problem. Useful relationship and dating advice isn't (often) given on the internet or in other media because of incentives to show people what they want and people's ability to filter to only get what they want. Useful relationship and dating advice is emphatically not what people want to hear because it inevitably involves "fix your own bullshit, do what's needed even though it's hard, your problems are mostly your own fault."
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Why is that?
It'd count as thoughtcrime, basically.
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