Forgot to mention, winner of the commenter contest was Johnny Five. The criterion for choosing the winner was whichever non-spam came closest to being comment #1050 without going over. Johnny got comment #1049 and comment #1051. An added bonus was the fact that they were damn insightful comments too.
Some interesting stuff from the web by the way. What are your thoughts on this?
Also, talk about having the cards stacked against you. After consulting evolutionary theories, gene charts, probability tables, astrologists, graphs and all manner of scientific testing and equations, I’ve conclusively determined that this child has only a .000037% chance of not turning out to be the biggest douchebag on earth. This simply must be the biggest concentration of douche genes in a pregnancy ever. We may be witnessing the birth of the messiah of douchedom if you will, something I’m fairly sure was mentioned in the book of Revelations as one of the signs that end times are nigh upon us.
As a conservative, I must admit that I am truly enjoying the current freakshow that is the Democratic nomination process. Between Hillary’s shrill rallying cries and Obama’s vague talk of change, it’s great to see the two candidates tear each other apart to the overall detriment of the party.
I think there is a recurring problem with the Democratic party, and this race has really brought it to the forefront. Many Obama and Hillary supporters that I meet don’t really know much about either party’s stances on various issues outside of extremely broad strokes.
The biggest problem the average Democrat has is that they tend to make all their major decisions using a thought process based on emotion. They focus first and foremost on what sounds and feels good rather than what may or may not be factually true. A beautiful, reassuring fiction always trumps a harsh and unpleasant truth in their minds. I like to call this thought process the Progressive Liberal Moral Continuum, and it is as follows:
Poverty is inherently more noble and morally superior to wealth
New money is inherently more noble and morally superior to old money
Darker skin victimology is inherently more noble and morally superior to lighter skin
Modern feminist values and matriarchy are is inherently more noble and morally superior to masculine values and patriarchy
Internationalism is inherently more noble and morally superior to patriotism
Working class is inherently more noble and morally superior to the moneyed classes
Quasi-socialism is inherently more noble and morally superior to free-market capitalism
Secularism and athiesm are inherently more noble and morally superior to religious devotion
Anti-military is inherently more noble and morally superior to pro-military
Baby Boomer hippie cred trumps any preceding or succeeding generation’s credentials
Anything European is inherently more enlightened than anything American (this is why many of them , even those who usually have no interest in sports, work hard to pretend to like soccer, because the simple fact that most of America doesn’t get it automatically makes it more attractive to them)
Eastern values are inherently morally superior to Judeo-Christian western values
Gay men are automatically more noble and enlightened than straight men
This checklist is the way they analyze everything. When you see progressive liberal columnists discuss the candidates, they spend most of the time analyzing them on how authentic their blackness, populism or feminism are. How is their charisma? How “authentic” and “likable” are the candidates? How well do they pay lip service to the poor? Even on the rare occasions where issues are explored, they are explored according to this checklist. A conservative will talk about the tax cuts by trying to discuss the economic principles behind them. Whether you agree with the economic rationales, the point is that there is at least an attempt to discuss the matter economically. When Democrats go into the issue of tax cuts, they oppose them mostly using an emotional appeal to anti-rich sentiments: tax cuts must go because they may help rich people. Don’t let the rich people get one over on you.
Note that I didn’t just say darker skin is better than lighter skin, but specifically said darker skin victimology is better than lighter skin. Having darker skin is not enough, or else liberals would be able to admire the accomplishments of black conservatives like Thomas Sowell, Clarence Thomas, Michael Steele and Larry Elder. But they don’t like these blacks because they preach personal accountability and don’t encourage a victim mindset. Being black is not enough, you must also claim to be a constant victim of racist discrimination.
Also note that I said modern feminism is morally superior in the Continuum rather than using the word “woman.” Being a woman alone is not enough, otherwise progressive liberals would be able to muster up more support for the likes of successful women like Elizabeth Dole, Condi Rice and Laura Bush. But these women do not give off emasculating vibes, are demure and not shrill and are openly content with taking a backseat to men. A woman has to subscribe to modern feminism to claim moral superiority on the Continuum, meaning she has to embrace competing with men by acting more like a man, all the while paying lip service to tearing down patriarchy.
This is the reason why Obama vs. Hillary is causing such turmoil for the party faithful. Because nothing in the Progressive Liberal Moral Continuum has given them a clear cut victor in a battle between candidates like Obama and Hillary. Obama is a black person that subscribes to victimology, which is better than white according to the Continuum. But Hillary is a feminist woman, which means she is better than Obama, who is a man. Yet Hillary is not a good feminist in some eyes because she stood by her man through his infidelity, while Obama in some ways has more feminist cred because he lets his wife openly disrespect him and put his down in public, giving him a henpecked beta male husband image that many modern feminist admire in today’s men. Yet Hillary is a true baby-boomer hippie, which wins her a lot of points since modern liberals tend to deify hippies as the greatest generation ever. But Obama thanks to his heritage has a lot more cred in the areas of internationalism and eastern values thanks to his Muslim and Ghanan background. And so on and so on.
You can see how this confuses many progressive liberals, as nothing in their playbook discusses how to compare these things to each other. Who has inherent moral superiority when comparing a black victimologist to a white female feminist (not a redundancy as there are male feminists too)? Who has inherent moral superiority when comparing an authentic baby boomer hippie to an internationalist with Eastern roots? And given the binary nature of their thinking, the fear is that if they declare one person the winner, they are making a moral judgment on the other person’s traits, thereby alienating a significant part of the Democrat constituency in the future. Does choosing Obama as a nominee make white feminist women inferior to black victimologists, thereby making feminists not want to vote Democrat this election? Does choosing Hillary make black victimologists inferior to white feminist women inferior to black victimologists, thereby making many minorities and Muslims abstain from voting Democrat this election?
You can see why the powers-that-be in the Democratic party are dragging their feet on this one, as a lot is at stake. There’s no clear cut winner under their usual criteria of the Progressive Liberal Moral Continuum. By creating an environment where not voting for a black man must mean you are a racist and can’t possibly be disagreeing with him based on his stances on issues and creating an environment where not voting for a woman means you are a misogynist and can’t possibly be disagreeing with her based on her stances on issues, they’ve eventually paralyzed themselves in a race where a black man runs against a white feminist, because they’ve reduced their choices to “What is the lesser of two evils, outing myself as a racist or as a misogynist.” The crude simplicity of their thought process that previously made all their life decisions ridiculously simple is the exact mechanism that is making their current dilemma such an excruciating choice.
Which leads us to Obama’s secret weapon: Michelle Obama. By being more shrill than Hillary and emasculating Obama on several occasions and refusing to look like a doting, Republican Stepford wife stereotype, she eliminates Hillary’s feminist advantage, which was already damaged thanks to her tolerance of her husband’s philandering. They can get both black victimology and modern feminism with Obama thanks to his wife’s persona, thereby eliminating one of Hillary’s major advantages.
Until the Democratic Party can evolve past this crude thought process of race, gender and class checklists, they will continue to face these problems in future elections.
I’m torn about this clip. It’s Senator Robert Byrd breaking down on the floor of the Senate over Senator Ted Kennedy’s illness. Call me heartless, but I’m not sure I buy this emotional display. Usually when someone loses all composure and rambles on like that, it’s a spontaneous flood of emotion that makes them act in such a manner. But given that he’s reading off notes during his breakdown, his eyes appear dry and his gaze never even leaves the paper at all leaves me feeling a little doubtful. It just seems like attention whoring. Not to mention that he’s treating the guy like he’s already dead and buried, which is not exactly the type of attitude you want to convey to a sick person. In fact, near the end it almost gets downright comical.
So I’ve included a poll. Is this blubbering a sincere emotional display? And if it is sincere, is it do you find it courageous and brave or inappropriate and embarrassing for a guy to get so emotional?
UPDATE: I removed the poll because it was messing up the page display.
One of my favorite books of all time for gaining insight on human nature is the The Autobiography of Malcolm X : As Told to Alex Haley. It’s got some great insightful quotes, and I’ve decided to phone one in take this time to share some of them. What follows are Malcolm’s views on various issues.
On getting what you want:
I learned early that crying out in protest could accomplish things. My older brothers and sister had started to school when, sometimes, they would come in and ask for a buttered biscuit or something and my mother, impatiently, would tell them no. But I would cry out and make a fuss until I got what I wanted. I remember well how my mother asked my why I couldn’t be a nice boy like Wilfred; but I would think to myself that Wilfred, for being so nice and quiet, often stayed hungry. So early in life, I had learned that if you want something, you had better make some noise.?
On competitive strategy:
Mr. Gohannas was close cronies with some other men who, some Saturdays, would take me and Big Boy with them hunting rabbits. I had my father’s .22 caliber rifle; my mother had said it was all right for me to take it with me. The old men had a set rabbit-hunting strategy that they had always used. Usually when a dog jumps a rabbit, and the rabbit gets away, that rabbit will always somehow instinctively run in a circle and return sooner or later past the very spot where he originally was jumped. Well, the old men would just sit and wait in hiding somewhere for the rabbit to come back, then get their shots at him. I got to thinking about it, and finally I thought of a plan. I would separate from them and Big Boy and I would go to a point where I figured that the rabbit, returning, would have to pass me first.
It worked like magic. I began to get three and four rabbits before they got one. The astonishing thing was that none of the old men ever figured out why. They outdid themselves exclaiming what a sure shot I was. I was about twelve, then. All I had done was to improve on their strategy, and it was the beginning of a very important lesson in life, that anytime you find someone more successful than you are, especially when you’re both engaged in the same business, you know they’re doing something that you aren’t.
On Women:
In Harlem, years later, a friend of mine called Sammy the Pimp taught me something I wish I had know then to look for in Laura’s face. It was what Sammy declared was his infallible clue for determining the “unconscious, true personality” of women. Considering all the women he had picked out of crowds and turned into prostitutes, Sammy qualified as an expert. Anyway, he swore that if a woman, any woman, really gets carried away while dancing, what she truly is at least potentially will surface and show on her face.
On Your Woman’s Exes:
Never ask a woman about other men. Either she’ll tell a lie, and you still won’t know, or if she tells you the truth, you might not have wanted to hear it in the first place.
On Wives And Prostitutes:
Domineering, complaining, demanding wives who had just about psychologically castrated their husbands were responsible for the early [client rush to the brothel]. These wives were so disagreeable and had made their man so tense that they were robbed of the satisfaction of being men. To escape this tension and the chance of being ridiculed by his own wife, each of these men had gotten up early and come to a prostitute. The prostitutes had to make it their business to be students of men. They said that after most men passed their virile twenties, they went to bed mainly to satisfy their egos, and because a lot of women don?t understand it that way, they damage and wreck a man?s ego. No matter how little virility a man has to offer, prostitutes make him feel for a time that he is the greatest man in the world. That?s why these prostitutes had that morning rush of business. More wives could keep their husbands if they realized their greatest urge is to be men…?
I mean, I’d had so much experience. I had talked to too many prostitutes and mistresses. They knew more about a whole lot of husbands than the wives of those husbands did. The wives always filled their husband’s ears so full of wife complaints that it wasn?t the wives, it was the prostitutes and mistresses who heard the husbands? innermost problems and secrets. They thought of him, and comforted him, and that included listening to him, and so he would tell them everything.
On Pimps vs. Husbands:
Most men, the prostitutes felt, were too easy to push around. Every day these prostitutes heard their customers complaining that they never heard anything but griping from women who were being taken care of and given everything. The prostitutes said that most men needed to know what the pimps knew. A woman should occasionally be babied enough to show her the man had affection, but beyond that she should be treated firmly. These tough women said that it worked with them. All women, by their nature, are fragile and weak: they are attracted to the male in whom they see strength.?
On Black Men And White Women:
From time to time, Sophia [his white girlfriend] would come over to see me from Boston. Even among Harlem Negroes, her looks gave me status. They were just like the Negroes everywhere else. That was why the white prostitutes made so much money. It didn’t make any difference if you were in Lansing, Boston, or New York, what the white racist said, and still says, was right in those days! All you had to do was put a white girl anywhere close to the average black man, and he would respond. The black woman also made the white man’s eyes light up but he was slick enough to hide it.
On Numbers Runners:
West Indian Archie had finished time in Sing Sing not long before I came to Harlem. But my boss’ wife had hired him not just because she knew him from the old days. West Indian Archie had the kind of photographic memory that put him among the elite of numbers runners. He never wrote down your number; even in the case of combination plays, he would just nod. He was able to file all the numbers in his head, and write them down for the banker only when he turned in his money. This made him the ideal runner because cops could never catch him with any betting slips.
I’ve often reflected upon such black veteran numbers men as West Indian Archie. If they had lived in another kind of society, their exceptional mathematical talents might have been better used. But they were black.
On Jews vs. Blacks:
‘Red, I’m a Jew and you’re black,’ [Hymie] would say. ‘These Gentiles don’t like either one of us. If the Jew wasn’t smarter than the Gentile, he’d get treated worse than your people.’
On “Brand Chumps” (vodka anyone?):
‘Another fellow and I would drive out to Long Island where a big bootleg whisky outfit operated. We’d take with us cartons of empty bonded whisky bottles that were saved illegally by bars we supplied. We would buy five-gallon containers of bootleg, funnel it into the bottles, then deliver, according to Hymie’s instructions, this or that many crates back to the bars.
Many people claiming they drank only such-and-such a brand couldn?t tell their only brand apart from pure week-old Long Island bootleg. Most ordinary whisky drinkers are ‘brand’ chumps like this.
More on Women:
I never in my life have seen a black man that loved white women as sincerely as Shorty did. Since I had known him, he had several. He had never been able to keep a white woman any length of time, though, because he was too good to them, and, as I have said, any women, white or black, seems to get bored with that.
On Mastery:
In every organization, someone must be the boss. If it?s even just one person, you?ve got to be the boss of yourself.
On Prison:
Any person who claims to have a deep feeling for other human beings should think a long, long time before he votes to have other men kept behind bars, caged. I am not saying there shouldn’t be prisons, but there shouldn’t be bars. Behind bars, a man never reforms. He will never forget. He never will get completely over the memory of the bars.
After he gets out, his mind tries to erase the experience, but he can’t. I’ve talked with numerous former convicts. It has been very interesting to me to find that all of our minds have blotted away many details of years in prison. But in every case, he will tell you that he can?t forget those bars.
On Sin and Redemption:
I have since learned, helping me to understand what then began to happen within me, that the truth can be quickly received, or received at all, only by the sinner who knows and admits that he is guilty of having sinned much. Stated another way: only guilt admitted accepts truth. The Bible again: the one people whom Jesus would not help were the Pharisees; they didn’t feel they needed any help.
The very enormity of my previous life’s guilt prepared me to accept the truth.
On Self-doubt:
[Elijah Muhammed] wrote, ‘If you once believed in the truth, and now you are beginning to doubt the truth, you didn’t believe the truth in the first place. What could make you doubt the truth other than your own weak self?
On Persuasion:
One day, I remember, a dirty glass of water was on a counter and Mr. Muhammed put a clean glass of water beside it. ‘You want to know how to spread my teachings?’ he said, and he pointed to the glasses of water. ‘Don’t condemn if you see a person has a dirty glass of water,’ he said, ‘just show them the clean glass of water that you have. When they inspect it, you won’t have to say that yours is better.’
On the Importance of Dependability:
I would rather have a mule I can depend upon than a race horse that I can’t depend upon.
On White Liberals:
The Deep South white press generally blacked me out. But they front-paged what I felt about Northern white and black Freedom Riders going South to ‘demonstrate.’ I called it ‘ridiculous’; their own Northern ghettoes, right at home, had enough rats and roaches to kill to keep all of the Freedom Riders busy. I said that ultra-liberal New York had more integration problems than Mississippi. If the Northern Freedom Riders wanted more to do, they could work on the roots of such ghetto evils as the little children out in the streets at midnight, with apartment keys on strings around their necks to let themselves in, and their mothers and fathers drunk, drug addicts, thieves, prostitutes. Or the Northern Freedom Riders could light some fires under the Northern city halls, unions, and major industries to give more jobs to Negroes to remove so many of them from the relief and welfare rolls, which created laziness, and which deteriorated the ghettoes into steadily worse places for humans to live. It was all, it is all, the absolute truth; but what did I want to say it for? Snakes couldn’t have turned on me faster than the liberal. Yes, I will pull off that liberal’s halo that he spends much time cultivating! The North’s liberals have been for so long pointing accusing fingers at the South and getting away with it that they have fits when they are exposed as the world’s worst hypocrites.
On Muslim Violence:
I knew that no one would kill you quicker than a Muslim if he felt that?s what Allah wanted him to do.
On Northern Blacks vs. Southern Blacks:
There is this to consider: always, the black people have advanced further when they have seen they had to rise up against a system that they clearly saw was outright against them. Under the steady lullabys sung by foxy liberals, the Northern Negro became a beggar. But the Southern Negro, facing the honestly snarling white man, rose up to battle that white man for his freedom?long before it happened in the North.
On Punctuality:
I have less patience with someone who doesn’t wear a watch than with anyone else, for this type is not time-conscious. In all our deeds, the proper value and respect for time determines success or failure.
On Fear of Failure:
Children have a lesson adults should learn, to not be ashamed of failing, but to get up and try again. Most of us adults are so afraid, so cautious, so ‘safe,’ and therefore so shrinking and rigid and afraid that it is why so many humans fail. Most middle-aged adults have resigned themselves to failure.
On Regrets About Separatist Views:
Well, I’ve come to regret that incident [where he rebuked the offers of a white college girl to assist the Negro cause, a scene shown in Spike Lee's Malcolm X movie]. In many parts of the African continent I saw white students helping black people. Something like this kills a lot of argument. I did many things as a Muslim that I’m sorry for now. I was a zombie then – like all Muslims – I was hypnotized, pointed in a certain direction and told to march. Well, I guess a man’s entitled to make a fool of himself if he’s ready to pay the cost. It cost me twelve years
Also, concerning the white girl he insulted:
I regret that I told her she could do ‘nothing.’ I wish now that I knew her name, or where I could telephone her, and tell her what I tell white people now when they present themselves as being sincere, and ask me, one way or another, the same thing that she asked.
To learn more about the incident with the little blonde co-ed, click here.
Recently Roissy had a post about the Beta Male of the Year, a man who petitioned to take his wife’s last name.
For those who don’t know, these are the definitions of Beta Male I use, from urbandictionary.com:
An unremarkable, careful man who avoids risk and confrontation. Beta males lack the physical presence, charisma and confidence of the Alpha male.
Pete knew he was losing the girl he’d just met at the bar to the guy who bought her a drink, but he was too much of a beta male to do anythigng about it.
and:
The opposite of Alpha male. In modern society an Alpha male not only requires physical prowess, but also confidence and attitude. The Beta male of modern society usually, only has one of these traits, if any. The Beta male tends to be smart, quiet and unconfrontational. If lucky, beta males can get a hot chick once in her 30′s, after she’s tired of fucking the Alpha Males, and decides to settle down with a beta male for money and stability.
Alpha Males get everything, Beta Males get the left overs. It’s a little thing called “Life”..
While I agree Roissy did indeed find the Beta of the Year, I think I may have topped him by finding the Beta of the Decade (note: I find the clip is even better when you play the above Joy Division song in the background):
One of the most telling things in the clip is the audience laughter. You can hear female snickers in there, and it’s part of a valuable life lesson: in the movies, beta male saps can win over the woman and get the last laugh in life by being lovable losers with a heart of gold. They can win a woman’s heart by garnering sympathy. But in real life, a beta male is more likely to get cuckolded by a homely, fat woman while getting laughed at by other women in a studio audience and by people watching the debacle on their TV sets or computer screens. And I don’t think it’s that people are cruel or pitiless. I think people genuinely feel sorry for the chump. He’s fallen into the thankless role of beta provider, something I touch on in this blog post.
Unfortunately, there’s also another natural human impulse at play here, and it’s something all men must work to keep in mind, especially in light of the false pro-beta, pro-geek and pro-feminization messages the media keeps sending them:
People see weakness in a woman and their first impulse is to protect and nurture and help her. People see weakness in a man and their first impulse is to crush it out of disgust and revulsion.
I can’t take credit for that line though, it’s a paraphrase from a wonderful book done by a lesbian who went undercover and lived as a man for a year, Self-Made Man: One Woman’s Year Disguised as a Man by Norah Vincent (great book, and much more sympathetic to men than you’d expect).
It also brings to mind a great line from The Godfather by Mario Puzo:
I spend my life trying not to be careless. Women and children can afford to be careless, but not men…I
One of the most important things a man can do is to be congizant of how much geek glorification media he consumes. Cut back on Apatow flicks. Don’t watch too many NBC sitcomes like The Office. Don’t laugh at Stephen Colbert too much, or worse yet, try to emulate him, just because you think it wins you cool points with liberal women. If you read the blog Stuff White People Like and find yourself getting offended instead of laughing, you are on the wrong track. Be careful of movies like this one, which send the message that you can whine and whimper your way through life like a pathetic wuss, yet still manage to upgrade from a hottie like Kirsten Bell to a hotter hottie like Mina Kunis just through sheer sympathy:
I’m not going to be able to write anything substantial until next week, thanks to being swamped at work. But that doesn’t mean I won’t leave you with something to entertain you. In celebration of Mother’s Day, which was this past Sunday:
Um, yeah. And here’s something else to entertain you in case that wasn’t enough. A classic Rocky 3 scene, except with Superman standing in for Rocky:
Like most male bonding this is incredibly fun, yet probably vaguely homoerotic at the same time.
God, I love being a man, along with all the dumb challenges that amuse us. That’s the beauty of manhood, just doing something simply because you want to know if you can. Fuck the danger, fuck whether it makes sense, fuck whether it has any tangible long term benefits…we just want to try it to see if we can do it. I think it’s more due to this natural drive and curiosity rather than sheer intellect or misogyny that so many inventions and innovations have been created by men: that love of challenge just for the sake of challenge. I think it’s hard for a woman to appreciate the risks these guys are taking with their testicles by doing these stunts.
UPDATE:Apparently this was just a viral marketing campaign for jeans. Bastards.
I have to warn you, this is either going to be one of my weirdest posts, one of my most profound or both. Even if it sounds really pseudoscientific and downright preposterous at times, I encourage you to read through it and keep an open mind.
One thing I constantly hear educated black guys complain about is their experiences with black women, particularly how they constantly test them or pass them up for guys of a thuggier nature. The big complaint I hear is that black women, even those of middle class status and higher, seem to want “Tupac with a degree.” Black guys often use this as their reason for primarily dating women of other races.
Now of course most women of all races go through a “bad boy” stage, especially when they’re younger and attraction and excitement are more important to them than long-term security. One of the problems with black women though is that they tend to go overboard in this department. A bad boy to an Asian girl may be a guy who’s a liberal arts major. When black women go for a bad boys, however, a prison record and a gun are often be involved. I even found this to be the case when I was in college and hollering at educated black women. With white girls, though, the simple fact that a guy is black is often enough to confer “bad boy” status and make a guy edgy. So when a guy is faced with a choice of going for white girl and being edgy and a “bad boy” simply by being black and having a little bit of street smarts, or going for a black chick and having to be a “soldier” and risk a criminal record to impress a black chick with his edginess, it makes sense that a lot of black guys find it less stressful to date outside the race.
But I’m not writing this to excuse black men’s dating choices or condem black women, but rather to understand why this “thug lust” phenomenon is so prevalent in the black community. After doing a lot of reading on evolutionary psychology, I think I may have an answer.
One of the tenets of evolutionary psychology is that women are programmed to test men for strength and leadership. Constantly. The theory is that in prehistoric times, the world was a much more dangerous place, especially for women, who could easily be raped or killed at will. Weapons were primitive, there weren’t laws to protect rights and society was not very civilized. Women needed men that were strong and dominant to offer them protection from other men who may try to invade. For this reason, it was in a woman’s best interest to test a potential mate. If he was too weak to stand up to her and let her walk all over him, then how could he protect her and their children from other men? If he was wishy-washy in day to day activities, how could he make important decisions in a time of crisis?
Chances are, at some point in history there were not only plenty of women who were genetically predisposed to test men, but also plenty of women who were not genetically predisposed to test men. Thanks to the principles of survival of the fittest, however, the women who didn’t have the innate tendency to test their men probably chose weaker men and wound up getting their genes weeded out of existence once trouble came around and these weak men couldn’t protect them. On the flipside, the women with an innate tendency to test their men and not mate with punks were better suited for survival and ended up passing their genes to future generations of women. Thus as the human race evolved over time, women with “man-testing” genes thrived in the human population because they were beneficial to survival, while women without “man-testing” genes gradually ceased to exist because they were wiped out over time. For this reason, any woman alive today is descended from women with “man testing” genes and has these “man testing” genes too. This is why modern women constantly probe men in a million subtle ways for weakness and lack of leadership during the courtship process.
The irony is that civilization has evolved to a point where a man’s physical protection is not as necessary as it once was. Society is much more civilized, women have access to better weapons to level the playing field, policemen exist to add more protection, there are laws to protect female citizens and conquest of women and other men through brute force is not only frowned upon but actually illegal. So logically, man testing is not as necessary as it once was. However logic can’t change a woman’s genes or hundreds of thousands of years of cultural conditioning, both of which have bred her to test potential mates for leadership and strength. It is for this reason so many women are attracted to assholes. They may not be nice, but they will not stand for disrespect and will fight for their rights against other men. I also think this primal urge for men who don’t take shit plays a big role in why so many death row inmates have those women who write them love letters and are attracted to them: these men take no crap, are leaders in a bizarre way due to the fact that they refuse to conform to society’s rules and can offer a woman protection from outsiders in a way that the average, law-abiding man can’t. Even though logically a woman may know these assholes or thugs are a bad choice, biologically and culturally they’ve been bred through hundreds of thousands of years of evolution to respond positively to dominant, alpha male traits on a primal, unthinking level.
Now over the past few centuries as the West has become more civilized and women have made great strides in gaining equality, Western culture has begun training women to tone down their man-testing ways. Even though the man-testing genes are still there, they seem to play less of a role in mate choice with each generation. This is why that ugly kid from Superbad and Juno can actually be a sex symbol to tweens today. Alpha traits still matter to women on a primal level, but given how safe modern Western society has become for women over the past two centuries, and how much safer society continues to become for them, it’s safe to say that testing a man for alpha status will continue to decline and become more subtle and it will be increasingly easier for beta males to thrive in the mating game.
So what does this have to do with black women and thugs? The black woman for a long time was denied the societal progress available to other Western women over the past two centuries. Unlike other women in the West, for a long time black women did not experience the same increase in status and societal protection that would allow them to feel less dependent on the protections of a mate. Europeans invaded West Africa and took black people as slaves. Once in America, the black slave woman could be violated at will by her master and his visiting friends. This was acceptable under law. Her black husband could do nothing about this, which had to be very emasculating for him. In addition, she probably gradually began to resent him for his inability to protect her, even if logically she knew there was nothing he could actually do. This dynamic likely was passed to her daughters too, who had to grow up seeing both their fathers and their mates routinely emasculated and rendered incapable of protecting them. After slavery ended, things didn’t get that much better. The Ku Klux Klan was around in the south, lynchings and other forms of racial violence were rampant, black families could be physically intimidated and wiped out at will and the black man’s emasculation continued.
Given all the hardships a black woman faced up until very recent history, it would make sense that her need to test a man would remain strong, even as this need subsided some in Western women of other races. If anything, man-testing genes may have increased over the last several hundred years in the black community due to the hardships they faced. Getting an strong alpha male probably became much more important to a black woman than to a white woman, since unlike the white woman she did not have the same alternative protections of law, status and police available to her. I imagine that black women needed man-testing genes more than any other race of women because they were more reliant on the protection of a strong man than any other race of women because they couldn’t rely on societal protections. And out of all the strong types of black men available, I figure a thug was probably the type of alpha male that made her feel the safest. A thug was probably the type of black man most likely to stand up to the white man or other dangerous blacks even at the cost of his own life. I imagine that over the course of history, evolution and cultural conditioning rewarded man-testing genes in black women much more than it did in other races of women because strong, tough men were much more vital to a black woman’s survival. I also think that history and evolution were probably more unkind to black women who didn’t test their men for strength than it was to white women who didn’t test their men.
The second most popular type of man in the West is the beta provider. He’s not as dominant, as strong a leader or as tough as the alpha male, because he’s a beta male. But thanks to his intellectual prowess and his ability to provide financial support, he becomes the next best thing to the alpha dog. He offers a different type of security. It may not be as primally attractive to a woman as a tough, dominant alpha male, but it is a very safe and secure (if somewhat boring) secondary choice. Examples of beta male providers can be your wimpy scientists, male lawyers, educated, civilized guys, sucessful metrosexuals, nerds with poor social skills but good incomes, etc. They may not have as much to offer in primal attraction and physical protection, but they make up for it in their ability to provide security in the form of financial assistance. The catch is, a beta provider can only compete with alpha males in extremely civilized cultures were society offers women a sense of physical protection through the existence of cultural norms and legal protections. This allows things like financial security and education to become as important as alpha dog status. That is why being a beta provider can be so attractive to Western women, since society allows them the luxury of choosing a man for reasons other than brutish alpha dog status. If society ever reverted back to the dangerously harsh, brutish free-for-all it used to be in the old days, the stock of beta providers would drop drastically.
Since black women didn’t have the same societal protections as white Western women, beta providers were probably a bad choice in the black community for a long time, even as the stock of beta providers was on the rise in the white community. How much good could a square, law-abiding doctor or lawyer be to a black woman in the heart of the rural, racist south? His money doesn’t have that much benefit since many white businesses wouldn’t take it and he couldn’t move to any neighborhood he wanted, even if he could afford to. If anything, his education and intellect and legitimate financial success could be interpreted as being “uppity” and not “knowing his role,” thereby making him a target and putting the family in more danger from racist whites. For all these reasons, I think that black American women have evolved to have even more man-testing genes than other women, especially in favor of men who disregard the white man and his laws. In the black community, the tables have traditionally been stacked against the beta provider black male. Money in the hands of a black man just didn’t offer that much protection and wasn’t as valuable as being tough and macho and strong.
And it only got worse once the welfare state came into effect in the 1960s. Once Lyndon Johnson introduced the Great Society, allowing single women with children to get money and housing from the federal government, this took away one of the black beta provider’s last bargaining chips: his money and house. Now a black woman could get that financial security from the government. Not just that, but if she did get together with a beta provider, she’d actually lose her free money, food, house and education because you had to be single to receive those benefits. The welfare system actually created an incentive against settling down with a beta provider. He can’t provide the primal attraction and physical protection an alpha male does, and now his presence is actually an economic liability. And since a man was no longer as needed for economic reasons, this helped raised the stock of thugs: the physical protection from racist whites and other blacks in the ghetto, the superior sexual prowess, the primal attraction that comes from his role as a “bad boy” alpha male and the tax-free, under the table financial benefits of his illegal money.
Even though society has changed greatly for black women in the past few decades and they no longer face the same level of racism or need for an alpha dog thug for survival, they still have generations of these thug-loving genes and cultural conditioning to fight against. And of course the glamorization of thug life through hip-hop probably doesn’t help things either. And this is why even as many black women move up socially and get more educated, they still have such a strong pull toward thugs.
by Norah Vincent (great book, and much more sympathetic to men than you’d expect).
by Mario Puzo:
