In the last installment we had two womanizers who appeared on the Tyra Banks show, Ahmed the superstar and Shawn the Slumdog Hundredaire. Two ladies’ men who were as different as darkest night and brightest day. As I was watching the show, I figured out that Ahmed, who came off as a guy who was effortlessly natural at wooing and attracting women, had detachment issues with his mom. And I came to the conclusion the Shawn was more of a momma’s boy. Shawn mentioned calling his mom every day earlier on, so I had no doubts about him, but I figured I’d never find out what Ahmed’s situation, but luckily near the end of the show the following exchange happened:

Tyra: So you say that marriage is not biological for a man and x,y,z, but tell me?there?s a reason why you think in your life with your childhood as to why you are a womanizer??

Ahmed: I think there is a detachment with me and my feelings when it comes to women, based off of maybe feeling a void I did what i did. At a young age me and my mother were tight, she was a single parent, and she was independent and I looked up to her. She was my mother and my father. She did what she had to do, masters? degree, blahblahblah. Then she got married, then put her career and herself on the back burner for a man, had his kids and he just broke out on her. So misery loves company, and I didn?t like that, and I was neglected in the situation, so ever since then, I was like ?You know what, I might do what I do, but?

Tyra: Did you become detached from your mother?

Ahmed: Yes, me and my mother didn?t get along. So I left at a young age and ever since then my attitude was like ?[Fuck] women??

Tyra: If you had a different childhood, do you think you?d be a different man?

Ahmed: I think so. I think all my friends that are cool with their mothers and respect their moms have a different outlook when it comes to dealing with women.

So how did I predict Ahmed had problems with his mother? Well first let me make something clear. I don’t think that everyone who is good with women has problems with their mother. Some people are good with women because they are late bloomers who studied hard or found good mentors as adults to cure themselves of politically correct reassuring fictions and undo a lot of counterproductive conditioning they had growing up. Some are good with women because they had the rare type of mother who was not politically correct and was willing to tell them some ugly truths about men and women. So I’m not trying to say every good womanizer has mother issues. But what I do believe is that people like Ahmed, the true naturals who don’t get emotionally hung up on chicks no matter how hot they are, who are effortless in their confidence and game, tend to have some emotional distance with their mothers, whether it’s just some aloofness to all-out rage.

I first stumbled on this notion in world-famous master pimp Robert Beck AKA Iceberg Slim’s autobiography Pimp. In it, the young Iceberg Slim grows up with a loving mother and his nice guy stepfather. It is the happiest time in his life. His mother has just been left by his philandering, unreliable father and times are initially hard for young Iceberg and his mother.

There were no jobs in Indianapolis for Mama and for six months we barely made it on the meager savings. We were pennisless and with hardly any food when a tall black angel visiting relatives in Indianapolis came into our lives.

He instantly fell in love with my lissome beautiful mother. His name was Henry Upshaw, and I guess I fell as hard for him as he fell for Mama.

He took us back to Rockford, Illinois with him where he owned a cleaning and pressing shop, the only Negro business in downtown Rockford.

In those tough depression times a Negro in his position was the envy of most Negro men.

Henry was religious, ambitious, good and kind. I often wonder what would have happened to my life if I had not been torn from him.

He treated Mama like she was a princess, anything she wanted he got for her. She was a fashion plate all right.

Every Sunday when we all three went to church in the gleaming black Dodge we were an outstanding sight as we walked down the aisle in our fresh neat clothing.

Only the few Negro lawyers and physicians lived as well, looked as well. Mama was president of several civic clubs. For the first time we were living the good life.

Mama had a dream. She told it to Henry. Like the genie of the lamp he made it a reality.

It was a four stall, opulent beauty shop. Its chrome gleamed in the black-and-gold motif. It was located in the heart of the Negro business section and it flourished from the moment its doors opened.

Her clientele was for the most part whores, pimps and hustlers from the sprawling “red light” district in Rockford. They were the only ones who always had the money to spend on their appearance.

The first time I saw Steve he was sitting getting his nails manicured in the shop. Mama was smiling into his handsome olive-tinted face as she buffed his nails.

I didn’t know when I first saw him that he was the pin-striped snake who would poison the core of our lives…

There was really nothing out of the ordinary that day. Nothing during that day that I heard or saw that prepared me for the swift, confusing events that over the weekend would slam my life away from all that was good to all that was bad.

Now looking back remembering that last day in the shop as clearly as if it were yesterday my stepfather, Henry, was unusually quiet. My young mind couldn’t grasp his worry, his heart break.

Even I, a ten year old, however, knew that this huge, ugly black men who had rescued Mama and me from actual starvation back in Indianapolis loved us with all of his great, sensitive heart.

I loved Henry with all my heart. He was the only father I had ever really known.

He could have saved himself an early death from a broken heart if instead of falling so madly in love with Mama he had run as fast as he could away from her. For him she was brown-skin murder in a size-twelve dress.

Steve was a sleazy, sneaky low-level pimp that had Iceberg’s mother dripping wet with lust and eating out of his hands.

Yes, poor Henry’s fears had foundation. Mama had never loved my stepfather. This kind wonderful man had only been a tool of convenience. She had fallen in love with the snake all right…

One scene in my life I can never forget and that was that morning when Mama had finished packing out clothes and Henry lost his inner fight for his pride and dignity.

He fell down on his knees and bawled like a scalded child pleading with Mama not to leave him, begging her to stay. He had welded his arms around her legs, his voice hoarse in anguish as he whimpered his love for us.

His agonized eyes walled up at her as he wailed, “Please don’t leave me. You are sure to kill me if you do. I ain’t done nothing. If I have, forgive me.”

I will never forget her face as cold as an executioner’s, which she was, as she kicked and struggled loose from him.

Then with an awful grin on her face she lied and said, “Henry, Honey, I just want to get away for a while. Darling, we’ll be back.”…

As the cab drove us away to the secret rendezvous with Steve sitting in his old Model T, I looked back at Henry on the porch, his chest heaving as tears rolled down his tortured face.

I’m sure it surprises no one to hear that things just got worse and worse from there. Steve convinced Iceberg’s mom to search out and reunite with Iceberg’s dad under the pretense of reconciliation, so that they could set him up to be robbed. Iceberg’s dad had straightened up and gotten a good job and was in a nice house and had accumulated belongings worth stealing. She not only double-crossed his dad, she acted as if she didn’t have anything to do with the double-cross, and cried hysterically when she “discovered” the robbery alongside Beck’s dad, who had no suspicion of her involvement. Iceberg AKA Beck recalled

For many tortured years she would suffer her guilt. She had made that terrible decision on that long ago weekend.

I know my lousy old man deserved what happened to his goods. I know Mama got her revenge and it was sweet. I am sure, but it was bitter for a kid like me to know that Mama was part of it.

Perhaps if Mama had kept that burglary cross a secret from me, in some tiny way I might have been stronger to fight off that pimping disease. I don’t know but somehow after that cross mama just didn’t seem like the same honest sweet Mama that I had prayed in church with back in Rockford.

Can you picture a child going through such experiences and still growing up to put women on a pedestal and seeking their approval? Me neither. Late in his life, long after he left pimping, Robert “Iceberg” Beck gave an interview reminiscing on his life and career:

Koblin: Do pimps hate their whores?

Beck: Well, not necessarily consciously. The best pimps that I have known, that is the career pimps, the ones who could do twenty, maybe thirty years as a pimp, were utterly ruthless and brutal without compassion. They certainly had a basic hatred for women.

My theory is, and I can’t prove it, if we are to use the criteria of utter ruthlessness as a guide, that all of them hated their mothers. Perhaps more accurately, I would say that they’ve never known love and affection, maternal love and affection. I’ve known several dozen in fact that were dumped into the trash bins when they were what?…. only four or five days old.

Koblin: You say you loved your mother in your book.

Beck: Of course, but underneath the threshold of consciousness, I know that I must have hated her, as demonstrated by my neglect of her through the years.

In reading Robert “Iceberg” Beck’s autobiography, you notice that long before he became a pimp, he was already an effortless, smooth-talking “natural” with women. Since reading the book and Iceberg’s interviews, I began looking at naturals and many of them had dysfunctional relationships with their mothers. In the case of some of these naturals, they had good relationships with their mothers but had even stronger relationships with a very alpha male father. This helps one become a natural as well, but by and large the somewhat dysfunctional or distant relationship with the mother seemed to be the biggest factor in creating naturals, especially if it was interspersed with periods of pampering (Iceberg also claimed that his mother, for all his faults, pampered him as best she could and that this also contributed to his becoming a pimp). The power of this combo is that they dysfunction keeps the man from growing up putting women on a pedestal because he’s sees his mom as weak and flawed, meaning he doesn’t have some ideal maternal model as an example for his mates to aspire to, but the pampering and coddling aspects train him to expect favors from women without any guilt, hesitation, shame or repentance. In fact, a natural doesn’t even view it as a favor so much as something he’s entitled to.

The extreme natural like Iceberg can turn off his emotions at will like a faucet because he has no mental division between the Madonna and Whore archetypes. The Madonna and Whore archetypes became one and the same for him at a young age. Sometimes even when I see brothers who handle women very differently despite growing up in the same family, I can look at their birth orders and examine how their relationships with their mother differed and see reinforcement that the one with the more natural skills with women is the one with a more complicated or less warm relationship to the mother, making him less likely to deify the feminine mystique.

What is the mechanism at work here? Well, do you remember way back when I discussed the Mystery/Mastery Paradox? That’s where I described how something is a mystery to you, which makes you love it and drives you to master it. However once you master it, it loses it’s mystery and you start to fall out of love with it. This boredom and frustration drives you to reframe the challenge in a way to make it interesting to you again or to chase a whole new challenge. Well that can also work in reverse. Sometimes something gets demystified to you first, and then the fact that it’s no longer a mystery to you allows you to fall out of love with it and master it easily. To people like Iceberg Slim and Ahmed, women were demystified to them at an early age, which made them fall out of love with them as a noble ideal and allowed them to master them.

It was my readings of Iceberg Slim that first made me notice this dynamic. This is they dynamic I immediately noticed when watching Ahmed and Shawn on Tyra’s show. It’s no surprise then that one of the first things Shawn, obvious late bloomer with horrible game, mentioned was he was close to his mom. And it’s no surprise that Ahmed, super natural with his arms around both his ex-fling and his current squeeze, said losing respect for his mom is exactly what made him great with women. And if you notice in the clip above, when Ahmed makes the same observation that Iceberg made about men and their mothers, Shawn immediately protests. Very telling.

Recommended Reading:

This post is the first in a two-part series on madonna/whore complexes, both parts going up today, and it’s going to be video heavy, with five, yes five, 6-8 minute clips. So let me warn you up front, it’s going to be time-intensive, but it’s so worth it. Watch every video. Then read the analysis.

I was watching the Tyra Banks show a while back (don’t ask) and saw an episode on womanizers. In particular, it was about women confronting the womanizers who wronged them. It turned out to be a lot more interesting than I expected, as the two womanizers they showcased were actually night and day in terms of approaches.

The first womanizer is named Ahmed, and the woman “confronting” him had little bad to say about him:

This kind of surprised me. This is Tyra’s show, which is pretty feminist and “You Go, Girl!” so I thought they’d be totally setting up the guy to get punked and embarrassed and shamed. But the girl has no hard feelings and has nothing bad to say about them. A lot of the women in the audience seem to be disgusted and are shaking their heads in shame when they hear the woman saying nothing but nice things about Ahmed before he actually comes out, but once he does come out the audience and Tyra seem to warm up to him. He seems to be a guy who is very naturally good with them, and is brutally honest about who he is and what he wants. The most impressive thing about the whole exchange is the intellectual honesty of the girl. She doesn’t try to remake what happened into a narrative that makes her into a victim, makes him into a manipulative predator or excuses her from responsibility. She doesn’t seem to be lying to herself or the audience.

Then it got more interesting. They brought out the dude’s current girlfriend, to make her sit there on the couch with Ahmed and one of his past flings.

This guy is really master of his domain. Pretty unflappable, doesn’t seem to get unhinged or made nervous easily. Even Tyra’s relationship expert, whose job it probably was to bash the womanizers to score points with the audience, says he thinks the guy is a “good guy.” This is even after the details of his past cheating has been revealed.

The next womanizer is Shawn. The clips speak for themselves. First the intro to Shawn:

Shawn “out on the prowl:”

I’m not going to spend time dissecting Shawn’s approach and pointing out specific mistakes he makes, because honestly there are just so many in that short clip that it would require a whole separate post (if the commenters want to go ahead and dissect his awful game, go to town on it). But the guy is cheesy, kind of like a broke Bollywood Fabio. I’m talking cringe-inducing cheese. He’s playing a numbers game, and not very well to boot, and he does finally get some interest, but from a girl who seems somewhat cheesy and desperate too. Honestly, I think she’d be game for any half-decent guy who showed interest. She doesn’t really strike me as a very challenging target. And unlike Ahmed, he is horrible at handling Tyra, the crowd, the women on the panel, and Tyra’s relationship expert. He also gets defensive, which just digs his hole deeper.

So I’m watching the fucking Tyra Banks show and shockingly it’s intrigued me way more than I ever expected to be intrigued by a Tyra Banks show. I felt a real mystery here: why were these two guys so night and day in their approaches and the responses they got from the crowd? What was the X-factor that allowed Ahmed to excel that Shawn lacked? My guess, based on some preexisting theories of mine about men and women, was that Ahmed was probably a guy who was a “natural,” someone who is naturally good with women, while Shawn was a late bloomer who tried to teach himself to be a player later in life, did a bad job and ended up with creepy, cheesy results. But because he’s articulate, shameless and probably approaches a LOT of women, he’s gotten his share of successes and thinks he’s better than he actually is. But if you compared the number of women he hooked u with to the number of women he approached, you’d see he probably gets a low return on investment. Plus the quality is probably not as good as it could be because he seems to be doing more of a numbers game than trying to go for quality. Most importantly, I figured like most naturals Ahmed had some issues with his mother, while I figured Shawn the cheeseball was a mama’s boy. This is a theory of mine, that men who are naturally good with women usually have some sort of mother issues that creates an emotional detachment in the mother-son link, while most late bloomers are mama’s boys who are very emotionally attuned to their mothers and put them on pedestal.

I figures this would just remain speculation, as I couldn’t imagine Tyra digging deep enough to find out about Ahmed’s relationship with his mother. After all, this is daytime fluff TV. But to her credit, then came the next part, which touched on exactly that. You can watch all of the following clip if you want to see the shenanigans of Dick Masterson, professional chauvinist, but the key part for the purposes of this blog post starts at 4:45:

Tyra: So you say that marriage is not biological for a man and x,y,z, but tell me…there’s a reason why you think in your life with your childhood as to why you are a womanizer…?

Ahmed: I think there is a detachment with me and my feelings when it comes to women, based off of maybe feeling a void I did what i did. At a young age me and my mother were tight, she was a single parent, and she was independent and I looked up to her. She was my mother and my father. She did what she had to do, masters’ degree, blahblahblah. Then she got married, then put her career and herself on the back burner for a man, had his kids and he just broke out on her. So misery loves company, and I didn’t like that, and I was neglected in the situation, so ever since then, I was like “You know what, I might do what I do, but–

Tyra: Did you become detached from your mother?

Ahmed: Yes, me and my mother didn’t get along. So I left at a young age and ever since then my attitude was like “[Fuck] women”…

Tyra: If you had a different childhood, do you think you’d be a different man?

Ahmed: I think so. I think all my friends that are cool with their mothers and respect their moms have a different outlook when it comes to dealing with women.

BIN-fucking-GO.

I’m going to post part 2 to this series later on tonight, where I discuss naturals, late bloomers, and their relationships with mothers, and what it all has to do with the madonna/whore complex.

Myths and Truths

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Date: 2006-04-18, 11:09PM PDT

Some rants and accumulated experience about women. Men in happy marriages or stable relationships don’t need to read this; neither do men who get laid every week (or even every month). The “truth” I’m putting out here is for all of those men who, like me, worship women and can’t figure out why they keep getting screwed over and dumped. The myths are things that I used to believe before I wised up.

MYTH: Women want love and affection. Women want to be treated well. If you treat a woman well, she’ll treat you well.

TRUTH: Young women want whatever other young women want. They’re herd creatures. If you lavish a woman with love and affection she’ll think you’re doing it because nobody else wants you (which may be true) and she’ll dump you. In fact, if you do anything that betrays that you’re a loser that other women won’t touch, she’ll dump you. Why? Because she wants to impress her friends with what a great catch she’s made, and if she thinks that they wouldn’t want you, then she doesn’t want you either.

There are only three exceptions to this rule. The first exception is psychos, otherwise known as “witches, bitches, and crazy ladies.” They’ll stay with you because nobody else wants them, or because you’re the only one who put up with their abuse. The second exception is women who like to “fix men up”: those women who like to take “broken” men and turn them into the man they want. These women are single because a mature man will recognize that these women don’t want him… they want to turn him into someone else. The third exception is that once in a long time you meet a woman who isn’t psycho, still wants to stay with you when she finds out that you’re not super stud, and doesn’t want to change you into someone else. This is the one you marry.

BITTER MYTH: Women are out for money.

TRUTH: Women are out for status and fun or for security, depending upon their age. A few women are out for cold cash, but not too many. Status-seeking women aren’t ready to settle down. They just wanna have fun, and they want their girlfriends to know it. They’re looking for a guy they can dangle in front of their friends and say, “Look what I got!” You don’t have to have money to be that guy, you just have to come across as desirable. Of course if you have money you don’t need to do anything else, but having no money isn’t the end of the world. The women who are out for security have had their wild fling and want to settle down. They want a guy who can provide a stable base for the future (and that includes finances).

All in all it’s sort of like what guys do (and women whine about endlessly): when you’re young you want some bright, bubbly thing with huge tits, a nice ass, and a trimmed bush who screams like a banshee in bed, although you’ll settle for much less; when you’re ready to get married you want a nice girl who isn’t going to break your balls. They’re usually different people unless you’re very, very lucky. Young women want bad boys who will show them a good time. When they’re ready to get married they want some guy who is going to be able to pay to keep them comfortable.

MYTH: Women are out for looks.

TRUTH: See above. Women are out for looks, after a fashion. A guy in good physical shape who wears decent-looking clothes is attractive because he looks after himself and probably isn’t a wimp or a whiner. She can convince her friends that he’s a “catch.” A guy who looks and smells like a laundry bin, or who can’t climb a few flights of stairs without a rest had better have some spectacular attribute to show off to her friends (like being a genius) or he’s not worth her time. Any guy can compensate for lack of looks or lack of money with showmanship. He doesn’t have to be a catch, just seem like one. All he has to do is make her friends think, “Damn, I wish I were going out with him instead of the loser I’m with.”

MYTH: I should find one woman I like who likes me, and stick with her through thick and thin.

TRUTH: This is the biggest mistake I ever made. I used to be loyal to whomever I was with, even when someone better came along. All that happened was that I missed out on some great opportunities while I hung on with losers that ended up dumping me anyway. Do this if the two of you are getting married; once you’ve tied the knot it’s a whole other can of worms. However, if you’re just dating, do exactly the opposite. In very subtle ways you have to let her know that although you like her, there are lots of other women out there and you still notice them. Glance at tits and legs. Smile at and chat with pretty ladies, even while she’s with you (you’re just being friendly, of course). This is the most important thing I’ve learned about dating in a decade. I even thought of dating WASP bitches again, so long as I could keep this in mind. Never, never let her know that she’s the only game in town. As soon as she believes that she’s your “everything,” she’ll start whining and bitching and making demands.

Think of it like buying a car. If you let the salesman know that this is your dream car, that you’ve stayed awake nights thinking about buying exactly this car, do you think the price will go down? Of course not! He’ll jack the price up as high as he thinks he can go and still have you buy it. If you tell your girl that you’ve dreamed all of your life of going out with someone like her, do you think she’ll smile and kiss you and things will go on as before? Of course not! She’ll realize that you’ll put up with more of her bad habits, and that she can put up with fewer of yours, and the bitching will start. She’ll try to make the relationship as comfortable for her as possible and still keep it going. Remember the car salesman? Remember the attitude that “this is a nice car, but there are hundreds of other great ones, including that one across the street”, even as your heart is thumping and you’re practically drooling? If you’re just dating, this is the attitude to take.

MYTH: Having a girlfriend / fianc?e / wife means being able to tell someone my problems.

TRUTH: Nobody gives a shit about your problems. Nobody ever will. I know that sounds harsh, but it’s the reality of being a man. Want to tell people about your problems? Get a sex change. Or join a men’s group; the flip side is that you have to listen to their problems, but it helps. I know of only two kinds of women who want to hear about your problems: ones with far more problems than you have, and ones who fancy themselves amateur psychiatrists and like “fixing” men. Neither is good company. Let’s face it: many women spend all day whining to their friends about how awful their lives are and listening to their neurotic friends responding in kind. The last thing they want to do is go out with you and hear more of the same.

To make matters worse, women simply don’t “get” many of men’s problems. Women have problems with things that don’t even bother us, but they expect us to be understanding or at least tolerant; we have problems with things that don’t even bother them, and no amount of explaining will cause the light to go on or elicit any sympathy.

So why not just commit hara-kiri now? Because it’s not that bad. You get over it. In particular, once you figure out how to handle women a lot of your problems seem smaller and more manageable.

MYTH: Having a girlfriend / fianc?e / wife means someone will finally understand me.

TRUTH: Understanding?true understanding?takes decades. If you spend most of your time with the love of your life trying to explain yourself, she will have nothing but contempt for you, for two reasons. First, because she doesn’t want to hear your whining (see above). Second, and more important, women want to maintain the self-delusion that they already understand men. Women everywhere claim that they understand men and that “men are simple creatures.” The truth is that women haven’t a clue where most men are coming from and furthermore they care only insofar as they want to control us. Nonetheless, they want to maintain the fiction that they have us figured out.

It’s a pride and status thing. A woman who doesn’t “understand” her man can’t control him, and a woman who can’t control her man is a loser. The more you try to explain yourself, the more complex and multi-dimensional you become (a.k.a. “difficult”), and the less she can claim to understand you.

Besides, most of the time you’re explaining yourself to her you’re really trying to figure yourself out. Go do it in a corner, hire a professional listener, or join a men’s group. She doesn’t want to hear it. If you master the art of keeping your problems to yourself she will complain bitterly about this. She will bitch and whine that you’re not open enough and that she has to drag things out of you. She will also secretly love this. It gives her one more thing to complain about to her friends.

MYTH: If only I could meet the right woman, my life would have meaning.

TRUTH: If your life doesn’t have meaning right now, when you’re single, then a relationship isn’t going to help. You’ll pile too much baggage on top of the delicate emotional bonds too early, and the whole thing will collapse like a house of cards. Want to see this in action? Watch women: they do this all the time. In particular, women who whine about men who can’t make a commitment are probably doing exactly this: looking to a man to make their life mean something. It doesn’t work.

The only way to have a happy life is to develop one for yourself, then leave an opening for someone else to come and share it with you. Neither of these two things is easy. In particular, it’s too easy once you’ve developed a life for yourself to end up with someone who was doing exactly what you were doing before?waiting for Prince Charming (or in your case Lady Love)?to come and rescue her life. People like this end up draining away all of that energy you’ve worked so hard to build up, leaving you exhausted and frustrated.

Take it from me: I waited for Lady Love for decades. Finally I gave up, got angry, got off my ass and tried to make a life for myself, and suddenly I was surrounded by women who wanted to date me. After a while I met someone who was very special to me and I married her. Now my life is about the same as before, but I have someone with whom to share it. As much as I prefer being with someone, I must tell you that having her with me doesn’t make my life any more or less meaningful. I’m pretty much where I was before, only now I have company, which is nice.

[P.S.: After two years she turned into one of those people who was waiting for her life to mean something, and she drained away all of my good energy. Oh well. Some things just don't turn out as planned, no matter how hard you try. Rats.]

MYTH: If I treat a woman well and listen to what she says, she’ll stop complaining

TRUTH: Women never stop complaining. For them, it’s a sport. Some complain more than others, but none of them will ever stop, any more than one day men will stop discussing football. Men have built civilizations, created law, invented husbandry (that’s keeping domestic animals by the way, not marriage; women invented marriage), built skyscrapers, invented cars, washing machines, antibiotics, toilets, computers, and microwave ovens, and generally dragged us out of caves and into condos. Don’t kid yourself: men did it all. If it were up to women we’d still be living in caves and dying at 20. I know that men did it all because I know why they did it: they hoped that it would stop women complaining. It didn’t.

If you listen to your girlfriend’s bitching and try to make everything better, you’ll suffer the same fate as all the men who came before: you’ll run yourself ragged, and at the end of it all she’ll still be bitching. If you ignore all but the most important complaints, she’ll bitch about that, too, but you’ll feel far better about your life.

MYTH: Men don’t listen to women because men don’t care about women.

TRUTH: Men ignore women because women normally have nothing worthwhile to say. This is not a condemnation of women, but rather a difference in what talking is for. This is one of the few areas where John Gray has something useful to say. Men mull things over, organize things in their heads, then speak. Men have to do this because they have to get things done, and if they blabbered all day long about nothing in particular then eventually other men would pay them no attention. Men talk to communicate ideas, negotiate compromises, and secure cooperation. Life and experience has taught men to be brief and pithy.

Women talk to organize their thoughts. It’s the difference between doing the math problem in your head and writing the answer at the top of the page, and scribbling all over the page in order to arrive at the answer in the bottom corner. Women want men to listen to them. Women want men to follow along as they scribble all over the page, not just wait for the answer. Quite frankly, who cares? As I mentioned above, there are lots of things that women don’t want to hear from men. If you want to talk about these things, you’ll have to find some other men who want to listen, because she sure as hell won’t. If she wants to attach her mouth to her brain and vocalize all of her mental processes then she should find someone who cares to listen, in other words another woman.

MYTH: She said she loves me. She must think I’m really special.

TRUTH: When women say, “I love you” it can mean almost anything. “I want to spend the rest of my life with you,” “I’m desperate to get married and have babies and you’re the best thing I’ve come across so far,” “You’re better than the last jerk I went out with,” “You’re the best guy I’ve come across this week,” “All my girlfriends are in love and I want to be too,” “I have a million problems and I want you to feel obliged to listen to them,” “I want another date and I want you to feel like you have to ask me out again,” “It’s time I put my foot down and started controlling you,” and any number of other things. OK, most women think they mean it when they say, “I love you.” However, remember the old saying, “It’s a woman’s prerogative to change her mind”? She loves you this minute. Maybe today. Maybe this week. Maybe even this month. However, this says nothing about how she will feel next month, next week, or tomorrow.

One of the biggest problems men like me have is that when we say, “I love you” to a woman we want to really mean it. Like “I love you forever.” Men don’t understand that a woman can say, “I love you forever” and change her mind next week. All she does is convinces herself that in hindsight, and despite everything you’ve ever said or done, you never really loved her, so all the times she said, “I love you” didn’t really count. You have to learn to use the same language. Go ahead and say, “I love you,” but inside your head say, “I love you right now. Tomorrow may be a different story.” When you break up and she screams that you said you loved her, tell her that you did, but she did this and that and now you don’t love her any more. When women say, “I love you” they aren’t promising eternal devotion, so why should you be? One day you’ll meet a woman who says, “I love you” and it’ll really hit home. You’ll test her love a bit and it will hold up. That’s the one you marry.

MYTH: Women understand relationships; men don’t.

TRUTH: This myth is perpetuated by women, pussy-whipped men, and psychiatrists. If women truly understood relationships… that is, if they understood relationships with men… then we wouldn’t have a 45% divorce rate. Maybe back in the pioneer days women understood relationships. These days, they have coffee with their girlfriends, talk about “men”, examine and dissect relationships, study interpersonal dynamics, talk, talk, talk about what works and what doesn’t, then go out and perfectly screw up their next relationship. I know. I’ve watched it happen from the sidelines.

Women spend more time analyzing relationships; they talk about them incessantly, and in doing so discover more truths than men know. However, all of this talk in a vacuum also means that their heads are filled with more bullshit and myth than are men’s. The combination of superior insight and copious nonsense puts them right back where we are. Men tend to see what’s going on in a relationship more clearly, but have no idea how to express what they see or what to do about it. Women would probably know what to do about it if they could only see it as it truly is, instead of through a fog of preconception.

The other big difference between the sexes is that women are absolutely certain that they know what is going on, whereas men make no such claim. The last man who claimed to have his own radical theories about relationships was Freud, and nobody pays any attention to him any more. It is women’s ideas about relationships and why they do or don’t work that have been imported lock, stock, and barrel into the field of psychiatry. Most male therapists you’ll meet are basically honorary women with university degrees, and as such they don’t really understand relationships either.

MYTH: Women are fairer and more even-handed than men

TRUTH: Nothing could be further from the truth. Traditionally men have favoured the same rules for everyone: “He who lives by the sword dies by the sword.” Women on the other hand make up the rules as they go along. Although women’s approach is patently unfair, it was valuable when they had to be the ones to point out that the rules needed to be changed, or that the rules should be bent in some cases. Back then they did this for the good of everyone. These days men still feel bound by rules, but women are in a conflict of interest. They still keep watch over the rules and break them as they always have, but now they modify and break the rules in their own favour.

Men’s justice is often harsh, but it’s fair. Women’s justice is arbitrary and these days often self-serving. (Liberal “situational ethics” are essentially the same as women’s ethics.) You’ll find this out quickly in a relationship. The joke going around about “The Rules” and how women change them all the time isn’t such a joke. It’s a documentary. If you doubt this, think of it this way. A man caught breaking or bending the rules of good behaviour will become either defensive or repentant; his wife will beat him over the head with his transgression for months, if not years. A woman caught modifying the rules of good behaviour to suit herself will giggle and freely admit it. She thinks it’s a game.

MYTH: Women do a lot for the relationship; men do a lot for themselves

TRUTH: My ex-girlfriend invented a little ditty that made her puff up with smug, self-satisfied pride. It went like this, “Women think of ‘we’; men think of ‘me’.” OK, so e.e. cummings she wasn’t. The point is that she actually believed this, and a lot of other women do, too. She thought that she was living and breathing our “relationship,” while I was just kind of hanging around and taking up space. Meanwhile, I drove her everywhere (she couldn’t drive), I spent hours making her gifts and writing her notes, and I spent hours thinking about what was going on with us and where we were going.

The truth of the matter is that women don’t think of ‘we’ any more or less often than men do. Women think of their own needs most of the time, too. The difference is that women redefine their own needs as being those of “the relationship”. For example, when a man needs to talk to his belle about something, he says, “I need to talk to you.” When a woman needs to talk to her beau about something, she says, “We need to talk.” Notice the difference? Suddenly what she needs becomes what we need. Women do this all the time, and then pout and whine that they work so hard at the relationship and you don’t. In fact they’re just playing with words.

The other truth is that there are two relationships: the one you’re really in?the one that exists between you and her?and the one in her head. Remember how women are always talking and theorizing about “relationships”? Well, much of what she defines as “our relationship” is really just a collection of theories and prejudices from past conversations with her girlfriends, and has nothing to do with what’s going on between the two of you. In that sense, even if she is doing more for “the relationship,” it isn’t necessarily anything that concerns her real relationship with you.

MYTH: Women are more involved in the relationship; men are more aloof.

TRUTH: Finally one that’s true. The false part is the assumption that being deeply involved in the relationship is always a good thing, and that aloofness is fatal to relationships. If you doubt this, look around you and find a couple in which both people do little else but sit around with each other and talk, and watch how fast the relationship blows itself apart. Every relationship has to have a balance between looking inward and looking outward. Most women who complain that their men don’t pay enough attention to “the relationship” aren’t seeing the relationship clearly and/or are buried in “the relationship” up to their necks and so are creating more problems than they solve. Recently I was skimming a book by Dr. Laura and saw a chapter that gets this one right. Where is it written that when a man wants to go back to college and a woman wants to get married, and she gets angry that he’s “not thinking of the relationship” that she’s automatically right? Maybe the right thing to do at that moment is for both of them to go back to college for a couple of years. Women confuse obsessing about “the relationship” with healthy involvement, particularly considering that half the time they’re seeing stuff that isn’t even there. Sometimes your relationship needs more attention than you’re giving it; other times she’s smothering it. The assumption that more involvement equals more love simply isn’t true.

MYTH: When she says no, she means no (so why am I so confused)?

TRUTH: Nobody means no every time they say “no.” Think about it: do you? You’ve never said no when you were too shy to say yes? You’ve never said no because you were nervous, didn’t know what you were getting into, and didn’t really have time to think about your answer? You’ve never said no because you thought that was the right thing to do even though you really wanted to say yes? You’ve never said no and then changed your mind? You’ve never said no as a joke, just to get a rise out of someone, when you really meant yes?

I’ve done all of these things at one time or another; most men I know have, and most women I know have as well. However, for men there’s a catch. If she’s prone to saying no when she really means yes, then you should dump her. Immediately. Especially if she’s told you in no uncertain terms “no” and then starts dropping huge hints that you’re supposed to ignore this and go for it anyway. Dump the bitch. This is just far too dangerous. If you doubt this, imagine sitting in court, accused of rape. “Did she tell you no, Mr. Smith?” “Yeah, but afterward she tried to rip my pants off, then stripped naked and sat on my face!” “But did she say no, Mr. Smith?” “Umm… yes she did.” “Case closed.”

I once went out with a woman who told me, on our second date, that there was no way she would sleep with me, that her ex-boyfriend was coming to visit and that it would be “too complicated” if she were sleeping with me when he came to stay. On our third date she did everything to let me know that she wanted me, including lying on my bed, making comments about removing her clothes for a nude massage. Spooked, I drove her home, dropped her off, and never went out with her again. I consider it one of the smartest things I’ve done in my dating life. (Incidentally, apparently so does she. Every time I meet her she asks why I don’t call her any more.)

MYTH: Women are social geniuses; all women get along well with each other, while men just fight

TRUTH: I lived in a mixed-sex dorm for two years in university where each floor was segregated by sex. It alternated: one floor men, one floor women, one floor men, etc. A few nearby residences were completely mixed. A couple of the men’s floors looked much the worse for wear at the end of the year. You know, men are so destructive. The women’s floors all looked perfect. All the girls were smiling and friendly. Talk to any of them, however, and they’d tell you that they hated living on an all-female floor, and every last damned one of them was moving to the mixed dorms the very next year, and not with each other. According to them, underneath the tidy rooms and smiles were claws and forked tongues. Every day was a quiet, mannerly, pitched social battle. The men, on the other hand, got along just fine with only a few exceptions. Most of us were quite happy where we were, the only complaint being that we didn’t see the ladies enough.

One thing that is true along the lines of this myth is that any woman will defend another woman against a man, even a woman that she doesn’t know. Start bad-mouthing women, even a particular woman that isn’t known to “present company,” and you’ll find women defending her even though they have no idea what’s going on. If anyone?a woman or another man?verbally attacks a man, other men will not jump in and defend him. Why? Men assume that other men can look after themselves and, after all, they’re competition. Women assume that an attack on one woman is an attack on all women.

BITTER MYTH: Women are all the same.

TRUTH: Women are not all the same, and in particular women change with age. A woman who wouldn’t give you a second look at 15 may be asking you out at 35. In part this is the dreaded “biological clock” at work, but in part it’s also changing priorities. At 15 she wants to impress all of her friends with her “catch” and she is starting to learn to control men. She wants variety and excitement. At 25 she wants to have fun with no strings attached and wants to hone her controlling skills. She wants more stability but she doesn’t want Ward Cleaver or Bill Gates. At 35 she realizes that the fun days are over and it’s time to settle down and get serious.

Boring, nerdy guys who were dog meat at 15 can be studs at 35. The guys grow up and mature, they learn to need women less, and they settle into a life of resigned solitude, which means that they cheer up because they’re no longer striving for something they can’t have. The field narrows, and there are fewer single guys with no divorce history. Finally, her priorities have changed. She’s no longer impressed by “bad boys” on motorcycles with a few convictions for petty crime. She knows that her friends aren’t impressed by flashy, fast-living rogues any longer, any more than they’re still impressed by fashions from Suzy Creamcheese. She’s more interested in building a nest than impressing her friends anyway (and she knows that building a nest is what will impress them). So, just because you can’t get anywhere now doesn’t mean that your whole life will be a write-off. Take a clue from me: I never had a single date in high school. I had one girlfriend for a year in University. Ten years later I was beating women off with a stick.

Like it or not, the tendency to stereotype is a part of human nature, and my view is that if a behavior or biological response is part of our human nature, it must be because it traditionally gave people an evolutionary advantage at some point in human history. When we say that a trait gave us an evolutionary advantage, what we’re saying is that it satisfied our two fundamental biological drives: the drive for self-preservation and the drive to spread genes through reproduction.

Take gossip for example. On the surface it may seem like a petty and ugly part of our human nature with little to no redeeming qualities. But there are many plausible theories out there that convincingly suggest the opposite, that the tendency to gossip is a tool that gives humans a huge evolutionary advantage over those who never gossip. Robin Dunbar in his book Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language discusses the development of language and the evolutionary benefits of gossip, for example. According to Dunbar, in the days before credit reports and background checks, gossip traditionally benefited communities by spreading the word about dangerous and untrustworthy people. If you were unreliable, a thief or violent, word spread around about you and people avoided you. In this way gossip satisfied the self-preservation drive. Also, say a woman was a slut. As a man looking to carry your genes into the next generation, you would have avoided marrying a slut at all costs because in the days before DNA tests and reliable birth control, a slut can easily get pregnant by another man and tell you the baby is yours. Now you’re paying for another man’s child and not spreading your genes. So by telling you about someone’s sexual behavior, gossip helped a man with his drive to reproduce.  Those who didn’t engage in spreading or hearing gossip probably had their genes weeded out out of existence eventually.

It’s also human nature for people to be more critical of a woman for being promiscuous and unfaithful than for a man. As I explained in this earlier post, that’s because if a man slept around and impregnated several women, it optimized the drive to reproduce in two ways. First, one man sleeping with multiple women led to multiple pregnancies whereas one woman sleeping with multiple men still only led to one pregnancy. That’s an inefficient allocation of resources. Second, if one man slept with multiple women, you’d know who the father is and who the mother is in each pregnancy. If a woman slept with multiple men, especially in the days before DNA testing and reliable birth control, you wouldn’t know which man was the father. This is an obstacle in a man’s drive to reproduce and spread genes. It’s for these reasons (and others) that we still tend to be more critical of women for promiscuity than men.

For a man, on the other hand, it’s a worse blow to his reputation to not be a provider than it is to be promiscuous. That’s why most negative gossip about men revolves around being cheap, being a deadbeat dad, and being chronically unemployed or lazy. Traditionally, the danger to women when men slept around wasn’t a threat to the drive to reproduce and spread genes. As we’ve seen, men sleeping around actually optimizes that goal. The threat to a woman when men slept around was to the other drive, the drive for self-preservation, because that man may choose to take better care of the other women and her children and send a majority of his resources their way instead. In evolutionary terms, a hardworking and responsible polygamous man who takes care of all his women and children is preferable to a lazy and irresponsible monogamous man who doesn’t take care of his one family. So when you look at human nature in evolutionary terms and focus on the two drives, the natural tendency human beings have to gossip about women’s sluttiness and men’s ambition and finances make perfect sense.

It also works in reverse, if good gossip is spread about you, it increases your reputation which in turn increases your chances of survival and reproduction. This gives people an incentive to manage their reputations, follow the rules and conform to societal norms, hence another benefit gossip provides to a community.

Take something even less obvious, like the natural urge we have to tickle people, and the built-in response we have of laughing when being tickled. It may seem like a stretch, but even tickling satisfies the two drives, as seen in this NY Times article:

Tickling and laughter are universal among humans and can even be found among chimpanzees, suggesting that they serve some serious evolutionary purpose. Researchers agree that tickling plays an important role in the bonding of infants and parents. Mother tickles baby. Baby laughs and smiles. Mother laughs and smiles. They endear themselves to each other to their mutual evolutionary advantage.

But Dr. Glenn Weisfeld, a human ethologist at Wayne State University in Detroit, suggests that tickling may do much more. Tickling, he maintains, is an educational activity.

”The structures of the body that are most vulnerable to tickling are also the ones that are most vulnerable to attack,” Dr. Weisfeld said. ”We may be responsive to tickling because it gives us practice in defending ourselves.” Children laugh, he said, to encourage adults to continue this tickle schooling, in what are typically safe, practice play attacks.

These examples reinforce the view that human nature is a collection of instinctive responses and learned behaviors that give us an evolutionary advantage by helping us either survive or reproduce. Gossip helps people avoid dangerous, unreliable and untrustworthy people. By helping us socially fit in and form bonds, laughing can help us in our drives to reproduce and spread genes. By teaching us to protect vital areas, tickling can help us with self-preservation.  And the list goes on and on.

So if stereotyping is a part of human nature, what evolutionary advantages does it give us? And how does it satisfy the two primal drives of self-preservation and spreading genes through reproduction? We’ll get into that in part 2.

Recommended Reading:

• I first encountered the two human drives in reading a book by the pickup artist Mystery, The Mystery Method: How to Get Beautiful Women Into Bed. Pickup artists and their books often get a bad rap as being manipulative or just plain bunk, but I find them to have a lot of sound theories about evolutionary psychology in general and gender relations in particular. Mystery was the subject of the recent VH-1 show The Pickup Artist. I find his social theories to be pretty sound overall.
• This book is a great resource on the evolution and advantage of language in general and gossip in particular.
• This book is an excellent starting point for learning about evolutionary psychology, and I highly recommend it. It’s written in a really easy-breezy style and is extremely readable and layperson friendly.

Click here for Part 2 of this post.

The black community in general has a high illegitimacy rate.  And I bet if you isolated the illegitimacy rates to just the ghetto, the percentage of single mother homes would be even higher. As a result, the ghetto tends to be a very matriarchal community. There aren’t many men, and most of the men you do find tend to be young. As Tariq Nasheed says in his book The Mack Within, you hardly see older men in the hood. This is because when most guys get past a certain age in the hood, they have either worked their way out, gone to jail, entered the military or died from violence or drugs.  The few old men you do still see in the hood tend to be burnouts.  So not only do young ghetto guys lack fathers to instruct them in how to be men, but they also lack older male authority figures outside their family to look up to (most teachers are female too) in their neighborhood.

Like most young men, they have testosterone surges making them aggressive and competitive.  However they don’t have reliable older men to teach them how to channel this testosterone-fueled aggression positively, and this creates an insecurity in their male identity and causes them to create their own hyperexaggerated ideal of what a man should be. Supermacho, obnoxious, fearless to the point of knuckleheaded, overaggressive…basically the parody of manhood we see in gangster rap. It’s overcompensation to the worst degree.

But even though they are doing their best to be supernigga, they still end up doing things in a feminine way because feminine influences are most of what they know.  Most of their role models and involved family members are women, and the few men in their lives were likely raised by only women too. And it shows in how they handle conflict: grudges are held forever, they never know how to let anything slide, they think primarily with emotion and are prone to outbursts, drama and confrontation and most importantly, they don’t know how to choose their battles.

True male behavior isn’t being a drama queen, being highly prone to emotional outbursts and holding onto grudges; true male behavior is picking your battles, knowing when to fight and when to let things slide, analyzing things calmly and logically and having discipline over your moods and emotions and exercising emotional restraint. There are times when it’s acceptable to lose your shit and times when it’s not.  These are things that a true mature male influence teaches you, and such influences have almost disappeared completely from the hood.

A chick in the hood can get away with all the drama queen meltdowns and public displays of emotion and confrontation because most people, guys and girls, don’t feel as threatened by a woman and are more likely to let her just yap without serious repercussions. Or at worst just argue back and never let it escalate to a physical level (although it does happen on occasion). When guys are the ones melting down and getting overly emotional and confrontational, it’s a lot scarier and it invites a much more serious retaliation, because now you have the extra ingredients of male size. more muscle and a whole lot of testosterone, which means escalation into serious, possibly fatal, violence is a real possibility. That’s why a society of men learning to manage conflict and emotions from women is a disaster waiting to happen, because what’s acceptable for a woman in this case can get a young man arrested or killed.

Sure a lot of male tendencies are going to show on the surface. These guys are young and are bursting with testosterone after all. But look at a lot of the other behaviors that are there also. Sitting on the stoop getting their hair braided by other girls. Long t-shirts that go down to the kneecaps and look like skirts. Colorful clothes. Obsession with fashion, shopping, shoes and accessorizing. Love of jewelry. Grooming obsessions that would put metrosexuals to shame. The more you think about it, the more you’ll notice and come up with your own examples.

Recommended Reading:

• Don’t let the cover of Tariq Nasheed’s The Mack Within fool you, this book drops some serious knowledge:
• Also of interest is his brutally frank dating advice book for women Play or Be Played: What Every Female Should Know About Men, Dating, and Relationships, which I highly recommend: