Funny - I’ve been seeing this exact problem for years and worry about what lies in store for my son, who turns 18 in a couple weeks. Fortunately my husband (his stepdad of 10 years) is an outstanding example of a “real” man: strong, brave, skilled, gentle and keeper of his own counsel. I also have four terrific brothers.
Still, the deficits you describe are so conspicuous in the younger generation, that a couple of months ago I approached three male friends (mid 60s) to form a “council of wise men” to do exactly what you describe - create mentoring teams for young men, with concrete objectives to build skills and resilience and courage. I told them my goal is simply to strike a match - this is not something I ought to be a part of. One of them asked “why not?” I just laughed. Of course not.
Don’t give up guys. Most women definitely prefer masculine men. I think the wealthy part is overrated (and a form of compensation for missing virtue). The big things are inner strength, bravery and intelligence.
You may never know how much your words are changing lives and inspiring action here and now. You are not writing for a paid audience, but nor are you throwing words into the wind.
One of the best musicians I know, Dave Carter, wrote one of the best songs I ever heard, "When I Go." Words, and true meaning, are never lost. He changed my life.
Real women do prefer masculine men and while the poisons in our food and drugs have been slaying men's testosterone, it has also been slaying women's estrogen for many years along with politically correct bull manure! Changing the truth to a lie is not a solution. Thank you for confirming what I have been ruminating on for several years and for.making me think deeper.
All I can say is, fucking fantastic and amen! The good news is, I think the cultural zeitgeist is shifting. "Nothing argues like success..." Nothing, that is, except catastrophic failure. And few failures have been as spectacularly catastrophic as woke feminism and critical gender theory and all the madness that it has unleashed on our culture. Great fucking essay, like always!
When the dust settles, our successor civilization will look back on this era the way we regard late Roman decadence: as a warning from history that's too fucked up to be fully believed.
My father left when I was 13 and I was raised by my mother and the streets. To put it bluntly, I was a punk. But I was blessed to have two older men, one a former marine and one a former gang member, who tore me down and built me up on a regular basis. I won't say they were like a father to me, more like a demanding older brother. They taught me what it meant to be a man by making me BE a man. No excuses ever, and even worse was a reason. That was just an excuse you conned yourself into believing. Pushing, finding your limits and then pushing more, and laughing when you failed. But respect when you didn't.
I'm 58 now, married to the same woman for 38 years, with eleven children, nine boys and two girls. I run my own business and employ 8-10 guys. Both are gone now but I want to say thank you, Steve and Kamau. The world needs more of you.
Well, I made my guardian angel punch the clock for overtime, that's for sure. I'm blessed, but that just means I have more to repay. Love your stuff, btw.
Not sure what you mean. I met my wife when I was sixteen, took her out on our first date when I was eighteen, and married her when I was twenty. We haven't had our 38th anniversary yet but it's right around the corner so I just rounded up. 😁
😂 Here ↓↓ is the whole straightforward meaning, ie what shows up with mouse hovering over your handle 🙂
🗨 57, male, married 36 years to my high school sweetheart and most beautiful woman on the planet. Self employed father of 11, grandfather of 20 and counting.
Real men make a difference and I will always be grateful to them. I like the phrase "Tonic Masculinity" to counter toxic masculinity. If I had to boil tonic manhood down to one word, I'd say, "Duty". I've never read your stack but I'll check it out. And don't despair, lol, men are out here. I'm raising nine solid men and have twenty grandchildren and counting.
Haha, thanks. I only have a sister but my wife also has nine brothers. The first time I went to her house for supper and to meet her parents, I walked into the dining room and there was a huge table with about twenty place settings. I said, "Are you expecting company?" She said with a smile, "No, just you."
Pffft to 'duty' unless it's our God-given duty to be creators of good. Too much of the 'duty', as sold by manipulators with a hidden agenda, is destructive to a man's creative spirit. And there are myriad ways to create good things so that men of every personality type can make a contribution.
My answer, in no particular order: creation, conquest, building, sheltering, enduring, planning, advising, providing. Not an exclusive list, that's just off the top of my head.
I agree, but I really wanted to hear his list of duties since he didn't like my definition of manhood as duty. I'm sure, upon examination, his list would include the most important things in his life.
PS congrats on the numbers. Large families are counter-cultural but can bring SO MUCH joy into ones life as one matures. My parents had 4 kids, now have 19 grandkids and 12 great grandkids with many more to come. My in-laws had 10 kids, now have 30 grandkids and it's early days on that side.
Anyway my mum's 2 brothers only wanted one kid each. One has one grandkid and the other none yet. As their cohort friends die off they seem more and more alone where as my folks have lost a lot of their same age friends too but there is always things going on in our wider family that they are invited into and places where they can still both give of their knowledge and/or skills and receive love and affection. The difference in life purpose and motivation is quite stunning.
Some useful points for those exploring the Manosphere, from someone who was not a natural Alpha but is now happily married.
1. You don't have to be an ass to be an Alpha. Bad boys are not the only ones who get hot chicks. Responsible squares are also successful in the Market. See why below.
2. Think in evolutionary terms. Human females are especially weak compared to males because our babies are large. And then said babies are slow to mature. A human female with toddler in tow is necessarily dependent. The only question is whether it will be husband, government, village, or extended family. This leads to several instincts into what constitutes a desireable man:
2a. Physically powerful. Duh. The physically powerful male can provide protection.
2b. Politically powerful. Leadership, even if one is an aging fat slob, is still an attractor. Indeed, even the illusion of leadership, such as being the lead singer in a band or a speaker at a conference, is a signal.
2c. Societal status. A man who is valued by the society is a source of protection even if said man is not a leader. Women love a man in uniform for a reason.
2d. Dependability. Power/status is nothing if a man will not follow through and use his protective ability. There is merit in being a reliable square.
2e. Caring. The man who truly cares will be a source of protection as well. A wimp who cares can provide more protection than a psychopathic powermonger. Sensitive New Age Guys can get a date for this reason.
Put these factors together and you can derive why libertarian men struggle to get a date. Combine the fact that most are cerebral non-athletes, with outsider status (whining about Government), and strong signals of non-commitment (freedom! non-altruism!)
For liberty to propagate, freedom lovers must embrace responsibility. To wean females from Big Government requires men to do their jobs. Take responsibility.
To be the ultimate man, read the New Testament. The True Man should lead but also care and sacrifice himself for those he leads.
🗨 Freedom is in danger of degenerating into mere arbitrariness unless it is lived in terms of responsibleness. That is why I recommend that the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast. ~~Viktor Frankl
Effing amusing, and even insightful, but definitely a good read.
I have a reference point that few men could have access to. I live within a culture that has understood gender roles for around 40,000 years. Men and boys socialise together and hunt together. Women, young girls and infants socialise and hunt together. In families, all are together. It is that simple.
Until forty years ago, nobody here had ever heard of homosexuality. In 1973, after a young bloke had witnessed a gay coupling, nobody believed his narrative. Sixty people of three generations sat around a camp fire and gasped in incredulity when I confirmed his story, then followed hilarity and ribald jokes as everone attempted to visualise such a spectacle. Yet homosexial activists insist every human community has experienced homosexuality. My research suggests the Australian Aboriginal experience paralelled that of Inuit and Kung.
I draw no conclusion because I have no interest in this issue. As a young man working in the entertainment industry, I knew plenty of what was then known as 'camp' people. Some were good company but most were neurotic, dishonest, rationalising inadequates. As far as my own maleness was concerned, it was simply never an issue. Likewise women.
Looking back, I see social change engineered by a malelevant media and, in Australia, when I finally commenced researching destructive change, the names Murdoch, Rockefeller, and Rothschild were up there in lights. This has always been about the destruction of Family, culture, values and, eventually, the elimination of national ssovereignty preparatory to imposing the New World Order.
Women were the primary targets. They were manipulated to wage war against men because in all cultures, men carry the value systems. Women are universally adaptable. Watch any two cultures come together and, even if there is no common language, women establish relationships. It's what they do. Men continue to eye each other off suspiciously. It's part of who we are and what we are. Wisely, the French gave up analysing and concluded "Vive la difference".
The sad aspect of this is that at 80, I have no prospect of finding a real woman. The globalist elite have done an excellent job of destroying them. They can no longer see their own injuries.
Fascinating comment. I'm curious, has there been an effort in Australia to retcon Aboriginal culture as gay-friendly, the way Canadian academic queer activists have tried to retcon Native culture as gay-friendly by adopting the made-up term 'two spirit' in the rainbow alphabet soup?
Yes, John. An aggressive team of homosexuals visited the Tiwi people and told them it was mandatory to accept homosexuality. The ABC and SBS (govt and NGO channels) strongly favour gay 'Aborigines', who invariably are cultural admixtures. School teachers proselytise similar ideas.
I think that I can answer that. The ABC and SBS (the Australian versions of the BBC) do appear to have a thing for camp or gender fluid Aborigines. I stopped watching TV a while ago but definitely got this impression. My first take is that indigenous LGBT are possibly perceived as potentially less violent and easier to patronise. This is not stated openly, but it is kind of understood. The new Australian norms re race are shot through with condescension and weirdness.
"At the top of government, our media and the civil service and sit men - it's usually men - whose core skill is talking fast, writing well, and endeavouring to imbue the purest wind with substance."
I dispute the 'writing well' part. Rather, their primary skill is hypnosis through stultifying boredom and impenetrable jargon.
You assess writing from the perspective of someone who values clarity. Bureaucrats value the obscurity needed to conceal agency, interest and motive. They also value the ability to persuade and to maintain the party line.
John, you would not have lasted a minute in any bureaucracy. Whatever your present situation...consider yourself truly blessed.
This. This is the way you do it. Thanks, man. This, this is what women want - they just don't know it 'cause too many haven't had real men for dad's either.
Humdeedee! This is an excellent point. Many, such as myself, had NO father. Or at best, one that you know is there but lives as a ghost haunting your life in increments. Much can be said for the wounds that having an absent father causes girls, but I will leave that for better writers like John Carter. On another note, I am 60 years young and glorious ly woman. Not a cis gender, whatever the fu#k that is. But it was not an easy road to discover who I am. I'll be damned to let these idiots of today tell me a man can be a woman or blur the lines. Peace!
An absent father is one of the worst things for children, regardless of sex. There's a real tendency for them to go off the rails. However, I wouldn't presume to comment too much on how this affects women specifically; not being a woman myself, I'm not sure what insights I could really provide. That's why I pointed to Megha's excellent and insightful post.
When I was in college in 1975, I had a girlfriend that was learing how to be a feminist. I spent a lot of time at her apartment with her and her two feminist roommates. One had a boyfriend that was a "feminist," a wimpy type let's say. One day a friend of mine stopped by. He was of the handsome/stud/real man variety (hopefully that description does not make me gay).
The girl with the "feminist" boyfriend's eyes lit up when my friend entered the room. I never saw her look at her boyfriend that way. At that point I realized that the feminism thing was a lot of hooey, as someone like Bogart would have said. Back then the term "male chauvinist" was the term for what morphed into "toxic male." Both were and are the preferred option to females looking for the genuine article.
Bravo!!! I laughed my ass off, was on the edge of my seat screaming FUCK YES so many times! As a very real 48 year old woman who has been single against my will for 7 years. I have been out here in the dating trenches wondering where all the real complicated gritty men are. I gave up trying!
I love your call to action and I will think seriously about how I could do my part to raise up more awesome complicated juicy women too. Challenge accepted!
To my credit, I have been fighting this nonsense for a long time and took a bullet for the men in my creative community in 2017 when the SJWs started destroying the same guys who helped build the underground cabaret scene right alongside us for over a decade. All that got me canceled and ruined my career. I’ve been trying to rebuild my life ever since. Sadly the bullies still are dominating the playground, but this article gives me hope that could change!
Apr 9, 2023·edited Apr 9, 2023Liked by John Carter
😂😂😂 Omg, so true. Your comment made me laugh so much. Trying to find a grown up man in one's 40ies (or any age really) is a tragicomedy. Anyone seen dating site profiles recently?
I feel like it's the sense of pointlessness, the ennui, that is causing both men and women to behave in strange and unnatural ways. The societal focus my whole life (I'm 52) was that Religion was Wrong, the Planet is Gonna Die, Having Children is Selfish, Patriotism to Country is Evil, Affinity to your Clan is Racist, and also, You're Never Going to be Rich so Vote for Bernie. So, what else is there to do? People spend their efforts banning plastic straws and trying to force everyone to be nicer to the mentally ill.
As father to some young adult men I can attest to the fact that these boys are looking for the male elders and the wolf pack with a purpose to express the maleness that they know they need to be.
You've inspired me to be even more purposeful in this respect, as one of the elders, as we reclaim what's been stolen in the last 3 seconds of human history from both males and females.
Would love to hear about some of your pragmatic efforts in this regard when you return to the topic down the line.
I've been so let down. This is just more devastating red pill (in the original sense; I didn't know about redpillers). The bastard top dogs of the world have deliberately engineered all this, and the “pandemic” and all the theatre accompanying it is the beginning of their endgame.
It's the old cycle. We are surrounded by weak men, and at the beginning of hard times. It's only a blackpill if you don't want those hard times to harden you.
Unpopular take: ban and shame all pornography. Just do it. You know, like every sane country in the world does (except the West), and every country in history has done. Why have we fallen so far that people can't wrap their heads around this simple concept?
In principle I agree, although I'm not sure it's possible in practice as the Internet makes it extremely difficult to ban things. The only practical solution might be to attach a huge social stigma to the consumption of porn.
Yes, but the two go together: if you need to use VPNs, you mom's ID, and some crazy darknet tools to get to porn, this automatically sends a strong message that society won't have it, it's bad, and you shouldn't do it. Porn has been around forever and everywhere, but there's a huge difference between society basically saying "cool, every 10 year old can have it, let's not be prude here" or one that bans it completely from all media and make you feel like a pathetic little pervert if you still go for it.
That's an excellent point: bans not as a primary means of removing a pernicious influence, but as reinforcement for social mores. Some day, perhaps, we'll be in a position to do so. Until then movements like nofap will need to do the preparatory work of stigmatization and weening the many, many addicted off of porn.
No, the idea that government regulation for the purposes of social engineering is morally acceptable or effective is largely responsible for the decline of our civilization. That said, an argument could be made that government regulation contributed to this particular issue somehow. I don't know. I do know the government was instrumental in fomenting the opioid epidemic in the US, but it is dumb luck that I know how that happened.
The porn epidemic didn't get bad until it was technologically enabled. However, legal decisions in the 70s that rescinded obscenity laws due to a rather dubious 1A argument created the permissive regulatory framework that enabled the development of the porn industry, and the proliferation of porn then normalized its use. So the government's choice of what and how to regulate absolutely had an impact.
I guess my confusion comes from the fact that criminalizing something aould be seen as a form of regulation/"social engineering" as well, so the question simply becomes "what kind of regulation" rather than regulation/non-regulation.
However, perhaps we can reframe it: what has been done is "decriminalize" with the promise of "regulation". Same argument always: decriminalize, otherwise it's just unregulated, so that we can regulate...
"that femininity draws more on biology, and less on social conditioning"
You lost me here. Maybe it's generational. But we had to sit down, shut up, cross our legs just so, do housework, be a lady, & play stupid so boys won't feel bad.
Foot binding, girdles, high heels, are socialized biology. "Stays" that preceded girdles forced internal organs out of position. Stays & girdles made it impossible to breathe deeply, correctly.
High heels wreck your feet & back.They literally crippled girls & women to force dependency...er... "femininity."
My best neighborhood friend, oldest of 6 kids, raised her 5 younger siblings while her mother sat sunning herself in the back yard. By the time she was out of high school she had already been a mother for more than a decade. That wasn't biology. That was training.
What is a woman? An adult, female human.
What is a man? An adult, male human.
What is the problem? We are no longer adults. We've stopped growing up due to bad socialization & a conditioned crappy culture & we've been physically damaged by the chemical replacements for food.
And none of us, male or female, evolved to sit around all day & consume.
As I said - it's not so hard and fast as that. Obviously there are biological and socialized elements to both.
However, a simple comparison. In most cultures through history, a girl became a woman when she had her first menses. I'm not arguing for that standard, merely that the standard was mainly biological, historically. Whereas for males, one was generally required to leave the home, enter the world of men, and be tested. To destruction if necessary. Failure was a very real possibility; not all boys would become men; but most maidens would become women.
Agreed 100% that in both cases the basic problem is socially enabled neoteny.
Incase some readers wondered what I meant by 'most women can't see their own injuries', here is the classic example... brainwashed into faux humanity. Bloody sad, mate.
I disagree lady, there are a lot of articles that show that stays, girdles and corsets were not uncomfortable at all, in fact even men used them in the 1800' and it was used for doing sports!!!!
Also feminity has its social elements, but it is much more biological than masculinity, women don't have to go through a violent or bloody ritual like men did in the years of yore.
Maybe some women wore it in a way that was not correct and that caused pain (as it was yours, I am sorry it was painful), but my point is that that was not the norm, at least that is what most articles I have read about corsets and similar underwears say. I have seen women using heels and it seems sort of uncomfortable. I mean I have read some men used it for theraupetic or deportive so probably they used it correctly otherwise it could defeat the purpose they were made for (in men).
I'm definitely going to be sharing this with people I know in the men's movement. I love the insights and courage, and kept laughing out loud. So much rich material here, I hesitate to comment on any of it for fear of slighting the rest. Maybe I'll write a full post on it. One crucial insight came at the end: you said, "There needs to be a point" and "It needs to matter." We are all familiar with the vacuity of those get-togethers with the guys that are just about consuming something. Working on hobbies together is a little better, but still far from satisfying our need for full masculine expression. Going to the gym and getting strong becomes a fetish too, a substitute for what we really want, when it isn't directed at a purpose beyond our own muscles. The muscles are FOR something. The fitness is FOR something. Thank you for pointing this out.
I think that insight leads to another about the origin of today's crisis of masculinity. What a man is FOR draws from larger cultural stories. Our culture once knew what it was for. We had an arc-story of humanity. It involved the onward march of science, colonizing the savages, conquering space, etc. The conquest and transcendence of nature. Today that story is in shambles, but it used to feed into the visions of men for their own lives, granting meaning through their participation in the larger story. So, I think part of restoring the man to manhood is to connect with a new story of the people. We want to get serious. Lacking that story, what are we left with? Impressing the ladies, getting laid, bulking up, showing off... but for what?
That's exactly it. Stripped of purpose or direction, everything becomes empty and performative. It's similar to the postmodern crisis of meaning - symbols referring only to other symbols. Without a compelling 'why', the what and how lose their goal, and soon after the 'who' hollows out and collapses.
Personally, I do think that space exploration and colonization must play a role in the story that comes next. The human spirit needs a frontier, a genuine physical frontier, to stay a bit wild. The 'owned space' of our fenced off, managed, regulated environment are stifling. However, the story that animates it can't be as simple as 'colonizing everything', because that's absurd - it's impossible, for one thing, the universe is just too big. 'Indefinitely preserving humanity' doesn't make sense either (we'll evolve into something that isn't human, no matter what). Perhaps something like 'gardening the cosmos', expanding the web of life, opening up as much room for novelty generation as possible, etc. ... but again, why? I don't really have an answer to that, beyond that my intuition tells me it's what the cosmos wants us to do. But of course, the need to have a rational explanation for everything before acting is very much part of the old story.
The post-modern infinite regress of signification, where signifiers end up signifying other signifiers dancing around the nihilistic void is I think kind of a coping mechanism, necessitated by the stripping of intelligence, consciousness, and beingness from the natural world, arrogating it to the human mind alone or banishing it to the non-material. Or to put it into more familiar religious language, it is the denial of God as an active participant in creation. Either way, the post-modern belief (which is actually very much a modern belief) is that all meaning is human construct, everything is a "text"... including man and woman. A social construct.
A new story might concur that reality is a construct of consciousness, but would admit many other intelligences, many of them far vaster than the human, into the process. That means we do not need to create a new story. It is there already, awaiting our participation in order to come to life.
Colonization, or shall we say exploration of new frontiers, then becomes something quite different from what it has been. No longer is it about subduing creation and ordering it into forms and categories of our making. This was the fundamental arrogance of transhumanism. We can become whatever, because there is no intelligence in biology, in life, in matter. We can improve on it willy-nilly, as if engineering a machine. It is also the arrogance of declarative gender. A man is whatever someone who says he is a man says it is. You can see how such a declaration denies that there is any is-ness outside human conceptualization. It is the ultimate in ontological imperialism. How ironic that it seems like it is now only people on the "right" who object to it.
This is why the "post"-modern catastrophe of meaning, while diagnostic of contemporary malaise, doesn't trouble me much at a personal level. Once I started looking at the cosmos as intrinsically alive and conscious at every level, it was obvious that it is, in a sense, BUILT of meaning. Yes, humans participate in that process of meaning-creation, indeed have an essential and privileged role in it, but it isn't artificial - or doesn't have to be, so long as we remember that we're channeling that which is, not inventing things out of nowhere. Post-modernism is a crisis of mechanicalism; in McGilchrist's terms, it's the left brain arguing itself into a corner.
Now that I think about it, this points directly to the importance of space exploration, to what it's real purpose is. Not subduing creation, but saying hi to it - and to ourselves, in every sense of that word.
//One crucial insight came at the end: you said, "There needs to be a point" and "It needs to matter." ... The muscles are FOR something. The fitness is FOR something. Thank you for pointing this out.//
This is such a good point. Purpose is a fundamental aspect of reality/experience. When we don't find the big purpose, that hole will easily get filled with little ones. We will default to a dumb purpose, blindly writing ourselves into a dumb story. But the bigger purposes are out there, waiting to be found. The good stories. In religious terms, this would be the Will of God, or becoming part of the Body of Christ. In Stoic terms, living in accordance with Nature.
Indeed, the need for purpose and "story" can be felt everywhere. The only story with some "punch" seems to be a mere reaction: against feminism, capitalism, inequality, gender ideology... But at the end of the day, this is not enough, and neither us defining yourself as a man based on getting laid or living a traditional family life. Somehow I think the next big story will be obvious enough soon.
I share this gut feeling - that story is emerging around us as we speak, as Charles certainly knows since he's one of the people helping to articulate it. Merely being against is insufficient; it is crucial that we be for. To say yes rather than no to life, as Nietzsche would put it.
For what, is the question.
I look forward to the time when the endless squabbling over the latest marxcissist outrage against the human spirit has become as relevant as debates over the correct direction in which to make the sign of the cross, when the topic that excercises our common imagination is not 'what's wrong?' but rather 'what should we build next?'
Funny - I’ve been seeing this exact problem for years and worry about what lies in store for my son, who turns 18 in a couple weeks. Fortunately my husband (his stepdad of 10 years) is an outstanding example of a “real” man: strong, brave, skilled, gentle and keeper of his own counsel. I also have four terrific brothers.
Still, the deficits you describe are so conspicuous in the younger generation, that a couple of months ago I approached three male friends (mid 60s) to form a “council of wise men” to do exactly what you describe - create mentoring teams for young men, with concrete objectives to build skills and resilience and courage. I told them my goal is simply to strike a match - this is not something I ought to be a part of. One of them asked “why not?” I just laughed. Of course not.
Don’t give up guys. Most women definitely prefer masculine men. I think the wealthy part is overrated (and a form of compensation for missing virtue). The big things are inner strength, bravery and intelligence.
"One of them asked “why not?”"
This, right there, is the problem. We've been sabotaged by boomer men who didn't understand why male spaces were even necessary.
"Most women definitely prefer masculine men."
Oh yes. And vice versa. Our culture forgot that and the aimless misery so many are trapped in is the result.
"I think the wealthy part is overrated (and a form of compensation for missing virtue). The big things are inner strength, bravery and intelligence."
Can't be emphasized too strongly.
Excellent comment.
Dear John,
You may never know how much your words are changing lives and inspiring action here and now. You are not writing for a paid audience, but nor are you throwing words into the wind.
One of the best musicians I know, Dave Carter, wrote one of the best songs I ever heard, "When I Go." Words, and true meaning, are never lost. He changed my life.
That's really beautiful, and I'm deeply touched. It means a lot to know that I'm reaching people like that. Thank you.
Real women do prefer masculine men and while the poisons in our food and drugs have been slaying men's testosterone, it has also been slaying women's estrogen for many years along with politically correct bull manure! Changing the truth to a lie is not a solution. Thank you for confirming what I have been ruminating on for several years and for.making me think deeper.
All I can say is, fucking fantastic and amen! The good news is, I think the cultural zeitgeist is shifting. "Nothing argues like success..." Nothing, that is, except catastrophic failure. And few failures have been as spectacularly catastrophic as woke feminism and critical gender theory and all the madness that it has unleashed on our culture. Great fucking essay, like always!
When the dust settles, our successor civilization will look back on this era the way we regard late Roman decadence: as a warning from history that's too fucked up to be fully believed.
My father left when I was 13 and I was raised by my mother and the streets. To put it bluntly, I was a punk. But I was blessed to have two older men, one a former marine and one a former gang member, who tore me down and built me up on a regular basis. I won't say they were like a father to me, more like a demanding older brother. They taught me what it meant to be a man by making me BE a man. No excuses ever, and even worse was a reason. That was just an excuse you conned yourself into believing. Pushing, finding your limits and then pushing more, and laughing when you failed. But respect when you didn't.
I'm 58 now, married to the same woman for 38 years, with eleven children, nine boys and two girls. I run my own business and employ 8-10 guys. Both are gone now but I want to say thank you, Steve and Kamau. The world needs more of you.
Your story starts with tragedy but in the end you were luckier than most guys will ever be.
Well, I made my guardian angel punch the clock for overtime, that's for sure. I'm blessed, but that just means I have more to repay. Love your stuff, btw.
Thanks, man.
And you've got precisely the right perspective.
You have a brother you will never know, across the Pacific. Keep ya head high, bro.
Good to know.
Neither here nor there, but your profile blurb got stuck on the wrong side of year divide 😉
Not sure what you mean. I met my wife when I was sixteen, took her out on our first date when I was eighteen, and married her when I was twenty. We haven't had our 38th anniversary yet but it's right around the corner so I just rounded up. 😁
😂 Here ↓↓ is the whole straightforward meaning, ie what shows up with mouse hovering over your handle 🙂
🗨 57, male, married 36 years to my high school sweetheart and most beautiful woman on the planet. Self employed father of 11, grandfather of 20 and counting.
Yeah, it's a year old, haven't updated it. Close enough, lol .
Full respect, brother!
Real men make a difference and I will always be grateful to them. I like the phrase "Tonic Masculinity" to counter toxic masculinity. If I had to boil tonic manhood down to one word, I'd say, "Duty". I've never read your stack but I'll check it out. And don't despair, lol, men are out here. I'm raising nine solid men and have twenty grandchildren and counting.
Nine. My God.
You're a hero.
Haha, thanks. I only have a sister but my wife also has nine brothers. The first time I went to her house for supper and to meet her parents, I walked into the dining room and there was a huge table with about twenty place settings. I said, "Are you expecting company?" She said with a smile, "No, just you."
So yeah, big families are different.
I'm lost for words.
Pffft to 'duty' unless it's our God-given duty to be creators of good. Too much of the 'duty', as sold by manipulators with a hidden agenda, is destructive to a man's creative spirit. And there are myriad ways to create good things so that men of every personality type can make a contribution.
Well, let me ask you what you consider to be your duties?
My answer, in no particular order: creation, conquest, building, sheltering, enduring, planning, advising, providing. Not an exclusive list, that's just off the top of my head.
I agree, but I really wanted to hear his list of duties since he didn't like my definition of manhood as duty. I'm sure, upon examination, his list would include the most important things in his life.
PS congrats on the numbers. Large families are counter-cultural but can bring SO MUCH joy into ones life as one matures. My parents had 4 kids, now have 19 grandkids and 12 great grandkids with many more to come. My in-laws had 10 kids, now have 30 grandkids and it's early days on that side.
Anyway my mum's 2 brothers only wanted one kid each. One has one grandkid and the other none yet. As their cohort friends die off they seem more and more alone where as my folks have lost a lot of their same age friends too but there is always things going on in our wider family that they are invited into and places where they can still both give of their knowledge and/or skills and receive love and affection. The difference in life purpose and motivation is quite stunning.
I constantly tell my boys, "You're a man and that means your job is to bend reality to your will. Women's job is to bend men's will to theirs."
Some useful points for those exploring the Manosphere, from someone who was not a natural Alpha but is now happily married.
1. You don't have to be an ass to be an Alpha. Bad boys are not the only ones who get hot chicks. Responsible squares are also successful in the Market. See why below.
2. Think in evolutionary terms. Human females are especially weak compared to males because our babies are large. And then said babies are slow to mature. A human female with toddler in tow is necessarily dependent. The only question is whether it will be husband, government, village, or extended family. This leads to several instincts into what constitutes a desireable man:
2a. Physically powerful. Duh. The physically powerful male can provide protection.
2b. Politically powerful. Leadership, even if one is an aging fat slob, is still an attractor. Indeed, even the illusion of leadership, such as being the lead singer in a band or a speaker at a conference, is a signal.
2c. Societal status. A man who is valued by the society is a source of protection even if said man is not a leader. Women love a man in uniform for a reason.
2d. Dependability. Power/status is nothing if a man will not follow through and use his protective ability. There is merit in being a reliable square.
2e. Caring. The man who truly cares will be a source of protection as well. A wimp who cares can provide more protection than a psychopathic powermonger. Sensitive New Age Guys can get a date for this reason.
Put these factors together and you can derive why libertarian men struggle to get a date. Combine the fact that most are cerebral non-athletes, with outsider status (whining about Government), and strong signals of non-commitment (freedom! non-altruism!)
For liberty to propagate, freedom lovers must embrace responsibility. To wean females from Big Government requires men to do their jobs. Take responsibility.
To be the ultimate man, read the New Testament. The True Man should lead but also care and sacrifice himself for those he leads.
🗨 Freedom is in danger of degenerating into mere arbitrariness unless it is lived in terms of responsibleness. That is why I recommend that the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast. ~~Viktor Frankl
https://statueofresponsibility.org/
Effing amusing, and even insightful, but definitely a good read.
I have a reference point that few men could have access to. I live within a culture that has understood gender roles for around 40,000 years. Men and boys socialise together and hunt together. Women, young girls and infants socialise and hunt together. In families, all are together. It is that simple.
Until forty years ago, nobody here had ever heard of homosexuality. In 1973, after a young bloke had witnessed a gay coupling, nobody believed his narrative. Sixty people of three generations sat around a camp fire and gasped in incredulity when I confirmed his story, then followed hilarity and ribald jokes as everone attempted to visualise such a spectacle. Yet homosexial activists insist every human community has experienced homosexuality. My research suggests the Australian Aboriginal experience paralelled that of Inuit and Kung.
I draw no conclusion because I have no interest in this issue. As a young man working in the entertainment industry, I knew plenty of what was then known as 'camp' people. Some were good company but most were neurotic, dishonest, rationalising inadequates. As far as my own maleness was concerned, it was simply never an issue. Likewise women.
Looking back, I see social change engineered by a malelevant media and, in Australia, when I finally commenced researching destructive change, the names Murdoch, Rockefeller, and Rothschild were up there in lights. This has always been about the destruction of Family, culture, values and, eventually, the elimination of national ssovereignty preparatory to imposing the New World Order.
Women were the primary targets. They were manipulated to wage war against men because in all cultures, men carry the value systems. Women are universally adaptable. Watch any two cultures come together and, even if there is no common language, women establish relationships. It's what they do. Men continue to eye each other off suspiciously. It's part of who we are and what we are. Wisely, the French gave up analysing and concluded "Vive la difference".
The sad aspect of this is that at 80, I have no prospect of finding a real woman. The globalist elite have done an excellent job of destroying them. They can no longer see their own injuries.
Fascinating comment. I'm curious, has there been an effort in Australia to retcon Aboriginal culture as gay-friendly, the way Canadian academic queer activists have tried to retcon Native culture as gay-friendly by adopting the made-up term 'two spirit' in the rainbow alphabet soup?
Yes, John. An aggressive team of homosexuals visited the Tiwi people and told them it was mandatory to accept homosexuality. The ABC and SBS (govt and NGO channels) strongly favour gay 'Aborigines', who invariably are cultural admixtures. School teachers proselytise similar ideas.
Of course. Same playbook everywhere.
I think that I can answer that. The ABC and SBS (the Australian versions of the BBC) do appear to have a thing for camp or gender fluid Aborigines. I stopped watching TV a while ago but definitely got this impression. My first take is that indigenous LGBT are possibly perceived as potentially less violent and easier to patronise. This is not stated openly, but it is kind of understood. The new Australian norms re race are shot through with condescension and weirdness.
That isn't surprising. Same playbook gets used everywhere in the anglosphere.
Cross fertilisation in policy is pretty big at an elite level and the wider culture amongst mandarins is interchangeable.
If you ever want to get to the bottom about why the Anglosphere is governed by fakers and chancers check this out...cannot recommend it too highly https://www.amazon.ca/Bluffocracy-James-Ball/dp/1785904116
Bluffocracy is a great term.
From the blurb:
"At the top of government, our media and the civil service and sit men - it's usually men - whose core skill is talking fast, writing well, and endeavouring to imbue the purest wind with substance."
I dispute the 'writing well' part. Rather, their primary skill is hypnosis through stultifying boredom and impenetrable jargon.
You assess writing from the perspective of someone who values clarity. Bureaucrats value the obscurity needed to conceal agency, interest and motive. They also value the ability to persuade and to maintain the party line.
John, you would not have lasted a minute in any bureaucracy. Whatever your present situation...consider yourself truly blessed.
This. This is the way you do it. Thanks, man. This, this is what women want - they just don't know it 'cause too many haven't had real men for dad's either.
Humdeedee! This is an excellent point. Many, such as myself, had NO father. Or at best, one that you know is there but lives as a ghost haunting your life in increments. Much can be said for the wounds that having an absent father causes girls, but I will leave that for better writers like John Carter. On another note, I am 60 years young and glorious ly woman. Not a cis gender, whatever the fu#k that is. But it was not an easy road to discover who I am. I'll be damned to let these idiots of today tell me a man can be a woman or blur the lines. Peace!
An absent father is one of the worst things for children, regardless of sex. There's a real tendency for them to go off the rails. However, I wouldn't presume to comment too much on how this affects women specifically; not being a woman myself, I'm not sure what insights I could really provide. That's why I pointed to Megha's excellent and insightful post.
When I was in college in 1975, I had a girlfriend that was learing how to be a feminist. I spent a lot of time at her apartment with her and her two feminist roommates. One had a boyfriend that was a "feminist," a wimpy type let's say. One day a friend of mine stopped by. He was of the handsome/stud/real man variety (hopefully that description does not make me gay).
The girl with the "feminist" boyfriend's eyes lit up when my friend entered the room. I never saw her look at her boyfriend that way. At that point I realized that the feminism thing was a lot of hooey, as someone like Bogart would have said. Back then the term "male chauvinist" was the term for what morphed into "toxic male." Both were and are the preferred option to females looking for the genuine article.
Bogart still rules.
This is a perennial tale and the source of much soy rage.
Bravo!!! I laughed my ass off, was on the edge of my seat screaming FUCK YES so many times! As a very real 48 year old woman who has been single against my will for 7 years. I have been out here in the dating trenches wondering where all the real complicated gritty men are. I gave up trying!
I love your call to action and I will think seriously about how I could do my part to raise up more awesome complicated juicy women too. Challenge accepted!
Brilliant. May your daughters mature into shield maidens.
LOL. Totally.
To my credit, I have been fighting this nonsense for a long time and took a bullet for the men in my creative community in 2017 when the SJWs started destroying the same guys who helped build the underground cabaret scene right alongside us for over a decade. All that got me canceled and ruined my career. I’ve been trying to rebuild my life ever since. Sadly the bullies still are dominating the playground, but this article gives me hope that could change!
And I do write about it-- https://open.substack.com/pub/trixielittle/p/5-fascist-feminists-and-fairy-tales?r=qlfnn&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
😂😂😂 Omg, so true. Your comment made me laugh so much. Trying to find a grown up man in one's 40ies (or any age really) is a tragicomedy. Anyone seen dating site profiles recently?
Happy to see you back in top form!
I feel like it's the sense of pointlessness, the ennui, that is causing both men and women to behave in strange and unnatural ways. The societal focus my whole life (I'm 52) was that Religion was Wrong, the Planet is Gonna Die, Having Children is Selfish, Patriotism to Country is Evil, Affinity to your Clan is Racist, and also, You're Never Going to be Rich so Vote for Bernie. So, what else is there to do? People spend their efforts banning plastic straws and trying to force everyone to be nicer to the mentally ill.
Absolutely fantastic piece John!
As father to some young adult men I can attest to the fact that these boys are looking for the male elders and the wolf pack with a purpose to express the maleness that they know they need to be.
You've inspired me to be even more purposeful in this respect, as one of the elders, as we reclaim what's been stolen in the last 3 seconds of human history from both males and females.
Would love to hear about some of your pragmatic efforts in this regard when you return to the topic down the line.
Likewise! Sounds like you're well situated to do good work in this respect.
I've been so let down. This is just more devastating red pill (in the original sense; I didn't know about redpillers). The bastard top dogs of the world have deliberately engineered all this, and the “pandemic” and all the theatre accompanying it is the beginning of their endgame.
It's the old cycle. We are surrounded by weak men, and at the beginning of hard times. It's only a blackpill if you don't want those hard times to harden you.
It's harden or die. I refuse to die.
That's the spirit.
Another brilliant article and call to action! So glad you're back.
Thank you! Good to be back.
Unpopular take: ban and shame all pornography. Just do it. You know, like every sane country in the world does (except the West), and every country in history has done. Why have we fallen so far that people can't wrap their heads around this simple concept?
In principle I agree, although I'm not sure it's possible in practice as the Internet makes it extremely difficult to ban things. The only practical solution might be to attach a huge social stigma to the consumption of porn.
Yes, but the two go together: if you need to use VPNs, you mom's ID, and some crazy darknet tools to get to porn, this automatically sends a strong message that society won't have it, it's bad, and you shouldn't do it. Porn has been around forever and everywhere, but there's a huge difference between society basically saying "cool, every 10 year old can have it, let's not be prude here" or one that bans it completely from all media and make you feel like a pathetic little pervert if you still go for it.
That's an excellent point: bans not as a primary means of removing a pernicious influence, but as reinforcement for social mores. Some day, perhaps, we'll be in a position to do so. Until then movements like nofap will need to do the preparatory work of stigmatization and weening the many, many addicted off of porn.
Pretending government legislation can fix this is how we got into this mess in the first place
Wait... government regulation created the porn epidemic?
No, the idea that government regulation for the purposes of social engineering is morally acceptable or effective is largely responsible for the decline of our civilization. That said, an argument could be made that government regulation contributed to this particular issue somehow. I don't know. I do know the government was instrumental in fomenting the opioid epidemic in the US, but it is dumb luck that I know how that happened.
The porn epidemic didn't get bad until it was technologically enabled. However, legal decisions in the 70s that rescinded obscenity laws due to a rather dubious 1A argument created the permissive regulatory framework that enabled the development of the porn industry, and the proliferation of porn then normalized its use. So the government's choice of what and how to regulate absolutely had an impact.
I guess my confusion comes from the fact that criminalizing something aould be seen as a form of regulation/"social engineering" as well, so the question simply becomes "what kind of regulation" rather than regulation/non-regulation.
However, perhaps we can reframe it: what has been done is "decriminalize" with the promise of "regulation". Same argument always: decriminalize, otherwise it's just unregulated, so that we can regulate...
You inspire me to be better and stronger. So does Jay Rollins.
That's all I want.
And I'm not easily bullied. I was watching Jay lose hair in real time.
>A Jew-fro isn't scary
Says you.
"that femininity draws more on biology, and less on social conditioning"
You lost me here. Maybe it's generational. But we had to sit down, shut up, cross our legs just so, do housework, be a lady, & play stupid so boys won't feel bad.
Foot binding, girdles, high heels, are socialized biology. "Stays" that preceded girdles forced internal organs out of position. Stays & girdles made it impossible to breathe deeply, correctly.
High heels wreck your feet & back.They literally crippled girls & women to force dependency...er... "femininity."
My best neighborhood friend, oldest of 6 kids, raised her 5 younger siblings while her mother sat sunning herself in the back yard. By the time she was out of high school she had already been a mother for more than a decade. That wasn't biology. That was training.
What is a woman? An adult, female human.
What is a man? An adult, male human.
What is the problem? We are no longer adults. We've stopped growing up due to bad socialization & a conditioned crappy culture & we've been physically damaged by the chemical replacements for food.
And none of us, male or female, evolved to sit around all day & consume.
As I said - it's not so hard and fast as that. Obviously there are biological and socialized elements to both.
However, a simple comparison. In most cultures through history, a girl became a woman when she had her first menses. I'm not arguing for that standard, merely that the standard was mainly biological, historically. Whereas for males, one was generally required to leave the home, enter the world of men, and be tested. To destruction if necessary. Failure was a very real possibility; not all boys would become men; but most maidens would become women.
Agreed 100% that in both cases the basic problem is socially enabled neoteny.
Incase some readers wondered what I meant by 'most women can't see their own injuries', here is the classic example... brainwashed into faux humanity. Bloody sad, mate.
I disagree lady, there are a lot of articles that show that stays, girdles and corsets were not uncomfortable at all, in fact even men used them in the 1800' and it was used for doing sports!!!!
Also feminity has its social elements, but it is much more biological than masculinity, women don't have to go through a violent or bloody ritual like men did in the years of yore.
Well since I wore a girdle as teen, I heartily disagree with you.
But thank you for 'mansplaining' what I actually felt. 😂
Maybe you can tell me how comfortable heels really felt
As for stays, are you suggesting men actually had them pulled to impossibly tiny, waistlines?
Heels were an invention of short men who wanted to look taller originally…but they didn’t keep wearing them because they are seriously uncofortable
Maybe some women wore it in a way that was not correct and that caused pain (as it was yours, I am sorry it was painful), but my point is that that was not the norm, at least that is what most articles I have read about corsets and similar underwears say. I have seen women using heels and it seems sort of uncomfortable. I mean I have read some men used it for theraupetic or deportive so probably they used it correctly otherwise it could defeat the purpose they were made for (in men).
I hope you understand me, lady.
I'm definitely going to be sharing this with people I know in the men's movement. I love the insights and courage, and kept laughing out loud. So much rich material here, I hesitate to comment on any of it for fear of slighting the rest. Maybe I'll write a full post on it. One crucial insight came at the end: you said, "There needs to be a point" and "It needs to matter." We are all familiar with the vacuity of those get-togethers with the guys that are just about consuming something. Working on hobbies together is a little better, but still far from satisfying our need for full masculine expression. Going to the gym and getting strong becomes a fetish too, a substitute for what we really want, when it isn't directed at a purpose beyond our own muscles. The muscles are FOR something. The fitness is FOR something. Thank you for pointing this out.
I think that insight leads to another about the origin of today's crisis of masculinity. What a man is FOR draws from larger cultural stories. Our culture once knew what it was for. We had an arc-story of humanity. It involved the onward march of science, colonizing the savages, conquering space, etc. The conquest and transcendence of nature. Today that story is in shambles, but it used to feed into the visions of men for their own lives, granting meaning through their participation in the larger story. So, I think part of restoring the man to manhood is to connect with a new story of the people. We want to get serious. Lacking that story, what are we left with? Impressing the ladies, getting laid, bulking up, showing off... but for what?
That's exactly it. Stripped of purpose or direction, everything becomes empty and performative. It's similar to the postmodern crisis of meaning - symbols referring only to other symbols. Without a compelling 'why', the what and how lose their goal, and soon after the 'who' hollows out and collapses.
Personally, I do think that space exploration and colonization must play a role in the story that comes next. The human spirit needs a frontier, a genuine physical frontier, to stay a bit wild. The 'owned space' of our fenced off, managed, regulated environment are stifling. However, the story that animates it can't be as simple as 'colonizing everything', because that's absurd - it's impossible, for one thing, the universe is just too big. 'Indefinitely preserving humanity' doesn't make sense either (we'll evolve into something that isn't human, no matter what). Perhaps something like 'gardening the cosmos', expanding the web of life, opening up as much room for novelty generation as possible, etc. ... but again, why? I don't really have an answer to that, beyond that my intuition tells me it's what the cosmos wants us to do. But of course, the need to have a rational explanation for everything before acting is very much part of the old story.
Very much so.
The post-modern infinite regress of signification, where signifiers end up signifying other signifiers dancing around the nihilistic void is I think kind of a coping mechanism, necessitated by the stripping of intelligence, consciousness, and beingness from the natural world, arrogating it to the human mind alone or banishing it to the non-material. Or to put it into more familiar religious language, it is the denial of God as an active participant in creation. Either way, the post-modern belief (which is actually very much a modern belief) is that all meaning is human construct, everything is a "text"... including man and woman. A social construct.
A new story might concur that reality is a construct of consciousness, but would admit many other intelligences, many of them far vaster than the human, into the process. That means we do not need to create a new story. It is there already, awaiting our participation in order to come to life.
Colonization, or shall we say exploration of new frontiers, then becomes something quite different from what it has been. No longer is it about subduing creation and ordering it into forms and categories of our making. This was the fundamental arrogance of transhumanism. We can become whatever, because there is no intelligence in biology, in life, in matter. We can improve on it willy-nilly, as if engineering a machine. It is also the arrogance of declarative gender. A man is whatever someone who says he is a man says it is. You can see how such a declaration denies that there is any is-ness outside human conceptualization. It is the ultimate in ontological imperialism. How ironic that it seems like it is now only people on the "right" who object to it.
This is why the "post"-modern catastrophe of meaning, while diagnostic of contemporary malaise, doesn't trouble me much at a personal level. Once I started looking at the cosmos as intrinsically alive and conscious at every level, it was obvious that it is, in a sense, BUILT of meaning. Yes, humans participate in that process of meaning-creation, indeed have an essential and privileged role in it, but it isn't artificial - or doesn't have to be, so long as we remember that we're channeling that which is, not inventing things out of nowhere. Post-modernism is a crisis of mechanicalism; in McGilchrist's terms, it's the left brain arguing itself into a corner.
Now that I think about it, this points directly to the importance of space exploration, to what it's real purpose is. Not subduing creation, but saying hi to it - and to ourselves, in every sense of that word.
Couple that with INNER space exploration and colonization, and I think humanity would be unstoppable. Neon-gnostic space explorers.
The Inner Path (To Outer Space)!
//One crucial insight came at the end: you said, "There needs to be a point" and "It needs to matter." ... The muscles are FOR something. The fitness is FOR something. Thank you for pointing this out.//
This is such a good point. Purpose is a fundamental aspect of reality/experience. When we don't find the big purpose, that hole will easily get filled with little ones. We will default to a dumb purpose, blindly writing ourselves into a dumb story. But the bigger purposes are out there, waiting to be found. The good stories. In religious terms, this would be the Will of God, or becoming part of the Body of Christ. In Stoic terms, living in accordance with Nature.
Indeed, the need for purpose and "story" can be felt everywhere. The only story with some "punch" seems to be a mere reaction: against feminism, capitalism, inequality, gender ideology... But at the end of the day, this is not enough, and neither us defining yourself as a man based on getting laid or living a traditional family life. Somehow I think the next big story will be obvious enough soon.
I share this gut feeling - that story is emerging around us as we speak, as Charles certainly knows since he's one of the people helping to articulate it. Merely being against is insufficient; it is crucial that we be for. To say yes rather than no to life, as Nietzsche would put it.
For what, is the question.
I look forward to the time when the endless squabbling over the latest marxcissist outrage against the human spirit has become as relevant as debates over the correct direction in which to make the sign of the cross, when the topic that excercises our common imagination is not 'what's wrong?' but rather 'what should we build next?'
Yeah. Painfully obvious, maybe.
So many good words in here. The best words. Gonna bromote the hell out of this.