Origins of male aloofness

I was reading a post the other day on the blog of Huge Schwyzer.  He was talking about the whole "asshole" mystique thing that has come into vogue in pop psych and the whole wannabe playa community.  The general stereotype in question being that women prefer to fuck high status assholes.

I credit Schwyzer for making the point that a lot of this behavior arises from the need to justify the modern war between the sexes, where jaded, horny, unsuccessful males assert that woman have assholery coming as the price for not fucking nice guys.  He also goes on to note that a lot of the pop evolutionary biology claims are in fact just indoctrinated behavior among women.  Particularly, he cites the female proclivity for pursuing brooding, inaccessible men as an example beaten into women by cultural norms.

One thing I'm not a fan of is the mass conspiracy theory.  Even in a case like this, where the notion is a conspiracy of ignorance.

I like a lot of Schqyzer's stuff.  I particularly think he hits the mark more often than not when he goes are the wannabe pick-up artists for their vindictive view of why women deserve to be on the receiving end of dominant male behavior.  There is a lot of stuff in the PUA community that can be chalked up to telling people a lie they want to hear.  Trust me . . . I've trolled those boards and if you ever want to see guys go psycho, suggest that they stop being so derogatory toward women.  That shit will explode.

I tried that conversation, because I didn't think the PUA community really needed to be overtly anti-woman.  For example, I tried advocating against slut-shaming.  I'm a believer in the sex positive movement.  I just don't see how a group of guys who want more sex could possibly lose if women felt less slutty for having more sex.

The problem is, the PUA community isn't about sex positive.  It's right-wing leaning.  And a great deal of its ideology falls into that Rush Limbaugh wheelhouse of "film it for us, you filthy cunt!"  The PUA movement is, at the end of the day, a jihad against women.

I'd also offer, it was around this time that I realized the PUA folks were like communism.  Sure, there are some ideas there worth exploring, but the broader ideology is dangerous and depressing.  So, I abandoned that crap.

I've had my frustrations with women.  But, the one thing that always worked out for me is that my frustrations come after I get that first burst of attention.  In truth, I don't know the pain of being a loser that no woman would fuck.  It's a slow night for me at the bar or the club that I don't get hit on.

The thing for me is my frustrations go back to those gestational days of my sexual awareness.  My frustrations go back to being a dirt poor fifteen year old kid who was ashamed he couldn't afford to take a girl out and treat her right.  My frustrations go back to being a 20 year old college kid afraid that if I settled into a relationship I couldn't provide for the woman in my life.  Women liked me. I've always had, even on my fattest day, even on my poorest day -- some girl somewhere who would have been glad if I asked her out on a date.

And this brings me back to Schwyzer.  One thing I think he misses widely on is just bashing these guys for projecting all their inadequacies onto women and screaming, "You deserve it, bitch!".

Why?

Because all these bad habits, all this anger, all this woman-hating, all the crap starts at an age where no one is really responsible for anything.

I look at a lot of my aloof behavior and I find it easy to trace.  For me, it all goes back to not being good enough to date that cute little tennis player who sat in front of my in Spanish class. 

One, it's not like my aloofness toward women was unjustified.  I, to this day, feel I have a right to hold back so that I may focus upon self-improvement.  When I settle down, I want to be the best possible man I can be.  I don't want to inflict myself on some poor girl.

Two, it's not her fault, but spending more than a year trying to catch the eye of an aloof guy did not impart to me any good lessons about gender.  To start, I learned about the astonishing ego-boosting power of just letting a girl trip all over herself for me.  I learned that women, when they fall hard for a guy, will endure hell and back with little chance of a reward.

But, you can't blame a fifteen year old girl for that!  I mean, hell, on a long enough timeline she was making a solid bet.  I did eventually grow up into one of the most successful men in my graduating class.  I was smart, tough, self-controlled.  None of these things that motivated her were at the base of them faulty in any way.

Yet, for all the non-fault in this tale, at the end of the equation you end up with a grown man with a very damaged idea of how to relate to women.

One of the biggest problems with modern sexuality is that we negotiate our sense of our own gender and the opposite gender under horrid conditions.  Fifteen year old kids aren't in a position to understand the right and wrong of these negotiations.  And worse, by the time those fifteen year old kids are old enough to be accountable for right and wrong in gender politics, the damage has already been done.  They're suddenly 20 year old losers glaring with hatred at the world.

I say this as a guy whose life had worked out pretty well.  If I want to get laid, all I have to do is go out on a Friday, smile and see who smiles back.  If I want a nice suit, I just put down my credit card and I walk out with a nice suit.  If I want good booze, I drop a twenty on the bar and I drink good booze.  That said, I carry a lot of damage with me.

I can't think of the pain that lesser guys suffer.  One of the greatest joys in life is trying too hard to be cute and having a girl smile back at you for it.  And there are many guys out there who have never known that joy.

It should come as no surprise that such men carry deep wounds into adulthood.

Frankly, I take issue with the white knight compulsion to ride in and slay all these evil losers for being mean to the woman folk.   It's too easy to pat yourself on the back for going full keyboard commando and sending the losers back to their mom's basement.  It's too easy to scream "Grow the fuck up!" and walk away smugly acting as if you've accomplished something.  No you haven't.  Not at all.  It just reflects on one more set of flawed ideas about gender politics.