I recently got a couple of comments from what I assume to be supportive subscribers to my channel, expressing concern about the title of my last YouTube talk, which was “How to Get Your Man to Punch You in the Face.”
The objection, to paraphrase it from the comment, was that the title was unnecessarily inflammatory, that it was the type of thing that could and would be used to discredit the MRM, and that I should employ less controversial, less provocative descriptors of my work. Here’s a link to the comment..
Historically, I’ve tended to just reject this stuff out of hand as concern trolling. After all, I have heard these same concerns since the first time I posted anything about men’s issues on the internet. It is not like I’ve never considered the consequences of my method of delivery.
And indeed, my initial reaction was dismissive, inviting one commenter to go find another channel if he didn’t like what I had to say, and in a later comment inviting him to be the change he wanted to see, rather than trying to get me to be that change. That part was in response to his suggesting that I should be emulating, of all people, Jordan Peterson, the man who called MGTOWs weasels.
Now, like I said, my general tendency is to read these comments and keep moving, perhaps after a quick eye roll. And if I am going to be totally honest, that is a practice I will continue. I will read them, occasionally respond, and then put them into File 13.
What I could do from time to time, however, is do a better job explaining why I do what I do and the way I do it. This will at least give anyone interested an opportunity to consider the motivations behind my methods. I realize it is not likely to change minds, any more than admonitions are going to change mine. Changing anyone’s mind isn’t and never has been on my list of priorities. Still, I’d like to provide some clarity those with questions.
To begin with, my advocacy for men predates my efforts on the internet by nearly 20 years. It was my experience in the mental health business of the late 1980’s and early 1990’s that first awakened me to the need for male-centered advocacy.
I came to that realization in an environment that was incredibly, savagely hostile to men. An environment that lured men in with the promise of compassion and help, only to abuse them with gynocentric, politicized garbage.
When finally saw what was happening and raised objections to it, I became the target of complaints and attempts to ruin my career. That isn’t a plea for your sympathy. I don’t need it. It is just a simple statement of fact that accurately reflects the depth and scope of the problem.
And I assure you, I never uttered any words near so provocative as I use today. I encountered the hostile backlash for talking in the most reserved of terms to professional peers who allegedly acted in the interest of their male clients.
I was once threatened with my job for asserting in a staff meeting that we needed to spend more time holding female clients accountable for their lives and less time telling them their problems were the fault of men. It was as though the idea was blasphemy, even though what I was saying was consistent with the idea that full personal accountability for your life and actions was a requirement for recovery from addictions.
In other words, I was just speaking the truth, and in the softest of ways. And I discovered that it was the truth, and not the method of telling it, that was the problem. That was true in 1988, and it is just as true now, 30 years later. In fact, things are much worse today than they were then.
I was not able to put it into words at the time, but I was learning that gynocentrism was, is, a nearly unstoppable, destructive force in the lives of men. I managed to hang on to my work till I voluntarily departed, but I was constantly up against that force in the mental health system.
Not being a glutton for punishment, and knowing that I would lose a war against the system, that left me at a crossroads. I had taken too many red pills to turn back, but I realized that no amount of truth, nor purity of motive, would push me through the gynocentric barrier, at least in groups of people, which are much more gynocentric collectively than the individuals in them.
What I did find though, was that telling the unvarnished truth to individual men, one on one, was a much easier path, and much more productive.
To illustrate this, I want to ask you to imagine you are seeing a man as I saw so many of them, limping into counseling, or perhaps dragged there, full of more shame than you can possibly imagine. A man with a serious drinking problem and all the humiliating failures that come with that; a man in a train wreck of a marriage. A man brimming with hidden pain, who had exploded more than once, at times becoming physically violent with his wife, even if that violence was in response to violence and/or relational aggression she had committed against him.
He’s a man who doesn’t need anyone to tell him that he is a piece of shit. His family has told him that, including his own children. The cop who arrested him told him that, and so did the judge who put him in jail.
And certainly, his wife, who now lords over him in the absolute, righteous power of her victimhood. She reminds him every day how worthless he is, and with the entire treatment team behind her, she sets conditions for him to get himself out of the doghouse.
In fact, examined with clarity we find that his participation in treatment is every bit as much about getting out of that doghouse as it is to save him from the self-poisoning of alcoholism. Even more so.
Now imagine, just for moment, creating a space for this guy to look at his life, his marriage and all, without viewing it through the lens of his shame and self-blame. Imagine that sorting through the details of his marriage we find that he is living with an emotional terrorist, a woman who emotionally and psychologically abuses everyone in her realm, especially her husband.
Or even if she wasn’t abusive in the classic sense, that he still finds that his life had been swallowed up by her gynocentric privilege. That in things being all about her, there was no room left for him.
Imagine him waking up to the insight that he didn’t have a problem with booze or violence till after he was married. Waking up to the cold fact that he had every reason to drink as an escape. And that he had not only never been able to articulate his circumstances, but that he had been trained his whole life to deny those circumstances existed. He had been conditioned as a man to heap all the blame on himself, something of which his wife and the rest of the world was only too happy to follow suit.
Now imagine that all this new insight shakes him to his very core, unleashing a torrent of rage. Not the confused, pathetic rage that engulfed him when he hit her, but solid, easily tractable rage that stemmed from his lived experience, from things he had previously been conditioned to never think about.
“That fucking bitch,” he says. No more talk of getting out of the dog house. No more questions about how he could grovel enough to get in her good graces. Just the pure, raw anger of an abuse victim coming out of denial.
And so, what do I do with this? Do I tell him his language is improper? Do I shame him some more by minimizing what I know to be the truth? Do I fall in line with his wife and kids, the cops and sadly the other members of my treatment team and continue to label him as the families identified problem?
Or do I honor his anger, knowing full well that he will never move past it, he’ll never heal, long as that anger is denied?
Do I honor and respect that anger, encouraging him to vent it as hard and fast as he wants, between him and I, away from the prying eyes of an ignorant and unjust world?
Do I in fact, agree with him that his wife is a fucking abusive bitch? And importantly, do I live by the certainty that anger that is denied expression is anger that will never be purged?
Do I fulfill my role as his advocate and support him for telling the world, including his wife, how he really feels? Or do I sell him out and urge his silence so he won’t be an inconvenience to the people who matter?
And there’s the rub, gents. Fluffy talk in deference to mainstream sensibilities makes for nice cozy conversation over latte and scones. It’s great coffee-house banter for those who want to feel good about themselves, and who want acceptance from people who ultimately don’t give a rat’s ass about men’s problems.
In the context of my work, that mealy-mouthed prattle is utterly useless.
Mind you I should say here that the purpose of doing all this was not to emulate the end-game victim complex we reserved for women. It wasn’t to just blame his problems on her and call it a day. Ultimately, he had to take account of himself. Not just his drinking and the damage it caused, but also to his choices. Who he married. What he tolerated. What, in fact, he indulged in as though it was healthy when it wasn’t.
Now, do you imagine that this man gaining the insight he needed was a product of talking in platitudes? Do you think for a moment that it was attained without talk that would outrage an alienate his wife and all the other forces that had coalesced to hang him on a cross?
You may be thinking at this point that I am using a false equivalence; that what I say and do with a single man behind closed doors is vastly different than what is said and done on a high profile internet platform.
But here’s the rub, and I want you to know this. That man I was asking you to imagine is in my audience, right now, as you read this. Even though I put this on a public platform, what every last one of them boil down to is a personal talk between him and I. Between you and I. Damned the world and its phony sensibilities. Damned public sentiments the delusional pipe dream of beating the gynocentric system. I learned better than that 30 years ago.
The talks I do, every last fucking one of them, is a talk with that man. He is the man that matters to me, and nothing more. Not public approval, not the positive regard of people who only lift a finger when reaching for their latte. Nothing, absolutely nothing else matters.
One part of the critical comments I mentioned from the start of this talk is that we were now in post Red Pill Movie society. That the ways that brought us to that film were no longer needed.
This is entirely missing the point.
My interest today is what it always has been, the pre-Red Pill Movie man. The guy who needs to hear this in terms he’ll relate to and understand and in ways that will leave him feeling less alone. The guy who needs to hear someone stand up and express the outrage about that which he has been bullied into silence.
That is my purpose, and the purpose of this channel. It is our decidedly male space, where we can talk carelessly, in the plainest of terms, public consensus be damned, because it is public consensus that is the problem.
I am here to do now what I was doing then behind the cover of the closed door to my office with each man who came my way. And to do it without reservation.
I am not interested in convincing the world that men are human beings, deserving of choice and compassion. I am only interested in convincing you of that, right here and now.
And this is the way I have chosen to do it.
