I've dated countless women and it has always amazed me how little they know about men. If nothing else, this blog is an outlet for voicing my astonishment at the typical female's ignorance of the male mindset. At most, it is a reliable source of advice for women who want to improve their chances with the opposite sex.
There's one thing some girls do that never fails to make me laugh. When they walk by a group of guys and suspect that the guys will check out her ass, they try to subtly drape their hand across their butt in an attempt to shield it from the guys' view. This is always funny because (a) it's never subtle and (b) it is absolutely ineffective. Although some girls might only be trying to "disrupt" the guys' view, rather than block it completely, it simply doesn't work. Whatever curve (or lack thereof) you might be successful in hiding on one side of your ass can just as easily be seen on the other. You'd have better luck trying to shade yourself from the sun with a broomstick.
But, as you might have guessed, I am not writing this just to remind your of your body proportions. No, there is something more important going on, and the attempt to hide your ass is just the symptom. By hiding your ass, you are either expressing insecurity about your body, or else you are showing your lack of comfort with male sexuality.
If you are trying to hide your ass because you don't like the way it looks, you are essentially saying "I am discontent with my body, so I am going to try to hide it." And I get that no one is completely content with their body; it's the hiding it part that is the problem. The alternative, of course, is to say "I am discontent with the way my ass looks, so I am going to do something to change it." By draping your hand across your butt, you are being dishonest rather than proactive. You are doing the same thing as the guy who, when asked by a girl what he does, tells her he "has his own company," when the truth is that he works at his dad's gas station for 50 hours a week and is making a weak-at-best attempt to start a website selling graphic t-shirts on the side. In the same way that he needs to start admitting what he really does with 95% of his time (and then doing something to change it if that makes him uncomfortable), you need to let men look at your ass for what it is, and then use the resulting discomfort as motivation for squats, lunges or dieting.
Granted, the guy who checks you out from behind probably isn't being completely honest either. If he were, he wouldn't wait until you passed to "steal" a look at your ass; he would do it while you are watching. Of course there is the practical consideration that a girl's ass can only be seen from behind, but this doesn't change the fact that most men are too scared or ashamed to express their sexual interest in a girl directly. Those guys probably liked your face or chest more than your ass, but checking those out would have required eye contact and revealing that they like you, which of course requires facing rejection. Anyway, just because most men are insincere in looking doesn't excuse you for being insincere in hiding. I am only saying so to point out that this isn't a gender-specific problem.
Now, if, on the other hand, you are attempting to hide your ass in spite of being perfectly comfortable with the way it looks, there is only one explanation: you don't feel comfortable with male sexual desire. This might be because of its intensity, or because you don't really understand it* (perhaps because you have no experience with it), or it might be because your sister or friend is on the receiving end of it far more than you. Whatever the case, it makes you uneasy.
You might attempt to defend this uneasiness by saying that you "don't like being treated like a piece of meat," but this is just an example of clever semantics putting a negative spin on a phenomenon that is so natural that you couldn't - or more accurately, wouldn't - exist without it. Straight men who are unmotivated by an attractive female body are about as common as women who are unmotivated by the idea of commitment. Good luck finding them. You either need to get used to that idea, or get used to the idea of being single, because if you can't feel comfortable with the fact that a man feels sexually attracted to the curves of your body, you can't feel comfortable with men.
Let me be clear here: I am not trying to defend men who only care about a woman's looks (who, by the way don't exist - but this is the topic for another post), and I am not trying to defend rude or crass expressions of male physical desire, like cat-calling or groping. But I am trying to point out that it isn't normal or healthy for women to walk around constantly worried about whether or not men are looking at their asses. And it certainly isn't normal to awkwardly pretend that your limbs happen to be in conveniently "concealing" locations when they have no natural business being there.
So if you are one of the girls doing this, realize that men know what you are trying to do and it doesn't work. And if you want to dig a little deeper, recognize it as a sign of a psychological kink that you need to work on.
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*Many men have a similar discomfort with the reciprocal, which is female emotional desire.
I suspect a good portion of the readers of this site have stumbled upon "The Manosphere" while browsing the internet for information about relationships – even if they haven't recognized it by that name. For those unfamiliar with it, The Manosphere is a very loose collection of blogs and websites written for men by men. They discuss male-related issues, with a heavy focus on the politics and social dynamics surrounding male-female interactions.
Perhaps more characteristic than the content itself (which can vary quite widely) is the underlying ideology, which champions self-improvement, the exposure of counter-cultural "red pill" truths about sexual dynamics, and a return to traditional gender roles for men and women. Sites like Return of Kings and Chateau Heartiste are typical of The Manosphere.
Recently, a reader asked whether I agreed with a post she'd read, claiming that women should read Manosphere websites (the post was written by a girl). By doing so, the post argued, women can learn a lot about men, and therefore more effectively attract the kind of man they want. What follows are my thoughts about this theory…
Let me start by explaining that I know about The Manosphere because I used to read it. I still do occasionally, as some of the blogs are still on my Blogger feed, and they often publish posts with titles that are hard to ignore, such as "6 Reasons Why Fat Women Are Defective."
In any case, the first thing you need to realize is that, in spite of the constant attempts to prove the contrary, The Manosphere is written by men who are bad with women. At least, it is written by men who have a history of being bad with women. I know this in part because being bad with women was how I discovered The Manosphere. But you don't need this "takes-one-to-know-one" perspective to see that posts titled "The Age of Flakes" or "How to Get Rid of Approach Anxiety" are written by guys (and of course, for guys) who have a lot of room for improvement.
Let me emphasize that I see nothing wrong with this. When a guy wakes up in his early twenties and realizes that he has crippling anxiety about talking to women, it is usually due to causes that were somewhat beyond his control - the way his parents raised him, for example. The fact that these guys are taking steps or even strides towards changing that fact is laudable. I am not mocking or pointing fingers here; I am just pointing out that the basic characteristic common to the authors of Manosphere sites is that they have a history of not getting the kind of reactions from women that they want, which leads to the more important point: Manosphere writers come from a place of discontent with respect to what women think about them. A small subset of them might have learned a handful of techniques that get them to a point where they feel proud of their success with women, and a select few beyond that might have genuinely overcome their underlying sense of inadequacy with respect to women. But the rest still feel this dissatisfaction, even if they don't recognize or admit it.
Now, there are two ways a man can react when he is disappointed with his success with women. The first is to recognize an inadequacy within, and work towards improving. The second is to blame that lack of success on women or circumstance, and give up. In The Manosphere, you'll find both. When I first discovered some Manosphere websites, I was looking for other men who had the first reaction; and I found enough of it to keep me interested for a while. But it was the realization that the majority of the writers were indulging in the second reaction that ultimately caused me to stop reading. In the same way that I eventually stopped appreciating Taylor Swift because I heard enough of her songs to realize that she has a major victim syndrome, I was turned off by The Manosphere's writers once I read enough to recognize what lies behind most of their complaints: dissatisfaction with themselves and the need for a scapegoat.
Let's look at an example to illustrate this: if a guy is approaching girls and they are rejecting him by turning immediately to look at their phones, there are two ways of explaining what is happening. The first is for the guy to admit that he is approaching these girls awkwardly, or that he is dressed poorly, or that something else is wrong. Then he can either work to improve or lower his expectations accordingly. The second way is to blame it on women or smartphones – or both. A nice way to confirm this opinion is to read (or write) an article claiming that "Women Who Own iPhones Lose The Ability To Love" and read all of the affirming responses in the article's comments section. Of course, the guy has to overlook the fact that the positive comments come from other men who've been similarly snubbed by girls, and are similarly looking for confirmation that it wasn't their fault. You, meanwhile, read such an article and are left wondering if maybe your phone is preventing you from attracting men. The reality, of course, is that your instinct to look at your phone all the time says much more about his timidity in approaching you than anything about your receptiveness.
I am not saying that all men in The Manosphere hate women. I am not even saying that any one of its writers hates women. But I am saying that The Manosphere is built on the tiny feelings of satisfaction that its thousands of readers – many of whom are normal guys who have a fairly healthy relationships with women – feel every time they can laugh or take a jab at what has caused them pain at some point in their past: women. I know because I've felt the temptation to do so myself, and I've seen the same tendency manifest itself as a wide spectrum of self-supporting-yet-delusional beliefs (held by men and women alike, and not necessarily related to dating). Men like reading The Manosphere for the same reason that women like songs that tell them weight isn't so important when it comes to attracting men: because it's easier than admitting that they're going to have to work harder.
I can absolutely see how a girl would be drawn in to The Manosphere. In a world of sappy, sugar-coated, "everything-is-going-to-be-all-right" dating advice, the stuff you read on The Manosphere stings just enough to be believable. You might even applaud yourself for pushing through your initial distaste for what you read in order to learn from the "harsh truth" beyond. But just because the truth is often harsh doesn't mean that harsh claims are necessarily true. Just because everyone else lies to you to make you feel good about yourself doesn't mean that the person who makes you feel bad about yourself isn't full of shit too. And as I explained above, there are good reasons to believe that a lot of The Manosphere is full of shit. What seems like a collection of articles written by men with absolutely no motivation to lie to you is actually a collection of articles written by men who feel shunned and mistreated by women in general (or at least have a history of feeling that way), and therefore have an underlying desire to believe that the playing field of sexual dynamics is tilted back in their favor. There is a reason why reading The Manosphere makes you feel like it kind of sucks to be a girl. What better way is there for a guy in his 30s to compensate for the feelings of sexual impotence he had in college (when he was surrounded by beautiful girls he couldn't get) than by inflating the importance of youth when it comes to female attractiveness? The assertions of The Manosphere are simply too convenient to be completely believable.
Yes, it is partially true that society has lost sight of what these guys call "red pill" truths; I am not denying that. But the very fact that they use metaphors from The Matrix should hint at the fact that many of them have issues with attracting women; and the almost singular focus on pointing out female shortcomings should suggest that maybe, just maybe, they hold their world-view because it conveniently puts them back into the place of power they feel so incapable of occupying. Ever notice how the most ardent modern-day Feminists are fat and ugly? The most vocal authors in The Manosphere are the masculine manifestation of exactly the same phenomenon: the phenomenon whereby people subconsciously choose beliefs that reassert their importance and agency in the world. The modern Feminist says "I am not good-looking enough to compete with Victoria's Secret models, so the standards of beauty they idealize must be inaccurate and unfair." The Manosphere writer says: "I am not getting the attention from women that I want; it must be because the girls in my country are selfish and entitled."
I don't want to paint the whole Manosphere in a bad light. From what I've read of his stuff, the guy who writes Chateau Heartiste seems pretty damn smart, and I admire Roosh's drive and bold individualism. There are definitely a lot of intelligent guys writing some very insightful stuff in The Manosphere, and there is a lot that both women and men can learn from reading it. The problem is just that there is a lot of bad mixed in with the good. And although it might be easy to identify the posts that are flagrantly wrong, even the sharpest readers will have trouble distinguishing the truth in the grayer areas.
So I am not going to tell you not to read The Manosphere. I've never liked the idea of censorship, and who the hell am I to tell you what to read anyway? But if you do choose to read The Manosphere, you need to recognize that you are walking through a minefield of ideas, where a lot of what you'll read is colored by the authors' need to feel sexually powerful. Yes, occasionally the complaints you read about women on those blogs will be honest and accurate expositions of things that women are doing wrong; but more often than not they will be frustration-fueled attempts to blame someone or something else for the fact that the author can't get the kind or quantity of girls he wants. That being said, being aware of the mindset behind what you read in The Manosphere should go a long way towards being able to distinguish the truth from the wishful thinking. So my advice is simple: keep this fact in mind, and read carefully.
One last note, especially for the men reading this: most of the good information contained in The Manosphere, and a lot more besides, minus all of the posturing and complaining, can be found on a website called Animus Empire. Women, of course, can find the good without the bad on blogs like this one.
Girls are famous for complimenting each other and supporting each other with their words. On the surface, this seems like a good thing. Telling your girl friend that she looks hot before a night out will boost her ego; telling her that the guy who just dumped her wasn't worth her time will help her get over him faster; and telling her that she has a "Beyonce butt" will make her feel more comfortable about her body... right? Wrong.
When you do these things, you are letting your girlfriend wallow in her mediocrity. If you tell your friend that she looks good when she doesn't, she isn't going to make an effort to look better next time. If you tell your friend that the guy wasn't worth her time, when the truth is that he definitely was worth her time, you are only going to prevent her from doing what she needs to do to make herself more attractive to the next guy of that caliber. And if you tell her that her big ass is sexy, she isn't going to lose the weight she needs to make it look better.
Granted, your girl friend probably isn't naive enough or dishonest enough with herself to completely believe you when you say these things; but I am willing to bet that neither is she wise enough nor honest enough with herself to disbelieve them completely. By telling her anything less than the complete truth, you are placing a Band-Aid over the wound; you aren't substantially helping her. Or worse, you are cowering from your fear of telling her the harsh truth, only because you want to avoid the confrontation that it might cause. Even your excuse about making her feel good about herself falls flat, because a girl's "need to feel beautiful" cannot be satisfied by empty or equivocated compliments.
The problem with this kind of "support" is deeper than just the effect that you have on your friend. Not only are you wrong about the fact that you are helping her, you are probably also wrong in believing that your motive was to help her in the first place. You tell her that she looks hot because you think she needs to hear that she looks hot. But that is just a symptom of the fact that, if you were in her situation, you would feel the need to hear that you look hot - precisely because you wouldn't believe it. And you tell her that her ex wasn't worth her time mainly because, if you were in her situation, you wouldn't be comfortable with accepting the harsh reality that he was absolutely worth your time, but you lost him. And if you had an ass that size, you'd want to believe that the shape compensated for the size, because you'd hate having to face the reality that your ass is huge, and that you actually need to start a real workout, rather than just reading magazines on the treadmill three times a week. In other words, your inability to be honest with your friend is a reflection of your discomfort being honest with yourself.
Granted, there are right ways and wrong ways to break the news to your friend that she is fat, or looks bad, or just lost the man of her dreams - or any other news she isn't going to want to hear. I am not suggesting that when she asks "doesn't my ass look big in this?" you reply "yeah, like huge!" There are ways to get the truth across tactfully, one of which is not embarrassing her in front of others. For example, in that situation (assuming there were others present), you could say something like "It's probably not the right dress for you" and then later - in person - tell her that she should throw it away.
Also, pointing out problems without solutions is the hallmark of un-helpfulness. So the other important thing to do is to help her find a way to improve whatever it is you are giving her honest feedback about. After you tell her that you actually thing she lost a great guy, for example, don't just stop there and let her believe (wrongly) that she has an inherent lack of ability to get a quality man; tell her that you think you know a couple reasons he might have left, and offer to help her improve in those areas.
By starting to be more honest with your girl friends, you aren't going to start a revolution in the way that women give each other feedback and advice. This is something rooted in female nature, in the same way that the male inability to engage each other emotionally is rooted in theirs (and neither is a strength). But you could do something far more important, in the sense that it affects you a lot more: you could change the culture in your group of friends. If one or two of you start breaking the insincere compliment cycle, the others will catch on, and soon realize that yours is a better course of action. The more you foster that culture among your group of friends, the more you all will benefit from the mutual honesty, the more you will improve yourselves and your chances with the opposite sex.
