Exiting the Manosphere: the Male Hierarchy is Not a Thing (Odd Columns #9 , AND Healthy Masculinity #5)
Okay, really, in all actuality, this was kicked off by this meme image, which I do not have the ability to display in its full glory. You can find it on the Twitter account of its originator @Evilgram, also if you want a good example of trans humor, I strongly recommend looking closely at it. It’s extremely funny.
I’ve been thinking about returning to my series on Healthy Masculinity lately, and it has never seemed quite so relevant. This might have to do with the number of transmasculine people I’m hanging out with these days (Edgar, while nonbinary or agender, also identifies as trans-masculine, and one of our most common drinking buddies is a trans man,) which throws the whole thing into a somewhat different light: it’s been commented that talking to cis people about gender is like taking a 101 course and talking to a transgender person about gender is like taking a master class, and while this is somewhat reductionist, I feel it generally holds true.
Throw into the mix the recent discourse about so-called “Sigma males”, and you have a recipe for something that really needs to be talked about. This week’s series from Behind the Bastards is an excellent primer on the concept and the general state of the so-called “manosphere” (I especially liked being pointed towards We Hunted the Mammoth’s photo series of MGTOW food, which were an excellent example of what I defined cringe as in my piece on American Cringe – read: something of which no parody is really possible.)
However, while talking with Edgar yesterday, I came to a realization about the whole “Sigma Male” thing that I realized that I need to share.
Unfortunately, this means I need to write a primer on this topic, so I’m sorry in advance.
We’re talking about dude stuff, so we have to involve the famous Three Wolf Moon image.
The Alphabet Soup of Manliness
There is a concept out there that all of society is predicated upon a socio-sexual hierarchy, and that we all have a place in it. This is a cancerous outgrowth of work done on captive gray wolves. This was first done by Rudolph Schenkel, a researcher at the University of Basel, and was picked up later by L. David Mech, who has tragically had to spend the rest of his career trying to debunk it, in his 1970 book The Wolf.
This concept essentially boils down to the idea that there is a static and immutable hierarchy of dominance in all groups: one person (usually a man) leads, and the rest follow. The leader is the Alpha, his collaborators are the Betas, and the member of the group picked on by the others is the Omega. Sometimes, it’s thought that there’s room for a population of subordinated “Gammas”, but all of this is bullshit and isn’t borne out. As Mech and other researchers note, they were observing male wolves in captivity, usually from different packs. Essentially, they were looking at the dynamics of a prison gang, played out in captive animals, and assuming that this holds true for human beings in day to day society.
We will leave the ghost of Michel Foucault where it is, because he doesn’t have anything helpful to add here. Even if the form of society might replicate the form of the prison, we here at Broken Hands Media are a bit to Deleuzian to accept that at purely face value.
So, if we have the A, B, G, and O, where the hell does the S come in?
Pictured: Jack Welch, or, as I like to think of him now, six Sigma males in a skin suit.
Well, in Mech’s original typology, the Omega was the “lone wolf”, but MRAs already decided that being the Omega was bad, so they picked a new letter. Specifically, Theodore Robert Beale, also known as Vox Day (who is discussed brilliantly in Elizabeth Sandifer’s Neoreaction a Basilisk, which is in turn reviewed by Edgar here,) picked it. There’s no reason given for the use of Sigma, though I do note that the letter is used in statistics for the standard deviation or in geometry for an unknown angle, and it has an association with General Electric’s “Six Sigma” doctrine, popularized by Jack Welch, the man who killed Fordism.
According to Dictionary.com’s slang page about the Sigma Male:
While a so-called alpha male is aggressive, sociable, and outgoing, the sigma male is constructed as succeeding in life and in relationships without actively engaging in social interaction. The sigma male is introverted and shuns mainstream society, yet still manages to be a successful man who is popular with women.
Beale described sigma males as “lone wolves” and likened them to introverted alpha males. He singled out actor Clint Eastwood’s movie characters as examples of sigma males. In a more recent post about the topic, he would further define the sigma male as “The outsiders who don’t play the social game and manage to win at it anyhow.” According to Beale, alpha males dislike sigma males because sigma males effortlessly succeed while alpha males have to work hard to achieve their status.
According to Charlottetown’s The Guardian, which is distinct from the UK-based Guardian, and operated by Postmedia, a right-wing publisher: “A sigma is an alpha, but he’s got more of an edge to him. Think of the lone wolf type of guy. A sigma also commands a room, but with his quiet mystery and intrigue. Because of that, women gravitate to him. He also finds success in his career, but he isn’t afraid to push the envelope and take risky moves.”
Needless to say this is all very dumb. Especially because there have now emerged courses and YouTube videos aiming to “teach” men to become Sigmas – I would be surprised if, in five years or so, we didn’t see black market hormone cocktails people could buy to become their ideal male type (marketed, of course, in a handy red or black pill.)
This is fundamentally a confusing thing if you take these people at their word: first, if the hierarchy is permanent and immutable, you can’t change your position in it; second, if the hallmark of a so-called “Sigma” is standing outside of this hierarchy, you can’t adopt this identity by going deeper into the hierarchy; finally, if these grifters make so much money off of this, then why are they essentially telling people they have to abandon it?
That last one, of course, is easy enough to answer because of the second: it’s a money-making opportunity that will never end. It’s a way of reducing these emotionally damaged young men to a population of permanent customers. They’ll always be trying to escape, but everything they buy into will just convince them to go deeper and deeper into the labyrinth.
The Bro-Industrial Complex
A knight on horseback, image taken from the Encyclopedia Britannica article for “Chivalry.” Prime example of a guy just being a dude.
Forgive the trite title of this section, but this actually has a purpose. I’m reminded of a great little essay that Patrick Wyman – the voice behind the Tides of History podcast – wrote on his substack called “Bro Culture, Fitness, Chivalry, and American Identity” where he places the modern conception of masculinity into a historical context, showing that it doesn’t differ all that much from, for example, the medieval conception of manliness under the imagined code of chivalry (of course, it’s necessary to remember that the nobility of the early middle ages and the corps of warriors that surrounded them were essentially gangs – so perhaps not that far from the wolves that Schenkel and Mech were observing?) This article is one of the principle reasons I wanted to return to this series – it was a well-written exploration of masculinity apart from the toxic/non-toxic distinction, while still acknowledging a background level of toxicity.
For example, Wyman does an excellent job of laying out the character of the “default male”, marking the otherwise unmarked default by defining it as such:
The assumed subject of this culture is a straight, young-ish (18-40) dude who’s kind of into fitness of some kind, whether that’s lifting weights, a little jiu-jitsu, or what have you. He probably played sports and currently enjoys watching them. He’s familiar with but not super dedicated to video games and likes beer and maybe some weed from time to time. He may or may not have a college degree, but either way has a solid but not extremely high-paying job. He probably lives in the suburbs, exurbs, or a rural area, rather than a dense metro. He’s probably but not necessarily white. He’s disproportionately likely to have served in the military, and if he hasn’t, he knows people - family or friends - who do or did.
These various demographic, and therefore cultural and social affiliations, don’t exist in isolation from one another. Put together, they form a relatively stable melange, an ecosystem with its own influencers and heroes, values and principles, and connections to other social, cultural, and political phenomena.
Marcus Aurelius, a classic dude. (Image uploaded to wikimedia commons by Pierre-Selim and used under a CC BY-SA 3.0 license.)
Taken together, these qualities show a masculinity produced by the machineries of American culture, which have replaced – in a Trowvian sense – history with demographics. These people may be aware of history, they may be fans of Marcus Aurelius or George Washington, but they don’t interact with history as the process of the production of our contemporary society. It’s just a story, and it makes sense to be treat it with a fannish approach. This is an aside, forgive me.
Wyman goes on to describe how the production of production of this identity – the mutually-reinforcing identification of people as part of “bro” culture and the emergence of influencers to cater to this demographic – leads almost inexorably to our current political situation, going on to show the affiliation of famous mass shooter Kyle Rittenhouse and Black Rifle Coffee Company, a “loudly and proudly Veteran-with-a-capital-V-owned, with the tagline ‘Fresh Roasted Freedom.’ It advertises widely, forging partnerships with a variety of influencers: You can get 20 percent off your BRCC order with the code JOEROGAN at checkout, of course. Maybe you’d like the Thin Blue Line roast.” (It should be noted that the company’s founder, Evan Haffer, disavowed Rittenhouse – but just as with Mech’s disavowal of the wolf research, I doubt anyone cares.)
Near the end of this piece, Wyman ties it all together with the assertion that
The code of American manhood that’s developing out of this social-media melting pot has some aspects that bear watching: A love of firearms centered on tactical usefulness (for use in what context, exactly?), a vision of muscular physicality, self-defense as a personal obligation, an unquestioning hero-worship of military culture, and far too often, a deep suspicion of people who don’t subscribe to this precise view of being a guy. Support the Troops, and if you don’t, you’re not really a man at all. If cops - quintessential subjects of Bro Culture - are told that they need to be bigger and stronger and quicker on the draw, that they’re basically Troops, and that the targets of violence deserve what they get, what’s the likely outcome of tense interactions between police and the people they’re supposed to serve?
This, admittedly, tends to define the culture that is adopted by and lionized by those who identify as “Alpha” male types. The Alpha has been thoroughly monetized, it’s a horizon of extraction for this capitalist apparatus. The Sigma, not quite as thoroughly.
I imagine that’s going to change at some point. The question is, fundamentally, why it is necessary to produce this whole new masculine type. The answer, I feel, is pretty simple: there’s already a preexisting division in how masculinity is constructed.
Same Shit, Different Day
As an aside, it’s really amazing that our all-male Jesuit high school let us put on a production of Lysistrata. Practices went so poorly that we developed the amazing advertising technique of “begging people not to come.” Of course, we sold out every night.
I really have to write something about the permanent damage that the American obsession with high school culture creates. Due to a variety of reasons (largely stemming from depression, I believe, though I don’t have a diagnosis, so don’t quote me on that,) I don’t really remember much of high school (probably for the best, since fellow graduates include Josh Hawley and Scott Tucker of payday loan fame.) I remember certain episodes, of course: handling a human skull in Anatomy Class (also testing my own blood type in that same class,) listening to my Cuban-national Spanish teacher describe the horrors of the 1977 Chilean Coup, performing in a disastrous and glorious production of Lysistrata, etc., but I don’t remember the vast majority of it. I get the sense that most people remember a lot more.
Of course, since the 1950s or so, almost everything in American culture has been reducible to the social dynamics of high school. Fundamentally, this is the imposition of a Jocks vs. Nerds dichotomy on everything (other conflicts, like Prep vs. Goth and the like, are fundamentally just reskinnings of the same thing.) You have the in-group and the out-group, and in the discourse of masculinity, this is about the conflict between the Jock – standing in for a “Warrior-King” archetype – and the Nerd – aspiring to the “Philosopher-King” archetype – and this incredibly dumb conflict just plays out over and over again.
Please note, I’m not saying that there’s any truth to this sort of thing. I’m saying that this is a sort of mythic explanation for the tension. There are two competing models of masculinity that are exemplified by these popcultural figures, and we’ve allowed it to infect and infest everything because of the American (potentially Anglo-American?) tendency to just make everything like high school, even though it was terrible and no actual adult would ever want to go back.
This movie invites you to cheer for someone who commits rape by deception. Classic!
The question is essentially “what defines a man? Is it strength or intellect?” and the competing answers to this question have become mere aesthetics, the core has melted away, leaving just a hollow shell behind – hollow figures of “Nerdity” and “Jock-ness” into which almost anything can be poured. Clearly, the figure of the “Alpha Male” is the Jock made into an archetype, and the production of the “Sigma Male” is just a recapitulation of a parallel “Nerd” archetype in the toxic environment of the manosphere.
You find similar recapitulations elsewhere: Hipster vs. Basic is one, but the one that has confused me more than anything else is the conservative turn in nerd culture (Gamergate) and the parallel social awareness in sports culture (exemplified by, but not limited to, Colin Kaepernick.)
The Only Way to Win Is Not to Play
Of course this is all just bullshit. Just about everything that I talk about on this website turns out to be about two thirds of the way in, longtime readers should be aware of that by now. None of this is true. There is no permanent, unchangeable social hierarchy. There are no male “types”. I maintain that all identities are the product of relationships, so it’s a trick question when you get down to it.
This is all a stupid game, and everyone knows that if you play stupid games, you win stupid prizes.
Perhaps some people who convince themselves that they’re “Sigma Males” will realize the self-defeating nature of the con that they’ve come under the sway of (I’m reminded of Trow’s adage, “the referee always wins.” New male types will be produced to explain why you just can’t be a Sigma. Maybe you’re a Phi Male, or the dreaded Omicron, who’s like an Omega but less of a loser, or something.) Maybe some of these people will come to the decision that the game of masculinity as it’s set up is really dumb, and go and take a cooking class, or learn how to dance or something. However, I would argue that this is just the same toxic bullshit, repackaged in a way that doesn’t seem quite so bad to the sort of people that pay attention to the manosphere from the outside.
Part of why I’m so incensed by this is that I’m pretty sure that, before the age of 25 or so, I might have fallen victim to it. I credit my evolution past that point, partially, to the influence of Edgar and my third (and silent for the moment) collaborator, Alex, who was going through his own hell during those years just after the financial crisis.
If any supposed, or would-be Sigma males are reading right now, allow me to paraphrase the advice he gave me at the time:
No one wants to hang out with the surly guy at the bar. You have to give people a reason to interact with you. This isn’t the pick-up artist “demonstrate value” or some bullshit like that, it’s the simple fact that if you want to spend time with other people, you need to be someone that other people might want to have a conversation with.
Also, instead of listening to some sweaty dude that can’t spell about what women want, maybe (once you’ve developed those conversational skills,) you should ask a woman. Preferably a woman you consider a friend, not a potential romantic partner, because (shockingly!) that’s probably something that you should have in your life.
Just a thought.