Toxic masculinity is here to stay

"Feminism for me, libertarianism for thee"

Indulge me while I vent for a minute.

Scott Galloway and Logan Ury were recently on The Diary of a CEO podcast. Over the course of this nearly two and a half hour podcast, they attempted to “dissect” some of the reasons that younger men were increasingly falling behind in society.

Here are some of the things they covered:

• The fact that there are no male role models in the household

• The fact that divorce courts are biased against men

• The fact that teachers are primarily female, which leads to a bias against male coded behaviors.

• The lack of play in school

• The lack of vocational training in schools

• The discrepancy between male and female brain development at early ages

• The winner-take-all dynamics of the economy and dating market

• The hypergamy dynamics on the dating apps

• The reverse gender pay gap in a growing number of American Metropolitan areas

• The lack of male only spaces

• The prevalence of porn

• Video games

• The lack of drinking as a social lubricant

• The lack of risk taking behavior

Three moments in the podcast stand out to me in particular.

Around 33 minutes in, Scott mentions that we can’t tell women to lower their expectations after all of the progress they’ve made. And yet, they repeatedly mention the fact that women have created a list of criteria for their partner that statistically only 2 to 5% of men in the US actually fill.

As I’ve mentioned in a previous post, as well as my podcast with Ancient Problemz, I’m not a big fan of the manosphere guy Kevin Samuels. I don't think it's particularly helpful to invite black women on your show and just berate them for 30 minutes.

Nevertheless, one of the reasons he got so popular is that he was willing to call out the elephant in the room: the fact that so many mediocre women seem to have a completely arbitrary set of standards as to what they’re looking for in men – standards that they derived from a combination of Instagram reels and their non-binary sociology professors.

To be clear, there’s nothing wrong with being mediocre. By definition, most people are.

What is utterly baffling, however, is the perpetuation of the idea that women’s problems are treated as men’s fault, and men’s problems are also treated as men's fault.

I used a sophisticated machine learning algorithm to create a diagram to adequately summarize the phenomenon. Feel free to steal it and share it whenever you see it playing out in your own personal corner of the internet:

Hell, we can even see this phenomenon playing out on Substack. Let’s compare these two articles.

Women are entering middle-age without finding somebody? Well that’s just because average men don’t have the cards — do better, men! Oh my god AI girlfriends are coming? Holy fuck, everybody stop what they’re doing! We need to solve this problem immediately!

(And as a tangent, we need to stop perpetuating this myth that men are somehow intimidated by women’s success. This is largely something that women say to each other in order to justify their lack of dating prospects.

“Oh my god you’re a product manager at a FAANG company – with a defined benefit pension plan?! Dear lord, how can I ever look her in the eye?!”)

The second moment of interest in the podcast was around 44 minutes, where both Scott Galloway and Logan Ury implicitly acknowledge the hypocrisy coming from women; while many women implicitly say that they are looking for emotionally competent men, in reality this means men need to be emotionally competent enough to support her emotions. God forbid if men actually open up.

The last memorable moment comes around 1 hour and 31 minutes into the podcast, when Scott bluntly states the truth of the modern dating market. Back in the day, a man could show his worth in many different domains, proving that he was a person of quality by a number of different metrics that weren’t necessarily quantifiable. But now, as he puts it:

Character has been squeezed out by money.

Ultimately, it is interesting to see how…

This new wave of male advocates parrot many of the same red pill/black pill talking points, while trying to dress it up in “New York Times” language

For example, over the course of the podcast they repeatedly talk about how men date “horizontally and down”, while women date “horizontally and up.”

But again, what does “horizontal” and “up” refer to in this context?

I'll tell you what it is: it’s the same retarded LinkedIn metrics that everyone has been using since the last fifty years. Are you a good man who spends time with his kids and abstains from worldly vices? Fuck you, get good at B2B sales, you stupid bitch.

Logan Ury claims to be a feminist, occasionally refers to the patriarchy, and stresses the need for some sort of “evolved masculinity”.

So what does this “evolved masculinity” look like?

Well, based on Scott’s recommendations, it is:

• Being rich

• Being smart

• Being kind

• Being funny

• Being jacked

• Promoting male spaces (that is to say, having lots of friends)

• Having “surplus value” (that is to say, constantly sacrificing your needs for other people)

• Enduring loads of rejection

Bravo, what a great list. I could’ve never imagined that a rich, smart, kind, funny, muscular, popular, levelheaded man is successful in the dating market.

Shit why didn't I think of that?

Logan Ury’s recommendations are even more retarded. The first is for women to stop using such a stringent height filter, and the second is for men to stop watching so much porn.

This advice coming from her is absolutely fucking rich; Ury is the director of relationship science at Hinge, and prior to that, she would sell porn advertisements online. She is literally complaining about the very problems that she herself created!

I don’t expect these sorts of people to solve the problem anytime soon; for guys like Scott Galloway, Logan Ury, and the host of the podcast, Steven Bartlett, this is nothing more than content.

Ultimately, it's hard to take these people seriously when they talk about the male suicide epidemic in between advertisements for matcha.

And that’s why you see them constantly skirting around the truth, which is the fact that…

There is a God, and his name continues to be trade-off

Let’s get back to this diagram

Until we start acknowledging the missing box here, nothing will change.

Yes, that means in a world that is post #MeToo, women will need to start taking more initiative in approaching people in real life – and potentially getting rejected in the process. Or otherwise, get comfortable with occasionally being approached by creepy guys.

Yes, that also means acknowledging that men give a shit about your waistline, and that you can’t swap out Scarlett Johansson with Lena Dunham without risking a fuck rate implosion.

Yes, that means acknowledging the mathematical truth that both of you can’t have the higher income in the relationship.

Yes, that also means dealing with his emotions, even when it’s inconvenient.

Yes, that means acknowledging that men are visual creatures — that they’re not assholes, they just need sex.

Yes, that means acknowledging that women – and especially white women – have done a pretty shit job in the sectors where they dominate: the humanities departments, the HR departments, the healthcare industry, the publishing industry, the DEI apparatus, and I’m sure many other places.

Or don’t. Don’t acknowledge any of these things.

Listen, I know several women in their 40s and 50s who never got married, and they are some of the happiest people that I know. But you know what they’re not doing? Constantly going on Substack and Podcasts, talking about the state of dating and relationships.

But just notice the disconnect between the problem space (the lack of male role models, the biases in the education system, the lack of vocational training, the abandonment of the left, and all the other systemic level issues) and the solutions they provide (have you tried going to the gym and making money, you fucking moron?)

Notice how these bleeding heart progressives suddenly turn into Austrian-economics-free-market professors when they actually have to talk about potential solutions.

So by all means, continue on with this “feminism for me, libertarianism for thee” mindset if you want.

But for all these podcast bloviators who pretend to give a shit, recognize that the problems are only going to get worse from here on out. Understand that Kevin Samuels and Andrew Tate are going to look like angels compared to whoever comes next.

Don’t start complaining when this all of a sudden starts impacting your life — that you were happy to ignore these trends when it was nothing more than an abstract concept, but now that it’s impacting you or your children, now you suddenly give a shit.

I would argue that it's already impacting your life – take a look at the stock market if you don't agree with me.

Anyways, I look forward to the next several years of masculinity think pieces. I'm sure that it will pair nicely with the delusional girl boss feminist blog posts, just like wine and cheese.

I’m sure that Ezra Klein, Scott Galloway, and Richard Reeves will do a great job in turning the ship around, and the next podcast appearance will finally solve everything.

But seriously, men, what's wrong with you? Your father left you, and your teachers discriminated against you all throughout school? Your one and only girlfriend left you because you nearly cried in front of her?

Have you tried getting rich?