"But a feature of progressive liberalism is that it cannot leave you in peace - in part that’s because it’s a moralising faith but also because the kind of person who is drawn to it is deeply anxious and therefore constantly expresses a need for reassurance by micromanaging the emotions of others." Insightful.
My read is that men are basically coarser, rougher and more offensive, and women are actively repulsed by this. (Slugs and snails and puppy dogs tails, to quote the rhyme.) By comparison, while men are likelier to find feminine social norms a bit soft or sentimental, it's more likely to provoke disinterest than to repulse them. Combine that with historic sexism and a grievance culture, and it's easy to see why women have edged men out of certain contexts.
To give another example, a mother can write a post lamenting her son's natural interest in toy guns, and even if somebody thinks she's being naive, her complaint is understandable. A father lamenting his daughter's natural interest in dolls is going to come across as insane, even though it's the mirror complaint.
That male-oriented content is boorish, offensive, stupid and much else besides is a reflection of all this, amplified by the fact it's produced for the lowest common denominator. To get men properly engaged with high culture you need a kind of Martin Amis figure, capable of being coarsely male at a higher register.
Higher testosterone levels link with reduced pro-social behaviour, and the modern world is very feminised and consensus driven which is pretty much the antithesis of that. Kaczynski's comments about the over-socialisation of leftists also come to mind in this regard - it's a world too prim, pious, rules driven and shame based to be attractive to men.
Regarding male spaces - the key is keeping women out. If that can't be done with rules or culture, then it is done unofficially through other methods. I can recall an old iron gym that was full of rust, poor lighting and no heating to try to keep it a male space where prohibiting female members would have been illegal.
Regarding the modern male writers you mention; male readership certainly skews towards the polemical, political and technical. If I publish fiction, unless it's political allegory, it does far poorer than more political posts. Strangely, poetry and fiction seem to have a roughly equal appeal. Some of that may also be a result of who is on substack, a platform whose popularity is in part due to its relative lack of censorship.
It’s a great point that I’ve noticed as I’ve moved more from Twitter to substack- the way the nature of the platform influences what writing flourishes on it… although of course nothing flourishes on Twitter these days
To be fair the big 5 publishing companies (literary fiction dept) essentially conspired - for 10 years and counting - not to publish serious (read: honest) new work from that apex oppressor the straight white male. Imagine there was a time not long ago when Huellebecq’s ‘Atomised’ was celebrated on these shores winning the Dublin international literary prize. Kevin Barry was accurately depicting mad Wesht of Ireland red blooded male characters. And on a dime it all stopped. I recall referencing Kevin Barry at the staff Christmas party in 2016 and a female colleague disapproved, not because of his stories. Her point seemed to be a confoundedness at why we weren’t talking about female Irish writers. As though my enthusiasm for Barry were irrational even. That uncanniness haunted the liberal scene until we all left it and sought answers on podcasts.
Yeah I was trying to highlight two connected things here, one was why I feel so alienated from so much art and entertainment but also why so many people seem so unfit for the more complex and worthwhile stuff. You’re picking up on one part of that but I think those two things are connected and interact with each other in weird ways.
They said the reason was ‘diversity,’ but what they actually did was to cull a market, ironically the underdog market: books of the experimental and masculine-literary variety written by and read by men. To the extent that women read books written by men, they read the more universally themed unisex ones and I posit that there are more of these pro-rata written by men than the contrary. The female authored fiction written by women that men also enjoy, transcends the predominating market driven fare: romtragedy, melodrama or girlboss-sentimental (see: ‘where the crawdads sing’ ‘little fires everywhere’) you get the idea and that wouldn’t have been controversial to say in the before-times. In 2020, we were passed the phase where an aspiring male author was thwarted by a publisher because ‘sorry, you’re novel just doesn’t appeal to a female reader’ …The next goalpost-shift meant compelling men to read the kind of books written by women that are marketed to (read: liberal-progressive) women. A bit like ‘we need more female politicians but they must also be progressive otherwise it doesn’t count’ The point was that it was bad that men didn’t read novels written for a female sensibility with Netflix-level segue fealty to progressive dogma. In fact, like the colleague in 2018, it was irrational, baffling, a moral concern in the reading world: the new software update for the prog-lib female reader. None other than Ian Mcewan was shrewdly drafted in by the Guardian to sagely admonish the unreconstructed male reader to this end.
And, adding insult to injury, you will be told that it isn’t happening, none of it, you’re imagining it, ‘literally no one is fucking say that’ ‘and it’s good thing that they are.’
Thanks for this post! Sadly agree about male cultural rot, i hope we will see a counterculture to this (part of me is still hoping for a fully- fledged revival of romanticism as a response to... well the current and recent monoculture which seems to be the result of both regressive progressivism as well as tech-philistinism - i just have no idea where the creative impetus is going to come from)
I've also seen a lot of articles people have written about how to attract men (and people in general) to progressivism and they seem to have thought of everything except for changing their politics to something more than an increasingly small subset of people could vote for. I recently saw one proposing that they need more clear 'villain narratives'. Yup. That'll do it.
Oh, I had a fantasy about writing a novel in midlife in my younger years but after hoarding enough money to theoretically retire I gave up after reading all the discourse on how nobody publishes straight white guys anymore--I don't fight losing battles. I sold all the books I had on how to write fiction to my local used bookstore and used the proceeds to buy a copy of Alan Moore's The Killing Joke (yes, the comic book). Seemed apropos.
I don't think I was ever meant for artistic greatness, but I'm sure there are many other similar stories, and some of them might have contributed something.
I do appreciate this. You've definitely surpassed the normal amount of insightful things in an essay on these topics. 95% of it I didn't have any problem with, and I think it was good for my brain.
One or two things kinda seemed worth commenting on.
> Women’s general upward mobility and increased social, cultural and political power means they will have an increased presence in the most respectable and valuable institutions, and an increased shaping of those institutions to better reflect female moral and aesthetic preferences. (There’s nothing wrong with that, and good for them.)
Um.. ok? Sounds to me like that means it doesn't matter who is the dominant party and "meh" to the spirit of equality. "It's our turn to eat." That's... not the greatest if that's what you mean.
Last paragraph: It's not *just* their fault, as the whole essay makes clear. Why talk like that unless you're trying to scold them like children into taking responsibility like adults? But maybe this is simply a way of doing polemics I personally find condescending and irritating.
That's a really good piece. It makes me realise that I've been part of the vacating, mentally retreating to some nebulous cultural space that from a real-life perspective seems to be pretty much unpopulated. So it's nice to read a global view that explains why I now can't stand many of the things I liked a decade ago—new fiction, football, music—and that it probably isn't just me. I'd put it down to the turning of the cultural wheel but maybe it's the entry of women. Maybe it's the same thing.
I'd push back a little on 'enchudification' though. I feel like there are still areas for your cerebral men, but they're ones which have a natural moat without needing cockroaches – big history because it's full of war, the outdoors because it's dangerous, the type of actual elite sport that actually feels existential and there are no spare resources to devote to playing nice. The classics in general because even the most irritating modern readings are still as gnats to an elephant. There are crowns-in-the-gutter there, and tbh it's not like the withdrawing men were all polymaths to start with.
Shout out btw to the Lana Del Reys, Houellebecqs and Jamie Vardys who have just ploughed through regardless, and kept the old spaces open. It can still be done!
Definitely, I agree with a lot of that, there’s a push and pull in both directions, you can feel it even in the one person and I can feel it in myself which is why I wrote it. Thanks for the read
What is wrong with Jordan Petersen or Joe Rogan? Neither of those guys is encouraging bad behavior. If anything, Jordan has helped millions of people (including me! A woman!)
Interesting essay, if quite bleak. Less depressing than reading David Goodhary on here, or Labour Beyond Cities on Twitter since there’s no sense of someone clinging desperately to the rotting corpse of the ideology and values of their youth.
One hopes a way out will be found, though.
“50% of the population, and in society dominated by a technology that allows everyone to see what everyone else is doing at all times.”
in _a_ society
“why aren’t they not responding to the old instructions” why _aren’t they_
“So from a defensive perspective men are drawn to spaces that not just that they skew male”
to spaces that don’t just skew male
“but that they skew towards”
but skew towards
“they are most impressed by it’s capabilities”
its (possessive) capabilities
“some examples of this techno-philistine idiocy below.” Promise never delivered on
“There is no way of having spaces that men are more comortable in are not also often repulsive and contradictory to the spirit of our ti”
comfortable in that is not also
“totally in line with progressive liberalism is going to result in something very wan or banal”
You may think the current culture is "valued intellectual property" but that indicates you have succumbed to a matriarchy and forgotten the values that made men noble, virtuous, and brave. As Arnold Schwarzenegger put it, you've become a girly man instead of kicking that shit out the door.
"But a feature of progressive liberalism is that it cannot leave you in peace - in part that’s because it’s a moralising faith but also because the kind of person who is drawn to it is deeply anxious and therefore constantly expresses a need for reassurance by micromanaging the emotions of others." Insightful.
Thanks Terry
My read is that men are basically coarser, rougher and more offensive, and women are actively repulsed by this. (Slugs and snails and puppy dogs tails, to quote the rhyme.) By comparison, while men are likelier to find feminine social norms a bit soft or sentimental, it's more likely to provoke disinterest than to repulse them. Combine that with historic sexism and a grievance culture, and it's easy to see why women have edged men out of certain contexts.
To give another example, a mother can write a post lamenting her son's natural interest in toy guns, and even if somebody thinks she's being naive, her complaint is understandable. A father lamenting his daughter's natural interest in dolls is going to come across as insane, even though it's the mirror complaint.
That male-oriented content is boorish, offensive, stupid and much else besides is a reflection of all this, amplified by the fact it's produced for the lowest common denominator. To get men properly engaged with high culture you need a kind of Martin Amis figure, capable of being coarsely male at a higher register.
Martin Amis’s non-fiction is probably low key my biggest influence so good spot
Higher testosterone levels link with reduced pro-social behaviour, and the modern world is very feminised and consensus driven which is pretty much the antithesis of that. Kaczynski's comments about the over-socialisation of leftists also come to mind in this regard - it's a world too prim, pious, rules driven and shame based to be attractive to men.
Regarding male spaces - the key is keeping women out. If that can't be done with rules or culture, then it is done unofficially through other methods. I can recall an old iron gym that was full of rust, poor lighting and no heating to try to keep it a male space where prohibiting female members would have been illegal.
Regarding the modern male writers you mention; male readership certainly skews towards the polemical, political and technical. If I publish fiction, unless it's political allegory, it does far poorer than more political posts. Strangely, poetry and fiction seem to have a roughly equal appeal. Some of that may also be a result of who is on substack, a platform whose popularity is in part due to its relative lack of censorship.
It’s a great point that I’ve noticed as I’ve moved more from Twitter to substack- the way the nature of the platform influences what writing flourishes on it… although of course nothing flourishes on Twitter these days
To be fair the big 5 publishing companies (literary fiction dept) essentially conspired - for 10 years and counting - not to publish serious (read: honest) new work from that apex oppressor the straight white male. Imagine there was a time not long ago when Huellebecq’s ‘Atomised’ was celebrated on these shores winning the Dublin international literary prize. Kevin Barry was accurately depicting mad Wesht of Ireland red blooded male characters. And on a dime it all stopped. I recall referencing Kevin Barry at the staff Christmas party in 2016 and a female colleague disapproved, not because of his stories. Her point seemed to be a confoundedness at why we weren’t talking about female Irish writers. As though my enthusiasm for Barry were irrational even. That uncanniness haunted the liberal scene until we all left it and sought answers on podcasts.
Yeah I was trying to highlight two connected things here, one was why I feel so alienated from so much art and entertainment but also why so many people seem so unfit for the more complex and worthwhile stuff. You’re picking up on one part of that but I think those two things are connected and interact with each other in weird ways.
They said the reason was ‘diversity,’ but what they actually did was to cull a market, ironically the underdog market: books of the experimental and masculine-literary variety written by and read by men. To the extent that women read books written by men, they read the more universally themed unisex ones and I posit that there are more of these pro-rata written by men than the contrary. The female authored fiction written by women that men also enjoy, transcends the predominating market driven fare: romtragedy, melodrama or girlboss-sentimental (see: ‘where the crawdads sing’ ‘little fires everywhere’) you get the idea and that wouldn’t have been controversial to say in the before-times. In 2020, we were passed the phase where an aspiring male author was thwarted by a publisher because ‘sorry, you’re novel just doesn’t appeal to a female reader’ …The next goalpost-shift meant compelling men to read the kind of books written by women that are marketed to (read: liberal-progressive) women. A bit like ‘we need more female politicians but they must also be progressive otherwise it doesn’t count’ The point was that it was bad that men didn’t read novels written for a female sensibility with Netflix-level segue fealty to progressive dogma. In fact, like the colleague in 2018, it was irrational, baffling, a moral concern in the reading world: the new software update for the prog-lib female reader. None other than Ian Mcewan was shrewdly drafted in by the Guardian to sagely admonish the unreconstructed male reader to this end.
And, adding insult to injury, you will be told that it isn’t happening, none of it, you’re imagining it, ‘literally no one is fucking say that’ ‘and it’s good thing that they are.’
Thanks for this post! Sadly agree about male cultural rot, i hope we will see a counterculture to this (part of me is still hoping for a fully- fledged revival of romanticism as a response to... well the current and recent monoculture which seems to be the result of both regressive progressivism as well as tech-philistinism - i just have no idea where the creative impetus is going to come from)
I've also seen a lot of articles people have written about how to attract men (and people in general) to progressivism and they seem to have thought of everything except for changing their politics to something more than an increasingly small subset of people could vote for. I recently saw one proposing that they need more clear 'villain narratives'. Yup. That'll do it.
Tech-philistinism” is a great phrase, I wish I’d known it before writing the article- exactly what I was getting at
Obama being our culture’s idea of a serious person is part of the issue
Oh, I had a fantasy about writing a novel in midlife in my younger years but after hoarding enough money to theoretically retire I gave up after reading all the discourse on how nobody publishes straight white guys anymore--I don't fight losing battles. I sold all the books I had on how to write fiction to my local used bookstore and used the proceeds to buy a copy of Alan Moore's The Killing Joke (yes, the comic book). Seemed apropos.
I don't think I was ever meant for artistic greatness, but I'm sure there are many other similar stories, and some of them might have contributed something.
I do appreciate this. You've definitely surpassed the normal amount of insightful things in an essay on these topics. 95% of it I didn't have any problem with, and I think it was good for my brain.
One or two things kinda seemed worth commenting on.
> Women’s general upward mobility and increased social, cultural and political power means they will have an increased presence in the most respectable and valuable institutions, and an increased shaping of those institutions to better reflect female moral and aesthetic preferences. (There’s nothing wrong with that, and good for them.)
Um.. ok? Sounds to me like that means it doesn't matter who is the dominant party and "meh" to the spirit of equality. "It's our turn to eat." That's... not the greatest if that's what you mean.
Last paragraph: It's not *just* their fault, as the whole essay makes clear. Why talk like that unless you're trying to scold them like children into taking responsibility like adults? But maybe this is simply a way of doing polemics I personally find condescending and irritating.
That's a really good piece. It makes me realise that I've been part of the vacating, mentally retreating to some nebulous cultural space that from a real-life perspective seems to be pretty much unpopulated. So it's nice to read a global view that explains why I now can't stand many of the things I liked a decade ago—new fiction, football, music—and that it probably isn't just me. I'd put it down to the turning of the cultural wheel but maybe it's the entry of women. Maybe it's the same thing.
I'd push back a little on 'enchudification' though. I feel like there are still areas for your cerebral men, but they're ones which have a natural moat without needing cockroaches – big history because it's full of war, the outdoors because it's dangerous, the type of actual elite sport that actually feels existential and there are no spare resources to devote to playing nice. The classics in general because even the most irritating modern readings are still as gnats to an elephant. There are crowns-in-the-gutter there, and tbh it's not like the withdrawing men were all polymaths to start with.
Shout out btw to the Lana Del Reys, Houellebecqs and Jamie Vardys who have just ploughed through regardless, and kept the old spaces open. It can still be done!
Definitely, I agree with a lot of that, there’s a push and pull in both directions, you can feel it even in the one person and I can feel it in myself which is why I wrote it. Thanks for the read
What is wrong with Jordan Petersen or Joe Rogan? Neither of those guys is encouraging bad behavior. If anything, Jordan has helped millions of people (including me! A woman!)
A thoughtful and well reasoned piece. Thank you.
Thanks for the read Bram
Interesting essay, if quite bleak. Less depressing than reading David Goodhary on here, or Labour Beyond Cities on Twitter since there’s no sense of someone clinging desperately to the rotting corpse of the ideology and values of their youth.
One hopes a way out will be found, though.
“50% of the population, and in society dominated by a technology that allows everyone to see what everyone else is doing at all times.”
in _a_ society
“why aren’t they not responding to the old instructions” why _aren’t they_
“So from a defensive perspective men are drawn to spaces that not just that they skew male”
to spaces that don’t just skew male
“but that they skew towards”
but skew towards
“they are most impressed by it’s capabilities”
its (possessive) capabilities
“some examples of this techno-philistine idiocy below.” Promise never delivered on
“There is no way of having spaces that men are more comortable in are not also often repulsive and contradictory to the spirit of our ti”
comfortable in that is not also
“totally in line with progressive liberalism is going to result in something very wan or banal”
_it_ is going to result in
You may think the current culture is "valued intellectual property" but that indicates you have succumbed to a matriarchy and forgotten the values that made men noble, virtuous, and brave. As Arnold Schwarzenegger put it, you've become a girly man instead of kicking that shit out the door.