Tl;DR – It’s them.
Men on the right love to talk about women. What women are, what we should or should not do, and how we are apparently fucking it all up for everybody. If you consulted with these men, women are like a plague that had befallen the menfolk by a vengeful God. We are rebellious in nature, the source of society's woes ("repeal the 19th!"), and somehow both completely useless while being a source of unstoppable destruction.
These boys dig their own graves in the relationships they, somehow, find themselves in. And, after knowing so many of them from much of my political past, I think they know it. But, for the more obtuse members in the room, here are things you do that fuck up your life.
Pipe Dreams of Despair
These men have high hopes for a society that harkens back to something that may or may not have ever actually existed. They envision submissive women who are perfectly content with their lot in life of serving their man while foregoing any dreams they have for themselves. Cooking, cleaning, and generally being treated as ahelpmateservant is supposed to be fulfilling for...reasons (God, I guess.) They do not, of course, build towards such a future by being the type of man needed to at least offer the "opportunity" to do nothing but bake banana bread. Heavens no and don't you dare ask for it, you gold-digger. A man who provides? What, you want to be "taken care of" your whole life and sit around and do nothing? You want a man who holds down the responsibilities of being the King, since he depends the privileges of it? Now you're asking for too much. Just another sort of prostitute, is all you are! Because women should be ok with a man who doesn't fulfill his side of this fantasy. They should be fine with a man who lives life in their 30s (or 40s) as someone in their early 20s does - free of investment into anything that requires effort. And if you're not, well you're just another feminist.
This is, of course, a hopeless situation. Not for the women, but for the men. The women can simply say fuck that and live their lives elsewhere, which is exactly what many of us do and increasingly so.
The older these men get, the more impossible this situation is that they have built for themselves. They either need to find a young and dumb woman, preferably someone in their chosen church who would submit to their terms and conditions on religious grounds and be too nervous to reject it no matter what her pre-frontal lobe was telling her, or a woman past her own prime who, for whatever reason, is desperate enough to settle for terms and conditions they don't really believe in. At least the young one comes with the prospect of children, which these guys also say they want but never do the work to get.
Either situation is a powder keg though.
The young and dumb one, assuming said guy could actually swing it well enough to land such a creature, WILL eventually resent them as they come to realize the situation they have been placed in. They will be expected to work alongside their "King" because he won't make enough money to do it on his own, while also "serving" him in the household. The children will be theirs to maintain. The dishes, the laundry, the cleaning. They will be expected to be a fulltime "traditional woman" while also being a part-time "traditional man." But they will have to do it completely on the man's terms. So, no career. Only certain jobs and only if their husband doesn't get jealous of their boss.
They also will be expected to remain completely ok with the demeaning tone and messaging these men will deliver to their woman on the regular. This schizophrenic existence would, eventually, break most.
And the older woman? Well most of those will never make it over the line (marriage) anyway before they realize what they're signing up for. Especially when the 23 year old at the gym who talks about women's rights has a crush on them. Having made it that far into life (30s or 40s) without this man, she will eventually remember she can continue without this man, no matter what sort of limerence she is in.
Treating women as equals in society and offering them a life of love and partnership isn't, of course, an option here. Because don't you know these men have identities to maintain? And said identities are wrapped around ideologies. And these ideologies are built on a cultural foundation of the Bronze Age Near East. Somehow, this is all supposed to translate to a modern Western culture, full of inconvenient trappings such as birth control and women owning property of their own.
Because that is what it boils down to. When given the choice of the traditional marriage or freedom, more and more women choose freedom. The threats that accompany this freedom, namely that we are the ones that are gonna die alone, seem like better opportunities than servitude.
For guys like this to make it work, they have to offer something to the woman - love, commitment, SOMETHING. But many of them can't even offer that much. Because they often are...
…Disagreeable Bastards
It doesn't help that people on the right are generally just unpleasant people.
Right wing men occasionally speak of the disagreeableness of right wing women. And, they're right. Right wing women are, often, a bunch of harpies. Even if you manage to dodge the "bleach blond bad built butch" type with the clacking nails, you still often reach a type of woman who has extreme ideological beliefs that, surely, must come from an equally extreme personality. This is, of course, the camp I am firmly in. The older I get, the worse I become, honestly. Very much capable of burning bridges as much as I am of building them. Probably not at all marriage material but, then again, who even wants to get married again?
But the problem is right wing men see no problem in their own disagreeableness. They suspect it is perfectly acceptable for men to be so abrupt and unpleasant because, well, they're men after all! Isn't that what men are supposed to be?!? But the strength and the type of aggression that leads to success (see "provider energy") gets muddied by these boys with off-putting humor, inconsistent behavior, and generally a low-brow approach to life. They love to demean and to shock and they do so with reckless abandon as if such brutish delivery equals masculinity itself. Sorta of like that female best friend who wears shorty shorts while grocery shopping, drinks like a fish, and explodes into a bad episode of BPD over the slightest of slights. They don't see themselves as the problem. But, boy, everyone else sure does.
And this comes out, of course, in dating. Inevitably, these boys will offend and slap on the ick to whomever is lucky enough to split the check 50/50 with them. Should their date be "disagreeable" enough to call them out on it, watch them backpedal and cry foul "I was just joking." No, you were testing her boundaries and you were shocked that someone actually had some.
Many of these men are also the type to wrap themselves in the persona of being superior. Racially, culturally, or (more often) because of religion. Sometimes all three. But don't be fooled. That's just a persona. Because when push comes to shove...
…You Can’t Trust Them
Pattern recognition sucks. Especially when you apply it to peers and friends. Given enough time, I've watched too many friends and online personalities on the right who marketed themselves as morally righteous, sincere, and well-intentioned go above and beyond the normal threshold of degeneracy. I've watched people who maintain podcasts talking about how it's a sin for a man to even look at porn who then love bomb women in an attempt to sleep with them and subscribe to OnlyFans girls, all behind their girlfriend's back. I've seen "alt-right" guys secretly have fetishes for black girls. And the stereotype of the guy who always says something is "gay" who is, in fact, super gay? Accurate AF.
It's not the scale of their "sins." It's the level of venom they spew for those they think are beneath them, all while wrapped in this cloak of moral righteousness. It's a performance. All of them. At this point in my life, if someone tells me they go to church all the time I take it as an immediate red flag.
Some Bible verse or whatever said something about judging a tree by its fruits. If that is the case, then every church is the seat of some of the deepest rot you can find.
If I, myself, am "agreeable" enough to them. Or, sometimes, if they want to fuck me...they will outright tell me as such. "I only go to church because my family raised us this way" is the most typical response. The other one is some word vomit of cognitive dissonance that makes you just want to shake them.
These men also date and sleep with women who are the exact opposite of what they say they want. Consistently. The one harping on wanting a feminine and submissive wife is really drooling over the boss bitch who is taller than him.
These people do NOT believe what they say they believe. You can't trust them. You don't even know the real them. THEY don't even know the real them.
Lessons Learned?
The article is about men on the right, but it's coming from a place of severance with people I would have aligned with for years. The frustration is still building and as the stakes get higher in this country, the more important it becomes to stay skeptical.
The part I struggle with is where this all leaves me. I fell into many of the camps I have in my mind as I write this for quite a number of years. I honestly have no idea what I even am anymore. Caught between two ideological camps at each other's throats and unable to compromise for identity's sake.
I am capable of believing bullshit. But not for forever. It is a blessing and a curse. You have far fewer friends. But you have many more nights being comfortable with who you are. If you hold strong, you get to die like that too.
"That's always been the difference between us, Daniel."
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