How the Reactive Men’s Movement hurts men
I believe the paragraph below summarizes the attitude of what I would refer to as the Reactive Men’s Movement:
Have you found relationships with women challenging? Have you tried to ‘just be yourself’ only to have your vulnerability trampled on by the person you wanted to trust? Are you tired of feeling entirely powerless while dating or trying to maintain a relationship? If this is you, then you’ve been doing it wrong. It’s time to take women off the pedestal and acknowledge them as the lesser vessel. It’s time to stop trying to relate with women and time to start managing them.
Sadly, many men and boys believe they’ve found the solutions they need in media and online communities that teach that the way to “succeed with women” is to manipulate and objectify them.
"Dating success" through hypnosis and devaluation
Men are finding themselves hooking up more thanks to hypnotic language patterns adapted to elicit attraction or arousal. They’re feeling empowered by ebooks that assert that women have no free will when it comes to choosing a man and that their feelings of attraction depend only on whether a man gives the right cues. They are buying into an ideology that encourages nihilistic and manipulative behavior towards women because, as the ideology asserts, women are inherently nihilistic and manipulative in their relationships with men.
These streams of thoughts--which include strategies, philosophies and generalizations presented as psychological theories--ultimately fail to bring anything beyond a thrilling novelty: a little extra attention and sex in the short-term that boosts the ego and further distracts from emotional wounds that need to be healed.
When it comes to happiness, fulfillment or even genuine empowerment in relationships, the ideas and techniques of this Reactive Men’s Movement (RMM) ultimately backfire. Any responsible mental health professional can tell you why this is true, and many can help a man to find a better solution.
How the RMM manipulates men
Recently, I was discussing with a mentor my own struggles in relationships, and I expressed sympathy for men who embrace the philosophies of the RMM. I grew up, like many did, without a confident blueprint for how to be, how to date, and how to build a relationship. My parents split up when I was in my pre-teen years, and then my mother introduced a stream of men whom she wanted me to start treating as if they were my father. (When I last saw her, she actually introduced her new boyfriend to my daughter, eight at the time, as her “grandpa.”) Instead, I benefited as a teenager from male role models such as my Grandfather and my karate sensei, but neither presented the model of functioning in a relationship I needed. My Grandfather had been divorced since before I ever knew him, and my karate teacher expressed that he was threatened by my innocent friendship with his girlfriend.
Through my teens and twenties, I experienced relationships with women to be more confusing than fulfilling. I didn’t understand why women treated me the way they seemed to, and the guidance that was available to me didn’t seem to help.
The lack of (need for) quality guidance
The stepfather my mother divorced when I was a kid told me it was a matter of learning to be patient with a woman’s menstrual cycle. A counselor taught me that it was a matter of taking ownership of my own feelings. And this is true. But I needed more. I felt frustrated and confused and needed concrete guidance. Thus, I was tempted when I heard a thought leader legitimizing an objectifying and manipulative attitude towards women.
I was easy prey because my relationships with women had me wondering if there was something wrong with me. When the RMM came along and said, “It’s not you, it’s them,” that thought appealed to my insecurity.
I needed and craved validation. I was tempted to buy into this fallacious kind of validation, the kind that boosts egos by putting down other people because I didn’t want to think I was responsible for my own obstacles.
“Empowering” men through objectifying women
If you feel disempowered, you might be easily tempted to blame, demean and generalize. Individual men with histories of feeling powerless in relationships with women might be quick to drink Kool-Aid that gets them off the hook for their challenges. “It’s not your fault that you struggle with women,” the RMM teaches. “It’s that women are inherently flawed.”
Blaming other people can be easier than accepting that we have something to learn from our challenges. Men can feel stronger if they believe that their difficulties collaborating with women is that women are incapable of the logic that would make them equal collaborators. Or that deep down, women don’t even want to collaborate, but really want to be dominated.
I believe this is why demeaning--or at least limiting--generalizations are common in the RMM. Thus the “red pill” and Rollo Tomasi’s generalization that women’s real motivation for romance is to rise is economic or social status.
“The key to winning any woman’s interest”
Men further find misguided empowerment in models that put them entirely at the cause of a woman’s behavior towards them. “Why didn’t she call back? It’s because you didn’t use behaviors that causes women to feel attracted. You engaged in a behavior that causes all women to lose interest.”
Knowledgeable men who respect women know that all women are different. Therefore all women have their own reasons for choosing whether or not to engage with a man. But the guides for men’s success at dating are neither respectful or aware of this reality.
Instead, they teach that women reject men only when men don’t use the right techniques. Perhaps he broadcasted insecurity or something that indicated a low status. If he were to properly communicate confidence and high social status, then she’d be his. She’d have no choice but to get interested. In other words, in relationships with women, men have all the freewill to behave in ways that will cause women to either feel attracted or uninterested. When a man does the right thing, a woman is powerless to resist her attraction. When a man does the right thing, the woman is powerless to find the man at all interesting.
These models are untrue because women, like all adult humans, are diverse, competent and decisional humans. They also fail because they nullify any higher purpose of a relationship. In the short-term, puffing up one’s chest can help a guy succeed in having sex. Why not? There are things that men and women alike can do to appear more attractive.
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Men need love, don't we?
But most people, including men, find relationships more valuable when they’ve matured beyond the point that instinctual attraction is the most important criterion for being together. When they see each other for who they really are, and still love and support one another, “that’s the good stuff.” That’s what it really means to “get lucky.”
Men are more than the peacocks we may pretend to be when we’re in heat. We’re more than our symbols of status and mating dances. None of us is strong and confident all the time. We’re imperfect. We fail. And sometimes, no matter how hard we try, our failures don’t lead to triumph, despite what the human potential movement preaches.
We are not all success stories. Does that mean we are not worthy of love and esteem? Don’t we want our partners to admire us despite our flaws?
Women are not drones and their instinctual responses to men's cues don't govern their decisions. They’re not automatically attracted to symbols of wealth, power or importance. To believe that they are is to demean them to a level where we don’t see them as worthy of sharing our true selves. In any real relationship, the best case scenario is one in which the couple sees qualities in each other that are hard to appreciate or tolerate, but knows they want to spend their lives together regardless.
Faking it is not making it
The dating and seduction guides offer techniques designed to trick. They are intended to elicit favorable responses from women by giving engineering the impression of a man who possesses attractive qualities. Not only is this misleading, but it interferes with the man’s development into a more confident self. By trying to look evolved, he stunts his evolution. He learns from the dating guides that men attract women when they don't act as if they need their approval. So he works hard to pretend that he doesn’t need it. Except he really does need it. That’s why he’s reading the ebooks, listening to the podcasts and getting an education in psychology from sexist subReddits.
So we have a movement of men working really hard to appear as if they don’t need women’s approval… in order to gain women’s approval.
"Timing your texts" and playing it cool
One specific strategy of showing off how not needy a man is to wait before responding to text messages. If a woman gives a man her number and takes 12 hours to respond to his first text, message, then he should take 13 hours to respond to hers. The idea is that this will prevent him from showing desperation or neediness. It could instead create the appearance of someone who has his needs met. If he’s not obsessively texting over a woman who has expressed interest, then that could mean he has good stuff going on. Maybe he has a satisfying life, with a fulfilling job, or friends who hold him in high esteem. Maybe he’s busy seeing a woman in a non-exclusive dating relationship. By delaying his responses, he is pretending that he has “places to go, things to do, and people to see.”
Or he’s pretending that his sense of self is strong and healthy enough not to obsess over a potential new love interest.
Starting relationships through pretense
Though the strategy is counterproductive in the long run, there’s some value in the concept behind it. There’s nothing wrong with being excited about meeting someone interesting. And it’s ok to curb your enthusiasm in order to put your best foot forward. But timing your communication in order to appear less interested than you are is simply insincere. It’s a misrepresentation to someone you may want to develop an authentic relationship with. It’s an act of self-denial and self-doubt.
“She won’t like me for who I really am, how I’m really feeling, and what I’m really thinking. So instead of taking a risk that could allow us to get to know each other, I’ll put on an act.”
There is a MUCH better way
There are better ways for men to respond when they realize they have behaviors or qualities that come across as unattractive.
First, question if a behavior is something you want to change for yourself, regardless of whether a woman approves of it. I don’t want to come across as insecure. I’d rather be a dependable and steady presence that my spouse finds supportive. And I want to model health and esteem for my children. I want to present as healthy to my clients or employers.
And what’s more important to me than appearing secure is FEELING secure. I want to BE secure. I want to evolve. To heal. I don’t want to pretend I don’t have insecurities. Instead, learn from them about the areas where I can heal.
If you want to change, then work on changing yourself from the inside. Instead of texting (dressing, strutting, negging, etc.) in a way that hides insecurity, work on developing your security. Instead of pretending to have a satisfying career or circle of friends, focus on developing these things.
Do it for you.
If you are only working on yourself to gain the approval of women, then work on that insecure need for women’s approval. And do it outside of the dating context. Discuss the need with friends or a therapist. Discuss your neediness within a men’s group and benefit from not being judged by it. When men learn from each other that their needs are valid, they become more accepting of them. Accepting our needs means becoming more accepting of ourselves. When we take responsibility for our needs, we can find ourselves in a more confident state of mind than “neediness.”
Men do not need special techniques to get a woman’s attention, affection, willingness to have sex and bond. There is no shortage of people having sex and forming relationships. There are, however, shortages of men who are fulfilled and truly self-sufficient. We need more men who are healthy in their senses of self and satisfied with their lives. We can stop trying to empower ourselves by objectifying or manipulating women. How much wiser it is to develop internal power by rooting deeply in self-awareness, our core values, and confidence in the paths we are meant to follow.
