Metrosexuals and The Dating Arms Race

This is PF, bringing you breaking developments from the Disco Front, where young WNs wage a war of gestures and hair-gel in order to propagate their genes. In this essay I describe a character who I have met again and again under various guises, a sort of limp-wristed ambiguous friend-character who haunts the cell-phone directories of various girls, and who lets himself be used against real suitors in that his status could at any moment be (obstensibly and very ambiguously) upgraded to ‘boyfriend’, or made to appear as such. Most imposing girls will have one or two of these domesticated animals in their service, acting as a ‘buffer layer’ through which they hope to filter genuine suitors. First, a little bit of theoretical background:

Living in a stable, technologically advanced, well-off society, where one’s life is rarely endangered and intrasocietal combat is effectively a non-option, the fruits of peace reach a marvelous state of cultivation, while the manly virtues fall into decay. The need for hard workers, fighters, decision-makers, is actually met by the accumulation of technology and modern methods of governance: these also a near-guarantee that no one needs to experience anything seriously harsh or unpleasant anymore. Thus there is no need to develop the vast array of personality traits which form in response to harshness, unpleasantness, and difficult circumstances: precisely those character traits which were formerly called the manly virtues. Although these traits have value in a world where life is difficult, in our world, where life is so easy that this very easiness itself becomes problematic, they are often enough considered burdensome and unnecessary.

Women have triumphed in the last century, as the arts of peace and trivial pursuits eclipse everything that came before them and made them possible. Their quick and nimble superficial thinking, their ceaseless networking, their continual circulation of information, easily gives them a great advantage in society, especially once the mainstay of a man’s power – his ability to have recourse to physical strength to enforce his will – is taken from him. In order for men to have effective coercive power, women don’t have to be beaten often or at all, the general understanding suffices that they could be beaten if they step too far out of line. The implied possibility alone is enough to change the entire dynamic. Knowing that no one, even their fathers or loved ones, can set them straight without incuring police intervention, gives women a freedom today which they never previously had.

The feminists answer this by exaggerating the attitude thus expressed and then tearing apart the resultant straw-man: acting as if there is no middle-ground between woman worship and caveman brutality. A brilliant tactic, like the Jews who make every critique of their group into a provocation to a second Holocaust. Every time a hand is raised against a woman in anger, we begin a descent down a slippery slope which ends in perpetual, senseless brutality, right? Right.

The scales have thus decidedly been tipped in favor of females, and over the intervening decades they have been adept at maximizing their advantage by carrying the arms-race further. One of their latest weapons, which arose more or less spontaneously out of the confluence of various societal trends, is the modern Metrosexual.

The Metrosexual is a weapon: an anatomically male, effeminate Non-man who can be employed against real males – traditional males– to drive up the cost of sex, and thus give women another advantage in the already lopsided Dating Arms-race. Who is this character, and how does he help them?

First, a rough character sketch. This person usually comes from a non-traditional family, i.e. non patriarchal. His childhood was not heavily influenced by sports clubs, athletic training, competition with other boys, or boys-only clubs or hobbies; if he has had hobbies, he has pursued none of them with vigor. His life generally lacks a strong male figure or he has no strong connection to such a figure. The Metrosexual reached maturity in a mixed-sex education system, totally saturated on every side with modern media product: he has grown up awash in estrogen. From above, hearing the songs of woman-worship on the radio, with bug-eyes Bono singing ‘She Moves In Mysterious Ways’, and sitcoms that revolve around the whims of unmarried 30-something women: these things are regarded as the ‘culture’ of the day. He lacks direct access to tempering experiences, being sheltered from anything unpleasant, and lacks access to vicarious sources of tempering experiences, i.e. fathers and grandfathers who could share their wisdom with him. From below, he has listened to the chatter of female schoolmates from his earliest days, and feels at home in the cushy playground environment provided by modern schools.

Thus equipped, he is a curious foil to the traditional man, who increasingly seems to disappear from the scene. But how do women use him?

First it should be said that the people whose personalities were genuinely minted in a modern school environment generally lack the strength of character necessary for the romantic relationships which are the supposed goal and fulfillment of modern life. Love is constantly paid lip-service to, but by people who are too weak to feel anything very strongly. The passions have become the prime directing force in life, just as their well-spring goes dry due to lack of a grounding in genuine experience. Can a person who grew up in front of a television set truly feel anything strongly? One often enough sees them struggle with the effort of trying to feel something.

The Metrosexual helps women out in this regard, because he fills a new position: the ‘friend with benefits’: a non-romantic semi-sexual relationship with an element of friendship, which frees women from the demands of traditional romance and the moral shame of hooking up and one-night-stands, while giving them the best of both.

This is a ‘friend’ in the most ambiguous meaning of the word. He relieves women of the pressure of romance, becauses socially he acts like he is ‘one of the girls’. He is not the strong silent type, but rather inured to female chatter to the point where he thrives on it and chatters himself. Women thus don’t have to cover up or overcome their innate pettiness with him—they can feel free to discuss color combinations, footwear styles, and their gossip, which is often below the self-respect of a more traditional male, apparently never bothers him or bores him.

He also demands nothing, having learned long ago that his will is not the point of orientation, but rather social circumstances are: thus he thinks already innately like a woman. All the qualities that make up a traditional male, are muted or lacking in the Metrosexual. He has no especially developed sense of pride, for example, so it is much harder to offend him- for example, females can actively scan their surroundings for other males and approach them and engage them while in the presence of the Met: unbelievable, but true!

If both parties are drinking, a woman can give herself to him for a night, safe in the knowledge that he will not ‘make problems’ later by becoming jealous or demanding more, and in this way she can slake her sexual thirst without risking negative consequences. This gives her an enormous advantage: she gets hit up when she wants, with no fuss, and can then put her toy back on the shelf whenever she wants. He can oscillate between ‘friend’ status and ‘really good friend’ status indefinately: women say this to each other knowingly, and they love the ambiguity inherent in the word ‘friend’. 
However, my research seems to indicate that not many Metrosexuals actually get this far: many women have too much self-respect to give themselves up, and thus he truly is often just a friend. Inasfar as women use their metrosexuals as sex toys, there is a gradient of personality traits established between metrosexual and player – men who specialize in one-night stands or short affairs – and she usually seeks out some hybrid type, rather than the metrosexual in his purest distillation.

How does the Metrosexual make problems for the traditional male? Well, for one, we can never be as informed or as cool as he is. His knowledge of pop-culture, seasonal color combinations, and a woman’s past history, culled from years of female chatter, make him a smooth operator on the conversational front. He is never at a loss for words, and never occupied with anything going on inside himself: he completely lacks the pitfalls and hang-ups inherent in the male character. Does he ever get angry? Jealous? Aggressive? Over-critical? Overbearing? Crude? Arrogant? No, he is as polished as a marble countertop. We inevitably look like some kind of overserious cave-man by comparison, and that despite years of working on charisma and tact.

Having a metrosexual entourage boosts a woman’s social status, giving the indication, ‘You have to fight for me!’. She thus uses the Met as a bargaining chip, in her search for a more manly man. She also uses her metrosexual harem, should she have had more than one, as a way of conveying how much prestige she has amongst men.

Who wins ultimately of the two? The traditional man, because it is a desire for him, in whatever alloyed form, that undergirds the psychological aspect of female desire. The metrosexual is a toy and a friend, and a trick; like an appetizer before the meal, ultimately she will discard him in favor of something better.

I suspect the Metrosexual is the real loser, even though he be shown again and again to be faultless, the star of many an evening. Call to mind his phylogeny: he represents a further evolution of the ‘nice guy’. He is essentially the ‘nice guy’ extrapolated to the point where all spiritual masculinity has been lost. I did a few terms of service as a ‘nice guy’ in various quarters and I can say that it is a wretched occupation, glad to be rid of it.

Posted by Potential Frolic on Monday, March 19, 2007 at 08:31 AM in
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