As I mentioned in my previous post, I get a lot of email from viewers of the Glenn Show. So many, in fact, that we’ve got a new set of initiatives to help viewers get in touch with me and each other in a more organized fashion, which you can read about here.
Our conversation from last week about what John McWhorter termed the “badass motherfucker” problem in the Black community seems to have struck a chord with people, if my inbox and the comments on YouTube are any indication. Many of these responses were quite thoughtful. One in particular addressed itself to some broader implications of the “badass motherfucker” problem so eloquently that I asked the author, Elizabeth Hummel, if I could share her name and her words with my readers. She generously agreed, and so below you’ll find her email to me in very lightly edited form.
Elizabeth rightly points out that the problem of hypermasculinity is not solely a “Black” problem—it’s endemic to the human species. Accordingly, it’s worth remembering that some aspects of the social and cultural maladies that John and I discuss have very, very deep roots in human nature.
But that does not mean that these problems cannot be at least mitigated. We see many places in the world where they are indeed mitigated, even overcome. Elizabeth’s message beautifully outlines the complexity of the “badass motherfucker” problem, but I came away from it with a sense of hope rather than despair. (As to whether I’m truly an “alpha male,” the jury’s out on that!)
Dear Professor Loury,
The “Slippery Slope to Hell” episode with John moved me. I have been feeling despair about the needle moving at all away from toxic woke ideologies, and I saw that despair mirrored in you both. I have been trying to find a ground where I can feel sane and live the rest of my life, doing what I can to change things but also not being paralyzed with grief and isolation. Since my entire social network has been progressive people and not conservative people, this is especially painful. You both were so eloquent in this episode, and as always, I appreciate your contribution to our culture. Sometimes you feel like a lifeline to me. Amidst my gloomy thoughts, it is so refreshing just to hear sane people talking.
I wanted to share some thoughts about the part where you talk about the “badass motherfucker,” because it seems to me that there is an obvious puzzle piece that you do not discuss: alpha males in all human cultures.
John brings up the “badass motherfucker” as a problem that he cannot see a solution for. He says that he “gets it,” both intellectually and culturally as a black person, but he does not see a solution, he doesn’t know what to do with it. He gives an example of a guy standing up in a lecture and declaring to great applause (from women especially) that he is a “badass motherfucker.” You tell your own story of being a badass motherfucker when you were a younger man, teaching at Harvard by day but switching personas at night to hook up, get drugs, walk the streets. You point out that you could have been killed, that it was completely stupid. You paid great prices for being that badass motherfucker, prices so clearly not worth paying.
As you convey, the valorization of this kind of person is incredibly damaging on many levels. Resisting arrest is just stupid, and people who do so should not be seen as manly heroes. I believe we need to criticize the damaging trends in any human culture as you do so eloquently of black culture. The fact that there is very little room for that critique is deeply discouraging, when you clearly want things to be better for black people in America.
So, I completely agree with you, but I do think we need to better understand why not only black culture but all cultures love their badass motherfuckers. I think having some compassion and depth of understanding both for yourself as a younger man and for these young men itching for a fight and a chance to display their tail feathers in this current moment could be helpful as we grapple with so many problems about violence in our society. They are not just going to go away. They never have gone away. It is always going to be a cultural balancing act.
John mentions that this persona exists in other cultures besides the American black culture. In truth, the badass motherfucker male person is in every human culture, including white culture. White girls call them “bad boys.” These fellows are also called alpha males by biologists, in humans and other primates. There is also a great deal of evidence that such males are born, not created by culture. Testosterone levels play a key role. Such behavior has been exhaustively chronicled by scientists about our own species and in our primate cousins, as well as other mammals and birds. Badass motherfuckery is part of primate mating behavior and the quest for social dominance in males. (Robert Sapolsky is a good source on some of this.)
In a relevant aside, John mentions that the women applauded when the badass motherfucker made his pronouncement during the lecture. That is because, as we all know, admit it or not, like it or not, young women are sexually attracted to alpha males. Female primates of mating age are generally speaking attracted to the larger, more dominant, more successful males. It is an anomaly of our current human culture that many males who are by nature more “beta,” that is, not as strong or dominant physically, have found status (and therefore attractive and healthy mates) through education or wealth.
It could be that, even though you had achieved the high social status of a job teaching at Harvard in your mid-30s, something else deep in your biology was also compelling. Alpha males also struggle mightily with monogamy. Even though pursuing these activities was damaging to you and others, even though it was stupid and dangerous, it was still something you had to deal with. It could have had little to do with being black. The particular form—the swagger, the language, the clothes, the drugs of choice—may have been from black American culture, but the deeper issue may have sprung from being born an alpha male.
I do not know black culture as you do, so of course I concede that there probably is a particular issue with young black men and the damaging narratives spun about them by the pundits in this moment we are in. But I believe the basic dynamics are human and pop up in different ways and cause problems in all cultures.
Now that you are older, you are no longer run as much by hormones. You also found your way out of that lifestyle before it killed you. You judge your younger self harshly, because you see how terribly it all could have turned out. The same kind of judgment of our younger selves happens with women: once we are past menopause, we cannot understand why we let ourselves be hurt by those badass motherfuckers when we were young, when there were really nice men on the sidelines that we ignored.
My point is not that we are “only animals,” or that our biology trumps culture and civilization. Civilization is necessary and beautiful and human. Laws are necessary for human culture, anarchy leads to darkness. I also do not make these points to excuse the fallout and harm, or to deny that bad choices are being made and better ones could be made. My point is that if we do not understand ourselves as we are, including the truth of our biological imperatives, we will never make progress. We must see the truth for what it is. Strategies should come from working with the truths about our humanity.
We do not want emasculated men, but we also do not want the excessive violence and other harm that testosterone unleashes in some men. We do not want to be cut off from our animal natures, but we are also cultural beings living in much more complex cultures than the ones in which our species evolved. We must honor and cultivate civilization too, we must grow beauty and create ideas. In my view, the unrest and violence arising all over the planet is at least partially coming from a deep human urge to assert the animal over the civilized being. And if that cannot be seen and honored and balanced as something important to address, then it will keep happening, over and over.
Sometimes it seems to me that the Greeks saw it all with such clarity—the deep and irreparable flaw in our humanity, leading to nothing but tragedy. However, I also believe in the love and compassion that Jesus and the Buddha taught. So I keep trying to communicate, make beautiful art, and enjoy my precious time being alive. Thank you for reading this.
And thank you for all you do.
Elizabeth
It seems that there may be lots ways to compete for alpha status along different dimensions, raw power & strength, wealth, ability to form friends/alliances, success in various fields, charisma, etc., so channeling the competitive drive to less brutish contests (less brutish than engaging in violence & bullying, for example) would be a good way allow less disruptive ways to secure alpha status & its benefits.
In response to Ms. Hummel, I offer the following letter I wrote to Prof. David M. Buss, one of the "founding fathers" of Evolutionary Psychology, of the University of Texas at Austin, giving my thoughts to his recently published "When Men Behave Badly: The Hidden Roots of Sexual Deception, Harassment & Assault", Sunday, May 16, 2021:
"Wow, I had no idea I'd get such a speedy response! Thank you!
OK, so my schedule this week is wide open; and given your tremendous contribution to the field, you've earned the right to pick the date and time that works best for you! In that I work for myself as a full time podcaster, talk radio host and author, I have a very flexible schedule.
Also: my latest live show over the weekend may be of importance to the discussion; among other things, I cite Kevin Samuels, a friend of mine and quite the internet sensation (he appears on the show at the 2:09:48 mark or so:
A Fair Exchange Is No Robbery - Right? #ORadio
https://youtu.be/Iu4Y_gSmaKE
I think what Samuels' year of de facto field research raises some powerful questions and challenges to the research your latest book claims - particularly, the idea that men over estimate their mate value. It is clear that, when it comes to today's Black women at least, they are no strangers to over estimating their mate value to a tremendous degree. Samuels became a household name in fact, because a Black woman who was "average at best" demanded that he assist her in landing a "high value man". Then, there's the example of singer and social media personality Lizzo, who actually had the nerve to think she could snag Captain America:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPrmOTavEEI&t=2076s
There are many, many other examples.
Given that your book was largely inspired and informed by the #MeToo movement, I definitely wanted to discuss that - especially what some of the "knock on effects" and consequences the "fixes" to address the very real problems of sexual and workplace harassment, assault and the like, would create? I think one of those consequences is something I recently podcasted about:
Why Every Man Should Implement The "Tom Leykis Rule" #ORadio
https://youtu.be/iev-oYLb_RE
Following up on the matter, and with regard to street harassment and the like: While I would agree with your argument for female mate choice being a human right, what is so often left out of these discussions are the responsibilities that come with those rights. I've been having a multiyear running "battle" with a Black feminist who goes by the name of Feminista Jones, who some years back created a #YouOKSis movement, that called on Black men to intervene when a Black woman was being street harassed. Yet, this same Black woman - an avowed feminist, mind you - is keen to let her "freak flag" fly - which begs the question: Why aren't the men she is supposedly having all this kinky sex with protecting her? Why is she turning to Black men she wouldn't piss on to put out if they were on fire, to do the heavy non-sexual lifting here? What I contend, is that many women - in this case Black - want, is to disentangle the age old "bargain" between men and women - her youth and fertility, for his resources, status and all that comes with it, which would include protection. Because science has finally proven and settled the matter that in a free world, women are only sexually attracted to the topmost 20% of men at any given time, all the rest of the guys are really little more than "drones" to provide non-sexual companionship services - as Steve Harvey among a great many others, have borne out in his runaway NYT bestseller, "Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man" - and which I discuss at some length in a column I wrote earlier this month:
NEW COLUMN: The Best Platonic Friend Money Can Buy (Negromanosphere.com)
https://negromanosphere.com/the-best-platonic-friend-money-can-buy/
I address how your book in particular, and the scientific findings it cites, finally settles (and supports!) the age old question about the "80/20 Rule":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3cdipyv8TU&t=385s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmktI9Cvc5Q&t=432s
This brings me to the question of incels, something I've been studying quite closely for quite some time now. While I have my share of misgivings and questions regarding many of their positions, it is hard to deny that they have a point, especially in light of the evidence you lay out in your most recent book, let alone your immortal classic, "The Evolution of Desire" and the excellent "Why Women Have Sex" with your former student and now evolutionary psychologist in her own right, Prof. Cindy Meston. A real question emerges, actually several:
1. If it is true that most women are simply not sexually attracted to the vast majority of men, it means that most men's "mating effort" will be for naught, most of the time
2. And if those men who are deemed by women to have lower mate value are sexually invisible, but are good enough to be "friends", those men should accept this reality and instead switch their attentions toward maximizing what they do have to offer - being a great platonic friend at a price and for profit
3. The trick, of course, will be in getting the majority of men to accept this scientific fact and making peace with it; as Jesse Jackson once famously said, many men "keep hope alive!"
4. As you've pointed out numerous times over the years - including an excellent piece you wrote for the Edge.org website, 2013 and called "The Mating Wars", that the "self-improvement" mantra many dating coaches and PUA gurus for men advise, do not always work - if by "work", it is meant, scoring a pretty or otherwise beautiful woman as a mate. What many of the aforementioned don't want to admit, is that it is very hard to sell the idea that a man should undergo a kind of "Six Million Dollar Man" level transformation, only to net a Plain Jane with the proverbial heart of gold at the end. Like Lucious Fox told Bruce Wayne in "Batman Begins", the big wigs at Wayne International didn't put the prototype Nomex suit for advanced infantry into production because they didn't think a soldier's life was worth $300K USD:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrzN1JBmscA
Finally - and as I point out in my book that I sent you - there IS a such thing as "women behaving badly". And to your credit, you do acknowledge this in your book. But, I think it is important that all of us finally publicly admit something that we all know to be true: That the "bad things bad men do" take precedence over the things "bad women do". When a man is "nuclear rejected"; or is "finessed" for dinner, trinkets or a whole lot more; or is cheated on, or played for a fool; or is even abused by a woman - they will simply not be seen as important, or even important at all, by our ever-increasingly "woke" world. As Dr. Warren Farrell and Prof. Roy Baumeister have pointed out in their own excellent works, men - particularly those who are deemed as "less" - are wholly disposable. Protecting women from the worst predations of a small minority of men is important, but we shouldn't fool ourselves - it comes at least in part, at the expense of the concerns of men, too. "Body positivity" is important because it impacts women (obesity, being "curvy" and "plus sized", etc.); it doesn't take into account rampant heightism against men, because again, it's guys who are literally getting the short end of the stick. And the same can be said for occupations like blue collar trades, typically seen as "less than" by the ladies, etc. These glaring inconsistencies in a "woke age" are hard to rationally excuse, justify or ignore by anyone who is in the least bit intellectually honest. What "empathy" amounts to is a one-sided, one way street, where women benefit. None of this is meant to say that I think we should roll back the clock or that women's concerns aren't real; just admitting that the course we're going down can and will generate tradeoffs - that there will be winners and losers. And if we're as righteous as we like to think ourselves to be in our ostensibly enlightened age, we all owe it to our own conscience to admit that.
So, I'd like to focus our interview this time around, less on the science, and more on the advocacy positions you take in the book, as well as the more philosophical questions I've laid out above; here, Chris Williamson comes to mind, where he discusses how there are men online who are "weaponizing" the insights gleaned by you and your colleagues, namely how to ape the dark triad traits. While disturbing, the truth of the matter is that this is clearly what the ladies want, at least in the short term; the fellas are merely adapting to the demands of a 21st century "free love" sexual market place - one where female mate choice is the sine qua non.
In other words, professor: Don't hate the player; hate the game.
I'm looking forward to our interview; this is gonna be good!
Sincerely,
Mumia Obsidian Ali"