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:
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:
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
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:
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":
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:
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!
Following up on the above - and again this is in direct response to Ms. Hummel - the entire point of Buss' most recent book (which dropped in late April of this year) is that the problem, and a very real one, is with the "alpha males" as Ms. Hummel likes to put it - and not the vast majority of men in any society at any given time. Ms. Hummel's keen observation of Prof. McWhorter's part in his account where the Black women in particular lept to their feet in praise of the "wolf tickets" the supposedly "basassed MFer" Black man he talked about does indeed give credence to the idea that women in this case instance Black, find such "MFers" sexy.
But the problem, if I may refer to the one and only Thomas Sowell, is "at what cost?". Buss' entire book was written in reaction to the (White) #MeToo movement, which was concerned with the abuses of a literal fraction of men - the very "alpha males" so many women lust after (an irony I just can't help but noticing and grinning at, I might add). And the sheer damage these "badassed MFers" have wreaked, not just on women, but on the American workplace itself, is still not fully known, but we all have a sense that it is wideranging and all directions. What is clear, at least to me, is that whatever evolutionary "advantages" such males brought in our past, they are not only clearly out of step with our literally more enlightened world, they bring a heck of a lot more harm than good.
I belong to a corner of the internet, known as the Black Manosphere, where the kinds of discussions Prof. Loury & McWhorter had that prompted Ms. Hummel's letter are routine; such lower level or more pedestrian "badassed MFers" are typified as "Pookies & Ray-Rays" vs. the more "boring and staid" "Educated Lames" - with devastating impacts and implications for the Black American community at large. Indeed, and for my part in contributing to the often times raucous conversation and debate to be had in that corner of the internet, my position is that it these "dating and mating" issues that are at the heart of Black American challenges in the 21st century, and NOT "racism", however one may define it; that Black women are not only choosing the wrong men on the most antiquated of measures in their best light, but more often than not choosing the worst men of Black America - not just to have a one night stand or a weekend fling with, but to bring on the next generation of Black Americans - with again, devastating results such that when I interviewed Prof. Loury on my talk show over on YouTube a few years back, he described the situation as "dystopian" - and I think just about everyone reading these words would agree.
I agree with Prof. Buss that Female Mate Choice is central to what it means to live free in an elightened world; but I also agree with Prof. Loury's take, from his own lived experience as a younger man, that choosing such a path (Black women choosing that "badassed MFer" as a mate or younger men attempting to ape it) is wrongheaded and should rightly be denounced. What is very clear to me here, is that women having the right to choose is not enough; they need constant guidance to make the right mate choices and yes, stern judgments when they get it wrong.
A beautiful and insightful letter; now i am also of a certain age and i recognize in my so well protected middleclass life in the Netherlands how much risk i have taken when hormiones were running amok. Fortunately here you don't have a gun and knife culture, maybe that's the reason i can still enjoy the beautiful city i live in(Amsterdam) Thanks Elizabeth for the letter and thanks Mr Loury for placing it here!
Because police shootings, especially of black people, are so central to the national conversation, I would like to share some statistics from the database kept by the Washington Post on police shootings that are fatal. The database covers 2015 to the present:
Number of white women fatally shot by police 2015 to now: 170
Number of black women fatally shot by police 2015 to now: 51
Number of white men fatally shot by police 2015 to now: 2,716
Number of black men fatally shot by police 2015 to now: 1,457
(BTW, database includes other races. The vast majority, about 98%, are not of unarmed individuals.)
If race were indeed the unique, if not superordinate, factor in shootings, you would not have almost 53 times the number of white men shot as black women....regardless of population percentages.
In fact, what I see in these numbers is clear empirical support for what is so eloquently expressed in Elizabeth's letter.
"We do not want emasculated men, but we also do not want the excessive violence and other harm that testosterone unleashes in some men. "
I don't know if it's ever been studied, but I've always thought sports was one of the "secret sauces" for holding America together. In school it channels a lot of 'alpha male' behavior into a benign and even productive form of behavior. In adult life it provides a peaceful, generally good natured, outlet for what might otherwise be anti-social behavior. Unfortunately I think professional sports may no longer play that role as they become overrun by CRT and SJW.
I agree with this. More physical activity that blows off steam and is fun is an obvious solution! I heard a report last week about a young black man who had started a running program in his city. According to the report,, running is not a common activity for urban black men. His goal was to get more black men running, and it's working.
I am almost certain that there is some reproducible research out there in the scientific literature that has delved into origin of the alpha male, “badass motherfucker” phenotype. That being said there is also a subset of “badass motherfucker” wannabes, represented in all cultures, who orbit and/or emulate the behavior of their idols to cope with their inferiority and perhaps a deep set sense of victim hood.
Some of these individuals, in my opinion, populate the authoritarian “enforcer” class. So we get the Proud Boys and Boogaloo Boyz and probably a certain percentage of the bad actors in law enforcement and the military.
Paul, that is a great point. It's not as if only the alpha males are causing the problems of male violence in societies all around the world. I don't know anything about the science regarding the "wannabe badass motherfuckers" (excellent technical term :)) but anecdotally it seems like those kinds of guys can be even more dangerous because they are also insecure and trying to prove something.
i think there's a distinction between alpha males +badass mofos. alpha males promote peace +provide empathy among the group. badass mofo's do just the opposite which i'd call the wannabe alpha male, no? i've read studies that hi testosterone men are very self-confident, don't have reason to fight whereas its low t supplementers w the roid rage. many many myths abt testosterone. women on t become more fair ... i've got loads pubmed bookmarks on the T if anyone wants to discuss this further
YES. In my experience, the badass mofos are fighting for the silver medal. Alphas are just hanging out reassuring people by their presence so that constructive things can get done. It's the silver medalist wannabes who are the problem.
thnx, i really want to distinguish badass mofos from alpha males +i don't think poor male behavior should be linked to testosterone. thats like the super predator myth of the prison population: as it turned out prison population wasn't all super-men peeing straight testosterone w extra male chromosones. (as way of explaination: i've prog neuro disorder +will accidently delete +delete to edit comments. i'm clumsy +make language mistakes too too often. please forgive. also language is terse: telescopic. nature of disorder. ty)
i think you were agreeing with the letter that alpha males +badass mofos are the phenotype but there's a subset of wannabes.
you wrote abt the: 'origin of the alpha male, “badass motherfucker” phenotype. That being said there is also a subset of “badass motherfucker” wannabes.' i want to clearly distinguish alpha males from badass mofos +unlink poor behavior from testosterone.
What a brilliant letter. Thank you for sharing this. Also, thank you for this substack - it's really helping to understand the different experiences of race, and the complexities of the issues.
Here's my take... Alpha males are gonna alpha male. Sometimes they overdo it and meet their demise at the hand of law enforcement.
The problem is the aftermath. Depending on the races of the people involved, we get either (1) a collective societal yawn; or (2) an insistence that the world is ending and can only be saved by the elimination of linear thinking.
This is a great letter, and the difficulty of alpha males with monogamy is very important - see Trump & Bill Clinton, LBJ, & JFK, all 4 well known womanizers & adulterers. And very very attractive to many women, including many attractive ones. Musk & Bezos & Philip Roth show it's not just politicians - as do many, if not most, professional sports athletes.
Getting easy sex is probably the primary reason for alpha male development. An obvious corollary to this is the power of young attractive women to shape culture - by their choice of who to mate with. And why.
Beta males should work out more; young women should look more for Boy Scout types rather than exciting bad boys.
Politically, we should be pushing incentives to those who save sex for marriage, and those who stay married - especially in poor communities (= school districts? with most kids not living with married parents?). Reality used to reward modesty, relative to promiscuity - but that seemed unfair to innocent bastards born to unmarried mothers that alpha males abandoned. Yet government programs to reduce the injustice of parental irresponsibility also reduced the social cost, which encouraged more irresponsible behavior.
Incentives matter. Both social and financial.
Society and culture should use government cash to give more incentive / cash to those who are more responsible. It won't happen without voters asking for it, after culture decides it's a good path to try.
the things said abt testosterone are alarming whether its lay ppl or doctors talking. no matter what we may like to believe very little is really known but there are way too many myths abt testosterone taken as fact. whether its hormones the body produces or taken in supplments by men with low t or women with neurological disorders the effects are varied.
That this space encourages such thoughtful correspondence, in contrast to the baser comments typically found in click-bait venues, speaks to the intellectual honesty as well as the deep compassion both you and John summon when approaching the complexity of being human. Rather than separate humans into proscribed archetypes, you are willing to probe the difficult and often contrasting behaviors in individuals by sharing your own confounding drives and instincts as you’ve matured.
Elizabeth’s letter spoke to this eloquently. In furtherance of these thoughts, I’d like to suggest that one problem we are confronted with in CRT, as preached by its current proponents, is that it is asking us to erase our own personal, historical development (and even selective aspects of our cultural development) and judge ourselves, as we are at this moment in time, against a purported, and in my opinion, oversimplified ideal. We are not asked to learn from our own histories, mistakes and all. In fact, in some instances we are being asked to deny our personal and collective past experiences and even rewrite those from their point-of-view. If we can’t own and learn from the negative and positive aspects our own pasts, we have to tell ourselves we’ve been living a lie. I’m concerned that the impact of denying who we’ve been (warts and all) will significantly add to the growing numbers of individual mental health problems our culture is already experiencing, as documented by many medical and public health professional organizations.
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"
Following up on the above - and again this is in direct response to Ms. Hummel - the entire point of Buss' most recent book (which dropped in late April of this year) is that the problem, and a very real one, is with the "alpha males" as Ms. Hummel likes to put it - and not the vast majority of men in any society at any given time. Ms. Hummel's keen observation of Prof. McWhorter's part in his account where the Black women in particular lept to their feet in praise of the "wolf tickets" the supposedly "basassed MFer" Black man he talked about does indeed give credence to the idea that women in this case instance Black, find such "MFers" sexy.
But the problem, if I may refer to the one and only Thomas Sowell, is "at what cost?". Buss' entire book was written in reaction to the (White) #MeToo movement, which was concerned with the abuses of a literal fraction of men - the very "alpha males" so many women lust after (an irony I just can't help but noticing and grinning at, I might add). And the sheer damage these "badassed MFers" have wreaked, not just on women, but on the American workplace itself, is still not fully known, but we all have a sense that it is wideranging and all directions. What is clear, at least to me, is that whatever evolutionary "advantages" such males brought in our past, they are not only clearly out of step with our literally more enlightened world, they bring a heck of a lot more harm than good.
I belong to a corner of the internet, known as the Black Manosphere, where the kinds of discussions Prof. Loury & McWhorter had that prompted Ms. Hummel's letter are routine; such lower level or more pedestrian "badassed MFers" are typified as "Pookies & Ray-Rays" vs. the more "boring and staid" "Educated Lames" - with devastating impacts and implications for the Black American community at large. Indeed, and for my part in contributing to the often times raucous conversation and debate to be had in that corner of the internet, my position is that it these "dating and mating" issues that are at the heart of Black American challenges in the 21st century, and NOT "racism", however one may define it; that Black women are not only choosing the wrong men on the most antiquated of measures in their best light, but more often than not choosing the worst men of Black America - not just to have a one night stand or a weekend fling with, but to bring on the next generation of Black Americans - with again, devastating results such that when I interviewed Prof. Loury on my talk show over on YouTube a few years back, he described the situation as "dystopian" - and I think just about everyone reading these words would agree.
I agree with Prof. Buss that Female Mate Choice is central to what it means to live free in an elightened world; but I also agree with Prof. Loury's take, from his own lived experience as a younger man, that choosing such a path (Black women choosing that "badassed MFer" as a mate or younger men attempting to ape it) is wrongheaded and should rightly be denounced. What is very clear to me here, is that women having the right to choose is not enough; they need constant guidance to make the right mate choices and yes, stern judgments when they get it wrong.
MOA
C.S. Lewis has some insight into this question in "The Necessity of Chivalry" and how a society needs to integrate somehow its barbarians and its milksops: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUMVG5SJ9kU&ab_channel=RodWirtz
Great letter! Her ideas remind me that I would really like to hear a discussion between you and Jordan Peterson.
Thank you Linnea! I need to check out Jordan Peterson.
A beautiful and insightful letter; now i am also of a certain age and i recognize in my so well protected middleclass life in the Netherlands how much risk i have taken when hormiones were running amok. Fortunately here you don't have a gun and knife culture, maybe that's the reason i can still enjoy the beautiful city i live in(Amsterdam) Thanks Elizabeth for the letter and thanks Mr Loury for placing it here!
Thank you Theun!
You are very welcome &, of course, thank you!
Boys will be boys.
Because police shootings, especially of black people, are so central to the national conversation, I would like to share some statistics from the database kept by the Washington Post on police shootings that are fatal. The database covers 2015 to the present:
Number of white women fatally shot by police 2015 to now: 170
Number of black women fatally shot by police 2015 to now: 51
Number of white men fatally shot by police 2015 to now: 2,716
Number of black men fatally shot by police 2015 to now: 1,457
(BTW, database includes other races. The vast majority, about 98%, are not of unarmed individuals.)
If race were indeed the unique, if not superordinate, factor in shootings, you would not have almost 53 times the number of white men shot as black women....regardless of population percentages.
In fact, what I see in these numbers is clear empirical support for what is so eloquently expressed in Elizabeth's letter.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/police-shootings-database/
"We do not want emasculated men, but we also do not want the excessive violence and other harm that testosterone unleashes in some men. "
I don't know if it's ever been studied, but I've always thought sports was one of the "secret sauces" for holding America together. In school it channels a lot of 'alpha male' behavior into a benign and even productive form of behavior. In adult life it provides a peaceful, generally good natured, outlet for what might otherwise be anti-social behavior. Unfortunately I think professional sports may no longer play that role as they become overrun by CRT and SJW.
I agree with this. More physical activity that blows off steam and is fun is an obvious solution! I heard a report last week about a young black man who had started a running program in his city. According to the report,, running is not a common activity for urban black men. His goal was to get more black men running, and it's working.
In order to play any "Black" sport today, such as football or basketball, running is key...
Word.
I am almost certain that there is some reproducible research out there in the scientific literature that has delved into origin of the alpha male, “badass motherfucker” phenotype. That being said there is also a subset of “badass motherfucker” wannabes, represented in all cultures, who orbit and/or emulate the behavior of their idols to cope with their inferiority and perhaps a deep set sense of victim hood.
Some of these individuals, in my opinion, populate the authoritarian “enforcer” class. So we get the Proud Boys and Boogaloo Boyz and probably a certain percentage of the bad actors in law enforcement and the military.
Paul, that is a great point. It's not as if only the alpha males are causing the problems of male violence in societies all around the world. I don't know anything about the science regarding the "wannabe badass motherfuckers" (excellent technical term :)) but anecdotally it seems like those kinds of guys can be even more dangerous because they are also insecure and trying to prove something.
i think there's a distinction between alpha males +badass mofos. alpha males promote peace +provide empathy among the group. badass mofo's do just the opposite which i'd call the wannabe alpha male, no? i've read studies that hi testosterone men are very self-confident, don't have reason to fight whereas its low t supplementers w the roid rage. many many myths abt testosterone. women on t become more fair ... i've got loads pubmed bookmarks on the T if anyone wants to discuss this further
YES. In my experience, the badass mofos are fighting for the silver medal. Alphas are just hanging out reassuring people by their presence so that constructive things can get done. It's the silver medalist wannabes who are the problem.
june m cutrightjust now
thnx, i really want to distinguish badass mofos from alpha males +i don't think poor male behavior should be linked to testosterone. thats like the super predator myth of the prison population: as it turned out prison population wasn't all super-men peeing straight testosterone w extra male chromosones. (as way of explaination: i've prog neuro disorder +will accidently delete +delete to edit comments. i'm clumsy +make language mistakes too too often. please forgive. also language is terse: telescopic. nature of disorder. ty)
Agree with you about alpha males and your comment is in line with what I was postulating.
i think you were agreeing with the letter that alpha males +badass mofos are the phenotype but there's a subset of wannabes.
you wrote abt the: 'origin of the alpha male, “badass motherfucker” phenotype. That being said there is also a subset of “badass motherfucker” wannabes.' i want to clearly distinguish alpha males from badass mofos +unlink poor behavior from testosterone.
What a brilliant letter. Thank you for sharing this. Also, thank you for this substack - it's really helping to understand the different experiences of race, and the complexities of the issues.
Thank you Linda!
Here's my take... Alpha males are gonna alpha male. Sometimes they overdo it and meet their demise at the hand of law enforcement.
The problem is the aftermath. Depending on the races of the people involved, we get either (1) a collective societal yawn; or (2) an insistence that the world is ending and can only be saved by the elimination of linear thinking.
This is a great letter, and the difficulty of alpha males with monogamy is very important - see Trump & Bill Clinton, LBJ, & JFK, all 4 well known womanizers & adulterers. And very very attractive to many women, including many attractive ones. Musk & Bezos & Philip Roth show it's not just politicians - as do many, if not most, professional sports athletes.
Getting easy sex is probably the primary reason for alpha male development. An obvious corollary to this is the power of young attractive women to shape culture - by their choice of who to mate with. And why.
Beta males should work out more; young women should look more for Boy Scout types rather than exciting bad boys.
Politically, we should be pushing incentives to those who save sex for marriage, and those who stay married - especially in poor communities (= school districts? with most kids not living with married parents?). Reality used to reward modesty, relative to promiscuity - but that seemed unfair to innocent bastards born to unmarried mothers that alpha males abandoned. Yet government programs to reduce the injustice of parental irresponsibility also reduced the social cost, which encouraged more irresponsible behavior.
Incentives matter. Both social and financial.
Society and culture should use government cash to give more incentive / cash to those who are more responsible. It won't happen without voters asking for it, after culture decides it's a good path to try.
the things said abt testosterone are alarming whether its lay ppl or doctors talking. no matter what we may like to believe very little is really known but there are way too many myths abt testosterone taken as fact. whether its hormones the body produces or taken in supplments by men with low t or women with neurological disorders the effects are varied.
that was link to not unrelated tweet re women who enjoy causual sex
https://twitter.com/cutrightest/status/1390369910858174469
That this space encourages such thoughtful correspondence, in contrast to the baser comments typically found in click-bait venues, speaks to the intellectual honesty as well as the deep compassion both you and John summon when approaching the complexity of being human. Rather than separate humans into proscribed archetypes, you are willing to probe the difficult and often contrasting behaviors in individuals by sharing your own confounding drives and instincts as you’ve matured.
Elizabeth’s letter spoke to this eloquently. In furtherance of these thoughts, I’d like to suggest that one problem we are confronted with in CRT, as preached by its current proponents, is that it is asking us to erase our own personal, historical development (and even selective aspects of our cultural development) and judge ourselves, as we are at this moment in time, against a purported, and in my opinion, oversimplified ideal. We are not asked to learn from our own histories, mistakes and all. In fact, in some instances we are being asked to deny our personal and collective past experiences and even rewrite those from their point-of-view. If we can’t own and learn from the negative and positive aspects our own pasts, we have to tell ourselves we’ve been living a lie. I’m concerned that the impact of denying who we’ve been (warts and all) will significantly add to the growing numbers of individual mental health problems our culture is already experiencing, as documented by many medical and public health professional organizations.
Thank you Margaret, such good points!
CRT is just hateful, wrong and misguided - it's quite a power play that has to be abolished, erased, & ignored.
So helpful. Thanks.