Manosphere misogynists like to tell themselves fairy tales about women. Their favorite such tale, repeated endlessly, is one called “The Cock Carousel” – sometimes referred to in expanded form as the “Alpha Asshole Cock Carousel” or the “Bad Boy Cock Carousel.” (Hence that Rooster-riding gal you see in this blog’s header about half the time.)
Despite the different names, the story is always, monotonously, the same: In their late teens and twenties, when they’re at the height of their sexual appeal, women (or at least the overwhelming majority of them) have sex in rapid succession with an assortment of charismatic but unreliable alpha males and “bad boys” who make their vaginas (or just ‘ginas) tingle. Then, sometime in their mid-to-late twenties, these women “hit the wall,” with their so-called sexual market value (or SMV) dropping faster than Facebook’s stock price. As Roissy/Heartiste puts it, in his typically overheated prose:
So sad, so tragic, the inevitable slide into sexual worthlessness that accompanies women, the withering tick tock of the cosmic clock stripping their beauty in flayed bits of soulletting mignons like psychological ling chi. A sadistic thief in the night etching, billowing, draping and sagging a new affront to her most preciously guarded asset.
While many women try to pretend they’ve still “got it,” even at the ripe old age of thirty, they inevitably have to either get off or get thrown off the “cock carousel.” At this point the more savvy women glom onto some convenient “beta male” who, while somewhat lacking in sexual appeal, will at least be a good husband and provider for them – and in many cases the children they’ve had with alpha male seed. Those women who don’t accept the new reality are destined to end up alone and childless, surrounded by cats.
To borrow the phrase South Park used in its episodes about Scientology and Mormonism, this is what manosphere men actually believe. Not only that, but they claim that this fairy tale is based on real science.
So who are these mysterious alpha males that get the women so excited? As one guide to pickup artist (PUA) lingo puts it:
In animal hierarchies, the Alpha Male is the most dominant, and typically the physically strongest member of the group. For example, in wolf packs, the “alpha wolf” is the strongest member of the pack, and is the leader of the group. This position of leadership is often achieved by killing or defeating the previous Alpha Male in combat. Alpha wolves have first access to food as well as mating privileges with the females of the pack.
Social status among human social groups is less rigidly defined than in the animal kingdom, but there are some recognizable parallels. Although people don’t often engage in physical violence to achieve dominance, there are still recognizable leaders in different fields who have wide access to material resources and women.
Because the qualities of the Alpha Male (such as social dominance and leadership) are attractive to women, many PUAs have adopted these ideals as models of emulation. In fact, the term “alpha” has come be shorthand for the qualities of an attractive man, and it is a common refrain among PUAs to be “more alpha” or to “out alpha” competitors.
There’s a certain logic to all this. But unfortunately for the PUAs and other manospherians the notion of the Alpha male is based on bad science. The notion of Alpha dominance, as the definition above notes, came originally from studies of wolf packs. Even if we assume that wolf behavior is somehow a good model upon which to base our understanding of human romance – as manosphere men and evolutionary psychologists tend to do – the science behind the Alpha male wolf has now come completely undone, with many of those who promulgated the theory in the first place decades ago now explicitly repudiating it.
The problem, you see, is that the studies underlying the notion of the alpha male wolf, who aggressively asserts his dominance over beta males in order to rule the pack, were all based on observations of wolves in captivity. In the real world, wolf packs don’t work that way at all. Most wolf packs are basically wolf families, with a breeding pair and their pups. When male pups reach adulthood, they don’t fight their fathers for dominance — they go out and start their own families.
As noted wolf behavior expert L. David Mech, one of those who helped to establish and popularize the notion of the alpha wolf in the first place, explains on his website:
The concept of the alpha wolf is well ingrained in the popular wolf literature at least partly because of my book “The Wolf: Ecology and Behavior of an Endangered Species,” written in 1968, published in 1970, republished in paperback in 1981, and currently still in print, despite my numerous pleas to the publisher to stop publishing it. Although most of the book’s info is still accurate, much is outdated. We have learned more about wolves in the last 40 years then in all of previous history.
One of the outdated pieces of information is the concept of the alpha wolf. “Alpha” implies competing with others and becoming top dog by winning a contest or battle. However, most wolves who lead packs achieved their position simply by mating and producing pups, which then became their pack. In other words they are merely breeders, or parents, and that’s all we call them today, the “breeding male,” “breeding female,” or “male parent,” “female parent,” or the “adult male” or “adult female.” In the rare packs that include more than one breeding animal, the “dominant breeder” can be called that, and any breeding daughter can be called a “subordinate breeder.”
So the dominant male wolves – those whom manosphere dudes would still call the alphas – achieve this position not by being sexy badasses but simply by siring and taking responsibility for pups. To use the terminology in the manner of manosphere dudes, alphas become alphas by acting like betas. That’s right: alphas are betas. (For more of the details, see this paper by Mech; it’s in pdf form.)
Also, they’re wolves and not humans, but that’s a whole other kettle of anthropomorphized fish.
I’d like to ask the alpha/beta guys how the rest of their life, into maturity and old age, goes in their theory. Or if your own future is hard to imagine, describe how your parents or grandparents lives fit in the alphabeta world.
You know, even if MRA-PUA fairy tales about riding the Alpha Cock Carousel are true, so what? Young woman has a lot of sex with a variety of young men, then settles down to monogamous sex with one man later on. Lots of sex is had, presumably, and everyone is happy. What’s the problem?
Assuming that this is a real phenomenon, a more likely explanation is that young people, generally speaking, like to have a lot of sex with different people. As people get slightly older, they start to think about wanting to settle down, start a family, etc. The type of person who is attractive to a young single person who just wants to have fun is likely to be different from a person who is attractive to a slightly older person with (hopefully) more self-knowledge and self-respect who wants to have a long-term, committed relationship. This behavior isn’t really unique to women, but is rather an artifact of the modern age, where people have the freedom to choose their own partners and defer marriage if they so desire.
Of course, the problem, from an MRA-PUA perspective, is that a sexually experienced woman is seen as damaged goods; so the “hapless beta” is having to settle for an inferior product–the alpha’s sloppy seconds. Fucked up, their world view is.
Hey David,
If you want to write about bizzaroland fairytales involving misandry for you to mock, check out this article and especially its comments.
http://feministcurrent.com/5829/owen-lloyd-the-feared-and-the-fearful/
It’s discussed here:
http://www.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/yn3tp/yet_another_male_feminist_attempts_and_fails_to/
@pecunium
The hipster “I totally could dance properly but I’m being goofy ironically” misexecuted Saturday Night Fever moves are standard. Works for me.
@aworldanonymous
I’ve just started going to uni this year, and I’ve mostly met lovely people. I did meet one guy who first asked me if I liked Reddit and then said that learning about ethics was stupid, but that was just one guy and I’m amazed at how lovely everyone I’ve met has been, even if a few had iffy assumptions that everyone’s been overseas multiple times. Don’t judge on appearances or majors either; it’s not only androgynous social science students who are capable of being fantastic.
My social circle’s about 65-35 female/male though, for a variety of reasons, so I’ve not many as many dudes and it’s possible people don’t pull out the PUA stuff with guys around. It’s also possible that the PUA-ier dudes are more into STEM stuff, but I wouldn’t tar all STEM people with that brush (see above): I live in a steel town (guess where, guys), know lots of engineering students down at the local university, and they’re all lovely people.
One of the best parts of uni, assuming you’re not living there (how does Canada work with this?) is that you’ll only ever have to see people if you want to. This isn’t high school, being stuck with the same group of people doing busywork. You’ll probably end up seeing people less often, but enjoying it more. This could be amplified by my experience: I commute 2 hours by train each way to uni.
Look forward to uni and have fun!
P.S. I can’t immediately think of any Man Boobzers currently attending college/university at an undergraduate level except Ozy (?), but they’re out there, and worth listening to if they pipe up. Everyone else is too, of course.
Also, why do so many wonderful people seem to live in Massachusetts and Canada? I’m sure there’s lots of people you wouldn’t want to be around in each (I’m looking at prominent politicians from both…), but they seem lovely places.
If I were at all capable of dealing with short days and the cold, and weren’t so attached to my friends and family, and had the money for it, I’d be in Boston in an instant. Love the accent too.
Of all the idiots on the world wide webbernets, the people most likely to accuse a rape victim of either lying about it, deserving it or being stupid for being there in the first place have the most thinking to do about why a woman might be afraid of a strange man in the middle of the night.
I’m sure that r/mr thread would be a good fit for manboobz, though. Seriously, that place is such a cesspool the thought of even reading it is disgusting, but I can’t wait for the post.
Yo, anyone who’s still up want to deal with Phil?
Aw, shucks! *blushes* But yeah, we’re not all so great in Mass. A couple of our shittier trolls hail from here.
The Modern Lovers come from there too, amongst other wonderful musical acts.
Also, wish I could show you guys, but there’s been some sort of dust storm outside and everything outside looks like it’s been colour-shifted to a pinky-orange colour. It’s happened a few times this year. Try imagining it; you couldn’t really go too extreme. Very haunting.
I always thought of the, “alpha male” as just some guy with leadership abilities, and he could be a nice guy or a jerk. My husband has leadership abilities, is a store manager, and he’s a very nice guy. His employees love working for him.
@lowquacks – you are on the coast, right? the sea plus dust storms must make for amazing weather effects.
@some guy bored with your schtick- A woman alone and scared in a laundromat is your example of misandry? With the messages women are inundated with every day on how they are always potential victims and how people attempt to make them responsible for their attacks and you consider her response as an attack against men? The woman was wound so tight she was jumping at shadows! Tell you what, you advocate for a world where people stop questioning why a woman was out walking that late or what she was wearing when she was raped or if she fought back- when we live in that world feel free to think that woman was being unreasonable for being afraid. In the mean time, so very sorry women’s socialized fear hurts your feelings. Honestly, what was she doing her laundry there so late in the first place? Doesn’t she realize her heightened awareness and fear at being alone in a public space at night might offend men?
I posted earlier in this thread, but can’t find the post now? Weird. Maybe I just thought I posted but hit the wrong button or something. S:-/
Anyway, wolves in CAPTIVITY don’t behave like the PUA model either. The reason being that the females will fight among themselves just as much as the males will, and eventually the best female fighter and best male fighter will form a monogamous couple. Earlier wolf researchers talked about “alpha females” just as much as “alpha males”. It’s just that the idea of “alpha females” beating “beta females” in fights and getting the mating privileges don’t fit human gender roles.
Kinda off-topic, but thought I’d share.
At the weekend, I was at great show in NYC, lots of people dancing, having fun and listening to music. Men and women, mingling, talking, flirting and getting close. It was great.
A few of us went outside, I was “feeling the love” so to speak (I’d taken X), and for a moment John the Other popped into my head and I started thinking about MRAs. I felt so desperately sorry for them. They wouldn’t be able to enjoy doing what I was doing at that moment, seeing people as people, not as alpha/beta/false rale allegers/gold-diggers etc. And they’re happy in their self enforced intellectual ghettos. It was a moment and it passed, but the pity remains, albeit tempered by how vile they are.
@Magpie
Yep. “Steel town” and “roughly 2 hours from a Very Fancy University” should tell you exactly where.
I think a major problem with these MRAs and people like them is that, once they believe something, they have to desperately cling to that idea or belief system otherwise their world falls apart. It’s like, the world has far surpassed them but they’re unwilling to catch up. I get the feeling these people never buy new clothes or move anywhere, or change their routines. It’s like, things must be set in stone. This is why they see an article like this and cry foul. Being disproven and changing their opinion is just too hard for them. This is why they cling to these ideas that we must still be functioning as the cavemen did despite having no need to do so.
I bet these were people who made those facebook groups when Pluto’s legitimacy as a planet was questioned too. Haha. HOW DARE THEY! IN MY DAY IT WAS A PLANET, IT SHOULD ALWAYS BE A PLANET!
lowquacks – yep. My mum’s family followed the steel over the mountains in the 30’s to your town. I’m fond of the place 🙂
Hey! Pluto the planet was a major part of my childhood! This is an important issue! Also, it’s not infringing on anyone’s rights as a person!
@Magpie
Wait, are you thinking of the same place? The one that’s not Newcastle? The southern one?
That singing Husky made my day. In return, I offer a baby fennec playing with a cat.
@ lowquacks
yeah, the southern one. the steelworks came from lithgow originally. All the workers were sacked, and had to reapply. They camped near port K, it was like a refugee camp for a while.
fennec fox is ridiculously adorable
@amused
Ah, the classic poisoning the well opener; a favorite among easily-triggered dogmatists. This should be good.
Simple. Our dear porcine host summed it up nicely: “At this point the more savvy women glom onto some convenient ‘beta male’ who, while somewhat lacking in sexual appeal, will at least be a good husband and provider for them – and in many cases the children they’ve had with alpha male seed.” Written ironically but ironically accurate.
It’s nice to know that you live in a world devoid of single motherhood, where women make responsible mate choices and never end up saddled with an Alpha’s bastard spawn. I bet farts smell like flowers in your reality too.
Fortunately, there are cuddly betas who are extremely grateful for sloppy seconds, even if it means raising another man’s seed as their own (at least when their cuckoldry is voluntary).
Until their partners go all EatPrayLove on them and seek out men like me.
Good on you for being able to type that with one hand while flicking the bean with the other.
Shorter inconvenient: wah wah wah, just because it makes no sense doesn’t mean it’s true, you’re fat, you’re oversensitive, you’re masturbating!!!
Yep. The high level of discourse continues.
Also, if you read his comments and replace Alpha and Beta with the actual wolf-meaning of the words–family-man father and child-still-living-with-parents–it becomes deeply disturbing.
DEEPLY. DISTURBING.
From now on this is how I’m going to read all of their posts, isn’t it? Oh, god, the things I do to myself….