Eureka!

I have finally done it.  I have identified the most pathetic men on the Internet.  Before the Internet, it was the LARPers.  Then, in the early digital days, it used to be the guys who ran BBSs dedicated to ham radio, but no longer.  LARPers and ham-radio BBSers, at least, are endearingly committed to their passions, pretty honest about their geekery, and charmingly virginal.

No, today the most pathetic species on the Internet are the Alpha Game men.

Perhaps you have heard of this.  I guess my not having heard of it is another sign, if one was needed, that I am way out of touch with the zeitgeist.  But I guess Glenn Reynolds, whose Instapundit I check with some regularity, must be a fan, a fact I find rather difficult to reconcile with the manifest evidence that he is otherwise an intelligent man, because he has linked to a blog called Alpha Game (whose tagline should be "for men who can't get laid!") on several occasions, and that's how I found out about these men.  It didn't particularly strike me until today just how pathetic they really are.

When it did strike me, I was actually reading a post on Dr. Helen's blog.  Dr. Helen is married to the Instapundit.  Part of Dr. Helen's schtick--and one that I am not unsympathetic to, because I also think men get a horrible deal from society these days in many ways, including in family law--is that men don't have many good reasons to get married anymore.  I mean, women are harridans, amirite?

But the comments!  The entire comments thread could be summarized thusly, "Women are a thieving pack of liars and sluts who will marry you, then divorce you and take all your money and, if you have children, take even more of your money and never let you see the kids.  And since women are sluts, the kid is probably not even yours anyway."

I'm not even putting words into their mouths.  If you care to read through the comments, you will find "pack of liars" and so forth in there, verbatim, although I did amalgamate.  And at first blush, the problem here seems to be rampant misogyny of a sort not even a Don Draper would publicly engage in.  I mean, this is real misogyny.  This is like the KKK Grand Duke of misogyny.

But after I thought about it a bit more, I found that the comments did not make me feel angry or defensive; they made me feel sad. This isn't just misogyny, this is a profound lack of self-esteem on the part of these men.  None of the mentally stable married men that I know (my own husband included) spends a lot of time worrying that his kids are not really his and that his lying slut of a wife might leave him at any moment, through absolutely no fault of his own, and take his car, his dog, and his house.  If they are confident that their wives are good women and that they are being the best husbands they can be, then they don't really let this kind of thing keep them up at night.  If they have had past relationships in which the woman was a lying slut and/or harridan (and it happens), they've kind of moved on.

To be so utterly and helplessly focused on all the ways a woman might hurt you--and to believe that she will do this with no warning, no fault on your part, and with a total lack of regard for your feelings--indicates that you don't believe you are worth being married to.  Nothing more.  You believe a woman will necessarily cheat on you because--well, look, you probably have a small penis.  You believe a woman will divorce you because you are not worth loving.  You believe she will prevent you from seeing your children because you harbor a fear that you are a terrible father.

Look, I know, it does happen that women commit adultery for no good reason, that women suddenly for no apparent reason just up and want a divorce, that women sometimes do prevent good fathers from seeing their children very often.  I know all that. And as I said, I am sympathetic to the idea that men get a raw deal in today's society.  They are often assumed to be pedophiles when they have any interest in children; boys are not well suited on average to the life that the public school system provides and indoctrinates them in; some of the types of work that men especially enjoy and are well suited to are disparaged; family courts are often biased in favor of the mother in many ways.

But, sorry--obsessing over the possibility that some woman might do you wrong, and that you are powerless to prevent it (by, say, being careful about whom you marry), that's just totally emasculating.

Then, chagrinfully, I followed a series of links and ended up here.  And this is just sad.  See, the thing is:  Even if this Alpha thing is really a thing, you aren't an Alpha just by pretending to be.  Don't get me wrong--I'm sure there are many women who are attracted to men who behave this way (I am equally certain that these relationships are unstable at best, but long-term relationships do not seem to be the goal of the Alpha Game).  There are, for some reason, always women who love jerks.  But those of us women who have married men who are really self-confident, not just pretending to be, are not sure whether to laugh at you or weep for you and try to introduce you to some nice lady.

SIDE NOTE:  I almost had to stop reading Instapundit the day he posted a link to something (possibly on Alpha Game) about whether wives have a "responsbility" to "stay sexy" for their husbands.  Reynolds added something like, "No, honey, you don't have any responsibilities.  Just let yourself go."  Yep.  You're right--I have no responsibilities--not taking care of the children, or cleaning the house, or cooking, or paying the bills and keeping the budget.  I just sit around all day.  Frankly, all of those responsibilities--real responsibilities--is more important both to me and to the success of our family than "staying sexy" is, and several of them are totally antithetical to the goal of staying sexy in the way that the Alpha Game types mean.

Fortunately, I have a husband who thinks I am sexy when I'm cooking and shouting about the coming collapse of the dollar, so we're in business.