To What Should Males Aspire?

I recently heard Dennis Prager ask to what men would aspire if not marriage and raising a family. He's repeatedly said that guys are not real men if they aren't husbands and fathers. This is something heard from various corners of our culture, along with other assertion of what makes a guy a "real man". [This entry has been bumped up.]

Notice you never hear what makes a real woman. You never hear "What a real woman does, is..."

What is a guy if he isn't a real man? An artificial man? A transgender man? Of course, that's not what people are talking about. They are saying a "real man" as opposed to a man who is somehow lacking, or, as they might say, a "boy". There's nothing wrong with boys, at least not beyond the general thing of humans being fallen creatures. Again, you don't hear this with women. Women will refer to each other and themselves as girls and nothing negative is meant by it.

A real man is any adult human male who isn't fictional. For example, Prince Charming is fictional. Christian Grey is fictional. Jack Sparrow is fictional.

If there was such thing as a "real man" as opposed to an adult male who isn't a real man, that real man wouldn't give a piece of dung what other people say makes a real man. because when someone says, "What a real man does, is...",  what they're saying is "What I like men to do is..." Because real men urinate unless they have kidney problems, real man have weaknesses, and real men mess things up sometimes. But you'll never hear "What a real man does is urinate." But it's true.

Getting back to Prager's question...



I understand he apparently had a great desire to be married and raise children. So much so that he's married three times.

That isn't what every man, yes, including REAL men, want. Prager might say it isn't a matter of want, it is a duty, an obligation. He might not use those words. However, no, a man shouldn't marry and raise children unless he truly wants to. Unwanted kids aren't just in orphanages. Some unwanted kids have fathers, right there in the home with them, and suffer a great deal from being unwanted.

It can be effectively argued that it is now irresponsible to have children, at least for a great many men.

So to what should males aspire?

Do No Harm

1) Do not assault people or steal/damage the property/money/time of others.

2) Honor your obligations. Part of that is not creating, nor accepting, obligations to yourself that you won't be able to meet. (See immediately below). Learn to say no and learn to negotiate. Learn to stand up for yourself and promote yourself. Pay your bills, and pay them on-time.

3) Do NOT impregnate women, give them diseases, or make them (or allow them to become) dependent on you. Do not cater to them, pay their expenses or bills or do things for them you wouldn't do for a male friend, because that makes them dependent. Don't be a sexist or misogynist: respect women as capable, independent, autonomous, equal human beings.


Contribute More Than You Take

You're going to be dependent and take up more than you contribute at the start of your life and, if you don't plan well, at the end of your life. Also, people do get sick and injured through no fault of their own, and that can prevent them from doing this. However, most people will have most of their lives to achieve and live out this goal, the goal of contributing more than they take. It is easier to do this if you're not bogged down with a dependent woman or children. 

4) Be self-sufficient and independent. I'm not talking about homesteading in a biodome (although, if you want to do that with voluntary private funds, go ahead). I'm talking about not becoming dependent on a woman and not being a net burden on your relatives, your friends and neighbors, your community, your state, or our country. Save for someone in that biodome or on a deserted island, nobody is entirely solitary, as we engage in voluntary trades. We can also have mutually beneficial personal companionship without dependency. These things are not being net drains on others.

5) Engage in honest work to earn money. This could include managing your own wealth. Wise investing and divesting is being productive.

6) Save, invest, and insure. Avoid renting money (borrowing/debt).


7) Be prepared to, and actually, defend yourself and innocents from attack. Attacks could be physical, verbal, criminal, litigious, etc.

8) Engage in prioritized, effective charity. It could be as simple as helping out a friend. Going on a church mission can be in this category, although it may be difficult to find a church that will accept your contributions without trying to inflict a woman on you. Do not confuse enabling for helping.

(Please note that neither 7, 8, or any of these above mean playing Captain Saveaho, where you get involved in the dance between a woman and her debt, mental illness, personality disorder, substance abuse, and/or her abusers. Such efforts are usually wasted. When a woman is biologically defective, chooses to get into debt through poor choices, or chooses an abusive man, trying to save her is almost always futile.)

Bonus Contributions:

9) Be engaged civically and politically, if you have the time/energy and discernment to do it well. Political involvement could be for a local campaign you truly support; for local offices like city council, mayor, or special districts like school districts. Hopefully, you'll fight Leftism, statism, collectivism in favor of individual liberty.

10) Influence your fellow men and the next generation. Some people cite this as a reason to raise children, but many children utterly reject the priorities and values of their parents. More influence can be had in an audience that is not captive and dependent. How you can best influence others depends on who you are; your personality, your life, your skills, your talents, etc. Some contributions are intangible, and that may be the case there and with this next one...

11) Hobbies and interests. Imagination, innovation, creativity can be great contributions.

But Isn't Parenting Contributing?

Some may ask, "But isn't raising a child contributing?" Maybe. Someone raised every mass murderer and serial killer there's ever been. I was raised by someone and I'm raising kids; so I guess you have to listen to my opinion on this matter, right? People get all sappy about whatever fond memories they have, as though they can be relived or recreated. They can't. Life has moved on. People can contribute to the lives of others in specialized ways, and have more ability to do so if they're not bogged down with being a husband and father in a culture that craps all over husbands, fathers, and natural families.

Efficient use of personal resources must be considered.

Prager says don't ask "What's good for me?" Ask, "What's good for society?" What's good for me and what's good for society aren't always exclusive to each other. Sometimes, they go hand-in-hand. However, if there is a conflict between what is best for a responsible man or for men and what is best for society, it could often, if not always, be in conflict because of how misandrist our society has become. At some point, a man sacrificing himself can become a waste. Let's be real here. If we are making a dichotomy between men and society, then the society we're talking about is really women and children, especially girls. Why aren't women being asked to consider what's best for men? And if a man doesn't have children, then he has no need to consider what's best for his own children. People like Prager think men will do more bad or frivolous things without a woman taming him, and that women will be drains on society. Well here's an idea: How about teaching women to be truly independent?


The Ongoing Plea to Men

Despite Prager telling men not to ask what is good for them, his Prager University has released two videos (so far) appealing to a man's self-interest or ego in trying to sell marriage to him. This blog thoroughly covered the first one, which told men to get married because they'd earn more money. Since I started writing this entry, a second video, in which a man tries to tell us what makes men their sexiest, was released. It has been effectively countered by TFM.

So:

1) "You'll earn more!"
2) "You'll be sexier!"

What will be the Prager University hat trick? Something I already answered here?

It's sad for many reasons. Most Prager University videos are good, but in doing these videos, they're turning off a significant audience that would benefit from their other videos. It appears that Prager's fixation on encouraging people to marry and pop out babies is going to take priority over whats best for the rest of the messages of Prager University.

So "Ward Cleaver" is supposedly the sexiest man, because he's dependable and takes care of a wife and kids. And we can believe what some guy tells us is sexy in men, right? Oh, sure we can, because plenty of middle-aged women are willing to agree, according to online comments and calls that Prager took on his radio show. But what women say and what women do are sometimes two different things.

What does sexy mean?

Doesn't it mean making someone want to have sex?

Who are women most likely to have sex with as little time since meeting having passed? Many women practically run to jump into bed with unreliable jerks or bad boys. If they're going on dates with a bad boy and other dates with a Ward "Poindexter" Cleaver, they'll have sex with the bad boy and keep Cleaver waiting. They might "reason" that they do this because they figure they'd better get it over with the bad boy, who isn't going to be around for long, and they don't want Cleaver to think they're "easy" or whatever. It doesn't really matter; the point is, what gets them into bed faster.

"But hold on," say the people who say Cleaver is the sexiest man. "That's only true for women aged 18-25."

Well, first of all, who do men think are the sexiest women? Generally, if we're being honest, it is women in that age range. Don't believe it? Go back and check the ages of Playboy Playmates. According to the crack researchers at Wikipedia, the average age of a Playmate of the Year, 23.5 years, is slightly higher than that of a Playmate of the Month, 22.4 years. You can bet your behind that company has done extensive research into what men find sexy. So, the women men find sexiest are most likely to find bad boys sexy.

Secondly, many women over the age of 25, including women decades older, still go right to bed with bad boys.

Yeah, it's true that some women might find Ward "Poindexter" Cleaver sexy, once they've aged, fattened up and lost their looks, popped out babies, accumulated debt and STDs and "have had their fun" as they write in dating profiles. They need Cleaver there to clean up their messes, pay the bills, and celebrate those special days with them. Except that Cleaver won't really be allowed to have authority over his stepchildren; he'll just have to pay for them.

Or maybe they say Ward Cleaver is sexy because they've woken up and finally admitted they're with a guy like that and probably not going to be able to find a guy with more money/power/fame if they were to leave, and they're telling themselves he's sexy as much as they're agreeing with Prager.

Who exactly is this video supposed to be appealing to, anyway?

From Prager's own show, it is young men. Well, the kind of young man who is going to be so ego-starved or foolish that he'll respond to this by changing his mind and saying "Well, I guess I should get married after all so I can be sexier" isn't the kind of guy who's going to make a good husband. Really, the video appears to be more about reassuring young Poindexters who are either being ignored by women their age or who are being used by women to pay for their meals, drinks, and entertainment and whatever else, that if they just stay the course, they, too, will one day be able to pay for an elaborate series of bride-worship parties, sign a legal contract that disadvantages them, and raise children for as long as a woman feels like letting them.

Unfortunately, the chances they'll find a June Cleaver are remote.

And, even if he finds a June Cleaver, everything else has changed and no longer functions in conjunction with Ward and June. Family life, school and education, workplaces and employment, the social landscape... everything. That means this video is less useful to my son than a video instructing him how to make kerosene lamps or drive a horse and buggy. It's worse, actually, because it is like encouraging him to stick his hand in a hornet's nest. "But, but I'm sexy!" he might say, as his wife consistently rejects him, or imitates a corpse during sex, or divorces him, kicks him out of his own house, and turns his children against him as he pays alimony and child support. Ah, they get to be sexy, although they only get to enjoy the benefits of that with one woman (if she feels like it, until she decides otherwise). It's kind of like saying the strongest man alive gets to carry the family's luggage and that's pretty much it.

All this being said, it doesn't matter to people like Prager. He says he wants to be depended upon. He wouldn't see himself as a man if someone wasn't depending on him. He sounded shocked that some women hook up with guys who depend on them. Because he noted that there are "men who hate marriage" who respond to these videos, people might get the wrong idea: MGTOW means Men Going Their Own Way. Anyone who subscribes to that will not leech off of women. But someone doesn't have to be MGTOW to be on a marriage strike. In case you're wondering, while Prager and others rightly ridicule men who depend on women, Prager and anyone in sync with him expect women to depend on men; they readily promote distinct gender roles. To be a man, in their view, is to support a woman and children, and that has to mean that women depend on men.

That can certainly be something a man does. It isn't a requirement to be a good man. And if a woman truly believes in, or demands equality, how does that square, anyway?

Be good men. And know that you don't have to sign a state contract with a woman or raise children to be one.