MANLY FLACCIDITY

                                                          by Andy Nowicki

My previous articles at Alternative Right and Counter-Currents, analyzing and and critiquing the manosphere and its attendent pick-up-artist "game" ethos, provoked a wide variety of responses. Commenters chimed in with much to say about what I had to say, and their feedback ranged from the highly complimentary to the laceratingly scathing and epithet-intensive.

Still, nothing that I've written on this subject has managed to stir the proverbial shit so vigorously as Ava Moretti's recent article "Pick Up Artists" has. Like Jaenelle Antas in a similar piece two years ago, Moretti indicted alt-rightists, white nationalists, and gamers alike for what she claimed was their all-too prevalent misogynistic attitudes. At the same time (also like Antas), Moretti maintained her own traditionalist female bona fides, thus distancing herself from the harridanic ideological misandry which pockmarks the hideously haggish countenance of contemporary feminism. But such insistances on Moretti's part did nothing to dissuade many masculinist commenters from believing her to be little more than a shrill feminist shill in disguise, or even more hilariously, a "beta" male on the down-low (perhaps yours truly, or perhaps C-C editor-in-chief Greg Johnson), who'd pussily assumed a female pseudonym to engage in an undercover rant against those manly-man "alpha" gamers of whom he's clearly so desperately jealous.

Much as it fascinates me, I don't intend to comment on this release of testosteronic vitriol from the peanut gallery in response to this pair of sassy and outspoken far-Right intellectual divas. I'd like to give my fellow alt-right/paleocon thought criminals the benefit of the doubt, since like them I am wary of the anti-male excesses of today's Cultural Marxist media establishment (although the appallingly ungallant cruelty indulged in by some Alt-Right commenters towards my friend Ann Sterzinger a few weeks ago demonstrate that Moretti and Antas may have a legitimate point in their critiques; see "Anti-Life Fiction." But rather than attempt to unpack the controversy itself, I'd rather investigate what all of the sound and fury may ultimately signify.

Moretti's article criticizes gamers for their crudeness, crassness, and dearth of chivalry; she takes PUAers to task only looking to get laid and not having the decency to treat a woman like a lady. Whatever the merits of Moretti's case, hers is in general terms a familiar lament, voiced by numerous women throughout the history of the human race. What sets Moretti's indictment apart is the fact that she specifically targets a particular subset of men-- that is, rightwing, anti-feminist, anti-modernist, Black Metal-listening, Evola and Spengler-reading men-- men with whom she presumably shares the same, or at least a markedly similar, perspective. These men strike back with a vengeance in the comment section which follows the article, but it isn't always easy to determine if their retorts are motivated by genuine disagreement or by an altogether less becoming posture of sheer defensiveness.

Then again, I don't really know where the truth lies in this rhetorical skirmish between Miss Moretti and her critics, nor do I feel especially fit to weigh in on the matter. I am neither a female looking for love, nor a male attempting to "score." I am a happily married man with two children, who has no intention of ever entering the dating scene again in my lifetime. Still, the kerfuffle over Moretti's piece has some interesting ramifications for the culture at large, and therein lies the kernel of a matter I wish to address.

*****************************************************************************

In my article "Manning Down," I cited blogger "The Blanque" and his arresting maxim: "Want to undermine the matriarchy? Then stop fucking."

Most of Moretti's critics do indeed wish to undermine the gynocentricity of our feminized, feminist age, but they have a hard time abiding The Blanque's radical solution. For the PUA-types, fucking is what it's all about; to refrain from fucking is almost to betray one's true nature. "I am, therefore I fuck" is practically their credo. And in this way, the PUA-ers, who fancy themselves to be counter-cultural rebels, are very much in lockstep with the Zeitgeist. For ours is an oversexed age, one whose ruling principalities and powers endorse libertinism and promiscuity while sneering at all notions of chastity, continence, abstinence, or celibacy. The march to this point has been prepared by decades of agitation against centuries of once firmly-established prohibitions and taboos; intensive and enforced permissiveness didn't begin with the repugnant sexual revolution endorsed and promoted by the smelly hippies of the baby-boom generation, but neither did it end with Woodstock or the Manson murders or the Kent State massacre or Watergate; indeed, the bitter seed squeezed out by those ever-copulating Deadheads back in the Day managed to fall on pliant soil; that foul seed has since grown into the giant, smegma-scented monstrosity which is the contemporary post-modern Western culture, where all is permissible except restraint.

This isn't to say that insufferable prudery has disappeared: far from it! Uptight judgementalism rules the day, in fact. Santimoniousness lives and thrives; it has simply shifted its locus of attack. One isn't allowed to pick on the sexual deviants anymore, but it's open season on ideological deviants. Today, it's no big deal for teenagers to fornicate, but they'd better not voice opposition to gay marriage, or entertain ideas of genetic racial differences, or advocate traditional sex roles. If they do any of these things, they'll soon find themselves summoned to the principal's office and treated to a fire-and-brimstone lecture on the sacred necessity of "tolerance" (a concept which, they'll note, is a one-way street; none of the representatives of Zeitgeist-approved ideologies are ever asked to be tolerant of their opponents; they are designated as the mandatory recipients of said "tolerance," but they are never called upon to bestow this kindness upon others).

Thanks to the sexual revolution, we are now invited to indulge our libido in any way and in every manner imaginable. After all, as sage stepdaughter-diddler Woody Allen once declared, "The heart wants what it wants." (Replace "heart" with a different word, if you prefer.) We call this relentless atmosphere of lewdness a by-product of "freedom." But in fact it is quite untenable to view freedom in such a light. Put simply, giving license to our sex drive doesn't free us; instead, it binds us. As long as we are lascivious, our would-be cultural commissars have us right where they want us. The man whose sexual appetite has been stoked can much more easily be ruled than the one who remains fixidly flaccid. There are few desires more potent and more deeply addictive than the carnal. Moreover, sexual hunger is of an entirely different species than other human appetites, in that it inevitably signifies a palpable loss of innocence; one who abandons himself utterly to its caprices isn't simply rendered physically gluttonous, but spiritually disordered; there is indeed a gravity to such a disorder which exceeds the category of mere compulsion. It is not random or arbitrary that--prior to the advent of bohemian modernist hipsterdom, followed hard upon by the post-modern establishmentarian decadence in which we are currently immersed-- tradition insisted upon heavily circumscribed and ritualized sexual intercourse, sanctioning the act for certain exclusive occasions and forbidding it elsewhere. So-called "hang-ups," in fact, spring from a perfectly logical and natural origin; man knows, in the deepest recesses of his soul, that the alternative to traditional sexual arrangements-- which is to say, marriage and monogamy-- is chaos. This is precisely what makes violations of the established rules so thoroughly exciting a prospect at times; chaos can, after all, be quite a thrill, at least for a brief span of time. But playing with fire is sure to result in painful burns and unsightly scars, even if the warmth of it initially draws us like moths.

Temptation to sexual transgression, then, is fraught with a unique brand of peril: what makes it sweet to contemplate and exhilarating to commit is the same quality which finally makes its consequence so bitter. But our post-modern principalities and powers, while wicked in orientation, are not at all haphazard in the application of their ruling strategy; well do they reconginze that the best way to control a man isn't just to own the brain within his skull, but also to make him a slave to the organ between his legs. Thus we have the one-two punch delivered by the guardians of the current Zeitgeist: 1) Enforced political correctness, which limits the "acceptable" bounds of thought to an extremely narrow spectrum of options, each more insanely irrational than the last, coupled with 2) no less enforced maintenance of culture-wide sexual "liberation," accompanied by the aggressive denigration of any vestige of "repression" as somehow inherently undesirable.

Thus, the typical subject of this Brave New Order is indoctrinated into intellectually retardation even as he is rendered increasingly carnally depraved. Day by day he becomes less of a man and more of a slave, chained to a requisite conformist attitude of debauched permissiveness, even as his mind shuts down on command and he obediently mouths the cliches and platitudes which prop up the ruling ideology ("Gays have the right to get married," "Rape is about power, not sex," "White people are the cancer of humanity," "Illegal immigrants are just 'undocumented,' that's all." "Blacks don't disproportionately commit violent crime--that statement is racist and I intend to make sure your career is ruined for saying it," etc.).

To free our minds, we must be defiantly thoughtful, considering notions that may be true even if they are dangerous to our health, well-being, and social life. And to liberate ourselves from the slavery of sexual "liberation" (more properly, sexual control), we must pull out the plug that keeps us perpetually turned on, thus keeping the depraved system perpetually juiced. We must refuse to watch our rulers' pornography and stop taking the Viagra they prescribe us; we must remain determinedly flaccid. For once a man refuses to be manipulated, he ceases to be anyone's slave.

(originally published at Alternative Right, July 2012)

Andy Nowicki, assistant editor of Alternative Right, is the author of eight books, including Under the Nihil, The Columbine Pilgrim, Considering Suicide, and Beauty and the Least. He occasionally updates his blog when the spirit moves him to do so. Visit his Soundcloud page.