Advice

On an inferior man

My housemate is almost exactly like the guy from your “On the nice guy” post. I know he has no respect for girls, because he puts them on a pedestal, but at the same time is extremely threatened if there’s any hint of a girl getting the best of him (he hates feminism and thinks anyone who is one is the stereotypical second-wave man hating bra burner.)

He doesn’t treat me like this because I know he doesn’t see me as a potential girlfriend, but it bothers me that his thought process about girls is so monumentally fucked up. He’s a very miserable person who tries to mask it but doesn’t do a very good job because all of his negativity about girls and relationships just festers under his personality. He hates himself and thus hates girls because they don’t date him/have sex with him.

Is there anything I can say to him that will prompt him to examine his personality and his opinions on girls?

Oh, and he wants to be a relationship therapist.

Okay, here’s what you do. Go pick up a copy of The Way of the Superior Man by David Deida. Do you have a boyfriend? Great. If at all possible, have him casually give it to your housemate. It doesn’t have to be complicated, just a “Dude, this book is really great. Every man should read it,” sort of thing.

Point is, it’ll be better if he thinks the book was given to him by a guy. (Ironically, so he won’t feel like he’s being tricked.) Make sure he reads it. I guarantee the book will have a profound effect on him.

Just to be clear, I’m not endorsing The Way of the Superior Man. David Deida is a stepping stone to superior manliness in the same way that Ayn Rand is a stepping stone to legitimate philosophy. It’s a valuable tool if you are already, in fact, a tool.

All this book will do is turn a malignant level of douchebaggery into a benign level of douchebaggery. Still, it teaches what your roommate needs to learn right now.

Baby steps.

Advice

On feminism.

What exactly is feminism? The definition seems so convoluted because of all the stigmas and faces attached to it, I would appreciate a straight answer from a straight talker. It almost appears to me to be a viewpoint that articulates the superiority of women over men, rather than the equality of sexes. Help? Thank you.

This is feminism.

Also, this.

(You don’t really want a straight answer. You just want me to take the bait. Go back to troll school, you silly troll.)

Advice

On breitbart.

Andrew Breitbart is dead. What’s the most appropriate way to feel when someone you’ve loathed is gone?

It’s okay to loathe his legacy. It’s okay to feel good about his new-media empire suddenly losing most of its symbolic capital, but whatever you do, don’t relish that the man is dead.

He was a magnificent asshole, but he was still a human being. The dude was only forty-three. He had a wife and four kids. That situation is incredibly sad.

Best-Of Advice

On sex and healing

Dear Coquette,

So, I’m 22 years old and I finally lost my virginity last weekend. I’m not dating the guy, but we have been seeing each other for a few months. I was raised to believe your virginity is a gift that should be saved until marriage, and my parents even gave me a purity ring, but over the past few years my own religious views have evolved and changed and I don’t identify with Christianity anymore.

That being said, I still carry a really messed-up view of sexuality. Somewhere along the way, I began associating sex with something dirty and shameful. My first kiss was with a stranger and we were both drunk. The only time I’ve given a BJ and the first time I was fingered were both against my will. I was never raped, but when I was scheduled for my first gyno appointment, I broke down crying so hard she decided not to examine me.

Clearly, I have issues, but back to last weekend. Despite my own messed up view of myself, I am very anti-slut shaming and I admire women who are confident with their sexuality. I think part of the reason I had put off losing my virginity so long was because I was afraid of feeling dirty, regretting it, and the like, but I feel like it was a healing thing. It was consensual, the guy asked several times if I wanted to, and despite the fact that it hurt like hell, I enjoyed it. I feel like it was a really cathartic experience, if that makes sense.

I’m not asking for any particular advice (unless you have some to give), but I don’t feel ready to talk to someone about this on a personal level and I feel that reading your columns (all of them, not just the ones about sex) has really helped me on my road to feeling good about sexuality. Thanks for the free therapy!

This breaks my heart, and we need to be clear about a couple things up front. If someone forces you to perform oral sex against your will, that is rape. If someone penetrates you against your will — even with a finger — that is rape.

I understand why you feel the need think otherwise, but telling yourself that you were never raped is a certain kind of denial that is at the heart of what you call your “issues.”

I’m not saying you should start considering yourself a victim. You shouldn’t. I just want you to recognize and accept that what you experienced really was sexual trauma. That’s okay, though, because you’re right about the healing.

Part of the reason losing your virginity was so cathartic is because it was willful and deliberate. You had control over the situation and your own sexuality. That’s a powerful experience after having carried around so much guilt and shame about your early sexual encounters.

You’re not done healing, though. You still have a lot of complicated emotions to process, and it’s not made any easier by an upbringing filled with purity rings and religious sexual repression. That’s also okay, though, because you’re on the right path.

You’re starting to realize that the “really messed up” view of sexuality you’ve been carrying around isn’t actually yours. You’re letting go of the unhealthy aspects of your past by taking control of not only your own sexuality, but of your own sexual values.

Keep doing what you’re doing. Continue healing, and continue strengthening your own personal set of values. You’ll get there.

Best-Of Advice

On the real reason he bugs you

Dear Coquette,

After a year and a half, I finally realized why my roommate’s boyfriend bugs me: He’s boring. He’s a perfectly nice, perfectly attractive, perfectly successful functioning adult, but he has nothing terribly interesting to say, or at least not to me. Then, when my roommate is together with her boyfriend, she feeds off his Wonderbread loaf of a personality and ceases to be an exciting person with creativity and dreams.

Am I wrong to think like this? Am I just a jealous single bitch? Am I just as equally boring for hanging out with these boring people?

Yeah, it’s all about you, isn’t it?

Your roommate’s boyfriend isn’t boring. You’re just bored by your roommate’s boyfriend. See the difference? Of course you don’t, because you’re the center of the whole damn universe.

After a year and a half, what you should have finally realized is that you’re an incredibly self-centered girl who gets annoyed when the people in your life stop playing whatever role it is that you’ve assigned to them.

You don’t seem to care how your roommate actually feels. You just care that she continues playing the role of the “exciting person with creativity and dreams.” Whose dreams are we talking about, anyway? I’m gonna go out on a limb here and guess yours, because it sounds like your roommate is pretty darned happy in her relationship with a perfectly nice, perfectly attractive, perfectly successful functioning adult.

Take a step back and ask yourself, why would a perfectly nice, perfectly attractive, perfectly successful functioning adult have nothing terribly interesting to say to you? Is it because he’s boring? Is it because you’re boring?

Nope and nope. Shocking as this may seem, he has nothing terribly interesting to say to you because he doesn’t exist to hold your interest. Sorry, babe. He’s not there for your entertainment. Neither is your roommate.

I know your type. You don’t feed off of chaos and drama. You’re not an evil person, but still, you quietly exist as an emotional singularity around which everyone else in your world revolves.

Unfortunately, your roommate’s boyfriend doesn’t love you or hate you. He does nothing to piss you off or make you laugh. It’s not that he’s boring. It’s that he’s in your world and yet totally indifferent to you.

That’s the real reason he bugs you.

Advice

On sucker punch.

Thoughts on Sucker Punch? I could totally imagine you being one of those babes.

You could totally imagine me being a scantily clad victim of rape and violence trapped with no free will in an incoherent mess of adolescent pornographic fantasy?

Yeah, no. That’s not a compliment.

Sorry, dude. You’re confusing female empowerment for being heavily armed with a vagina.

Best-Of Advice

On playing dress-up

Dear Coquette,

I’m interested in so many fields. From bartending to chemical engineering and journalism and law. I get that no one cares about your degree, but since these areas do all kind of require some kind of credentials, how should I prepare for them?

Sincerely,

An Enthusiastic High School Junior

You don’t want to be a bartender. You want to be a hipster mixologist rocking out signature martinis for a bunch of starry-eyed hotties at the coolest bar you’ve never been to.

You don’t want to be a chemical engineer. You’re a fan of “Breaking Bad,” and you want to be a modern-day wizard who secretly has the knowledge to whip up a fresh batch of blue crystals.

You don’t want to be a journalist. You want to be a truth-chasing, gut-following investigative reporter with a reputation for integrity and a show on one of the cable news channels.

You don’t want to be a lawyer. You don’t even know what it means to be a lawyer. You just like the idea that if you stay in school long enough, one day you’ll be able to wear a suit and tell people that you’re a lawyer.

See what I’m getting at here? You’re not really interested in those fields. You’re interested in those identities. You’re fantasizing. You’re playing dress-up and make-believe with your future self. That’s fine. You’re a teenager. It’s what you’re supposed to be doing.

The problem is, there are a lot of twenty-somethings out there with dust gathering on their liberal arts degrees, still doing the exact same thing that you’re doing at sixteen.

I’ll give to them the exact same advice I’ll give to you: Don’t create an identity for yourself that isn’t rooted in the real world. You can bartend for a few years while putting yourself through engineering school, but whatever you end up doing, recognize that it’s gonna be a grind.

It doesn’t matter what kind of credentials you earn or what field you eventually choose. You’re guaranteed to spend at least a half-decade paying dues at the entry level. You’ll work longer hours, doing harder work than your bosses for significantly less pay. Nothing will be handed to you, and in all likelihood, the experience will be degrading and a little bit soul-crushing.

If you want to prepare for a career, then don’t pick your field based on the fantasy. Make an honest assessment of your talents, and pick your field based on the reality.

Advice

On persona

Coke, is your ‘raging bitch’ persona really all that different from wanting to be a fictional character? I mean, yeah there’s meaningful and creepy differences between playing a role and wanting to be a specific fictional character instead of putting a particular spin on yourself, but I feel like there’s a bit of pot calling kettle black going on here. Your whole ‘deal’ on this site feels a lot like that sort of fantasy. :/

On which fictional character am I based? Am I pretending to be someone else’s character, or would you at least grant that my online persona is somewhat original? That’s the point.

Everyone’s aspirational identity is based on various amalgams of both real and fictional role models. That’s not the problem. The problem is when people do it passively, without any self-examination or original thought.

Self knowledge is critical here. It’s the difference in being able to say, “I know who I am, and therefore I have adopted ‘X’ as an expression of my identity,” versus, “I don’t have a fucking clue who I am, and therefore I have adopted ‘X’ as an expression of my identity.”

One is clothing. The other is costume.

Best-Of Advice

On a real man

In your last post, you mentioned men “drinking rye whiskey cocktails like they were some kind of Don Draper starter kit.” I laughed, and it reminded me of a recent conversation I had. The guy informed me that “real men only drink beer.” Coke Talk, where do people get such ideas? I told him that real men don’t give a shit what “real men” do, and drink whatever the fuck they want. Men who are truly comfortable with their masculinity drink things they think are tasty. He then regaled me with tales of how he passes on things he thinks are turn-offs to women, like books, video games, and certain shows. I spent far too much time explaining to him that most women like men who are authentic to themselves and also that women who identify as nerds aren’t mythical creatures.

Now, my question – I feel I wasted too much time in my otherwise enjoyable evening of civilized debauchery. How much time is too much when attempting to challenge another person’s worldview when that worldview sees women as two-dimensional creatures? I have a feeling the answer is “Any amount of time is too much,” but I’m hesitant to give up altogether.

The problem isn’t that he sees women as two-dimensional. The problem is that he is two-dimensional.

He wants to be thought of as a man, and like all straight dudes, he wants to be appealing to women. No duh. Unfortunately, he doesn’t have the slightest clue what real men do, so he takes his cues from the most influential teacher he can find on the subject of masculinity — no, not his father — mass media.

And why not? He’s a good little consumer — shallow, secretly unhappy, and totally brand aware. His identity is defined exclusively through popular culture, and if he wants to take on the identity of a “real man,” all he has to do is mimic what he sees on television.

Professional sports are just a distraction for advertisers to repeatedly hammer dudes in the skull with the message that “real men only drink beer.” You can’t compete with that shit, and rest assured that if you hear a guy actually say it out loud, you’re never gonna challenge his world view. He doesn’t have a world view. Not really. He’s just leasing one from Viacom.

There’s nothing underneath the logo on his hat. He’s an empty shell with a top coat of marketing that he thinks says “real man,” and that’s why you were wasting your time. Sorry, but you can’t ask for authenticity from someone who’s never had an original thought in his entire life.

Next time, ask him to give you his definition of a “real man.” Make him use his own words. Force him to examine where he gets his ideas. See if you can get him to squeeze out an original thought.

If that doesn’t work, well… stay thirsty, my friends.

Best-Of Advice

On being a joan

So, I’m pretty excited about Mad Men’s new season. Are you a Joan, do you want to be a Joan, or do you just fantasize about being with a Joan?

I don’t mind if you want to hurt my feelings by telling me what her image does to my existential reality or unestablished self-esteem, but she’s the imaginary woman I never knew I wanted to be.

I don’t have high hopes for this season of Mad Men. I’ll watch it. Of course I’ll watch it. I might even enjoy it, but let’s all be clear that the show jumped the shark after season three.

That’s what happens with all great serial shows — The Sopranos, Sex and the City, Nip/Tuck, Weeds, Californication — you name it, and I can point to how it was all down hill after season three. (What about The Wire, you say? Yeah, yeah. The Wire is essentially five sets of mini-series with a number of reoccurring characters. It’s the exception that proves the rule.)

When Weeds jumped the shark after season three, at least Jenji Kohan had the foresight to (literally) burn down the whole universe of the show, steal away the main characters, and create what is essentially a spinoff of the original.

Good for her. Matthew Weiner tried to pull off the same trick, but unfortunately, he didn’t go far enough. He stole away the main characters from Mad Men‘s original universe, but the new one he created was an exact replica with more modern furniture. Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce was no different than Sterling Cooper, and the show really started to sag.

I don’t expect Mad Men to get any more interesting than it’s already been, because the only place left for Weiner to take his band of merry narcissists is on a downward spiral. Don is finally divorced from an idiot. Joan is finally married to an idiot. What now? Guess things will have to start getting weird for no reason. That, or really boring.

As for whether I want to be a Joan, all I can say is fuck no. It’s not that I have anything against Christina Hendricks or the character she plays, but the whole idea of typing myself as a fictional personality is more than a little bit creepy.

This kind of shit used to happen all the time back in the Sex and the City days. Bitches couldn’t help but ask, “are you a Carrie, a Samantha, a Charlotte, or a Miranda?”

“Fuck you,” I’d say.

“Oh, you must be a Samantha. I’m such a Carrie!”

“Of course you are,” at which point I’d excuse myself to the bathroom mirror to check that there wasn’t any blood leaking out of my ears.

Point is, everyone wants to be either a Carrie or a Charlotte. Everyone wants to be either a Joan or a Peggy. And if right now you’re saying to yourself, “Wait, wait! I’d rather be a Betty Draper or (god forbid) a Miranda,” then you’re double fucked. Not only are you missing my point, but you’re fantasizing about being a two-dimensional cunt.

I know I’m rambling at this point, but this shit bugs me. I hate hearing other women say they want to be like fictional characters on television. Real life role models are hard enough for me to condone, but tailoring your personality after some idealized bit of pop culture fiction is as shallow as it is dangerous.

This applies just as much to all you guys, by the way. Yes, you. The ones wearing fedoras and drinking rye whiskey cocktails like they were some kind of Don Draper starter kit. Stop it.

No, I’m not telling you what to wear or what to drink. I’m telling you to stop buying what television is really selling: your identity.