I Googled “alpha male” and this was one of the first images that came up. I, uh, can see how that might be hard to resist. (Via sodahead.com)

TRIGGER WARNING: This segment of the Hopeless Reimantic series deals with some themes which may be triggering to abuse/harassment survivors, and some of the authors discussed within play it seriously fast and loose with the concept of consent.

Welcome back to Hopeless Reimantic, where I try to convince you all that my taste in books isn’t really that bad!

First of all, some housekeeping: er, it’s been a while since I last put out one of these, so sorry about that. My degree sort of ate me (final year), and it stands to swallow me whole again in a couple of weeks (FINAL YEEEAR), but I promise to get back to some kind of regular posting schedule in the summer.

Alright! Let’s talk about alpha males. Specifically, let’s talk about how spurious science has constructed a cultural narrative in which the expectation of alpha-dom has been projected onto men. Even more specifically, let’s talk about what that means in romance novels, because the Alpha Male (see also “alphahole” and “alphole”) of Romancelandia is a different specimen to the kind uplifted by, say, economy theorists. Or PUAs.

This in itself is kind of interesting to me, to be honest, because I encounter a lot of guys (and I’m sure I’m not the only person to have experienced this) who say that they feel they need to alpha it on up because that, secretly, is what women want.¹

At first glance, you’d see that pretty well backed up by the sheer overwhelming presence of the alpha male in romance novels. You don’t even have to delve into a Mills and Boon backlist to see it; take Fifty Shades of Grey. Christian Grey is arrogant, and controlling, and he gets what he wants. He’s tormented, angsty, abusive and stalkerish (but only in a really hot way), and he’s richer than God, better-looking than the most virile of the Vikings and carries his own name-brand popsicles around in case you happen to get thirsty when you’re going down on him.

A Mills and Boon backlist will show you a lot more of the same, though. This brand of alpha male is raw power in a designer suit; he mixes pure, unbridled Man with all the trappings of high civilisation, because his power is such that he can dominate any world he wants to. Often he’s risen up from humble beginnings or has some kind of connection with a criminal underworld, just so you know he’s a badass.

A different breed of alpha male emphasises the badass aspect over the size of the wallet. One of the most popular alpha males in recent releases is Kane “Tack” Allen, hero of Kristen Ashley’s Motorcycle Man. Now, my experience of Ashley has largely come through reading reviews of her work, but I did check out Motorcycle Man, and I might take a look through her back catalogue with a view to devoting a post on her at some point. Not because I’m a particular fan, but because her books – and their wild success – have caused quite a stir among the romance-reading community, and I think that deserves some scrutiny.

Some people vociferously dislike them, while others compare them to literary crack (there is a Kristen Ashley Addicts Support Group). At any rate, she specialises in this certain type of alpha, and Tack is a perfect example of it. He’s bad, he’s brawny, and he’s terrific in bed (he gives Tyra, our heroine, “so many orgasms I lost count”). Let’s take a look at him:

Dark, longish, somewhat unruly, definitely sexy hair with a hint of gray interspersed in it. Blue eyes with pale lines radiating from the sides that I knew, I just knew, came from laughing. A dark goatee around his mouth, the bit at his chin overlong in a biker way that was too cool for words. Fantastic tattoos slithering up his defined arms, broad shoulders and muscled neck along with one on his ripped chest and a big one on his back. The rest of his body hard and strong…

– Kristen Ashley, Motorcycle Man, Kindle location 87.

He also embodies alphadom, as, in my understanding, Ashley heroes tend to. I gave up highlighting all the stereotypical alpha behaviours he displayed that I found creepy, because the book’s quite long, but I when I looked at all the ones I’d taken, I still had twenty-four. I lost count of all the times he backed her into something or grabbed hold of her and she told him to back off and he wouldn’t. And he always gets what he wants:

“To be fair, I’m givin’ you a warning,” he said quietly.

“Let me go,” I demanded just as quietly, mostly because I was freaking out.

“I want somethin’, I get it.”

“Let me go,” I repeated.

– Motorcycle Man, Kindle location 498

I’m going to try to not quote this book too heavily, but I could, because there are a lot of informatively creepy passages in it. One last one, though, because it’s important. He manhandles her and tells her what to do and in the end she is happy with it because deep down, it’s what she wants. So far, so adherent to PUA theory. What Ashley enthusiasts – and alpha fans in general – would argue makes that sexy and not creepy is that he knows it’s what she wants. That is the nature of their connection: that he knows what she wants, even when she doesn’t.

My arms were crushed between our bodies and I uncurled my fingers from his tee and pressed them flat against his chest as I whispered, “Please, get off me.”

“You want this,” he informed me.

– MM, Kindle location 1258.

And, more explicitly, here:

“…the minute you gave me more of you, I took it, wanted even more and I didn’t keep that a secret, babe, and you fuckin’ know it. And you kept givin’ it. You coulda walked away and you didn’t. And along the way as we’ve been playin’ our game, you got your hooks in me and I got mine in you and you know that too.”

I definitely did if the heartache I’d experienced the last two days was anything to go by.

But I wasn’t going to tell him that.

– MM, Kindle location 3248.

The way I’ve heard this described is that creating a good alpha hero demands a certain skill on the part of the author. If he’s going to dominate the heroine, then the reader needs to be assured that said heroine is in safe hands, and that reassurance is the author’s job. We must be sure that nothing the heroine isn’t okay with is going to happen to her, and readers that are content that the author (and thus the hero) is acting on behalf of the heroine’s best interests tend to be more willing to forgive things like non-consent. Her protests are part of the journey the story takes you on, because – well, you know she’s going to be okay.

This is key, and it’s something I find both reassuring and deeply troubling. On the one hand, I do find the assumption on the part of non-romance readers that the scenarios portrayed in these books are what their readers actually want or believe that they want kind of condescending. These people have brains in their heads like anybody else, and I don’t see many defenders of these books arguing that this is what they feel real life ought to be like. Some do, but not many that I’ve encountered.

The fantasy-escapism aspect of the work is lost on pretty much nobody, and I find it very strange that people don’t assume for other genres that it is. Do you put down a crime novel hoping you’re going to find a dead body in your garage? Fantasy fans might daydream about riding to war on the back of a dragon (I know I have) but I don’t think many people are seriously all that blind to the reality of what that might entail in a real-world context. Very few people would want to be placed in a fantasy scenario with the security of the story stripped away.

On the other hand…

I do understand the reservations non-romance-novel readers have about this kind of scenario being so widely marketed. There’s a crucial difference between, say, a crime thriller and a story about two people falling in love. Being a detective figuring out the culprit of a murder: well, that only happens to a very specific set of people. Falling in love happens all the time, everywhere, to people of all kinds and from all walks of life. A huge part of the appeal of romance and romantic plotlines is the near-universality of the experience. A lot of people are going to find the feelings described as part of that process relatable, even if the way it’s happening isn’t.

Which means that the boundary between fantasy-escapism and “this is the kind of thing I should look for in the world around me” is a lot easier to blur. The idea of a partner knowing what you want before you do, for example, has seeped into culture to an alarming degree, as anybody who’s picked up a women’s magazine will be able to tell you. Fifty Shades has pushed BDSM into the mainstream in a big way by marketing it as romantic. And there is no getting away from the fact that the normalisation of unhealthy relationship power dynamics in mainstream culture and mainstream romance feed off one another, and that is a process which is going to continue until the romance industry and the rest of mainstream culture recognise that it is happening.

I don’t have an easy answer for this one, honestly; it’s something I am still struggling with, and I’m running out of column space. It’s not for me or anybody else to tell people what they should be fantasising about, and I’m not sure that demanding clear delineations between “realistically romantic” and “don’t try this at home, kids!” in romance novels is either practically viable or particularly useful.

But the fact remains that some of this stuff is harmful, and its harmfulness, I find, gets dismissed by romance novel readers as “it’s just fantasy, it hurts no one!” and by non-romance novel readers as “it’s just romance novels, they’re too stupid to know any better!”. This is something that deserves deeper consideration and more frank discussion, whether you’re a fan of the romance novel or not.

Eesh, and I didn’t even get to any actual wolf packs! I’m sorry, paranormal genre. I’ll cover you someday, I promise.

What do you guys think? Do you like a bit of alphole in your hero? When does a book cross the line between fantastical goodness and creepy-ass weirdness?

Join me next time on Hopeless Reimantic, where I’ll be talking about…marriage! See you then.

1. Ed’s Tiny Note: And indeed you can read two early BR ‘WTF is this alpha male business all about?’ posts from Sarah C here and Stephen B here!

I’ve been weirdly obsessed with romance novels for about the past two years. I read my first one a lot longer ago than that – I abducted and read, over a period of about three weeks, a romance with a name I can’t remember about a Japanese lady falling in love with an American man just after World War II during my breaks in volunteering at a nursing home – but I didn’t really think all that much about them for a while afterwards. Then I stumbled upon Smart Bitches, Trashy Books and started following it because, damn, those ladies are hilarious, and from there started following Dear Author as well, who focus on snark a little less (although they can also be pretty funny) but who are nevertheless thoughtful and insightful in their reviews. For a long time, I was an avid follower of the romance industry without ever actually having picked up more than two romances.

And then I got a Kindle for Christmas.

You guys, for the reluctant obsessive, ebook readers are poison in super-convenient button-clicky packaging. Thanks to its extreme user-friendliness and the large number of freebooks available on the Amazon website (in case anybody is worried that I’m being paid for advertising, the wireless keeps breaking and sometimes the thing refuses to charge) I have something like one hundred romance novels on my Kindle now – a conservative estimate, not taking into account non-category romances and books debatably qualified for the title. I can’t stop reading them, and I can’t stop talking about them; I am fascinated by romance novels, in spite of the fact that more often than not picking one up guarantees that I will spend half the book with my jaw clenched to the point of pain. It’s a guilty pleasure, if by “pleasure” you mean “bafflement-inducing” and “guilty” you mean “thing that I am liable to be judged for”.

So what brings me to all the jaw-clenching? Well, I’ve been a reader ever since I was a kid – I’ve tried pretty much every genre of fiction, from fantasy to crime to sci-fi to sci-fi fantasy crime – and category romance is, without question, the most formulaic genre I have ever come across. It’s baffling. I mean, every genre has its stock characters and tropes, but while there are things that crop up a lot in, say, fantasy, as far as I can see the only thing really required to write a fantasy novel is the strong enough conviction that what you’re writing is fantasy. Write a category romance, and your story is pretty much plotted out for you. Don’t believe me? Let’s take a look at the submission guidelines for Mills and Boon Modern Romance (the UK version of Harlequin Presents):

Readers are whisked away to exclusive jet-set locations…When the hero strides into the story he’s a powerful, ruthless man who knows exactly what – and who – he wants and he isn’t used to taking no for an answer! Yet he has depth and integrity, and he will do anything to make the heroine his. Though she may be shy and vulnerable, she’s also plucky and determined to challenge his arrogant pursuit.

Modern Romance explores emotional themes that are universal. These should be played out as part of highly-charged conflicts that are underpinned by blistering sexual anticipation and released as passionate lovemaking…

Got that? So, your story has to be somewhere “exclusive and jet-set” (what does “jet-set” actually mean in this context? I sort of expect the entire thing to be set in the Business Class lounge at Stansted) and your hero needs to be a Romance Novel Hero, you know, hot and alpha and, well, willing to be kind of creepy if he thinks it’ll help. (Bonus points if he’s so manly that his manliness bursts out of the cover – for reference, please see the pictured-below edition of The Very Virile Viking, one of the most beautifully alliteratively-titled works of romance that I have ever come across.) And your heroine needs to challenge him but also be vulnerable to him. And they need to clash and eventually express that clash through a lot of hot sex.

Yes, there are a lot of variations you can play out on that theme – which I suspect is why publishers like Mills and Boon are a long way away from getting stale – but ultimately this frame is pretty limiting, and it makes it easier to see why romance novels are stereotyped as all the same. And this moulding of the romance novel storyline doesn’t stop with the publishing guidelines; the romance novel review websites I follow do downgrade books that fail to deliver on agreed-upon “romance trademarks”, although in fairness the only one that seems to need strict adherence is that of the HEA (that’s Happily Ever After, to those of you who use their time much more wisely than I do). Even that strikes me as strange, because while I can understand it as a trend – if, as common theory purports, romance novels are wish fulfilment fantasies, why wouldn’t they have a happy ending? – I can’t wrap my head around it as the thing which makes a romance novel romantic. More on that later.

Which brings me, finally, to this: Why do I think it useful to subject romance novels to feminist analysis? Aren’t they just, as a friend of mine once put it, “granny porn”? Is there any mileage in analysing such an outdated form of trashy entertainment from a feminist perspective?

I obviously think so, or I wouldn’t be writing this. And here’s why: most romance novel writers are women, writing for a female audience. I’ve read some (very good) romance novels written by men geared towards women, but only a very few, and they tend to focus on gay male couplings – in other words, not part of the main body of mainstream romance publishing. (LGBT people in romance novels is a whole ‘nother article.) More troubling is that most of the flaws and foibles of romance tropes that persist even today – virginal women, marriage and babies or nothing, and the time-honoured classic of “forced seduction” – are overwhelmingly shrugged off as “it’s just wish fulfilment”.

Is it?

As a lifelong avid reader, I’m no stranger to escaping into a good book. And I have no doubt that there are people out there who don’t really want a relationship in which the man takes charge, sweeps the lady off her feet, and loves her with a love that’s never been loved before until her resolve melts into baby-making funtimes, but can still get into a traditional romance plotline just for kicks. But is this still (or has it ever been) so overpoweringly The Female Fantasy that it’s the go-to, the default, the only world a romance fan wants to escape into? Why are these elements so built into “women’s” fiction? And what, in the end, does that tell us about the cultural narrative that has been built around us?

Those are the questions I want to answer; they’re the main thing going around in my head every time I pick up a new romance, and they are what keeps me reading whenever I finish one that has made me want to drill a hole through my skull. (Which isn’t all of them! Some are quite good. Maybe someday I’ll tell you about them.)

To get us started, though, over the next few weeks I’ll be doing a rundown of what I think are the five most central tropes or stock characters in romance novels. It’s going to be difficult to whittle the list down that far, but I’ll power through it. Honest. I don’t really need this university education.

Over the course of the series, I’ll look at the trope itself, where, when and how it shows up in different genres, and how I think it’s been adapted for the modern romance novel, because if there’s another thing that seems to be true of romance? It’s that they never throw anything away. I…am no one to judge on that, as anybody who’s seen my living space will be able to attest, but there’s an impressive level of trope-hoarding that goes on around here, and I’m going to show you why. I’ll also be probing a bit into what that means for romance storylines as a whole.

So stay tuned for Instalment One, which is going to be the aforementioned Virginal Heroine! Are you excited? I’m excited.

See you then!

• Rei (not to be confused with Rai, who writes our Gamer Diary!) is a small but strident university student who is from London but primarily based in Cambridgeshire, except for when she lives in Japan. She is reluctantly obsessed with romance novels, and is starting to think that it is they who are addicted to her; she also likes general reading, general writing, martial arts and acting in pantomimes. In her spare time, she tries to come up with things to do in her spare time. She is often spotted hanging around the tea-and-coffee-making facilities, looking impatient. And we are very pleased and proud to welcome her to Team BadRep!

Oh yes, and it’s a biker gang.

The Arizona website AZCentral.com recently published this story about BACA – Bikers Against Child Abuse. The theory behind the group is simple, and works very well: if an abused child is scared of their attacker returning, if their home no longer feels like a safe haven, or if the outside world and school feel too exposed, their new family will stand guard for as long as they need.

(Warning – you should definitely read the whole article, but if you do there is a high chance you will cry your eyes out and have your faith in humanity restored. As the comments put it: “How come ninjas are cutting onions in my living room?” “Ahh they’re at my office too!” Not too triggery except in the general discussion of the topic.)

Bikers Against Child Abuse is a non-profit organisation started by a social worker in 1995. John Paul Lilly realised that the 8-year-old boy in his care was too scared to leave the house, and remembered what had successfully taken away his own fears as a child: having a biker gang look out for him. He developed safeguards and checks to make the idea work in a therapeutic environment, and now there are chapters in the United States, Canada, Australia, Italy, The Netherlands and Belgium. The details of precisely what they do are extraordinary.

First of all, the child meets the whole local gang and becomes part of their family. They get the same t-shirt as the gang. They get a biker name. They are under no doubt that these men and women will be there for them from now on. For the bikers, this involves training from qualified social workers and discipline from their leader around how they behave during that first meeting.

I don’t want to see any tears coming out of your eyes, and the child doesn’t either. Remember why we’re here: to empower the child. If you can’t handle it, keep your shades on.

After that, two bikers are assigned as the child’s “Primaries”. (Always two, and no biker is ever alone with a child – two is the minimum number at any meeting and parents/guardian must give permission each time as well). They will be on call, a mobile number the child can ring whenever they need to. And that’s important, because being present and being seen (especially by the child) is what they’re there for.

If the man who hurt this little girl calls or drives by, or even if she is just scared, another nightmare, the bikers will ride over and stand guard all night. … if she has to testify against her abuser in court, they will go, too, walking with her to the witness stand and taking over the first row of seats. (They) will tell her, “Look at us, not him.” And when she’s done, they will circle her again and walk her out.

The emphasis is always on keeping the child safe from fear, of being a wall of friends between them and the influences making them feel vulnerable. And it works, again and again.

I’ve written for BadRep before about how society’s definition of ‘manliness’ STILL involves violence and requires complete isolation from anything feminine, and how this obviously doesn’t help feminism (or indeed men). But there are also many other aspects of alpha-maleness which directly harm men, women and equality. Male aggression is (rightly) regarded as often negative in modern life, and we haven’t come up with new ways of valuing masculinity since the office worker replaced the hunter and warrior.

The challenge facing these bikers is exactly the same as for anyone trying to be a White Knight in the modern age: it’s a very, very narrow and fragile path to stay on. These men and women are valued because of their capability for violence, at least by reputation. Their quiet physical intimidation is precisely what makes them useful to society, and that’s actually a rare role these days.

But a successful warrior is defined only by being the best at combat. If any warrior loses the approval of the community due to being untrustworthy, indiscriminate in who they attack or just out of control, then they become a rabid dog who needs to be contained for the safety of others. A superhero only has the public cheering them on in fights if they don’t take cheap shots, attack a child, injure the defenceless, or any number of things which can break their honourable image.

In the same way, these bikers cannot be seen to be harmful to the children, aggressive to the public or openly criminal – not one of them, not even once. This charity (which I approve of and respect so much I was nearly moved to tears) works only until the first biker breaks that trust. What this means in the real world is that there are incredibly tight restrictions on how these particular alpha males can channel their masculine image, forcing them to be extremely honourable at all times. It sets up a rare situation where private individuals on the street following their own decisions (not soldiers following orders in an army) are able to display all the violent alpha male traits which usually result in problems for society, and use them to create trust, healing and safety from fear.

I thought this post was a good fit for BadRep not because I’m under any impression that biker gangs are bastions of feminism and equality – I know nothing about it, but expect that any chapters led by women are in the vast minority and regarded differently. But while all the women in the article were treated as equals in a family, this time it was the role of the men I particularly wanted to mention.

The article describes such an atmosphere of caring, security and trust between these bikers and the children that it’s made many readers into instant converts. I can totally believe that this approach would work on even the most terrified brain – anything coming for the victim will now have to go through their big friends first. It’s a real-world solution which lets children sleep at night, and I love that both women and men are out there doing it with such selfless dedication on their own time and at their own expense. (In the article, two bikers stay on watch outside a girl’s house from 8pm until 2am, when two more arrive to take the next shift. In another example this rolling watch is kept up continuously for two and a half days, by people travelling two hours to get there.)

An online friend of mine and her husband are members of The Patriot Guard, bikers in the US who (strictly at the invitation of the family) will attend funerals of servicemen to protect the event from protesters such as the Westboro Baptist Church. (The WBC picket funerals of LGBT personnel, shouting that God killed them because of their sexuality.) It’s precisely the same thing: bikers using their image to – when invited – protect the emotionally vulnerable. It’s a hugely positive way to use alpha male traits in the modern world.

The judge asked the boy, “Are you afraid?” No, the boy said. The judge seemed surprised, and asked, “Why not?” The boy glanced at [the bikers] sitting in the front row and told the judge, “Because my friends are scarier than he is.”

“I suppose I might open the trick door now, and seek the monster of my own volition, sword in hand and ready. Then, if I slay him, I might return for you, and free you.”

The girl wept. Through her tears she said, with a knife for a voice: “If you are a man, you will do it.”

“Oh no, lady. Only if I am your notion of a man.”

– The Hero at the Gates, Tanith Lee

Conan felt at ease in the office.

Following on from Sarah C’s blogpost yesterday, I wanted to ask: who decides what it is to “be a man”? And why is the answer vital to improving things for women?

This is not just about Alpha Males, but our entire definition of masculinity (and therefore what we’re telling boys and men they should aim to be). We can talk about being a responsible adult, but how is that different from ‘manly’?

We haven’t moved on very much from celebrating men as muscle-bound warriors, from equating manliness with physical strength. Nerds are not manly. Thin, ‘weak’ guys are not manly. The efficient office worker is not ‘manly’. The patient father is not praised with “What a man!” Anyone with the wrong body shape can never qualify.

Manliness also requires independence: you’re not a successful man if you live in your Mother’s basement, but men who own motorbikes or fast cars are sexy. It goes beyond this, though. You’re not manly if you’re ruled primarily by tender emotions, or “under the thumb” of a woman, or –

Sorry, I just can’t keep this up. It’s such utter, utter bullshit. The short answer seems to be: you’re not a man unless you control your own destiny. If others are in charge of you, or you submit to them, then they are above you on the Manliness Scale.

And we wonder why the entire planet is in danger.

It’s as though the capability to fight and take – and therefore provide – is still the only measure of what makes a man. Male aggression is not popular in modern society (outside of sports, boardrooms and the army) but Sarah C referred to some websites yesterday which celebrate a particularly horrible version of poisonous alpha male tropes. Their vision consists of controlling your women (multiple), being in command, being admired for being powerful, and taking it easy while your slaves do the work because you’re the big man.

It’s pretty strange to see that this still exists in an allegedly modern country. These men seem to think they can be less powerless in life if they take imagined power from women around them. A big part of it lies in succeeding specifically because you have lowered a woman’s power from a perceived higher place. Femininity is seen as making men weak, and women are assumed to be always less powerful (making any example of them EVER overruling the alpha an unacceptable demonstration of the alpha’s weakness.)

So why is this commanding behaviour not only acceptable, respected, sought-after, but the definition of masculine prowess?

Some sources believe it’s because fighting is the one thing you can’t fake. It’s also the action which overrules all others: it doesn’t matter how deserving, wise or honourable you are, someone with a bigger gun can take it all away. So maybe it’s about security, and therefore defence of loved ones, rather than the more pessimistic approach of valuing someone primarily for their ability to attack.

What’s interesting is that this Conan image comes more from the media and movies than reality. A quick poll of some female friends found that they mainly think “manly” means having Values, Character, Responsibility… behaviours which suggest you are not just a boy in adult clothes. The change is from a child to an adult, not to being more male than before.

But the images and lessons boys receive from TV and cinema simply cannot equate maturity with manliness unless the man can also kick the ass of everyone onscreen. And be totally 100% heterosexual, of course. (In the same poll, one woman said she’d think less of a man if he wasn’t physically stronger than her, so it’s not all one-sided.) Even here, ‘feminine’ qualities are seen as taking away from a man’s masculinity. And since ‘feminine’ is deemed inseparable from a woman’s perfect role of being a (usually married) mother, that means men are deemed less manly if they show any nurturing behaviour towards kids, are emotionally sensitive, etc etc oh god this is depressing.

Ultimately, masculinity is bound up with individual heroism instead of having to rely on others, and that’s a dangerous place to be.

It’s a sad trend for feminism that men are judged on what they do, and women are judged on how they look, but the male side of that is not as enabling as it appears. The target for masculinity has to include muscle, mastery and money. A man’s worth (as a “successful” male and especially as relationship material) is very closely linked to his money. Not just the prestige of the job, but how far up the status ladder of it he is. Success and potential future success are what are really being measured, in whatever field. And it IS about wealth; that’s why status symbols work. They represent the money, and therefore the power, or his capability and drive to get power.

Who are the male role models on TV? Bling-laden hard men rappers surrounded by girls, secret agents who win every fight, footballers and movie stars. All of whom are alpha males who get the girls and status (and money). Individual parents might offer better role models linked to how to be manly, but “society” doesn’t. Even the “lad’s mags” of the 1990s like FHM and Loaded aren’t connecting with what men feel is right for their lives.

Despite all this, the problem is nothing compared to what women face when society tells them what it thinks ‘feminine’ is. That still must include sexual issues in a way that ‘masculine’ doesn’t, as well as passivity/submission. And for all the harm that men feeling unneeded may bring, reclaiming feminism from its Bad Rep is a more urgent issue – but it’s not unrelated. We need ways for men to behave better towards women without feeling less masculine. The strict mandate to never appear as ‘weak’ as a woman is a foundation of male violence.

The message needs to change. We need to be saying that a man is valued if he behaves well, with compassion and thought and honour. The only medium that counts in bringing messages like this to the public is television, and that’s why pop culture is so crucial. Less ‘lone white male avenger’ shows, more balanced, nuanced depictions of heroism. We won’t get it from retail advertisers (who want you to believe you need money, items and to be having constant fun or you are a failure). We need it to come from pop culture, and to reach children and young adults in ways which seem natural and obvious.

There is hope. As well as the attitudes of real individuals in the surveys I mentioned earlier, some websites and magazines are also looking at the problem. One very interesting example is The Good Men Project, which launched recently. They seem to be asking precisely the same question I have: what’s the difference between “being a man” and “being a GOOD man”? And why is there such a huge potential difference at all? (Also: high-five to that site for genuinely exploring how to get comfortable with masculinity in a way which benefits the individual and society, and so far not setting up feminism as any kind of block to that.)¹

While men are told that compromising, accepting help or having anything in common with a woman makes them weak, everyone needs this harmful definition of masculinity to change.

“The tragedy of machismo is that a man is never quite man enough.”
– Germaine Greer

1. Ed’s Tiny Note, Added In 2013: It would seem The Good Men Project has since made quite the effort to distance itself from feminists, and has had more of its fair share of problematic moments. But at the point this post was written, none of that had gone down.

Underlying it all is the idea that being an alpha male is a good idea (for men) and that having alpha males is a good idea for society.  I disagree.

So let’s look at some definitions to get the balls rolling. I’m using wiki and an A level in Biology here, so Actual Scientists please have your white lab coats and clipboards at the ready to score me on this one. The David Attenborough lexicon would have “alpha male” as a perfectly acceptable term for the dominant male in a group of pack animals (note that not all alphas found in nature are de facto male, and often you will find an “alpha pair” as the sole breeders in a group). This usually resembles a social set of multiple females and their young, sometimes including juvenile males. Social dynamics vary from species to species but generally the defining trait of the “alpha male”  is that he is the only sexually active male in the group – all the females mate with him alone and he will chase off or kill other males who approach.

Problem solving - if you are a male red deer

So far, so Darwin. By constantly battling to be top dog, the male maintains his status as physically fit to father offspring and consequently he’s the best genetic offering for the females. Now, let’s step away from the forest and into the urban jungle to look at human animals.

Why do we like to apply this term to men?

Superficially, it’s all very easy, obvious and media-friendly to ascribe animal behaviours and terminology to people for a handy reference point.  The list is vast and serves as shorthand for personalities. “Alpha male” carries with it all those connotations that we like to think of as traditionally masculine – aggression, sexual dominance, high status. However, like all metaphors it can be carried too far to be rendered meaningless, and this is absolutely the case with “alpha males”.

The parallels between humans and animals only go so far. We don’t live in a forest. We don’t hunt our food using our own hands and teeth. We don’t compete for space, food or shelter in the same way that animals do. We don’t live like animals, so why are we aspiring to their structures? Our society is complicated and challenging, and yes, there is competition, but the idea that we are basing all our actions on base instinct inherited from our ancestors, and that this is a good way to live is absurd, and frankly, oversimplistic.

Problem solving if you are a business man

Worse still than caveman antics, the term has become something for men to aspire to without really thinking of the consequences of persuading 50% of the population to butt heads and massacre every other man in sight. There are hundreds of websites dedicated to becoming an alpha male.  Some are quite tame and offer encouragement in leadership and confidence – good things for any person, but some are just plain nasty. Problems abound, including that contention that “feminine” traits are weak – read bad – and “masculine” traits are strong – read good.

Let’s get this straight from the get-go. I hate the use of the word “alpha male”. Whenever I hear it, my brain automatically erases those two words and replaces them with “wanker” or “desperately insecure”. I think it’s a terrible metaphor both for masculinity and for relationships between (straight) men and (straight) women, and the more we can question it the sooner we can throw it into the bin and come up with something a little bit better.  So on to the questioning.

What are the implications of having “alpha males” in our society? First, it creates a hierarchy in which the men who can bag the most women are the best.  Being an alpha is about being the manliest of men, and that means not being “feminine” or “gay” – both are of course bad things to be.

The inclusion of alphas in our society immediately makes it a sexist one – no room for the gay, the bi or the queer. No room for anything other than manly-men and womanly-women. And it places us all in an “us versus them” scenario with prospective partners.

Sexual conquest is all. This sets up a contest for male dominance which requires female (and other male) submission. In order to “win” the female must “lose” – as must the other men trying to get her. Women are a prize or a target. Other men are competition. Hardly the basis for a co-operative or productive society. This kind of scenario is clearly seen in the seduction community / pick up artist style of thinking which aims to reduce a woman’s confidence (often picking targets with low self esteem in the first place).

This is the power of the playschool bully and it’s high time that they grew up.

What we are looking at here is in fact a  zero sum power exchange in which no one wins.  Rather than both parties coming out of it feeling postive or ready to build something for the future, one of them is tricked and the other knows they have played a trick. It might be smug and satisfying to con someone into bed, but I don’t think that kind of underhanded behaviour is a worthwhile measure of a man.

Being an alpha male, or trying to be one, is bad for men. There are a few ways in which this works. The first is the manipulative gameplayer outlined above. That’s a common (and deeply unpleasant) way of living, but if all you want is sex, then it might make someone a terrible person but it might not make them feel bad about themselves. The other ways probably will. For one thing, if masculinity and self worth all about how attractive men are to women, then there’s a problem. This is a game that we women have been playing for a long time (being attractive to men, that is) and it’s not a lot of fun, so I don’t really advise it.

Looking good, feeling yourself? Image from Flickr via dallasmuslworship

Look at the chap here, for example – he’s quite hard not to look at. You want to be an alpha? You want to attract the most ladies? Well, this is what you need to look like then – a torso you could play the xylophone on, and frankly who cares about your personality? Not sure about those pants though, baby. Here, let me help you with those.

A world in which we encourage men to become alphas is one in which we are telling them that their appearance and sexual attractiveness is their only important feature.

The other reality of the alpha male is a lonely and isolated existence, in which other men are to be rejected for fear they take away “your” women, and women themselves are only of use for the notch they can put in your bedpost. The nature of being an alpha is to be uncollaborative and unyielding, thereby contributing towards “strong and silent” archetypes that have coloured our view of maleness for many years, resulting in an idealised brooding male.

Being around an alpha male is also bad for women. It means being one of many “conquests” instead of someone special. It means always worrying about being played or being tricked.

It means that your partner just wants you for sex and possibly just to display their own ability to have sex with you. It means being valued for your ability to make them look good rather than because they enjoy your company or even, heaven forbid, like you. And in order to maintain this status quo they will constantly have to put you down in order to feel big, hard and clever. Ladies – this one is a keeper.

Having alpha males at all is bad for a proper, grown-up society. The alpha male condition reduces the wonderful variety of men in our midst into nothing more than adrenaline pumped, testosterone fuelled, muscle bound animals. Suitable only to fight each other and die for the glory of impregnation. It replaces personality with a set of operational parameters. And frankly, I want better for the men in my life and the men in the world.

And so should you.