Smug alert
Sludge bio: Penelope Trunk is a self-cutting aspie, and bulimic, with borderline personality disorder. Sexually abused by her father as a child, she’s now beaten by her husband. Oh, and Inc. Magazine called her “the world’s most influential guidance counselor.”
Who would pay a basket case attention whore like Trunk $250 an hour for life coaching? Who would want any complete stranger to tell them how to run their personal life? Why is it always village idiots and cranks that believe they’re part of an anointed class able to improve the lot of the masses?
Life coaches are the Pauly Shore of the blogosphere.
When confronted with their garish plugs I’m not sure whether to snicker at the shitty business model or to be outraged that they imagine a world brimming with lost souls in need of their guidance. Tele-coaching is the Hail Mary of money-grabs for writers without the know-how to be consultants. Even luddites barley able to launch IE can smell the desperation. Selling a typo-ridden, half-plagiarized 17 page eBook for $49.95 is honorable in comparison.
Today I had the misfortune of coming across another charlatan, spouting man-up “wisdom” while hawking life coaching services. Skimming articles like ‘Where Are All the Men?’ and ‘What Is A Real Man?’, I could scarcely contain the vomit emerging from my esophagus. On the sidebar, the gloating white knight with spawn rested against his shoulder made me want to repeatedly stab nearby drywall with a mail opener.
Blurb:
I’m Dean; a husband, father of eight, and life coach.
Eight kids?! A tad excessive unless you’re Ghengis Khahn, a Saudi Sheikh, or an aspiring cult-leader, isn’t it? And this guy is a fountainhead life-planning knowledge?
Destructo fisking time!
Let’s lead off with ‘What is a Real Man?’:
Real Men Create Margin
Real men create margins in their lives and the lives of others around them. They don’t weigh people down, but lift them up. This extends to all areas of life. They make more money than they spend. They accomplish more work than they create. They encourage more than they discourage. Others are better for knowing them. That’s a man.
First things first, as the “Dude” divulged in The Big Lebowski, “what makes a man” is the ownership of a pair of testicles. Manhood is not granted by the arbitrary criteria of the Joneses or society; it a state of mind found within the self.
The man isn’t more noble or selfless than the youth, as the man places himself and his kin at the center of the universe. Rather, his burdens are greater so he must approach life pragmatically. He lowers the priority of his ideals of altruism towards benevolent outsiders as he no longer has the luxury.
Real Men Are Tough
There is a toughness that we instinctively identify with masculinity. Men don’t cry at the drop of a hat, don’t limp because of a little pain, and don’t back down from conflict because it’s uncomfortable. Men absorb punishment and keep going. They can carry burdens without breaking down. It’s just how they’re wired.
It is this dogmatic notion of “toughness” that has prevented men from organizing as a group to address the chain of atrocities committed against their gender. Soldiers are conditioned to view their expendability into a badge of honor, as it is sold as bravery; once broken they’re swept under the rug as civilians then tossed into the great dust bin of history. Joe Sixpack family man is a pack-mule with a similar fate though his story drawn-out and uninspiring.
Women and children speak up when they’re in pain but only because receptive ears and empathetic hearts surround them. The male youth quickly learns that his suffering is his own, so he rationalizes that his silence is strength.
A man that absorbs punishment when no better option exists is rational. A man that continuously absorbs punishment for the benefit of malignant forces is cannon fodder and a lemming.
Moving on to ‘Where Are All the Men?’:
Wives
Guys get married by fooling some poor girl into thinking he has great potential. Potential that goes untapped is not potential, but waste. Married guys are masters of waste. They waste the majority of their time on non-goals like video games, leaving their wives to pick up the slack.
Guys won’t be bothered to help clean up, take care of the kids, or any other household responsibility. This leaves wives to pick up the slack, which they usually do, at least until they burn out. Guys don’t help carry the burden of managing life, leaving paying the bills, cooking and shopping, cleaning, and raising the next generation to their wives. She’s forced to not only pick up his slack, but he adds to her workload with his own demands, requirements, and stupidity. As a result, the wife suffers.
How many men “fool” poor girls into marrying them? Marriage-obsessed males are about as rare as a Kakapo birds, unless devoutly religious. Men don’t salivate on the pages of bridal magazines while dog-earing the best pages. Men don’t grow up watching Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast on repeat while playing with Sophisticated Wedding Barbie.
Where is this mythical “man” with a wife that never moans about him when she’s with her gossip companions?
How about the bills she said she’d pay but forgot to, her ever growing debt that will inevitably become her husband’s problem, the expensive alligator shoes she bought with his VISA, or the fact she regularly gets trashed on Smirnoff Ice in front of the 4-year-old? What about her Prozac addiction? How convenient that she skipped over her own wrongdoings while magnifying the misdeeds of her husband.
Real Men
This one is annoying, but not as serious. Real men suffer from the action and lack of action on the part of guys in two ways.
First, it makes us all look bad. There are some women I’ve met who honestly don’t believe that men can be loving, sacrificial, and strong. They’ve only seen ogres and cowards, and so they put all men in one of these two categories. We men suffer for the reputation the guys have created.
Second, we’re left holding the broken pieces of lives that should have been filled with joy. It’s our sisters and nephews who are hurt when guys run from their responsibilities. It’s us men who are called to finished jobs the guys are too lazy to complete. It’s us men who pick up the slack for guys who won’t grow up. In that way, we suffer, too.
Being the naïve blue piller he is Dean fails to realize that women don’t assess their exes favorably no matter how upstanding they were. A man is a woman’s Mr. Perfect for a short stretch after which he transitions into a henpecked man (aka husband), or is called a range of expletives after the relationship fizzles out.
The “ogres and cowards” were the alpha scoundrels these women got pumped-and-dumped by or were rejected by while the majority of men didn’t produce enough ‘gina tingles to deserve mention.
The manosphere spin on his notion that “men suffer for the reputation the guys have created” isn’t so black and white. Beta-providers get a raw deal when they marry woman who spent their best years riding the alpha cock carousel. A Western women intent on settling down wants to cash-in her chips before her looks have faded too much. Captain Save-a-ho swallows the squealing about “Peter Pan syndrome” men at face value as he lacks the skepticism to discern she’s the architect of her own circumstances.
Ah, the life lessons this life coach could learn from MRAs, PUAs, and divorcees.