Tag Archives: Dalrock

Assertiveness, Leadership, and Bitchiness

Dalrock posted avideo. I had seen it earlier and was going to comment on it, but never got around to it, so I’ll comment on it now. Watch it:

Cane also had a good post on it, but I’m going to take this a bit of a different direction.

You’ve all heard feminists whine about how women are called bitchy where a man would be called assertive or women are called bossy, while men are called leaders. It’s one of those memes that seem to continually float around. (Any young women who may read my blog should take note of this post).

The reason women are called bitchy or bossy is because in general feminists, and many non-feminist women, do not seem to understand that there is a middle ground of assertiveness between being a pushover and being bitchy. Leadership exists in the space between passiveness and bossiness. This commercial illustrates that ignorance perfectly.

There are five mini-stories in the commercial, where there’s a before, where the woman is sorry and an after where the woman is “confident” (although, bitchy would be a better term in most cases).

In the first, the woman interrupts someone, probably her boss, in who’s making a public presentation. In that case, ‘sorry’ is only the minimal politeness. Now, they should have focused on her calling her own question ‘stupid’, that was the real problem with that example, and shows a basic lack of confidence. But in the second, instead of just having her show more confidence in her own ideas, they jump her straight to bitchy. She just flat out interrupts the guy making the presentation in mid-sentence. That’s not assertive, that’s just plain rude. The assertive way to pull this off, would have been ‘Excuse me, why don’t…?” When you are publicly interrupting someone in the middle of a presentation, ‘sorry’ is just plain common courtesy.

In the second one, the women barges into someone else’s office. For this one, there’s nothing particularly wrong in either example, both ‘sorry’ or a polite ‘do you got a minute?’ are basic courtesy when interrupting someone. There’s the small problem that the commercial paints the basic politeness of ‘sorry’ for interrupting someone busy, as being somehow weak when it is not.

The third one, illustrates a girl apologizing when she shouldn’t. The commercial is right here, if someone sits don’t beside you, apologizing is silly. But instead of simply having her simply not apologize and ignoring him, which would be the confident thing to do, she smirks at him like she’s purposely being an ass and winning some sort of non-existent competition. That is being passive-aggressively bitchy; between men, that kind of attitude at the wrong time could result in a fight.

The fourth and the fifth ones are the worst though. In the before skits, one woman passes a child to the husband and says sorry and the other takes part of a blanket her husband is hogging and says sorry. In either case, saying ‘sorry’ is rather silly. Nothing wrong is being done in the former and the husband is in the wrong in the latter; no apologies needed. In the former, just saying ‘take him’ or, in the latter, just taking the blanket without a word is perfectly fine. But again, instead of showing a confident woman doing what needs to be done, they jump straight to bitchy. Going out of your way to say ‘sorry, not sorry’ is not assertive, it is passive-aggressive bitchiness, as is taking the whole blanket on purpose.

This is why “assertive” women are called bossy or bitchy. It is not because of some sort of double-standard, it is because many of them don’t know the basic rules of assertiveness game.

Assertive men do what they need to do, but, as the situation calls for it, they either don’t mention it (such as in 3, 4, or 5) or show basic politeness when they do it (such as in 1 or 2). Only aggressive assholes, the male equivalent of bossy bitches, violate someone else’s space or speaking time or go out of there way to rub their “assertiveness” in someone else’s face.

Among men, that kind of behaviour is what starts fights, but men can’t/don’t generally verbally or physically attack women, so those kinds of women get away with the rather minor penalty of being labelleda bitch.

So, women, if you don’t want to be called bitchy or bossy, learn the rules of decorum game, because the kind of passive-aggressive jackassery shown in this commercial is not “assertive”, it’s just being a jerk.

Marketing Marriage

f you follow Dalrock you’ve seen is recent posts on this little advertisement on Mark Driscoll’s new man-up and marry series:

Dalrock has already pointed out the moral problems with the ad, I’m going to focus the advertisement aspects. Dalrock argues that the ad is aimed at churchian feminist woman, and I agree because otherwise, the proponents of marriage suck at advertising.

Instead of making marriage look like something men would want to pursue and would be willing to sacrifice for, they make it look horrible.

In the little skit in the middle, the man is the thoroughly henpecked, seemingly unhappy husband of a fat, dumpy, controlling wife. He’s so thoroughly beaten down that he’s afraid to have a little masculine bonding time with his son, with the video implying that there’s something wrong with him wanting to do so.

Watching this, my main thought was”is this really how they want to advertise marriage to men?”

I’m lean more towards the more pro-marriage part of the manosphere, but this would drive me away from marriage more than any other possible effect it could have. What kind of man would desire to become that husband?

What young man could possibly watch that and say, “yeah, I want to man-up and marry so I too can be a the ball-less husband of an ugly, dominating shrew who’s afraid to play pool with his son.”

C’mon guys. If you want men to man-up and marry how about making marriage look good? How about making marriage seem like a rewarding experience?

In fact, I’ll give you guys an awesome marketing campaign. A marketing idea this good would generally cost thousands of dollars from a slick New York agency, but I’ll give it to you for free because I love western civilization and we need working marriages to keep the remnant chugging.

Here’s my ad campaign for a man-up series:

It starts with an average-looking man in a suit, someone most guys could identify with, coming home from a day at the office. He looks kind of worn-out and stressed. He parks his car, sighs a bit, then walks up to his house. He opens the door.

The first thing seen when the door opens is his non-offensively pretty wife dressed femininely. She looks up from working in the kitchen and sees he’s stressed, so she comes up to him with a smile on her face and gives him a hug and quick kiss on the lips. She takes his bag and says, “Dinner is almost ready, why don’t you sit down?” He gets into his recliner and leans back, his stress visibly fading away. She joyfully brings him a small plate of freshly made cookies and some milk. He thanks her with an expression of mingled gratitude and relief and takes the cookie. While he snacks she says, “How about later…” and bends over and whispers something in his ear while brushing her hand up his leg. The man responds with a large, expectant smile.

Cut to her calling out that dinner is ready. The man goes to the table to find a delicious home-cooked meal of steak and potatoes, his cute, happy children run up to the table. His wife wipes the dirt smudges off of one of the rascals as they sit down. The man looks on proudly as he sits at the head of the table. His wife sits to his right. She looks at him with an expectant smile, her hand on his arm, and he proudly says grace for the family.

During the prayer fade to black and end with the tagline: Worth being a man for.

Boom. I’d want buy that product. I don’t know a man who wouldn’t.

I’d happily man-up to come home to that; I’d happily work 70 hour weeks to come home to that; I would happily sacrifice quite a bit to come home to that. So, would most men. Most men would willingly sacrifice their left nut for that.

So, some marketing advice to Mr. Driscoll. If you want men to man-up and marry, make marriage seem like something rewarding for men.

McDonald’s doesn’t sell cheeseburgers by having a fat, ugly man eat them in his dingy basement while playing WoW and sobbing to himself. They sell cheeseburgers by showing groups of realistically attractive people having fun together while eating cheeseburgers.

Likewise, you don’t make men desire to man-up and marry by showing marriage as a demasculating process of having your pride, virility, and freedom slowly drained from you by an ugly, domineering shrew. You make men want to get married by showing marriage as a refuge from the cares of the world occupied by a pretty, loving, nurturing woman.

Then again, my campaign might be false advertising for most men. Driscoll might get sued.