Why Did Men Waste Time Being Gentlemen?

In this video, we discuss traditional gentlemanly behavior and why it has been lost in modern American culture. We explain how acts of deference like opening doors and paying for meals used to signify male dominance when done proactively from a position of power. However, today these acts are often misconstrued as weakness due to discomfort with class differences. We explore the importance of anticipating a partner's needs, showing gratitude, and maintaining good form in relationships. Our goal is to revive gentlemanly behavior in a way that displays strong masculinity and high value.

Simone: [00:00:00] I think that's one reason why men are misunderstanding what it looks like to be dominant and then ending up just kind of acting like trailer trash when they try to be dominant, you know, it's just you know, they, they

Malcolm: think, Oh my gosh, I love, no, it's true what you're saying, right? every cultural group has different, more refined ways to handle these dominant fights that don't involve two males making themselves look big and then like physically attacking each other. Because that's really costly., and this is what Simone means she mentally is associating this. with lower socioeconomic groups because lower socioeconomic groups like anyone who's resource scarce are going to have less luxury of the ability to suppress these things. And often their families have been in this situation for multiple generations, so they might have lost even the cultural software for how do I handle a dominance fight with another male other than.

Malcolm: Puffing myself up and then beating him up.

Simone: I [00:01:00] think we've lost we've lost a lot of the ways that people historically demonstrated dominance in, this sounds terrible, sounds really classist, but in a, in a civilized fashion.

Would you like to know more?

Malcolm: hello,

Malcolm: Simone!

Simone: Hello, Malcolm. How are you doing? Absolutely

Malcolm: spectacular today. It is so wonderful to have you back from a business trip. So something happened recently that was really telling for me because, you know, I see this was in some conservative communities and it's something that I'm getting really worried about, which is somebody was like, why do you put your wife's name?

Malcolm: First, when you write books and in correspondence, you know, don't you know that you're the man and that that means you're better than her. And so you should be putting all of your stuff first. And I think this shows how far we've descended from, from most traditional cultural beliefs[00:02:00] which is if you look at manners books, that's just polite manners, like opening the door for a woman like, All of these nice little things that guys used to be expected to do for women and then progressive culture came like a glacier and cleaned all of those things clean so clean that we don't remember them almost, you know, with Gen Z's coming around and they're trying to reclaim their masculinity, but in so doing, and so, and so reclaiming this masculine role, They, they, you know, through people like the way that this has been portrayed by individuals like Andrew Tate, it almost comes across as every interaction you have with a woman who like you love and have a longterm relationship with is to some extent to exert your dominance over that woman.

Malcolm: Whereas most of the traditional cultures in the world, I say, no, no, no, no, no. It's to make her feel special and treasured and [00:03:00] to protect her. Now, this actually has very big effects if you're talking about long term fertility of a culture. So why do you do like, why? It's not just to be nice. Like I'm not just you know, within my family's life.

Malcolm: Putting my wife up on a pedestal to be nice to her. I'm not doing all of these things that we traditionally call manners, like ensuring that I walk on the side of the street where if a car is going to splash us, it splashes me first. Opening doors, all of these little things like that. Standing up from a table when she gets up.

Malcolm: I don't, by the way, right. No, I mean, I don't do all of those things just to be like a weirdo. I do them for a very specific reason. It's so that when my daughters See the way I treat my wife, they desire that outcome for themselves in the future. And when my [00:04:00] sons see the way I treat my wife, they treat their own wives that way.

Malcolm: And then their own daughters think, Oh, being a wife. It's awesome. And so someone, I wonder, you had talked to me before about what you felt like growing up. Right.

Simone: Yeah. Yeah. No. So I thought growing up when I was young just meant, you know, giving a bunch of things up, like giving up your career and then having to take on a whole bunch of additional responsibilities.

Simone: So just basically meant more work, but you know, not really being celebrated. Not that my, my father wasn't absolutely amazing to my mother. He was, but there was no like elevated status in, in Silicon Valley, like in the very progressive Bay area for women. I remember the first time I saw someone stand up when a woman got up at a table and when the first time I saw a man, like ceremonially open a door for a woman, I was floored.

Simone: I really liked

Malcolm: it. Well, so you've been around my family, like you've been around my cousins and stuff. Yeah,

Simone: and they're like, yeah, they're, they're very, [00:05:00] yeah, they're, they're raised like Southern gentlemen and I'm all for it. But yeah, so there was definitely, I mean, like I had zero incentive to, to not only.

Simone: Have kids, but get married at all. Because why? I mean, it just basically meant that you were technically more entangled with a friend that was supposed to make you happy for the rest of your life, which isn't really what, you know, we found marriage to be about and what it's not sustainable. But I think what's more interesting about this is that a lot of these men's rights activists are manosphere figures that are.

Simone: Complaining about your behavior online or missing is, is they think that like showing deference to women is I don't know, suggesting that they're in a position of power or yielding power to them. And I think it, there's something more interesting at play in, in American culture there, where, where shows of power or, or shows of politeness are no longer seen as shows of power, where in, in earlier [00:06:00] times they were so in, in the book Alvin Seed by David Hackett.

Simone: Fitcher. He talks about, especially in the South where the Cavaliers first migrated to the American colonies. There was, the concept of condescension was very different from what it is in a modern America. Do you remember this part where he was basically talking about Yeah, no, it was a very positive

Malcolm: thing.

Malcolm: Yeah.

Simone: So well, no condescension was essentially like no bless oblige. So when you condescended to someone you through your more informed or you're more powerful, more educated, more you know, whatever, from a position of power, you are showing kindness to someone who hierarchically powerfully, whatever was below you.

Simone: So condescension was like a benevolent paternalism. And I feel like part of what has happened in, in American culture. Is that there's a lot of status anxiety or like around even acknowledgement of different sides. I think it's

Malcolm: