"The term “beta,” in the circles Harper-Mercer frequented, is an ironic inversion of the fabled swagger of the alpha male. Whereas alphas tend to be macho, sporty, and mainstream in their tastes, betas see themselves as less dominant males, withdrawn, obsessional, and curatorial in their cultural habits...
this seamless convergence of women-demonizing forces is, indeed, something new under the sun, an innovative incarnation of the free-floating male grievance that, as we’ve seen, metastasizes through culture. It’s striking, then, to note just how thoroughly both the press and the social media–centric feminist commentariat have consigned the beta rebellion to the dustbin of outmoded patriarchy—treating it as an obsolescing bug, as opposed to a distressing feature, of today’s Internet discourse...
In fact, a great deal about the beta-male rebellion runs counter to theories of masculinity advanced by scholars like R. W. Connell and Michael Kimmel. In her 2005 bookMasculinities, Connell lists the words “nerd” and “geek” among the terms that stigmatize marginal masculinities. The beta style draws from a countercultural genealogy and identifies itself against feminism but also against social conservatism, political correctness, mainstream consumer culture, and most important, against hegemonic masculinity itself...
Today, we see the weirdly parallel ascent of an Internet-centric feminism that, like the beta revolution, glories in geeky countercultural elitism, and whose most enthusiastic partisans spend a great deal of time attacking other women for being insufficiently radical."
http://thebaffler.com/salvos/new-man-4chan-nagle
Related: Man enough for Men's Right's Movement
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