Episode Details

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 p