The term “beta male” has always amused me. I am, by other people’s definitions, a “beta male.”
Here’s a really suspect website’s definition of it that will give you a good chuckle. I particularly love the infographic on this page. Notice that the beta male is fat!
I’m used to people who are a step or ten removed from this silliness, but the term beta male is still used, particularly by artists, to define those of us males who aren’t into macho bullshit, who don’t start fights, etc.
I’m noticing something, though. The males that have risen to prominence in everything but politics this generation (even athletes like Peyton Manning) are beta males, but their fans and supporters are not. A great example of this, not to harp on Dan Harmon, is… well… Dan Harmon. Harmon is a self-defined Beta Male, but if you witness the behavior of fans of his work, sprinkled into that beta community are some rather obnoxious alpha males.
And that’s going to be a big problem for this generation. How do beta males talk to presumed alphas from a younger generation without it devolving into muck flinging? One of the problems I have with communication is that I’m soft spoken, but I’m not weak. And I’m nice, but I’m not a pushover. I can snap back hard and fast, and I am more likely to be the capable leader than not in almost every collective I end up being a part of. It’s not that I crave the leadership role; I actually don’t. But I’m good at it. I’m not cocky, but I have a certain amount of confidence about my abilities, at least at the things that I attempt to do regularly.
But what will become of the beta male, or as I’d rather refer to it the feminist man, in a world that went from Obama (a tolerant, even keel “beta” world) to Trump (alpha out your ass, boyeee)? How will we reconcile the chasm of difference between loud and lying and even keel and rational/honest?
I’m not sure we can. I think that might be the problem.
The other day a student came to my office. I have a sketch of Bernie Sanders wearing the infinity gauntlet on my bookshelf. The student said “is that Warren Buffett?” I said it’s Bernie Sanders, and the student said “oh.” With distain. The student was a Trump voter.
I don’t know how to navigate that space the way I used to. When it was Bush, or the other Bush, or Romney running for office, it was easy enough to talk about how we’re all on the same team, so my own political stance didn’t really matter. But the President of the United States right now is at war with people like me. It’s hard to say to his supporters “oh, yeah, it’s America. We all get our freedoms.” It’s hard to be compassionate when you know how the other side thinks. It’s gotten scary.
Maybe it’s time to Alpha up?