This post was my first on masculinity, and a big breakthrough for my blog when Heartiste promoted it- to this day I have never gotten so much traffic from a single retweet than from Heartiste. Someday I'm going to come back to the relationship between masculinity and femininity with more evolved thoughts, but the basics of this remain true: the heart of masculinity is power and the white knight is primarily searching for a masculine identity in a weaselly way by trying to disqualify other, more genuinely masculine men.

also, the white knight referenced in this story grew up to be the biggest fucking pussy you've ever met with MULTIPLE tattoos dedicated to his (eventual) ex-wife. Multiple. More than two. Seriously.

Nothin but love, BBP


The heart of masculinity is a man’s relationship with power; his efficiency in acquiring power, his comfort in holding power, and his ability to maintain power. This is the core of masculinity; the Form of masculinity. There may be markers or signifiers that point toward this, usually these signifiers are mistakenly understood as masculinity itself, but they only aid in coming to understand an individual’s relationship with power.

Masculinity is amoral. It is up to the individual to decide what they do with power once they acquire it.

Conversely, embodying “the nice guy” is signaling an overt relinquishment of power as an attempt to gain respect- ultimately a backhanded, and misguided, approach to appearing masculine. The idea is that the nice guy is so comfortable with his masculinity that he doesn’t need to signal anything traditionally masculine; signaling that he is above traditional masculinity and hoping to disqualify every other man in doing so… and failing miserably.

And, from there, the nice guy must then make a choice in either continuing to peruse a failing strategy or face the bitter truth that niceness only inspires revulsion and hatred in women.

For woman to rationalize this hatred the modern meme became that men are only nice to get sex- entirely bypassing the idea that men have other social needs that may be met by embodying a nice guy persona, like respect and a positive identity.

“Nice men are duplicitous and entitled schemers who assume a front of being unlike all the other guys in order to garner sexual interest in women who would otherwise be disinterested,” or so it goes.

As Feminism is the push for greater female entitlement paired with extinguished responsibility- women feel entitled to hold as much power as they can garner without suffering any of the tribulations of power acquisition, nor are they held to any objective standard that would typically be saddled with power.

Since women feel entitled to the possession of power their response to male power is an attempt to annihilate it, and if annihilation fails, to cast ownership over it; if all else fails, to get fucked by it.

It is entitlement without responsibility that engenders an environment where women are able to unflinchingly objectify men freely and without social criticism or limitation; this objectification creates a culture of categorization where women are able to sort men into one of three groups: attractive/desirable, useful/exploitable, worthless/vile. Only the top group, attractive/desirable, are worthy of female respect- the rest of the men listed are to be reviled, emasculated, and shamed in order to be kept in line; so they do not attempt to grasp power by any means available.

The nice guy is under the impression that a good man is defined by his willingness to immediately relinquish whatever power he may hold or acquire; he is taught to always put the needs of others before his own, not to feel pride or exude confidence, and to emote at all times (preferably in public and to others).** Men are taught that this relinquishment of power will garner respect- in this regard masculinity is cast in a negative light as something toxic; something that only mentally weak or insecure men are concerned with maintaining. They also probably have small dicks, BTW FYI.

The weaker lot of men- the plebeians who are exploited for their resources along with the worthless untouchables, will promptly fall for this social narrative, surrender their power, and in-turn expect respect- this is the majority of men and they are stupid motherfuckers.

The Myth of the Strong Independent Woman

When people lie they often say the opposite of whats true. Take, for instance, the Strong Independent Woman and the idea that to embody masculinity as a female is more difficult and more daring than receding into a feminine role- this is not only incorrect, but it’s the polar opposite of the truth.

Embodying masculinity, in world of gender role negativity, is an easy path for a woman to take. Unlike a male with an overt presence of masculinity, a woman who embodies power and assertion will not have the authenticity of her masculinity tested because the social narrative is in place that the Strong Independent Woman is fighting against the establishment and succeeding- we should applaud her moxie rather than question her credentials.

The perception of the Strong Independent Woman is that she has had a very difficult and challenging path to get to whatever point she may be at- university student, new employee, career woman, middle management- that the average person will mentally applaud her tenacity so loudly that her achievements and ability will appear more impressive than they objectively are.

Since she is Strong and Independent, she will surely not allow herself to be “pushed around” (the parameters of which are defined by her), and she is sure to understand the laundry list of protocols should someone challenge her- using other women, nice men, HR, the police, and the court system to secure her end. And since taking her oppositions side would be understood as being “part of the larger social problem,” she is granted immediate credibility for whatever claim she makes- she has overcome so much already, didn’t you know?

You certainly do not want to fuck with a masculine woman, but for none of the reasons that she believes.

The White Knight as a Perversion of Masculinity

My first experience with a White Knight was when I was a wee lad of fifteen. An awkward, doofy fifteen year old; with my Misfits cassette in my Walkman and my denim jacket. I had just gotten my very first girlfriend, and although I wouldn’t really count this girl as my true first girlfriend in the years that followed, it was nice to be able to see a girl on a Saturday night and touch some boobs. Touching boobs… it was all about touching boobs. The year was 1995, and it was a simpler time.

Some things about me around this time: I had never been in a fight outside of playful roughhousing, I wasn’t much of a bully outside of standard issue High School dickary, and I had no idea what I was doing with a girl. In my mind, you pushed for a hand job maybe around a month, at least two months for a blow job, and sex? That was a discussion to be had after six months- maybe a year.

So, like I said, fumbling with a bra on a Saturday night sounded great.

This girl was the best friend of my friend’s girlfriend. One day, after about a week of my “dating” her (despite seeing her maybe twice), my friend comes up to me at school with a very serious expression on his face and says, “just so you know… if you lay a hand on Colleen… ever…. There’s going to be problem with me and you……”

He seriously said that.

Even as a doofy fifteen year old, I wanted to laugh. LAY A HAND ON HER? This girl that I’m going to be seeing once a week, in her parents rec room, between 7:00 and 11:00pm? So, during that four hour stretch, instead of watching MTV and making out, I’d have to “show her the back of my hand” in order to “keep that [adolescent] bitch in line.”

I said something like “yeah, okay,” just to end the awful, awkward interaction, and it never came up again.

Now, looking back on this, twenty years later, it’s obvious my friend never thought I was going to start beating the shit out of this girl that I dated for less than a month (no hand job), and he certainly didn’t say this for an audience of gushing school girls around us; we were alone. So, why did my friend need to get in my face about street justice? Did bustin’ make him feel good?

White Knights wouldn’t need to be White Knights if they felt comfortable possessing a traditional masculine identity. In place of a traditional masculine identity, the White Knight finds his identity in the self-appointed status of “necessary protector of women.” The White Knight combines traditionalism, in the idea that women are in-need of a tough and fair man to protect them, and Progressiveness where the White Knight happily relinquishes any shred of potential power he may have in order to emphasize that he is unlike those other guys. Since embodying this demolition of masculinity may leave the White Knight feeling weakened, less-adequate, and with a confused identity, he falsely reclaims a feeling of masculinity by asserting moral-superiority over other men through serving social justice.

So, in other words, White Knights are nice guys who feel like pussies.

Like my post? Check out my blog Kill to Party, updated with: Suburbia and “Over the Edge” (1979)