Exit the Longhouse
How the quiet withdrawal of men reshaped everything no one wants to admit.
Note: For the spirit in which this essay should be read, see my prefatory post: “Shitposting to the Point of Tears,” https://www.respectthekayfabe.com/p/shtposting-to-the-point-of-tears.
As a society, we are cooked—so cooked.
It’s clear to anyone not held captive within their own ideological bubble that the paradigms society once depended on—those built upon the covert contracts1 of older generations of men—no longer work.2
There is a generation of young men who, after heartbreak—after being used up and told through the actions of the women in their lives, this is the way it is—turned to YouTube and searched for videos on how to get over a breakup.
Eventually, they would stumble upon The Black Phillip Show and learn—it doesn’t have to be this way.3
Fast forward ten years, and shows like that had grown in number and remained available to these same young men, of all races and ethnic backgrounds. Based on exit polling, they proved to be the swing vote in the 2024 election.4 They were not swayed by campaign ads that sought to shame men into voting for a female candidate simply because it would be good for the women in their lives—or because it might help them get a relationship.
Shows like Black Phillip had taught young men that their own happiness is paramount—that they must always place themselves first. And since the Harris campaign did nothing to reach those men—men whose interests, funnily enough, involve wanting better economic opportunity to at least have the kind of job that would not only place them on equal footing with women (believe it or not, there’s a glaring disparity—hence the lack of viable options women now say is out there)5—but would, in the end, position them as the providers my generation had erroneously programmed them to be.
Democrats campaigned to voters whose support they assumed—women—while alienating, just as they did with men, those who want to be homemakers, who reject the narrative that declaring “I feel like a woman” makes one a woman, and who refuse to monetize their bodies in the name of empowerment. Women who would be shamed as not real feminists, dismissed as pick-me’s.6
And the one thing leftist feminists failed to respect—the one thing all women would demand of them—is that women need their spaces to feel safe, without having to justify themselves as to why. Only to then be told that, to be considered a good person and not evil, they must accept biological men in their spaces, in their sports.7 So it’s no wonder that women who would traditionally vote Democrat cast their ballots for a man who is not only a convicted felon but, according to the judge, a rapist.8
The devil that you know is better than the devil that you don’t know: there are women who understand the contradiction in voting for Mango Mussolini, but did so anyway out of the sense that the chances of ever meeting him—of being grabbed by the pussy—are more remote than the trans person walking around their locker room at a gym, visibly erect, with everyone afraid to call it out for fear of being shamed on the internet, where their fear can be monetized for a viral moment—for entertainment.9
So regardless of the policies the felon-in-chief may enact that could hurt women even more, the notion is abstract when, just a few feet away in a gym locker room, a moment of violation could be at hand.
And that right there angers men like me who, up until recently, would have considered myself a progressive. But because of the demand for ideological purity—somehow because I believe in reality (while recognizing biological outliers that have always existed in documented history)10—I’m suddenly right-wing. Because I lift weights to take care of my health, to develop strength, somehow I’m Nazi-adjacent.11
Democrats, if they want to win national elections and stop what feels like an inevitability in this country—a fascist regime—need to fill the vacuum they allowed racist and misogynist voices to occupy with a vision of corrupt masculinity, which, in my opinion, The Black Phillip Show now embodies. But only because that show features a host who, having passed away over a decade ago and never having had a chance to evolve his viewpoints, remains forever frozen in the anger phase of his journey.12
All men who discover what the show makes clear, eventually—if they truly want to hold themselves accountable—will have to evolve and find a balance, as espoused by David Deida in The Way of the Superior Man.13
In a healthy relationship, masculinity and femininity is not approached as sex or gender, but as polarity—without disavowing traditional gender roles. One example: a couple must make a decision about their financial future. Although the man leads most of the time, he may shift into a feminine polarity and be led by his wife, who has proven to be more adept at managing the finances, and he knows it. Or he stays home with the kids while she works because she’s more established in her career, and it would save money on child care—while also giving him the ability to be present, just as it would be expected of the woman if the roles were reversed.
The young men stuck in the anger phase keep themselves there because they can’t accept that human nature does have a polarity, and at times, men resist this because “they’re the man™️.”14
To avoid financial ruin (child care costs as much as the monthly salary of one half of a couple)15—or ruin of any kind—young men will need to learn when and how to operate from a feminine polarity, and women from a masculine polarity, and vice versa. A dance. (The men who criticize the woo-woo language in The Way of the Superior Man have no problem when they read Meditations by Marcus Aurelius or the work of other Stoic philosophers.)16
Maybe that’s the approach that needs to be taken, but first there has to be an acknowledgment that masculinity is not toxic, or right-wing, or Nazi-like (that logic would also conflate feminism with communism—a focus women have on the collective).17 An acknowledgment that the way to raise good men is not to raise them like women (albeit defective but still sensitive). And that it’s even more wrong to make distinguished men like Gov. Tim Walz cry performativity on the campaign trail to garner votes.
Only after that acknowledgment can the conversation be had with those young, broccoli-haired bros—that stoicism means nothing without a developed sense of empathy, a capacity to use their strengths for what’s right.
Until then, feminists, enjoy this march toward The Handmaid’s Tale.18 I won’t. I’m afraid we’re heading there. Your ideology’s words have always been underscored by male strength—and over the last ten years, by turning every regret-sex women had with men into online declarations of rape,19 by saying you don’t need men, especially since it’s been the good men who’ve been the ones to keep the evil men in check, that toxic, testosterone-fueled male strength will no longer be there to back up our values through the potential of our righteous violence. Because of shows like Black Phillip, that generation of young men no longer believes in covert contracts, because the social contract—built on chivalry—has been broken, by women.
A young generation of men has learned to ask the same questions women have always asked of themselves:
What’s in it for me?
Nothing.
They’ve exited the Longhouse.20
Robert A. Glover, No More Mr. Nice Guy (Philadelphia: Running Press, 2003). The term covert contract refers to unspoken, often subconscious expectations that men carry into relationships—believing that if they behave a certain way (usually pleasing or self-sacrificing), they will be rewarded with love, sex, or approval in return. These expectations are rarely communicated and often lead to resentment when unmet, revealing how men were conditioned to earn affection rather than assume it as a birthright.
Warren Farrell, The Myth of Male Power (New York: Berkley Books, 1993).
Patrice O’Neal, The Black Phillip Show, XM Radio, 2006–2008 (archived broadcasts available online).
Edison Research, “National Exit Polls 2024,”
Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Median Weekly Earnings by Sex and Occupation, Q4 2023.”
Lexico-social usage of “pick-me” within feminist discourse, documented in sources like Urban Dictionary and Twitter trend archives.
Kara Dansky, The Abolition of Sex: How the “Transgender” Agenda Harms Women and Girls (Lantern Publishing, 2021).
See E. Jean Carroll v. Donald J. Trump (2023), judicial commentary on civil liability for sexual abuse.
In Arlington and Fairfax Counties, Virginia, Richard Cox—a registered sex offender—accessed women’s locker rooms by identifying as a transgender woman. He was reported to have exposed himself multiple times, including while visibly aroused, before his eventual arrest. See Nick Minock, “Timeline: Registered Sex Offender Richard Cox’s Alleged Crimes in Arlington and Fairfax Counties,” WJLA, February 29, 2024, https://wjla.com/news/local/registered-sex-offender-richard-cox-fairfax-arlington-county-virginia-timeline-case-history-exposed-rec-center-womens-locker-washington-liberty-wakefield-high. In a similar 2021 incident at Wi Spa in Los Angeles, a woman confronted staff after seeing a nude individual with male genitalia in the women’s locker room. The spa defended the person’s right to be there under California law. A video of the confrontation went viral, sparking protests and national attention. The individual was later charged with indecent exposure and had a record of similar offenses. See “Wi Spa Controversy,” Wikipedia, last modified February 12, 2024, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wi_Spa_controversy.
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976), and Matt Ridley, The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature (New York: Viking, 1993).
There’s a video of a socialist gathering in Germany that has one of its speaker conflating masculinity with Nazism. I will update this post when I can find it—it has since been taken down.
Patrice O’Neal’s death occurred in 2011; his material has since been recontextualized posthumously.
David Deida, The Way of the Superior Man: A Spiritual Guide to Mastering the Challenges of Women, Work, and Sexual Desire (Boulder: Sounds True, 1997).
Camille Paglia, Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990).
Child Care Aware of America, “The US and the High Price of Child Care: 2023 Report.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, trans. Gregory Hays (New York: Modern Library, 2003).
Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, trans. Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier (New York: Vintage Books, 2011).
Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1985).
Katie Way, “I Went on a Date with Aziz Ansari. It Turned into the Worst Night of My Life,” Babe.net, January 13, 2018, archived at https://www.babe.net. The piece sparked widespread debate over whether Ansari’s behavior constituted sexual misconduct or reflected an uncomfortable but consensual encounter, with critics noting the blurred line between regret and assault in how the story was framed publicly.
Longhouse, Wikipedia, last modified April 2024, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longhouse. Historically, the longhouse was a communal structure used by the Iroquois and other Indigenous peoples of North America. It was matrilineal in organization and housed multiple families. In contemporary metaphorical usage, “the Longhouse” refers to modern social structures perceived as conformist, collectivist, or matriarchal in character, drawing on the communal and lineage-based model of the original term.