On "Alpha Males"

As an author, I regularly find myself on Smashwords  browsing the front page, which is mostly porn.  One of the biggest trends right now in porn (and in life in general, judging from all the how-to manuals out there) is an obsession with "alpha males."  I'm pretty sure most writers who use that phrase have no idea what it actually is supposed to refer to.  I have a whole post I want to make on the awesomeness of beta folks, but that's another post.

In the meantime, here is an amusing analysis of the alpha male trend in seven parts - as well as the female counterpart who is generally paired with this alpha male.

I will say that I have finally figured out what, in general, turns me off about so much of what turns other people on.  I don't really care about the backwards gender concepts that make people happy in the privacy of their own minds or bedrooms--it isn't my business.  But I do find it irritating and somewhat distressing that those concepts are so regularly and aggressively promoted as norms by the culture, and that the stratification of society is actually eroticized.  I'm fed up to here hearing about the "primal urges" of men and women, and the "natural roles" of sexes or genders or individuals who fall into one category or another (or don't).  There is no "natural" role for anyone as a member of a group.  There may be a natural role for you as an individual, but that is about who you are, not what is between your legs.  Maybe it matches social norms, maybe it doesn't.  That part doesn't matter.  It's not because you're a member of a group, it's because you're you.

As a switch, I am fascinated by and often inspired by power exchanges between individuals.  But power exchanges across groups?  Never.  And nowadays with the 50 Shades deluge of shit, we have a whole lot of writers casually equating this "alpha male" nonsense with BDSM.  Let's just add to all the misconceptions, shall we?  Browsing through most of the titles out there these days, you'd naturally assume most men are dominant and most women are submissive and that's the way nature made them.  Not only does this not match any of the real life data I've encountered, but the main "alpha male" trait (which appears to equate to "be an asshole") has nothing whatsoever to do with being a good dominant.  Most of these "alpha men" are the last people in the world you'd want tying you up or giving you orders.  Weakness masquerades as strength, oppression as power.

"It's only fiction."  I hear that excuse thrown around so often, but literature is part of what creates the culture, what creates our ideas of norms.  And when the message is so often the same, again and again and again on loop, when writers package stories about sex or relationships a certain way because they believe they will sell or because they "should" be that way, that cultural message is drilled into peoples' brains.  We're told what a man should be, we're told what a woman should be.  And anyone outside that binary?  They may as well not exist at all, along with anyone who does identify as a man or woman but does not agree with the definitions they're being sold.

These are really damaging social messages, and the writers who promote them are damaging.  It isn't "just" fiction, it's sexual politics.