Sexual Main Character Syndrome
Sexual Main Character Syndrome: The Manosphere, 4B, and the Quest for Power
In this week’s FD original, Amelia Buzzard critiques “Sexual Main Character Syndrome,” arguing that both the 4B movement and the Manosphere leverage victim narratives to justify treating the opposite sex as less than human.
Sexual Main Character Syndrome: The Manosphere, 4B, and the Quest for Power
Amelia Buzzard
In the worlds of 4B and the Manosphere, one sex is always victimized and always right—in other words, the main character—while the other sex is programmed by both society and nature to seek domination.
This way of seeing the world does reflect the reality of human beings’ base desire for power, but it doesn’t account for the complexity of human relationships—or human beings’ capacity for love. Like the Internet, it boils everything down to the blackest of blacks and the whitest of whites, losing the gray areas that give our lived experience its three dimensionality.
Men and women may fight fiercely, but, as Aristophanes’ Lysistrata wisely shows, our sexuality is the very thing that tends to bring us back together.
This Week in Sex-Realist Feminism: Another Gender EO, Stop Hacking Humans, and the Anti-Social Century
This week: Lisa Selin Davis on the pediatric gender medicine executive order, Brad Littlejohn and Clare Morell on not hacking humanity, and Derek Thompson on our anti-social century. Plus: branding care, what women want, making patriarchy progressive, book club information—and more!
From the Archives:
Shelby Kearns argues that men and women need to work together to provide care for the elderly.
A Partnership in Eldercare
Shelby Kearns
“To respond effectively to the crisis in eldercare and affirm the dignity of seniors, we must draw on the respective strengths of the sexes while acknowledging how their differences lead to gaps in care.”
A Book Club Email Update:
The Flowers of Fire book club will be starting next week, led by Featured Author Leah Libresco Sargeant and Patrick Brown. If you already receive our email newsletter, you will automatically receive these discussion posts in your inbox. If not, you can find them here or subscribe now.
Want to opt out?
If you’d rather skip the additional emails (1-2 extra emails each week during February), you can. Open Substack in your browser, head to “Settings” and then click on your Fairer Disputations subscription. There, deselect “FD Book Club.” That way, you’ll continue to get our weekly newsletter but not the extra book club posts.
Buzzard is mistaken: 4B isn't "treating" men like anything, it's ignoring them. Big difference.
"In this week’s FD original, Amelia Buzzard critiques “Sexual Main Character Syndrome,” arguing that both the 4B movement and the Manosphere leverage victim narratives to justify treating the opposite sex as less than human."