Alpha and Beta Male Terms: Are they useful and worthwhile, or (per what the other guy in the discussion seemed to be suggesting, if I understood him), somehow counterproductive?
I myself am not crazy about these imperfect terms, and don't care about whether they're used, but there are some interesting elements to the broader discussion, I think...
So as most of us know already, "alpha male" and "beta male" are terms guys who used to write books to help men become more successful with women often used. I don't know which men's self-help writer used them first, but I think the terms themselves originated in biology, from observing more "dominant" (possibly physically aggressive) animals getting more than their fair share of the females, and labelling these the "alpha males."
Basically, the men's writers tend to pitch the alpha as a more confident and assertive type of male (often a leader) whose behavior and demeanor creates some automatic biological level of attraction in women, and the beta as a more typical type of male who tended to lack confidence, follows other men (or women!) rather than leading, acts more submissive, and so on.
Idealized masculine physiological traits may or may not have been mentioned, depending on who the author using the "alpha male" term was. My opinion on that is that physiological traits are obviously a bonus to attract women, but definitely a separate issue and also of much lesser importance: Obviously muscles of steel and/or tall height and good looks might be associated with an alpha in an idealized context, but not actually a key part of the picture, since guys who are flat-out hopeless incels or send women running for the hills by being psychos or creeps can also have muscle, height, looks, etc. (As a related aside, apparently there's a known problem of bodybuilders who are in admirably built condition getting targeted to get beat up at bars or elsewhere by jerks who are better fighters and get a kick out of bullying bodybuilders with vastly better physiques, so there's that to support my feeling that physiology and being "alpha" aren't the same.
) However, there's also an entire new dimension to this that I'm hearing about from MGTOW (which I've only recently started reading about and don't really get yet), where there's (I guess) some perception that greater men's solidarity is needed, and so some of them don't like the alpha/beta concept because of the implied division amongst men...?
If I got that wrong, others can correct me on what it is they actually meant.
If/when using the alpha/beta terms, I would agree that any implication that an alpha man needs to focus on bullying or bossing around "beta" males is not productive (and bullying is always bullshit anyway because it's mean and unethical, IMO, regardless of the fact that a subset of women are also physically attracted to abusive jerks and "bad boys").
Personally, I don't give a damn about these silly alpha/beta terms and never did, my basic position is basically:
These terms, even if they're kinda dumb and fuzzy on definition from one guy to the next who wrote books about how to attract women, are obviously pointing you toward the valuable concept that, archetypal primal masculine concepts are rooted in biology, and getting women sexually attracted tends to become orders of magnitude easier if you acknowledge this and try to manifest it in some way.
This is true totally regardless of other physiological traits, race/ethnicity issues (which can matter to some women, but obviously aren't the crux of attraction or else every male of the race/ethnicity that female prefers would be attractive, LOL), or other even more counterproductive distractions I've noticed have entered the more modern manosphere, like "sexual market value" or obsession over economic or social status. Me and (more credibly) a ton of other oldtimers who are far more experienced in terms of notch count (LOL) and wrote books or did seminars or whatever to help men succeed with women, almost all know that latter stuff is total BS: They'd often go out of their way to claim they had unprestigious jobs, refuse to spend money buying drinks, etc, and basically disqualify from any displays of trying to show off status, so they could focus on the more fundamental primal basis of attracting women. (You can also see good examples of this in all sorts of fun films that I think still reflect the realities of masculinity and attracting women convincingly. A few featuring guys with no money off the top of my head being Van Damme in Hard Target, Dolph in Army of One, or Michael Douglas in Romancing the Stone, LOL, none of whom were attracting the women by showing off their prestigious jobs, status, or money since they didn't have any of these things at all.
) Oh, and if it's of any interest, the original discussion we had leading into this was in the topic @ArchibaultNew started about why so many faggots were increasingly entering the "manosphere" and MGTOW, LOL. I see some other guys who know way more about transexuals than me have been continuing that discussion over here
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