In this podcast interview, Christopher Ryan and Aubrey Marcus joke about being called cucks. This four-letter word that is so cavalierly thrown about on the internet has layers of depth and nuance.
I’ll explain why many men call them cucks and why it’s a deservedly derogatory term.
They are discussing a book that Christopher Ryan wrote, Sex at Dawn about how humans are naturally promiscuous and non-monogamous. It has a pretty obvious message humans are animals and we like to fuck. We naturally want to maximize hedonism, minimize effort, enjoy novelty and we tend to be promiscuous.
Aubrey, who is a successful entrepreneur, health guru, and internet celebrity has implemented the message of the book and became a cuck, literally — he encourages his long-term girlfriend/fiancée that he lives with to date and sleep around with other men. In numerous podcasts and articles h,e talks about the jealousy and mental anguish of letting his girlfriend fuck other guys - he emphasizes that this is not an easy lifestyle. He's a hardcore, professional biohacker with access to an amazing array of stress relief and mindfulness tools and technologies, and using all of them he manages to live with his jealousy.
Presumably, Aubrey also gets to date and sleep with other women — but on numerous podcasts of his that I've listened to he NEVER talks about all the hot sex and good times he's having outside of his relationship, he just whines (and sometimes jokes) about being jealous of his girlfriend sleeping around. I'm NOT hearing about the upsides of cuckoldry from Aubrey.
I suspect that Aubrey is getting the short end of this deal. His girlfriend is a fit, attractive, and somewhat internet-famous woman, I'm sure that her options for secondary relationships are boundless. To go on a hot date and get laid, all she has to do is say yes to one of the hundreds of proposals that I'm sure she receives weekly. But the dating marketplace is VERY different for men; to get a date men have to swipe their smartphones thousands of times or approach dozens of women on the street.
Also, I suspect that the women Aubrey is sleeping with on the side are a downgrade from his girlfriend both in looks and personality. If the other women he's hooking up with are really hot he'd probably be showing them off on Instagram the way Dan Bilzerian does. Sleeping with a man who is literally a cuck (and advertises it) is NOT the behavior of a true high-quality woman and certainly not a virtuous woman. I imagine that there are women who want to sleep with him because he's a good-looking guy and an internet celebrity BUT I can't imagine that any of them are decent people who would make a good partner.
If I knew that taking Aubrey's advice of opening up my relationship would result in my having a harem, like a Sultan, of sexy young women worshipping my cock I might do it BUT it sounds like it's just a frustrating pain in the ass!
Why we call them cucks…
Obviously, monogamy is not natural. But civilization is rising above our animal desires and impulses. Civilization was NOT built by men just trying to optimize their sexual hedonism. Go and read some historical biographies of great inventors, explorers, entrepreneurs, or statesmen. They lived these stoic lives of self-discipline and self-sacrifice devoted to a higher cause. They were not obsessed with finding weird or sadomasochistic ways to express their sexuality.
The exotic cultures that Chris writes about in his book that don't practice monogamy are all the same cultures that were scratching around in the mud while our monogamous Christian culture -Western civilization - was inventing the airplane and curing polio. They're sacrificing civilization on the altar of the utmost primacy of sexual hedonism — EVERYTHING is less important than making their dicks happy.
Sexual liberation
We have plenty of evidence that widespread sexual liberation is quite bad for society…
The tragedy of single motherhood that ruins the childhoods of so many children.
The demographic decline of our countries.
The feminism wrecking our countries politically.
The vast number of attractive young women who jeopardize their futures and ruin their lives by entering the porn industry for the promise of easy cash and celebrity.
The #metoo victim culture, false rape hysteria, and the real rapes enabled by our YOLO culture of irresponsibility and intoxication.
The hordes of men going MGTOW, retreating away from women and society into the pixel-pleasure world of porn and video games.
Personal anecdote: Sexual liberation destroys a new family
A few years ago an old childhood friend of mine married his beautiful young Argentinian girlfriend with whom he had a son. They seemed very happy together and the marriage was a truly joyous merger of two families that got along famously. At their wedding, I remember thinking, this is the start of something great! To my surprise about 6 months later they announced that they were getting divorced. It turned out that my friend’s young wife got drunk one night and cheated on my friend. He was deeply ashamed and decided to divorce. Thus another single mother was created and the burgeoning friendship between the two families was blown up. My friend’s young son goes to daycare when he’s not being juggled between his parents. There are signs that he’s going to have a troubled childhood. This is what you get with sexual liberation folks; you brainwash people from the youngest age that they should just do whatever feels good to them in the moment. Countless songs and everything on TV repeat this message that sex is just a toy that exists for your enjoyment. The women are wonderful message gets repeated everywhere — convincing women that they don’t need to be virtuous or disciplined — they are perfect just the way they are. This cultural cauldron of individualism, feminism, and consumerism has made so many incapable of seeing beyond their own noses. My friend’s young wife had all the very best reasons to be a loyal wife and a decent mother YET she couldn’t even make it six fucking months into the marriage without cheating!
Would have she cheated if she was raised with a proper moral compass in a culture that practiced proper slut shaming and social ostracization? Doubt it!
If sexual liberation was just consenting adults in private bedrooms enjoying each other's bodies I wouldn’t have a problem with it but it’s actually destroying families and hurting the most innocent. I’ll condemn in the strongest terms these fucking degenerate cucks promoting this ideology that hurts children for the sake of adults who want to indulge in excessive sexual hedonism.
Aubrey is especially worthy of the label cuck because while he promotes this unnatural lifestyle he also bows down to feminism and prostrates himself before the soaring pedestal upon which liberalism has placed the pussy. Rich, good-looking, and an internet celebrity — Aubrey is the kind of guy that could have a harem. If you’re a high-status male you can tell your girlfriend something like…
Look I’m going to fuck other girls. But this is not a two way street, you’re not going to fuck other guys. I will provide for your sexual needs. I’m not going to tell you about fucking the other girls to try to hurt you or make you jealous but I am going to do it. These other girls are just sex to me. I don’t care about them like I care about you. I won’t be taking long walks on the beach with these girls. These girls won’t be sleeping in my bed and I won’t be kissing them in the mornings. They will be fucking and then going home in a taxi. And I’ll use protection when I sleep with them so I don’t bring you any STDs. If you don’t like that you can leave me.
Aubrey could tell that to his long-term girlfriend and she would probably go along with it. Women seem to need a bit of jealousy or else they get bored with the man they are in a relationship with. But men, on the other hand, don’t seem to need jealousy. I would be perfectly happy to go through the rest of my life without being viscerally jealous. I think almost all men would.
My understanding of psychology is that…
Men are really sensitive to sexual infidelity — We don’t really care if our wifey is having coffee and conversation with some guy but the thought of her fucking other guys is nausea-inducing. This is because for our caveman ancestors if their wife was sleeping with another caveman she might become pregnant and then he would be pouring his precious resources into raising another man’s child. In the prehistoric world of extreme scarcity of calories and shelter from the elements, this could mean gene death. Thus monogamy, pair bonding, and slut shaming are evolutionarily adaptive.
Women are really sensitive to emotional infidelity — Women are really bothered if we are falling in love with another woman but they don’t care as much if we are just having meaningless sex with them. Cavewomen relied totally on their men to provide food and shelter, if a cavewoman lost the attention and affection of her partner she would be hungry and left out in the cold.
Surely Aubrey must know this as he’s spent so much time diving deep into evolutionary sexual psychology yet instead of giving his woman the gift of jealousy he decided to impose his masculine promiscuity upon her.
Why would he subject himself to the mental torture of kissing the lips that he knows just a few hours prior were sucking another man’s cock?
Extreme virtue signaling. It’s evident from his podcasts that he’s ensconced in this extremely progressive lefty world. He broadcasts loudly his extreme egalitarianism — if he gets to sleep with other women then his girlfriend must sleep with other men too! I hope the feminists and cultural Marxists of the world are rushing to Onnit.com with their credit cards out to support this man.
As I explain in chapter 7, Seducing a Virgin, of my book Don't Stick Your Dick in a Blender, marrying a virginal girl is like a veteran software developer launching a new app or website — success is likely. You might not be able to find a virginal woman or you may fall in love with a great woman who has had a few partners. That’s OK but I really would not take a woman seriously who had over three previous sexual partners. Aubrey’s girlfriend has likely had three sexual partners over the course of some weekends!
What’s also cucky is that Aubrey advocates for this lifestyle without frankly discussing any of its practical downsides…
Aubrey’s girlfriend probably promises him that she uses condoms when she’s sleeping around BUT he has no way of knowing. Most people stop using condoms after they’ve had sex three or four times. Especially in Aubrey’s cosmopolitan world condoms are mostly just a first date thing.
The kind of guys that would sleep with a woman in an open relationship are not going to be very virtuous, disciplined men. They are going to probably be very promiscuous also so there’s a huge risk of STDs.
There’s always that chance that his girlfriend might get pregnant by one of the other guys she’s sleeping with as has happened to numerous other cuck couples.
It looks like Aubrey’s girlfriend lives with him so if he wants to get some ass on the side he probably needs to sneak off to a hotel.
Ultimately, Aubrey is just about guaranteeing the failure of a future marriage with his girlfriend, marrying a girl with over 5 sexual partners in her past is tantamount to an inexperienced, first-time entrepreneur, mortgaging their house to open an Applebee’s franchise (that’s a crappy casual dining chain restaurant) — failure is a near certainty!
Burning down civilization…
Late into the interview, Chris Ryan reveals that he thinks that…
Western civilization is pathological
And has some enmity for modern civilization, he thinks we would be better off running around in the jungle. Like Agent Smith in The Matrix, he intimates that humanity (and especially Western civilization) is a virus. And clearly, his plan for burning down civilization is further stoking the flames of the sexual revolution — which is just unoriginal and faux-edgy, postmodernists have been burning down civilization since the 1960s and (congratulations guys!) it’s almost all the way burnt down. People like Chris Ryan like to pretend that they are counter-culture when their hedonistic, nihilistic, liberal secularism is actually the mainstream culture. Back in the 1950’s Sex at Dawn could honestly be considered subversive and edgy but now it’s just further entrenching the hedonistic imperative into the mainstream which has been the norm for at least three decades. And again, the message of the book is so far from being original; monogamy is not really in our nature — yeah DUH.
It should be noted that Chris Ryan practices monogamy with his wife. If he didn’t, I’m sure he would brag about it on his numerous podcasts. So this is yet another case of a profiteering public intellectual NOT practicing what they preach.
If you explore much of Chris’s backstory it becomes evident that his obsession with this subject is a manifestation of his low sexual market value. He is one of these guys who spent several decades of his life traveling and backpacking around different countries finding himself. This is something that gets incorrectly romanticized as a meaningful path to wisdom. I spent the better part of a decade as a nomad myself and I can tell you that most Western people who do long-term nomadic travel are not finding themselves, they are they are losing themselves.
These are people who have oriented their lives completely around hedonism and novelty.
Abroad they let their health decline. Their bodies and minds are weak. They often succumb totally to vice; drug addiction and alcoholism.
They are suckers for vapid pseudo-spirituality or any self-indulgent, narcissistic pursuit.
Men travel because they hope to hook up with exotic women yet few do because they are just not willing to do the work of seduction most resort to running scammy, weaselly, lazy online game, pretending to be musicians or “model photographers” or screwing hookers.
They don't read (anything much deeper than Harry Potter), they don't listen to podcasts or audiobooks. They spend vast amounts of time watching torrented Hollywood movies and Netflix.
They don’t work. Their discipline and capacity for achievement have totally atrophied.
These are not people whose advice you should be taking about how to live your life! Chris reveals in one podcast that his moment of waking up to non-monogamy was a conversation with his stripper roommate in San Francisco. Chris Ryan’s discourse totally reminds me of conversations I’ve had with drunk gringo idiots in beach bars in Panama or other exotic locals where Westerners escape their mundane lives to indulge in a bit of sun, sand, booze, and white powder.
An analogy that Aubrey should appreciate…
You don’t go to the gym because it’s pleasurable and a natural leisure activity — it’s the opposite, it’s something we do because it is hard. Going to the gym is not immediately beneficial. It takes months or years of strenuous effort to see much benefit. Monogamy is analogous on a civilizational scale, it’s strenuous and discipline intensive but in the long term, it’s so much better for everybody.
Chris Ryan doesn’t look like he goes to the gym much and clearly, he’s failing to think effectively in the long term.
Complementary rights
You know what’s actually culturally subversive and edgy, the idea of complementary rights — the idea that men and women are biologically and psychologically different, we’re equal in no objective measure, thus we should have rights that correspond to our respective strengths. The anti-feminist Lacey Lynn exhaustively explains this…
The Bonobo question...
Chris Ryan seems to have a fetish for our evolutionary cousins, Bonobos who are extremely promiscuous. His research indicates that their promiscuity results in them having more tranquil and peaceful societies. That’s interesting but Bonobos are fucking animals — they sleep on the ground, they don’t even wear clothes, they don’t have a language, they’ve never invented anything — call me a human chauvinist but we are clearly better.
Chris Ryan observes that Apes in contrast to Bonobos have this sexual winner-take-all hierarchy that is rife with violence in the struggle to be the alpha ape. But he fails to notice that the sexual revolution has created a similar asymmetrical dominance hierarchy in the human sexual marketplace where the top 5 % or 10% of men have almost all the sex. In the past an average Joe had a chance with an average Jane but not anymore (unless he’s in a country like Bulgaria that has not been ravaged by feminism) — shouldn’t a liberal like Chris Ryan be concerned about this stark inequality?
On promiscuity
I did the nomadic pickup artist thing for a long while and yes it’s a lot of fun to be promiscuous and enjoy the sexual variety. But eventually, I reached the point of maturity where I realized that there are more important things in life than making my own dick happy. Even the sexual variety gets repetitive — once you’ve slept with a blonde white girl, a curvy black girl, a brown Latina chica, a skinny girl, a girl with a really big round butt, a girl with huge tits, or a woman who is a bit older one time, sleeping with subsequent women in the same aesthetic or racial category is a pretty similar sexual experience. Their pussies all feel like rubber (because I’m using a condom) and their mouths all feel pleasantly warm and wet. Promiscuity over promises and really under-delivers.
On values
People, especially the reviled straight white male, will suffer through the most obscene conditions and tribulations if they feel like it’s for a greater ideological purpose. Thus Aubrey is willing to subject himself to this unhealthy lifestyle to advance society towards this mythological egalitarian utopia.
Liberals hold in the highest esteem the value of “love” — everything is always less important than love and love should be our sole guiding principle as individuals and as societies of millions of people. Of course “love” is just whatever you feel like doing at that moment and whatever your biological urges direct you to do. So, of course, Aubrey is going to subject himself to cuckoldry for “love”. We live in the age of great forgetting. We’ve forgotten that virtue and self-sacrifice matter. The liberal social engineers of the century of self continually promised us that we were just one progressive breakthrough away from utopia but instead, we’ve just gotten genital warts and girl fights at gay pride parades.
The libertarian argument
Many who wouldn’t personally choose cuckoldry would defend Aubrey’s right to be a cuck and even his right to promote cuckoldry. I suppose as a consistent respecter of free speech, I would have to agree BUT just because I have a right to make a decision doesn’t mean that it’s a good decision. It needs to be OK to harshly criticize those who spread bad ideas and this is a really bad idea.
And make no mistake, it’s very profitable to promote these kinds of bad ideas. Sex sells, the promise of consequence-free sex is a siren song that appeals to the animal in all of us. Sex at Dawn is just the kind of book that the New York Times and the mainstream media love to promote. Aubrey elevates his internet celebrity by advocating for something as high valence as cuckoldry that people are either going to love or hate.
Aubrey and Chris would respond to my criticism saying: Hey we’re not recommending cuckoldry and non-monogamy. We’re just putting it out there and people can try it if they like. We’re not forcing anyone to do anything they don’t want to do.
It’s true that they are not forcing anyone to do anything BUT this is the same defense that a drug dealer who sold heroin to high schoolers would use... I don’t recommend heroin to anyone. I tell people that it’s bad. But I make it available and people can decide if they want to buy it.
An illegal arms smuggler would use a similar pseudo-moral defense: I don’t make the African child soldiers fight a war with AK-47s. I just provide the AK-47s, the warlords can buy them if they want and use them however they want.
There’s a good reason neither defense would hold up in a court of law. The drug dealer and the arms dealer would both be sent to jail for a long time. Chris and Ryan are conveniently ignoring the significant moral hazard of what they are promoting.
Genetic Immortality
My parents are generally quite proud of me, they think I have a pretty nifty existence and that I’m doing meaningful work in the world, they are also justifiably proud of themselves, they are more than anyone else responsible for bringing me into the world and forming me into a decent (some would say awesome!) human being. My parents could have had a life of travel and fancy dinners but instead, they spent their time and resources on being parents and when they look at my great life they say wow it was worth it!
My grandparents aren’t alive anymore but they would most certainly feel similarly, they worked very hard their whole lives in a significantly less comfortable world to provide for their children. And it’s the same all the way down my (or your) genetic line, there are thousands of people through history (whose names have long since been forgotten) who suffered through a pretty hellish existence to provide for their offspring that eventually produced us. All of them hoping and striving so that their children might be better off than them. And the life I get to enjoy so much is the culmination of the ocean of blood, sweat, and tears they shed in a cruel world.
It’s a giant slap in the face to all of them to let their genetic line end with you. If you have a sense of grandeur, romance, metaphysics, or spiritual connection to the past I hope that you, like me, feel compelled to honor our ancestors by doing our biological duty. By humping to ensure their genetic immortality. I think I have a spark of greatness within me and I intend to ejaculate it out into the cosmos — the vapid hedonism that Chris and Aubrey promote enables the arrested development and extended adolescence of many of those who should be doing likewise.
Reject cuckoldry
I’ve made a strong case here that cuckoldry is a bad decision for almost everyone. I’m trying to think of anything that’s good for you (or your family or society) but makes you viscerally sick and angry and I can’t come up with anything. If your body and mind have an automatic reaction of disgust to something it’s a pretty good sign that it’s unhealthy.
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A trenchant critique of "Sex at Dawn" and faux-edgy non-monogamy