Rob Henderson
@robkhenderson • 215,557 subscribers
Best-selling author of "Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class" | Senior Fellow, @ManhattanInst | All Views My Own
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The manosphere’s most effective recruiting tool is the discovery that adults did not tell boys the whole truth about women. One reason young guys are drawn to the manosphere is that some of the information they find there is not really offered anywhere else. And some of it is directionally accurate. One thing these guys will say is that women are trained from a young age to be aware of what men can be like. "Men only want one thing, you have to be careful around guys, etc." And so, once girls hit puberty, they have this ambient awareness that men have certain motives and that they should keep their guard up. Boys, by contrast, are not always told the complete truth about what women can be like. They grow up thinking women are like Disney princesses who want nothing but kindness and generosity and empathy. Then a boy enters high school and sees the kinds of guys many girls are actually drawn to. Often it is not the super nice guy. Sometimes it's the bully, or the jock, or the guy who seems dominant and socially confident. If you are not prepared for that, and you are a naive teenage boy, the realization can send you in a very dark direction. You start thinking, “I have been lied to about women my whole life. What else have I been lied to about?” And from there, it is easy to conclude that there is an entire matrix of hidden truths you now need to see through and only the online influencers will show you the way.
Rob Henderson199,288 次观看 • 1 天前
Muscularity is a huge predictor of romantic appeal. One study of more than 7,000 men found that muscle mass was associated with more sexual partners in the last year and more sexual partners overall. A study on males aged 18 to 59 found that muscularity is significantly positively associated with the number of total sexual partners and total partners within the past year. Handgrip strength is correlated with self-assessed happiness, health, social confidence, overall physical attractiveness, and overall number of sexual partners. To me, the most interesting finding in this line of work is that how tough a guy looks to men appears to be a much stronger predictor of mating success than how attractive he is to women. Researchers recorded short videos of 157 different men. Next, another group of men watched these videos. Researchers asked them a question about each of the men in the videos: “How likely is it that this man would win a physical fight with another man?” They used a scale ranging from “extremely likely” to “extremely unlikely.” A group of women also viewed the videos. They responded to a question about each of the men: “How sexually attractive is this man?” They used a scale ranging from “extremely unattractive” to “extremely attractive.” Eighteen months later, the men in the videos completed a questionnaire asking about their sexual history over the 18 months. How tough a guy looked to men predicted his reported mating success better than how attractive he looked to women. The researchers concluded, “Men with higher physical dominance, but not sexual attractiveness, reported higher quantitative mating success.”
Rob Henderson156,476 次观看 • 2 天前
You keep saying you don’t have time, he did all this in 27 seconds.
Rob Henderson11,004,923 次观看 • 1 年前
The manosphere is full of late bloomers who mistake their own romantic failures for a universal law of male life. A lot of these manosphere guys strike me as late bloomers. They were not getting laid in high school, in college, or throughout their twenties. Then they assume their own experience is typical of men in general. So they advise their followers, “Don’t worry about women in your teens or twenties. Just focus on making money and becoming successful. Then, when you’re an alpha male in your thirties, some hot 19-year-old will be attracted to you.” But that is not how relationship formation usually works. If you look at the data, a 19-year-old woman is much more likely to date a 22-year-old man. She is in college, and she will probably date someone a few years older who is slightly more mature or successful. The average attractive woman in her teens or twenties is not looking for some 38-year-old influencer. These manosphere guys have a warped view of what happens in typical relationships because many of them have never really had an normal relationship themselves.
Rob Henderson42,146 次观看 • 4 天前
How do luxury beliefs spread to the general public? Imagine that tomorrow, the people who shape culture decide that littering is no longer a big deal. The opinion pages of major newspapers start running essays arguing that concerns about litter are overblown. Glossy magazines publish longform pieces suggesting that cleanliness norms are socially constructed, maybe even a little oppressive. The hot new series on your favorite streaming platform depicts attractive and interesting characters tossing trash on the ground without a second thought. Academics, journalists, politicians, CEOs, and influencers all start saying some version of the same thing: littering is not a serious issue. And if you criticize someone for doing it, you are the problem. You are being judgmental. You are enforcing outdated norms. You need to let people live. Perhaps some new legislation is passed that decriminalizes littering. Over time the message becomes clear. Throwing trash wherever you want is acceptable. It is normalized. It is actively defended. Now let me ask you something. Would anyone be surprised, 5 or 10 years later, if garbage started piling up? Would anyone be surprised if that problem was not evenly distributed? If it showed up most in lower-income neighborhoods while affluent areas remained relatively pristine? That’s the pattern. The people who promote the luxury belief are insulated from its consequences.
Rob Henderson144,758 次观看 • 18 天前
If you want to know which men have the most success with women, you might be better off ignoring women and asking men instead. Researchers recorded videos of 157 different men. Next, a different group of men watched these videos and responded to a question about each of the men in the videos: “How likely is it that this man would win a physical fight with another man?” They used a scale ranging from “extremely likely” to “extremely unlikely.” A group of women also viewed the videos and responded to a question about each of the men: “How sexually attractive is this man?” They used a scale ranging from “extremely unattractive” to “extremely attractive.” Eighteen months later, the men in the videos completed a questionnaire asking about their sexual history over the 18 months. The shocking result: how tough a guy looked to men predicted his mating success better than how attractive he looked to women. The researchers concluded, “Men with higher physical dominance, but not sexual attractiveness, reported higher quantitative mating success.” Reference: Kordsmeyer, T. L., Hunt, J., Puts, D. A., Ostner, J., & Penke, L. (2018). The relative importance of intra-and intersexual selection on human male sexually dimorphic traits. Evolution and Human Behavior, 39, 424-436.
Rob Henderson110,377 次观看 • 22 天前
Some people are more desirable than others. Behind the pursuit for money, beauty, intelligence and prestige lies one of the oldest contests in human life: being chosen. Many arenas of status are, in an evolutionary sense, connected to the effort to attract a romantic partner. This competition exists because people differ in desirable traits. Not everyone is equally kind, intelligent, healthy, ambitious or resourceful. Not everyone is equally attractive, empathic or generous. Because these qualities are unevenly distributed, a process of mutual mate selection arises. People are trying to find someone they would like to be with while also trying to become the sort of person others would choose. In general, people want to stand out on at least a few desirable dimensions while searching for a partner who possesses desirable qualities as well. My friend, the great evolutionary psychologist David Buss, puts it this way: “The mating preferences of one sex set the ground rules of competition in the opposite sex.” What does this mean? Essentially, when members of one sex consistently desire certain qualities, members of the other sex have an incentive to develop, display and advertise those qualities. People compete to satisfy the preferences of the partners they hope to attract.
Rob Henderson43,507 次观看 • 9 天前
Self-help books for women vs. men aren’t selling the same story. If you walk through the self-help section and compare the books marketed to men with those aimed at women, the contrast is striking. The books for men tend to emphasize stoicism, discipline, and self-sufficiency: become more focused, toughen up, don’t let the world knock you off your path, no one is coming to save you. The message is essentially that you need to strengthen yourself and earn your way forward. The books for women, by contrast, rarely begin with the idea that you’re lacking something that needs to be built. Instead, the theme is closer to: you’re already great, but you keep getting in your own way. The world hasn’t recognized your value because you haven’t fully accepted it yourself. The promise is that once you stop beating yourself up and embrace who you already are, others will see it too. Two very different messages—one built around improvement, the other around affirmation.
Rob Henderson911,243 次观看 • 7 个月前
In high school, you get 155 hours on Hitler, 3 minutes on Stalin, and nothing on Pol Pot. Nothing on Mao. Barely a mention of Fidel Castro. It's striking that we don’t learn about Mao or Pol Pot—despite the scale of their crimes. Mao killed more people than any dictator in history. Estimates range from 40 to 80 million deaths. Just between the Anti-Rightist Campaign and the Cultural Revolution, one to two million were killed. And yet we were taught nothing. Pol Pot is another example. He killed about a quarter to a third of Cambodia’s population—roughly two million people—in just four years. And again, silence. Maybe some of you went to better schools than I did, but most people I talk to say they didn’t learn anything about Mao or Pol Pot either. As a kid, we read The Diary of Anne Frank. In high school, it was Schindler’s List or The Pianist on slow Fridays. I wasn’t even a great student, but I still remember all the lessons, books, and discussions about Hitler and the Nazis. You grow up knowing the worst thing you can be called is Hitler or a Nazi. And that’s fine—we should study Hitler. But we could also make room for the other brutal dictators, especially the ones on the far left. For some reason, that's barely mentioned.
Rob Henderson1,213,167 次观看 • 1 年前
What is the male "monkey dance?" In his book Meditations on Violence, law enforcement consultant Rory Miller describes "the monkey dance" as a ritualized form of male combat to establish dominance or secure territory. It is typically non-lethal and intended to convey strength without escalating to the level of severe injury or death. The steps are: 1. Eye contact, hard stare 2. Verbal challenge (“what are you lookin’ at?” "you got a problem bro?") 3. Closing of distance, possible chest bumping (arms extend outward) 4. Finger poke or two-handed push to the chest 5. Dominant hand roundhouse punch (if the person is untrained in combat) Males, especially young males, do not play the monkey dance. It plays them. In many species, males engage in ritualistic conflict, suggesting this ritual predates humans. We have millions of years of evolutionary programming tucked away in our brains, which can be hard to switch off in certain situations. Especially if alcohol is involved. One way to circumvent escalation is through submissive body language. Lowering your eyes, apologizing. It doesn’t feel good to do this. For young males, backing down from a status challenge is psychologically painful. There are implicit rules about monkey dances. The dance is about gaining or maintaining status. Which means the selected adversaries are important. Nobody plays the monkey dance with children. No one plays the monkey dance with someone who is obviously high on drugs or crazy. Few men partake in the monkey dance against women. Typically, the dance is between two males who are similar in physicality and age. It is more likely to occur when there is an open question about who would prevail in a physical contest.
Rob Henderson24,221 次观看 • 6 天前
Gay male couples—two men in a relationship—have the lowest breakup rates, which is striking given that gay men also have the highest rates of what evolutionary psychologists call extra-dyadic mating, a technical term for sex outside the primary relationship: infidelity, or cheating. In other words, they have the lowest breakup rates despite the highest levels of non-monogamous behavior. After gay male couples, heterosexual couples—one man and one woman—have the next lowest breakup rates. Interestingly, the highest breakup rates are found among female–female couples. Lesbian couples, on average, dissolve relationships more frequently than either gay male or heterosexual couples. One likely reason is that, across relationship types, women are more likely than men to initiate breakups. In heterosexual marriages, women initiate 60 to 70 percent of divorces. When you have two women in a relationship, you effectively double the likelihood that at least one partner will initiate a breakup, which raises the overall probability of relationship dissolution.
Rob Henderson590,281 次观看 • 7 个月前
A 2025 study of American billionaires found large sex differences in marital behavior: 30% of the male billionaires married billionaires, whereas 65% of female billionaires married a billionaire. There used to be this belief that as women became more successful, more economically independent, and more educated, they would become more willing to “date down” in terms of the socioeconomic status of their male partner. The idea was that because women were becoming economically self-sufficient, they would no longer need to look for that quality in a partner. But if anything, it seems to go the other way. The more successful a woman is, the more likely she is to want a man who is at least as successful as she is. You can see this in research on women with advanced degrees, women with high incomes, women who are millionaires, and women who are billionaires. A female billionaire is far more likely to be married to a male billionaire than a male billionaire is to be married to a female billionaire. Male billionaires generally tend to marry successful women, but usually not women who are as financially successful as themselves. They tend to marry women who are educated, upper-middle-class or above, and accomplished in some way. But female billionaires are much more likely to marry men who are also at the very top economically.
Rob Henderson98,029 次观看 • 1 个月前
The truth is that many men are naturally timid and fearful. Social media algorithms reward crazy, sensational, outrageous videos. So when you see these clips, and I’m sure both of you have seen them, of some girl doing squats at the gym while recording herself, with a caption underneath like, “Oh my God, some creep just looked at me,” guys watch that and think, “Oh, girls don’t even want to be looked at in public.” So they go into this mode of eyes forward, blinkers on, don’t look at anyone, don’t make any woman think you might be interested in her. But most women at the gym are probably either indifferent to being noticed, or, if they’re single, maybe even positively inclined to being approached in a normal, respectful way. The problem is that men see the video and think that is reality. They get this distorted view of what women are actually like in public. The other thing is that a lot of guys use Me Too, or these videos of women posting mean comments about men, as a justification for what pickup artists call approach anxiety. They’re already afraid of approaching women. Now they have a socially acceptable excuse. “Oh, I don’t want to be accused of harassment.” “I would totally go talk to her, bro, but I don’t want to get Me Too’d.” “I would approach that girl, but what if she records me and posts it online?” That becomes the story they tell themselves. But the truth is, they probably wouldn’t approach her anyway. They would be afraid regardless. So I think there’s a lot of excuse-making mixed in with genuine fear.
Rob Henderson28,211 次观看 • 10 天前
Many conservatives say we now live in a nonjudgmental society. That's obviously wrong. We live in a society that has changed what it's willing to judge. There used to be certain behaviors that were stigmatized. And then we reached a point where judging those behaviors, or upholding those stigmas, was itself stigmatized. So stigma is now stigmatized. And, oh yeah, I have a joke for you as well, by the way. Two psychologists walk out of a bar, and they see a man lying in the street. He’s broken, bloodied, clearly been attacked. And one psychologist looks at the other and says, “Oh my God, we have to find the person who did this and get him some help.” But, you know, I’ve spent a lot of time around people who have this attitude, and I’ve recognized that, yes, there is now a stigma around judgment itself, at least when it comes to violations of conventional moral values. If you want to use drugs, if you want to shoplift, if you want to engage in all sorts of alternative relationship arrangements and so on, the attitude is often: fine, who are we to judge? But the same category of people can still be extremely judgmental. If you don’t recycle, if you use outdated terminology for historically marginalized groups, if you don’t hold the right political opinions, you’ll suddenly see that desire to judge and condemn activate within them.
Rob Henderson68,239 次观看 • 28 天前
The people most committed to communism in the Soviet Union weren’t the workers—it was the educated elite. A retrospective study conducted in the 1990s titled "Work Ethics and the Collapse of the Soviet System," examined which groups were most supportive of the Soviet system. The researchers found that, compared to factory workers and semi-skilled laborers, individuals in white-collar positions—especially those with higher levels of education—were significantly more likely to express loyalty to the Communist Party. In some cases, support was two to three times higher among elites. In other words, the strongest support for the system came not from those at the bottom, but from those in relatively advantaged positions within it. This runs counter to the common assumption that egalitarian or redistributive ideologies are primarily driven by the least well-off. In practice, they are often most strongly endorsed by people closer to the top of the social hierarchy—those who benefit from the system’s institutional structure, or who are positioned to navigate it successfully.
Rob Henderson238,728 次观看 • 3 个月前