Jaycee Woods

I don’t write enough stories that are just guys, zero representation.

Last night, I edited one from my mansplaining genre with the working title “Alpha Wingman,” which is a dialogue between a PUA (pick up artist) and a MGTOW (men going their own way) guy; a heated argument actually. While detractors like to conflate the two as red pill or manosphere content, this story highlighted the differences.

The PUA turns into a gynocentric mouthpiece for the status quo. Given that his focus is on the pump-and-dump, he ironically says all the points that a woman would like to hear about a man centering his life around a woman and the benefits of being in a relationship for a man.

Meanwhile, his backstory is that he was dumped after a seven-year relationship by a girlfriend who cheated on him. Thus, he cannot commit to a relationship as he goes through the motions of picking up women without ever committing to one.

In contrast to the PUA’s bromides, the MGTOW guy talked facts, probabilities, and risks. He honestly expressed his concerns about his inability to confidently judge an individual woman’s trustworthiness over time into the future. He illustrated the conflict of their perspectives with the standard observation: “Not every woman will do X, but any woman can get away with it at any time; where X is making a false allegation, committing paternity fraud, stealing a man’s children through divorce, et al.”

The PUA engaged in common shaming and blaming tactics like “you’re in incel” and “you’re a misogynist.” After a few of these attacks, the MGTOW guy (who wasn’t a monk) revealed that he had [redacted] the PUA’s ex-girlfriend the night before. As explanation, he said he did it to demonstrate to his friend that the ex was an unpaid vertical entertainer who wasn’t worth making the center of one’s life.

In the end, the former friends are irreconcilable over this dispute about women.

As fiction, neither character is me nor my advocate. Instead, each represents what middle-aged single women tend to encounter in the contemporary dating market, short term fun without commitment or apathy, as she asks, “Where did all the good men go?”