Why Did Men Waste Time Being Gentlemen?

<p>In this video, we discuss traditional gentlemanly behavior and why it has been lost in modern American culture. We explain how acts of deference like opening doors and paying for meals used to signify male dominance when done proactively from a position of power. However, today these acts are often misconstrued as weakness due to discomfort with class differences. We explore the importance of anticipating a partner's needs, showing gratitude, and maintaining good form in relationships. Our goal is to revive gentlemanly behavior in a way that displays strong masculinity and high value.</p><p></p><p><strong>Simone:</strong> [00:00:00] I think that's one reason why men are misunderstanding what it looks like to be dominant and then ending up just kind of acting like trailer trash when they try to be dominant, you know, it's just you know, they, they</p><p><strong>Malcolm:</strong> think, Oh my gosh, I love, no, it's true what you're saying, right? every cultural group has different, more refined ways to handle these dominant fights that don't involve two males making themselves look big and then like physically attacking each other. Because that's really costly., and this is what Simone means she mentally is associating this. with lower socioeconomic groups because lower socioeconomic groups like anyone who's resource scarce are going to have less luxury of the ability to suppress these things. And often their families have been in this situation for multiple generations, so they might have lost even the cultural software for how do I handle a dominance fight with another male other than.</p><p><strong>Malcolm:</strong> Puffing myself up and then beating him up.</p><p><strong>Simone:</strong> I [00:01:00] think we've lost we've lost a lot of the ways that people historically demonstrated dominance in, this sounds terrible, sounds really classist, but in a, in a civilized fashion.</p><p>Would you like to know more?</p><p><strong>Malcolm:</strong> hello,</p><p><strong>Malcolm:</strong> Simone!</p><p><strong>Simone:</strong> Hello, Malcolm. How are you doing? Absolutely</p><p><strong>Malcolm:</strong> spectacular today. It is so wonderful to have you back from a business trip. So something happened recently that was really telling for me because, you know, I see this was in some conservative communities and it's something that I'm getting really worried about, which is somebody was like, why do you put your wife's name?</p><p><strong>Malcolm:</strong> First, when you write books and in correspondence, you know, don't you know that you're the man and that that means you're better than her. And so you should be putting all of your stuff first. And I think this shows how far we've descended from, from most traditional cultural beliefs[00:02:00] which is if you look at manners books, that's just polite manners, like opening the door for a woman like, All of these nice little things that guys used to be expected to do for women and then progressive culture came like a glacier and cleaned all of those things clean so clean that we don't remember them almost, you know, with Gen Z's coming around and they're trying to reclaim their masculinity, but in so doing, and so, and so reclaiming this masculine role, They, they, you know, through people like the way that this has been portrayed by individuals like Andrew Tate, it almost comes across as every interaction you have with a woman who like you love and have a longterm relationship with is to some extent to exert your dominance over that woman.</p><p><strong>Malcolm:</strong> Whereas most of the traditional cultures in the world, I say, no, no, no, no, no. It's to make her feel special and treasured and [00:03:00] to protect her. Now, this actually has very big effects if you're talking about long term fertility of a culture. So why do you do like, why? It's not just to be nice. Like I'm not just you know, within my family's life.</p><p><strong>Malcolm:</strong> Putting my wife up on a pedestal to be nice to her. I'm not doing all of these things that we traditionally call manners, like ensuring that I walk on the side of the street where if a car is going to splash us, it splashes me first. Opening doors, all of these little things like that. Standing up from a table when she gets up.</p><p><strong>Malcolm:</strong> I don't, by the way, right. No, I mean, I don't do all of those things just to be like a weirdo. I do them for a very specific reason. It's so that when my daughters See the way I treat my wife, they desire that outcome for themselves in the future. And when my [00:04:00] sons see the way I treat my wife, they treat their own wives that way.</p><p><strong>Malcolm:</strong> And then their own daughters think, Oh, being a wife. It's awesome. And so someone, I wonder, you had talked to me before about what you felt like growing up. Right.</p><p><strong>Simone:</strong> Yeah. Yeah. No. So I thought growing up when I was young just meant, you know, giving a bunch of things up, like giving up your career and then having to take on a whole bunch of additional responsibilities.</p><p><strong>Simone:</strong> So just basically meant more work, but you know, not really being celebrated. Not that my, my father wasn't absolutely amazing to my mother. He was, but there was no like elevated status in, in Silicon Valley, like in the very progressive Bay area for women. I remember the first time I saw someone stand up when a woman got up at a table and when the first time I saw a man, like ceremonially open a door for a woman, I was floored.</p><p><strong>Simone:</strong> I really liked</p><p><strong>Malcolm:</strong> it. Well, so you've been around my family, like you've been around my cousins and stuff. Yeah,</p><p><strong>Simone:</strong> and they're like, yeah, they're, they're very, [00:05:00] yeah, they're, they're raised like Southern gentlemen and I'm all for it. But yeah, so there was definitely, I mean, like I had zero incentive to, to not only.</p><p><strong>Simone:</strong> Have kids, but get married at all. Because why? I mean, it just basically meant that you were technically more entangled with a friend that was supposed to make you happy for the rest of your life, which isn't really what, you know, we found marriage to be about and what it's not sustainable. But I think what's more interesting about this is that a lot of these men's rights activists are manosphere figures that are.</p><p><strong>Simone:</strong> Complaining about your behavior online or missing is, is they think that like showing deference to women is I don't know, suggesting that they're in a position of power or yielding power to them. And I think it, there's something more interesting at play in, in American culture there, where, where shows of power or, or shows of politeness are no longer seen as shows of power, where in, in earlier [00:06:00] times they were so in, in the book Alvin Seed by David Hackett.</p><p><strong>Simone:</strong> Fitcher. He talks about, especially in the South where the Cavaliers first migrated to the American colonies. There was, the concept of condescension was very different from what it is in a modern America. Do you remember this part where he was basically talking about Yeah, no, it was a very positive</p><p><strong>Malcolm:</strong> thing.</p><p><strong>Malcolm:</strong> Yeah.</p><p><strong>Simone:</strong> So well, no condescension was essentially like no bless oblige. So when you condescended to someone you through your more informed or you're more powerful, more educated, more you know, whatever, from a position of power, you are showing kindness to someone who hierarchically powerfully, whatever was below you.</p><p><strong>Simone:</strong> So condescension was like a benevolent paternalism. And I feel like part of what has happened in, in American culture. Is that there's a lot of status anxiety or like around even acknowledgement of different sides. I think it's</p><p><strong>Malcolm:</strong> more than that. So I think something that the manosphere accurately points out is that as a [00:07:00] man, when you show emotional weakness or you defer to a woman in your life consistently for many women within our current cultural context, they will permanently look less upon you.</p><p><strong>Malcolm:</strong> They will, you know, like you've talked about this, some people will be like, Oh yeah, you know, open up to your wife, you know, have a cry, show how sad you are about something. And, and you've been like, actually, this can permanently damage your relationship with somebody, even if you don't want it to.</p><p><strong>Malcolm:</strong> Yeah.</p><p><strong>Simone:</strong> Yeah. Especially because if someone like, if they're, I mean, using our terminology, if they're lower in your relationship, the thing that they used to. Attract you and bring you in was, Oh, I'm very powerful. I'm very strong. And the thing of value that I provide to you is to feel like you're always surrounded by this invulnerable, super powerful person.</p><p><strong>Simone:</strong> Of course, it's going to break the entire selling point when that person suddenly becomes vulnerable and where you, the other partner, find yourself in a position where you feel like you need [00:08:00] to be the powerful one. Which is, you know, many people just don't want to do that. They want to surrender, you know?</p><p><strong>Simone:</strong> No,</p><p><strong>Malcolm:</strong> absolutely. Yeah. And so I think that they do recognize this aspect</p><p><strong>Simone:</strong> where, yeah, and there's something there, but there it's very, so there's a big difference between vulnerability and, and showing like. I don't know putting someone on a pedestal or like groveling at their feet and showing a polite deference to, to someone.</p><p><strong>Malcolm:</strong> Well, I'll, I'll, I'll divide this. Cause I think you're capturing something really true, but I called the way I treat you within our family pedestalization, which is to an extent, but it's a bit of a wrong word because I think when we think of pedestalization within the manosphere, what we're thinking of is the way that we Sometimes pedestalize a woman who we have a crush on or something like that.</p><p><strong>Malcolm:</strong> Right. And we begin to think too much of them or treat them with too much deference. You know, before relationships start, when I first started dating you, I treated you not this way as much. No.[00:09:00] But, you know, when I realized, and when it was very clear that our relationship was long term and I began to integrate with you identity wise, it became very important when I thought about the image I am portraying to my daughters around what a marriage means.</p><p><strong>Malcolm:</strong> And so, this sort of divides things into three broad categories, okay, of behavior patterns you can show, right? One is the behavior pattern where you as a guy. Are sublimating yourselves to a wife's desires because she is pushing these desires upon you. She is saying, I want this. I want that. I want you to change X, Y, Z about yourself.</p><p><strong>Malcolm:</strong> And you're like, Oh, okay. Okay. Yes. Whatever you want, you know? Right. And, and, and this is true. This is a submissive position, which can, if it is not what a woman wants, hurt her perception of you permanently, even if you were just trying to make her happy. Right. Then there's the secondary position, [00:10:00] which is to say, okay, I am going to constantly show my dominance to the women in my life, constantly build frame in which I am this hotshot and they are this weaker person than me.</p><p><strong>Malcolm:</strong> Right. And. One thing that I would always say, and, and this is, this is something I so want to like, I actually think Andrew Tate has some good points I, I don't hate everything he says, I think he has some interesting things but I think the, the one thing I would frame my biggest disagreement from him is weak women make weak sons, and it's true, and if you have a whole attraction strategy, if you have a whole life strategy for how you are treating your wife, That consistently disempowers her, you are making a weak mother and weak mothers genetically and socially will lead to weak daughters and weak sons, which permanently weakens your family line.</p><p><strong>Simone:</strong> Well, and [00:11:00] furthermore treating a mother, any mother figure or woman in a relationship like Trash isn't going to inspire daughters to be really excited to enter those</p><p><strong>Malcolm:</strong> relationships or have kids. People are like, Oh, my sons will be okay, but then your son's daughters will not be okay. So anyway, but then there's this other category.</p><p><strong>Malcolm:</strong> So I've, I've talked about this dichotomy of categories of, of, of male to female treatment. Yeah. Then there's this other category of treatment, which he used to be the gentleman. And it's funny in historic society like when, when, when these manners came up. It's almost like they didn't conceive that there might be a world in which women lorded over men.</p><p><strong>Malcolm:</strong> They were just like, how do you not lord over your wife too much? And so this, this whole new category of behavior is like a new thing that nobody really knew how to deal with. So it wasn't really considered when all these rules were created. But a lot of it means that you have to be there to protect your wife and your wife's emotional state to somewhat anticipatorily.[00:12:00]</p><p><strong>Malcolm:</strong> Right? So you went on a trip, right? And I know the things you care about. You just came back from a business trip making our family money. I love that. Right? I didn't have to go. And I, I know that you don't care about flowers or stuff like that, but you really care about how clean things are. So, I mean, a point of having the car detail when you got back and having the house look really pristine when you get back because early in our relationship, which you would leave the house would just Full to hell when she left, all the dishes would pile up, everything like that.</p><p><strong>Malcolm:</strong> And I saw it emotionally hurt her. Now she didn't then go to me and say, Hey, Malcolm, never do this again. Right. But she knew because of the, the priors I had set in our relationship that when I had obviously emotionally hurt her or put her in a bad emotional state that I had shown in the future, I don't like.</p><p><strong>Malcolm:</strong> hurting my wife. So in the future, I went out of my way to try to prevent those [00:13:00] states, right? And that showed how much I cared about her while also showing, I think, you know, if I had kids who were more cognizant in the house right now that dad's really thinking about how mom feels and he's trying to make her feel special, particularly when she puts yourself out from the family, but also just every day.</p><p><strong>Simone:</strong> Yeah. I think there's something else that has been lost that men are missing out on. And, and it's again, like it comes back to class. Like I was saying earlier a lot of the discomfort, I think, or a lot of where this got lost was this. this sort of loss of comfort with there being class differentiation, or frankly, in any differentiation, gender differentiation, anything like that.</p><p><strong>Simone:</strong> So like men opening doors for women people acknowledging that there are different social classes, like it just makes people super uncomfortable and we all pretend that it's not real, even though we all know that it's there and we all experience it every day. [00:14:00] And, and if, I think that's one reason why men are misunderstanding what it looks like to be dominant and then ending up just kind of acting like trailer trash when they try to be dominant, you know, it's just you know, they, they</p><p><strong>Malcolm:</strong> think, Oh my gosh, I love, no, it's true what you're saying, right?</p><p><strong>Malcolm:</strong> And, and, and this is because when an individual is resource scarce Oh God, this is going to sound so bad. No matter how I say it, do it. Okay. Let's let's see when individuals resource case when an individual is under a lot of emotional stress, their inhibitory pathways don't function the way they would normally function, you know, if you had like a, a full civilizational construct around an individual and they begin reacting in a way that is very.</p><p><strong>Malcolm:</strong> animalistic. It's, it's, it's their base impulses, right? And so when they are asserting dominance you know, it's what you think you're better than me. You think you're better than me? Well, what does the person saying when they're saying that they're really saying, do you think you're of a higher dominance position than [00:15:00] me and this local hierarchy that we've created?</p><p><strong>Malcolm:</strong> How dare you think you are dominant in, in comparison to me. And when they do that, Oh, you think about, you know, they're puffing themselves up like an animal trying to get in like a gorilla and another gorilla, like in a dominance fight. Right. And humans default to this, right. However, every cultural group has different, more refined ways to handle these dominant fights that don't involve two males making themselves look big and then like physically attacking each other. Because that's really costly. If you have to solve every dominance fight with like actual physical violence, their actual, you know, and this is what Simone means when she says she mentally is associating with this.</p><p><strong>Malcolm:</strong> This was with like lower socioeconomic groups because lower socioeconomic groups like anyone who's resource scarce is, is, are going to have the less luxury of the ability to suppress these things. And often their families have been in this situation for [00:16:00] multiple generations, so they might have lost even the cultural software for how do I handle a dominance fight with another male other than.</p><p><strong>Malcolm:</strong> Puffing myself up and then beating him up. Right?</p><p><strong>Simone:</strong> I think we've lost we've lost a lot of the ways that people historically demonstrated dominance in, this sounds terrible, sounds really classist, but in a, in a civilized fashion. So anyone who's read the original like Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie will recall that the constant fight between Peter Pan and Captain Hook was actually pretty interesting and Both of them were like pretty obsessed with good form, good form, they were always like, Oh, that was bad form.</p><p><strong>Simone:</strong> That was good form. And it wasn't, it wasn't about who won the fight. I mean, they, they both really cared about the fight, the art of the fight, and also like playing with good form. And I think that. There's something about traditional successful masculinity that involves good form, not just [00:17:00] like successful showing of dominance or violence or disregarding another party.</p><p><strong>Simone:</strong> It, it involves fighting right, fighting fair and fighting clean. So I,</p><p><strong>Malcolm:</strong> I forgot who said this.</p><p><strong>Malcolm:</strong> Anyway, well, we'll find whoever said it from our listeners. They'll be like, Oh, I know who said this quote. So the quote is something like a, a true gentleman is defined by an individual who knows how to open a quarrel and maintain one. And what that means is that actually part of, at least in the Victorian period, being part of this upper class society was about starting specific quarrels with individuals, but also all of the rules for how these quarrels worked, right?</p><p><strong>Malcolm:</strong> You could be one of these guff people who has seen a, what's an example of somebody who is like bad at quarrels. Andrew Jackson, right? He'd just shoot anyone. He'd be like, okay, go into a duel. Directly to a duel. You, you disagree with me. Duel time. And the man did not know how to fight. And that would have been seen within [00:18:00] the period.</p><p><strong>Malcolm:</strong> And it was seen within the political advertising. This is like a very low class way of handling these disagreements. Whereas within these And again, sorry, we're talking about class so much here, and I really need to be clear what I mean by this in a historic context. Every cultural group had its own complicated set of rules for disagreeing with another individual and conflicting with another individual.</p><p><strong>Malcolm:</strong> But those broke down and would become more and more the pre evolved set of rules. Which, you know, previously I referred to as animalistic, but it's really humanistic. It's really the way humans act if they lived on a desert island and were never exposed to any other cultural group. Yeah,</p><p><strong>Simone:</strong> like we're, we're, we're talking about the presence or evidence or trappings of culture, a.</p><p><strong>Simone:</strong> k. a. civilization. Like the, the presence of a set of values, of traditions, of, of basically pro social per that culture or religion. [00:19:00] Civilizational technologies or the absence of them. And the problem is what we're discussing is that there's, there's basically an absence of civilizational, cultural, religious, whatever you want to call it, technologies in male dominance, especially as demonstrated to women.</p><p><strong>Simone:</strong> Right. Well, yeah,</p><p><strong>Malcolm:</strong> but you, you can, I mean, there's other ways around this. So when I was in high school, you know, one of the things I always told you about the fights, I got in a lot of fights. Yes, always in detention and stuff like this. And I realized pretty early. There was a specific strategy I would use in my fight.</p><p><strong>Malcolm:</strong> So I would physically often lose the fights, individuals. I was not the strongest kid. I mean, I was, I was medium strong. Like I knew how to fight, but I couldn't ensure that I would always win a fight. However, what I could ensure, and I always went into fights with this strategy is always give my opponent a bloody nose or a black eye because after the fight.</p><p><strong>Malcolm:</strong> Even if they physically caused more damage, I'm in more pain. I have more long term damage to my body [00:20:00] because of that fight. They walk out and they go to a group and the public sees the two of us and they did damage to my torso or some other area. I have a few bruises that are easy to cover up, but they have a black eye for the rest of the week, or they're walking out of that fight was a bloody nose.</p><p><strong>Malcolm:</strong> People perceive the public perception is they lost the fight and what they misunderstood going into that fight is they thought the purpose of that fight even from an animalistic, you know, middle school, high school context. was to hurt me, the actual purpose of the fight was to determine our positions in the local hierarchy of our high school or middle school.</p><p><strong>Malcolm:</strong> Actually funny, but most people our listeners might be surprised that I always was really obsessed with protecting any group that I thought was, was disenfranchised, was, was in my current community context. So most of the fights I would get into were protecting gay people. Because I would, so this might seem really weird to Gen Z audience today.</p><p><strong>Malcolm:</strong> But [00:21:00] when I grew up, you know, me standing up to people who were using derogatory terms that I can't even say on YouTube now towards gay kids at my school to protect them was something that would cause them to fight me. I mean, let's talk about why it caused them to fight me, because this is actually really interesting as well.</p><p><strong>Malcolm:</strong> So when you're talking about, like, how human social hierarchies work When, when, when one group of people is like making fun of another individual, if I come and I stand up for that individual, I say, Hey, stop this. You guys, I have actually asserted myself even was in their dominance hierarchy as head like above the highest person was in their dominance hierarchy.</p><p><strong>Malcolm:</strong> Capitulate to that, if they walk away they have lost status. within their local dominance hierarchy and within the global dominance hierarchy of the school. So they're almost sort of like trapped. Like they, they can't avoid it. We'll do another episode on, on bullying because this people not understanding how like high school [00:22:00] dominance hierarchies works causes a lot of bullying.</p><p><strong>Malcolm:</strong> But they're trapped, you know, they actually have to fight me to, to show. That, that they haven't lost face, but if they then come out of that fight with physical damage and black eyes were the thing I always really aim for because those last for about a week and so, you know, they can then tell people, Oh, I beat up Malcolm, but they have a black eye and I look fine on the other side of the classroom.</p><p><strong>Malcolm:</strong> It, it, it doesn't sell. It doesn't sell. And, and this is where all of this comes down to is so much of the ways that we act and posture are about changing our dominance positions visa be other people was in our society, but we forget how those around us are judging that and how those was in our own family are judging that.</p><p><strong>Malcolm:</strong> And this is where, when we're talking about the way a man treats a woman in a long term relationship, why it's very important to like intentionally build a culture for your family. I don't think you ever feel that I am like putting myself in a [00:23:00] submissive position to you when I am going out of my way to make you feel good about yourself.</p><p><strong>Malcolm:</strong> Do you? Or like, how is it that I have prevented that framing?</p><p><strong>Simone:</strong> Yeah, I think, I think it, a lot of it depends on contextualization. So when condescending to a woman or when showing deference to a woman comes from a position of power then you're, you're asserting dominance essentially. So when, you know, think about all the scenarios of like traditional gentlemen you know, paying for a meal.</p><p><strong>Simone:</strong> Paying for a meal. That comes from a position of</p><p><strong>Malcolm:</strong> power. Well, but hold on, not always. If a, if a, if a, you know, there's two different ways you can end up paying for a meal. One is another person's like snidely, oh, like</p><p><strong>Simone:</strong> stiffing you or something.</p><p><strong>Malcolm:</strong> Right? Yeah. The other one is southern gentleman style, where everyone's fighting to pay for the meal.</p><p><strong>Malcolm:</strong> You know, happens whenever we're visiting my family. Because the person who pays for the meal has shown their higher social status than the other people in the community.</p><p><strong>Simone:</strong> Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah, so I would say... [00:24:00] Yeah opening doors the the, the very classic example that freaks me out of the man throwing down his coat so the woman doesn't, you know, step in the mud puddle.</p><p><strong>Simone:</strong> Well, a man who does that has to be in so much of a position of power. They can have people to clean his coat for him or several coats that he can change into, right? So, a lot of these gallant moves actually are... Dominance displays. It's just, I think people have forgotten the context of them.</p><p><strong>Simone:</strong> Whereas when instead it comes from a position of weakness Oh, I'm afraid because my female partner is unhappy. I need to go make her happy, or I'm afraid because my female partner is going to get angry at me if I don't appease her. Then it, you know, comes from the completely wrong position and it shows a lot of submission on the male part.</p><p><strong>Simone:</strong> So I think a lot of it is it's proactive. Like you were saying earlier, one of the things that you do is anticipate my needs. So I'm not asking you to do something. You are anticipating my needs and acting ahead of me acting as though I need something or showing that I need something. So if it's [00:25:00] anticipatory and if it's a, if it's a display of having, Either more emotional control, more resources, more strength, all those sorts of things, you know, like lifting up suitcases for me.</p><p><strong>Simone:</strong> And when you always put, you know, my suitcase in the overhead bin, you always handle our luggage like that is, that is a, that's a dominance display. So I think that's the key differentiating.</p><p><strong>Malcolm:</strong> How you're culturally relating to it. That makes it one. And I actually think that this is an important thing within relationships, right?</p><p><strong>Malcolm:</strong> When you are dating a woman as a guy today, I would say. You get a chance to see how she reacts to gentlemanliness, I guess I would call it. If she perceives it as a weakness, right, and I think you can tell pretty quickly, does she think that she's one... Scored a point on you by you being gentlemanly to her.</p><p><strong>Malcolm:</strong> There's really nothing you can do. There is no way that that relationship ends happily unless you just go like full Tate and you basically [00:26:00] dominate her and treat her like a house slave. Right. But if she has the acculturation and the upbringing, which many women. So the great thing is you might be like women these days.</p><p><strong>Malcolm:</strong> No women these days, especially if we're talking Gen Z from the families that are actually having kids. A lot of them have the class regardless of their economic status to see that politeness and gentlemanliness is a kindness to them because it's many of these more traditional families that are having these large families and women in these families are raised.</p><p><strong>Malcolm:</strong> To recognize these things, if you are dating women who don't recognize that when you are, you know, opening the door for them, that it is not because you are beneath them. Right? If a woman thinks that, then she's trash,</p><p><strong>Simone:</strong> right? No, you know, I think it's two things here. One is I feel like the key differentiating factor between submissive male action that's deferential towards women and dominant male action that's deferential towards women is, is whether it's [00:27:00] proactive or reactive.</p><p><strong>Simone:</strong> Proactive is a dominant system. Reactivists as a mission display. Second, I feel like proactive male dominance displays and deference of women are s**t tests from men. So if you as a man take a proactive dominance display, you pay for the meal, you open the door, and the, your date, your female date, like sniffs at that or doesn't appreciate it and that's key then you know she's not a good match like she needs to be shown right away that it's super not cool that she did that and if she doesn't change then she's not a good match but it's one of those things where you point out in Pregnancy guide to relationships, how, if you don't immediately draw lines with partners and explain this reaction is totally not cool.</p><p><strong>Simone:</strong> You know, if we keep doing this, like we are not a, we then, you know, nothing's going to happen. But what do you think about that as, as a</p><p><strong>Malcolm:</strong> really good point. And it comes, you know, when you talk about paying for meals, I think that's almost the core of it, right? Whenever I would date women. [00:28:00] On the first date, I would usually, unless I took them to an unusually expensive restaurant like I did with you on the first date I would usually go 50 50, right?</p><p><strong>Malcolm:</strong> But even when I take them to an expensive restaurant, like when I took you to an expensive restaurant and I would pay for it, if you hadn't thought to pay for it, I would have treated that as a extreme red flag. And you didn't, but you're like, no, no, no, you know, we have to do this. And I'm like, no, no, no.</p><p><strong>Malcolm:</strong> I took you to a more expensive restaurant than you would have gone to, you know, I bought you drinks. You've never really drunk before, you know, so we're, we're, I'm the first restaurant I took her to. She goes, Oh, I don't drink and I don't eat meat. And I was like, well, you know what I say, like that's not happening.</p><p><strong>Malcolm:</strong> If you're dating me. And so she goes, okay, I guess I'm getting me and drinking. But you know, I, I put her in that position, but she still fought back against me paying for it. So I knew that she had a level of gratitude for me doing that. And I think that this is an area where we begin to see a corruption of the gentleman values that can happen after a few generations of a culture, and we need to really work to make sure it never happens, especially with our [00:29:00] daughters, is just because they know a man is can show their dominance through paying for something they should never expect them</p><p><strong>Simone:</strong> to.</p><p><strong>Simone:</strong> Yeah. And also never exploited. I mean, at least in media, I don't know if this happens in practice. It's, it's implied that a lot of women are like, Oh, it's a free meal. Like I'll go on this date. Cause it's a free dinner and I don't feel like paying for dinner, but I want to go out. And that's, that is really screwed</p><p><strong>Malcolm:</strong> up.</p><p><strong>Malcolm:</strong> Or they see it as an exchange. Like I go out, he does this, I get this instead of he is showing his. His upbringing through how he's treating me and his level of respect for me. And I do think the other thing that you said there is the anticipatory aspect of being a gentleman. When you're in a really like long term relationship with somebody you're one of the core things that you're supposed to do as a partner.</p><p><strong>Malcolm:</strong> And you do this for me all the time as well. If you try to understand them the best you can, so you know the things that are necessary, the things that are harder for them than for you [00:30:00] and, and the things you could do to make them feel special and that you aren't doing those things just on days where you're trying to make them special.</p><p><strong>Malcolm:</strong> But that is a natural part of every interaction you have with them. And I think that that is, is the key, but that they never lose their gratitude for that. And as I've said over and over again, when you're choosing who you marry, the single most important thing is not how hot they are. It's not how smart they are.</p><p><strong>Malcolm:</strong> I think the second to the most important thing is work ethic. Work ethic is very important, but it's how much gratitude they are capable of showing. Because some people in our society have just been trained out of showing gratitude. You know, if you were to embody you know, we were talking about Andrew Tate earlier, like a full Tate mindset, I genuinely don't know if he's capable of feeling gratitude for the things the women in his life do for him.</p><p><strong>Malcolm:</strong> And that would lead to a really Like not [00:31:00] great long term relationship. Like I think he's smart about a lot of things. I just, you know, and it may just be framing. It may just be the way he's showing himself to the public. That's like biteable, like hookable for young guys. But the ability of both yourself and a partner to show and genuinely feel gratitude when the other person anticipates their needs and goes out of the way to address them.</p><p><strong>Malcolm:</strong> I think that's just so, so, so key. And, and no matter how perfect a partner is for you. If they are unable to feel gratitude when you go out of your way to be nice, so they can be the hottest, smartest, richest person in the world. If they don't feel gratitude when you. Go out of your way for them. The relationship won't last.</p><p><strong>Malcolm:</strong> It will devolve. It might be five years. It might be 10 years, but a breakup of a relationship, especially the longer the relationship is, the more you suffer, you know, either because they get some of your kids who, who then get raised in an environment where they're like poisoned against you or All of the [00:32:00] other</p><p><strong>Simone:</strong> terrible aspects.</p><p><strong>Simone:</strong> Well, this has been fun to talk about. I think what we're going to focus in on more with our kids and teaching them like inter, inter gender relations is. A heavy emphasis on good form, proactive, anticipatory, kind action on both parts. It doesn't matter what gender you are, what role you're playing, whatever.</p><p><strong>Simone:</strong> And then looking for gratitude from that partner when you show that action. And if you don't see it either show that that's super not okay. And see if they change or just drop them.</p><p><strong>Malcolm:</strong> Yeah. I love you, Simone. And I hope that our daughters. Can see that and that they grow up believing and that our sons grow up understanding how, how a woman should be treated within our cultural group so that their own daughters are really excited to become wives and mothers.</p><p><strong>Simone:</strong> I think there's no way they're not going to see it. I love you so much, Malcolm. You're the best.</p> <br /><br />This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit <a href="https://basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&#38;utm_campaign=CTA_2">basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe</a>