The Five Male Archetypes…

And why they are all wrong.

I wrote a piece on this blog about what constitutes a “real alpha male”, so I won’t go into detail about those specifics here. You can read about that at the link below:

https://therationalram.blog/2019/08/25/traits-of-a-real-alpha-male/

To summarize my real alpha male post ever so pithily, an alpha male is a man who strives to be a man of value rather than a man of success or bravado.

That said, the description of an alpha male in the graphic that opens this post is a caricature, an archetype as is seen (to be perfectly frank) in the eyes of women and of men who are more in touch with their feminine side than they realize.

The definition of an alpha male typically proffered in the online forums that make up the Manosphere is a false one because the ability to bed women is not what makes a man alpha.

If being confident and aloof was all it took for a man to be alpha, then a lot of men would be alpha since confidence is very easy to fake and very hard to gain in actuality.

Confidence comes with experience, both from success and (most importantly) from failure. We learn more from our failures than from our successes.

The so-called sigma male archetype is a contradiction of two different personality traits. A “lone wolf” is by definition an extreme introvert who prefers solitude over forging interpersonal relationships. To suggest that such a man is also successful with women is incongruent to the point of absurdity.

Of course, like all of these terms from the so-called Manosphere (feel free to look up the term “Manosphere” if you lack context here), the sigma male archetype is a lonely, loser male internet fantasy that does not reflect reality. I’m willing to pay real money to find a lone wolf who is not only good with the ladies, but is also someone whom the ladies find attractive enough and appealing enough to want to date.

Sorry, but the Unibomber is more representative of a lone wolf than is someone like a Grizzly Adams (RIP Dan Haggerty).

The beta male archetype is probably the most realistic of these Manosphere characterizations, if for no other reason than all men are “beta” in some aspects of their lives and more “alpha” in other aspects.

For example…

The meek, bespectacled nerd who is an accountant by day, but a popular club DJ by night.

The big, buff, athletic bodybuilder who loves to cook, prefers chihuahuas over Rottweilers, and doesn’t mind playing tea party with his little daughter.

A man who is man enough to show his more sensitive side without regard for what others think is more alpha than these fake Manosphere types will ever admit. Men are far more complex than the dichotomous archetypes of “alpha” and “beta”.

I am lumping the gamma and omega male archetypes together because the strict descriptions of the two aren’t all that divergent from one another.

Both archetypes describe men who are suffering from aggrieved entitlement and both archetypes describe men who are feckless and feel inadequate as men, yet do not know what to do about it.

The omega male archetype is more likely to become a mass shooter in reaction to his lack of efficacy in finding a date or a mate.

I wrote about aggrieved entitlement on this blog as well, so I won’t elaborate further except to say that giving one’s pain a name does nothing to alleviate the pain.

The point I close this post with is that none of these archetypes describe any one particular man, so they are hardly accurate descriptors of distinct groups of men.

All men have and display characteristics of all of these archetypes at some point in their lives. If it were that easy to categorize men the way the Manosphere does, then life would be far less interesting and mysterious.

-The Rational Ram