We Need to Stop Shaming Our Fellow Men - Stop Calling Them "Simps" and "Incels"

Okay, if you're a frequent listener of the Dad Starting Over podcast and you find yourself saying, "Yeah, that sounds like me," well, you don't need another podcast episode. What you need is support. The Help for Men Brotherhood is where men go when they're done pretending that they got it all handled. You know, your dead bedrooms, your divorce, your loneliness, your rebuilding life. We have private forums, frequent live Zoom meetings, one-on-one coaching courses, all my books at no additional charge. And yes, we get together in person, real men and real conversations. So stop doing this alone and join the Help for Men Brotherhood today at help4men.com/join. I look forward to seeing you in the next member meeting. Let's make a little vow. Is that vow— is that the right term? A promise to ourselves? As dudes. In case you don't— haven't noticed, us men today are not the most popular human beings on the planet, are we? In fact, it could be argued— I don't like to get political, detest politics— but this latest American political thing at the election that just happened, very, very interesting. In fact, I was interviewed by several mainstream news outlets prior to the election to talk about men, to Divorced Men in Particular and the Election. I was interviewed by Forbes, who did a close to 30-minute interview. You can find it on the Forbes YouTube channel. I did a quick talking head thing on News Nation, which I hate to admit I'd never heard of. Apparently it's like CNN, Fox News, all these guys' news. It's got a lot of big names. Geraldo's on there, so it's gotta be big, right? And Chris Cuomo, Geraldo, it's basically all the people that used to be on CNN and Fox and got fired for whatever reason, came to NewsNation anyway. So I did a little talking head thing on there as well as an interview with New York Magazine. So what's interesting is we talked about kind of the ostracization— ostracization, you know what I mean? Ostracization sounds like I'm missing a syllable there. Ostracization of men, uh, in particular divorced men, feel like we're kind of cast aside, like your feelings don't really matter, divorced dude, like shut the F up. And then we notice our spouses getting a lot of you go girls and a lot of attention and a lot of sympathy and empathy from others. And we're like, what the hell? So we feel cast aside and doesn't make us feel too good. And that is kind of analogous to society in general. There's kind of a very progressive, let's say it kind of a leftist kind of, I like to call myself kind of a centrist, but I can see both sides are equally nuts. On the lefty side, more progressive side, we saw a lot of people that were kind of anti-masculinity and pro-femininity and pushing a lot of agendas and things that were kind of made men feel like we were less than, that we're all monsters and we're all evil. We need to have our, you know, certain tendencies be tamped down. That's a proper term, and you know what I'm saying. So that may have helped contribute to a lot of people saying this group over here makes me feel more welcome. So I'm going to that group, in part, right? Anyway, um, so I think it's important that we dudes stick together and we help each other out. What I don't like to see— and in our personal group, the Brotherhood, learnmorehelpformen.com, the HFM Brotherhood, private community for men only— um, one thing that I, if I see it within our group, I will say, I'll squash it immediately and say, we're not doing that shit. And that is people will post like video clips or links or stories to stories of men doing things that make us go, oh dude, no. For instance, you know, there'll be some story of some poor dude who's has all these signs in the universe pointing to your spouse is cheating on you, dude. Or even worse, the kids are probably not yours. You know, some always awful stories that it doesn't take long if you subscribe to my stuff. I'm sure some of these stories from other content creators have come up on your, on your, on your feed, your algorithm there. Um, they're, you know, it sells pain and these horrible stories. They sell and they get a lot of eyeballs on them. And so, uh, you're bombarded with this stuff and men get downright angry at these dudes. And a term they will throw out often is simp. What a simp. In other words, kind of a pushover, Mr. Nice Guy. Wuss. That's what we used to call when I was a kid, a wussy guy, or the other word. And, um, it's not nice and it's not constructive. Doesn't get anything done. We need to be a little bit more empathetic to our fellow brothers out there. Um, not everybody is on the same timeline in life. We have some poor guys out there who are 30, 40 years of age later who by virtue of the fact that they don't have hardly any relationship experience. A lot of these guys are like, you know, I met this gal when I was 16, got married shortly thereafter, been with each other ever since. And then they'll rattle off all these stories about the relationship, and you're just like, oh yeah, that's not good, dude. And frankly, he didn't know any better. Um, he had no relationship experience. Compounded with that, a lot of these guys come from not very good backgrounds. Mom and Dad were pretty shitty parents, and their extended family was a lot of shitty people. And to them, shitty relationships is kind of normal. And he's continuing the tradition, the generational tradition there of shittiness, and it bites him in the ass. And what it doesn't help is for him to go on the internet, for example, and share a story and everybody saying, haha, what a simp. Sucks, guys. We need to cut that shit out. It's not nice. What men in that position need is the proverbial arm around their shoulder saying, It's all right, dude. We all make mistakes. We live and learn. Going forward, you're not going to do this and this again. In fact, here's a community of other men, like-minded men, who have been through what you've been through, worked on themselves, and come out better on the other side. Hence our group, the HFM Brotherhood. Learn more at helpformen.com. That was smooth. But, um, that's why I created the group, basically. We have so many men, you know, we got guys that are stuck in dead bedroom relationships, we got guys that have been down the path of divorce and come out the other side smelling pretty good. Guys that are still in the process of divorce, considering divorce. Guys that have never been married. Um, you know, all these different walks of life. And what we've learned is that we all have so much in common, so much dysfunction in our past, and we're all just trying to figure shit out, and we're all trying to do better, and we're all trying to learn from our mistakes. The last thing we need is some dipshit from middle of nowhere Nebraska telling us that we're a simp. Because we did something wrong or were ignorant of something out there. It's just part of the human condition. We all learn as we go, right? So you're a simp, cut that shit out. Um, what are some of the other language? Another term, um, this is a very loaded term, incel, involuntary celibate, for those that don't know. So it's a short term for involuntary celibate. Incel. It's basically the name given to— I think it was a self— the group named themselves this. It's kind of a loosely organized— not even organized at all. It's just a bunch of dudes that got together on the internet and say, I have zero luck with women. I am involuntarily celibate, meaning I would love to get some, but it ain't happening. And then this guy says, yeah, me too. And this guy says, yeah, me too. And then thousands, if not millions, of them get together and say, yeah, me Me too. This sucks. And they are ostracized by society. Society loves to pick on the old incel. Society loves to call them a bunch of creeps, weirdos, whatever. And sometimes, let's be honest, they live up to the reputation because that world can go, take a bad turn real fast. You take a dude who has very limited social experience, maybe social anxiety, maybe even on the spectrum, neurodivergent autism spectrum, is relatively common in that world. They just have a difficult time forming relationships with others. They haven't got the help. And therefore, you know, cascading series of events leads them to not have good luck with romantic relationships either. Stands to reason. And instead of society saying, "Haha, you suck," what they need is, again, the proverbial arm around the shoulder. "It's okay, dude. It's not the end of the world. This is a fixable thing." Work on your social skills, work on your, your social anxiety, find like-minded people to hang around with, other women for example, and then maybe these things will organically happen. In addition, we also have things such as for these guys, some of these guys are in pretty bad shape where forming a relationship, romantic relationship and everything, may be kind of out of their grasp. In a traditional organic fashion. So then we have certain things like sex workers. That's a whole other ball of wax. There's some people that say, no dude, that's bad. Those women are victims and so forth. Yes, some are for sure. And some are completely voluntary in that world and enjoy their work. That's what they do. I know some women who work in that field and they would say, no, I'm not a victim. I know what I'm doing. I'm a grown adult. And they provide a service and they help these men. It's the world's oldest profession for a reason. So I'm not going to shame men for going down that road either. It's a lot of shaming in the world of men, sexuality, relationships, lack thereof. And it's bad enough that it comes from the opposite sex pointing and saying, haha, you bunch of losers. We— they really don't need it from here, from their own team, so to speak. So to you guys, let's make a commitment. Let's cut that shit out. And if you catch other guys doing that, just say, "It's not nice, dude." If it makes you feel better to knock a dude down while he's down, or kick a dude while he's down rather, maybe that says a lot about you. Maybe it's something you need to work on. We can do better. So what do you say?