I'm inclined to defend Broicism. I had never known of the term until a couple of hours ago when the algorithm decided to toss a Massimo Pigliucci video condemning it my way. The gist of his criticism is that real Stoicism encourages us to flourish by accepting and fulfilling our public role whereas Broicism encourages us to lock ourselves off from others by not having emotions. The two names everyone seems to toss out as examples of Broicism are Tim Ferriss and Ryan Long. I've vaguely heard of Long but Ferriss is a new name to me.
Now, let me admit that any time I see something Bros or guys or young men have picked up on being attacked, I get suspicious. There is a tendency to invalidate male desires in our culture and I don't trust it. Yes, men can play a valuable role in making society work and there are good reasons to encourage them to do so. But men don't exist to serve society any more than women do.
I had a conversation with a relative over Christmas. She felt, and wanted to tell me, that women weren't obliged to be sexual. What she was pulling against was the notion that a woman should bring her sexuality to the tablee. I agreed. And then asked who were the bad people forcing this on women. You will not be surprised to learn it was men. We give our attention to women who successfully present themselves as sexual. And that's true enough. These women are not offering sex. They are just playing up their sexuality.
And there are benefits that go with this attention. For starters, many people find it feels good to get attention. And it greases the wheels of social life. Men want to talk to and will provide more encouragement to women who do this. They get opportunity and assistance that other women do not.
But my question for this relative was, if women have the right (and they absolutely do) to present themselves as they want, don't men have the right to direct their attention as we want? I don't owe anyone my attention and I don't owe anyone an explanation of why I give it to some and not others. There are some legal and professional limits of course.
If you think this through: you will see that there are advantages for the woman who self-presents as a sexual being. And there are trade offs. Some decide the trade offs are worth the gains and others do not. My experience is that the women who embrace sexual self-presentation are more likely to flourish than the ones who don't but no has to listen to me. Each individual woman can decide for herself. Men should have the same freedom. Yes, there are advantages to being a socially generous man instead of an isolated one. There are also trade offs. And there are times when even those who have committed to their social roles might want to withdraw from for a while. The when and how is up to them and not to some nagging scold who wants to tell others who and what they are supposed to be.
And that's the thing that bothers me about criticism of Broicism. Yes, I think that men ultimately will flourish more in society than through isolation. But being a lot less emotional is not isolation. There are a lot of self-management skills that you can only learn by stepping back and away sometimes. Men do no harm to themselves or anyone else by doing this. Yes, it makes sense to return to society but do so on terms that will benefit you as well as others. And do yourself the favour of figuring it out for yourself. Ignore people who try to scare you off of something by giving it a stigmatizing label.
