John Scalzi proves he doesn’t care what people think about him by writing yet another post explaining his opinion
concerning what people think about his position on the socio-sexual
hierarchy and why he is not insulted by being identified as a “beta
male”:
I think they are less
concerned about insulting me than they are reassuring themselves that
there is no possible way they could ever be beta males, whatever their
definition of ‘beta male’ is. By all indications their definition is
something along the lines of “a man who sees women as something other
than a mute dispensary of sandwiches and boobies” and/or “a man who does
not live in fear of everyone else not continually affirming his
internal assessment of personal status,” gussied up in language that
allows them not to have to deal with these essential facts of their own
nature. But inasmuch as insulting me is part of the mechanism of
reassuring themselves, I am offered the insult.I’m not insulted because, a) I consider the source, b) I don’t mind
being seen as someone who does not view women through a tangled bramble
of fear, ignorance and desire, c) when I step into a room, I don’t
neurotically spend my time tallying up who in the room has higher status
than I do, and who doesn’t. I am a grown-up, for God’s sake. Paranoid
status anxiety is tiring.
One has to wonder how John knows that paranoid status anxiety is so exhausting considering that he cares so little about what others think of him. In any event, I take a more in-depth look at what his response tells us about his socio-sexual status at Alpha Game.