In Defense of Beating Bad Men

The lost art of ass-kicking

I despise Worst Boyfriend Ever. The first time Substack’s algorithm recommended an article of his to me, I legitimately thought I was reading fiction. It could still turn out to be fiction. I sincerely hope it is, for everyone’s sake. I read Deep Left Analysis’ write-up on hanging out with this dude recently and did not come away from an improved impression. Then the algorithm recommended WBE’s latest post, I gave it a try, and realized something important: he needs to have his ass kicked.

You can find arguments for bringing back bullying and articles lamenting the decline of masculinity on Substack, but I have yet to read something that connects healthy masculinity and violence. There is such a thing as good violence. Violence to defend, of course, is the easiest one to think of. Self-defense is justified in everyone’s eyes. Even preventative attacks — making the first violent move before the “bad guy” does — is often justified. But there is another form of violence, one that exclusively men used to be responsible for, one they no longer perform, a type of social responsibility that is no longer fulfilled, and that is beating up the bad men in society.

Imagine the countless generations of human beings living in rural agrarian societies between the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions. A family from one village marries off their daughter to a young man in a neighboring village. They love their girl, they have watched her grow into a beautiful, kind, funny young woman. They want the best for her, and they deliver a generous dowry when she marries. They hear a rumor a year later that her new husband unjustifiably beats her, according to the standards of that place and time. There was a cultural expectation throughout history that the men in that family, her father and brothers, act. Their sister’s honor, their daughter’s honor, and by extension their honor, has been violated. Someone hurt their little girl. They must act and seek recompense, and if the other party is unwilling to pay whatever price that society has deemed is appropriate for such an offense, they must extract it by force.

Modernity has lost such a mechanism. There is no longer a feedback loop that connects action and reaction. Dating apps have allowed people to lead someone on in order to extract sex and then ghost them with no consequence. In the past, two people dating would’ve met through a circle of friends or family, a whole group of people who would have judged and criticized the person who tried to pull such a stunt. There was a feedback mechanism in place that hung a sword over everyone’s necks, forcing them to act in a socially acceptable manner. Then that feedback was lost, and anyone with low enough personal moral standards suddenly became free to act as they wished with no consequences. The same thing has happened with the disappearance of the threat of violent, painful consequences for mistreating women; there is no longer a sword hanging overhead to constantly remind men that they are expected to act appropriately towards women. Or else.

WBE wants to be beaten. You can tell he knows he deserves it. He admits that he understands what he’s doing is wrong. He wants to be punished, but he never is. He keeps getting away with it, and he’s incredulous at how easy it is for him to get away with it. Where are the consequences for cheating? Why is he left to torture himself for how poorly he acts? Where is the brother of the woman he has hurt? Why is there no father showing up at his apartment to remind him that men of another kind exist? WBE’s entitled narcissism has a very easy solution. The therapy he needs is not of the type where he sits down and talks through his childhood trauma, but of the type where he is sat down and is reminded that shitty actions have painful consequences.

The problem is that WBE is a sociopath, and the consequences that remain today for treating women poorly are those imposed by women themselves; shame and social ostracization. If the man does not feel ashamed, if he does not internalize the social consequences of his choices, then there is in fact no consequence at all. He gets away with it. Normal, socialized men can be influenced through these mechanisms. A good person will feel bad when the people around him judge him for cheating or lying or any other formally legal but highly immoral action. There are other men, however, who experience no such qualms. That is where other, better men must step in. At some level, every man understands that the threat of physical retribution is in fact the only thing that any of us pay attention to. We are cognizant of it at some subconscious level at all times.

This is something women often don’t fully understand, but something men know as boys and as fathers to boys. It is true that men control themselves because they were raised right and because of the law. We do have internal ethical instincts that determine our actions. It is also true that we control ourselves because of the implied consequences of stepping out of line. Why don’t we drunkenly talk shit to strangers at a bar? After all, if they choose to hit us, they would be the ones going to jail. We hold our tongue because we know that the punches and kicks that we would experience for talking shit would come more swiftly than the police. More importantly, we instinctually understand that the sting of wounded male pride would hurt much more than the bruises on our body. Though the bruises are important too.

I do not think we should be living in the Wild West, where everyone carries a revolver and shoots the moment they feel like someone looked at them the wrong way. Instead, I would like us to remember that chivalry was a concept that originated with knights, and that knights were anything but peaceful. I am also not proposing silly duels for hurt feelings or violated honor, but beatings. Unfair, one-sided beatings. It is the threat of these beatings that is more important than the beating itself. The point is not to perform violence, but to create an invisible barrier that restrains men’s actions due to implication. The stepfather does not beat the mother because he knows that her son will grow up to be bigger and stronger than he is one day.

In retrospect, the Me Too movement ended up having a lopsided impact. Good men who never had nor ever would harass, assault, or rape a woman internalized the message of the moment and retreated from interacting with women, even though they were not the intended audience. Bad men, the target audience, could not have cared less and never adjusted their behavior. It is these bad men who require additional repercussions other than harsh words and mean stares. Shaming and cancelling only works if you accept their negative consequences. Social ostracization only works if you are socialized.

Who else will control out-of-control men in our society if not other men? If it is men who go off to defend the motherland during invasion, why would it not be the same men — good men: fathers, husbands, brothers — who should be expected to police the motherland during peacetime? How else would we achieve tribe cohesion if we don’t have the threat of a belt hitting a rear end, reminding the boys why they can’t act out of line? By having made all forms of violence anathema by modern society’s standards, we have disbalanced the two-sided methods of social control. Women in historical societies had a lot of influence and a lot of ways to impact people around them, and that has remained true. Men, however, have been stripped of their primary method of influence.

The need to sometimes hit or threaten to hit someone for good reason has been forgotten in modern times. We now have two extremes when it comes to violence; no violence at all and evil violence. There is a missing middle ground of good, healthy violence. The kind that keeps the show running, the lights on, society functioning. We scoff at the dad who shows up to the front door with shotgun to scare the boy taking his daughter out on a date because we have forgotten that the reason that trope existed in the first place is because the dad knows exactly what men can be capable of, and wants to ensure that this boy, a boy he doesn’t know and cannot immediately trust, is reminded of what could happen to him if he made the wrong choice.

We cannot write this into law. Just as with adultery and lying, this must exist in a gray space. The vagueness of exactly when you might face consequences for overstepping boundaries is a part of the proposed solution. It is good when men have to think twice about doing something that is technically legal, something they cannot be formally punished for, but something that you could catch a punch to the mouth for. We allow this gray space for other wrongs and regulate exactly what actions deserve what consequences through discussion and debate. So I am opening the floor to discuss this topic: bad men should be beaten.