New Manosphere Term – Lapdogging
The guys over at 3rd Millenium Men (link below) posted something about the whole Alpa/Beta thing. In that post, they linked to another blog, insideawomansmind (link below). That blogger created a new verb that is extremely germane to the Manosphere – “lapdogging”.
Lapdogging is a series of behaviors used by men who supplicate themselves to women in an obsequious manner. It’s not white-knighting, it’s far, far worse. As the blog’s author writes:
I tried to explain myself – with a shot or two in my bloodstream – that it is most -surely- possible to be too nice. It has nothing to do with women wanting male chauvinists or hardcore criminals. But there’s a -major- difference between;
‘Is there anything I can get you?’
and
‘Is there anything I can get you? No? Are you sure? Coffee? A sweater for your shoulders? … No? But … Something to drink? No? … Alright.’
There is -nothing- worse in this world than a man lapdogging on you. And the latter is absolutely lapdogging, much too nice, and makes my respect for the man drop to below zero.
So, there it is, “lapdogging”. It goes right along with uxorious (link below). As an aside, I tend to avoid the alpha and beta monikers because it smacks of old-school pickup artistry (PUA) and not the more sophisticated approach to a man’s lifestyle improvements.
The Private Man 
Reblogged this at me and my friend’s new ‘sphere blog Musings of Random Plebeians (http://musingsofrandomplebeian.blogspot.kr/2012/11/manosphere-lapdogging.html) and added:
“The Private Man’s recently posted about a new Manosphere term called Lapdogging, something all self-respecting men must avoid. This goes beyond merely playing the Nice Guy and makes a man look like an obsequious butler, though I suspect butlers and maids carry themselves with more dignity than this.”
I’m not sure how useful this term is.
If any man is engaging or has engaged in such behavior, he is beyond saving.
I don’t know. I have seen a regular lapdogging man get fed up and turn around to treat another woman with inattention and even disdain. He was able to really see the opposing reactions of the women and was astounded. The difficulty lies in being able to treat a woman that he cares for in a manner where his opinion is more important to him than hers.
Vicomte, it wasn’t used in terms of trying to turn it around and teaching him to be more alpha, it was used to describe the male equivalent to a panting dog, tail wagging, just eager to please. It -is- not salvageable, and there’s no point in trying.
My point being that we Men Educated In All Matters Fine and Delicate (And Proselytes Of Such) have no use for the term.
I understand it’s deno- and connotation perfectly, however. Not using it a sort of linguistic eugenics.
Propaganda, if you will.
Thanks for the shout out. Great find hey, incredibly insightful writing.
Vicomte
Not that he is 100% beyond saving. But such a behavior sure is so disgusting that you lose all the motivation to help him. Even middle age saints who used to hang out with lepers would probably be repulsed by that.
However these supplicating people are the actual social lepers of modern day. Nobody even wants them to pull themselves out of their misery, but if someone does descend to them to try to preach the new evangelion of red pill thought, most likely recieved by hostile denial, then he is in fact the modern day saint.
Lapdog Colony.
Maybe in Liberia or Siberia or some other -eria.
The interesting thing here isn’t just the term, but her reaction — the absolute contempt she feels when a man does this. This is the strategy most men employ when a relationship seems to be failing and they’re trying to make the woman happy. He’s just trying to be nice! And she’s telling us that it doesn’t just lower her attraction; it kills it stone dead. She says there’s nothing worse, and I believe her — she’d rather a guy punch her in the face and steal her purse than be a lapdog.
That’s hard for a guy to really absorb, because we like it when women are nice to us. But it’s critical to understand how much women hate too much or too consistent niceness. It really, really, really doesn’t work.
I have a friend that is exactly like that and just the other day I was thinking of how my respect for him drops completely when he turns into a girl’s slave, it’s really disgusting and makes you ask if the man doing it has any sense of self respect.
That said, I think the author’s hamster is just rationalizing (maybe even coming close to the truth) the reason she divorced and, in the end, shifting the blame the man because she cannot keep a commitment herself. It might be true that the man’s behavior was nauseating but this does not excuse her own bitchiness and behavior.
I -do- have hamster in me, I actually have thought about writing a blog entry called ‘A hamster in disguise’ or something alike, but no, not being able to commit wasn’t the issue. We were together 9 years, and there was never any infidelity involved.
I -did- get unreasonably bitchy, though, which I’ll flat out admit. I pushed and pushed to make him step up, when he never had it in him. I got a bit like a child seeking boundaries, and I should have stopped it soon than I did. But it’s more in hindsight I see this so clearly, I didn’t back then, and also why I ended up starting my blog, due to the millions of thoughts on beta men (which I didnt even know at the time, they were classified as).
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From the 3MM article: He still flicks my bitch switch so hard, and brings out the worst in me.
Being lapdogged is . . . . I am struggling for words here trying to describe it. It really does trigger something visceral and this woman described it well as her bitch switch. It is incredibly difficult to control the *bitch* while this is going on. I find myself usually leaving to take a short break when I am around a man like this otherwise I know I will snap at him without really meaning to. It is this visceral reaction to men being “too nice” that is so telling that women want to be lead. They may not like the vocabulary of “lead” but it doesn’t change how they react to it.
@ Stingray,
I see what you mean…
And this is quite a common phenomenon in the dating world.
And I assumed this was what TPM was referring to, i.e. trying to secure an *attraction* from a woman, and yes, ‘lapdogging’ is clearly NOT the way to go. Agreed.
But then I read the article and found out that the woman was talking about her HUSBAND. Presumably someone she has already been attracted to, once before…
And now it doesn’t seem so right to me anymore, somehow.
Bitter taste in mouth.
Sure, that visceral reaction is severe and deserves special mention.
But surely one’s vows can and should override this?
Is this visceral reaction really that bad that it is impossible to overcome even with one’s own husband?
I can understand that he must have irritated her with his ‘lapdogging’.
In the dating/SMP, a man would be ‘friendzoned’ for this sort of thing – immediately.
Unfair… but that’s reality.
But should a MARRIED man be similarly punished? He has earned a few ‘special rights’ no? He deserves to be granted ‘immunity’ to the ‘visceral reaction’ I would hope. This should be one of the things marriage buys a man…
ST,
I can get more specific now as we’re headed out the door, but in short, I whole heartedly agree. You don’t divorce over this, you work to fix it. Vows are forever (barring REAL abuse).
Trust me when I say, I did try to fix it. I didn’t leave out of the blue, I spent the last couple of years, trying to make him see that my respect in him as a man (not as a human being, but as MY man), was faltering. I said it in those words, I didnt muck about, giving subtle hints. After we had kids, is when his pleasing side really manifested itself. He couldn’t tell the boys a simple ‘No’. If they’d start crying, he’d give them the icecream they wanted, and were just making as fuss about not getting, cause he couldnt deal with them crying.
I started out talking to him about it gently, and it didn’t register. I got more direct, told him litterally, that if he didnt step up – we’d end up divorced, that I needed him to be a Man. I tried several times to get him to do couple’s councelling with me to overcome our differences and he wouldnt hear of it.
The contempt I have of him now, didnt emerge out of the blue. When he didn’t want to communicate with me, when he kept being a playmate to the kids, leaving me to do the parenting, when he started lapdogging more and more and he didn’t want to talk about the downward spiralling in our marriage, my respect in him lessened and lessened and when we -did- get a divorce and I got some distance, is where my contempt in him as a -man- (still not as a human being), began. To this day, he’ll lapdog on me and he’s played the martyr card so many times to get pity, that he can’t -not- represent everything I don’t want in a relationsship.
I dont think marriage buys you anything. If you change remarkably from the person you were when you fell in love, you owe the other person to at least communicate, to try to find a solution, and to overcome the differencies. And also, I dont think marriage buys you the right to stop being Man and Woman. I don’t feel a shred of guilt for leaving him over such a ‘luxury’ obstacle as this, cause I did everything in my power to get him into a dialogue with me. And also, I’m positive he’ll be happier with another woman than me. In the last years, we brought out the worst in each other, cause we were on such different pages when it came to the dynamics between a woman and a man. I wanted a Man, an Alpha and he was content with me being it.
Thanks Stingray,
Question for you: if a man won’t or can’t restore his masculine self, how else can a woman ‘fix’ the problem?
Would simply ‘stepping back’ do it?
For example, in Inside’s case, would it be an option for her to refuse to take over when he won’t do the masculine things expected of him?
If he refused to correct the boys, should she NOT do it, forcing him to have no option but to do it himself? Even if for a few days the boys go uncorrected?
Would this work in the long run? (But at the expense of the boys’ upbringing in the short term).
Inside…
Thanks too.
Appreciate your explanation.
You mentioned you tried to get your husband to get into a dialogue…
Do you mean ‘to talk’?
I hear that rarely works. And perhaps your testimony helps to confirm that. 😦
Can I use your story being posted here as a teaching opportunity for those of us not yet married?
Any suggestions as to how to overcome this issue (from the woman’s side, since the man refuses to do it from his side)?
Or is this a truly non-salvageable and untenable situation with no solution other than divorce?
(I am hoping not, and look forward to hearing some possible suggestions to get round this obstacle).
ST,
Those are very difficult questions to answer. I simply don’t know what would work. From Inside’s explanation, it sounds like she really did try. I do not think simply stepping back would work, from her explanation, but maybe for some men it would. It sounds like her husband needed a true kick in the pants but I have no idea what that would be.
In trying to put myself in that situation, if my husband changed like that, I would step up and discipline my children because it is so very necessary. I might try it for a couple of days to see if he would step up as I think I would try almost anything, but I wouldn’t let it go on for long.
And me saying this might hurt Inside, but for me, I would’t divorce him. It would be an incredibly difficult life, but I made vows and and they are for life.
My guess is the “bitch switch” you talk about is the covert way of communicating his behavior is wrong as a man. Since women don’t want to tell a man to be a man because frankly they don’t know how…they go into fighting over something else. The concept of the “shit test” is another way a woman determines if the guy is a man. If a man gives into your weak emotional swings so easily…he’d probably give into real problems even easier.
I believe Rollo had an article about how women expect men to just “get it” to be a man. Most guys don’t these days.
Stingray, I think it’s something deeply embedded in men and women. Men have been the provider, the leader, the one with the club who’d drag you home to his cave, and to see a man groveling, shufflefoooting, almost not even daring to keep eyecontact with you… It just makes my every hair stand up and just pisses me off even further.
I am very capable of having a normal discussion with someone without blowing a fuse, but when a man plays the martyr card and has an aura of victim, wanting to please you no matter what you do or say, it just makes me push even harder. I even said it out loud to him; ‘Stop fucing being such a martyr, playing the victim in everything life throws at you.’ He just doesn’t get it.
And it really does make me even more cold. And all it took, a couple of weekends ago, when I met an old schoolmate for the first time in 10 years, was a look, to make me all soft. Just a -look-. He kept the eyecontact with a small, secretive smile on his lips, and just keep the gaze, making -me- be the one who looked down while almost giggling. I swear, if you dont have a natural Alpha in your somewhere, you just -do- not get the difference.
Yeah, tons of typos in that one. Sorry bout that!
Heh…the way into a woman’s heart and parts beyond is through the eyes.
Seriously though I never knew how powerful eye contact was until I studied body language…now it comes naturally to me. A woman’s eye contact is the first thing I look for now.
‘Lapdogging’ aka ‘being too nice’ doesn’t work simple because anybody desperate to please is unattractive as they demonstrate a lack of self respect. This concept, explored here, has been mentioned before by women.
Another misconception often written about here is ‘being yourself’ which appears to mean something different to men who hear it from what it means to the women who say it.
It’s no misconception. “Just be yourself” to blue-pill men means “just continue acting on your feminist training” and to the women who say it, it means “just stay in the friend-zone like a good little boy.” Same thing, really.
Well someone better tell the men and women I know who are married or in relationships that contrary to their beliefs, they aren’t happy, and they’ve gone about it all the wrong way.
Non sequitur…
I thought that term was called begging?
A man should never beg unless a gun is pointed to his head.
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I apologize for my lateness in approving many of the comments, especially from insideawomansmind.
The more I read, the more my contempt for women grows. Stay single.
I like it. Lapdogging differs from begging, because with begging you are at least directly asking for something. I can only think of a few instances where I’ve experienced lapdogging, one in particular comes to mind – where it went on every five or ten minutes for a few hours. I know it sounds petty, but it evokes a very real sense of revulsion. A kind of “who is this person and get them away from me” feeling. I had to lay down the law “If you do not stop asking if I am alright every five minutes, I am going home.”
It really sounds ridiculous, and I know this won’t be an easy thing to hear, but what about the red pill is?
I can’t think of what would be comparable for men – maybe the kind of incessant nagging where your overweight wife follows you around the house in her dirty pajamas pointing out all the things she wants you to do?
The male equivalent would be the girl you’re not interested in that constantly throws herself at you.
I hate that shit.
Love the term – altho it might strike a little tooooo close to home for many of us former blue pill ex-husbands – fuck, the stupid crap I used to do when she wasn’t haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaappy and I was trying to save the marriage. All those damn tricks just to try to get a treat of a little attention.
Head:bang:desk
God – that seems so long ago anymore.
Yeah, I was lapdogging like crazy in the last months of my first marriage.
And to think I used to be scared of women’s emotional manipulation. Now I do the manipulating for fun.
Hell an angry women is more easily aroused than a happy woman.
Yup, is. If you know how to handle an angry woman, it can so easy go into kink instead of a screaming fight.
The only way to deal with an angry women is to kick her to the curb.
Depends on what the anger is…is she angry because you stand up and disagree with one of her unreasonable expectations, or is she angry because you act like a beta who caves into her unreasonable expectations.
One leads to sex-ay time…one leads to judicial rape.
@Spacetraveller (Can’t reply directly to your comment, for some reason)
I -did- talk with him. I had conversations where I tried to make him see what was happening. I put the cards on the table many times, but it didn’t register. He never really got what I meant. Hell, I even said to him at some point, that sexually, I wanted him to pull my hair, to pin me, to whisper in my ear … and he did a little, but it didn’t come from the pit of his stomach, it came from his head. It wasn’t feral, it was studied. He just -did- not have it in him, to be an Alpha. It didn’t come natural to him, he felt awkward being the one in charge, he felt awkward getting in a confrontation, he was just content with being a pleaser and being soft and cute all the time, trying to please everyone. And, you know, it didn’t make him a bad person, but it just made the chemistry between us fade away, when I grew older and more aware of what kind of man turns me on and makes me feel safe and soft. Just as -he- grew older and what made him him – liking to please, wanting everyone happy and not liking confrontations – grew stronger and clearer. The difference was just too great, and he didn’t get the difference between an Alpha and a beta.
My personal theory is that your values, your turn on’s, what makes you -you-, get’s stronger and more defined between 20 and 30, and so ppl can get together at quite young, and sometimes grow in different directions. Could it had been saved, had we spotted these differences early on? I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s possible to create an Alpha from a beta at heart. Maybe it is? Someone mentioned a programme in the comment section over on my blog, and I’ve seen some comments here too, that makes me believe it -is- possible to change, but the gap between me and my exhusband became too wide to mend. I don’t even think I was able to pinpoint it as correctly back then, as I am now. Back then I knew, I needed him to be more MAN. Stronger, clearer, more dominant. Today I know more, recognize more patterns. And God knows I was a bitch to him back then, I was a version of myself, I really don’t like to be.
And yes, you can, but send me a link or something, yeah? 🙂
Inside,
Well, good on you for trying.
I shall think further about what you said.
It is scary for me because I have never honestly thought about a man going all (permanently)beta on me before.
I just never considered that possibility…
And now you make me realise it can happen…fairly easily.
You just popped my fantasy bubble 😦
Zut alors…
She said he was a sniveling beta when she married him.
One reaps what one sows, and all that.
No, I said the beta went full blown when we had kids. He had it in much, much less scale when we got together, just as I had some of the wanting and needing an Alpha, as I do now. The level both sides were on at the time matched fine when we were young.
It didn’t work because you told him what to do sexually…and then it didn’t register when he did it because he was told to.
Men are stronger than women physically, mentally, emotionally, and morally…despite the brainwashing that both genders are equal. They aren’t in this world. A man has to lead her in all facts of life. Hypergamy is much more than a woman trying to marry a rich guy…she wants to find a guy that’s better than her in all ways because she will benefit from it. Any weakness…she’ll find it, highlight it, and never forget it. There isn’t a guy on this planet who doesn’t have some weaknesses…but having too many or having big ones and you are in trouble.
Face it…sounds like you were with a dud.
Inside – please tell me that when you left him, you opted to request nothing from him in the future in terms of money. Please tell me that you did the alpha woman thing, and really set him free. Free from having to answer to you in any way, free from owing you a damn thing. See, I would love to hear his side of the story too, Sure he lacked some man skills, but are you so sure you acted out of feminine loveliness? Sounds like you were trying to browbeat him into masculinity. Did you ever suspect your own macho tendency might have neutered the poor bastard early in your marriage? I may be wrong here, but you sound like you’re just blaming an insecure guy for your own inability to tame the entitled bitch goddess. Please tell me if I’m wrong – I want to be wrong here.
He got the house, and I didnt seek allimony (Spellcheck, am on phone). He -does- pay what is called ‘childrens money’ which is a legally binding thing here, but the things I could have gone after by choice, I didnt. He’s not a bad person, and -I- was the one qho left. I wasnt interested in kicking him while he was down.
-Was- I much too hard though, trying to get a reaction from him? Yeah, I was. It wasnt a conscious thing but my frustration of not getting any response from the countless talks we had. Was it fair reaction on my part? No, but Im not trying to sugarcoat what actually happened.
@wingman
I was thinking the same thing. We’re only hearing one side of the story.
Did the term uxorious come from a reading off “The Church Impotent”? That’s where I first saw that word.
My problem with IWM is that it promotes a general attitude that one should go out and look for what they are really deeply attracted to. But is this a reasonable thing to do? Is it such that you are more likely to be happy that you leave a beta and children in SEARCH (and may never find) of an alpha that hits your sexual buttons?
At 50, I find that most women around me look like crap. I need a woman in shape that dresses in a feminine manner to hit my “god I want to bang you” buttons, but I am simply not going to find it. I have to settle for something that is not quite this, but from whom I still get some benefit from. Notably companionship, friendship, huggs and kisses, and occasional sex when Im horny. I settle because I know that I am no alpha due to my relatively low status and that I have trouble holding a masculine frame, as much as I may want to.
How likely is IWM to be able to find an alpha for a LTR that turns her on? Is it worth the emotional destruction that may have been wrought on her children that daddy and mommy just cant get along?
This whole culture is falling into the Rhiannazone–where being turned on is more important that finding someone of integrity that is compatible. I guess Im starting to see this has a rot which will inevitably lead to the fall of the west, and the rights and freedoms that we hold dear.
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