Illusions and Structures: How Sexual False Consciousness is Maintained

Sexual false consciousness rampant

Recently, I have been elaborating on the issue of sexual false consciousness in western society. Sexual false consciousness is the widespread male delusion that young, attractive women hand out sex for free. Moreover, not only do they spend every hour of every day handing out free sex, they give it to ageing, blue-collar schlubs in pick-up trucks.

All utter nonsense, of course: and yet such delusions are ubiquitous among blue collar males, who truly believe that 18 year old models are gasping for sex with mechanics and road-sweepers.

Don Draper reflecting sexual reality again...

If we accept that the legacy media is largely responsible for sexual false consciousness, a question presents itself: how is it infiltrated by such an agenda? Why do celebrated TV shows like Mad Men describe sexual experiences completely detached from practical male experience?

The answer is relatively simple. The mass media – and especially the Anglo-American mass media – tend to extol the views and experiences of unrepresentative minorities. This is partly because the people who create and finance TV shows like Mad Men are simply not representative of most people. The same is true of those who create Hollywood films, or BBC costume dramas. Like Anglo politicians, they are overwhelmingly upper-middle or upper class in origin.  They will generally have had very limited contact with anyone outside a small, relatively privileged social circle. In his superb book Hollywood Versus America, Michael Medved cites examples of American TV executives thinking routine office workers earn millions of dollars a year. If someone can believe that, they can also believe road sweepers are having regular sex with supermodels.

Blue collar oafs wallowing in sexual false consciousness...

The British sociologist Anthony Giddens explains the effects of this hermetic self-isolation via the concept of ‘structuration’. In this view, English-speaking countries are characterized by extreme self-segregation between different economic strata, age-groups and ethnicities. This leads to widespread delusions about the nature of society. For example, half the British underclass think that everyone in Britain is like them - that is, unemployed and living in social housing. Similarly, American liberals assume that ‘everyone’ is left-liberal, because they only mix with other left-liberals. In sum, then, Anglo-Saxon countries are characterized by extreme 'structuration'. Because different social groups have little in common and no shared experiences, social subcultures tend to massively exaggerate the status of their own worldview. Given such a bizarre situation, it is little wonder that wealthy media executives tend to over-promote their experiences on the casting-couch.

So when we see Don Draper being approached by models for sex on an hourly basis, we must remember that those who created this scenario are overwhelmingly rich, privileged and socially unrepresentative. It may well be that they are having lots of ‘casting couch’ sex themselves – but that is hardly true of most men. Moreover, their social insularity deludes media executives into thinking that mechanics and road-sweepers are indeed having regular sex with supermodels. Much like ‘everyone’ took drugs in the 60s, or made millions on Wall Street in the 80s, so ‘everyone’ is having sex with elite women in the mad, weird world of the Anglo-American mass media.

Cheers, Don.

Having explained the idiomatic, fantastical content of the ‘mainstream’ media, we must ask: why do the masses accept such blatant lies so readily? Why do frigid, hypergamous women watch Sex and the City (a hyperreal fantasy if ever there was one)? Why do incel computer programmers enjoy watching Don Draper bang his latest playmate? If the media does not reflect reality, why are the masses so readily seduced by it? Perhaps because it is not reality. Like porn, maybe its appeal relates more to vicarious wish-fulfillment than personal identification. As boxing fans emulate the punches of their heroes in the bathroom mirror, TV and film audiences derive voyeuristic pleasure from the priapic escapades of their media idols.

Don Draper considers his options

Knowing this, the media has developed conventions to maintain its hold on the mass mind. American TV executives clearly have an informal agenda to elide the old, the ugly and the poor. For seldom if ever do we see Anglo-American TV shows starring anyone over 50, crippled or possessing a socially critical outlook. Everything conspires to banish reality in favour of an upper-middle class, hyper-sexualized fantasy world full of grinning, youthful automatons. No producer will break ranks to create a show bucking those conventions, since money is king.

However, the broad masses go beyond simple voyeurism in their appreciation and consumption of ‘mainstream’ media. Many of them come to internalize such delusions as ‘reality’. Indeed, people like ourselves who dare to question this ‘reality’ are viewed as embittered eccentrics and dangerous malcontents by guys who, frankly, will never have sex with a model in their whole lives.

Perhaps we need to remember that the 'mainstream' media has been pumping out these ‘libertine’ messages since the mid-60s. Three generations of men have grown up knowing little else. Since infancy, the notion that ‘everyone’ is living in a mansion and having daily sex with models has been drilled into them, without pause. Such ceaseless indoctrination has surely clotted all capacity for critical thought on these issues. Hence the innumerable blue-collar incels  who serious think they can bed models and actresses, or white-collar men who seriously think women view them as something more than walking ATM machines.

Only with the rise of the Internet has sexual false consciousness been offered any challenge since the mid-60s. Little wonder that educated males from generations Y and Z are the first to begin throwing off its brain-rotting yoke.

More swill for the trough...