Insecure men
I strongly suspect that for these so-called ‘alpha males’ seeking therapy would be as abhorrent as incorruptible women holding positions of power. That’s how gratuitously diseased they are.
If they had sought mental health counseling after the uproar they would have been diagnosed as being seriously disturbed, terribly insecure Filipino men prone to dehumanizing people.
But for the judgmental hosts of the recently controversial Machong Chismisan podcast, I strongly suspect that for these so-called “alpha males” seeking therapy would be as abhorrent as incorruptible women holding positions of power. That’s how gratuitously diseased they are.
Anyway, in case you’ve been out of the loop, the hosts of Machong Chismisan recently faced tremendous public uproar and government intervention following an episode where they mocked and ridiculed an individual on the autism spectrum.
But at the cost of their arrogant posturing and shameful hubris, the individual in question happened to be the son of pedigreed Kris Aquino, the prominent daughter and sister of former presidents. A fact which certainly did attract widespread public attention.
Anyway, for their costly arrogance and disgusting public crime, Machong Chismisan has since been hounded off the internet and its slimy hosts have slithered back to their former obscurity.
Still, in their 15 minutes of fame, the smug Machong Chismisan hosts involuntarily resurfaced the troublesome issue of the Filipino manosphere.
But before anything else, a few takes on what “manosphere” and “alpha male” mean.
The “manosphere,” according to journalist Rebecca Solnit, is “usually treated as mysterious or somehow authentically arising from the grassroots, (and) what came to be known as the manosphere was to a large degree a racket run on internet platforms that let lies, hate, and manipulation proliferate because they are profitable.”
“Alpha male,” on the other hand, is the pseudo-scientific term for a constructed masculinity influenced by neoliberal ideas of productivity and success. It is synonymous with the term “high value” men or a concept of masculinity as necessarily hierarchical and aggressive.
“High value” proponents “frame the ideal of a man as someone who is financially successful, assertive, strong, logical, and a natural leader,” say researchers Jwana Aziz and Anna Lavis in The Conversation website.
Anyway, the rhetorically-termed “alpha” men are often contrasted with the “beta” men or “low value men.”
Needless to say, the Machong Chismisan clip involving Kris Aquino’s son was clearly a case of “alpha” men ridiculing a “beta” man when a host referred to Josh Aquino who has autism as “walang kwenta” (useless) and mocked his reported daily school allowance — to the snickers, giggles, and guffaws of the other hosts and guests.
Their obvious performative display as “alpha” men showed that they — so-called influencers of a harmful underground internet subculture — can break into the mainstream, to the alarm of those dealing with issues of abuse heaped on persons with disability and, to a larger extent, the demeaning of women.
Breaking into the mainstream and clout-chasing, in fact, was probably Machong Chismisan’s bigger intention, indicating that they aren’t babes in the woods.
In fact, it may even be said that Machong Chismisan is the latest instance of the many insidious attempts by toxic local “alpha” men, locker room and “macho” content creators unconscionably using vulnerable Filipinos with intellectual and physical disabilities as punchlines or political tools.
Often too these groups weaponize Filipinos’ deep-rooted “ableism,” or Filipinos mistakenly believing that disability is some sort of family “baggage” or spiritual failing, to gain headway and clout.
By all accounts then, it was a good thing Machong Chismisan got publicly smothered. Otherwise, if left alone they would have reproduced a dubious existing system of power and dominance.