There’s a bulwark of support surrounding Congressman Anthony Weiner, even after his admission his admission that he did send those now infamous twitter pics of his pecs, even after members of his own party are seeking to disown him. A terrible liar – Weiner’s guilt was pretty apparent from the offset – why else did he redirect questions from the press when they wanted to know why he didn’t want to investigate the ‘hacker’ responsible for causing him so much embarrassment? Why couldn’t he say for certain whether said pictures were of himself? Weiner could learn a thing or two from Bill Clinton, he lied with poise and dignity. Weiner squirmed and barked until he finally caved in under the pressure.
Yet, there is a lot of sympathy for this guy: his behaviour is chalked up to “Alpha Male Syndrome” essentially a classic case of ‘boys being boys’. Nobody batted an eyelid when JFK did it, Clinton bounced back with relative ease and dignity and I’m guessing Arnie will follow suit. John Edwards, well that’s a different case because where terminal illness comes into play, people tend to feel that those ‘boys being boys’ should grow up and take a little responsibility for their actions.
Alpha Male Syndrome
An endorsement of destructive behavioural patterns deemed to be adaptive for modern life. Essentially, it’s a great way to excuse yourself by claiming that anything you do is “society’s fault”. In short, Alpha Males have high levels of testosterone, so high sex drives, are more likely to engage in high-risk behaviours (like having affairs), they are aggressive and competitive.
The Alpha Syndrome: When Strengths Become Liabilities
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Table 1-1 |
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Alpha Attribute |
Value to Organization |
Risk to Organization |
| Dominant, confident, takes charge | Decisive, courageous leader; gets people to take action and move forward | Doesn’t develop strong leaders; intimidating; creates fear; stifles disagreement |
| Charismatic, magnetic leader who leads the way | Brings out the best in others; gets people to do more than they thought was possible | Manipulates to get his way, uses charm to lure people down his path |
| Aggressive, competitive | Determined to win; turns others into winners | Competes with peers; alienates colleagues; reluctant to give others credit |
| High achiever with a strong sense of mission | Action-oriented, produces results, energizes teams to reach impossible goals | Takes high levels of performance for granted;expects the impossible and fails to acknowledge what’s required to achieve it |
| Bold, creative, innovative thinker | Dreams up ingenious ideas, solves intractable problems, sees further than others | Arrogant, stubborn, overly opinionated; imposes own views; closed to others’ thinking |
| Persistent, tenacious, determined, steadfast | Has courage of convictions; always moves forward; willing to take unpopular stand to get results | Drives self and others to exhaustion; urgent; impatient; thinks rules don’t apply to him |
| Strong appetite for newness and change | Values speed, drives people and organizations toward needed change and rapid growth | Overzealous; undervalues organizational alignment; launches into action before gathering support from others |
| Farsighted; sees what’s possible | Recognizes gap between today’s reality and tomorrow’s potential | So focused on future that present and near term are neglected; loses sight of business viability |
| Sees what’s missing | Proactively spots problems, adjusts, corrects, prevents things from getting worse | Can be critical, demeaning; fails to appreciate others’ contributions; people feel demoralized |
Men grow up wanting to be classic Alpha Males like James Bond or Rocky Balboa, men who fit the definition of what a ‘man’ should be perfectly.
And female Alpha’s? Do they exist?
It’s assumed women don’t crave power or money or want to be creative, confident, charismatic, magnetic personalities who sleep with a chocolate box array of men, because why would they want to be human? Women need to put up and shut up and let the intelligent men do all the important stuff while they go to get fat sucked out of their stomach and implants in their boobs, in a desperate attempt to get recognised as still alive by their significant ‘Alpha’ other who justifies his need to drool over other women as a part of his ‘nature’. How lucky that we have psychologists who still inform us that it’s ok for men to have a good time, but women are too emotional to be capable of anything much.
So, a nation of Weiners we most definitely are, and it certainly is one rule for men and another for women – I guarantee that if Hilary Clinton had been caught sexting, the press and public reaction would have been quite quite different. So go ahead and justify ‘boys being boys’ - citing natural differences has served us very well in the past as a tool of subjugation, and I’m sure we can get a few hundred years’ worth out of this theory yet…
Self Improvement for The Alpha Male:
Shifting from Defensiveness to Learning
http://www.worthethic.com/the-alpha-male-syndrome.html
I don’t think Anthony Weiner can appropriately be labeled as an alpha male. A real man would be in control in that situation. By the looks of the texts, he was completely out of control.
Risk-taking behaviour like Weiner’s is characteristic of men with high testosterone levels. As is a tendency towards aggression, and competitiveness – both of which are character traits ascribed to the ‘Alpha Male’, and identifiable in Weiner. It seems that he was getting a kick out of the risk most probably because he was dissatisfied with his life in some way. I don’t think this detracts from his position as an Alpha male any more than Arnie’s or Mel Gibson’s bad behaviour and lack of control does. Gibson, has screwed up on a colossal scale many times though I doubt anyone would refer to him as a Beta or Omega male.
Yet these are necessary characteristics, but not sufficient. I actually agree with Rush Limbaugh (huge surprise) who conjectured that Weiner was desperately trying to prove his masculinity, since he has been ‘feminized’ and grown up around strong females his whole life.
I have an issue with labeling this type of behavior as “typical male-in-power,” which a lot of the media have done. But back to your point, I would definitely say that Weiner most resembles a beta male. Although he’s outspoken and confrontational, he’s by no means a “leader of the pack,” and it seems that his constant media crave more so showed his underlying insecurity.