Darker Me

“The only unnatural sex act is that which you cannot perform.”

“These Billionaires are the smartest, most unprincipled, double-thinking gamesmen in the world, playing the biggest, most dangerous games in the world, on a field where whole nations are at stake. They didn’t get to where they are by being stupid, taking chances, and making mistakes. You can be sure they’re not making them now. They have immense control in media, finance, military, government, business, and while every plan has risk and it might still get away from them, it sure won’t be for lack of trying. And that goes for the gamesters in China and every other country worldwide who are try every day to do the exact same thing to back to them. It’s the big boy’s game, and when the elephants fight, the grass gets trampled.”

“The fact is that nothing in The Ugly Truth is new. Most of its messages are taken directly from relationship advice guides for women. The Ugly Truth is He’s Just Not That Into You in spirit, if not in title. The message of these guides, paradoxically, is not that women should subordinate themselves to men because men are stronger and smarter. It’s that women should subordinate themselves to men because men are very, very stupid and deeply, unbelievably weak.

The average straight man, if dating guides for women are to be believed, is a fragile, delicate flower, ravaged by primitive desires beyond his control, needy to the extent that he requires constant, fawning admiration (but not too much – the idea that a woman is actively pursuing sex or a relationship will scare him, as he is a skittish creature) and absolutely incapable of dealing with any sort of criticism or challenge from the women in his life. This is conveyed in the movie in a scene where Mike reveals that his macho front is a put-on, caused by dating women who “didn’t like him”. (The question of why on Earth he deserves to be liked is neither asked nor answered.)

A woman’s natural desires – to talk about her life, to laugh at jokes that are funny, to disagree with people when they’re wrong, to have real orgasms – will drive a man away, if not scar him for life. However, the advice goes, you can actually control men (to the extent that you can get them to date you) by pretending to be someone other than who you are – someone who simply delights in doing every single little thing a man wants at all times. Because men are also, fortunately, so stupid that they won’t realise you’re lying.

It’s strange that feminists are called “man-haters”, given the fact that so many sexist prescriptions for women rest on the concept of male inferiority.”