Jack Donovan quotes
Jack Donovan is an American writer and public speaker, recognized for his works on masculinity, tribalism, and male identity. His books and essays have sparked widespread discussion and controversy, especially within men's movement circles. He has become a prominent figure in contemporary debates about gender, culture, and society. Here are 47 of his quotes:
To protect and serve their own interests, the wealthy and privileged have used feminists and pacifists to promote a masculinity that has nothing to do with being good at being a man, and everything to do with being what they consider a "good man.” Their version of a good man is isolated from his peers, emotional, effectively impotent, easy to manage, and tactically inept.
Jack Donovan
No one respects a man who is always apologizing and backpedaling. No one respects a man who is always asking for permission. No one respects a man who won't stand up for himself or fight for his own interests. No one wants to cheer for a team that stopped playing to win. Most people would agree that men who don't play to win deserve to lose.
Jack Donovan
The human body is made to work hard. When there is no work to do, our physical health deteriorates. Doctors have to tell people to walk like it is some kind of breakthrough exercise technology. Once, I watched in awe as a personal trainer authoritatively led a pair of forty something adults on a walk around their own neighborhood. He was a seventy-five dollar an hour human dog-walker.
Jack Donovan
Competition with women is almost always a net loss of honor for a man. Men don't consider competition between men and women to be "apples to apples." I don't think women do either... What does a man have to gain? He shows no courage by entering the ring with a woman. He is expected to win. If he does, his victory is shallow and unsavory. He gains no honor in beating a woman- the idea is offensive even to a modern man's vestigial sense of chivalry.
Jack Donovan
Boys and girls don't pair off at birth and scurry off to a dank cave together. Humans have always been social animals. We live in cooperative groups. Our bodies sort us out into groups of males or females. We interact socially as members of one group or the other. These groups aren't arbitrary or cultural- they're basic and biological. Males have to negotiate male and female groups as males. Males aren't simply reacting to female groups as males. We react to other males, as males. Who we are has a lot to do with how we see ourselves in relationship to other males, as members of the male group.
Jack Donovan
There's an old Greek proverb that says, "society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in." If you don't like what's happening around you, what's happening to culture, what's happening to men and women, what people are becoming- get out there and start digging.
Jack Donovan
Ugliness is the new beauty. Weakness is the new strength. Emotional survival -endurance- is the new courage. Women are applauded no matter what they do and masculinity is institutionally denounced. Adolescents are treated as if they are supernaturally wise, and the aged aand experienced are ignored or dismissed as if they were children. The heroes of history are now villains and every guttersnipe is glorified.
Jack Donovan
Moral rules and social norms no longer flow from the wise or the accomplished or from custom. The new moral rules and norms and taboos are frantic mass responses to claims of discrimination, oppression, offense, hurt feelings- even a failure to affirm some obvious delusion or pathosis... The Empire scrambles to accommodate victims, and that gives those who claim to be victims - often the most fragile, helpless, dysgenic and emotionally needy people - ultimate moral authority.
Jack Donovan
While its true that masculinity must be forced and fostered, this is also true of any human potentiality. One must be forced, or force oneself to learn a language or play an instrument or solve mathematical equations. No one calls an accomplished dancer, painter, athlete or singer a phony because it took years of disciplined practice and some kind of nurturing environment to become what they are- for them to develop their talents to their full potential. On the contrary, to ignore these talents is considered a tragedy.
Jack Donovan
Men who have more muscle tend to have and maintain higher testosterone levels, and men who have higher testosterone levels tend to have an easier time getting bigger and stronger. Men who increase their testosterone levels- either through training and diet or via artificial means- tend to look more masculine. Put differently, men with more muscle look less like most women, and more like the least androgynous men. This has absolutely nothing to do with culture. There is no human culture where men who are weak are considered manlier while women who are muscular are considered more womanly. The importance of strength varies from society to society (usually in some relationship to available technologies and the kind of work that is required of average people) but strength has been a masculinity quality always and everywhere.
Jack Donovan
There is a difference between being a good man and being good at being a man. Being a good man has to do with ideas about morality, ethics, religion, and behaving productively within a given civilizational structure. Being good at being a man is about showing other men that you are the kind of guy they'd want on their team if the shit hits the fan.
Jack Donovan
War against men are known to fewer and fewer of us. Mandatory conscription for the Vietnam War ended the year before I was born. Since then, the United States has effectively created a class of professional contract soldiers who do the government's fighting in faraway lands. Average men know more about collegiate basketball than they know about a given overseas conflict.
Jack Donovan
If there are females in your group, they will have plenty of hard and necessary work to do. Everyone will have to pull their own weight, but the hunting and fighting is almost always going to be up to the men. When lives are on the line, people will drop the etiquette of equality and make that decision again and again because it makes the most sense.
Jack Donovan
Grown men, otherwise daring, capable and virile men of accomplishment frequently find themselves terrorized and terrified by ridiculous accusations of bias or impropriety cast by spoon-fed students, indignant sluts, disabled lesbians, bipolar transsexuals, illegal immigrants and the morbidly obese. In the space of a few hundred years, the noble morality of the sovereign has been exchanged for the ignoble morality of the squeaky wheel.
Jack Donovan