More than a few people reading this page will nod knowingly when they see that I have a page named, "Tom Leykis." "Ah yes," they'll think, "I figured he was a Leykis groupie. Misogynistic nut bar." Well, you can think I'm a misogynistic nut bar if you like, but the fact is that I've never heard Tom Leykis and I don't listen to his show. I've read snippets about him on the Web, and some of what the snippets say rings true.
Leykis 101: Golden Rules for Men
- Never date a single mother.
- Never tell a woman how much money you make, although it is OK for her to think you have a lot.
- Never answer the phone on the weekend. It makes you look like you have nothing to do or no place to go, and if a woman is calling you over the weekend it means her other plans fell through and you are a backup.
- Don't speak to women you work with unless it's related directly to work. Don't date them. Don't tell them they look nice. Don't comment on anything except whatever work needs you have, because you're a walking lawsuit waiting to happen.
OK, so it's pretty clear where Tom Leykis is coming from. From everything I've read, he has three sides to him. First and foremost he's a shock jock à la Howard Stern. Whatever he may have to say, he has to make it shocking and provocative, or nobody will listen to him. For me, this is the least appealing part of what he is; what I want to know is whether beyond that shock-jock marketing he has anything worthwhile to say. Second, he's trying to be the father figure, to dispense advice to men on how to be men. You may disagree with his advice, but he is nonetheless trying to "mentor," to use a popular jargon term. Third, he's trying to tell men how to get what they want in life, which is mostly to get laid. In this sense he's a "Neanderthal" from a feminist perspective, but he's doing the job that therapists should be doing: telling men how to improve life for themselves, not how to be good little boys and follow the feminist formula for good behaviour.
In the four "Leykis 101" points above, I see two things that ring true with me. The other two seem like artifice: tactics to get laid. The two that resonate with me are the first and fourth ones.
First, never date a single mother. Well, I say that elsewhere. Single mothers can be nice people, but they also come with many more risks than other women. Given the hostility of today's courts towards men, a single mother can easily set you up as a "father figure" that has to pay support to her kids. This actually happened to a friend of mine: his lady friend, who had a son, asked if she could stay over at his place for a couple of months. She was being kicked out of her apartment by the landlord (or so she said) and needed a place to crash. He being a gallant fellow agreed. After two months she found another place and left, and a short time later he received notice that a court had declared him (in absentia, of course) to have become a de facto "father figure" to the boy because he had "shacked up" with this woman, and he would now have to pay child support. He settled out of court for $18,000, which was more money than he had in the whole world, but he considered himself to have gotten off cheap. Of course, she's now chatting up some other poor asshole who will get the same treatment. Of course, very few single mothers will pull stunts like this, but do you want to risk being the next poor bastard on this woman's list?
Single mothers are also probably failures. Not that some aren't nice people, and some haven't been screwed over by their ex-husbands. The point is that all single mothers blame their lamentable situation on their ex-husbands, or bad luck, or a poor choice, but most of them are wrong. Most of them just screwed up their first (or second or third) marriage, and now they want to take another kick at the cat with you. Sure, you could be hooking up with a very nice lady who had an unfortunate experience, but more likely you're hooking up with someone who wants to take another crack at something she screwed up last time, and there's no way to tell which is the case until it's too late. Why should you risk being someone else's guinea pig? If you avoid single mothers altogether your chance of success improve dramatically.
The second of Leykis' rules that resonates with me is the one about dating coworkers. I dated a woman at work once. Fortunately I didn't suffer any lawsuits or shakedowns, but I did discover an ugly fact: if you date a woman from work and your relationship tanks, you still have to go to work and you still have to see her every day or worse, you have to collaborate with her every day. This is my definition of hell. Sometimes splits are amicable, but when one goes sour you never, ever want to see that witch again, but there she is, every day, sitting across a desk from you. I ended up quitting and finding another job. It's a lot easier to make a clean break, and even stay friends, when you aren't forced to see each other. Dating coworkers, I decided, is just plain stupid.
So, even if you're not afraid of lawsuits (and these days that makes you an idiot), there is still the problem of continued exposure if the thing goes sour. After my bad experience I had a simple comment for any woman who chatted me up at work: I don't go out with anyone I work with. The funny thing was, as soon as I started chanting this refrain in response to come-ons, the more come-ons I got. I became a "challenge." One woman even left my group and went to another department just to "get me." (It didn't work.) Never again have I gotten myself romantically involved with a coworker. So if Tom Leykis doesn't convince you, take it from me: just say "no" to coworkers.
Leykis versus Therapists
My beef with therapists is that they always seem to tell women how to be strong and assertive and make their way in the world, whereas their advice to men seems to be to "get in touch" with their feelings and be more "sensitive." Really what anyone wants to know when they go to a therapist is how they can be happier in their life. So why, I ask, does no therapist ever offer male patients an obvious option: listen to Tom Leykis, treat women worse, and look out for yourself.
Therapists seem intent on instructing men to be more gallant and more sensitive. This can help solve life's problems; I know because I tried it and it helped me. However, another way for men to be happier is to start getting more of what they want. If therapists were really focused on making their patients happier, rather than making their patients happier within a politically correct context, they might suggest that their male patients go out and get laid more, and that a good way to do that would be to follow Tom Leykis' rules. Of course, therapists never say this. If you think it odd that I'm railing against a philosophy that helped me out, let me just say that I'm suspicious of anyone with blind spots, and I see therapists as having a huge blind spot when it comes to men behaving "badly." The bottom line is: are professional therapists striving to help each of their patients cope with life in the most beneficial way for the patient, or are they trying to pour every patient into a politically correct mold and then help them be happy so long as they don't break the mold?
I think that in the world of "professional" therapy, political correctness comes first and helping the patient comes second.
