Taki Magazine

This is a test

by Evan McLaren on September 04, 2009

I recall a minor controversy some months ago over vulgarity in this magazine. I did and do tilt towards the fuddy duddy button-up attitude on this. I reserve cursing for my boss, and for my emails to Robert Stacy McCain.

So I’m embarrassed now to be telling you about the concept of the “shit test.” This arises out of the lingo of pickup artists and seduction literature, a subculture based in an effort to uncover the rules that govern our social, romantic, and sexual matrix. The idea is to master the rules and manipulate them like Neo. In any event, there’s enough in it of interest to be worth reading, at least because it suggests any number of subversive sociopolitical perspectives. Besides your basic stock anti-feminism, there’s a lurking acknowledgement of something that strikes deeper, against philosophical and anthropological individualism. The patterns that distinguish men and women, what they want and how they go about getting it, are at least as strong as the force of individual personality and choice. In their systematic pursuit of social success the men of the seduction community have brushed up against peoples’ core evolutionary character, an awareness of which they attempt to bring to bear on obstacles of everyday interaction.

You have to recognize things for what they are. So far the best explanation I’ve found of what people are comes not from anyone at my $38K/year alma mater but from a couple guys who read a little evolutionary psychology, approached eight women a day for years, and wrote down what they learned.

Back to the shit test. It refers to women giving men a hard time on any number of levels to test their reaction. If you can’t handle the challenge with grace and verve you’re out. Simple enough.

It turns out shit testing is at the root of what drew me to politics in the first place, even if I didn’t think of it that way until recently. But it makes sense. The high-pitched activist liberals I collided with in college are living out one prolonged shit test that has its own ontological area code. I recall the effect of their overall swagger and posture to be a dare, to anyone who suggested any degree of serious hesitation about gay marriage, mass immigration, racial egalitarianism, or whatever. I wasn’t self-consciously right-wing when I first encountered this but I couldn’t resist the challenge and still can’t. Cocky liberals might intimidate someone with their knowing bluster, but it won’t be me. I was going to call their bluff wherever and whenever I could. My instinctive response was to say, “Look, you don’t have the grasp on truth you pretend to and your moral scruples are exaggerated. You’re not saving any lives or making the world a better place by raging against homophobia and imaginary Nazis. You’re just striking a pose to impress yourself and others. I’m unimpressed.”

I still am, no less yesterday when the viral Facebook status update read, “No one should die because they cannot afford health care, and no one should go broke because they get sick. The purpose of government is to improve the lives of its citizens, and basic health care should be a universal right. If you agree, please post this as your status for the rest of the day.” Oh, how butch! Who could possibly dispute that?

Eventually I ended up saying to one such friend that I’d support universal health coverage. All I ask in return is for an immediate end to immigration, restriction of citizenship to some concept of native identity, and reversal of all Federal civil rights legislation. A reasonable trade, no?

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