Why Men Love Bitches

Michael Hobbes (0:00)

Think of all the possibilities you have, Peter. What do you know about why men love bitches?

How much time do you need?

Peter Shamshiri (0:06)

The amount of self-censorship I have to do during this episode is fucking herculean.

Michael Hobbes (0:11)

The thing is, though, she says more offensive shit than you could ever come up with, so it's actually perfect. You could just act shocked and horrified.

Peter Shamshiri (0:17)

Yeah, the more problematic the book, the more runway I have.

Michael Hobbes (0:20)

Yeah, yeah.

Peter Shamshiri (0:22)

Why men love bitches.

Michael Hobbes (0:24)

Peter.

Peter Shamshiri (0:24)

Michael.

Michael Hobbes (0:25)

What do you know about why men love bitches?

Peter Shamshiri (0:27)

All I know is that I can't answer that because I've never met one.

Michael Hobbes (0:44)

So, the full title of this book is Why Men Love Bitches, colon, From Dormat to Dream Girl, Emdash, A Woman's Guide to Holding Her Own in a Relationship, by Sherry Argov. It was released in 2002

According to the front cover, it has sold more than one million copies.

Peter Shamshiri (1:03)

It's crazy to be writing this right after 9-11.

Michael Hobbes (1:06)

The nation needed to heal, Peter. This was the only way. The initial release of the book is not particularly interesting. It was followed up by a sequel, Why Men Marry Bitches, in 2004

It then went dormant for quite a while, but then in 2020, this book blew up on TikTok and has been pretty popular ever since. So I checked the Amazon list for best-selling dating books, and this book was number 5 this week. What? Yes, people are still... If you go on TikTok, there's hundreds of videos of people talking about this book and how wise it is and how good it is.

Peter Shamshiri (1:43)

What the?

Michael Hobbes (1:44)

So we are going to watch one of the TikToks, Peter.

Peter Shamshiri (1:49)

Oh, now we're talking.

Michael Hobbes (1:50)

This gives you an overview of sort of the premise of the book and I think why it is appealing to contemporary women.

Peter Shamshiri (1:56)

This has 146,000 likes on TikTok.

SPEAKER_3 (2:00)

Yes. My God.

If you are a woman who is single, hates men, can't deal with these dusty crusty musties, listen up, this is for you. I need you to go grab this book right here, Why Men Love Bitches. When I was in my, I don't give a fuck about a man era, didn't want to talk or entertain one, didn't even want to go on dates because of how dusty some of these men were. When I tell you that this genuinely changed my perspective on dating, it changed my perspective on relationships and how I move in relationships. I was always this nice girl, okay? I was always the girl that would always make an excuse, oh, like he couldn't come to something. Oh, it's okay. It was probably because he was tired. Oh, he couldn't show up for me because he had something going on. It's okay. Maybe next time. Do you know how cringy that sounds? I was losing myself trying to make these men happy. And that is the last thing I will be doing today. This book genuinely taught me that what you tolerate, you allow. Let me say that again so it's drilled in your head.

What you tolerate, you allow. If you are not okay with your man doing a certain type of behavior or certain thing and you've already communicated to him one too many times that what you're doing upsets me. And instead of him not doing it, continues to do it, or you don't have a strong backbone and don't put your foot down, don't tolerate it anymore, he will continue to do the same thing until you decide to break the cycle. You can still move with love, you can still move with kindness, you can still move with your feminine energy, but having boundaries in place is the one thing that is going to protect you from low quality people and low quality experiences.

Michael Hobbes (3:24)

What do you think, Peter, how are you defending against the Dusty Christy Musties in your life?

Peter Shamshiri (3:28)

This makes sense to me, this is a girl who is like 24, and she's like when I was 23, I was so stupid.

Michael Hobbes (3:35)

The message of it is basically fine.

Peter Shamshiri (3:37)

It's hard to know because if you frame it like, hey, you set some boundaries, people actually respect that, sure. But if you're like, you should be kind of mean because it tricks people psychologically into wanting you more, then you're in like weird, nagging pickup artist territory, right? It's a very conservative world view. You must be warlike because your enemy is also warlike. This is the epitome of the right wing world view, and it's being brought into the dating world.