David Deida

Is this a pastiche of '70s radfem writers or just an exercise in how many innuendos you can work into a self-help book? I've never been thrust into so many unsheathed topics that we should fully receive as a loving message that blooms as we release our energy from the sucking verbiage.

So beneath the comedic insistence of putting the message in terms of fucking, what's left? Women be emotional. Male and feminine energy be different. Women want you to take charge. It's fairly boilerplate, show more bullsetpoint stuff stretched out for entire chapters, but with some real howlers like how you shouldn't allow your woman to make you cum because if she can "drain" you, so can the world, and in realizing that she'll resent you. The latter part of the book is just some reworked kundalini and tantric yoga, hold your breath enough and you won't blow your load too fast.

Could your relationships improve if you become more assertive? How about working on that one pump chump problem? Sure, it might help. But given how often this book comes up in lists of books "for men", and the quality of the writing, the real question should be is this the best we can do? If this was genderswapped it'd be on lists of "worst of self help" and derided as some new age horseshit by the very same people who are giving this 5 star reviews. show less

I can't tell if Deida is brilliant or insane or insanely brilliant. Masculinity in general is in crisis, and between you, me, and everybody on the internet, my personal masculinity isn't doing so hot. Deida identifies this issue as a blockage in the flow of masculine energy associated with the rise of the counterculture in the 1960s and feminism as a social movement. And the basic fix is to get right with your masculine essence.

"I do not avoid women. But I do deny them my essence."

In Deida's show more reading people of all genders have both masculine and feminine energies, which are available in various amounts. Men and women are of course legal, political, and social equals, but the private world of an intimate relationship, especially a physical heterosexual relationship, is only truly enacted in the interplay of energies between these two poles.

Assuming that you're a straight man (Deida notes he is writing mostly for straight men, though others can gain insights from this book), getting right with your masculine energy means getting clear about your purpose in life, finding strength in stillness, comfort with fear, and aligning and unblocking your natural impulses.

As this relates to women, to paraphrase, take women seriously but not literally. Feminine energy is about change, flow, and emotion. You can't capture it and hold it without killing it, but you can dive right in and ravish it, which is what women really want. They'll tempt you and distract you and place tests in your path, which you should read as indications of emotional insecurity rather than sincere desires. They don't want you to do what they ask, they want you to be strong enough to resist and impose your will on the situation.

So yeah, it's proto-Jorpian "Wimmenz are teh CHAOS DRAGON!" vibey stuff. But it's provocative, and what the hell, we're due for a vibe shift anyway. show less

This is a hard book to review. It's got some fantastic advice in it, and also has a _lot_ of shit. Some of the great stuff is about making moves in the world even if you're not super sure where you're going, being confident in your relationships and striving to be true to your purpose above all else.

And then it gets to the "women" portion. The Way of the Superior Man comes off as a book written by a guy who has never once been in a healthy relationship; it's full of advice like "if you come show more too quickly, your woman won't respect you and will attempt to undermine you at every turn" and "if she doesn't sound happy about your accomplishments, it's because she's testing you to see if you give a shit what she thinks." This is some dark red pill shit dressed up in language about love and "her positive feminine energy." Nah, Deida, just stop dating terrible humans and things will be alright.

Rating this a 4/5 because of it's good advice for taking care of yourself; skim the stuff about women. show less

I would give this book a 2.5 rating.

Critiques I agree with;
1. Way too repetitive
2. Cheesy, soft porn style at times
3. He describes an ideal without explaining how mere mortals can get there
4. He uses the word God when he means sacred love

I read his Superior Man book which was a star better than this. I wanted to get the other perspective, which is why I picked this one up. I feel he is way better at depicting the source of the issues many women (and men) have at reaching their full human show more potential in love, sex and relationships, than he is in giving practical advice at how to avoid these issues. He is a bit better at that in the Superior Man book.

As for those who complain this book is sexist and/or (shudder) “problematic”, I would argue that complaint is a reflection of the four critiques noted above. Perhaps the style is a direct result of him trying to appeal to a “spirituality”, New Age audience. If instead he tried to explain tantric ideas as a profound intellectual attempt at understanding a million years of human evolution, and how humans can achieve their full potential within the limits of evolution’s biological and cultural expressions, the book would be more useful and uplifting.

I wish there were better books for both men and women that explain these ideas without the cheesy, New Age rhetoric. show less