When people think of revolutionary artists, Pablo Picasso is likely one of the first names to come to mind. In recent years, his problematic views have been reassessed.
It is no surprise that a man from the past was racist and sexist (it still isn’t a surprise), but his style of sexism struck me. It is a mindset I see more often online, in my friendships, and even with my students.
Picasso once declared, “There are only two kinds of women: goddesses and doormats”(source).
Picasso’s life reflects this view. He could go from worshipping a woman to emotionally abusing them. Sadly, this dynamic plays out too often today. The goal, from the limited view of a certain type of man, is to reduce goddesses to doormats.
Breaking down woman
Kevin Samuels was an internet personality who marketed himself as an image consultant and dating expert. He pushed for strict gender roles, traditional values, and hypermasculine authority.
I’m pretty sure Samuels was the first person I heard say “high value man.” If you haven’t heard this phrase, it describes the type of man all women should want to date according to Samuels: financial “success” and high social status.
Samuels pushed for women to be “high value” by being submissive, losing weight, and marrying young.
Like most grifters, he didn’t live the life he sold. He wasn’t a “high value man” until after his YouTube success. He had already been married twice, had a child, and engaged in casual sex.
Of course, his actions didn’t stop young men from flocking.
Many of these men are awkward, trying to figure themselves out, and stumped on how to engage with the opposite sex. I can speak from experience when I say it is hard to date when you are a little weird and nerdy in high school, especially when I was growing up, and especially as a Black man, Samuel's original target audience.
Sometimes, when dating feels so distant, it is easy to start viewing women as unattainable objects, especially as a hormone-driven teenager.
The correct thing to do is to teach boys that girls are humans, but Samuels goes too far. He teaches them that girls are doormats, and if a woman does not believe she is a doormat, the boy should break her down until she becomes one.
The videos from Samuels I find most disturbing are the ones where he brings on women to rate themselves. The conversations can start kind enough with Samuels trying to figure out what they are looking for in a man.
He slowly plants the seed that the woman desires a partner, asks them to rate themselves, and then breaks them down if they think highly of themselves.
He has a rule on his show where a woman cannot rank herself as a 7 because it is the “safe” number that everyone wants to choose. Also, for reference, he rates Beyoncé as an 8.
Immediately, Samuels makes these women place a large portion of their dating potential on their physical appearance and then tricks them into driving that self-worth downward.
If he feels the woman isn’t compliant or submissive, he will hang up the call.
Samuels passed in 2022, but several similar grifters have taken up the call. Even though many of my students can barely read and most of them don’t actually know Samuels, many of them quote the same talking points he was making years ago.
They are making the same points, though not as poetically, that Picasso made decades ago.
Kids objectifying women
I have one especially immature student this year we will call Dayton. He loves to fart in class and giggle about it. He will make loud, controversial statements in the middle of a silent classroom, like “Did you know Israel controls the weather?” He is frighteningly obsessed with the 6–7 thing.
He is also obsessed with the “high value man” mindset. If this motivated him to do well in school, I could see the benefit. Instead, he just pokes his chest out and makes sexist remarks about women.
A former student developed a crush on him, and despite my rule to stay out of student relationships, I did warn her that it may be an unhealthy situation.
She made her move, and once they started talking, he immediately reduced her to body parts and rejected her when she refused to be physical with him in the school library.
He now walks around with an even bigger surface-level ego, even though I can’t imagine any other girl showing interest in him until he grows up.
He is the type of kid who makes an entire class groan when he speaks up. Unfortunately, this is also the type of kid people like Kevin Samuels prey on.
Dayton’s father has been in jail most of his life. His mother has passed. His grandparents pay very little attention to him. He is thirsty for acknowledgement. We have a rule in my class. If he feels he needs attention, instead of acting out, he can just raise his hand, and I will come check on him even if it's just to listen to a silly joke. I would be lying if I said it works the way I would like, but he has been open to the idea. He occasionally calls me over when he feels compelled to blurt out something inappropriate.
Still, his lack of social skills means he doesn’t have many actual friends at school. He is the clown, but most of the laughs he got in middle school have now dried up.
He is clearly very attracted to girls, but he doesn’t have the maturity to draw their eye. Instead of reflecting on his own flaws, he finds the YouTube bros who blame women for their problems. "Their standards are too high," they'll say. "Dayton is great."
Although an extreme case, so many boys are in Dayton’s boat. Luckily, many of them grow out of it. Sadly, some of them do not.
Negotiating from goddess to door mat
I decided to write this piece because I’ve watched so many women in my life follow this path. In many ways, I am a traditional man, and I admit part of me views women as goddesses, especially Black women.
This is why it is always so disheartening to see them negotiate themselves into doormat status. They start out with such high standards and expectations in a relationship, and as time progresses, they are walking on eggshells and doing whatever they can to keep a little piece of man.
This most recently happened with a friend I’ve known for about 25 years. (I just did the Math, and I’m realizing how old I am as I write this.) She has always been strong, even when in a relationship. In some cases, I’ve even argued that she emasculated her partners. I’ve never imagined she would become a doormat for someone.
However, in her most recent relationship, she is doing just that. She started with her traditional expectations, even demanding a monogamous relationship before intimacy would occur.
She then broke her money rule by paying for him to go on a cruise after only dating for a month. This is when she found out he was cheating. She then forgave him, even though he said he would not stop seeing the girls.
My friend said she would not be in a polyamorous relationship, but she would give him a year to get rid of them.
She then caught him lying again, and this time, when she confronted him, he said he had no intentions of getting rid of the women. Although she cried and so on, as I write this, she is at his house again.
Notice how her standards started at one place, and she continues to drop them. There is nothing wrong with this if she is truly happy, but she spends more time stressing about his whereabouts and crying than actually being happy. What happened to her?
Sadly, I’ve experienced this attempt to negotiate from goddess to doormat firsthand as well.
As a single man with several friends who are looking for relationships, I am occasionally asked about my availability and interest in dating. Outside of some extremely rare and specific circumstances, I’m not drawn to that life.
Unfortunately, I know what these women are looking for in a man, and when I tell them that I’m not interested in a relationship, they start to bargain with me. One conversation (over multiple weeks) went something like this.
Friend: I think we would be good together.
Me: I don’t really do the relationship thing.
Friend: Why?
Me: It just isn’t for me.
Friend: I’m different.
Me: I know.
Friend: So you should give it a try.
Me: I’ve done the relationship stuff before. I have a lot going on. It just isn’t for me.
……
Friend: You should be my boyfriend for a week and see how you like it.
Me: No. That is a bad idea.
Friend: I was joking, just a day.
Me: Haha.
……
Friend: I’m looking for a friend.
Me: Are you okay?
Friend: I’m looking for someone to hang out with.
Me: We can hang out.
Friend: And have sex with
Me: I don’t do relationships
Friend: I don’t want a relationship. I just want a buddy.
Me: Based on our conversations, I think you want a relationship.
Friend: I don’t anymore. I just want someone I can hang with and cuddle and spend time with sometimes, and be intimate with.
Me: Sounds like a relationship
…..
Friend: I’m just looking for someone I can have sex with a couple of times a week.
……
Friend: I’m just looking for someone I can have sex with once a month
…….
Friend: I’m just looking for someone to have sex with whenever they feel like it.
This is an extreme example, of course, but this type of thing has happened multiple times over the last several years.
I imagine some people equate sex to love. Sadly, as far as I can tell, this is the goal of Samuels’s proteges. The end product is a woman who is submissive and basically willing to do anything for a man.
I hope my empathy for the men and women involved in these situations comes through in my writing. Their actions usually stem from a place of pain, a desire for love and connection, and a fear of rejection.
I’m constantly inundated with the agony of the modern dating world, and I try my best to be a listening ear. Sometimes, real friendship is more meaningful than romantic entanglements, even though it may not seem so at the time.
The woman who desperately reached out for a relationship later thanked me for not taking advantage of her during a time of pain.
Still, I encourage her to seek therapy. I encourage any woman who feels the need to make herself small to please a man to be honest about what is important to her. We can be so quick to trick ourselves without realizing it.
I encourage men to seek therapy if they feel the only way they can find love and affection is by making a woman into a doormat. If they find some pride in that, I encourage them to look in the mirror and ask if they see a good person looking back.
As for the Kevin Samuels types who make money by manipulating boys, well, you already know you are garbage, but it isn’t too late to reflect and make some changes.