ask [Dr. Helen] why she doesn't use her husband's last name and if she'll be sharing the profits from the book with bloggers like yourself & heartiste that she "borrowed" from your blogs.This question was, of course, in reference to Dr. Helen's Ask Me Anything on Reddit yesterday. And it revealed a fundamental misunderstanding of what drives intellectuals, or at least, some intellectuals.
First, I am very pleased that Dr. Helen to utilize some of the concepts introduced here at Alpha Game, and I strongly suspect that Roissy et al feel the same. I am much more concerned with the ideas I have articulated becoming popular wisdom than I am about receiving public credit for them; note how my demolition of the religion causes war has entered the mainstream and even scientific journals without credit ever being given to me. Dr. Helen was very generous and careful to credit her various influences, which is considerably more than I can say for a number of public commenters and scientists.
To the extent she borrowed them, she is welcome to keep them and utilize them to the best of her ability. Die Gedanken sind frei.
Second, ideas are not only free, but modular. I built on Roissy's ideas. Roissy built on Neil Strauss's. Dr. Helen hasn't necessarily built on them, but she is performing an equally important role in popularizing them and putting them in front of an audience that will never consent to listen to either Roissy or me. As I've noted with regards to Susan Walsh, it is women who will ultimately bring the truth of Game into the mainstream, not the men who developed its concepts. In our society, most women simply disregard men's opinions to the extent they are even capable of understanding them, which means that female translators are more or less necessary if any coherent new ideas are going to penetrate the female-dominated mainstream.
Third, I have written nine or ten books. I never bothered writing a book about Game or the socio-sexual aspects of society because I am more interested in writing other books, such as The Irrational Atheist, The Return of the Great Depression, and A Throne of Bones. I have published nearly 1,400 pages of fiction in the last year, I am in the middle of writing the second of five 850-page novels, and so I am glad Dr. Helen wrote Men on Strike because, among other things, it means I didn't have to do it. And I am delighted that her book is meeting with such success because it is an important subject and one of vital interest to millions of men and women across the Western world.
As for Dr. Helen's, I don't even know if that is her actual name or simply her professional name. Regardless, that's her business, not mine or anyone else's, and I could not care less if she wishes to call herself Dr. Helen Smith or Helen of Troy. It is the individual who merits one's regard, not the label.
