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asshole is interestingly said to
himself need
rough treatment. Perhaps he is better off, on balance, with a few bruises, having come to see the error of his ways. Our suggestion here is not that this is false, but that rough treatment is largely pointless, because it has little to no chance of bringing the asshole around.
    26 . Wallace, “Certainly the End of
Something
or Other,” in
Consider the Lobster
, 59.
    27 . Nietzsche’s Übermensch famously stands beyond conventional morality and prizes the assertion of self above all. As far as I can tell, he can be read in different ways: either as rejecting morality altogether, as endorsing the true universalistic morality of personal authenticity, or as endorsing special privileges for the few who are courageous enough to assert themselves in ways that are in principle available to all. He’s closest to the asshole in the latter reading.

[ 4 ] GENDER, NATURE, BLAME
    Having now examined numerous assholes, we observe a pattern: assholes are mainly men. Why should that be so? What explains why assholes are so overwhelmingly distributed among only one-half of the human population?
    Is it because men have been socialized so differently from women—that is, is it a product of
culture
? Or is it something about men themselves—something about
male nature
—that explains why newborn boys are so much more likely to become assholes than are newborn girls?
    The answer, we will suggest, is gender culture rather than maleness. Maleness per se, seen as a mere biological category, is not causally to blame, or at least any influence it has is swamped by deeply entrenched, nearly universal gender culture. This causal thesis implies nothing about morality by itself. It does raise a deep philosophical question about moral responsibility, about who, if anyone, is morally responsible for what. If culture systematically steers newborn babies into becoming assholes simply because their sex is male, how can the grown-up asshole be blamed or condemned for his foul condition? Responsibility might seem to lie squarely upon
society
. It allows gender culture to have this profoundly influential steering role. The foulness of the asshole may therefore seem to reflect not the foulness of the individuals we routinely blame for their asshole ways but rather the foulness of a social condition that producesassholes in abundance. We usually do single out the individual asshole, blaming
him
. But why should this be fair? Why isn’t the lone asshole just a hapless soul caught up in a grand cultural asshole-production machine?
    A measure of sympathy for an asshole might be laudable, but it shouldn’t be taken too far. He still has freedom of will. He usually acts in his assholish ways freely and of his own free will. That is the source of his actions and the proper target for management, criticism, and blame—or so we want to maintain.
    Philosophy won’t simply take that for granted. The philosophical skeptic will deny it outright: according to the skeptic, no one, not even an asshole, is the appropriate object of condemnation or blame. Moral responsibility is, at most, a useful fiction. As usual in philosophy, there is no easy refutation of the dug-in skeptic. But even if refutation isn’t in the cards, the skeptic’s salutary role is to force those of us who aren’t skeptical to
say
what we might mean in claiming that people do indeed have “freedom of will.” Why is it, exactly, that assholes are the appropriate object of blame, whereas the insane or the drug addict are not justly held responsible? What, precisely, is the difference?
    In one traditional interpretation, the asshole indeed has freedom of will, and so qualifies for blame, in the sense that he has
control
over his actions and the nature of his character. His actions and character are finally up to him, despite the strong cultural currents he swims in. As we will see, however, requiring this special kind of countercultural control makes