Men's Rights Advocates! Come out and plaaaaaayyyyy

[self biased]

linkavitch

"What is 'the manosphere'?" I ask Paul Elam around three one morning. This is not a factual question. It's an existential one.

I already know that "the manosphere" refers to an online network, nascent but vast and like the universe constantly expanding, each twinkling star in its firmament dedicated—obviously—to men. Men and their problems. Usually with women. Some galaxies of the manosphere are composed of self-declared "pickup artists" (PUAs) who want to help ordinary guys trick women into bed; other solar systems deal earnestly with child custody and the Adderallization of rambunctious boys. There are constellations of MGTOWs, "men going their own way," separatists and onanists and recluses. There are hundreds of websites and blogs, many openly hostile—SlutHate, Angry Harry, The Spearhead, NiceGuy's American Women Suck Page—and many more that are brutally lewd. For instance: Return of Kings, published by the author of a series of popular country guides such as Bang Ukraine: How to Sleep with Ukrainian Women in Ukraine.

i'll be honest, i didn't read the whole article. by the end of the first page i was sick of the taste of bile in my throat. A friend sums up the arguments fairly succinctly, though: " It's white privilege, male privilege, straight privilege, the same repetitive buttheadedness where the very idea that some other group you don't belong to is improving its situation that it has to be some zero freaking sum game where you have to be LOSING because someone else is winning, that PC is limiting your freedom of speech instead of letting you be the verbal butthead that generations before you have been. Well, people like this are half right. They're losers. Nowhere in history have the whiners ever come out ahead, just fodder for sociology students a hundred years in the future to wonder, 'what was with these ****wits?'"

discuss.

[Sava]

i think your italics are broken

[Dinner]

Bang Ukraine sounds interesting.

[self biased]

i think your italics are broken

... No? My friend's rant is not composed of my words, and therefore not italicized.

[kentonio]

The red-pill moment, explains one men's rights activist (MRA), "is the day you decide nothing looks the same." It's what the movement calls the born-again experience of opening your eyes to women's Matrix-like control of the modern world. For a young MRA named Max von Holtzendorff, the red-pill moment was being accused of sexual harrassment by a co-worker to whom he proposed sex, "being blunt and forthright, because that seemed the best way to ensure consent."

#Facepalm

[Sava]

... No? My friend's rant is not composed of my words, and therefore not italicized.

okay

I thought that might be what was happening

I figured you might put that in a quote box

[Sava]

if someone ever confessed to me that they were MRA, I would need to be stopped from physically assaulting them

[kentonio]

The night winds on, with discussion of rape and the smothering of penises, the sorrows of false accusations and the narcissism of young girls. A sore point for Factory, who has two daughters, who, like young women everywhere, he says, compete for the most exaggerated rape claim. It is, he says, a status thing. When one of his daughters came home one night and said she'd been raped, he said, "Are you ****ing kidding me?" Sitting with us, he hikes his voice up to a falsetto in imitation: " 'Oh, I just got raped.' " He laughs. There's a moment of silence. A bridge too far? "I told her if she pressed charges, I'd disown her."

Elam, whose attention has drifted, grins through his beard. "That's good fathering," he says.

Factory loves his children. He would have reacted differently if it had been what he in theory considers a legitimate claim, but—"if you don't have videotape or forensic, a whole lot of bruises, I don't give a ****."

You have to think a lot of the stuff they come out with is just macho bull****.






Someone, please tell me that...

[regexcellent]

I can't help but read MGTOW as maximum gross takeoff weight...perhaps apropos to the men using the term. But honestly, the PUA thing seems to get undue attention to the actual population proportion.

I read something recently that noted male MIT graduates are dramatically less likely to have had sex than the average male high school graduate. Moreover having large numbers of sexual partners is strongly connected to criminal records, alcohol and drug use, low educational attainment, domestic violence, etc. So in the middle of all the "nice guy" smoke there's probably a little bit of fire.

Like, when someone says "I am a nice guy, why can't I get any dates?" he's not saying "I'm so nice that women should grovel at my feet and crawl over each other for my dick," he's saying "I'm nicer than the guy next door who's on his fourth wife and hits her over the head with a beer bottle every other night. Why does he have more success with women than me?" I can understand why that would be frustrating.

All that being said, internet anti-feminism is still really annoying and I'd rather be spared it.

[iHateFatPeople]

Six eight, 290 pounds, with the beard of John Brown and the rumbling voice of James Earl Jones, Elam, whose name happens to be "male" backward, wants to be a provocateur. Responding to a feminist critic, he once wrote, "The idea of ****ing your **** up gives me an erection."

A six eight 290 pound man gets boners fantasizing about violently assaulting women who are half his size. That about sums it up. Also, his BMI is in the "obese" range. Another fatass with an attitude of entitlement.

[regexcellent]

Gribbler, you know you can just ask Aeson to change your account name, right?

[ZEE]

I cKan't wait for Kidicious to Poast in this thrade and PWN everyone's asses!

[MRT144]

I can't help but read MGTOW as maximum gross takeoff weight...perhaps apropos to the men using the term. But honestly, the PUA thing seems to get undue attention to the actual population proportion.

I read something recently that noted male MIT graduates are dramatically less likely to have had sex than the average male high school graduate. Moreover having large numbers of sexual partners is strongly connected to criminal records, alcohol and drug use, low educational attainment, domestic violence, etc. So in the middle of all the "nice guy" smoke there's probably a little bit of fire.

Like, when someone says "I am a nice guy, why can't I get any dates?" he's not saying "I'm so nice that women should grovel at my feet and crawl over each other for my dick," he's saying "I'm nicer than the guy next door who's on his fourth wife and hits her over the head with a beer bottle every other night. Why does he have more success with women than me?" I can understand why that would be frustrating.

All that being said, internet anti-feminism is still really annoying and I'd rather be spared it.

It's only frustrating if you don't entertain the possibility that you don't know donkey dick attraction and have no interest in developing that knowledge and experience.

I bet there is a severe overlap between these kinds of complainers and some ridiculous unattainable standard of woman which is suitable.

"Why do these jerks get dates with women I'm attracted to physically? It's not fair! I'm a nice guy!"

I never hear that all the nice girls are taken.

[regexcellent]

They're still hitting on a nugget of truth there, which is that women don't necessarily consider "niceness" more important than whatever the serial domestic abuser has got--probably a combination of physical attractiveness and confidence.

As to your point about standards, I think it's spot on. My favorite high school math teacher had two fantastic and universal pieces of relationship advice: 1. Lower your standards. 2. If you want a girlfriend, get a dog.

[regexcellent]

Oh, to add, I've been thinking about the whole "nice guy"/"friendzone" thing for a few weeks now, because while the term "friendzone" has been around for at least 20 years (when it was used to describe Ross and Rachel on Friends), it's only recently that it's gotten the whole neckbeard/nerd stigma thing associated with it.

And long before it became a big internet meme, I'd seen lots of independent observations about the phenomenon in a number of places. Like this very old and top 10 quote on bash.org. Or this xkcd strip from 2008. Or the third episode of Scrubs which aired in 2001 (I just binge-watched that series recently). Or if we want to go way back, the relationship between Gilbert and Anne in the Anne of Green Gables books, which were written about 100 years ago. By a woman.

In short, I don't think the complaints about "friendzone"/"nice guy" stuff are restricted to pasty nerds with unrealistic expectations of dating supermodels. It's older than the hills and there's at least a bit of truth to it.

edit: related to the xkcd thing, Randall Munroe appears to have waffled on this front, or perhaps his perspective has changed now that he's married.