The charming Man Going His Own Way who calls himself Rex Patriarch has written up a short treatise entitled “Women Are Incapable of Love.” (He’s also posted a video by another MGTOWer making the same point, but we’ll just ignore that for now, because I didn’t bother to watch it.)
Anyway, here’s Rex’s argument, such as it is:
Look guys, women are like pets.
Do pets love you?
No, of course not but they do feel the warmth which is the love you may have for them. At a minimum you are their meal ticket. That in of itself is why they stick around.
Same same with women. As long as you are their meal ticket they “love” you but the very moment you can’t provide for them. The very moment they find a better deal, find some higher status.
Watch how fast that “love” goes out the window.
The reason being is it never was there to begin with. It was just something they were telling you to keep the goodies coming. Up until they could find something better. If they can.
The thing is men can love women all they want or none at all but don’t expect them to love you back in the same measure. They simply do not have the ability.
What’s interesting about this argument, insofar as anything about it is interesting, is that he’s not just, you know, wrong about women. He’s also wrong about pets.
Now, anyone who’s bonded with a pet certainly feels that their pet loves them back. (Or at least some pets do; I’m pretty sure the turtle my brother had as a kid didn’t really love anything other than worms.) Still, some skeptics insist that we’re just anthropomorphizing when we look at our pets and see love in their eyes.
But researchers are increasingly seeing harder-to-dismiss signs that animals may have emotions remarkably like our own — and that they can indeed feel love. By scanning the brains of dogs, Emory University neuroeconomics professor Gregory Berns has found that dogs and humans are alike in some key ways:
All in all, dogs and humans show striking similarities in the activity of an important brain region called the caudate nucleus. So, do dogs love us and miss us when we’re gone? The data strongly suggest they do. And, those data can further move humanity away from simplistic, reductionist, behaviorist explanations of animal behavior and animal emotions and also be used to protect dogs and other animals from being abused.
You can read more about his research, and what he sees as its implications, here.
More on animal emotions here and here.
You can also learn a lot about how animals — including the animals called humans — think and feel by just fucking paying attention to them and having a tiny bit of empathy. This is apparently a bit too much for some people to manage.
So here’s my “kitties can love” story:
My parents have two cats. One of them loves my mom above all (but doesn’t mind others), which makes some sense, because Mom is usually the one to feed them. Also, my mom is awesome and I am not surprised when animals love her too. Our dog loved her above all, too. This cat will leave whoever she’s cuddling with at the sound of Mom’s voice.
The other cat… well. He was my grandmother’s, and she had him for a few years before she moved in with us. For all the years she lived with us, he never loved anyone the way he loved her. He would only sit on her lap, only nuzzle her neck. Even though she developed severe Alzheimers and the rest of us (including me) were doing all the feeding, etc., he stayed by her.
When she died, he fell in love with my sister, despite the fact that there were three–two if you count my mom as taken–other options in the house, who fed him more often and are bigger cat people, though I think he has seduced her to the dark side.
And here is my newest video of my two little monsters:
And the previous one, if you missed it (posted before, but what the hell, its cute):
(You can kind of tell I like to video them grooming each other. I need to get one of them wrestling, but they don’t stay still enough.)
Eeek! I didn’t think of that!
Still, we can scare him off with talk about kitties and makeup and bras if he tries talking to himself here.
Thank God fasting that this guy IS going his own way.
Exactly how old is this Rex Patriarch fella? I remember believing very similar things about women. It’s just that I was six when I believed them, and girls had cooties as well.
As for seeing love in the eyes of your pet? I’d say it’s less anthropomorphising the animal, and more anthropomorphising the emotion to argue that they cannot. Emotion is a far more primal thing than rationality and ingenuity, yet we’re not the only animals to investigate or plan for the future, nor are the the only animals capable of invention, so by what divine providence would we be the only animals to feel love? So where’s the division? “There isn’t a sharp line dividing humans from the rest of the animal kingdom — it’s a very wuzzy line — it’s a very wuzzy line — and it’s getting wuzzy-er all the time…” (Fuck yeah! First time I’ve ever had reason to use that quote! :3)
Yeah I’ve had fish capable of being fond of me, not the food. The plec before the last one I had raised from when he was TINY and I put my hands in the tank and WOOSH I had a sucker attached to me. Took some coaxing to get him to let anyone else hand feed him.
And then there was Miss Minion. So named because she’d follow me around the apartment as best as she was able, despite having a whole school of loaches she could’ em been playing with (she watched TV, it was hilarious! One of those cat food commercials would come on and the cat would do some movement on a white background and that damned fish would mimic it…I’m sure all she saw was movement and contrast, but if she was watching me, and I was watching TV…)
And puffers? They’re jokingly compared to puppies for a reason!
So yeah, this is me having serious doubts that any mammal is incapible of love.
Awwww kitties!
Here’s Mads being invisible.
http://youtu.be/WXh9INqqCqE
If cats don’t feel affection, why was Fribbie so lonely after Katie, Hadji and Magnus all went Home within six months?
If an animal is getting regular food, regardless of zir behaviour, why does zie show affection at all? Why does zie have changeable moods? (Magnus you bastard)
If Katie doesn’t/didn’t feel affection, why did she spend so much time (earthside) snuggling up on me, burrowing her head under my chin (and biting my chin, little wretch) and purring mightily, when I was not her principal food-provider? It’s not like she needed me as a heat source or comfortable bed, since she had both.
I hope Lackwit McJerkoff never has anything to do with animals, or women. Not only is he probably not to be trusted around either, he frankly deserves to be isolated. Never knowing the love of a cat or dog or human = serves him right.
So the guy who doesn’t think women are people can’t accept that animals have emotions? What a shocker.
wordsp1nner – Aww, pretty kitties! I have a gray tabby too. 🙂
About these guys who think that women only care about being provided for by men – are they aware that lesbians/bi women exist? What do they think two women dating each other are getting out of the relationship?
Wait, no…it just occurred to me that I probably don’t want to know.
toujorsgai,
Actually, that’s bad lighting (it was dark when this snuggle sesh happened). Pan is a brown tabby, with reddish bits around his white splotches.
They’re currently play wresting right in front of me. Jade actually started it, which is a first–Pan is usually the one who starts the party.
So Rex wants to be king and not even a dog will give him the adoration he thinks he should have.
Why do men who supposedly go their own way have their noses stuck so far up women’s asses? So much for going his own way…he really should though and do us all a favor.
“Rex Patriarch”…that is pretty hilarious. 😉
Don’t you know? Lesbians only exist to torment straightmans with the friendzone.
Unless you meant Jade, who is a dilute tortie with some tabby markings on her head and inside her legs. Then only about half of her is a grey tabby–the other half is a cream tabby.
wordsp1nner – Whoops, sorry. Brown tabby with reddish bits is also very pretty.
kittehserf – Mads is adorable. I love calicoes.
I suppose that is one way to explain to himself why his life is the way it is. He is certainly not the first to have chosen to dehumanize the disobedient.
::snicker:: His name couldn’t have been worse chosen, could it? How’s any MGHOW supposed to be king of anything, let alone a patriarch? Doesn’t being a patriarch sorta suggest you need to have a family? As for being king, well, sorry, bud, but there aren’t any thrones coming up vacant, and if they were they tend not to get voted to some anonymous drongo who’s already shown he’s unfit for any job. There isn’t a Kingdom of Blokesville; they never did establish Reddit Island, yanno.
As for animals not being capable of love: could someone please tell the Husky at work? He howled for three hours yesterday when his people left after visiting hours. THREE. HOURS. Whoever designed the runs at my hospital did NOT take acoustics into account.
But seriously, if this guy has evidence that animals don’t have emotions, he should submit it to JAVMA or whatever his country’s equivalent is. I’m sure they’d love to see it. While he’s at it, he can take his evidence of women not feeling love and submit it to every psychiatric, psychological, anthropological, sociological and ethnographic journal ever, because it would overturn entire disciplines. And that’s without even getting into anecdotal evidence or little details like “are women human”?
toujoursgai, thank ‘ee!
@Kittehs not to mention that “rex” and “patriarch” are two different languages…
Some interesting research about the dog/human bond reported in the Nova special “Dogs Decoded.”
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/dogs-decoded/
Dogs certainly are capable of what humans call “love” and they can be remarkably discriminating in terms of who, or what, elicits that emotion. I know one of my dogs loves me, but the other one just puts up with me (but really loves my SO). And one of the most poignant aspects of doggie love is that they will often continue to love someone who treats them badly.
Such a give-away, isn’t it? He doesn’t just say “Well, I don’t feel the need to be in a relationship/I’m not comfortable with women” or anything like that; noooo, it has to be a Manscreed about how menners are the only creatures in the world with Feeeelings.
emilygoddess – sshh, you’ll confuse him even more!
La Strega – that’s it, about dogs (and other animals): they love those who really just deserve to be shat on.
toujoursgai: No problem. I just have SIWOTI syndrome about my precious babies, that’s all.
I also just found (and am in the middle of reading) Beasts of Burden: Animal Rites, a horror comic about animals fighting supernatural creatures. Serious trigger warning for harm to animals (and people), but it is heartbreaking and so beautifully illustrated. I almost cried a couple of times last nice as I was reading it, and I had both cats sitting on my chest (which did make it awkward to read.)
Here’s Mads trying to tempt Fribbie into a fight, with very little success. Fribs does finally react a bit from about 2.20, but she’s generally not tempted and not at all impressed by Maddie’s efforts.
http://youtu.be/CDmUxtljZ-I