>
The video above, which has been making the rounds of the manosphere, is one of the creepiest and most off-putting things I’ve seen since watching Dogtooth a couple of weeks ago. Actually, I take that back: Dogtooth was much less creepy and off-putting. I was so repelled by what I saw in this video that it literally took me several tries to get through the whole thing. And no, it’s not some weird misogynistic rant by the likes of Bernard Chapin. Oh, no no no. The misogynists of the world are as repelled by the video as I am, though for radically different reasons. Titled “Dear Woman,” the video was actually put together by a couple of self-described “conscious men” who think they’re doing a great favor to the women of the world.
To which I can only say: Guys, stop it, you’re not helping.
If you can stomach it, the video is worth watching in its entirety. If not, here’s what you’re missing: The video is the work of a couple of New Age gurus — Arjuna Ardagh and Gay Hendricks, Ph.D – who, with the help of a little gaggle of guys, have written a little manifesto “apologizing” to the women of the world for all the bad shit done by men to women over the centuries. Or, as they put it:
I feel deep love, great respect and a growing sense of worship for the gifts of the feminine. I also feel deep sorrow about the destructive actions of the unconscious masculine in the past and present. I want to apologize to you and make amends for those actions, in order to bring forth a new era of co-creation with you.
The first step in “making amends,” evidently, was to gather together a group of men – some of whom seem to have been roped into it in the middle of a garden party — and to somehow convince them to read out loud the entire text of this manifesto. (The full text is here, but it’s much creepier when it’s read out loud.)
There is something about this manifesto, and the men reading it, that is so “off” that it may well make your skin crawl, and make you wonder how many of the men in the video have dead bodies secreted away in the crawl spaces under their homes. A female friend I showed the video to could only make it through the first couple of minutes before switching it off in horror; one commenter on Metafilter reported that it “made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, and not in a good way. Eeew.”
The creepyist, skin-crawliest part of the video has to be the section in which the assembled men talk about women’s bodies:
I honor the beauty and integrity of your body. When we worship each other through our bodies with awareness and devotion, there are no boundaries to the love that we can generate. I feel sorrow that men have used your beauty as a form of commerce in prostitution and pornography. In the grip of lust we have often lacked the skills to ask gracefully for intimacy or to take ‘No’ for an answer. I take a stand against any form of enforced or soulless commercialization of woman’s beauty, and I respect that your body belongs to you. …
I honor your capacity to listen to your body and its needs for food, rest and playtime.
I feel confident that I speak for many when I say “ewww.” Somehow I’m reminded of Saturday Night Live’s hot-tub-loving “lovers.”
As one commenter on Metafilter put it:
“We worship women” sounds like something Buffalo Bill would have said if he had a PR agent. My guess is that they’re sickos who seem really earnest at first but it turns out that they’re actually trying to collect used tampons for onanistic purposes or something.
So what is it, aside from all this worshiping, that makes the video so creepy? Part of the problem is that these “conscious men” are, in their own way, as patronizing and sexist as any manosphere dudes “mansplaining” about how all women only want to fuck alpha guys. Women, in their view, are inherently peaceful earth-mother types. “I commit now to … honoring the spirituality of the divine feminine,” the guys tell us. “I honor your deep connection to the earth.”
From this day, moving forward, I vow to treat your heart as the sacred temple it is, and I commit to honoring the feminine in you and me and in my relationship to all life.
I know that by leaving the past behind and joining hands in the present, we can create a synergy of our strengths. Together, there is nothing we cannot do.
—
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>"I'm just trying to keep up here. So fiddler crabs explain the wage gap?" If you don't think there is any sense to be made from nature in regard to sexual selection and gendered behavior I can't help you David.
>Women work less hours, compete less for territory and resources, seek jobs out of a different modus of personal fulfillment (one which has little or nothing to do with appealing to the opposite sex), work less overtime, work less lucrative jobs (the ones that produce utilization of resources), work less dangerous jobs and as a whole work in entirely different jobs than men. Sometimes women don't even work at all….
>Well, Discount, just don't go and try to cut trees down with your teeth just because you saw a beaver do it, or try to pick up a car because ants can lift many times their own body weight. Sometimes these lessons from nature are a bit tricky to apply to your own life.
>I think that Julia Ward Howe would be a bit annoyed at Discount's description of her contribution to the celebration of manhood.
>You are drawing inconsistent variables here David. We are not ants and beavers but we are male and female. Go ahead draw no wisdom from anything but your free will deterministic ideas of individual relativism. Your human ego deceives you. It's all a social construct right. Gender, society, gendered behavior, differences and interrelations are all a mailable social construct. I've heard it before.
>All right then, I'll stick to gender relations in the animal kingdom. The male seahorse gestates and gives birth to seahorse babies. Clownfish sometimes change their sex. Male bees have exploding balls. One kind of octopus has a detachable penis that swims by itself to impregnate the female.So what lessons should we draw from all this? http://www.neatorama.com/2007/04/30/30-strangest-animal-mating-habits/
>We should be discounting Discount's opinions?
>"free will deterministic ideas of individual relativism. " I think that exemplifies Discount's statements. They are bizarre ramblings so incoherant and self contradictory that it is impossible to make any semblence of a sensible position from them. Either discount lives in some place utterly free of logic and cognitive dissonance, or discount is trolling.
>men in our personal lives will simply MGTOW…we are simply walking away. So go ahead and do it already. Why are you sticking around talking to us feminazis and manginas when you could instead be going your own way?I would start by not typing "manboobz.com" into your browser anymore. The DNS chooses the way that that leads you, so you can't go your own.
>What Elizabeth said. Just like FeministTrollQueen, Discount is telling us exactly what s/he is in the name – someone to be discounted.
>Lady Victoria von Syrus said…"What Elizabeth said. Just like FeministTrollQueen, Discount is telling us exactly what s/he is in the name – someone to be discounted." Lol, our debate is over it seems. Nothing to work with here but ignorance….nexttriplanetary said…"men in our personal lives will simply MGTOW…we are simply walking away. So go ahead and do it already. Why are you sticking around talking to us feminazis and manginas when you could instead be going your own way?"Lol…debate comes to an end again…nothing to work with here…nextDarkSideCat said…"free will deterministic ideas of individual relativism. " I think that exemplifies Discount's statements. They are bizarre ramblings so incoherant and self contradictory that it is impossible to make any semblence of a sensible position from them."Fail again…. These are philosophical concepts DarksideCat..You are spending to much time alone with your cats and without a man of course…nextElizabeth said…"We should be discounting Discount's opinions?"Ohhhhh more intellectual vacuity…next
>David Futrelle said…"All right then, I'll stick to gender relations in the animal kingdom. The male seahorse gestates and gives birth to seahorse babies. Clownfish sometimes change their sex. Male bees have exploding balls. One kind of octopus has a detachable penis that swims by itself to impregnate the female.So what lessons should we draw from all this?"FINALLY…AT LEAST SOME SORT OF PROCESS IS GOING ON UP STAIRS… Listen David, my point is simply that we are not separate from the world around us. Human beings do not exist in a vacuum apart from other processes we see in the world around us. Human beings are animals whether you like to admit it or not. We are not Gods, we are not something special beyond our adaptive trait of intelligence. My point is that we have a lot more in common with the world around us than not. My point is that we do not operate from Free Will alone and that despite what feminists will tell you there are real biological differences between male and female and different roles we play hence the existence of two genders to begin with. In fact I venture to say that men and women in many regards are opposites in every way. Despite what feminists believe we are supposed to be complimentary and operate in symbiosis. We are supposed to fit together like a glove. We are supposed to need each other. Believe me I have heard ENOUGH about "toxic masculinity". I had to sit through a semester of "women's studies" constantly being demeaned and denigrated for being male. I had to look at illustrations showing girls literally rolling their eyes at the inferior and violent male: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_IU3iQnIt6Nc/SWA7reY3_DI/AAAAAAAAAAc/UbDMBtCcjhc/s1600-h/ScreenShot004.png There is a reason for this David: "After analyzing the imaging data for the entire group, the researchers found that the participants showed activation in the brain's mesocorticolimbic center, the region typically associated with reward and addiction. Male brains, however, showed much greater activation, and the amount of activation was correlated with how much territory they gained. (This wasn't the case with women.) Three structures within the reward circuit – the nucleus accumbens, amygdala and orbitofrontal cortex – were also shown to influence each other much more in men than in women. And the better connected this circuit was, the better males performed in the game."The findings indicate, the researchers said, that successfully acquiring territory in a computer game format is more rewarding for men than for women.http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_IU3iQnIt6Nc/SW84Yu9VRDI/AAAAAAAAAFM/aB-ARWKTQ68/s1600-h/8.bmp If women don't like it they can go to their own land, acquire their own resources and leave men the hell alone. I will not tolerate misandrist bigotry pouring out of the mouths of women and their pseudo scientific bullshit courses that denigrate the masculine.
>I don't think harassment at clubs is the main reason there are so female comedians–I think it's mostly because of our cultural comedic expectations.Most people would consider things like slapstick to be just not funny if it happened to a woman. It might be considered unseemly for women to do dirty jokes or body part humor. Women very rarely mug for the camera, for whatever reason. Result: Women in comedies are virtually always the straight man (pardon the terminology). And straight men don't lend themselves to solo or stand-up comedy.But of course women can be funny. My favorite female comedian? Kristen Wiig as SNL correspondent Judy Grimes. (Just kidding!)
>The excessive line breaks are making Discount's comments look like beatnik poetry.
>cboye said…"The excessive line breaks are making Discount's comments look like beatnik poetry." Lol…I love it…Anything intelligent to add to the conversation? The line breaks occurred after copying and pasting from my blog but for you they are intentional.
>I hate to break it to you but women are so not funny that they had to request affirmative action be given to them because the people hosting the recent South By South West festival filled their comedy line up guest list with the funniest comedians they know…all men. They had to send some of the men home to bring women on stage. Can't women just accept male display behavior and ability for what it is instead of feeling all inferior?
>If I were a woman I'd be embarrassed.
>So basically Discount believes that men are superior because they like to obtain more territory and resources regardless of consent of owner. Since women apparently do not feel the same need to be conquering bastards so therefore it is all our fault men go to war.Contradiction you make Discount.
>And yes, I was being intentionally bizarre in my statements because your premise is bizarre.
>Discount, everyone else on this blog seems to have mastered the tricky art of copying and pasting without including accidental line breaks. In fact, I think the rest of us mastered this skill when we were forwarding emails around in 1998, in the nascent days of the internet.
>http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_IU3iQnIt6Nc/SWA7reY3_DI/AAAAAAAAAAc/UbDMBtCcjhc/s1600-h/ScreenShot004.pngI don't really know what you're trying to get across here. Virtually every thread here on Manboobz has a few comments about how we feminists don't generally like gender essentialism. So none of us here are going to agree with the premise of that image. So… are you attacking us for the content of that image? Or are you just devoid of any coherent point beyond "fuck wimminz"?
>I didn't find either one of them "creepy", just deluded or misguided.
>"So none of us here are going to agree with the premise of that image." Well none of you here speak the message of main stream gender feminism now do you. Am I angry yes I'm angry. I and many other men have the right to be. A movement is brewing. We are in the process of consciousness raising…a feminist term. From there comes intellectual coalescence and then propagation in our personal lives or as a class. Either way things will work themselves out of the system the good way or the bad way.
>Discount said… "If I were a woman I'd be embarrassed."I think if you were a woman, women would be embarrassed.
>Well I take that back..your just backpedaling and in denial. That's what this site is about. Furthermore, David, as a homosexual man has no understanding or right to speak about relationships and understanding between men and women from the primary perspective of the heterosexual man. As such he does not speak for us nor the hetero male experience of gender relations.