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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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>"IQ tests have massive cultural bias"Uhh huh…sure they are..that's why the curve is proportional at the top and bottom and the exponential curve is represented by the same exponential male presence in the areas Ms. Cronin mentioned.
>-"You know what? I'm fine with men owing women nothing. When it comes to relationships, I'd rather see people giving of themselves because they want to rather than give of themselves because they feel obligated to do so." How about people being force to give because the person they are giving to is a weak women who is unable to support herself and her own family?
>Family meaning women's families and women's children not a family of a man, woman and child.
>Oh, sure, I hunt mammoths all of the time. Fucking agriculture, how does it work?
>"Otherwise we should discriminate based on IQ rather than gender (by your own argument)"Nope…just equal opportunity. Men deserve the equal right to education based upon merit not women only Affirmative Action policies.
>"The only safety, wellbeing, protection, provision and suffering that matters to you is that of women. You would rather men die in order to save yourselves. You are weak, selfish and you have no honor. I do not respect you." "-Yeah, women, when was the last time you hunted a mammoth?" See who's lives, safety, welfare and wellbeing women value more when the time comes.
>Nope…just equal opportunity. Men deserve the equal right to education based upon merit not women only Affirmative Action policies. Aaaaand…here's where we ask you to prove it: how are men being discriminated against in university admissions?
>"They own 60% of the nations wealth" Source?-It's called google "women 60% of wealth"Furthermore more money flows from men and government to women than from women to men even in the personal realm. "You also lack data in regards to your assertion that women make more in all cities."http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704415104576250672504707048.html?mod=rss_opinion_mainTime Magazine: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_IU3iQnIt6Nc/TOI70pL8FVI/AAAAAAAAAeY/2kkHVHRxun0/s1600/75179_1579626383548_1622331797_1399185_1851917_n.jpg
>There is simply nothing more anyone owes women to provide for and protect them. You will have to learn to stand on your own two feet like a man.
>See who's lives, safety, welfare and wellbeing women value more when the time comes The people they care about the most? I'd imagine that varies from woman to woman. I'm not sure what "time" you are referring to.
>The recent time when that airliner crash landed into the Hudson..that time. Women's lives, safety, health, wellbeing and equal opportunities are not more important than men's. Women do not see it this way. Very sad.
>Ask any woman who she would rather see a man pull out of a burning wreckage a man or a woman.
>The 60% of the wealth stat is widely quoted, but poorly sourced. The nearest I could find to a source was a study cited by The Economist which projected that women will control 60% of all the wealth in Britain by the year 2025.
>You will have to learn to stand on your own two feet like a man.Right, just like a man who has had his bad behavior excused with that old aphorism, "boys will be boys," had his mediocre grades overlooked because of his family connections with the university, who got his job despite lackluster qualifications thanks to the same connections, who is able to save more of his paycheck because he has an unpaid secretary/accountant/babysitter/maid doing all the quotidian manual labor type tasks he prefers to avoid (a traditional-gender-role wife, in case you couldn't tell), who has been granted promotions and pay raises because "he has a family to support" (unlike the single mother, right?)–yeah, stand on your own two feet dammit! Just like those Real Men who do everything alone without any help from anyone ever!!So interesting how Real Men are nearly indistinguishable from grumpy toddlers.
>Discount is making some pretty sweeping accusations here – really, all women prefer to see men die, as a universal rule? I mean, that just sounds incredibly stupid to me. If women were really possessed of that much unthinking gender solidarity you'd think McCain would have won the election.
>Ask any woman who she would rather see a man pull out of a burning wreckage a man or a woman. Is the man Brad Pitt? This is important.
>"Right, just like a man who has had his bad behavior excused with that old aphorism, "boys will be boys," had his mediocre grades overlooked because of his family connections with the university, who got his job despite lackluster qualifications thanks to the same connections, who is able to save more of his paycheck because he has an unpaid secretary/accountant/babysitter/maid doing all the quotidian manual labor type tasks he prefers to avoid (a traditional-gender-role wife, in case you couldn't tell), who has been granted promotions and pay raises because "he has a family to support" (unlike the single mother, right?)–yeah, stand on your own two feet dammit! Just like those Real Men who do everything alone without any help from anyone ever!!So interesting how Real Men are nearly indistinguishable from grumpy toddlers." Lol…yea sure there are no "privileged" daughters of the world. What would you have society do, create "social justice" policies i.e. discrimination policies against men as you have already done? Your ideology is filled with the concept of a wide spread Marxist class oppression and embodies no values of Freedom, Independence, Liberty but most of all equal protection and representation under law. You believe in a nation divided by gender, race and religion and I believe in the founding values of my country which is to say that no law should be based upon these things.
>Discount said… Ask any woman who she would rather see a man pull out of a burning wreckage a man or a woman. I'll ask should the occasion ever arise.
>"Discount is making some pretty sweeping accusations here" You are the one making sweeping accusations and likewise seek to create all encompassing discriminatory laws and polices against the male gender.
>"I'll ask should the occasion ever arise."No you won't, you will help the woman first and so would a woman.
>Discount said… "I'll ask should the occasion ever arise." No you won't, you will help the woman first and so would a woman.Naw, I'd get a stick and some marshmallows and cackle maniacally while making s'mores. Fuck everyone.
>Enjoy your women only loans, mandated contracts to women owned businesses, women only scholarships and "advancement programs", heavily structured female based learning models and most of all Affirmative Action "women first" policies. While men lost 82% of all jobs in this Recession I resent representatives from your now separate socio-political and socio-economic class who advocated for and won the diversion of Stimulus Package funds and associated economic policy based upon "gender class". http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/016/659dkrod.asp Make no mistake women as a class have made themselves the competitors and adversaries of men.
>You speak of a non-existent wage gap when for sake of argument if it were true the money which flows from men's hands into yours more than eclipses any disparity. You are heavily dependent upon men for your very survival. Those men who lost Stimulus funds and find themselves out of work are forced by women to give them what money they have left in savings and their UNEMPLOYMENT CHECKS GARNISHED like my brothers is. Barely able to feed themselves and survive while their ex is going on European vacations and getting spa treatments. I've seen the suffering "independent" women inflict upon men in their personal lives. These expectations of men are not supported by public policy which seeks to remove men from the equal opportunity to attend education and obtain work. Those men (who are now a minority) in the nations colleges and those men who are getting their unemployment checks garnished resent what you are doing. When the unemployment runs out the expectations of forced labor upon men, our bodies and the fruits of our labor are not relieved and instead these men are placed into cages for failing to give women their money. I and many men resent you for this.
>You are the one making sweeping accusations and likewise seek to create all encompassing discriminatory laws and polices against the male gender. I appreciate your support, but I'm not actually running for office. So I haven't actually been elected and am not in a position to enact laws that would discriminate against men. If you want to make a donation to my PAC, however…
>Make no mistake women as a class have made themselves the competitors and adversaries of men.That's adorable, really, but I think you're overstating your position. I regard you, personally, as an adversary, but hardly a competitor. And, as several other men here have pointed out, you don't speak for or represent all men. If you want to set yourself up as an enemy of all women, fine–have at it. But don't pretend as if 100% of y-chromosomal peoples agree with you.