MRAs and MGTOWers are, as you might have guessed, some pretty acronym-happy people. And one of their favorite acronyms — besides those two – is NAWALT, which stands for “Not All Women Are Like That.” This is a phrase often uttered by people who are not misogynist assholes in response to things said about women by people who are misogynist assholes. Apparently many MRAs and MGTOWers hear this so often that they’ve turned it into a running gag, the “joke” being that in their minds all women really ARE like that.
Now W.F. Price of The Spearhead has caused a tempest in the teapot that is the manosphere by admitting that, in fact, not all women are like that:
We all know that there are good women out there, including some who comment here, in our families, at work and in neighborhoods all over the land, so why shouldn’t we listen to women who tell us this is the case?
Now, Price has not suddenly become a feminist or anything. Indeed he went on to argue that even if not all women are horrible monsters,
a lot of them are, and we have no assurance that the nice girl who is smiling and saying she loves you won’t at some point destroy your life. …
If somebody handed you a revolver with three loaded chambers and three empty ones and said, “go ahead and aim this at your head and pull the trigger — not all the chambers are loaded,” would you go along with the suggestion? Of course not. It would be sheer folly.
And, oh, it goes on. Blah blah blah, men, don’t get married. Blah blah blah, and you good ladies out there better give up some of your rights – sorry, advantages — because the bad ladies abuse them and pretty soon no man will want to marry any of you:
[T]hose women who really “aren’t like that”… are less likely to find a man willing to marry them, and more likely to be used and abandoned at the first hint of commitment. Society at large is increasingly skeptical about the virtues of women, and the word is bubbling up from the grass roots that women are a risky proposition. …
Until the laws are reformed and some balance is restored to relationships, men who care at all about their lives will have no choice but to regard any woman he becomes involved with as a loaded gun pointed straight at him.
So, yeah, this is the same old W.F. Price we know and don’t love.
On The Spearhead itself, the dissenters were at least generally polite. “Nah, sorry Mr Price,” wrote oddsock. “Your well written post cuts no ice with me. All women are like that.” Herbal Essence also challenged Price’s math:
The argument needs to be rejected because nearly all women are enabling the behavior of the worst of them. And nearly all women stand, arms akimbo, as a bloc to preserve female superiority. ..
[I]t’s time that men take off their rose-colored glasses and realize that nearly all women are waging a war against us. For god sakes, our own mothers, sisters, wives, and daughters support the female hive mind over their own flesh and blood. (us.)
Over on MGTOWforums.com, the judgment was a little harsher. The commenter calling himself fairi5fair reacted as though Price had lopped off his own dick and announced his engagement to the ghost of Andrea Dworkin.
W. F. Price is just a daisy-picking mangina with a chip on his shoulder imo. Even the woman MRA I knew was probably just using it as a slick way to trap a nesting male.
Bottom line: if words are coming out of a woman’s mouth, she’s a lying cunt. Mr. Price probably wants to believe in some romantic fairytale because he just got divorced and wants pussy again, and doesn’t want to face the reality of his options.
Yes, Mr. Price, you’re going to get your sorry ass handed to you again if you keep thinking with your dick and your heart. Use the brain, moron. Next!
Whenever I run across something this idiotic, I have to remind myself that Not All MGTOWers Are That Astoundingly Stupid. NAMGTOWATAS, for short.
So are you with us?(comrade)
Depends, how important are apostrophes for you? 🙂
Comrade Svilova, I want to see that whole spiel on a commercial someday.
Ah the male brain.
“enthusiastically consenting SEX FREE of gender constraints FOR ALL”
Count me in! (For the original thing as well. 🙂 )
Apostrophes look kind of like phalluses, so they’re only important for people in the mood to do something that involves an apostrophe/phallus.
I have no idea where this metaphor is going.
But the point is … feminism is great and sexy and about destroying gender binaries. I have no idea why the MRAs aren’t into it! Unless they like gender binaries and gender hierarchies. They seem to want to STAY ON TOP.
Ah, but when you queer hierarchies, anyone can be a top and anyone can be a bottom. 😉 It’s FABulous.
And totally enthusiastically consenting, and some of the participants have curvy figures or fat figures and some are lean and some have bound breasts or no breasts or big breasts. And/or cocks. Ah! What could be better?
Plus, no time is wasted frittering away with the Greek alphabet because we’re too busy with the kama sutra of pleasure in EVERY alphabet!
How’s that commercial for ya, Amnesia?
But in all seriousness, it’s sad that MRAs are missing out on the opportunity to have so much more fun than they seem to currently be having.
I’m actually in agreement with Anit about a bunch of stuff, and OMG there were way too many comments made while I was out having a life for me to possibly reply to it all.
I don’t hang out on feminist sites much because they really do get under my skin in ways I don’t appreciate. I feel like this blog is different because most of the time it’s not OMG SRIUS. There’s another one I read (that does get on my nerves a lot actually but I like it enough to keep reading) and that’s
Real Adult Sex. One of Figleaf’s constant topics is how feminists and MRAs really should be allies and it drives him crazy that they’re not. So Anit’s not the only one with that viewpoint and Figleaf definitely isn’t a concern troll.
(I kinda think I originally found this blog through him maybe?)
“Anyone else notice anit showing a THASF-like need to put himself in a unique position of mastery of the conversation?”
*THASF* here. Way to make me out to be some kind of boogeyman. For the record, I’ve never posted more than once to any given blog post since Man Boobz moved to WordPress. If you see someone starting some kind of back-and-forth thread monopoly thing, it ain’t me. I’ve put that nonsense behind me.
Y’know, maybe I’m way off-base here, but I’m interpreting these messages from the MRA camp very differently from most folks here. I try to read between the lines; try and figure out what their lizard brain is thinking.
The way I see it, the MRAs and their complaints about “western women” can effectively be summed up as their own subconscious telling them that “OUR WOMEN ARE BEING UNCOOPERATIVE! WE’RE GOING TO BE BRED OUT OF EXISTENCE BY SOCIETIES WITH TRADITIONAL GENDER ROLES! WE MUST IMPORT THE NON-DEFECTIVE ASIAN MODEL OR RISK OUR SUPERIOR GENETIC CODE BEING LOST!”
Apparently, they’re so desperate perpetuate their own genes that they don’t even see the irony in using methods that dilute those genes. Or, perhaps the reason why “western women” are so repulsed by the notion of breeding with “western men” is because our race lacks proper genetic diversity and our bodies somehow know this?
But, I digress. This kind of irrational, instinctive panic response that they’ve manifested is not too surprising at all, considering how self-interested our species has demonstrated itself to be over its short, brutal history. Ironically, they complain that women have no accountability while lacking any of their own to speak of. Is it really all that “emasculating” to try and seek a compromise that is beneficial for all parties? Is there anything wrong with that?
I find it darkly humorous how they complain about women being self-interested while displaying nothing but a profound case of selfishness in the process, as though it were a masculine virtue; as though it should be unique to males. No. Selfishness is a human virtue. It’s universal. It’s ingrained in our every cell.
You can no sooner remove a human being’s self-preservation instincts and expect them to survive in the modern world than you can remove a cat’s claws, eyes, fur, ears and tail and expect it to survive in the wild. I think that selfishness in women – and men – is beautiful. It’s a reflection of their humanity. The problem is getting these selfish instincts to interact in such a way that they further mutual goals without lessening the lot of anyone, hence this entire discussion.
With that out of the way, since when has anyone actually oppressed men? Who is responsible for virtually every case of genocide or human experimentation ever? Who built the atom bomb? I don’t see men being systematically raped and murdered in Colombia and Sudan.
The MRAs fail basic logic. Rather than wondering how they can go about their day without eating inanimate objects, we should be wondering how they can even type those inane comments of theirs without dying of hypoxia from forgetting to breathe.
This is you putting yourself in a unique position of conversational mastery. You’re saying that you bring important things to the table that nobody else does. And you won’t get any brownie points for posting a 10-paragraph monolith instead of a serial post.
Also, nobody wants to talk about eugenics and evo psych. Everyone else outgrew these ideas long ago.
katz: It that was traindodger was on about, eugenics and evpsych? Now I have a context for it, because otherwise it was pretty senseless.
Hey, I think a comment of mine is in moderation for having a link, oops.
In the meantime a little p.s. to that – if anyone can point me to a blog that’s like David’s that makes fun of ridiculous things radical feminists say I would seriously love to read it (this is not a joke or a silly “I bet you can’t do it” challenge – actual radical feminists get on my nerves and I would love to see them being mocked). That is, if it is up to the standards that this blog is – meaning it manages to make fun of that subset of women without itself becoming anti-woman. I doubt anyone but the most hard-core MRA is going to accuse David of running an anti-man blog here. I mean, he is a man, why would he be anti-himself?
And to that, I must counter that I believe that evolutionary psychology is still quite relevant and we’ve hardly outgrown it. In fact, all this bickering between the MRAs and the Feminist community is evidence that we need more study of human sociobiology, not less.
Bear with me. I’m still young and ignorant, and while you’ve all probably been over everything that I’ve said before and had time to get jaded about it, this stuff is all very new to me. How can I ever hope to offer up snide quips about people’s sex lives with a knowing shoulder-nudge and a wink – like you all seem to enjoy doing – if I don’t work all this psychoanalytic mumbo-jumbo out of my system?
Fine, I won’t say another word.
Ev Psych’s problem is that it has no way to prove it’s contentions. The conclusions the practitioners reach are shaped more by the ideas they have, than the data available.
Moreover, and more problematic, is the large numbers of it’s adherents who use it as nothing more than fodder for “proof” that “the way I think things ought to be” is ordained by biology, and our brains are built so that the ways they prescribe (usually throwbacks to some golden age of yore) are the key to societal happiness.
They are as bad a Freud was with his ideas about Oedipus and primeval man; dressed up with the language of science.
While ev psych may have some merit in actual science with actual scientists, on internet boards it rarely seems to be used for anything other than justifying bigotry and dickishness. We’re clearly not going to conduct any studies HERE, so let’s wait until the nice scientists do that important work before bringing it up again 😛
I don’t think evpsych will ever be able to do the things the people who are popularising it want it to do. People are too plastic, social interactions to dependent on other factors to be able to say, “men like x, women like y”.
Really simple cross-cultural comparisons show how much this is true. The polder model of politics (holland) compared to the, superficially similar “town meeting” model in New Hampshire shows how very different, and locally/historically dependent people’s models of how the world works are.
There may be some, broad brush, stuff built into the structures of our brains (e.g. the cycle time of flight/fight in the amygdala) but even that isn’t as fixed as all that (comparing the apparent differnces in the structures of our brains and those of bonobos doesn’t really account for how much less automatic is there fight/flight reaction).
Since we have changed how we do things; by virtue of language/culture, the psychosocial aspects of our makeup have almost certainly become somewhat divorced from simple instinctual reactions.
Above someone has spoken about circumcision and how mra’s are somehow fighting against it.
In the late 1970’s the first thing I ever read about circumcision was my mothers Ms magazines. (perhaps someone can cite?) I would bet that feminists were the first to speak against this practice. If not the first, it was certainly a very liberal demographic who first stopped circumcising their boys.
The last child my wife and I “had” (we are a blended family) she shared her room with a teenage mom and a conservative farmers wife all having boys. (nick our privilege, we’re Canadian and sometimes private rooms aren’t available, which is o.k.)
Teenage couple were asked by the nurse if they wanted their son to be circumcised. They didn’t really know what that meant. ( I guess both they were rather ignorant and dad wasn’t traumatized).
Nurse leaves and the conservative mom later on joined by the dad tell the rather stupid teen mom about the infections etc. that can happen if they decide not to.
My wife not one to force her opinion asks the teen mom to do some research, and also takes the nurse aside to ask her to fully inform the parents. The nurse does this, but after the horror stories the teen parents have heard about how he won’t look like you, how hard it will be to clean etc. they decide on the procedure.
Blaming this on feminists? Feminists are the last people I would blame for circumcision. First blame in my mind would be the right-wing church and their issues with cleanliness. But that falls right in the face of the mra’s main goal to be ultra right-leaning.
I don’t think they know where their enemy lays. If they really cared about the issue.
amnesiac
I can’t ignore the old creepers that come to my work and try to hit on me.
-You mean those older men that you like who hit on the female employees that look like something but never on you.-
I can’t ignore the fact that society expects me to prioritize my appearance over my intelligence.
-You only think this is a problem ’cause it’s easier for you to persuade yourself that your smart than it is that your beautiful. In reality you are neither.-
I can’t ignore the possibility that if somebody
-a guy on LSD perhaps-
decided to rape me, I’d probably be blamed for not being careful enough or accused of lying about it, maybe both.
-because you probably would think that lying about being raped would get you more attention from men ’cause you think men think like you do but they don’t-
I can’t ignore the several Superman and Batman movies that have been made without wondering when we’ll get to see Wonder Woman on the big screen.
-Cry me a fucking river.
A pity they don’t make enough movies with women throwing dudes around twice their weight these days. Perhaps this can be the next war crime your ilk can take to the streets to protest.-
I can’t ignore the guys who ask for some ‘strong men’ to help move stuff because they don’t think any women would be willing or strong enough to help.
-cause you generally ain’t-
I can’t ignore that I’ll probably have to work twice as hard to be considered ‘as valuable’ as a man.
-you mean work AS hard as a man is willing and able to-
That’s because you have not outgrown it. The fact that it doesn’t seem ridiculous to you is a sign of your lack of perspective.
Pecunium: I forget if you were around when THASF was before, but he’s 19 and was going off about eugenics, sterilization, improving the gene pool, and such earlier. He was being a total thread-swamper and then he went away until I mentioned him. It’s like I have summoning powers.
katz: I think this is my first real encounter with man boobz (I prefer the sort which are found as part of a woman), so yes, this is my first encounter with traindodger.
Of the local axe-grinders he seems to be only moderately bothersome. He at least doesn’t pretend to read people’s minds.
Also… LSD doesn’t make you want to rape anything. It makes you want to sit down and listen to music and eat crunchy things and watch TV while giggling at only concepts you can understand (and can logically explain) to people who just haven’t got it.
evil, argue your points all you want but there’s no reason for personal attacks like that.
Oh, and one of Plymouth’s comments got held b/c of a link; it’s up now, on the previous page of comments.
@ Pecunium
“On Moving Goalposts:
Picking out individual venting-comments and displaying them here as representative of MRAs. Interesting strategy to get approval from feminists but not the strategy of a truth seeker. (btw, that’s a form of ad hominem. Hard to say if it’s personal attack, bor circumstantial)”
I criticized his methodology, not him as a person. If that’s the closest to an ad hominem you can find in my writing, then I can live with that.
“Show us a mra website, thread, forum which you would imagine the mra should be.
Your response was: Lets imagine for one moment that there was a systemic injustice towards a group of people. If some of them make a forum and try to point out and fight those injustices, you are always going to find a lot who are just venting. They’ve been hurt and they found a place where they can let that anger run free.
”
Wrong. That was not a response to the question above. All you can criticize me for here, is not having responded yet and the intellectually honest way to do that is to say “you still haven’t answered that question, please do so” – not to just label me as a “goalpost shifter”.
“You said it was unfair to judge the MRA’s based on those groups Dave points out.”
No, I said that picking out individual raging comments is not the right method for accurately judging any group, MRA or otherwise.
“Kave gave you the benefit of the doubt, and said, “OK, show us the groups which don’t do that.”
3: You replied, “Oh, well those groups that do it are justified.”
Not true. Firstly, like I said above, that was not a reply to that question. Secondly, even if it was, I never attempted to justify misogynist behavior. Explain, maybe but not justify. Make sure you don’t confuse the two.
So we’re either dealing with a straw man or just a misunderstanding.
@ kirby
“Anybody else picking up on what anit is saying? Have I committed character suicide here? If thats the case, I must be much more oblivious than usual.”
Lol. Talk about relying on a home advantage. Even funnier is that, despite the mutual shoulder patting here, nobody answered!
“Many of your responses to questions have been further questions.”
I take that as a compliment.
“I would call going to other forums and derailing the conversation by bringing the subject to “what about men’s rights” being a dick. ”
I never suggested anyone to derail anything and deliberately added the word “polite”. And you say I’m side-stepping.
“not every feminist topic needs to address men.”
Never said it should. But, of course, you’d NEVER just be phrasing it this way to mischaracterize my position. No way.
@anit: several people answered your accusation that our beloved Kirby had committed character suicide (mostly with LOL’s).
Honestly, what is your point here? What do you want?
Do you want feminist to be more polite? To pay more attention to men’s issues? To never ever mock people who are quite clearly against them, no matter how ridiculous their positions? All of the above?
Listen: feminists are incredibly critical of their own. Trufax. It’s when some (male) outsider swoops in and starts telling sanctimoniously telling us how we’re all doing it wrong, in some incredibly sanctimonious way, that we get a bit annoyed.
@ Pecunium
“anit: “This is definitely not true. Why do you think they’re so hostile if they think the existing power imbalance was ok?
At a guess, he doesn’t believe they think the present power imbalance is ok.
He thinks 1: there is a power imbalance; against women.
2: He thinks the MRA Movement dislikes this power imbalance.
3: They think the present power imbalance doesn’t give them as much power as they want.
QED: He thinks MRA are not about “equality.
Logic, so simple anyone can do it.”
You mean me? What makes you think I’m a “he” in the first place?
And now to your absurd comment:
What I said above was a response to someone writing something along the lines of “MRAs want to keep the power imbalance as it is”.
“He thinks 1: there is a power imbalance; against women.”
Never said that.
“2: He thinks the MRA Movement dislikes this power imbalance.”
Not quite. I just said that I think MRA dislikes the “existing power imbalance” – obviously referring to the perceived notion that men are more oppressed than women.
“3: They think the present power imbalance doesn’t give them as much power as they want.
QED: He thinks MRA are not about “equality.
Logic, so simple anyone can do it.”
Fallacy. That would be like saying 19th century feminists who fought for more political power for women, were not about equality. They were about rectifying inequality. And the MRAs at least claim to do that too. If you’re going to lecture me on logic, you better make sure you’re not using a logical fallacy to do so.
Plymouth (I think) and Anit: here is an example of a moderate, sex-positive feminist (they exist! really!!) mocking a radical feminist. In fact, it’s Holly, who occasionally comments here.
http://pervocracy.blogspot.com/2009/02/twisty-faster-is-fucking-insane.html
Okay, this next bit goes out to Anit:
Here’s the thing. I’m a feminist; I love Holly’s blog and I respect her tremendously. I think Twisty’s rantings tend to be pretty over the top. In fact, I find her tone sufficiently annoying that I pretty much never read her. I also think she’s wrong about some pretty important things.
But honestly, I glanced over a couple of the “Twisty Faster is F*cking Insane” posts, and I actually sided with Twisty at least half the time.
Did you see how much is going on there? We have a moderate internet feminist mocking a radical internet feminist. Yes, this happens. And then we have a third internet feminist reading the mockery, disagreeing with about half of it, and continuing to view the person who wrote it as one of her feminist role models.
Next time you’re tempted to whine about home feminism is monolithic or whatever, I want you to think about that.