Sometimes the fellows on MGTOWforums.com get all philosophical on us. At the moment they are discussing a question of great import: Are women incapable of love to the degree men love?
I suspect you can guess their unanimous answer – women are incapable of love — which is pretty much what you’d expect men who hate women to say about women and love. Some highlights:
Fairi5fair thinks women are monsters; he just can’t figure out which kind:
Women are just incapable of love period. The thrill of being able to use her pussy to get free shit is what women mistake for “love”. …
They are cold, grasping, selfish, and heartless parasites. They have no souls. They are all vampires. Undead zombies lurching from meal to meal.
Wait, so are they vampires or are they zombies? I think I can handle either one by itself, but if they are both at the same time we’re doomed!
Goldenfetus seems to be smoking something powerful:
Yes, they are less capable of love than men, or totally incapable.
One possibility I’ve considered is that in a natural … environment male ‘love’ (platonic) would be reserved only for other men, while women would be viewed as property or objects of reproduction whose value was derived from fertility and subservience without any basis in ‘love’ reciprocation. If so, I would identify feminism as the factor that misled men into extending this love, disastrously, to females – tricking them into believing that females have souls and are like males.
Loving a woman is like trying to pet a toilet, water a sandwich, or plow a parking lot and then wondering why you aren’t getting results. The defect (of understanding) lies with the man loving an object incompatible with love, rather than in the female whose nature precludes reciprocity.
Arctic thinks it’s all about the Benjamins:
Love to a woman is a man who is their servant 24/7 365 a day. …
The idea of love involving sacrifice to a female is as foreign as periods are to men. Why should she care about a relationship involving sacrifice on her part, when she is taught all her life to exploit men for her own uses? Sacrifice herself for a mere man? WHY? Why, when beta males are selling their souls to sniff her crotch? …
[I]ts safe to say the idea of women being in love begins and ends at the ATM of her committed male asset.
The Accomplice agrees:
Women do not seek love or companionship. Their main objective is to find a man of the highest status possible (Richest men, the toughest guys, most popular guy etc) who will protect them, provide for them and satisfy their selfish desires. … [T]he majority of women are too weak physically and mentally to do these things on their own, hence why they always chase after men …
A women’s idea of love is all hypergamy, nothing more.
Superion goes all Evo-Psych on us:
Women are incapapble of love is the great, horrible secret that society has tried to hide from men since the dawn of time.
Women are physically and mentally weaker than men.
In order to survive and pass on their genes they need the resources of the strongest and best providing male available.
To do this, women rely on beauty and guile to trick a male into being her slave.
Women do not love.
For men, love is a self-delusion.
We trick ourselves into wasting our resources on one particular female.
This makes no sense so we tell ourselves we’re in love to justify it.
Such an unromantic bunch! Maybe this will cheer them up.
Actually, screw them. Maybe it will cheer me up:
And if that didn’t do the trick, how about this?
Tabby Lavalamp, I also chuckled at the “no souls” insult. My answer, if I wanted to waste my time talking to these MGTOW, would be “Is a soul made of energy? No? How about matter? No? All right then, we’ve just determined it’s imaginary.” Since nobody has any evidence for the existence of souls, it means anybody can decide who or what has them. Do men have souls but not women? Does a newly fertilized egg have a soul? Does a sperm cell have half a soul? Do animals have souls? Does Christina Aguilera have soul? We can make up the answers for ourselves.
I am not a big fan of love. But I do not assume someone else cannot be capable of it because I have seen it in action.
Of course I also view marriage as more of a business transaction then something all lovey dovey. Stupid growing up reading history.
I started dating my now-husband when he was unemployed and broke. Shortly after we started going out, he got strep throat and was the sickest he’s ever been in his life for two weeks. Ten years later, he still talks about how amazed he was that I stayed with him and took care of him. He honestly thought from, I don’t know, sitcoms or something, that if you show any weakness in front of a woman she’ll be disgusted and dump you.
I feel bad about the difficulty men have feeling attractive and wanted. It’s the opposite problem that women have: instead of being treated as sex objects and constantly given long lists of things they’re supposed to do to increase our attractiveness, men are treated as if they have no sex appeal, so they have to piece together their own weird concept of how to be attractive. Most MRAs seem to be guys who got it really, really wrong, and rather than trying something else they’re going to sit and fume about it.
I mean, have you noticed the number of MRAs who think women ought to be flocking to them because they lift weights and/or own a motorcycle? That’s stuff you do to impress other men, not women. There are women who like that type, of course–there are women who like every type–but it’s not exactly a surefire ticket into the average girl’s pants.
“hey love men; abjuring women, and all their works.
Or…”
Oh dear Cthuthlu no. Please don’t say theire closet gays. WE DON’T WANT THEM EITHER!!!!
Shaenon: I can’t speak to other men, I ride a motorcycle because it pleases me.
It’s why I do most things. Do I wonder how women see me when I do some of them? Sure. Because I like women. I want them to like me. Which is why I do things to please me. I figure that if I am a happy person, content in myself, I am more likely to be attractive.
How many women would say yes to a jobless man’s proposal?
Um… me? So there’s one. Of course, in our case, MrB was off the job market while he waited for the stars to align properly and the doctors to get up off their asses and take one of his kidneys to give to his sister. So I knew that it would likely be a longish period of not working – it turned out to be almost a year and a half, during which his sister’s kidney function dropped scarily. But it all turned out well, she’s showing no sign of rejection eleven years in, and MrB has a great big scar to show off.
“Does Christina Aguilera have soul?”
All signs point to “no.”
I have got to stop reading those comments.
“Women know they have to put out or their man will get up set. Thats why generally women do not remarry, because they can stand being without a man, as long as she has his benifits for retirement.
Thats why my great / grandmothers never remarried but men at their agies do. Women’s main job is to land a man and take his money.
Proof women do not love men, because she doesn’t remarry for love, she already has her dead husband money.”
So, gratuitous schmaltzy grandparent story: My grandmother turned 90 this past spring. She’s been a widow for almost three years. Most of her friends are widows as well. There are a few who remarried; their husbands died when they were middle aged. But most of them have never remarried. The very idea that this is “proof” that they never loved their husbands just hurts my heart and my head.
When my grandfather became ill –Parkinson’s and dementia- my grandmother refused to even consider putting him in care. We remodeled their home for greater ease of movement and, because the house is small, she gave up her piano to make room for a hospital bed in the living room. We hired a fine nursing service so that she could have help during the days but she learned how to do everything from changing his feeding tube to, eventually, his catheter all by herself. She was well into her 80s. As a family, we rallied around his care as much as our schedules would allow. But my grandmother changed her husband’s diapers.
Eventually it all became too much. The doctors said it was time for hospice care and she fought us every step of the way. When he was admitted the doctors and med students who rounded on him daily would tell her –because she was there every single day- that it was amazing that he’d been bed ridden for so long, with her as his primary caretaker, and didn’t have so much as a bed sore. She sat with him every day. The rest of us took turns giving her rides, sitting with her, making sure she ate lunch, and helping her shave him. He’d been clean-shaven all of their years together but the staff would not shave his beard as part of his care. So she did. Twice a week.
He was rarely conscious, had difficulty speaking when he was, and was almost never lucid. He hadn’t recognized me in years. But I would watch him open his eyes when my grandmother was there and she would talk to him and he would recognize her and tell her that he loved her. They were married for over 60 years. She does receive some of his benefits. They are owed her by law. I dare say she earned them as well.
She still refers to him as her “sweetie.”
“lift weights and/or own a motorcycle…not exactly a surefire ticket into the average girl’s pants”
Shit. Good thing I didn’t go ahead and buy the motorcycle.
shaenon, I’ve often thought that MRA’s get their ideas about how relationships work by looking at aspects of popular culture and taking them way too literally. It doesn’t seem to occur to them that pop culture is driven by profit-making enterprises trying to sell things, and isn’t a very accurate reflections of reality.
(BTW, it’s belatedly occured to me that you were the artist GOH at Capricon a few years back… I don’t recall speaking to you then, but anyway you are probably the only Manboobz commenter that I’ve seen in person.)
And amazingly enough those of us women who have discovered that while we do not love men particularly (w/some exceptions for friends and family, but I doubt that’s the kind of “platonic” love OP means), happily go our own way loving women, or a woman, cats, and our darling adorable puppies who are right now demanding a walkies.
“One possibility I’ve considered is that in a natural … environment male ‘love’ (platonic) would be reserved only for other men, while women would be viewed as property or objects of reproduction whose value was derived from fertility and subservience without any basis in ‘love’ reciprocation. If so, I would identify feminism as the factor that misled men into extending this love, disastrously, to females – tricking them into believing that females have souls and are like males.”
Last time men got this idea, we got the Renaissance. Which I know everyone thinks is the bees knees, but keep in mind: it was shortly followed by things like the reinstatement of slavery, the Age of Exploration (and we all know how that went), and the iron-boned corset.
Idea! Quick, someone invent a time machine so we can send these guys back to ancient Rome. They’d be happy there.
Until the Goths sack it, I mean.
We could give umpteen million examples of how we love and have loved in our lives, and how our female relatives have loved in their lives, but it wouldn’t matter a tick to these dudes. They don’t want to hear it. They would ignore it, or write it right the fuck off. Or, even worse? They’d excuse it, name it either as an exception, or twist it around and say “but, no really! they did it for the money!”. And that angers me to the point where I have no pity left in me for these sad little excuses for people.
Nobinayamu – that made me tear up a bit. We should all be so lucky to have such a spouse.
And by “we” I mean non-whiny, entitled, worthless MRA bigots. They’re on their own.
All these sad MGTOW are making me feel lonely. 🙁
Can I get a manly hug?
@Shaenon
No, Love is a battlefield
My wife loves me and I love her.
Why did I put my boxing gloves on this morning? This is becoming a dating advice site.
Right at the top of the screen, Zarat. We mock misogyny. Although, to be fair, sometimes we just shake our heads. I think this thread is heavy on the head shaking. That comment about the Renaissance and a time machine to a pre-Goth sacked Rome was some pretty fucking funny.
You know what you should do? Start a blog where you can talk about Father’s Rights every single day. Won’t that be nice?
To prevent your non-stop naraccistic wankery?
Shoulda kept them on, dumplin.
I don’t know who exactly said this but..”Love is the ultimate expression of a life well lived”.
The irony is that the best cure for loneliness is to be an active lover of humanity.Do Volunteer work learning how to cook reeducating your self…See how life treats you then…
or you could pursue cynical, narcissistic, self defeating, emotionally castrating dogma that serves nothing but validates your apathetic world view.
Well that was my good deed for the day…I’mma go troll Ms.Magazine now…
Also, Bruce…, um I got a little verklempt writing that. We should all, in fact, be so lucky.
Hey! 🙁
Also, wordpress needs to add a +1 so I can up-vote Bruce.
Sheesh, these guys need to make up their minds.
Before, they were all about how women are overly-emotional, hysterical, Nicholas Sparks-loving creatures who fall for the low-class, often unemployed, presumably leather jacket-wearing “bad boys” (the implication being that the aforementioned women should have been falling for these more sensible MGTOW/MRAs instead).
Now, all women are heartless soul suckers who can only feel true love for the holy dollar.
Which is it?
“T]he majority of women are too weak physically and mentally to do these things on their own, hence why they always chase after men …”
Now they’re suggesting that women ruthlessly (perhaps even desperately) chase after men so that they can leech off of them. Yet in the past, I’ve heard MRAs, MGTOW and the like (well, Susan Walsh) ranting about how they can never seem to get laid because women have monopolized the sex market.
Who is being chased? Who is doing the chasing?
See what happens when you try to generalize when referring to roughly half of the population? Eventually, you start contradicting yourself and it starts to seem as though you’re just looking for someone else to blame your own personal problems and failings on. Oh, wait…
@David Futrelle
“An ellipsis [ … ] proves to be a handy device when you’re quoting material and you want to omit some words. ”
If you’re going to make entire blog entries by cutting and pasting quotations from forum members, or whoever, to try and prove that MRA’s or “MGTOWers” are misogynists, it might lend more credence to your arguments if you actually print the entire post rather than editing out the bits that you do not want people to read. TRIGGER WARNING: Surely if the things these misogynists write are so so unbelievably outrageous and upsetting to you, you would reprint them in all their raw, hate-filled ugliness, and not just cherry-pick the parts that you are most aggrieved by?
Or are you trying to pursue an agenda and are editing people’s writing to fit such an agenda?
OR they would tell you to “let it go” because “those days are gone”.
Hey that “One semester of Spanish love song” made me feel better!