The blogger Fidelbogen likes to think of himself as some sort of grand theoretician of “counter-feminist” thinking. Which means that his posts are usually far too long and ponderous to read, much less to write about. His ideas – at least judging from the few posts of his I’ve had the patience to wade through — are really not much more advanced than your typical MRA; he’s just much more pretentious (and long-winded) about it.
He is, in other words, the sort of guy who could take 3000 words to explain the rather basic MRA notion that women control men with their vaginas.
I mean that quite literally. Our excitable MGTOWer friend MarkyMark recently drew his readers’ attention to a 5-year-old post by Fidelbogen with the enigmatic title “Ideas Which Go Against the Grain,” which offers, yep, a 3000-word précis of the evils of pussy power. Perhaps against my better judgement, I’ve decided to give it a detailed look. Strap in!
I’ll give him credit for one thing: despite his vague title, Fidelbogen states his thesis quite plainly at the start:
Female sexuality is raised high upon an altar like a golden calf. Male sexuality is looked upon as a ratty old kitchen chair with a cracked vinyl seat, under suspicion of mildew.
Well, ok, not the very start. Right about here:
This disparity, this imbalance, this . . . . inequality, accounts for most of women’s power over men. By extension, it accounts for a great deal of feminism’s leverage in the realm of gender politics.
In other words: vagina=power.
I leave it to the poets to wax lyrical about the mysteries of the eternal feminine, and to the psychoanalytic priesthood to plumb its shadowy depths. As a political tactician and theorist, it is my cold-blooded task merely to figure out how the world works, blabbity blabbity bloo.
Ok, those last three words are my paraphrase of his argument. Focus, Fidelbogen, focus!
The higher valuation assigned to female sexuality generates a seller’s market for women in the so-called game of love. That is how the world works; women do not queue or cluster in quest of men’s favors. No, it is nearly always men who act this way around women.
And this leads to, yep, the dreaded Pussy Cartel:
Deprived of euphemism, the case is this: women have cornered the market on sexual intercourse, and are able to dictate the price and the accompanying politics much as OPEC might set the terms for oil. …
Understand, that the higher valuation of female sexuality translates into both female power and loss of male power. Since female supremacy is feminism’s driving ambition, it makes sense that the women’s movement has undertaken to siphon power away from men using every siphon hose imaginable.
Normally, I would assume this last bit was some kind of sniggering reference to blowjobs. As Fidelbogen seems to be utterly without a sense of humor, I have to assume it’s merely a belabored metaphor.
So how do the evil feminists siphon away male power? By driving along some sort of road:
Certain lanes, deeply rutted by age-old usage, serve handily along feminism’s route to power.
So after siphoning their way down this road, we (and the evil feminists) arrive at what I’ll call (to keep Fidelbogen’s metaphor going) “Courtship Lane.”
The word “courtship” is revealing. Men are the “courtiers”, which is to say lackeys or sycophants who wait upon the pleasure of their “lord”. In courtship, more often than otherwise, women hold all the cards. Feminists, being women, are well aware of this. But they are also aware that the realm of courtship, while being women’s greatest zone of power over men, is likewise a critical link in the chain of power which binds men specifically to the designs of feminist domination.
After a bit of empty rhetoric, Prof. F continues:
Most women are aware of their superior sexual bargaining power. And many women have been politicized to some degree (more or less) by feminist ideology. This latter group will most certainly carry their politicized outlook into the sexual bargaining arena, and in their minds both feminist ideology and the knowledge of their age-old power will meld together into a troublesome sort of hybrid entity.
Fidelbogen, alas, does not take the opportunity to name this dastardly “hybrid entity.” Let’s just call it THE FEMIGINA!! (In all caps, with two exclamation points.)
At this point, Prof. F loses what little steam his argument has, and begins prattling about this and that and the evils of feminism. I will attempt to convey the gist of it with the following excerpts. In order to truly capture the flavor of it, I will replace the traditional ellipses – used to indicate excised material – with the phrase “blabbity blabbity.”
Blabbity blabbity to gauge the extent of feminist indoctrination among the female population would be like measuring the spread of a gaseous substance with a rubber band. Blabbity blabbity [f]eminism has blabbity blabbity secured a tremendous power over men by means of a momentous bio-political conjunction. Blabbity moral corona of the ideology blabbity female noosphere blabbity blabbity feminist-tinted spectacles blabbity blabbity the path lies clear before us.
And then he comes to his point:
Men should cease to value female sexuality beyond a certain fixed rate. Once the cost exceeds this rate, the value should fall to zero—leaving the purveyors in their deserted market stall.
Yep. That’s right. He’s talking about what we here on Man Boobz know as the Cock Blockade.
Blabbity blabbity it would go against nature blabbity blabbity laborious gritting of teeth. Blabbity blabbity supremely human accomplishment. Blabbity blabbity we are more than simply animals.
And he comes to another point:
Devaluation of female sexuality would alter the balance of power between the sexes. There would come a point where a man, any man, could make the personal choice to cast loose from women altogether—in all but the peripheral aspects of his life.
Blabbity blabbity men would need to cut each other some slack blabbity blabbity stop competing with other men in the customary arena where female flesh is the prize. Blabbity blabbity. The question “are ya getting any?”, along with the adolescent mindset it signals, would be out of place in this altered scheme of things.
And this would put the ladies in their place – standing lonely in their vagina stalls, gamely trying to interest men in their now worthless vaginas.
Women would be the courtiers, the ones who queue and cluster. Deny women their fundamental age-old power, and feminism would find itself reeling in shock as though from a serious blood loss. The best way for men to free themselves from the boa-constrictor grip of feminism is to free themselves from the power of women.
So now I have the image of lady boa-constrictors with head wounds standing in a line, displaying their boa-constrictor vaginas with a sort of desperate hopefulness to the wholly uninterested men who pass by.
After a good deal of blathering so tedious it’s not even worth quoting in part, Fidelbogen begins to ponder the power of “no.”
[M]en must play hard to get. They must learn to exercise the very same option which has historically been the province of women, namely, the power to say NO.
Saying no lies coiled at the very heart of playing hard to get. Saying no signifies a withdrawal which generates a vacuum along its line of retreat, and this vacuum by its draft draws the other into a pursuit by default.
I feel a bit of a breeze myself, but I think that’s just because Prof. F is talking a lot of wind.
Let’s move from breezes to earthquakes:
The changes I am discussing here would amount to a tectonic realignment of unquestionably world-historic magnitude. An inversion of the Victorian pedestal.
The old way of doing things, Prof. F tells us,
I have decided to call it the pussy paradigm—a somewhat vulgar expression to be sure, but it has the common touch!
Ironically, the common touch is something hetero dudes will have to become masters at if they swear off the ladies. Prof. F continues:
So, this pussy paradigm belongs in the category of things which predate feminism’s arrival in the world. And when the feminists got here, they saw in a flash where their advantage lay, and they closed in, and they threw a harness around it.
They threw a harness around a paradigm?
The heart of feminism is female supremacism, and the heart of female supremacism is the pussy paradigm. Remember this if you remember nothing else.
So what does Prof. F call his pussy-optional way of doing things? The “optionality paradigm.” That is, dudes can have sex with women or not, whatever they want, and shouldn’t pressure one another to score with the ladies. (I’m not quite sure how, in Professor F’s economic model, the price of pussy can be reduced to zero if some dudes are still interested in it, but I confess that I only sort of skimmed that bit of his post. Life is short, and Fidelbogen’s posts are long.)
More blabbity blabbity:
The future, in theory, should see a migration of the optionality paradigm toward the center of the map within hetero-normative male culture, along with a corresponding displacement of the pussy paradigm toward the perimeter. This would exactly reverse the present disposition of forces. The optionality paradigm would, at that point, become the ruling paradigm.
After reading this turgid turd of a paragraph , I decided to cut my losses and skip directly to Professor F’s grand conclusion. Which turns out to be neither grand nor much of a conclusion:
My endeavor in writing has been to flesh it out somewhat. To write about it is to give it a form, to make the inchoate choate, to fashion an anchor of words that can hold things usefully in place so we can discuss them, if need be, with a view toward implementation and concrete action. The time to draft contingency plans is now. Put these ideas in your thinking cap and ponder their utility.
Even better, put them in a small bag, weigh it down with rocks, and toss it into the nearest large body of water.
Jesus, this turned into a long post. Still, it’s only about half the length of Prof. F’s original.
Once you call someone a fuckhole with a pulse*, your right to civil discourse has been revoked. Other people’s respect is not an inalienable right. If you treat people without respect, you will be treated without respect. That is the way of the world.
*without their consent
Fuck MRAs: gee, from your nickname I can already tell you’re a reasonable and unbiased person. I mentioned the zombie makeup thing as well as a previous incident of somebody lying about cancer, as a response to people here claiming “they doubted her for no reason at all”. That’s it. And what does ‘mansplain’ mean? is that like feminist-speak for “man saying something is automatically wrong”? Seriously, you’re a pretty hostile bunch, and if saying that means I’m trolling, so be it.
I knew it xD
ozymandias: You know what? A day or two ago I would have agreed with you, but after what I’ve seen lately, I’m willing to bet that it wasn’t NWO who first started the personal name-calling.
The fact that someone dressed up once for Halloween is not a reason to doubt their assault claim, therefore it was indeed for “for no reason.”
DO try to keep up.
What are you basing that on, Hengist?
Hengist, what makes you think anyone buys this concern troll at all? Scarper off to your MRA site, please.
Seriously, I’m going to give you a tip, because this deserve a better class of troll:
Do not directly quote one of your side’s talking points when concern trolling the other side. The latter only works based on a perception of being on the same side. If you actually quote one of your points, you tend to show your true form.
At any rate, “No X will ever want you” is not a ‘shaming tactic’ reserved exclusively for use on men. It’s frequently invoked on anyone considered sad and pathetic. If you’re confusing it for an anti-male trope, you probably just don’t ever observe the shit the other gender goes through. In fact, that probably holds true if you think only women hear it too. I hate this parody of civil rights movements you Men’s Rights Assholes do. It’s plain old embarrassing to see you guys reach for shit.
Sure, innocent NWO came in here just to have a nice, peaceful discourse and we evil, evil feminists just abused him until he had no choice but to call us inferior and whores and fuck toys with pulses! That poor innocent man!
Only, no, he’s the scum of the earth and he deserves each and every insult he’s received in these comments.
Nobinayamu: On the defensiveness and hostility with which I’ve seen regulars here react to myself and others’ fairly neutral comments.
Rutee: Sorry, are you the owner of this blog? If not, please keep the backseat moderating to yourself, thanks.
Henigst:
Well … yeah. There was some question about this?
The hostility is almost always directed at the deserving, as in this case. You see, what makes you a troll is claiming to believe hostility is inherently bad. I have a feeling you only believe that when deployed in the service of certain viewpoints, but in any case, that’s the tone argument, a classic troll maneuver — so classic, in fact, that we all know it when we see it.
Also, are you the owner of this blog?
We only get “hostile and defensive” when some MRA comes in a shits all over the rug. You know, by mansplaining and concern trolling. Sound familiar?
Rutee’s a community member here. She knows our policies and conventions, official and unofficial, and she’s earned our respect. You haven’t, Hengist.
Why so defensive? My point was to say that it looks like the comments section has gotten nasty lately, unless it’s always been like this. I’m not sure how else to say that.
I’m not defensive. I am curious. You said two things, which contradicted each other… you either read the comments, or you don’t, and if you don’t you really aren’t in a position to judge.
If you do, it sounds like concern trolling.
For the record, whatever NWO may have said, I can’t personally condone the nastiness of nobinayamu’s posts. Maybe if telling men that they’re losers no woman would ever want wasn’t such a common tactic used to silence and shame men, but even then… it’s one thing to stand up to a bully, but if you keep kicking him after he’s down while your friends cheer you on, it gets a little nauseating, sorry.
For the record, NWO deserves a lot more harsh language than he ever gets, and Nobinayamu didn’t address, “men”, she addressed NWO.
I am not sure I agree with all of her conclusions, but he’s a shitheel. He lies, ignores evidence, pretends people don’t respond to him, slut-shames, abuses people, says evil things about women as a class, engages in veiled anti-semitism and says that women are the cause of all his personal problems.
I have, once, engaged in telling him just what I thought of his behavior. Dave removed it. I still think I was 1: justified, and 2: just this side of improper.
Dave, and CB disagreed. Some others saw it and said nothing, so I don’t know what they thought. I would be happy if he were banned; which is not something I say lightly; in the main I figure anyone ought to be allowed to speak. The truth will out.
NWO is a miserable excuse for a human being. He is, so far as I can tell, not worth much more than his value as compost.
You are walking into a conversation well after it has begun and proceeded to tell the people having that conversation that they should be respectful of the other persons in the conversation without having any idea why someone might be disrespectful.
NWOaf is slime. He is nothing but a lying, rude, vicious weasel of a person. Despite many many many attempts of treating him with the respect he never earned or deserved, he continued to insult, lie and act in a manner that was absolutely reprehensible. After a while being civil is not an option.
By your own admission you have not read the archives so you have no clue why someone is being treated this way and yet have the firm belief that the treatment is unwarranted. Make an effort to see why someone does something before rushing to that asshole’s defense. He does not deserve it.
Did I say you should be moderated? Or did I say nobody was going to fall for your blatantly poor attempt at a concern troll? Protip, it was the latter.
That’s just worded poorly. If this shit keeps up I’m going to offer my services as an editor to AVFM; this shit is clearly seeping into your movement’s writing habits. I mean, good writing and clean editting won’t make your stupid points true, but it’ll make them less unbearable to read.
“I was pointing out the defensiveness and hostility with which I’ve seen regulars react to neutral comments”, for instance. There are dozens of ways you could have written this clearly and concisely.
Hengist, you’re talking to people who have been reading NWO’s bullshit for months and months. We know the sort of vile shit he says on a regular basis, and we know what even more vile shit he said that led me to put him on moderation. (Most places would have banned him months ago; I let him get away with get away with breaking the rules here again and again.)
If Nobinayamu had directed her angry comment on someone other than this particular person, I probably would have put her on moderation. But NWO has pretty much forfeited the right to be treated politely here
Is it “shaming language” if it’s directed at someone who has no shame?
Hengist, if that’s what you want to believe, fine. I mean the entire purpose of the blog is mock misogyny and it can be hilariously funny. I’ve also seen threads/discussions spin off into some truly fascinating and illuminating topics. There are a bunch of smart people here; it’s rarely a boring read.
And yet people who want to offer misogynistic opinions, or full-out misogynists like NWO, come here, call women whores, and then act shocked, SHOCKED I SAY when they’re insulted right back. Hengist, it’s insulting to have someone say, over and over again, that women are whores by our very natures.
Do you understand that?
It’s insulting. You have no idea how this started, or what I was referencing but you enter the fray with this mealy-mouthed, “well I’m not sure what he said but, um harump”. He called one of the posters a “whore”. He called her a “fuckhole with a pulse”. That’s not me being a defensive, hostile feminist who’s paraphrasing him with hyperbolic rhetoric.
That’s a direct quote. There was nothing neutral about it. And he’s said other things, just as bad, and been put on moderation before.
It’s the audacity of him daring to complain about being put on moderation, whining about how unfair David is with his own friggin’ blog, that was a bridge too far for me today. It’s okay for NWO to lie and hurl insults at us because we’re defensive hostile feminists and probably started it?
But it’s not okay for me to insult him? Why, because I’m better at it?
“Why, because I’m better at it?”
XD
Hengist: Rutee: Sorry, are you the owner of this blog? If not, please keep the backseat moderating to yourself, thanks.
Beams, motes.
I’m torn between wanting to find cover and making some popcorn.
Hengist: You’re not exactly making a good first impression, here. fyi.
What amuses me is the way Hengist has managed to get a number of people who have been refraining from sharing their personal opinions of NWO to actually do it.
KathleenB: First rule of firefights, move to cover.
Second Rule: Shoot back if 1: Safe. 1a: Shooting back will remove the status of safe.
Third Rule: If Safe is not an option, Shooting Back is the same as not shooting back.
I’d say, Find Cover, Make Popcorn, Snipe as amuses you.
I have been moderated for addressing my opinion of NWO, when he was dancing around the idea of raping 14 year old teen girls. As always, moderation is David’s exclusive call, and he errs mostly on the side of freedom of speech.
NWO is a vile person, as evidenced by his own words.
PecuniumL Good point. /me goes looking for chest high walls equipped with microwaves