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.
He’s really not trying to say anything, is he?
The non-feminist world is a big place, and its conclusions are no doubt many. But I do not doubt its capacity to draw conclusions in whatever form. Or its inherent right to do so.
This is the biggest non-statement I’ve ever seen.
I really wish you’d add some logic and debate texts to the reading lists.
I’m still waiting for the explanation of how feminists can not know what feminism is. If I’m doing feminism wrong, and almost every other feminist is doing it wrong, then maybe we could just call this thing we’re doing “feminism” and call it good?
Shorter fidelbogen: blabbity blabbity bloo.
No, FB, this is not a matter of taste. You are using overheated, pseudo-intellectual language to disguise the underlying poverty of your thoughts. And BTW, you are not succeeding… the flimsiness of your logic and the pig-blind ignorance of your worldview are painfully obvious to everyone here (just for starters).
I’m in Seattle. Let me know when you’re planning on heading up. I’ll set an afternoon aside. Or let me know where you live, I have a friend in the airline industry. I’ll be happy to come visit.
I’ve had this offer up more than once.
Being a douche? Yeah, I notice it’s fairly common.
Especially on the internet where there’s little to no reprecussions.
The world is a big place, and there are many kinds of toast in it, but I do not doubt the possibility of spreading jam on all of them. Therefore you are wrong.
“I’ve read a great deal of Melville. That doesn’t make you any less of a dick.”
I never meant to imply that your reading of Melville makes me “less of a dick”. Sorry if I gave that impression. 😉
And no, I didn’t come here to tell anybody any such thing. I just came here. . . and THEN I got the impulse to write!
You (all) have a thin skin, don’t you? Interesting, that. . .
(Sigh…) Sometimes I wish I were actually as smart as most the posters here.
Sadly, I take the Jager voice, because I’m not really that socially adept and tend to act rather than think.
I’d really like to be able to take the high road.
Vhy can’t hy be de schmoot guy?
“Being a douche? Yeah, I notice it’s fairly common.
Especially on the internet where there’s little to no reprecussions.”
Actually no. It was a serious statement. If you wanna call it douchery, I reckon that’s your “issue”. You have a low threshhold for such things, don’t ya?
Okay, so Fidelbogen is just Brandon with a thesaurus. “I don’t know or care what we’re talking about, but I’m very smart and important so I’m right. …about something.”
“The world is a big place, and there are many kinds of toast in it, but I do not doubt the possibility of spreading jam on all of them. Therefore you are wrong.”
Dude! i LOVE meaningless mind-twisters, and that one’s a gem! Mind if I steal it some time?
“Okay, so Fidelbogen is just Brandon with a thesaurus. “I don’t know or care what we’re talking about, but I’m very smart and important so I’m right. …about something.”
Actually. . . I do not own a thesaurus. Believe it or not.
Why? Because I don’t need one. Hey, it’s just a fact.
Whoa. Whatever else he may have been, as a writer Melville was incredibly readable. It’s often over looked because so much of his work is now classic and often “assigned reading” at the high school level. There was nothing “turgid” about Melville’s prose; Moby Dick is a great read.
That is… an interesting deflection. A poster named chuckeedee used to attempt something very similar but less transparent. Let’s try this, you said that “the rest of the world can see perfectly well what feminism is, and draw its own conclusions.” As a statement this is both true and fairly meaningless. For it to have any substance and be more than just some sort of anti-feminist “filler” it needs some sort of parameters.
How are you defining “the rest of the world”? Is it simply the world outside of feminism? Is it specifically the parts of the world that are anti-feminist? What about when both exist simultaneously, like here in the U.S.? Are you talking about the world online? Are you referring to the actual earth and water globe?
I never suggested that the rest of the world was incapable of drawing its own conclusions about feminism or that it had no right to do so. That part of what you wrote is a bit of a non sequitur. But, you know, you created a comparison and I’m asking you for the basis of that comparison the better to understand your point. I’m not asking you if there is a non-feminist world or how big it is. I’m asking you where/what “… the rest of the world…” is and what conclusions its drawn. You’ve implied that you know.
Please share.
You call it being “thin skinned”, we call it “not putting up with your shit.”
Good to see you never thought about being less of a dick.
Saves us the time of having to get bored with your tediously overwrought prose and gets us straight to mocking you.
http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Content?oid=322237
Yes, I do have a low threshhold for douchery. When someone comes in as acts like a douche I tend to react to the douchiness. You come and are “inspired” to be a douche and then you project “issues” on other because they don’t put up with your bullshit.
You’ve addressed no topics, contributed no insight and imagined yourself more savy and worldly than people you don’t even know.
It’s a trifecta of doucheitude.
He’s just a THASF-style narcissist troll. He doesn’t actually have any opinions or beliefs, he just wants to talk about himself and his Melville-reading, thesaurus-not-owning ways.
“I’m asking you where/what “… the rest of the world…” is and what conclusions its drawn. You’ve implied that you know.”
Rather call it non-feminist filler (than “anti”).
But I should have made it clear that “rest of the world” means whatever is exclusive of feminism. Yeah, it exists. Clear out to the furthest quasar, if you wanna push it that far. In human terms, it means anybody who looks you in the eye and says “I am not a feminist”. He/she will share his/her conclusions if so inclined. If not so inclined, he/she may go in peace.
Oh and yes…Melville’s a good read. I first tried to tackle Moby Dick at age nine, and I got about as far as page 120.
TB: Once again, you are coming into a feminist space, where most commentors are feminists and highly educated one at that, and expecting your pre-freshman logic to do anything but amuse us. Also known as walking into someone else’s house and shitting on their rugs. You’re being an asshole and expect not to get called on it? Here, of all places?
@Cynickal: Sigh. My statement was a serious one, as I stated.
@Katz: You brought up the thesaurus, and I simply corrected you as a point of information. but I guess you don’t appreciate that.
If you had never mentioned thesauri, then I would never have mentioned that I didn’t own one.
So, I am damned if I own a thesaurus and damned if I don’t….eh?
Oh… and I mentioned Melville (and Carlyle) also as points of information. Stay on track, okay?
“. . .pre-freshman logic. . .
Whatever that means. Snootiness doesn’t look good on you.
Whether you own a thesaurus was not the pertinent part of my comment.
(I don’t own a thesaurus either! I’m a special little fucker.)
The pertinent part was whether you had anything at all to say other than “I’m so smart and I’m so right, even though I’m painfully unclear about what I’m being right about.“
FB: You don’t know shit about what looks good on me. And if you can’t figure out the ‘coded’ insult in there, I’m sure as fuck not going to help you.
And, hey, way to fail to address any of my salient points!
“The pertinent part was whether you had anything at all to say other than…”
Unfortunately, whatever first set this in motion has gone long astern in the backwash. What with people talking about thesauri and other such dreck. . .
Then pay some fucking attention, FB. It shouldn’t be too hard for your big, manly brain to track multiple conversations at once, especially when you can go back and read them.