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.
“Then you get offended when people laugh at the laughable.”
And when did this happen? I must be getting forgetful in my old age.
Obviously.
Perhaps some Gingko biloba would help.
fidelbogen: So … if it’s sarcasm, then the Latin bit couldn’t possibly have been intended to impress? I hate to elucidate the obvious, but you are incapable of logical thinking.
No, I meant the ‘getting offended’ part ……
“So … if it’s sarcasm, then the Latin bit couldn’t possibly have been intended to impress? I hate to elucidate the obvious, but you are incapable of logical thinking.”
You know, I am worried and troubled on your account, because I cannot see the “logic” in this very statement.
Truly, I cannot.
OH MY GOD I’ve been reading these comments and just realized fidelbogen is the guy from the OP! Don’t go away fidelbogen! I just have to go get my siphon hose and I’ll be right back!
“. . then maybe we could just call this thing we’re doing “feminism” and call it good?”
Yes, by all means do so. That would make things simple.
Too stupid to know he’s stupid. Quite entertaining to watch him dance, no?
Let’s see: Ducking questions? check Misinterpreting remarks directed at him? check Quoting selectively? check Telling all us stupid feminists that we don’t understand our movement, but he does, by virtue of possessing a big, turgid, manly brain? check. Folks, we have a bog-standard antifeminist/MRA troll here! Cue the parade!
Rutee Katreya: I know, it’s a blast.
ME: You are incapable of logic.
FIDELBOGEN: I can’t see the logic! Honestly, I can’t!!
Yeah, we know.
FB, yes, I am that Ozy. Yes, my blog comes from a feminist perspective; I’ve been actively involved in feminism, in one form or another, since I was fourteen years old. I am not sure why you think I think MRAs should be grateful for my efforts; I don’t actually target the blog at MRAs. Oddly enough, there are lots of people in the world who are interested in men’s rights who don’t feel that cock blockades and pussy cartels are actually a thing.
But yeah. Don’t like NSWATM, don’t read it. None of the bloggers expect your gratitude, you know?
“And I can authoritatively say that if you are are a feminist, then you are a person of interest.”
Interesting that you would use a term police use when dealing with suspects. Have committed a crime or are we under suspicion?
^Have we.
Today is not my day wrt typing.
@Kathleen B:
Yes, there is strength in numbers. If you were to come into a non-feminist space, the locals would outnumber you and play the same game on you that you play here. We both know that.
By the way, I’ve seen people here committing that very same roster of offenses (ducking, misinterpreting, etc…), but with several players, it is easy to do this in a distributed, tag-team style.
“. . . or are we under suspicion?”
Yup. Always. That’s a basic; a given.
And you are welcome to turn that game around and play it in reverse, from your own side. Which you will, in any event.
And so we’ll both be playing that game mutually and equally.
Ahhhh…..equality.
Actually, I helped convert a space much meaner than this into a feminist-friendly one. True, it was sympathetic, but work’s work.
Thing is, I actually can argue substantively, I understand the issues I claim to care about, and I am not a completely ineffective rhetoricist. You are none of these things. If you were half as smart as you thought you were and also correct, you could have offered something of substance. But you’re not even a tiny iota as capable as you think you are. Aught but a capering monkey.
By the way, I’ve seen people here committing that very same roster of offenses (ducking, misinterpreting, etc…), but with several players, it is easy to do this in a distributed, tag-team style.
One: nice to see you admit to it,
Two: [citation needed]
uh oh watch out guys we got a puppetmaster
we are but his puppets
truly it is a grand game he plays, saying nonsensical things and thus cleverly manipulating people into saying “that was a nonsensical thing”
all part of the plan, all part of the game
@Rutree:
You are entitled to your opinion. We all are.
And yes..I didn’t bother to spell your name right. 😉
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.
Sounds like a plan. See you soon, “uncle Adam”.
Thing is, I actually can argue substantively, I understand the issues I claim to care about, and I am not a completely ineffective rhetoricist.
Really? Is that before or after you resort to spewing insults and ad hominems?
“One: nice to see you admit to it,
Two: [citation needed]”
One: what did I “admit to”?
Two: “nice to see you admit to it.”
“Why not? When I’m on a troll, I tend to keep trolling. Call it inertia.”
Fixed that for ya
Holly: Thing is, I actually can argue substantively, I understand the issues I claim to care about, and I am not a completely ineffective rhetoricist.
Really? Is that before or after you resort to spewing insults and ad hominems?
Holly, he didn’t say he does it, merely that he’s able.
He’s subtle that way.
Dang it Pecunium! *falls asleep at the reference of Hawthorne*
Failpedant, but that’s probably better than the opposite. Still, TSTKTS.
Before, during, and after, little concern troll. If I’m mocking you, you’re not actually my target anymore. It’d be great if you saw your own stupidity, but I’m not overly concerned with it. My target is the audience. Doesn’t work on everyone, but it does actually work on a fair number of people. Your movement is ridiculous; effective ridicule reduces its truck. Particularly effective ridicule can increase that of my own cause.
Ah-ah-ah, you have to learn to use a logical fallacy correctly before you can use it at all. Ad hominem is “You’re stupid, and therefore wrong”. It invokes qualities of the target to imply or outright state wrongness of position. Saying you are wrong, and therefore stupid, is simply an insult. It does not say you are wrong because of character trait X, it says you are wrong, and ALSO possess character trait X. The difference is subtle to a fool, perhaps, but to the rest of us…