Given the enmity towards women in general, and feminists in particular, that’s omnipresent in the manosphere, it seems logical to assume that most of the dudes lingering around MRA, PUA and MGTOW sites online would take a certain secret pleasure in seeing women suffer.
As regular readers of this blog know all too well, oftentimes the desire to see women suffer is not so secret: some MRAs and others of their ilk literally laugh at women getting cancer, declare that rapists should be given medals, openly fantasize about “beat[ing] the living shit” out of women, and tell feminists who complain about this sort of shit that they’re “so pernicious and repugnant that the idea of fucking your shit up gives me an erection.” (Those last two examples come from Paul Elam, one of the MRM’s most influential bloggers.) Still others send rape and death threats to outspoken women online.
But good news, folks! It turns out that not all manosphere misogynists want women to suffer. Why? Because suffering is an ineffective way to put women in their place. That, at least, is the argument of a fellow calling himself Höllenhund. In a comment on Susan Walsh’s Hooking Up Smart blog, he offered this argument:
Making women suffer wouldn’t achieve anything in itself – I’m pretty sure the overwhelming majority of the Manosphere would agree. Women are normally solipsistic and they fail to understand their own urges and don’t comprehend the connection between cause and effect. They’d never understand why they’re suffering in the first place.
So, basically, in his mind, women are dumber than dogs and thus harder to train. Even worse, the suffering women can sit down in the street and cry, and countless “white knights,” hoping to win their approval (and get in their pants) will rush to their aid:
Suffering only motivates them to fish for male sympathy (and thus investment) through crying and whining, to blame ‘ bad men’ for their ‘misfortune’ and thus play the game of ‘let’s you and him fight’. That’s how it has always been.
So making women suffer is largely pointless. I’d go further and say it’d actually be detrimental to men because it encourages white-knighting and intra-male competition. …
And some of the ladies even seem to sort of like it:
Not to mention the fact that many women actually seem to find some sort of twisted pleasure in suffering, that all this’d simply serve to justify more anti-male legislation and whatnot.
Poor Höllenhund doesn’t have much hope that women will ever see how totally terrible they really are
[T]he notion of making women ‘admit their faults’ is pie-in-the-sky as well. Again, I’m sure pretty much everyone in the Manosphere would agree. You have a bigger chance of seeing pigs fly.
If women are to recognize their faults in this SMP [Sexual Marketplace], they need to have a realistic picture of both their own sexuality and the SMP in the first place, plus they need to have empathy for beta males …
Er, you’re lecturing us about empathy?
Sorry, on with the rest of the sentence:
plus they need to be imbued with the sense of morality without which the very concept of ‘fault’ is meaningless.
And lecturing us about morality too?
I think we’ll sooner see Haiti become a dreaded military superpower.
I’d rather see that than live in a world in which women were so self-hating that they actually believed they were guilty of whatever unnamed sins Höllenhund attributes to them.
NOTE: I found Höllenhund’s comment because the blogger at Pro-Male/Anti-Feminist Technology cited it as a prime example of the sort of brave “truth telling” that will get you banned “on feminist sites that supposedly support men.” And yes, it apparently did get poor Höllenhund banned from Hooking Up Smart. I’m not quite sure how Susan Walsh, a traditionalist devoted to slut shaming in a thousand different flavors, counts as feminist, but that’s not the point. The point is: I’m regularly accused of “cherry picking” comments from MRAs. In this case, Mr. PMAFT picked the comment for me.
i thought David’s post was about a guy who thinks it’s ok to inflict pain and suffering on another being if it produces a desired behavioral change. and this same guy basically thought that women weren’t smart enough to effect such behavioural change in response to pain and suffering. he also illustrated that other men in the Manosphere seem to think it’s ok to inflict pain and suffering on women who please them or meet their notions of appropriate behaviour.
erk *don’t please them or meet their notions of appropriate behaviour*
oops sorry
Given that we’re talking about MRAs, it actually makes sense either way . . .
I am firmly convinced that my kittens can be trained to make me breakfast. Also correct, right? I’m not wasting my time, right?
If “breakfast” == “dead mouse” then it actually should be quite easy. ^_^
@hippodameia…after i posted the correction, i looked at the original and thought, hey, you know what? ; )
To clarify:
I am a supporter of gender equity. I reject the third wave agenda of female supremacy. I reject the misogyny of men like Hollenhund.
@kirbywarp:
Links shown below.
Here’s David’s link to the Elam post, in which he promotes “Bash a Violent Bitch Month,” clearly about IPV:
manboobz.com/2010/11/28/paul-elam-youre-no-jonathan-swift//2010/11/28/paul-elam-youre-no-jonathan-swift/
Here’s the article that David wrote about, talking about “white knighting,” which is the term used in the men’s rights movement to refer to men who jump at the chance to defend women from external threats:
http://www.hookingupsmart.com/2012/02/10/whatguyswant/defining-sexy/comment-page-8/#comment-99853
Quotes from the above article follow, all referring to violence in some way:
The author of the above quote implies that a women who is rejected sexually, or is otherwise enraged at a former partner, will lash out at that partner by inciting another man to do violence against him. MRAs call this practice “white knighting,” elaborated upon further down the comment as shown here:
Now the commenter opines on the value introspection (as opposed to blame shifting), empathy for the suffering of others (as opposed to indifference to their suffering), and adherence to a clear set of moral standards to guide one’s behavior (as opposed to a self-serving moral compass). People who commit violent acts (or who incite violent acts) against their intimate partners routinely blame shift instead of taking responsibility for their own problems (including being sexually rejected by a former partner). Another aspect of abusers is the way they attempt justify any abusive act, by claiming it is some sort of just retaliation for a perceived or real offense. Here’s that passage:
And a further point regarding a deficiency of empathy, which is a trait common to abusers. As I’ve pointed out earlier, David also cited posts in the manosphere which attempted trivialize the pain experienced victims of violence, such as (1) cancer victims, (2) rape victims, or (3) victims of threats. He clearly is critiquing the lack of empathy that he sees in the sites that he monitors:
(1) Cancer victims
manboobz.com/2011/08/16/david-k-meller-on-women-getting-cancer-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha%E2%80%A6lol/
(2) Rape victims
manboobz.com/2012/02/08/theamazingatheists-misogynist-meltdown/
(3) Victims of threats
manboobz.com/2011/11/23/and-what-if-they-get-killed-a-voice-for-men-as-an-antifeminist-witchfinder-general/
manboobz.com/2011/11/23/and-what-if-they-get-killed-a-voice-for-men-as-an-antifeminist-witchfinder-general/
Lack of empathy for others’ suffering is clearly a part of this discussion. Hence it’s justified for me to point of David’s lack of empathy for male victims of female-perpetrated violence, by pointing to an insensitive comment that he tolerated and didn’t counter, a comment made by an ideological ally. Ideological alliance is the reason why a lack of empathy was tolerated on his blog. That’s why I critiqued him. He made the point with this post that others have no empathy, but he’s tolerated exactly that same callousness by commenters on his very own blog.
David has indeed linked violence with the discussion of the so-called “sexual marketplace.” Intimate partner violence, its causes and the public’s response to dealing with it are all an intricate part of this discussion. I am astounded that you don’t see it. I’m frankly astounded that you’re sitting here criticizing me for being inconsistent, off-topic, derailing, etc. I couldn’t possibly be more ON topic.
Keep ’em coming!
Yo, Roscoe, that’s a nice book report you wrote there and all, but I’m pretty sure all the commenter in the OP was saying is “women are too dumb to learn from being beaten and they’ll just make trouble anyway, so they’re not worth beating.”
I don’t think that’s a statement requiring extensive exegesis.
BigMomma: XD!
“I couldn’t possibly be more ON topic.”
Not on this planet, dear, but thanks for playing.
@kirbywarp: “i think roscoe took so long to respond because it took him that long to spin both his position and the subject material in his favor…”
That, or maybe I went out for a burger.
Oh, then I oppose the Zokmar aliens of the Orion nebula.
That’s the name of the game, right?
I oppose the Zibwits of Mars. And the Moostrians of Neptune.
@Roscoe:
Basically what Holly said, and what I said earlier repeated for convenience:
“You do realize that “on topic” does not mean “anything that can be reasonably or possibly related,” right? If David had a mind-bleach post about kittens, that isn’t an excuse to talk about abandoned dogs.”
Now to your recent… post.
“Quotes from the above article follow, all referring to violence in some way:”
Sorry, but you are trying to show that DV shelters are on topic. “Referring to violence” does not show that DV shelters are on topic. Also of note, you keep inserting “intimate partner” in all your discussions, and making vague wispy rationale for how you could possibly link various quotes to DV. Sorry Charlie, but no. Your half-assed armchair-analysis linking “bash a violent bitch” to “lack of male DV shelters” is simply not gonna cut it.
“Lack of empathy for others’ suffering is clearly a part of this discussion.”
“That’s why I critiqued him. He made the point with this post that others have no empathy, but he’s tolerated exactly that same callousness by commenters on his very own blog.”
These two quotes of yours are surprisingly the only bits that are relevant. But of course every post of yours except the first is critiquing David himself. And accusing David of hypocrisy still doesn’t equal talking about male DV shelters no matter how you twist and turn.
“I am astounded that you don’t see it.”
Frankly, I’m astounded that you do see it. O_O Of course, by now the topic of conversation is how incredibly on/off topic you are, so at this point it probably doesn’t matter whether you justify yourself or not. (small hint; you won’t)
@Holly:
“Yo, Roscoe, that’s a nice book report you wrote there and all, but I’m pretty sure all the commenter in the OP was saying is ‘women are too dumb to learn from being beaten and they’ll just make trouble anyway, so they’re not worth beating.'”
Then I would gather that you haven’t fully considered how female-perpetrated violence-by-proxy works. Imagine a married woman whose husband was having an affair, perhaps because he wants to punish his wife for something she said or things she’s done. She feels deeply hurt and wants to strike back against him, only harder. So she tells a sympathetic man, with size and fighting acumen, how abused and neglected she was by her husband. He feels compassion for her suffering, hatred toward her husband, and develops protective feelings for her which take the form of an aggressive posture against her husband. The next time these two males see each other, animosity exists. All it takes is a little provocation, a little incitement, and soon the men are hitting each other, stabbing each other, fighting for their own honor, fighting for her honor, fighting for justice, fighting for their lives. White knighting, as MRAs call it, is dead serious. I am no MRA and I don’t identify with the MRM at all, but I do recognize that “let’s you and him fight” is no trivial matter.
wow, @Roscoe, out of all the pages and pages of comments this blog generates, that was the best you could do? and also even if i agreed with you that it demonstrated a lack of empathy, i think one comment from over a year ago, (among all the other comments which seek to hear and recognise abuse within all sections of the community), scarcely can be held to show that this blog and its commenters lack empathy.
and…
i oppose the way mosquitoes always bite me on my knuckles so i can’t scratch it properly.
Hypothetical women are always so evil. And hypothetical men just seem to be dumb.
MISANDRY!
@Roscoe:
Cool story, bro.
“White knighting” is:
A. Generally not DV
B. Generally not real
C. Generally used as justification by MRAs for why rape shouldn’t be reported (because even if a man is acquitted, the white knights will come for him, and then the evil rape accuser will have killed him!)
D. No, NOT a serious social problem in the world today
E. Not what the post was about, anyway
F. Not what any of your posts until just now have been about
@susanwalsh
you support gender equality do you? you do know gender equality means not adhering to the double standard of women=slut man=stud sexual double standard right?
lying hypocrite.
I love (hate?) how, even in Roscoe’s hypothetical, the woman was still the one who pushed the man into doing violence.
@ Holly, i’m having a hard time keeping track of Roscoe. One minute it’s men only shelters, then it’s not, then it’s IPV, then it’s white knighting…none of which are particularly related to what David was criticising in the OP
@BigMomma:
Actually, he is being consistent! Consistently off topic! XD
Oh goodie the ol’ DV argument again.
Hey Roscoe and other MRA turds? if you claim to care so much about male victims of DV why don’t you fucking DO something about it? why do you always harass feminists who help women? do you think feminists didn’t work their asses off to bring light to domestic violence and funded their own shelters?
Fuck you you entitled fucks. Because all I hear from you is that female victims are not important, and we should all just put men first. Why can’t you do it? why can’t you create a charity? why can’t you create support networks? feminists did and still do. We always have to listen to your bullshit about men being sooo much smarter and hardworking then women. Men get shit done while women sit back and eat bon bons all day…so why can’t you use your manly virtues and create shelters and support networks for men? No one is stopping you.
Perhaps its because you don’t actually give a shit about male victims at all. It’s just your not so subtle way of trying to attack women’s shelters and support networks, probably because many of you are abusers yourselves. People who are truly interested in helping men actually DO SO. They don’t attack other people under the guise of helping.
@Kirbywarp
fair point, fair point. 😉