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 think a lot of “white knight” attacks, to the extent they happen at all, are actually done against the woman’s wishes. It’s more about certain guys being gung-ho to fix all problems with smashing than it is about women being these conniving femme fatales.
@Quackers:
Just to let you know, Roscoe has said that he has started a support group for male abuse victims, and has done various other things.
You know when you hit a ball really hard in a squash court and it bounces madly all over the place with no particular pattern or purpose? That’s kind of what Roscoe’s comments in this thread remind me of.
I mean, I know that he intends it to have a purpose (David is a lying hypocrite what lies), but the actual effect is more ball-bouncing-randomly.
it’s obvious what he’s doing…trying to distract everyone from the blatant misogyny in the OP. Classic abuser or pro-abuse mentality, trying to deflect away from someone’s clearly abusive mentality (Höllenhund)
@Kirby
Did he show proof? if he did why the hell is he on here? why doesn’t he recruit more MRAs who claim that they care about male DV victims?
I gotta say I’ve come to look at this situation very cynically now. It’s clear that feminists and MRAs can’t come to agreement about this topic so for now I think MRAs should stick to helping men and feminists should stick to helping women. Both should help non-cis and LGBT folk too, but I’ll give you one guess who is more accepting of those people.
@Quackers:
“Did he show proof?”
No, nobody asked him to.
@Quackers: “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?”
I speak for myself, and no one else, nor any group, speaks for me. My statements stand on their own, so please don’t associate me with the MRM or any of the individuals that David criticizes on this blog.
That said, to answer your question, I do look to people who make equality the centerpiece of their world view and hope that they show their commitment to equality by assisting both male and female DV victims in need. Holding people up to their own values demonstrates some basic level of confidence in their integrity. Are you implying that I shouldn’t have such confidence in victim’s advocates?
Did the Walsh herself just grace us with her presence? SUSAN WALSH FOR TROLL OF THE YEAR!
@katz:
Funny thing was, not even David said anything about Susan Walsh in the OP, everybody’s just talking about the comment itself. She probably got a notice of people linking to her site from manboobz and thought she needed to defend herself.
She seems like she’d be a more entertaining troll to engage with than Roscoe. Susan, come back!
Well, ok, scratch that. David did say she was “a traditionalist devoted to slut shaming in a thousand different flavors…”
Quackers, I think feminists should help men too. I think feminism inherently helps men, in that many men are harmed by patriarchal gender norms. And I don’t oppose domestic violence because it’s wrong for men to hurt women; I oppose domestic violence because it’s wrong, period. Besides, carving out separate spheres (feminists for women, MRAs for men) excludes people who don’t fit neatly into a binary conception of gender.
Also, it just seems cruel to leave all men to the MRAs. The vast majority of men deserve far better than that.
@Roscoe
Yeah well I wish women were granted equal rights with men from the beginning so there wouldn’t be a need for feminism in the first place. Men never gave women equal writes, feminists had to fight damn hard for them. You completely overlook that, all you MRA trash do. MRAs continuously pretend that women faced no inequality ever. Feminism happened to put women on equal footing with men. No more, no less, equal. MRAs claim to be about equality too, but all they do is talk about how worthless women are. How we’re career bitches when we support ourselves. How feminists fucked everything up by putting women in the work force and giving them rights.
Do you care about equality? do you care about female DV victims? Do you care about women being equal to men? you wouldn’t even KNOW about DV if it weren’t for feminists. Fuck off and continue helping men if you aren’t actually lying about doing so, and leave women’s services alone because overwhelming evidence – BJS, CDC, WHO, shows that women need those services. If you believe men need them just as much, then rally up the boys and create them just like women did. Once you prove that your true goal is helping men and not destroying women’s services, then most feminists will be more than happy to assist you.
@Quackers: “I don’t see why you need to hurl such invective in my direction. I didn’t do the same to you.”
@Quackers: “Fuck off and continue helping men if you aren’t actually lying about doing so…”
I don’t see why you need to hurl such invective in my direction. I didn’t do the same to you.
Did Roscoe just… paraphrase himself? O_o
Ima predict that Roscoe’s next point is gonna be how tone trolling is now suddenly on topic, because the OP contained words that might be considered meanie-pants, and he’s just pointing out the hypocrisy of using meanie-pants words while criticizing others for saying meanie-pants things…
@Burgundy
I’m not opposed to the idea that feminists should help men, I’m all for it…that is if by help men MRAs didn’t actually mean “fuck women victims, help men only” that’s what MRAs want. They are insincere shit. They don’t want to help men, they want to destroy laws and services that help women. That is fucking bullshit. It’s like one cancer organization opposing another cancer organization because it’s not the same type of cancer and accusing that cancer organization of being a bigot.
And every time feminists do try to help men, like by showing them how traditional notions of masculinity harms men they just scream that we’re demonizing men and trying to “feminize” them and god forbid they are anything like some pussy woman.
@Roscoe – I know the statement was not addressed to me, but it may be because it is in his/her/etc “social justice arsenal.” Social justice makes unprovoked aggression okay.
So now, if one party is calm and civil and the other is an immature trainwreck, the calm and civil party is “tone trolling.”
@IdeologueReview:
What is it called when someone takes random quotes of people he doesn’t like out of context (or in context), interprets them poorly, and uses completely random links to justify his claims when there’s only a tenuous link between the link’s title and the claim?
Social justice? 😛
@Roscoe
I’ve got especially little patience for disingenuous MRAs tonight.
It’s getting much harder dealing with you fuckwits and having to hear how horrible I and other feminists are when we do a hell of a lot more than MRAs do. I recently donated to this organization: http://www.goodshepherdcentres.ca/index.htm
It has homeless shelters for men, shelters for women and youth, palliative care and more. An organization like that which hosts many different services would most likely be open to the idea of having a DV shelter for men.
“So now, if one party is calm and civil and the other is an immature trainwreck, the calm and civil party is “tone trolling.””
If one party is trying to use the other party’s harsh language to discredit them in an effort to avoid criticism, that’d be tone trolling. The thing you are describing only happens when TAA is the “other.” 😉
You can attack me all you want, kirby. I derive a sort of masochistic pleasure from your beratement.
@kirby
oh look, Mr. Preggo Punchout is upset because I used the big bad fuck word against one of his MRA buddies XD
somehow I can’t take his concerns about my tone too seriously