So WF Price and the rest of the fellas over on The Spearhead are doing a little bit of armchair psychoanalysis of the dreaded “male feminist” in general, and me in particular. It is fairly amusing stuff.
Price sets forth his highly original thesis:
If you observe genuinely feminist men, there’s something a bit off about them, and it’s tempting to chalk their feminism up to a result of some flaw or aberration in their character. Normal men (aside from those whose paycheck depends on it such as politicians and men who work for feminist-dominated institutions) simply don’t go in for feminism unless it gets them sexual gratification, but those days are pretty much over, so the remnants tend to be an assortment of freaks and guys who have a chip on their shoulder.
“But those days are pretty much over?” Evidently, Price thinks there was a time during which women were obligated to reward feminist men with “sexual gratification,” but that this is no longer the case. So “normal men” have stopped being feminists, or at least stopped pretending to be feminists.
So what are these freakish feminist men of today really getting out of it?
I think I’ve come up with a nice explanation. The men who support feminism are exactly those men who would be on the bottom of the totem pole in a male-dominated environment. It’s about relative status. If there truly were a patriarchy and male dominance in society, these men would be the “losers” that other men look down on for whatever reason. So it’s in their best interests to use feminism to dismantle any masculine institutions or power wherever possible, as this gives them more relative status and power.
In other words, male feminists are only feminists because they’re “losers” who can’t get laid. Huh. Isn’t that one of those “Anti-Male Shaming Tactics” I hear about from MRAs all the time?
Oh, I’m sorry — those are only shaming tactics when they’re directed at MRAs. When directed at feminist men, this hoary old insult is a profound psychological insight worthy of a 200-comment thread.
Naturally, Price’s brilliant hypothesis goes over well with all of the totally-not-losers who populate The Spearhead. TFH suggests a slight refinement to the thesis:
It might be something even simpler.
Having lost all hope of having sex with women, these losers have decided that at least they will settle for proximity to women, and being male feminists enables them to do that.
What losers….
Eric offers his spin on some old psychological research:
What is apparent is that they share the same deep-seated hatred of men that feminists do.
Kurt Koffka did an intensive study about the ego-relationship to a hostile environment back in the early 60s. His findings were significant in that perceived anger easily developed into narcissicism if allowed to continue unchecked. It’s the same effect everyone feels on a smaller scale when we’re around people we find distasteful—we tend to withdraw upon ourselves. In cases of malignant narcissicism, the ego has withdrawn upon itself to such a degree that, to use Koffka’s eloquent phrase, sees the surrounding world as ‘an undifferentiated hostile field.’
Women educated under feminist ideology fit that profile perfectly.
Um, guys. You do realize that you’re part of a whole little movement that spends most of its time ginning up small slights to look like a culture of MISANDRY, and which is somehow convinced that an evil cabal of feminists and their lackeys run the world? In other words, that you’re narcissicists narcissists who literally do see the world outside of your little message boards as “an undifferentiated hostile field?”
What am I saying? They don’t realize anything. MRA dudes, please take a moment to look up the concept of “projection.” That’s all I ask.
VitaminD (not to be confused with one hit pop wonder Vitamin C) offers this evidently hilarious observation on natural history:
Male feminists are like the clever animals who sneak into the alpha male’s harem and impregnates some of the females behind his back. Unluckily for male feminists, human females subconsciously consider them cowards and are repulsed by this sexual strategy. LOLOLOLOL
LOLOLOLOL indeed!
Andybob suggests that most of us male feminists actually hate being massive pussies:
Most male feminists are frauds. Only the tiniest percentage men could possibly be so unhinged by self-loathing that they genuinely embrace the man-hating swill that is the bedrock of feminism.
The rest of them are just nervous. That’s why most of them seem “a bit off” – to red pill men, that is. They’re playing a role for reasons too humiliating to confront and can sense that a red pill man is likely to see through it and call them on it. But why masquerade as a feminist in the first place?
Mr Price makes a compelling argument that many of them, for whatever reason, can’t quite cut it among their male peers. They may be nerds, socially awkward, sissy-gay, annoying or just plain weird. So, they take the soft option of hanging out with girls – usually the type who naturally repulse boys: feminists. It’s a trade-off. Embrace the ideology, and they can hang out with actual people, even if they are only feminists.
I am intrigued by the final paragraph of the post in which Mr Price suggests that this supplication is a complex form of manipulation. Perhaps some of them are using feminists to out-maneuver their competition – other men. It’s like a perverted form of Anti-Game. Most male feminists I’ve met could easily pass as sociopathic enough to be into this. David Futrelle seems to fit this profile. Surely he can’t really hang around all day with those demented cretins who inhabit his site because he actually finds them interesting. They must be a necessary evil to fulfill a greater goal, whatever that may be. Or maybe he really is just a big old girl’s blouse mangina.
Damn, he’s on to me. But while we’re on the subject, here (see pic at right) is a man in a big old girl’s blouse.
Darryl X is feeling a little cranky today:
There is NOT something a “little off” about feminist men. There is something WAY off. They are malignant narcissists and psychopaths. Career con-artists who manipulate women and men to satisfy their addiction to money and sex and power and control. They do not suffer from a mental illness. Their criminal disposition is the result of bad choices they have made and lies they have told throughout their lives. After you lie enough, you start believing the lies and then you can no longer tell the difference between them and the truth. Feminism is evil and it is a choice. It is not a “little off”. It is the single most evil thing a human can be. Feminism is the most fundamental threat to civilization, an affrontery to God and personally offensive to me.
Also, feminists eat puppies. I can’t believe he forgot to mention that.
Gamerp4 bashes out this weird little rant about “dead men” and river currents:
For me there is no point in beating a dead men, I call those Male Feminist and Mangina’s “Dead Men” their soul and their mind are dead, their thinking, their feelings, their emotions are dead, Just like feminist women they have oath to sought revenge on Patriarchy (Which was the reason that civilization went ahead and humanity was preserved), their Self-hate, Self-Marginalization, Self-Indictment for something that doesn’t even exist shows How they are charming and grooming themselves for a Matriarchy, which surely is not gonna happen in another 200 years, but apart from that I dont wanna piss their plan for “Going with the River Current, Where the River Current takes them”, the real men well “He fights the River Current, To Pave the way for Humanity to survive the WATERFALL”, and I & many in MRM are those Real- Men that are fighting the RIVER CURRENT to pave way for Humanity “of Men Especially.”
Ollie classifies the enemy into five different “archetypes,” in a comment that is an equal mixture of prejudice and delusion, leavened with a teensy bit of truth (see category #1).
1. The Sensitive New Age Guy (SNAG)
Examples, Hugo Schwyzer, John Scalzi, Will Wheaton, Josh Weldon, Anthony Weiner.
This guy is often angling to use sensitive new age guy (SNAG) game to get himself a soft harem, and secure/maintain/enrich his employment. These guys will often plug the fembot party line because it is instrumental to the persona/career they have created. … If you write SWPL oriented sci-fi for a living, it really makes no sense to rock the grrl-power boat. …
Nevertheless, deep down these guys have a raging libido just like the rest of us. It’s just that they have figured out that this libido can be fed (in part) by occasionally stabbing other men in the back.
Yes, it’s true that there are some allegedly sensitive new age guys who mouth feminist platitudes in an attempt to get laid; they’re the “Nice Guys” of the feminist world, and they’re creepy and annoying in much the same way as non-feminist “Nice Guys” are. (See that awful Dear Woman video from a year ago for many cringeworthy examples.) But other so-called “sensitive new age guys” are actually just … sensitive and new agey, for better or worse.
The remainder of Ollie’s categories bear much less resemblance to reality.
2. The Closet Transgender
Examples: Julia (Former name?) Serano, Robert (now Raewyn) Connell, Larry (now Lana) Wachowski
These guys, while they are still guys, are ardent feminists, because they know in their heart of hearts (as soon as enough money/time for the hormones and surgery arrives) they are going to be playing for Team Woman someday, so they had better ingratiate themselves now.
Yeah, that’s … not … how that works.
3. The Gay Leftist
Examples: Andrew Sullivan, Dan Savage.
The men in this category (which also includes the closeted) support feminism inasmuch as this support is something of an ideological tithe to another component (feminists) of the leftist coalition/army fighting the greater culture wars.
Um, what?
4. The Socon (Social-Conservative)
Examples: Glenn T. Stanton, Mark Driscoll, William Bennett
These guys are a lot like group one, willing to stab their fellow man in the back to get a paycheck, and perhaps a little more (wink, wink). … [But] they do it under the guise of conservatism and/or religiosity. … They are ruthless white knights. … [And they] will follow the major tenets of feminism, but never, ever admit to it, heaven forbid they lose some precious street cred in front of the Limbaugh/Hannity/Falwell crowd.
White Knights they may well be, but the notion that, say, Bill Bennett is a closet feminist is a bit … odd to say the least.
Oops, he almost forgot me! So he added one more category in a second comment:
5. The Desperate Guy
Examples: David Futrelle,
This guy is a lesser beta/omega and he is essentially begging for attention. The worst part is that to a certain extent, this ploy for attention works, and the Desperate Guy then proceeds to double down on the fembot activism in hopes that it will lead to greater emotional rewards. As time goes on, this type of guy has more and more of his ego invested in this gambit, to the point where he would rather kill himself than end the attachment to such a poisonous ideology.
Around this point I basically got bored with the thread, though, skimming the rest, I did notice a few further thoughts on my evil self.
Keyster, after quoting an earlier commenter who referred to me as “Fucktrelle/Flabtrelle/Mangina,” complains that I have “no original thoughts, just finger wagging and ad hominem ridicule.”
The Whammer defines “a futrella” as being “like a mangina only fatter, dumber and more pussy whipped.” He also imagines me getting my balls cut off, after which he adds a smiley face.
In a later comment, Mr. Whammer adds some thoughts about you, gentle readers, as well:
If you’ve ever read the comments on his blog they are from the same handful of lesbians,females who ride the fatmobile at the food store and are “depressed” (about being fat lol) and think they are entitled to disability, females who have no idea what sex they are and refer to normal people as “cis”, and pussy whipped sissies and manginas. …
Little David will also erase and ban any comment that doesn’t fit into the stupid groupthink there and believe me these girls are dumb as rocks. Even when these “girls” try some humour or sarcasm it sounds like something from a 5yo and falls flat. David apparently has no life or anything else to do so he reads every comment and will ban those he doesn’t like. Price allows anyone to post but this sometimes permits people to write things that will discredit the MRM which little David will then pounce on and use as an example against the MRM. Personally I think that Welmer should delete comments from people who write things that may discredit the men’s movement and also those that just ramble on in some long confused post that makes no sense.
Thank, you, Mr. Whammer, for providing me with yet another “long confused post that makes no sense” that I can cherry-pick to discredit real MRAs like … you. Er, wait.
My favorite comment in the whole thread, though, is one from Alex F., who is convinced you can spot a mangina by just looking at his fingers. (You may recall our friend Gucci Little Piggy making a similar argument about lesbians some months back.)
Don’t know if you’re familiar with “the ring finger theory”, but it’s been proven that a reliable way of identifying high-T men is observing the ratio between the index and ring fingers. A longer ringer finger indicates unusually high testosterone, and is a common marker in professional sportsmen etc. …
I would be willing to bet no male feminists have the longer ring finger (Futrelle for example is overweight; low testosterone tends people towards weight gain). Low testosterone would disable these men in all sorts of obvious ways, making them unappealing to men and women alike. Hence, they adopt feminism to compensate.
Take a look at the picture at the top of this post, Alex F., and weep.
Is it possible that MRAs are quite literally wrong about every single thing in the world?
(Who wants to bet that the MRAs respond by suggesting that the picture is faked?)
This is what I really can’t fathom. I have a terrific marriage, two lovely kids, a job I adore and a lifestyle that would have seemed like Utopian fantasy to me as a child.
Have a guess how likely I am to want to swap all this for the lives of the desperately embittered individuals quoted in the OP?
They can insult me all they want, but until they can prove that they’ve got a better deal out of life than I have, it’s going to have no effect on me whatsoever. And something tells me that they probably can’t.
Well, all I can say about that Spearheader thread is that I thought it was rather funny.
Shorter Price – Men only hang out with icky, cootie-having girls if other boys won’t talk to them. I wouldn’t talk to them at all if it wasn’t for the inconvenient fact that they own all of the vaginas! Which of course we should own, since it’s the same thing as owning sex, but that’s a subject for the next post.
wtf
is this like one of those kid rides outside the store that you put a quarter in and get 30 seconds of flashing lights and something that resembles a rocking motion
i’ve seen ponies and cars and shit but i don’t think i’ve ever seen THAT one
Kladle, I think he was talking about the motorized carts that a lot of grocery stores have for shoppers with mobility disabilities. So the Whammer was making fun of overweight people with disabilities.
Also, those kid rides at Wal-Mart cost 50 cents now. They still make a good bribe to get my kids to behave at the checkout, so I’ll pay it anyway.
kladle, I think it refers to those little electric carts some stores provide for the benefit of those with limited mobility.
So it’s a basically a bid stinkin’ heap of fat hate and ablism rolled into one.
Ninja’d.
Late, late, late to the conversation, but I just wanted to put in a good word for my very favourite city-building game (Never having played Civ, I’m assuming it’s city-building+risk, right?)
Anyhow, it’s called Pharaoh and I love love love it. Also it’s older than dirt and should run on older machines. It’s charming as all hell and there’s some pretty cute little goodies tucked into it!
How did we go from the Spearhead to Civ 5? You folks are incredible.
No, but seriously, keep it up. I’m currently seeing someone who loves Civ 5, but I’ve yet to play a single game in the series and I doubt my computer is up to speed.
RE Civ: I love you people.
OT NOSTALGIA/GAMING COMMENT:
I used to play Civ 2 on my dad’s work laptop when I was a kid. I have fond memories of staying up all night, feeling overheated while playing a very desert-rich world map, and putting my hands over the laptop speakers while it booted to avoid waking up my parents. I always played the Aztecs, probably because their Civ color was yellow. Years after that, I somehow wound up with a copy of Civilization: Call to Power, which was actually pretty good but oddly enough was produced by some non-Sid Meier associated firm at the behest of the IP holders or something. Maybe twelve years on, I realize that the space cities and city-destroying eco-bombs probably don’t make for great gameplay, but it was freaking fun and I miss stuff like that. I must have gotten Civ IV in ’08 or so, and the Beyond the Sword in ’10. The introduction of things like Espionage was difficult to adapt to for a while, but just this past year I was able to achieve my first ever Civ victories that weren’t just having the most points and running the clock out, using espionage as a minor strategic asset. It’s amazing how each game can have its own unique flavor, generating unique and memorable experiences. My favorite game took place on a pangea map, and while I was conquering a crescent of land around my Malinesian allies I was successfully waging a proxy war against my main rival on the other side of the map by gifting loads of units to the one-city (I had captured the rest) Persian civ on my eastern border, extending what should have been a short war by centuries and cementing my lead. And then there was the time… Hm, I have homework to do.
NOSTALGIA/GAMING COMMENT CONCLUDED
I have a feeling if I started playing Pharaoh I might never leave my apartment again. That said, where would a person go to purchase such a game, hypothetically speaking? (cloudiah does not game much, beyond occasionally playing pinball on her computer, so please pardon her noobness.)
cloudiah: I do all of my game buying online. Mostly by downloading through one of the many services/platforms there are. I use Steam and Desura (the latter of which is for indie games).
If you don’t fancy using a service like that, or you have a shitty internet connection that snailifies if you try to download something (like I do, if I download something big it often takes all day, or more D:), Amazon is also good. Amazon is especially great if you want an older game that might be harder to find otherwise (people put second-hand games up on there all the time).
For Pharaoh specifically, your best bet would be either Amazon, or better yet, here. This is a place where you can buy and download old games that have been modified to work on newer systems (which is a huge plus), and Pharaoh is on there (and the download is only half a gig, so even with a crappy connection it wouldn’t take all day). The site has its own download manager, but it’s not a service/platform like Steam or Desura. You just buy it, it downloads and installs it like a normal game, and you’re good to go.
Hope that hypothetically helps. 😀
i guess i fall under the “closet transsexual” category in the Stoopid MRA Classification Scheme. i am ALREADY playing for “Team Woman” even though i have not had all the medical treatments yet. And i am HONORED to be in the company of Julia Serano!!!!!!!
Thanks, ShadetheDruid! I actually found gog.com and then was wondering if it was a trusted place. That game looks so fun, I’m kind of thinking I should hold off on downloading it until I am done with my thesis. I have this whole list of rewards for myself once I actually file it: (a) take an actual vacation, rather than taking a day off from work to write the thesis; (b) watch those DVDs that have piled up next to the couch; (c) read that pile of books (including Ex Libris, which someone here recommended); and now (4) download and obsessively play Pharaoh.
aw man, you’d think with a name like “fatmobile” it would be something fun. that’s really depressing. my dad has to ride on one of those things at stores because he is dependent on oxygen and can’t exert himself too much. ):
Man, these dudes would have their minds /blown/ if they knew of my existence.
Every time I see posts like these, I can picture these guys meeting me and thinking I’m one of them. It gives me great pleasure. (Side note: I love dropping the line “feminists have the best sex” into public conversations. I usually get the opportunity to follow up with “Enthusiastic consent is fucking hot.” Very entertaining.)
Successful, charismatic, virile, smart, well-built and muscular, center-of-the-party, arrogant, former Marine and… ‘sissy’ feminist.
cloudiah: Yeah, it’s a legit place. Though you have to be careful because most of the stuff on there is really cheap, so you have to resist to urge to just buy loads and loads of stuff. 😛
Remember that there’s also more in the same series set in other places than ancient Egypt. You also have Caesar, Zeus and Emperor. I think they all play pretty similar, it just depends on what ancient civilisation you’re into I suppose. I’m not an expert on the series though.. i’ve only played Emperor. 😀
Good luck with the thesis too!
@ Cloudiah – Good luck with the thesis as well! I know I had to uninstall *everything* on my computer when I was working on mine. I’ve played Pharaoh through about four or five times, and it never gets old to me! I highly reccomend the Cleopatra expansion – being able to build a bunch of the “newer” (lol!) tombs with the painter and plasterer occupations was a hoot!
I got a boxed set of all the CDs of all the different civilizations as a gift sometime in the late Triassic, so I have no idea where one would source them right now. There may be some … pirate-y type places …. where you might go >.> I never really got into the other civilzations, but I’m sure they’re all wonderful, and really not that overwhelming for “n00b” type gamers, honestly.
The fellow (whose name escapes me) who developed Pharaoh for Sierra Games left and made his own game called “Children of the Nile” which is a little bit more like The Sims than a pure city building game. It’s *gorgeous* and a little more realistic in terms of running an acient city. I havn’t finished that one yet, because it is a little more intense and city building games suck ALL THE ATTENTIONS right out of my life, but I reccomend CotN as well.
You know what’s hilarious? Over here, people are talking about creative games. Over there, the thread has turned into this mess of white supremacist blabbering, Price trying to do damage control on it and guys who think David Futrelle and all the rest of us here are so unimportant and weak that they need to never stop talking about how unimportant and weak we are.
@tuba_man: I know what you mean. I do metalworking and gunsmithing. For fun. By their own standards I’m probably more manly than 90% of them. If I were to go into the details of my personal life, that number would jump to about 98%. So you know what they do about guys like us? They pretend we don’t exist. Mainly because their stereotype of weak, ineffectual feminist men is comforting and reassuring to them, much like their stereotype of unattractive and shrewish feminist women. Their frail little minds and their cowardly spirits can’t handle anything else.
@MertvayaRuka
From that thread, the most hilariously honest assessment of MRM advocacy I’ve ever seen:
I wonder why Mikey isn’t out their championing MOCs ^o)
*MOC
Sooo… it’s only “shaming language” if it’s used by feminists, is that it?
So… I’m not a “real man” because I would fail in a “male dominated social heirarchy”. That’s why I was an abject failure in the Army.
Oh wait.. shit, I wasn’t. Fuck!, Screwed that up too.
Wait… maybe I can salvage myself, MY FINGERS… crap, ring finger is longer than index.
John Scalzi (monogamous, married, writes Heinleinesque SF) is doing it to get pussy? I’ll have to tell him that the next time I see him. I’ll be sure to wear earplugs (to deal with the laughter when the content of that idea actually gets through).
That’s a good point. There are a lot of people who hold onto ‘comforting’ thoughts when reality sets in, and on that side I can’t exactly be surprised. It’d be nice if what comforted them was, ya know, slightly less hateful.
Oh, this was well timed. My husband is out working, my older son is crashed in his bed, younger son is downstairs making imaginary ninjas fight each other. Yesterday, older son had two of his friends over, who started a D&D campaign with me as the Dungeon Master. Both boys LOVE anime/manga. Older boy loves Dr. Who, which he watches with my husband.
We, as a family, are about 98% nerd by weight. All male, half LGBT, and mostly Black. I cannot express my squee at imagining what the MRMs would make of US.