Hey, ladies! You know how the dudes of the so-called manosphere are always saying horrible shit about you? They’re not doing it out of hate. No, no, they’re doing it for your own good! In a guest post on the blog Freedom Twenty-Five, Matt Forney offers women his own brand of tough (alleged) love:
The manosphere is frequently accused of being misogynistic because we mock fat girls, disdain sluts and criticize the behavior of modern women. … But scientific studies and common sense both show that women are generally happiest when they’re physically fit, chaste and focused on their families instead of their careers. Women who are virgins are exponentially less likely to divorce; women with BMIs in the normal range are more likely to have fulfilling relationships instead of being pumped and dumped; women who throw their lives into their jobs are less happy than those who become wives and mothers.
If you follow the link back to his post you will see how Forney has carefully footnoted all these assertions. For example, his line about women who aren’t fat having better relationships links to this carefully constructed academic study.
Oh, wait, that’s actually a link to a discussion on Yahoo Answers that’s full of alleged wisdom like this:
Fat women have to settle for less for the same reason that people: in wheelchairs, poor people [especially men], balding people, or single people with children have to settle for less. They have less to offer on the dating market, so; there is a much smaller pool of people willing to date them. And the people who are willing to date them are usually of lower quality.
You can’t argue with that kind of SCIENCE.
Forney continues:
Basically, for women, the modern feminist consumerist lifestyle is a path to misery and loneliness.
[Citation needed] [And by “citation” I don’t mean “some dude spouting shit on Yahoo answers”]
In light of that knowledge, ask yourself this: who are the real misogynists? The ones who are guiding women back onto the path to happiness, or the ones encouraging them to destroy themselves through poor life choices?
Here’s an example of Forney “guiding women back onto the path of happiness,” taken from an earlier post on his own blog:
Bashing fat girls is all well and good, but how many of us have taken the fight to the enemy? By not viciously rubbing their hideousness in their faces, we are encouraging fatties to blimp up even more. Silence implies consent.
Back to his Freedom Twenty-Five post:
The fact is if you defend and excuse away womens’ bad behavior, fully aware that they’re harming themselves, you don’t truly love them. If you want to avert someone from traveling down the path towards death and destitution, you’re going to have to get in their face and risk hurting their feeeelings. In that sense, not only do we in the manosphere love women, we perhaps love them more than any other men in the world.
The manosphere is a space for men, but it also doubles as a mass intervention for the female of the species. Stop crying about your hurt feeeeelings and listen up, ladies. You might learn something.
Matt Forney, you’re a shithead.
I say that out of love.
Like men, women are happiest when they have options in their lives, not restricted to one particular lifestyle. We’re just as diverse as men. Trying to make us all into Stepford wives is just a way to feed the misogynists’ egos.
“A friend of mine is defending at the same time on the same day and we’ve decided* we’re bringing in cat toys, so that if things go totally to hell (aka cattawumpus, ha) we can try to distract our committees.”
Good plan or bad plan?
_W_ Good plan
___ Bad plan
Wait, can I get a new form, I think it did it wrong.
Cloudiah, good luck, I know you’ll kick ass.
Cloudiah, I have no doubt that you will nail the defense.
Also, that poetry slam post is awesome.
@bewilderness
Yeah, it’s probably one of the most obvious manipulations of data out there. “People who do things that are mostly only done in our subculture which near-prohibits divorce and encourages people to marry early get divorced less!”
Good luck, cloudiah.
I am confident that not only did you nail your defense, the panel was so impressed they did this:
http://youtu.be/vQQhBp40Ml4
And then they all bought you a beverage of your choice at the local watering hole.
Okay, maybe not that but I am sure you did great. 🙂
Ha ha, the defense is actually not until November 14, but I have to finish writing it soon so that the committee has enough time to read it. I’m storing up all the “good luck” wishes & videos and will look at them often until that date. You guys are the sweetest.
The extent to which anything on my blog is awesome is all because of how creative you all are. I can’t keep up!
TTF, those cat emoticons are … I just love them. That is all.
And I’d like to thank the Academy, and my co-stars, and … Oh wait, that was just a dream I had.
November 14? Oh, rats! I saw you’d just posted and came rushing over (okay, clicked at speed) to see how it’d all come out …
… lets self down slowly …
Anyways, that gives me time to add a few more rounds of Good Luck and You’ll Blitz It to the chorus. 🙂
Good luck, Cloudiah. You’ll knock ’em dead.
@TimeTravelingFool
If I’d already bet my money, I’d say that GIF is from a Twilight Zone called “Masks”. And if you think this is creepy, the show will keep you up nights.
(PS Chapter-and-verse “Twilight Zone” knowledge some of us find hawt.)
Can we get a source mention from DavidF?
Says the women who believes all women will go for the guy with the biggest bank account.
I’ve got to hand it to the comments section of the offending article. Many people take Matt Forney to task there, and so many of them are simply hilarious.
Check out what Matt is looking for in a girlfriend:
http://mattforney.com/2012/06/04/young-white-female-needed-for-companionship-and-sexytime/
I’ve looked around Matt’s blog, and he doesn’t have stable employment (an aspiring writer and musician with no such paid work on his resume so far) nor a permanent address. That’s fine, except that his potential girlfriend isn’t allowed to have a career and has to cook/keep the house full time. I guess it’s great that she is required to stay thin (or he threatens to bully her to tears, seriously) because she’ll be starving half of the time anyway.
Also, she must be very pretty, very thin and she must dress sexy at all times- Matt gets to decide what’s appropriate attire for her. On the other hand, this is Matt:
Now, don’t you feel bad for him? His insane level of entitlement and childish fantasies have got to be a defense mechanism for insecurities and disappointments so major that they might destroy him, if he doesn’t work through that shit immediate.
Runner’s Zen. Way to miss the point. It’s not his looks that make him unnattractive. Honestly he looks tolerably well groomed, and as such I know lots of people who would give him at least a second glance.
And the internet diagnosis of why he’s a misogynist douchenozzle is no more acceptable when you do it against him, than when some misogynist explains the “insecurities and disappointments so major,” they drove someone to feminism.
RunnersZen, Forney isn’t ugly because he’s unattractive, he’s ugly because he’s an entitled, abusive prick.
Plus the hypocrisy level, of course. Ordinary looks and tolerably groomed (I’d want a bit more than tolerably – it sounds borderline not-very-clean) are fine, but when a man like that demands model-level beauty and grooming and mindless devotion from a woman, then he automatically descends to Stinking Ugly Creep level. And I don’t mean physically.
I just wanted to draw attention to a specific comment in the linked article, and add my own eloquent and thoughtful response:
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Nah.
Matt Forney is unattractive precisely because of the combination of his personality and appearance.
If he were an entitled jerk that he is, but looked like a male model, there’d be someone shallow out there for him. There are people in the world who care only about looks, and a lot of them are even hot themselves.
If he were a good open minded person, there’d be a lot of people out there who’d date him just the way he is. Personality, compassion and mutual connection are the most important things in a relationship for many a person, regardless of the potential partner’s matching the societal ideals of attractiveness.
But when you got nothing to attract a deeper person (no compassion, no open mind, no greater understanding of the world, no self awareness), AND (no qualifications to attract a shallow person: no money, no conventional beauty, no steady employment, no status, ect.), who the hell will ever want you?
Nobody should ever throw rocks. It’s wrong. But when people who live in glass houses throw rocks, it’s extra hilarious.
It’s like if he were a man who required his whole family to attend church every Sunday, Wednesday and Friday night to boot, because those who don’t are whores, sinners and destined for the fire pits of hell, but he, personally, would stay at home to watch football.
I wouldn’t want a relationship with someone with such strong religious views in the first place. But if he were to walk the walk himself, I’d, at least, respect his sincerity and consistency.
Runner’s Zen: Nobody should ever throw rocks. It’s wrong. But when people who live in glass houses throw rocks, it’s extra hilarious.
And that entitles you to throw rocks because?
I don’t know quite what to make of the implicit standards of, “objective” good looks you have in their either, “If he were an entitled jerk that he is, but looked like a male model, there’d be someone shallow out there for him. There are people in the world who care only about looks, and a lot of them are even hot themselves. “.
I know lots of people who think men who look like his are hot!!!!. If all they care about is looks, they’d be willing to bang him like a cheap drum.
So you are building a glass house, just to throw stones from.
@pecunium
From personal experience, I’d say that most people who are vehemently into the conventionally hot look, are seeking status and social approval as much as arousal. We all know what conventionally attractive means and we can all recognize it, even if we’re aroused by something else. Those who are genuinely aroused by conventional beauty, without caring about the status such a partner would bring them, generally don’t beat others over the head with the supposed universal superiority of their standards. This guy Matt, obviously, wants a mommy, a sex toy AND an object to show off without being a glittery status symbol himself. In the context of his mocking girls on his blog for nothing else, but their looks and requiring his girlfrind to be conventionally hot (and threatening abuse if she ever slips in that regard), his own looks do matter because they expose him as a hypocrite.
I’d be erecting a glass house from which to throw stones, if I were a conventionally unattractive person who required conventional beauty in a partner while laughing at Matt for being the same.
As it happens, I’m a person of entirely average appearance (by societal standards) who happens to be strongly attracted to a type that is not considered beautiful by most people. And even though, it’s nowv pretty clear that I am only able to have chemistry with people of that certain type, I don’t find it necessary to mock anyone who doesn’t fit that certain type. People who have stringent standards might be closed minded, but those of them who don’t even come close to reaching their own standards while mocking others who fail in that regard, are laughable.
I don’t feel superior to high school drop outs. Some of them are wonderful people, and many have done well for themselves. But a high school drop out who mocks anyone without a Ph.D. is more laughable than a Ph.D. who does the same.
I read Runner’s Zen comments as pointing out that Forney is yet another man who expects conventional beauty – or rather, the incredibly narrow conventions set by the advertising industry – in any woman, yet doesn’t feel the slightest whiff of inconsistency in being a long way from the male equivalent. It’s not about “Ooh look he’s fat!” to my mind, just “He’s a great example of double standards and hypocrisy.” Nothing wrong with his appearance; it’s the clash with what he expects of women that makes him both laughable and offensive. I don’t really think that’s throwing rocks at him.
Runner’s Zen: From personal experience, I’d say that most people who are vehemently into the conventionally hot look, are seeking status and social approval as much as arousal.
Goalpost moving.If he were an entitled jerk that he is, but looked like a male model, there’d be someone shallow out there for him. There are people in the world who care only about looks, and a lot of them are even hot themselves.
Nothing in that requires the people who care only about looks to care only about, “conventional looks”.
Those who are genuinely aroused by conventional beauty, without caring about the status such a partner would bring them, generally don’t beat others over the head with the supposed universal superiority of their standards.
Whut? That’s the whole point of, “That person isn’t hot.” It’s people saying anyone who doesn’t find their sense of “attractive” to be “Teh Bomb!” is wrong. It’s why the MRA types are hung up on Brad Pitt. They think they are protesting the people whom they think are beating them about the head and shoulders with expectations of conventional attractivebness.
I’d be erecting a glass house from which to throw stones, if I were a conventionally unattractive person who required conventional beauty in a partner while laughing at Matt for being the same.
Nope. You are building a glass house because you are pretending to know all sorts of things about Matt Forney which you don’t.
Is is a catch? I don’t think so, but it’s got nothing to do with his looks, it’s got to do with his words. Pretending his looks are relevant to that, is exactly the same as MRAs slagging feminists for being fat/ugly, etc..
I think the problem with citing personal experience as universal experience is fairly obvious.
@TheKitteh’s Unpaid Help,
Yep. That’s exactly what I am saying.
@ pecunium,
Nope, haven’t moved the goal post at all. If it seems that way to you, it’s because you were arguing against what you thought I was saying rather than what was actually there.
I’ve never made fun of the boy’s looks, but simply pointed out that he doesn’t reach his own standards of personal beauty.
Yes, there is such a thing as conventional beauty standards. If you don’t know what they are, consider yourself very lucky.
Of course, nothing requires people who are only focused on looks to be aroused only by conventional beauty, but if they have ANY specific standards, mock people who fall short of those standards and fail to reach those standards themselves, they are laughable hypocrites. It’s just that Matt’s standards for women happen to coincide with those of conventional beauty and ultra conservative morality. And yet, Matt himself fails miserably in both regards. That is funny to me.
Perhaps I got Matt Forney all wrong, but I only judge him based on what he writes on his own blog. Yesterday I took a looksie, and I’ve seen numerous posts mocking people for being fat and having the gall to not hide in shame, mocking women with unconventional hair cuts, rejoicing in Jen McCreight being bullied off the internet, calling her an ugly bitch in several posts (I wasn’t able to find any clues for any other reasons he might have had to dislike this girl), mocking fathers who get separated from their kids through divorce, mocking men who aren’t very good with the opposite sex, expressing hatred towards the elderly ( for being old and not knowing shit about shit), promoting rape culture, and bitching about his own mother being entitled just like all the other women (she privately expressed a wish to see him be more positive about life).
Of course, it’s his words and not his looks that make Matt a disgusting human being. But in light of his words, his looks are hilarious.
It’s like… You remember when a string of ultra right wing anti gay rights politicians were found in motels with hired boys, one after another? The GLBT community had a lot of fun bringing it up for a while. You do understand that they weren’t making fun of these men for being gay, don’t you? These politicians were disgusting because they promoted discrimination against the GLBT community. But turning out to be gay was hilariously pathetic in light of their political activities.