MGTOWer: “Women are like a bitter medicine that you force yourself to swallow because you believe it is doing you good.”

“You may thing/want to pretend that that was the argument you were making, Bob, but that’s not actually what you’ve been saying at all.”

I can’t help it if other people can’t cognitively understand the point I’m trying to make.

“I’m still not sure why anyone else is supposed to care about the fact that you think other people get divorced for what you consider frivolous reasons.”

Uh, they’re not. People don’t have to engage in a debate or discourse if they don’t want to.

“Ah, this moldy old chestnut: I am entitled to say what I think.

And we are equally entitled to say what we think and criticize your speech: free speech does not mean freedom from criticizm, dipshit.”

Can you point out to me where I have said otherwise? I don’t recall every saying that I don’t want my opinions to go unchallenged and that nobody has the right to dispute what I say.

Hey, Bob, guess what? Like many other people here, editing the writing of others has been a part of my work history. If what you write isn’t communicating your point clearly, you don’t get to blame that on your readers. The goal of writing is to communicate ideas, and if your writing isn’t doing that the fault lies with you.

“Citation fucking needed: give me one example of Christian benevolence resulting in women having equal standing with men (and, sorry all, be prepared for spamming of links).”

Yeah, that was sarcasm. Do you know what sarcasm is? Another poster tried to compare and contrast Saudi Arabia with North America. What is the difference between Saudi Arabia and North America? The former is dominated by religion and elevates men and treats women as property and chattel. The latter gives women equal standing thanks to the women’s suffrage movement and has codified the separation of church and state. Women owe their freedom to the woman’s suffrage movement and the fact that we don’t make laws on the basis of what Pat Robertson wants. Almost all religions embody patriarchal attitudes and norms, but in the Muslim world this has been taken to a large extreme and there is no separation of church and state.

@Bob “No, I was making the point that spousal rape was uncommon because the vast majority of men, then and now, were and are not rapists. The fact that attitudes had not evolved to the point where people could recognize that men, in fact, sometimes do rape their wives doesn’t change the fact that the vast majority of men don’t rape, regardless of whether there are laws against it or not.”

As katz points out above, just because more than 50% of men don’t rape doesn’t mean that it’s uncommon for men to rape. Also, even with laws saying that rape is wrong, 1 in 10 men admits to being a rapist. How many men do you think were raping people before there were laws saying it was illegal? More, or fewer?

“We’re not discussing human behavior? If we’re discussing behavior of humans shouldn’t we talk about all humans? Isn’t courtship and mating something most humans engage in? Or are homosexuals not human according to you? Also, again with the erasing of people who are bisexual (not to mention asexual, etc.)”

We were discussing male-female romantic relationships and courtship rituals. By not offering up the irrelevant and pedantic disclaimer that non-straight people like fucking and companionship as well, then I am apparently a homophobe that sees non-straights as subhuman. Got it.

“Actually, no, you’re not entitled to say what you think here. This is not a US government-run website that has free speech protections. There is no right to free speech on the internet.”

Duh. I know how the first amendment works.

“Even if there was, freedom to speak does not mean freedom from criticism. If you say some dumbass shit in public, I can tell you it was dumbass shit. Your opinion is not sacrosanct.”

Can you show me where I instructed other posters to stop responding to me and that I deserve to be exempt from criticism? Where have I stated that other people are not allowed to engage in give and take?

“Yeah, I noticed that too. The idea that women should leap to accept a proposal from any man they currently have a decent relationship with is intrinsically at odds with the idea that people should take marriage very seriously and not leap into things until they’re sure it’s going to work out. And Bob keeps contradicting himself like that.”

It’s not a contradiction. I’m not saying a woman should accept a proposal of marriage without reservation after dating a guy for a few months who seems like a decent bloke. What I am asking is what is a woman doing with a guy in a long-term relationship if she’s not attracted to him and not passionate about being with him? Most, but not all, people do want to get married. Some people are like George Clooney and are philosophically opposed to marriage and they are doing nothing wrong if at the outset they explain their relationship philosophy. I don’t think people, men or women, should waste each other’s time.

Oh, so your reading comprehension is as bad as your writing. I didn’t say that the relationships I was talking about were only a few months old, that was something that you read into the statement as a result of your own bias.

In reality, not everyone wants to get married, and some people do want to get married but not necessarily to the person they’re currently dating, even if they’ve been dating that person for years. They are allowed to feel that way if they want, and it’s really none of your business if they do.

I agree that people shouldn’t waste each other’s time, but they also shouldn’t just assume that whoever they’re dating wants to get married, possibly to them. If someone wants to get married and is considering their current partner as a potential spouse, they need to actually communicate that.

Also, the idea that anyone who dates someone and doesn’t want to marry them is wasting the other person’s time is nonsense. If the other person has clearly stated that they want to get married and have a timeframe in which they’d like that to happen, or if they promise marriage later and don’t mean it, then sure, that’s a crappy thing to do. But lots of people are quite happy with serial monogamy, and it’s foolish and unfair to just assume that someone you’re seeing wants marriage as much as you do and thus be angry with them if they don’t propose.

And I see Bob still hasn’t addressed the question of happy marriages in Saudi Arabia. Come on, Bob. Stop dodging the question.

Additionally, I think it’s really sad that anyone wants to stay in a relationship that the other person has to be guilt-tripped into. If someone wants to leave you, why on earth would you want them to stay? I can see why from an immediate gut feeling point of view, but honestly, wanting to rearrange society in such a way that they would feel obligated to is kind of pathetic.

My original point is that I think women should shoulder some of the blame for why people in general seem to be so dissatisfied with the state of the dating scene, relationships in general, and that these men’s subcultures that have sprung up are a reactive response to how some women are conducting their romantic lives.

Then why couldn’t you have said that, instead of your original 825 word screed?

Well, here’s my take on things. We actually live in a much more affluent society than in decades past. Women today don’t have the same incentives to get married young anymore, or even at all in some cases. My grandmother married my grandfather when he was 22 and she was 19 after a very brief courtship. That’s just unheard of nowadays. If two young people today tried to get engaged after only knowing each other for a month, their friends and family would be screaming at them to slow down and not rush into anything serious. But back then it was different. Women didn’t have the same opportunities as men to pursue educational and professional goals. It was important to find a guy who could provide for her. And the sooner, the better. Back then, if a woman was 25 and had never been married, she was seen as probably having something wrong with her, or maybe she was a lesbian or something. Nowadays, I think we discourage both genders from getting married too young.
Now we live in an affluent society where both men and women typically continue their education after high school and can afford to delay taking on adult responsibilities like getting married, having children and buying a home. And because women are making advances professionally, relationships are just not necessary anymore. There was a time decades ago where relationships were necessary for the purposes of getting by, surviving and gathering resources. But we now mate out of weak biological urge and not necessity. We want relationships, but we don’t need them.
The Men’s Rights, Pickup Artists and Men Going Their Own Way subcultures are a response to these changes and the fact a significant percentage of women today in Western societies tend to be flaky, unreliable and extremely picky when it comes to when and where they will enter and maintain romantic relationships, etc. I see over and over again in mainstream media the onus is completely put on men for declining marriage rates and the fact that the median age of first marriage continues to rise. Popular tropes include the adolescent man boys that would rather play video games instead of growing up and becoming well-rounded personalities ready to handle adult relationships with women. And there is a little something to that. But I would also argue that this is not entirely the fault of men, and in fact a significant percentage of women today in their twenties and thirties lack emotional integrity and emotional maturity themselves. We shame young men for playing video games and fantasy football, but do we shame young women for consuming tabloid media and watching reality television? If a woman wants to get married and have children, and nearly all of them do, shouldn’t they make finding a good man a priority in their prime child-bearing years of 25-35? It boggles the mind to me that any woman over the age of 27 would turn down a marriage proposal from a suitor who has proven himself to be a person of good character and intelligence. And yet many women have followed the lead of Kate Bollick and decided that they’re “not ready to settle down” and maybe “something better is out there.”
You may detest them, but these male subcultures are a response to some very real changes in the the culture and the way that a large number of women are conducting their romantic lives. There’s a reason they exist now and weren’t around 30-40 years ago. There are things about these movements that are incredibly unattractive. It’s true that a significant amount of misogyny exists in them. The MRA and MGOTW guys in particular are incredibly bitter and hateful towards women. The PUA types aren’t bitter, but they tend to view women as not worthy of relationship commitments and as suitable for nothing more than objects for sexual release in the form of sport fucking and short-term flings.
I think it demonstrates a severe lack of cognitive understanding to assume that all of these men want to go back to a time where wives were nothing more than maids that their husbands got to have sex with, or that they believe it is a worthy goal to roll back women’s suffrage, or that these men are neanderthal types that are bitter that domestic violence isn’t tolerated anymore. A large percentage of these men deep down would like love, respect, emotional companionship and intimacy with women, and they’re simply not getting it. And I agree that in the case of the MRA and MGOTW types, their bitterness and their misogyny is their own worst enemy when it comes to their inability to get what they want in their interactions with women. But having observed over and over again as a whole the behavior of young women today, I understand how they come by these attitudes in the first place.