You might think that Pickup Artists, dudes obsessed with sexing up the young fertile lasses, would be huge fans of contraceptives – which, after all, are what makes their particular lifestyle possible. But some prominent PUAs are about as enthusiastic about contraception as a Pope.
In the case of the charming fellow who calls himself Heartiste, I mean this literally. In a recent posting, he quotes approvingly from Pope Paul VI’s 1968 Humanae Vitae dissing contraceptives for allegedly demeaning the women that use them. Paul suggested that contraception may cause men to
lose respect for the woman and, no longer caring for her physical and psychological equilibrium, may come to the point of considering her as a mere instrument of selfish enjoyment, and no longer as his respected and beloved companion.
I’m no Pope, but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t work that way.
Heartiste, for his part, embraces and extends this line of reasoning, adding in some of that Alpha-Beta-Schmeta nonsense that manosphereians seem to regard as cutting edge science.
[A]s cheap contraceptives silently and subtly move men toward devaluing women, so too does the technology move women toward devaluing beta males, those bitter losers in the sexual market (note: I did not say marriage market or child market) for whom contraceptives, coupled with female economic self-sufficiency, have rendered them practically superfluous as primetime sexual partners.
The mass-produced condom and the Pill have freed men from feeling obligation for women as much as they have freed women to regularly and blithely pursue what was historically risky sex with caddish alpha males on the make.
The contraceptive is, in practice, a female hypergamy facilitator.
Yep, that’s right: contraceptives are the tickets to the mythical Alpha Asshole Cock Carousel.
But poor Heartiste has impaled himself on the horns of a dilemma. He’s got a good anti-woman rant going, but there’s just one problem with it: he’s devoted his life to becoming one of those Alpha Assholes that contraceptive-using women purportedly cannot resist riding.
It’s funny for me to write this, because contraceptives have, in fact, been very very good to me. I did a back of the envelope calculation and figured that my aggregate sex life would have been truncated by 90% if contraceptives were prohibitively expensive, unreliable and hard to get. A world in which women had to grapple with real, palpable fears of STDs, pregnancy and subsequent abandonment is, not to put too fine a point on it, a really shitty world for womanizers and serial monogamists and uncomplicated lovers of the art of seduction itself. I imagine I’d have to *gasp* start promising marriage or some such claptrap to any woman I wanted to bang, just to loosen her up enough to unhook her bra.
Spoken like a true asshole.
Oh, but don’t worry, Heartiste isn’t going to stop attacking sex-having women as one of the harbingers of “the cultural and technological juggernaut that hastens, if it is not the sole cause of, the death of Western civilization.”
Indeed, Heartiste almost seems to relish the ironies of his position, as it allows him to spew forth some of the silliest purple prose you’re ever going to find outside the pages of bad romance novels (or comments from our friend Steele):
Here I am, standing at the edge of the abyss, pointing into its bowels like a histrionic jester, leading the ignorant and the deluded to peer into the void and imploring them — no, more precisely taunting them — to heed my warning of their desolate future… and still I cavort insouciantly along its lip, secretly relieved that no one will seriously weigh my prophecies.
Well, at least he’s right about that “histrionic jester” bit.
Last I checked, Heartiste’s post had spawned 450 comments. I can’t bring myself to look through them to see what further horrors can be found there.
EDITED TO ADD: You should all be aware that our lovely Alpha Asshole Cock Carousel illustration is available in t-shirt form! As is the Mammoth! And a delightful Cupcake as well! And you’re in luck! Zazzle is having another one-day 40% off sale on T-shirts! Click here to go to the Man Boobz Zazzle store. Use the code 12DAILYDEAL8. Oh, and in a lovely irony, the profits go to Planned Parenthood!
@rty23
And if radical feminism were about dominating the world, the men could live on the moon and have bellies full of green cheese!
So men having hidden birth control means that women can’t get pregnant by a man using it but pretending he isn’t, by pretending thst she is using birth control when she really isn’t. So particularly deceiving and manipulative women in relationships with equally deceiving and manipulative men would now have to cough up some money & go to a sperm bank. Or maybe find a willing sperm donor.
But, yes, this will totally bring feminism grinding to a halt. *facepalm*
I’ll put it this way. Just because a woman wants to have a baby doesn’t mean that a man does. I’ll leave it at that and let you do the math.
Duh, what a genius you are to figure that one out. Decent people would be talking about it with their partners and if it was a dealbreaker, they’d split up.
Also you seem to have no fucking idea what “radical feminism” is or how it differs from other branches of feminism. If anything, I’d say radfems are more likely to want little or nothing to do with men. Domination isn’t part of it, and it has NOTHING to do with mainstream feminism.
@titianblue
Most likely, more men sabotage birth control (removing condoms, poking holes in condoms, removing female contraception, messing with pills, etc) than women sabotage birth control (poking holes in condoms, lying about being on birth control, etc.). And it isn’t just manipulative, it is often used by abusers to further control their victims. (Most domestic violence victims are women and most of those have experienced some form of birth control sabotage.)
No shit Sherlock. But what you turds repeatedly fail to grasp is that most adults in an adult relationship actually talk about important things like children and if/when to have them. Relationships, the MRM is doin’ them wrong.
I know the straw feminists in your head are acting up again, perhaps you should leave.
If radical feminism is about women dominating the world and being in complete and total control of their own lives independently of men, then a hidden form of birth control for men makes that goal more difficult.
If that’s what it was about, I would think being saddled with kids that a father has no interest in would be pretty counterproductive. And also radfems being in total control of their lives independently of men – SHOCKING concept, I know – kind of implies that they don’t in fact want to trick dudes into getting them pregnant. Cos they are living their lives independently of men.
And there are sperm banks for women that really do want a kid one way or the other.
But hey, don’t let me rain on your bizarro parade. Let’s just agree that the more MRAs that use contraception and choose sexbots, the better for everyone. Especially women. And children. And good men.
@rty23
And just because a man wants a baby, it doesn’t mean that a woman does. All the available evidence indicates that abuse happens in this scenario more often.
The male pill will protect some men from unintended pregnancies, but it won’t solve all problems as birth control sabotage is abusive. A male pill likely won’t prevent birth control sabotage (after all, the female pill doesn’t).
To accomplish what you want to accomplish (fewer unintended pregnancies), a male pill is a fine addition to the toolbox, but what we really need are better sex ed, and equality between men and women. We need feminism.
@somegirl I know. But that thought doesn’t enter this guy’s head, does it? No, it’s all the dreadful women trying to spermjack their partners. Sigh.
I’m trying to figure out what this has to do with math. Maybe it’s a kind of non-Euclidean geometry?
Who made up the sperm-jacking thing anyway? I swear I saw some woman use a turkey baster on some crappy daytime soap when I was about 8 or 9, and even then I laughed at how completely daft it was.
If we are all so desperate for sneaky MRA babies, why is abortion such a huge feminist (and human) issue? Mind. Boggled.
cloudiah: welcome to MRA ASSMATH.
1 MRA + 3 Comments = 2 much arglebargle for me. Night boobz xxx
Not sure if he made it up, but I believe Tom Leykis popularized it.
MRA ASSMATH
@hellkell I am so going to steal that phrase.
titianblue: go forth and spread the ASSMATH.
[cloudiah puts MRA ASSMATH down. cloudiah looks for hand sanitizer. cloudiah realizes there isn’t enough hand sanitizer in the world to make her feel clean. cloudiah considers purchasing an autoclave.]
Don’t use an autoclave for ASSMATH, the stink is really hard to get out of the room.
And the soap opera with the turkey-baster was Sunset Beach although it was not a sperm-jacking but a forced insemination. Bleah.
@titianblue
And they use cutesy-terms like sperm-jacking, which downplay that most of this stuff is part and parcel with domestic violence. They claim to advocate for men, but default to caring about the money or their sperm (all the talk of “theft” that accompanies these things) rather than address the issue of birth control sabotage head-on. Of course, calling it what it is (domestic violence and birth control sabotage), would require acknowledging that this isn’t some super-special men-only problem. And who wants girl cooties all over their Serious Advocacy Group?
I was talking to a guy IRL, unrelated to any MRA group, who was actually worried about being sperm-jacked. He didn’t have a name for it, but he was paranoid all the same.
So outside of MRA circles I think it’s related to the stereotype that all women want commitment and no men do. So a woman will use a baby to trap a man into marriage/a relationship, but a man wouldn’t because all he has to do is ask. And the inverse is true for sex of course.
So while the focus on money/theft is an MRA thing, as is coming up with jargon for it and thinking about it conciously, the whole trope is very old and ubiquitous.
You would seriously think the dangers of pregnancy and childbirth, and the overwhelming likelihood of being the primary/sole caregiver, were things that affected men, not women, the way these lackwits carry on about birth control.
I would love to see a safe, reliable contraceptive for men, one without nasty side effects. I’d like to see one for women, come to that. But even if it were available, if I was in a relationship where I could become pregnant, however good that relationship was, I would still use my own contraception. Why? Because it’s my body at risk of pregnancy, not his. The stakes are so much greater for me that entrusting contraception solely to someone who can’t get pregnant just wouldn’t happen.
Kim – did you try to set this fellow right? Or was it more a case of thinking, “Don’t worry, fella, if you’re that immature/insecure nobody’s likely to want to trap you into marriage … ”
Also, condoms, has he heard of them? Vasectomy, if he’s that scared?
I wouldn’t be too worried about “radfem” world supremacy if their alleged plan to live independently of men could in fact be foiled by men refusing to do something.
@kitteh. I made some sarcastic jokes about spermburglers and hot sauce because I thought he was joking, and then realised he was serious. Then I was too gobsmacked to say anything… I wish I had thought to say something like that, I was just so surprised to find MRAishness in the wild.