Brazilians! Portuguese! I have fantastic news! Fidelbogen is now available in Portuguese!
Yes, our old frenemy Fidelbogen, the self-described Counter-Feminist Agent of Change (CFAC), and the would-be philosopher king of the manosphere, has managed to find someone who is, for some perverse reason, willing to translate snippets from Mr. F’s blogs into Portuguese.
This is a bit ironic, in that Fidelbogen’s writing, in its original English, reads a lot like a bad translation from the German. He’s a writer of almost pathological verbosity; rarely has any writer said so little with so many words. Not that, at the root, he has much to say; underneath all the verbiage, his ideas are trite and simplistic. And yet he seems convinced that he’s a genius. He’s one of those terrible writers who thinks he’s great. The manosphere is full of them.
And so I thought I’d use the opportunity to present some examples of Fidelbogen’s magisterial prose.
These examples are all from Mr. F’s new blog, CounterSnippets, which he evidently sees as a sort of “Dummies” version of his regular blog, The Counter-Feminist, a place where he can put forth pithy counter-feminist slogans for the masses. As he describes it:
This blog is a meme-dispersion apparatus. It is called “counter-snippets” because it features snippets of counter-feminist philosophy — sometimes one or two sentences, but typically a short paragraph. Each snippet is designed to be memorable and to stick in the reader’s mind. Having done so, it may take root and grow like a seed
As you’ll see from the examples below, Mr. F has not quite mastered the fine art of pithiness just yet.
Each of these quotes is from a separate post.
The complete phenomenology of female supremacism outdistances what any given feminist would openly acknowledge to be feminism, and the word feminism itself operates as a misdirection of attention. (Source)
In the end, the non-feminist revolution is not an identifiable human target group but a cloud of forces manifesting through human actions which can sometimes be politically linked to each other, but other times not. (Source)
In the end, the feminist left gets the bulk of its blood supply from the feminist right. And that blood supply is nothing less than old-school gynocentrism itself. (Source)
Feminism has driven you fifty miles out into the country and left you there to fend for yourselves. Yes, it is unwise to take rides from strangers. Now you’ve got some walking to do, but hopefully the exercise will prove beneficial. I am the messenger. (Source)
We would understand feminism as a gynonormative project, while acknowledging that it could not have come into operation without a preexisting base of gynocentricity in the traditional culture.
Gynonormativization is integral to the establishment of female supremacy. (Source)
Counter-feminist analysis concludes that feminism and female supremacism are interchangeable terms, and we assert that no other analysis will generate effective political traction.
You may agree, or not, that feminism equals female supremacism — yet female supremacism as a datum is not to be doubted. (Source)
We of the non-feminist sector claim the status of an autonomous power with respect to the feminist power on earth, and we demand the full measure of diplomatic courtesy due to such a status. (Source)
Feminism as a whole needs both the academic and the pop cohorts. The academic cohort is needful so that feminism will have an intellectual vanguard — so that the snake will have a head, in other words. The pop cohort is needful so that the vanguard ideology will be demographically incarnated in numbers — so that the snake will have a body, in other words. (Source)
Remember that ALL feminism is packed into a system of interwoven karma. ALL feminism contributes to an evolutionary trajectory which points toward a radical feminist future. (Source)
Your message will take root and grow only if you make the herd disintegrate. Do that, and their power to dismiss your message will disintegrate in tandem. And when people get to this point, they will instinctively cast about in search of a new herd they can join. You know how joiners are. So it is a good idea to prepare something they can cling to, that they will be more readily persuaded to make the jump. (Source)
If we translate all of his posts from Fidelbogenese to plain old English, the message of his blog seems to be pretty simple:
1) We non-feminists should be the ones to define what feminism is.
2) Not all feminists are radical feminists but somehow they really all are, because of … karma?
3) Once we defeat feminism, it should be easy enought to herd the former feminists into our flock if we set forth some nifty little memes for them to “cling to.”
It’s hard to imagine a philosophy that’s much more condescending and cynical than this. No wonder Fidelbogen tries to disguise his philosophy in giant gasous clouds of verbiage.
Regarding painful amounts of verbiage, I soldiered through my first scholarly article in ages on moral status and integration in multiples. (Translated into Layman: “Hey guys! Maybe how people treat multiples is fucked up! We should think on this.”)
It was a subject I care deeply about, I was hugely interested… and oh god, it was just so fucking dry, nineteen pages of hammering down the exact definition of selfhood, of moral status, of multiplicity, of defending his stances on all of these things, all in language where instead of, “Yes,” you said, “I would be inclined to give an affirmative answer.”
And it was only nineteen pages, a frickin’ wisp by academic standards! God, it hurt. It hurt me right in the brain area.
I’m just ignoring DL until they go the fuck away for good.
Dvarghundspossen, I am so sorry you’re not well and the Haldol is not working like it should (ie not stuffing you around even more) – more internet hugs for you!
LBT – that’s a pain in the arse, it’s a subject I’d like to learn more about, but yeah, reading academic papers is almost as much fun as rubbing sand in your eyes.
Amusing tale on that line: I once did a sort of fan letter to an historian who’d done articles and books on Cardinal Richelieu, asking him what he meant about something. I mentioned having read his first book (on the Cardinal’s finances – interesting material, pretty dry writing) and he was “Oh god, you managed to plow through that?” 😀
The thing I don’t get about Fidelbogen’s chosen writing style is that he’s trying to win people over to the MRA cause, right? If you want to win people over to your cause then you need to make an effort to make your argument easy to understand. Be engaging, be succinct, and ffs be clear.
His writing is none of these things.
@CassandraSays
I think he is more concerned with patting himself on the back than he is with converting anybody. I’m not sure that these types of misogynists really want too many people agreeing with them anyway, it would challenge their view of themselves as brave, “anti-PC,” marginalized truth-tellers.
All of the MRAs write terribly, but I think some of them really do need/want an audience (and the fans and praise that come with it). Fidelbogen strikes me as someone who is so devoted to himself and his writings that any other admiration is superfluous.
Some Gal – seconding that.
RE: CassandraSays
Be engaging, be succinct, and ffs be clear.
This is a problem I see with a LOT of attempted activism, actually, not just fidelbogen. (Though he deserves props for sheer purpleness.) The jargon and academia of queer theory and crap ALONE gives me agro. (Looking at YOU, Judith Butler.)
It’s so stupid, isn’t it? Like, what’s the point of talking solely to an in-group if it’s about social justice issues? How is that going to help get the message across?
@ LBT
Especially with something like queer theory where part of what you need to do is reach out to young people who may be confused and who probably haven’t hit the stage where they know the jargon yet, it’s really counterproductive to write that way. Not everything needs to be aimed at a general audience, but at least SOME of it should be.
Good luck plastering that on a hamster.
Ooh, can we encourage them to make buttons? I want to see this shit on a button.
Imagine opening a fortune cookie & finding one of those snippets ….
Never have I felt so metal as when I read that I am “basically a microbaby graveyard.”
OMG, this could be better than when one of L7 threw her tampon at a heckler. Just think of the potential lyrics!
Dvärghundspossen: My sympathies. When meds do things they most certainly are NOT supposed to do, it’s frustrating as hell. =(
Nice Ogress: The Mojo Jojo speech is right on the nose!
Some Gal: Well, this blood isn’t going to let itself! The very thought is making me quite melancholy! *ducks flying tomatoes*
@Viscaria
It makes me feel a little like the Tardis – bigger on the inside. I find the idea of going for a walk or a picnic with friends in my microbaby graveyard rather charming. Very Walt Whitman (“I am large, I contain multitudes” taken a bit too literally). I know it is supposed to creep me out, but it just seems pretty awesome.
RE: CassandraSays & Kittehs
What doubly frustrates me is the meme of “educate yourself.” I realize that nobody is obligated to do education all the time, hell, sometimes I need a break, but acting like educating yourself is truly that easy is just… patronizing as fuck. (I mean, if you work two jobs and your only internet access is half-hour chunks once a week at the public library, researching jargon likely isn’t high on the list. Never mind if you have dyslexia or something that makes the Internet a UI nightmare.)
I mean, I realize people’s frustration… but I really, really wish the smart-aleck “educate yourself” retort would just die.
I found the baby graveyard thing creepy… not in a ‘well I will remove my Implant and only have reproductive sex within marriage in the missionary position’ result but more ‘ok, how easy is a DIY hysterectomy, and would it be better to do it in the kitchen or the bathroom?’ result.
@Creative Writing Student
I hope my weird infatuation with the image didn’t make it worse. If it did, I’m very sorry.
“Educate yourself” to some splainy troll who wants someone else to do their reading for them? Sure! “Educate yourself” to everyone who doesn’t immediately get it? I can see why people do that, but it’s often not very helpful, nor does it help to dispel the idea that feminism has class issues. Every time I see that I imagine how it must read to someone like the person you just described.
Dvärghundspossen — ick, I’m sorry — my worst drug failure was “contraindications: bipolar” and oh hey! So yeah, I wish you all the best and hope you find something that works soon, and that any side effects are tolerable. And if hugs are welcome — *hugs*
Creative Writing Student — I realize you’re almost certainly joking, but the answer to DIY hysterectomy is no — there’s one case of a woman surviving DIY c-section and it’s basically held as a medical miracle. Pretty sure she went for the kitchen though.
Dvärghundspossen, I’m sorry to hear about your side effects. I hope you find something effective and side-effect free soon!
Dvärghundspossen, I’m also sorry about the side effects, and sending internet hugs your way. Just wave them off if they’re not wanted.
RE: CassandraSays
Yeah, and my frustration is primarily for 101 sites that do that. High level academic sites, I sort of expect a layer of jargon, and that’s okay. It’s also personal on a level, since my first exposure to the trans community was a drag king festival. I went there, and all of this lingo was getting used that I didn’t know (I was a confused college teenager raised in the South USA), like genderqueer and bioqueen, and I kept my mouth shut, because I was positive asking would be offensive.
I mean, I didn’t end up offending anyone, and everything went fine. But I felt completely detached from the proceedings, and a complete stranger, and it left an impression. I decided that obviously I wasn’t one of these people, and I haven’t really spent much time in queer or trans spaces since.