The Man Boobz Pledge Drive continues. See here for more details, or click below to donate.
And now back to our regularly scheduled post:
Reading through some of the stranger comments from MRAs and PUAs and other manospherean types I often find myself wondering to what degree this “new misogyny” reaches beyond the internet. I don’t mean old-fashioned misogyny and sexism, which are obviously fairly common offline. I mean the elaborate misogynistic ideologies we discuss here – the “feminism runs the world,” “all women are hypergamous bitches who will dump you in a second for an alpha,” “we hunted the mammoth to feed you” kind of stuff.
I run across much less of this offline than on, though the people I hang out with aren’t exactly a representative sampling of the general public.
So I’m asking you, dear readers, to tell me a bit about your own experiences. Do you run across MRAs/PUAs in the real world on a regular or even an irregular basis? Where (online or off) did you first encounter MRAs and/or PUAs? What aspects of what we might call the manosphere ideology are the most common offline? If it seems less common offline, is this because the beliefs are not that widespread, or is it that people are less willing to say the kind of horrific misogynistic shit they say online to other people face to face?
Thoughts?
Never met a PUA but amongst my generation and education group it would have been mega uncool to be anti feminist I think things have gone a bit downhill since the 1980s.
I also remember the drum banging first men’s groups. We thought it was a positive if slightly silly American style self actualisation Then it morphed toxic.
Half of my high school friends bought into the MRA rhetoric without even realizing what it was.
I’ve never run across anyone who was openly MRA in real life. PUAs? All the damn time, it’s impossible to go to a bar without running into them.
The one who negged me with “nice boobs, how much did you pay for them” was a classic. I don’t think he appreciated me spending the rest of the night pointing at him and laughing with my friends, though.
I’ve run into a shit ton of nice guys, and as long as its not YOU they’re into the misogyny and racism are made pretty clear. Last NG into me stated that is was only with Beloved because I wanted his money etc,ect. (Despite the fact that I made it clear that NG and I weren’t compatible for very different reasons). This same dude told me that women can’t run as fast as men “because our boobs get in the way”.
I know of one guy who is a truly hair raising misogynist, when he loses his shit the insults and threats are terrifying. And his mother is often the recipient over the phone. I won’t repeat what I’ve heard, I don’t think there’s a trigger warning to cover it. And yes, he buys the MRA line big time.
Both these dudes were pretty heavy drinkers and had other issues like insecure jobs, poor health going on.
As far as why I’m not seeing much of it other than PUA offline, I think that it’s a matter of the circles you move in. I’m in a liberal, urban, West Coast area, and my social circle is self-selected to exclude people like that. I hear a lot more Nice Guy stuff than anything else, and used to hear a lot more of it when I worked in the tech industry.
There’s also a sense in which it’s just not socially acceptable at all to say stuff like that here. Even the milder end of the MRA spectrum would get you side-eyed by even the most conservative people here.
I don’t think I’ve ever run into a PUA, but then I don’t go to bars, I live in a smaller city and day game isn’t for the faint of heart apparently.
I also look like the stereotypical ball busting feminazi.
Depends how exact we’re being. “We hunted the mammoth” is just a specific phrasing of the general idea that Men Did Everything, and that comes up somewhat often IRL; for instance, in discussions of curriculum standards. The “boy problem” and idea that school/college are biased against men are common. But really specific MRA ideas I’ve never seen.
Rape apologia is all over the place. Last time we visited Doad’s grandpa he said that some woman couldn’t have been raped because she went up to some guy’s room and everyone else in the family totally agreed *barf*
My friend’s boyfriend works with a guy who seems to be an MRA, though (in gaming media). Dude is also into the Tea Party, hating on immigrants, and generally being a conservative asshole. Apparently the whole office hates him.
Honestly, I can’t imagine walking up to someone with nice boobs how much did you pay for them? And not expect a drink in the face and an escort to the nearest gutter.
To be honest, I have fairly seldom run into even the more common types of misogyny, let alone the kind you track down and share here. Shall we call it “hypermisogyny” or “webmisogyny”? Anyone have any better ideas for appropriate terminology?
This may have a lot to do with the fact that I’m the kind of woman that many MRA’s apparently don’t actually see as a woman, per se, from what I’ve read here. Since I’m very short, I find a lot of people, male and female, don’t even notice me unless I do something to attract their attention (apparently, anyone below their eyeline is invisible – I think it’s a side effect of excessive cell phone usage). I’m not conventionally pretty. And I’m told that I exude a definite aura of “knows where she’s going/what she’s doing” that seems to make people leave me alone for the most part.
My biggest complaint along these lines is the number of people who want to call me terms like “honey” and “sweetie” and “girlie”, and I get most of that from older women rather than from men of any age. At 38, I really don’t appreciate terms like that from anyone who isn’t actually my mother…and even my mother doesn’t call me words like that. I’ve experienced more blatant misogyny from other women than from men. Don’t misunderstand, I’ve gotten it from men, too, but it’s been more subtle, and for me it’s been hard to separate from the kind of unthinkingly dismissive attitude I get from people who think I’m much younger than I really am.
A neighbor of mine once called me a “stubborn independent little bitch”, and when I gave him the side-eye and replied, “Yes, yes I am”, he laughed and said he actually meant it as a compliment. At which point I allowed him to give me a hand with the furniture I was hauling into my apartment.
Oh..wait… I did know a total MRA twenty year old through work. He was of the incel variety, and the shit he told me thinking that I would somehow be impressed because he was so edgy.
How could I have forgotten him?
A lot the the negging stuff baffles me in that it seems to result in women being offended far more often than it results in women being inclined to fuck the guy. They may have refined it a bit over the years, but in the early days it was just ludicrous stuff.
Ellex, are you my long lost goody two shoe twin?
PUA types, like other people have said — particularly when I was younger. And there was a guy in a socialist organization I was in who thought we shouldn’t talk about feminism at all because it was a distraction from the “real” issues, but the other dudes explained to him that he had probably chosen the wrong organization to be part of. So he didn’t last long.
Lately I’ve been having the exact opposite experience, where guys I suspect of harboring MRA-like views turn out to be pretty feminist, or at least NOT asshats.
Pillow! It’s you! I knew you were out there somewhere!
I don’t go to bars either, or at least so seldom it really doesn’t count. And I’m not a social butterfly. I like my little circle of people I’m comfortable with, and in the end I’m always happiest with my own company.
An example of the curriculum problem.
Ellex, LOL! We really are twins!
I don’t remember ever having encountered this sort of thing. When I socialised in meatspace (mid to late 90s) it was with people who just didn’t have these sorts of attitudes, and there were no single men in my group, or men who were married sleazes. Racism and sexism would have been well crushed if they came up. I’ve never hung around in bars* or dated, so the, ahem, opportunity to encounter this sort of shite hasn’t arisen.
I’d never heard of the MRM or PUA before I started reading this site. I thought MRA stood for Male Rape Apologist (which it does, of course, just not officially). Reading their crap confirmed what I’d long thought about misogynists, or at least the most virulent of them: that they think women are always wrong, will say anything to put us in the wrong, and essentially want us to be fuckable property with no rights again.
I can’t say how much of this exists offline in Australia. Our papers are full of low level, standard, unconsidered misogyny, but not the sort of ravings this lot go in for. But I don’t socialise, so I simply don’t see what it’s like out there, good or bad.
I’ll say one thing, though: contrary to what Slavey et al seemed to think, I’ve yet to see a man, let alone men in general, slavering over women in public, in agony from those terrible boners they get from our slutty slut slut jeans and shirts and knitwear.
*I’m not a lumberjack, either.
I know a lot of garden-variety misogynists, but only one person who has flat-out told me he is an anti-feminist and blah blah women rule the world this and blah blah it’s not fair for women to suspect he might be a rapist if they go on dates and etc etc.
Got hit with some awesome rape culture-y bull crap of the more typical variety today from a co-worker! He told the hilarious story of that time he went to a bar and his friend said “I’ve always wanted to hug someone until they just got uncomfortable. I figure it would happen at the 10-second mark.” So my hilarious co-worker’s hilarious response was “dare me to hug somebody until they get uncomfortable!” And then his friend picked out a strange woman, and he went to hug that woman, and at the 6-second mark she started actively pushing away from him. 6 seconds, not 10! Science! Ha ha fucking ha violating women’s boundaries is great fun.
Harlem Shale – Doctor Who style…
http://t.co/FygnO3oL
Because PillowInHell said I could derail with thus but you wouldn’t mind. :p
Gakk, yes, “sweetie” and all that stuff. I really hate being called “love” by a guy young enough to be my son. Well, any guy, but especially the young ones. I feel like saying YOU ARE YOUNG ENOUGH TO KNOW BETTER.
I live in a collective house with a bunch of punk kids who are PC to the point where it highlights my own latent sexism for me, e.g., I was helping my male housemate move this huge freezer and he was like, ‘I think you should get the heavy side,’ and I was surprised for a second before I thought ‘well why not?’ and did get the heavy side, no problem, but why did I hesitate in the first place? ug.
Outside our happy home & friendly social circles, I do think PUA stuff is definitely more common than MRA stuff- my brother sent me PUA materials 6 or 7 years ago when I was in college and obsessed with a boy who had “friendzoned” me. But my brother (and most of the PUAs I’ve since recognized among acquaintances) were all really vocal about recognizing how gross some of the stuff is, and picking and choosing what they perceived to be the non-creepy advice… not that one shouldn’t take all that protesting with a grain of salt when it’s coming from a dude explaining himself to a militant feminist…
The only really MRA-ish ideas that I see in the non-internet world on a somewhat regular basis are evo-psych just-so stories. Cannot believe the popularity of that bullshit.
/delurk
Nice guys. Nice guy attitude is everywhere. Ashamed as I am to admit it, back in my university days, I had my fair share of nice guy attitude (I got better!). I suppose this made me good at recognising it in others.
I find that the nice guy to be so common (particularly amongst males 18-30 years old) it becoming kinda to norm… at least for a largish sub-set of the M18-30 population. If you can’t get a girlfriend / get laid, it’s clearly not you that’s the problem. It’s her. Only undeserving males get the girl (thugs, alphas, the vocabulary changes, the gist stays the same). Oh… and everyone is doing it, all the time. Except you.
Maybe I’m overly cynical. I hope so.
/relurk
On the “stop oppressing my boner by walking around looking sexy!” stuff, I’ve never seen that outside parts of the Middle East. Until I encountered the MRM I assumed that those attitudes were a result of religion repressing sexuality, which is why they’re common in communities where men are supposed to feel bad about looking at women who they aren’t married to and feeling lust. Although I don’t like the logic that women should cover up because it’s a sin for men to lust after them, it’s a lot less sinister than wanting women to cover up because it’s not fair for them to “make” men have erections and then refuse to service those erections.