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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?
Game can’t help you, junior. Nor do I think it has been helping you, DB. You’d be too busy hooking-up to post here. And really, a “fighting chance” at sex? It’s not suppose to be warfare, you dolt.
My brain literally hurt for a second there reading that.
My experience has not been with MRAs-mainly just sexists abound. In fact until this part in my career, I had rarely met any sexists.
Years ago, before I’d even heard of MRAs or PUAs (thanks for the education, everyone!) I dated a guy a few times. Second date, he told me over dinner that as he already had a child (and an ex-wife) he didn’t want any more kids, so I shouldn’t bother wanting babies from him. Taken aback, I told him that truthfully I had no desire for pregnancy/children whatsoever, least of all with some guy I’d just met. He didn’t believe that, he said, because I was a woman AND in my mid-30s so obviously I did want babies. He stated that I was just deep in denial, and it was inevitable that eventually I would try to nag him to fill my yearning womb, and I should know up front he wasn’t into that. He was, like, doing me a favour by being honest.
I remember being totally confused and gobsmacked at his total failure to see past his own weird world view.
In short, it didn’t work out for us.
PS: Ten years on, I still don’t want babies. He was wrong.
@princessbonbon – makes you wonder how he’d cope with images like this from the Duc de Berry’s Book of Hours, which just slightly predates Communism. Or this, which while 19th century still looks to predate ol’ Karl by a good few years.
Women have always worked outside the home, and do so in societies that have naff all to do with Communism or its tenets. (I know we know that, but just in case any witless wonder trolls ever follow links, y’know …)
Re: Draggin’Arks – don’t you love the way he’s all “urgh urgh wimmin cooties horrible fatty sacks love tubes blah blah blah women’s bodies are gross” and then when it suits him, he’s wittering about how Game can get our heroes “tasty vag.” Make up your fuckless mind, sonny.
Of course he could be misspelling Veg, as in Vegemite, but he’s even more confused if he thinks Game is needed to buy it.
@Spleeny – gawd, the “of course you want babies” thing. I’ve had that, but from older women, not men. I’ve met some real hostility simply for not wanting a stranger’s kid to lean all over me with its drippy ice-cream, and one nitwit said “Oh but it’s not too late!” when I pointed out that even if I had ever wanted kids, 47 was a bit late to be starting.
I’m reminded of the line attributed to W C Fields when asked if he liked children – “Boiled or fried?” My own preferred lines are “I’d only breed if I could have kittens” or “The child I bear will be the next king of France or I’m not having it.” The latter confuses strangers enough to shut ’em up.
I think he is like an average adult in Discworld-unlike witches, children, cats and wizards, they cannot see things that are really there Kittehs’.
@marie,
Sadly, depression is so rampantly misunderstood that people tend to go the route of “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” crap. Most depressed people would happily pull themselves up if they weren’t depressed! It’s the most dismissive ignorant crap to tell someone they’re choosing to have a debilitating mental illness. Makes me mad. Hope you’re depression is well managed!
@princessbonbon – perfect comparison! 😀
Funny, isn’t it – they love to go on (and on and on and on) about having “taken the red pill”, but in fact they’re the ones living in a delusional world.
I read this blog daily, but never comment…
Anywho, I do a lot of fandom conventions, and I’ve seen a lot of “nice guys” there… If I have to hear another guy talk about getting “friendzoned” my eyes may roll so hard they fall out of my head. I usually spend my time explaining to them just how dumb they’re being.
There are also a bunch of guys in the community who can’t take a hint. As a 300lb, 6’3″ dude I obviously haven’t had any direct issues, but at many a room party I’ve had women friends ask me to help “rescue” them from creepy guys who would not leave them alone.
That said, I’ve never encountered a straight out MRA that I’m aware of… but in my experience, jackasses don’t always make themselves apparent. I knew this one guy for years before I found out he was a raging racist as the subject had just never come up.
On the women in the workplace front, Elizabeth Warren put out a book that documents a lot of ills from having two-income households. http://www.amazon.com/Two-Income-Trap-Middle-Class-Parents-Going/dp/0465090907
The problem isn’t women per se, but because women are now common in the workplace, it drives up the cost of real estate, and substitute domestic goods like child care or prepared meals.
Even if one part of a couple would prefer not to work and stay home and be domestic, they’re prevented by a sort of collective action problem – if one couple puts both people into the workforce, they will have a much easier time buying a home or be able to buy a bigger/better one. Everyone else is forced to go into the workplace to catch up.
So the practical effect of women in the workplace is that people are worse off materially (assuming that the marginal extra income is worth less utility than the leisure time and services offered by having one partner in a relationship stay at home). It also makes labor cheaper, for sure.
But those trends wouldn’t improve unless people would be willing to move collectively to a system with one wage earner in a relationship, and good luck ever figuring that out.
I noticed that there is a lot of overlapping of conservative, Republicanism, libertarianism, racism and sexism when it comes to the MRM. They all live in a disillusion world.
Drew: Why are you blaming women and two-income families for this? It’s not their fault that employers don’t pay enough for a family to get by on one income.
And what about people who aren’t in relationships, eh? Not everyone is part of a couple. Are you suggesting that women should be kicked out of the paid workforce upon marriage, as used to be the case?
I notice you’re not saying “the problem with having most people working.” Oh no, you’re specifying women getting paid for their work outside the home. Here’s an idea for you: how about masses of men leave the paid workforce instead? How about they stay home and do the unpaid, socially lower-status work a household requires, whether they want to or not, whether they find it fulfilling or incredibly boring and frustrating?
And like all the oh-so-reasonable types, you’re basing this on a fantasy of the 1950s, which in turn came from 19th century middle-class ideas. Women have ALWAYS worked outside the home. Your oh-so-thoughtfully phrased comments are still steeped in misogyny, because you are specifying that there is something wrong with women being in the workforce.
As to the topic: MRAs seem to be pretty socially and economically marginalized, sometimes by choice, and probably older on average than this blog’s readership. Cranky bitter old men probably don’t interact a lot in public. PUAs are probably the opposite demo in every way.
So drew… the reason that employers don’t pay enough for it to be feasible for one partner to stay home is?
And that driving force is the problem of women?, not the employers? Nice bit of gendered victim-blaming you’ve got going there. What with it being aimed at one gender I’ll bet there’s a term for it too.
Oh yeah, right in the header of this blog… misogyny.
News flash, the “one worker household” as standard has always been a myth. Oddly, the thing which made it common enough (among white folks) to be seen as the standard was… labor unions and Social Security, and the GI Bill (which was gutted after the Korean War).
But Reagan, and his handlers, managed to make “labor” a dirty word and a scapegoat, and then idiots like you blame women for the second order effects of that.
Way to go.
Drew: As to the topic: MRAs seem to be pretty socially and economically marginalized,
Older on average than this blog’s readership? Nope, plenty of younger tossers among the MRM, and this blog has an age range from teens to 70ish.
KEH:
What? “The problem isn’t women per se, but because women are now common in the workplace, it drives up the cost of real estate, and substitute domestic goods like child care or prepared meals.”
I’m not saying women should be forced out of the workplace. I don’t think Elizabeth Warren is opposed to women in the workplace. The couples I know with one person out of the workplace are all women working with men staying at home with kids and doing side creative projects. I tried to be gender neutral throughout my post.
Historically, though, women entering the labor market en masse (as opposed to domestic work for which they weren’t paid) is what caused the trend. Obviously, making women leave the workplace or making women abused perma-temps like in Japan (or here, in the 1950s, where women were almost universally stuck doing low end jobs for less pay and worse treatment) aren’t good options.
That’s sort of the point – the problem is intractable because your options are to (a) force people to stay home, or (b) convince everybody in two-person households to have one person stay home. (A) is repugnant and (b) is unworkable.
And labor works like any other good for which there is supply and demand. If you up the supply but not the demand, the price (i.e. wages) are going to follow. It’s not the employer’s fault that adding a bunch of smart, talented women to the workplace means they can hire people more cheaply.
My Yearning Womb is my new band name.
Pecunium: They’re a bunch of weird shut-ins who are sending their unemployment checks to Elam. I don’t think anyone’s done substantive demographic research, but from how poorly they write and critically reason, most of them seem to not be very high on the old SES scale. I guess it’s possible they present as normal in the real world and can hold down normal jobs, but it would surprise me.
I mean, sure, in the middle of last century, there was a time when a lot of middle-class families could get by on one income. But I rather doubt that this stopped because people went “Hey, you know what we should do? Work more for the same pay!” Seems a lot more likely that it went the other way: “Shit, I can’t pay the mortgage on this income. We need another source of money.”
You are really bad at it.
Drew: Historically, though, women entering the labor market en masse (as opposed to domestic work for which they weren’t paid) is what caused the trend.
When do you think this happened?
Because They’ve been a large part of the labor market; and paid, for more than a hundred years. The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire didn’t kill men. Women as “shifters” in the woolen mills of England, and the cotton mills of New England go back to the 1830s. The Jungle (by Upton Sinclair) details it in the meatpacking industry at the turn of the 20th century.
So when did this shift of non-working to working women happen?
I mean it. Because there are strike songs about women in the workplace; “The Idris Strike Song”, for one, which dates to the 19-teens, in England. This, “entrance of women to the labor market, en masse” isn’t new.
Drew: Rabid misogynists present as normal in the real world and hold down jobs all the time. People here have shared how they’ve worked with them. Your imaginary Venn diagram between MRAs & “weird shut-ins” is pretty offensive, actually.
Drew: They’re a bunch of weird shut-ins who are sending their unemployment checks to Elam. I don’t think anyone’s done substantive demographic research, but from how poorly they write and critically reason, most of them seem to not be very high on the old SES scale. I guess it’s possible they present as normal in the real world and can hold down normal jobs, but it would surprise me.
So you are making it up as you go along. Got it. That explains a lot.
Thanks.