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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?
@Pillow in hell
Thanks for the welcome 🙂 And I’ve seen people be welcoming here before, so I don’t think you guys are all gonna bite my head off, I just tend to get really shy when finally posting. I might be weird that way.
Scented candles are handy, especially in a power outage. Is not just sitting around in the dark misandry?
As far as I can tell, its always misandry if someone finds contentment or joy in life because anger and spite isn’t the rule. And its triple billion misandry if a woman finds contentment and the MRA finds out about it.
What if we gave colorful, scented cupcakes, just to cover all our bases?
That might work… We could serve them with cute little candles on a wooden plate?
With tierra shaped candles, on mini wooden thrones…
A wooden plate painted in bright colors. Maybe with a little rainbow, just to make sure the homophobes don’t feel left out.
Hmm, maybe glitter instead of rainbows? I suppose we could test both.
Oh, and don’t forget that we need trained penguins to serve the cupcakes!
I learned about the MRA because of a male friend of mine. He started spewing off all this alpha, beta stuff and I’m like “what’s a beta male?” He regaled me with tales of men sitting in rows of cubicles, fettered, while toiling there lives away providing for single mothers of children of alpha males. Women who after years of riding the cock carousel would find a beta male to help them raise their children. He had been living on his own for many years and was romantically interested in me. I was like “I don’t know what a alpha male is and I have not impregnated myself by a man…” He was like “oh it’s not you, it’s women in general.” As part of his study into women he thought that pua’s understood how the sexual network functioned. I came to understand he is more interested in both a mother at home, and random women to stare at then other people and relationships which is likely why he’s not in one.
This whole thing is rather creepy to me, so now I just study more and work on my own life. I have trouble connecting with people in general anyway, without all kinds of paranoid delusion being mixed into small chat. It was hard for me to accept, for a long time, that this person actually regarded me as a person to try strategies on. That; because I didn’t conform to the standard of what he considered to be a “woman” or “female” (which seemed to translate to “object” in there mind), I was “other person” because I was nice. Being nice in there warped, socially inept view meant that I was to be a mother to them and console them when their pornography failed them and women they hit on, turned them down. So eventually he just started finding excuses to spend time with “women in general.” Appearing for all intents and purposes to pay for the privileged. This is not something I’m interested in this life.
I tried for a long time to involve this person in social things and find out what they liked. Trying to humanize the experience of their company but in the end they saw me and women in general differently and insisted that a person couldn’t be a woman. The nicer I was, the less they wanted a romantic relationship. It couldn’t work that way. This person also read spearhead and feminist bloggers as well as pua’s. The investment I made into this person eventually is wasted. Time no one should waste on someone with a) a pornography addiction or b) anyone in the manosphere. I believe they are cut from the same cloth.
Oh well. Delusion is a sad thing. I hope sanity helps men in the manosphere to eventually work on the social skills. That would ultimately bring them success in life rather than focusing on imagined power and imaginary soulless people.
Cupcakes! *drools* Of course if one really wanted to increase membership they’d give out kitties! 😀 (Sad, because I do not have money to take care of a cat…)
I’ve got it! We need specially trained kittens to deliver the cupcakes. Only then will the Feminazi Revolution be complete.
Buntzums, I think that just finding a passion in life that makes them happy would work wonders. Focusing on that while working in small ways on things that aren’t going so well is a recipe that works for me.
Also, I really think society needs to more thoroughly examine the idea of success. It would help if these guys didn’t see themselves as failures because they don’t have the job/relationship/sex/money/power that men are pushed to have.
Cassandra! That’s it! You’re a GENIUS!
@cassandrasays
That would be so adorable. <3
Now I am going to figure out how to scent my special colored towels just to piss off whatever special snowflake was going on about pillow and towels and how you have to have model trains in every room to make men feel welcome. SCENT ALL THE THINGS!
Lavender scented spray. Not only is it associated with women, it’s usually associated with old women, for that dose of extra boner-killing power.
Now I wonder if I’m a failure as a feminist because I avoid scented things. Or are my allergies one of the things that make me tend to register as “not a woman” on the radar of MRAs and PUAs?
I finally went and looked up the hard chair thing. Now I’m wishing I hadn’t.
Oh come on Ellex! Tom Martins chairs were hilarious. At least as far as showing how far one human being can stretch what was a valid point (that hard chairs are uncomfortable and need replacing).
It wasn’t the chairs, pillow, it was the rest of Martin’s idiocy. It left such a bad taste in my mouth, and it was so clearly coming from a place of multiple privileges even beyond the basic white male privilege. He comes at everything from a particularly abhorrent type of “Let them eat cake” attitude, with absolutely no understanding of life outside his tiny little world.
The chair business was just silly, and nothing I haven’t seen before – only the justifications regarding ass padding were new.
ZOMG!!
Cliff Pervocracy blog is featured in a post on Psychology Today!!
@pillow in hell, That’s fantastic!
Here’s the link:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/thinking-about-kids/201302/lessons-kinky-sex-blog
If you take “politicians” and substitute “MRAs” you get the perfect argument that should shut up an MRA about this supposed goal women have to live on on public assistance.
http://www.cracked.com/blog/4-things-politicians-will-never-understand-about-poor-people/
How about penguin kitties to serve the cakes? Twice the misandry!
And if it’s glitter vs rainbows, well, the solution to that is glittery rainbows.
On the flirting – nobody’ll be surprised to hear I hate it when someone tries flirting with me (apart from the usual suspect, lol). From anyone else it makes my skin crawl, however nice he is about it. I say “he” because I’ve never had a woman try to flirt with me and can’t say how I’d react.
@Kitteh’s
I’ve now reached the point where any man trying to flirt with me in public is assumed to have skeevy intentions, because in the past they generally have (or it just gets into completely weird I Plan To Be Pope And Rule The World territory). 🙁 It’s an almost Pavlovian reaction now.
That’s pretty much my gut reaction, too. Mercifully it’s rare, and brief, since I’m not in bars or clubs where they’re as appealing as bathroom mold and just as hard to get rid of.