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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?
I haven’t really met guys like this in person. I mostly socialize online thought games or game related communities tho, so I see this sort of crap all the time.
Also, there was this one little special snowflake emo kid in my college program. Imagine your typical “nice guy” but then he get’s bonus points for entitlement because he’s in a class composed of 85% women who can ride circles around him. I still rage about this guy every time I think about him. I don’t know if he was a genuine MRA, but he certainly had the attitude down.
My public-transportation pet peeve: When you’re sitting in the back row of forward-facing seats and someone is sitting in the sideways-facing seat behind you and decides to use your head rest as an arm rest.
Tigwell and Rory are sweeet! I love Tigwell’s white nose. So cute (though is he prone to sunburn with that?)
Our Mr Hadji was so shy of strangers he’d hide under the bed when anyone came. My friends dubbed him The Imaginary Cat because none of them ever saw more than a pair of eyes in the dark.
I’ve taken public transport for thirty-plus years (I don’t drive) but I’m more sensitive than I used to be about being touched. I don’t know if it’s because I’m more aware of the idea of boundaries, or because of being partnered, or a combination of the two. I keep thinking I should get a sheet of hard plastic or something to use as a shield and shove it between the seats. “That’s your space, this is my space, now butt out!”
I’ll agree here for the most part, but I’ll add a but….
I grew up and (I hope) grew out of Nice Guy tendencies. A lot of people grow up and grow out of some silliness. But….
What worries me is that amongst the young’uns (and some of the not so young’uns) I know, the Nice Guy attitude seems to be becoming default. There’s not of a lot “I’m single and I’d prefer not to be but I’m still awesome and someone will come along. Or maybe not, but I can deal with it”.
There’s more “Being single is being a failure, but I’m awesome so I couldn’t possibly be at fault. Or it couldn’t possibly be a situation where nobody is at fault. No, SHE is at fault for choosing X instead of me, the obvious correct choice”.
Strictly anecdotally (so with a hypertension inducing grain of salt) I see the Nice Guy attitude becoming far more widely distributed than I remember. And it’s this creeping sense of entitlement that worries me.
Cassandra – that is one chill kitty. I bathe mine because I’m mildly allergic. Otherwise, it depends on the cat. I think all cats should get an occasional bath, just for the sake of cleanliness. I used to have a lilac point Himalayan who would turn brownish if he didn’t have regular baths (about every 3-4 months) because he washed himself too much!
Tigwell is very like the cat in the video, but he’s used to being bathed. Rory loves to play in water, but hates baths, so I have to put him in the bathtub, get in with him, and close the sliding glass doors, and it sounds like I’m torturing him.
He’ll get used to it eventually.
katz – oh yeah, or when you’re in the side-facing seat next to the door, and the idiot standing in the doorway thinks the bar is there for them to prop their elbows on. Elbows are at head height for the person sitting down. They get a firm push when they do that to me.
I agree that it seems to be getting worse. For example, for people my age (late 30s), did you know anyone like the guys who congregate in online incel communities when you were late teens/early twenties? When I was younger it was just a thing that people accepted, that it took some folks longer to find a compatible partner than others, and that it’s easier for some people to get laid than others. The idea of “incel” as an identity didn’t exist, and if you’d tried to ID that way people would have given you so much side-eye.
Protip: beware of laughing too hard at work. It prompts farting and that can be embarrassing.
All this entitlement and crap generally just reminds me I am so, so glad dating was never a thing for me.
@TheCat:
I wonder if this is, in part, a reaction to the ways that feminism has changed how we perceive and judge the interactions of straight men and women? Like, at one point, it was considered totally reasonable for men to treat their potential romantic partners with offhand contempt. Public opinion has changed on that. So now, we have this crop of young men, and they’re thinking “hey! I didn’t totally dismiss you and treat you like a child! I’m so much better of a man than men have been before! Why aren’t you rewarding me with orgasms??”
Yeah well, sex is really being pushed a hella lot more. I still remeber when sex wasn’t expected by date three. So that there are guys identifying as incel, or more men who feel entitled doesn’t surprise me.
Also, what is with the hook up culture thing where women are expected to please the boner, but not to get anything in like and kind returned? I’ve never done the hook up thing, but I hear a lot of complaints about it.
@ Viscaria
The problem with that theory is that I see far more offhand contempt for women in the men who’re now 18-35 than in the men I knew who were in that age range when I was too.
hellkell – Thank you! They’re very good kitties. Bathtime is mainly a matter of perseverance, patience, and establishing myself as the alpha. Eventually, each and every one of them has become resigned to it. (And I find myself giggling at using the term ‘alpha’ here.)
Kittehs’ – No, Tiggy has never had sunburn that I’ve noticed, but his fur is very thick. Technically, he and Rory are short-hairs, but I’ve never seen other short-hairs with such luxurious coats. And that includes Rory’s mother and siblings. I must be doing something right.
I’m so glad I don’t have to take public transportation anymore! So often I’d be standing there thinking “Dude, I realize I’m only 5’1″, but do you realize that my face is pretty much in your armpit? There’s a vertical pole right beside you, you don’t have to show off and hold onto the horizontal pole above your head.”
Also, hey tall people, please let the short people hold onto the vertical poles! We can’t reach the horizontal pole near the ceiling when the bus/train/trolley is too crowded and we have to stand!
“Hey sonny, meet Rosie Palm. I’m sure she can help you there.”
Part of the issue with incel is that people have unrealistic ideas about how much sex everyone else is having, I think. Survey say that high school kids are actually having less sex know than they were when I was in high school, but they all seem to assume that everyone else is fucking like bunnies. There’s a big gap between perception and reality, and it’s getting bigger all the time.
Heh, fair enough Cassandra.
I guess the reasons don’t really matter anyway, so much as that people stop doing it. God, dudes.
Ellex – I’m convinced the designers of our newest trains and trams must be at least 7′. They haven’t even provided hanging handgrips, just bars a few inches from the ceiling, and even guys have trouble reaching them. I’d have no hope if I were stuck standing. That’s one good thing about being at the end of the line: I always get a choice of seats.
Now I just need to get onto making a miniature legionary shield …
It does concern me that so many young men are so jaw-droppingly sexist, and I suspect that there’s some connection between that and the gap between reality and perception that I was talking about.
On the flip side, the young men who I know who aren’t sexist are far more woman-friendly and less homophobic than their peers back when I was that age, so it’s as if there’s a widening gap between the guys who’re decent people and the guys who’re stewing in bitterness too.
I think the “being single is a failure” used to be a meme directed mainly at women, but is now being much more equally directed at men (yet another example of the patriarchy seeing feminism’s complaint of male privilege and responding by taking away the privilege from men instead of extending it to women). And that leads men to having to choose between “I’m a failure” or “other people (i.e. women) are failures.” And while choosing the latter is hardly meritworthy, it’s far more palatable than the former. And it can be really hard to realize there’s a third option.
But I’m not really sure who it is that’s promulgating the meme at men. I know that I’ve picked it up from somewhere or other, but have no idea where.
+1. The “everyone is doing it, all the time, with everyone but me” fallacy is particularly widespread. Thanks overly sexualised but non-reflective of reality mediascape!
And incel is such an elastic term, isn’t it? When GGG first posted here with his whines about it, he’d had sex within the last six months. Dude, that is not “I am going to die of virginity!” even if that was a thing. Incel seems to be just another name for the eternal MRA whine: they aren’t getting sex on demand.
The theory of hypergamy is adding to the mess too. I’ve seen young guys who’re genuinely convinced that 90% of women are fucking 10% of men, and first of all the math just doesn’t work, second of all, dude, look at the couples all around you.
Yeah, we called it a dry spell, and it was pretty much a given that if you weren’t a complete assbag, it would pass.
I know a fellow that I began to suspect for an MRA when I happened to say “feminist” in a sentence and he responded “feminazi”, and will do so nearly every time someone will say “feminist” regardless of context. That could just be regular sexism, but he sometimes says claims marriage is a huge scam, and a friend of mine claimed this person tried to convince him that there is no wage gap between sexes so women are just trying to con more money out of their employers. I was not surprised to discover he is a libertarian gun fanatic who fantasizes about surviving the zombie apocalypse and gushes over mercenary groups.
GGGs issue seems to be that, OK, he has this idea in his head of how easily sex and dating come to other men. And there are some men for whom that’s true, but it’s not the average. But he’s comparing himself to this imaginary norm, noticing that his life looks different, and then catastrophizing.
I mean, that’s not his only issue, but it’s part of it.