NOTE: I’ve closed comments on this post because it keeps attracting crankish comments from misogynists who agree with the misogynists I quote in the post.
Hey ladies! Have you ever wondered why so many men hate you? Well, you’re in luck, because on Reddit, another lady just like you has an answer. It’s because you suck. No, really. Men hate women because women are terrible. And not very ladylike, to boot.
Let’s join FleetingWish as she explains “Why Do Men “Hate” Us?” in Part 2 of her Who-knows-how-many-parts opus “Attracting Alphas,” which she has helpfully posted in the fPUAs subreddit, a forum apparently devoted to teaching “females” how to more effectively get picked up by alleged Alpha males.
FleetingWish starts off by distinguishing “misogyny” — in scare quotes — from bad things like racism:
[W]e cannot to fall into the common trap of lumping “misogynist” in the same category of “racist” and “homophobic”. The reason is they occur for entirely different reasons. Racist and homophobic people occur largely from lack of exposure. It’s easy to have misconceived notions of certain groups of people when you haven’t met any.
Obviously! For who in history were less racist than America’s antebellum slaveowners, white people who lived in close quarters with large numbers of black people and sometimes even fathered children with them via an ancient non-racist practice known as “raping your slaves.”
But this is not the case for women; men have met many, many women in their lives. Any “misogyny” that they may have developed (or lack thereof) has been created by their exposure to women, and those women have only confirmed their biases.
Huh. So if you retain your hate for a group of people even when you have had considerable contact with these people, this means your hate was justified? By this logic, then, slaveowners were justified in their racism, and Nazi concentration camp guards were justified in their antisemitism.
[O]n to the reason men “hate” us. There are countless complaints to be found, but they all seem to lead to the same core. They don’t see what value women can provide for them (outside of sex).
And how exactly is this the fault of the women, rather than a reflection of the rather limited imagination of the men in question?
When I first understood this, I felt disappointed and sad, because I want to feel that my presence makes a difference, and not that 50% of the population would be better off without me.
You didn’t ask: What the fuck is wrong with these guys who think that that the value of women can be reduced to what they provide men sexually?
But I wanted to find the truth behind the anger, so I asked myself two questions; “What are women providing for men in today’s society?” and “What should women be providing them?” (Or alternatively “What is it that women could provide that would make men see their worth?”)
Why would you assume there was “truth behind the anger” rather than, say, a stunted personality and a giant sense of entitlement? Why are women obligated to “provide” anything for men, apart from the basic human decency all people are generally expected to show one another?
I answered my first question by observing the world around me. We have a society where women are encouraged to behave like men. We are encouraged to be competitive, career driven, even to be brash and arrogant in order to get what we want.
None of these things are inherently male traits.
Also, we are told again and again, that not only should men not expect anything of us (not even common decency), but that we should leave any one who places any demands (or requests) on us.
Huh? I think Ms. Wish may be having imaginary conversations with those old villains the Straw Feminists.
The trouble with the first mentality is by acting like men, we run the risk of being second place to actual men. If a man wants to have a relationship of some kind with someone who behaves masculine, why would he seek a woman? … If he wants to seek out a woman, it’s because he’s seeking someone who behaves like a woman, and personifies feminine behavior.
Says you. Even setting aside all those who fall outside of, or otherwise confound, the traditional gender binary, there are plenty of straight cis men who have no problem with straight cis women whom you’d no doubt define as excessively “masculine.” Indeed, recent research suggests that men aren’t as intimidated by successful, high-earning women as the old stereotypes suggest. A recent report from the Brookings Institution noted that marriage rates amongst the top-earning women have been rising while those of lower lower-earning women have declined.
And why do you even care if other women act in a way that you’ve defined as “masculine?” If you want to act in a way you think is appropriately “feminine,” it’s your life, go for it. Let other people define “masculinity” and “femininity,” and their relationships with these concepts, how they want.
The trouble with the second mentality is that by not taking into consideration what men want from us, it takes away our ability to listen to their needs. Because men have needs, they have feelings, they have wants, and they have desires. And those needs are important, they are important for their basic happiness and fulfillment in life.
Uh, yeah. Women have needs, too. I’m pretty sure most successful long-term relationships are based on fulfilling both partners’ needs, not on forcing one partner into a “feminine” mold so as not to challenge the male ego.
The solution to both of these is actually the same. Be feminine. That’s what men are desperately craving from us. … Men don’t want a woman that they have to compete with, they compete with people all day long, at the end of the day they want someone who they don’t have to compete with.
In other words, if you’re better than him at Halo 4, go ahead and let him win. These sorts of dudes tend to have a bit of a temper.
The thing is, those men who “hate” us, they don’t really hate us, they desperately want to be able to love us. But they have been unable to with every, single, woman they have come across. And they’ve become so hurt, that they don’t know what else to do.
Uh, no, I’m pretty sure a lot of these guys really DO hate you. If you don’t believe me, I’ve got roughly 1200 posts in the Man Boobz archive that might provide some further illumination on this point — although, admittedly, some of the posts are about kitties, not misogyny. So maybe 1000 posts?
So, my challenge to anyone reading this is if you see these men on reddit, try to empathize where they are coming from. Instead of being angry at them, be understanding of them. Instead of defending yourself, defend them. Instead of telling them “you’re not like that”, show them you aren’t like that. Respond to these posts with something to the effect of “Wow, I’m really sorry that women you’ve come across have treated you so bad, I wish there was something I could do to heal that hurt you’re feeling.”
“I’m so, so sorry you think I’m a worthless bitch.”
By responding like this, you accomplish so many things. First is you are validating their concerns, second you empathize with their feelings, and third you show them that there are women who care (demonstrating to them that they might be wrong after all). You will see that if you do this, these men’s hearts will melt so fast for the opportunity to believe that there are women who care.
At least until they disagree with you about something, at which point you can expect all the old misogyny to erupt again, this time aimed directly at you.
Naturally, all the guys who for some reason were reading a subreddit devoted to the “self-improvement of women” thought that Ms. Wish’s advice to her fellow not-fellows sounded a-ok with them.
“As a male, this is spot on,” wrote one. “This actually made me get shivers. Thank you for existing. Thank you for caring.”
You know, I would ALMOST feel sorry for the person who wrote this. Because here’s a woman who saw a bunch of assholes who hate women, and instead of saying “Wow, what a bunch of noxious assholes! I want nothing to do with them.” Her reaction was to say “How can I get the assholes to like/tolerate me?”
I mean, that’s pretty sad, and if she’d stopped there, I might feel sorry for someone like that who places the approval of assholes above their own self-worth.
However, I don’t feel sorry for her, because after “thinking” about it, she comes to the conclusion that the problem isn’t with a certain vocal subset of men being assholes, no, the problem is with ALL women, instead. Or all modern women, or all Western women, or all women who don’t just do whatever these assholes say.
She blames women for not listening, but the thing is that women ARE listening to these guys. They’ve been listening for years, and what they’ve learned from all that listening is that manosphere guys are fucking disgusting.
Great article, David. Ms. FleetingWish’s hate-apologist exposé is about the dumbest thing that I have ever read.
I feel the same way, becausescience. I do feel sorry for women with internalized misogny, because I know what it’s like and I’m sure many other women do, too. The problem with fleetingwish and other FeMRA’s is that they then direct their misogyny toward other women.
No kidding. I want to ask her, “Why do you want praise from guys like them? Their opinions don’t amount to shit. There are many wonderful men out there that won’t demand you put yourself in a second class status just to win their respect”.
Sorry to go back to Michelle Duggar, but I do feel sorry for her about how she has to dress. Her religion demands that she always wear long dresses and be modest, but she’s also on TV for the whole world to watch and laugh at her for looking frumpy. Even in Arkansas or Branson, people stare at her and the daughters for wearing their long prairie skirts with hair down to their butts. I don’t know, but by laughing at the way they look, it seems like people are just laughing at their oppression. Does that make any sense or am I just rambling?
You know, the most apparent hatred I’ve received from men in my life is when I’ve been working at very pink collar jobs, where I do usually wear a lot of dresses and skirts because it’s easier to find my size in skirts and dresses.
Men, almost always men, who already have a bone to pick get their ire up even more when they hear my very feminine voice over the phone, or see me, looking youngish and feminine, and generally feel far more entitled to call me “stupid” or “worthless” etc, etc when they are not getting the answer they want to hear – and usually they are not getting the answer they want to hear, not because I’m a horrible masculine, man-hating woman, but because it is part of my job to not disclose the kind of information these kinds of men are generally demanding I disclose.
What’s especially funny to me is that I’ve never once, in a year of playing co-ed volleyball, gotten any verbal swats from any of the men I play with, and I’m really pretty darn competitive when it comes to sports. I’ve blocked and been able to dig a fair number of their spikes too, and give a pretty decent amount of spikes back. But none of these men I play with seem to hate women, or begrudge the women who are part of our group. Not one of these men has told me “you know, I compete with men all day. The last thing I want to do is show up on the court and have to compete with a woman who everyone knows can only serve half as well as a man”.
It’s almost like FW’s screed is bullshit and there are lots of men out there who aren’t entitled warts and just some men who are entitled warts who want to hate on women no matter what.
I get it when misogynist men reject the idea that women are people and go around acting like people. It is harder for me to understand misogynist women who reject the idea that women are people and chastise women for acting like people.
It is not humanly possible to live up to unrealistic expectations and yet unrealistic expectations are the only kind many people seem to have. Of others, of course, not themselves.
Maybe themselves too. I don’t know.
I can relate to that so well. I agree that there are some men that will treat women in customer service much worse than men, and I think it’s because they see women as a weak, easy target. They’re like “How dare she not let me have my way, when she is a woman and I am above her!” Add that to the ridiculous idea of “the customer is ALWAYS right” and you get that kind of behavior.
What made me the maddest was when they would say something sexually degrading and act offended when I referred them to a manager. It’s like yes, sexual harassment is still wrong even when it’s a customer doing it. Sorry to go off on that rant, but I waited tables at a truck stop in high school, so I’ve had my fair share of sexist asshole customer experiences.
And I didn’t look at guys like that and decide “God, men suck” just because of them. Yet when MRA’s and PUA’s encounter bad women, they then paint all women with the same brush.
I wonder how people like this woman on Reddit even know what it takes to eliminate misogyny. She talks with such authoritativeness, and yet her thesis betrays a stunning ignorance of history.
For much of the pre-feminism period, women were reviled, at least by intellectuals, not for being too “masculine”, but for being feminine. Numerous writers in the vein of St. Jerome described women as animalistic, brainless, and basically non-human, precisely because they were deemed to lack qualities traditionally associated with men — such as competitiveness, intellectual success and courage in battle; a non-insignificant number of theologians claimed that women are like animals in that they have no soul, and thus do not enter heaven.
Even moralists who were less extreme nevertheless agreed that women’s very femininity made them unsuitable for companionship. A man could only have love and meaningful companionship with another man. Women were deemed fit for sexual pleasure and breeding only. Writings on the subject — such as those of Michel de Montaigne — are extremely depressing to a woman, as they postulate that a woman has nothing to look forward to in her relationship with a man –no love, no intimacy, no companionship — just mechanical sex, child-bearing, and endless humiliation, but in word and in print.
So clearly, those poor men who lived in the 16th century, didn’t hate women, they were desperate for being able to love women, if only women were more like men. Which is the opposite of what this Reddit woman is claiming.
This seems to be a good time to leave this here:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/ryanhatesthis/this-is-the-most-epic-brand-meltdown-on-facebook-ever
I saw that yesterday; the Yelp reviews are too much. Sometimes you can’t tell which ones are real and which ones aren’t.
“For much of the pre-feminism period, women were reviled, at least by intellectuals, not for being too “masculine”, but for being feminine.”
I think that’s how things are today, too.
@princessbonbon, that meltdown was very cringeworthy. I kept reading and wondering how far they would dig their hole. I must say, though, the inside of their bakery was very pretty.
@thebionicmommy- I had a sudden flash on the sort of woman who would want these sorts of men to like her is someone who grew up in surrounded by deeply misogynistic people, who grew up hearing over and over that it is the duty of women to serve and the duty of men to steamroller over women. The only sort of person who writes screeds like this is the sort of person that has internalized that abusive behavior is normal.
And then I was EXTREMELY depressed, because there are parts of society where people think that those levels of misogyny are normal.
If Amy is the one who did the design work, she is very good at that. Stick to what you know I would say.
pineapplecookies —
“Btw, I’m new here…So I decided to enter the lounge and have a cookie and some tea too”
We have chairs and penguins too! And a whole welcome package! Cushions are available upon request (well, until someone finds the link to that rant about how couch pillows are feminine and pillows get added to the welcome package)
thebionicmommy — “Does that make any sense or am I just rambling?” — yeah, that made sense, and, much as I hate the “quiver full” movement, mocking them isn’t cool (or at least the kids anyways, I guess Michelle made her own choice)
Odd that FleetingWish is setting herself up to advise women how they can catch themselves an “Alpha” male when the men she’s advising them to pander to display personality traits more often found in alcoholics, addicts, gamblers, etc. rather than high-status, high-earning men, so I have to wonder if she’s running a scam or if she really is that deluded.
I myself mock many of the tenets of Quiverfull, especially its misogyny, reactionary ideals, and rigid gender roles. I guess I just don’t feel right to mock the way the women look, since they are pressured to do so by their communities. If they dressed in jeans or T-shirts like me, then they would be slut shamed and ostracized in their churches. But by adhering to their churches’ dress codes, they get mocked by the rest of the world for being frumpy. What bothers me is that the women are the ones getting all the crap for how they look, even though they have the least power in these groups. They are just like how M Dubz described as
They are brainwashed to see themselves as inferior, to believe their status is a servant and brood mare, and that their own needs and desires don’t matter. So when they choose to dress like Little House on the Prairie, it’s a decision made based on huge societal pressures. But for the patriarchs of these families, I won’t give them nearly this kind of slack.
Karalora: Yes! It’s always astounded me that manospherians put all this strange thought and theory into male/female relationships, but not into all their other human relationships. Won’t someone tell me how I can ditch my loser beta manbros and attract some more alpha friends? Won’t someone lay down some evobiotruths about what kinds of dudes I should play videos games with for maximum Darwin points?
Going back to the “attracting alphas” in the title, I think one of the basic reasons that I find PUA stuff so hard to understand is that it requires women to be carnivorous plants. Women can’t actually actively go after a guy they want, they have to “attract” him into going after them. If you take that assumption away by giving women the least little bit of agency, the whole Greek Letter theoretical edifice collapses. Since most of my relationships have been initially initiated by women*, does that make me a sexy manly alpha, or a passive un-man poodlebeta? Maybe I’m just really good looking? I’ll bet that’s it.
Also, fuck that no competition bullshit. Having a competent live in opponent is one of the main reasons I like being in a relationship. Being around someone who is as good or better than me at stuff makes me get better at stuff.
*”It is cool how we both like/hate the same things. I am doing a thing later, perhaps you would like to do that thing with me?” Pretty sneaky fPUAistry, women. I can see how you’d need a whole subreddit to discuss this technique.
Pinapplecookies, hi and welcome! Please accept your Official Manboobz Complimentary Welcome Package. Use it well while Oppressing teh Menz!
Exactly. I really appreciate and am often attracted to women who are highly competent in their fields. If it’s a field I don’t know well, all the better. I can learn something from them, and our conversations will never get boring.
Plus, I’m egotistical enough as it is. The last thing I need is some fawning sycophant to inflate me even more. I much prefer people — men and women and otherwise — who will check me on my bullshit with love, confidence and compassion.
Whoops, ninjaed on the welcome package! 😀
Kitteh — 😛
thebionicmommy — point noted, and I did mean mocking her religious type decisions not wtf she wears, but context and lack of clarity and yeah, I failed. Hard to sort which is which though — actual choice versus no real option without being shunned. Maybe it’s the “put it all on TV part” that bugs me so much (and, of course, raising the kids to think their value is solely tied to making as many babies as possible)
@Aaliyah
You are correct. The reason “traditional” gender roles are so much harder on women than men is that women are screwed whether they follow the script or not. If they don’t, they’re transgressing, but if they do, they’re assumed to be weak, simpering, and incompetent. For all the “separate but equal” blather, femininity is definitely not given the same respect as masculinity.
I had a similar conversation recently with a friend about the “ideal” appearance standards for men and women. The ideally masculine and ideally feminine physiques are arguably equally hard to attain, but the closer a man approaches to his, the better off he will be in ways unrelated to appearance – physical strength, stamina, etc., which are good to have even if nobody ever looks at you. The closer a woman approaches to the ideal feminine physique, the…um…better she looks by conventional standards? Being very thin with big boobs doesn’t really do anything for a person apart from being considered cute.
No worries, I get what you’re saying. You didn’t fail at all. It’s just the subject matter is so complex. And there are things Michelle does that I have serious problems with, like her making the oldest daughters tend to their younger siblings instead of pursuing their own academics and interests, pushing the kids in front of the cameras to make a spectacle out of the size of the family, sending the sons off to right wing militia training camps, and expressing so many right wing, Christian beliefs. Sorry, I could go on forever on the subject, because I find it so fascinating after leaving a fundie church in my teens and reading feminist responses to the whole Christian patriarchal movement, like Quiverfull by Kathryn Joyce.
And this kind of stuff really gets me annoyed with the feminists that put down “choosy choice feminism” as classist and elitist. Um, I’m not sure how women who are brainwashed into servitude are showing privilege by not working and raising ten or more children, especially when to do so, many of them live without things like running water, enough food, or access to health care. (They aren’t allowed to ever accept government help but still must live on one income.) Oh yes, that is so privileged of them for “choosing a choice” even when they made their choices under the authority of a dominating patriarch. I would rather everyone, including women, be free to actually make choices that make themselves happy, and that is not elitist at all.
LOL, sorry I should make my own blog that is pro choose my choice feminism. It’s just frustrating to see feminists put other feminists down for making choices when they cut way more slack to FeMRA’s.
Not only does it do nothing for one’s health, it doesn’t even make it easier by fitting those stereotypes. When was the last time anyone saw off-the-rack clothing that was made to fit a thin woman with big breasts? Just another small example of how fitting the demands doesn’t actually help.