So the manosphere blogger who calls himself The Red Pill Theorist has managed to work himself into a tizzy over a Wall Street Journal piece by a woman who — gasp! — froze some of her eggs in her 30s in order to give her more time in which to find the right guy with whom to have kids.
In her op-ed, titled “Why I Froze My Eggs (And You Should, Too),” Sarah Elizabeth Richards wrote:
Between the ages of 36 and 38, I spent nearly $50,000 to freeze 70 eggs in the hope that they would help me have a family in my mid-40s, when my natural fertility is gone. For this baby insurance, I obliterated my savings and used up the money my parents had set aside for a wedding. It was the best investment I ever made.
Egg freezing stopped the sadness that I was feeling at losing my chance to have the child I had dreamed about my entire life. It soothed my pangs of regret for frittering away my 20s with a man I didn’t want to have children with, and for wasting more years in my 30s with a man who wasn’t sure he even wanted children. It took away the punishing pressure to seek a new mate and helped me find love again at age 42.
I have a lot of reactions to this op-ed, ranging from “damn that’s a lot of money” to “that’s kind of a sad way to look at your past relationships” to “congratulations to you, I guess, but I don’t think this is really a solution to the work-life dilemma faced by most working would-be-moms.” (See here and here for discussions of this latter issue that are a lot more informed than my gut reaction.)
The Red Pill Theorist had, well, a different reaction, worrying that egg freezing could become a “grrlpower-enabling” technology, much like the birth control pill before it, and predicting that evil Democrats will soon demand that it be covered by Medicaid.
His real worry? That egg freezing will allow women to have sex with a variety of men into their 30s and even — gasp! — their 40s without “settling down” with the hardworking betas who’ve been waiting patiently on the sidelines for a chance to score a little nookie with the ladies before these ladies get completely old and ugly.
If women begin freezing their eggs en-masse at thirty, and embark upon fifteen more years of debauchery, watch out. The current trend of beta misery, female misery, and alpha ecstasy is only going to get worse. Now 30-35 year olds with a lick of sense leap off the carousel with all the alacrity they can muster. But what if they don’t have to? They’ve got frozen eggs, and early-thirties women can be decent looking. There’s going to be a massive increase in the supply of female sexuality in the dating market. We all saw how well that worked out for women in the sixties.
The Red Pill Theorist imagines that somehow these gals will manage to stick those poor, pitiful, endlessly used and abused beta schlubs with the bill:
In the future, there won’t just be divorce-rape. There will be pre-divorce rape. Crafty college gals will extract financial resources from their beta boyfriends to freeze their eggs, and then unhaapyness will set in, and the beta will be stuck with the bill.
His grand conclusion:
Egg freezing is one more brick in the wall of total sexual marketplace deregulation. Bit by bit, the chains that once encircled the hypergamic beast are falling away. There’s never been a better time for men with options, never been a worse time for men without them. … It’s the next sexual revolution, except this time, women 30-40 will get to have some ill-advised fun.
Imagine that. Women in their 30s and 40s. Having fun. The horror!
@katz
Bleh, of course. When I first read that I assumed the non-bizarro definition of “racist” and thought they’d been arguing with the regulars, which’d be pointless really but at least sort of noble.
But no, I suspect you’re right about it being a case of “white people don’t run everything and not everything is about white people and this racism must end!”
@Katz
For some Cambodians and fans of Cambodian cuisine, spiders are food!
… wait.
I think you may have feminists confused with brain slugs.
Meh, it’s possible that he’s an “anti-racist” who actually goes around telling white supremacists to stop using the N-word or whatever, but if he’s hung around there long enough to consider it a Thing He Does and didn’t get a) banned or b) chewed out so badly he flounced away in misery or c) both, then he must agree with them on enough points to pretty well be a white supremacist. Those sites aren’t exactly known for supporting a great diversity of opinions.
Mind control?
Sorry, that’s the Furrinati you’re thinking of, not feminists.
As for checking out any brand of the Democrats … why would I bother? Mercifully for me I do not live in the US. Much as I’d love to live where most of my friends are, there are WAY too many things about the system there that mean anyone not wealthy is going to be in deep shit sooner or later. I’ll stick to dealing with the idiot politicians in my own country, kthx.
About the abortion business – like Argenti said, you’d never have been born, so your current earthly self wouldn’t exist to care. I do believe in the soul, and I think it would simply live its life in Spirit and grow up there, same as if the fetus aborted naturally (which, btw, counts for the majority of “abortions” – the spontaneous ones). Oh, and don’t presume from that comment that I’m Christian or follow any religion: I most emphatically do not.
I was debating white supremacists. I am not a racist. I will debate any racists who come on here. I also won’t tell them I’m here.
Pope John Paul I was very conflicted about birth control, and so am I. In the Wikipedia article about his moral theology, he seems to have had a conservative position on abortion. Of course the Church would have been a bit more liberal if he had not died, and perhaps this would even be a good thing. The fact is, it did not happen.
Yes I privilege the concept of life over the quality of life. It’s a major cultural dispute in our time, and since separatism is likely not a workable idea, it’s one of the many things we have to compromise on.
One commenter disparages Democrats for Life. The Religious Right and the manosphere also doesn’t like democrats for Life. Liberal and libertarian rape culture mysogynists pretending to be feminists also don’t like Democrats for Life. Yes I do see a conspiracy at least at the highest levels between feminists and mysogynists, at least in some factions. Dalrock, a writer on the manosphere, discusses the Religious Right as being secretly aligned with feminism. Andrea Dworkin discusses the alignment of right-wing women and men against liberal men who victimize women. Both writers are very different but are interested in the role of right-wing women as key power brokers in society. I see this as a positive thing (I don’t like Sarah Palin though).
Yes liberal discourse dominates feminism. Yet liberal feminists want the government to regulate a lot of aspects about people’s lives. When it comes to abortion though they act like the government has no right to tell anyone what to do.
My thinking may seem less organized and more unclear than most writers here. In real life I’m a much better communicator. When I release my treatise on gender relations everyone will be surprised that it’s me. I am experimenting with a revolutionary style of artistry in intellectual discourse. It comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable. Like the Old Testament prophets. At least it takes the attention off the amoral idiot Red Pill theorist, whom this article was supposed to be about.
@Katz
I used to read a lot of white supremacist stuff before I turned to to Manospherian types for my dose of how-do-these-awful-people-exist, and they actually do seem to realise that they’re vastly outnumbered and will tolerate just about anybody sufficiently racist. Big splits:
Muslims will destroy Western society and Jews are okay because Israel is the one “civilised” part of the East vs. Jews are behind everything, Muslims are okay because we think of them as really sexist vs. both Muslims and Jews are awful
White nationalists vs. keep non-whites around for slavish labour
White people are the best in every way vs. Jews and East Asians are way smarter than white people but inherently evil
Libertarian laissez-faire capitalists vs. those who propose heavy government checks on capitalism because of how corrupt and Jewish capitalism is
Christian Identity vs. Catholics vs. Evangelicals vs Atheists vs Asatru/Neopagans
Boneheads vs ultratraditionalists
People who focus on white-v-non-white vs. people who insist on making a million different racial categories within whiteness and ranking them
Those Other societies are so sexist because non-whites are barbaric vs. with this liberal multicultural Jewish etc. agenda, you can’t even be sexist anymore!
Hitler was kinda cool vs Hitler was really cool vs let’s not talk about Hitler because even tho he’s kinda cool it’s a bad look
and so on and so on. . . hate seems to have a way of bringing people together :
Has the modern Right forgot that conspiracy theories other than false flags exist? At least have some creativity.
Pro tip – troll less obviously.
Lowquacks, brilliant description of the white supremacist blogosphere.
Hey dipshit troll: misogynists, racists, homophobes and trans* phobes = despicable. Forced birthers fall right into that collection.
You value the concept of live over quality of life, eh? So the idea that something might live, might come into existence, weighs more with you than the life of someone already here, already a separate human being?
I’ll take quality over that any day. I’ll take the woman you’d force to give birth against her will over the fetus-that-might-develop-into-a-person any day. I’ll take an early exit over being kept in a vegetative state or coma or immobility, over anything that traps me in this body, cut off from the world, any day.
And in case that nonsense about your pseudo Democrats was aimed at me: I repeat, I’m not USian. It’s all academic except insofar as I care what misogynists like you do to all the not-cis-straight-men in the US with these foul ideas.
Go fuck a whole garden of cacti. Your mealy-mouthed trolling doesn’t disguise anything, you fake, scummy creep.
Oh word, it’s almost as though feminists’ political ideology is based on more complicated ideas than “should the government be involved y/n.”
Yeah, we’re all on tenterhooks, champ.
Pro-Patria Truthiness: Yes I privilege the concept of life over the quality of life.
This is the major moral failing of the Conservative Movement. It’s how they can be “Pro-life” while allowing the poor to starve, and privileging the rich over everyone else.
Extremism in the defense of virtue is a vice.
Pro-Patria Truthiness: You don’t actually take much of a stand.
Yes I privilege the concept of life over the quality of life. It’s a major cultural dispute in our time, and since separatism is likely not a workable idea, it’s one of the many things we have to compromise on.
In what ways do you see, “compromise”, being needed? I.e. what things do you think each group much give up to attain that which you see as the happy medium which is closest to the moral ideal?
Pope John Paul I was very conflicted about birth control, and so am I.
Actually, he wasn’t. The politics of the Curia were conflicted, he was trying to decide on either a papal bull, or an encyclical saying it was a moral issue to be resolved by the individual. He was going to endorse it (another thing he wasn’t conflicted on was those who were ordained who violated their vows. He was going to issue a bull allowing Catholics to be Masons, but defrocking any priest who had been one, because that violated the vow of obedience. Had he been pope the scandals of abusive priests might have been a bit differently handled, but I digress).
His position on abortion seems to have been more liberal than the church at the time. The latter is a bit harder to show, since what writings/sayings we have from him on the subject much be weighed against the fact that his discussion of the topic (in a durable form) was before he was pope, and so had to be, more or less, in keeping with the doctrine at the time.
Because I have to go to work, and so won’t have time to bandy words with you I will clarify what the actual argument I am making (which is not about abortion, or birth control).
You can’t claim the authority of The Moral Position of Catholicism to support your view. You can claim the present catechism of The Catholic Church, but that is a very different thing.
The moral question is, very much, in debate; and there are large strains of the catholic moral tradition which, very much, support birth control, and are; at the very least, ambivalent about the condemning abortion out of hand, even if we accept the doctrinal position that ensoulment takes place at conception (which is a belief The Church has only espoused for about 130 years).
Also, this being a country where the State and the Church are separate, you need to articulate a reason for limiting either, which follows a legitimate state interest, not one of personal morality; based on religious belief (render unto Caesar, and all that).
Pro-Patria Truthiness: I am experimenting with a revolutionary style of artistry in intellectual discourse. It comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable. Like the Old Testament prophets. At least it takes the attention off the amoral idiot Red Pill theorist, whom this article was supposed to be about.
Did you just pull a, “you are all ignoring the subject of the post”, while boasting of how you derailed th conversation? That’s rich.
My thinking may seem less organized and more unclear than most writers here. In real life I’m a much better communicator.
Sorry charlie, this is real life.
I also find it hard to believe that in a deliberative medium such as writing, that you are less persuasive than you are in speech. Unless you have some amazing charismatic gift, which overrides the muddy vagueness of your expressed ideas, the ability to look at what you are trying to say, and edit it before putting it out before the public should polish your thoughts.
And you are planning a treatise to put it all into “real perspective”, when you admit to being less organised and unclear than people who are commenting on the fly (all I do is look for typos, the stuff I write here is all a first draft response).
That might merit some meditative reflection
I’ve yet to figure out how supposedly ‘benevolent’ patriarchy is actually all that benevolent, since the main problem with patriarchy (benevolent or non) is marginalization of anyone who doesn’t fit in to relatively narrow definitions of ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’. I’m not even talking about LGBT+ issues, I’m just talking about (white) straight, cis-folk who don’t fit those categories.
And who gets to make the definitions of ‘femininity’ and ‘masculinity’ anyway? Why does it get to be a religious authority? Christianity may be the most followed religion per the CIA World Fact Book (look, I can use citations!), but even then we’re only talking about roughly a third of the world’s population. And last I checked, one third was less than a majority…
If I’d been the original Red Pill Theorist, I’d have been more worried about the spermjacking opportunities which egg-freezing presents. I mean, ladiez, it’s going to be so much easier than mucking around with a turkey baster. Just get the medical centre which has frozen our eggs, to just thaw a few, add the jacked sperm and that poor beta sucker is paying child support for 20 years. /bwahahah
Ooooh, ProPatria is ‘conflicted’ on birth control. What a humane, reasonable, open-minded piece of right-wing shit he is.
so, Pro-Patria, are you conflicted about pain-killers? When you get a headache, do you take a pill or is it God’s will that you suffer? Have you been vaccinated? Or do you leave it to God to decide whether you catch certain illnesses? Do you wash your hands after urinating or is it God’s will whether you contaminate your food before eating it? ‘Cos I’m betting that you’re all with the medical interventions when it’s your choice, your body & your health.
It’s always bloody birth control, ismn’t it, that suddenly leaves you all conflicted? Because, let me guess, it’s not you who could get pregnant. So you can be all self-righteous about something that doesn’t affect you.
Although to be honest,PP, I wouldn’t be too surprised if you didn’t do the handwashing thing,since thinking through the consequences of your ideas and actions doesn’t seem your strong suit.
I’m amused by the way PP Truthiness keeps coming back to words like “real” and “true”, like the use of them totally legitimizes and qualifies everything he says. “Real” women, “real” perspective, “true” gender relations.
PREMA? aka Pro Equality MRA?
@OP: the most important human rights movement of this century, folks. *gag*
I, for one, and getting reeeeal tired of the “sexual marketplace” model and the idea that I am cheating someone by choosing who I have sex with. MY VAGINA IS NOT A COMMODITY, you disgusting, creepy motherfuckers. (Go ahead and accuse me of “creep-shaming”. You should be fucking ashamed)
Also, fuck you and your “divorce rape” bullshit.
@Cloudiah
So now sex workers are forcing men to hire them? Do men have any agency at all in Esmay’s world?
@ProPatria
Probably shouldn’t have one, then. By the way, how often do you give blood? Are you an organ donor? How many unwanted children have you adopted?
I think you may have overestimated how many fucks other people give about your ideas. Also, your research will be a little lacking if you think all you have to do is ask blog commenters what they think. You don’t even seem to be including people who don’t identify as either feminist or MRA – the majority of the population isn’t even included! Sounds like a quality treatise, right there.
“Life” as in biological life signs, but not “life” as in “quality of”.
The pro-choice movement is not actually about you. Also, you’re not a moderate.
That’s not what you said, though.
@Kittehs
Really? It sounded an awful lot like rape, to me.
@Aaliyah
Thanks. My arachnophobia is better than it used to be (hypnosis works really well for me), but my anxiety also manifests around food being “contaminated”, so your post and the ensuing discussion have freaked me the fuck out.
@ProPatria
Again, you assume we care more than we actually do.
Also, I don’t think “marginalized” means what you think it means.
Dibs on “mind-control matriarchy” as a band mane!
Which is why they encouraged condom use in the portions of Africa with high rates of HIV infection. Right?
Hitler was a vegetarian, therefore vegetarians are Nazis. Yay I can logic!
LOL IRL
I doubt this. As far as I know, she was Jewish and remained so.
I’ve always found this obsession with last-minute conversions and renunciations weird, and the fact that here it’s a Jew who’s supposed to be converting (with all the historical pressure on Jews to convert this brings along) adds an extra garnish of gross to it.