So over on The Spearhead, the fellas are discussing journalist Daniel Bergner’s sexy new sex book What Do Women Want?: Adventures in the Science of Female Desire. It’s a book that challenges many conventional wisdoms, both scientific and popular, about sexuality and, as Salon puts it, portrays female sexuality as essentially “base, animalistic and ravenous.”
I haven’t read the book, but it’s worth pointing out that this is not exactly a new idea. Indeed, for long stretches of human history this was the conventional wisdom about female sexuality, a fact I can only presume that Bergner addresses in some form.
Of course, none of the fellows on The Spearhead have actually read the book either, including W.F. Price, so essentially they just use the occasion of its publication as an excuse to spout their own, er, theories about evil sex-desiring ladies.
Price, extremely old school himself, agrees that “women’s sexuality is a powerful and often disruptive force” that “can be terrible in its power.” But he also thinks that the good fellows in the “androsphere” — his preferred term for what others call the “manosphere” — have these sneaky sexy ladies all figured out, and that this “knowledge disarms much of that [evil sexy lady] power.”
So, he concludes, Bergner may actually be doing the dudes of the world a solid:
The Red Pill, in short, is simply the truth about female sexuality. All Bergner has done is repackage the red pill and make it look sexy, and even empowering to women. So I suppose we should give the guy credit for doing us a favor, because although it is being sold with some misleading advertising, at least his book will contribute to general knowledge about the ancient truths of the world.
Or so he assumes, anyway, not having read the book. (I wish I could get a job reviewing books without reading them.)
Naturally, the Spearhead commentariat has many, erm, intriguing thoughts on the matter. So let’s look at some highlights — by which, as always, I mean lowlights. (And it goes without saying that all these comments got numerous upvotes from Spearhead readers.)
DCM offers some thoughts on female brains, and why the ladies need to be held in check and, I guess, never told that they’re pretty (even if you want to bone them):
Females’ minds are slightly but noticeably more primitive than men’s. Few of them will achieve mental and emotional maturity till they are old and infertile.
There’s little hope of getting most females to be rational, however smart they may be; they can only be somewhat repressed via ethics enforced by other females and the law, or men can be educated from childhood to see them as they are and not give in to the semi-instinctive idealization of females that’s part of the mating urge.
The latter is probably simpler and better.
Joeb offers a long and admittedly baffling manifesto, filled with parables and mixed metaphors and words used in, well, let’s just call them idiosyncratic ways. I’m trimmed out some of the really confusing bits, so what is left should be merely confusing.
Human sexuality is a red herring for the female to divert the real issue
Men cringe and cower to the mere mention of sex . Females use this red herring the same way the Government uses feminism .
As a shield .
If ,we all stop thinking with the most basic human drive and start thinking with are Mind’s , We need to put away anything remotely attributed to the visualization of sex during the other 23 hours a day . and push the real issue’s that stem from these basic drives in overdrive …
As long as females can divert the argument to sex they win . …
The red pill gives us a release from this Bondage .
I like to call Blue pill males ” Males still tied to the mask . We are all on a ship with rules and a limited space . As soon as you wake to the horror of your enslavement to the mask , Doesn’t mean you are not still enslaved . Shanghaiing refers to the practice of conscripting men as sailors by coercive techniques such as trickery, intimidation, or violence.
Does this sound familiar . …
Continue Taking the regiment of the red pill and you will start seeing Life boats , Islands and other men on the boat .
Its not a one time Pill its a regiment .
Being deprogrammed from Bondage is a painstaking task . All that’s needed to derail this process is The Captain to throw a few galley wags to the sailor and he calms down and works hard .
Don’t get sidetracked by sexual issue’s they have nothing , I say nothing to do with Men’s rights . The Government is the privateer and we are the conscripted Male .
Conscription have been used for Thousands of years , Hitler , pirates , the Chinese , Mongols , The British , To build army’s of slaves .
We still fall for that one every time And it never ends well .
Keyster is a tad more coherent, if equally backward:
The Red Pill is understanding female sexual power.
If you’re an unattractive woman or lesbian you might be a feminist because you have such limited sexual power – over men.
Women wanted “rights” and “liberation”, but insisted on keeping their sexual power, much to the dismay of strident feminists. The male needs to understand female sexual power. Most are entranced by it while not even knowing it. There are untold fables and metaphor for this, from The Fall to Odysseus to Cleopatra and Mark Anthony.
It’s a “backlash” against women wanting feminism AND sexual power. Their sexual power is diminishing every day. The more they behave like men, the less sexual power they have…the less power they have at all.
I confess I don’t really understand sven thomas’ deal at all. Oh, his argument I get. It’s his, well, vocabulary that puzzles me.
Ummmm
The Author is late to the party.
5,000 years ago we witnessed Eve being tempted by the serpents as she lusted after da lostasts cockasz.
About 2800 years ago we witnessed Helen deserting her family/husband and running off with a PUA and causing a war, whence tens of thousands perished.
The important thing for MEN to see here is why the Neoconsosnz banned the GREAT BOOKS FOR MEN–because they teach of the TRUE NATURE of women.
Women are only Virgins and nice and good when they are raised by STRICT, HEROIC MEN who reign over their fallen sexuality via their manly honor, as exalted in THE GREAT BOOKS FOR MEN.
zlozozozozzo
And a zlozozozozzo to you too, sven, whatever that is!
dsfrogs: But the alliteration is lost in the translation process, as is the reference to Mel Gibson.
What I want to see is the wife’s letter.
“Dear Abbey. A while back my husband started spending lots of extra time on the internet, and being really strange and secretive about it. At first I thought he might be having an affair, but then he started babbling on about alphas and hamsters and hypergamy, whatever that is, and now I think he might have joined some sort of cult because he seems to be evaluating all of his decisions based on some sort of strange list of rules. Whatever the cause, he’s being a real asshole lately, and now he’s started talking shit about my family too. Should I leave him?”
@Radical Parrot,
I shouldn’t be starting a conversation when I’m about to go to bed, but this is really interesting:
“I toyed with the idea of heaven and hell not being “eternal joy” and “eternal punishment” per se, but a “locked in the moment” type of deal.”
That’s what it’s like for me crossing the veil of a night. If boredom and ennui don’t exist, the fear of time, or an expanded idea of time, sort of dries up. I can think “I wonder what we did last night?” (the memories don’t come spontaneously) and have a very earthly sense of “Oh, is it just more of the same?” – but when those very simple memories come through, the in the moment pleasure and lack of apprehension or anxiety of any sort comes with them. Who’d think it’s a real pleasure to experience, let alone remember, getting beaten at chess repeatedly, or the little breakfast routines, or trimming hedges, or repapering bedrooms? Yet that’s the sort of thing I recall most often, things I’ve never done or wanted to do, and there’s perfect pleasure in it.
Course it could just be the company over There. 😉
All I was saying was that the Spearhead commenters are a pretty weird bunch. I mean look at Joeb’s comment, I can’t even understand what he’s saying. You might disagree with AVfM’s tactics but at least they’re coherent.
What women want” is basically “what I want to believe that all women want.
Feminist entitlement is generally pretty predictable these days, is the thing.
@Kittehserf: Well, you know what they say: You go to Heaven to get the great weather, but you go to Hell to get the great company. Wait, maybe no one says that except me.
Memories certainly are interesting. Who was it that compared the memory to a little child walking along the beach: You never know which little rock she is going to pick up and add to the other treasures in her pocket.
I don’t know, inherently, it’s a very emotional thing. Things seem *right*, nothing more, nothing less. Maybe, if you were enlightened enough, even painful things, like the death of a beloved uncle, could show in a “that’s how it happened, and there’s no inherent evil in that” kind of way. Well, I’m certainly not enlightened enough yet to view many events in my life through that filter. Besides, I’m not sure if I understood your point correctly, since I’m drunk. Am I drunk too often now? Hey, it’s my first day off after a difficult week, I’m allowed to be a tad drunk. What? I’m not getting defensive, it’s YOU who’s getting defensive!
Interestingly, I have once experienced “the zone”, or whatever the martial arts experts like to call it, back when I played a lot of tennis: time seemed to slow down, it seemed I had all the time in the word to contemplate my next move, and I was, in essence, one with the moment. There was only me, the racquet (is that how you spell it?), and the ball – all were essentially an extension of me. My opponent was just a natural force that followed my lead and whose lead I followed. While I had all the time to think, I did not, I just went with the flow. Everything seemed so natural, so “right”. It’s a state I long to return to, especially since in regular life, I’m just a big-ass worrywart party-pooping poopyhead.
OT: Can anyone recall which thread Tom Martin has been posting his little updates in? I seem to remember him posting a comment a few months back about his new documentary projects… and other assorted wankery.
Hey David. Can you please write your next Blog about this: http://jezebel.com/australian-pm-described-on-menu-as-small-breasts-huge-512794598
“Social movements have a good core, and then the fringe are the “bad” ones. ”
I think I see what you’re driving at but I don’t think it’s literally true. I’ve been involved in antiwar activism my whole life and one of the key problems is that the people who form the core of many, many antiwar groups tend to be, not “bad” per se but certainly people who have a lot of delusions and tendencies that aren’t conducive to getting anything done.
That’s mainly; I think, for practical reasons – stable, productive people tend to have more responsibilities than unstable, unproductive people and activism is very time-consuming. So if you have an antiwar email list 80% of the posts are from people whose posts don’t make any sense, make assertions that are based on prejudice and lacking evidence, etc. Not too unlike an MRA blog comment section in that regard. BTW I was probably one of the unstable, unproductive people at the time.
To me the difference between MRA’s and a “real” social movement is that they don’t actually do anything. There’s no wheat, only chaff. What we accomplished (or didn’t, not like we stopped any wars) in DC and New York in the early 2000’s was not about strongly-worded emails but street protests and coordinated mass actions; actual ACTIVE activism, which is a lot of boring work mostly involving filing paperwork and making sure there are enough trash cans, etc. MRA’s seem to have no stomach for that sort of thing.
It’s also possible that despite Internet appearances there just aren’t that many of these guys. That happened to me once with another “social movement” I won’t name – it fizzled when we held what we expected to be a huge event and about six people showed up. Just because you imagine your movement is speaking for the silent majority doesn’t make it so.
Currently, in France, there have been quite a few angry divorced fathers (whom I don’t know if they are connected to MRAs, but they sound the same).
There modus operandi seems to be:
– get on tall thingy (like a crane or a church)
– wait for journalists to ask what’s going on
– complain that men are treated unfairly *
– get down from the tall thingy, (probably because at some point you want a bathroom)
*I’m still not sure what they’re complaining about, and what they want to be changed.
– Social vision of dads ? (that would be a fail, they mostly look silly by doing that)
– Changing laws ?
– Fighting bias in courts ?
– Fighting mothers who don’t obey the court decisions?
But each time it happens I can’t help to think: if this guys haven’t seen there kids** maybe a judge thought that was the best for the kid for a good reason.
**unless it’s the 4th option, in which case you should be fighting in a court, instead of sulking in front of journalists
@Yellaine:
Well, on the assumption (probably wrong) that these guys actually want to accomplish something other than just venting unproductive anger, the main recommendation I’d make is that they stop doing these one-man protests. One person alone can’t accomplish much of anything no matter how just the cause. You see these guys comparing themselves to Rosa Parks from time to time which is sad not only because that’s pathetic and dumb on its face but also because the idea that Rosa Parks was just this single person (whose feet hurt, as the story goes) is completely wrong. The Rosa Parks bus protest was the culmination of years of hard work and organizing.
The worst thing about these guys (and it’s a long list) is that to whatever degree there are real problems with the way family court systems treat men, MRA’s make it difficult to address these problems because anyone bringing them up will get lumped in with these violent yahoos.
Take that derivative, baby! Ooh yeah, you like that, don’t you, you dirty little tangent?
becausescience:
I’ve been referring to the MRM as a cargo-cult social justice movement for a bit, now. Same general idea–they think that if they just ape the actual SJMs, they’ll somehow get the same results. So they use the words (without understanding their meaning) and they take some small actions (without understanding the proper context for those actions) and they adopt a bunch of superficial similarities without any substantial elements underneath, then sit around looking confused because no one’s air-dropped a new Jeep on their lawn.
Pro for the zombie analogy: You get the fun dig about having their brains eaten. Common pop-cultural touchstone means that more people will ‘get’ the comparison at the outset.
Downside: Makes them look ‘scary’, which is a bit of an ego-stroke for them.
Pro for the cargo cult: Makes them look silly. Also, as it’s based on a real historical phenomenon, it’s easier to make the comparison stick.
Con: Less well-known, as time goes on, meaning you may have to explain the background.
@Falconer:
Probably NSFW:
http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2934#comic
Pharyngula posted a call for help for his video series from Tom Martin:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/06/13/television-science/
Drew Nighlok:
You did more than merely claim that the Spearhead was weird and outside the mainstream. You also suggested that our host ignores ‘mainstream’ sites like AVfM in order to paint the Spearhead as the primary face of the MRM.* This is, of course, a blatant lie. In fact, at times, David has posted so much about AVfM that he’s been accused of being obsessed with it. (The same has happened with several other MRM sites, actually.)
So we’ve now established that you are:
1: An ignorant asshat (speaking as if you know what David’s site contains when you don’t, even though such information is quite easily accessible);
2: A lying asshat (saying something you know to be untrue without any regard for the fact that the rest of us will know it for the lie that it is), or;
3: Both.
Regardless of which option comes up, curiously, you still end up being an asshat. So why should we give a flying ratfuck what you have to say, again?
*: Open to the floor–how badly do you have to suck that you need your own post explained back at you?
Their “coherence” is irrelevant because they’re awful people anyway.
Asking for equal treatment =/= entitlement
RE: Howard Bannister
That tumblr article has been debunked many times over. The poor woman has specifically requested that asshole soapboxers stop using her experience to push their agenda.
Re: Drew Nightlok
Feminist entitlement is generally pretty predictable these days, is the thing.
Hey, feminists got me my right to vote, divorce, birth control, and own property. If that’s entitlement, I can’t see that as a bad thing.
As for the dudes in OP quoting the Bible and the Iliad, they obviously skipped OTHER women in ancient literature. You know, like Judith, who saved her people by decapitating a general. The priestess in Gilgamesh who civilized Enkidu with sex. The Gorgon (who apparently was a protector of women in other stories). Ruth and Naomi, who endured hardship through love and devotion.
C’mon guys, I’m not even a good study of ancient work. Someone throw some Egyptian, Chinese, African myth in!
Ah. Day late, dollar short. Story of my life.
RE: Howard
It’s okay. Tumblr can be an everlasting circle jerk, and the nature of it allows myths to keep getting spread without the debunking. These days, I just don’t trust anything I see on it without independent collaboration or a debunking.
So Seth kills and dismembers Osiris, right? Isis tracks down all his bits and puts him back together, except she can’t find his penis (probably eaten by something) so she makes him a wooden one. And then she brings him back to life, and has sex with him, and conceives Horus.
When the peoples of Egypt stopped listening to the Word of Horus, he got angry, and convinced Hathor and Sekhmet to merge, descend to the Nile, and start killin’ dudes left, right and center. Well, it worked a little too well, and Horus got worried that there’d be no humans left, so he tried to stop Hathor-Sekhmet, but they/she wouldn’t listen, so he filled the Nile’s waters with beer, and when the rampaging goddesses grew thirsty and drank their fill from the river, they fell asleep and when they woke up they weren’t angry anymore. Hooray!
Ready for some nonfiction? Hatshepsut was regent for her stepson Thutmose III after Thutmose II died. And then she decided she wasn’t gonna be no regent. So she started wearing the official regalia of pharaoh (which included a false beard — but every male pharaoh wore a false beard, too) and adopted new official names as male pharaohs did.
And then everyone’s boner was sad.And when she died, she was entombed in the Valley of the Kings and at some point Thutmose III and Amenhotep undertook to erase her name from monuments, like the enemies of Akhenaten would 120 years later.What, the VJ-Day kiss tumblr post?
@Falconer: this
(which is to say, this)
Okay, thanks! I was confuse.
RE: Falconer
I am ashamed I forgot Hatshepsut. Cleopatra XIII is also a fascinating historical figure; from what I can tell, her reputation as a sluttyslutslut isn’t really historically supported, and she was in a pretty unenviable position.
Also yeah, the VJ kiss post. Unfortunately, tumblr being what it is, I can’t find any of the debunkings I saw previously, but from what I recall, pretty much the woman came back, said, “Look, guys, you know what, I now say it’s consensual. Now stop dragging up all my old history and turning it into your personal wankfest.”