Leave it to the guys at Roosh V’s Return of Kings blog to find a bright side, of sorts, to a study reporting that one in five Americans suffered from some sort of mental illness in 2010, with more women (23%) amongst those affected than men (16.8%).
Since “at least a quarter of the women you run into at any given time are not going to be alright upstairs,” RoK contributor Athlone McGinn argues, and the percentage is likely to be much higher amongst younger women, you might as well use this fact to your advantage.
But first you need to accept the disadvantages. For one thing, you need to realize your powerful man-logic won’t work on these gals:
If you’re 18-25, you will in many cases be dealing with someone who is fundamentally incapable of being reliably rational.
Never mind that most mental illnesses don’t affect the ability to think rationally about most things. Someone with an intense phobia of Donald Trump’s hair, for example, is able to think rationally about everything except Donald Trump’s hair.
Maybe that’s a bad example. I’m not sure it’s entirely irrational to be afraid of Donald Trump’s hair.
And, like their sane counterparts, the crazy ladies may sometimes turn you down. But at least this time you don’t have to feel so bad about yourself.
You may think you’re a loser because you get shot down by these girls more than you’d like, but this isn’t always the case: you’re often dealing with not-entirely-alright girls with illogical criteria.
Oh, but McGinn assures us that “[t]his isn’t an excuse, mind you.” You still need to make sure your “game” is tight. Just don’t be too hard on yourself, because women (like the prices at Crazy Eddie’s electronics emporiums) are literally insane.
So what’s the great advantage of dating a woman who’s mentally ill? McGinn is a bit vague, probably deliberately, but essentially he suggests that men can keep “dysfunctional” women in line by treating them like shit:
Dysfunctional treatment is often welcomed by dysfunctional people, and many of those with mental issues fit that bill. Since we’ve already established that a very large number of young women fit into that category, you should not be surprised to see so many of them respond positively to dysfunctional behavior.
It is not uncommon for young men to adopt some of these dysfunctional behaviors, find increased sexual/romantic success with their female peers as a result, and then feel guilty about it all. Such guilt is understandable (they don’t like the fact that morally degraded versions of themselves are more appealing to girls in general than the men they actually prefer to be), but ultimately unnecessary—there is nothing a man can do about the female proclivity to welcome such behavior except adapt to it. It is the result of factors much bigger than him.
Poor pickup artists! They don’t want to be abusive, manipulative, exploitative assholes and terrible people generally. They’re driven to this awful behavior by forces beyond their control — like the fact that women are statistically somewhat more likely to suffer from mental illness than men.
Actually, that’s specified in the results. In their definition of “Any Mental Illness,” the category that gave that 17/23% figure:
So yes, most of these people were not impaired at all. The percentage of people with a mental illness serious enough to interfere with life was 5%, with a 3.4/6.5 gender split. Based on the higher rates among the unemployed and those under the poverty line, I suspect that the main culprit is depression. You think it’s possible that men are less likely to seek help for depression than women?
Oh yeah, the rate of mental illness was also higher among Caucasians that any other single race. Got an explanation for that in your bag of tricks, PUA community?
Human beings routinely make irrational decisions and hold irrational beliefs. That doesn’t mean all human beings are mentally ill.
The comments under that article are revolting.
Andy, point out some of McGinn’s “super charisma” would you, I’m not seeing it.
No.
What this basically is is someone, when faced with the statement: “1 out of 4 people you meet statistically have some kind of mental issue” chooses to reply with:
The response to “These people have a mental issue” is “Oh, hey! Sweet! They might accept more dysfunctional behavior from me”.
An at-risk group who might be, in some cases, more accepting of shitty behavior… is now a reason to engage in shitty behavior. You might feel bad if you do so, but hey, fuck it, you get laid. Your sense of self worth, your conscience, your conscious decisions to leverage emotional manipulate at people who might be inclined to more readily accept manipulation is a-okay… Because hey, chicks dig jerks.
This is no longer the lowest hanging fruit or the “taking the easy route”. It isn’t even someone saying “Be an asshole, because assholes get laid!”. This is seriously someone going “So long as people don’t respond negatively, being dysfunctional and a dick is fine! Bitches be crazy anyway, so it’s OKAY for you to adopt dysfunctional behaviors towards these people!”.
What kind of sense does that make?
Of course! Just like poor treatment is welcomed by poor people, and belittling treatment is welcomed by little people. That’s logic for you!
Isn’t sociopathy a mental (personality) disorder?
I guess that makes Roosh dudes part of the 16%.
(I’m not diagnosing them, just using their own bullshit criteria to evaluate people. The behaviour they claim to have is quite sociopathic.)
Regarding rationality: Firstly, there’s no consensus on exactly how one ought to behave or acquire beliefs in order to be rational, there’s lots of philosphical debate over that. But it’s safe to say that someone who’s in the middle of a psychosis or right now faces something zie’s got a phobia about, for instance, are gonna behave irrationally on most theories. However, there are also lots of instances where not mentally ill people think and/or behave irrationally on most or all accounts of rationality, as Sarahliz pointed out above. So it would be really weird to consider “irrational” ableist.
This is a bit of a sidenote, but I furthermore think that the project of creating a perfectly oppression-free language is doomed. I’m personally offended by people using “psychotic” as a slur, because I think people who do so usually have lots of prejudice regarding people who suffer from some kind of psychosis disorder (which I do). I personally don’t care when people use “crazy” or “insane” as slurs, because I feel that these words, in lots of everyday contexts, function more as general slurs and aren’t meant to convey that the person they’re used against is actually mentally ill – BUT I respect that lots of people DO feel offended by them, so I avoid them.
However, a friend of mine has tried to argue that “idiot” is ableist and ought not to be used, because once upon a time it was a medical term for people with down’s syndrome and the like. I’ve also seen people argue that “asshole” is homophobic, the ass is seen as a bad bodypart because anal sex is scary and it’s scary because gays do it… Idk, it seems like it’s possible to make this kind of argument about virtually any slur. But language would be poorer if it was utterly slurless, I think… so, somewhere one has to draw the line.
@Maude LL: You’re thinking of Anti-Social Personality Disorder. “Sociopathy” is a term of art.
I refuse to acknowledge this bullshit, but I want to comment on this before I run out the door —
“I suspect that the main culprit is depression. You think it’s possible that men are less likely to seek help for depression than women?”
Afaik, yes, and yes. I’ll try citing that when I get back.
OBVIOUSLY it is because the white male is THE MOST OPPRESSED GROUP EVER.
Re: irrational: usually I’d be happy with calling the MRM irrational because, y’know, a lot of the arguments are, but in this context, “17% of men are irrational” is referring to the percentage with some kind of mental illness in this study, which is equating the two things.
I don’t think “irrational” is ableist – apologies to Ashley, I misunderstood you.
And this is why we call the MRAs an abuser’s lobby.
The differences in rates of diagnosed mental health problems between men and women is likely exaggerated due to men being less likely to seek treatment (true in all medical specialties). Any actual disparity is due to higher rates of depression and eating disorders in young women. These are your “neurotic” not psychotic illnesses.
Heh. I’m coming out of a long-lasting major depressive episode. The men I have romantic/sexual relationships with have been *wonderful*. (Well, really, pretty much all of my friends and family have been wonderful. I am very lucky.) Guess who’s going to get laid like mad when my sex drive comes back?
My ex totally had an easier time abusing me because I was mentally ill. That he did makes him a terrible person.
God, it’s like saying “I know I shot him to death, Your Honour, but you see 1) I really wanted to kill him and 2) he was asleep at the time, so it was really easy for me to do. Much easier than if he had been awake. So you can’t really blame me.”
Sure, you can make arguments that nearly any word is offensive, but are many gay people complaining about the use of the word “asshole?” It seems… unlikely, to me, based both on personal experience and on my own judgement that the offered justification is incredibly flimsy. (The widespread disgust regarding anal sex is probably at least partly based in homophobia, but there’s a huge leap from that to “asshole” being a slur.)
“Idiot,” on the other hand, is a word historically rooted in oppressive practices and stigmas which continue to this day, even though the word itself has been more or less divorced from all that. Does that make it terrible to use? Probably not. It does make me uncomfortable to think about how much I rely on historically awful ideas in my vocabulary, though, so I personally try to cull stuff like “idiot.” Plus, avoiding even the chance of upsetting or triggering someone seems worthwhile, to me.
Basically, yeah, you need to draw a line, but why should we assume that line is arbitrary or difficult to draw?
Ugh. Just UGH. This is awful.
Really, the difference between men and women in mental health is very small. Men don’t get treated for their depression, OCD, and other more minor mental illnesses (minor in terms of you can go through life with them and be miserable, but not dangerous) and women are over diagnosed with things like borderline personality disorder and bipolar because in some communities being a woman who has her own thoughts and desires is pathological.
I actually couldn’t read most of that. Sometimes in the comments someone will say ‘I couldn’t even read that’ and I’m like, why are you commenting then? Well, my eyes have been opened. When you know whats coming, when you know very well that certain people prey on the weak. I just can’t bare to read it. I can’t. It’s eviscerating my soul. (Dramatic much)
In nicer news, my other half has got a job working for crisis at christmas, and its an even better job than the one he actually applied for! Woo, so proud!
Also also, there seems to be about 3 people with actual kitty pictures as their avatars. This is very confusing and disconcerting to a bear of little brains such as my self. Originally it was just kittehs but now there are others and I obviously don’t concentrate enough and its getting me in a muddle.
Also, boop.
No, I don’t think that line is totally arbitrary. The line goes so as not to offend people… I think “asshole”, as you said, isn’t really offensive to anyone (and the person who was making that argument was not a gay man, so it seemed a bit academic). “Idiot” though feels like something of a borderline case, since I actually know this one person who thought it was offensive (he made an IQ test once and had a pretty low score, and he’s a bit ashamed of that, plus the historical connotations) – but I’ve actually never seen anyone else who reacts to “idiot”. So I end up not saying “idiot” around him, although I use it otherwise, mostly because I don’t know what else to say in certain situations. I just lack a good replacement word I guess.
Btw, I recently just learned that the English word “douche” means some kind of vagina-washing device. I just knew it as a slur.
Dvärghundspossen,
I hate the word ‘douche’ but love idiotic things like south park. It’s very annoying!
I think on this here blog there have been posts about (oldish) horrific adverts aimed at ladies on how to ensure your lady bits smell of strawberries if not no man will ever want you. Though I think it is more of an American thing, it’s certainly not something I’ve ever come across in UK.
Also ‘some kind of vagina-washing device’ is fantastic.
Dainty, I’ve never in my 36-year-old life come across some special vagina-washing device either. Like, you’re in the shower or the bath, and you just wash your entire body, right? You don’t have special devices for particular body parts!
But maybe it’s some weird thing from America’s past…
I’ve never heard of lysol (outside of douches) though. Ignorant dougal.
Although: “In 1911, poisoning by drinking lysol was the most common means of suicide in Australia.” makes it sound positively delightful!
Oh good lord:
“Joseph De Lee, a prominent American obstetrician who held great sway over American obstetric practice through his writings, encouraged the use of Lysol during labor. He writes in 1938, “…[J]ust before introducing the hand, the vagina is liberally flushed with 1 per cent lysol solution squeezed from pledgets of cotton, the idea being to reduce the amount of infectious matter unavoidably carried into the puerperal wounds and up into the uterus by the manipulations.”
auggziliary,
Ah, a UK equivalent is dettol…but less poisonous.