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.
I have two mental disorders, namely autism and (hopefully only a brief spell of) clinical depression. I do think it affects my ability to act (not think!) rationally, so I wouldn’t recommend for people to seek to date me honestly.
I’m a bit cynical about these matters, but I’m always cautious around people with self-professed flaws. (including myself I guess) I was put in touch with a guy at university who had been dealing with similar issues as me and even though I’d like to play some positive part in his life I’m worried it will backfire. He is just such a depressive person to be around.
If someone were to tell me they had been diagnosed with a narcissistic or an anti-social personality disorder I wouldn’t want to associate myself with them no matter how difficult their struggles or how noble their attempts at getting some semblance of a normal life or whatever. I comfort myself by saying that autism is different, but it can still make me a difficult person and I don’t really blame others for sometimes just not bothering.
Maybe a bit off-topic:
with regards to ableist language, I find it really too difficult to change my vocabulary since I found that in disapproving of something I can barely go two sentences without resorting to words like dumb and stupid and to me it’s generally not worth the effort to change it.
I thought it would be worthwhile to have some precision in language.
lacking wisdom = foolish
lacking common sense = stupid
lacking intelligence = dumb
being incapable of learning = a dunce
being easy to take advantage of = a dolt
…and so on.
Those words can be dismissive, but I don’t think they are problematic per se as they are words with specific meanings. I would say that only idiot, moron and imbecile are borderline, for their historical associations but even then a lot of time has passed since those classifications were relevant and the words have passed into regular vernicular since then.
And well, if you use slang like ‘lame’ then who are you really victimizing? The physically handicapped person who is reminded that being physically handicapped is something negative? God forbid. (I think they might already know.)
A word like ‘retard’ in this case is clearly different since mentally handicapped have historically suffered a lot more abuse and also can’t defend themselves.
Maybe another example: my teacher for computer science sometimes talks about ‘autistic functions’ which don’t respond to input and I didn’t like him using that terminology, but I think that since his use was purely descriptive it can be justifiable. I wish he wouldn’t use it while I was present in the room, since for me it’s a painful subject, but otherwise I wouldn’t mind. I wouldn’t use ‘the name of the lord in vain’ if I was talking to a Christian either, but otherwise I don’t change my vocabulary.
So I don’t think a lot of words that are called ableist are victimizing at all, so I don’t feel too bad using them.
By which I mean, yourself! Oh, wait, forgot that it was a PUA writing this stuff so double standards are part of the starter pack.
Lysol wasn’t invented as a douche, but as a disinfectant during a cholera outbreak.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysol
Wait, how is this different from how they advocate treating women who aren’t mentally ill?
Oh dear! Theses PUAs really are fucked up. I often wonder if it’s possible to act horrible and manipulate people and feel true happiness and peace at the same time. I sort of doubt it.
Strange that this should be my first comment here.
My mother had a douchebag. It was like a rubber balloon with a hollow stick at the end. You sucked water into the balloon, inserted the nozzle into your vagina, and washed anything out you didn’t want….sperm, vaginal secretions, what have you.
My brother and I used it as a bath toy.
When people started using the term douchebag and the shorter douche as slurs I knew it was supposed to be bad because it was something that went into a vagina. This is why I never use those terms as slurs.
It was the poor person’s birth control, that didn’t work, and was dangerous. http://www.motherjones.com/slideshows/2012/02/when-women-used-lysol-birth-control/lysol-douche-please-dave
Seems to me that the discrepancy in the numbers is, as in many other cases, to do with reporting. There is a considerable social stigma in admitting to having a mental illness. As women are seen as being physically and psychologically weaker than men to begin with they have less to lose by asking for help, therefore there appear to be more women suffering from mental illnesses than men. Men are not supposed to be as vulnerable to weakness of any sort so they are more likely to hide their condition and not seek help. This would explain why the suicide rate for men is higher than it is for women. Women ask for help when they recognize they have a problem, while men are more likely to either ignore it or “soldier on” until the problem becomes unmanageable. What we need to do us get rid of the stigma so that men feel able to seek help early, rather than suffering, sometimes for their whole life, from a treatable illness (Dad, I’m looking at you here *Looks owlishly over glasses at her father*).
I personally like douche or douchebag as an insult, because douching is irritating and bad for women. Seems to sum up most of the people the term is applied to.
So basicly, treat mentally ill women the same way you treat other women, except when they reject you it isn’t your fault because they are not-entirely-alright and so have illogical criteria, rather than being programmed by nature to have illogical criteria…I see…
I promised citations, and we all know I deliver on those promises! Yeah, that was hours ago, but still, it’s on topic, so without further ado!
http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/the-numbers-count-mental-disorders-in-america/index.shtml
Major depression (6.7%) and dysthymic disorder (1.5%) account for 8.2% of that 17% / 23%. Anxiety disorders, excluding PTSD (I’ll explain why in a second), account for another 14.6%.
I’m excluding PTSD because a huge percentage of cases among women are because of sexual trauma, which would make their manipulation potentially more effective.
*pulls out DSM*…*rearranges half of bedroom, pulls out DSM* >.<
Gender splits!
Major depression — “Studies indicate that depressive episodes occur twice as frequently in women as in men.” — works out to about 2.23% of men and 4.46% of women. (This isn’t the stats on major depressive disorder because *drum roll* per the DSM they range from 5%-25% for women and 2%-12% for men, depending on the study)
Dysthymic disorder is the same split so 0.5% for men and 1% for women.
So non-bipolar depression adds to about 2.73% of men and 5.46% of women.
I’ll spare you the details on anxiety disorders, in part because it’s a very long list, and summarize:
Excluding PTSD the gender split works out to…
Men 6.2%
Women 7.4%
Add depression to it…
Men 8.93%
Women 12.86%
Subtract that from the original percentages and we’ll have the percent of men and percent of women with a mental disorder that is neither non-PTSD anxiety nor non-bipolar depression…
Men 16.8% – 8.93% = 7.87%
Women 23% – 12.86% = 10.14%
And now for shits and giggles, what percentage of men have a mental disorder besides those one? And women?
Men 47.8%
Women 44%
So for slightly more than half of people with a mental disorder it’s anxiety or depression.
And for a good sized chunk of the rest, it’s ADHD or avoidant personality disorder, which is a bit like depression on steroids (yeah, I know it isn’t really but bear with me here) — which means all the begging and shit would be just as “effective”. So yeah, more than half the women they want to manipulate this way are extra susceptible to it and they’re extra douchey as a result.
——
One huge issue here — “Anxiety disorders frequently co-occur with depressive disorders or substance abuse.” But considering the rates for major depression, I’m not too worried that the overall point — that most people with mental disorders are depressed or anxious — stands.
Also, I’m using the low end of the ranges of the rates, because like I said, it’s possible that a full quarter of women are depressed at any point in time, which would be higher than the rate in the OP. and obvious thing is obvious, there are women with other mental disorders.
That second question about whether men seek treatment less? Yes.
——
This concludes today’s statistics, assuming no trolls say anything stupid.
Oh and thank you, I needed to get under there for fishie stuff so needed the DSM worked nicely.
I was out shopping and I realized how weird something I wrote here earlier might have sounded. I wrote that my brother and I used my mother’s douchebag as a bath toy.
This was unsanctioned usage! When she found out she was embarrassed and locked the thing up. It was as clean as could be, too.
Also, we had no idea what it was. For us (3 and 5 years old) it was just a cool balloon toy. We used it to shower each other’s head. My mother came in and turned red and confiscated it.
@Andrew Johnston, thanks for that breakdown of what counts as mental illnesses. It almost gets to the point where I think anyone who’s not happy 24/7 is counted as having something wrong with them. /hyperbole
On irrationality – I’m getting to hate the whole “you’re irrational!” line, not because of cases like dirtbag PUAs, but because it seems to get used to mean anyone who doesn’t share the speaker’s beliefs (and of course the speaker won’t think they’re beliefs but facts). Or it might be just one belief – like David’s example of a fear of Donald Trump’s hair (though like him, I think that’s totes rational. That hair is an alien). Half the time it’s the old misogynist thing of emotion = female, cool Logic and Rationality = male, and so of course showing any feeling at all is weak and female and laughable and totally excludes the Holy Rationality, while anything at all a dude says is automatically purest reason and never has anything to do with emotion, amirite?
On slurs generally – I agree with Dvarg, I think it’s a doomed enterprise. I’m not bothered by historically based ones that have lost the specific reference, like idiot and related terms.
It just struck me that MRAs and PUAs could fall under the obsolete term of monomania, given their obsession with getting their dicks wet.
@DaintyDougal – and here’s another confusing kitty avatar! But you know it’s kitties’ job to confuse, so be glad you’re contributing to their success.
Also, have we delurkers in this thread? I see some names I don’t recognise. If so, hi, and help yourselves to a Welcome Package!
Anyone who doesn’t want your PUA-blog-reading peen is clearly acting irrationally! Rationality is defined here by wanting your PUA-blog-reading peen.
Poor phrasing, or stealth-neg?
Mind you, “My peen reads blogs” would at least be an interesting pick-up line.
That really is the subtext, innit. We have developed this dysfunctional system for picking up women and if it doesn’t work for you not to worry it isn’t you it’s them?
My reply: “My vulva writes dirty limericks.”
“I wouldn’t use ‘the name of the lord in vain’ if I was talking to a Christian either, but otherwise I don’t change my vocabulary.”
Pfft. As pecunium will surely attest, who I’m talking to never stops me.
On topic — yes, there’s a sexist bias in psych diagnoses. Go google “borderline personality disorder sexism” (and check out the scholar results)
The most ridiculous part of the “women are irrational” stance they have is that attraction and love by it’s nature is irrational. If everyone chose their partners completely rationally then the result would be the hypergamy that they worry about so much.
They need a class is psychology. They know NOTHING.
Fixed it for ya!