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 shall forward my invoice for keyboard-cleaning services as soon as I’ve got my keyboard cleaned.
Mom had an Oster Stim-U-Lax massager which we used for back-rubs. Years later, I was watching a documentary on sex toys, and when the section on vibrators came up. One of the few times I’ve actually done a spit take in real life.
AK: That’s the way I heard it too: Marketed by the patriarchy as essential, but generally worthless and often harmful. It helps that it’s almost exclusively used in the mainstream to describe frat-boy assholes.
It just goes to show how ableism can completely distort one’s understanding of mental illness. I mean, seriously, they’re not even wrong.
jjbeans: And what are the causes of the slight increase in women suffering from mental illness?
It could be that society ascribes certain behaviors (when performed by women) to be dysfunctional, when they don’t if men do them.
auggzillary: Daintydougal, Lysol was first invented for douching.
No. Lysol was made to sterilise inanimate things; later they made a separate product for flesh: to precent physicians from using weak solutions of it on open wounds, etc. The adverts don’t make that clear
Re language: I’m torn on some words, because I see usuages which are becoming (or are) divorced from the original meanings, which makes them usable in some contexts (and good to use in those contexts, that the divorce may be completed). I can also see the arguments against that (in that the divorce isn’t complete and so it may work the other way, and put the offensive context into places it wasn’t previously).
I have to go to sleep now or my girlfriend will confiscate my phone so I can’t cite the paper, I could find it tomorrow if any body wants it. I read an article that looked at the different rates of depression and alcoholism in men and women in different cultures. It found that in cultures where drinking is illegal or frowned upon that women and men suffer from depression at around an equal rate.
Hey wanna know the secret behind getting laid whenever you want to? Find the drunkest girl with the lowest self-esteem. Now give me money you terrible goddam human being. Subscribe to my newsletter today and get a FREE 20 pound bottle of cyanide – killing yourself has NEVER been so easy!
Silly question: has anyone ever been hit on by a PUA? Were they greasy looking, really skinny, and did they also wear a fedora/sunglasses? Were they unintentionally hilarious? Or were they just really rapey?
It just struck me that “That hat’s wasted on you” would be something to say to a fedora-wearing PUA. Fedoras lovely, PUAs irredeemably gross.
@j
Eh, you can’t judge by appearances too much. A friend of mine has an odd on-off thing with a real PUA type (interested in “NLP”, all the rest of it) and he’s good-looking and distinctive (bald head with eyeliner, usually), and comes across as nice enough (presumably because he can tell when he’ll get called on his shit or not), but is incredibly creepy. Big on cataloging who he’s had sex with and has had the on-off thing with a woman who has only just been out of high school this year for a few years despite being in his 40’s.
“Idiot,” on the other hand, is a word historically rooted in oppressive practices and stigmas which continue to this day
well, “historically rooted” works against you there, as the original meaning of “idiot” was “person who did not vote” (uninvolved in society), worked its way into meaning “lacking skill” and from there to “ignorant”. Its very brief use as a technical term for someone specifically disabled is a modern aberration that was hardly noticed in the roughly 2,500 year history of the word.
As for these WATBs, their relationship with reality is so hostile that I suspect that they are confused by velcro.
I should also add that geek culture being fairly sexist does not mean all geeks approve of it that way – some greasy skinny friends of mine with clothing choices that tend towards the geeky have been very tuned-in feminist types. I mean, society in general is sexist, but that doesn’t mean that everyone’s cool with it.
I don’t know what WATBs stands for, but I love “confused by velcro”!
This is more infuriating to me as a person suffering with chronic mental illness than as a woman actually. Inviting people to maltreat the mentally ill of ANY gender is not welcomed by us. And far too much of it goes on.
But whetevs, anyone who would believe this advice is probably too unimaginative to handle the legendary “crazy sex” anyway.
Men tend to be more frequently diagnosed with NPD and ASPD and women with BPD. From what I saw working in an acute care clinic men and women diagnosed with depression, psychosis NOS, or substance dependence were usually equal in number. However, I never saw a woman who had received a diagnosis of NPD or ASPD and only one man diagnosed with BPD.
I ate something with gluten in it last Friday, and I got over the physical effects by Sunday, but the depression and anxiety wore on for most of a week. I’d say it’s only today (Thursday) that my emotions have stabilized into a lovely, serene apathy. So yeah, I’m completely BOGGLED at how significantly food impacts my mental and emotional health.
The thing about being depressed and anxious is not that I’m irrational when I’m in that state, but that I make bad decisions anyway, explicitly in order to punish myself for being such a worthless fuckbrain.
And let me tell you, when my internal conversations are abusive and demeaning to me, I have NO FUCKING TIME for external people trying the same shit. (My depression tends to be of the hostile variety.)
“And let me tell you, when my internal conversations are abusive and demeaning to me, I have NO FUCKING TIME for external people trying the same shit. (My depression tends to be of the hostile variety.)”
That’s pretty much what my disappearing act was about.
On topic…yeah I just fucking can’t deal with this one as anything but cold clinical statistics. It’s too personal. Too “you’d really specifically take advantage of me because I’m crazy and yet I’m considered extra nuts because I don’t trust people?!”
I was going to say that this is why I like fish, they don’t manipulate you, but that’d be bullshit, the puffers totally beg for food even when their little bellies are all stretched out (puffers get noticeably full, which is nice in a way, makes it easy to be sure they’re eating enough). But begging for food is a million times better than taking advantage of someone for sex. And doing it because of specific, already stigmatized things? Fuck off asshole.
No way that can I get a picture of this brain bleach, but my pea size puffers sleep on the bottom and will look at you like you’re a complete asshole for waking them if you shine a light in there. Yeah, they’re expressive enough that they manage at least “I hate you” and “I love you”, we’ll see what else the little cuties come up with once I’ve had them longer!
Further brain bleach — they nibble my fingernails. Which I’ve decided to encourage as they’re like rodents, they have to wear down their “teeth” (beaks) and my nails are certainly hard enough and I can’t see any harm in it as long as they’re clean and polish free. Also, Pea. Sized. Puffers. Nibbling. My. Nails. *swoons from cute overload*
Argenti, I googled “pea-sized puffers”. I have to say, I never would have thought that “cute” would be a descriptor for fish, but they really do have adorable little faces.
If like a fish pedicure, but for your hands! And more sanitary since yours are the only hands they’re nibbling on.
I’ve finally made manboobz. Interesting.
In any case, I’ll just say this and get out of here:
1. The main point of the article was not to celebrate the idea of men treating “treating women like shit”. The main point is in the last part of that paragraph:
“there is nothing a man can do about the female proclivity to welcome such behavior except adapt to it.”
In this case, “adapt to it” does not have to mean “treat these women as harshly as you can” and/or “use this to increase your notch count!”. It can also mean simply leaving them alone.
The point I was trying to convey was that men should not feel responsible for the decisions that women who have low self-esteem will make. They should simply accept them. They do not have to take advantage of these women in order to do this.
2. “So what’s the great advantage of dating a woman who’s mentally ill?”
I would actually contend that there is none.
3. “She’s not interested? Obviously she’s nuts!”
Obviously not. The whole concept of “self-improvement” harped on at ROK belies this notion. If we believed that we were all entitled to attractive women by virtue of merely being male, we wouldn’t bother telling men to work out, dress better, gain confidence, etc.
4. “Poor pickup artists! They don’t want to be abusive, manipulative, exploitative assholes and terrible people generally.”
Most of the young men who “adopt dysfunctional behaviors” that I mention in that article aren’t PUAs or anything close to that. They’re just dudes, and they don’t know how to handle the reality that so many of their female peers have low self-esteem and make decisions accordingly. I hoped to provide at least a partial answer by telling them that they should not feel responsible for the situation at hand and should merely learn to live with it.
How they do so is up to them, but I do not (as this article implies) suggest that they MUST do so by taking advantage of things in order to up the notch count and “capitalize” on the situation. They can choose to simply leave these women alone, as many of the readers at ROK (not all of whom desire sky-high partner counts) have chosen to do.
Anyway, there are my two cents. Make of them what you will.
@Argenti – “I was going to say that this is why I like fish, they don’t manipulate you, but that’d be bullshit,”
Well of course they do. They are the Fishinati after all.
You’re obviously going to have to get them a Do Not Disturb sign to put up. Turning lights on when they’re asleep, I mean really – and you KNOW living in a tank makes it really difficult for them to phone the SPCA.
Ha ha, Chris, your douchebag as a bath toy story is actually very funny.
When did douchebag/douche start being used to mean “horrible person” anyway? Seems like it’s fairly recent. I don’t really remember it from my youth.
I’have lived with a BDP and it is pure unadulterated hell. There is only one thing to do with those people : run, fast and far. Even a one night’s stand is playing with fire.
This ant-ableist discourse is basically abuse enabling.
I think people are just more open about mental illness and more likely to seek help than they were generations ago. I don’t think mental health related problems are increasing by any means, if anything people are probably more likely to recover if they have an issue. I know when my mother was child in the 50’s, there was no such thing as mental health issues. Women simply “coped” by drinking alcohol and taking pills until they had a breakdown and had to be institutionalized. Men simply drank until they had a heart attack or committed suicide. And then the family would hush it up so nobody ever knew. Only a fool would think those times were better. Feminism has increased women’s happiness, not made us all “crazy” (sorry to use that word, but I’m quoting PUAs). There is a misconception that seeking help to improve your life means you are “damaged” and beyond redemption, and that’s simply not true.
“This ant-ableist discourse is basically abuse enabling.”
What?