Mark Minter, a bitter, angry, divorced man in his late fifties, made a name for himself over the last year or so in the tiny world of the misogynist manosphere as that subculture’s most vociferous opponent of marriage.
In a series of little manifestos, deposited as comments on various manosphere blogs, Minter excoriated the institution he thought made a “slave” of men. “Get it through your head,” he wrote in one,
Men are from mars; women are FUCKING IDIOTS.
Never marry. … Duh. Game. Duh. Pump them, dump them, next them. Duh. THAT IS THE ONLY WAY TO WIN. Duh!!!!!
That was the old Mark Minter. Then, last week, word got out that Minty was getting married. To a single mother (oh no!) over the age of thirty (eek!) that he’s apparently never even met in person (well, actually that does sound a bit worrisome).
If this isn’t all some elaborate work of performance art, it may well be turn out to be the most entertaining drama I’ve seen since I started following the manosphere three years ago.
It was Minty’s future wife, a mysterious manosphere-friendly woman known only as Kate, who first broke the news, in a comment on Heartiste’s “game” blog, where she is something of a regular fixture. Heartiste posted about the strange engagement shortly afterwards, wondering if it had been his blog that had “brought these two lovebirds together into a promise of holy matrimony.”
Needless to say, some of Minty’s fans — now ex-fans — reacted as if he had just pooped in the punch bowl.
“Oh crap, the one man wh ostands agianst marraige……destroyed by the unmerciful claws of marraige,” wrote one commenter, evidently too overwhelmed by emotion to type properly. “Farewell Mark, you will be missed. The medusa kate has you now.”
“Speechless,” wrote another. “This is like having Jesus spit in your face while saying ‘FUCK YOU BROTHER!’”
Feeling a tad defensive, Minty rushed to defend himself, and his future wife. In a comment on Chateau Heartiste, he explained
I suppose I have to eat crow. So why the change of heart?
First, I would say I saw some photos that the rest of you have not.
He’s seen some photos? Am I right to think that the only possible interpretation of this is that the two haven’t actually met in person yet?
Second, she is Red Pill and has actually been in this community longer than I have. You cannot imagine what it is like to have conversations with a woman and say “Remember the CH essay on ….” and have a girl say “Yeah, He was right on with that one.”
And I think the odds of men finding someone that fits the first statement AND the second are pretty remote. I believe I nailed down one of the 2 or 3 that might exist in the world that have photos that can make a fellow sit up and pay attention, and then having the intellect and the preparation to keep that attention.
After some proud blabbing about Kate’s apparently quite traditional values, Minty brags about what an alpha dog he is for scoring her:
To me, this engagement is a validation of Game.
I practiced what I learned here. I am 58 year old man. None of you know what that truly entails until you get to that point in your life. Kate is an attractive 34 year old woman, with options galore if she chose to take them.
And in following what I learned here, following the suggestions, the psychology, the mandates, I have an attractive woman 24 years younger than me that is ready to commit to me.
Top that motherfuckers.
As for the medusa Kate, he defended her honor in another comment,
When this Facebook announcement thing happened and members of Kate’s family learned of it, my name got Googled and the writing I have done came to the attention of her family. And some of it was quite provocative and written by me to be intentionally provocative.
And her family came straight at her.
They set up something like an interdiction where she was confronted by not only her family, but also by a PhD in Psychology …
The family compelled her to attend this session with them and this counselor.
They could not believe that a rational woman would wish to marry a known sexist and misogynist.
So she went into that meeting alone, and she stood her ground, she defended our ideas of the Manosphere, she stood up for me, my right to write what I have written, and she won the day. …
She deserves your respect and she has earned it.
Not everyone in the manosphere is convinced that she — or Minty — deserve this respect any more.
In a post yesterday, PUA skeezball Roosh V denounced Minty as a “phony” and warned him that he would no longer be tolerated in Roosh’s corner of the manosphere:
He is like the conservative politician who espouses family values while diddling young boys on the side.
What? What kind of a world do you live in where a man who announces his plans to get married is in some ways equivalent to a child rapist?
He is the PUA who sells products on how to get laid but can’t even approach a single woman, someone who creates a false character to gain either money or—in this case—praise, at the expense of everyone’s trust.
For that reason, he has lost all respect from me. If he were to knock on my door, starving, begging for food and drink, I would only place the sustenance on my front step. He would not be permitted to enter my home so that the foul odor of hypocrisy that now trails him does not infect my place of sleep.
I hope his name will forever be synonymous with a man who doesn’t live by his own code. He deserves to be permanently exiled from the manosphere community. No more praise or compliments should be directed his way.
Contributing to Roosh’s disillusionment with Minty: his discovery of comments left here on Man Boobz by Minty’s ex-wife Suzanne Minter, which depict Minty as something less than the swashbuckling figure so many in the manosphere took him to be. With somethig less than fondness, she described him as
an absolutly insane person. … we have been divorced for ten years, dont you think it is time to get over it? …
[He] has 2 children, including a 19 yr old daugther. He has never paid a dollar of child support in his life, so all of the crap he spews is crap. He has not worked in 5 years because no one will hire him. Amazingly, he has been fired from EVERY job he ever had. He lives with his sister because without her support he would be homeless.
This is the man that people are calling “great” – he is a bitter ass.
In a comment on a site called FOKMCAST, which had posted something supportive of Minty, Suzanne elaborated further:
Mark Minter is a fraud. … Mark is the biggest victim I have ever known. You say his children didn’t appreciate him? What the hell did he do for them? They were 7 and 3 when we finally divorced. He never saw them because he moved out of state and then emptied out is 401k after getting fired for the 6th time , to go to South America to have relationships with women he met on the Internet. (As a result of that brilliant financial decision he owes the IRS about 35k in back taxes and penalties and fees)
You people act like Mark is the greatest thing ever. He is a fraud and a liar. 99% of what he has written on the web is fabricated. Don’t you people have real lives that involve human interaction or do you only have the social abilities to exist in cyber space? I really would have thought that one or 2 of you might have been smart enough to do some fact checking before you took Mark as your messiah.
His engagement is a sham. Don’t you find it odd that he is marrying someone he has only seen pictures of? Well, I take that back, he did marry a columbian woman he met on the Internet which she shortly after had annulled. …
Moral of the story: mark is a liar and a fraud and they way you people idolize him his a sad testament to the modern Internet. I am a 5’7 135 lb blonde who earned 200k last year. I raised my children on my own and was single for almost 10 years before marrying someone 8 yrs younger than me. I am clearly the slob, pig, bitch, moron, bloodsucker here.
Have a great Sunday.
After quoting Suzanne Minter’s comments here, Roosh sadly added “I don’t know what to believe right now, but our manosphere “innocence” has been violated.” In a followup comment, as he evidently began to take in the implications of all this, he wrote:
Our enemies will use this against us for a long time. Minter has done serious damage. I accept blame since I helped spread his writing. My troll radar seemed to have failed me this time.
Dude, speaking as one of your enemies, we figured out that Mark Minter was full of shit the minute we first ran across him. Why do you think I was writing about him with such obvious relish months ago, back when he was still your hero? When Suzanne Minter came by to tell us that he was (to borrow your own description of him) “literally … a basement dweller troll,” we didn’t even blink, and I didn’t even bother to write a post about it. We already take for granted that the gurus and would be gurus of the manosphere are a bunch of liars and frauds. The fact that the manosphere is full of gullible idiots is not news to us.
In the comments to Roosh’s post, some commenters wondered if he was some sort of “feminist psyop,” sent to disrupt the manosphere. “Until I see the photo of them in wedded matrimony,” wrote taterearl.
I’ll just take this as a pleasant fairy tale for us to bark about. For all we know they could be actually be double agents from Jezebel posing as people with the elaborate plot of trying to take down the place.
Well, it’s pretty clearly not that, but whatever it is, I suspect it will be providing us all with some lovely drama for some time to come. Will the now happy-couple make it to the altar before the old marriage-hating Minty rears his ugly head once more? Will Roosh and Heartiste start a feud? Who the hell knows, but it should be entertaining nonetheless.
Suzanne Minter summed up her reaction in an email to me,
This can not be real. Seriously, Mark is penniless and I don’t see his sister forking over the dollars to buy him a car (he has not owned a working vehicle in 3 yrs) so he can go meet his fiancée in person. I can’t see a woman with an IQ higher than 40 signing up for this, no matter how “red pill” or what ever the hell it is that she is. …
It does blow my mind though that a man who lives like a troll in his sister’s spare bedroom for 4 years, hasn’t had any real human interaction in years, can’t get a job dispute the fact that he is truly gifted in a math/computer science sense, has managed to create a name and following for himself in the cyber world.
I should add that while I have confirmed Suzanne’s identity (and that she’s really the one who’s made all these postings of hers I’ve quoted), I don’t know how much of what she says about Mark is true. I also don’t know if the engagement is real, or even if Kate is a real person. Of course, I don’t know if Roosh has slept with a single HB8. In the manosphere, it’s fair to say, roughly 80% of everything is bullshit. I’m guessing the truth value of Suzanne’s comments is higher than that.
To keep up with the ongoing drama, I suggest starting here:
The original, ever-growing thread on the Roosh forums
The comments to Roosh’s “Mark Minter is a Phony” post.
The comments to Heartiste’s announcement post
For more on Minter see:
Roosh’s two earlier posts quoting him at length.
My posts on him, especially Mark Minter takes on Marriage, Mangina Manservants and America’s Matriarchal Infrastructure.
For Suzanne Minter’s take on the alleged engagement, see her comments to that post, starting here, as well as her comments on the FOKMCAST post, some very pointedly directed at the mysterious Kate.
For more on his future wife Kate, see this post of hers on the racist manosphere blog Eradica, where she urged white men to “alpha up” lest white women desert them for men of other races, thus destroying civilization. Yep, she’s a real prize.
I feel like just being an MRA would takes a few years off your life, due to stress.
I know, right? You would need to spend hours each day finding something to be mad about…
Hard chairs, MISANDRY!
I don’t have any pets , because seriously, I know my own insanity ..but I regurlarly mutilate my voice by singing along to Tom Waits.
There are people who “give” themselves or their real or fake children terminal diseases and scam people to give them attention (sometimes money). I guess it’s about attention seeking and enjoying manipulating people.
DEAR CASANDRAHSEZ,
HELLO AND GOD BLESS YOU, KIND LADY. I SEE YOU HAVE BEEN THINKING ABOUT ME. SINCE MY HUSBAND, PRINCE ABBANDO, WAS CALLED TO HEVEN I HAVE BEEN SO LONLEY AND AM IN NEED OF SOMEONE TO BE THE EXECUTER OF HIS ESTATE. IF YOU WILL SEND ME YOUR BANK ACCOUNT NUMBER AND PASSWORD I WILL DIRECTLY DEPOSET HIS $70000000000.00 FORTUNE INTO YOUR ACCOUNT TO HOLD UNTIL I ARRIVE IN THE STATES.
THANK YOU, DEVOTED FRIEND. MAY HEAVEN GRANT YOU BLESINGS.
SINCERELY
QUEEN MOOSAFAH
PS: For a real-life catfish hoax that spanned over a decade google “warrior eli hoax”– fascinating!
PPS: I believe the girl behind the Warrior Eli hoax (spoiler, sorry!) had some sort of sociopathic traits.
@kittehserf
Thanks so much for the welcome package! 😀 I loved the attention to detail right down to the penguins’ spanx.
And I flutter my white ribbon at you in return, gentle reader, with sincere thanks for perusing this Harlequin “Pump ‘n’ Dump” Romance(tm).
@3SweetCats, you owe me a spoonful of soup now. ::mop mop mop::
@Michael – ah, but you don’t have to have pets to hear them. The Furrinati have a long reach.
@CassandraSays
If I had to Catfish someone, it would be an MRA, though.
Yeah Münchhausen by webproxy.
@kittehserf
Hee, I do have a soft spot for kitties that make you work for their affection. I guess that makes me whatever the female equivalent of a pussy-begging mangina is?
I enjoyed Lost in Austen as a fresh take on things, especially as Lizzie herself preferring modern England provided a nice counterpart to the tendency (discussed here) to over-romanticise the past. However for someone supposedly obsessed with the period, the heroine blundered around making some really obvious mistakes, which was rather annoying.
The Darcy in Lost in Austen was as bland and forgettable as the one in the atrocious Kiera Knightly adaption, which is probably the worst thing you can say about a Darcy. (Can you tell I disliked the Kiera Knightly adaption?)
1995 BBC adaption is definitely my favourite. The only Darcy that can hold a candle to Colin Firth is maybe Larry Olivier in the screwball-ish 40s adaption with Garbo. Did you ever see it?
@PrincessBonBon
Doorstop is ADORABLE! Thanks for sharing that cute pic!
@Michael, I mutilate my voice in the same way. Especially on this song:
@Marie
I like your kitty too! 🙂
The colour combination really works and I like the anime-ish quality it has. I could definitely see it biting Sakaki-san. (Anybody else ever watch Azumanga Daioh?)
Yeah, the LiA heroine was a bit hopeless, wasn’t she? And the Darcy – ugh ugh ugh, just NO. I loved Lizzie staying in the 21st century, too. She adapted so quickly, no surprise!
I haven’t seen the Kiera Knightly (oh please, she is NOT Lizzie Bennett) or the 1940s version. The idea of that story transposed to an 1850s setting just to shove ’em all in crinolines raises my blood pressure. Society was so different then from when Austen wrote the book. (Plus Larry Olivier really doesn’t do anything for me.)
I saw a BBC series from the 80s originally, I think. Liked it very much at the time but it can’t compare with THE series.
I bow in recognition.
@a horse of course!
Aw, thanks :3
Sadly, the only anime I’ve watched is Fullmetal Alchemist, and I also have no idea what you’re talking about. No clue if those are related, I just haven’t watched much anime :XD: Not that I wouldn’t want to, but I haven’t had time.
plus I’m supposed to be watching Star Trek with my dad but I haven’t seen any in the last month or so@Buttercup Q Skullpants
OMG, that was hilarious! Well played, sir or madam, well played.
What about:
The ‘Sphere is my shepherd; I shall always want
It maketh me lie through my teeth; it leadeth me into madness
It restoreth my rage; it leadeth me down the path of misogyny for “Game’s” namesake
….
Surely rage-strokes and misery shall follow me all the days of my life; and I shall dwell in the chateau of of hate forever.
@Buttercup Q Skullpants – ahahahaha. That was truly brilliant. I needed that laugh – I’ve been kind of stressed out after I stupidly got into a comment-fight on a particularly vicious manosphere article today at AVFM. I suggested that men and women are equal and got called a ‘filthy cur’, a ‘slimeball’ and a ‘hypergamous feminist’.
Also, those comments from Kate on inter-racial love….wow. So the white women who are in love with black men are somehow ‘slumming it’ until all the white beta chumps tighten their alpha game? Fuck that. How frightening to think she teaches elementary school – I hope she doesn’t have any black or mixed race kids in her class. Also, not that I can have any knowledge over what either Kate or Mark Minter are like as parents – but I really feel for a little kid (a GIRL) growing up in a ‘red pill’ household.
Cloudiah, thank you. I needed that.
So wait… Minty is the hypergamous one?
@kittehserf: XD
Your cat is so cute, by the way! Have you seen this?
http://fatcatart.ru/gallery-2/?lang=en
I’d feel for a boy growing up in a household like that to. His parents would be setting him up for a life of misery and isolation.
Ermagerd that is hilarious! I’ve seen the Birth of Venus one before but had no idea it was a whole website.
I think Mads might take objection to the implication that she’s FAT though.
Mind you, she’s in a minority of one.
@kittehserf
I always wondered what somebody as resourceful and bright as Lizzie would do with her life away from stifling Regency social conventions. I also loved that she bobbed off all that high-maintenance “romantic heroine hair” that must have represented uncountable hours of combing and laborious piecemeal washing and uncomfortable curling papers in the night!
That’s pretty much how I feel about the 80s version too. 🙂 The only BBC costume drama from the 80s that ever really captured my imagination was the Jane Eyre adaption with Zelah Clarke and Timothy Dalton. Great pacing and electrifying chemistry!
I was so bored watching the Kiera Knightly version – also a little uncomfortable. The constant lingering on KK’s (admittedly very lovely) face to the exclusion of all plot and character development made me feel like I was intruding on some teenager’s fantasy about their crush.
As for the 40s version, the 1850s setting wasn’t some sort of creative decision reflected in the script – the studio just had a load of 1850s costumes on their hands after filming Gone with the Wind. I never questioned it because I grew up watching it, but if you can get over the visual anachronism, Austen’s original work is left to work its magic, albeit with some elements of 40s screwball.
It’s utterly charming and even though I’m not a Larry Olivier fan, the chemistry between him and Garbo is comparable to Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth. I’d thoroughly recommend trying to set aside any preconceptions and give it a go!