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The news of misogynistic marriage-hater Mark Minterβs upcoming nuptials has been ricocheting around the manosphere for about a week now. In my previous post on the subject, I looked at the manosphereβs initial reaction to this startling — and for many, disillusioning — development. Today, a followup, looking at how the manosphere has begun to adjust to the idea of a married Minty.
Over on the blog heβs modestly named MATT FORNEY, Matt Forney uses the whole brouhaha as an opportunity to chide manosphere dudes for their incredible gullibility and childish hero-worship.
The manoblogs are all a-twitter with righteous outrage. Mark Minter is a fraud! A liar! A hypocrite! How could a guy who railed against marriage, called it an institution for βpussies,β go back on his words? With a single mother no doubt? Why did he lie about the fact that heβs a penniless bum whoβs been living with his sister for the past few years?
Why? Why? WHY?
Youβll notice that I havenβt joined in the ritual witch-burning, and thatβs because I didnβt care for Minter to begin with. …
He was just a pissed-off guy who found a forum to vent in. By any objective measure he made out pretty good, seeing as heβs getting married to a groupie nearly half his age. … Toss in the fact that heβs a broke deadbeat and from his perspective, heβs practically won the lottery.
So who do I blame? I blame you.
You credulous cronies. You gullible dipshits. You idol-worshipping nimrods. Youβre no different than the legions of Oprah-watching soccer moms who turned on James Frey after his fabrications were revealed. βBut-but-but he LIED to me!!!!!1β³ No asshole, you lied to yourself. …
Same with Mark Minter. The evidence of him being a broke basement dweller was sitting in plain view, but no one bothered to do a basic Google search before they decided to deify him. Why? Because he sold a vision of life that the manospambots found appealing, where marriage is always doomed to fail and divorce is always the womanβs fault. …
If you donβt want to get fooled again, stop being so easy to fool. Stop building shrines to every halfwit who assuages your prejudices.
Forney is a bigot and an asshole and an all-around terrible person, but heβs got a little bit of a point here.
Over on The Black PillΒ — formerly Omega Virgin Revolt — Mr. Pill has a unique theory: Minty decided to renounce his marriage-hating manosphere ways to marry a single mom because he was sick of running into dumb conspiracy theorists on manosphere blogs. Yep, that’s right: the manosphere got too weird for Mark Minter.
[W]hat happened to Mark Minter?Β He didnβt just get married after being a stalwart against marriage.Β He married a single mother.Β Only he knows, but one possibility (assuming that he didnβt troll the manosphere or something like that) is that he came to the realization that the so called manosphere is insane and ran back to his old life (in a manner of speaking). A few months ago Minter had a problem with a Return of Court Jesters … article about how Obamacare mandated that everyone have a RFID chip in them and that this was going to lead to the mark of the beast in the Book of Revelations in the Bible.Β (This is completely false.)
Oh really? Obamacare ISNβT going to lead to all of us being branded with the Mark of the Beast? Thanks for clarifying that, Mr. Black Pill!
This is something that I suspect happens to a lot of the men who vanished from the so called manosphere or suffer from so called βplayer burnoutβ.Β These men come across some aspect of the manosphere that is too insane for them which causes them to run back to their old (likely feminist derived) ideology because it appears sane in comparison.Β Minter just chose a way of dealing with this that didnβt involve vanishing (at least not right away) or coming up with a contrived explanation like βplayer burnoutβ.
I donβt know what will happen next, but my guess is that Minter will use the ensuing criticism to exit the so called manosphere completely.Β After that, in a few months no one in the so called manosphere will remember who Mark Minter was … .
So getting married is sort of the manosphere version of faking your own death? Huh.
Over on The Soul is Not a Smithy, βFrancis Begbieβ writes (in dialect):
[B]asically, that Mark Minter guy, the most staunch, anti conjugal bells motherfucker residing in the manosphere … That guy, well yeah, he’s got himself hitched up with … a single mother. This has disappointed many a cunt in this here parts as of late. But the thing is kind of sobering too, in its one perverted little way.
Oh, a note on usage: In Begbie’s writing, the word “cunt” generally refers to men.
A cunt has learned:
A man will do anything for some snatch. This is why a lot of the MGTOW bozo the clown types can be funny goofy motherfuckers at times. The second the whiff of pussy enflames de nostrils, they’re just like the preacher and mustache Charlie.
There be a lot of paper alpha types doing the rounds. …
[Y]ou need to be a man of your word, not this paper alpha shite. And that is why this whole debacle with Minter is so bloody insinuating. Minter was not a man of his word …
As de Captain would say, stay frosty lads. Nothing more powerful on the planet then pussy ken…
Unless you’re David Futrelle.
Wait, what? I totally did not see that coming!
But of course the best response to the whole brouhaha comes from Minty himself. In the comments to Rooshβs post labeling him a βphonyβ and essentially drumming him out of the manosphere, Minty replies with a mixture of indignation, defensiveness and self-pity:
If you find me a hypocrite then that it your choice. You all are searching for some path.
I am 58, and I promise all of you, things will change for you dramatically once you do cross 50.
My financial situation has become most public. Divorce took me from a prosperous upper middle class suburbanite to my bottom some one year ago when I found this manosphere. Yes, you can go and find my ex-wife jumping up and down over money, and lack of my ability to pay. Economic forces, my age, and some of the actions I took under the cloud of depression in the first years after divorce caused jobs that I could get with a snap of a finger before 2001 to become few and far between. Interviews that were mere formalities before become inquisitions. And I aggravated my situation by trying to leave the country without guidance, to find how to do it own my own.
And also, unlike almost all of you I never hid behind a pen name, And I have paid the price for my participation. I have been ostracized by family and anyone that searched by name before, particularly any woman, immediately leaped to conclusions about me that preclude from any corporate job for the rest of my life.
Uh oh, heβs started monologuing.
After explaining at length why his impending marriage doesnβt in any way contradict his endless antimarriage rants — because heβs an old dude without many options and women (like his new internet girlfriend) prefer to be married — he suggests that this wonderful new relationship might not survive all these mean comments on the internet.
To be “Branded” like this, to have ensigns of rank ripped of my shoulders, to be drummed out like this, for marrying a manosphere woman, is going to be quite a shock. And frankly I don’t think the relationship will withstand so public a humiliation.
Really? Your relationship canβt take your online buddies actually knowing about it? It canβt withstand some douchebag on the internet that you used to think was super cool calling you a βphony?β
Maybe you shouldnβt have devoted the past year of your life to seeking validation from a bunch of hateful assholes.
Long-time lurker (over a year), first time poster. Hi, everyone!
When I married, I not only took my husband’s name, I changed my entire name completely due to having bad associations with the old name (others who have been abused as children may relate). Had this not been the case, we likely would have come up with something ridiculously nerdy (think Quenya) or just stuck to our own names.
Also, in regards to Ariel Castro: there is not enough NOPE in the universe.
MEZ, exactly. MGTOW want women to be all choked about them not marrying, so we change our evil, feminist ways to desperately try to win them back.
Yea, it ain’t happening. Nobody misses them. It’s actually really sad.
@ Kittehs
It triggered a conversation where she waffled on about how she thought I would like it because blah blah tradition and I responded with “have we met?”, and then she finally knocked it off, but not before attempting to guilt trip me about how “sad” it would make Mr C. To which I explained that he doesn’t care, and she claimed that he must, and I pointed out that as the one who’s married to him I may just know him a teensy bit better than she does. And that even if he was sad, it’s still my call to make. Then there was some bonus nonsense from her about how well he’s Asian so he must prefer to be more dominant and I’m probably really offending his traditional mother (who’s a feminist and about as left wing as you can get without actually tattooing a communist flag on your ass).
There’s a reason why I avoid some parts of my family.
I was briefly tempted to take my wife’s surname, as it was foreign and distinctive and I rather liked it. But by the same token, she was desperate to ditch it because she was sick and tired of having to spell it every single time. So we ended up going down the traditional route, much to my feminist sister-in-law’s disgust – but it was completely my wife’s decision, and I’d have been happy with whatever she chose.
Spelling-challenged it may be, but that graffiti certainly wasn’t written by an MRA. Although I daresay the car might have been owned by one.
@baileyrenee:
Which brings the inevitable question: how can we miss them if they won’t go away?
@Cassandra:
Priceless. π But strewth, that one aunt sounds worse than the three of mine put together. Bleargh.
So, Falconer, I read your surnym as pahoehoe, in my head.
Oh man, I wish I was from Hawaii. I’ll just have to settle for being Bluegrass born and raised, while thinking most popular Bluegrass music sounds like That Poor Cat.
It’s just what Mr. Burns says whenever he answers the telephonic device on The Simpsons. Allegedly that’s because “Ahoy” is what Alexander Graham Bell wanted people to use when answering the telephone.
Mr. HK is from HI. It’s great having such a wonderful place to visit, and a metric ton of family to stay with when we go.
That sounds wonderful.
I just wish it were easier to get to from TX. We got spoiled flying out there from Seattle, five hours and you’re there. Now it sucks up the better part of a day.
For what it’s worth, my last name is pronounced “ka-POOR,” and in fact “Kapoor” is a much more common spelling. (According to Wikipedia, both are transliterations of ΰ€ΰ€ͺΰ₯ΰ€°β. I personally know fuck-all about Hindi.)
Of course, there are other wrinkles, too. I’m ethnically half-Indian, half-white (French-Canadian, a few generations back), but I’m culturally all-white. Mostly this means I have complete white privilege, despite clearly having darker skin — I “sound” white, and it’s not obvious to most people what my ethnicity actually is, so I don’t usually trigger subconscious (or conscious) stereotypes. The nice, Greek-derived first name of “Nicholas” doesn’t hurt.
Anyway, the point is that I may not have any cultural connections to India at all, but I don’t necessarily want to give up the name. I’m half-white, my wife is white, any biological kids we may have would be white with a nice tan. It may not be the most important thing to me, but at the same time I’m in no hurry to “de-Indian” anything more than I have to.
Regarding my own name, we’re obviously in a very different position than most of y’all. When our disabilities process is finally, mercifully over, we plan to legally change our name, just because it feels really weird to be walking around wearing a dead girl’s name, and none of us have anything like it. We don’t go by it socially at all, and whenever anyone has to write us a check or send us a donation, they tend to get a bit of a shock.
Even though I don’t speak to them much anymore, I don’t look forward to the possible backlash from our family for changing the last name. Our parents have finally given up calling us the legal first name, but they seem to have the impression we will keep our legal last name–that’s how their letters to us are always addressed. I’m not entirely thrilled about them eventually finding out we’re ditching it, but it was our mother who claimed we were strangers in a house, nothing to do with her. I’d rather stick to my predecessor’s name, thanks. At least I can look at that name and not have the nagging fear that I’m not wanted.
RE: Argumentum ad Stultitiam
‘Kaput,’ maybe? But yeah, those two names really don’t squish well, not like Seabell.
RE: sarahlizhousespouse
What? Organized atheists being assholes? I am shocked. SHOCKED, I tell you.
RE: Ariel Castro
Sorry guys, you’ll have to mock that yourselves; I really can’t take the level of horror there.
It wasn’t all that long ago that some states didn’t even give men the option of changing their names upon marriage. The state Mr. AK and I got married in didn’t, and we really have not been married all that long.
We both kept our own names, but we joked that we should make a portmanteau. I have an Irish name and he has a very German one, so we joked that we should call ourselves the O’Schwarzes (not actually his last name, but you get the idea). We still joke about it when people comment on our different surnames.
@LBT, just saw your post. I don’t know if you know this, but you can usually set it up with your bank to accept checks under your preferred name. I’ve known a lot of artists who use names other than their legal ones who have done it. I’m not sure what the process is, though, so it may be a big hassle.
Sorry if you already know that, just wanted to mention it in case you didn’t. π
RE: AK
Huh. I didn’t know that, actually. I wouldn’t mind doing that; I’ve mostly avoided doing it for fear of redtape overload.
On the question of accepting checks in a name beside your legal one; YMMV but my bank let me accept checks under my pen name when I was freelancing. I had to submit a notarized letter stating that the name in question was a professional name and not an attempt to commit fraud, and it’s apparently more common than you would think because the bank had a more or less standard form for that letter text.
More recently, when doing some more ethically questionable freelancing, I again worked under a pen name that I connected to my PayPal account to accept payments and keep the work separate from my professional, legal name.
It’s probably worth a quick call to your bank to ask what their policies on that. I’m sure there’s some legal stuff and some bank policy stuff that affects it.
If they do need some documentation that you’re the same person under two different names,* maybe look into getting an employer identification number. It’s super easy (and IIRC, free) to get. I’ve done it when I was an independent contractor so I didn’t have to give out my social security number to clients at tax time. There’s a section where you can put another name you’re doing business as. Of course, that may foul up your taxes or disability, so definitely research it first. I’m not sure if there are other ways; banking confuses me.
And of course this is US-centric because I am like 99% sure I remember you saying you’re in the US; if I’m wrong please forgive me. And I could be totally wrong, but I do have some limited experience in this regard as a long-time self-employed person, so I hope it helps. π
*The reason I say “if” they need documentation is because I used to get checks made out to AK [husband’s surname] all the time, because one of my first clients was a woman who could never remember my actual last name (I met her through my husband), and she got me like 60% of my business. My bank never had a problem with my checks being written out to the wrong person (the first name was often wrong too, as I go by my middle name in real life), and my bank never asked for any proof. HOWEVER, it was an extremely small town and a credit union and we all kind of vaguely knew each other, so I’m not taking that as proof of anything. I didn’t have to show ID to make withdrawals either, after all. π
Your illicit, mysterious work fill me with wonder and curiosity. Are you a spy for the bees? Do you work for Lancester or York? Is Gilly really Ghilie, as in suit, and you’re somewhere in the bushes sneaking around, spying on plants?
Puzzlement
I just wanted to add that I didn’t see gillyrosebee’s comment when I started typing mine. π Zir experience seems a lot more recent than mine.
@Argumentum ad Stultitiam
I can relate in some ways. Like you, I’m half-white and half-Indian, although the ethnicity of my father’s side of the family is Pakistani. My male name is a common Arabic name that was chosen for religious reasons (Muslims are encouraged to use Arabic names for their children, although it isn’t obligatory). Even though I’m no longer a Muslim and I have almost no attachment to my father’s ethnicity, I chose an Arabic female name for myself when I started identifying as trans* female. I was thinking about names like “Amy”, “Miranda”, etc. but I didn’t want to estrange myself from that ethnicity completely.
I personally spoke with Mark a few times – nice guy, trying to find his way just like anyone else. I think it’s a bit ridiculous to focus on a man’s financial situation, then jump to marital situation, then jumping to blogosphere reputation, and thinking we can draw some kind fo conclusion worth reporting.
Remember folks, Donate button is in the center and prominent, this guy needs the money too – hence an article about someone’s personal life
3 cheers for misogyny
Mark’s a nice guy. Granted, he’s a self-identified “woman-hater”, but he’s a nice guy! Really!
Oh, yeah, JRR, total nice guy. Who just happened to write about how much of a woman hater he is.
RE: AK and gillyrosebee
This might be helpful! It’s a little complicated in that I’m hitting the road soon, so I’ll probably be hitting the bank in various different places. I might let it wait until the trip is over, and I’ll have to check and make sure it doesn’t wreck my disability process. (Seriously, it’s already been a year in process, I don’t want to delay shit even LONGER.)
RE: JRR Token
That’s nice. And no, this post hasn’t been about his personal life, it’s been about how the manosphere is shitting kittens over the guy getting married. THEY’RE the ones going on and on about his personal life. Why don’t you go bug THEM?