So I get periodic visits here from hostile and uninformed visitors demanding to know just what I have against those Men’s Rights activist-adjacent fellows who have declared themselves to be Men Going Their Own Way. Surely, they sniff, I can’t be really opposed to men living the lives they choose to live, independent of women? Don’t feminists encourage women to be similarly independent? You go, girls, and all that?
As a fellow calling himself Praetorian wrote:
Why are women so bitter towards men going their own way, without them
“John,” meanwhile, thought he detected some hypocrisy:
So, if a woman says she does not need a man in her life, she is seen as a strong independent woman. If a man says he does not need a woman in his life, he is seen as someone who has a deep hostility towards and/or profound distrust of women.
How convenient and how logical…………….
Happpily, the commenters here always put these misguided souls straight: we don’t object , in principle, to men “going their own way,” if that’s what they want to do.
But in practice, the men who classify themselves as Men Going Their Own Way don’t go anywhere; they stick around and stink the place up with their raging misogyny.
If you go to MGTOWforums or any other popular MGTOW hangout, you’ll discover that the regulars there don’t spend much time talking about the fabulous lives they’re leading on their own — the things they’re learning, the hobbies they’re pursuing, the experiences they’re having.
Nope. They spend virtually all their time and energy taking about women, and how awful they are. The typical MGTOWer spends more time thinking about women on any given day than the president of Planned Parenthood does. And what they think about women is awful. Just go through my MGTOW posts here for example after example.
You want to see some men who are really going their own way? Watch the video at the top of this post. These are guys enjoying themselves and not giving a shit what anyone thinks. They are AWESOME.
That’s what Men Going Their Own Way should look like. And I’m not even joking.
NOTE: I think I’ve posted this video before. I don’t care. Some people might not have seen it. EVERYONE MUST SEE IT.
I really think she would have been a lot of fun at parties. Except not.
@theladyzombie
…I did not know that about her novels :/ It’s like everytime someone talks about her I find out more icky stuff about her. (I already heard the ‘idolized killer’ part.)
Why? People with staunch moral views are fun at parties. I enjoy getting three shots under the tipsy limit and listening to them explain every single thing in the world. It makes me feel oddly happy inside, that someone can be such a certain rock of foundational strength, utterly convinced that the world is Just Like So.
@fibinachi
Probably easier when you can drink XD On a completely unrelated note* I bet my stepmom will be much more bearable to hang around once I hit the drinking age here. (she’s nowhere near rand-levels of douchiness, but there are similiarities.)
*blatant lie is blatant.
Marie – in Atlas Shrugged, John Galt vowed earlier in his life to “stop the engine of the world.” When he finally withdrew to an enclave in the Colorado Rockies and began to take who he considered producers and leaders with him, he knew he was condemning the rest of society to die since society would crumple without its thinkers and doers. He actually wanted that. His whole 60 page speech was him basically taunting everyone about their imminent demise and how they should have been nicer to him.
Never mind that this scenario would never (and could never) happen. It just illustrates how Rand thought of the world. And it ain’t pretty.
Well, I guess that does make it a lot easier, yeah.
That’s a definition of fun I haven’t heard before, Fibi. Don’t think I’ll be trying it, though! 😀
@theladyzombie
Wow. That seems rather…childish.
Wow, I had forgotten that from my teenage reading. It sounds awfully similar to those MRA fantasies about stupid/frail women falling to pieces if a couple of misogynists decide not to marry us or something. Boys, I think we’ll survive.
Whoever published Ayn L Gland’s* books should have to walk on legos forever … unleashing that unspeakable tripe on the world.
*I haz a childish
It’s funny, I’d forgotten about the location of Galt’s Gulch. Now I’m wondering if the author of Hunger Games didn’t forget and that’s why the Capital is up in the mountains.
Remember all that noise about short hair?
auggziliary – I know the scene you’re talking about. Rand described each of the passengers and what they did for a living. One I believe was a social scientists. Anyway, each of the people on the train were what she considered evil, liberal, and progressive people who were in favor of laws and regulations that would take from the producers of society. The whole scene was gross because it was like ‘these people deserve to die’ because of their ideals.
“O_o How does the disconnect work, between those ideas? I am confused.”
That’s what happens when you turn ‘Everything for me, and nothing for thee’ into a moral principle.
@Kittehserf
I think it’s an acquired taste. I have a lot of Very Political Friends, who can’t seem to understand that they won’t win me over to the cause. I had to make a game out of it (The game is: Present scenarios that they tend have to explain in terms of their overarching philosophy.)
@Thread
It is a little childish, yeah. Marie is right.
But it’s also the point. Rand posits a world where there’s only two kinds of people – Righteous Producers or Cowardly Parasites, and any person that is a Righteous Producers shares an overarching philosphy with every other Righteous person.
So everyone’s fine with everyone who isn’t them dying off terribly, because everyone else are just bad people. In Atlas Shrugged, there’s a (kind of cool) side story where this mega super genius operates mines in South American country, and has built a bunch of housing and so on for the workers who will be working in the mine as part of the government contract.
Because this is a Rand book, the Evil Government immediately nationalizes the mine. Because this is a Rand book, the Supercool Righteous Objectist saw that coming, and the mines are actually all empty, and the workers housing made of cheap, useless materials, and the entire thing is a mess that continues to tank the economy of the country.
There’s a bit where he mentions that the only building that isn’t really shoddily made was the church because: “in the coming years, I have a feeling they will need it“.
The implication there is that the workers housing, and the mines, are not only badly constructed, they’re lethal. They will kill the people living and working there. Anyone in those housing complexes will be breathing in asbetos, living with faulty electrical wirings and suffering possible gas malfunctions from the stoves. The odds of them dying, or getting horribly hurt, is not a question of “If”, it’s a “When” and to “What extent”.
It’s the greatest example of Lawful Evil I’ve ever been able to that can be summed up in three paragraphs – it wasn’t enough for this Righteous Objectivist to con the government with false mines, he had to go the extra mile and make sure anyone who thought to profit or work for him died. Even the innocent workers, who, I fucking bet, didn’t have a hand in the nationalization but were expecting jobs at a decent pay. No, no, they deserve to die too.
The rank evil and baseless righteous need for not only winning, but eradicating the perceived opponent that modus operandi emphasizes turns my fucking stomach.
It’s the same mentality that drives high school shooters, Rand just wanted to take revenge on the masses economically rather than more directly, with guns.
I never read Atlas Shrugged. My first contact with their ‘phylosophy’ was from an Objectivist organization site and their essays. They sounded, at first, evil – like the arguments of a video game villain – and then puerile as I noticed the fallacies creeping in.
I did read a part of the A = A text, and started to wonder why didn’t Rand write a treatise instead of a fiction book.
The real concern here, though, isn’t Rand. She’s dead. It’s that Greenspan is still around and actively implementing her philosophies.
The more I read about her, the clearer it is that she was an utterly reprehensible, disgusting human being.
I hope she’s been hit with total self awareness in recent decades.
Also, it’s amusing that I’ve seen multiple feminists call out the way she treated her husband as appalling, but no Randroid men do so. But we’re the ones who supposedly don’t care about men.
I find the Galt’s Gulch idea hilarious.
These “thinkers and doers” run away with their toys to get back at the world that scorned them – but they can’t exist without that same world, as they forgot to bring people willing to till the fucking soil or build their toys.
The Randroid utopia is self-contradictory because, if everyone deserves to be a CEO, who’s going to clean the damn toilets? The übermensch might decry the parasites, but their ideal society NEEDS them to function.
Not to mention that the Randroid misogynists are taking these notions from a woman’s books in the first place.
(Or do they think Galt was real? It wouldn’t surprise me.)
Yeah, everyone one the train was at fault for the train wreck because they were all altruistic evil commies or something. I read Ayn Rand because my bf at the time was really, really into her. I was biased against her before I met him but I wanted to give her a chance because he was such a big fan.
After I was some way into it I was like, “I don’t like this book. I want to stop reading it.” And then he was all “well, at least get to the train accident” like it was some amazing feat of literature. So I got to the train accident and I was all “Dude seriously?” and then he was all, “well, at least get to John Galt’s speech.” So I got to John Galt’s speech and then I threw the damn thing across the room.
vaiyt – turns out often enough the so-called ubermensch are the parasites, doesn’t it?
@vaiyt
I’d really like to see them answer that one.