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.
Makes me wonder if Rand was more than uttterly without empathy, admiring Hickman for what he did to Marion Parker. How sadistic would you have to be, seriously?
Wow. The commenters over there, especially Lynne, just reminded me why I avoid online atheist communities.
The thing about Randian heroes, for all their “high minded” ideals about being so strong and above it all that they are so petty and trivial. They have these minuscule egos that are easily injured and insulted.
Dostoyevsky touched on many of the same themes that Rand wrote on. Roark is Raskolnikov and Galt is the Underground Man made into heroes rather than the assholes they really exposed to be in Dostoyevsky’s lierature. But I guess we can all see that Dostoyevsky wrote literature and Rand wrote bullshit.
OK, so, honestly, my thoughts about Rand? She was deeply emotionally scarred by what happened to her and her family during the revolution, and those experiences underpinned everything that she wrote. Her attitude towards the masses seems like contempt on the surface, and on some level it was, but underneath and causing that was fear. She was never able to get over that fear of people outside her own social class as a dangerous mass that she perceived as wanting to hurt her if they got a chance and destroy everything she valued. Once you’re aware of her history you can see it in everything she wrote. Which doesn’t let her off the hook for writing that shit, at all, it just helps to explain why she did.
The people like Greenspan without those formative experiences who embraced her ideas? They’re just selfish assholes who like her philosophy because it allows them to see themselves as the most special snowflakes who ever snowflaked.
@cassandra The misogyny that I found in many atheist online communities made me reject the need to associate myself with atheism. Now I am just a happy non-theist.
I still call myself an atheist, I just don’t want much to do with the sexist, racist, classist shitshow it so often seems to devolve into online.
” seems like contempt on the surface, and on some level it was, but underneath and causing that was fear.”
So much hate of various kinds seems to be rooted in fear
Robert – I know how you feel. I started distancing myself from the New Atheist movement when I started to see how many of them were Libertarians and/or racists and/or misogynists. Sam Harris, Dawkins, Hitchens (I can’t believe I admired him for as long as I did), Penn Jillette, etc. The final nail came during “Elevatorgate.” I really was shocked at the time at how anti-feminist the New Atheist movement actually was.
The best moments are always when one of the really blatantly misogynist ones tries to call out religion for being sexist. Yes, it is, but so are you, and hypocrisy isn’t a good look on someone who claims to be a deep thinker.
Like Bunuel said, human life is too deep to assign myself to such a boring designation as “atheist”
I am happy being non-theistic, whether there are gods or not has nothing to do how I develop myself as a human being, if there are gods I just hope they are beneficial enough to see that I took the gifts they have gave me and used them to benefit not only myself but others. Because that to me is the only thing that matters. If they cannot see that then a pox on them, and it is them who are among the non-evolved and the petty and not me.
This summarizes basically every single Christian website that attacks Islam.
Conservative Christian website, I mean.
“Robert – I know how you feel. I started distancing myself from the New Atheist movement when I started to see how many of them were Libertarians and/or racists and/or misogynists. Sam Harris, Dawkins, Hitchens (I can’t believe I admired him for as long as I did), Penn Jillette, etc.”
I had no idea these people were racist and/or sexist. I don’t know who Jillette is but I’ve watched a few videos of Harris, Dawkins and Hitchens. Can’t recall any sexism or racism in them. Can you give a few examples?
After all her dissing of “collectivism” Rand herself publicly called for Americans to collectively “support Israel” on the Phil Donahue Show. She said that Palestinians were “barbarians” and “not technologically advanced” whereas Israelis were the civilized, technologically advanced people. So if they were/are so civilized and technologically advanced then why do they need “support” from Americans? Seems like the people who need the support are the ones who are not so technologically advanced, no?
About Rand’s ultimate alpha hero, John Galt, building a perpetual-motion free energy machine…. why would he run away and hoard it if it was meant to give “free” energy to people?
@ Ally
Yep. Extra points if the denomination in question is connected to anti abortion or pray the gay away groups.
Old Reader
Sam Harris on why we should profile Muslims, i.e. brown people at airports
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2012/04/29/sam-harris-we-should-profile-muslims-at-the-airport/
Sam Harris on torture, i.e more about brown people
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sam-harris/in-defense-of-torture_b_8993.html
Dawkins being racist and misogynistic
http://www.thewire.com/national/2013/08/short-history-richard-dawkins-vs-internet/68149/
Hitchens being misogynistic and gross
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfeminism/2011/12/on-being-an-atheist-and-a-feminist.html
Penn Jillette being a misogynistic ass
http://freethoughtblogs.com/blaghag/2012/02/women-who-dont-amuse-penn-jilette-are-cunts/
There is a lot more out there.
@cassandra
Ugh, those guys are the worst. I could vent about them for.ev.er. Only one I’ve had the dis-pleasure of talking to was all ‘I’m a dude, let me explain how your religon is oppressing you, what do you mean I’m speaking over women about sexism, you’re speaking over me by disagreeing with me’. And yes he practically said that last bit. :/ /rant.
@robert
Ditto (though I’ve kind of got some weird reilgious feelings). But if you’re* only reason for not being a massive dick is god is watching… well idk man that’s just shitty.
*general you, not you you, just to clarify.
@Ally
Kind of not surprised :/ I know the church I went to said some Islamophobic shit, but I can’t remember what. (I stopped going ages ago, I only heard second hand from my brother venting about it.)
@old reader
asldfj. wha….? Why am I still getting surprised by her horrible-ness 🙁
Ps, everyone Fade says hi.
Penn’s misogyny bothered me especially (had been fond of Penn & Teller, although this was before some of the BS episodes aired). Not an atheist personally, so the other ones didn’t impact me as much (not that what they did/said wasn’t awful as well
I mean, as an ex-Muslim whose life is still being affected by conservative attitudes rooted in conservative Sunni Islam, I have reasons to be critical of the religion in general (even though I understand that it’s not a monolithic religion with a monolithic group of adherents).
And sometimes I don’t like the term “islamophobia” either because I’ve often heard the most bigoted Muslim scholars use that term to silence critics (Muslim or non-Muslim).
But so many conservative Christian websites attack Islam with shit like “HERE’S PROOF THAT ISLAM ALLOWS ANAL SEX” or “ISLAM IS THE DEVIL BECAUSE MOHAMMED WAS PROBABLY GAY.” Or even funnier, “Islam is sexist but we Christians aren’t because we think that a husband should be an authority over his wife.” (I’ve actually seen that argument before on answeringislam.com.)
If you want to say “Saudi Arabia is a sexist country” then sure, that works. Even if you’re saying that it’s more sexist than the US then yep, that is correct. But if you’re a Christian fundamentalist claiming that America invaded Afghanistan or Ira
(cont, hit enter too soon)
But if you’re a Christian fundamentalist claiming that America invaded Afghanistan or Iraq because we wanted to save the poor Muslim women from sexism in Islam then I’m going to point and laugh because a. you’re lying and we both know it and b. lol, seriously, dude who believes that women should obey their husbands?
I think there is something to be said for anti-(conservative, mono, Christian)theist-privilege activism, by which I mean activism meant to disrupt the narrative that just because something is someone’s religious belief means its outside of morality debates, which I think allows conservative theists, mostly Christians in the west, to get away with claiming that because they believe something it should be enforced. I.E, the gay marriage activism and the brouhaha about religious employers being forced to not be able to control what their employees do with their own benefits. (I feel like I’m not being coherent, but if someone knows how to explain this better, go ahead.)
I also believe that the US, in particular, really needs to break down the idea that “religious” = “good”, because… no. I hate whenever you hear about someone in prison who says they “got religion” and therefore should be paroled… not because I believe that the person necessarily isn’t reformed, but that I think it should be perfectly fine to say, “I found atheism in prison, and since I believe that everyone only gets this one life, I have a moral duty not to harm people,*” and have that mean as much.
But this is… I’m not totally sure that atheist activism is the way to go forward on this, in part because (a) I don’t trust many atheists not to be assholes (b) many, many religious/spiritual people also have a stake in this fight. For example, I honestly consider abstinence education to be the government forcing a religious moral on students, and while most atheists (even the assholes) don’t agree, many theists/spiritual people wouldn’t either.
*This, BTW, is a simple version of my beliefs.
By “don’t agree” I mean “don’t agree that abstinence until marriage is a moral necessity”. Or really even a good idea.
Isn’t that more of a separation of church and state issue? I came here from the UK and one of the oddest things to me was the assumption that religion had any role to play in the political process at all. As in, why do I even know what a politician’s religious beliefs are, and why are people who don’t share them supposed to care? I feel like the real issue here is that a lot of people feel that religion should have some sort of an influence on politics, which to me feels both strange and really wrong.
Why do people who threaten to go Galt never actually do it? Please, go! You show us how miserable we will all be without you.
Here is a man who can go into the woods on a manly retreat without being misogynistic.
Yeah, but the US has separation of church and state legally (most of the time) but culturally… hell no. So I think it would take a cultural movement/advocacy to chance that.
And the idea that being religious (or, at least the right religion) is a sign of being a good person is again another cultural quirk that really hurts religious minorities in the US–and again, its a cultural issue, not a legal one.