So manosphere dudes have a theory of sorts about young women that they frequently boil down to the handy catchphrase “alpha fucks, beta bucks.” The idea is that women — oh, you evil women! — have an insatiable desire to mate with and capture the sperm of hot but unreliable alpha males, and an equally innate tendency to try to con some hard-working beta schlub into paying the bills, with his beta bucks, for the resulting alpha spawn.
There are a few problems with this theory. First of all, this DOESN’T HAPPEN. Ands second,it makes no fucking sense. Why would the invisible hand of evolution want to reward the genes of Alpha men with no interest in caring for their kids and punish the betas who (at least in the manosphere version of the world) actually keep those kids alive?
But I digress. Because one clever Manospherian commenter — recently featured in a post on Rollo Tomassi’s Rational Male blog — has discovered yet more proof of the evil alpha fucks-beta bucks theory in action: Sperm banks.
Let’s let him explain, because I sure can’t:
Let’s look at this abstractly. Man and woman marry, find that she isn’t getting pregnant, determine from medical testing that his swimmers aren’t winning the race. So they pay for another man to impregnate her, although via a medical go-between. The original sperm banks screened donors and pretty much limited them to med students and other college men.
This is “Alpha Sperm, Beta Provisioning”, and nothing less. Putting a tech or a doctor in the middle wearing gloves and a lab coat, and injecting semen with a syringe rather than the usual method doesn’t change that.
Uh, aren’t sperm banks a way for couples who want babies and can’t have babies themselves to have babies? The guy in this scenario has no way to pass on his genes. That’s not an option. He wants a baby, too.
Sperm banks are therefore a clinical version of AF-BB, and as such clearly serve the Female Imperative in the same manner as a married woman having an affair while she’s ovulating … .
Uh, BUT THE MAN WANTS THE BABY TOO. Men can love children who are not biologically theirs. Families adopt children. They love them too.
[T]he whole idea of a sperm bank is a clear, medicalized, fully legal example of the Female Imperative of AF-BB … today we all accept it because teh wimmenz deserve their own bay-bee if they want one (or more), no matter the cost to anyone else.
What cost? WHAT COST? THE MAN WANTS THE BABY TOO.
“Rollo Tomassi” adds some conspiracy theorizing to the mix:
On virtually any post I’ve made about feminism … one or more commenters invariably post the youtube video about how feminism was conceived to destabilize western society (by the Rockefellers?). …. the fact that sperm banks were an unheard of development prior to the sexual revolution does give me pause to think that they were a need anticipated to better facilitate and perpetuate a future feminine-primary society.
Yes, that’s right. Feminism + Sperm Banks x Rockefellers = MALE ENSLAVEMENT
Indeed, he points out, some of the women who go to sperm banks DON’T EVEN HAVE HUSBANDS.
Almost as if in anticipation for the unfettering of women’s hypergamy, the facility of insuring a woman’s best optimized hypergamy was institutionalized and normalized. This may sound like conjecture (since the socially proposed purpose was to facilitate pregnancy for an infertile man), but the utility of sperm banks quickly shifted to facilitating the pregnancy of women who wouldn’t be married or had no intention of marrying to start a family.
Unmarried women having sperm bank babies. Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria!
This was the first institution, legalized and normalized that laid bare feminism latent purpose – strong independent women® could remove the man from the equation of effecting an optimal hypergamy, while at the same time effecting future legislation and social engineering to enlist men (either publicly or privately) in the provisioning of this new breed of motherhood. And with every guy dutifully jerking off into a petrie dish, they effectually contribute one more element to institutionalized Alpha Fucks / Beta Bucks.
And so a dude getting paid to masturbate into a cup — they don’t use petri dishes, dude — becomes yet another brick to the wall of the manosphere’s imagined oppression of men.
@cloudiah is it off the back of the William Roach trial in the UK? The Not Guilty verdict wasn’t exactly a surprise given the historical nature of the events but it was bloody depressing all the same. Especially since it was followed by the usual tsunami of victim blaming.
Makes the Saville victims not coming forwards until he was dead completely understandable.
“I’ve read a few of these MRA tracts about “male enslavement,” and the loving detail with which these predictions are written kind of make me wonder whether they’re getting off on it.”
Nothing sexual ’bout it, I reckon. Nah, I think it’s just another example of paranoia – a recurring theme of right wing thought, I’ve observed. Indeed, I find that reactionaries, regardless of how exactly they come down on the issues, tend to indulge in contemptuous suspicion of someone/thing at least once when expressing their political opinion – even if they’re okay with the Jews, the blacks and the gays, they still look out for Communists subverting their precious bodily fluids, criminals breaking in at night, spies sappin’ their sentries, or whatever.
Think I’m right? That make sense?
Nope, it’s about another anonymous reporting system, this time at Yale.
Yeah, that worked _so_ well for them last time. =/
@10knives, I’ve been comparing them to conspiracy types for a while now. Replace “male enslavement” with “FEMA camps” or “one world government” and it’s all basically the same kind of paranoia.
@David
Those book-learning manginas only serve their Women Studies feminist overlords, while MRA types have manly male man work jobs that make make the country run and have the workplace death toll of Siberian prison camps.
This whole hilarious post makes me so very happy. Making fun of MRA ranting that clearly has no victims other than logic, reason and credibility? It’s a good thing.
ignotussomnium — I was watching a special on cuttlefish where someone decided to paternity test the baby cuttlefish, turns out the lady cuttlefish are more likely to use the “cross dressing” gent’s sperm than the big burly alpha sperm. Theory is she wants the smarter mate, not the bigger one. (The ladies collect sperm from lots of males and then pick which to make use of, so not only do they avoid the fighting, but they stand a better chance of having their sperm picked.)
“Hypergamy” in this case means single moms marrying ‘big daddy government’. This is considered to be the ultimate form of Beta Bucks–the taxpaying betas don’t even get to claim the benefits of a relationship with the woman, they just pay for the kid. Never mind the fact that government aid to single moms is horribly insufficient; in their minds, it all works out.
That said, I disagree with the bolded portion above. They’re remarkably consistent: If a woman wants it, she shouldn’t get it, and if she does something, that something is automatically bad for the duration of this conversation.
&Buttercup Q. Skullpants
You don’t see a lot of quality Don Ho references on the internet these days. Kudos.
Kiwi, I’ve seen several Manosphere comments where they diss even their own moms.
Interesting you should ask that though. There’s this “iibertarian youtube philosopher” by the name of Stephan Molyneaux who seems to be pretty sympathetic toward the Manosphere and pretty anti-feminist. Anyway, I did some googling about him recently and apparantly he tries to get all of his callers to the podcast “Free Domain Radio” to “DeFOO” their entire families. DeFOO means “departing the family of origin” and Molyneaux’s opinion is that nearly all parents are abusive and therefore should be cut off firmly and forever from your life if you want to achieve “freedom and liberty.” This includes siblings as well, even spouses. Several families have been ruined by him and one young man even committed suicide, you can read about that here;
http://www.molyneuxrevealed.com/2012/06/suicide-caused-by-stefan-molyneux-and.html
Holy shit.
Old Reader,
That’s awful. That poor young man and his parents. I don’t even want to imagine their heartbreak.
Old Reader: wow, just wow.
OK…reading that father’s story was sad, but “atheistic religion”? What…like Buddhism, Jainism or some Quakers? Nope, he just claims that a lack of belief in gods is a religion because…reasons. After reading his complete rant about how he views and blames atheism, I find it hard to believe that their relationship wasn’t strained before the young man got into the libertarian cult stuff. That just compounds the sadness.
Not gonna lie, I used to be totally “Atheism is a religion!” back when I was a stupid college student.
@leatapp, I triggered on that too. But the father is clearly hurting deeply, and people in pain do tend to lash out more than they would normally, and can grasp at straws in an attempt to find meaning. So I decided it wasn’t possible to draw any further meaning from the letter without possibly decontextualising the content and thereby drawing an incorrect conclusion. Religious people can be completely wrong about atheism and still be loving parents. But I agree that the interpretation is one that leaps straight to mind.
@katz, I can believe the college student, but not the stupid. 🙂
“OK…reading that father’s story was sad, but “atheistic religion”? What…like Buddhism, Jainism or some Quakers? ”
There’s a branch of atheistic Quakerism? Never knew. What’s the reasoning?
Also, it sounds like before he fell into the cults people, the son was religious and thus may’ve shared his views.
Old Reader,
Dunno. I don’t know much about it.
Titianblue:
“Yeah, ‘cos the sperm bank isn’t going to check the form. Right. ‘cos noone would sue the spern bank if thesperm wasn’t as advertised. Nope, never going to happen. Not something sperm banks might worry about, at all. /sarcasm
Nice to know TFH is consistently stupid.”
Buttercup:
“Yeaaaaaaah….no. Sperm banks are tightly self-regulated and have way too many checks and balances. They carefully validate donor identity along every step of the way. There are multiple in-person interviews, and any inconsistencies send up a red flag. You don’t just anonymously drop off a styrofoam cup and a form in the ATM deposit drawer.
More MRA #shitthatneverhappened. Do these guys ever post anything that isn’t a loser revenge fantasy?”
– I thought the same things. His reasoning is that “caucasian” includes his ethnicity (South Asian/Indian). But he was counting on none of the men in the Manosphere not ever having been to a sperm bank or seen the forms and their questions and thus uninformed enough to not question him. Neither have I but its immediately obvious that when it comes to reproduction, there’s going to be a lot more options to check off besides white, black, hispanic, other. Or caucasian, non-caucasian. Or to take us way back “caucasoid”, “mongoloid”, and “negroid”.
He must really take the Manosphere for fools, and can you blame him?
Not quite. If we assume 50% of the US population is male, then this means that 54% of men have attended college.
If we imagine that the US population is 100, then 60 of them have gone to college. 45% of 60 is 27. So 27 men went to college, out of 50 total men in the US. 27/50=0.54.
Anyway, mathing aside, these particular MRA theories are so divorced from reality. I mean, I can almost sympathize with someone who just hates women and thinks they are all assholes because he got rejected a bunch. Being undesired sucks and it can be very difficult to realize that the problem is you and that you need to make positive changes in your life if you want to share it with another human being.
But to literally believe that the goal of every woman everywhere is to get pregnant by an “alpha” and then marry and divorce a “beta” in order to get child support and alimony? What universe are these people from?
Kiwi Girl,
I didn’t say they were bad parents …..I said , “I find it hard to believe that their relationship wasn’t strained before …”
Context?
You think his opinion of people who don’t share his faith came about after his son died even though that’s a fairly common trope tossed out at atheists from their religious families / coworkers /etc while they’re still very much alive? Fine. I don’t. Let’s leave it at that.
“Also, it sounds like before he fell into the cults people, the son was religious and thus may’ve shared his views.”
Yes. I’m not Christian and my views on theism vs atheism are neutral but if as the father writes he was raised in a loving, non-fundamentalist Christian home and he gets involved in over a short period of time with a cult that preaches most parents are evil and abusive, any parent that takes you to church is evil and abusive, the career field you currently find yourself in (the military) is evil and abusive, your entire life up til you met us has been evil and abusive, and then this person, instead of gradually over time reflecting upon his life and making some adjustments here and there, swallows all of that Kool Aid in a matter of days – can you imagine the mind explosion and effect on his entire physiological system?
The thing is, Molyneux has several Youtube videos where he “deconstructs” and “exposes” various respected and renowned personalities, like Gandhi and MLK, and practically shouts that these people were cult leaders who brainwashed masses and that the public are a bunch of fools for believing their hype and that we need to break free from mind enslavement to these prominent figures and not put anyone on a pedestal.
“This was the first institution, legalized and normalized that laid bare feminism latent purpose – strong independent women® could remove the man from the equation of effecting an optimal hypergamy, while at the same time effecting future legislation and social engineering to enlist men (either publicly or privately) in the provisioning of this new breed of motherhood. And with every guy dutifully jerking off into a petrie dish, they effectually contribute one more element to institutionalized Alpha Fucks / Beta Bucks.”
– The Manosphere is replete with articles and comments about how 3D VR Holographic porn, sexbots AND “artificial wombs” will soon render the female sex completely obsolete.
In fact, that “futurist” TFH who wrote “The Misandry Bubble” has been “predicting” this all for years now.
So why then are they against sperm banks? Rather they should promote their use because the same science that made them possible will be the same field of science (reproductive technology) that will eventually make artificial wombs possible and available to them.