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After all of the depressing stuff from recent days, here’s something a little lighter: A heartwarming story of misogynist gullibility, and yet another reminder that the evil feminazi double standards that the manospherians think they’re fighting exist only in their own fevered imaginations.
So last night, as a result of a rather nasty contretemps in the comments here, I was going through some old comments, and I discovered that one recently banned troll has a little blog of his own. Curious, I went and checked it out, and discovered that the obnoxious fellow, one “Ronnie Libra,” fancies himself a “dating coach.” And he’d just posted a rant defending pickup artists from accusations of being the creepy, manipulative predators that we know a lot of them are.
Here was his defense:
Pickup Artists are widely considered people who use tactics and techniques to try and “manipulate” members of the opposite sex into bed. Predatory, manipulative, rape culture, creepy…
Where else have we seen that before?
Popular Women’s Magazines perhaps?
As proof of this matriarchal manipulation, he posted the covers of three women’s magazines, adorned with pictures of sexy celebs and covered with headlines promising women guidance on how best to enslave men with their sexy sexiness.
But let’s look at some of these Mainstream Articles in these Popular women’s magazines.
Article Titles like:
Get Men to do your bidding without being a Nag
Get in his head and in his bed!
Christina Hendricks: How she chased her man and got him!
How to disappear without a trace.
The Sex position that will Put a Ring on your Finger.
Football and poker will improve your relationship. Find out how!
And a whole host of ways to manipulate men through sex.
It took me literally 3 minutes to pull of 3 random women’s magazine covers without even skimming for what the content of the covers would be. …
Am I complaining? Am I saying there’s something wrong with all of this? NOPE! As a matter of fact, I am very far from the hypocritical crowd out there spouting out how men learning tactics and techniques or even just improving their lives inside and out is somehow creepy, misogynistic, women hating, rape culture. If that were the case than women have been rapey, men hating, creepsters since before I was born.
No. Men and women trying to become more attractive to the opposite sex is AWESOME! … Women and Men are playing the same game, and the fact is, the WOMEN have been making the rules for a long time. …
[T]his double standard that what is great for women to do is evil for men to do just needs to be put to rest.
There’s just one teensy problem with Ronnie’s argument: two of the three magazine covers that Ronnie used to prove his point were obvious, ridiculous fakes. Here they are:
Yep. Apparently Ronnie thinks that Vogue runs cover stories on “The Lost Art of the Handjob,” and that InStyle is obsessed with telling women not to cut their hair because guys like women’s hair long.
You may notice that in addition to being festooned with headlines that sound like they were written not by sneaky sexually manipulative women but rather by a committee of horny dudes, these covers also feature a url on them: coolmaterial.com.
Using the sophisticated internet research technique of typing this url into my browser and, upon reaching the site in question, typing the words “women’s magazines” into the search box, I discovered that these covers were taken from a couple of “humor” features imagining what women’s magazines would look like … if they were written by men.
The basic joke behind them all: how can we convince these silly women to bend over backwards and forwards to please men sexually, while making them think they’re empowering themselves? Hell, there’s even a freaking sandwich joke on that fake InStyle cover.
And seriously, Ronnie, the NAME OF THE IMAGE FILE for the ScarJo cover, the image you posted on your blog and that I’ve reposted here, is if_men_wrote_womens_magazines_00.jpg. How did that not tip you off?
It’s true that women’s magazines do offer sex tips– shocking, I know — and, heck, I even found a handjob how-to in Vogue’s downmarket rival Glamour. But how is that in any way comparable to the manipulative and pedatory techniques favored by so many PUAs? Offering advice on how to please your partner in bed is about as innocuous as providing recipes for delicious food that people will enjoy eating. It’s nothing like the creepy gaslighting and routine boundary-violation regularly recommended by PUAs. Dread Game, anyone?
It’s also true that a couple of the headlines that Ronnie quotes are taken from the one real cover he posted, that of the May 2012 issue of the UK edition of Cosmopolitan. But tellingly, one of these quotes is actually a misquote. Cosmo wasn’t offering sneaky women advice on “how to disappear without a trace” – presumably with a briefcase full of pilfered cash and a vial of some poor man’s sperm. The actual headline?
Cosmo investigates: How can a woman disappear without a trace?
Yes, that’s right: it was an investigative report about a woman’s disappearance. I couldn’t find the piece itself on the Cosmopolitan UK website, which only puts limited stuff from its print editions online, though I found a more recent news story there about a missing woman who has been in the news a good deal in the UK. The American edition of Cosmo has also run investigative reports on missing women.
I’m not quite sure how Ronnie managed to get the headline so wrong. It’s written in big letters on the cover. Maybe he was distracted by cover girl Christina Hendricks’ cleavage? But it’s a revealing little slip nonetheless, transforming a story about a woman missing and possibly murdered into how-to guide to female deception.
More proof that these guys see just what they want to see – even if what they’re seeing is a joke, or entirely a product of their own imagination
Note to Ronnie: If you’d like to defend yourself here. I’ll unban your and let your comments through, just so long as they stay withing my comment guidelines.
I mean, Cosmo is sometimes a big pile of patriarchy-infested crap that’s simultaneously alien and offensive (see: Cosmocking, the Pervocracy, hilarity), but to describe them as PUA tips for women?
Welp. Let’s say it’s a continuum between wrongity-wrong-wrong and NO JUST GO TO JAIL.
And guess which is which.
If you came out of your mom’s basement, and unplugged from your attempt to win the favor of women by self-loathing you could go to any supermarket and look at any cover of any of these magazines and see how ridiculously wrong you are.
Cheers! 🙂
Like everybody else I have been writing about Eliot Rodgers and manosphere misogyny etc etc and have found myself attracting male commenters who first tell me that in no way do they share any traits with this terrible killer, only to move on and explain why they hate women as vehemently as they do.
One gentleman carefully explained that he knows about all the bizarre things women get up to, which he was kind enough to enumerate for me. My conclusion is these men live in a very strange anti-world of their own fabrication – they’re like the dwarves in Narnia who keep bumping their noses against the stable walls, even when the stable isn’t there any more and they’re in open space.
A bit of a difference in the articles aimed at women and the ones aimed at men – they’re mostly about how women can keep their male partner interested and satisfied *after they’re already dating*. As in, the two folks have agreed that they are interested in each other and want to spend time together.
I will admit, though, Cosmo’s sex tips are often terrifying and boggling, regardless of how long the partners have been together.
http://www.cracked.com/article/156_7-sex-tips-from-cosmo-that-will-put-you-in-hospital/
Well, Ronnie Libra didn’t really strike me as a very intelligent chap.
Hilarious! Ronnie keeps getting stuck on this imaginary notion that feminists don’t want men to improve themselves. Improve yourself all you want as long as your idea of improving yourself doesn’t involve harming anyone else.
I do have a slight, probably irrelevant nitpick. I wouldn’t call Vogue and Glamour direct competitors. Vogue and Elle are a little bit more high fashion and classy while Glamour and Cosmo are more commercial.
Not that I’m defending Vogue. In addition to the usual sexism, racism and heteronormative BS in all magazines, Vogue is also extremely classist.
It’s just that Vogue and Elle market themselves to an older and wealthier demographic than Glamour and Cosmo.
Yes, I went through a rabid magazine consumption phase in college. *Hangs head in shame.*
Manoshperians’ gullibility really amuses me. It’s nice to have a laugh after all the recent bullshit.
I hope Ronnie doesn’t show up again, he was plenty tiresome.
I was going to say, some of those lines sound like legit Cosmo cover stuff…gawd I hate Cosmo. I’m pretty sure it’s always been run by men trying to get women to do their bidding, all the while thinking they’re actually empowering themselves 🙂
Oh god, the sandwich joke makes it sound like the dude will be doing something with the sandwiches besides eating them. That was not a mental image I needed today.
And Cosmo is also a communist magazine!
The best ever moments of Cosmo ridiculousness were a. use your panties as a scrunchy, your boyfriend will find it totally hot and b. put your scrunchy on his cock, he’ll find it totally hot. So my theory is that Cosmo is actually a super seekrit false flag operation designed to persuade women to make complete fools of themselves in front of men who they’re trying to impress.
@damselindetech The Onion did a piece on that very thing titled “How to Get a Guy to Notice You While You’re Having Sex With Him”
They did indeed.
What the…?
I suppose their are a few men who might find those things hot but I can’t imagine this is universal.
What about the radical notion of asking your partner what they find hot? I guess no dating advice columns would stay in business if they did that.
Granted that I’m not a man, but I am attracted to women, and if I saw one wearing her knickers as a hair accessory I’m pretty sure I’d be laughing too hard to have sex any time soon.
Is the counterpart to the phrase “gina tingles” “pickle tickles”? Hm. Neither work, just fyi manospherians.
I looked at Ronnie’s blog because I thought no one can be that clueless, so it must be satire, but no: his posts are long, clueless, and REAlly boring. Ronnie thinks that feminist objections to Game are simply that “she-hateists” are threatened by men “getting better at dating”. It’s like, dude, that’s not what “Game” is and that’s not the problem with it. The sad part is that he even talks about how awful and demoralizing “Game” can be, but he thinks it’s the only way he can improve his chances at getting a relationship.
Especially if it was big cotton period underwear.
“The best ever moments of Cosmo ridiculousness were a. use your panties as a scrunchy, your boyfriend will find it totally hot and b. put your scrunchy on his cock, he’ll find it totally hot”
…WTF o.O
I keep wondering what they think they mean by improve. They seem to mean “fuck more women, thus win all of the totallyalphabetterhanyouothermenshouldkissmyassnow points”, but it makes it a bit challenging for people who’re using the more conventional definition of improve to have a conversation with them.
(Not to mention the whole, hey, women don’t particularly appreciate being framed as poker chips issue.)
At the core, women’s magazines and PUA coaching are all about women failing to be perfect and men needing to be pleased.
It’s almost as if they both peddle shopworn gender essentialist cliches for profit.
I never understood the comparison between those women’s magazines and the crap PUAs and ilk like to spew. I see the former as, like you said, ultimately about pleasing your partner (although I’m not to crazy about most of them, if i’ll be honest…), while I see the latter about men (the PUAs) pleasing themselves at the expense of women. But that’s what women have always wanted anyway according to these guys so it’s coo’. sarcasm
Am I the only one or is the sex they often claim women want kind of gross, selfish, scary and really not attractive at all?
Buttercup Q. Skullpants: “At the core, women’s magazines and PUA coaching are all about women failing to be perfect and men needing to be pleased.”
Yes! So much this! I’ve been looking for a way to explain why I don’t like womens magazines too much either and you pretty much nailed it.
YMMV, obviously, but I’ve never seen any PUAs talking about the kind of sex they like to imagine themselves having and thought “yeah, that sounds like fun, let’s do that”.
Boxer briefs make great hair extensions.