Oh dear. Paul Elam’s attempt to anoint himself King of the MGTOWs doesn’t seem to be going terribly well, mainly due to the fact that the overwhelming majority of those who call themselves Men Going Their Own Way would prefer it if he went his own way off a short pier.
His new ebook on MGTOW — despite receiving rave reviews from people who work for him at A Voice for Men — has not done quite as well amongst the MGTOW masses, many of whom are posting one-star reviews on Amazon.
Their complaints are a mixture of the reasonable and the ridiculous. On the one hand, they accuse him of being a con artist trying to cash in on their little movement with an ebook made up mostly of stuff that’s already been posted on the internet. On the other, well, they think he’s some kind of quasi-feminist supplicator to women who’s committed a sort of treason against his fellow men by not banning all women from AVFM. No, really:
On their own websites, Elam’s MGTOW haters are even more blunt. Here’s what one commenter on MGTOWHQ had to say:
But my favorite response so far comes from a Youtuber who calls himself TheMadShangi. A few months ago, Mr. Shangi was a loyal AVFMer; indeed, he contributed a post to Elam’s site gleefully recounting how he’d been such a royal pain in the ass to me on Twitter that I stopped responding to him. (Or, as he put it, How I made David Futrelle cry and ragequit on Twitter.)
Well, these days he’s singing a different tune. Literally. Here’s his musical critique of Mr. Elam and his book.(The bit at the beginning is from a video Elam made baiting his MGTOW haters.)
Both sides in this MGTOW civil war are so thoroughly terrible I can only hope that they both go down in ignominious defeat, leaving us, the amused spectators, the only real winners.
A turn of the century version of Sunshine Mary! The 19th century, I mean.
Huh, 1907. And in 1914 men in their millions were recruited, drafted and volunteered and soldiers. Everyone of whom had some version of the “hussif” mending and maintenance pack (say housewife quickly and you get the idea). They all had to sew on their own buttons, darn their own socks and work in the kitchens and do all the rest of it with no woman in sight until they got themselves wounded badly enough to go to a hospital. And they managed perfectly well. The great majority of those who survived the war married and some of them even continued doing those things if it turned out that they were better at it than their wives happened to be.
pfffft. …. as soldiers.
My father taught my mother how to knit. He was born in the late 1930s.
I wish someone out of Mr C and I knew how to darn, it would come in handy. Alas, failure at that is something we have in common.
And in the past 108 years, they still haven’t explained why women would want to be with someone who was literally only interested in them because of their cooking and sewing ability.
*S* I actually know a radical feminist who argues that inventing artificial wombs is super important if feminism is gonna go anywhere, because the whole reproduction thing is at the roots of patriarchy. (She’s not a TERF though; she argues that the root of transmisogyny is that trans women can’t bear children like women are “supposed” to do, so they’re included in the theory.) I’m not sure whether I remember exactly how this argument went (and I’m definitely not sure that I completely buy, although I must say I think that there’s something to it), but basically, men are motivated to control women in order to control reproduction. Women must in various ways be steered away from things that might interfere with precious reproduction, and pushed into seeing “being the subject of a man, having his babies” as their primary goal in life. Plus being pregnant and giving birth is still fairly dangerous. In Sweden and many other western countries it’s extremely rare to actually die from childbirth, sure, but getting some kind of permanent damage to your vagina area is much more common than medical professionals are usually willing to admit, plus the very pregnancy might be problematic in various ways – but all medical problems surrounding this must be downplayed as “natural” and “no big deal at all”, since otherwise women might begin opting out, and we can’t have that!
So basically, her feminist utopia includes that no one needs to actually be pregnant and give birth in order to produce new humans – people still could if they wanted to, but it would be regarded more as engaging in an extreme sport rather than the natural duty of all women everywhere. Of course, this line of reasoning presupposes that men in general don’t hate women just for the sake of hating women, as the MGTOW seem to think is perfectly natural, and be all like “finally we don’t need the women any longer, let’s go live in a cave alone with our artificial wombs!”
My favourite artefact from the Mary Rose exhibition: a sailor’s sewing basket. Needles, threads, bits of ribbon (with designs identical to ones I had). Gosh, a man who could sew in 1545! How could this be?
Not to mention tailors and the like. Because men can’t possibly learn those skills, nosiree.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/75/Quiringh_van_Brekelenkam_-_Tailor%27s_Workshop.jpg/389px-Quiringh_van_Brekelenkam_-_Tailor%27s_Workshop.jpg
And cooking! Name a show that has a real chef as the focus. Is the chef a man?
Usually!
When men do it, it’s High Art.
That goes for emotions, too. Whenever men are angry, or head over heels in love, it’s Serious Business, worthy of its own Hollywood screenplay. When women have these same emotions, we’re silly, irrational, or stalkers.
Love that painting, kittehserf! Have you seen “Tim’s Vermeer”?
Ellesar,
Kids get it.
My son asked me “Why are there hardly any black people in movies?”. My jaw, she dropped. He starts giving examples for why that’s weird.
At school there were fewer white people, but in movies there are so many white people. What’s with all the white people?
We had just watched Jeepers Creepers 2 and he pointed out that there were only 3 black people in the movie and that was still more black people than he usually sees in movies.
Before long he’s asking questions about why we need separate bathrooms in public but not at home. “Where do girls like Rori (who is trans) go to the bathroom?
He’s a kid. He likes to watch cupcake wars and dreams of being a trucker. He can see and articulate things these Men Doing Stuff on Their Own One Day movementeers throw mantrums (man tantrums) about when confronted with. Just a suggestion that everything isn’t about them they come unglued.
These guys lack the emotional depth and reasoning abilities of a tween.
Of course, my husband has taught him the ways of misandry. He’s teaching our son to tie his own ties. He’s a sharp dressed boy. He’s considerate, polite and responsible. He’s likes fuzzy wuzzy animals and takes good care of his. Yep, he’s nurturing just like his dad. I’m sure all of that is oppressing his true, rude, pompous, Cheeto wallowing nature. It’s really a shame he’ll never be gross enough or hate ladies enough to be a Real Man ™. Oh the misandies of it all!
My grandfather was a tailor. And my dad and uncles all know how to cook. In fact, one of them so likes to cook that he’s taken that task over while his wife does the accounting for the family business. Strangely, though, not one of these guys has ever made noises about doing without a woman…
Even if artificial wombs are created what are these guys doing to do about eggs? And mothering the children? The only way I can see this happening is if they’re willing to pay women significant money to donate eggs and then raise them, and then they’re right back at square one but without the relationship part. In fact they’ll probably have to cough up MORE money than if they were in a relationship, as she won’t be motivated by love.
They really haven’t thought this through, have they?
I think she may be onto something! I wouldn’t mind having more children, I just never, never want to be pregnant again. Never.
Ditto, grumpyoldnurse. I’d be first in line for an artificial womb.
I can’t help feeling that they would be used against women somehow, the same way daycare is – ” oh, you’re not a Real Woman who carried her own child for nine months, you’re a selfish careerist who outsourced her fetal development to technology.”
@sunnysombrera Good point – it makes me glad eggjacking really isn’t a thing. They’d probably have to pay a hefty jackass premium to convince a woman to donate privately, or go through some unspeakable black market. They wouldn’t pass the screening process with a reputable agency.
It isn’t really about the kids, though, is it? It’s about having a little genetic trophy to prove that you’ve had sex and your liquid gold thingys can swim.
Buttercup: also a good point. They’d have to lie about themselves AND cough up dosh to convince a woman to donate, especially if it’s through a black market. They’d be in even more of a fix if they decided they only want kids from “high quality” women i.e 5-10% of the female population. Then what? Stoop to kidnapping and forced surgery? That’s a crime there fellas. And again, who is going to raise the kids?
You know what, if you put the right author to the task you could squeeze a decent Sci Fi dystopian novel out of all their drivel. Shame Aldous Huxley is dead.
And yes, it’s not about having kids for the sake of having a kid to love, it’s about having a little mini-me as proof of manhood. They’ll have no idea what to do when their human shaped trophies start talking back and thinking independently. What if the kids (well, teens) reject the ideology? How will the MGTOWs teach strong minded daughters to shut up and submit? What if any of them escapes the commune?
Oh man its starting to sound like a cult now.
Or a really good, non-depressing novel. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethan_of_Athos
I’m not sure if it’s possible to make a kid from two sperm, but I read somewhere that if there artificial wombs a kid could be made from two eggs. It seems like they endanger men more than women. Since eggs don’t have Y chromosomes all those babies would be girls. The ultimate misandry!
I’m not sure they’d want to make a kid out of two eggs when everything revolves around them and their liquid gold. Like, I think they’d rather it was possible to make a kid out of two sperm. (They could still wind up with girls though).
Quite accidentally, I recently came across an article in Wikipedia that describes an actual historical occurrence of Men (and Women!) Going Their Own Ways: Beguines and Beghards. These were self-organising religious communities in Middle Ages Europe. People who joined them, although celibate, would not take permanent vows like regular religious orders, only staying as long as they felt they needed to.
Alas, they seem to have been charitable in outlook and are thus incompatible with the libertarian bent of most modern MGTOWs…
Yep. All of that^
I love babies and kids. Pregnancy was not awesome and there is no way in hell I would do it more than once. If I could have avoided it then, that would have been great.