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.
Lea: I had a phobia about being pregnant – the thought made me want to crawl out of my skin. I have no problem with being around pregnant women, and I can deal with kids in small doses, but the thought of growing a kid inside me… Yuck.
I did manage to find a cure, but it involved a 30% rise in reproductive cancer risk, a horrific reaction to the hormones normally used to treat the condition, and two operations – admittedly, one involved a robot and the recovery was fairly easy, but still: surgery. Not an approach I’d recommend.
And as it turns out, I’m going to have another chance to work on my baby tending skills: my sister is pregnant! The nephew and brother in law are both firmly convinced it’s a girl, and the nephew has taken to following sister around with a blanket, telling her that ‘the baby’s COLD, mom!’
What will they do if they have a daughter? Or anything other than a non-alpha son? Or if the son is born anything other than “perfect” physically and cognitively? What if they are permanently injured from trauma, physical or psychological?
These guys should not be anywhere near children.
Hello. I have a serious question. My name’s Dave, I’m 26 years old, and I have diagnoses of anxiety and OCD (hospitalized twice). I’m a feminist and I believe Men’s Rights people are disgusting.
My question: Is it a sign of total failure and being a bad person if a guy is single? That’s not rhetorical – I genuinely want to know the answer.
Granted, I’m not a virgin – I’ve had two girlfriends previously. But lately I’ve been having a lot of trouble getting a date, let alone a girlfriend, and I’m half convinced I don’t really even want to be in love at this time in my life. Maybe later.
It’s just that I see misogynist tools being described as undateable and “forever alone” on this site and so many others (not blaming – you guys are far from the first). I’ve been very angry at myself lately because of this stigma, perpetuated both on the internet and in real life. I’m worried that because I’m having so much trouble meeting this basic standard of human interaction, I’m no better than misogynists, or even worse.
Anyone is welcome to respond – be honest in your answer.
thank you for your time
Good lawd, what did Fleetwood Mac ever do to deserve this? MY EARS
I didn’t even listen to the song, the last few MRA attempts at making music have permanently scarred my delicate ears enough.
Not so sure. There were a lot of arguments like this around the place as part of 2nd wave theorising. Part of it was in the throes of casting off the last vestiges of the Freudian style versions of what a real woman was about. But mostly it trips my socialist and comparative sociology buttons. Hard.
It seems far too locked into accepting the dominant patriarchal cultural ideas about virginity=purity=only virtue of women and it’s tied into the prevailing notions of workplace and work of the time. Some women writers alluded to non-European ideas about family and marriage, like women in some cultures not being eligible for marriage until they’d proved their fertility (and health) by successfully producing an infant. Other alternatives like brothers both/all being married to one woman and treating all the infants as their personal family responsibility were treated as curiosities, not quite like the horrified/fascinated prurient interest of a Victorian explorer, but not seriously considered as a real alternative either.
I thought by and large they were too culture-bound, like seeing uncommitted hippie communal living and sexual arrangements as being not just an alternative, but as the only alternative to monogamous marriage for life. The idea of a multiplicity of arrangements that suited the individuals concerned wasn’t really there. It was one coin that could be flipped with only two possible options.
And their ideas about women being able to have both a family and an independent working life were similarly over-simplified. Can’t really blame them for being much like the men theorists and only a bit more flexible. No one at the time really foresaw how profoundly the workplace and jobs would change with the introduction of more automation, computers and robots and more “flexible” working arrangements.
I still think they were stuck in that all or nothing mindset. If women were to be free to work as men did, then artificial wombs were a good idea — because they made women just like men. Thereby tacitly acknowledging that “male” was the default and the way that men worked and organised work was more or less inevitable.
If we’re going to support the idea of artificial wombs as something for women’s benefit, then we should make damned sure that that’s what it is. And not just another addition to the long list of things that can make a woman less of a woman or more like a man or some kind of gender/family traitor.
Really interesting comment, mildlymagnificent!
Oh fuck no. They butchered Fleetwood Mac?
Also, mildlymagnificent, excellent points all around.
Also, where do the eggs come from in this scenario? Donating eggs isn’t an easy, pain-free process. What’s to stop men from focusing on that part of the process as a way to control women? Patriarchy has proven itself to be able to adapt quickly to changing circumstances in order to maintain the basic gender heirarchy, I see no reason to think that this one thing would be the exception that changes everything.
Men’s desire to control women is rooted in our biology (sex, reproduction), but once the desire to do so has been implanted into a society I’m not convinced that changing one aspect of how reproduction works will eliminate the impulse to control. Maybe over a millennia it might, but in the short term? The men who’re obsessed with controlling women will start looking for another method. It’s the desire for control itself that we need to attack and try to socialize people out of.
Also, considering how expensive IVF is I don’t see how something more complicated, thus presumably more costly, will be available worldwide to all the people who don’t happen to be wealthy.
The whole idea of framing it as if the artificial womb is all that’s needed and forgetting the eggs reminds me of the old empty vessel idea, where a woman is basically just a pot that you grow babies in.
Yeah, these are good points, Cassandra. I believe too that once patriarchy is in place, it’s probably fairly self-sustaining. Also good point about seeing women as mere vessels.
Welp, that’s 4 minutes and 23 seconds of my life I’ll never get back. Does it hurt to be that bad at singing?
Did he keep the original lyrics? “Loving you isn’t the right thing to do…”
Yes, angry dude, loving women is the wrong thing for you to do. You should only love your pet rock. No living pets either, ideally.
Let’s start a charitable fund! Pet rocks for MGTOWs.
Or chia pets, maybe.
I’m happy to chip into a Kickstarter or similar to get them their own island so they can bloody well go their own way. Into Island of the Flies.
Or remember those Sea People things from the 80s that were basically a tiny aquarium filled with brine shrimp and a whole lot of wishful thinking? That might work.
Heh – the “empty vessel” makes me think of a proverb that really applies to MRAs, MGTOWs, PUAs et al – an empty vessel makes the most noise.
Sea Monkeys, rather. For the young uns who’re wondering wtf I’m going on about.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea-Monkeys
http://www.yoyo.com/p/schylling-sea-monkeys-ocean-zoo-colors-may-vary-143009?site=CA&sku=YN-051&utm_source=Google&utm_medium=cpc_Y&utm_campaign=GooglePLA&utm_content={adtype}&ca_sku=YN-051&ca_gpa={adtype}&ca_kw={keyword}&CAWELAID=1324520355&kpid=YN-051
Sea Monkeys! I remember this ad for them in comics from when I was a kid, so they go back at least to the 60s.
http://gentlemint.com/media/images/2014/05/16/4e76ed4f.jpg.650x650_q85.jpg
Ninjaed!
Those had to be the most over-promising and under-delivering ads ever. They’ll build cities, it said. Lies.
I remember that ad! Normally in comics. 70’s for me
Was that before there was ethics in advertising?