There are a lot of good reasons to give Valentine’s Day the side-eye. It’s a holiday, as many people dutifully point out every year, that’s more about selling candies, cards and jewelry than it is about love, promoting a backwards version of (hetero)sexuality in which men trade expensive gifts for sex – a philosophy perhaps most crassly expressed in the ad slogan for Kay Jewelers: “Every Kiss Begins With Kay.”
It’s a day that causes stress for a lot of couples and resentment amongst the single. And those little chalky heart candies with the words on them, whatever their kitschy charm, are really kind of crappy as candy.
But there are bad reasons to dislike Valentine’s Day as well. Amongst the Men Going Their Own Way of the world, “National Vagina Worship day” is the holiday they most love to hate; in their minds, the “bitches” don’t deserve any kind of respect at all, much less flowers and candy.
The folks at MGTOW.com has decided to fight back against V-Day, sort of, by inventing a holiday of their own. Here’s a semi-official annoucement:
FEB 14th is INTERNATIONAL MGTOW DAY and it is 17 centuries too late!
That’s ok cunts of the universe. We have the Future Covered Bitches. Fuck You!
The MGTOW.com regulars are celebrating the day (they claim) by treating themselves to nice dinners and new power tools and whatever else they can think of. As Soul Man put it on the MGTOW.com forums,
It’s gonna be a GREEEEEAAAAATTTTT DAY!!!
I am going to treat myself to whatever the fuck pleases me! I think I’m going to have a big fat steak and go ride my crorch rocket at very excessive speeds! If I’m feeling altruisric, I will find some cheap trollop to toss on the back and give her a couple of miles of “Mr. Wrong”! HAHAHA!
Yeah, that’s gonna happen.
Ned Trent, reporting in from Germany, has similar plans, minus the motorcycle ride:
For this evening I am going to take myself out for a substantial meal like a big Schnitzel with fries in a cool restaurant which specializes in this at a pre-ordered table for one person (myself), before heading out to a local nightclub on a mission: taking the piss out of /pissing off any female that I may encounter during that night over there, whilst having a great time myself on my own…
Mostly, though, as you may have already gathered from these two comments, the MGTOW.com regulars seem to be using the day as an excuse to do the same thing they do every day: try to take over the world kvetch about women and fantasize about making them miserable.
Mycocaine, writing back in January, allowed himself to dream:
This will be first 2.14 I am looking forward to. Rubbing my hands together. What say all men in unison dump that bitch on Feb 13. and go buy themselves a car.
GoneGalt had a somewhat more labor-intensive plan:
We ought to start some campaigns to counter women, small or large or just funny. One might be to derive a list of chick flick movies and then use it as a guide to rate all such movies as ‘1’ star on Netflix/IMDB/Rotten Tomatoes to bring the ratings down, and every now and then write a review that’s generic (so you can cut and paste it) and extremely insulting of that movie (something like ‘typical female drama and romantic garbage – amazing how women view themselves as soooo special’) 🙂
ListenUp! announced an equally, er, creative way to punish the women of the world on their (allegedly) special day. It involved a photo of celebrity feminist lawyer Gloria Allred.
Tonight after printing 30 pages all with this photo on it, I’m going to the gym to tape this photo on every punching bag in the place. Carry on men!
Machiavelli tried to live up to his namesake with a proposal to ignore women real hard:
Studies have show that [ostracism] creates the same effect in the brain as physical pain (google it). People become co-operative when ostracised to win back approval. … It’s hard wired into us for evolutionary reasons.
Women are particularly sensitive to being ostracised.
The more guys that become mgtow the more women will be ostracised for mistreating men (either yourself or another man). …
14 February 2015, it’s a “nice day for an ostracism” for women everywhere.
We (men) are 50% of the population, so let’s see what women think when this half of the population starts ostracising them until they treat all men with equality and respect.
As I read through all of these little fantasies, none of which seem at all likely to ever be implemented in the real world, I found myself thinking of the title of an old album by the eccentric British post-punk band Television Personalities: “Mummy Your Not Watching Me.”
Because the one insurmoutable problem of all these plans is that they depend on women actually giving a shit about what these guys do. And as most of these guys in their hearts probably realize, no one really cares if they eat a nice steak dinner (go for it, dudes) or waste their evening giving “chick flicks” one-star ratings on Netflix (knock yourselves out).
If they were decent human beings, being ignored by them actually would hurt. Of course, if they were decent human beings, they wouldn’t be giddily fantasizing about ostrasizing the women of the world for being women.
Maybe the MGTOWers need to replace their clumsy five-letter acronym with a new one: MYNWM (Mummy You’re Not Watching Me, pronounced “minwim”).
Here’s the actual song “Mummy Your Not Watching Me,” by Television Personalities (music only), followed by a video of them pretending to perform their song Painted Word. Happy Vagina Worship Day!
OMG! MYNWM! I am so taking that and running with it. I can’t wait to dish it out to the next crop of misogynistic, man-children I find myself (either willingly or unwillingly), debating (and I use that term loosely), on the internet[s].
“…before heading out to a local nightclub on a mission: taking the piss out of /pissing off any female that I may encounter during that night over there, whilst having a great time myself on my own…”
For a second there I actually felt a little sorry for this guy simply because of how pathetic it is “having a great time myself on my own”…but then I woke up to myself.
He’s going to have so much fun pissing off those women who will most probably write him off for what he is “an angry, drunk, self-loathing, man-child”. He may just piss off the wrong woman and end up with a fist in his face; or a bouncer throwing him out of said ‘nightclub”, or the cops dragging him down to the station for questioning, before entering him into their database of ‘people to watch’.
Or maybe he’ll just sit there watching everyone else enjoying themselves, and most probably watching other guys hooking up with women simply because they are just having a good time being themselves, not coming off as threatening or creepy and not taking it all so damn seriously.
I played both and also Hate Plus, the sequel to Analogue. It took a bit of doing collecting the deaths and pairings on LLQ, but I had fun. Good times.
What really boggles me is that I’m somehow expected to envy or loathe someone who is having a good time, whether in a group of people or alone. If some guy is out in a restaurant, sitting alone in a table, and having an awesome steak lunch by themselves, and enjoying it with hungry gusto, what’s that to me? I’m not his waiter; it is not my duty to go over and ask if everything is fine, and would sir like some feminine attention between the sheets for dessert? No? Sir is going his own way? Jolly good.
Because all I will see is this: There’s someone eating food, and that’s his business whether he’s eating it all alone or in company. On 14th of February, or all the other days of the year.
About the only time his seating arrangement concerns me is when the place has no seating reservations and it is starting to get full, and that’s when I ask “excuse me, is this seat at your table available” and get on with my own noms once told it is free. Thankfully, living in Finland means that nobody’s expecting any talk beyond that. 😀
“People just aren’t that invested in a number, how does a film getting a rating of 1 change how much you enjoyed it?”
Unless you’re a gamerdude. Then, your game only getting a 9/10 or 89/100 is a deadly insult on your identity.
No, really. That’s an actual #gamergate talking point.
“Unless you’re a gamerdude. Then, your game only getting a 9/10 or 89/100 is a deadly insult on your identity.”
I guess when you percieve any criticism of things you like to be a personal attack it does happen. I don’t know anyone for whom “movie watcher” is as important to their sense of identity as “gamer” seems to be to those gamerdudes though.
Wait, what if my significant other likes beer nuts??
It usually isn’t, but do you remember the reaction to when Marshall Fine wrote the first less-than-wowed review of The Dark Knight Returns, causing its cumulative score on Rotten Tomatoes to drop below 100%? (Oh the horror!). Needless to say, it included death threats.
Although I suspect there’s a fairly strong overlap between impassioned Batman fans and gamerdudes.
I still find it strange how anyone can be *this* viciously hateful against people just for… well… existing as free individuals.
To hate someone to this degree – for not wanting to be a submissive wifey – for not wanting to be a slave.
The level of entitlement and ego at work here… these MGTOW are very damaged people.
See, I actually would be a little vexed if a bunch of random Mgtow whiners started lowering the scores of random films on IMDB. My Bad Movie club use IMDB ratings to look for terrible, terrible films which we can get drunk and heckle at, and it would make extra work if we then had to google every movie with a really low score to discover if it was actually bad, or if it just had women in it…
“National Vagina Worship day” WTF??? Thanks for ruining my birthday you guys! (it was my birthday on Valentine’s day) Who’s vagina am I supposed to be worshiping exactly? My mother’s?
@ParadoxicalIntention: Yay, games! I haven’t played “Long Live the Queen” yet, but I’ve seen other people playing it, and it looks great. I might get it myself when I have the money.
Plus, you can be extra happy that the MRAs would probably hate “Long Live the Queen” and “Analogue: A Hate Story”, since the first one is about a young girl (a princess, no less!) growing into competence and independence, and the second is a critique of misogyny and oppression in patriarchal societies.
I wish I still could. But I’ve read too much history.
They’re libertarians. They can’t possibly be expected to grasp the idea of doing nice things for people out of love.
It doesn’t surprise me that guys who are so hung up on numbers, charts, and graphs would overestimate the importance of IMDB ratings, and assume that everyone else does too (while also vastly overestimating the impact of their one-star copypasta crank review). Do they think Hollywood execs will stop making chick flicks if they get rated lower? Studios don’t pay much attention to ratings. They care about box office.
– Nequam
I get that people simply have been (and are) like this. Bigotry, racism, sexism, it’s nothing new, and it has had horrible consequences throughout history. What I don’t get is – *why* – how does someone get *this* filled with hate… over practically nothing?
To hate, viciously *hate*, women in general – to the point of actively trying to punish members of the gender at random – just for them not wanting to serve as subdued servile servants.
Is it just out-of-control entitlement? Is it some kind of misogyny-gene? Are these people genuinely sick – in the true, pathological, meaning of the word?
And… do I really *want* to get into their headspace to the point where I understand?
WRT The review of The Dark Knight Rises: And then, although the death threats were mostly generic and didn’t seem particularly graphic or personal, RT dealt with the problem swiftly and completely. It immediately closed comments on that review and a few months later did away with comments altogether.
The person being harassed happened to be a man. Coincidence?
In Finland we call it Friend’s Day (Ystävänpäivä) and it’s pretty much entirely platonic. Seriously, I can’t think of it having any romantic aspect that wasn’t influenced by the US equivalent. I used to be so confused watching sitcoms when the single characters cried to their friends that they’re so lonely like… Your friends. Are in the same. ROOM.
Internet hugs and playful kittens to MouseFarts and WWTH, if they are welcome.
We must act now and save the Future Covered Bitches from the clutches of the MGTOW!
Reclaim the beer nuts! Make it “Take Back the Beer Nuts from the MGTOW Day”!
Srsly, though: These guys are like junkyard dogs. They see something nice that isn’t theirs, they just gotta piss on it. Just to prove to the world who’s really boss. It would be hilarious if it weren’t so pathetic.
@skiriki, this made me LOL IRL. I laughed so loudly my cat fled the vicinity.
Of course they illustrate their big holiday with a picture of a woman looking devastated after they stomped on her roses and walked away instead of a man actually enjoying his woman-free life.
I made the mistake of clicking over and perusing their forums for a few minutes, and yikes.
Even the section for discussing jobs and careers is captioned “Ever work for a woman? Roll up your sleeves and share your horror story.”
This reminds me of Spaced, there’s a bit in the comic shop:
@Bacon:
Ooh, ooh:
– Tip Toes (read the following review, watch the film and read the review again. It’s like lime and salt with tequila. http://www.cracked.com/blog/i-love-tiptoes/ – Just fantastic).
– The Room (Tommy Wiseau) – “wait, did I miss something?”; no, it’s just that this major plot point has never been referred to before, but don’t worry too much about it as it will never be referred to again either.
I can’t think of others right now, but those are my goto bad movies.
“I can’t think of others right now, but those are my goto bad movies.”
Don’t forget “Birdemic” !
Again, it’s kind of adorable that Ned feels the need to clarify any table-for-one confusion he seems to think would have ensued without his careful mansplanation. We got it dude. You used ‘myself’ twice in the same sentence. That table = your territory. We’ve been told.
On a related note,
So much spam potential, so many memes.
http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lx19jt3Yox1qckti2.gif
http://cdn.meme.am/instances/500x/57771369.jpg