People used to say that Steve Jobs had a sort of “reality distortion field” that surrounded him like an aura, that his charisma and enthusiasm were so off the charts that he was able to convince those in his presence (and, quite often, himself) of almost anything.
The people I tend to write about on this blog also seem to live within reality distortion fields of their own making, but instead of seeing the world through Apple-colored glasses they come to believe a lot of stupid and terrible things about women. And in the process, some have become incapable of seeing what is right there before their eyes.
Take, for example, the surreal discussion of the new Sally Field comedy Hello, My Name is Doris that I ran across recently on the MGTOW forums on GoingYourOwnWay.com.
The film tells the story of a comically frumpy and awkward older woman (Field) who gets the hots for a charming, handsome and much younger co-worker (Max Greenfield). I haven’t seen the movie, so I have no idea if the two end up together. Or if the movie is any good.
The fellows on GoingYourOwnWay.com haven’t seen the movie either, but they have some pretty strong feelings about it regardless, notably the feeling “eeeeeeeeww!” They’re not only offended and disgusted by the idea of the two getting together; they’re angry that any old lady could even think she could bag a much younger man.
“Well i like older women but this garbage glory hole piece of garbage grand parent slut i wouldnt be able to puncture,” one commenter declares.
“[I]ts not a rom com its a fucking crime against nature, a freakish out growth that exists only after years of gynocidal feminist garbage has poisoned us all,” adds another.
So far this is all pretty standard MGTOW stuff. After all, these are guys who, like so many others in the manosphere, think women “hit the wall” by the age of thirty, if not earlier.
What’s interesting to me is how old they think Sally Field is.
In the post that opens the thread, titled “New fantasy for post-wall women,” a commenter who calls himself Nuggets describes the film thusly:
Romantic comedy with 50-ish woman seducing the 20 something new hire guy at her job. I always find shit like this hilarious. Probably the beginning of a new trend for movies. Bleh
In a followup comment, he adds:
It’s like they’re in total denial that she’s old. They’re trying so hard to present her as an “omg so awkward” 23 year old woman, even though the actress who plays her is 54. That’s exactly how women think though, especially the target demographic for this movie. Picture some grannies going to see this, gives me the creeps mang.
Sally Field is 69 years old, not 54. She played “The Flying Nun” in the 1960s, for god’s sake.
Not only that, but in the film she’s done up in a way that makes her look even older — as you can see from the film’s trailer, which Nuggets helpfully posted to the thread:
Here she is at the film’s premiere, with somewhat better styling:
For purposes of comparison, here’s another 69-year-old who’s been in the news a lot lately:
Now, I should point out that several commenters on GoYourOwnWay.com piped up to set Nuggets straight on Field’s actual age. And, for what it’s worth, Nugget is also off on the age of Sally Field’s movie crush. The actor playing her co-worker isn’t “20 something.” He’s 35.
But Nuggets’ confusion about Field’s age is telling.
Does he think that when women ‘hit the wall,” at whatever arbitrary age he thinks this happens, that they immediately start shrinking down and drying up, transforming from “hot babes” into an army of bitter old crones?
Is he so convinced that “women age like milk,” as misogynists often say, that he simply can’t see all the women who don’t?
Newsflash, MGTOW dudes: lots of men find older women attractive.
In the real world, to be sure, it’s pretty rare for 35-year-old men to date 69-year-old women. But the inverse is also true, and there are plenty of men who are interested in the older women that MGTOWs profess to be so disgusted by, even if they lack the age-defying powers of a Helen Mirren. Indeed, one recent study by AARP found that a third of 40-something women who were dating were dating younger men.
Physical attraction doesn’t abide by the rules that people like MGTOWs try to impose upon it. Contrary to the assertions of manosphere “wall theory,” not all men are forever obsessed with 18-year-old supermodel virgins.
One of the weirder aspects of straight male sexuality is that men are often afraid to admit when they find themselves attracted to women who don’t measure up to some arbitrary standard of conventional attractiveness.
That’s why you see so many teenage boys and young men online loudly proclaiming that they “would not bang” this or that celebrity woman due to some weird and imaginary flaws (“pointy elbows”); their proclamations are often so obviously and ridiculously untrue they’ve inspired a popular meme, here applied to a perfectly lovely cat:
MGTOWs are men who’ve never outgrown this phase; indeed, they’ve turned their cries of “would not bang” into a life philosophy of sorts. Some of them must realize that they’re protesting too much.
But others, like Nuggets, have become so enmeshed in their own nonsense they can’t ever see straight. Bad ideas can be a strangely powerful thing.
Thanks MGTOW I didn’t know this movie existed and now I want to watch it.
OT–but I like to think that Sally Field will vote for this guy, who wants to fist fight both Koch brothers. He’s running for the Senate in California and promises that he will “not do nothing” to fight climate change. So far, I like Mike Beitiks!
Katz:
Books?? What books? I don’t think even booklice would eat an electronic copy of Bang Iceland.
By far the best relationship I had before I met my wife was with someone 17 years older than me.
Come to think of it, she turned 66 a few days ago. I haven’t seen her in over twenty years (we’re on different continents now), but I somehow doubt my reaction would be “ewwwww” if we did meet again.
@ Tulse
Helen Mirren is awesome.
Starstruck trivia: my husband actually dated her when they were both still at school (his school and hers, both single-sex, were near to each other).
She was an older woman, 17 to his 16, and they went out for a frothy coffee a couple of times in Southend.
It means I get to say “Your old girlfriend is in the news again” on a fairly regular basis.
@Razzamatazz – Speculating about the looks, sexual history, or childhoods of MGTOWs is super, super unhelpful.
MGTOWs’ problems are not that they are not good looking (even if some of them aren’t), virgins (even if some of them are), or promiscuous (even if some of them are/have been). Their problems stem from having a toxic attitude of entitlement to women’s bodies, time, and attention, and/or having a complete, wilful lack of self-awareness and personal responsibility. Their lack of romantic success is due to the horrifying way they treat people–not their looks, sexual experience, or family background.
Many people who are plain-looking virgins are wonderfully kind individuals. Many people who are great-looking playboys are irascible jerks.
Demonizing MGTOWs because of their assumed looks or sexual history doesn’t address their actual problem, and it causes splash damage by potentially hurting decent folks who aren’t conventionally attractive and/or haven’t had sex (whether they want to or not). It also indirectly implies that MGTOWs would be happier or better off if they could just get laid–which is basically one of the terrible core assumptions MGTOWs/Red Pill/PUAs already make.
Mocking someone’s lousy attitude and hateful speech is fair game. Mocking their face/body or sexual past is highly uncool.
kootiepatra, thank you for putting that so succinctly and well. That is exactly why small-dick “jokes” are crap that plays into the same toxic masculinity narrative that mgtows and mras use.
Fixed it for you. Not that this changes your core argument one iota.
Wow, Sally Field looks incredible.
@bluecat
Whoa!
The manosphere needs to put that tired phrase “sexual market value” back on the shelf, and dial it WAY down on the armchair evo psych. We are far more than our primitive ancestors, and our interactions in life are far more than a straight up pursuit for the best mate to create the most and the best babies with. Some people truly do not WANT babies. Some men, with the thought of passing on their genes not something they give a rat’s ass about, don’t feel so constrained to only pursue younger women. Some would be quite happy to go to bed with Sally Field or Helen Mirren.
Better not tell this intrepid young buck about The Graduate, or about the cultural significance of Mrs. Robinson.
They hate her! They really, really hate her!
(Well, it’s Sally Field….. someone had to….)
If that’s how he describes people he likes, I’d be interested to see how he describe people he hates. Presumably he calls them “garbage” four times instead of only twice.
It’s not their looks or lack of sexual experience that’s the problem, it’s their reaction to it. Plenty of people are lonely, unattractive, and awkward and it doesn’t turn them into entitled creeps who want to torch the entire world because other people are having sex. MGTOW are angry because Sally Field is supposed to be a miserable post-wall cat lady hag – their mythology tells them so – and here she is having the audacity to have romantic desires AND the possibility that they might be reciprocated, from someone with higher “SMV”. If 69 year old Sally Field can get action and they can’t, it reminds them that they rank below post-wall women in the sexual hierarchy and they find that intolerable.
I always feel awful after I drink too much fine wine.
I always feel like eating more cheese after I eat too much aged cheese.
@the_real_Nick. Good point. These guys aren’t even fine wine, though. They’re vinegar.
@Buttercup Q. Skullpants
Vinegar doesn’t need that kind of insult.
@Razzamatazz,
Welcome! It’s awesome to hear that you bailed out from the MGTOW ‘community’ after getting a good look at it. It attracts people for the exact reasons you talked about, and it gives them an echo chamber full of hate. Help yourself to a welcome package if you like, it’s full of misandry.
Also, do read the comments policy and – well, read through some of the comment threads and such! I’m guessing you’re somewhat new to feminism. We are (in the proper, technical sense) radical feminists for the most part; that implies we think that there are parts of our culture which need to be torn down and fixed; no amount of band-aid fixes will solve the problem.
So , comments that may be acceptable in the world at large may irk some people here! Kootiepatra’s reply is a good example of the things that can bug us. Don’t take offense, if you can! It’s a slightly different headspace, this whole rad-fem thing – you get to throw out a lot of preconceptions and work from first principles. Takes some getting used to. Short form is that we care about people, first and foremost, and our main opponents are the bad ideas that hurt people. That these bad ideas are often carried most visibly by the MRAs and MGTOWs is incidental.
All of the above is just my opinion, though, and i tend to be rambly and wrong-headed about a lot. Your mileage may vary, and I’m happy for any corrections.
Welcome!
@kupo: Sorry, I should have clarified: vinegar made of belladonna berries and basement-ripened male tears.
What gets me about these guys is the way they come up with huge laundry lists of requirements for women that eliminate about 98% of the population right off the bat, while complaining constantly about how there are “no good women” and how colossally unfair it is that they have to compete for an ever-shrinking pool of acceptable plates.
MGTOWs subscribe to a rentier capitalist version of sexuality. They criticize “the pussy cartel” and what they perceive as sexual rent-seeking, without understanding that it’s an articifial scarcity created by their own arbitrary rules about who counts as a sexual being and who doesn’t. Even they admit that their mythical eternally 18 homemaker pornstar virgin supermodel with poor boundaries and low self-esteem is a unicorn. It’s not on women to contort into a pretzel to meet their many contradictory and unrealistic requirements.
When women are wrong no matter what they do and you go through life with a “2/10 would not bang” mentality, you forfeit the right to complain about scarcity.
When I was young, I had one or two relationships with women considerably older than myself. Don’t regret them. I’ve now got to an age where considering oneself younger is not really an option.
If anybody wants to watch a series where an older woman, younger man (her chauffeur, played by Neil Dudgeon), relationship is hotly implied, if never made explicit, I can recommend, the Mrs Bradley Mysteries. Sophisticated innuendo.
But then, Mrs Bradley is played by the incomparable, Dame Diana Rigg.
I have it on DVD.
So women are down with the fact that a fish doesn’t need a bicycle, but when men deny women the legal enslavement of males through marriage, alimony and child support – women have a problem with men defending their sovereignty from women’s misandric oppression?
Oh the hypocrisy. You strong, independent women are going to have to learn to support and defend yourselves from now on. Men are tired of that burden being placed squarely on their shoulders.
In other words, women can go F*** themselves.
@bluecat
Wow! That is really, really cool!
@ Kootiepatra,
I’m sorry. I didn’t know this was a feminist site. I’m very pro female, but I don’t think I could be considered a feminist.
I hear you, though.
I do not disagree with anything you said. I completely agree that people’s looks, behaviors, etc do not make the person. It’s what’s inside that counts.
My comments were mostly triggered by mgtow hypocrisy. The very things they claim women are (slutty, cheats, ugly, fat, desperate etc) are the same things many mgtow are. Personally, I don’t care what they look like or how they live. I don’t need to see them. But when many of their members completely devalue and poke fun at women based on their age and appearance, I’m like, “Well, I wonder what you look like.”
You put it perfectly in a nutshell when you said, “Their problems stem from having a toxic attitude of entitlement to women’s bodies, time, and attention, and/or having a complete, wilful lack of self-awareness and personal responsibility. Their lack of romantic success is due to the horrifying way they treat people–not their looks, sexual experience, or family background.”
In the short time I’ve known about mgtow, I’ve seen where many refuse to take personal responsibility for their lives and situations. They blame women for everything that goes wrong in their marriages and relationships, when reasonable people know there are other sides to the stories.
@Scildfreja,
Thanks! No offense taken. The poster “Kootiepatra” was very respectful and I appreciate the correction.
I think I probably skimmed over the comments policy, not reading it too well. I didn’t know this was a feminist site, but I am quite impressed with the comments here from men and women. I’m learning a lot and will continue to read.
Scildfreja,
Thanks again! I checked out the “welcome page.” Very nice! And I do love cats. I love dogs too. I just love animals, in general, all their different natures and wonderful unique qualities. 🙂
Hi, Razzmatazz.
I’m curious – what do you see is the distinction between being pro-female and being feminist?