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Trouble in paradise! Just days before the opening of The Red Pill, the apparently quite awful Men’s Rights documentary, one of the film’s biggest backers is mocking Men’s Rights Activists as a bunch of sad men “who clearly need to improve their lives by going to the gym.”
Mike Cernovich, the notorious alt-right Trump superfan and steroid enthusiast, basically bought himself an associate producer credit on The Red Pill with a big donation. But he wants everyone to know that he’s no wimp, like the dudes interviewed in the film.
“When I joined The Red Pill as an Associate Producer, and agreed to match contributions up to $10,000, there was a mutiny among my readers,” he writes in a post on his blog.
How dare I fund a film by a woman? Clearly I went soft, becoming a white knight. (None who cried about me joining The Red Pill as an AP were making their own films.)
But despite the heroism he showed by shoveling money at the film, Cerno doesn’t have much sympathy for the sad men it depicts:
[T]hese sad faces are why I’m not an MRA (and why MRAs have disavowed me many times).
I have no tolerance for male weakness, and many MRAs are men who clearly need to improve their lives by going to the gym. My lack of compassion is rooted in a patriarchal view of traditional masculinity. When life hits you, hit harder.
While he likes the film, and says that he wishes MRAs “nothing but the best” in their struggles against the evils of gynocentrism, or whatever it is they’re fighting against, he reports that
The Red Pill is a reminder that the men’s rights movement isn’t for me. MRAs aren’t my audience and I’m not their voice.
In life you impose your will on reality, or you lose. That’s especially true for men. While MRAs seek to reform the system, my vision is for you to Unf*ck Your Mind.
It’s really kind of amazing that he managed to avoid the alt-right’s favorite c-word — cuck.
Cerno’s sentiments have not gone over well with some of the staffers at, and fans of, A Voice for Men, the Men’s Rights hate site at the center of the film, and they have swarmed the comments on Cerno’s blog to express their vociferous objections.
AVFM “Chief Public Relations Officer” Suzy McCarley launches an attack on all of those men who, in her view,
make juvenile pretenses of superiority, while digging ever deeper into their own pits of bitterness. They have given up all hope for anything, even for their own potential autonomy.
I wonder which does more to undermine the well being of the male half of the species – the smug traditional proponents of male disposabiliy, or the snarling dogs in the manger. And are either of them better in principle than feminists and gynocentrists?
A commenter named Bryan Scandrett, meanwhile, takes aim at “Mikes affected manliness,” declaring that
Mike seems happy to tread on the wounded man out of misguided ‘manliness’ and some belief in the unmanly weakness of the wounding. Weird.
He’s actually got a point — one that would be a lot stronger if the Men’s Rights movement actually did anything to help “wounded men” rather than exploiting their pain as an excuse to attack women and scapegoat feminists.
Cerno himself has moved on to attacking Alan Scherstuhl of the Village Voice, who gave the film a pretty scathing review yesterday, on the grounds that Scherstuhl, a professional film critic, “has never produced or directed a film people want to see.”
Wait, what?
Add “film reviewing” to the long list of things that Mike Cernovich does not understand.
NOTE: Today’s Pledge Drive Capybara prefers terrible shark movies to terrible documentaries.
@Handsome Jack
I understand that — in theory.
But not when it’s my 5 damn bucks.
No bet!
Oh, come on! I can use the cash!
Mike Cernovich wrote:
That’s not, er, a strong argument. How do you define weakness? Why is it so objectionable (besides offending your “patriarchal view of traditional masculinity”)?
Plus, if I had to sort character traits into “strong” and “weak” based on their usefulness, “lack of compassion” would be on the weak side.
@MissEB47/Steampunked:
Oh yes, she lost that dead weight eventually. Though he made such a fuss about it and drew it out for so long that Children’s Aid (the Canadian Social Services) had to step in, which is unfortunate. They mandated supervised visitation only.
I still check his twitter sometimes, and half of what he has to say is bitching and moaning obsessively about how his ex and “the system” has abused him. Children’s Aid is apparently an eeeeevil feminist organization that is oppressing him. Sound like any MRAs you know?
@ Buttercup Q. Skullpants
Is there any practical difference between “impose your will on reality” and “live in a delusional bubble”?
Yes, if imposing your will on reality means bullying those weaker than you or actually using PUAs tactics on a woman.
Well, I suppose you’re still living in a delusional bubble, but those in the bubble with you get hurt.
There’s an implication of powerlessness in delusional bubble that isn’t necessarily so.
Delusional Bubble, for example AH towards the end of WWII, and arguably starting from near the beginning.
Perhaps a delusional bubble isn’t the best comparison. Instead, we might compare them to the hagfish, exuding a disgusting slime of willful ignorance. This slime expands to create a foul, choking cloud of toxic ideology, suffocating those close to the beast. If caught in the jaws of a critic, the creature can also tie itself in a knot of self-contradictory arguments, slipping free of the need for consistency or logic long enough to flee.
@Diptych
They don’t deserve the comparison. What have hagfish ever done to you?
@Handsome Jack
I have bad news and good news.
The bad news is I just sent my last 5 bucks to this guy:
The good news is I will share his reality-bending secrets with all Mammotheers.
You’ll get 5 bucks — and maybe a little more!!!!!!!!!!!1!!!!!!!!!
Looking forward!!!!!11!!!!!!!!!!11
@Handsome “Punkle Stan’ Jack
Especially since the slime they can secrete is being studied to create new supermaterials.
Via IFLS (Since my prior comment is probably in moderation with the link. *sad trombone*):
I’d say they’re FAR more useful than JuiceBro and his ilk.
Yeah, I’m already regretting not going through with the “but that would be an insult to hagfish” tagline. I’d hoped the analogy would make a worthy post on its own.
Nice to see the Department of Infernal Rarefactions is still producing good work.
So Monica Crowley is apparently a conservative columnist — which is news to me, but I don’t go to hateful blogs that promote hatred unless they promise to be (hatefully) entertaining.
And she just won the coveted award Bullshitter of the Day from Salon.
http://www.salon.com/2016/10/05/bullshter-of-the-day-monica-crowley-for-tweeting-about-walls/
BULLSH**TER OF THE DAY: Monica Crowley, for tweeting about walls
The conservative columnist finds inspiration for Trump’s immigration policy where you’d least expect it
It’s a short story.
I’ll make it shorter.
She visited the Berlin Wall, had her photo taken, and tweeted, “Walls work.”
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Yes, Monica, let’s bring back East Germany! It had so much to recommend it: secret police, dictatorship, fear everywhere, and nobody who wasn’t authorized got out of the country or into the country without the risk of being shot.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
East Germany — that’s where a young, heroic Vladimir Putin (oh, those photos of a shirtless Putin on horseback!) got his start as a KGB foreign intelligence officer. I’m all aflutter just thinking about Vlad. Damn that Wendi Deng Murdoch (Rupert Murdoch’s ex-wife) for snatching him up!
Really OT:
IIRC there’s some folks here who have trouble with their thyroid. I have a friend who is suffering from hypothyroidism, and the medications she has been given cause her to become violently sick. If anyone has advice or similar issues, please share anything you have.
As others have said: Not okay.
There’s no question that irrational beliefs can be harmful and have real world effects, but a bubble’s still a bubble. Cerno can posture and preen all he wants, even suck others into his bubble, but he can’t become a godlike (or even decent) human being just by saying he is.
Another way of looking at it: “impose my will on reality” is a synonym for gaslighting.
@Dalilama: what meds?
@everyone else: teel dear coming. Read on if you’re interested in hypothyroidism.
If it’s hypothyroidism, then I can assume she’s taking some form of levothyroxine, and there are a couple caveats she should be aware of.
First, absorption of levothyroxine is hugely altered by anything else in the stomach. So, if your friend is taking it with breakfast some days, and skipping breakfast other days, she wont be absorbing the same amount of the hormone each day. This would, in turn, cause significant fluctuations of her blood thyroid hormone levels, which would certainly cause significant side effects. The advice I give my patients (and something I insist on in my nursing home patients) is to always take the thyroid hormone at least a half-hour prior to breakfast in the AM, and to take it with water only.
The other caveat is that levothyroxine, unlike virtually every other medication, actually has different rates of absorption for different brands. This does not mean that the brand name is ‘better’ than the generics, but that the brand name (synthroid) will be absorbed at a different rate than, say, the Walgreens brand of generic. Also, the Walgreens brand and the CVS brand (for example) have slightly different formulations that can significantly alter absorption. So, if your friend recently changed pharmacies, or switched from synthroid to a generic, then she’ll need to adjust her dose of levothyroxine, and her doctor is going to have to do that based on her bloodwork.
Finally, I’ve noticed liothyroxine (that’s the hormone one step down the pathway from levothyroxine) has started gaining traction in treatment for hypothyroidism, both alone and in combination meds (I think Armor thyroid is a combination). I don’t prescribe these except for patients in myxedema coma (that’s the crisis that results from having too little thyroid for too long), because the liothyroxine has a very short half-life, so if your friend is on one of these, I don’t have much to add to what I’ve said above.
Hope this helps, and I hope your friend does better.
@Dalilama: one other thing: pregnancy will also make levothyroxine more effective. The hormones involved with pregnancy alter the level of thyroid binding hormone in the blood, and (per my recollection) the current guidelines are to cut back levothyroxine dosage by either 1/4 or 1/3 (sorry for the lack of precision. Geriatric patients don’t often get pregnant) as soon as you confirm pregnancy.
Finally, if by some chance you meant ‘hyperthyroidism’ instead of ‘hypothyroidism’, GI distress is a rather common side effect of the meds we usually use to treat hyperthyroidism. The good news is, its a transient reaction, and most patients adjust to the meds quickly.
Good luck.
Feeding frenzy continues on the Right… Megan Kelly and Sean Hannity feud over The Donald’s sudden refusal to grant interviews to reporters who ask real questions. Hannity even called Kelly a “… dirty, low-down scum sucking… (wait for it)… CLINTON SUPPORTER”!!!!
@Kat
Oh sorry, I should check my mailbox. See, I was too busy making the fundamental forces of nature tap out to my patented FIGURE-FOUR REALITY LOCK. As soon as I finish altering time and space MERELY BY FLEXING MY ARMS I will check my mail.
@Diptych: Another Fallen London player? Nifty.
I double posted. How strange.
So YouTube keeps showing me Trump Ads (can’t imagine why), and one of the ads states “Hillary Clinton called half of all Americans deplorable” followed by the clip of her specifying Trump supporters.
I just thought that was really telling of Trump’s ego.
@Nequam: I used to play that a long time ago. Not sure why I stopped.
Though, I did pick up a fun mobile game yesterday called The Last Viking, and it’s got a good bit of challenge to it.
@PI
You too? I keep getting that shitty political scare drama “Clinton’s America” on my feed. I didn’t want to see a film like that when people were thinking Obama would institute an Arabic Third Reich and rule as a God King and made a film with that premise. Why would I be interested now?
My coworker was distraught the other day because he’d jokingly told a friend he was voting for Trump and the friend was ready to end the friendship over it. I kept quiet but dude, if you can’t understand why voting for a racist, sexist, hot-tempered manbaby would be a friendship ender maybe that’s your privilege talking. You can afford to think of it as just politics because it’s not your life literally in danger.