By David Futrelle
Today’s MGTOW of the Day, fresh from the Men Going Their Own Way subreddit, has a rather unique perspective on the relative values of men and women. As he sees it, women are vastly inferior creatures whose only value stems from the fact that they can er, carry seed.
Men, by contrast, are … buses.
I’m not sure MGTOWs have quite mastered the fine art of the metaphor yet.
Mostly OT but tangentially related (i.e. to do with appearances and crappy treatment of people? I gave it a shot, tried to make a connection)
Has anyone else here been following the trainwreck of Mamamia’s interview with the legendary Roxane Gay?
@Alan
….I’m speechless, is that really what they do to each other and themselves??
Dudes, look around! There are men out there who are really unattractive by these standards and are in happy relationships! Men who are burns victims! Men who have disfigurements! Men who were born with that genetic illness where your skin grows too fast and it looks like your entire body is covered in scales! (I was a reporter for a while. I have interviewed the guy with scales. He was lovely, and so was his girlfriend). Look around, you’ll see plenty of guys who don’t look great on first sight in loving relationships.
Of course, it might be that they aren’t dickheads who think some wtf facial ratio actually means something. Just a thought.
@cornychips
:-/ I’m sorry to hear that. Just to reinforce, 1) there isn’t some perfect, objective formula for what makes an attractive person, and 2) there is more to you than what you look like. I offer hugs if you want them.
Mish,
I haven’t heard about it. Do you have a link?
I personally don’t care whether the people on r/incel are just indulging their insanity, believe what they say, are just being ironic, trolling, satirizing extreme views, or are just assholes.
It’s a community for people who are, to a first-order approximation, misogynists who don’t get to have the sex they feel they deserve.
There might be the occasional post that’s not misogynist, but it’s not worth wading through the trash just to get that grain of rice.
@JS, please look over the Comments Policy. Thanks!
@Mish
OMG, yes! And I’m trying to avoid the comments right now because even in intersectional feminist spaces they’re full of fat shaming and victim blaming. 🙁 🙁
I saw some Aussies were worried that Mia reflects poorly on other Aussies, but I find that silly. She doesn’t speak for everyone in the dang country!
Edit:
@Ooglyboggles
I haven’t used firefox in a while, but I’m a Web developer so I can probably help. Are you looking to disable auto play or block YouTube videos completely?
@kupo
I’m looking to block YouTube videos completely and channels if possible. If I have to I’ll download Chrome and HbomberGuy’s extension that blocks most people I’d block anyways, but I’d much rather prefer to keep using Mozilla if I can help it and still be able to block videos manually.
@Ooglyboggles
Ah, that’s more complicated than I thought. I’m sure you know how to search for extensions so I’m not going to be of much help. If it was disabling autoplay or something like that I could probably help.
@kupo
Yeah, and it’s nothing but pages and pages of how to Unblock videos after the only two YouTube video blocking addons…
It just seems like a common sense feature, but that would mean Google spending money on YouTube, and they can’t have that. Oh well, I should be using Chrome, it is faster and I don’t multitask my web browsing with anything else. Hm, maybe if I take up coding again and ask Hbomberguy to update his channel blocker/ask him how I can make something similar, I can make something of use.
Right Viscaria, used the word starting with i by mistake. Sorry. “indulging their fantasies” would probably have been better choice.
If you really want to block youtube entirely, there’s always the “router DNS server block method”, or setting up a hosts table to block servers you don’t want to see stuff from.
Leechblock is another useful addon, though I’m not sure it’s been updated to recent Firefox plugin standard.
@wwth,
I seriously thought you meant the French & Saunders thing for a moment 😀
I first saw it on Twitter – this is one of Gay’s responses here
It’s pretty much everywhere right now; this piece in Junkee isn’t bad.
@kupo,
Gay’s term “shitshow” is pretty apt, I think. And no, of course Freedman doesn’t represent Australians – just those of us who are white and wealthy 😛
Srsly though, we really do have issues with white feminism here…
Brad Fucking Pitt! Yeah, baby!!
@Afro
If you don’t get why people don’t want to engage with you on this site, it’s because whenever people from any part of the manosphere come here it’s never in good faith. I’m explaining this to you because after reading a number of your posts, I think it is barely possible you might be questioning in good faith and are just ignorant and lonely. I try to give everyone the benefit of the doubt.
I’ll make a deal with you. You said you go to the incel site for attention and people who won’t yell at you for your thoughts. You’ve heard everybody, especially WWTH explain why being a part of those sites is misogyny because even if you aren’t saying it you’re supporting it. If you truly are here to learn, and you want to be a better person, stop involving yourself with those sites. Don’t defend them. I mean yeah, maybe people there agree with you, and don’t berate you and it feels good but it’s truly bad for you. Reading those hateful nasty self-pitying screeds is bad for your mental health.
In exchange, when you comment here, I will pay attention to your comments and always answer them and not get angry at you for your thoughts as long as they aren’t hateful and misogynistic, and I will also answer any questions you may have. I’m willing to do this because I was really ignorant once upon a time and people helped me when they didn’t have to and they got nothing out of it(well, friendship in the long run)but it changed my life.
If you actually are a troll/misogynist asshole then haha you got me, but I’d rather try to help people and look foolish and gullible sometimes rather than assume people are lost causes. If you are sincere, look for attention at healthy places like this. Maybe try the site Dr Nerdlove if you haven’t already.
This Mamamia person seems like white feminism perfuckingsonified, huh? And it seems she’s one of those people who thinks if women don’t drink, they won’t get raped. Aaagh no.
She must be the Australian version of Christina Hoff-Summers. Do the Aussie MRAs hold her up as one of the few good feminists? Wealthy white and willing to throw other women under the bus.
The picture = TFW you don’t bother grabbing a basket at the grocery store because you’re just there to pick up a head of lettuce, and then you’re like, “oooooh, they have fresh corn!!!” or whatever, and soon you’re stumbling toward the cashier concentrating like all heck on not dropping any of the dozen items you’re awkwardly clutching to your chest.
The picture = TFW you don’t bother grabbing a basket at the grocery store because you’re just there to pick up a head of lettuce, and then you’re like, “oooooh, they have fresh corn!!!” or whatever, and soon you’re stumbling toward the cashier concentrating like all heck on not dropping any of the dozen items you’re awkwardly clutching to your chest.
Man do I need to tell all my hetero guy friends who have no trouble getting dates the terrible news? They and the women date seem to all enjoy themselves, but apparently don’t see the nefarious women bus schemes or something. Everyone involved will be so disappointed.
@wwth,
Oddly (now that you mention it), no – Australian MRAs absolutely hate her. Bettina Arndt is more their kind of gal.
And yeah, the rape stuff is horrendous.
The website has become a bit of a juggernaut (by Antipodean standards). If you were at all interested, some colleagues recently did a content analysis type paper on the site.
*cough, cough* there may also be a paper by yours truly in that same journal issue – not on Freedman tho 😀
re buses: I hadn’t encountered a monthly bus before, but weekly market day buses are pretty common–one trip to the market in the morning, and one from the market in the afternoon. A few months ago I took a bus out to a Neolithic site I wanted to visit, and the driver said ‘if you’re not back at this stop this afternoon you won’t be getting home until next week.’ (Well that’s a bit of an exaggeration as I suppose I could have afforded a taxi if I needed to.)
@Katz A few months ago I and a young houseguest were preparing food for a picnic the following day. I mixed up some Katz’s Chicken Delight and stuck it in the oven, and asked my houseguest to turn the oven off in about 20 minutes, then went upstairs to take a nap. When I came back down again about an hour later SHE HAD FORGOTTEN TO TURN THE OVEN OFF. But the chicken was fine! What with the moisture and the honey seal it did not burn at all. So the recipe is extremely resilient as well as tasty.
@Tosca
Whaaaat? Didn’t you hear the news? The most important thing is stuff like building skyscrapers and going to the moon, those are the things that keep the world going!!
Monzach:
This is just “my hay”, as we Finns say 🙂
Yellow flowers? I see leafy shoots that are part green part yellow (the old image seems somewhat miscolored). They don’t have very consistent morphology, so it’s likely the artist just wanted to depict generic leafy greens. Some of them look much like celery.
@Afro, @Katie
I want to second Katie’s comments. It’s really important to me to believe people can learn and change their views (it would be a bloody awful world otherwise). If you really are here because you are questioning the incel/MGTOW crap you have been taught, I think that’s great and I’ll answer any questions you might have.
But the onus is on you to show your intentions are good. Some commentators here probably will be hostile. They have good reason to be. Literally every other self-identified incel or MGTOW who has shown up here came here to troll us, to try and convince us they are in the right, or to get us to feel sorry for them.
Just to get this absolutely clear, I don’t feel sorry for incels. I was once in a place where I felt I was too ugly to go outside, where I felt no-one would ever date me, where I looked around at all my beautiful friends and their handsome loving boyfriends and just felt like shit all the time. And I recognised (eventually) that the problem was me, and I started making my life into one I could enjoy single rather than just sitting around crying and waiting for a man to fix everything.
Everyone has to do that work; it’s bullshit to expect a beautiful woman to just walk up to you and say “I’ve come to be your girlfriend.” That never happens. It doesn’t happen to anyone. Ever. And it’s also a pretty damn lazy expectation, putting all the emotional work of possible rejection on to that woman while you take no risk. I have an Eastern European friend who uses the saying “If you won’t put out your hand for food, then you must starve.”
So my main response when I read the incel posts is: what a load of lazy deluded whining and these people need to check their opinions. And yes it is misogynist. Sitting around talking about sex like you you have somehow been done out of something by not having it is misogynist.
Suppose you saw a forum where a bunch of women were talking about men in the same terms, saying things like “all men are good for is sex” and “they are a different species” and “every single man in the world only wants to date skinny white teenagers and all the rest of us have to hang around trying to please them so we can have sex too. Even though they are awful evil shallow sub-beings and we hate them. But we are driven by biology.” How would you feel when you read that?? Would you want to have sex with a woman who you knew hated you? That right there is the reason incels aren’t getting any!
If you are doing some kind of stealth operation to change my opinion about that, you won’t. If you’re genuinely here to broaden your mind, you’re welcome and please stick around 🙂
But… it’s not even monthly. It’s only on the 5th Saturday of the month, and most months (more than half) won’t have 5 Saturdays. That’s stretching the definition of “regular”.
@Katie, @Violet
First things first, while I can’t post on r/incels right now because it’s private I also have no intention posting there after it goes public again.
Now, here is where I am coming from. I’ve considered myself a feminist, a leftist and a progressive for far longer than I have an incel. A lot of you probably won’t believe me but it’s true. Or maybe you read that and think I must have been a fake or a nice guy. Some slimy asshole who tried to worm himself into predominantly-female spaces with ulterior motives. But I don’t think that’s the case either. I actually read this blog before I ever knew what incels were. Same goes for the bluepill subreddit. Reading, and on Reddit participating, on such critical and mocking subreddits ironically lead me to find out about the manosphere and incels in particular.
The thing is, next to being those things I talk about up-above I am also “pretty damn lazy”. I am also cowardly and afraid of rejection. I am also incredibly insecure and filled with self-loathing. And deep down I feel entitled to women. To their desire, their attention, their love, you name it. And that has led me to post on a place like r/incels for the last couple of months. I have without a doubt made misogynist generalized statements about women. I have participated in a misogynist subreddit purely because it made me feel good. I am honestly not trying to exonerate myself from anything I’ve said or from the time I’ve spend on r/incels. I completely understand the hostility and discomfort with my presence. I deserve every last bit of it. But talking about this stuff in places like this, exposing the stupidity of the places I myself was/am a part of and seeing others give their impressions of those places, helps me get away from it. It helps me stop selfishly indulging in my insecurities and fears. That’s why I’d like to keep commenting here. Now, I wouldn’t blame anyone if they never wanted to engage with me or even wanted to see me banned. I’ve got no special right to be here. I can’t expect everybody to pretend I didn’t spend 3 months on incels making misogynist comments. All I can say is that I’d like to participate for as long as I’m allowed.
And I’m definitely not trying to convince anyone that incels aren’t entitled or lazy or whiny. We absolutely are. But maybe, whenever somebody’s interested, I could explain some more of their thinking. But only if it’s related to the topic or someone asks. Like for example the comparison to pro-ed or pro-ana forums I made a couple of comments ago. I think that’s helpful in understanding what goes on in the mind of an incel. And just to be clear, I am not at all saying that the ramifications or danger of pro-ed/pro-ana forums are the same as r/incels. One is a danger to the users themselves while the other also threatens women. But the thinking is pretty similar. I’d like to add those kinds of insights wherever appropriate. And I apologize if it seems obvious to any of and not insightful at all. One of the reasons I’d like to participate here is because the community here is a lot more read-up on feminist and progressive literature and nomenclature than other places I’ve read/participated in. I think there’s a lot I could learn here.
And to touch on one more thing related to incels that I think might also be insightful, I think this:
is a completely understandable sentiment but also not really true. Just speaking for myself, I know exactly why I’m “not getting any”. There are a lot of reasons for that which I won’t get into. Don’t get me wrong, it’s got very little to do with how I look and absolutely zero to do with women. It’s all on me. And it’s all things I could change but currently aren’t doing anything about. But I don’t believe my loneliness has anything to do with the misogynistic way I indulged in my fears and insecurities. It absolutely should because it’s very unattractive but it’s also something that only exists in the anominity of the internet. I know a lot of people believe differently but I can honestly say from my own experience that nobody, man or woman, suspects me of commenting on a place like r/incels in the real world.
Ugh, I am sorry I’m bothering you guys with another long-ass post all about myself. That’s reason enough right there to ignore me. If I can stay here I promise I won’t make a habit out of it.