By David Futrelle
For years I’ve been chronicling the manosphere’s obsession with the so-called “cock carousel,” that wondrous merry-go-round of endless zipless sex allegedly enjoyed by every twentysomething Western woman, but off-limits to all Western men except the Chadliest top twenty percent.
Well, it looks like I’ve finally found the first rider of this sex-go-round, and she’s a bosomy fictional slattern named Elaine, brought to life in the 1963 pulp novel This is Elaine by someone called Jason Hytes. If the front cover is any indication, Elaine was not really that into shirts.
I have not read the book — which you can purchase used for $28.50 on Amazon — but the back cover gives a bit more detail on the perverse world of Elaine and her naughty friends.
Wait, wouldn’t the carousel have to still be working for anyone to get off?
H/T — @pulplibrarian, whose tweet was pointed out to me by former regular WHTM commenter @pecunium; I found the back cover on Pop Sensation.
@dcfcfan1
Can you point at when this happened? You talk of “a generation of bitter young men”. How long do you suppose MGTOW has existed for?
The road to hell might not be paved with “it wasn’t meant to be about x”, but I think it makes up quite a lot of the signage on the way. In this case though, I don’t think it was ever meant to be about positive things. From day 1 it was “i’m not getting what i want, so fuck you, i’m going on man-strike”. There was no self-improvement; it was meant to punish the feeemales who’d soon come crawling for the manly mans who make society go.
You can wring your hands and wish it were otherwise all you like, but you’d be better off dumping the toxic brand and its malignant followers and doing something new.
Eastport, Maine? Given the geography, wouldn’t a port there have to be East?
Regarding porn novels trying to qualify as non-porn – there was a period during which ‘redeeming social value’ was the legal fig leaf. The pulp novel would have an earnest forward describing the r.s.v., which was often unintentionally amusing.
“Political oppression, legally sanctioned abuses of power, corrupt officials – all these can turn incarceration from a necessary function of organized society into a nightmare in which the innocent and naive can be exploited by the wicked and cruel. ‘Punished Prison Punks’ – a gripping tale of man’s inhumanity.”
I also read one that was clearly Jean-Michel Basquiat fanfic, which was just bizarre.
@ dcfcfan1
And the Tea Party was meant to be a revolt against bailing out the financial institutions, and that lasted just about as long. Not meant literally, I really don’t have a sense of when “pua… mra… mgtow (mickey moouuuse… mickey…) really started. I remember the “Charles Atlas body-building course” ads in comix when I was a kid (early-mid-60s), and this HAD to be at least an element of the culture (the ads, anyway), and, of course, there was the literary masterpiece “How to Pick Up Girls” from the same comix, circa late-60s
Much of the current incantation of this nonsense was in place, but it really increased in volume and abrasiveness after Gator-Game… er, Gamer-Game… uh, Gamer-Gate, which was a kerfuffle which turned out to be NOT about a woman’s sex life, OR about games, gamers, or gates, but about gamer-ettes intruding on the last refuge available to immature gamers.
I think it’s been around a while, maybe since social awkardness has been around and since the socially awkward needed a target for their frustration….
ETA: added link to “How to…”
p.s., gotta love google, I checked “How to pick up girls” 1960s, got a bunch of ads for 1960’s era pickup trucks… 🙂
Wise words from Our Lady of San Francisco…
🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂
The tea party comparison actually works. It was always an astroturf movement, not grassroots. Just as MGTOW claims it’s about men being happily single when really it’s all about misogyny.
@wwth;
And the T.P. got hijacked instantaneously by a cartel of wealthy (ish) conservative vultures looking for some “white-man-frustrated-feels” to feast upon… the rest is history… see Faux News. On second, thought, don’t.
Speaking of “don’t”, I read a bit of the SplinterNews review of “HtPUG”. the tome referenced in earlier post. I didn’t get far into it. The review, not the book. The review. Yeesh, if any of the mra’s actually DID read it, it certainly goes a long way to explaining their attitude. EXPLAINING it, not justifying or excusing it. Damn, what 1950’s Madison Avenue nightmare DRIVEL.
Well, no. It never got hijacked by the wealthy because it was the wealthy that started it in the first place. Just as MGTOW never got hijacked by the misogynists because it was always a misogynist group. That was my point.
The Tea Party originated as a plausible way for mainstream Republicans to attack Obama from behind a shield of angry racists. It actually kind of got away from them eventually, running primary races in safe Republican districts, and turned into the Freedom Caucus, which today causes no end of headaches for House Republicans.
So you have it exactly backwards there, Weird Eddie.
Look, gamergate was really about ethics in game journalism!!!111!1!1!!1!1 (/sarcasm)
That, and the “Sad/Rabid Puppies” Hugo hijack were what started me seriously thinking something was really wrong with social media. I’d thought it was just a waste of time before. Now it looks like the opposite of an “internet immune system”, where people with all sorts of odd beliefs can easily find people who agree with them. Partially a good thing, but so much has gone utterly wrong with it these days.
Then Pizzagate (and other similar “chase the wrong thing” stories) came along, and showed me just how wrong reddit can be.
Twitter’s covered in bots and people who apparently think Trump is wonderful.
@ PoM, wwth;
semitemos taht od I…
Yes, that adds up. I remember from the early days of the bank bail-out, a bunch of angry-conservative-types commenting on conservative sites against the bank bailout, and I’d counted that as the “genesis” of what became the T.P. It could have been that, and then been co-opted (or hijacked… 🙂 ) by a cartel of mega-churchies, Koch Brothers politicians and Silly Sarah Palin for comic relief..
Do you all think it was planned all along to be turned toward right-wing big-machine politics?? I’m not on a conspiracy bent, here, but if anyone WAS to conspire, the Koch Bros. would do it!
Yes, but not in the way it actually did. It’s a monster that bog-standard Republicans created as an outlet for the Republican id, and it’s evolved beyond their control.
Indeed, Dr. Frankenstein’s creation is on it’s own… and it’s turned out to be not the gentle intellectual giant from Dame Wollstonecraft’s novel, but rather Karloff’s terrifying monster.
I hesitate to say we’re in this mess with the ‘publican’ts, but I fear we are. The monster could well destroy the ‘publican’t party, but it could also destroy our democracy (such as it is) at the same time.
Unfortunately, no one can un-ring that bell.
@ dcfcfan1
It’s fairly possible to get into a toxic community like MGTOW or Gamergate because someone who either believes it or is really good at selling it tells you it’s about “it’s okay to be single”(?) or “ethics in games journalism”. Sometimes, you even get pocket communities that are less about hating women and largely behave as though the media-friendly version of their message is the real one, at least for a while. Then you start talking to people from the larger community, or it starts seeping into your group, and they start talking more about SJWs and hating on women and feminists, and it can look and feel like toxic voices are taking over your beloved community instead of that you’ve just peeled back the surface and discovered what was always there.
It’s like how you can have people who are nominally Republican or of a very conservative Christian sect but not hate racial minorities or gay people. I’ve had acquaintances and colleagues in men who peripherally support gamergate but don’t hate women. I haven’t really known any non-women-hating MGTOWs, but by definition they would probably have avoided socializing with a woman. That doesn’t mean these movements are about what a less toxic subsection of them wishes they were, and if the subsection stays in the movement and ignores those issues instead of breaking off to form their own, they aren’t *against* the hate either, and their support is taken as implicit agreement. I’d love for it to be possible that some of them are staying to try to make the movement live up to what it was sold to them as, but they can only go so far before they have to be willfully ignorant that the movement is, at its core, about those toxic views and to try to change that would mean a complete takeover.
You can mourn the idea of the community/movement you thought you had, but even if some part of the MGTOW community that wasn’t about hate existed, it now has rabies and needs to be put down.
Speaking of toxic communities, I found this look at the so-called “alt-right” interesting:
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/09/was-charlottesville-a-turning-point-for-the-alt-right/538824/
@ vicky p
That was interesting. Although must confess I don’t share all her inferences and conclusions. There may be some ‘in it for the lulz’ types who now wish to dissociate from the far right because the reality of what they were supporting and facilitating has smacked them round the chops; but from my, admittedly limited, observations I’d say the main reaction is to be emboldened.
I think for most of them, the events of Charlottesville were less shocking than exciting. It’s their apocalyptic ubermenschen fantasies being played out for real. It may be a vicarious enjoyment, but it’s positive reinforcement nevertheless.
Other opinions equally valid, and probably better reasoned, of course.
@Ellesar
The transistion being via classism mixed with misogyny; ‘slattern’ at one time meant scullery maid/female menial. Anf of course such folks, being poor and at rhe bottom of the class structure, were routinely sexually abused by male employers and indeed coworkers and had no recourse. Cue victim blaming.
@ Alan
Yes, I agree that all the inferences and conclusions may not be quite as solid as the author has constructed them, and certainly I can believe that certain segments of the far right have taken inspiration from Charlottesville. Though I can also believe that the more casual far right types may have decided to distance themselves from the movement (and if so, groovy) – but remember how the Isla Vista shooting gave the incel movement a new martyr-saint?
I’m still digesting the article, so I may think something else later.
Ahh, shit, can I say something about “P.C. culture”, or rather about the phrase “P.C. culture”?
“Political Correctness” is a strawman, invented by people who like to swear in public. The purpose of the term is to denigrate the perfectly acceptable idea that ITS RUDE TO SWEAR IN PUBLIC!
I hate that phrase with seven purple passions!! What it means, what “Political Correctness” means, at least the way trump, the trumpanzees, and other mean-spirited people use the phrase, it means TREATING OTHERS WITH DIGNITY!
THAT’S ALL!
It means, “no, it’s not acceptable to demean someone because they don’t look like me, aren’t a member of my church, aren’t as able as me, and on.”
My father taught me that when I was THREE!!! WHEN THE FUCK DID IT BECOME “OK” TO BE RUDE???
My go-to response to being accused of “going all P.C.” is to point out that I’m not objecting to the other person’s politics, I’m objecting to their rudeness.
@Eddie
It’s literally the same as “polite.”
@Weird Eddie
It’s Plain Courtesy.
In my recollection, this term (which smacks of Soviet-speak) was used jokingly by the left. Then Bush the elder got hold of the term — and so did the rest of the right, most of whom are CA (complete assholes).
I once had a student turn in a paper in which, due to a spellcheck problem, she told me that Act 4 of Much Ado About Nothing ‘descends into wonton violence’.
FOOOOOOD FIIIIGHT!!!!!
Wontons are too delicious to use as weapons. As are bonbons.
I prefer dumplings, on the whole.
@(((Podkayne Lives)))
Now I’m visualizing Kenneth Branagh, Emma Thompson, Denzel Washington, Keanu Reeves, Brian Blessed, Kate Beckinsale and the rest of the main cast having a food fight at a local Florentine chinese restaurant. 😉