By David Futrelle
If you’re having girl problems I feel bad for you, son. Just don’t go to the Men’s Rights subreddit for help.
Consider the case of one lonely high school student and budding MRA who recently asked his fellow Men’s rights Redditors for some advice: how can he find himself a girlfriend who isn’t one of those awful feminists?
“I have a lot of problems with feminists,” he explained,
but one of my biggest comes to dating and all of their drama. It’s amazing to me that feminists believe they’re entitled to a good man like me when they’re entitled to trash. With their false rape accusations, lack of honesty, lack of respect, lack of significant value in cultures, customs, and traditions, and just simply acting so brash and out of line, dating a feminist would be an absolutely hellish experience.
Dude, I really don’t think you have to worry much about feminists begging you to date them.
I have never had a girlfriend before and the big reason I’ve somewhat restrained my endeavors in romance is because of the feminists I always have to share classes with.
I’m sure they were equally thrilled at having to share a classroom with you.
I’m a traditional, conservative, southern, country boy … I’ve been disrespected and verbally assaulted by women before in my college and high school classes for me fighting back when they said something I disagreed with or I even just simply wanted to talk to them and strike up conversation.
Yeah, I’m sure those, er, conversations were an absolute delight for the women too.
I even made a controversial slideshow presentation about red pill dating and that got me all sorts of hateful comments and text messages. The fact I rocked that project with an A and made every single feminist’s in the class spine crawl is one of the greatest memories of my life. In total, I’ve probably asked out 30 some girls since around the age of 16 and I’ve not had luck in finding love.
Gosh, why oh why would someone who delights in making feminists’ spines crawl have trouble getting a date?
Despite how men lack so much on the rights in marriage, sex, and paternity, my heart still longs and I wish to find love but it must be with the right person. It’s fair statement that I am red pill or for more accurate definition, a dark purple piller. I want to be able to find a girlfriend who is not just only NOT a feminist but perhaps a men’s rights supporter herself.
Dude, once again I would like to reassure you that you are in no immediate danger of ending up with a feminist girlfriend. I mean, it’s kind of amazing that there are still feminist women who are willing to be in the same room as you.
I’ve been taken advantage of by women in the past and it’s made me at some points, turn cold and extremely cynical of the opposite sex but I cling on to hope I will find someone.
How can I find this person who is elusive to me? Where should I go? Where should I look? I would appreciate the help! Thanks!
Naturally, the denizens of the Men’s Rights subreddit had lots of thoughts on the matter. The advice he got was varied and often contradictory, but most of it still managed to be very bad.
“Don’t date anyone you meet online,” warned someone called Edumakashun,
and you’ll want to avoid women with odd hairstyles or hair colors, unnatural-looking make-up (especially eyes and lips), and horn-rimmed glasses. Look for a woman who dresses like a woman. You’ll have the best luck with working class women, since they have WAY bigger responsibilities than writing catch phrases on posters and shaking them at people.
In a followup comment, he practically shouted:
Divorced with kids SCREAMS daddy issues. They fight for sole custody of their children so they can continue to control the man who divorced them, and so that no one can EVER fully LEAVE them, and they also need a man that they can control in their day-to-day lives. Or they marry some guy who will control them and beat their children.
Yeah, dude, I don’t think the high school student asking the questions is going to be dating any divorced woman with kids any time soon.
Someone called Calliopenis started off with some not-terrible advice, but alas it went south before he got to the end of his first sentence:
The odds get better with age, so work on yourself and build yourself a life that you consider fulfilling, and just hang on until 30.
HANG ON UNTIL 30?
You’ll have money, you’ll have freedom, and you’ll find that the percentage of feminist haters declines with every year after university. They cannot maintain that level of hate, face to face, with brothers, male cousins, male friends, co-workers, and not ultimately drive themselves out of society, or re-imagine their stances.
Not … exactly. While it’s true that women in their mid-thirties to their late-forties are less likely to call themselves feminists than younger women are, according to a 2016 poll by the Washington Post/Kaiser Family Foundation, women in their fifties and early sixties are much more likely to label themselves as such. The odds are good, in other words, that Calliopenis will end up a bitter old man surrounded by feminists he hates.
Furchfur had a grab-bag of suggestions. “I would go to another country. Non westernised,” he began. “Or do a sport, most feminists I have met do not do sport. Get a girl who does a job many feminists object to. Dancer, beautician.”
EricAllonde had some career-related advice as well:
Today feminism is completely entwined with victimhood culture. So if you look for a woman who isn’t a professional victim, she’s probably not a feminist either.
You can find non-victims by looking for women who are going out and achieving things in fields where there’s no benefit to being a feminist. So rule out the media, academia, acting etc.
For example, I met my very non-feminist wife when she was already an entrepreneur running her own business. She got her start by just going out and starting businesses; no “patriarchy” ever tried to stop her and her income depends on nothing except how successful her businesses are. She thinks feminists are pathetic and their “women are oppressed” narrative is stupid. Whenever I show her the sort of idiocy feminists say, she shakes her head with contempt.
Is it wrong that I hope she divorces him and moves in with a feminist?
EricAllonde also suggested that our high school student put off dating for a long, long time:
Right now I think you should be focussed on getting established in whatever career you choose and making yourself a success.
Jesus, dudes. The kid hasn’t even been to college yet.
Here’s my advice for the kid, for what it’s worth: Go to college. Let yourself learn a thing or two. Actually listen to women, in class and out of it. Stop being a dick, pull the stick out of your ass and give up your fixation on making feminists’ spines crawl. If you can do all that, you might end up an actual datable human being, and not the future incel you now seem bent on becoming.
For some reason, this quote:
makes me think of that scene in Falling Down where Michael Douglas turns to the police officer and says incredulously “I’m the bad guy?”
Kids are being taught to use PowerPoint? That’s horrifying!
But find a working class woman who is well paid, because one who is struggling will just want you for your money. But not one who is skilled at her job, because that’s emasculating!
I rather suspect this is a generational cohort thing; women who grew up during the Women’s Lib movement in the 60s and 70s (now in their 50s and 60s) call themselves feminists. Women who grew up during the backlash of the 80s and 90s (now in their 30s and 40s) don’t, even though most of them in fact support pretty much all the things feminism is for. Women who grew up in the current resurgence since the turn of the century call themselves feminists again.
@WWTH:
Well, you have to bear in mind that feminists are all makeup-hating harpies, so beauticians are out. And these guys would never go to the ballet for fear of seeing men in tights, so I’m pretty sure their definition of “dancer” is “stripper,” and there are some brands of feminism who aren’t especially fond of that.
As for getting an “A” for his presentation, I don’t actually find that hard to believe. There’s nothing stopping a teacher from being just as much of a misogynistic asshole as anyone else, especially in high school. I know a couple HS-level “history”, “business”, and “health” teachers that would happily give an A for that sort of thing (and before you ask, no I don’t know how it would relate to business, but said teacher would still give it out for liking the opinion). Alternatively, the teacher could be someone trying to bend over backwards to not be “political” in his/her assessment, and so letting terrible logic get through in order to support seemingly above-average “effort” in research and possibly graphic design. He could also have given a neutral-tone, “these are the facts of this organization/group” presentation that would legitimately be worth good points, then gotten smug from misperceived approval of it as a point of view.
It’s amazing to me that MRAs believe they’re entitled to a good woman when they’re entitled to trash. With their belief in false rape accusations, lack of honesty, lack of respect, and just simply acting so brash and out of line, dating an MRA would be an absolutely hellish experience.
@iknklast
I was thinking the same. Also, one other thing that has always fascinated me about successful “non-victim” professional women is that if you ask them questions about their struggle to reach their current position, they will often tell you things like how people thought less of them for being women, often giving several examples.
It’s just that they think you shouldn’t really care about those things. You shouldn’t be a victim. They will say that “sure, these things happened, but you can’t let it stop you. You just have to fight, stop whining and pull your self up. I made it, so you can to.” I guess it makes sense to view oneself and one’s life this way, because, who wants to be a victim? And can you afford to show “weakness” in such a competitive environment?
But I think that while this “non-victim”, you-can-beat-the-odds-believe-in-yourself narrative is kind-of true, it kind-of isn’t. The unfairness shows in the very fact that they had to fight as hard as they did, and hide and ignore their reactions to the discrimination.
These women got where they are for being extraordinary. For a man to reach the same position, being good would have been good enough.
@Gatecrasher:
Women who have the “ignore the male chauvinists and their hand-maidens and get on with being a success” attitude, also don’t do much to end these traditional attitudes about women in the workplace. I certainly do understand them, and at one time in my life I shared their attitude.
I remember reading advice from an 80s women-at-work guru who actually recommended women not take action about being sexually harassed at work. Her advice? “Just move on. Everyone hates these women.”. I read this when I was at an impressionable age.
Nowadays, I think it’s reprehensible.
“For example, I met my very non-feminist wife when she was already an entrepreneur running her own business. She got her start by just going out and starting businesses; no “patriarchy” ever tried to stop her and her income depends on nothing except how successful her businesses are. She thinks feminists are pathetic and their “women are oppressed” narrative is stupid. Whenever I show her the sort of idiocy feminists say, she shakes her head with contempt.”
This person is not married and doesn’t even have a gf I bet. I’d bet money this is all fantasy.
I thought he maybe got an A for practicing PowerPoint use? That is, if the assignment was “make a class presentation on something that interests you”.
If so, that teacher might be requiring content preview in the future.
I generally find non-feminists hiding under rocks in damp, relatively unpolluted environments.
… No, wait, newts. I’m thinking of newts. And while it’s certainly true that I’ve never heard of a newt claiming to be a feminist, they also don’t deserve to be subjected to an MRA. Hmmm…
Hey, dudes, I’m pretty sure that non-feminist women live in deep space. They’re perfectly beautiful and submissive and waiting for a prize guy just like you. You should definitely go find them.
FWIW, I took a college class in high school. I also took a class in college that was called something like “computers in the theatre”. Most of the class was focused on using Autocad, but towards the end we also used word to make programs and had to learn PowerPoint. We did PowerPoint presentations, but we weren’t graded on the intellectual content at all. The grade was entirely based on whether we could use PowerPoint or not. (e.g. insert pictures, have bullet points) We didn’t even have to come up with our own content. I wrote a terrible poem for mine, somebody else wrote a story about a penguin, I seem to remember somebody else used a brownie recipe….
Oh there is just so much to chew on in this post that I’m not sure where to start. I suppose I’ll start with the biggest thing that leapt out at me, which was this:
First off, given his attitude, I’d be very interested to hear how exactly he justifies himself as a “good man.”
But more importantly, let’s dig into the list of things he says feminists lack. Honesty, huh? If this kid is a teenager and an MRA, I’m going to assume he’s plugged into the Reddit and 4chan cultures. Truth and fact are malleable concepts there at the best of times. But this little twerp has the gall to decry a lack of respect? Respect is a two-way street, chump and you don’t seem to respect feminists if the best moment of your life was merely spiting them.
But the one that really caught my eye was lack of significant value in culture, customs and traditions. Because he doesn’t go into specifics on which culture, customs and traditions he’s talking about. He goes on to claim that he’s a “traditional, conservative, southern, country boy”, so many words that tell me so little. What is this culture? Is it the religion? The clothes he wears? The car he drives (or wants to drive)? The music he listens to? Most young people have abandoned the church. The clothes he wears were made overseas. So was the car. The music–if it wasn’t appropriated from black people–is only mass marketed if its considered monetarily viable. So what is this “traditional, country culture” that this guy feels feminists don’t value enough. (I think I can guess.)
I will say this for the kid: at least he’s up front in narrowing his culture to the old Confederacy. Too many white supremacists start appropriating all European culture as their own, or refer to it as “Western culture.” As if they so in touch with their heritage that they go out Morris dancing during the spring equinox:
The last one that made me laugh was feminists acting “brash.” His self-identification as an MRA all but screams “I have a playlist of feminist pwnage videos.” And this dipshit wants to admonish others for “brashness”?
Again, ironic that this is typically the same group of people that decry the decline of “Western civilization.” Seems like they actually hate the west for what women have accomplished therein.
Make no mistake, there’s a part of these guys that actually love what the fundamentalist regimes of the Middle East do to women and the LGBT. Only their racism and xenophobia override the ideological kinship they actually share.
How many pills are there??
@Gatecrasher
I’ve seen this attitude so many times, including from a colleague who was being sexually harrassed by the same person who was harrassing me. I asked if she wanted to go with me to report, since there is some safety and courage in numbers, and she said, “I’m not a victim; I can handle myself.” Okee doke.
@Viscaria – Pills are a spectrum. But gender is binary. (according to these guys)
But it tells his audience that he’s part of the tribe:
1. He believes there are certain acceptable roles for women and most definitely unacceptable roles for women.
2. He’s totally against all that non-heteronormative stuff.
3. He believes in purity culture (at least for women) and probably modesty (at least for women).
4. He’s anti-choice.
5. He has a natural distrust of “liberal elites.” (He might even have referred to New York city as “The Whore of Babylon” at least once in his life.)
All that other stuff you asked? That’s not important and not what those words are about when he uses them anyway.
Wouldn’t MRAs be the ones who hate beauticians? Don’t MRAs have a thing about women entrapping men by appearing more beautiful than they really are?
dark purple piller
How many of these freaking pills are there??
I’m a Pantone shade 225c pill
@James Hutchings:
Wasn’t that MGTOWs?
I was expecting the word respectful to pop up in the description – knowing the US’s South’s rep for good manners and courtesy, but I guess he does at least have the self awareness to know that he is not respectful or well mannered.
I have yet to actually meet IRL a man who said he was verbally abused when he approached a woman RESPECTFULLY, and I have yet to meet a woman who verbally assaulted ANYONE without provocation, so perhaps this young man would like to reflect upon his attitude when he made these approaches.
As an ex-graphic design major, I am kind of obsessed with our H.S./college dude’s “dark purple pill” thing.
A simple mix of blue and red pills would give you a nice shade of purple but he doesn’t sound like he’s still clinging to “blue pill” philosophy at all.
If you added some black pill, then it would be dark purple but, again, I doubt he embraces anything “blue pill.”
Mixing red pill and black pill would get you more of a dark maroon color, not unlike what David uses to blockquote. But, that’s not purple, even though it seems to better match his attitude (which is pure yuck.)
I’m back, Mammotheers! This never fails to make me laugh! MRA: *says a bunch of misogynistic bullshit* Same MRA: Why won’t anyone sleep with me?! I’m such a nice guy but nooo they’re too good for me! Bitches!
Hey Mammotheers, I’m back! Also this never fails to crack me up!
@Katherine the Adequate
Please don’t send him here the balance is finally starting to shift towards sanity, lol
Especially with the recent protests