By David Futrelle
Manosphere misogynists seem to think that the world is basically the first three panels of that famous cartoon Charles Atlas ad writ large, in which musclebound “Bullies of the Beach” are continually kicking sand on wimpy beta males and humiliating them in front of their girlfriends.
Indeed, many manosphere dudes are convinced that that this old cartoon ad is a completely accurate description of how the world works. Forget all the women out there with skinny husbands or boyfriends; forget all the women writing fanfic about Benedict Cumberbatch. These guys honestly believe that literally the only men that women want to have sex with are big, burly jocks.
Consider this recent comment in the Men Going Their Own Way subreddit that conveniently captures all the key elements of this manosphere delusion. Warning against the dangers of female “hypergamy,” by which he evidently means the innate tendency of every straight women to immediately drop whatever man she’s with if a Chadly jock looks her way, the MGTOW Redditor who calls himself GamingYourMom declares that
while rock stars and famous actors can be considered acttractive, they will get cucked by a professional athlete everytime. It’s just like high school. Nothing has changed. The jocks roll in pussy.
MGTOWs seem utterly convinced that the world works exactly like high school — or at least how they imagine high school works. In some sense, they’ve never graduated; they’re still jealous of the high school football star who dated the cheerleader they had a crush on. Literally.
If you are at the top of the pyramid in theatre or band, you can nail a hot nerdy chick, but you still don’t get the cheerleaders.
You know, I’m pretty sure the theater guy dating the “hot nerdy chick” preferred her to the cheerleaders, because, you know, people generally like dating people they have something in common with?
But never mind, because apparently the jocks are out there cucking even the world’s most famous theater guys:
Brad better keep Angelina away from NFL players if he knows what’s good for him.
Yes, he brought up Brad Pitt, every manosphere misogynist’s favorite — if perhaps a teensy bit outdated — example of the ultimate handsome dude. Never mind that Brad and Angelina split MORE THAN TWO YEARS AGO and have been fighting bitterly over the terms of their divorce ever since. Never mind that even after this split Angelina has never been spotted hitting the town with a football team.
And you can be ugly as fuck and still consistently pull if you are over six feet.
More bad news for Brad, who’s only 5′ 11″ tall!
And no one in this sub is Brad Pitt, so if you’re not 6ft., you’re fucked. Women say as much in their tinder bio. “If you’re not at least 6ft., go ahead and swipe left.”
I’ve never used Tinder, but I’ve used other dating sites and apps, and while I’ve seen women (some women) express a preference for tall guys, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a woman categorically ruling out all men under 6 feet.
Nature says big guys win the fight, and a woman wants to fuck a winner.
Uh, I’m pretty sure most women prefer being with men who aren’t always getting into fights, for assorted very obvious reasons.
And this isn’t even how nature — red in tooth and claw — works. If size were the only — or even the most influential — determining factor in evolutionary success, wouldn’t humans have evolved to be huge monsters? Wouldn’t every animal? Why would short men — or small animals — even exist?
Elephants are the largest land animals, and can kill people with a swing of their trunk. There are about 450,000 of them left in the world. Rabbits are small and fuzzy and scare almost nobody; though there are no reliable estimates of the rabbit population, there are probably billions of them. (At one point there were ten billion in Australia alone.) I live in a fairly dense neighborhood in a major metropolitan area, and I regularly spot wild rabbits hopping across lawns and in the alleyways. I’ve never seen an elephant wander by.
Here are some bunny videos, just for the hell of it.
But I digress. The point is that MGTOWs don’t know anything about anything and seem to think the world works like Charles Atlas ads.
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Good one. That gave me a snicker.
Though I would’ve preferred a reese.
@Rabid Rabbit
I’m guessing the stance they’ll go with is both, at the same time.
@Jenora Feuer: There’s at least one more – horses. Which we also domesticated. And possibly zebras, but those are too independent and self-centered to domesticate, despite being herd animals.
But the list probably is pretty short.
@Jane Done
Both at the same time, and completely ignoring the fact that about half the Alpha sperm turn out to be women.
They’re essentially competitive generalists. A gymnast or parkour athelete won’t be able to keep up their pace for 4-6 hours like a professional cyclist, not will they be able to lift anywhere near as much weight as a powerlifter. Most sports have different requirements in terms of muscle use.
Instead of thinking of it as a binary, think of it as a min-maxing problem: simplistically, there’s only a certain amount of musculature that each anchor point can support, and each of those muscles can be a mix of fast and slow twitch, with the proportion of each varying depending on use. If you work out to maximize strength, your body will decrease the density of slow twitch muscle in order to increase the fast twitch, which means reducing your endurance to increase your strength. But if you train for something that requires both, you’ll get a mix…which means you won’t be at your personal maximum possible strength, nor at your maximum possible stamina, but as both gymnastics and freerunning require you to be stronger than you would be at maximum stamina and more endurant than you would be at maximum strength, those are the constraints you have to work with.
Of course, different people’s bodies can support different amounts of muscle, and their muscle fibers have slightly different properties, so “talent” (for lack of a better word) can play a significant role, especially in professional sports where a fraction of a second can make a world of difference. In everyday situations with non-atheletes, it doesn’t matter as much.
@Gaebolga: ah I see, good analogy
@ gaebolga
Seconding Jane; great analogy.
@ Jane Done;
But, but Almond Joy’s got nuts! (Mounds don’t)
@Jane Done and Alan Robertshaw
Thank you!
re: cheerleaders
Saw a wonderful response to a “cheerleading’s not an athletic endeavor” mansplain, don’t remember where I saw it…
The (mildly) offended cheerleader retorts”Oh, really? Do my routine, then get back to me on that– when you can walk again”
@ weird eddie
The reason I found out about cheerleaders is because my you-tubing involves a lot of fitness type stuff. But it’s usually all the military type regimens. Navy SEAL training and the like. But in my recommends a cheerleading one popped up. “Huh? Well, may as well take a peek.”
*Several cheerleader training vids later*
“Fuck that; I’ll stick with my Log PT”
My apologies for coming back to this so late; got munched on a bit by RL.
@Victorious Parasol
The things in the WD sequel I was referring to (from memory) were a reference to some of the does from Woundwort’s warren discovering what was described by the rabbits as a psychic river (a ley line?) that showed them the lives and problems of another warren. Later, some time after the defeat of Woundwort but well before Hazel’s death, the fomer leader of that unknown warren shows up at Watership Down for a while. Was anything like that referenced in the new series? Or the expanded tales of El-ahrairah?
At any rate, I’ll have to see how Netflix does their subscriptions and see what I can afford (and if it’ll work on an SE5), and catch the rabbits and FMA before they poof on me again.
Thank you for your help.
A lot of bodybuilders are pretty damn strong, though, in between contests. There’s even an established term for that: “Fat-strong”. As in “I’m in the fat-strong phase right now”. Obviously doesn’t mean fat for real, but, like, a decent amount of body fat. Then you diet it all off for a contest, and so on stage you’re in a pretty bad shape and also seriously dehydrated.
I sometimes feel weirdly defensive on part of bodybuilders, even though I really don’t like that aesthetic myself, and it’s pretty damn unhealthy if you wanna go far…
But a) have a friend who’s really nice and smart who used to compete in bodybuilding at a championship level, so that’s had an influence on me, and b) most of all, I think there’s some weird homophobia or maybe just plain-old sexism underlying a lot of “haha, bodybuilders look weird and they’re really weak from their diets”. Like… it’s so un-manly to spend that much time and effort on looking a particular way. Although I think this can often be subconscious, rather than something people explicitly think. (Not directing this towards anyone in this thread, it’s more a general observation.)
Actually, the other day, an older professor at my department complained about how he doesn’t understand any computer stuff, and is too old to learn, but unfortunately, he never got the help he hoped for from his daughters. First, his plan was for his daughters to learn computers and then help him out with computer stuff when need be, so he bought them computer games and stuff, but they never developed a real interest. Next, he hoped that when they became teenagers, they would date computer geeks, so their boyfriends could help him out with computer stuff, but alas! they only dated football players, and none of their boyfriends ever knew the first thing about computers.
Clearly proves that the guy David cites is absolutely correct.
I don’t get it. The girl expresses nothing but contempt towards the bully, calling him a “nuisance” and far from running right after him tells her angered boyfriend not to be bothered by the asshole. Granted, I don’t get her emphasizing the boyfriend’s physique while saying this, either. Is that supposed to prove something in favor of hypergamy theory? As a whole though, shouldn’t this particular strip be interpreted in exact opposite manner if anything?