For example, see this post in which a MGTOW-friendly Redditor waxes rhapsodic about … his washing machine. (Or, as he accidently calls it in his headline, his “machine machine.”)
I’ve read through this several times to see if I’m missing some important subtext but I can’t find any. If he wanted to gloat about women using technology developed by men, wouldn’t he have said something about that? Or should we classify this with MGTOW cooking posts, in which MGTOWs boast about making unimpressive dinners? Should we expect to see more MGTOW celebrations of other trivial accomplishments, like tying one’s own shoes or peeling a potato?
I give up.
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@ full metal ox
Ah well “Turn thrice widdershins” is bad luck; so we’re just taking sensible precautions. 😉
hm. I kind of wonder if this particular fellow has some kind of neurodivergence that has given him this singularly odd but generally harmless… interest. I have a feeling that MGTOW subreddits do tend to attract men who feel they don’t belong or wouldn’t be accepted by a neurotypical partner and might thus feel forced to “go their own way”, and I know a lot of neurodivergent men seem to feel very othered. The majority of them are just better able to cope constructively with those feelings of othering and loneliness than to join a forum dedicated to hating women…. but, clearly, at least this guy has a solid and constructive hobby, so I’m not gonna hate on him for that.
The reason I say, is that by some odd coincidence or quirk or perhaps a logic that I don’t understand, my 7yo daughter with down syndrome also calls ours the machine machine. There’s just different emphasis on syllables in the two words, “MAH-sheen mah-sheen”. I have no idea why she calls it that, if it has to do with her mildly impaired hearing (and refusal to use her hearing aids) or what.
@Alan Robertshaw:
I first encountered the Witches’ Reel at the age of thirteen—however suspiciously apropos that figure might sound—in the form of this dramatic recitation by Vincent Price:
… maybe I am missing something here, but I really don’t get posts on WHTM like this one? Isn’t this site here for pointing out, criticizing, and mocking toxic masculinity? What’s toxic about saying “I am glad I have a washing machine”? Isn’t the regular joke to rag on MGTOW dudes for never actually doing anything but whining about women? Why are we sitting here trying to belittle a dude for starting a conversation that isn’t about belittling women?
@ Alan
Well that seems like a whole other hassle. Reminds me of how I as a child was sometimes annoyed when a couple was getting ready for a fancy party and the man needed his wife’s help with his cuffs, which I assumed just meant that he was a klutz or something. It was only later that I learned that cuffs might not have buttons and that cufflinks are probably cumbersome (at least if you don’t wear them all the time and so aren’t used to them).
@ GSS ex-noob
Buttoning from the bottom up seems like a good idea! I might try it if my only available option wasn’t to start with the second button from the top.
@masse mysteria
I think that comes with the idea if you need someone to something basic for you as an adult it means your incompetent. Which really sucks for disabled people. A lot of the times I need my husband to do buttons for me or even tie my shoes because my fingers don’t move in the way they need to do these task anymore. Doesn’t mean that I don’t know how to. Just that I’m losing the ability to.
@ Elaine
Point taken. I hadn’t thought of that. Though perhaps on the occasions I was thinking of, it’s also a dash of that wife-as-mother stuff, where a woman offers her husband the same care she offers for her children.
Also, my childish “I never have problems with my cuffs!” was completely unwarranted in any case, seeing as my shirts only rarely had cuffs, those cuffs always had buttons, and I think it’s already been estalished that I’m just not a champion at buttons.
@ mass mysteria
They are worth it. We have to wear different collars in court to outside; so being able to swap them means you only need one shirt. And then if you’re out in the pub later you can just not have a collar at all. Also if you have to stay away for a few days you can take spare collars and avoid laundry.
Oh yeah, especially as the shirts are double cuffed. So you have to try to get them through 4 layers of material. Handy though if you ever need to demonstrate how a wormhole works.
You’ll take my cufflinks when you pry them from my cold, neatly starched shirt!
Love those things – best ones are my Edwardian ones with chain connecting the two plates instead of a pin or T bar. Easy as doing up a button, those.
I’ve seen no evidence of this. MGTOWs seem to be MGTOWs because they have bought into the idea that women are evil. Hence the obsession with women: it’s their belief that women are evil that defines them, and giving up the obsession would mean the loss of some definition of themselves.
Some of them appear to have had bad experiences with women; others have not, but the notion is still there. They’re still attracted to women, presuming that they were attracted to women to start, but feel like the evils of women will just bring them down and their attraction is, itself, a sign of women’s manipulative evil.
It’s just bog-standard male supremacy, and trying to armchair diagnose MGTOWs with neurodivergence to explain them is unwarranted.
@Masse_Mysteria: My mom taught me the “start from the bottom” trick when I was a young’un and completely unable to button correctly. You can SEE the bottom few buttons and button holes, which means you have a better chance of getting halfway up correctly.
@Alan: It’s been a while since I was on a carousel, but I think I remember it goes around more than 3 but less than 9 times, so it’s safe.
@ Alan
Interesting stuff about detachable collars. I was vaguely aware of them before, ut they make more sense now (not just in an old-timey sense).
Incidentally, I kind of wanted to make this the year when I’d actually find a dress shirt that fits me, but I’ll probably need to wait out the pandemic. On the plus side, the pandemic is likely to mean no shenanigans requiring dressing up, so there’s that.
Regarding shirt buttoning, wasn’t there a scene in Cheaper By the Dozen on that? The original, based on the actual life of Frank Gilbreth, not the later remake. Gilbreth was a workplace efficiency expert, one of the first ‘time and motion men’, and there’s a scene in the movie where he has his wife time him buttoning his shirt from bottom to top and top to bottom to see which one is faster. (Top to bottom, because you can let gravity do a bit of the work for you on moving your hands.)
https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/a4ba1575-32b4-4b7f-b0fd-3efbdc2d5f95