Check out my new blog, My AI Obsession, and my latest post there, I asked AI to Create a New Yorker Cartoon for Me. It Didn’t Go So Well.
There’s an old joke. Two elderly women are at a restaurant. One of them says “The food here is terrible!” And the other replies, “And such small portions.”
In the Men’s Rights subreddit today, a guy asserts that “modern women aren’t … worth dating,” that they’re “loud, abrasive, and generally unpleasant to be around.”
And he complains that these apparently worthless–or at least worth-very-little–women don’t want to date men.
In a post on what he calls “the rising epidemic of sexless men in feminist society” a fellow called Wasteofoxyg3n lays out his, er, critique of modern dating.
“Something I’ve noticed is that with the rise of feminism, less and less men are in relationships,” he begins.
In the past, it seemed like every guy had a wife. You never heard of 30 year old permavirgins.
Actually, some 62 percent of American men between the ages of 25 and 54 are married or living with a partner. And 30-year-old “permavirgins” are rare as well; only 9 percent of those in their 30s are virgins, and that drops to 6 percent in their forties.
All of that seemed to change with the rise of feminism. Every straight guy I’ve talked to seems to struggle with dating in some capacity.
First and foremost, women’s standards have increased drastically. in the past, women would just marry some guy from her village/town/whatever. Nowadays, they have BILLIONS of men to choose from. It’s no longer about choosing a guy in spite of his flaws, but choosing a guy WITHOUT any flaws.
Think of every guy you know who is married or has a girlfriend. How many of these men are absolutely flawless?
Second, most men are too afraid to approach women. In the past, men would buy women flowers and try to woo them. Nowadays, you can’t even say hi to a woman on the street without being called a “creep” accused of harassment.
Well, maybe you can’t say hi to a woman without being accused of harassment, but for most of us men that isn’t a problem.
How tf are you supposed to meet women anymore? You can’t approach them on the street, you can’t approach them at the gym, you can’t approach them at the library, you can’t approach them ANYWHERE. Unless you’re crazy attractive, most women will display a “get away from me!” attitude towards you. The only way left is through online dating, and we all know how well that goes for men. It’s almost as if men are being forced into a system where women have all the power.
Among online dating users, according to one survey, “83% of men have met in person with someone they first talked to online.” Women are actually less likely to have met with someone in person.
And now, after all this complaining about small portions, we get to the part about how the food sucks:
Last, but not least, modern women aren’t even worth dating. I’m probably going to get some flack for this, but it’s honestly true at this point. So many men are no longer bothering with dating and are instead choosing to focus on themselves, simply because it’s not worth it anymore.
So wait, who exactly is refusing to date whom here?
As a whole, modern women have been raised by feminism to hate and fear men. I don’t think I’ve ever met an old woman who was as loud, abrasive, and generally unpleasant to be around as the women from my generation. Modern women always ask what we have to offer but never wonder what THEY have to offer.
Feminism has completely ruined dating. It’s conditioned women to no longer view [men as] human beings. I don’t want to play the part of dancing monkey, bending over backwards just to impress some woman just so she can use me for a free meal, ghost me and then make a post on the TwoX subreddit about how many “red flags” I had.
Dude, posting this to the Men’s Rights subreddit is pretty much all the red flags you need.
Follow me on Mastodon.
Send tips to dfutrelle at gmail dot com.
We Hunted the Mammoth relies on support from you, its readers, to survive. So please donate here if you can, or at David-Futrelle-1 on Venmo.
@Jazzlet: thank you for saying that. And oh dear god how I hate when they have such simple “solutions” for our problems. And usually their solutions are something we’ve already tried, like in your case. And usually we’ve told them we’ve already tried and it’s when they suggest said simple thing that we realize they haven’t listened to a thing we’ve said. My personal favorite is when they say “oh you’ll be fine and won’t have to take those antidepressants anymore if you just get more exercise and go outside more!” My brain doesn’t produce serotonin well, that’s why I need the drugs in the first place, so I can actually get up out of bed and do all the exercising, outside things! Oh, and I’ve already mentioned that to you, thanks so much for listening so well when I’m telling you something that’s really fucking difficult to talk about… Ugh…
@Sheila: thank you. I am not a metal ox, though, I am a water goat. I wish I was a rat, though, being a rat would be the coolest. At least to me, I have a pet rat and he’s the most wonderful ratty ever. I haven’t been able to get a friend for him, he’s been attacked the couple of times I’ve tried and so since I work short hours, I’m his friend.
@Yutolia: I agree, she was never actually your friend, you did the exactly-right thing, you shouldn’t fall for her gaslighting, and she is a garbage person who can go live in garbage land with her garbage boyfriend (who will, of course, dump her instantly if even the most minor thing goes wrong with her health or she ever dares to disagree with him). So there. I bet your mental state will improve an infinitesimal bit not having to deal with all her microaggressions.
I haven’t managed to watch this season of Mando yet, too busy with things. Too many things for my amount of spoons.
Are 4 Metal Oxen a herd?
@Jazzlet: also forgot to mention, sorry for your loss. You said you were at a funeral. I hope you are ok!
@Kimstu:
What about transport costs?
Most people already have internet and a device anyway, which are used for multiple purposes, so would not need to spend additional marginal money on those to socialize as well.
I’m so pleased someone else has noticed this! I particularly struggle if there’s a show where key bits of the story are playing out over text message “realistically” (ie. They are shown on a phone screen rather than big stylised text bubbles). If I don’t get up and sit a foot from the screen five-year-old style I can’t read a bloody thing. It took me ages is one film to realise I’m actually *meant* to be reading something, instead of judging the contents by the characters reactions.
I also got my eyes tested (turned out I didn’t need glasses) because so many in-story subtitles – the “translating alien/foreign to primary audiences language” kind – are SO SMALL and DO NOT CONTRAST with the background. It may be a dyslexia quirk but I swear typeface/colour choices didn’t used to be so obscure.
@Yutolia the Laissez-Fairy Pronoun Boner:
And oh dear god how I hate when they have such simple “solutions” for our problems. And usually their solutions are something we’ve already tried, like in your case. And usually we’ve told them we’ve already tried and it’s when they suggest said simple thing that we realize they haven’t listened to a thing we’ve said.
I may have told this story before, but one of my all-time favorites was the Good Samaritan who, noticing my public display of osteoarthritis, decided that I Needed Fixing. Unasked, he advised me to (A) avoid eating nightshade vegetables and (B) take capsaicin supplements.
(Capsaicin comes from chile pepper—which, last I checked, was a nightshade plant.)
@Jazzlet: I offer my condolences as well.
I did the same a few years ago with someone I went to college with in the 1980s, my final straw was a couple of weeks after I’d had a colonoscopy – which I did mention to her – she said “I’m sure the pain would all be fixed if you would just clean everything out, empty your intestines right out, it would re-set everything and you’d be fine!”. Quite how she thought the colonoscopy guy managed to stick a camera up my clearly still-full-of-shit ass I have no idea.
I’m recalling Dr. Dean Edell’s account of an enema buff who claimed to have cleaned out a fifteen-year-old cornflake. This led me to wonder: was it stamped with an expiration date, or what?
@Yutolia the Laissez-Fairy Pronoun Boner:
Or maybe her friend has realized she doesn’t want to talk about her disabilities in this person’s presence, because of the reaction she’ll get.
@Alan Robertshaw
And of course you have to rob it in French, as well, and if you forget to use a comma as a decimal point in your note demanding the money, they only give you a dollar and fifty cents instead of fifteen hundred dollars.
I have to agree with Surplus on this point—when I watch a detective show, I want the story to be primarily about solving mysteries, not the detective’s marriage being unhappy.
Is that new, though? Columbo talked about his wife all the time.
@Moon, @Surplus: I agree on this point, too. I had to stop watching the Dark Crystal because it became focused on a subplot romance between two Gelflings. I understand that some people might be interested in that, but not me – give me more stuff like the movie, which was amazing, don’t fill it up with fluff. I loved the friendship between Jen and Kira, I don’t think it needed to become something else.
@Moon: Honestly, I thought of that, and I do think that’s what’s going on. She likely doesn’t talk about it in order to protect herself from my former friend. Also, what she said about her friend not talking about it “she doesn’t like talking about it because she doesn’t want to draw attention to it”. That doesn’t say strength to me (not saying she’s not strong, though) that says exhaustion and shame. I didn’t want to talk about my disabilities for many years because I was incredibly ashamed and thought they made me less of a person. I talk about them now partly because I am proud of the person I’ve become and the work I’ve done, but also because I want to make the world a better place for other people with disabilities, especially young people. I don’t want them to live in a world where “don’t talk about it” and “it’s your job to make able-bodied people feel comfortable” is so much of a thing anymore. I want them to have the space to be themselves that I didn’t have.
She doesn’t realize it’s not our job to lessen ourselves to make her comfortable. If our existence makes her uncomfortable, that’s all about her, not us.
And, considering I had never heard of this person until this particular conversation, i a, doubting they’re really friends, and are probably more acquaintances.
@Dave:
But Columbo’s references to his wife were usually relevant to the case at hand. Also, I’m not saying the characters can’t mention their personal life at all, just that if the mystery plotline consistently takes a back seat to the detective’s personal life, it’s no longer a detective show, it’s a straight drama in which the main character happens to be a detective and we occasionally get to watch them do their dayjob.
Which is fine if you like that, but sometimes I want to watch a genre show.
@Yutolia the Laissez-Fairy Pronoun Boner:
Yeah, I’d been going to suggest that as well, but felt like my comment was already long enough.
@Moon Custafar
Funny thing is, I actually prefer case-of-the-week shows where the mystery is basically there to justify the cast interacting with each other, with a focus on the characters over the case.
@Moon
I’m the kind of Columbo fan who believes that only a certain percentage of Columbo’s stories about his family are true. The rest of the time, he’s storying the suspect, as my grandparents would put it – mixing truth and untruth for a purpose and a greater good.
@Yutolia:
It’s not entirely implausible that they might not even exist. Your ableist ex-friend might not be above outright making shit up to score points in an argument. I wonder how many “I can’t be racist, I have a black friend!” types actually have the claimed black friend at all …
@Yutolia:
Earth Monkey myself.
And let me add my voice to the chorus of saying that standing up and making decisions is what makes you stronger, not just bearing it all in silence. (Stoicism can be a strength in some circumstances, but generally only when what’s against you is something you cannot possibly do anything about, not when it’s an actual other person trying to push you down for their own comfort.)
That said, replying at least in part because that reminded me of a story I heard once…
There were early experiments in machine translation during the Cold War, mostly on Russian technical documents; this of course required big iron computers, it being in a day when personal computers were still really new and nowhere near able to handle that sort of thing. In order to test the translation capabilities, they ran documents back and forth through the translator to see what came up.
They got really confused when the translation on one batch of documents kept spitting out ‘water goat’.
It took a while to track down the originals and discover that the words which were turned into ‘water goat’ were in fact ‘hydraulic ram’.
(I think I read this in Godel, Escher, and Bach? Almost certainly one of Hofstadter’s books, might have been Metamagical Themas, I know he had an entire column just about translation issues.)
@Surplus: I was thinking that could be as well.
@Jenora: thank you. And the hydraulic ram thing is hilarious.
I think @Jenora’s right, I remember the water goat being in Hofsteader. Obviously Soviet tech manuals aren’t talking about Capricorns, which are also water goats.
@Yutolia: We all remain proud of your strength. We’ve only got so many spoons, so often it’s easier to let things slide, but you’ve got to periodically re-allocate your spoons to more worthy uses.
Remember: disabled is NOT un-abled. We can still do stuff, and there are plenty of jocks in the world (some of whom are also disabled!).
@GSS: thank you, and that is absolutely true.
With regard to the “spoons” thing, I actually like to think of it as sand in the hourglass. Some days my hourglass (or maybe dayglass?) is enormous and thus has tons of sand on top. Some days it’s closer to the size of one of those minute timers that come with board games. Some days it’s in between. Some days it starts out with a huge glass with lots of sand and it gets shaken and the sand falls faster. Or knocked over and that’s it for that glass. Etc…
is that Chloe Price on the banner art