Just a little heads up for any of you in the Chicago area: I’ll be speaking at Northwestern University on Monday, as part of its annual “Sex Week.”
My topic? “How to hate women and have terrible sex: Misogynistic sex myths, and how they ruin sex for everyone.” Nice Guys, Friend Zones, and the Alpha Asshole Cock Carousel will all make appearances.
The talk will be at 8 PM in Room G02 of Annenberg Hall on the Northwestern Campus in Evanston.
Sex week is sponsored by the College Feminists; I’m talking at the invitation of Men Against Rape and Sexual Assault.
I’ll be writing the lecture over the weekend, so please feel free to offer suggestions as to which misogynistic sex myths I should talk about.
EDITED TO ADD: The Spearhead has discovered that I’m doing this talk. W. F. Price writes about it with his usual objectivity, by which I mean that his piece is filled with lies and weird projection.
Tired of reading long, rambling, barely coherent misogynist tirades? Would you prefer misogyny in convenient, e-z to understand chart form? Well, you’re in luck, because a Redditor calling himself firstEncounter has assembled a handy imgur album of “women logic” graphics and comics. Here’s one of them:
Oh, let’s do one more:
Oh, let’s make it an even three:
If you enjoyed these, there are 29 more for you here.
Why, you ask, has firstEncounter gone to the trouble of assembling such a giant stinky pile of misogyny? It’s not why you think! He just likes to put things in categories! As he explains:
I actually have entire imgur albums categorized by content. …
I don’t hate women, seriously. Nor do I believe the images within the album are accurate depictions of standard women behavior. I simply found them entertaining to some extent.
So there you have it!
Oh, and in case you’re wondering, firstEncounter’s little collection received (let’s all say it together) DOZENS OF UPVOTES on Reddit.
Nope! As the totally scientific chart above shows, it also contains: generalized misogyny, racism, atheist dickbaggery, and last but not least: lots of pics hosted on imgur!
Here, some recent data, most of which I have borrowed from ShitRedditSays. I’ve put the number of upvotes for each post in brackets, when relevant.
He’s been shamed into deleting it by you. Are you happy now? For the record, mattperrin said “Why does she have to be 18? So she can be in porn? Very very few girls enter porn, and if you’re just talking about being sexually aroused by her, that’s okay for anyone 13+”.
Reddit Makes Me Hate Atheists, by Rebecca Watson. As you’ll notice, her examples from r/atheism contain many massively upvoted rape and pedophilia jokes, not to mention lots more generalized misogynistic douchebaggery. The circle is complete!
But generally speaking you can pick almost any random highly upvoted post here for endless more examples of what makes even atheist activists hate Reddit atheists.
Then again, random pics of cute dogs and squirrel-riding frogs are certainly preferable to more angry racist rapey hatey pedo-justifying crap. So, yay imgur, I guess? (At least when it’s not being used to post still more angry racist rapey hatey pedo-justifying crap.)
This tiny kitten actually has nothing to do with the post.
Did Tom Matlack of the Good Men Project – not to be confused with Ben Matlock, fictional defense lawyer beloved by the elderly – swallow one of those mysterious “red pills” I keep hearing about on Men’s Rights blogs? Whatever he swallowed, it’s apparently causing him to hallucinate.
How else to explain his recent post on the GMP site titled “Being a Dude Is a Good Thing.” Now, as a dude who spends a good deal of time every day being a dude, I’ve got nothing against anyone being a dude, provided that’s what they want to be. It’s just that the piece itself is full of some rather strange generalizations that don’t actually seem to be, you know, true, at least not in what’s commonly known as “the real world.”
Rather than try to rebut his argument, because he doesn’t seem to have much of one, let’s just look at some of his loopier pronouncements:
Back to Matlack, whose generalizations get more surreal by the sentence:
In the locker room, in the bathroom, on the walk out of the board room, in my conversations with men of all kinds, that’s what I hear more than anything. The resignation that to be a man is to be unacceptable at some level to the woman in your life.
Really? Who on earth are you hanging out with? And what women are they hanging out with? Are men other than Tom Matlack and his possibly apocryphal conversational partners actually having conversations like this on a regular basis? If the “woman in your life” basically hates men, what is she doing with you, and what are you doing with her?
One close friend jokes, “When speaking to my wife I always make sure to look at the ground in deference. And I make sure not to make any sudden movements.”
Um, what?
I’ve watched him. He loves his wife.
He’s a very competent human being. But with her he’s decided the only way to survive is to submit. The female view is the right view. The male view just gets you into trouble.
You see what I meant before about the hallucinations, right?
But Matlack suggests there is hope for the poor demure, never-before-heard-from men of the world. Apparently they are starting to open their mouths at last.
It seems that the blame game in the mainstream, whether through the minimization of male life in pop culture or on television or through the continued obsession with men behaving badly, has finally struck a chord with the average guy.
Let’s just pause a moment to reflect on this whole “minimization of male life in pop culture or on television.” Mr. Matlack, do you actually watch movies or television, or visit libraries or anything like that? Most movies revolve around men as the main characters, with women in many cases serving as little more than a love interest or simply as scenery. Have you ever heard of the Bechdel test? Read up on it, run the test on some of your favorite films, and then get back to us on the “minimization of male life in pop culture.”
Now back to Matlack’s manifesto:
We are no longer willing to be blamed for being men. We are no longer willing to avert our gazes and stay silent about our feelings. We are raising our voices and telling our stories in our own male vocabulary.
Yeah, because men have been so utterly silent about their feelings, their opinons, and pretty much everything, up until now.
To women, I assume the response is, “well, it’s about time.” But just remember when we talk it’s not going to sound like a women in a man’s body. It’s gonna be all dude. And you are just going to have to deal with that.
Ladies, prepare yourselves for a lot more Dudesplaining in the near future. Dudes will be ignored no longer! Dudes!!! DUUUUUDESSS!!!!!!
EDITED TO ADD: Matlack’s gotten some responses on Twitter to his dudely roar; he’s posted a bunch of them here. Guest appearances by Amanda Marcotte and (seriously) Roseanne Barr.
Dating can be tough. It can be especially tough if your personality is a mixture of petulance and insecurity. And even tougher if you think you can argue someone who’s not interested in you into a second date with an angry, accusatory, sometimes hilarious, sometimes deeply unsettling 1600-word email. And no, I’m not speaking hypothetically here.
The email in question, written by a young investment banker named Mike to an unfortunate woman named Lauren after one less-than-great date, was posted on Reddit a couple of days ago, and has already gotten a lot of internetty attention, but some of you may not have seen it, so I thought I’d give it a little fisking anyway. Settle in; it’s going to be a long and bumpy ride. (Note: What follows below is most of the email; I’ve cut out a few passages here and there.)
Hi Lauren,
I’m disappointed in you. I’m disappointed that I haven’t gotten a response to my voicemail and text messages.
Well, we’re off to a not-so-good start. Perhaps she is, as they say, just not that into you?
FYI, I suggest that you keep in mind that emails sound more impersonal, harsher, and are easier to misinterpret than in-person or phone communication. After all, people can’t see someone’s body language or tone of voice in an email. I’m not trying to be harsh, patronizing, or insulting in this email. I’m honest and direct by nature, and I’m going to be that way in this email.
Gosh, I wonder why Lauren didn’t get back to him.
By the way, I did a google search, so that’s how I came across your email.
Google-stalking – always a nice touch. There’s no better way to charm a nice lady than by tracking down her personal information online.
I assume that you no longer want to go out with me. (If you do want to go out with me, then you should let me know.) I suggest that you make a sincere apology to me for giving me mixed signals. I feel led on by you.
Uh, what? She’s ignoring you, dude. She doesn’t want to go out with you. Seems to me she’s sending you a pretty unmixed message here.
Should she have responded to your voicemail and/or texts? In an ideal world, perhaps, but she may have sensed that you’d react precisely how you’re reacting now, and didn’t want to have anything more to do with your creepy, entitled bullshit.
And now Mike the banker makes his, er, “case” for why she should go on a second date with him:
Things that happened during our date include, but are not limited to, the following:
-You played with your hair a lot. A woman playing with her hair is a common sign of flirtation. You can even do a google search on it. When a woman plays with her hair, she is preening. I’ve never had a date where a woman played with her hair as much as you did. In addition, it didn’t look like you were playing with your hair out of nervousness.
You were flirting!! Hair-twirling = sex! If you don’t realize it you can google search it!!!
-We had lots of eye contact during our date. On a per-minute basis, I’ve never had as much eye contact during a date as I did with you.
Eye contact is an Indicator of Interest. IOI! IOI! If you didn’t want to bear my children why did you look at me, with your eyes????
-You said, “It was nice to meet you.” at the end of our date. A woman could say this statement as a way to show that she isn’t interested in seeing a man again or she could mean what she said–that it was nice to meet you. The statement, by itself, is inconclusive.
Well, not really. This is what people say to be polite at the end of a disappointing date, when they don’t want to see you again. If she wanted to see you again, she would have said something about making plans for a second date.
-We had a nice conversation over dinner. I don’t think I’m being delusional in saying this statement.
We had a conversation! You did not flee in horror! Therefore you must have my babies!!!
In my opinion, leading someone on (i.e., giving mixed signals) is impolite and immature. It’s bad to do that.
And sending someone who clearly wants nothing to do with you a long, creepy, accusatory tirade is polite?
Normally, I would not be asking for information if a woman and I don’t go out again after a first date. However, in our case, I’m curious because I think our date went well and that there is a lot of potential for a serious relationship.
Dude, you do understand that she has to actually like you too in order for there to be a relationship?
I think we should go out on a second date. In my opinion, our first date was good enough to lead to a second date.
You cannot argue someone into a second date! That’s not how it works.
Why am I writing you? Well, hopefully, we will go out again. Even if we don’t, I gain utility from expressing my thoughts to you.
Gain utility? Really? DATING IS NOT MICROECONOMICS!
In addition, even if you don’t want to go out again, I would like to get feedback as to why you wouldn’t want to go again. Normally, I wouldn’t ask a woman for this type of feedback after a first date, but this is an exception given I think we have a lot of potential.
If you don’t want to go again, then apparently you didn’t think our first date was good enough to lead to a second date. Dating or a relationship is not a Hollywood movie. It’s good to keep that in mind. In general, I thought the date went well and was expecting that we would go out on a second date.
So your argument is that she should go out with you, even though she doesn’t want to go out with you, because life isn’t perfect and you’re probably the best she really deserves?
Way to sell yourself, dude.
If you’re not interested in going out again, then I would have preferred if you hadn’t given those mixed signals. I feel led on.
Well, she’s not really responsible for you thinking that every woman who twirls her hair in your presence wants to have your babies.
We have a number of things in common.
Oh dear, sounds like we’ve got another “logical” argument coming up here.
I’ll name a few things: First, we’ve both very intelligent. Second, we both like classical music so much that we go to classical music performances by ourselves. In fact, the number one interest that I would want to have in common with a woman with whom I’m in a relationship is a liking of classical music. I wouldn’t be seriously involved with a woman if she didn’t like classical music. You said that you’re planning to go the NY Philharmonic more often in the future. As I said, I go to the NY Philharmonic often. You’re very busy. It would be very convenient for you to date me because we have the same interests. We already go to classical music performances by ourselves. If we go to classical music performances together, it wouldn’t take any significant additional time on your part.
Um, what?
I have no clever remark to make here, other than that Lauren is probably going to have to avoid going to the Philharmonic ever again, on the off chance she might run into banker Mike.
According to the internet, you’re 33 or 32, so, at least from my point of view, we’re a good match in terms of age.
YOU ARE RIGHT AGE. INTERNET SAYS SO. THEREFORE YOU MUST DATE ME.
I could name more things that we have in common, but I’ll stop here. I don’t understand why you apparently don’t want to go out with me again. We have numerous things in common.
Also, you both require oxygen to live. Lauren, can’t you see that you and banker Mike are soulmates?
I assume that you find me physically attractive. If you didn’t find me physically attractive, then it would have been irrational for you to go out with me in the first place. After all, our first date was not a blind date. You already knew what I looked like before our date.
Banker Mike: You said you wanted feedback. Here is some feedback. She was apparently not horrified by your physical appearance. It may be your horrible personality that needs some work.
Perhaps, you’re unimpressed that I manage my family’s investments and my own investments. Perhaps, you don’t think I have a “real” job. Well, I’ve done very well as an investment manager. I’ve made my parents several millions of dollars. That’s real money. That’s not monopoly money. In my opinion, if I make real money, it’s a real job. Donald Trump’s children work for his company. Do they have “real” jobs? I think so. George Soros’s sons help manage their family investments. Do they have “real” jobs? I think so.
You’re fighting a losing battle here, dude. Just as you cannot argue someone into liking you, you cannot argue someone into being impressed that you manage your parents’ money.
In addition, I’m both a right-brain and left-brain man, given that I’m both an investment manager and a philosopher/writer.
And I’m the Queen of Denmark.
That’s a unique characteristic; most people aren’t like that. I’ve never been as disappointed and sad about having difficulty about getting a second date as I am with you.
Oy. As if this email wasn’t stalkerish enough already.
I’ve gone out with a lot of women in my life. (FYI, I’m not a serial dater. Sometimes, I’ve only gone out with a woman for one date.)
This last bit I have no trouble believing.
I suggest that we continue to go out and see what happens.
I suspect that Lauren has already played out various scenarios in her head already, and that none of them end well.
Needless to say, I find you less appealing now (given that you haven’t returned my messages) than I did at our first date. However, I would be willing to go out with you again. I’m open minded and flexible and am willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. I wish you would give me the benefit of the doubt too.
So now you’re being noble and “open minded” for trying to pressure a woman who wants nothing to do with you into a second date?
If you don’t want to go out again, in my opinion, you would be making a big mistake, perhaps one of the biggest mistakes in your life.
Now you’re just making my skin crawl.
I spent time, effort, and money meeting you for dinner. Getting back to me in response to my messages would have been a reasonable thing for you to do. In addition, you arrived about 30 minutes late for our date. I’m sure you wouldn’t like it if a man showed up thirty minutes late for a first date with you.
Here’s a solution, dude: How about she never goes on another date with you, ever. Then you won’t ever have to worry about her being late ever again.
If you’re concerned that you will hurt my feelings by providing specific information about why you don’t want to go with me again, well, my feeling are already hurt. I’m sad and disappointed about this situation. If you give information, at least I can understand the situation better. I might even learn something that is beneficial.
I hope you find the feedback that the internet has now provided you to be helpful.
If you don’t want to go out again, that I request that you call me and make a sincere apology for leading me on (i.e., giving me mixed signals).
Now we’re back on this again.
In my opinion, you shouldn’t act that way toward a man and then not go out with him again. It’s bad to play with your hair so much and make so much eye contact if you’re not interested in going out with me again.
Damn you, foul strumpet, and your devious hair-playing ways! Google it! GOOGLE IT!!!
I would like to talk to you on the phone.
I think you’ve pretty much guaranteed that this will never, ever happen.
Even if you don’t want to go out again, I would appreciate it if you give me the courtesy of calling me and talking to me. Yes, you might say things that hurt me, but my feelings are already hurt. Sending me an email response (instead of talking on the phone) would better than no response at all, but I think it would be better to talk on the phone. Email communication has too much potential for misinterpretation, etc.
Not much to misinterpret here, Mike. You’ve made it absolutely crystal clear that you’re an undateable creep.
Let me be serious for a moment. Forget about Lauren. Hell, forget about women in general for a while, and work on yourself. Get some therapy; you can afford it. Work through your bitterness, your petulance, your highly unattractive mixture of entitlement and insecurity. Stop being a “Nice Guy” and learn to be genuinely nice.
And don’t ever, ever, ever write another email like this one.
Question for Pierce Harlan, the guy behind the False Rape Society blog: Do you really think this is the best way to fight false rape allegations?
The real problem here isn’t that he’s recycled an old rape joke; it’s that he’s pretending that rapists are somehow a species apart from ordinary men. His big complaint is that the PSA in question “passes off a criminal deviant as a typical guy.”
Pierce, what do you think rapists look like? They’re not villains out of some silent-movie melodrama, twirling their whiskers and cackling with glee. They don’t have giant R’s tattooed on their foreheads. No, they look like “ordinary” guys. Exactly like them. Rape prevention — and crime prevention in general — would be a lot more effective if criminals could be easily identified at a glance. But the world doesn’t work that way. Most criminals look pretty ordinary, actually.
But the problem with Harlan’s stance here go beyond that. The fact is that most rapists aren’t sinister strangers hiding in an alleyway; the overwhelming majority – something like 70% — are people known to their victims. As someone who writes regularly about rape, Pierce is presumably aware of this, which means either that he’s being completely disingenuous, or that he’s simply pretending that date rape (and non-stranger rape in general) doesn’t exist.
The PSA in question is far from perfect. Aside from the terrible acting, the main problem with it is that it it’s victim-blaming. Its depiction of a rapist as an ordinary-looking guy – and a friend of the victim — is the one thing it gets right.
To get an idea of the sort of person who reads (and agrees with) The False Rape Society blog, here are a couple of comments on the, er, “controversy.”
Here’s a comment from YouTube, posted by someone who obviously got there from Harlan’s blog (it appeared after the video was linked at the FRS; before the recent batch of comments, the video hadn’t had a comment for three years).
So the message is that if a guy is being helpful at a party, he’s probably a rapist? This is not a fair psa. It did better than some though, by highlighting the fact that the female friend ditched her.
Apparently, in this guy’s mind, trying to remove the clothes of a woman almost completely incapacitated by alcohol is just a way of being “helpful.”
Wow- just like TV- apparently the only people on earth who ever do ANYTHING wrong are white males- preferably fat ones to give feminists a little extra to hate.
Is it really possible that anyone – including the author and the people upvoting the comment — could actually believe this nonsense? If so, what a strange, sad world they must live in.
In the Slavering Beast Theory, there are two kinds of men. Two species, nearly. … There are ordinary guys and there are Slavering Beasts. And they are very, very easy to tell apart. They act different, even look different, to the point where any adult should be able to distinguish them in any casual social setting. …
This dichotomy is how someone can simultaneously believe that women shouldn’t go out after dark because rape is such a big problem and believe that tons of rape accusations are false. It makes perfect sense if you believe there are Slavering Beasts out in the dark, but if an ordinary guy is accused of rape, there must be more to the story. It explains why people are angered by rape prevention tips aimed at men–those are insulting to ordinary guys, and Slavering Beasts won’t listen. And it justifies the belief that abuse victims had it coming: either they were abused by a Slavering Beast and should have known better, or they were abused by an ordinary guy and must have done something terrible to provoke him.
Jezebel has apparently decided to gin up some page views by running a bizarre, victim-blaming, slut-shaming, skeevily prurient screed on Amber Cole, the 14-year old African American girl who was videotaped giving oral sex to some boys; the video got posted online and, despite the fact that it was, you know, child porn, went viral. The story itself is appalling; so is the screed, written by a guy pretending (for rhetorical effect) that he’s Cole’s father. It reads like something you’d find on The Spearhead.
The piece starts off melodramatically:
I am Amber Cole’s father. I am angry, confused and completely at a loss. I love my daughter. I want to guide her without suppressing her. That is not always easy. Children need protection from their worst inclinations. That is not always easy. I am trying to convince her that the world will still love her if she keeps her clothes on.
Just to remind everyone again: the author is not actually Cole’s father. (And Amber Cole is apparently not her real name.)
The screed quickly descends into an attack on the girl’s mother that reads like something you’d read in the comments section of The Spearhead or In Mala Fide:
She would listen to her mother, if her mother was not busy. Doing something, anything that is not parenting. I want her mother to spend less time being “empowered” and more time being aware and engaged with our daughter.
And it only goes downhill from there. We get a section essentially blaming girls at large for the incident, because they allegedly ignore the “nice guys” who would never make such a tape. We get a section blaming the “mother’s boyfriend, Karrine Steffans or Kim Kardashian” for teaching the girl to be “proficient at such a difficult act. … I want to know why my 14 year-old knows so much about oral sex.”
And then we get a ridiculous race-baiting rant about white feminists and the Slutwalks:
White feminists can teach their own little girls to find empowerment through their crotches – my brown little girl cannot afford to be that carefree and cavalier with her life choices. Slutlife is the hard, lonely vocation of rich, educated, privileged white women who will fuck The World, contract social diseases and still, somehow find a husband. No black woman ever got far being a slut. I want to know what kind of women “slutwalk,” while young impressionable girls of all kinds look on with wonder and admiration.
After placing blame for the whole thing on just about every girl and woman in the world, the author comes to the father:
I am Amber Cole’s father. Don’t ask where I was that afternoon, because you already know. I was at work, just like you. I do not live with her, cannot always talk to her, cannot always be there. Not the way I want, and there are few laws to help me. To protect me and my rights.
Because that’s the real issue here: Father’s Rights.
And then the big reveal:
I am Jimi Izrael. I am not really Amber Cole’s father. But she is my daughter.
You do not think so. But she is your daughter too.
I don’t believe I could recommend this as a strategy for most men, but it is surely educational to learn that raping and killing a woman is demonstrably more attractive to women than behaving like a gentleman. And women, before all the inevitable snowflaking commences, please note that there is absolutely nothing to argue about here. It is an established empirical fact.
From this one data point, Vox seems to have made a somewhat hasty generalization based on the notion that all women are the same person – that is, if one woman thinks or does something, all women think or do that same thing.
Yes, there are women — and men — who find themselves attracted to vile human beings. Some women idolize murderers. Some men think Ann Coulter is hot. That doesn’t mean that all women idolize murderers or that all men want to get it on with Ms. Coulter. It just means that some people have really, really, really appalling taste.
But let’s just assume for a moment that Vox’s basic premise is true: all women love violent psycopaths,. If you’ want to get with the ladies, but aren’t so hard up for a date that you’re actually willing to resort to homicide, is there some other way you convey what a violent psychopath you are to the ladies of the world? Yep, says Vox:
[I]f you are being introduced to a woman you find attractive, she will be more attracted to you if you slap her in the face without warning and walk away without explanation than if you smile and tell her that you are very pleased to meet her. Now this, being a mere hypothesis, can be argued. And tested, if you’re feeling especially scientific this weekend.
I really hope none of his readers take him up on this.
Is Vox being altogether serious about this? Yes and no. About the idea that women love killers? Absolutely serious. About actually assaulting women? He’s a bit more cagey. On his blog Alpha Game, Vox elaborates:
Women find it sexier for you to rape and kill a woman than putting them on pedestals and being a nice guy. I’m not saying that you should rape and kill anyone, but I would recommend, at the very least, dropping the nice guy routine and pushing over the pedestals.
Women have plenty of positive attributes. But they’re not angels, and when it comes to what sexually attracts them, even the nice, well-bred ones are more insanely twisted, from the male perspective, than the average serial killer.
So apparently the only truly happy couples in the world are those in which both partners think like serial killers.
Note to angry dudes: Women not wanting to date you is not the equivalent of this.
There needs to be a Manboobz Addendum to Godwin’s Law to cover those who compare their lack of dating success to, you know, genocide. You may recall the charming Tumblr dude who equated dateless “nice guys” with persecuted Jews in Nazi Germany.
And now we have “white and nerdy,” the blogger behind Omega Virgin Revolt taking the datelessness=genocide thing a step or two further. As you might guess from the title of his blog, WAN doesn’t exactly have women beating a path to his door. Not even golddiggers, even though he is, he says, “a widly successful owner of my own business.” Women don’t even want to use him for his money? Why is that? Because he is not a — wait for it – “alpha” man.
Yep, it’s the same old dopey logic we’ve seen so, so many times before: Women won’t date me => therefore I’m not an alpha => therefore women won’t date anyone but alphas. WAN has added one more step to this illogical logic chaim: this makes them the equivalent of genocidal monstere:
The ideology that women act on is the ideology of Pol Pot, of the Killing Fields. Women want non-alpha men purged and intelligence is considered by women to be a lack of alphaness in a man. This is similar to the ideology that led to the killing fields. Many of the millions who were murdered by the Khmer Rouge in the Killing Fields were murdered for showing signs of intelligence. That included everything from education to the possesion of wristwatches and/or glasses. If modern geeky hobbies had existed in Cambodia in the 70s, I’m sure that would have been included along with wristwatches and glasses as evidence of intelligence, and anyone interested in geeky hobbies would have been murdered too.
He’s making a could-not-possibly-be-more-strained reference to the whole Alyssa Bereznak/Jon Finkel kerfuffle. Bereznak, as most of you probably already know, wrote a sort of snarky, sort of stupid piece for Gizmodo about her date with Finkel, a champion Magic the Gathering player, and said some mean things about him and his geeky hobby. Pol Pot engineered the deaths of roughly 2 million people, many of them urban dwellers and intellectuals forced to relocate to collective farms in the countryside. Many died of starvation; others were shot – or beaten to death, in order to save on bullets.
So, yeah, Bereznak and Pol Pot are pretty much identical.
WAN continues:
[T] ideology of what women are doing now and what Pol Pot did are very similar. The Killing Fields needed to be opposed for both moral and practical reasons and so must what women are doing now. Rebel at The Spearhead said that women are engaged in a “holy crusade” against men. … The Khmer Rouge was also on a “holy crusade”. As Rebel also said what is at stake is nothing less than civilization itself and your existence and freedom just as it was with the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.
In an earlier post pretty much making the identical, er, “argument,” WAN takes aim at comedian Julie Klausner, who recently published a memoir called I Don’t Care About Your Band: What I Learned from Indie Rockers, Trust Funders, Pornographers, Faux Sensitive Hipsters, Felons and Others. In her book, and in some interviews about the book, Klausner made some unflattering comments about “beta males” and “immature” men. This sends WAN into a rage:
Hitler, Stalin, Mao, or Pol Pot would be proud of this cunt. She all but calls for concentration camps for her “useless beta inferior men” who secretly run the world. …
Ah, classic weasel words: “All but calls for.” In other words, she doesn’t actually call for concentration camps, or even rock ‘n’ roll fantasy camps, for men in any way shape or form. Never mind. WAN continues:
Somehow these “straight angry nerds” who are “useless and inferior” took over the world when no one was looking and this cunt says “something needs to be done” about this “epidemic”.
This type of thinking is widespread among women. …
[I]t’s no surprise that a lot of men are saying they think they would be better off with the Taliban running things. While I’m not sure that isn’t just trading one set of problems for another … I understand what these men are thinking. Anything has got to be better than this.
So: Nerdy men are “oppressed” by women who won’t date them. The solution to this imaginary oppression: oppress women for real.
Say what you will about the dedicated PUAs (Pick-Up Artists) of the world: at least they sometimes actually talk to real human women. The guys in Reddit’s Seduction subreddit, I’m not so sure about.
It’s kind of sad, sometimes, to read the plaintive requests for advice on Seddit (as it’s known) from college guys who’ve fixated on some girl in some class of theirs, and want desperately to learn the secret formula to get into her pants. These aren’t guys who’ve mastered the art of “negging” women with clever little mini-insults (a favorite PUA technique); these are guys who haven’t quite grasped that you have to actually talk to a woman in order to ask her out.
Write “coffee?” on your forehead, and stand in front of her. Point at your forehead if necessary.
So, yeah, I’ve been banned from Seddit.
Look, I feel for the guy. I’ve been that guy.
But just think of it from the point of view of the girl. Some guy you’ve never spoken to, some guy who doesn’t know a thing about you other than you make him feel funny in his pants, approaches you out of the blue and … slips you a note?
But really, the problem there isn’t the note. Well, part of the problem is the note, But the main problem is that college dude has never spoken to her before. As anyone who has watched Seinfeld knows well, “coffee” means “sex.” Going up to a woman you’ve never spoken to before and asking her out is a bit like saying “hi, you make me feel funny in my pants. I would like to put my penis in you. Perhaps we could chat a bit first. Though, clearly, I don’t care what’s in your actual brain, because here I am asking you out based on nothing more than the fact that you cause that aforementioned feeling in my pants.”
Pro-tip for lonely guys: remember that women are actual human beings also.
Now, this poor Sedditor got some good basic advice from the crowd there, basically boiling down to: figure out an excuse to talk to her before class, and see how it goes.
Now, Seddit may be mildly useful in giving this sort of basic advice to the truly hapless. But it doesn’t seem to be very good at getting across the notion that women are human.
Indeed, there was a strikingly similar question posted in Seddit a couple of days ago: a guy who wanted to ask out the only girl in his engineering class. His post, in stark contrast with the note guy, was bristling with PUA acronyms and lingo: the girl was an “HB8” (Hot Babe that he rated an 8 of 10 on the hotness scale); he was on the lookout for IOSs (Indications of Interest) from her, and so on and so on.
But his strategy was strikingly similar to that of the AFC (Average Frustrated Chump) with the note: he was going to walk up to her after class and ask her out for dinner. But he was planning to add one more “technique” to his approach: “kino.” In PUA-speak, kino means touch.
So, yeah, that’s what he learned from all his study of advanced PUA-oloogy: just start touching her! Women are eager to jump into bed with guys who come up to them out of the blue and start groping them. (The post itself was deleted after it got linked to in the ShitRedditSays subreddit, so no link.)
Trouble is, this guy is not the only one getting the message that Pick-up artistry is all about invading a woman’s personal space and “escalating” until she literally fights you off or given is. This is, in fact, the basic message of the PUA who calls himself Gunwich – a man who not that long ago (allegedly) shot a woman I the face after she refused his advances.
And, yes, pressuring a woman until she gives in, or up, is one way of getting in her pants. It’s also, you know, rape.
In recent days a number of Sedditers have posted advice that is little more than a how-to of date rape. A number of instances were pointed out in ShitRedditSays, and were deleted by the Seddit moderators. It’s clear this is damage control; a number of regulars on ShitRedditSays have been banned from posting in Seddit – many of whom had actually never posted there in the first place.
Here’s a discussion of one copy-and pasted date rape guide that got deleted before anyone made a screencap.
The Seddit mods say this is “fringe” stuff that doesn’t reflect how most Sedditors think. Then how is it that some of the creepiest comments get dozens of upvotes? Take this Sedditor’s advice on how to get inside a woman’s house (and then her pants) that I managed to screencap before it was deleted:
Now, there is plenty of PUA material that is not rapey. Manipulative, sure. Dopey, absolutely. But not rapey. A good Pick-Up Artist, in theory at least, should be able to tell when a woman is interested and when she isn’t, and move on when she isn’t.
But it’s clear that many Sedditors aren’t learning that whole “if she’s not interested, move on” thing. They’re learning: “if she’s not interested, pressure her and manipulate her, and wear her down. And be sure to touch her. Sorry, “kino escalate.”
They’re not learning empathy. They’re learning stupid human tricks. And, worse, they’re learning to ignore a woman’s “no,” to treat it as what PUAs call LMR – that is, Last Minute Resistance. And that’s pretty much a formula for date rape.
