Why do the ladies get to stand in front? Misandry!
When you look at the above picture — a group portrait of the Congressional freshman class of 2013 — what’s the first thing that pops into your head? Maybe something along the lines of “there sure are a lot of white dudes in that picture!”
Eventually, women won’t have to do anything, and men will just carry them everywhere.
These women clamoring for equal pay — what’s their game? I mean, obviously they don’t want anything as straightforward as equal pay for equal work. What woman wants to work?
I do feel bad for all the fellas in the Men’s Rights subreddit, none of whom presumably work in air-conditioned offices. They probably all have to wrestle lions for a living, with their bare hands, in coal mines, blindfolded. (Them, not the lions.) It’s kind of amazing they find time to post on the internet at all!
h/t to TheBluePill for pointing me towards this manly wisdom.
Sneaky Anita Sarekeesian, trying to hide behind a stack of video games.
So Angry Harry, the dotty old British uncle of the Men’s Rights movement, has a post up vaguely warning that the virus software company Symantec just might soon have some sort of shareholders revolt on its hands because it dared to put a bunch of men’s rights sites on a “hate sites” blacklist, blocking access to them for some users of Symantec’s Rulespace software.
That’s kind of an old whine at this point, but what captured my fancy was this recent discussion about Harry’s article in the Men’s Rights subreddit.
Oh, where to begin with all this? I’m charmed, of course, by the idea that feminism is just ruining things — ruining things! — for all the nice ladies in the tech world. I mean, it’s not like feminists have anything to complain about with regard to sexism amongst male techies. They’re just complainy complainers. Ladies in tech are doing just fine, thanks! Don’t take their word for it. Take the word of some random dude in the Men’s Rights subreddit for it.
But the real treat here is Hamakua’s nightmare vision of an army of secret “imbedded” Anita Sarkeesians infiltrating major corporations and … doing what, exactly? Secretly making videos about sexist tropes in video games in hidden compartments underneath their desks, like that secret nap compartment George had built under his desk at work on Seinfeld?
Check out Escaping the Friendzone: The story of a former right-wing MRA on Jezebel Groupthink, a confessional mini-memoir by a dude who traces his “transition from misogynist, homophobic, right-wing MRA to raging intersectional feminist atheist leftist.”
Meanwhile, that guy who just got that rapey pickup manual funded by Kickstarter, Ken Hoinsky? Well, he’s apparently been quite upset by the criticism and is now pledging to make the manual entirely non-rapey. No, really. He met with the guy who started the petition about his book, and released an apology of sorts saying, among other things:
The concept that someone could interpret what I was writing to be a rape guide shocked me at first. But I took a long look in the mirror and absorbed all the great feedback coming in from across the Internet…
Here is what I realized: In the most offensive and controversial parts, I chose my words poorly. Very, very poorly. I meant one thing and people were reading another. THIS IS A MAJOR PROBLEM. I needed to seriously evaluate every last word of my writing to make sure I wasn’t encouraging sexual assault in any way, shape, or form.
Ben Kassoy of DoSomething.Org … graciously offered to meet with me to provide alternate opinions and insights to help remove all of the potentially harmful advice. I am proud to say that his was the first of many meetings I will be having with anti-rape and anti-abuse organizations and experts to make sure that the advice I am offering is free of any tinge of sexual assault or rape vibes. I will be rewriting Above The Game under their guidance and insight.
Right here, on abovethegame.info, I will be starting an international dialogue on how we remove the negative stigma and shame that drives men to seek out seduction advice in the first place. My name may have been martyred in the press, but I will be using this opportunity for good.
The answer isn’t censoring all dialogue surrounding the issue ala Kickstarter’s statement on banning all men’s dating guide projects. Women’s rights and “male seduction guides” can and should coexist …
P.S. To my loyal followers from reddit, you should already be aware my writings are not intended to encourage rape. So rest assured the final book will be in the same style you are used to. I’m just taking us to the next level.
Frankly, it doesn’t sound like he’s really learned much of anything from the experience yet, but if he actually follows through with his promised meetings with anti-rape activists he might. We’ll just have to see how that goes.
There were a lot of ridiculous answers to that question, but one of the most ridiculous (and one of the most highly upvoted) responses came from our old friend John Hembling, the blabby Canadian videoblogger and A Voice for Men “Editor in Chief” also known for some dopey reason as John The Other. He explained:
A better way to retain your mate: Be a sharp-dressed man.
You may know Heartiste as a reactionary, misogynistic, proudly racist dispenser of manipulative, sometimes abusive dating advice to would-be “alpha males.”
Did you also know that he was an open advocate of domestic violence against women?
Well, I didn’t, until a friend pointed out a strange little exchange on his Twitter account the other day.
Last Tuesday morning, apropos of nothing in particular, Heartiste made the following pronouncement:
Depriving men of the means to make credible mate retention threats will assure that women need more retaining. #evolutionaryarmsrace
The latter three items on the list (“Abandonment. Shame. Ostracism”) are standard techniques in Heartiste’s dating strategy, but the open advocacy of violence is, I think, new.
In addition to being repugnant, Heartiste’s argument here doesn’t even particularly make sense. Essentially, he seems to be saying that men need to be able to hit women to keep them in line so that they won’t have to … hit women to keep them in line.
Also, the phrase “mate retention strategy,” apparently popular with Evo Psych types, gives me the creeps. I’m pretty sure the best “mate retention strategy” is to be the sort of person your “mate” wants to be in a relationship with.
I did a quick search for the phrase, and found numerous references to two academic studies. One suggested that some women fake orgasms as a “mate retention strategy.” Another possibly more revealing one claimed that men of “low mate value” often insult their mates to lower their self-esteem so they won’t feel confident enough to leave. That seems more or less in line with what Heartiste’s general approach. And certainly, by any reasonable definition of the term, Heartiste and his followers are some pretty “low value” people, both as “mates” and as decent human beings generally.
I also found this reference to research by Evo Psych big daddy David Buss suggesting that violence — surprise! — isn’t actually a particularly effective “mate retention strategy.”
Also, beating up your mate is, you know, just generally a pretty shitty thing to do.
If Heartiste takes his tweets down, I’ve got screenshots.
EDITED TO ADD: Heartiste has really been going wild with the Twitter lately.
Here he claims to have invented the term “hivemind.”
Interesting that this pants-wetting manboob stole the Chateau Heartiste coinage "hivemind." A reader is outed! http://t.co/F729vnZLRe
So our old friend Fidelbogen the Counter-Feminist Agent of Male Renaissance has gotten on the Twitter. And even though he hasn’t yet figured out how to replace his generic egg avatar, and has managed to amass only 44 followers (one of them me), he’s been tweeting up a storm in the last couple of days.
Indeed, he’s so proud of his recent tweets that he screenshotted a bunch of them and put them on his blog under the title Casting Your Breadcrumbs Upon the Water. (Huh. I thought the expression was “Cast your bread upon the waters.” Maybe Fidelbogen is hoping to recruit some ducks?)
Anyway, I thought I’d give his timely tweety wisdom a somewhat wider audience. I hope he won’t mind.
Can you all suggest some more Fidelbogenisms for him to post?
So my Mighty White of You post — about the demographics of the Men’s Rights subreddit — drew the attention of Obsidian, a longtime Manosphere blogger who has been described by some of his comrades as “the Blackest Man of the Manosphere” (not that this is much of an accomplishment in that lily-white world). He stuck around for some not-terribly productive discussions of race and feminism, pickup artistry, and I can’t remember the rest because I just sort of stopped caring after a while.
But there was one thing he said — a passing remark in a long comment — that stood out to some of the commenters here, and which I thought was revealing enough to warrant highlighting in a post:
I don’t support rape for a very simple reason – because it’s not necessary. A Man with Game doesn’t need to rape anyone.
That … is not a good reason to “not support” rape.
Really, that’s probably the worst reason to “not support” rape besides “I don’t have enough time in my busy schedule to rape anyone today” or “I might muss up my new suit raping someone.”
Do you really need to search for reasons to “not support” rape beyond, you know, the idea that violating other people for your own selfish pleasure is wrong?
PUAs: Even the ones who aren’t directly advocating sexual assault have some pretty fucked up ideas about rape.
