Last week marked the 50th anniversary of the publication of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, which inspired a flood of commemorative essays everywhere from Slate to the New York Times.
It also inspired what I think is one of the most hilariously dumb sentences I’ve ever read on The Spearhead. In a post talking about Friedan’s “youthful Bolshevik activism” – she spent a number of years as a labor journalist – Spearhead head boy W.F. Price offers this assessment of the book that jumpstarted feminism’s second wave:
Although I haven’t read the book, it apparently stresses the need for women to engage in work outside the home, which is a basic Communist tenet.
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And now back to our regularly scheduled post:
Warren Farrell, whose 1993 book The Myth of Male Power essentially set the agenda for the Men’s Rights movement we know (and don’t love) today, did an “Ask Me Anything” on Reddit yesterday.
Most of the questions he chose to answer were pretty much softballs, and his answers largely reiterated things he’s said before many times. But he was also asked some pointed questions about his views on incest which he chose to answer. Well, sort of. Instead of clearing up the issue, he dug his hole a little deeper.
[TRIGGER WARNING for incest/child abuse apologia.]
Over at The Spearhead, the boys are thinking about tomorrow – to be more specific, about the year 2020, the date at which an MRA calling himself The Fifth Horseman predicted in an eccentric online manifesto that a convergence of forces would lead to the popping of what he calls “the misandry bubble,” and that the ensuing gender apocalypse would put the uppity ladies of the world firmly in their place.
A veritable anthem for average looking guys with nothing particularly interesting about them who are pissed off they can’t date women much more conventionally attractive than they are.
Happy Valentine’s Day Boycott Day! Every year on Valentine’s Day, MRAs around the world unite in a sacred ritual: the annual Valentine’s Day Blaming of the Ladies parade.
For, you see, Valentine’s Day is little more than a plot by the ladies to extract fancy chocolate and diamonds and other pricey romantic goods from the world’s men. That’s why, for the past I’m-not-going-to-look-up-the-number of years, the lady hating radio personality Marc Rudov has been trying to get other men to boycott the holiday to show the ladies of the world what’s what.
The twitter hashtag wars continue! Apparently still pissed off that feminists pooped on their #INeedMasculismBecause tag the other day, the dudes of the manosphere launched a little counterattack aimed at #TellAFeministThankYou, a hashtag originally started by Melissa McEwan of Shakesville to give an opportunity to feminists to thank other feminists for, you know, being awesome and stuff.
Usually I venture into the manosphere to collect the latest misogyny, but sometimes it’s delivered right to my door. Here, some intriguing thoughts on women, from an MRA who showed up in the comments here yesterday, and who has been delighting the regulars not only with his opinions but with his colorful writing style.
The feminist movement is doomed not because of us MRAs, but because of women. These days most women spend their youth with mouths agape, babbling on their cell phones and strutting around in public with the fatty sacks on their chests manipulated in such a way to attract a man’s attention. That’s literally all they do. Then once they get older they start looking to mortgage their pink clam off for private use in exchange for food and shelter. After that, they could give a shit about the rest of the world. So for your own sanity, I’d recommend you all just drop this feminism project.
I’m of the opinion that women aren’t really capable of love. I mean sure, they’ll barter access to various body parts- temporary bodyguard for butt action, manservant for intercourse, and such- but that’s not really “love” in the way it has been traditionally defined, by men. I suppose the only pure expression of “love” is that found between two men.
Evolution hasn’t programmed women to reciprocate affection. From a reproductive standpoint, they exist to gobble as much hot sour cream as possible and then propagate the species with the best DNA they can wrangle. Men, on the other hand, are programmed for targeted monogamous affection, the better to protect the female who chooses him as her sperm donor. In modern society, this dynamic has changed, as women don’t just require elite semen, but also financial security, which more often than not can be better provided by a biologically inferior male, to whom she transfers access to her love tube sometime in her early thirties.
So the pink clam is now a love tube? So confusing.
Is Dragon Slayer for real? I admit I’m not altogether sure. There’s some suspicion that he’s a sockpuppet of the legendary Man Boobz troll Arks; the writing style is similar, and, like Arks, the new guy puts bromance before ho-mance. Whether or not this is Arks II, I suspect he’s not purely trolling — that is, while trying to be inflammatory, he believes at least some of what he posts. And indeed, aside from the stuff about man-man love and the bit about men being programmed for monogamy, this is all stuff we’ve heard before from the evo-psych-obsessed dudes of the manosphere.
So: many if not most of you have probably heard about the whole #INeedMasculismBecause thing. For those who aren’t: a bunch of Men’s Rights Redditors and other MRAs, inspired by a post on 4Chan, decided to swarm Twitter with #INeedMasculismBecause tweets in response to the #INeedFeminismBecause hashtag. Feminists responded by outswarming the MRAs, flooding their new hashtag with often quite hilarious parodies of MRAspeak, as well as some just plain ridiculousness.
All PUAs are equally douchey, but some PUAs are more equally douchey than others. Wait, wrong Orwell book.
Over on PUA dirtbag Roosh V’s Return of Kings blog, a guest poster calling himself Emmanuel Goldstein (oh, how clever) offers a rather revealing take on the psychology of “players” and pickup artists like himself.
After justifiably mocking “nice guys” for assuming that “girls choose men like people buy houses” – that is, by carefully weighing pros and cons and looking for the best deal – he suggests that
[p]layers … are more like that sweet old lady with saggy arms wearing a hairnet at your local supermarket, handing out free, tasty samples.
Stay with him; it will all make sense, sort of, in a moment.
