Space Moses, part 2.

Follow up thoughts on Geordie Tait.

https://twitter.com/Geordie_Tait

The guys has some serious issues. But I think this thought process is on a kind of spectrum. The cold, logical conclusions of feminist ideas like Patriarchy Theory, is that men are women's superiors, and that women will never, ever be safe from men. Thus you run a spectrum of solutions based on the morals and principles of an individual feminist.

Someone like CH Sommers stops very early, at the gynocentric break. Men are useful to women, and cannot perform if they are not treated sufficently well.
Most coffee shop feminists stop just past rape culture and the wage gap. Men are predatory and oppressive, but they can be taught, like animals I suppose.
Further off the deep end are feminists like Jessica Valenti, who use feminism to justify their misandry, and call it 'ironic;. "Often a true word is spoken in jest"
Next stop on the crazy train is Geordie Tait, and the idea that anyone against feminism deserves to be gassed to death. He's not willing to push the button himself, but would be perfectly fine if someone else did.
Last stop is Valerie Solanis, who thought that radical feminism didn't go far enough.

So the ideology leads to a conclusion that men should be killed, and the morals and principles (or lack thereof) of an individual feminist shows where they get off the crazy train.

Space Moses

I listened to King of Pol's chat with Geordie Tait today while at work. A few things stuck out for me. I mean aside from the NAZI IDEOLOGY.

Tait mentioned how men are superior to women. Even comparing men to the fictional character of Superman. I'm sure he wouldn't use the term "Superior to women", but the idea that men are so powerful as to be compared to Superman, and that they have oppressed women for 10,000 years is so blatantly an idea that men are their superiors that it's hard to miss. Of course, a man can be excused for having such godlike power if he uses his superior masculinity in the service of women.
Otherwise, he'd be one of the Bad Men. It came out clearly when Oliver confonted Tait with the idea that his speils were making women feel afraid. That's against his Prime Directive, and so caused him cognitive dissonance. Even after vehemently asserting that he's fine with the idea of women being gassed if they support #GamerGate, being faced with the idea of threatening #GamerGate women tripped him up.

And his constant accusations that #GamerGate supporters are misogynists, etc. I couldn't help but think of how the Nazis portrayed the Jews as dangerous.

Responsibility.

I've been thinking of the video clip of Caitlin Moran shown at the beginning of this video, Singing the Masculinity Blues.



It's telling that Caitlin mentions how she thinks men should step down and give women power for a while. The sheer misunderstanding of how power, authority and responsibility work.

If women want power and authority, they need to take the responsibility that comes with it. It's like feminists have a fairy tale idea of men being all powerful and seeing only the riches and power that powerful men had, and ignoring all the men underneath, toiling and sweating for little thanks or recognition.

Let me put this as clear as I can. If women want power, they first must seek the responsibility to prove that they have the qualifications to wield that power. Most men have to earn their positions of authority, they are not given them. Sometimes a golden boy gets a fast track to unearned success, but that is rare and often disastrous.

But even more than that, I think that it comes from father worship. To admit that men could be vulnerable, that men might not be all-powerful is to admit that men might not have the power to protect and provide for them, that their father figure might have feet of clay, and be made of blood and sinew instead of steel.

Note the reaction of many women in 3rd world countries if their husband is raped. These men are tossed aside as valueless. It opens up a vein of fear in women.

So these radfems are trapped in a place where they envy their fairy tale vision of male power, but to take it from men is to admit that men could be powerless, and thus shatter their father worship fantasy.

Orestes

You wild goddesses who dart across the skies
seeking vengeance for murder, we beg you to free
Agamemnon's son from his raging fury....
We grieve for this boy. Happiness is brief among mortals.
Sorrow and anguish sweep down on it
like a swift gust of wind on a sail boat,
and it sinks under the tossing seas.

The Exodus

On a popular table top rpg site I visit, I saw another person question the progressive social justice movement. In this case, the issue was over #GamerGate. The user was given a lengthy ban for daring to question the SJW narrative that they spin about #GamerGate.

These people usually seek out alternative places to speak their minds. KotakuInAction, 8Chan, the MRM, MGTOW boards. They still want to talk about the issues, and the tendency for SJWs to ban and silence just makes them more eager to speak.

Weaponized Threats

Brianna Wu recieves death threats over internet.

Some of those who have been following gamergate see the pattern. A woman gets threats over the internet, inevitably gets a plug for their product or video, and uses the threat as a shield against criticism.
Hell, Davis Aurini and Jordan Owen are attempting to get a documentary made on this subject, aptly named, The Sarkeesian Effect.

http://www.patreon.com/thesarkeesianeffect

Digging deeper shows that there is more going on under the hood of these threats.
Brianna Wu was not above making troll accounts to attack gamergate supporters.

https://archive.today/ApOy0

We may never be able to confirm where these threats come from, or if they are intentional fabrications or trolls trying to play both sides, but they do happen, and they're the strongest weapon the SJWs have in their arsenal, since they play on emotions instead of logic.

Framing the debate.

"If you believe certain words, you believe their hidden arguments"
-Children of Dune

I started looking into framing these past few days, in response to the #gamergate issue in specific, but in the general topics of feminism, social justice, etc.




I started with this video, by a progressive, on using framing as a tool in debate with conservatives, and how conservatives use framing.

I then did a little reading on how framing is affected by the amygdala, inspired by this blog.

http://www.anonymousconservative.com/blog/touching-the-raw-amygdala-part-i-foundational-understandings/

I then did some watching of Robert Sapolsky videos, especially this one on the limbic system.




I'm still digging, but my opinion so far is that while facts and stats are good, they don't necessarily win debates or influence people. Emotions are the motivations to accept or reject those facts.

There's some debate on the value of engaging with social justice warriors and feminists at all. I think that engaging with them is inevitable. Either that, or they will continue to co-opt various areas of interest and twist them to their agenda. Atheism, video games, comics, etc.



Alison Tieman recently did a great video on how feminists frame the issue of sufferage.




I think this illustrates the value of framing and reframing well.

Limerance and Elliot Roger

My road to Men's Rights started with dealing with my own oneitus.
(oneitus is PUA terminology for limerance...)

Once upon a time, I pinned all my romantic hopes on one woman. This lasted for literally about a decade and a half, where I "lost" her, "found" her and despite all my efforts, finally lost her again.
After first losing track of this woman, I reconnected and found that she had gone through a dysfunctional, abusive relationship. In a moment of despair, I finally asked myself the correct question, that led me slowly out of the oneitus trap.

"Why did she choose to be with an abusive partner?"

Up until that point, I had been pretty blue pill,  believing that if I did the "right" thing, she would fall in love with me. Buy her crap, treat her right, etc. But I then went through a rather unhealthy (but necessary) period where I determined that if an abusive partner could "control" her, then I could too, for her own good and for my romantic gratification. I then looked into pick up artist techniques, and divorce councelling. The two combined gave me a pretty good picture of human dysfunction and contrariness in relationships. I learned to let go of limerance and instead focus on my own health and happiness first. It wasn't instantaneous, and took a lot of introspection and work, but I finally let go.

Thunderfoot recently posted a video criticizing Stephan Molyneau.



I'm going to focus on Thunderfoot's comparison of Stephan Molyneau to Elliot Roger. Being critical of a person, a demographic or a gender is not, repeat not, indicative of hatred. Hell, we could go down that road and say that Thunderfoot's criticism of Anita Sarkeesian is misogyny if we accept that tactic.

For those asking my @xoxo talk should be online soon. In it I discuss how defamation, libel and slander are often deployed to harass women.
— Feminist Frequency (@femfreq) October 1, 2014

They key to dealing with my limerance was being critical. Of women and men and relationships. The difference between Stephan Molyneau and Elliot Roger was, of course, that Elliot Roger shot people. If we fall into the trap of considering anger to inexorably lead to violence, then I suspect all people are just like Elliot Roger. The guy in the bar bitching about his wife. The woman bitching to her girlfriends that all men are assholes because the guy she slept with won't return her calls, etc, etc.

Threats.

I've been thinking about online threats, and their value. I think the two problems with this is-
1. There will always be a troll or jackass or, in extreme cases, false flags. No matter how squeaky clean a community is, it only takes a few moments for a troll to create a new user account, and go threaten somebody. Bonus points if they do the research and use a real phone number or address.
2. Accsuing someone of faking a threat opens the accuser up to refutation if they aren't dead goddamn certain of their facts.

Trolling for threats is easy enough as well. Feminists and social justice warriors have been attacking various groups for a long time. Eventually someone will lose their cool and post something embarrassing.

And I've been clued in to the phenomenon of search engine optimization revenue tactics.


I'm pretty sure this is what was behind the Emma Watson nude picture threats. Another source of real and false threats that cannot be prevented by self-policing.

But also the value in threats is that it plays on people's sympathy. The focus is shifted from the arguments to the threats. This is how Anita Sarkeesian operates, and in a lesser fashion, Zoe Quinn.

#gamergate is chasing it's own tail.

If you haven't been following #gamergate, well google it. There's far too much to go over.

But I saw a twitter log that confirms what I've been worrying about.

The participants of #gamergate are going after small potatoes, making up silly accusations against indie devs instead of chasing real corruption. I can only hypothesize that the accusations of "misogyny" worked, and they've gotten cold feet over challenging feminists and social justice warriors, which was where the corruption originally came from.

Ah well. Baby steps.

Somebody is going to do something stupid.

With all the hostility and confrontation and frustration... Someone is going to be goaded into stepping over the line. Danielle D'Etremont. Zoe Quinn. Anita Sarkeesian. Threat narratives get people scared, and scared people do things...




Well, maybe not as dramatically as V for Vendetta, but still.

Anita Sarkeesian, level 50 Troll.

Feminist Frequency's latest video. Be aware that clicking on the link gives them ad revenue.




Problems with the video abound, in her feminist interpretation of violence against women in video games. In almost all cases, the violence is portrayed as BAD, because it's an easy button to push in men's psyches. We have an innate desire to protect women, and when we see them harmed, it motivates us. It's a cheap and simple way to propel a protagonist into action.

But my main problem is with her conclusions. That this violence is "problematic" and indicative of "systemic misogyny"... blah, blah, blah. I'm reminded of the hysteria over video game violence in the 80's except now the hyseria gets a coat of lipstick.

I do think that media influences us. But I also think it's important for artists to be able to portray what they want, within legal guidelines, of course. (No kidde porn for art's sake, please)
Anita doesn't go for the legal route of controlling art, she uses the feminist tools of manipulation and guilt to portray ALL video games, and ALL video gamers as having the mentality of a 14 year old pervert who grows up to rape and abuse women. You don't hate women, do you? Then you better do what Auntie Anita tells you to.

And the cherry on the shit sundae is that after insulting gamers, and portraying them as monsters, they sling insults back at her. She gathers up these insults and parades them around as "evidence" of that misogyny. It's getting a bit old and predictable at this point. But GG Anita, you got more people to donate to you out of pity instead of having a compelling, logical, well thought out presentation. You cuntrag. (You can quote me on that.)

Zoe Quinn

Women against feminism.

Why the hell not? Eveyone else is talking about it. As I see it, there are 3 important categories of WAF. I'm sure there's some overlap, and a few that don't neatly fit into a category, but I'll deliniate them anyway.

 #1. Tradcon women who are fine with getting back to the kitchen, as long as there's a man to bust his ass to provide for her. These I dislike the most, because I'm sure there's lots of guys who will take them up on that offer without doing a cost/benefit analysis.

 #2. Me-too's. Women who see an opportunity to post a selfie and get some attention. Mostly harmless.

 #3. Honey Badgers. My favorite. Women who know terms like 'gynocentric', 'hypergamy', 'misandry' who have done their homework on feminism and have read stuff like The Myth of Male Power, and The Manipulated Man. I fear this category is not nearly large enough.

 Watch WAF with caution.

Building the future.

I hate having to preface a post with disclaimers like "This is my opinion", etc, so I'm going to do it this once, and hopefully I won't have to do it again.

Typhon Blue made a most excellent statement in one of the Honey Badger podcasts. drrandomercam then put it to video, and I'm going to link to that.


And I pretty much agree.  Women, in the vast majority, control the raising of children. That means legions of white knights in training, identifying with their single mothers, vulnerable to anti-male propoganda. Compared to that, the men's movement is a trickle.

So, that's what women can do. What can men do? We're mostly doing it. By creating an alternate space where people can speak without being censured by social forces. The creation of those spaces, and participation in them, is a place where a man can say "That cunt was one fucked up bitch!" and not immediatley be dismissed as a "misogynist", or speaking about the usual issues like genital mutilation or divorce courts and not have someone femsplain to us why women's issues are more important.

What's amusing is when one looks at how the progressive types turn on each other without an enemy present. I've seen it in the online communities that I have participated in. Often it turns into an outrage contest, and they turn on those who don't express the proper amount. Mundane Matt covered it pretty well.



Make those alternate spaces. Participate in them.The goal is not to infiltrate the mainstream, or to convert them, but to create an alternate space, and people will judge that alternative by their participation in it. And if the "misogyny" offends them, too fucking bad. They can always go to Jezebel or Good Men Project.

Just Say No.

http://www.parkrdnews.com/women/feminists-time-ask-men-help/

It's an issue of boundaries. Feminists and women abuse the male mentality of providing and protecting. Their problems, their issues, they will never end. You can see it in the ever expanding definition of rape. You can see it in the imaginary problems they invent. 

Just say No. You don't owe some random woman out there on the interwebs one bit of consideration. That consideration is earned and quite frankly, it's time for women to stop thinking just of themselves, and take some responsibility.

Gotcha!

I'm reluctant to even address these types of "arguments". It's one Gotcha! after another, where they dredge up anything and everything in an attept to point the politically correct finger and justify their claims that men's rights is homophobic, transphobic, etc, etc, ad nauseum.

But.

I'll dissect the latest from Futrelle, since it's topical, and this Gotcha! mentality tends to irritate me to no end.

http://wehuntedthemammoth.com/2014/06/19/why-is-a-voice-for-men-giving-a-platform-to-one-of-canadas-leading-opponents-of-gay-and-lesbian-rights/

Which rights? Right from the article,

Gay marriage isn’t a men’s right, according to AVFM conference speaker Anne Cools

I recognized this as a Gotcha! gambit from the start, and so did a little googling.

http://www.religioustolerance.org/hom_marb51.htm 

Of note:

Honorable senators, as I said before, I wish to register my strenuous opposition to Bill C-38. I believe that the issues have been falsely framed as Charter rights issues and equality issues. Marriage is not now, and never has been, a right. It has always been a grand privilege, with its origins as a sacrament of the church, governed by the canon law, received from the civil law into the common law. No sacrament of the church is now, or has ever been, a right.  

 Here, Anne Cools points out that Marriage of any kind is not a Right, but a privilege granted to religious unions.

This is a Gotcha! move, in an attempt to paint Anne Cools as a homophobe. A Post Hoc rationalization of their prejudices.

I may disagree with Anne Cools on some points. Personally, I think that the definition of marriage should be children. In a nutshell, I think that hetero and homosexual couples should be able to join in a civil union, and that union "graduates" to a marriage when children are born or adopted. A marriage should come with a complete set of obligations to those children.

But just because Anne Cools has a certain opinion, and also has a technical reason to object to gay marriage, doesn't mean she's against gay rights, and certainly not the homophobe that these Gotcha! arguments imply.

But there is no room with these people for debate or dissent. Agree or be cast down as the heretic.

I was raped of my Big Mac when they forgot it in the drive through.

The latest nuttery from Huffpo Women.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/hayley-krischer/the-maleficent-rape-scene_b_5445974.html?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000063

Now, I am a fan of fairy tales. It is true that the original tales dealt with so-called Adult issues, since they were tales for everyone. It's only in modern times that fairy tales got relegated to the children's section of the library.

But this attempt to politicise  a modern interpretation of a fairy tale into an alegory specifically about certain rape and alleged rape cases to further the feminist agenda is pretty damn crass. Though one might say that that's been feminism's whole tactic all along. Call everything rape, because rape is the topic they can throw into a man's face to make him feel like shit for his gender, for being male. Ignore female rapists and male victims, ignore that rape incidence is dropping and has been dropping for decades,  rape is a tool for feminists to shame and control men.

It's too soon for men to be free.

As a group.

Leonardo DaVinci created many ingenieous designs for a flying machine... and none of them worked.
Not for lack of imagination, but for lack of the technology that allows a modern helicopter or airplane to fly. He didn't have the kinds of engines or materials to make his designs work in the real world.

Men are enslaved to their instincts to provide for and protect women. Moreso, they identify too strongly with women, base their identities and self worth on their service to women. For men to be able to free themselves from this, they need to be able to free themselves from it. A tautology. The technology does not exist. A few eccentrics, MGTOWs, will dream of the male emotional emancipation equivalent of DaVinci's flying machines,  but the mass of men, even MGTOW men, are simply waiting for the pendulum of female social acceptance to swing back to give them some measure of relief from women's constant attacks.

The end of MGTOW?

Erin Pizzey has noted that previous men's movements have failed due to infighting. From what I've seen following the MGTOW channels, it's happening there too. MGTOW criticizing MRAs, MRAs criticizing MGTOW, MGTOW criticizing each other. It's depressing at times. Debate is fine, people disagreeing is fine, but it seems like there's no real camraderie in the MGTOW movement. Men going their own way, and kicking each other in the shins on their way.

Is it the fate of any gathering of humans to devolve into infighting over social status and hierarchy?

Moar Harlock.

I've rediscovered this series, since watching it as a little kid. What's interesting is the 1978 series enemy was the Mazone, an alien species that resembled women. There's some interesting undertones lurking.

How's that Feminism working out for you, Chuck?

Looks like feminist Huffpo writer and blogger, Charles Clymer has fallen into their sights as "Not an ally."

https://twitter.com/hashtag/StopClymer?f=realtime&src=hash

Color me shocked, etc. We saw it happen in the atheist/skeptic community, the video game community, the comic book community. Feminism is female emotional bullying on a grand, organized scale. The kind of Lord of the Flies mentality where shouting "Boo!" gets people attacked.

I'm a tad surprised that with all the blaming of MRAs over the Elliot Roger incident, that they'd turn their hate on something else so quickly. But I guess they have enough free time to chase Clymer when they're not twatting on #yesallwomen about how the Patriarchy forces women to wear their hair long, or whatever shit they're spewing lately.

I don't know whether to feel sorry for Clymer. I do in a kind of "puppy dog fell into a nest of hornets" way, if he was into feminism for some chivalristic attitude. Then again, if he was in it for the attention, or the pussy, then I'll give him a Nelson Muntz "Ha ha!"
We'll see as more comes out. Looks like Clymer himself has batten down the hatches so far.

He said Cunt.

The AVFM conference is in jeopardy due to death threats against the Detroit Hilton where the conference is scheduled to take place.

http://www.avoiceformen.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/AVFM-Security-Letter-REDACTED.pdf

I've watched a few vids, and read a few articles, like this one

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/29/mens-rights-conference_n_5405300.html

This comment especially caught my attention. (No screenshots, my net connection is poor where I'm at right now, and it causes problems when I try to upload images.)

Avian Donn (aviandonn)

    42

Super User · 1,071 Fans · My micro-bio is empty
Sisters, don't stand outside the conference with your little protest signs. Buy tickets and get in there. Listen to what's being said and challenge - as in debate, not randomly disrupt - as necessary. Trying to stop the conference makes you look thin-skinned, overly PC and censorial.

Sorry, but I was a pretty radical feminist in the sixties and seventies and attended conferences where women really vented their rage against men and it wasn't pretty. I don't remember a single time that men demanded that the place we were meeting cancel the conference. Sometimes they infiltrated and argued like crazy, or taunted or did get disruptive, sometimes they stood outside and taunted, but they never tried to shut the conference down. We can at least return that.

This is a very equalitarian viewpoint. If women have the right to get pissed off about men and society, then why can't men get pissed off about women and society?
Arguments about patriarchal privilege can go fuck off right now.

For illustration, I'll go ahead and post some infamous feminist quotes now.

The male is a biological accident: the y(male) gene is an incomplete x(female) gene, that is, has an incomplete set of chromosomes. In other words, the male is an incomplete female, a walking abortion.... To be male is to be deficient, emotionally limited; maleness is a deficiency disease and males are emotional cripples.  - Valerie Solanas

Only when manhood is dead - and it will perish when ravaged femininity no longer sustains it - only then will we know what it is to be free. - Andrea Dworkin

Think about the double standard.

(No, Paul Elam didn't say cunt in that quoted article. I'm using the phrase to illustrate the pearl clutching over men saying naughty things.)

Women do not owe sex to men.

True. And parents do not owe affection to their children.

Reading Elliot Rodgers manifesto has reminded me of the case of Genie, a girl who was kept in a room until age 13, given no affection, and abused.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genie_%28feral_child%29

No one owes anyone anything. But we can see that humans are social creatures, and that being deprived of affection causes severe emotional and mental issues. Genie is at the far end of that spectrum, and I imagine Elliot Rodgers is somewhere between there and the average person. No one owed him affection, no woman owed him sex, just like no parent owes their child affection, but somewhere along the line, Rodger's emotional needs were not getting met. This brings up the issue of involuntary celibacy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denise_Donnelly

The manosphere has blogged on this issue, of how the current social environment is trending towards more sex for fewer men, and women's heightened hypergamy driving them to choose only what they perceive to be the best of the best, leaving the average guy out in the cold. My previous blog post outlined my thoughts on the media instilling unrealistic expectations for men, to get a hot supermodel girlfriend by spend, spend, spending money on useless crap. Romcom movies often use highly unrealistic stories, and a lot of people seem to incorporate these fantasies into their expectations of real world relationships.

Elliot Rodger

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Isla_Vista_massacre

Of course, the usual suspects are spinning this as evidence that the MRM are full of violent misogynists.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/05/24/1301671/-Elliot-Roger-Gunman-in-California-Mass-Shooting-was-influenced-by-the-Men-s-Rights-Movement

Or to use it to shame all of men, and prove that they are the One Good Man.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/24/santa-barbara-shooting_n_5384839.html?utm_hp_ref=canada&ir=Canada

I've skimmed Roger's manifesto (it's long) and read in full the last few pages leading up to his rampage. And I've formed a few preliminary thoughts.

Men no longer bond. In the modern, western world, we have no rite of passage. No mentors. No real mentors. Councilors and mental health professionals, except for some rare exceptions, are all indoctrinated in the modern feminist view of men and masculinity. Specifically, that masculinity is the problem. Often, both mother and father, in the increasingly rarer situations where both parents are not divorced, both work and have little time to shepherd their sons into the world of manhood. Not to mention the hordes of single mothers who have no clue how to relate to their son's needs as they pass that threshold into manhood. Instead, young men rely on the media, which only wants to suck their wallets dry with the promise of success, wealth and women, with video games (and I am a fan of video games myself, but this criticism needs to be made) which offer the virtual rewards of accomplishment that many young men lack in today's society.
There are fewer men in teaching positions. There is a severe lack of men to give the younger generation of men a realistic perspective on relationships, and what it means to be a man. What little there is for young men, is tainted with feminist inspired imaginings of what men are like. Shame and humiliation for their gender. Who would want that?

My impression is that Elliot Rodger had a skewed perception on women and relationships, fueled by the media blasting him with images of rich, successful men, banging away at supermodels, and he projected that twisted perception onto the people around him. He envied the young men whom he saw as getting all the fine pussy, and resented the women whom he thought denied him that fine pussy. There was no one to bring his lottery (he mentions the lottery many times, money and success, unrealistic expectations of life) fueled fantasies back down to earth. No men to relate to, to communicate these ideas with. The men in his life, I imagine, were far too blue pill to even attempt to reach him in a meaningful way.

Men, we need to band together once again. We have done it before, we can do it when building a skyscraper, or planning a campaign, or journeying across an ocean to discover new lands. The challenge in today's world is to band together with the goal of  supporting each other.
I don't know if such an environment would have helped Elliot Rodger, but it might have. And I believe it's a topic worth thinking about.

Selective Service

I doubt many, if any, women truly understand what registering for selective service is like.
When I signed up, it was the late 80's. The Vietnam War wasn't so very long ago. Thinking back on it now, from a red pill perspective, I can articulate the subconcious feelings I had.

It's a subtle, but very powerful reminder that while society talks large about equality of the sexes, that it is still expected for men, in times of need, to die to protect women, who do NOT have to register.

I'm sure some men didn't spend much thought on the matter. But I'm also sure that many did, and many more took that reinforcement of their expected disposability to heart, and it affected their perceptions of gender expectations.

Nowadays, the draft is a distant memory. Wars are renamed "Operations", and Vietnam is an entry on Wikipedia. But it's still required, and it's still a reminder of exactly where men stand.

Misogyny! (Daffy Duck Voice)

Dr. Warren Farrell recently did an Ask Me Anything thread on reddit. I thought I'd post my opinions on this thread.

http://np.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/24accd/hi_im_warren_farrell_author_of_the_myth_of_male/

Setting aside the commenter's lack of grasping the satire, what steams me is something that Alison Tieman has noted a couple of times. It's a testament to men's patience and nonviolence that more men don't go completely apeshit on their female abusers. A woman (for example) puts cigarettes out on her husband or boyfriend, cheats on him, emotionally abuses him, divorces him, accuses him of abusing their children so she can get a favorable settlement, leaving the man battered and cripples in mind and body. And then, to pour salt on the wound, Jezebel makes a "funny" article joking about hitting their male partners.

Jesus Fucking Christ. And Paul Elam DARES to feel pissed off about that state of affairs. A man can't even get pissed off at misandry without being accused of misogyny.

There are days when I feel like humanity is a lost cause.

Androphobia.

Sparked by the reaction by feminists to Janice Fiamengo's attempts to address feminism at Queen's University, I've been contemplating the irrational fear of men, and how it drives most feminist discourse.

And I found something interesting. A first stop at wiki, to see what it had on the subject, pulled up a huge amount of nothing. Seriously, here's the entire wikipedia entry on androphobia, minus the header and links and crap.

Androphobia is the abnormal fear of men.^[1][2][3] The word is derived from the Greek άνήρ (man) and φόβος (fear).^[4][5]

That has got to be the smallest wikipedia entry I've ever seen. Let's take a look at gynophobia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gynophobia

Anyway, back to the topic at hand. Androphobia. From the previous article on AVFM:

Shortly after we were seated two of the organizers introduced Friedman. The introduction, without any exaggeration on my behalf, without any attempt at hyperbole, was completely apeshit crazy – utterly insane. I mean waking up in the morning and eating raw chicken breast off the floor insane. Presumably referring to d’Entremont’s alleged attack, the speaker for some reason actually began crying, and immediately set to work on whipping the audience into a paranoid terror – “as we were deciding whether or not to hold this event, we talked a lot about safety – and fear,” she said, while sobbing. It was a theme that was constantly reinforced throughout the event. On two separate occasions women referred to their “fear” and began sobbing uncontrollably.

So. Was it truly irrational fear of men, or an attempt to damsel? I don't know, I wasn't there. But I do know that people who are whipped into a state of irrational fear are both dangerous and capable of some pretty nutty things.

Why do you persist?

Live free.

"I wander the edge of the stars 
People call me 
Captain Harlock 
Captain Harlock 
Hoist the skull and crossbones flag 
In a sea without tomorrow 
Those voices sing, 
'Go and live freely!' 
Under my flag 
Under my flag 
I live freely"

Politics.

"I speak the popular myth of prescience: to know the future absolutely! All of it! What fortunes could be made—and lost—on such absolute knowledge, eh? The rabble believes this. They believe that if a little bit is good, more must be better. How excellent! And if you handed one of them the complete scenario of his life, the unvarying dialogue up to his moment of death—what a hellish gift that’d be. What utter boredom! Every living instant he’d be replaying what he knew absolutely. No deviation. He could anticipate every response, every utterance—over and over and over and over and over and . ."
-Children of Dune.

If a little bit is good, more must be better. One of my favorite lines from the Dune series.
I find most politics to follow this statement. People draw their tribal lines based on their political beliefs. If you're an Objectivist, or a Libertarian, or a Conservative, or a Liberal, it seems all-or-nothing. And I find that kind of thinking useless. Policy is a balancing act between the good of the many and the good of the individual, between what is fair and what is practical, between ideals and reality. Any -ism is destructive when taken to an extreme.
But probably more importantly, ALL -isms are followed by, and implemented by people. People who lie to themselves, who rationalize emotional decisions, who hide their mistakes out of fear and embarassment.

Don't put too much faith in your -ism. You're restricting yourself to only one tool in your toolbox.

Can't we all just get along?

The latest dissentions and criticisms floating around the MGTOW circles.




And so on...

Personally, I think debate is good. People are different, and they're going to process things in different ways. I enjoy Sandman's videos. I have some trepidation regarding MGTOW going mainstream. (I bring up this point thinking of the issue of monetizing video content.) You may laugh, but the media has a tendency to take anything with a following and try to make some money off of it.

Cashing in on women's liberation to sell cancer sticks to women.

Appropriating black culture to sell breakfast cereal to white xenophiles. (Shout out to RazorBladeKandy, who got me thinking about oikophobia and xenophilia in social justice attitudes.)


Sandman himself makes a reference to companies marketing pudding to herbivore men in Japan.

"This phenomenon has also created a shift in the Japanese economy. Men have been buying products such as cosmetics and candy in greater quantities than before, and marketers have begun to shift to target this growing population. Products typical of the Japanese salaryman, such as cars, have shown a notable decrease in recent years; products geared towards family life, typically shunned by salarymen, have seen an uptick amongst fathers, as well.^[10]"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbivore_men

I find the appropriation of MGTOW by the media to be much more troubling than some MGTOW video makers dissapointed in some video content. If anything can blunt and dilute the MGTOW ideas, it's going to be the mass market.

Speaking of dissent, I've got a few criticisms of my own that have been fermenting. There seems to be a tendency for MGTOW to criticise MRA activism on certain points. Stardusk has asked the question "What laws have they changed?" But then, I could make the same criticism of MGTOW. What have MGTOW videos accomplished to change laws?" The answer, of course, is that neither have tossed out the gynocentric attitudes that pervade our society. Hell, these observations about women are as old as recorded history.

"If we could survive without a wife, citizens of Rome, all of us would do without that nuisance; but since nature has so decreed that we cannot manage comfortably with them, nor live in any way without them, we must plan for our lasting preservation rather than for our temporary pleasure."

http://www.the-spearhead.com/2013/02/24/when-the-romans-tried-to-save-marriage/

What has changed is the internet. Obscure voices now have a platform to reach a huge amount of men. These ideas can have a global impact, and that means a global community of men discussing them. Men of all temperements and attitudes.

There's a fine line between criticism and dismissal. The difference between not liking Sandman's videos, and considering them damaging to the movement. I encourage more criticism, because criticism is the forge that tempers ideas into fine steel, and removes the impurities and flaws.

Tom Golden said something that has stuck with me. Women talk about their problems. Men either withdraw or apply themselves to a solution. The rift between MGTOW and MRA might be a manifestation of that. MGTOW withdraw and contemplate, and MRAs attempt to fix the problem. I'm not going to say that that assessment is correct, but I find it an interesting point to ponder.

I am not your knight in shining armor.

I am not your knight in shining armor.
I am not your good man.
I am not your hero.
I am not your traditional provider or protector.
I am not your ally.
I am not your sycophant. 

I am a human being, not a dumping ground for your desires and fears.

More saturday morning propoganda.

We had this stuff beamed into our homes as children. It's interesting to watch it again, with the hindsight of the things I've learned as an adult. The historic context of how women actually got the vote, what motivated them, and, of course, how politics panders to the women's vote.

Samus Aran was never a strong female character.

In the first Metroid game, the player controls the character of Samas Aran. Only at the end is it revealed that the character is female.

"We were partway through the development process when one of the staff members said 'Hey, wouldn't that be kind of cool if it turned out that this person inside the suit was a woman?'" Link1

Let's sidestep the pink bikini for just a moment, I'll tackle that a bit later. Samus' sex was irrelevant. An important distinction, and one that I think was indeed kinda cool. But over the years this aspect of the game has grown to ludicrous proportions.

Which brings us to Other M. Where overwrought and possibly sexist storytelling portray Samus as a weak woman who seeks the approval of a man. And the argument has been made that Samus' relationship with Adam is dysfunctional. Link2

What's the nature of that dysfunction? Is it... Sexist? Is it... Misogynist?

I'll give you my take on it. It's a fantasy based on fanboy perceptions of what a strong female character should be... male.

Yes. Our perceptions of agency are male-centric. In order to be percieved as being strong, a female character acts in ways typically viewed as masculine. "Kicking ass and taking names."

But.

This clashes with our real world experiences of the feminine. Most women act through others, and avoid direct conflict. Those that do stand out because of their rarity. (Please lay your opinions on Thatcher's politics aside for a moment.)

So we have this odd clash of typical feminine behavior, and fantasy female behavior. And it implodes spectacularly in the story of Other M. Where Samus defers to Adam's authority with little reason and no sense of self-agency. This is a story by men for men about the "strong" woman fantasy. Samus kicks ass at the direction of a man.

Remember the pink bikini? 

The Zero Suit is Other M's pink bikini. Again, it's an appeal to the male fantasy of a sexy woman, acting like a man so the fan can feel better about ogling her butt. The mishmash of feminist guilt versus male sexuality. Just ogle her goddamn butt and get over your societal induced shame of your sexuality. 

Man Bad, Woman Good.

I read a blog post today that I wanted to comment on.

http://www.danielleparadis.com/2014/01/26/but-prove-to-me-that-patriarchy-exists/
"It seems wholly doubtful to deny that individual acts of sexual discrimination exist, and I think most people would agree. Really then to say that patriarchy exists is only to claim that these acts of discrimination are not simply random acts of individual prejudice or individual bad behaviour, but a more generalized social prejudice that favors males as a demographic and/or masculinity as an ideology."

The problem is that the tone and message has been "Man Bad, Woman Good" for a very long time. Since 2nd wave feminism definitley, and possibly for a lot longer than that.
Take the Redstockings Manifesto.

"All men receive economic, sexual, and psychological benefits from male supremacy. All men have oppressed women. "

This kind of rhetoric erases men's oppression and suffering and elevates women's condition to the level of martyr, and only and solely oppressed class. Saying that "Patriarchy hurts men too" is a mischaracterization of the human condition though history. Men AND women particpated in a patriarchal system because it was the most effective system for survival of the species.

"4. Violence: women are more prone to being abused

• 7 sobering facts about violence against women
• Violence against women in Canada
• Amnesty Internationals facts on violence against women"

The disinformation campaign continues. Women and men are equally prone to violence against each other. And there is some evidence that women are more prone to initiate violence against their partners.

http://fermat.unh.edu/~mas2/ID41-PR41-Dominance-symmetry%20-%20corrected-pg255.pdf

But feminism and their Patriarchy Theory has long asserted that domestic violence is an issue of patriarchal dominance, and not a pattern of learned behavior, and poor conflict resolution skills.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duluth_model

This kind of misinformation continues to portray men as the villains, and women as the victims. This does not match up to facts and the lived experiences of men and women, but it's the kind of thing, created by feminist thinkers to keep the threat narrative going.

"5. Paid work: women are likely to be paid less

The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics describes the gap between wages, something that economists have been tracking since 1890. Worth noting that although a pay gap exists between men and women in general, it is dramatically more pronounced among women of color especially migrant workers."

Another debunked assertaion, which I have blogged about before. There is no pay gap. Women are paid the same amount as men. Women EARN less because of their choices, not because of some patriarchal system that undervalues the work of women. If anything, perhaps men should consider if working themselves into an early grave is worth the tradeoffs.

http://chadnine.blogspot.com/2014/02/obama-misogynist.html

So yes, patriarchal systems did exist, and feminists like Gloria Steinem cast those patriarchal systems as "The bad guy" in order to gain political clout via sympathy from the public. The victim narrative is strong, and when it's used to portray women as victims, logic and facts get thrown out the window.

"It is worth noting that many people prefer to use kyriachy to describe interlocking systems of oppression because patriarchy alone does not cover the entire scope of oppression. Patriarchy sometimes misses queer, class, and racial oppressions. Patricia Hill Collins in Black Feminist Thought in the Matrix of Domination moves us closer to an inclusive definition of understanding oppression,"

The retreat of the argument from Patriarchy to Kyriarchy kinda sorta aknowledges that patriarchy theory does not describe human history very well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_B%C3%A1thory

Women have held power, and used it just as oppressivley and for great evil as men have. Oppression is oppression, it is done by both men and women, and gender roles are not a source of oppression, but a factor in how that oppression plays out.

Patriarchy doesn't hurt men too. Feminism hurts men by portraying them as the villians of the feminist Patriarchy threat narrative. And until feminists can let go of blaming men, the problems with their ideology will continue to harm men.

I should give a shout out to Justicar, who made a video response to this blog post, where I got the link.

ABC Afterschool Specials

Discussions about the media made me remember these afterschool specials that were popular in the 70's and 80's. I have a dim memory of the content of these specials, and so I reviewed the list of episodes on wiki.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABC_Afterschool_Special

The first few seasons seem innoccuous enough, though the liberal bias is pretty apparent even early on. The very first ABC special dealt with an endangered species.

As the list goes on, they delve into topics like rape and abuse. To be fair, the list does portray women as capable of wrongdoing, like Please Don't Hit Me, Mom. But a lot of them have the man as the villain, like Don't Touch, and Andrea's Story.

There's a lot of these, and quite a few are uploaded to youtube. I'll have to see if I can make the time to review some of these old videos and go further into the content.

Metamorphosis

I hope you'll forgive my indulgence in optimistic speculation here.

I wonder if all of these events are the beginnings of a transformation of our society.
Feminism may have been a necessary stage. The unbridled fury of gynocentrism made manifest in a social movement that put forth the very worst of human sexism seems to have been the faciliator of the growth of the men's rights movement, the men going their own way philosophy, and the unnamed reactions of men and women who see the injustice and bigotry that has infused our society.
People react. They accuse. They point fingers and stamp their feet. Some write books about men going on strike, and protest the unfeeling and unfair treatment of men. The traditonalists moan and weep over their imaginary "better days", and the feminists reach for ever more ludicrous examples of oppression that make the public wonder what the hell they're talking about.

Meanwhile, a few intellectually brave people are getting a glimpse of these portents for what they are. A metamorphosis of our societey from one that is a slave to our biological and social heritage, to one that is fully aware of the nature of men and women. A society that truly treats all human beings as human beings. Unfettered by our preconceptions and expectations. One that recognizes our foibles and predilections and rises above them. A world where men and women are united, perhaps for the very first time, in the wonder of seeing each other for what they are, and not what we hope or fear they may be.

Getting paid to masturbate.

There's a lot of great comment about Laci Green's latest video "SEX OBJECT BS", but I think Razor Blade Kandy knocked it out of the park.

Original video:



RBK's response video:



RBK makes long videos, and he uses a text to speech synth, but it's worth watching all the way through. He tears her video apart, and makes some good jokes along the way.

The thing I wanted to blog about, is that RBK at one point makes the observation that Laci's success is nothing more than the softcore version of masturbating on cam for money. Now, as an *ahem* watcher of porn from time to time, I have come across videos of women doing just that. They set up some kind of account and men will PAY THEM MONEY to go at it with a dildo or whatnot. I'm not the one paying, I watch these vids after they're put up on the net for free afterwards.
But doesn't that tell you something? Men will pay women to just watch them play with their genitals. It's a bit like paid phone sex lines too. For a society that's supposed to be so misogynistic, there certainly seem to be an awful lot of guys willing to throw money at women just for the most threadbare fantasies that they're in some kind of sexual intimacy with them. If they just wanted to watch women masturbate and jack off to it, I can tell you there's lots of free stuff available for that. No, they're wanting something much more. To connect with a woman intimately. And they're desperate enough to pay money to pretend that that's what they're doing.

Anyway, here's some more commentary on Laci Green's vile, hypocritical video. Just think kids, she's actually speaking on sex issues at schools. No wonder society is so fucked up.

John the Other:


Chazwold Almighty:


Honey Badger Radio:


Victor Zen:

Obama the misogynist?

In his latest State of the Union Addresss, Obama made the old, debunked argument that wages in America aren't fair because mean old men pay poor little women less than men.

 “Last night, President Obama told Congress, ‘Women deserve equal pay for equal work,’ and then he headed back to the White House where women don’t receive equal pay.”

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/01/29/216301/how-does-obama-stack-up-on-womens.html

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/01/29/216301/how-does-obama-stack-up-on-womens.html#storylink=cpy

When this discrepancy is pointed out, someone inevitably starts backpedalling, saying that this is example of misogyny too.

Hold on to your fucking horses there, boyo. You can't claim that women are paid less than men, and then claim that women aren't paid less than men. Get your fucking argument straight, then we can have a conversation. Start your argument from the basis of women's choices, not some mythical sexist boogeyman that Snidley Whiplash employers out there are short changing women.
Get your fucking argument straight.

But let's address that comic's "point" as well.

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/lifestyle/2012/06/doing-chores-makes-many-men-happiest/

We're fine with taking on that half of the domestic duties. Hell, it's easier than ever with modern conveniences. Imaginary sexism is easy to find. Go looking for some real sexism, like how women don't find domestic husbands as attractive.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-467390/Househusband-backlash-high-flying-wives-ditch-men-em-em-wanted-stay-home.html