We hear again and again from the angry dudes of the Manosphere that women are status-seeking sluts, spending their twenties riding what has come to be known as the Alpha Asshole Cock Carousel and shutting out the hapless beta males who beg for their attention. Indeed, some Manosphere dudes are so convinced by this narrative that they devote their whole life to learning how to be (or at least how to pretend to be) the the Alphas males that the ladies allegedly prize so much.
Rookh Kshatriya on Anglobitch thinks these fellows – PUAs and “nice guys” alike — are all wrong about “Anglosphere” women. Far from preferring Alphas, he suggests, these women would rather hook up with smelly, butt-scratching losers. Literally. Here’s his, er, argument:
Because of the puritanical fictions that prevail in Anglo-American society, Anglo women have become impossible to please by rational means. … the bar has been set impossibly high. The outcome is either misandrist spinsterhood or, more often, what we see around us: a female obsession with the dregs of the male sex. …
Since no male is good enough for her, all men are flattened into an undifferentiated, priapic horde in the Anglo female’s mind. A king is a jack is a joker… a classical scholar at Yale is suddenly no better than a murderous baboon like Charles Manson. An illiterate tramp with a ring through his nose instantly acquires the same standing as an architect, physicist or surgeon.
Naturally, Kshatriya provides no actual evidence for these odd assertions, but in the wide world of misogyny that’s never a deterrent for a guy with a new dumb theory about the evils of women.
[T]his is what makes Game – so appealing to the logical male mind – so ineffective in the Anglosphere. Misandrist women cannot distinguish between Nobel Prize winners and tattooed psychopaths – all are men and thus worthless brutes in their entitled eyes. And so all the Gamers’ striving for ‘Alpha’ status is pointless – they might as well stick rings through their noses, grow some dreadlocks and slouch the streets scratching their butts. Indeed, as many North American commentators claim, their mating chances would probably improve if they did this. ‘Omega males’ doubtless confirm the Anglo female’s contempt for men in general. If she has to have a man, only the worst knave will do.
I’m pretty sure that I’ve seen “Anglo females” out strolling with men who are neither wearing dreadlocks nor sporting nose rings nor scratching their asses, but those sightings must be anomalies.
Kshatriya is convinced that social conservatives are equally wrong about the ladies:
Writers like Daniel Amneus consider female hypergamy to be the ‘glue’ that binds male consent to the social order. …. In the Anglosphere, however, rational female hypergamy has short-circuited due to our cultural bloc’s uniquely puritanical socio-moral conditions. While alphas and high betas trudge home to empty beds or divorce threats, tramps and mass-murderers wade through tons of female flesh without breaking sweat. And so the Anglosphere falls apart around our ears. Yet still David Futrelle exhorts us all to ‘respect women’ and be ‘nice’.
Woah, that was a bit of a surprise ending there.
But obviously I must be doing something terribly wrong to merit such a mention. I guess I’d better start growing out some white-boy dreads and thinking awful things about women.
Three things:
1. Chuckeedee, you might like Norah Vincent’s book “Self-Made Man.” She’s an investigative journalist who lived for the better part of a year as a man. She took her alter-ego through a lot of typical life situations, and came away with a pretty sympathetic view of the trials and tribulations of men in the United States.
2. As Nobinayamu wrote a few comments up, women do feel the need to be “on.” Just because you see a lovely woman waiting for you for drinks doesn’t mean than an enormous amount of time, effort, and money didn’t go into making her that way. If women didn’t feel the need to impress, you’d see a lot more girls in raggy yoga pants, flipflops, and tank tops over sports bras slopping into clubs on Friday nights. Cosmo and its sisters publications would also run light fiction or pictures of puppies instead of advice on how to wow your fella in the sack (in the same vein, if you think women get bikini waxes just for fun, I’ll be glad to donate $60 and an appointment to the local dayspa so that you can form an opinion based on personal experience). Women are also socialized to be pleasant and accommodating, so while the guy may feel the pressure to keep the date running smoothly, the gal is feeling equal pressure to make him happy by being nice. Vincent pointed out in her book that very few people see dating from both sides of the dinner date table, and that we all assume that the other person has a better deal. The grass(hopper martini) is always greener and all that stuff.
3. If you wanted to talk about the idea that men are judged by utility, why didn’t you say that? Why throw in an entire quote about how women passively go with the flow in life, and then get disappointed when we didn’t all jump on the two sentences you wanted to discuss? In the United States we are a consumer society, so I’d argue that everyone is judged by their utility. I took a sociology class in college where the professor argued that perceived utility is the root cause of the indifference or contempt that this country feels for the elderly. This ideology had it’s beginnings in the early colonies. The settlers needed everyone to be productive to survive, and those that were old and weak were merely a drain on the resources. I wouldn’t be surprised if this mindset also contributed to our current ideals that men should be strong and rich and women should be perpetually beautiful and fertile.
Do I think this is bunk? Of course. People should be people, and it’s awful that for different reasons men still feel just as objectified and marginalized as women. I’m sad that the world still wants to cram everyone into their boxes, and doubly sad that it will probably still be this way when my daughter and son launch their own lives in the next fifteen or twenty years. I want them both to be able to determine themselves, and not feel like they have to conform to the norm because someone else expects it. As to how successful they’ll be in swimming against the tide is yet to be seen.
I was brave/foolish enough to follow the link that chucky-doll left us. This is the bit that jumped out at me.
They actually think they are the only ones breaking the rules. They really have no idea what feminism is or does and yet they rail against us.
[blockquote]We aren’t just sitting there, stone-faced, with a single arched eyebrow waiting to be entertained. The women you interact with may be doing that, but that’s your shit[/blockquote]
A friend of mine used to date a woman who did exactly that. She hardly ever tried to add something to the conversation too. She was as close as you can get to what MRAs apparently describe as the typical woman concerning her dating behaviour et all… which made her a very unpleasant person to have in your social circle.
Chuckeedee, those rules at AVfM are just a rant against straw feminists.
For example, rule 1 is
I agree that when men are hurting, they deserve empathy and compassion, just like anyone would. The culture that tells men to always suck it up doesn’t come from feminism, but from hegemonic masculinity, where being “macho” means never showing vulnerability.
No, feminists are fighting against the idea of putting women on pedestals or infantalizing women. Feminists want women to be judged on who they are than being stereotyped as either saints or sinners.
That is a distortion of what male privilege means. Male privilege does not mean men are never victims. It just means that on the axis of gender, women do not have privilege, although they can have privilege on other axes like race, class, being cis, or being hetero.
LOL, what? What feminist says that? It’s like NWOSlave wrote this list.
No, it’s okay to criticize a woman when she’s wrong. It’s not okay to stereotype all women or take away their rights.
This contradicts itself. In our society, being seen as a victim is shameful. Being seen as strong is good. This is also rich coming from MRA’s that think they are victims just because they can’t have sex with “hotties”.
leftwingfox, you made my day with this.
Women work so much harder than men to be “on” in social situations. It’s because they put so much effort into it that dim, solipsistic men think it comes naturally.
Chuck, I promise you, your dates do not roll out of bed in high heels and perfect hair, their ability to make charming conversation comes from practice and effort, and your jokes are not actually funny. It’s all a performance, and apparently it’s much more convincing than your performance, so step up your game.
Does chuckeedee live in China? I mean, it sounds as if, due to people pairing up according to proximity, it results in a surplus of men, because there’s… what? 3 men on every woman born, or?
It’s all about motivation, my friend. When a man and woman start dating, the man is making a bold, individualistic choice, while the woman is just wandering off with him at random, derp de derp. Men and women are different, you know. Men do things for Reasons, and women do the exact same things for Stupid Wrong Reasons.
More to the point, Chuck doesn’t want to bone the man, so who cares if he’s “removed from the dating market”? The woman, on the other hand, is now unavailable to bone Chuck. Ergo, she’s a big dumb dummy and he doesn’t even like her, so there.
After reading the title of this post at least a dozen times in passing, all of a sudden my eyes rolled over it and my inner DJ started blaring:
ENTITLED EYES (clap) They’re WAAAAtching you! (clap clap)
They see your EV- RY MOVE
Does anyone else see a picture of a phone handset that looks like it’s been watermarked onto John Travolta’s forehead in the post picture?
Oh, and I’ve seen Battlefield Earth and it was rotten. I was hoping it would be so bad, it’s good, like Gigli, but no such luck. John Travolta did a fine job acting in it. The problem was the plot.
Shaenon you make a good point with jokes not actually being funny. I would much rather be with someone who tells no jokes than someone who tells unfunny jokes every few minutes. I know laughter is good for bonding and things but really it isn’t that important.
There’s a plot of a dystopian future gay novel in there… Am I the only one who sees it?
@thebionicmommy: Or maybe like Manos: The Hands of Fate? But I probably couldn’t watch that one without Mike & the bots.
Possibly coincidentally, the next The Gamers movie is going to be subtitled The Hand of Fate or similar.
@thebionicmommy
“I agree that when men are hurting, they deserve empathy and compassion, just like anyone would. The culture that tells men to always suck it up doesn’t come from feminism, but from hegemonic masculinity, where being “macho” means never showing vulnerability.”
Yet you give no empathy, instead, you blame it on masculinity. Why is masculinity the problem? Perhaps the problem lies with femininity, or lack there of. Once again man, or masculinity is somehow wrong. Women are perfect.
—————-
“No, feminists are fighting against the idea of putting women on pedestals or infantalizing women. Feminists want women to be judged on who they are than being stereotyped as either saints or sinners.”
Yet in your very first statement you’ve both pedastalized and infantilized women. Masculinity is screwed up, femininity is perfect, (the pedestal). The blame must always fall on man because women are to childlike to be held accountable, (infantilized).
—————-
“That is a distortion of what male privilege means. Male privilege does not mean men are never victims. It just means that on the axis of gender, women do not have privilege,”
Only women are privileged. What law doesn’t favor women over men? Can a woman kill a mans unborn child? Yes. Can a man kill a womans unborn child? No. A man and woman are drunk and have consensual sex. The next day the woman says it was rape. He is accountable for her actions. A man and a woman apply for a job, quota law says a woman must be hored. She gets the job. Privilege, pedestal, infantile.
—————
“No, it’s okay to criticize a woman when she’s wrong. It’s not okay to stereotype all women or take away their rights.”
Criticizing one woman or steroetype all women is the same. Man is bad, man is wrong. However the reverse is promoted. Dontcha read the papers? How about those classes out in missoula? All men must take the men are rapists class and get a 100, (agree with the indoctrination), before admittance. In a normal, non-feminist society only a man who actually assaulted a woman would be required to take a class on not assaulting women.
You don’t go to AA if you’re not an alcoholic. You don’t get put on probabtion if you haven’t committed a crime. But you DO go to guilty rapist indoctrination class for being a man.
—————-
“This contradicts itself. In our society, being seen as a victim is shameful.”
Being a self annointed victim is the height of power in the modern world. Anita Sarkeesian comes to mind. The self annointed victim of hurty feelings managed a tidy sum of about 170K. Anyone who isn’t a victim is default bad.
—————-
Feminism has nothing to do with equality. Feminism has nothing to do with women becoming better since the default position is perfect. Feminism is all about changing men to better defer to women. All feminism ever talks about, this site included, is how men fail women.
—————-
@Shaenon
“Women work so much harder than men to be “on” in social situations. It’s because they put so much effort into it that dim, solipsistic men think it comes naturally.”
Of course women work harder. When don’t women do more than men? Men are simply solipsistic and ignorant about women hard work.
—————
“It’s all a performance, and apparently it’s much more convincing than your performance, so step up your game.”
Women of course are much better at this as well. Men need to man up and step up their game. The power of the eternal victim. Men need to do more. Women are already perfect.
No kidding. You know I liked MST3K better when Joel was the host, but I think Mike is great, too.
I’ve never seen The Gamers but based on my five minutes worth of Google research about it, I am going to put that on my to-do list.
Thank god, I thought that was just me.
Speaking of hilariously terribad movies, I was trying to decide what my cats would sound like if they could speak the other night, and now I can’t hear the orange one as sounding like anyone but Tommy Wiseau.
I hadn’t notice it. I was too aware of the giant worms dangling from his nose.
I think it’s time for the greatest line in cinematic history:
If women are never pressured to be “on” why do all these assholes (mostly male, always strangers) come up to me in public and demand that I smile*? Why is it I never in my life have seen this happen to a man?
(*To which I vary my response with “I just found out I have cancer” or “My dog just died” depending on my mood.)
You tarring me apaaaaaat, Whiskas!
@drst, I knew somebody whose stock reply was ‘menstrual cramps’. It’s a sexism-embarrassment one-two punch.
Apparently they have found another diamond planet. When will the MRA claim women will start demanding men to go off to get these diamonds as part of a plot to get shinies while ridding the world of men?
*places a bet*
http://news.sky.com/story/996444/astronomers-reveal-planet-is-made-of-diamond
PosterformerlyknownasElizabeth: Wake me up when they find a planet made of kittens! 😀
Bloody blockquotes!