Viz magazine is famous for its surreal and deliberately useless “Top Tips.”
An empty aluminium cigar tube filled with angry wasps makes an inexpensive vibrator.
Olympic athletes. Disguise the fact that you’ve taken steroids by running a bit slower.
The similarly surreal and useless fellows who populate the Men Going Their Own Way subreddit have decided to have a go at the advice thing themselves. A post there today asks the question: “If you could give women one piece of advice, without being crucifed, what would it be?”
The assembled MGTOWs have happily provided dozens of answers. Unlike Viz’ Top Tips, though, their little nuggets are funny only by accident. Also, most of the “advice” is not so much advice as it is a random misogyny-dump onto the internet.
That said, here are my picks for the Top Ten Tips for Women From Men Who Hate Them.
Get a goddamn hobby, something that requires effort and intelligence and builds character. I am so sick of reality TV addicts whose only real interests are complaining about a world they didn’t earn.
Pot, Kettle — have you two met? Yelling about women online is not a “hobby … that requires effort and intelligence and builds character.” Take up something more worthwhile and less embarrassing, like subscribing to magazines you never get around to reading and letting them pile up for years, a hobby I used to enjoy in pre-everything-is-on-the-internet days.
Also, dude, how many worlds have you personally “earned” anyway?
Deleting fakebook, instaslut, or myfake will improve your “personality”
Wait. People still use MySpace?
Make yourself useful in areas that don’t involve sex.
This might have been a tad more persuasive if it hadn’t come from someone who has proven himself completely useless as a human being by posting on the MGTOW subreddit.
Grow up, and take responsibility for your own emotions you goddamn overgrown parasitic, entitled infants.
This one is also a teensy bit ironic, given that it was offered by the highly emotional compulsive liar John the Other — remember him? That is, a man who doesn’t seem to take responsibility for anything he says.
Feminism is 100% complete fraud, ALL of it. From the very beginning 50 years ago. Everything you think you know about gender is wrong, so is most of what you think about the world at all. Men are not oppressing women or holding them back. We’ve rolled out the red carpet for you, yet you’re lazy, not all that bright, no ambition, too cowardly and too whiny with no real interests in anything productive anyway. The only one holding you back is yourself.
This is not technically advice, just a bunch of random angry wrongness.
There’s 3,5 billion of you. You’re nothing.
If you think 3.5 billion women and girls is “nothing,” you try fitting even a billion of them into a summer rental on Cape Cod.
Also, there are slightly more men in the world than women, so does this mean that they’re, I dunno, slightly more nothing?
Suck my [deleted]Â and get lost.
Yeah, I don’t think that one is going to happen for you, champ
Do you realize that in the grand scale of evolution, progress and civilization, women contributed almost nothing compared to men?
I don’t realize that, partly because it’s not true.
If you want to be truly physically, psychologically and spiritually happy, strive to learn how critically important it is to set your emotions and feelings aside while unrelentingly seeking out and attending to TRUTH, FACTS and and irrefutable INFORMATION, even when it makes you uncomfortable to do so (this is where you’ll find out just how coddled and spoiled women are and have been compared to men).
Of course, knowing you’re intractably ingrained with a toddler’s lack of attention, accountability, responsibility and emotional control, we both know offering you the aforementioned nugget of wisdom is a complete waste of time.
Yes, the guy telling you in two rambling paragraphs to set your emotions aside is pounding out angry misogynistic screeds on the internet that intermittently break out in ALL CAPS.
The more people you have sex with, the less interested I am in a relationship with you.
This may be the only bit of actually useful advice for women in the bunch, offering a handy technique that women can use to avoid being pestered quite so often by woman-hating men who still want to have sex with the women they hate. The women in question don’t even have to have sex with a lot of people if they don’t want to; printing up a batch of business cards saying “I’ve had sex with lots of people,” even if you haven’t, should also do the trick.
Possibly. I’m not sure these guys are all that good at taking a hint. I mean, they call their movement “Men Going Their Own Way” but it seems pretty clear that not a single one of them has gone anywhere.
@scijfreda : the myer test gave me three widely different result the three time I passed it. That’s a personal experience that, at best, people change category depending on context.
@Virgin : Myers-Briggs is so loosely based on his theory that it’s a bit like saying the Civilization game are based on history. That’s not wrong, technically, but that’s misleading ; the theories of Jung would not allow an easy and neat categorization like that. Which make sense, because people themselves can’t really be categorized in so few categories.
@scildfreja
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is a pretty model actually, especially when you view it in the light of Dialectic Materialism.
Our basest instincts are to seek food, shelter and warmth, and we are unable to achieve anything else unless our basic needs are met. Self actualisation, being at the top of the pyramid, has long been the reserve of the rich and privileged, rather than the masses which occupy the lower rungs. If you look at the Western Canon, and the way in which it has long been dominated by wealthy, white men, and commissioned by the aristocracy, you can see it in action. These are people ‘of leisure’ who could put their minds to ‘higher things’ as they did not have to till the ground or work in factories to be able to stay alive. Of course, there are exceptions, there have been countless poems and songs written by the very poor, often about their experiences.
But basically, if you can’t get your ‘material’ circumstances correct, you have little chance of developing your higher functions, the intellectual and the spiritual.
@Ohlmann, that’s really the thing with the MBTI; it doesn’t provide a stable perspective on personality. It could be used as more of a snapshot for that particular moment and situation, but that’s not what people use it for.
@Virgin Mary, it’s good for expressing that sort of hierarchy, yes! This, however,
turns out to be wrong. People can, and do, achieve goals from higher up on the hierarchy while still struggling for things on the base. This happens frequently enough that the whole model’s invalid as a perspective on decision-making and goal-setting. It has been replaced with things like Four Drive theory and other models which do a better job of describing how people actually behave.
It remains a well-known theory for pretty much the reason you describe – it highlights class inequality and systemic unfairness. In that it’s useful and worth thinking about! But for its intended purpose, much like MBTI, it’s been discredited.
The best usage for Meyers-Briggs personality types I ever heard was from a writing coach who suggested that for secondary characters in a story, you could assign a MBTI to the character to get a handle on how they would be likely to react. Primary characters should be more fleshed out, but secondary characters could be just assigned a category and run from there so they would still be mostly self-consistent.
@Scildfreja in particular:
Regarding fuzzy logic, somewhere I should still have a copy of the issue of Scientific American where they were talking about the design of a computer program to play Backgammon. (Quick web search says it came out in 1980.) Because so much of backgammon is tied to random dice rolls, strict tree searches don’t work so well, and they had to do everything probabilisticly. Worse, Backgammon has a pretty strict break between the ‘hitting game’ and the ‘running game’, the latter being once the two players are completely disentangled from each other and are both just going for bearing off as quickly as possible. Apparently figuring out when to make that transition was one of the hardest things to get the computer program to do.
That Backgammon program, BKG 9.8, was one of the first cases of a computer program beating a human world champion back in 1979. Though from what I recall, later analysis indicated that the program benefited from a non-trivial amount of luck in dice rolls.
@Jenora Feuer, that’s totally the best use for MBTI! Great tool for that. Have heard a lot of good things about it, at least.
As for Backgammon, yeah, that’s a very interesting problem. Probabilistic games end up being really complicated to solve! You can’t use a simple search, so you end up mashing together a bunch of heuristics and let *those* bubble around instead. I imagine some sort of a blackboard was used, but I’m not familiar with BKG9.8 so I’m not sure I can say!
When I took the Meyers-Briggs it was at the office of a career counselor and was just one of the many tests she had me take, but my results were I/ENTP (borderline introvert extrovert, highly situational dependent). I do think that for some people, additional life experience would change their answers though. The way I see it, all these personality sorting assessments and the like are merely to help an individual discover the basic foundations of who they are – it’s up to them to flesh it out into a career and the kind of life they want.
@jenora
That is very good advice for a writer. I seem to look for MBTI in TV characters, the well written ones always seem to conform to types, the less well written ones, especially the ones ‘written by committee’ in long running soaps etc less so. Terry Nation and Chris Boucher’s Blake’s 7 I see as an object lesson in MBTI, I found great examples of types in that show, almost as if it were intentional. I definitely think there is an influence of the actors type on the character they play tho. My favourite characters from my two favourite TV shows are Number 6 from The Prisoner, (INTJ) and Agent Dale Cooper from Twin Peaks, (INFJ), both are avatars, Number 6 being basically Patrick McGoohan himself, and Coop, well Kyle I think is an INFP, but David Lynch based the character on himself.
I think Twin Peaks and The Prisoner have the cult following they do because most TV is written by and for sensing types, but these were written by and for intuitives.
@Sinkable John, @Ohlmann
I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you by saying that an MRA shouldn’t reproduce because he’s an MRA.
My father was a proto-MRA. He died before he log onto Paul Elam’s website and have his worldview supported. Which is not to say that the “men’s rights movement” came from nowhere. On the contrary, that kind of thinking was very prevalent in US society. What’s different now is that the MRM has a “philosophy” (women are bad; they need to give me sex right now) and “politics” (women are bad and won’t give me sex right now, so I’ll yell at them on the Internet), and its proponents are willing (albeit mostly anonymously) to put these views out there, stated in the most vile terms, for the world to see.
@dontgiveahoot
So well put!
@Virgin Mary
My boyfriend says that when he met me he took one look at me and knew that I couldn’t lie.
I had to correct him. I can lie. I do lie. But only when absolutely necessary.
Also, social lies happen.
@Alan
As the US tabloid the National Inquirer used to advertise, “Inquiring minds need to know.” What’s your type?
@kat
My father would have been an MRA too, fortunately he died before the Internet thing took off in a big way, and that I’m sad to say is a good thing. Him having an echo chamber to amplify his hatred would have made life even worse for myself and mum.
He married my mum for sex and a domestic slave. He would not allow her to work and isolated her from her friends because he thought she would run away with another man. He would not even let us have a landline phone in case she called the police. He liked to paint himself as a ‘big shot’ and a member of high society, which he aspired to, and always had to try to make her ‘grateful’ for putting a roof over her head and food on the table.
It is him who made it so difficult to come to terms with being born female, because he hated them so much and did nothing to hide how dissappointed he was with me.
@Virgin Mary
I’m sorry that your father wasn’t much of a dad. That’s a very painful situation.
Congratulations on surviving some bad stuff and moving on from there. I hope that you’re able to have some sense of peace about your relationship with your father.
RE: “X shouldn’t reproduce!” thing
I see it more as a “no child should be condemned to having such a shithead for a parent” thing than as a “your genes are bad and therefore your kids will be bad too” thing, but I definitely see it being used in the latter sense of the phrase too.
Being as I’m childfree and will never reproduce myself, I don’t see “you shouldn’t have kids” as an insult, because I know that I shouldn’t have kids. I’d be terrible with them and children deserve better than that. Some (many, in my opinion, but I am biased) just aren’t well suited for nuturing children. Some of the time it’s because they’re awful, noxious assholes but some of the time it’s just because that’s not their calling, any more than being a doctor isn’t everyone’s calling. Yes, sure, put enough work into it and you can get a medical degree, but if you hate what you’re doing you’re not only liable to screw up your own life, but the lives of other people who depend on you as well.
…whoops I got up on a soapbox a little.
@ Virgin Mary & Kat
ENFP-A (not sure what that -A means)
As for the test generally. I can see the risk of a ‘cold reading – one size fits all’ sort of thing. But, reading up on what traits are supposed to be associated with that classification, they do seem to reflect me very well (and the other categories less so).
I can also see who people may vary under different stimuli. Personally though I seem pretty consistent. Maybe you just get more set in your ways over time?
It was a fun excercise. I can understand why it would be risky to make major decisions about people based on their results though. That’s why we always stick to Rune casting.
@alan
I’m INFJ but it varies in tests and I often get INTJ because I like to choose T answers, I think I am I lot more in control of my emotions than I really am. Best fit, therefore is INFJ.
A good trick is to take the test again but answer the opposite of you real answers, for me I will get ESTP, which is a type I really do not get on with at all.
@catalpa
One of the reasons I chose not to reproduce was not wanting to give my father grandchildren, and feeling that by being trapped into motherhood would make me another victim like my mum. I am asexual anyway, and I guess a bit not binary. As a teen I desperately wanted a gender reassignment, but was talked out of it. I often wonder what would have happened had I made that decision. I had to learn to cope with being a woman, and I guess I’m still learning how to do that.
@Alan
ENFP? From what I know of you, that does sound accurate. Although that rune casting thing does sound more scientific. 🙂
@Virgin Mary
A big reason why I didn’t have children was my gut-level fear that I’d have to always be nice to my husband.
Not. going. to.
@ kat
Yeah, it certainly does sound like me.
I like Runic. I’m one of those annoying people who points out that it’s “The olde…” not “Ye olde…” 🙂
How do I delete instaslut and myfake?
@ Mike Hisandry – you don’t need to, silly; aren’t you a man? 😀
We used MBTI quite a bit in the large organisation I used to work in. It’s excellent for larger groups and working out how well committees, working parties and other joint/ cooperative activities are likely to go. The organisation consisted of a large core of accountants/ lawyers and a whole variety of other roles and management.
Finding out that your “core” group of highly trained technical experts consisted of 90+% INTJs was very helpful for setting up activities that could succeed. My feeling is that the job itself brought those attitudes to the fore. I was always the odd one out in this group – people attributed this to me being a) a woman, b) a union official. In fact, most of the difference was attributable to me being INTP rather than having the INTJ attributes. It was very helpful for people to be able to identify something in other people rather than just dismiss them because you disagree with them.
Mr and I also did enneagram questionnaires for non-work stuff. Quite enlightening. Mr had always thought he and I were a pair of peas-in-a-pod. Light dawned one day. He realised that the same-as-me classification he’d come up with was based on what he did, rather than on who he was. A handy thought to keep in mind when doing any of these “personality” thingummies.
Fine…fine, I’ll delete Fakebook and Instaslut but you don’t touch my Whoresquare!
@mildlymagnificent
The Enneagram! I find this system to be really helpful, complex, and subtle. I’m a One. How about you?
@kat
I’m a 4w5