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Reading through some of the stranger comments from MRAs and PUAs and other manospherean types I often find myself wondering to what degree this “new misogyny” reaches beyond the internet. I don’t mean old-fashioned misogyny and sexism, which are obviously fairly common offline. I mean the elaborate misogynistic ideologies we discuss here – the “feminism runs the world,” “all women are hypergamous bitches who will dump you in a second for an alpha,” “we hunted the mammoth to feed you” kind of stuff.
I run across much less of this offline than on, though the people I hang out with aren’t exactly a representative sampling of the general public.
So I’m asking you, dear readers, to tell me a bit about your own experiences. Do you run across MRAs/PUAs in the real world on a regular or even an irregular basis? Where (online or off) did you first encounter MRAs and/or PUAs? What aspects of what we might call the manosphere ideology are the most common offline? If it seems less common offline, is this because the beliefs are not that widespread, or is it that people are less willing to say the kind of horrific misogynistic shit they say online to other people face to face?
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.
Poster at a memorial event for Tom Ball, an MRA who advocated burning down courthouses and police stations.
EDIT 6/15/13: Tom Ball’s manifesto is no longer posted on A Voice for Men, though it isn’t clear if this is a website glitch or a change in policy on AVFM’s part; no announcement about taking it down has been made.
EDITED TO ADD: In the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing, it seems even more important to reinterate that influential Men’s Rights website A Voice for Men continues to host, in its “activism” section no less, a terrorist manifesto literally calling for the firebombing of courthouses and police stations. Until and unless that manifesto is removed, and A Voice for Men apologizes for hosting it, I will be linking to this post every time I mention A Voice for Men.
There has been another courthouse shooting. On Monday morning, the father of a man due in court for a child support hearing pulled out a semiautomatic handgun and shot his son’s ex wife and a friend of hers as they entered the lobby of the New Castle County Courthouse in Wilmington Delaware. After an exchange of gunfire with police that left two officers wounded, 68-year old Thomas Matusiewicz took his own life. The two women Matusiewcz shot were pronounced dead on arrival at a local hospital.
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.
Whatever this kid is saying is guaranteed to be smarter and less offensive than Jacob Ian Stalk’s horrific rant
Cloudiah found this amazingly awful rant — from a prolific manosphere commenter and Spearhead supporter by the name of Jacob Ian Stalk — in the comments section to a piece on feminism in The Tab Oxford, a student paper. She posted it in the comments here on Man Boobz, where it’s already generated a good deal of discussion (see comments here, here, here, and here for starters). But I thought it deserved a post of its own.
So without further ado, I present Jacob Ian Stalk’s “12-Step Program for Recovering Feminists.”
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.