Blair Naso, who writes at Return of Kings, has some pretty definite ideas about the state of gender relations in society, and he is unabashed at holding men just as responsible as women for the mess we are currently witnessing. There are a few people in the Manosphere who are convinced that I am an evil traditionalist woman raping my husband of resources and giving him nothing in return (except for the 3 well-mannered, loving biological children, a comfortable, welcoming home that is appreciating in value because I take care of it, healthy, nutritious, delicious food three times a day, clean clothes and frequent sex, but who cares about that stuff, amirite?), and I tend to just avoid the debate for the most part.
I have had my say on whether I am a traditionalist, and I will engage in the debate no further, because it really isn’t a debate, as far as I am concerned.
There are a lot of things that Blair says that I heartily disagree with, and many more things that I do agree with, but ultimately we are unified in our thinking that something has gone very, very wrong with modern relationships between men and women. Blair not only lays the smackdown over at Return of Kings, but he writes creative works of prose and poetry as well.
I can’t tell you how often I browse bookshops, picking up titles that have all kinds of awards and praise plastered all over them, only to read a blurb that says something like “after divorcing her husband of 20 years, Susie takes her children…. blah blah blah” and my response is always ugh no thanks with this single mother destroying her children bullshit. I don’t want to read crap like Eat, Love, Pray. It disgusts me. It’s not empowering or enchanting or even interesting. It’s sickening.
So for all those men who have chosen MGTOW as a philosophy, or even just men who are interested in poetry and prose, but who do not want to read gynocentric Princess drivel, I present to you The Death of Ideology by Blair Naso. This book is an eclectic collection of poems, lyrics, parables, fables, short stories and even an email that discusses love, relationships, sex, gender and life from the perspective of the Manosphere. It doesn’t hold back on the satire, irony or sarcasm, and Blair pulls no punches when it comes to treating women like delicate flowers in need of protection. His words can be sharp and his portrayals of both men and women rather cutting, but underlying it all is a longing for a world in which men and women can love and respect one another beyond ideologies about how men and women should be. Blair is not interested in how men and women should be.
He is interested in how they are.
Here are three short pieces from The Death of Ideology, reprinted with permission.
The Physics Of Relationships or Chemistry Is Not A Science
To every sin there is
An equal and opposite reaction,
So was mine the one you expected?
Were you expecting smiles and puppies
In exchange for deceit?
It’d be nice to say that
I’m glad your friends approve of you,
But the reality is that
You’ve turned them all into enemies.
A Story For The Tavern
Once there was a merchant who was of a certain age when men begin to look to marry. There were two women to whom he was prospecting. One was very beautiful, but very evil. The other, her sister, was very ugly, but very compassionate, and both very much loved him. The man could not choose to whom he should marry, so he decided that they would draw straws. The lot fell on the ugly sister, and so the wedding arrangements were made.
The beautiful sister could not stand this, and so she went to see the Fool, who lay drunk in prison. He was not really a court jester, but he had always been thought of as out of his sanity, and everyone enjoyed making jokes at him, so gradually he became known thus. He was rarely sober, but since he had inherited a coal mine to the west, he had no need to work. The Fool had always loved the Beauty, as did everyone, but she could not feel the same about such an unstable man. Nevertheless, being very evil, she did have some purposes for him every now and then. Today she asked, “If you love me, then kill my ugly sister.” “Iʼll do anything for your pleasure, my lovest.” “Uh, sure…just make sure no one knows I told you to do it.” And then she quickly left, seeking to be as distanced from him as possible.
So after he was sober and freed, the Fool went into the marketplace to find the Ugly. And when he did, he shot her in the back with his revolver. Everyone was shocked at this random shooting. Women fainted and an infant began to cry. The Ugly did not even see him, and the Fool had said nothing. The Beauty saw everything, and only smiled approvingly. “Someone arrest that man!” cried a townsperson. The constable seized the Fool and took him back to jail.
The Groom, of course, was obligated to avenge the Uglyʼs death. And so he called the Fool to a duel, as was the usual custom in those parts. This greatly worried the Beauty, so she went again into prison to see the Fool. “If you love me, then empty your gun and fire blanks so that my Groom will not die.” “Iʼll do anything for your pleasure, my dovliest.” “Right…just remember your promise.”
Meanwhile, the Groom was having second thoughts. Who was he to take a life? Was that not the responsibility of the government? He was just a civilian. No, it would not be right for him to kill the Fool. But he could not back out from the fight, for, if he was to abstain from the fight and marry the Beauty, he through his great-grandchildren would be shamed throughout the whole country. No, he would not fill his gun and instead take a hit, and thus people would cry instead of laugh at his funeral.
The next day, the two men lined up to duel. The whole town came to the village square to watch. A street vendor was selling turkey legs, and another had wooden toys to be bought by children. Suddenly, the Fool realized that he forgot his revolver at his house. “Wait!” he cried. “I will send my boy to fetch it.” So his slave ran off to get him his gun. But when the boy found it, he realized that there were no bullets inside. ‘Silly masterʼ, he thought. ʻHe forgot to load his gun. I will do it for him.ʼ
The gun having been brought back, they lined up again with their backs to each other. They took ten steps as a snare drum rolled, and then they turned around to fire. The Groom fell dead, and the Beauty ran to him, tears down her face. “My love!” she cried. “For whom now shall I hope? My future is my past!” And she took his switch-knife and cut longways her wrist. The brass band continued to play, and the crowd took no notice. A journalist went around asking important people questions, and the mayor said something about the impact this will make on something else.
The Fool saw this and began to twitch neurotically. His purpose lay dead by his own doing. He checked his gun; it was fully loaded. ʻHow!?ʼ he thought. ʻDid I forget to unload it? Surely I havenʼt made such a grave mistake!ʼ With nothing left for which to live, he put another bullet into his head, and he, too, fell dead.
And so the moral is this:
Donʼt waste your short life,
Already full of strife,
On a vain woman,
An emotional omen,
For emotionʼs a blooded knife.
Daddy’s Little Girl
Daddy’s little girl is gonna be a slut tonight.
She’ll put on the drag for the big game.
There’ll be a dance afterward,
And then she and Hot Johnny Rocket will run.
Here is the park where she used to play
As the sweetest little girl in the first grade.
There is the Baptist church where Mama
Played the pipes and daddy smelled
Like mint and oak. She’d be dressed
Up in bows and beauty like a Southern queen.
Hot Rocket’s burning, and he lays her down
On the picnic table at the park.
Across the street, the church looks dead.
Groaning, the wood is uncomfortable.
She can’t stretch her back right,
But Johnny has to have his prom.
Mama gave it to Rick before she married Craig.
Daddy took it from Sarah in a tent,
Like the cherry on the top of a perfect rush.
Burning faster, Hot Rocket finishes and laughs
With a tint of embarrassment.
“Wasn’t that fun?” he pretends. And it was.
The Sunday School flower girl fell in love tonight.
Hot Rocket knows how to spread his fire.
She’ll graduate and marry Bill,
Then shit out three kids and be the greatest
Youth football mom ever. Her sons
Will grow up to rape cheerleaders
And her daughters will let themselves be raped.
The Baptist church won’t even notice.
Want more? Feel free to buy the book, and indulge in some wicked and often wickedly amusing writing, brought to you by Blair Naso.
Enjoy!
Lots of love,
JB
judgybitch 
http://www.everydayfamily.com/blog/surprising-number-pregnant-virgins/?Internallink=Outbrain&obref=obinsite
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Based on the three things you’ve shared, I think Naso writes well, and interestingly, but I can’t see the equal accountability that you’re talking about. I mean, is every “Daddy’s little girl” who “plays the slut” before marriage doomed to “shit out” her kids? Is it only the few virgin brides who are capable of giving birth and being real, loving mothers? All other women just “shit out” their kids and raise their kids to be rapists and rape victims? Really?
Am I the only one who’s curious about how Johnny’s kids turned out? From the reading I’ve done at ROK, I’m guessing that Johnny messed around all through his 20’s and 30’s, and at age 40, had his socks totally blown off by a young virgin who fell totally in love with him, and now they are happily raising a brood of happy, non-rapey children. Because Johnny is the ROK version of the perfect alpha, who messes around and “ruins” everybody else’s wife, and then snatches up one of the few remaining virgins (who was just yearning for an alpha and worried she’d never find one) when they’re ready to settle down.
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Can you PLEASE help me understand something here? Do you pretty much believe across the board that every time a woman leaves her husband and takes her kids with her that it is TOTALLY her fault?
You don’t strike me as that myopic in your thinking, but your writing and general tenor . and tone scream that to me over and over again. Are you simply calling out those that leave for no reason other than their nail broke and they need to go find themselves? Because if that’s where you’re coming from, I would agree with you.
But, I’m a divorced woman. Not a girl. A woman. Likely probably old enough to be your mother to be truthful and I REALLY resent what appears to be this constant drumbeat from what I’ve read at your site, and others associated with you, that because *I* left a deeply dysfunctional and toxic marriage, that I’m destroying my children’s lives.
Who, I might add, are in college, landing themselves on the Dean’s List, hold down excellent jobs with thriving companies, and have very disciplined and moral lives. We live in an upper middle class neighborhood – that *I* pay for – and no one is hanging on a stripper pole.
It is entirely possible that many women leave crappy marriages because the SOB’s they were married to were abusive schmucks. Which probably begs the question…..what about my judgment. Believe me, I’ve been round and round with THAT issue.
Yet, it is also possible that good women MEAN well, and CHOOSE crappy. There are painful and difficult consequences for all involved, but do we also have to bear the burden for the rest of our lives? Are we allowed to recover and do better?
Or is that just not allowed in your prism?
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The reality that I see around me resembles the situations that you’re describing much more closely than the reality that Janet seems to be surrounded by. The divorcees she knows seem much more along the lines of something out of “Desperate Housewives.” The women I know don’t have time to abandon their responsibilities and rush off to find themselves every time they break a nail.
The main difference between men and women is that when a man decides to get out of an abusive or otherwise dysfunctional marriage, he is sometimes forced to divorce his children, too. And the feminist organization NOW even opposes shared parenting arrangements that would enable both parents after a divorce to continue playing more or less equally active roles in their children’s lives.
However, in my own little neck of the woods in the American Midwest, I am seeing a lot more shared parenting arrangements, and also even situations where the court rules that the father should be the custodial parent — and not even because the mother is abusive or anything, but just because judges are starting to objectively look at the situation and try to determine which living situation is in the best interests of that particular child in that particular family, rather than just automatically ruling in favor of the mother.
But in the U.S., everything differs from state to state, so I’m sure there are some states where divorced dads are still getting the shaft — and I’ve learned that this issue, child custody, is one of the driving forces behind the Men’s Rights movement.
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I just read the article that you linked to as an example of Naso holding men and women equally accountable, and I realize that his view of accountability is heavily steeped in his patriarchal worldview (he promotes patriarchy with his own words — it’s not just a label I slapped on him). He feels men are to blame for the current mess because women can’t make a mess unless men forget they have dicks and just let women make a mess.
So yeah, in reference to my other post about his poem “Daddy’s Little Girl,” he feels that children grow up to be rapey or otherwise dysfunctional because their mothers lay back on the uncomfortable picnic table and let Johnny take their virginity — but it’s really Bill’s fault for being willing to marry and make babies with Johnny’s leftovers. Apparently any man who marries a non-virgin (who gave up her virginity to anyone but him) has tied himself to a woman who’s going to just “shit out” his kids and somehow turn them all rapey.
While I definitely believe that men and women are different, and also that no two individuals, even two of the same sex, are the same, I just can’t buy into patriarchy as the answer. I’m cool with the fact that my husband uses the shears on his head while preferring me with long hair, and that we each have various other expectations of one other that aren’t the same because we are different and care about different things — but that doesn’t mean I’m a stupid toddler who will run around making messes if he doesn’t keep me in line.
This doesn’t mean that my husband and I shouldn’t be accountable to each other, and I do agree that it’s important to communicate clearly with our significant others about the things that are important to us in a relationship. If you have no attraction to overweight people, then by all means, this is something you should be very direct about with everyone you date. If you’re extremely sensitive to body odors, and also want a spouse who can just notice on their own when they’re stinky and take a shower because it annoys you to ever have to say anything about it, then by all means, communicate about this while dating and don’t continue dating anyone who doesn’t seem to “get it” pretty quickly.
Those are just two surface examples of flaws that might be dealbreakers for certain people. Whatever is a dealbreaker for you personally, whether you’re a man or a woman, you need to be able to communicate about your expectations clearly rather than just expecting them to read your mind. And if a man’s wife told him, “I think you’re equally cute whether you work out and eat healthy or veg out in front of the TV and binge on fast food,” and if that man really enjoyed overeating and didn’t particularly like exercise — then yeah, that man would probably get fat and sloppy.
The difference here is that many women seem to like the idea of taking on their husbands as a sort of “project,” and it’s really not a social no-no for a wife to get on her husband about his “spare tire” in the same way that it’s a no-no for a man to get on his wife for not taking care of herself. So rather than patriarchy, I see a need for greater equality. I don’t think either spouse should be mean or humiliate their partner in front of friends and family — but both should be able to express their concerns about areas where they feel like their partner could do better.
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P.S. When I used the phrase “stupid toddler,” I wasn’t referring to actual toddlers, who are not stupid but are just acting age-appropriately.
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Susan I hear you. In my view Naso doesn’t give men or women the freedom to be fully human, but I take his words as generalizations that cannot, and should not, in my opinion, be extrapolated to individuals.
As I stated, I don’t agree with everything Blair has to say. 🙂
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The internet is replete with sources telling women who leave their husbands, bankrupt them, and deny them access to their children are always entirely right and deserve everything they steal. and an equal number of sources telling men that a man who leaves his wife is a scumbag and doesn’t deserve his children, is a ‘deadbeat’. As a divorced woman can find as much edification as she likes from Glamour and Cosmo. A man has to go to deep dark corners of the internet to have it so much as acknowledged that he can be a victim of abuse by his wife and be helpless, as these days men are more shackled to their wives than vice versa. Perhaps JB is guilty of overcorrecting for feminist lunacy. But I’m guessing that the next time I see a mainstream media characterization of divorced men and am reminded of the lack of empathy for this demographic, I suspect I will also be duly reminded of why I am not shedding any tears for the ‘plight’ of divorced women.
You sum it up at the end of your post well. Women choose their husbands, their choice. Men choose their wives as well. So if men can be expected to endure the suffering imposed upon him by a bad spouse in stride, if he is supposed to man up and deal with it, why shouldn’t women do likewise?
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I find his fascination with virginity bizarre. That’s fine for him as a sexual fetish, but marrying virgins as a matter of moral principle seems unfounded. Puritanical too.
I too am quite suspicious of his desire for ‘patriarchy.’ Now, to be sure, a feminist could call me ‘patriarchal’ because, in my preference for equality, I think we should accept that certain disparities feminists wrongly call patriarchy will persist even (especially, actually) if true equality of opportunity existed (there would be more male political leaders than female; also more male prisoners than female), just due to biological differences; but I don’t think that’s what this Naso means when he says patriarchy.
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I’m not a consumer of Glamour and Cosmo and frankly, don’t know any women who are. I also don’t know the type of women that JB might be over-correcting for.
I honestly don’t find that radical feminists or whoever these monster women are, are even remotely mainstream. I say this as one who has spent her own fair share of graduate school consuming feminist theory as well. I truly believe it has a marginal influence in our current culture.
And I also agree that we all should take responsibility for our choices I certainly have.
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Unfortunately, this guy really does represent the most negative aspects of anti-feminism, and isn’t doing the movement any favors. Really, being aggressive and holding the genders to a double standard (which clearly favors men) is more than a little off-putting, and reinforces the stereotype of the MRA as a bitter entitled misogynist who’s obsessed with being ‘alpha’. Really, for the sake of true equality, doesn’t it stand to reason that the genders\sexes\whatever should be held to equal standards, none above the other? As such, while it’s fine if a guy disapproves of promiscuity\infidelity\whatever in a woman, isn’t he being just a little condescending if he demands virginity or other past sexual\lifestyle conservatism in his mate, while he partied and slept around in his youth? While I’m hardly a feminist, it’s things like this that really hurt his case and the cause
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Basically what i remember from this post is “frequent sex.”
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JB how do you reconcile this statement:
“Blair is not interested in how men and women should be.”
with “Daddy’s Little Girl?”
Beyond the vitriol and Talabanic-like concern over other people’s sex lives, can someone be this obtuse regarding the intersection between basic biology and the average first marriage occurring after age 25? This Blair guy isn’t writing about the death of ideology; he must be writing about the death of HIS ideology. What an awful, hateful, ignorant nutjob.
But you’re not a traditionalist JB. No way 🙂
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I wanted to add that I’m really glad Janet has opened up this dialog about the Return of Kings philosophy. Because if egalitarian anti-feminists never differentiate themselves from groups like ROK and Ladies Against Feminism — which, though certainly different from each other in some ways, nevertheless are pretty similar in their promotion of rigid roles for men and women — then you end up with a situation quite similar to what’s happening with feminism.
The majority of people who identify as feminist are not politically involved in the movement — they just call themselves “feminist” because they see feminism as a movement that promotes equal rights and equal sharing of responsibilities between men and women. I know many happily married, liberal (and therefore probably identifying as feminist) men and women who are working together as teams to raise their families — in some cases, both are earning money, while in some cases, one spouse stays home with the kids NOT because they see it as their “role” in life but because this simply works better for their family for the time being.
The key is to get the word out to these “regular, salt of the earth” people about the areas where prominent feminist groups are fighting equality — the most prominent area in my mind is NOW’s opposition to shared parenting after a divorce.
I see the parenting issue as absolutely paramount — but another equally important issue is the high number of boys being medicated so that they can fit into the current classroom setting — as well as, of course, the push to “engineer” children’s preferences in order to get more girls interested in STEM. I’d like to see more responsive educational systems that can allow room for the fact that some children are ready to learn reading and other academic skills earlier, and some are ready later. I think something like the Montessori approach would be great for many young kids because it allows room for each child to learn various things at his or her own pace, and it doesn’t penalize the more active kids.
If the coming generations can grow up relatively freer to get to know themselves and what they’re good at, and to follow their own paths, we’ll end up with a world of happier adults and greater respect and appreciation between the sexes. And this is what I believe the majority of people, whether they label themselves as feminist or anti-feminist, really want.
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Here in the Midwest I see married women going to clubs for hookups. They also are going on sex strikes against their husbands. Likely, they have a bf they are hooking up with.
The sexual strategy of women of Alpha Fux/Beta Bux indicates that women tend to marry sexually unattractive men. Hence women look outside the marriage for sexually attractive men.
We know that there is a general pattern of gradually, continually declining sex in marriage. We also know that, generally, married women say that the frequency of marital sex is sufficient and that married men say that it is insufficient.
We know that there is a general pattern of women being disrespectful and insubordinate to their husbands. This has a noxious effect on marriage. Not only does it harm the husband–it causes the wife to lose sexual attraction for the husband. Hence the declining sex the longer the marriage continues.
When married women go on sex strikes against their husbands, who can blame the husbands for looking outside the marriage for sex?
Women generally get a financial benefit for divorcing their husbands.
I blame women for most marriage problems.
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Ah….insubordination. In that regard, I would expect that you WOULD blame women for most marriage problems.
Rebellious and mouthy lot that we are.
Wishing you well for 2015.
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“JB how do you reconcile this statement:
‘Blair is not interested in how men and women should be.’
with ‘Daddy’s Little Girl?'”
This is an excellent point. While I understand that it’s possible to disagree with someone on a lot of things and still find a few things in common, I still think that Blair has very rigid ideas about how men and women “should” be living their lives.
It IS possible that of all the other writers at ROK, Blair may be the least negative about women, and the most willing to admit that men who are bitterly unhappy about how their lives have gone have probably played some part in the situation and aren’t just total victims.
But his ideas about sex seem pretty much in-line with the ROK mantra that men who’ve had multiple sex partners should be worshipped like gods, while women who’ve done so are filthy sluts. Of course, ROK blames men for the lack of virgins — NOT the godlike alphas, but the “stupid” betas who are willing to marry the alpha’s leftovers.
They see this as stupid because since women know there are plenty of nice guys out there willing to marry non-virgins, they’re under no pressure to turn the key in that chastity belt…and they also see it as stupid because they (ROK) see no possibility of a sexually experienced woman becoming a happy wife and mother. They call such women “alpha widows” because they didn’t have what it took to get an alpha to marry them, but they’re irretrievably bonded to the alpha jerks who used them and tossed them aside, so while they’re sleeping with their nice beta husbands, they’re fantasizing about the alphas, and even sneaking them into their beds while the kids are napping or watching Barney and their beta idiot husbands are working.
That’s pretty much the underlying theme of “Daddy’s Little Girl” — even though she married Bill, her heart was forever branded with Johnny’s name when she lay back on that picnic table, and all the kids she bore to Bill were worth less than shit to her. She seemed like a great mom at the football games, but her heart was forever lost to Johnny so she couldn’t really love Bill or their kids or be a decent mom.
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“We know that there is a general pattern of women being disrespectful and insubordinate to their husbands. This has a noxious effect on marriage. Not only does it harm the husband–it causes the wife to lose sexual attraction for the husband. Hence the declining sex the longer the marriage continues.”
Respect and subordination are two different things. My husband can respect me and still disagree with me on some things, and vice-versa.
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Well on college campuses it’s everywhere. And mind you, it’s not primarily the radfems who we’re talking about when we describe women who, say, abuse their husbands, or leave them and take their kids and property without the least justifiable cause. I’ve known plenty of such women. Hell, it is commonly known that women file for oaver 2/3 of divorces, and the vast majority of those have nothing to do with abuse; it is also known that a decline in a man’s income significantly correlates with the probability of his wife divorcing him. So clearly, this problem is not just a figment of the imaginations of some chauvinist entitled men.
Maybe all of the women you know really are quite moral. Perfectly possible if you live in a community of well-off, educated, people. But frankly, I have never known a man who abused his wife, nor have I ever seen a man physically assault a woman. Never. Not once. And yet, the media, the activists, and a good many people I’ve met still seem to insist it’s everywhere. Meanwhile, I have seen numerous women physically assault men in public in broad daylight (usually on buses or street corners in inner cities) and not so much draw a sideways glance from the people around them.
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Agreed. I rarely use the word reactionary, as 99.99% of the time it’s used it’s a bullshit excuse for a leftist to avoid having to refute a rational argument, but this guy is a bona fide reactionary. And what’s more, the world he wants to ‘go back to’ never really exited in the first place as he imagines it. And he likely does hurt ‘the cause.’
To be sure, there are feminists who think just like him (but inverse with respect to gender) who are popular in the mainstream, rather than on some obscure blog, but unfortunately, due to our lack of clout in the media, critics of feminism have to be far more careful than feminists to avoid crossing lines for fear of being pegged as bigots, while they can be as bigoted as they want and still be regarded as supporting equality. This Blair does not therefore appear to be an asset.
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I think part of the problem is that, since feminism has become so thoroughly entrenched on the conventional political left, the only place MRAs or critics of feminism can get heard is in the conventional right. The fact that left-leaning fora have almost without exception imposed extremely narrow strictures on debate all but banishing non-feminist perspectives has, ironically, led to the right-leaning forums or discussions to become the some of the only areas of free and open discussion on gender issues (I would argue this has happened in other areas as well where “liberals” have become increasingly illiberal).
Consequently, even though most MRAs probably identify more as libertarians and a decent many are even left-leaning, they find themselves by necessity intermingling with (and being lumped in with) conservative traditionalists, as their places are the only ones where criticism of feminism seems to be accepted. Also, despite the surprisingly large civil libertarian anti-feminist segment of the population, it is the traditional conservative institutions that remain the best-funded and most influential institutions in the country that consider perspectives counter to feminism. So an MRA often has to go to Breitbart or Fox to get his views presented in the more-or-less mainstream media. Hence the unfortunate conflation of counterfeminism or Men’s Rights with the conservative traditionalism that MRAs also criticize, but with whom they often form a reluctant alliance out of necessity.
If bastions of liberalism would stop enforcing the feminist monopoly on gender issues (as they often do very heavy-handed using unabashed censorship) then this issue could perhaps be resolved, and a more honest debate could ensue. But alas, those who already hold power are never interested in winning the debate, but rather in convincing everyone that they have already won it, and that the debate is already over and the supposed losers should just go home and be quiet.
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Subordination, as in “active, willing obedience” out of love and respect as opposed to “grudging obedience” such as slaves give.
Married women generally respect their past alpha lovers and despise their beta husbands. Hence the insubordination and cheating rampant in married women.
Health and happiness to you as well.
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“If bastions of liberalism would stop enforcing the feminist monopoly on gender issues (as they often do very heavy-handed using unabashed censorship) then this issue could perhaps be resolved, and a more honest debate could ensue. But alas, those who already hold power are never interested in winning the debate, but rather in convincing everyone that they have already won it, and that the debate is already over and the supposed losers should just go home and be quiet.”
That is such a great point.
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See, it’s stuff like this that gets me into trouble. When I try to hold my wife to the same standards for respect that I aim for, I get angry. Big mistake. Men need to totally ignore the codswallop that you wrote.
Men and women are so different that what you wrote is just so absurd. Different standards for respect. Different emotional chemistry. Different reproductive physiology. Different wiring of brains. Different sexual wiring. Etc.
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“Subordination, as in ‘active, willing obedience’ out of love and respect as opposed to ‘grudging obedience’ such as slaves give.”
What about mutual submission, also known as give and take — not one spouse obeying the other but both being willing to listen to each others’ side in a disagreement and reach a solution that both can be reasonably happy with? If both are equal partners and equally responsible for their marriage and family life, it stands to reason that both would also have a voice in decisions affecting the whole family.
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Thanks for the back-story on ROK and “Daddy’s Little Girl.”
” I still think that Blair has very rigid ideas about how men and women “should” be living their lives.”
Exactly. What JB is blind to seemingly is that the Bible IS ideology. One, mind you, that was born out of living conditions and resulting extremism that we in the modern West can’t really appreciate.
The whole pre-marital sex issue really just infuriates me. Is it not obvious that when girls married when they were 13 virginity was a LOT easier to pull off? 2,000 years ago the idea of virgin brides meshed with biology. Now? Not so much.
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“… — then you end up with a situation quite similar to what’s happening with feminism.”
Bravo!!!
Do you have a blog Susan?
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Okay, I wrote, “Respect and subordination are two different things. My husband can respect me and still disagree with me on some things, and vice-versa” — and you are saying that this is “codswallop” that men should ignore? You seriously can’t see any difference between respecting another human being and continuously submitting your will to theirs?
I don’t quite see what makes you angry about having a mutually-respectful relationship with your wife. Maybe you could explain what you mean by holding her to the same standards for respect that you hold yourself to?
My standard for respecting other people also involves respecting myself, because I think empathy plays a big part in respect, and it’s only when I fully understand my own need to be heard, understood, and respected that I can even begin to get into another person’s shoes and try to see things through their eyes.
My husband and I are indeed very different people, and a big part of learning to get along has involved each of us learning not to devalue the stuff that the other finds important and interesting. For example, he likes A LOT of meat in his diet and I love vegetables, so we buy more meat than I’d buy, but also less than he’d buy if it were just up to him, in order to have enough money for some fresh vegetables, as we’re on a very limited budget.
That’s just one very surface example of respecting each other’s values and concerns — and even though we’re physically, mentally, and emotionally very different, we’re both still human, we be both like to be respected, and we both love each other enough to give respect as well as receive it.
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Not yet, but thanks for asking. 🙂
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See my 19:44 comment. No such thing as an equal partnership. One partner is always senior.
Women are wired to 5h1t-test men. They don’t even have to be in a romantic relationship. I saw this recently with a woman I dance with a lot. I had severe jet lag, danced with her a lot, bonded strongly, then acted just a little needy. She 5h1t-tested me several times. I got past the bonding.
One night at a dance, she asked me to dance. I needed a rest and declined. She asked again later. I said, “No thanks” and walked away. She pursued me and wanted to find out why, so I said we could talk in private and we did. She acknowledged that she had been disrespectful. We danced after that and everything was Ok. Some bonding from dancing together a lot, but nothing to hard to handle since there’s no jet lag. Anyway, the point is that she 5h1t-tested me just because she perceived a weakness in my Frame.
This woman and I have an informal serious dance partnership going. We are working on an advanced move. She expects me to take the lead in working on it. Suggesting where to practice and figuring out logistics. Leading in the partnership as well as the dance. Different, unequal roles. Just like lead/follow dancing, which is an excellent paradigm for romantic relationships of men/women.
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I’m not a fan of anyone insisting that another human being “obey” them.
I do agree that men and women are wired differently and have different needs – I think you posted that somewhere else in this thread?
And I’m certainly totally okay with recognizing those differences and respecting them as well.
But, the notion that women should “obey” someone is positively primeval. I’m not interested in allowing anyone to assume a position of control and power over my life, and I’m not interested in doing that to another person either.
And good Lord, you can be sure, I’m not going to teach my children (both sons and daughters) this type of nonsense.
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Do you seriously think that partnerships can ever be equal? Certainly, no business partnerships are ever structured that way. Or do you think that most romantic relationships require the man to be dominant?
And what’s with the “primeval” shaming? Snarky much?
Lead/follow dancing involves the lead giving physical commands and the follow obeying those commands. Do you have a problem following men while dancing?
Nonsense or Red Pill truth?
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I get angry if she doesn’t keep to my standards for respect that I aim for (dominance/leadership/rationality/emotional stability), which is unreasonable. She senses that I am being unfair. It is as unfair as expecting her to be up to my physical level.
I am expected to be able to read my wife’s emotional needs. She has no similar expectation. See my post about relationships on my blog.
Sure, there’s always ordinary give and take–but that’s uncontroversial.
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I’ve already responded to your 19:44 comment, and I hope that when you get a chance, you’ll respond to my question as to what makes you angry about mutual respect.
But for the moment, I’d like to respond to what you said here: ” No such thing as an equal partnership. One partner is always senior.”
There is no such thing as a partnership where both people are THE SAME, because there are no two people who are the same, and I realize the use of the word “equality” can be confusing here because one meaning of “equal” is the same — as in, two potatoes of equal weight weigh the same amount.
When we’re talking about equality between people, it gets more complex — but rather than seeing one partner as “always senior” — in human relationships, I think different people are “senior” in different areas. One is strong where the other is weak — and yeah, in situations where one person has extremely high intelligence and is very physically strong and capable, and another has extremely low intelligence (which usually correlates with poor physical coordination), it may seem that person A is “senior” to person B in every respect, and it may seem very contradictory for me to say that they’re both still equally worthy of respect.
Respecting person B is probably going to involve treating him a lot differently than I would person A. For example, if person A looked lost and asked for directions, I’d give him directions if I knew the way, or if I didn’t, say, “sorry, I’m not sure” and assume that he was perfectly capable of finding his way there one way or another. With person B, I’d probably feel the same way I would if I met a small child who was lost, and want to make sure that he got to where he needed to be and was taken care of.
If person B were left a large inheritance, he’d probably need a trustworthy person to manage it for him, but he still should be given as much say as possible regarding how he wanted to spend his money. If person A spent his whole fortune overnight, he’d just have to get a job and learn to take better care of his money.
Of course, with married couples, I think most people choose spouses who are at least “in the same ball park” with them mentally. Most of us like being able to understand and laugh at the same jokes, etcetera. So you don’t generally see person A married to person B — you see people who are strong and weak in different areas, who would do best to listen to each other rather than having one of them call all the shots.
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“I get angry if she doesn’t keep to my standards for respect that I aim for (dominance/leadership/rationality/emotional stability), which is unreasonable. She senses that I am being unfair. It is as unfair as expecting her to be up to my physical level.”
It sounds like you’re saying that you can’t respect someone who doesn’t have a dominant personality, and also that you can’t respect someone who’s emotional. And that since your wife Is more gentle and emotional than you, listening to her, and trying to understand her point of view and reach a compromise in disagreements, makes you angry.
I’m sorry, and I’m not sure how to help you move past your anger. It sounds like you’re used to negotiations where there’s always a winner and a loser — maybe reading some stuff about win-win solutions would be helpful? And also about respecting people with different communication styles than yours?
“I am expected to be able to read my wife’s emotional needs. She has no similar expectation. See my post about relationships on my blog.”
I’ll try to check out your blog later when I have more time — but I wonder why your wife isn’t willing to voice her needs to you? Is she not used to identifying her own feelings and putting them into words, or is she afraid of making you angry? If the former is true, then all I can say is practice makes perfect. I used to expect my husband to read my mind, too, but one day I realized that I could either spend a lot of time unfairly mad at him or just tell him what was important to me.
If the latter is true, than that’s obviously something you need to work on. It won’t always be fun to hear what your wife has to say — but it has to be better than trying to figure it all out in the dark.
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So true. Great analysis. Despite her denials jb very much fits into the trad con camp. As does avfm. Dal rock. National parents org. The only place to get the mainstream mra viewpoint is through the men’s rights sub-reddit. We really need a strong moderate voice. I do appreciate what jb and the others are doing though.
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Thanks. I don’t think Avfm is particularly traditionalist; they do publish some articles from that perspective, and they generally get reamed in the comments section. They have also published articles from dissenting feminists. Sometimes they’re just in a ‘big tent’ sort of mood I guess.
I agree, moderate voices are certainly needed. Not moderate in the sense of lacking conviction (something unfortunately often attributed to moderation), but in the sense of not habitually sliding toward the political extremes and becoming purists.
My theory is that the natural human instinct is to slide down the slippery slope into one of two camps and, upon arriving, to dig in and begin throwing feces at the other side like monkeys. And perilous it can be to stand anywhere between the two warring camps as then one catches feces coming from both sides. I visited the zoo recently, hence my choice of analogy.
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It’s more like a cartoon than any real women I have ever met.
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HI, I just went to your blog and read your post about relationship management. I guess we can’t get on the same page because I’m not wired like the kind of women you’re apparently spending time with. In my younger days, if I ever went out with a guy who tried to “create drama” by making me worry about how valuable he was to other women, I just knew he wasn’t the guy for me.
I’ve long been aware that I’m capable of feeling sexual attraction for more than one person, and that my husband therefore probably also notices other women. He doesn’t have to “create drama” to keep me forever focused on him and stop me from going after other men. I’ve chosen to be faithful to him and so I am, and I expect the same from him. Neither of us needs to play silly games to keep the other from straying.
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The thing about radical feminism is that the “crazy” individuals do not have to be out in the open about it, because bit by bit, feminism ideology finds its way into academia, media and pop culture. And while neither academia, media and pop culture will say “we hate men”, they are certainly influenced by radical feminism in the way they treat and portray men and set them up for failure. Family courts are a great example of this.
You may not know the type of woman JB describes, but that type of woman certainly exists. With the influence of feminist-backed, movements that sell women the wrongful narrative that they are still being oppressed by men, women find themselves, (most likely without even realising it) making choices that do not make them content because the ideology that has wormed their way into the heads of many women, does not have their best interests at heart.
I guess you should count yourself lucky if you have never truly met or known about such a woman.
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JB, notice how a couple of these broads are hitting me with 5h1t-tests. First, the one posts a comment here that ought to have been on my blog and the other says that a submissive woman is cartoonish. Think I’m gonna give them any attention? Heh.
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Only a fool thinks that men and women are equal. Only a fool worries about equality between men and women. Men and women are fundamentally unequal in so many ways.
You comment “Really, for the sake of true equality” is just so sophomoric.
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Another area where we differ is that I think it’s unhealthy to look to one’s marriage as the source for all the “drama” and excitement in one’s life. This makes me think of the changing Unity candle tradition in weddings. It used to be that the bride and groom used their individual candles to light the Unity candle, and then blew out the candles representing their individual lives, but by the time I got married, a new tradition had developed wherein the marriage candle was lit without extinguishing the individual candles.
If my candle is out, and the only thing I feel passionate about is making sure my husband loves me and isn’t chasing after other women, then what good will I be in raising my children and doing the things I need to do to meet the material needs of my family? And the same things goes for my husband if all his energy is spent on “managing” our relationship drama.
I see our marriage as a place for us to love and nurture one another — and strengthen one another for the many challenges of life. If I need drama, I’ll read a good book. Frankly, during the years when couples are raising children, the drama of the continual changes of childhood and the teen years are going to consume plenty of their energy. To have parents who are so absorbed in the “drama” of keeping one another “hooked” seems very unfair to kids.
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Respond or don’t, whichever you prefer. In a discussion on THIS blog, you suggested that I read a related post on your blog, so I read it and did leave a brief comment there. letting you know that I’d respond to it here, because it seemed more relevant to post it in a discussion that’s actually occurring right now. This makes perfect sense to me — but maybe you and I are too different and unequal for it to make sense to you. At any rate, there may be others in this discussion who find some value in it, or who have their own ideas to add in response. It’s cool either way.
When I get a chance later, I’ll look up the term “shit testing” and possibly say something about it here, in case anyone’s interested in discussing that topic further.
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Here’s the definition of the term “shit test” that I found in Urban Dictionary: “A test that a girl performs on a male by saying or doing something to judge the reaction or response from him” (link below).
The key word in this definition is “girl” — and given the fact that many ROK -style guys prefer women who are much younger than them, I suppose you would spend a lot more time with girls than grown women. Of course, some very young women are indeed grown women, and some middle-aged or older women act like immature little girls, just as some young men are grown men and some men stay boys all their lives. So it’s not just an age-thing, and my husband is six years older than me, so I seriously don’t feel like spouses have to be the exact same age or anything.
It actually seems pretty normal to me, when considering whether you want to spend your life with someone, to observe and judge their behavior and reactions in different situations. But an adult man or woman knows that it’s totally unnecessary to be dishonest and fabricate fake situations to see how their love-interest will respond. If you spend enough REAL time together in different situations and with all different kinds of people — old people, little kids, handicapped people, and so on, you’ll get a pretty good idea what kind of person you’re with, without needing to conjure up some fake scenario.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=shit+test
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Hmm. I just realized that I read something into the Urban Dictionary definition of “shit test.” I assumed they were talking about a dishonest ploy to get someone to reveal something about themselves that they’d rather keep hidden — but really it could be as simple as asking someone a question in order to see what their response will be. Apparently, since you’ve accused me of shit-testing you, you believe that if a woman asks a man a question and wonders what his response will be (even if she’s already married to someone else and isn’t searching for a new mate), she’s shit-testing him.
Now, I hear straight men ask other men questions because they presumably want to hear their response — and I also hear straight women asking other women questions and taking an interest in how they respond…
So I guess that, in a sense, every time we ask another person a question or say anything at all to them, we are performing some sort of a “test,” in that we’re trying to find something out. And, of course, we sometimes try out different behaviors in our jobs or personal lives — if we’re not happy about how things are going in some area of our lives, we might try to see if just changing our own behavior can improve the whole situation — as in, “Be the change that you wish to see in the world” (Mahatma Gandhi).
So, yeah, every time we interact with the world around us, we are probably performing a test on some level.
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“Obedience” is a kink under the BDSM umbrella. Some people are into structuring their relationships that way. That’s their business.
As a moral imperative, obedience is as outdated and savage as the similar mandate to slaves to obey their masters.
However the manosphere has observed- and I agree- that male/female relationships tend to work out better when the male is the more dominant partner.
Dominance is natural and need not be pointed out. If you’re a big dog, everyone knows it. Small dogs bark a lot. If a man argues that a woman should obey him, it is a display of weakness on his part. This is especially true if he needs the power of a god to back him up.
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My comment about cartoonish women got lost in the shuffle so it was unclear that I was pointing at your comment about married women having sex strikes and going to clubs for hookups. As others have pointed out, there are a range of life experiences represented here. I am sure that is your experience, but it seems silly and absurd- cartoonish- to me.
Also, I am curious why you seem to identify “shit testing” only with women. Have you never been tested by a man?
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Autistic gamer, I perused (very lightly) your blog.
I’m curious, if you don’t mind me asking, how old you are?
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This isn’t about Naso’s poetry – but I wanted to talk about a poem my teen daughter just shared with me titled “8 Hit Songs With Hidden Meanings That Should Never Be Played Again” (link below).
I’m realizing how much I really am one of those people that Mark here describes as never totally fitting in with either camp. The poem’s about popular songs promoting rape culture — and I find myself appalled by the judgment that they “should never be played again” (because I’m really in favor of free speech) — and, at the same time, appalled by some phrases I’d never noticed in a couple of the songs that I’ve really enjoyed through the years, such as the line “Say, what’s in this drink” in Frank Loesser’s “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.”
I think what I’d like to see is NOT censorship — but, rather, more and more YouTube parodies like the remake of Grease’s “Summer Nights” that I’ve linked to below (2).
And, of course, this means I’m in the interesting position of not believing we’re totally immersed in a rape culture where most people think it’s “normal” or “understandable” to rape under certain circumstances — but, at the same time, not believing that rape culture is totally nonexistent, either.
1) http://www.upworthy.com/8-hit-songs-with-hidden-meanings-that-should-never-be-played-again?c=ag
2) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9eHdb2bR9g
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We can be influenced by entertainment and propaganda. No one is immune but it is good to be aware. There are countless portrayals of violence and other shocking things in the media. Is sexual assault a sacred cow? Do violent images influence people to condone violence?
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Oh, I’ve met them. And I’ve read about them as I said in my own foray into feminist literature in graduate school as well.
I don’t agree they are mainstream. I think they are a subculture, as I believe the men’s rights movement is a subculture as well.
Yes, these women exist, but they are not the average woman. Quite frankly, I think you have to really search to find them.
That is not to say that I don’t think feminism hasn’t influenced our culture at all. It certainly has. But, I don’t see it as a foreboding influence in our day to day lives. It’s not in mine and I’m very much involved in academia and the occasional study of feminist literature.
I also have a tough time swallowing the “they don’t even know they think this way” explanation in making an argument against feminism.
What does that mean anyway?
Who decides what another person thinks or doesn’t think? I find it presumptuous and difficult to take seriously when it comes to real debate and serious intellectual reasoning.
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And pretty much everything you’ve written is why MRAs and anti-feminists have the standard stereotype as woman-hating neckbeards who can’t get a date. Really man, what’s your deal? If you’re not a troll, maybe you should get a hobby or something; I hear ultimate frisbee is pretty fun
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A 5h1t-test is what happens when a woman tests for a man’s sexual dominance. It helps her determine his level of sexual attractiveness. It may be accompanied by a thought like “Who is this guy?” or “Who does this guy think he is?” This emotional behavior is hard-wired into women and is difficult for them to understand by observing themselves in real-time. It has to be observed. Men observe women performing 5h1t-tests and women can observe other women doing this. Women may sometimes realize that they have 5h1t-tested a man after the fact.
To get more perspective on 5h1t-testing, see https://heartiste.wordpress.com/2013/06/25/compendium-of-female-super-shit-tests/ .
Happy New Year everybody.
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The Matrix is strong in this one.
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It sounds like you’re saying that you can’t respect someone who doesn’t have a dominant personality, and also that you can’t respect someone who’s emotional.
Not what I’m saying at all. A woman can be respected when judged against standards for women, which standards are necessarily different than the standards for men.
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My blog is the appropriate place to comment about its OP. I will be happy to respond to comments placed there.
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I don’t really think sexual assault needs to be a sacred cow, set apart from all other violent crimes. As far as your following question: “Do violent images influence people to condone violence?” —
Not always, and I actually think they’re less likely to do so when the violence is more obvious, like in Grand Theft Auto. This is where what you said about awareness comes into play; I think that when an image of a subtly violent behavior, such as, say, topping off someone’s drink when they’re not really paying attention so that they end up consuming something like three drinks when they thought they were just consuming one, in an attempt to get them into a more compliant state that they’d ordinarily be in…
When “soft” images like this get slipped into songs or movies about protagonists that we really like, and nobody notices it, I think that it can contribute to a culture where this kind of behavior, when seen in real life, doesn’t stand out enough to cause others who see it to say, “Hey man, what are you doing?”
But, again, rather than increasing censorship, I’d rather see people simply becoming more aware — and I’d love to see those with video skills simply making a video, like the one about Grease that I linked to in my previous post, to draw attention to the wrong behavior so that images like that will be less and less likely to slip into our subconscious and affect our ability to notice and quickly act in situations where we see one person trying to abuse another.
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theasdgamer, in order to respond to your most recent (as far as I know) post on the topic of respect and subordination, I thought it would be a good idea to try to summarize our discussion on this topic, so I’ve compiled the following summary:
You wrote: “We know that there is a general pattern of women being disrespectful and insubordinate to their husbands. This has a noxious effect on marriage. Not only does it harm the husband–it causes the wife to lose sexual attraction for the husband. Hence the declining sex the longer the marriage continues.”
I wrote: “Respect and subordination are two different things. My husband can respect me and still disagree with me on some things, and vice-versa.”
You wrote: “See, it’s stuff like this that gets me into trouble. When I try to hold my wife to the same standards for respect that I aim for, I get angry. Big mistake. Men need to totally ignore the codswallop that you wrote.”
I wrote: “I don’t quite see what makes you angry about having a mutually-respectful relationship with your wife. Maybe you could explain what you mean by holding her to the same standards for respect that you hold yourself to?”
You wrote: “I get angry if she doesn’t keep to my standards for respect that I aim for (dominance/leadership/rationality/emotional stability), which is unreasonable. She senses that I am being unfair. It is as unfair as expecting her to be up to my physical level.”
I wrote: “It sounds like you’re saying that you can’t respect someone who doesn’t have a dominant personality, and also that you can’t respect someone who’s emotional. And that since your wife Is more gentle and emotional than you, listening to her, and trying to understand her point of view and reach a compromise in disagreements, makes you angry.”
You wrote: “Not what I’m saying at all. A woman can be respected when judged against standards for women, which standards are necessarily different than the standards for men.”
Before I respond to your last statement above, I’d like to again highlight your first statement that I quoted, where you seemed to be saying that there could be no respect without subordination, and I’d also like to highlight your response to my post about spouses being able to respect one another and still disagree, in which you referred to my post as “codswallop” that men should ignore.
In your last statement, you seem to be saying that you can indeed respect people who are not dominant – people who don’t hold to “the same standard of respect that (you) aim for.” So again, I want to ask you why It’s “codswallop” for me to say that my husband and I can respect each other and still disagree on some things?
I agree with you that men and women are different from each other – and additionally, I assert that even people of the same sex differ from one another in many ways. To me, this means that a huge key to success in relationships is realizing that the other person doesn’t have to be me or to think like me for their opinions to matter. We can have mutual respect for one another, and in cases where we disagree on something but need to act together, we can talk it out and reach some sort of a compromise. We can do this even though we’re very different and aren’t the least bit capable of meeting the same set of standards.
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Oh man, I just made another weird connection between your following two statements:
“JB, notice how a couple of these broads are hitting me with 5h1t-tests. First, the one posts a comment here that ought to have been on my blog and the other says that a submissive woman is cartoonish. Think I’m gonna give them any attention? Heh.”
“A 5h1t-test is what happens when a woman tests for a man’s sexual dominance. It helps her determine his level of sexual attractiveness.”
You think any woman who tries to engage in a debate with you is checking you out sexually — and indeed, you must think this of any woman who disagrees with any man on anything.
I do understand that sex is the very basis for our continued life and evolution on this planet. It may be true, in one sense, that because we’re sexual beings, we can’t really separate sex from any aspect of who we are. It’s kind of like breathing — it’s forever a part of us for as long as we’re living on this planet. And many people find it useful to spend a part of every day relaxing and just focusing on their breathing.
But at the same time, it was somehow evolutionarily helpful for vertebrates to develop an autonomic nervous system so that we wouldn’t have to consciously think about functions like breathing every single second.
On the one hand, I’m certainly not advocating sexuality becoming part of the autonomic nervous system, because we really should put some thought into when, with whom, and how we have sex.
On the other hand, turning every discussion between men and women into some kind of sexual game seems kind of like an attempt to pull everyone’s mind away from the actual content of the discussion. Why would anyone do that? Could it be that your arguments aren’t as rational as you’d like to think they are?
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Susan,
You think any woman who tries to engage in a debate with you is checking you out sexually — and indeed, you must think this of any woman who disagrees with any man on anything.
Oh, no, not at all. 5h1t-tests involve a woman misbehaving in order to test a man’s dominance. It’s not merely about debate or disagreement.
5h1t-testing is decided at the level of the amygdala, not the cortex. There is no rational decision involved. It’s very difficult for a woman to avoid 5h1t-testing a man. It’s just part of being a woman.
I’m used to dealing with 5h1t-tests without consciously realizing that I am. Sometimes I think about it, like on this blog, in order to make a point. It’s often appropriate to call out misbehavior, so I did.
Cortical activity in a woman decreases her amygdala activation–sex and rational thought are inimical in a woman. If she thinks about sex, she loses arousal. If you think about it, you realize that a man’s job is tricky–to arouse a woman without causing her to think about it consciously. She needs to ride her emotions–to be “in the mood.”
A woman might discuss sex, but that would inhibit her ability to be aroused by a man. Put another way, a man cannot talk a woman into having sex by logical, reasoned argument. A man has to make an emotional appeal to interest a woman in sex.
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You make good points. A side effect of freedom is that people are free to express garbage and immorality. That’s why I appreciate the saying, “sunlight is the best disinfectant.”
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They influence laws, such as in family court and criminal justice. Familiar with the one they just got passed in California college campuses.
Every day when I walk down the street and see dozens of homeless men and not a single homeless woman, I see a little feminism in it. They’ve had a hand in that disparity.
And every time I look through a journal and get excited about a job listed (I’m in academia too, finishing my PhD in a couple years probably), but see “women and minorities preferred” which often means “white males need not apply”, I can’t help but note their influence on my life. Not to mention the perpetual apprehension over dating and sex, knowing that my university’s definition of sexual harassment tacitly includes flirting and asking a woman out on a date.
It may often be subtle, but feminism’s influence on my life is clear and unmistakable. Sometimes little things, like the posters on the bathroom stalls reminding me that I’m a potential rapist, and men are virtually never victims of abuse, almost always perpetrators. Sometimes it’s the anvil in the sky that may never drop, but you worry about it nonetheless, like the frivolous sexual harassment complaint that could end the possibility of a successful academic career for me. It’s definitely there, for me at least.
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The “Baby it’s cold outside” was I think completely distorted by propagandists like Anita Sarkeesian. It’s not in the least bit ‘rapey.’ A man is trying to convince a woman he likes not to go, to stay with him; she sort of wants to go, but is hesitating because she sort of wants to stay. One has to think women are pretty weak to believe that trying to persuade a woman to do something is coercion, but that’s what some of them actually seem to think.
As for the line about the drink, this is pure hysterical presentism on the part of the feminists: they think (I assume) it’s a reference to a rufy; clearly, given when the song was written, it’s a reference to what alcohol is in it (gin, scotch, etc. not a rape date drug). It should go without saying that a woman can choose to drink it or not. Handing someone an alcoholic beverage does not amount to forcing them to drink it. This really shouldn’t be a controversial opinion.
I find concepts like rape culture to be so poorly defined as to be difficult to even engage. I hate vagaries, and find it unfortunate that most discussion on such matters seems to happen in the form of soundbites, and details are never clarified. Even when people say ‘the culture’ or ‘society’ promotes this, I’m that pedantic guy who shakes his head and says ‘what does that even mean?’ These concepts, they’re not real things, just generalizations we use off hand for convenience, not suitable bases for grandiose theses about the world. It’s like when we say ‘the Germans took issue with France’s estimates of their economy’s expected growth.’ We don’t really mean the whole of the German people is taking issue with France’s predictions; really, we just mean some German bureaucrat takes issue with them. But one may refer to ‘the Germans’ in different senses with very different meanings. ‘Society’ and ‘culture’ are therefore extremely loaded phrases, in my opinion.
Wow, what a tangent. I’m not sure whether to be proud or ashamed o that one.
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That’s the first time I heard that saying, and I love it!
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I see your point about rufies not being around back then.
And I agree that it’s my responsibility to decide whether or not to drink or eat something I’m offered. The person offering it isn’t guilty of anything, unless this person is attempting to deceive me by giving me something much stronger than what they’re leading me to believe I’m getting. I’m also responsible for how many drinks I have, so long as there’s no one surreptitiously topping off my glass whenever I’m not looking.
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“5h1t-tests involve a woman misbehaving in order to test a man’s dominance. It’s not merely about debate or disagreement…5h1t-tests involve a woman misbehaving in order to test a man’s dominance. It’s not merely about debate or disagreement.”
So you feel I was “misbehaving,” in order to test your “dominance,” by responding to something you wrote on your blog in this discussion? You had asked me to refer to a particular post on your blog in your response to one of my posts. So I saw it as part of this discussion, in the same way that I might pull in something else off the Internet that seemed relevant.
I find it more interesting to post on currently active threads; if that’s “misbehaving,” then so be it.
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I do agree in the academic environment you’re going to see it a lot more, Mark. I’m in academia and will be in it for many years to come, so I know you’re not imagining things. It’s there. And I share your frustration with “women and minorities preferred” in job postings.
As a woman (white but not young), I feel frustration in that I’m discriminated against in the job market because I’m not a young, minority female. So, I do appreciate what you’re saying as a white male.
I suppose I see much of what you are describing as more of an overall progressive, liberal movement, which is based in Marxism, and in which feminism is surely based in.
But, I see it as far bigger than simply feminism. I see it as a general political shift which has occurred in our country toward less conservative politics, to more socialist/communist politics.
I’m not anti-feminism in its basic premise. But, I do find the average radical feminist to be a bit off her rocker and wildly outdated. When I think of the type of feminists you’re talking about, I think of Susan Sontag types. And frankly, they are really rare in this millennium.
They had their day in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. But, they have long since passed their expiration date in my opinion. They just do not have the power that I think the average MRA wants to give them.
They might bark, but the dog has no teeth in my opinion.
And by the way, I haven’t read many of your posts, but you sound like one of the few reasonable people who are a part of this movement…..if you are. I don’t know.
I check out these blogs because I’m fascinated with the food fight that seems to be ongoing between the MRAs and the so-called big bad feminists. By and large, I’m more of an observer than I am in agreement with any of it.
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Well, however one may think we overestimate the influence of feminists, there is not a shadow of doubt that MRAs are the underdog in the fight. Case in point, how many admitted MRAs show up on major news networks? Or even online newspapers for that matter. The MRS essentially does not exist outside of the internet, in the general media, it enjoys perhaps slightly more credibility than the neo-nazi movement (and many feminists think it is just that evil). So the frustration (quite understandably I’d assert) derives from the fact that in this ‘food fight’, things are so one-sided that, no matter how good out reasoning (or accuracy, using your analogy) we’re still left shooting chic peas though straws at them while they lodge whole turkeys at us with catapults.
And I think their influence is more than enough to be of concern. Women like Catherine McKinnon (who literally believes all heterosexual sex is rape) are consulted by congress in crafting sexual assault laws. The NOW has effectively blocked attempts to carry out family court reform to make custody cases fairer to fathers. So even if they may be a slim minority of the population, small minorities can be extremely influential, as history documents, so I don’t put my faith in silent majorities, as long as they remain silent.
It’s not that I’m worried some young Andrea Dworkin is going to castrate me on my way to work. It’s this: there are, as it stands, major biases, double standards, and other problems primarily afflict men today. Most of these problems predate feminism. And the ones standing in the way of addressing such problems are, almost without exception, feminists, and are doing so, purportedly, in the name of women.
Which leads to why I, personally, reject the premise of feminism as I define it. That is, I disagree with the idea that a person who purports to support gender equality can really call oneself a feminist, just as I would be sceptical of someone saying “I support equality between the Italians and the French, and therefore, I am an Italianist.” This does not make sense to me. It assumes two false things: 1) Men are the principal source of gender inequities (in fact, biology explains most of them, and both men and women reinforce them, I would argue) and 2) these inequities invariably or almost invariably favor men and disfavor women.
So that’s the way I see it at least. I don’t disagree with you that feminism tends to go hand in hand with certain other ideologies (part of the ‘race, gender, class’ trifecta of leftist politics), but many of us would argue anti-male sexism enjoys greater social acceptability than other forms of radicalism. After all, the president himself proudly declare in a speed “women are smarter than men, everyone knows that” to a cheering (presumably mostly feminist) audience. Not even a fig leaf of equality in that one.
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Behave yourself, Susan, or you’ll get time out 😉
I’ve always thought shit tests basically meant when someone does something to test how well they can control someone else or manipulate them. Like spilling something on the floor deliberately to see if they’ll automatically clean it up for you, or ask them to buy you something you don’t actually want just to see if they’ll ‘do anything’ for you. Not sure that phrase applies to online anonymous internet discussions.
Then again, maybe he thinks his wife or girlfriend has spied on his internet habits, assumed a fake identity, logged on to this blog, and started taunting him to get a rise out of him. Sounds pretty elaborate.
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Yes, the deck is definitely loaded against the MRAs, and also, to a lesser degree, against the people like me, who prefer to identify as human rights activists. I’m currently participating in a thread on a feminist blog (it’s somewhat more open than most because they’re not automatically blocking people like me) in which some of us are talking about the distinction between feminism and human rights activism.
I expressed my concern that many feminists seemed to feel that injustices against women were more worthy of attention than injustices of a similar level against men, and one woman responded with an analogy about a rich person and a poor person being robbed of the same amount of money.
I responded by sharing about my own interactions with the world, in which I don’t see a bunch of wealthy men and poor women — but, rather, I see both males and females struggling with challenges and achieving successes. I see human beings, male and female, who all need support and understanding.
Hopefully she’ll respond, and we can continue a respectful debate. Debating with feminists is a really intricate dance to learn (as is debating with ROK-type people), but I think I’m getting better at it.
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Oops, I just realized I quoted one of your statements twice, and didn’t successfully copy and paste the second one that I was responding to in that last post.
Here is the other part, which I failed to copy: “I’m used to dealing with 5h1t-tests without consciously realizing that I am. Sometimes I think about it, like on this blog, in order to make a point. It’s often appropriate to call out misbehavior, so I did.”
Hope my previous post makes more sense now.:)
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I can’t argue – neither do I wish to – with much of what you say. I have a serious problem with A LOT of people the current administration consults across the board.
I’I’m not a fan of him and where he’s taken our country.
I’m a very conservative person politically. A bit of a traditionalist in that I accept gender differences and don’t feel slighted that men are actually better at a lot of things than I am.
But, I’m actually better at a lot of other things than the average male, so it all balances out in my view.
As a mother of a son, I have a real tender spot in my heart for the plight of the average male. As strong as I know my son is, I see his struggle in this world and I know how much he needs to be loved, supported, and cared for by the women in his life.
He has made good choices in women, however, so I feel certain he’s going to be okay.
If not, I might have to kick their ass and that would be too humiliating for him. 😀
As an observer of the MRA movement, I can only say that it’s very difficult for me to embrace it entirely because I see so much blinding vitriol.
It’s unfortunate, because I think if there were more reasoned voices, people like me might be willing to listen.
As it is, I just can’t sign on to something that seems to be driven by so much anger and hate. It’s exhausting to me.
Thanks for being willing to chat about it, though.
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theasgamer, you are right about calling out misbehavior. That remark was passive-aggressive and catty. I should have said so sooner.
Why did you shittest me and Susan?
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Ha, I guess one should be very wary if you see a guy loitering around starbucks with a flask of grain alcohol. Especially if the tea tastes unusually strong that day.
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Well, I wouldn’t ask anyone to sign on to anything. I couldn’t care less what people call themselves, it’s their particular opinions that matter.
“Opposition always inflames the enthusiast, never converts him.” Says Friedrich Schiller. Personally, I get rather frustrated myself almost every time I go on Salon or Slate (or God forbid Jezebel). One might say, ‘so avoid those sights if you know they’re havens for nonsense, for the sake of your sanity.’ But then I feel like a coward for avoiding opposition, or letting them ‘win’ without so much a dissenting voice. That’s the intellectual catch-22 I perceive, not sure that’s what others feel too.
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@ that1susan
Your feminist interlocuter, to me, is a good illustration of the wrong way to thing about equality and rights, with the rich man and the poor man.
It is not ‘stuff’ like water or money, where one has more than the other. If women lack a privilege men have, then taking away a privelege both men and women have, and giving it exclusively to women, is neither just, nor productive. For example: suppose we fail to reform alimony and child support systems or by fail to address the fact that society expects men to earn money because these are ‘less important’ than the dearth of women in power or the income disparity (as I expect your feminist would say); well, these factors are precisely what (among others) drive men to prioritize money an power, to be competitive, and perhaps even to want to keep women out of their work fields, because if a man loses his job to a woman, he may not be able to support his family, he may not be able to pay his child support, and so may even end up in prison.
This feminists fails to perceive that the inequities against one gender are inextricably linked to those against the other. You cannot tolerate one set of inequities while trying to fix the other ones. So when you push women to work more an enable them to earn more money, you must, absolutely must, relieve men of their special financial responsibilities and distribute them equally to men and women; if you want women to work more, you must give men greater access to child custody, as otherwise men have no incentive to work less, and women no time to work more. By focusing only on female victims of domestic and sexual violence because male victims are less important, or by treating female perpetrators more leniently, we allow many men or worse, boys, to continue to be abused, especially by women, and some of these boys grow up to be rapists or abusers themselves. All the anti-rape activism in the world won’t solve the problem, if they fail to confront the problem of child abuse. When feminists minimize as ‘less important’ the abuse of males, they are inadvertently ignoring the injustice that causes most rapists to come into being (abuse).
So by failing to address problems facing men ,because they’re ‘not as important’ they are exacerbating both men’s and women’s problems. Never mind that I would emphatically disagree that men are ‘the rich man’ in the analogy; (is a man who dies working a mine to feed his family so much more privileged than a woman who dies giving birth to her child? Certainly, a father’s custody rights are not a ‘backburner issue’ compared to an astronomer’s tacky shirt?) Equality is something they have to take or leave, they can’t pick and choose. To try to tackle inequality against women while neglecting inequality against men is to not tackle inequality at all. That’s the way I see it. It is not a problem where you can solve half of it right now, and save the other half for later. Either the whole thing, taken together, or don’t even bother at all.
Good luck with your discussions, you’ve more courage than I (I avoid feminist blogs these days, otherwise I’d never get any work done). Sorry for my novel a post. I’m really quiet in real life, so I guess I make up for it by sermonizing on the internet.
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🙂
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Very well said! This is exactly why I’m a human rights activist and not a feminist, and you’ve helped me structure my argument a lot better by explaining how treating abuse of males as a “backburner issue” actually leads to more social problems like rape — or like some men resenting women entering their fields and competing with them for jobs they need to be able to fulfill their designated role of “provider.”
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Thanks! Always glad to contribute. 🙂
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I’ve been thinking more about what you said here: “My theory is that the natural human instinct is to slide down the slippery slope into one of two camps and, upon arriving, to dig in and begin throwing feces at the other side like monkeys. And perilous it can be to stand anywhere between the two warring camps as then one catches feces coming from both sides.”
Choosing a platform and aligning oneself with it is a lot easier than thoughtfully approaching each issue and considering, and possibly even combining, some of the opposing viewpoints in order to come closer to the truth.
I just now googled the words “the middle way” to see what would pop up — and lo and behold, it’s a Buddhist term for the concept of moving away from a “good vs. evil” dichotomy, to a place where one sees that “”every virtue is a mean between two extremes, each of which is a vice.” (Aristotle).
When you can see some kernel of truth in practically every argument, it may seem like you could be friends with everybody — but it actually means that some people will never want to be friends with you. 🙂
http://www.sgi.org/buddhism/buddhist-concepts/the-middle-way.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_mean_(philosophy)
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Understanding How the Hamster Spins…
Stone age:
Club to head->sex
Mud Huts
Skip ahead 6000-25000 years: Civilization w/indoor plumbing!
1950’s:
approach->dating->courtship->marriage->sex!
Patriarchy!
1960’s:
approach->dating->courtship->sex!->marriage
Sexual revolution!
1970’s/80s:
approach->dating->sex!->marriage
Sexual liberation!
1990’s
approach->sex!->dating->marriage
Birth of PUA, hook-up culture.
2000-today
approach->sex!->sex!->sex!->sex!->marriage
Dating is so Beta, but Rape Culture!
tomorrow?
Club to head->sex
Approaching is so Beta! I just want a man to take me.
So let’s take a look when the hamster plays possum: Getting duped.
There is getting played, duped, lied-to, misled, etc. And then there is just responding to the proper signals, guidance, and frame of a man well practiced in the art of pickup or otherwise blessed with attributes that place him in the “natural” camp. Lines get blurry.
Game, in part, is about disarming her inhibition, feeding her hamster the right pellets to get her to rationalize behavior that is often incongruent with her words or her surroundings; not against her beliefs (or that is where it would stop), just against some level of discomfort with how she might be perceived after the fact.
That’s why plausible deniability is so commonly baked in to the situation. IOW, it is not forcing her, or tricking her to go against her values, but it is closer to just kindling her empowerment and rationalization until it becomes as much her idea as his.
In fact it is this conversion of “no” into “yes!” that is the crack, the excitement, the novelty of being “taken” by men who “just get it”. And vice versa in some ways. Part of why it’s addictive. Part of why the pattern is often repeated over and over but with different packaging. See: a still a pattern, not “back luck in love” but: prefers sex with Alpha men as paramount.
A lot of women – enough to matter, will claim they were duped once or twice or thrice. And they probably were. Just like a lot of men will orbit some HS girl or college girl or even work colleague. But most men learn the futility of this early and often. The ones that don’t are the objects of universal disdain.
But where this gets tricky is that there is quite often a pattern (to the observer) that she fails to see (or admit) because to her the change of scenery or contexts over time mask the underlying dynamics, which remain largely unchanged.
Women like to lump as many of the N’s as they can into the duped category. Fine. There’s not a lot of rope either way. But there is a lot of hamsterbation going on if she fails to see that most of the duping is to herself. She’s just too used to having her “no” (or other conditions precedent) converted into “yes” by a certain type of man. That man is Alpha Fux.
It might play out like this:
Age 18: duped by the fratboy she was hoping for more with. Lesson learned, so no more sex without a “where is this going” chat – especially the hot, smooth ones!
Age 21: duped by the guy in the club they banged that same night, AMAZING chemistry! But he didn’t want to go on actual dates. Lesson learned, so no more going home with guys from clubs, they have to take me on at least three dates – especially the hot tall guys who just won’t back down, so aggressive!.
Age 28: they were duped by the partner-track VP at work after flirting for three months over a long work trip “one thing led to an other.” but upon return only resulted in awkward water cooler chit chat. Lesson learned, so no more pissing where you eat, especially with the hot ones who are so confident (cocky) and just know how to take charge (in the bedroom too hehe!).
Three “dupes”. Sounds about right. Guess what. Basically the same guy. ATO house intramural flag football champ bangs lots rando’s in college, used to troll clubs and have his way on the weekends until his career took off (he’s great at sales) and he’s on the road a lot, though he likes it – different girls in every city, even a few from his marketing team. Up for partner next year. He’s thick in it and has no reason to change a thing.
Throw in a few STR’s where monogamy was agreed, an LTR or two (alpha’s will commit for periods of time) and it really does seem like a progression, like there is real learning. I’ve got female friends that have made a career out of it. They think because they actually “dated” for a month or three, or that he took her to his cabin in Michigan, that it is TOTALLY different than those three “duped” bangs above. They want to believe: they are different; he is different; being older everything must be different; and finally, that she can break this alpha. She will try try try until *something* changes. Hint: its not going to be the alpha:
http://www.app.com/story/life/family/2014/11/04/wall-mans-sex-column-goes-viral/18474021/
Different set: same actors. She may change some of the decisions along the way, but the primary one: the target, doesn’t change much.
And the “duping” story gets tricky when (if) women really do choose to play around in those short bursts post divorce, or breakup, or peace corps, or 6 month assignment in DC. What changes then? The voracity, the velocity, the occasional “out of character” role playing. What doesn’t? The target of her attraction/affection.
Alpha fux is constantly put in some isolated corner of being tricked or compartmentalized into a brief “phase” as opposed to say, a repeatedly demonstrated preference for a certain type of man with which sex is offered with the fewest conditions or actionable expectations, who are least likely to commit but only swept from the radar screen when the endgame of marriage finally (and with great reluctance) trumps sex with these men.
Next stop for the hamster: looking for a “good” man to marry (Beta Bux) I’m ready to settle! But time is of the essence:
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2007/10/in_economic_terms_you_are_a_de.html
So spin hamster spin…
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