Fan Mail From A Squirrel

"Ella the Squirrel" asks me, "What future do you predict for the manosphere?"

Well, Ella, first let me say I am incredibly flattered (and bemused) that you would think I have any idea.  If you have read much of this blog, you'll realize that I --- like most old fogies  Baby Boomers --- am much more engaged in reminiscing about the past (specifically, my own past) than speculating about a future, especially a hypothetical future that I am, every day, less and less likely to be around for.

However, thanks for your question.  Let me haul out my reading glasses crystal ball, and give your query an honest crack.

Hmm...  I'm not seeing much here, Ella. The future looks cloudy, with a strong possibility of rain -- whoops, that's the local weather forecast!  Never mind... 

I'm still not seeing a damn thing, Ella.  Perhaps that means that the MRM (Male Rights Movement) doesn't have a future.  Maybe because it doesn't have a present?  By that I mean it doesn't exist as a movement at all, but rather as a symptom -- a symptom of severe post-Reaganomics social / economic distress.

As you no doubt know, the "manosphere" is a loose confederation of PUAs (pick up artists and gamers), MGTOW (men going their own way), and MRAs (male rights activists, or, as Paul Elam of "A Voice for Men" would have it, MHRAs).  Feminists and other intelligent, thoughtful-type people (who may not identify themselves as feminists, but, frankly, who are) clump them together, recognizing that they are linked by a common thread of misogyny (= fear and loathing of women) w/ a big round dollop of racism.

What also unites the followers of the "manosphere" blogs is that they are really, really unhappy (frustrated) + really, really stupid.   What unites the leaders of the "manosphere" (i.e., the writers of the blogs) is they are, for the most part, utter and abject social failures w/ outsized senses of entitlement, whose only experience of (or hope for) recognition is in being followed by... well, by a bunch of desperate morons.  (And these days recognition (for whatever reason) = success, hence the phenomena of reality television "stars" and the fact that news media have become little more than celebrity gossip mills.)

The leaders of these manosphere blogs (Roosh, Roissy, Price, Elam, Forney, et al.) eke out slender livings by pandering to an audience of losers.  And I call them "losers" not in anger, but in pity:  young (or developmentally delayed) white guys who are being cast out by a global economy that no longer values them, or rather, that is no longer willing to accord them privilege simply by virtue of being white + male.  

They perceive themselves as being "overtaken" by women and by brown people.  The reality is that they are, for the first time in thousands of years, simply being forced to compete with those "minorities" on an increasingly level playing field.  (Still, it has to be pretty scary. "Who stole my cheese?"  I mean, I can only imagine...)

I am not without sympathy.  But then, I've always been kind of a softy.

I was reprimanded over at manboobz for calling these guys "dinosaurs" who were heading for extinction (because I was being too hard on the dinosaurs, as I recall).   But I will resurrect that poor analogy, nonetheless.  The "manosphere" may survive, but the so-called "movements" it purports to be incubating will not.  Oh, I'm sure there will always be a place for lonely guys to give each other dating advice, just as (for some inexplicable reason) girls keep buying Cosmopolitan magazine.  Just cuz when we're young, we're horny and clueless...

The Men's Rights Movement in its present incarnation will go the way of the KKK and the John Birch Society, increasingly marginalized and irrelevant.  The legitimate grievances of the MRM (fathers' rights, acknowledgement of sexual and domestic abuse of men) will be subsumed under the broader liberal agenda (and I predict feminists doing a lot of the legwork in those regards).  Men Going Their Own Way?  There have always been a portion of involuntary celibates (of both genders) and "hermits" (of both genders), and nothing necessarily "wrong" with that: some people just aren't suited to "coupling", yet still enjoy rich and rewarding, albeit eccentric and somewhat lonesome, lives.

Of course, to a great extent, the "manosphere" is a phenomenon of the internet.  People are (I certainly am!) still thrilled to be able to "connect" to others with similarly "esoteric" interests.  The internet has made it possible for people with relatively uncommon conditions or identities to find one another, to connect, to share, and to build on that.  

I'm not trans, but my Best Beloved is.  How we envy the trans kids today, who have so much more information (and power) at their fingertips!  How different would my SO's life have been, had she known she was so far-from-alone in the world?  The internet has in this way fueled social justice movements, by bringing people together.

Of course, the dark side to this is that the internet also brings together people who are marginalized (or feel themselves to be unfairly disadvantaged) in a very different way, and provides them with a refuge, an answer.  In the case of the "manosphere" boys, that "answer" is scapegoating women (and minorities) for their troubles.  Paradoxically, the internet also isolates, and draws already-isolated people into cults. And ultimately does them great disservice.

But the "manosphere" is ultimately likely to remain primarily an internet phenomenon because it cannot stand up to public scrutiny.  In the court of public discourse, the New Misogynists will lose.  That explains why they are so ambivalent about straying outside of the "intertubes" into the "real world."  And why, aside from their kamikaze-style leaders, most members scrupulously avoid having their real identities known:  most people are not willing to commit social suicide.  

To publicly identify oneself with this stuff (as Roosh has, in essence, admitted on more than one occasion) = to burn one's bridges forever.  Elam and Price are old farts, so who cares?  On the other hand, Roosh and Forney are relatively young -- yet they have tattooed their bigotries and hatred onto their identities more permanently and damnably than any white supremacist ever tattooed his face.  There is as yet no laser surgery powerful enough to erase the evidence they have strewn upon servers across the world that they are, simply, terrible people... 

Returning to the "patriarchy" is a lost cause.  The followers of the manosphere, however much they may enjoy indulging in false nostalgia, know that the tide of the world is irrevocably turning against them, and the few of them willing to be swept out to sea for such a lost cause will be remembered with the approximate admixture of pity and contempt as we now accord the long-dead soldiers of the Confederacy: the poor, stupid, deluded bastards!

Does this answer your question?