tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3711202640864482160.post7055658197618739029..comments2023-04-02T02:01:35.445-07:00Comments on The Blog of Cinzia La Strega : Everybody's bloggin'Cinziahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16811789307226566072noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3711202640864482160.post-66338517276831366282013-04-28T22:32:30.656-07:002013-04-28T22:32:30.656-07:00If I could recommend any books on the subject of g...If I could recommend any books on the subject of gamers and fundamentalists, and the odd parallels between them, I would, but unfortunately I haven't encountered any; all the stuff I've mentioned above has really just come from my own personal observation (it probably doesn't help that the whole "Game" phenomenon is still relatively new, and has therefore probably yet to come to the attention of serious scholars). I'd imagine a lot of it would boil down to authoritarian worldviews and whatnot - I've heard stories of people with this sort of rigid, black-and-white thinking finding it surprisingly easy to jettison one particular authoritarian philosophy (for whatever reason), and adopt that philosophy's (equally doctrinaire) polar opposite.<br /><br />Religious groups arguably provided my own introduction to the manosphere; I seem to recall first encountering a lot of common MRA talking points on websites run by conservative Christian organizations (many of which seemed to push the decidedly contradictory message of "Patriarchy hurts men too, so let's all go back to it!" Um, what?). Another site that proved pivotal was one called Oz Conservative, an <i>extremely</i> conservative Australian website (and another site I've been staying away from of late) whose creator, Mark Richardson, seems to have a bug up his butt about something called "autonomy" (ie the evil idea, much favoured by feminists and other degenerate liberal types, that people shouldn't be limited in their life choices by things they have no control over eg sex, race, ethnicity etc), and whose every post seems to degenerate into a rant against this. While not a manospherean per se (indeed, he often rails against the MRM, seeing its members as a rather degenerate and unmanly lot), his blogroll contains links to blogs that are far more sympathetic to that movement (indeed, it was thanks to his site that I first stumbled upon Roissy). He's also sympathetic to that Orthosphere mob I mentioned above.<br /><br />I remember first becoming interested in fundamentalist groups myself during my final year of school (far too long ago now), and researching a couple in my own part of the world: namely a mob called the Festival of Light, who are/were rather notorious in Australia (and maybe the UK as well), and a similar group with the rather pretentious title of Women Who Want to be Women (who subsequently gave themselves the somewhat more innocuous-sounding name of the Endeavour Forum). So, yeah, a lot of the ravings of today's religious anti-feminist crowd have a very familiar ring for me.<br /><br />I agree with you that institutionalized misogyny ultimately does men few favours. Another obvious way in which it does this is by making everything even remotely feminine (and therefore "inferior") so taboo for boys and men that these individuals are then forced into an extremely narrow role. Indeed, it's a source of constant amusement/bemusement to me to see MRA types demanding that men be released from the restrictions of their traditional role, but not in any way that might, God forbid, "feminize" them. Um yeah. Not sure how that's supposed to work (maybe it's why "true" masculinity for so many of them seems to revolve around being a basement-dwelling bum).<br /><br />Finally, re your last point, I think that chasing stats and comments was what our mate Matt ended up doing when he was blogging as Ferdinand Bardamu. I recall him actually writing, as the latter individual, a half-decent piece on why White Nationalism was a stupid and doomed movement, only to later renounce it when he evidently decided that the white power movement was a great untapped source of potential support (so, yes, his complaints about his comment threads subsequently becoming overrun by neo-Nazi knuckle-draggers were a bit rich!). I sort of miss his old blog - it was like this great one-stop-shop for all the different brands of right-wing lunacy on the market today. Good stuff!Zosimus the Heathennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3711202640864482160.post-74536861872316114602013-04-28T13:57:41.697-07:002013-04-28T13:57:41.697-07:00Yes, the parallels with religious cults and sects ...Yes, the parallels with religious cults and sects are very interesting to me as well. Equally fascinating is the uneasy alliance, or at least sympathy, between gamers like Roosh and the taliban / fundy mindset. United in their common misogyny? If you can recommend any reading that explores the psychology of this, please share.<br /><br />The way institutionalized misogyny works against men's interests perplexes. For example, female infanticide (through neglect) or gender selective abortion has resulted in Asian and middle eastern countries with disproportionately high numbers of single men. That doesn't seem to benefit heterosexual men at all. (Oddly, it doesn't raise the status of the surviving girls either.) <br /><br />Maybe that's what fascinates me about the manosphere realm: it all seems so perverse. I cannot wrap my head around it. <br /><br />A lot of bloggers are chasing stats and comments, so it's not surprising they try to give their readers what the readers seem to want. I expect in most cases they're not conscious of it themselves. Cinziahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16811789307226566072noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3711202640864482160.post-44411044043792338642013-04-28T11:01:36.064-07:002013-04-28T11:01:36.064-07:00I'm honoured to discover that my last comment ...I'm honoured to discover that my last comment helped provide the inspiration for your latest post (though understandably sorry that it appears to have triggered memories of what sounds like a positively ghastly piece of music)! Yes, the homogeneity of the manosphere is indeed rather striking, although I suppose, to be fair, it's a trap that a lot of other "rebellious" subcultures and movements end up falling into as well (outlaw motorcycle gangs being another notable example that springs to mind). They're certainly also not alone in their tendency to undergo endless schisms - I can't help but notice parallels there with groups of religious fundamentalists (from the countless Protestant sects the Reformation spawned to the jihadist groups causing so much trouble in the Middle East today) that likewise seem to be constantly fragmenting (and whose members all seem to end up hating one another even more passionately than they do the vastly larger numbers of unbelievers that you assume would be the main targets for their wrath). Still, for every manospherean group that's fracturing in this manner, there seems to be another that's attempting to forge an alliance with the most unlikely of people. One of the most bizarre such alliances I've noticed lately has been one that PUAs have been trying to form with religious fundamentalists - seeing guys who want to screw around without consequence trying to find common ground with modern day Puritans who want to outlaw contraception, abortion and everything else that makes consequence-free sex possible makes so little sense that I'm assuming the only reason they're doing it is out of some misguided notion of "my enemy's enemy is my friend" (then again, this wouldn't be the first time these dimwits have engaged in behaviour that ultimately goes against their own self-interest - witness the way they devote so much of their lives to getting sex, only to reward the women who give it to them by calling them "sluts"). One of the nastiest groups of this type I've seen them extending the hand of friendship towards has been a mob called the Orthosphere, a group of ultra-<i>ultra</i>-orthodox Catholic nutjobs who seem to think that Western society started going down the toilet when the Middle Ages ended, and who, if they ever got into power, would no doubt make PUAs among the first victims of their modern-day Inquisition.<br /><br />Getting back to the subject of manospherean bloggers' uncanny similarity to one another, I'm wondering if part of the reason for this is the fact that once a blogger starts getting seriously caught up in this sordid subculture, he (or occasionally she) finds him/herself being influenced by the most vocal (and unhinged) members of that subculture. Some manosphere blogs I used to follow (before going cold turkey on them for the sake of my continued sanity) actually seemed to start out being reasonably moderate, only to become more and more extreme as time went on (or maybe I was just a lot more naive when I first stumbled upon them). A classic example is a blog called Married Men Sex Life, which seemed almost progressive when it started, the author rejecting the more misogynistic or otherwise douchy beliefs of the more prominent MRA and PUA bloggers. Over time, though, said author seemed to push more and more the message of Traditional Gender Roles Are Awesome! before giving the whole site a complete makeover, so that when I last dared pay it a visit, the first thing I saw was a huge graphic of a hand holding the RED PILL. Needless to say, I ran away screaming and never went back.Zosimus the Heathennoreply@blogger.com