The voice of men, the voices of despair

I spent the sunny afternoon at a public pool near my home.  Not surprisingly, given that it was an exceptionally warm day in Seattle, the pool was filled with families.  The density of splashing, shrieking youngsters frustrated my effort to swim laps, but I enjoyed observing the kids nevertheless.  Although I don't have a family and children myself, I sometimes find a kind of vicarious pleasure in watching other families enjoying themselves together.  I was especially moved by several affectionate, attentive fathers interacting with their little ones.  It gives me a kind of hope.  After all, one does not need to be a biological parent in order to feel invested in the youngest generation.

When I got home, I thought about the men of the manosphere, who are so angry and hateful towards women.  Although I frequent manboobz, the site which delights in mocking misogyny, I sometimes feel at odds with the prevailing tone of dominant commenters.  The more I follow the manosphere (Voice for Men, Heartiste, Roosh), the more compassion I feel for the young misogynists.  It's easy to ridicule them, because most of what they say is ridiculous.  It's easy to be outraged by them, because most of what they say is outrageous.  It's easy to be frightened by them, because they are simmering with anger.  And then it's comforting to reassure myself that their ideas are, well, after all, pretty silly.  They pretend they are a movement, but they spend so much of their energy squabbling with one another that it's evident that they couldn't organize themselves out of a paper bag. 

But more and more, what I hear behind their hateful words, their virulent disdain for all women (and most other men), is despair.  Roosh and his ilk (Matt Forney, Paul Elam, "Roissy," et al.) are men who have pretty much given up on the one thing -- other than engaging work -- which makes life meaningful: intimate, committed relationships with others.

A couple of weeks ago, Roosh was positively distraught when Mark Minter abandoned the manosphere ship to marry a gal he'd met online.  His sense of betrayal was palpable.  Even his followers were a bit baffled that he took it so much to heart.

But someone like Roosh has nothing else except his convictions, as delusional and self-destructive as they are.  He has no relationships beyond his tenuous online connection with the men and boys who echo his nihilistic philosophy.  He is so out of sync with the cultural tide that he must seek refuge in ancient texts, to constantly imagine that the way it was is the way it should be now.  

Today he posted, in his typically self-aggrandizing and melodramatic fashion, that "every man dies by his own ideas."  He views himself as a martyr to his own ideals.  But relentless, inchoate rage is not a "cause."  It is a symptom of a personality disorder. 

I reflect on the mothers and fathers I watched frolicking in the pool today.  Whether they are "happy" in their marriages I have no idea.  I have never been convinced that "happiness" should be a person's primary aim.  I'm not sure even what "happiness" means.  I can say that they all looked thoroughly engaged with one another.  I thought, "This is Real Life."  And by merely observing from the sidelines, I felt myself part of it:  the Family of Man.  And I pity the men of the manosphere, who have learned to hate what they have come to believe they cannot have: intimate connection, a sense of purpose, community membership, an investment in the world around them.

MGTOW Mark "Minty" Minter Slides Off His Barstool

Poor Mark Minter!  He bumped up on Manbooz last night, where he was roundly razzed, and then apparently had a few more shots before churning out this strange missive to his guru, Roosh.  Is it too much cheap tequila?  Or has he truly lost his mind?  The comments that follow are equally bizarre... Yet there is a strange poetic beauty in all this incoherence.  Kinda like reading The Last Words of Dutch Schultz, y'know?  Although hardly a ringing endorsement of the expat MGTOW lifestyle... 

(Note:  Go to manboobz to read David Futrelle's analysis and some really funny commentary.)

Mark Minter • a day ago

Ah, but when you are there, this American life is a million miles away, and far, far from your thoughts. When you are there and on the streets, those unfamiliar streets in that strange world and culture, you live more in 5 minutes than you do here in one day. It starts at the jetway when you arrive, it builds when you see the foreign immigrations officers and it smacks you in the face when you step outside the front door or the airport. All airports are the same, little pieces of America, no matter where you are in the world. But that ends at the front door.And when you go alone, when you have very little to anchor you, when you get into that taxi and ride through the city, when you end up in some strange room, and you drop your luggage, and then in the following days as you find your way, find yourself, then all you were, and all that was, is so so far away. And it can ruin you forever. I have been back 3 years and I do not seek to engage America in any way. I stay home, on the internet. I shop in the middle of the night for food. When I must be out in the day, I move quickly, efficiently. I interact little with this society that I am no longer a part of. Some of that is age but a lot of is that I have killed my American self and I feel no affection for it, no loyalty to it, and I shall discard it forever, soon. The only connection is feel to it is you, you band of renegade rebels to whom I feel a kindred spirit.Listen closely to expats. Perhaps it is a self limiting situation. I would assume no lover of America, no person that celebrates it as a place, is an expat. So on one hand, they are a group disposed to dissent. They may have issues over the laws, the bureaucracy of the new place they now live, but rarely do they ever ever long for America.

• Despite the claims of feminists, America is the Matriarchy, the land owned and dominated by women and their mangina menservants, their guards, their infrastructure that so caters to them, their laws.You see it when upon landing in America. In other places, immigration is almost a "lip service", a gang of sorts to get money from you when you arrive and when you leave. The security you must pass, when entering. is almost a joke compared to what you encounter when you arrive in America. And it is far greater when you leave, those airlines and airport security forces have a procedure that is not so much that the idea of the country you are leaving, but rather the dictates of America, and its women.And here you are not a man, but a functionary, a manservant, a slave to women. You see it when you arrive, you feel it, you know it, that stripping of your masculine dignity that begins the moment you leave the plane and enter an American terminal, that herding, that loss of the you that is you. And you see it as you come out on these clean, lit streets, this great giant boring shopping mall, all designed for women, all policed for women, all at the behest of women and those manginas that have bought in, that know no different, that do not understand what they are, what they do, and what they have done.  So, yes, you leave because you have the idea that something here is wrong, some other place must be better, NAPALT, Not All Places Are Like This. Perhaps, if you are only gone for a short while, you won't quite be a able to put your finger on what the difference is, just that it is different. But when you spend a good deal of time away, you know there is a difference, and if you must come back, then you yearn not to be here.
  It is not the adventure of the place or the exotic.  What you miss is the experience of being a man in a way that this society will never allow. It is too late for here. It is more than merely cultural, more than social, it is even biological. This matriarchy has dominated even nature here, controlled every last aspect, even the dirt, even the germs, all of the animals, and certainly, all of the men. If you stay, you will remain in angst, a slave to women. When I close my eyes the image I see is elsewhere. And when I die, the fact I got to live elsewhere for a time, will dwarf what I feel about here. It is the basis of my rants about marriage and this American life as a married man being insipid, stupid, and a waste of the life of man. Because it ties you to here, it chains you, it removes your option, your hope, that you might leave, and seals your fate as a slave.