Roosh Calls For "Retrenchment"

Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you're always afraid
You step out of line, the man come and take you away

("For What It's Worth" -- Buffalo Springfield)

Acknowledging that Return of Kings (and similar Red Pill sites) have suffered "quite a beating in the wake of the Elliot Roger's [shooting]," Roosh is calling on his troops to lay low, "burrow within society," and "attack only when we have a clear advantage." In other words, quit publishing click-bait that only gives young women something to furiously re-tweet, and which gives the "megaphone of the cultural elite" more ways to paint the fine young men who make up his readership as "cannibals." 

"We must only attack when victory is assured -- when we can isolate a liberal blogger or reporter and hurt their credibility in the eyes of Google."

Ah yes, that fail-safe strategy favored by the manosphereans: publish smear posts that will mess up the online names of obscure bloggers (teachers, students, beginning journalists).  I suppose it's futile for me to point out to Roosh and his followers how very ineffective that strategy has proven to be?  Or to suggest that most people recognize how ephemeral -- and notoriously untrustworthy -- Google-able information is?  There is a reason that college students are discouraged from relying on Google for their research papers!

And while being the victim of such a campaign is unpleasant, it certainly doesn't shut critics up.  If anything, it suggests the "target" was "on to" something, and the perpetrator(s) look like unscrupulous crackpots.  The professional journalists he has targeted appear to be carrying on doing their professional journalist thing, utterly indifferent and unfazed -- this sort of attention goes with their territory, doesn't it?  Getting epic hate mail from the New Misogynists is, if anything, a pretty fair litmus test that a writer is on the side of the angels (or at least on the side of common sense and decency).

As for a big nobody like me, the fallout of having my name smeared online has been... well, zero.  Apparently nobody Googles me!  Even my friends and colleagues, when I informed them of this terrible blight to my reputation, couldn't be bothered.  Certainly no one has come to my little blog by searching my legal name yet; the only unfriendly visitors appear to have been linked directly via Matt Forney himself.  Since the "attack" on my "credibility," I have managed to get a promotion at work and pre-qualified for a mortgage and no one has looked at me askance. The real world -- or at least the world I live in -- doesn't give a shit what Google says any more than it cares who Roosh is or the cranky online cult he seems intent on creating.

Rather than face the overwhelming evidence that the world at large is pretty much repulsed by, or indifferent to, his philosophy, Roosh continues to frame its rejection in terms of an epic underground ideological war in which he (and his followers) must bide their time, harness their resources, and patiently await the day when they will ultimately rise up to vanquish their enemies (the girls?), be crowned with laurels and awarded scores of houris (the perpetual virgins of an Islamic paradise).

Meanwhile, Roosh concedes that not only is Red Pill victory impossible in the short term, but survival itself is not a given, and is therefore recommending that like-minded neo-reactionaries ally themselves with "traditional conservatives" while vigilantly (but discreetly) seeking opportunities to recruit "masculine men" to their fantasy Fight Club.

Maybe that's what he's doing in Siberia?  

Have Trolls Overtaken Return of Kings?

One of my favorite past times has become to identify the trolls on Return of Kings.  The website is riddled with them, and the more blatant they are, the more fervent are the responses they elicit from the ROK's moronic simple-minded fan base.  Return of Kings is basically the equivalent of the World Wrestling Federation.  It doesn't matter if this stuff is real or not; it only has to deliver a predictable form of entertainment.

In his (?) post, "The Moment I Saw Women For What They Really Are," "Fry Koskenin" retreads the ground so familiar to Roosh and the other New Misogynists: the utter perfidy of the female sex.  In this particular story, our hero experiences his epiphany about the truly vile nature of women when a "fiery fit" former girlfriend coerces him into having (anal!) sex with her despite his suffering from a slipped disk: "My back, buttocks, and pelvis felt like they were filled with loose razor blades during every tentative thrust."* 

To top it off, this succubus proceeds to deride his unsatisfactory performance before storming off into the dark night:  "And then it occurred to me that I had brought a stealth predator into my sanctuary, and when I was most vulnerable to boot. She was not my ally and not my friend, and certainly not when my needs diverged from her most frivolous whims." 

Hey, when did the desire for sex become a "frivolous whim?" According to the "game" artists' version of evo-psych, we are all driven by the relentless messages emanating from our loins (because reproduction).

Fortunately, there were positive lessons to be learned:  "Now I laugh about all of this unnecessary strife, and take a certain sick joy in knowing that it’s unwise to ever fully relax in a woman’s presence.. It has liberated me from so many burdensome concerns, and for that I am grateful. You just can never fully trust what women are thinking or might do... And a bit of unease is always prudent when you know that a vampire is watching you sleep."

I would bet a significant amount of money (in my case, say, $100) that not only is "Fry Koskenin" not "a regular guy," but is not a guy at all, despite claims to be "a 41-year-old nuclear-engineer-turned-writer ... fond of intelligence, achievement, danger, and beauty, and not much else... [who] loves his motorcycle and despises communists."  The only part of Fry's post that is probably true is that he/she does have "an exemplary education."

This is not Matt Forney-level trolling.  This is far too carefully crafted.  And this particular troll has even gone to the trouble of creating a fake website. 
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*Is it possible that she was just trying to play Marilyn Monroe to his Jack Kennedy?  MM was said to have mischievously remarked, "I think I made his back feel better" after one of their trysts in the early sixties.

Trolling in the Manosphere

The other day I received an e-mail from a gentle reader who had just tumbled into the toxic waste dump that is the manosphere.  Specifically, she had found an article on Return of Kings by one "Raywolf" that purported to expose the cruel, bestial nature of womankind.  Although the article itself is horrible, it's pretty much run of the mill fodder for a website run by Roosh, and hardened veteran readers of the New Misogynists, like myself, will hardly raise an eyebrow.  This gentle reader, however, had then made the fatal error of reading the Comment Section.  (There is good reason that PZ Myers often implores his readers, "Don't read the comments!  Don't read the comments!")

But Gentle Reader had no way of knowing that she was proceeding into ever more dangerous terrain where no novice should venture without a seasoned guide (or at least a torch, a strong hand to hold, and a barf bag).  

She discovered comments by someone calling himself "Ruler" that disturbed even the other commentators since "Ruler" was clearly extolling the virtues of rape and was actually using that word, "rape."  (Because while the act of rape is fun, natural, and necessary, the word "rape" is generally verboten -- unless, of course, it is used to explain how rape is not "rape.")

I took a quick peek at the comments, and didn't know what the hell to think, so I turned the matter over to the webmistress of Bodycrimes, who is, like, five times smarter than I am, for her take on what "Ruler" was all about.  She graciously dashed off a brilliant assessment of the post, "Raywolf," and "Ruler" that I am re-posting here.  Please read it and please, please do not go over to the article on Return of Kings; rest assured the relevant passages have been summarized and extrapolated here:

Does misogyny cause reading problems?

I’ve been so busy lately I’ve mostly stopped reading Manosphere websites, much to the relief of Mr BC. But this morning I received an email about an article, so I went and took a look. The article in question confirmed my opinion, once again, that hard-core misogynists have something of a reading problem.

They want so badly to believe whatever it is that they’re reading is true, that they literally fail to comprehend what’s right in front of them.

The article in question is ‘Women Can’t Control Their Animal Instincts’ over at Return of Kings.com, written by one ‘raywolf’. Basically, the article is your common-or-garden women-hating tripe. Raywolf starts with an anecdote about how a pet lioness took a swipe at someone, to establish the fact that women can’t be trusted, and then he starts riffing on how women have had a negative impact on his own life.

None of his anecdotes make him look good. He details a broken marriage that was partly based on him marrying someone so he could get a diplomatic passport. (Thus proving he was much too young and dumb to marry, as he evidently didn’t realise – and perhaps still doesn’t – that the only non-spousal family members who can get an ‘A1′ passport are legal dependents a.k.a. children.) Then he talks about being taken advantage of by a flaky flatmate, and then about his relationship with a psycho woman who compelled him to make poor business decisions, which is why he missed out on being part of the global enterprise his former business partner then went on to build.

In other words, RayWolf is the last person any young man with prospects should be taking life advice from. Still, readers were quick to congratulate him on writing such an insightful and helpful article, as RoK readers are wont to do.

And then the weird thing happened.

A commenter called ‘Ruler’ came along and wrote this:

Men are gods and women are less than soulless beasts. But men are partly controlled by biology as well, in the matter of sex, as raywolf says. While rape where a male is the victim is a monstrous, unnatural act, men have a deep-seated, completely natural, biological need to rape girls and women, and should never be shamed or punished for this basic male right and need…

Now that’s some hard core misogyny right there! So hard core, that it even upset some RoK readers, who took ‘Ruler’ to task for advocating rape. This is RayWolf’s reply:

You have to be careful how you word statements like this….. the original point of a marriage contract was to show the women had offered herself up to the man, as and when he felt like it….. thus a man could basically force himself on his woman….. and women do actually like that kind of thing in the right context….. princesses were married off because it suited the politics of the day, and essentially their new husband ‘raped’ them on their wedding night…. (so much for the Disney princess fantasy…. ) but after a while the woman got experienced and grew to like it…. but none of this means you can go trolling the streets at night for pretty young things…… NO WAY!

In other words – way back when, aristocrats regularly raped one another, to their mutual satisfaction. But that doesn’t mean us plebs today could or should do it!

Nothing daunted, Ruler cheerfully responds by saying:

OK, good point. Don’t rape. But it is every man’s biological need to force sex on girls of his choosing, teaching her that she is less than nothing and is only here to serve men. And I am clearly not a troll, as I am only repeating what many on here have said, just mistakenly used the word “rape”.

See what Ruler did just then? Outed himself/herself as a troll. S/he gives it away right smack in the middle of a clearly sarcastic comment. At least one reader did understand it was a troll at work. And RayWolf was promptly called out at least once for suggesting that women grow to like forced sex, which is somewhat heartening to see.

RayWolf should have stopped at that point. The conversation was getting close to advocating violence and some readers were clearly uneasy. But RayWolf didn’t pick up on the tone. Which led him to write this:

Actually [forced sex] works brilliantly and i’ve tried it with girlfriends…. you obviously have to know them well, but forcing yourself on them, and forcing yourself inside her when she’s still tight, dry and trying to resist makes for great sex, and is very alpha…. the marriage contract was originally all about this act… AND… in my opinion the reason that most LTRs fail is because men don’t have the balls to do this more often… although admittedly it can be hard if she’s in a boner killing mood…..

Oh dear. Tricked into revealing his unsavoury sexual practices by someone who was obviously a troll.

Just why are young men taking advice from this man again?

This is something to bear in mind when reading the manosphere: it is riddled with trolls.  In other words, these guys are often hoaxing each other.  Who is "Ruler" and what is he/she playing at?  We can probably assume he/she is a "manosphere antagonizer" if not a "feminist sympathizer."  On the other hand, he may just be a bored lonely dude with a couple of hours to kill who, due to his own low esteem, finds it validating to "prove" he is smarter than a bunch of morons.  

And furthermore, as Ms. Bodycrimes points out, why are RoK's readers so eager to take advice from some random dude ("raywolf") who admits his own life, in every respect, is completely fucked up?  Why do they cluster at the odoriferous feet of Roosh, whose life by any rational measure and by his own admission is pretty damn miserable and unsatisfying, and whose central ambition at this point is to persuade Russia to take him in?

Once I had read Ms. Bodycrimes' post, I couldn't believe how I hadn't spotted the trollery myself!  Maybe because, no matter how hard I try, I cannot understand what motivates the New Misogynists, who have nothing to gain and everything to lose by adopting such bleak, amoral philosophies.

But paranoia is infectious.  As soon as I realized that "Ruler" was a troll, it made me wonder if my Gentle Reader was, too.  Was Gentle Reader one of Ruler's alters?  Because what could be more delightfully malicious than to get me to respond to a troll's comments by bewailing the new depths RoK had sunk to? Trolling x 2!

And guess what?  Gentle Reader really was a gentle reader, after all. The wolf in sheep's clothing was, after all, a lamb. Thank you, Gentle Reader, and I'm sorry I doubted you. 

By the way, if you are interested in following the New Misogynists, I advise you to start by reading "secondary sources" like David Futrelle's manboobz or any of the blogs listed to the right.  This helps "filter" the content and places it firmly in the mocking or critical light it deserves.  Direct exposure to the manosphere can be psychologically traumatizing for the uninitiated.  I'm serious!

Meanwhile, the sun is shining and my papers are calling, and bless us everyone.

What American Women Watch On Netflix

So over on Return of Kings, a fellow who goes by the commanding handle "General Stalin" posits that a gentleman can know a lot about a lady by her Netflix queue.

That's probably true, and the same goes for a person's library record.  Every time I pass the pleasant young man at my local library's circulation desk, I have to avert my eyes because he knows more about me than my doctor does.

Anyway, General Stalin claims to have a unique insight into the psychology of American women because a girl he "casually dated" left her Netflix password on his laptop.  Not only did he get to enjoy months of free streaming, he knew exactly what his ex and her roomies were watching (and presumably thinking).

That General Stalin is one nosy dude!  Not to mention cheap. And it occurs to me that confessing to this seems oddly more embarrassing than once failing to return a library book, but I digress...  Truth be told, I would have been sorely tempted to behave in a similarly dubious fashion, especially if I had some "unfinished business" with the ex.

The General summarizes his findings as follows:

First, young American women watch a lot of "sexually deviant movies and documentaries."  The General was dismayed to find that "a small group of average white single American girls, who grew up in nice neighborhoods with good families, cared far more about sex than romance. I hardly ever saw a romantic comedy or critically acclaimed tear-jerker on there."  

I'm not a young woman, but even when I was I generally loathed romantic comedies and treacly melodramas (with a few notable exceptions).  But I did, and still do, treat myself to the occasional kinky documentary.  Ever since my ten year old psyche was permanently scarred by "Mondo Cane," I've had a predilection for viewing the bizarre margins of human behavior.  I have watched more than one documentary about "sex dolls", for example, a phenomenon I find morbidly fascinating. 

Second in popularity, according to General Stalin's informal survey, were independent movies with "strong female leads" especially those that featured women overcoming perilous situations, like "Girl With The Dragon Tattoo."  This makes perfect sense to me.  People (not just women) enjoy watching characters they can identify with who use their wits and fortitude to triumph over evil.  From this, the General concludes that "single women want to be fucked raw and treated like filth by bad-boy miscreants, but they also want to make these men suffer for not showing them respect and honoring their strength and independence."  WTF?  I would come to the opposite conclusion.  Both men and women love watching horror and suspense for a number of reasons, but the desire to actually be a real victim (or perpetrator) is not one of them.

I've already confessed that horror and true crime are my guilty pleasures.  My Netflix queue is jammed with unwatched "Disappeared" and "Deadly Women" episodes.  Ann Rule books are my "go to" trashy reading.  I scare the bejeezus out of myself for an hour, then turn on the lights and realize how safe and cozy my life actually is, have a hot cup of cocoa and sleep like a baby.  Sadly, my partner does not share my passion, so I have to indulge myself when she is not around.

Finally, the girls whose Netflix viewing he was obsessively monitoring had a taste, broadly shared by the American public, for "Reality TV." 

OK, I agree with General Stalin, that is just plain indefensible.  I'm proud to say that I never watch Reality TV shows.  Except for the ones about plucky dwarfs and adorable polygamists.

BTW, why can these guys never discuss American women's media tastes without referencing Sex and the City, a show that has been off the air for a decade?  It's beginning to seem like a kind of tic.

General Stalin describes himself as "a passionate but misanthropic cynic who is tired and beaten down by the shortcomings of Western civilization, currently living a life of quiet desperation."  I feel his pain.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm right in the middle of "Blue is the Warmest Color,"and I'm just getting to the "good parts" if you know what I mean (and I know that you do).

Too Funny Not to Share

If you haven't seen the new website of "Femgoddess" Desiree Meyers-Liebowitz, it isn't for her lack of self-promotion on twitter.   She only has one post up so far, but it's designed to create quite a stir in the PUA community:  "The Five Ugliest Pickup Artists".  It's a much funnier (and much meaner) riposte to the Return of Kings post that started me on my own road to ruin over a year ago.

My initial question was, Who exactly is Desiree sending up?  Because she seems to be making as much fun of the "fat acceptance movement" and the "BBW" scene as she is of the New Misogynists.  In other words, I was pretty skeptical that Desiree Meyers-Liebowitz was the unapologetic cuckolding feminist fatty that she claimed to be.

I had no idea who the creator could be of (what I initially assumed was) this brilliant caricature, or even his/her gender.  For if "The Five Ugliest Pickup Artists" she eviscerates in her post represent the average woman's worst nightmare, Desiree's online persona is custom-built to be the average manospherean's fever dream of what a "feminist" is:  A "gender studies" major, she has scored herself a "beta" lawyer husband "Harold" who, when not busying himself in the kitchen, is rubbing her feet and, indeed, embracing every inch of her gloriously wanton, gluttonous self, while she lolls on the couch stuffing herself with cheetos and entertaining a stream of eager swains.

Then I did a little "research" (that is, idle stalking googling) and I learned that Desiree has been lurking in the manosphere for years, even posting on Il Douche's Forum in 2012 (back before he decreed that vaginas defiled the Inner Sanctum*).  So it appears that she has either been "trolling" these guys for quite a while, or else Desiree Meyers Liebowitz really is "for real."

It doesn't matter either way, I guess.  My only question for Desiree at this point is, What took you so long?  And what will you post next?
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* And before he thought to explicitly exclude "homos" or even ban his own members if they stooped to respond to a female commenter who had somehow slipped through security.  Are there no lengths to which this freak won't go to maintain "ritual purity?"

Back to the Kitchen Ladies!

So this week is "Return to Traditional Values" over at Return of Kings, and the boys are twittering up a storm.  This is the sweet, nostalgic side to the New Misogynists.   They just want to find a girl like Mom Grandma.  And judging by the success of Domestic Goddesses like Nigella Lawson and Martha Stewart, there are a lot of women who share this fantasy of Getting Back to the Kitchen.  Too bad the New Economy makes that pretty much impossible for all but the most affluent.

1. Retweeted by Roosh

   John Glanton ‏@ThenTheJudgment 5h

   Does being a partner in a dual-careerist household of symmetrical domestic duties and expectations sound romantic to you? #backtothekitchen

   In fact, it does to me! 
2. Retweeted by Roosh

   runsonmagic ‏@runsonmagic 6h

   When you die, it will be your children, not your co-workers, who mourn for you. 

   Funny, I was just talking about this last night with a girlfriend of mine who is also childless, and we agreed that counting on your kids to mourn you (or even come around and visit you in the nursing home) is kind of an iffy proposition. 
3. Retweeted by Roosh

   Emmanuel Goldstein ‏@Goldsteineum 6h

   The death of a grandmother elicits heartfelt eulogies of the foods she lovingly prepared. #BackToTheKitchen

   Expand 

   Not my grandmothers, neither of whom was ever considered a good cook (nor was my own mother).  My father claimed that he ate so many fried potatoes and eggs as a child it gave him a headache.  My paternal grandmother later became a strict vegan who survived on pots of gluey oatmeal and soy yogurt.  The only scrap of culinary heritage worth keeping from my grandmothers were their recipes for fruitcake and divinity.  Seriously, I think Americans in general are much better cooks than they used to be -- when they have time.  Sadly, most of us are working outside the home and simply don't have the leisure or energy to spend hours planning and preparing meals.  And all of the nagging from the boys in the manosphere isn't going to change that picture.  I mean, seriously, how are these fellas proposing to support their "traditional" wives?  Even television's favorite Mormon, Kody Brown, depends on the salaries of two of his four wives, and he's got his own reality show.  
   
   BTW, an excellent response to this RoK campaign can be found at Parodoxy. 

Turning "No" Into "Yes"

So yesterday Facebook took away Roosh's "privileges" for a full 24 hours -- a kind of "time out" -- because of complaints about LMR (Last Minute Resistance), a "rape guide" by Return of Kings author Vincent Vinturi.  Then Amazon, alerted by Huff Po UK, decided to pull the book from its inventory.

Needless to say. the boys over at ROK are pretty steamed at this "attack" on their "freedom of speech", while the gals over at Jezebel are crowing.

Personally, it is a matter of complete indifference to me whether Amazon carries this book or not.  There are plenty of books available that I would probably find even more despicable and offensive. And it's not like this notion (that men can overcome women's initial objections through coercion) is a new or novel approach or isn't the stuff of a hundred years' worth of popular fantasy. 

What these boys don't understand is that media conveyers like Facebook, Twitter, and Amazon are corporations which have the right, nay, the obligation, to refuse custom that they believe will hurt their bottom line.  It probably took Amazon about five minutes flat to figure out that the paltry profits it would get from this execrable self-published tome weren't worth the shit-load of bad PR its existence was creating among its literate customer base, who actually buy real books (and lots of other stuff).  Du-uh!

I read some of the comments over at Huff Po UK.  One male commentator complained rather peevishly that women "always say no when they really mean yes."  In fact, neither women nor men always do anything, but I do understand why some men accuse some women of being disingenuous.  

As a former proud, card-carrying slut, I have had loads of sex (mostly meaningless and quite forgettable) with a lots of different men.  I have never said "no" when I meant "yes".  I have occasionally said "no" when I meant, "Maybe later -- I'm not sure yet."  And once I did back out at the very last minute because a prospective partner smelled really bad, which I didn't realize until he had taken off his shoes, and I'm sorry, but ew, no no no.  And occasionally I said "no" when I was pretty sure I was going to say "yes" on the third date because -- well, I didn't want the guy to dismiss me as a "slut."

This is a topic that I wish the manosphereans and the young ladies they lust after & resent could have a really honest conversation about.  

Gentlemen, I will concede this:  Young women need to take ownership of their desires.  A woman who, at the last minute, says "no" while secretly hoping the man will ram through her explicit refusal is being fundamentally dishonest with and unfair to both herself and her partner.  And, frankly, if I were a guy, and I suspected a woman was playing me like that, I wouldn't like her one little bit.  At the very least, I wouldn't trust her any farther than I could throw her.  She sounds like a bad bet for a lot of reasons, and the last thing a man should do, under those circumstances, is proceed to fuck her.  This is where I want to grab these boys by their short hairs, and say, I know you're horny, but don't be a moron!  

Trust me, fellas:  Women want sex too.  A woman who truly wants to have sex with you, and understands that you will not proceed without her unambiguous permission, will step up to the plate.  And if such a woman loses respect for you because your deference strikes her as somehow unmanly, well, this is a person with some issues you are better off staying well clear of. 

Nobody has ever died of blue balls.  In fact, back in the day before people expected instant gratification of every imaginable appetite, all that built up "frustrating" tension could result in some ultimately intense, explosive release.  Try to think of sex as a ride, not just a destination.

And so what if you "miss" a particular sexual opportunity and -- the horror! -- it never presents itself again?  What, are you still crying about the ice cream cone you dropped at the State Fair when you were in second grade?  Don't be such a fucking baby.

By the way, I do find the way Roosh exhorts his flying monkeys to push back against critics quite chilling.  He and Matt Forney seem to have taken a cue from Paul Elam of A Voice for Men by advocating the intimidation and harassment of young women he identifies as "hostile" to his "movement."  There's a weird sexual sadism vibe here too: he tends to target the younger, more attractive girls for these campaigns. 

Today:

1. Retweeted by Roosh

   
   

   Return Of Kings ‏@ReturnOfKings Jan 31

   @saracnelson abused her position as Huffington Post blogger to cause financial harm to one of our contributors. She may come to regret it.

   Expand
   

   • Reply
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2. Retweeted by Roosh

   Return Of Kings ‏@ReturnOfKings 7h

   We're currently collecting information on @SaraCNelson, who yesterday attacked a ROK contributor http://www.rooshvforum.com/thread-32624.html …

   Expand

Yesterday:

1. 
   

   • Reply
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2. Roosh ‏@rooshv 6h

   @SaraCNelson started the attack against VinceNnt. Please send me any info you have about her to roosh@rooshv.com to aid our response.

   Expand 
   
   What a nasty, paranoid little shit he is. 
   
   

Abortion, a Male Perogative?

Over at Return of Kings this week, there are two posts about abortion running concurrently:  "How to Convince a Girl to Get an Abortion" by someone who calls himself "bacon," and "How to Fight Abortion" by regular ROK contributor Athlone McGinnis. 

The bottom line: Abortion is always the woman's fault, and it's always wrong for a woman to seek an abortion unless the responsible male partner wants her to -- in which case, it is wrong for her to refuse to comply.    

I really don't believe most of the readership at ROK cares two figs about the rights of fetuses, and in fact these are the kinds of articles ROK readers have been complaining about. (Such downers!)  What they do care about is controlling women, and particularly women's sexuality.  In that respect they are no different than many "mainstream" conservatives and religious fundamentalists. 

I wish there were more non-permanent birth control options for men (and for women). Nobody should be forced to parent against his or her will, and I have a low opinion of women who accidentally-on-purpose let themselves get pregnant in order to secure commitment from men (and yes, this happens).  I understand condoms are a desensitizing drag, and, as Nina Hartley recently pointed out, not ideal for female partners either, but for fuck's sake, grow up and quit railing against reality.  Biology is often unfair.  And it strikes me that Roosh, with his much vaunted degree in microbiology ("a man of science" indeed!) could have chosen to apply his training to help develop better contraceptive methods instead of squandering his life promoting irresponsible sexual behavior.

ROK: A Kinder, Gentler Place?

Roosh V is "on hiatus," his exact whereabouts unknown.  Maybe he's in Moldova learning the fine art of gun-running.  He is definitely casting about for his next scam.  

Meanwhile, is it just my imagination, or is Roosh V's "other blog," Return of Kings, becoming a kinder, gentler place?  It seems to be filling up with articles about how to set up a "bachelor" kitchen, healthy eating "on the run," the joys of the great outdoors, and the relative merits of "soylent" as a food substitute.  One today exhorted readers to quit whining about their jobs and start using their leisure time more fruitfully!  Plus a very idiosyncratic list of coma-inducing songs that are supposed to be conducive to lovemaking (see David Futrelle's take on that one.

Even Matt Forney recently devoted an entire post to the art of shaving using mineral oil instead of shaving cream (which believe- you-me I read with interest).  Of course the comments section is another matter entirely...  Tread there at your own peril. 

Isn't Baking Soda Just A Little Bit Beta?

Guess what the lead story was today on Return of Kings:

a.  5 Feminists Who Will Kill Your Boner
b.  5 Steps To Achieving Killer Abs
c.  5 Big Ass Books to Read Before You Die
d.  5 Surprising Uses For Baking Soda

It is really cute!  First the author, Mikael, assures his skeptical readers that he doesn't expect them to actually own any baking soda because  "Well women use [it] for baking, let’s get serious we’re men, we don’t bake, we go to the store. But being as men don’t generally bake, not every man has baking soda in their home as a bachelor, and you should."  

Re-read the previous passage and consider the following information:  Mikael has a B.A. in English Literature.  He even has his own blog, in which he writes about Education ("Learn More While Doing Less").  He even has a job that allows him to listen to his Ipod all day so that he can "multi-task" on his employer's dime time.  Pretty sweet.

All right, never mind the comma splices and run on sentences, Mikael's got some damn good tips about baking soda.  Of course, being a woman of advanced years, this wisdom has already been passed down to me over the ages through my mother and grandmother and about a bazillion newspaper fillers.

Anyway, in case, being a guy, you haven't considered baking soda since you constructed that volcano in fifth grade, baking soda has a number of possible uses:

1.  Deodorant

I'm not sure why someone would want to use baking soda as deodorant, but I suppose if you're stuck on the edge of the Empty Quarter, where soap, water, and basic grooming products are unavailable but where baking supplies (perversely) abound, and you don't mind the inevitable "grit factor," this works.  At least it works according to Roosh, who apparently dealt with this particular application in some length back in 2011 (I must have missed that essential pearl of Roosh wisdom).  "It is good to know in a pinch one always has options."  Indeed!

2.  Tooth Whitener

I've actually used baking soda as an ad hoc dentifrice now and then.  I've never been impressed with the results though, and it leaves a weird residue on your teeth.  Don't over do it, at any rate:  You don't want to grind off all your enamel.

3.  Mosquito Bite Treatment

"Mosquito's [sic] suck plain and simple."

Hmm...  I'm very allergic to mosquito bites, and in desperation have tried just about anything to alleviate the itch, including baking soda.  Unfortunately, I didn't find it any more effective than bleach, toothpaste, alcohol, or camomile lotion.  Icing followed by cortisone cream works best for me.  Better yet, avoid getting bitten in the first place.

4.  Refrigerator Deodorizer

"Let it absorb the stank [sic] of your horrendous cooking leftovers."  Wait a minute, I thought a real man doesn't cook (that's the second function of females) --. or else, when he does, he's a much better cook than any woman could hope to be.  I've actually wasted boxes of soda to prevent my frig from offending, but I find as with 4. (above), prevention (i.e., throwing away "stanky" food) is more effective than treatment.

5.  To Extinguish a Fire

"Just throw a whole boat load on it and boom, fire be gone."  

As someone who has started more than her share of grease fires over the years, unless it's a very small fire, you still need a portable fire extinguisher.  Or a Cosco-sized bag of baking soda.  Just sayin'.

There you have it.  Were you as "surprised" as I was?