Observe But Don't Engage!

That's the opinion of my partner regarding commenting on manosphere blogs.

She's worried about my safety of course. She also thinks that by engaging with them, I am egging them on.  She thinks I'm on a Joan of Arc trip.  "Don't make yourself bait for a nut case," she pleads.  There is merit to this argument.

She assures me, as does my young male colleague, that the "manosphere" is a tiny group of delusional and paranoid misfits who are mostly all bluff, anyway.   "But there seem to be thousands of them," I protest.  "Maybe, but I doubt it," says my male colleague.  "I'm a guy, and I'm all over the internet, and I've never heard of any of this crap.  Anyway, there are millions of other people."

I know thousands is a lot less than millions, but it still seems like rather a lot.  Of course, if most of these guys were dragged out from behind their computers and exposed to the full light of day, it's likely I'd find them more pitiful than threatening.  Although they fantasize a lot about running away to various poor countries where the living is easy and the girls are cheap, I suspect most of them never go farther than the local convenience store for more beer.

For example, they idealize angry old gasbags like Mark Minter, an MGTOW who brags about living off the local economy in Colombia, and you know what?  I too tried escaping from the U.S. (in my twenties, a lifetime ago), but it got pretty damn old, pretty damn fast.  In the hothouse environment of most expatriate communities, it takes about two weeks to recreate whatever social straight jacket you thought you'd escaped, only now it's even worse because there's no reliable electricity, hot water, or public libraries.  You learn after a while that wherever you go, there you are.  

If it seems like you're an outcast in your own land, and everything and everyone is rubbing you the wrong way all the time, and you are casting about for someone or something to blame, take it from me:  Look in the mirror.

Don't take these buffoons seriously, I think.  And then I remember, wait, Isn't that what a lot of Germans were telling each other in Berlin in 1930?

I've promised my partner to step away from this for the sake of my sanity, but I'm of two minds.  Does one just ignore bullies, hoping they'll get discouraged and go away?   On the other hand, do they "win" if they chill or silence feminists' public voices?  I'm thinking of course of the redheaded protester doxed and harassed by "A Voice for Men" readers this week.   

How can these guys scoff at the existence of "rape culture" when their widespread response to rude or uppity women is to advocate gang-raping, torturing, and murdering them?

The answer is, of course:  They don't care.  They're not looking for truth, or compassion, or mutual understanding.  They are angry white guys who have lost (or never developed) the capacity to engage in rational debate or self-analysis.  That leaves them to spinning fantasies of escape and revenge rather than doing the hard work of engaging in any effective way with the rest of society or taking any positive actions.

I am the cancer that is killing American academia...

Or so says Matt Forney, in response to a comment I left on his blog giving his most recent post a C-.   

"Herds of rabbits???" I wrote in imaginary red ink in the imaginary margins of his unimaginably weak essay.  "Logic?" "Over generalizing!" and "Please support this assertion."

I know, I know: quit picking on Matt Forney!  He has enough problems, especially now that half of Portland Reddit is about to tar, feather, and ride him out of town on a rail.  And God knows I have enough grading to do without taking on another recalcitrant student; it's not like I'm getting paid by the head.

Yet I can't help laughing.  Cancer!  Really?  In typically hyperbolic, manospheric fashion, Matt will never reach for a fly-swatter when he can fire his really big cannon.  
  
Now I realize I'm not just some overworked, underpaid, ineffectual frump with a crummy M.A.  Rather, I am a curiously powerful, even dangerous creature, part of a vast malignancy invading the highest portals of learning, stealthily inserting the tentacles of feminism and liberalism into every nook and cranny.  The horror! The horror!

In fact, when I say that I "toil in the basement of academe," even that's a stretch:  I teach remedial English in a community college (or, as one wag put it, "13th grade with ashtrays").  Which means that going to the manosphere for recreational reading is, for me, a kind of busman's holiday.  It also means that Young Matt greatly overestimates my Power to influence young minds, either for Good or Evil.

Trust me, had I such powers, my students would recognize comma splices by now.

Cancer is no joke, of course.  At the moment, I have four-count 'em-four friends who are either in treatment for, or in remission from, cancers of various lethal sorts plus two peers who have died in the past two years (I really don't have many friends, so that is a lot.)   And since everyone in my circle is aging at an even faster rate than I am, "cancer" is likely to become an ever-increasing presence in all our lives.  Bummer.

"Everybody's dead or dying and I don't feel so well myself," as my mother used to grimly chirp -- before she died too.

Back to grading essays!  I am twenty down, fifty to go.  Each essay takes at least 15 minutes to read and mark: you do the math.

The Arrogance of Youth

One of the tropes of the New Misogynists is that attractive "quality" women, with their impossibly high standards, often miss the boat.  They turn thirty (or forty, or whatever), only to find themselves alone on the dock, all weathered and nasty and flea-bitten, while the ship of true happiness (a marriage to one of them, presumably) sails away. 

In Roosh's forum, he reproduced a post from "Date Lab" from a very attractive middle aged blonde named "Carla" who was reporting that she had recently met a nice fellow.  My response to Roosh's snark attack follows.  

Date Lab: 53 y/o woman wants magical spark
Author	Message

Roosh Innovative Casanova Posts: 8,346 Joined: Aug 2008 Reputation: 91

Roosh snark:  53 year old women still have standards? Carla quote: I told [her new beau] I’m trying to figure out why it took [Date Lab] so long to find someone for me Roosh snark: Not all mysteries of the universe will be solved. Carla quote: Definitely similar sense of humor. [That’s] important to me. A lot of guys don’t get my humor. Roosh snark: If enough people don't get your humor, at what point is it time to accept you don't have it? Carla quote: I didn’t feel a chemical attraction or that spark where sometimes you know right away. Roosh snark: This bitch is almost dead and still waiting for the spark!    (See what I mean about the braying donkey?) --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unless she's been diagnosed with Stage 3 cancer, a 53 year old woman is hardly "almost dead."  Statistically, she is likely to live another 35 years, and statistically she is likely to outlive her male partner.  She could very well outlive you, Roosh. Wouldn't that be a burn!  But who among us knows when he is going to die?  (Note -- topic for my other blog.) I do see from her picture (which I have deleted to respect her privacy) that, although she's two years older than her new beau, she looks a decade younger.  In fact, she's an attractive woman for any age, and I'll bet he's feeling very lucky to have met her.  Is that what bothers you Roosh?  That a woman old enough to be your mother is sexually viable? But here's the truth:  Love is precious at any stage of life. And as long as we're alive, and our hearts are open, and the desire is there, life is full of endless possibilities for love.  Here's something else I want to say, Roosh, and you may choose not to believe it, but the fact is, A woman can always get laid.  Yup, you heard me right:  If a woman wants sex (and only sex), it hardly matters how old she is.  As distasteful as it is, them's the realities of the sexual marketplace: ladies' choice, men's opportunity.  Sorry about that! Hell, I'm even older than the lady above plus I'm fat, and if all I wanted was a Casual Encounter, it would take me about thirty minutes to arrange one.  Not only can an older woman get laid, she can be loved.  It's rather harder -- at any age -- but I also know this, from personal experience, to be true. I'm not sure why evidence that people over fifty seek -- and often find -- "that spark" vexes you.  I would rather that it encouraged you.  You are approaching middle age yourself.  Aging is tough regardless of gender.  Is that why you're scared? And as for referring to a woman your mother's age as "the bitch..."  May I remind you that you are not an adolescent anymore?  Do you still talk like that to your mother?

A Modern Love Story

I have a younger friend.  I'll call her Becky.  I've known her about ten years.  She's from the midwest, is tall, slender, auburn haired.  At the age of forty, she still looks very much like the barrel-racing rodeo princess she was as a teenager.  To my annoyance, she still gets carded in clubs.

Around the time I became friends with Becky, she met "Mark."  Mark is a couple of years older and also from the midwest.  He's been bald and rather pudgy since he was in his twenties.  As a result, he doesn't look much older now than he did when he graduated from college, but he's still rather self-conscious.  Both Becky and Mark are passionate about hiking, wine-tasting, and sex (not necessarily in that order).

Mark was enamored with Becky from the get-go.  In terms of appearance, she was the kind of woman he had always wanted but never thought he could win: real trophy wife material.  Becky, on the other hand, never seemed quite as enthusiastic about Mark, and she definitely had zero interest in being a trophy wife (she made her own income, thank you).

Ten years ago, Mark was doing very well in commercial real estate, pulling in $200,000/year plus bonuses.  That was a lot of money in our circle, and I'll admit I was a bit envious when Mark sent Becky exotic blooms for no reason at all, or swept her off for all-expense-paid vacations in Europe.

But Becky was always complaining about Mark.  He drank too much.  He didn't share his feelings enough.  He was too conventional.  He wanted to get married and she didn't.  He was bossy and critical.  He wanted her to play hostess at his parties.  His friends and colleagues were pretentious.  That sort of thing.

Yet their relationship persisted, off and on, for a decade.  Finally, Becky announced she'd had it with Mark, and they broke off.  Becky took off for North Dakota to take care of aging parents.  We thought it was kind of a shame.  We liked Mark and we missed being invited to his parties.  However, it was a relief not to listen to Becky complaining about him anymore.

Then the recession hit.  Overnight, Mark lost his job and his prospects of finding another one were bleak.  He was so devastated he started seeing a therapist, which wasn't the sort of thing we expected Mark to do.

It took Mark a year to find another job, and that was in the non-profit sector for about $45,000/year, a fraction of what he was used to making.

And that's when Becky decided she really missed Mark after all, for all his imperfections, and they got back together, and have been together ever since in apparent harmony.

When I ask Becky what accounted for her change of heart, she shrugs.  He's still bald and he still drinks too much and he still nags her about getting married.  And now when they go out, it's dutch treat: no flowers or expensive restaurants.   

But apparently, she likes him better now that he makes less money.  She's always nattering on about how darn important his work in low-income housing is.  Go figure!

So much for hypergamy.

  

Roosh: America's Ambassador of Love to Romania

I hate to link to one of Roosh's posts, cuz I know it just gives him more hits, but the videos from Romania are pretty funny, especially the one where he wanders around a half-empty subterranean shopping mall looking for girls. All I can think about is, He's paid a thousand dollars to fly to Europe and he's in a deserted underground mall?  WTF?  I'm not sure what I'd be doing there, but I'd definitely want to do it above ground, in daylight, where I could actually see something.

In one video he is a guest on a local TV show, sandwiched between two lissome Romanian girls, and being thrown questions in broken English that are meant to show the audience what a perfect tool he is.  I'm pretty sure he realizes they're making fun of him, but he is just so damn happy to be on camera he can't stop grinning. (It warms my heart to see Roosh smile, but when he laughs, he exposes his teeth and tosses his head back, so that one can't help but picture a braying donkey.)

Again, I don't know what I would wear if I were invited to appear on Romanian television, but I'm sure that whatever it was, it would be clean.  Maybe Roosh's faded t-shirt and peculiarly unflattering jeans are freshly laundered, but they don't look like it.  There he is, complaining about what slobs American women are, and look!  He's showing the Romanian public that American men are equally slobby.  I don't think he's doing American guys any favors over there. And what's with the crotch shot?  He has spread his legs just as far apart as he can, like he's saving a seat on the bus for a friend who's getting on later.  It doesn't even look like a comfortable posture.  

Oh God now I sound like his mother.  And we all know what Roosh thinks of his mother.

In his favor, Roosh is definitely showing a flair for comedy in these videos. Maybe he can get himself cast in a European sitcom, playing himself ?  I'm serious!  It could happen!

Seals: An Animal I Love

Reading manosphere blogs makes my head spin.  And not in a good way.

I'll watch this whenever I need to go to My Happy Place.  I only wish the clip were longer, so I didn't need to keep clicking the restart...

Don't Get Me Wrong, I Love Dogs!

Whenever the topic of gender came up, my old boyfriend, Paul, used to assert that,  "Men are dogs."  Our ensuing argument always followed along the same lines, with me protesting, "Not all men are dogs!  You're not a dog."  "I am a dog," Paul would counter, "because I am a man.  And all men are dogs."  (By insisting that men were dogs, Paul was claiming men were slaves to their dominant, hormone-driven instincts.  Or something like that.)  After a few rounds, I gave up trying to convince Paul to take a more evolved stance on the matter, and after a couple of years, boredom and frustration with Paul's distorted logic and lack of sophistication took its toll, and I broke off with him.

Whether comparing men with dogs (or rabbits), or women with hamsters (or chickens or snakes), barnyard analogies render any argument meaningless.  They are simply ways to "dehumanize" the other so that you don't have to treat them as individuals with unique qualities and experiences worthy of consideration.  While it's true that humans, like wolves, are pack animals, as any (reputable) social scientist will tell you, to understand the origins of our own behaviors, we are better off studying the higher primates, i.e., chimpanzees. (I'm a bonobo myself.)

And yet-- and yet--

Today I found myself wondering if Paul wasn't right.  Men in groups can certainly act like dogs in packs.  I have four (male) dogs myself.  Each dog, on his own, is a sweet and distinct individual.  As a group, however (Anyone say "kibbies?") they form a howling, snarling mob bent on chaos and destruction, impervious to either reason or protocol.  

Roosh recently got a couple of e-mails which he reproduced in part in his forum.  Apparently they were from a male friend of one of the "conquests" Roosh had described in a book.  What the sender's messages lacked in coherence and literacy, he made up in sincerity.

Sample of what the "white knighter" wrote to Roosh:

"I hope you [Roosh] feel bad for what you did. You betrayed her.... Do you ever think of the consequences you create when you do this? What pain you create?...  I believe this is a form of terrorism towards other countries and to the people you have hurt already. Terrorism is defined as creating terror in people and that is what you do when you write about your conquest. It is the woman's fault too, to fall for your game and they have had a choice to sleep with you, but it is not fair to them that you write about it without their permission...What you did to her was uncalled for.  You scared her... When you write your books, please warn them or at least send them a book so that way they can take steps to prepare for the shame you might bring them. .. to be published in your books of accomplishments with women would make any woman feel cheep, used, and disgraced..."

These tidbits are the bones that Roosh throws to his troops, who slavishly leap into the fray like... well, like a pack of dogs.  A grindingly predictable thread follows, in which the Roosh's minions deride the "beta orbiting" e-mailer's masculinity and dignity (for protesting the treatment of his friend), and lavish praise on Roosh, All Hail to the Chief, etc., ad nauseum.  In this way, Roosh uses a "threat" to the Group Think to reinforce his own authority.  He's very shrewd that way (part of why he's scary).

Ironically, the "hive mind" of females is a persistent trope among misogynists.

I can only hope that on some level, some of of these Rooshites realize:  Hey, he [the victim's friend] has a point...  Maybe it's not very manly or heroic to exploit women that way...  I wouldn't like it if it were my sister / my friend / my daughter Roosh was exploiting sexually and monetarily. .. 

(While some manosphere bloggers do concede that Roosh isn't the type of guy they'd want their sisters to marry, they don't seem able to take empathy any further.)