Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid

So I'm meandering through the Mysterious Forest of Twitter (because I will do anything to avoid marking papers) when I stumble across a tweet by a self-styled, Las Vegas-based playboy (whose first name is probably what he is not practicing, and whose last name is pretty much the epitome of posthumous cool).  This particular specimen of machismo has a manosphere blog, too, of course, where he promotes his e-books and classes.  His latest post teaches men "How To Have A Three Way With Strippers."  I didn't read it since I'm not planning a trip to Sin City anytime soon, but I would hazard to guess that it's all a matter of having the right party favors.

I recognized his moniker because he was one of the boys who was outraged by Roosh's little hoax.  But now he's done an about-face, urging his followers to "Treat Roosh right.  I'd take a bullet for him.  Don't fuck with him or fuck with me. And trust me, you don't want to fuck with him."

Now that got my attention, because I reckon I'm somewhere on Roosh's Shit List.  And at least by his standards, I've already "fucked with him" a bit.  

And "take a bullet for him," isn't that a bit... melodramatic?  I mean, under what circumstances might that be necessary?  Is Roosh a masculine lifestyle guru, or a war lord?

What are these guys so afraid of, I wonder?  That they'll be doxxed and their Google-able identities slimed?

Trust me, fellas, it isn't as bad as you fear.

Oops!  Breaking news!  Looks like the Las Vegas playboy has just been doxxed himself!  And not by some nasty feminist either!

Anyway, poor guy, I'm certainly not going to compound his misery here.  After all, we can all agree that doxxing is a terrible thing to do, a cowardly and despicable action, and as a sympathetic compadre pointed out, [tsk-tsk!] just goes to show how some people have way too much time on their hands!

I don't think this is going to help.

Now You Tell Me!

In case you're in NYC, you may still have time to hustle your bustle down to the White Man March.  It's been organized by Kyle Hunt, a 30-year-old graduate of Amherst College with a double major in psychology and theater and dance.  (Hey, wait a minute, aren't those sort of "girly" interests for a manly white supremacist?  On the other hand, they're probably good preparation for someone launching a fledgling career producing idiotic spectacles to incite the most moronic elements of society.)   Of course, they've got signs, and those are pretty hilarious too (although not quite as hilarious as the MRA signs).

Not your typical product of an expensive liberal education.

Dragnet Nation

If you missed Bill Moyers' interview with Julia Angwin, the author of Dragnet Nation, it's well worth watching.  The worst news?  It's pretty much impossible to "opt out."

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).

Now This Is Scary

Looks like A Nice Guy, doesn't he?

I can mostly dismiss the New Misogynists as a pretty marginal bunch of losers, but then a story comes along that makes me realize some of them actually exercise authority and influence in The Real World. And that is scary. Take the case of Mike Maggio, a judge from Arkansas who was recently doxxed and revealed to be the author of the kind of blithely horrible racist and misogynistic comments that are the fodder of most manosphere blogs. Shivering in the cold wind of his exposure, he is ineffectually struggling to maintain his position in the Corridors of Power by issuing the type of (non)apologies these idiots are wont to do.  The author of This Ruthless World discusses this phenomenon -- sure to become more common in the near future -- in her typically incisive fashion.  And when it rains, it pours: the embattled judge is now facing an onslaught of unrelated complaints of misconduct and civil suits because, in addition to being a complete dick about women and African-Americans, he also seems to be incompetent at his job.

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?
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* 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?"

Is This the Worst Relationship Advice Ever?

A couple of weeks ago, our favorite "Game Master" challenged his readers, "Are You The Player Or Are You Getting Played?"

There are only two roles that can exist in any male-female relationship:

• The player
• The person who gets played  

(This post seems deliciously ironic in light of the fact that it was quickly followed by the writer and his co-conspirator Tuthmosis "playing" the entire Roosh V and Return of Kings readership, as though to drive home the point in the most humiliating manner that this "zero-sum game" is not confined to sexual relationships.)

The man who is "a winner" gets to establish all terms, chief among them "the frequency and depravity of sex," the opportunity to "degrade her in bed to your satisfaction." 

Wow. Let's just get past this unfortunate choice of words -- this is Roosh, after all --  and concede (for the 100th time) that this is a person who not only hates women, but really hates the sexual act itself.  For how can one person "degrade" another without degrading himself?  How morally bankrupt and perverse is a person who perceives the act of sex as an opportunity to "degrade" another human being?

"There is no other role that you can fill. There is no 50/50."

In fact, I have seen (though thankfully few) relationships in which the individuals involved DID take turns exploiting and humiliating each other tit for tat.  But I didn't get the impression either party was enjoying himself/herself much.

A relationship in which one party pulls all the strings all the time is going to get tedious even for (indeed, especially for) the one in charge.  That's why it strikes me that doms have a much harder "job" than subs do.  That's why there is always a bigger market for "tops" than "bottoms."

"Remember that time when you started off as the player, but then you got played in the end? I know why that happened. It’s because you stopped giving her the game that got her in bed in the first place."

Now here Roosh actually touches on something that I can recognize as a kind of truth:  To keep the other's interest, especially in the early stages of a relationship, one must remain a little at bay.  It is human nature that we don't value what is too easily obtained.  Courtship is a series of small tests; it is a dance in which one partner steps forward, the other back (and reverse).  And even later, if and when commitment and trust are established, the roles of "giver" vs. "receiver" tend to fluctuate. Among many contented couples I have seen, one partner is always more "in love" than the other, and that works well too -- so long as the power balance is not too lop-sided.  50/50?  Probably not realistic.  20/80?  Not uncommon at all.

I also think Roosh has a point when he claims women dislike "needy" men who force them to run the show.  My impression is that passivity and "instant attachment" are, indeed, huge turn-offs to most (although not all) women.  Whether this reflects an intrinsic quality in women's natures, I don't know, but I'm willing to entertain the possibility.  My personal observation is that, while it is true that "neediness" in a man is more of a turn-off to women than the other way 'round, it doesn't follow that most men are looking for a "sex-bot" in the flesh, either.

To keep the spark alive, both parties must be stimulated by a sense that they do not possess "all" of their partner.  And whether male, female, or other, people in a coupled relationship need to work to maintain their individuality and "personhood" for a number of reasons.  One of these reasons is pragmatic.  Relationships never last forever.  Unless both parties perish simultaneously in a fiery crash, one is likely to predecease the other.  If the survivor has completely given himself away, built his or her life entirely around another, what will be left to sustain him?  Another reason is that a relationship without any tension or conflict whatsoever is about as exciting and as "sexy" as a tepid bath.  Predictability is the death of romance, and what could be more numbingly predictable than a relationship in which one person calls all the shots all the time?

What frustrates me about someone like Roosh giving relationship advice to young men is that he is someone who has never been in an intimate relationship himself (sorry, one night stands just don't count).  It's even worse than celibate priests acting as marriage counselors, because Roosh actually hates women.  (And while the Catholic Church as an institution treats women badly, I don't assume its individual clergy do.)  It's like taking financial advice from a person who (looks like he) lives in a trailer park.

And if there's one thing I'm pretty sure about after examining the readership of these self-appointed authorities is that most of them really do want relationships.  Of course, if you're a lonely, horny 17 year old, a casual "bang" (or even a series of them) sounds great, but I expect their dreams are a little bigger and better than that: They want beautiful girlfriends who understand them and want to have sex with them because they love them for who they are.

Isn't that what everyone wants?

I really hate to see impressionable minds prematurely embittered by cynical advice like this because their dreams are not impossible or permanently out of reach -- although following "game" theory is the worst way to achieve them.