And these guys want a world where they don’t have to “apply” and she doesn’t get a “veto”, is that it?
(Blaming the victim? Who’s the victim? The man that can’t get a second date he feels he deserves? I was advocating personal responsibility, male or female, if your relationships are always bad dynamics, you’re being used, it doesn’t seem fair, then go get some help to figure out why you keep reproducing this dynamic. That’s what mature self aware people do, in my opinion.)
Ultimately opening your heart again, after having it crushed is very painful, and frightening, as we all well know. But it’s a choice. A hard, hard choice, but definitely a choice.
But if you choose not to ever risk it again, that’s surely 100% on you, in my opinion. All the rationalizations, for why this hard stance is required, notwithstanding.
Now there’s some of that I don’t agree with: the angry tone, for example. I’m 100% against knocking women up and leaving them. (Assuming they’re advocating that, which I don’t think they are.)
However, there’s absolutely nothing in there about “pick-up artists”, or advice for becoming one. From my understanding, there’s more than a little antagonism between the groups.
But I do think that they’re right that having sex with a woman - in this day and age - is not an unattainable goal, or that it’s something reserved only for married men. (That’s assuming married men are actually having sex - which if you listen to popular culture, they’re not.)
Then it should be easy to come up with a cite indicating that even some MGTOW believe as you say. But if LinusK is so completely wrong about MGTOW, it seems strange to me that no one in this whole long thread has questioned his cites and that you’re arguing with me instead of him about the accuracy of what he’s said. I’ll say again, I want him to be wrong, because the material he’s been posting sickens me. I would be relieved if you could give me some reason to doubt him so please, if you’ve got a cite then share it.
Here is a link to an article about the difference between the three groups. I’m not vouching for it: I know nothing about MRA, and very little about PUA (and was repulsed by what little I read).
It just came up high on a google search. It’s long, so I’ll just link to it. (And for the record, I specifically disavow the anti-women statements randomly sprinkled through it.
So you twist this into some fantasy in men’s minds where they merrily drag women back to their caves by the hair. No, you aren’t biased one bit.
Men would like women to ask them on dates on an equal basis. And pick up the check, because the one who proposes the date pays. Women who date other women don’t have a problem with this, so why should straight women? Men can say no as gracefully as women do. Many women indeed do this, but that’s the exception that proves the rule.
I’ve got no problem with someone of either sex opting out of institutions like marriage and the military. I have an issue with opting out of higher education only to the extent that it’s a bad choice, which it isn’t always. I like when people have goals and plans, and I think a college education is a good idea for many people. But not all.
And I do think men are often treated as chumps and disposable commodities. I honestly think that comes as much or more from other men than from women, but wherever it comes from, it’s evil.
I am not asking about Pick-Up Artists, a subject I already know as much as I care to know about. I am asking why you and Slithy Tove have characterized MGTOW in completely different ways.
Him:
You:
I’d feel better about the world if Slithy Tove is right, but you’re the one with a cite, and your cite is pretty emphatic about his characterization of the group being wrong.
Er, I quoted his words, not mine. And was hoping for clarification of what that sentence was intended to mean. Hoping it’s not the meaning it would seem to indicate.
(What this has to do with getting asked out half the time, or women picking up the cheque, I can’t see. So I’ll leave that to you to work out.)
My interest lay in ‘apply’ and ‘veto’, as they were used in snippet I quoted. If you’d care to shine a light on the nuance I’m missing from that sentence, I’m more than willing to listen.
It isn’t bad at all. As a matter of fact, it is a dream come true from my personal viewpoint as long as you run things right (I have). You get unlimited freedom, increased wealth AND more quality time with your children. Now, most men fail at this miserably but I didn’t because I knew exactly what I wanted and learned from the mistakes of others so I am not going to repeat them.
I suspect I know why this isn’t an endorsed social policy for everyone. It is because most people screw it up badly and society as whole will suffer if everyone tries it but there are a few of us that can pull it off quite well. Let’s face facts, hardly anyone likes being married in the long-term. It is just one of those unfortunate forced life circumstances that people live with because they believe they have to. I am one of the people that says it does not need to be that way and there are other ways to accomplish the same goals. I guess that makes me a perverse type of Progressive Evangelist for the first time in my life.
You still have to fulfill your necessary and mandatory obligations but there are multiple ways to do that beyond the stereotypical expectations. Love of your own children comes naturally for most people. Marriage is an antiquated cultural artifact but still somewhat necessary.
Men don’t want to take away women’s right to say no. They just want it too. But they can’t exercise it until women shoulder the onus of having to ask for dates themselves.
Plenty of women ask guys “hey, want to hang out?” And they mutually decide on what to do, and they split the “cheque.” But there’s still a lot of “I prefer the guy makes the first move” and a lot of guys here will say “so what? So just make the first move. It’s not like root canal” and they’re right. But doesn’t that seem like an unresolved power imbalance right from the start? “I’m doing you a favor by saying yes, but let’s not forget who asked who here” vs “I manned-up and asked you out, so I get the driver’s seat in this relationship.” Or a reliance on traditional gender roles for their own sake?
How exactly do men NOT currently have the option of saying no to a date invitation?
It sounds like sour grapes that these men aren’t getting asked out as often as they’d wish, a struggle all too familiar to women, I promise. But blaming anyone but yourself still seems misguided to me.
So what DID ‘apply’ and ‘veto’ mean as you used them? These guys don’t want to ‘apply’? As in they want the women to come to them? And the women get all the ‘vetoing’ because men do all the asking?
And so we resent women and society because women aren’t asking us out and picking up the cheque? I mean, that’s just laughable, isn’t it?
I agree that women should ask men out if they want to go out with them. The ridiculous game playing is stupid, and I think women play more games like that than men do.
I disagree with that. I mean, I agree with “[feminism] gets to be whatever any opportunist feminist says is, but it’s always above criticism by outsiders”.
I think they have done some good things. I specifically mentioned deconstructing old-fashioned ideas of what it meant to be a man, many of which I think were poisonous.
I think they get some credit for opening doors to women that were previously closed - although I think liberalism generally generally credit for that too.
But feminism was never about equality, and its not about equality today. It’s about giving women choices, but not “obligations” or “consequences”.
Opps: Screwed up that last post. This is what I meant to say:
I disagree with that. I mean, I agree with “[feminism] gets to be whatever any opportunist feminist says is, but it’s always above criticism by outsiders”.
I think they have done some good things. I specifically mentioned deconstructing old-fashioned ideas of what it meant to be a man, many of which I think were poisonous.
I think they get some credit for opening doors to women that were previously closed - although I think liberalism gets some credit for that too.
But feminism was never about equality, and its not about equality today. It’s about giving women choices, but without consequences, or obligations. As a philosophy, it’s untenable. It’s doomed to failure, and it is failing, but not without doing a lot of collateral damage along the way.
OT: I haven’t read Stiffed. Who does Faludi think screwed guys?
I don’t think it’s women starting the wars that get a lot of men killed, by and large. Women have been central to a lot of historical social actions to glorify the soldier who fought and died for soceity (and shamed the coward who didn’t fight), but you can’t blame the White Feather Society for the combat deaths of WWI.
I wouldn’t make the argument in quite that way. I do remember hearing discussions and debates some years ago about how teaching methods favored boys’ learning styles (individual studying and tests) over girls’ (peer interaction and group projects), and that teachers should change their methods to give girls more educational opportunities. Has it worked, is that why women now outnumber men in college admissions; and should we put some effort into making sure boys don’t get left behind?
It’s a complex subject. Real life usually is. I don’t think either side should be dismissed out of hand.
I wanted to address the bolded part of this. Suppose that it was true, for a moment: that “MGTOW want everyone to know that they’re humping and dumping women all the time.”
So what?
As long as the sex is consensual, what difference does it make that they’re “humping and dumping” a lot of women (or even that they want people to think they’re doing it?)
Let me offer a feminist answer:
Are you slut-shaming men for having (too much) sex?
Shaming the for not having sex?
Or shaming them saying they’re having sex when (you think) they’re not?
Which is it?
If anyone is misleading, lying, gaming, etc. their way into sex, they suck. When someone says “humping and dumping,” I picture someone being dishonest about their intentions. If it’s just “having sex with lots of people and no one is being misled,” I’ve got no issues with it.
I’m not quite sure how to respond to this. I certainly can’t speak for Slithy Tove, because I’m not him.
For my part, I was quoting from their FAQ. I personally think it was poorly written, and I object to the hostile, defensive tone it conveys.
But personally, perhaps unlike you, I think I know where it’s coming from.
At the beginning of the thread, the label that was being thrown around was “Oh, this just a bunch of basement-dwelling losers who can’t get laid”. I suspect they get a lot of that. More recently, the accusation is that they’re “humpers and dumpers”.
There doesn’t seem to be a lot of middle-ground there. If men have too little sex, they’re losers. If they have too much, they’re predators. My own opinion is that they’re probably getting less than they’d like, since men have something like 10x the sex drive of women. If you want to dismiss them, dismiss them. But if your basis is they’re “they’re not getting any” or “they’re getting too much” that seems pretty lame to me.
So that contradicts Slithy Tove’s description of MGTOW as being opposed to “humping and dumping” and instead choosing celibacy, at least temporarily.
It’s strange how determined the two of you are to avoid acknowledging, much less explaining, your contradictory definitions of what MGTOW are all about. Slithy Tove has at least implied that different MGTOW might believe different things, but the material you’ve quoted emphatically denies that MGTOW practice celibacy and insults anyone who says they do. Yet despite your differing positions on what MGTOW believe, you seem united in your efforts to change the subject rather than address this issue.