I hear you.
If you were to go over to MGTOW and post a guide on how to successfully navigate a divorce, I suspect you’d be very popular over there.
“Humping and dumping” is a Lamia concoction, not something that comes from MGTOW.
How come Slithy Tove sees this and LinusK sees that? Is one of them lying or is MGTOW just a disingenuous jumble of self-contradictions?
He and I see different elements because we are allowed to, and that’s great. It’s Ok to not have a girlfriend, it doesn’t make you a loser. And it’s ok to date women once you’ve broken away from the manipulative games they play and the bullshit conquest games you’ve been conditioned to play. Freedom of choice is not contradictory because its practitioners are free to make their own choices.
Using my analogy of the feminist helping the drug-addicted prostitute again, one feminist may counsel her to quit cold turkey and lay off sex until she’s put a life together for herself. Another may counsel her to manage her high and become an independent sex worker with no man leaching off her. MGTOW is like that: be yourself, not who you feel pressure to be. Men have not been deaf to feminists all these years, and not only do they call them on their occasional contradictions, they also applied the same values to themselves. For that men should be grateful, and feminists should be proud.
And how come some MGTOW sites are full of misogyny? Because if MGTOW was a multi-billion dollar like Coke it would have a quality assurance division like Coke. But its not so it doesn’t. (Maybe they should invest in some coffee mugs like SDMB)
If you can draw strength from celibacy while rebuilding that, cool. If you connect with one or more women along the way, cool too. Women are not the enemy, but as a group they do operate on a different agenda. Until you’ve establish yourself as an individual and not a victim of social construct, the only marriage you’re likely to make is with a similar victim on the other side, or worse: a predator who’s figured out how to game the system. “I’m entitled to a supermodel” has nothing to do with it.
Me, personally: I’m well out of it. I noticed a while back that I only have sex dreams about my wife, and she’s been dead now almost ten years. That realization convinced me to put that part of my life behind me more that any online philosophy class. But I do think there’s something for the younger guys who only hear “Men! You sit on the phone driving up your stock options by firing workers all day, then smoke cigars on the golf course, then go home and order your powerless women to make you sandwiches and suck your dicks. And then you have the gall to manufacture grievances like false rape and child molester accusations!”
Fuck Jesus. Just sayin’.
Thank you.
First, there is a fact that stuck in my mind listening to NPR in 2007:
The median age for women getting married in 1957 was 20.
20! That means roughly half of all women getting married were teenagers. The average for men was a few years higher. The median for women in 2007 was 26 IIRC.
Then here is an opinion that I didn’t come up with but I think is pretty close to a fact:
Women are sex objects; men are success objects.
Should it be that way? No. Is it that way? Basically yes. Is it that way for primitive reasons rooted in primate psychology? I certainly think so.
So let’s put it together. Very recently, we had an economy in which men could rather easily fulfill their role as “success objects.” Graduate high school, get a job at the mill, pay your bills. In your early 20s, you could get married, have kids, and enjoy social approval. All this with average intelligence and abilities.
At the same time, women could fulfill their role as sex objects fairly easily. Put more positively, objects of desire. Look nice, have some basic social skills, leverage that home ec knowledge you gained in high school.
Was there plenty to criticize about this setup? Absolutely. Has feminism been a valuable critique of all that? Absolutely.
OK, now fast-forward to 2015. We have a shitty economy with terrible prospects for young people, but one thing is still true:
Women are sex objects; men are success objects.
The difference between now and the past is that women can more or less just as easily fulfill their role as sex objects/objects of desire today. Look nice, have some basic social skills. Have some interests. You’re golden!
But men are very much hampered in fulfilling their role as success objects. Those mill jobs are gone, and even if they existed, what kind of blue-collar loser works at a mill anyway? Who cares if you look good, work out, put work into yourself, have some interests? If you’re not a young billionaire like Christian Grey, then what the fuck good are you?
The shaming of the “basement-dwelling losers” in this thread is exactly this. They are basement-dwelling, i.e., they are not successful. They are not successful, ergo, they can’t get a decent woman or a woman at all. To top it off, they are bitter about it all! What loser mutherfuckers worthless trash deserving of no respect at all.
Feminism has been great for society on the whole. The trouble is that primate psychology hasn’t changed. Women have absorbed feminist teachings and apply them in their top-level cognition, as well they should, but beneath all that the desire to have a man “who can really take care of me” has not changed. At least not much. Just as feminism has also influenced men’s thinking but hasn’t changed their desire for “a really hot chick with massive hooters.”
Although the career prospects in 2015 are shitty for both men and women, that situation, while no doubt having a negative impact on women’s perception of self-worth, is catastrophic for men’s self-worth. Moreover, men may think less of women who don’t have good jobs, but women really think less of men who don’t.
Meanwhile, it’s no harder to look good and be charming now than it was in the 1950s.
That’s why, I believe, you see this growing pool of bitter men. The choice, then, is to piss on them even more or actually have some compassion and try to help them a bit.
They are not full of misogyny, they are made up of misogyny. Per my analysis, it you remove the misogyny there is vanishingly little content. Misogyny is not an unfortunate side effect or an unwanted guest, it is, as the actual content clearly shows, a primary activity for this particular group.
Men who are genuinely interested in these causes need to stop being apologists for the nasty things these guys are indulging in. There are genuine problems with gender, on all sides. Women need to be partners in dismantling these, just like men are our partners in feminism. Women are your mothers, teachers, lovers, colleagues, friends and partners. Together we can imagine a better world where our sons and daughters are seen as individuals first, with the range of expectations and opportunities available to them not defined by their plumbing.
But not while you are calling me a fat, dim, sexless, gold-digging, cheating whore (or defending those that do.)
Out of interest what is your assumption about how these men relate to other men? Sort of Clooney and Pitt type pals, never a cross word, socially enabled, great social skills? It’s just their attitude to women?
Seriously? Seriously?
You know, I interact with women on a daily basis working minimum wage jobs and the like. Many are middle-aged women, often immigrants. I always felt kind of bad for them because that’s a tough way to make a living, especially if you are trying to raise kids on what is objectively just not enough money.
Turns out I’m wrong! Hey 45 year old obese single mother of five working at McDonalds! You don’t have it so bad after all, at least you get to be a sex object!
You are absolutely right. But it doesn’t contradict what I said. Or was trying to say (to cover all the bases like that would require a lot of text).
The shitty and changed economy directly impacts what made men seem valuable in the eyes of women and society. It does not directly impact what makes women seem valuable in the eyes of men (and to a certain extent society, though feminism has changed this for the better, kudos).
The shitty economy could indirectly impact women’s ability to look good, exercise, etc. I do think changes resulting in an older median age for women getting married does put more women in a position where, when they want to appeal to men in a traditional way, it is more difficult, since they are older. But on the whole, the changes have been much more detrimental to men.
You’re allowed to see whatever you like, but you have posted no evidence in support of your claims even though I have literally begged you for a cite. LinusK said the material he was quoting was from the MGTOW FAQ and that it represented what they say about themselves. I have not accused either one of you of lying, but it is not possible for you both to be right because LinusK’s cite explicitly says that you are wrong. And as much as I’d prefer to believe you, he’s the one with a cite claiming to speak for MGTOW. I’m thus forced to conclude that what you’ve been saying may be sincerely felt, but is what you wish MGTOW was and not want it actually is.
It seems like a lot of men complaining they just can’t compete. That men compete for women hasn’t changed. That women lean toward tall, successful, confident, athletes, stars, etc, also hasn’t changed.
But every single day of the week, short guys find love, poor guys build relationships, less than perfect men create loving happy families, look around you. The insurmountable barriers that these men are complaining of, the societal disadvantages etc, seem to have zero impact on the vast majority!
Leaves me thinking if you can’t run with the big dogs, maybe staying under the porch licking your wounds, IS the best choice.
Maybe choosing to not compete is easier on their egos, in the long run? In which case I’m glad they’ve found an outlet for their collective voice. Which isn’t to say anyone need take them seriously.
I’m not denying that, because its true. I’m not apologizing for it, because I didn’t do it. All I will do is ignore it, because that’s all I owe you as a human being. As I quoted upthread: evil cannot be forced out, it must be crowded out.
As for your 45 year old obese single mother of five working at McDonalds. I didn’t knock her up, I didn’t force-feed her, and even if I don’t admire or desire her, I will still treat her with dignity. However, I don’t eat shit fast food; so of all the onslaughts she suffers, I offer the most serious threat. I will happily pony up tax dollars to get her out of her mess, so long as they don’t go through some bureaucratic graft trough.
I think that is indeed the essence of it. But has the competitive landscape changed over the past 50 years? I definitely think it has.
I think it’s a lot like the economy as a whole: it’s always been a game of musical chairs with winners and losers, but there are more chairs removed now. And it only takes a moderate change to create a significant pool of “losers.”
And it’s this lack of compassion that isn’t cool–or productive.
You’re confusing some psudo-Darwin spiel with what is essentially a political choice - social nurture over nature.
I literally want a quiet life - I don’t want big vacations and to be asked what I did all day and where I’ve been. I just want peace and to spend as much time as I like not achieving, not providing, not living up to someone else’s set of aspirations (for me). And not having to listen to the minutia of someone’s else work and family day/life.
It really, really suits me. Has absolutely nothing to do with where I rank in some middle-age desirability chart.
Having said that, I like womens company, I love their perspectives on life. I just don’t want to take one home.
Makes sense. So do you have a FWB or just do without?
I see what you’re saying, but I think it oversimplifies a bit.
Traditional-minded men are most attracted to women who aren’t going threaten their self-image as a strong, capable provider. So in a bad economy, when such men find themselves at the bottom of the food chain, they typically are not going to be pining after women who are outperforming them status-wise.
Which is part of the reason why there are so many single, high-achieving women. It’s not just that their standards are disqualifying men. It’s also that fewer men are pursuing them. This is one of the reasons that women feel pressured to dumb themselves down and downplay their jobs when dating.
No fixed thing. I’m finding chemistry harder to find as I get older though. Social companionship is one thing, getting it on another 
Right, what you say is an additional factor.
this is me to a T.