Friday, February 4, 2011

The Cupcake Files, Part One: Happy Bachelors Edition

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When you think of the word "cupcake," what pops into your head? A vision of a delicious miniature cake, on the general model of a muffin, with a topping of lovely creamy icing and perhaps a light dusting of sprinkles? Or do you imagine some evil vindictive bitch hell-bent on ruining your life?

If the latter, there's a good chance you're a Man Going Your Own Way. On the MGTOW message boards I read (so you don't have to), "cupcake" is the go-to insult when the regulars want to say something especially nasty about a woman that they, or some other man, once regarded as the epitome of sweetness and innocence. In the minds of some MGTOW, a cupcake is even worse than a cunt.

Let us look at the characteristics of a truly modern cupcake. We will start today with some statements from the fellows on the Happy Bachelors forum. (I'm too lazy to provide links for every example; they all can be found by searching for the word "cupcake" on HB's search page.)


Cupcake: Fucks up relationships just for the hell of it

The way things are going there is almost no incentive for a woman to maintain a relationship and there is always the knowledge that no matter what cupcake is like at the start she can destroy things completely whenever she feels like.

Cupcake: Only brings vagina to the table.


If you ever decide to get married, just ask cupcake what she will be bringing to the marriage other [th]an a vagina. Watch her squirm trying to answer that question.


Cupcake: Is the queen of food-related mixed metaphor

Some men, once they get a whiff off pussy, turn into jello in the hand of cupcake.

Cupcake: Something-or-other to do with Lord of the Rings, I can't figure it out.

If you want a Tolkien analogy, look no further then the 9 ring wraiths, once that magic ring got on their finger they were enslaved and drained of all life, nothing but shadow figures. Women will do that to any man, no exceptions, don't delude yourself into thinking you're special, you're not and you will be a source of amusement for cupcake as she emotionally torments you for her pleasure. Women hate not only men but they especially hate themselves, it's why they do what they do. Their behavior is that of a clinically insane inmate. Only the asylum is the real world and the few sane men must take refuge behind emotional bars.

 Tomorrow: Guys from NiceGuy's offer their take on the Cupcake Question.
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26 comments:

  1. Thank you, David, for digging in the dirt...so the rest of us are spared. Love your chosen keyword tags. :D

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  2. I will admit-I am tempted to emotionally torment these guys because well, I am just cupcakey that way.

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  3. So true, I got called "cupcake" several times at the Spearhead by one of the regulars. Also, miz independent (not sure why being independent is a slur), of course "bitch" and the gender neutral "dumbass."

    David, I trust you're going to do a ValDay post? The Spearheaders are working themselves into quite a lather over this most evil of days.

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  4. Katz: Oh, yeah, I'll be doing at least one Valentine's day post. I'm not exactly a big fan of this particular holiday myself, but not because women are all evil demanding, er, cupcakes. As is the case with marriage, most of the MRAs/MGTOWs who are angry about V-Day seem to be unaware that many feminists have their own critiques of these things.

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  5. Also I'm now pretty sure - thanks to this newfound exegesis - that Tolkien wrote poor Frodo as a beta. Sauron was totally an alpha, since the chicks (ring wraiths) were totally into him. Gandalf was the PUA...

    I'm going to start working on this essay and submit it to the scholarly journals.

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  6. I'll confess, I wanted to have "one ring to rule them all and in the darkness bind them" inscribed on the inside of my wedding ring. For some reason, my wife did not find that particularly amusing.

    I now know, thanks to our MRA/MGTOW friends, that the reason for this is that she is, in fact, a Ringwraith. I just thought she liked wearing black hoods and hissing. And who the hell is this "Baggins" she keeps asking about?

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  7. "If you ever decide to get married, just ask cupcake what she will be bringing to the marriage other [th]an a vagina. Watch her squirm trying to answer that question."

    I have no doubt that she would. Probably not for the reason he thinks...

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  8. These guys are all believers in The Ladder Theory, that's why many of them want to become PUAs.

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  9. For men going their own way, there's an awful lot of discussion about women.

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  10. The Tolkien analogy only half works. Yes, the nine mortal men are doomed to die (as per the poem) and turn into Sauron's creatures, but their death does not make them powerless or "mere shadow figures". Rather, it makes them invisible, immortal, powerful and brutally evil. No mortal man can slay them (ironically for the MGTOW, the witch-king can only be killed by a woman). And the ringwraiths were most certainly special. They were nine chosen out of all of humanity and were picked due to power and skill (three were great lords of Numenor). Nazgul are an extremely elite class, the highest level of servants. Lords of Numenor you are most certainly not, MGTOW, so you are fine. Though, perhaps, you could aspire to be Smeagol, though I suspect you are more on par with Lotho Sackville-Baggins, a petty villain of so little consequence that basically only his mother notices when Saruman kills him off.

    (Okay, yes, I am that person who read the appendices and the Silmarilion far many more times than I should admit).

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  11. Cat, I bow to the amazing depth and breadth of your knowledge.

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  12. I think it works. I don't have the time to flesh this out. Maybe over summer, when I plan to read LOTR.

    But I was thinking about it. Really, Eowyn is one of those "one of the guys" type women - y'know the ones that say 'I don't think sexism exists, women are bitches, I'm way more comfortable with the dudes'.

    The Nazgul are as powerful as the MRAs think feminism is. It's their deep lurking terror. They're loyal to Sauron - the alpha - reflecting the MRA's belief that all feminists secretly want to bone the alpha.

    I'm just trying to figure out who the mangina is... maybe Sauruman?

    If I'm not careful, I'm going to found a whole new school of literary criticism here.

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  13. "If you ever decide to get married, just ask cupcake what she will be bringing to the marriage other [th]an a vagina. Watch her squirm trying to answer that question."

    You know, I have to agree with this one. Seven years ago, on Valentine's Day, my husband proposed to me at the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco, where we first met. He took me into the gallery and made me read a Peanuts strip while he psyched himself up to pop the question. He was so nervous that when I finally turned around to see him standing there, ring box in hand, he was struck speechless and just stood there smiling. Eventually he said, "Well?" and I said, "What's the question?" and then he asked and of course I said yes.

    I have to admit, if he had immediately followed with, "By the way, do I keep you around for any reason other than pussy access? Because I can't think of anything," I probably would have squirmed. Pretty hard.

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  14. @Johnny, I hated the live action LOTR films (as compared to the 80s animated LOTR films). Tolkien's addressing of gender isn't perfect, but it isn't terrible either. The films were far worse actually. The books actually do acknowledge the characters as living in a sexist world. The film does not. There are massive character changes and the entire end of the story is omitted.

    "But I was thinking about it. Really, Eowyn is one of those "one of the guys" type women - y'know the ones that say 'I don't think sexism exists, women are bitches, I'm way more comfortable with the dudes'."

    This theory meshes somewhat with the films, which make Eowyn rather lovesick and fickle, but not with the book. Eowyn is basically stalked and sexually threatened by Wormtounge (who Saruman promises to sell her to in return for his actions). She insists that feminine duties are a cage and becomes depressed because her gender role bars her from winning renown in battle.

    "All your words are but to say: you are a woman, and your part is in the house. But when the men have died in battle and honour, you have leave to be burned in the house, for the men will need it no more. But I am of the House of Eorl and not a serving-woman. I can ride and wield blade, and I do not fear either pain or death."

    ""What do you fear, lady?" he asked. "A cage," she said. "To stay behind bars, until use and old age accept them, and all chance of doing great deeds is gone beyond recall or desire."

    In the book, Merry the Hobbit is also forbidden to go along and Eowyn both arms him and brings him with her. There is evidence of solidarity there.

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  15. "All your words are but to say: you are a woman, and your part is in the house. But when the men have died in battle and honour, you have leave to be burned in the house, for the men will need it no more. But I am of the House of Eorl and not a serving-woman. I can ride and wield blade, and I do not fear either pain or death."

    ""What do you fear, lady?" he asked. "A cage," she said. "To stay behind bars, until use and old age accept them, and all chance of doing great deeds is gone beyond recall or desire."

    In the book, Merry the Hobbit is also forbidden to go along and Eowyn both arms him and brings him with her. There is evidence of solidarity there.


    All of this is in the movies as well, including the exact quote about the cage, so I don't understand what the problem here is.

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  16. I'm looking forward to actually reading the books when I get the time, Darksidecat. When I was 19 and not a very disciplined reader I tried to do it and couldn't make it through the Tom Bombadil stuff. But I'm still a huge nerd, and saw the movies, and I'm a big Blind Guardian fan (did a whole concept album about the Silmarillion), and I spent a lot of time on the encyclopedia of Aarda - so I know all kinds of trivia, but I'm not yet intimately familiar with the works themselves. It's funny - I'm one of those lit snobs who reads all of those books that people hate or talk a lot about but never read - but I was putting together my "when I have the time" list, and it's mostly sci-fi and fantasy.

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  17. Johnny and Cat, are you two on library thing? I love that site because it lets me track my books. http://www.librarything.com

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  18. Man, Blind Guardian is KILLER. They came to Toronto last year touring their new album, and I was blown away. Saw 'em a few years beefore that, and they owned the town then, too!

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  19. ok, this is a new one for me. Whenever i have heard or read the word "cupcake" used by the Macho HeMan Woman Hater's Club, it has always been directed not at women but at men deemed by the Macho HeMan Woman Hater's Club to be insufficiently Macho HeMan and Woman Hating. Kind of like "mangina."

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  20. I believe that Eowyn was added to the story while Tolkein was writing it, because his daughter had told him she wanted to see more strong women in the story! Imagine that- a young girl who wants to see a character she can identify with. I can relate to this completely. Sorry, it's late and I'm too lazy to cite... but I have heard this story before...

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  21. Here, this has lots of info about it:
    http://www.yvonnesplace.net/news/lotr.html

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  22. One band to rule them all
    One band to find them
    One band to bring them all
    And into metal bind them.

    Can I say how much glee it fills me with to see Blind Guardian mentioned on this blog? I totally should have gone with my Priestess of the Metal Gods ID on this blog.

    I suspect quite a few commenters here are closet nerds.

    How many of us know what THAC0 is?

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  23. I don't think he's saying women are the Nazgul. He's saying men are the Nazgul and women are the ring.

    You wouldn't really expect him to compare women to (what used to be) actual humans, would you?

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