Angels and Insects

 

Manosphere dudes devote a fuckwad of time to denouncing the evils of modern marriage. But if anything they drastically understate their case. A recent post on io9 took a look at an old Superman comic that faced the issue no one wants to talk about: What if your lovely bride turns into a giant bug and stings you to death!!?? 

 

Also, Happy Easter! 

 

As for me, I celebrate Easter a day late. Well, it’s not so much Easter that I celebrate as Leftover Easter Candy for 50% Off Day.  

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Two Holes Don't Make a Right, and other somewhat baffling MGTOW slogans

Grace Jones will kick your bumper sticker's ass.

One of the quickest and easiest ways to make yourself look like a complete idiot is to festoon your car with an assortment of bumper stickers – preferably stickers that are belligerent, incoherent, and “funny.” (By “funny,” of course, I mean “funny only to people who share all of your social, cultural and political beliefs, and probably not even then.”)

Alas, the Men Going Their Own Way movement doesn’t have any bumper stickers of its own. Oh, sure, there are a vast variety of just plain sexist bumper stickers out there  (“If I wanted a bitch, I’d buy a dog”),  and you can even buy “I HEART misogyny” stickers on Cafepress. but there’s not much out that deals with the specific stupid concerns of the MGTOW crowd.

The good fellows on MGTOWforums.com want to change all that. Recently a batch of them began brainstorming about possible slogans for MGTOW bumper stickers. Womanhater started the discussion off with a doozy, managing to be both belligerent AND baffling to anyone who hasn’t already taken a sip of the MGTOW Kool-Aid:

Chivalry is Treason!

A promising start. Not all the suggestions that followed quite lived up to this standard. Quite a few were earnest and plodding, not very slogan-y:

When Was the Last Time You Treated a Man Fairly?

Single moms should stay single.

Some men live happy fulfilling lives, the rest get married.

Women and happiness don't go together.

Still, some of the more earnest attempts managed to be attention-grabbing nonetheless:

I don't believe any accusation of rape

Many others simply rehashed basic MGTOW themes:

We Are Men, Not Wallets

Marriage is for morons 

Alimony is Slavery

But a number of the suggestions contained the spark of creative loopiness that keeps me coming back to the MGTOW forums again and again. Take, for example, the surprisingly large number that managed to work vaginas into the equation, generally in a highly off-putting manner:

Give women the finger and not in a good way 

Excuse me, is that fish I smell?

Two holes don't make a right

This last one, while not without its charms, is a little puzzling. If you do the math correctly, women have seven holes, and men have six (or seven, if you include one very small hole). Up to three of these lady-holes (and up to two for men) may come into play in the course of routine sexual activity. (More advanced fetishists may use more holes, as this somewhat NSFW video illustrates; don't worry, it's not a link to a video of someone putting something in a man's seventh hole, because, OW!) I'm not entirely sure which two holes our sloganeer is fingering as the villains here. 

Quite a few of the suggestions seemed almost designed to baffle everyone outside the confines of MGTOWforums.com (and even some within it):

Don't blame me for 1920

Hammurabi was correct about women

Listen to Cato the Elder

For those playing along at home, 1920 was of course the year in which matinee idol Douglas Fairbanks married actress Mary Pickford, known as "America's Sweetheart," even though she was Canadian; it was also the year in which construction began on the Holland Tunnel between New York and New Jersey, thus setting the stage for the horror later known as the “bridge and tunnel crowd.” But I’m guessing the event our sloganeer is really concerned about is the passage of the 19^th Amendment, giving American women the vote, though, unless our sloganeer is quite elderly indeed, I’m not quite sure why anyone would be blaming (or crediting) him for the Amendment’s passage.

As for the other two, well, the Code of Hammurabi, the first king of the Babylonian Empire in the 18th century BC,  “mark[ed] the beginning of the institutionalization of the patriarchal family as an aspect of state power,” as historian Gerda Lerner notes. Hammy (as I like to call him) also invented the idea of “an eye for an eye.” And Cato the Elder? He said some nasty shit about women.You can look it up yourself. I'm lazy.

Other slogans weren’t so much obscure as just plain odd:

If the FDA screened pussy, you'd need a prescription to get it.

I'd rather have guns than gals.

A cow in the bed...but a freak in the courtroom!

And then there was this little riddle:

Q)Why don't women respect men?
A)Becoz a Mousetrap laughs at the Mouse

Uh, what?

Of all the proposed slogans, only one actually showed any real wit, this punny little contribution from Apeiron:

Better dead than wed.

Indeed, this one was so good I suspected it had to have been used somewhere before. And indeed it has been. A quick Google search showed that the UK anarchist group Class War used the phrase back in the 1980s on a poster protesting the marriage of Prince Andrew and Sarah “Fergie” Ferguson. Of course, that temporarily happy couple ended up separating after only six years, and divorced a few years after that.

Maybe slogans can change the world.

Scary thought.

Despite that risk, I would like to encourage the MGTOWers to make up some stickers of their own. Maybe some t-shirts, coffee mugs, and baseball caps as well.  Heck, put these slogans on everything you own. Seriously, anything that makes it easier to identify you, preferably at a distance, is more than welcome.

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*Yes, that was a Bioshock reference.

The Price of Love

Apparently, it's only 15p!

With Valentine's day fast approaching, I thought I'd point you all to an interesting little set of online apps, courtesy of the fellows at NoMarriage.com: calculators that purport to tell dudes the true cost of sex -- with wives, girlfriends, and what the kids today are calling "randoms." 

The assumptions behind each of these calculators are pretty revealing: they essentially assume that guys generally resent the women they're involved with, and only spend time with them because it's necessary to pretend to be interested in them in order to get sex. The calculators also assume that guys are more or less paying for everything.
 

I ran a few numbers, and the results are telling: for the guys for whom these calculators are basically designed -- that is, guys who generally dislike spending non-sexy time with women, and who believe that "every kiss begins with Kay" -- the cost can easily be hundreds of dollars for each and every time they and their special ladies manage to set aside their resentments long enough to engage in a grudging bout  of the old in-and-out.

By contrast, for guys going out with independent (and perhaps even feminist) women they actually like and enjoy spending time with, who pay their own way, and who live nearby, the putative cost of sex can literally be pennies a pop. For married men who actually like their working wives, the cost of sex can actually be negative, because it's cheaper to cohabit than to live alone.

In a nutshell: misogyny costs you, big time. But actually liking women? That makes sense -- dollars and sense!

For dedicated Men Going Their Own Way, the calculators, with a little tweaking, can also be used to calculate the cost of NOT having sex. Using the girlfriend calculator, replace "How many hours do you spend having stupid conversations with your GF (per week)" with "How many hours do you spend having stupid conversations with other MGTOW (per week)." Ignore the rest of the questions until you get to the one about your hourly wage. Then, for the question asking how many times you have sex per week, ignore this wording and simply input "1." Voila! You have calculated the (opportunity) cost per week of not having sex!

So, dear readers, what is YOUR cost of sex?

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*Yes, that was a Bioshock reference.

"I don't hate women. I just want them all to die bitter and alone."

Non-haters also gonna hate.

The "Rant you very much" section of NiceGuy's MGTOW [Men Going Their Own Way] forum is the place for commenters to post stuff that they think might be too crazy and "out there" for the forum's other sections. Given what else is posted over on NiceGuy's -- the stomping ground of a fellow named Nightstorm and his wild fantasies of moustrap vaginas and leech women --  this is a tall order indeed.

NiceGuy richbansha tried his best to live up to these high expectations with a recent rant titled "Why not hate?" Why bother to pretend that we don't hate women, rich asks his fellow NiceGuys, when this won't actually do us any good? As for him, he admits his hatred up front. (I've taken the liberty of bolding some expecially ranty bits in the quote below, and adding a paragraph break.)

Do I "hate women"? You bet your ass!  ...

[T]he most common reason why one of us will deny the possibility that we hate them  is not not look bad. Is there any doubt that they don't hate YOU or that those listening in wouldn't just as soon see you violated? ... No matter what you do, you can still expect the most inconscionable treatment at the hands of AW [American Women]. If the response to both kindness and cruelty are identical, what is the reason for such a lopsided favoritism for appeasement?

When saying that you want to rape and cut up a woman with a band saw is met with the exact same reaction as saying you want to want to buy them a drink, what ... is the incentive to not be hateful and violent? We have seen for ourselves that refraining only makes you are more likely target for hatred and violence. ... So when a stinking cavern gets out of hand why not pulp her? You know you want to. Does anyone really think that stopping yourself or saying you would stop yourself will make it any easier on you?

In a followup post, he blames it all on the alleged tendency of women to adore "bad boys" and treat kind, considerate nice guys -- richbansha apparently thinks he is, or at least was, one of them -- like dirt:

My fate was decided in 7th grade when that girl said I had cooties. ...  If you ever got a "P" in the box on your report card that says "Respects the rights of others" then you are a marked man. ...

I have suffered far more for the things that I had nothing to do with than any active and intentional infraction that I ever committed. ... Who do skanks even call the cops on? Violent meth dealer Bf who routinely beats her and impregnates her or the honest, hardworking auditor who pays for the meth dealer's offspring? Is it any wonder that I think dudes should get on the good side of that equation?

The "good side," of course, being the side of of the girlfriend-beating "bad-boy" meth dealer.

So, yeah, that's what a rant on NiceGuy's looks like.

More interesting to me than the actual rant, though, are the responses of others in the forum. TheDude suggested he tone it down a bit: 

So you think that violence may be the answer when there are thousands of cops who would love to beat your ass because you "disrespected a lady?" I think talking about it on this board just makes us a target and it is bad advice.

In other words, the voice of reason in this discussion frames his advice in entirely self-interested terms: Don't attack women because then cops will beat your ass. Don't talk like this on the forum, because it makes MGTOW look bad.

And then there are those who chime in to say they didn't hate women ... but. There is always a "but." A couple of the "buts" are fairly mild and inoffensive. the american, echoing the famous Dr. Freud, notes

I don't hate women. I just don't understand their thought processes.

Our friend Yohan goes a little further (bold in original):

I am not hateful or violent, but I am highly MISTRUSTING against all and everything a Western female will ever tell me.

It's not only about my past, it's about the present legal situation in feminist countries, which encourages females of any age to consider men of any age, even young boys and old people, even your own father as nothing but trash except for quick money supply.

About hate, it should be said, hate is really bad for your health cousing heart problems, stomach problems etc..

And then there are ... these. Richard Cranium blames those evil Sufragettes (and the manginas who loved them) for it all:

It's not a matter of hating women per se, it's hating what they've become, or more specifically what manginas have let them become. As has been stated here & elsewhere, the day we let them out of the kitchen and let them vote was the day it all went to hell.

Big R takes his non-hatred to a whole other level:

I dont hate them either. I want them to live to see how lonely and suicidal they,ll become when they find out all the men have dumped them forever in the feminized world. I want them to live and suffer without men or the attention they receive from us. ...

I have turned out just a little vengeful towards women for the treatment I have received from them throughout my life. Just seeing an AW maybe lying on the sidewalk after a drunken suicidal depressive drinking binge after being dumped and cheated on would brighten up my day.

Our friend Yohan obliged this last wish by posting a photo of a drunk woman lying on the floor in what appears to be a pool of her own urine, with a friendly little note advising Big R to "have a nice day."

So very considerate, these Men Going Their Own Way.

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*Yes, that was a Bioshock reference.

Beware the jackbooted feminazi marriage thugs!

The denizens of the Happy Bachelors forum, always alert for possible threats to their Happy Bachelorhood, seem to have discovered a new one: Evil feminists "enslav[ing] men through forced marriage."

That might sound a bit like the plot of an old episode of Futurama, but apparently the threat is all too real. Artbunker sounded the alarm in a recent posting:

What if women and manginias in power pass a law to make men marry with women?

Hear him out, guys:

[M]ore and more guys are truly waking up to the no marriage to Western Women concept. It's a small but growing fact. We already know feminist have made it harder fro Eastern European women to come over here and probably in other countries as well.

If they can get laws passed for that how much longer till they start going after single men? How much longer till they want to make sure single women with kids are paired with single men for "the betterment of the children?" because the single man makes a good wage to support her and her family.

Why would this be necessary, you may ask. Aren't there a lot of simps and manginias doing this already, of their own volition?

Sure there still a lot of simps and manginias that dont mind doing this already without a law sure. But we know these women really want guys who have the economic power to provide them the lifestyle they want. A lot of simps and manginias today cannot provide that for them .They want the guys with the big checks whom they know wont chose them.

Yes, all the fantastically wealthy movers and shakers who spend all their time trading stories about how evil women are on the MGTOW message boards of America.

Longshot39 suggested one (somewhat familiar) way to resist the jackbooted feminazi marriage thugs:

A man with any sense could still refuse to marry, at least in the traditional sense. Just get another MGTOW friend and marry them, like was said in another thread. Even if a person were required by law to live in the same house, having your friend as a roommate would still be a HUGE improvement over being forced to marry some womb turd with little thuglits.

To be sure, not everyone on the Happy Bachelors forum is convinced such a danger is imminent. The always logical spocksdisciple responded:

There won't be forced marriage, as women want the earning power of the beta but 'gina tingle factor of the thug/bad boy. Instead what the gov't will do is simply start to garnish the wages of single men with selective taxation and "fees."

And if any men resist the New Girl Order by not earning enough, well, naturally they'll just be forced into labor camps:

These labor camps would come into existence under some economic pretext set up by gov't. One such pretext is that unemployed or underemployed people(ie men) of a certain age range say 18-40, would be very useful to the government as labor for various federal projects. ...

Of course women would be exempt because they'll have some beta or stooge on standby for marriage and they would claim "gender oppression" should women be inducted into such camps. ...

These camps would be run under the auspices of FEMA and would be painted to be "emergency support facilities", note that some form of this type of forced and indentured labor already as come back in the form in prison chain gangs which were all but abolished by the 1950s-60s but made a comeback in the late 90s.

But hey, still beats being married -- amirite, fellas?

All joking aside, I feel that one thing we can all agree upon here at Man Boobz is that the fine gentlemen at Happy Bachelors should not be marrying anyone any time soon, either voluntarily or as a result of evil feminist legislation. So I ask the women reading this post now to pledge publicly, in a comment below, that they personally will not marry anyone on the Happy Bachelors forum, even if they are required by law to do so.



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*Yes, that was a Bioshock reference.

Wasn't that an Adam Sandler movie?

Ladies, watch out! Over on the Happy Bachelors Forum, a fellow calling himself ac101202 has figured out a sneaky way that guys can escape you gals doing that whole marrying-a-dude-and-divorcing-him-and-taking-all-his-money thing you ladies like to do. All it requires is a little bit of fake-gay marriage on his part.

Imagine if two straight men got legally hitched (emphasis on straight). No expensive ceremony, no grueling engagement process, just signing the contract. Then, they go on and live their separate lives as bachelors. Because of their legally married status they ... Cannot get remarried legally. This means if they get married with a women, come divorce time she will be unable to legally claim any of his property as they are not legally married. Bigamy and polygamy is illegal so all marriage contracts signed after the first are not recognized as valid by a court of law.

Oh, you sly dog you. Such a clever idea. And so original!

The Men's Rights Movement Vs. The People's Front of Judea

One of the strangest things about the Men's Rights Movement is how little actual debate there is within it. Oh there's plenty of discussion, to be sure, and plenty of arguments about what sort of strategy is most effective in dealing with MRA opponents and the rest of the world in general (see, for example, "Pansygate" and the ongoing sniping between Manhood101 ubermilitants and pretty much everyone else in the MRM). But actual substantive disagreements over major issues? Very few. With most key issues the MRM deals with, there's a party line, and few within the MRM fold deviate very far from it.

This sort of ideological conformity is far less common outside the insular world of the MRM. Among leftist political groups, of course, internecine battles are so common that Monty Python satirized them in Life of Brian -- you no doubt remember the bits about the Judean People's Front and the People's Front of Judea. And such battles are hardly confined to the left: just consider the battles between the teabaggers and the Republican party, not to mention the much more substantive battles you see between the various factions that make up the contemporary right, like those between Ayn Randian libertarians and bible-thumping social conservatives.

Among feminists, of course, there have been giant, bloody battles between anti-porn and sex-positive feminists, battles over "difference" feminism, over race and class, and on and on. (For a quick look at a dizzying array of different ideological tendencies within feminism, see here.) I've participated in these battles myself: see this piece of mine critiquing anti-porn feminism in general and Andrea Dworkin in particular.

These kinds of battles are inevitably frustrating, sometimes massively silly, and often distract activists from "real" political work. But they're also necessary, a way to work out and work through issues that are inevitably more complicated than the political slogans with which most movements make their case to the world at large. Within feminism, for example, the "sex wars" have pushed anti-porn feminism from the center of the movement to the margins -- a good thing for feminists, and for everyone else. Debates challenge dogmas; they're symptoms of political health, not signs of weakness.

Indeed, if the Men's Rights Movement is to have even a small chance of transforming itself from an insular, largely reactionary movement that's actually harmful to men, into one that actually does men, and the world at large, some good, it's going to have to have these kinds of debates. Right now the Men's Rights Movement turns legitimate concern and legitimate anger at real problems faced by men into bitterness aimed at feminist bogey-women and women at large; it's as destructive for the real cause of men's rights, and for the world at large, as the Dworkinite branch of feminism was for feminists and for everyone else.

So it's always interesting to me to see an actual substantive debate break out in the angry-manosophere. The latest: an honest-to-goodness debate over the notion of a "marriage strike" that has recently become an MRA shibboleth.  In a series of posts, the blogger who calls himself Dalrock asks

whether or not there really is, or will be, a marriage strike.  My first answer is that it depends on how we define the term.  If those using it are thinking of a classical strike where men would eschew marriage out of a sense of male solidarity in an effort to extract a better social bargain, this isn’t happening and won’t happen any time in the near future.

Looking over the stats used by MRAs to provide evidence that men in general, not just Men-Going-Their-Own-Way MRA types are, in effect, boycotting marriage, he argues

that the metric published by The National Marriage Project is being widely misinterpreted, and show[s] that the vast majority of current white men and women in the us in their mid 30s have married at some time. ... We may yet see a marriage strike by white men in the US, but the data simply isn’t in yet.

As a result of his posts, Dalrock has gotten a lot of what he calls "push-back" from the MRM community, some of it quite personal, so much so that he felt he had to clarify that

For those of you who are refusing to marry, I’m not denying your existence or equating you with UFO conspiracy theorists.  As I’ve said before, we won’t see men banding together against their immediate interests to form a better social bargain longer term.  But this doesn’t mean individual men won’t decide that marriage isn’t a risk they want to take. 

This kind of "push-back" from your ideological allies is actually a sign that you're moving forward. 

I'll weigh in on the whole marriage debate in a future post or few, but in the meantime I'm just going to watch how this plays out.