My Secret Life as a Group of Women

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

One of the weirder pleasures of writing this blog is that, from time to time, as I wend my way across the assorted gathering holes of the manosphere, I discover the natives chattering candidly about little old me, apparently forgetting that I actually read the forums they hang out on. These conversations tend to be a little, well, surreal.

You may vaguely remember The Troll King from a post of mine a couple of weeks back on his brief career as a faux-feminist calling herself the Feminist Troll Queen. I recently found him in the Men’s Rights subreddit on Reddit, trying to defend himself against charges of, well, trolling, and suggesting that some of the subreddit’s resident trolls are “manboobz followers and probably feminists from feministe.” (Not that I know of.) But the strangest thing was this reference to me as a person of indeterminate gender:

I saw him talking about not being able to become pregnant on one of his posts recently about gangbangs and MGTOW and I wouldn't be surprised if it is a female with a male internet persona or maybe a FTM transperson??

Whaaaa? It took me a little while to figure out that he was referring to a dumb joke I made at the tail end of my post about MGTOWers speculating on why some women like porn. Here’s the joke, such as it was:

Now, I’m no evolutionary psych expert, but, er, what exactly is the evolutionary advantage of facials? I’m pretty sure you can’t get pregnant from semen on your forehead, in your eyes  or, say, up your nose. (At least I never have.)

Hey, I didn’t claim it was a good joke. In any case, for anyone confused by it, the idea was to humorously suggest that I was such a frenzied masturbator that I regularly shot semen up my own nose. And that this had never made me pregnant. Not only because the semen was in my nose rather than my vagina but because, you know, I’m a non-transgender dude, and non-trans dudes can't get pregnant. (Also, even if the semen were to get in my vagina I wouldn't get pregnant, because I DON'T HAVE A VAGINA.) (Some trans men can get pregnant, but THEY CAN'T GET PREGNANT FROM SEMEN UP THE NOSE either. NO ONE CAN.)

For the record, I would also like to point out that have never actually shot semen up my nose – or, for that matter, on my forehead or in my eyes.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

In any case, Troll King’s confusion about my gender – especially strange, given that he himself had just engaged in a bit of internet cross-dressing by posing as the Feminist Troll Queen -- got me thinking back on one of the more surreal aspects of my domestic violence debate with Paul Elam last fall, which was the assumption on the part of a group of his followers that I was not just a woman, but a whole group of them.

As “Frank” put it:

“David Futrelle” argues like a provocative feminist woman, or perhaps I should put a group of feminist women. 

Note the personal abuse, the petty point scoring, the personalised arguments, and the lack of any real evidence or examination of the issues under discussion.

There is also the (supposedly) witty sarcasms, and the (supposedly) funny rudeness while ignoring hard points backed up real evidence. So typical of the misandrist feminist woman.

“Roderick” concurred:

I suspect the the sarcastically named Manboobz is a group of young ‘educated’ woman.

– note: {Often I have found that mediocre woman always work in groups. Woman who have higher abilities tend to work independently from the protective huddle.} (Who bravely hide from accountability or challenge)

“Alphabeta,” meanwhile, has a slightly different take on it:

I wonder if Futrelle is a woman disguised as a man or perhaps a woman in the making. His/her words have the whirr of the hamster wheel about them.

Remember this?

http://mensnewsdaily.com/2010/04/22/mens-studies-foremost-authority-opts-for-castration-literally/

What right-thinking man advertises his intellectual wares as ‘manboobz’? Sounds like wishful thinking at the very least.

Yes, he's arguing that this blog is called "Man Boobz" because I want some.

I don't, actually.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

So, once again, to clarify: misogynist dudes, when I refer to “boobz” in the title of this blog I am referring to you. It’s a double entendre. “Boobs,” yes, can refer to breasts. But “boob” can also mean “an ignorant or foolish person.” Do you see where I’m going with this? YOU GUYS ARE MEN, AND YOU ALSO ARE BOOBS. The “Boobz” in “Man Boobz” ARE YOU.

She's my sister... She's my daughter... My sister, my daughter.  She's my sister AND my daughter!

Oh dear. I got carried away.

I should probably explain that the last bit there was from Chinatown. I do not have a sister who is also a daughter. Evelyn Mulwray does. But she’s not a real person.



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Alone Again, Naturally

Choose "none of the above."

The blog A(n)nals of Online Dating is, like a lot of things involving online dating, both hilarious and horrifying at the same time. The blog catalogs the highly ineffective habits of the most clueless and/or offensive would-be romancers online. I’m sure there are terrible female daters out there as well, but the blog mostly focuses on the dudes, many of whom are not entirely dissimilar from the sorts of guys I write about here all the time: angry, undersocialized misogynists who desire women (or at least their vaginas) as much as they hate and fear them. Luckily for the women of the online dating world, most of these men make their odiousness so plain that it is unlikely they will ever score even a single date.

Here are a few of my recent favorites.

Bachelor Number One I’ll call the Master Debater. He sent the following missive to at least one woman online, hoping, apparently, to spark a little discussion, and perhaps a little romance: 

I love to debate. I feel that Im very good at it. I see the Feminist Movement as a CIA funded political agitation mechanism. Many men feel that the Feminist Movement is anti-male, but I feel that its anti everybody. It hurts everyone that comes into contact with it.

My question to you is, would you be able to offer a rebuttal to what I just asserted without resorting to personal attack 

Able, or willing? I think any number of potential respondents would be more than able to offer a critique without resorting to namecalling. But what would be the fun of that?

Let’s move on to Bachelor Number Two, a guy I’ll call Mr. Optimistic, a fellow who actually thinks he can cajole twentysomething women into having hot sex with him by, among other things, suggesting that women over 31 are unfuckable monsters. (Hint: With  few exceptions, women under 31 will eventually be women over 31.) In his dating profile, Mr. O explains that ladies messaging him should be: 

reasonably tall …  passionate and intelligent so as to be good company, sexually liberated, and attractive - really attractive, fat chics need not apply (hehe, I’m so self-amusing). 

Evidently they need not be sticklers for correct spelling or grammar. Mr. O goes on to explain that he wants a woman who earns her own living, but doesn’t mind him bossing her around. As he puts it, he wants someone: 

Capable of holding a steady job but without making it your #1 priority - since it could interfere with our sexual activities. …  If you can accept that I’m responsible for taking charge and my decisions will be final, don’t take yourself too seriously and thinks the world of me.

He wants a gal who is family oriented, but open to threesomes:

Family oriented but not anytime soon … open to spontaneous sexual activities (you know, outdoors sex, the odd 3-some with a cutie we pick up somewhere or one of your girlfriends), likes the outdoors (nudity optional), and doesn’t complain when I go fishing with the guys.

And she can’t be in a hurry about the whole family thing. After all, he wants a few good years of fucking before his wife hits the age of 31 – what he says is “the expiration date for most women anyway.”  She should be: 

ready to have children only after 30 and proving yourself to be a faithful wife and a loving woman, prepared for the duties of a good mother, have class and know when it’s time to speak up and when it’s NOT the time to do so, instead of a stuck-up naggy b!tch who can’t shut up, sociable, know how to please the sexual drive of your partner (little things such as giving me a call when you’ve gotten a new set of sexy lingerie to surprise me), and know that gifts are little treats and rewards, and not a never-ending desire to be pampered.

 '

Interesting how quickly his disquisition on family values turns into kvetching about "naggy b!tch[es]" and then, just as quickly, into the tritest of sexual fantasies. In any case, he explains, while she should be willing to spend money on lingerie, she should otherwise be a thrifty sort with

good spending habits, no ridiculous credit card debts and a sense of home economy; I’m not planning on changing my excellent lifestyle, and I plant to eventually be able to give my children an excellent education - and that’s not possible without good savings and planning. This will also help teaching them to earn their own achievements, respect their parents, and not be spoiled brats.

Also, no pets:

You should also understand that pets are simple money pits that only serve as something lonely women occupy themselves with so that they don’t have to connect with their husbands.

But hey, he’s not picky:

I’m attracted to all kinds of women, redheads, brunettes, black, white, latinas, you name it, as long as they’re attractive. Not attracted to fat women, and that includes the infamous “curvy” (a word that used to mean actual curves, not fat), and “a few extra pounds,” regardless of your supposed “inner beauty.” Sorry :)

The final smiley really nails it for me. If I were a woman – and a few years younger, and not so fat, and bisexual, and into outdoor sex, and both debt- and pet-free, and willing to put my life into the hands of a guy who can’t spell the word “chick” -- I’m sure I’d be begging the guy for a date.

No mystery, these guys.

It’s hard to compete with Mr. Optimistic here, but Bachelor Number Three, the guy I’ll call No Beefcake, comes pretty close. His strategy for winning over the ladies? Ranting about how women on Plenty of Fish are a bunch of delusional fatties.  

I can honestly say the selection on here is mostly scary to me. I have no problem with single moms or girls that are other than stick thin. But for real, if you are gargantuan and just gross … please don’t waste your time with me. 

I'm no beefcake but I am healthy and I am getting tired of creepy girls wondering “where all the good men are” when its clear that they have either been eaten by those same girls, or are in hiding for fear of being mistaken for a 7-11 corndog. I am not Arnie, nor would I want to be but I do have biceps and a fairly flat stomach, if you have a massive muffin-top and can’t take care of yourself why set yourself up by hiding behind deceptive photo angles? Just because you have cleavage does not mean you have nice boobs. We’re gonna find out eventually, why lie now? Every woman’s profile says they demand “honesty”, how many actually offer it? Self delusion is not attractive, except to the worst quality guys.

Biceps, a “fairly flat stomach,” a raging hostility towards women. Is that all this fellow has to offer? Not by a long shot! Did we mention that he owns his own home?

I am a homeowner with a couple of promising careers, a well developed intellect, a decent body and a serious disdain for drama, game playing and bullshit. Therefore I do not feel the need to “capture your attention” with something artificially witty and intriguing. How about you show me that you have what it takes to hold an intelligent conversation for ten minutes, or that you actually care about your future, and could be entertaining and fun for me as well?

So, do you have what it takes to hold an interesting conversation with No Beefcake? Possible topics include: 

1) home ownership and why it is the backbone of the American Dream 

2) why so many women are fat fatties. 

The ball’s in your court, ladies.

PS: Here's the Gilbert O'Sullivan song that I stole my title from.

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Men Who Hate Women, and the Women Who Love ... Porn

Cats also love porn.

So the guys over at MGTOWforums.com – who want nothing to do with women but somehow can’t stop talking about them all day every day – have some interesting theories on why some women like porn so much, sometimes to the point of addiction. 

According to the aptly named womanhater, it’s because they’re picking up tips; apparently, the better women fuck, the better they can fuck guys over:

Women (a few exceptions aside) see sex the same way a lumberjack sees a chainsaw - a useful tool. If they're 'addicted' to it then my guess is that they're in fact just studying it because they know it is their competition and they'd better learn how to do it like the men they hope to manipulate and extort want it. It's like any other form of physical performance - you get better by watching the professionals. There's not a man among us whose swing wouldn't improve if we spent several hours a day watching professional golfers.

True, at least that bit about golf. Based on my admittedly limited exposure to her work, I’m not sure that all the skills that one can learn from watching Sasha Grey necessarily translate all that well to non-gang-bang situations.

Zuberi, meanwhile, suspects that women watch porn just to spite men:

Are they really addicted to porn or are they desperately trying to keep up with the sheer number of men who watch porn? Are these harpies so insecure that they have to overtake men in everything? It's pathetic. There's already a number of women who are drinking themselves retarded trying to keep up with men that they think are power drinkers.

But are they really watching all the porn they say they’re watching? Shade47 is suspicious:

When women look at porn they see pixels on a screen. Just some more attention whoring from women looking for a new angle to reel men in.

Almsot every trashy girl Ive met claims to be into porn but when you look at her internet history its all retarded girl games on flash websites and shit. You know they arent covering their tracks by deleting browser history because that would involve understanding computers.

Damn these computer-illiterate, flash-game-loving, only-pretending-to-like-porn slatterns!

AC101202, by contrast, is convinced that a lot of women actually do love porn, or at least the more nasty and degrading parts of it – “facials, ass in the air, DP etc.” Why? Evolutionary Psych 101, dude!  Because their reptilian cave-lady brains just love gangbangs: 

Pre-civilization, women thousands of years ago spent their days getting nailed by dozens of guys. We all know here a majority of women have rape fantasies …

Women who are managers, in positions of power, probably get off most watching degrading actions performed on women. Their lower reptilian brain likes seeing women treated like sex objects, since the women who reproduced best were the one's who learned to enjoy gangbanging.

Now, I’m no evolutionary psych expert, but, er, what exactly is the evolutionary advantage of facials? I’m pretty sure you can’t get pregnant from semen on your forehead, in your eyes  or, say, up your nose. (At least I never have.) Perhaps someone better schooled in evo psych and the general evil of women could explain that to me.

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OkCupid can read your mind

From OkCupid

Antifeminists regularly charge feminists like me with assuming men and women are the same. Which is a bit silly. I don’t know any feminist who assumes men and women are the same, whether the differences are due to biology (I can’t grow a baby in my belly) or culture (women are far more likely to while away their evenings reading or writing fanfic about Sam and Dean). I think the confusion amongst the antifeminists on this point stems from the fact that the specific things they think are different between men and women are often nothing more than sexist nonsense, and feminists can’t help but point this out.

No, if you want to see the ways men and women really are different, it helps to start with actual data rather than a bunch of retrograde sexist assumptions you pull out of your ass. The folks behind the OkCupid dating site have lots of data – users of the site fill out detailed profiles and answer countless questions about themselves in order to find others like them – and they know how to crunch it. Which means they can tell you with a great deal of precision what the men and women who use their site think about all sorts of things. Which is why OkCupid’s blog is so often a source of wonderment.

Take the latest post – thanks to Feministe for alerting me to it – which presents an assortment of creative charts -- like the one above, depicting some of the actual differences between men and women on the site.

Who knew that men who mention “poetry” in their profiles were more likely to be into rough sex than dudes who talk about “boating?"

And what about guys who are into both poetry and boating? There must be some. I mean, many of my favorite poems involve Nantucket, a small island reachable only by boat.

Most of the rest of the charts in the latest post don't specifically contrast men and women, but are interesting in all sorts of other ways. (You may have to change some of your assumptions about vegetarians.) If you want more on gender differences (not to mention intersting stuff on race), I'd suggest looking back through the OkCupid blog's back catalogue. Here's an interesting post on The Mathematics of Beauty. And then there's this classic, which is probably a big part of why the fortysomething women I know who've used the site have gotten so, so many messages from horny guys half their age.

Roses are red

Violets are blue

I love the OkCupid blog

And so, I think, will you

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On Strike. Also: kitties.

It’s not hard to find misogyny on manosphere sites. Hell, on some sites, like The Spearhead or MGTOWforums.com, it’s hard to find a discussion that’s not overflowing with misogyny. 

What is hard to find, sometimes, is misogyny that is interesting. As I poked around on the regular sites today the misogyny all blurred together into one giant mass of "I've heard it all before." Here, it's: women are all dirty whores. There, it's: those damn bitches will get their comeuppance when we Go Our Own Way. Yeah, yeah. Tell me something I don't know. 

So I’m going on strike today for better misogyny. 

In the meantime, I present: a cat trying to jump onto a dresser. (In the interest of fairness, I should point out that cats can also do this.)

Maybe I'm just being cranky. There may well be some genuinely interesting misogyny I missed in either or both of the threads I linked to above. If you find some, feel free to post it in the comments.

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Body heat

Jayne Mansfield leaks sex onto Sophia Loren

Be careful, gals. With warmer weather coming, don’t be tempted to wear skimpier clothes. Because female sexuality works the same as body heat on a cold winter’s day: the more skin you show, the more heat – literal and figurative – leaks out. Eventually, you will run out. And that’s bad news, possibly for you, and definitely for your future husbands. (And really, they’re the only ones who count.) 

That, in any case, is the theory of one traditional-minded Men’s Rightser calling himself Alucin. In a blog post today he mused about the differences between traditional religious women and, you know, all those filthy “western” sluts wandering around exposing sexy bits like their legs and their … hair. (Not their leg hair, their head hair. We’ll get to leg hair in a minute.) Alucin writes: 

Orthodox Jewish [and]  Muslim women [cover] their hair and other parts when in public. The ideal is that they save their sexuality for their husband. Only their husband can see their hair, legs, cleavage, and experience their sexuality. 

All well and good, Alucin says. “Western women,” by contrast, 

fully display their sexuality, and tend not to value virginity or other traditional sexual morals. Then, when married, they turn into dowdy, asexual androids, gaining weight and wearing their man's clothes. And forgetting to shave.

They give none of their sexuality to their husbands. It has already been used up. She says that she owns her sexuality, but in fact it was the zillion guys she's been with who have owned her sexuality. Her sexuality has been farmed and mined.

A western woman's sexuality is for everyone but her husband. 

  

Here’s one of those horrible hair-showing western harlots singing about hot cleavage in the summertime. (Just so you don’t get too confused by the lyrics, I’m pretty sure the song is from the point of view of a guy missing his girlfriend.)

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Guys, you're not helping: The Dear Woman video

 

The video above, which has been making the rounds of the manosphere, is one of the creepiest and most off-putting things I’ve seen since watching Dogtooth a couple of weeks ago. Actually, I take that back: Dogtooth was much less creepy and off-putting. I was so repelled by what I saw in this video that it literally took me several tries to get through the whole thing. And no, it’s not some weird misogynistic rant by the likes of Bernard Chapin. Oh, no no no. The misogynists of the world are as repelled by the video as I am, though for radically different reasons. Titled “Dear Woman,” the video was actually put together by a couple of self-described “conscious men” who think they’re doing a great favor to the women of the world.

To which I can only say: Guys, stop it, you’re not helping.

If you can stomach it, the video is worth watching in its entirety. If not, here’s what you’re missing: The video is the work of a couple of New Age gurus -- Arjuna Ardagh and Gay Hendricks, Ph.D – who, with the help of a little gaggle of guys, have written a little manifesto “apologizing” to the women of the world for all the bad shit done by men to women over the centuries. Or, as they put it:

I feel deep love, great respect and a growing sense of worship for the gifts of the feminine. I also feel deep sorrow about the destructive actions of the unconscious masculine in the past and present. I want to apologize to you and make amends for those actions, in order to bring forth a new era of co-creation with you.

The first step in “making amends,” evidently, was to gather together a group of men – some of whom seem to have been roped into it in the middle of a garden party -- and to somehow convince them to read out loud the entire text of this manifesto. (The full text is here, but it's much creepier when it's read out loud.)

There is something about this manifesto, and the men reading it, that is so “off” that it may well make your skin crawl, and make you wonder how many of the men in the video have dead bodies secreted away in the crawl spaces under their homes. A female friend I showed the video to could only make it through the first couple of minutes before switching it off in horror; one commenter on Metafilter reported that it “made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, and not in a good way. Eeew.”

The creepyist, skin-crawliest part of the video has to be the section in which the assembled men talk about women’s bodies:

I honor the beauty and integrity of your body. When we worship each other through our bodies with awareness and devotion, there are no boundaries to the love that we can generate. I feel sorrow that men have used your beauty as a form of commerce in prostitution and pornography. In the grip of lust we have often lacked the skills to ask gracefully for intimacy or to take ‘No’ for an answer. I take a stand against any form of enforced or soulless commercialization of woman’s beauty, and I respect that your body belongs to you. …

I honor your capacity to listen to your body and its needs for food, rest and playtime.

I feel confident that I speak for many when I say "ewww." Somehow I’m reminded of Saturday Night Live’s hot-tub-loving “lovers.”

It’s worth pointing out that the written manifesto refers to men and women “nurture[ing]” one another’s body; apparently no one noticed that the dude reading this passage in the video had turned nurturing into “worship.”

As one commenter on Metafilter put it:

“We worship women" sounds like something Buffalo Bill would have said if he had a PR agent. My guess is that they're sickos who seem really earnest at first but it turns out that they're actually trying to collect used tampons for onanistic purposes or something.

So what is it, aside from all this worshiping, that makes the video so creepy? Part of the problem is that these “conscious men” are, in their own way, as patronizing and sexist as any manosphere dudes “mansplaining” about how all women only want to fuck alpha guys. Women, in their view, are inherently peaceful earth-mother types. “I commit now to … honoring the spirituality of the divine feminine,” the guys tell us. “I honor your deep connection to the earth.” 

The manifesto is overflowing with this kind of shit. No matter how “New Age” these guys think they are, these are some truly ancient, and quite thoroughly retrograde, notions.

But that’s just what makes them wrong and misguided. What is it that causes viewers to pick up that whole serial-killer vibe?

I think the answer to this can be found in a book called The Gif tof Fear by security expert Gavin de Becker. The book attempts to explain why our intuitions about creepy people are so often correct. There’s a good reason you feel uneasy around certain people; that’s your unconscious picking up on real, if hard to pin down, signals of danger.

De Becker also lays out some of the techniques predators use in an attempt to allay the suspicions of those they’re trying to victimize. One of the sneakiest? The unsolicited promise, which often means the very opposite of what is said. When someone tells you, out of the blue, that they “aren’t going to hurt you,” it’s often a very good sign that that’s exactly what they’re going to do. When someone feels the need to tell you, apropos of nothing, that he “honor[s] the beauty and integrity of your body” and “respect[s] that your body belongs to you,” you may well want to run screaming. 

Even more than the unsolicited promises, I think it’s the unsolicited apologies in the Dear Woman video – so similar in intent to unsolicited promises -- are a large part of what is setting off alarm bells in so many viewers. When a young guy in the video takes personal responsibility “for dragging you into … wars, and for the rape, murder, broken hearts and damaged families that resulted from them,” that’s just plain … weird, given that (unless he’s some young despot I’ve never heard of) he’s not actually responsible for any of this.

The “unsolicited promise” is similar to what de Becker calls “loan sharking” – offering unsolicited “help” in order to make victims feel obligated in some way to their unwanted helpers. In the manifesto/video, this “help” is abstract, but the strategy seems to be the same:

From this day, moving forward, I vow to treat your heart as the sacred temple it is, and I commit to honoring the feminine in you and me and in my relationship to all life.

 

Uh, who the fuck asked you to treat anyone’s heart as a “sacred temple?”

The manifesto/video is also filled with examples of “forced teaming,” another strategy favored by predators who want to convince their victims that they are in fact working together to do the very same thing:

I know that by leaving the past behind and joining hands in the present, we can create a synergy of our strengths. Together, there is nothing we cannot do.

(For a fuller explanation of some of de Becker’s ideas, take a look at this post on saying “no” on Captain Awkward’s excellent blog, which I’ve drawn on heavily here.)

But there’s something else about the video that adds to the sense that something is not right here: no matter how earnest all the men in the video are trying to sound, none of them (except perhaps the two ringleaders) seem to really believe the ridiculous things they’re saying. Instead, they seem to be, with varying degrees of insincerity, mouthing a series of essentially meaningless New Age platitudes – in short, simply saying what they think women want to hear.

No one is buying this bullshit, guys. Give it up.

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