Miss MRA @MraMissOne major distinction I have noticed between the Pickup Artist community and the Men's Rights activists is that the latter tend to be of lower socio-sexual status and less aware of Game. They tend to be enthusiastic about female involvement rather than wary. So, rather than simply accepting women of sympathetic views as allies while keeping them at arms length as the Game community does, the MRAs appear to welcome them as members and even spokeswomen.
Advocating for the rights of men and women!
This, I strongly suspect, is a major strategic mistake. Women are very, very adept at transforming organizations and movements into mere mechanisms serving the Female Imperative. This can be seen in the history of everything from church denominations to the American voting franchise.
It will not take long for "advocating for the rights of men and women!" to transform into yet another form of women's rights advocacy. It is one thing to welcome a friendly passenger to the back seat, another to hand them the keys and trust that they both know, and want to go, where you were intending to drive.
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Many MRAs seem desperate for female approbation. This is what always gets men into trouble.
The moment you bring women into any organization they start making pointless changes just to make changes. They can't help it, it's the nesting instinct. But the end result is scope-creep, they will throw any organization off mission.
The problem with MRAs is that men do not unite together, as a group, to fight women, as a group. Not even politically. Men will join with other men and form teams to compete with, or fight against, other groups of men, without question -- that's obvious. But to do so against women as a group? No. There are numerous reasons for this, but essentially it boils down to the much lower sex-based in-group preference that men have as compared to women (women are something like 4 times as likely to have a sex-based in-group preference for other women than men are for other men). Likely this has deep historical roots in pre-historic time, but for whatever reason, it is so. So trying to organize men to "fight for their rights as a sex" is a fool's errand -- in sharp contrast to women, men don't align on the basis of their sex with stranger men with whom they have little or nothing in common. Instead men align with other men with whom they share something important in common -- historically tribal/blood kinship, but today numerous other forms of alignment, as we can see in everything from athletic teams to corporate organizations and the military. But the key is that the organization is not as men, qua, men, but as one group of men over against another group of competitor men. That is how men are, and it's why "men's rights" is a walk in the dark politically.
Of course, the same underlying issues (many of them family law-related, some of them related to other laws like the creeping definition of rape on campus and so on) can be addressed politically if framed properly. But to frame them as "men's rights issues" is simply a fail. Similarly framing them as "men's human rights issues", as some have tried to do, is also a fail. The reality is that there is a small group of men advocating for change in certain areas against a larger, and more entrenched, group of men which defends the status quo. Yes, the FI is always lurking and is what they serve to a large degree, but it's still mostly a fight between two groups of men, and a political one. It's also a losing fight, because the MRAs tend to buy into the same paradigms that underlie the FI to begin with, such as equality and rights and so on. But even leaving that aside, framing the issue as "men's rights" only guarantees failure, again because the overwhelming majority of men are not going to sign up for a fight based on some kind of allegiance to men on the basis of their sex. Men don't work that way, and by pretending that we do, MRAs have really only demonstrated how little they understand about the natures of both men and women alike.
So they have women in their ranks because their appeal to men is low -- even among men who, as compared with men as a whole, care more about the kinds of issues MRAs talk about and are somewhat sympathetic regarding at least some of those issues. The problem is the frame. A movement based on organizing men over and against women, or some subset of women, will simply not work. It is not a masculine frame, and it flies in the face of an actual understanding of how men work. As a result, MRAism is a dead letter politically. Any real political solution would need to be systemic in any case, but even for incremental gains, the framing of the MRAs is just a failure, and makes it a failed movement even before it leaves the stable.
Idiots. Where are the Men's Clubs today? Elks? FPOE? All gone. Why? They let women in. Women. Ruin. Everything.
"Women are very, very adept at transforming organizations and movements into mere mechanisms serving the Female Imperative"
Yup. Seen this happen twice in three years, just in the manosphere.
Nova - Isn't part of the problem too that once a woman shows up in a group of men, there is a natural tendency for men to compete with other men for the female and a low ranking male "competes" by conceding to the female? Being fear-driven, the female tendency is to garner protection and once she shows up to the MR cause (the province of lower ranking men), she smells the weakness and continues to seek protection not from these men but through instinctual girding of the FI?
Conscientia Republicae said... Idiots. Where are the Men's Clubs today? Elks? FPOE? All gone. Why? They let women in. Women. Ruin. Everything.
This is why women were never permitted in the past to be members. They joined the women's auxiliary, which was under the purview of the men's grouup.
Nova - Isn't part of the problem too that once a woman shows up in a group of men, there is a natural tendency for men to compete with other men for the female and a low ranking male "competes" by conceding to the female? Being fear-driven, the female tendency is to garner protection and once she shows up to the MR cause (the province of lower ranking men), she smells the weakness and continues to seek protection not from these men but through instinctual girding of the FI?
Of course, that is also a problem, even with the small size of the group. That is, even for the small group of men who are willing to sign on to activism on behalf of their sex, as such, the presence of women will still undermine them due to the tendencies you mention, making the whole thing even less impactful than its small size to begin with would suggest.
You also see this with conservatives who invite liberals into their ranks. There's a tendency to think that having "both sides" represented makes your group more legitimate. If you just say, "Nope, sorry, no liberals allowed," you'll be accused of being closed-minded and too afraid of other viewpoints to face them. So you make room for them to show how open-minded and reasonable you are, and eventually you have gay scout leaders.
With men and women, there's the additional problem that men just plain like having women around. But there's the same dynamic: a man doesn't want to be accused of being afraid of women. "Oh, what, all you boys can't handle a few girls putting in their two cents once in a while? Are you really that insecure?" So they cave, and then cave some more, until women are running the group.
"It is one thing to welcome a friendly passenger to the back seat, another to hand them the keys and trust that they both know, and want to go, where you were intending to drive"
Judging from all the enthusiasm for the impending destruction of Western civilization, the only rational response women can engage in is to try and take the damn wheel and wreck your car. We have a group of men who apparently don't believe in love, fantasizing about the coming zombie apocalypse and the opportunity to execute all their perceived enemies, and you wonder why women might be, you know, tempted to throw your asses out of the drivers seat.
Nova, that was a briliant comment. it really explains a lot about what's wrong with the MRM.
This reminds me of horrible article about the "patriarchy" over at Good Men Project. It was prompted by SCOTUS's ruling that you can't force employers to be complicit with the murder of unborn children.
PUAs and MRAs are post-feminists, but for different reasons. PUAs are in it for the personal benefits, MRAs for ideological reasons.
GG, as always, you brighten my day.
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The Good Men Project is a gamma warren. I thought it was started that way, was it overrun at some point.
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I don't know who MissMRA is but on twitter you can claim to be whoever you want to be. It seems to me that any group of at least 5 men will eventually attract a woman looking to be included in order for her to obtain some sort of validation through having a hive of her own. Hence the female trekkies, comic book enthusiasts, gamer girls, LARPers, etc.
From Male Space:
http://therationalmale.com/2014/06/03/male-space/
Overseers in the Locker Room
The second purpose in the goal of female inclusion into male space is really a policing of the thought dynamics and attitudes of the men in that space. When women are allowed access to the locker room the dynamic of the locker room changes. The locker room can take many different shapes: the workplace environment, the sports team, the group of all-male coders, the primarily male scientific community, the ‘boys club’, the group of gamer nerds at the local game store, even strip clubs and the sanctuary you think your ‘man cave’ is – the context is one of women inserting themselves into male space in order to enforce the dictates of feminine social primacy.
When the influence of feminine-primacy is introduced into social settings made up mainly by men and male-interests, the dynamics and purpose of that group changes. The purpose becomes less about the endeavor itself and more about adherence to the feminine-inclusionary aspect of that endeavor. It starts to become less about being the best or most passionate at what they do, and more about being acceptable to the influence of the Feminine Imperative while attempting maintaining the former level of interest in the endeavor.
Men unaccustomed to having women in their midst generally react in two ways; According to their proper feminized conditioning, they embrace the opportunity to impress these ‘trailblazing’ women (hoping to be found worthy of intimacy) with their enthusiastic acceptance of, and identification with, their feminine overseer(s), or they become easy foils of an “out moded” way of thinking that the new ‘in-group’ happily labels them with.
Once the feminine-primary in-group dynamic is established a ‘feminine correct’ social frame follows. This feminine correction restructures the priorities of goals, and validates any accomplishments, in terms of how they reflect upon the feminine as a whole. Thus any in-group success is perceived as a feminine success in male space, while in-group failures or simple mediocrity is either dismissed entirely or blamed on out-group men’s failure to comply with, or the rejection of, the Feminine Imperative’s ‘correcting’ influence on the in-group.
MRAs are just one more Locker Room to infiltrate, and when they do, it wont be because women were passionate about Men's Rights – it'll be because MRA's fell all over themselves trying to identify with the women.
RT
What I find toxic is the Pick-Up Artist community aligning with the Men's Christian Community. They might philosophically agree with many things, but one is a sexual heathen and the other is not.
What I find toxic is the Pick-Up Artist community aligning with the Men's Christian Community.
Which is ironic, as that is the more effective alliance. Both sides have a genuine commitment to the truth.
Overseers in the Locker Room
That was a very good post. If I didn't link to it before, I should have.
If you want to see the future of the MRM, look no further than the MMSL forums and how Athol Kay's overall message has shifted since he quit his day job and found it necessary to pander to the wives and women who co-opted the message of his book(s)
This will be AVfM inside 3 years.
"If you want to see the future of the MRM, look no further than the MMSL forums and how Athol Kay's overall message has shifted since he quit his day job and found it necessary to pander to the wives and women who co-opted the message of his book(s)" - So true, exactly. I was "chastised harshly" from the site for suggesting that men there really needed their own space without women intruding. His reaction was classic Beta/Omega. I withdrew my userID after that.
Re: the AVFM / MRA thing. I agree. but I do enjoy sharpening my teeth on the feminists on their hashtag. Fun.
You also see this with conservatives who invite liberals into their ranks. There's a tendency to think that having "both sides" represented makes your group more legitimate.
I keep telling the gun guys this very thing, they think I am a nut.
Nova, the problem with your assertion is that you want those men's groups to be against ALL women, but they are not against ALL men when they fight specific groups of men. All male organizations are certainly worthwhile, but targeting all women is not an effective or sustainable tactic.
VD,
> "Which is ironic, as that is the more effective alliance. Both sides have a genuine commitment to the truth."
One wants to exploit sin for their own gain, the other wants to call it sin and avoid it. Both may acknowledge that the sin is sin, but common cause and direction seems to be missing.
My impression is that MRA groups are heavily Gamma, with all the social dysfunction that implies. Their solutions rely on someone else (e.g. the government, a strong woman, etc.) solving their problems. In the end, they won't be our allies.
GG, putting aside for a moment how you are trying to shame men by saying they don't believe in love....
Can you make an attempt to rationally explain what is so loving about the women who use these legal inequities to hurt men through divorce extortion, cuckholdery, and paternity fraud?
PUAs are in it for the personal benefits, MRAs for ideological reasons.
I think this is the fundamental reason why MRAs are eager to embrace women as allies--they (MRAs) see themselves as victims of oppression who need all the allies they can get. PUAs aren't fighting against anything; they're more like hunters stalking prey.
"GG, putting aside for a moment how you are trying to shame men by saying they don't believe in love...."
I don't do shame, Trust. In the garden one of the first things God says after the fall is, "I did not give you a spirit of shame." Shame is a destructive thing and pretty much the root of all evil in the world.
"Can you make an attempt to rationally explain what is so loving about the women who use these legal inequities to hurt men through divorce extortion, cuckholdery, and paternity fraud?"
No, why would I do that? Such is the nature of women. People can wail about it all they want, but it is what it is. I never asked if anybody here believed in the goodness of women, I asked if they believed in love. There is a difference, you know.
GG - whether men believe in love or not is irrelevant, because women are not capable of providing love on the terms under which it was sold to men.
We (the beta and gamma men) have been told since birth that women will love us if we are just ourselves. We were told that a woman would love us unconditionally and interminably.
We were, in short, lied to. And now that the lie has been exposed and men are responding in the logical way to it, you want us to love women as though we were never exposed to the truth of the FI?
Sorry, not gonna happen. Can't put the genie back in the bottle.
Does anyone else besides me see accusing men who hesitate to marry of "not believing in love" a shaming tactic? Or am I wrong?
I believe on love, but I don't recommend playing Russian Roulette in pursuit of it.
. We have a group of men who apparently don't believe in love
I don't believe in (human) love, because love is not God and love is not a religion to believe in. If somebody is foolish enough to believe in a fleeting human feeling instead of our Creator, s/he is for a bad awakening.
why women might be, you know, tempted to throw your asses out of the drivers seat.
I wish women threw our asses out of the drivers seat and drive alone. But they only know how to threat, whine and complain to manipulate men who get things done. Let them drive alone and make a fool of themselves. Destination: Stone Age.
It they want to throw our asses out if the driver's seat, fine. But don't demand we pay the gas bill for the mileage on Alpha Avenue.
" ..whether men believe in love or not is irrelevant, because women are not capable of providing love on the terms under which it was sold to men..."
Do men really believe that women are the ones who provide love? That our ability to reflect love back to you is what creates your feelings of worthiness? I think you do, so when love falls apart you risk not losing just money, but your very identity itself, your value, your purpose.
That really is a cruel joke. Most women aren't like that. When our hearts break, most of us tend to eat a half gallon of ice cream, wash our hair, and move on.
"I believe on love, but I don't recommend playing Russian Roulette in pursuit of it."
Interesting Trust, because I think that's exactly what love is, especially for men, a game of Russian Roulette. That's part of the design and why men tend to be more excited about risk taking than women are. They have to be, love is a dangerous game.
One of the healthiest things I see in the manosphere is men who are advocating investing in themselves, increasing their worth, not through women, but by other means of self improvement.
IMO the thing that is tripping people up here is not looking beyond existing, traditional power structures. They are lost. All of the institutions have been subsumed by feminism. All have have been re-tasked from their original purpose - creating and preserving society's wealth, power and culture - to instead being primarily focused on providing to women. Even as they become ever more focused on squeezing men they grow less effective in their original purpose - and much more fragile. One way or another, they will start to break. The wealth and power they used to command and protect has almost been exhausted. They are spent.
Expecting men to band together to fight for their rights is, well, foolish. Can any man here really see thousands of men marching in the streets for their 'rights'. I mean really? Doesn't that seem a bit 'ghey' to most men?
It will never happen - that is what women do. It is not the way of men.
For almost all women their only route to power is to co-opt the power structures men create. Marching in the streets to push men to give them access to their power structures is the female way.
Men don't follow the same route to power. Men understand that power granted from a higher authority is no power at all. For if power can be granted, it can be taken away. True male power comes from besting nature or other men. That means destroying, creating, inventing, innovating, improving, confronting, risking, sacrificing. Most men don't make the cut, some don't even try. That's fine - there is more variability in men than women so it is to be expected.
So where are we now?
Feminism had women join together to form an army of millions. They conquered the institutions and consequently the institutions are dying.
For men the Red Pill is creating a million armies of one. They are increasingly finding ways of living that marginalize the feminized institutions.
My point is that whilst I will not get in the way of MRAs, I believe they will ultimately be seen to be a side show in the real dynamic of change; millions of men all deciding for themselves the path they will choose in life. Men acting independently or in small groups with occasional hierarchies forming to execute a particular mission. But with decreasing engagement in the traditional power structures as they increasingly confer fewer benefits and status to men. As the institution's power fades men are already finding new ways to measure themselves - ways that mean something. Not the metrics the failing institutions seek to impose.
In short men are (as ever) creating new power structures. These structures are distributed, transient, virtual. Feminism and indeed TPTB are flailing in response; there is no figurehead to topple, no institution to attack, no single pool of wealth or money to tap in this new distributed power system. For a tiny part of it resides in every single man who adopts any part of the red pill lifestyle, to whatever degree.
Red Pill men are hidden in plain site - it's not just the Rooshes and Roissy's that are red pill. That guy with the corporate job may have turned down a promotion in order to have more time for his hobbies - safe in the knowledge that his wife will not complain because he's got marriage game in full effect at home. That hard charging entrepeneur may just be knocking himself out with the plan to retire at 35 - not to form a family. That great family guy who managers the under 16 soccer team - he may be dispensing red pill truths at every training session.
So I would say, stop lamenting that men refuse to band together 'for our rights'. Change is already happening - many young women already sense it even though they can't articulate it. The best thing to do now is promote the red pill and if you can't do that, then just get out of the way of those who do.
Expecting men to band together to fight for their rights is, well, foolish. Can any man here really see thousands of men marching in the streets for their 'rights'. I mean really? Doesn't that seem a bit 'ghey' to most men?
It will never happen - that is what women do. It is not the way of men.
Hear, hear. The only men who engage in this sort of behavior are feminized men who will try to perpetuate the broken, doomed, feminized society that is crumbling around us. They're supplicants, begging on their knees for a little more gruel.
MRA guys seem to understand that there is indeed a problem but they can't swallow the red pill.
They want to have Don Draper's world back. Understandably so, it was probably the best time in history to be a lower status man. In Draper's world a Gamma could excel just by being a loyal company man. By his late twenties sheer attrition had moved him up the ladder, he had a car, a house and a steady career. Congratulations Mister Gamma you are now a catch. It was world where women still needed men. There was the occasional problem of woman trying to convince a Gamma that she was indeed interested in him (kind of) but eventually they could figure it out.
As more capable women entered the workforce, lower status men were forced out. The need for men vanished and the rest of course you know.
I think the big difference between MRA and PUA is the sad belief that if enough people are educated about the problem they can change things.
Bottom line: MRA guys are going to be someone's useful idiots. It would be better if they were ours.
Bottom line: MRA guys are going to be someone's useful idiots. It would be better if they were ours.
Idiots, yes. Not sure how useful they will be though. Their idea of getting something done is complaining until someone else does it for them. Whoever is in charge of making them useful will have far more patience than I.
The main reason why the men’s rights movement is never going to get anywhere is that it’s trying to play on a sympathy that does not exist. Human beings just aren't wired to give a damn about what happens to men, as a group. A son or brother, a nephew, a boyfriend or husband... yes, maybe. But men in general... no, no, no.
The men's movement comes across as a bunch of weak men asking for things to be given to them out of sympathy, which is why so many people of all political persuasions have no respect for MRAs. Men cannot just ask for things like women can and expect them to be handed to them; they have to take what they want or fight for what they want, or do without it.
As has been said, “Women’s strength is their appearance of weakness, while men’s weakness is their appearance of strength.” Because females are the weaker sex, they can have their concerns and needs addressed by society and the state, and they can ask for help and sympathy and get it.
Meanwhile, the concerns and needs of men are going to be overlooked and ignored, because no one respects any man who needs help or has to ask for anything.
It is what it is. Men can either choose to complain about the inherent unfairness of what Heartiste calls the Fundamental Premise, or they can find ways to deal with it and prosper in spite of it. And the latter is the only option that has any hope in hell of working out for them.
Here's the post in which Heartiste defines the Fundamental Premise.
http://heartiste.wordpress.com/2013/03/21/the-fundamental-premise/
MRA's may also play into the hands of the liberals with their appeal to reason; while it may be necessary to do what they can to change the legal system they need to realize that this is a power struggle, and that "logic" is not the problem here but appetite. Vox's posts about dialectic vs. rhetoric are apropos.
By the time the MhRM goes mainstream (if it gets that far) it will be virtually indistinguishable from feminism.
I believe on love, but I don't recommend playing Russian Roulette in pursuit of it. Indonesian blogger
Men are no more capable of solidarity around women than women are around Alphas.
Idiots, yes. Not sure how useful they will be though. Their idea of getting something done is complaining until someone else does it for them. Whoever is in charge of making them useful will have far more patience than I.
They will be useful to feminist. They will be held up as the good Men's Rights Activists.(for whom sadly nothing can be done of course) as opposed to those vile sexist PUA guys. Tragically the MRA types will be happy to get the attention
They will be useful to feminist. They will be held up as the good Men's Rights Activists.(for whom sadly nothing can be done of course) as opposed to those vile sexist PUA guys. Tragically the MRA types will be happy to get the attention
Sure, but... a world where that is useful is a world that can't change for the better. A world that can change for the better will pay no attention to MRAs
What I'm really saying is, nothing will get fixed until society ignores feminists, and that won't happen until society values masculinity again. The only way the typical MRA gamma can help society realize the value of masculinity is by providing a counter example. So perhaps the most use they can be is as obvious puppets of the harpies.
Doesn't truth being spoken have value whoever is speaking it? Or do you have to have the precisely accurate truth befoe it has value?
"What I'm really saying is, nothing will get fixed until society ignores feminists, and that won't happen until society values masculinity again"
Actually, no Jack Amok. "society" isn't going to do anything. It's men who have to learn how to value masculinity in themselves again. Thinking society is going to change is not a game you are ever going to win.
You know GG, women in general have relentlessly attacked and even outlawed masculinity, male confidence, etc., the very things they find attractive about men, and then wonder why they are dissatisfied with the results.
It would be like me bitching every time my wife went to the gym, dressed nice, or ate right, and then complaining that she just wasn't attractive to me anymore.
Awaiting the "but men need to so the opposite if our reward/punishment system" response.
Actually, no Jack Amok. "society" isn't going to do anything. It's men who have to learn how to value masculinity in themselves again. Thinking society is going to change is not a game you are ever going to win.
You misunderstand what I mean by changing society. You assume - like a woman would - that I'm calling for the attitudes of the people who make up "society" to change. I think we need to change the membership.
"You know GG, women in general have relentlessly attacked and even outlawed masculinity, male confidence, etc., the very things they find attractive about men..."
Yes Trust, but I think you forget about all the low status males heavily invested in the destruction of traditional masculinity themselves, buzzing around women like bees, hoping they will rate higher in the equation, as soon as the rules are rewritten.
thank you . . .
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