Recently Andy Man posted a brief introduction and links to a series of Videos produced by Kelly Jones. This articulate and obviously intelligent woman had a great deal to say about the nature of both men and women, much of which I agreed with.
What was of particular interest to me, however, was her proposed explanation for why some men, whom she referred to as manginas, seem hopelessly unable to resist indulging and enabling neoteny in women, or, in different wording, why these men (indeed all men by her later implications) assume the burden of hyperagency in their relationships with women, effectively insisting that those women lead lives of incompetence and dependence.
She goes on to say that her explanation also accounted for the phenomenon of misandry. The answer, according to Jones, is laziness:
Men have permitted women to become morons. It is the lazy man who, himself, is desirous of being as stupid and irrational as he can get away without compromising his survival, who is responsible for misandry to a large part.
Now, from the outset I found this answer to be lacking, both in terms of explaining men’s predisposition to tolerate childlike women, and as a genesis for misandry.
I will get to more of that before concluding, but I think it is important to say that simply shooting holes in Jones’s theory is not the objective of this writing. I actually found much of her presentation compelling. Even better, she has eloquently tapped in to questions that I would like to reframe, as I think they are crucial to the common discourse here.
Why do so many men tolerate and indeed seem to insist on enabling irrational, materialistic, self-absorbed and grossly immature behavior from women?
Why do so many men go as far as to idealize this kind of woman, catering to every capricious whim and seemingly having no limit of what they will endure or surrender in their efforts to please her?
And why, when queried, will these men, most men, demonstrate staggering levels of denial, fumble for words or explanations, or as a last resort direct outrage at anyone asking the questions?
These, I believe, are the questions of the century for modern men. And this venue is one of the few places that they have a chance of ultimately finding substantive answers.
My answer for this is, like Jones’s, quite simple. I also think it is a lot more accurate.
Fear. More precisely, fear of what most men’s unconscious minds interpret as a painful, death-like black void where they reside without validation of their worth in a woman’s eyes.
I should acknowledge at this point that I do not offer these observations as empirical. I have no sources, nor do I doubt that empirical support for these ideas is scant or non-existent. They are submitted solely for the judgment of your rational mind and nothing more.
It’s a complicated matter, and one that cannot be explained without an understanding of men’s collective, historical experience, their education, and their personal family experiences.
Consider that until the industrial revolution families were most often run like business concerns involving all family members. Whether they were farmers, craftsmen or artisans, most men worked in immediate proximity to the home. They were intimately and continuously involved in their lives of their children. Sons, the only children relevant to this discussion, were often assumed to follow in their father’s footsteps after being mentored in his skills during their upbringing.
The connection to the father, even when fraught with all the expected conflicts in the struggle for individuation, was the son’s primary source of approval and identity. It was in the father’s eyes, and ultimately in his own works, that he found his worth, or his failure, as a man.
The marital relationship in the home was much different than in modern times. Unless the family was affluent, and few were, women worked and toiled alongside their husbands and children. They were integral components to the family’s success. It is not difficult for me to imagine that the realm of “emotional needs” for women was much less of a priority then than it is now.
And then men invented factories.
While in retrospect it is likely a misnomer to call it an industrial “revolution,” as it occurred over such a broad timeframe, there was nonetheless a great deal of social change associated with the development of large scale, centralized manufacturing processes. The number of residents in American cities doubled in forty years, from 15 million to 30 million, between 1860 and 1900. The growth went hand in hand with the proliferation of factories.
This had a significant impact on the family. The first, monumental change in the lives of men was that it removed the father from the home.
Fathers, who once headed family concerns, now left their families to work in factories, whether on the manufacturing or business management end. The children, of course, remained at home with the mother.
Now, I am certain at this statement could have the effect of prompting a feminist to register with the site just so they can point out that women worked in factories, too. And yes, they did, but not many. Most, even women of that time, were not suited for the physically arduous nature of the work, and most families needed someone at home to care for children. It made sense that the person with the greatest capacity for labor, and who did not need to nurse infants, took on that responsibility.
As history clearly illustrates, that is what happened.
Then something else happened. As men labored to take care of their families, they began to export the products of technological advances back to the home. Food in cities was not grown by the consumers. It was bought and prepared. The milk bottle was developed and patented in 1877, and home deliveries of bottled milk began in 1878.
What this meant was that the more men worked, the less women had to. For the first time in western history women, unlike men, began to have options about what to do with their time. Some chose to work, many others chose to settle in to a new role, as a housewife.
Why is this important to this discussion? Because this is the time in history that women began to experience a more idle time than ever before. That idle time, I think, was the beginning of trouble for men, and for all of us.
With the father removed to produce income, and with women having time to dwell on emotional “needs” instead of work, children, particularly young boys, began being placed in the role of surrogate husband in the father’s continual absence. It is a form of emotional incest that was conducted with the collusion of the father, who often made their sons, “The man of the house while I am away.”
This effectively left boys alone with quietly disgruntled, idle mothers who used their sons to buffer the emotional emptiness that arose from a life with too many options and too little to actually do.
Thus the father’s role changed significantly. He was demoted from family leader to mother’s enforcer and financier. I am sure it was not too long after the masses of people migrated to cities that the term, “Wait till your father gets home,” became a common threat to secure approved conduct from children, particularly young boys.
What developed was the forerunner of the broken family; father, breadwinner and as-needed authoritarian, participating in but a fraction of family life as compared to his predecessors; mother, beneficiary, dependent, isolated and filling the void in her life with emotional needs that the father could not fulfill (because no one can). Mothers turned to their children and began reversing the role of caretaker, emotionally speaking.
It is a model still common today, even in post-divorce families.
And what change did this effect on the psyche of boys? For one they went from measuring themselves by pleasing their fathers with demonstration of competence in a skill or trade, to measuring themselves by pleasing mother in emotional terms.
It is just that simple.
And it is just that profound.
In a society that has coined the phrase, “If momma ain’t happy, nobody’s happy,” this has powerful implications on the emotional and psychological development of young men.
When the measure of your worth, as inculcated every day of your life, is in meeting the bottomless emotional needs of a still childlike adult, the absence of approval from that adult becomes a form of death.
Consider the norm for how we perceive disrespect of or even simply displeasing a mother in this culture. Now consider several generations of mothers who exploit that at every turn, even as it twists the minds of their sons into conforming “maternalists.”
Couple that with the fact that even when young boys get a temporary escape from the home in the form of school, that they enter a system where compliance with female wishes is essential to any measure of success. Consider what happens when failure to please the women at school results in a damning note sent from the teacher.
Well, wait till your father gets home.
Now couple all this with the millions of years of human male instinct to be accepted by women for reproduction, and the mixed evolutionary and socialized expectation for men to protect, provide and sacrifice for women.
Is it any real stretch of the imagination that in 2013 we now have a population of men that literally cannot conceive of their own existence without the mirroring of their fitness in the eyes of a woman?
Would that not offer one plausible explanation of why the absolute insanity of gender feminism has flourished and found nearly universal support from men? And they have supported it, either overtly by laying themselves prostrate before the altar of feminism (women), or by a toxically enabling silence born of the fact that they are too afraid to speak up.
After I placed my comment to Jones, she responded, and appeared to infer from my initial statement about fear that perhaps the problem was in the age old ‘fragile male ego.’
You say, Paul, that manginas work for women out of fear of the identity void from being rejected by women. That is, you say these men work like slaves not out of laziness (of course) but from fear of not being praised by women. Then, are their egos so fragile that they need the psychological blow-job of being told they are good and useful slaves?
I have to reject this premise as well.
First, and to quickly clear up a detail, I did not use the word “mangina,” nor do I ever use it in my writing these days. It is not that I don’t think some men need to be shamed, but not in the context of this discussion. I am not talking about men who are consciously obsequious, but of average men, many of whom tolerate the most egregious conduct and parasitic bonding from women, but are likely never fully conscious of the degradation.
This is not a matter of some innate, characterologial deficiency in the male ego. Intact egos are a product of healthy emotional and psychological development. Most men, since the industrial revolution, have had healthy ego development sabotaged from birth. There was never really a chance for them to defend against the dependence on women’s approval. Indeed, society as a whole has coalesced around the idea of making them as servile as possible.
I don’t pretend to have a solution for that, either. Thankfully, the red pill is now available for the minority of men who can digest it. And as more men do that then more will follow. It could take a hundred years or more to reverse in this fashion.
But there is, with all respect to Ms. Jones, no answers to be found for the average man in misandric clichés. Laziness, weak ego, and the rest are just canards covering a more basic reality: men pathologically fear women’s rejection because we raise them pathologically to be dependent on women’s approval.
This is not created by men, or by women in a vacuum. It is a cultural product of a society whose technological advances outpaced the human ability to adapt and adjust functionally.
If there is to be answers, and I think there eventually will, they will be found in a nuanced understanding of the human condition that runs deeper than labeling all dysfunctional behavior as a flaw in character.
If there were ever a path to misandry, that is it.
Tags: explorer
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Andres:
Dean Esmay:
Sam:
Kimski:
Near Earth Object:
jmnzz:
“Why do so many men tolerate and indeed seem to insist on enabling irrational, materialistic, self-absorbed and grossly immature behavior from women?
Why do so many men go as far as to idealize this kind of woman, catering to every capricious whim and seemingly having no limit of what they will endure or surrender in their efforts to please her?”
pussy…
pussy
Yup, and as a wise man said:
“If they didn’t have one we would hunt them for food”.
I think it’s more than that. I agree with Paul – it’s about being trained to gain female approval.
I mean, why would some guy defend a woman 1000′s of miles away over the internet? Obviously they are not going to have sex. It’s a drilled in need for female approval.
True dat. If it were reduced to pussy, you would not see men cowering to women they are not even sexually attracted to. You would not see men clawing and scraping to get back in the good graces of women who treat them in ways they would kill other men for.
Nah, not just pussy at all.
Even some gay guys do it…
As the workplace continues to transform, will men’s role then shift back towards the home?
The notion of women providing men ‘validation of worth’ may be overstated. There is other fear: fear of lacking a companion, a partner, someone who cares and is there for you always.
Extending companionship, partnership and love IS validation of worth. That is precisely the point.
OK, if I accept the premise that love, companionship, sex, etc. with a woman is validation of my worth, that would suggest that without those things, I have no, or lesser, worth in both my own eyes and possibly those of others.
I can’t speak for anyone else, but my sense of worth and self-esteem does not really vary dependent on having any or all of those things. In fact, I’ve been quite happily single for half my adult life, and MGTOW for the last 8 years.
The half of my adult life when I had female companionship was when my sense of self-worth took a tumble.
Somehow I don’t think this really applies to MGTOW.
That’s an interesting point: are MGTOWs different somehow than non-MGTOWs in some existential way?
Are MGTOWs men who intrinsically, by their very nature, don’t particularly need or want women for validation of worth and never did, or are they men who want it but have concluded that current women don’t actually provide it?
“or are they men who want it but have concluded that current women don’t actually provide it?”
Or are they men who have concluded that it doesn’t matter if women can provide it, because either way, the price is too high.
The more that I study human nature and especially female human nature, the more that I believe that “love” is the great lie.
Some people argue that you cannot love a pet because it is not free, to develop or mature to its full potential.
How is love involved in human sexual relationships when change or maturing from one of the members can end the relationship, plus I find within my own experience that what was expected of me from the women in my life, was gods truth to them and just a deal breaker if not fulfilled by me. That is not love (from my current paradigm I do not believe women are capable of loving a sexual partner only of using them).
I have to agree with this. What good would it do for a woman to be in love with her laborer? evolutionarily speaking. and, of course, the lessons of so many men. i have to ask, though, what can we say to explain the, well, pretty cool and peaceful and fulfilling relationships that some people out there are having. some of these guys aren’t manginas, though of the couples i can think of, the women are likely candidates for male brain-wiring, in my unscientific opinion. Good fathers of both people in the relationship is probably very important, but also male brain-wiring? are women’s and men’s brains placed somewhere on different continuums that almost touch each other, and in the case of people who are transgendered, actually intersect?
@bcdad666,
It is a validation of your worth, there a plenty of other valid validations.
“The half of my adult life when I had female companionship was when my sense of self-worth took a tumble.”
Withholding the validation gives them so much power….
On the other hand, she was still with me and providing HER validation of me, which as we see was of no use to my self-worth.
My reduced sense of worth came from the fact I was being deprived of the things from whence I truly derived that self-worth – autonomy and freedom from irrational control being among them.
All I can say is DAMN Paul.
This is by far, over and above any other of your writings my favorite; and resonates with me more than any others.
For me, this curtails all the things in the sub conscious mind I have faced and naturally bucked and railed against since I was a boy. Much to the chagrin of my feminist teachers, and single mother; and now my foreign wife. Growing up in public schools, raised by a single mother; and never having known my biological father. The black void of unknowing rings deep in me.
Growing up in feminist dominated schools where I am from; I could never articulate what it was I was trying to push out? Like a spec ops warrior in a POW camp refusing submission (yet unaware of his location), or the viking in a long boat unknowingly far from the unknown shores of a foreign land he will never live to see his share of the credit for their discovery; is the journey of my soul trying to escape the institutional rape of my strength for female benefit. This proxy punishment by feminists was set up before I was born as the infrastructure to frame my existence. I feel they have threatened me with death since before I entered the womb.
As a boy, I instinctively knew I was greater than the obvious lies I was being fed. Forced against my will, yet without my awareness or knowledge; I was intentionally left bereft of anything that would complete me as a man. There is a reason for this; they fear the power of a intellectually adept, technologically skillful, mathematically logical, and capable of a sound mind of is the man who is all at once content with himself; and secure with the power he knows he possesses in his own skin.
They know they cannot resist a man they cannot control; yet therein lies the rub. A man who they can’t control may be sexually intoxicating; but he holds the power. These lovely little usurpers had to manipulate us, as they saw that the inventions we made were likely to allow us to leave them behind.
So they used suffragettes and then feminism to strike first and fail to totally hamstring all of us.
All I can say, despite my many failures; is look upon my glory and tremble sexist witches. I won’t suffer fools, nor worthless human beings by their own choice and lazy manipulations.
Our time is coming; and I just wanted to say thank you for writing this. It obviously resonated with me.
Our time is coming…….
Paul, thanks for yet another insightful piece. I would strongly recommend a book to anyone interested in these issues, Esther Vilar’s remarkable ‘The Manipulated Man’ – published in 1971 or 1972, if memory serves right.
Mike Buchanan
JUSTICE FOR MEN AND BOYS
http://j4mb.wordpress.com
LMFAO! That book ruffled quite a few feathers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvnxvAwSu-0
Watch the whole video. What a personality she is ! An epitome of the zeta woman.Just note how majestically she held her fort in the debate.
This was epic !
AS :How did you acquire that disrespect for women and that glorification of men? How did you get there?
EV: Because I can no longer listen to the nonsense that you and your comrades are spreading in public.
Thanks Bewildered, I’ll try to get to that later. Didn’t know this footage existed. Her London-based publsher told me she isn’t interested in engaging publicly in such debates these days, which is a shame. Maybe when the MHRA makes more progress, we’ll reach a tipping point when such stalwart women may be prepared to engage again. Let’s hope so.
Needless to say, Vilar received death threats when the book was published. The book has some nice touches of humour, including exaggeration for comic effect, which led to some commentators claiming the whole book was a spoof. My strong hunch was that it WASN’T a spoof, and her publisher said my hunch was correct.
Thanks so much for posting that video. Absolutely wonderful. I love Vilar’s amused patient composure throughout the whole thing, exactly as if talking to a confused child.
This is indeed wonderful, a must see. An amazing woman. Her attitude and laughter at AS’ insanity is wonderful. if she were laughing like that today in interviews and debates things would speed right the fuck up. It is also a treat to see the obvious threat tactics used against her, similar to when Lisa Simpson ever went her own way. must see.
The book I read that first gave me doubts about feminism.
Just as valid today as it was then.
First, it is surely not fear of an absence of female approval as simply the fear of failing to successfully compete with other men for status so as to be sexually selected by females. A male can in one or more ways be quite thoroughly disapproved of by a woman who nevertheless sleeps with him!
Second, it seems to me not female idleness that is the issue but the dramatic loss of a sense of role/function as mother and home-maker, given far smaller family size (if any children at all) and universal schooling, and labour-saving devices marginalising housework.
Being a home-maker turned from an all-embracing defining existence to at most a part-time job. Women have moved into the male domain of full-time workplace hierarchical progression by default as the only remaining thing to do. As this is hardly consonant with female role/function, and just further eclipses it in the impossibility of ‘having it all’, then not surprisingly they are pissed off; and by displacement dump much of their anger on to men.
I would argue that access to sex is a rather significant form of approval for most men.
I’d also argue that if it were simply the fear of failing to compete for sex that you would not see men hanging on year after year for the same, sexually inaccessible, non approving woman. There is hardly any status to be gained from that, yet scores of men do it all the time.
Men even stay with women, looking for approval after they have lost interest in sex with them.
If the primary drive was sexual selection, they would just go out and compete for sex with other women.
Hi Paul.
Well we’re all agreed it’s about access to sex, but I can make no sense of the rest of your post.
I can’t see how you can backtrack on sexual selection being the primary drive. Obviously it must be primary. Men have to compete with other men and try to convince women that they do indeed have high mate-value; two sides of the same coin.
Men seek female approval but women essentially are looking for alphas (or as near as they can get, given their own mate-value: assortative mating). Research shows that women want men who are dominant (and, indeed, not nice) to other men, as long as they are not not-nice to THEM. Not a fantastically high threshold. Men hardly would get very far signalling their mate-value by any approval-seeking that amounts to grovelling to women and fearing them.
Now, what does fit with what you’re saying, though, is men appealing to women in terms of mate-guarding. As I’ve argued re the pair-bond, the female needs to anchor down a male at the time she is at or near her peak in mate-value (fertility), so the male can bag a higher mate-value female (than he would through being promiscuous) if he ‘honestly’ signals his potential reliability as a mate-guarder. Then again, male mate-guarding is about keeping ‘losers’ at bay, so again we’re not exactly talking niceness here.
It strikes me that your focus is on the relatively surface stuff of how two people suss potential partners in terms of the prospect of managing to live together for a few years.
Both sexes often list quite high similar qualities of potential mates, but you have to view these as add-ons after the ‘givens’ have been met. A woman may list high a prospective partner’s agreeableness, but not only is this only in respect of HER rather than to other people, what she isn’t telling you is that if he isn’t first of all reasonably tall and in a good job then he wouldn’t have got to first base. Correspondingly, a girl can be an easy-going dream in character, but if she has a less than even plain face, and/or with a body like a sack of spuds and/or ‘old’, then you’re unlikely to choose her as your girlfriend.
I have long believed that as much insight as evo-psych has to give us, it can also lead us to gross oversimplifications, especially if one is still stuck in evo-psych pop works written decades ago (like “The Naked Ape” which, as interesting as it was at the time, has many things in it that have been rendered questionable in the decades of evo-psych work done since its publication).
Any look at human history prior to the industrial revolution and, probably more important, prior to the agricultural revolution, shows one very clear thing: human beings are pair-bonders.
Pair bonders. Not tournament maters. Not harem builders. Not promiscuous maters. Pair bonders.
In fact as a species we are more pair-bonding oriented than almost any other species on Earth, and moreso than any other primate.
Pair bonding does not necessarily mean 100% exclusive monogamy; “cheating” goes on in all pair-bonding species, humans no exception. Yet we tend to be more monogamous and more pair bond oriented than the vast majority of pair bonding species. I can dig up references for this if you want.
Thus reducing everything males do to simple competitiveness for access to copulate with a female is inaccurate, and in many ways debases both male and female sexuality in different ways.
Let me be clear, I am not arguing these are cultural forces; I’m stating up front that pair-bonding is our evolutionary, biological heritage as a starting point, and that any evo-psych analysis which fails to take this into account is bound to be deeply flawed.
The typical pattern, pre-industrial revolution: after puberty, within a few seasons, a few years at most, human beings go through a somewhat competitive mate selection process during their teen years, and typically then stick with that chosen mate until one of them dies. Now in premodern societies, odds of one of them dying before they even reached the age of 40 were very high, so some of our modern culture of divorce probably stems from our greater lifespans. But in any case “marriage” appears very much to be a formalization of something that people are already biologically inclined to do by nature.
I believe that formalized rules for marriage came about not as an artificial imposition to cause pair bonding–that’s something we were and are already inclined to do as a rule–but as a way to address the increasing ease of cuckolding and “cheating.” When the average human lived in a small group, a hunter/gatherer tribe or a village of a few hundred, cheating and opportunities to same would be far less abundant than in cities with thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people. Social friction would be caused by the greater opportunities for cheating and cuckolding, coupled with the rise of occupations which separated the pair bonded couple more than would normally happen in our natural, pre-civilizational environment.
A lot of the rules of modern civilization come from the fact that we have essentially domesticated ourselves, and chosen an environment that does not come naturally to us. Just as dogs have changed from wolves because of domestication, so too we have changed, but the base nature of dogs still remains fundamentally wolfish, as does the basic pair-bonded pack nature of humans.
Again, pair bonding does not suggest there will be no cuckolding, no adultery, no cheating, no nookie on the side. Indeed, these have been observed in every single species that is a pair-bonding species–whether that species be predator animal, flight animal, avian, mammalian, whatever.
As a specie we pair bond, and we should be hugely wary of any evo-psych analyses which do not acknowledge this overwhelming fact up front, because it otherwise leads us into sloppy conclusions about both male and female sexuality.
The pair bonding impulse is not an invention of civilization, not some value that was imposed on us by religion or ideology. Pair bonding is our base biological nature, wired into us all from birth (with the occasional “sport” who shows up who’s wired somewhat different than the baseline).
Someone will likely suggest this means I think we should shuck off the comforts of modern civilization and all go back to living on the plains with sharp sticks and rocks as our main tools and weapons. That would be absurd. But the comforts of civilization have come at a great price to us all (male and female alike) psychologically and yes, spiritually. We have accepted a base, and wrong, notion about family life.
This to me is the biggest beef I have with many so-called “traditionalists,” who always seem to assume that “man as breadwinner, mom stay at home with kids” is some sort of default setting for humans. No it is not, it never, ever was until very recently. In fact, when it was at its height, probably the 1950s, it was an innovation; prior to that, only rich people had such arrangements. Women always worked and not just inside but around the home, and men were always around the home or nearby.
Having the man as the sole provider and the woman as the sole childrearer is a very modern invention, and one that caused great discomfort to men and women alike.
The development of feminism was probably an inevitability precisely because of what Paul said: women had more time on their hands, and at the same time, less adult male company. You can see this in the writings of 2nd wave feminism’s era. If you look at the biographies of people like Erin Pizzey, Susan Brownmiller, Betty Friedan, and others, it’s screamingly obvious: whether they became “feminists” or not, what you had here was women who had no clear feeling about what their role should be in life, who felt constrained and claustrophobic stuck in an idealized fantasy of “you make babies and stay at home alone with them all day while your mate is away.” That entire dynamic is completely contrary to anything that the vast majority of humans experienced throughout history.
Paul I think you have it right on all the fundamentals here. I really do.
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Hi Steve:
Humans appear to have less predilection for extra-pair sex than most, if not all, other pair-bonding species. I have a reference for that I can dig up if you like. We’re more faithful by nature than most if not all pair-bonding animals.
The rise of civilization and the population explosion that came with it increased opportunities and lowered risks for extra-pair dallying to happen, so it naturally increased, but prior to that, the very ability to do it was greatly hindered by small population–we ran in packs of dozens or maybe hundreds at most. If we were inclined to mate-guarding and competition to proving ourselves worthy of females as a primary activity throughout our life cycle, males would almost never leave their females alone, and males would rarely cooperate with each other at all.
Males would also not tend to “settle down” and become more cooperative with each other once they mated, they would tend to become more territorial and more aggressive with each other instead.
One of the most remarkable things about Homo Sapiens is the fact that our males are incredibly cooperative with each other, virtually all the time, and tend to trust each other around their mates. This would be one major reason why the discovery that a trusted male companion has cuckolded you is generally an emotionally shattering, crippling experience, a trauma some men never fully recover from, and may cause murder but is as likely if not more likely to cause suicide.
The notion that males spend their entire lives mate guarding and competing for status with females appears to me belied by what we see of the anthropological record and even what we see today in our own civilization.
Even serial monogamy, while natural to some extent (after all, mates die), would tend to be relatively rare until it became possible for some males to generate orders of magnitude more resources than other males, which is also a comparatively recent phenomenon in human evolution.
The default state for human males is cooperation with each other. This starts in early childhood and continues throughout life. Anyone who can’t see this is blind to reality, you see it everywhere, in all walks of life, from the time they are toddlers. Even male competition with each other is remarkably tame compared to most other species.
Human males cooperate, trust each other, like each other. Moreso than any other species I can think of. Even our dominance hierarchies and pecking orders tend to be remarkably fluid and mostly nonviolent and to be inclined to switch from moment to moment dependent on context. This is one of the reasons why I now reject the Alpha/Beta/Omega paradigm: it’s been shown to be a gross oversimplification in other species, including wolves, and it appears to be a gross oversimplification for the naked ape as well. Paul Elam’s “Zeta Male” concept to me appears less a reinvention of masculinity than a rediscovery of authentic masculinity.
Hi Dean
Of course it’s not a case of everybody having extra-pair sex all the time, and anyway only a minority of high mate-value males would get most of the polygyny (in whatever form) as well as the extra-pair sex; but there has always been ample opportunity for it. Ancestrally girls/women would be able to have sex with bold strangers from neighbouring groups simply by straying close to the extent of their community’s home range. There is no reason why all this cannot go on and the group remain male intra-sexually cooperative. Males accept their rank, and albeit that they may try to gain rank, also are very good at making the best of where they are.
In general, the principle of cooperation in nature is at the level below how most social structure and dynamics manifests. The sexes are in essence intra-sexually competitive — though much more so the male — but when you drill down to the biology even below sex, then you see everything coming together in a mutual system.
Excellent analysis Dean, especially on the point that “Dominance is situational”.
I see an awful lot of women are pair bonding – not with a man mind you as you’re claiming, but with the government as substitute husband.
Dean, I think you have pretty well nailed it here. Cheating? Gee is anyone surprised at human cheating any more? They even cheat at cycling, cheat at cards, exams, at work, on the stock market, when they are buying, when they are selling, people cheat at everything.
@Stephen O’Brian,
That’s the governments’ harem, not pair bonding
I am fine to disagree. I don’t think you addressed much here, though.
I am a strong believer that sex is a dominant drive, but it is reductivist to force everything through that lens. You have not accounted for anything but sex, as though no aspect of male psychology is driven by anything else.
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Freud has so much to answer for…
On a lighter note,
@Paul: “Men even stay with women, looking for approval after they have lost interest in sex with them.”
Exactly. Read Ronald Fairbairn’s revolutionary writings on this subject- he places attachment as a more primary motivator than sex or sexual selection. And he had the behavioral observations and arguments to back it up.
This is why infants die without close human attachments….. you’ll never see someone die just because they didnt get a fuck with the opposite sex.
The Samaritans are by some distance the most prominent charity in the UK working to prevent suicide. Well over three times more men than women commit suicide in the UK. The Samaritans recently reported that after lengthy (heterosexual) relationship breakdowns, men are more than 10x likely to commit suicide than women. There’s now an epidemic of ‘disadvantaged’ men committing suicide in mid-life in the UK, and the Samaritans have written a report on them. If anyone emails me at mb1957@hotmail.co.uk I’ll track down the report’s URL.
Mike, its interesting and saddening to read these figures and they tell us a lot. That fact that men suicide after losing an intimate attachment bond (to use psych jargon), or that they may suicide if they are not ‘advantaged’ enough to secure attachments, says volumes about the centrality of attachment to human motivation.
So its not only infants who die without close emotional attachments – even when they are adequately fed. It is adults too who choose death over a life when bereft of quality emotional attachments.
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@SMoxon: “It is silly to compare attachments built upon pair-bonding with the obvious crucial need an infant has for care and the consequent evolution of infant-carer attachment.”
“silly” ?
Infant attachment and adult attachment styles are absolutely continuous in key respects. Even a rudimentary understanding of attchment psychology makes this completely clear. Your ignorance on this topic is all too clear.
Adult attachment styles (look that up if you are ignorant of the definition) are a contunuation of the attachment styles of infants. Furthermore, these attachment styles dictate the variable character of pair bonding – or indeed the lack of pair bonding displayed by some individuals. The person with an avoidant attachment style will avoid pair bonding, often completely. The person with an anxious (clingy) attachment style will cling intensely to the nearest potential source of pair bonding with little discernment of the suitability of the partner. And there are numerous other attachment styles that are fundamental to how pair bonding will appear behaviourally.
Attachment styles in infants -which are continued into adulthood- are not developed simply an infant’s need for physical care. That would be a dumb reductionist assumption. It has much more to do with the quality of emotional interaction taking place between primary carer and infant.
In short pair bonding is secondary to attachment styles and is utterly reliant on them.
And with that I’d prefer to get back to the real topic of this article.
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I’d also argue that if it were simply the fear of failing to compete for sex that you would not see men hanging on year after year for the same, sexually inaccessible, non approving woman. There is hardly any status to be gained from that, yet scores of men do it all the time.
Men even stay with women, looking for approval after they have lost interest in sex with them.
The only reason men stay with such women, especially if they’re married to or have been for a long time cohabiting with them is because they’re too expensive to get rid of. Two words (“family court” or “divorce lawyer” – take your pick) is all it takes to make a man choose the deep fryer over the fire that heats it.
It is “the fear of failing to successfully compete with other men for status so as to be sexually selected by females.”
More reductionism to the supposed primacy of biological and evolutionary drives (sexual selection) and associated insecurities. This explanation is becoming increasingly repetitive.
Paul is here prioritizing emotions and emotional attachment as primary, as in Object Relations psychology – elaborations on which subject you can find in the writings of Bowlby, Winnicott and particularly Fairbairn. These writers long ago broke out of the suffocating box of biological drives and evolutionary models left by Darwin, Freud, and the later behaviorists – a box more recently revived with some additions by evolutionary psychology and its sociobiological models.
Paul is here viewing attachment insecurities as inculcated by object relations, ie. through interpersonal interactions between boys and their mothers (etc). This doesn’t need to be reduced to the vicissitudes of sexual selection.
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“Peter Wright’s comment…displays such a fundamental wilful ignorance of evolutionary theory as to beggar belief.” Steve Moxon
“How about learning some biology before making erroneous assertions?” Steve Moxon
“I perhaps shouldn’t be surprised at the ignorance of even the most basic philosophy of science and of biology, but I’m still astounded.” Steve Moxon.
Jesus. I thought I was a snarky dick.
Your credibility as an academic and published author is undermined by your propensity to respond to each and every challenge in this unecessary manner.
Always on the mark, you.
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“Come again?
Biology is always primary: anything on top evolved to feed back to fine-tune and reinforce the underlying biology.”
That is the problem in your thinking. “reinforce”
According to you, we use our evolved portion of the brain to find a way to execute the decision that is taken by our primitive brain.
Well No….
Decision taken by our primitive part of the brain are urges, and decision taken by our evolved portion of the brain (cortex) are judgement. See the difference…. ??
Brain evolved on top of the reptile brain don’t always reinforce the urges that comes from the reptilian brain. Actually it rarely does that and only when all other conditions are met. Otherwise in a time of famine humans would Cannibalize each other rather then dying.
More evolved portion of the brain make judgement about the urges. That’s the whole point of being an intelligent and civilized species. And those who can’t do the judgement are not civilized and may be called clever but not intelligent. And they are out of context of this article.
When women start owning the narrative, here, there or anywhere, shaming will inevitably follow. It’s the only way for the female to neutralise male certitude. It’s more subtle here than there, buried beneath supportive language, but once it starts its corrosive journey it can undermine the integrity of the building. Beware.
“…men’s predisposition to tolerate childlike women”
ROFL.
I watched that movie only 2 days ago, and I saluted Marx Brothers for doing that scene, just as I salute you for posting it.
I think Groucho took a few red pills.
They were dirt poor in the beginning, so he has probably witnessed the extend of attraction money and success has on women, from a front row seat.
And the man was way too smart not to recognize the hypocrisy of it all.
“As the workplace continues to transform, will men’s role then shift back towards the home?”
Not as long as women have control issues in every environment they enter. They did it with the workplaces, and they have always done it in the homes. I think one of the main reasons we see the present decline in women’s happiness is based in this fact. They’ve taken on an impossible task for anyone with that kind of behavior. Before women wake up to the fact that men do things just as well, but just in a different way, I don’t see any significant changes in the near future.
@bcdad666:
“There is other fear: fear of lacking a companion, a partner, someone who cares and is there for you always.”
Seeing that roughly 70% of marriages don’t make it past the fourth year, and almost every single one of them are over when the children leaves the nest nowadays, it’s time to look for that kind of validation elsewhere.
The vast majority of those divorces will be initiated by the woman you depend on being there for you.
Contemporary women will not stand by your side, care, or be there always, unless they benefit from the relationship to a much larger extend than you can possibly hope for, and it’s time for men to wake up to that fact.
And the odds looks just as bad in your second and third attempt at lasting happiness in a relationship.
As a man, and I really hate to use that phrase or be the one to say this, you’re born into this world alone and that is how you’re going to leave it, too.
Standing up for number one is the ONLY viable solution, nowadays, if you want to get through life with a minimal amount of selfrespect and pride, because those will be the first to go, when she decides your good enough to marry, but only need some ‘modifications’ to be ‘perfect’.
Because when she has succeeded in that, you’ll be boring from her point of view, and you can kiss your relationship or marriage goodbye before long..
Actually I think the odds for 2nd and 3rd attempts are considerably worse. But wanting sex, companionship, partnership with a woman, or even fearing the lack of them, is not quite the same thing as gaining one’s sense of personal value from them.
” But wanting sex, companionship, partnership with a woman, or even fearing the lack of them, is not quite the same thing as gaining one’s sense of personal value from them.”
Yes!
Please explain where ‘fear’ enters the equation, if that is not the case?
Whenever I tell someone that I choose to live alone, without the company of a woman, I am generally looked at as some kind of alien and treated as an outsider.
When I’m trying to negotiate a deal with someone, I’m much more likely to get what I want in the company of a woman, which both politicians and corporate leaders are well aware of and use to their benefit.
It may not have any influence on me personally, in the way I regard myself, but great importance is placed upon this little fact from the rest of society.
And as it is, I have to live in that society, whether I like it or not.
So in the cases you are citing, the validation of worth does not actually come from the woman, it comes from those others you mention.
If those others ‘validated’ you more if you had a Ferrari, would you agree that your ‘worth’ came from the Ferrari?
Does YOUR sense of worth come from any of those things or does it come from inside yourself?
Perhaps the fear comes in when we must depend on the ‘worth’ judgements of others for our livelihood and success.
First of all, I asked because I was curious about your definition of worth, in regards to the validation obtained from women, and specifically where the fear comes in, when you’re not getting it.
“Does YOUR sense of worth come from any of those things or does it come from inside yourself?”
I usually don’t care much what other people think about me, since I guard my personal life with barbwires and pitbulls. I don’t let many people come close enough for their opinions to mean much to me, because their opinions would be based on not really knowing me.
But I also have a business to run, so I’m not able to step completely out of the box.
To answer your question, I get the sense of worth from what I do, and the succesfull decisions I occasionally make.
It’s my experience that the more people I bring into the process of defining ‘worth’ for myself, the more messed up the results becomes. You know how the saying goes: Opinions are like a**holes,-everybody’s got one.
I think the rise of telecommuting will help bring about an era where men go back to their more natural state of actually being around their women and children for significantly greater portions of the day, even if they aren’t directly paying attention to them as much as the women, and that this will be a vast improvement to the psychology of men, women, and especially children.
I would like to see a similar rise in the number of family-run businesses, although that would require that thing that so many these days are leary of for whatever reason: greater skepticism toward the supposed wonders of megacorporations, and a change to tax and other policies that are far more friendly to the self-employed and to small businesses. Yet I believe that to be not just an ideal to be striven toward, but in all of society’s collective interests.
I think any look at our evolutionary record makes something Paul said here abundantly clear: it is absolutely and utterly bizarre to human behavior for men to simply be gone 12, 14 hours a day, 5 or more days a week, away from their wives and children.
Yes, the absence of a few hours here and there, a few days here and there, is one thing, and men being focused on something other than the mate and children is also normal, but complete absence for the overwhelming majority of the time is absolutely not natural, not normal, and as research increasingly shows, not healthy, especially not for children.
Our occasional contributor Judy (Judgy Bitch) not long ago revealed something that I think is crucial to understanding her own psychology of embracing a supposedly “traditionalist” home: her husband telecommutes. He’s at home with her most of the time, even if he’s usually busy doing other things, he’s nearby and available if needed most of the time.
Which is actually how humans evolved. And is a very happy arrangement for virtually anyone I’ve ever encountered who has it: mom spends most of her time with the little ones but dad is usually nearby. Dads do most of the resource providing but far from all as women get necessary things done and women also go and obtain resources themselves on an as-needed basis, especially as the children get older. This is the exact model that hunter/gatherer societies almost invariably function under, with only a few exceptions here and there (like among the Inuit, where harsh conditions push men into more than 95% of the provider role, which is atypical for hunter/gatherers, where the provisioning is much less lopsided than that).
I think one of the ways that the change you speak of might come about, were if businesses started hiring people in their vicinity, instead of having a large percentage of the population stuck in their cars for hours every day. It’s bad for the families and it’s bad for the environment. If your employees were living close to their workplace, it would be a matter of time before they didn’t actually have to show up to the extend they have today, and the pendling would be greatly reduced, due to the fact that a lot of work can be done from home. It would be a step in the right direction, anyway, and lead to more time for the kids and your partner.
I’m well aware of the way the hunter/gatherer societies of the past lived, and I think we need a more de-centralized way of thinking and living. Let’s get rid of the huge corporations and go back to living in small communities, while still being able to take advantage of the current level of technology. Also, huge cities have become cancer cells that destroys both the people living in them, as well as their surroundings, and that applies to the major corporations as well.
But, as noted elsewhere, we have to get the women in on this, before we can start demanding these things and make some significant changes, and as you well know, women are off doing their own thing these days.
Kind of “funny”, when you think of it.
They’re mistakenly including all men in their fight against perceived wrongs of the past, while the rest of us are well aware that the real enemy is the top 1% that makes the rules for all of us, and always has. So, instead of fighting the real problems behind all of this, we’re fighting eachother.
Humans..you gotta’ love them…
Telecommuting is increasingly prevalent and I expect that to get even more and moreso as time goes on.
I also would propose tax and regulatory policies that favor small businesses over large megacorporations, but these days that seems to make a third to half of people’s heads explode politically as they scream that it’s “social engineering” and whatnot (as if the invention of large corporations and the liberalization of laws allowing their expansion into the private sphere wasn’t a matter of government intrusion into the market and a large experiment in social engineering in the first place–but again now we’re getting political, unfortunately, but it does point to why I’ve become increasingly skeptical over the years of people who just say the words “smaller government” without any specificity at all about it; if you aren’t going to control the corporations, which government created in the first place as a social engineering experiment, then you aren’t helping, so far as I can see.)
I see your point, but consider me the man who just want to see the corporate world burn, and that is how I’d deal with them.
No, seriously, I’m just kidding here.
But then again, who knows?
Its funny but decentralization to smaller communities would place men back in their own community leading to a lesser need for policing.
Of course policing is sold to us as a protection giving them access to our communities to apply and enforce additional taxation with by-laws.
Police don’t stop crime they respond after the fact. Their main function is to generate revenue by applying fines. Personally I’d like to see communities dictate the terms under which the police have access. They’re not necessary in most cases. If men were employed and functioning in their own communities what is a cop for?
Divide the family and then the community and you create all kinds of reasons for parasitic taxation. The government monopoly.
Regarding the lesser need for policing, please allow me to explain how things work around here where I live, even though it is somewhat off topic.
I live in the country. There’s two major cities on each side of this area, some 50 km’s away to the east and west of here, and everything in between is taken care of by 1, yes, ONE policeman.
Juvenile delinquency is practically non-existing in this area, and people leave their frontdoors unlocked when leaving their homes, because he prides himself with knowing _everyone_ in his area, just as we all know him. He’s the cop on the street of days gone by.
This means that there’s a very low rate of crimes and convictions in this area, because if a problem arises he will deal with it in his own way, that doesn’t involve courts or judges, but rather the families of the ones that commits those crimes.
For the kids that means that if they’re caught red handed, they will have to face their moms and dads, and not some faceless judiciary entity, and to some extend that goes for the adults too, only they have to face the look on the faces of the ones they live with in their neighborhood. And it is working..
Let me tell you, reading the recent crime section in the local paper is over in less than one minute, and I’ve been visiting this area for more than 5 years, before I actually moved here two years ago.
There’s no telling how much money this one man has saved society in taxes alone, and his judgement and assesments of each individual case is more than fair, which makes him a highly valued member of the community.
“I think the rise of telecommuting will help bring about an era where men go back to their more natural state of actually being around their women and children for significantly greater portions of the day, even if they aren’t directly paying attention to them as much as the women, and that this will be a vast improvement to the psychology of men, women, and especially children.”
That’s a very astute prediction – it’s exactly what I did about one year ago, becoming self-employed and working from home.
I’d had enough of the 2-3 hours a day commuting, missing my family, and being the stranger that gets home shortly before the kids go to bed. I was miserable, but it was the ‘inner white knight’ and ‘family provider’ instinct that kept me in work-drone mode longer than I should have been. In the end I thought “fuck it” and stepped off the treadmill.
Now I am spoilt with meaningful time with my family each day, we have family meals every day, no child care issues, a much happier child, and total autonomous flexibility with how we schedule our lives.
To say quality of life has increased is an understatement.
Even though I earn more money now, you do lose the security of a predictable 9-5 pay check, but who really has job security these days?
If anyone here has the inkling to leave the Metropolis-like dystopia they feel they are trapped in, I can whole heartedly recommend self-employment and working from home.
I’d suggest it’s a great way for men to feel at least partially in control of their lives again.
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“Wouldn’t this be the same line of reasoning feminists use to argue for the existence of a patriarchy?”
Uh, no.
I can’t even begin to grasp how you came up with the question. Perhaps you should research an explanation of patriarchy theory?
“an explanation of patriarchy theory”
wow, I’d love to see that. I can only hope that there’s enough beer in the world to make me believe it.
I know for a fact that there aren’t enough drugs in the world to make me believe in rape culture. (although oestrogen seems pretty potent)
There isn’t enough beer in the world to make me sit through those four videos that woman made.
Do you mean the three videos on wise misogyny, totalling 24 minutes’ of your time? I’m sorry I wasn’t more succinct, but they’re not for everyone.
@ kellyjones00
I did not make women into “morons” as you put it. I just played the hand that I was dealt by society. All my life I had been conditioned to seek the approval of women. Guess who’s knee I learned that at?
Now that I have become more self aware, I find my self caring less and less what women think. So if men have made women into dependent morons( paraphrasing you), then women have made men, at least in my own case, attention deficit.
@Kelly
I don’t mean this in an unkindly way, but maybe a bit more pep in your presentation? A strong coffee, or two?
the other problem that I have with the MRA shows with multiple hosts (so, not about yours), is people talking across each other. This drives me nuts (maybe not a long journey, but still). I suspect that it’s more of a problem caused by skype type delays, not really the people involved. I get similar issues when using skype in a one-on-one situation. Any chance that AVFM could use a backbone of POTS (Plain Old Telephone System) for the presenters, even if the call ins are skypey?
Just a thought. The content is fine, but I think that skype type delay confusion marrs the finish of the shows unjustly.
Thanks for your thoughtful reply, Paul. I understand that my criticism of men might be difficult to sift from mere scolding and emotional haranguing of the womanly type, given how frequent the latter is experienced, and I’m sorry that’s how you’ve perceived my views. However, I think you might be willing to concede, given your general openness to thinking about these issues deeply, that I’m not simply falling into misandric rhetoric when I speak of mental laziness on men’s part, nor appealing to hyperagency as if men *ought* to do better. I’m simply saying men *can* do better, since they’re the ones with the means, so if anyone can, only they can; if they don’t, then it’s an emotional resignation that drives them to submit — and that, in turn comes from a lack of will to truth.
Using the brain to think, is the will to consciousness and to truth. Not using it, from not wanting to think, is a will to unconsciousness. There’s no value judgment on calling the latter mental laziness. That’s just what it is.
None of us is probably capable of a constant consciousness and will to truth, so we all have some degree of mental laziness. I’m not talking about being lazy for not overcoming our biological need for rest and sleep, but for not using our waking hours to be as rational and conscious as possible.
Is this fine with you so far? I’m not talking about *why* we’re not able. Just the fact we’re not.
If one is not seeking to be conscious, making that effort, then one is not making that effort, and not wanting to. So that’s laziness.
So let me explore this notion of the will to unconsciousness, in men, as a driver for their willingness to submit to women’s unconsciousness, and find pleasure in her company.
You say men have been conditioned by women to find her company pleasurable, because they know no different. They have Stockholm syndrome.
Your point that boys are typically turned into surrogate husbands by their mothers, in the absence of father away at work, and conditioned to be “mummy’s boy”, is dead right. Yes, and this primal dream of becoming a Mother, as the highest aspiration for a young boy, is played on by Her, as a way of controlling him and training him as a Woman’s Slave. So, yes, this greatly influences the formation of his self, his young ego, making it ego weak and fragile and prone to emotional manipulation by women in later life. So, we are in accord: men who are raised like this, and submit to Her world, do establish habitual patterns of self-doubt, guilt, ambivalence about women, and internal conflict. The typical young boy of ten, say, can see his mother is ridiculous and incompetent, prone to irrational rages and nagging, and is highly resistant to having mop up after her moods. But at the same time, he is proud of his superiority, whilst also eventually finding her cute and sweet because he can control her moods so easily. So he develops pride in his relationship to his mother. He is a good husband, and he is her superior.
Here enters a spanner into the works. This hypothetical lad has discovered his native powers *by accident*. He could have discovered them in any event, like having a sudden profound insight popping into his skull on a chance walk by the sea and watching the waves. Suddenly, he recognises what ability he has. He starts to turn his thoughts to other subjects, his understanding unravels further secrets. He is free! What a magnificent event!
Yet, you paint these boys as if they are Woman-dependent cripples. How could they remain cripples, when they’ve suddenly discovered the keys to the universe in their own private skulls? They see causality working as a principle by their own abilities: how can they doubt themselves, especially in contrast with Her obvious dysfunctionality and flaccidness? His mother is as weak and floppy as an old piece of lettuce; her macchinations and calculations are like the yappings of a wobbly-teated bitch. How could they control and frighten him? He has soared far beyond her, and he is only 9 or 10, maybe 11 years old.
So, I really don’t believe you. These young boys are not geniuses. They’re just normal boys, who love to explore the world, do risky things like flip their BMXs or dirtbikes upside down while not holding onto the steering, and get away from the stifling boring circumference of Her.
Even throughout the teen years, boys show so much wildness and power of thought. And most of the greatest discoveries in science, the most magnificent and challenging literary works, and pioneering happens during the twenties. Sure, much of it is being directed to solving problems that women will find useful. But not all of it. There is still wildness and freedom of mind.
So then —- what has been happening to get to the point where we have these hen-pecked, submissive henchmen types: the manginas? I think you’re right about fear, though. Men have a huge fear of each other: with good reason. Many men get killed or incarcerated, or otherwise stifled, for spreading “unwholesome” teachings, or for being different. Men tell other men they ought to “get a job”, “find a woman and settle down”, “do something useful with yourself”, and “stop being a lazy fucktard”. Men harangue each other, to ensure they keep the common rule of being good providers and fathers. They beat each other up for saying anything pejorative about how much money they earn, the state of their car, their wives’ looks.
Yes, it is fear. But what happened along the way, for these bright young boys, with such pride in their abilities and freedom of mind, to pour it all into competitive service to please women? Why did they dumb down, instead of seeing what else was on offer? Remember, they know women are fools; they know mother is weak, (but sweetly silly).
This is the crux of my argument: men are afraid of REALITY itself. They don’t want to think about the nature of that reality, the philosophical nature of that non-finite, unbounded “thing” called absolutely everything. They don’t want to see what they truly are, stripped to their very core, up against the complex Totality. Instead, they want the easy: Woman. That mundane, simple, very achievable, and recognisable domain of worldly dog-eat-dog.
This is the mental laziness I’m speaking of. I’ve headed far away from the human species and its concerns in presenting this issue. To understand me, you’ll have to explore this terrain as well. This is what I mean by men’s rationality: it’s the potential for understanding the self in relation to the Infinite.
But do what you like. Hang around attacking the feminists (those dolts). Frankly, I don’t see the point, nor the attraction, but that’s just me. How can one’s children see the value of thought and the great prize of reason, if all one uses it for is politics?
Kids are important, but wisdom is more important.
Kelly Jones
You’re several years behind the times.
Kids these days don’t go out and play on dirt bikes anymore, even if they wanted to. “Free-range kids” as they are called now; aka normal kids who actually do things on their own, are out playing, barely exist. Kids are driven to school, picked up from school, and then kept inside the house, for fear of the big bad world.
They’ll be put in front of the tv or video games; and if it only it were video games that actually stimulate their imagination and their minds, you can bet your ass “responsible mother” makes sure the only video games the boy gets to play are the mind-numbing ones.
So, what about all the males prior to “these days” – say, any males older than 15 years of age? What happened to their drive for freedom, exploration, risk-taking, and creativity? Why didn’t they fulfil the potential of their consciousness and explore philosophical questions about the nature of self, existence, and how Reality itself works? Why did they opt for the domestic hearth?
I posted a reply, Paul, but it hasn’t appeared. Perhaps it was a word limit blockage. So, I hope there is enough beer in the world for by_the_sword to attempt reading it in three – or four – parts. It’s not mental laziness, it’s a need for beer…..
Part 1.
Thanks for your thoughtful reply, Paul. I understand that my criticism of men might be difficult to sift from mere scolding and emotional haranguing of the womanly type, given how frequent the latter is experienced, and I’m sorry that’s how you’ve perceived my views. However, I think you might be willing to concede, given your general openness to thinking about these issues deeply, that I’m not simply falling into misandric rhetoric when I speak of mental laziness on men’s part, nor appealing to hyperagency as if men *ought* to do better. I’m simply saying men *can* do better, since they’re the ones with the means, so if anyone can, only they can; if they don’t, then it’s an emotional resignation that drives them to submit — and that, in turn comes from a lack of will to truth.
Using the brain to think, is the will to consciousness and to truth. Not using it, from not wanting to think, is a will to unconsciousness. There’s no value judgment on calling the latter mental laziness. That’s just what it is.
None of us is probably capable of a constant consciousness and will to truth, so we all have some degree of mental laziness. I’m not talking about being lazy for not overcoming our biological need for rest and sleep, but for not using our waking hours to be as rational and conscious as possible.
Is this fine with you so far? I’m not talking about *why* we’re not able. Just the fact we’re not.
If one is not seeking to be conscious, making that effort, then one is not making that effort, and not wanting to. So that’s laziness.
So let me explore this notion of the will to unconsciousness, in men, as a driver for their willingness to submit to women’s unconsciousness, and find pleasure in her company.
You say men have been conditioned by women to find her company pleasurable, because they know no different. They have Stockholm syndrome.
[end of part 1]
Part 2.
Your point that boys are typically turned into surrogate husbands by their mothers, in the absence of father away at work, and conditioned to be “mummy’s boy”, is dead right. Yes, and this primal dream of becoming a Mother, as the highest aspiration for a young boy, is played on by Her, as a way of controlling him and training him as a Woman’s Slave. So, yes, this greatly influences the formation of his self, his young ego, making it weak and fragile and prone to emotional manipulation by women in later life. So, we are in accord: men who are raised like this, and submit to Her world, do establish habitual patterns of self-doubt, guilt, ambivalence about women, and internal conflict. The typical young boy of ten, say, can see his mother is ridiculous and incompetent, prone to irrational rages and nagging, and is highly resistant to having mop up after her moods. But at the same time, he is proud of his superiority, whilst also eventually finding her cute and sweet because he can control her moods so easily. So he develops pride in his relationship to his mother. He is a good husband, and he is her superior.
Here enters a spanner into the works. This hypothetical lad has discovered his native powers *by accident*. He could have discovered them in any event, like having a sudden profound insight popping into his skull on a chance walk by the sea and watching the waves. Suddenly, he recognises what ability he has. He starts to turn his thoughts to other subjects, his understanding unravels further secrets. He is free! What a magnificent event! What can’t he understand!
Yet, you paint these boys as if they are Woman-dependent cripples. How could they remain cripples, when they’ve suddenly discovered the keys to the universe in their own private skulls? They see causality working as a principle by their own abilities: how can they doubt themselves, especially in contrast with Her obvious dysfunctionality and flaccidness? His mother is as weak and floppy as an old piece of lettuce; her macchinations and calculations are like the yappings of a wobbly-teated bitch. How could they control and frighten him? He has soared far beyond her, and he is only 9 or 10, maybe 11 years old.
So, I really don’t believe you. These young boys are not geniuses. They’re just normal boys, who love to explore the world, do risky things like flip their BMXs or dirtbikes upside down while not holding onto the steering, and get away from the stifling boring circumference of Her.
[end of Part 2]
Part 3 (one short concluding part to come)
Even throughout the teen years, boys show so much wildness and power of thought. And most of the greatest discoveries in science, the most magnificent and challenging literary works, and pioneering expeditions are those by twenty-somethings. Sure, much of it is being directed to solving problems that women will find useful. But not all of it. There is still wildness and freedom of mind.
So then —- what has been happening to get to the point where we have these hen-pecked, submissive henchmen types: the manginas? I think you’re right about fear, though. Men have a huge fear of each other: with good reason. Many men get killed or incarcerated, or otherwise stifled, for spreading “unwholesome” teachings, or for being different. Men tell other men they ought to “get a job”, “find a woman and settle down”, “do something useful with yourself”, and “stop being a lazy fucktard”. Men harangue each other, to ensure they keep the common rule of being good providers and fathers. They beat each other up for saying anything pejorative about how much money they earn, the state of their car, their wives’ looks.
Yes, it is fear. But what happened along the way, for these bright young boys, with such pride in their abilities and freedom of mind, to pour it all into competitive service to please women? Why did they dumb down, instead of seeing *what else* was on offer? Remember, they know women are fools; they know mother is weak, (but sweetly silly). Are the perks of serving them — and pleasing other men — so great, that they’d give up exploring the WORLD alone if need be?
This is the crux of my argument: men are afraid of REALITY itself. They don’t want to think about the nature of that reality, the philosophical nature of that non-finite, unbounded “thing” called absolutely everything. They don’t want to see what they truly are, stripped to their very core, up against the complex Totality. Instead, they want the easy: Woman. That mundane, simple, very achievable, and recognisable domain of worldly dog-eat-dog. The world other men are busily engaged in shoring up with bits of recycled crap.
[end of part 3...]
It is a great discussion, and thanks Kelly for bringing it on.
If males are afraid of reality, what is it that drives them to make the great discoveries and flip their BMX bikes upside down?
Seems to me that a direct, even personal investigation of reality is intrinsic to male behavior and thought.
Perhaps successful reproduction of the species required a blind spot when it came to females?
Wow! What a fantastic discussion!
It’s great to have a voice for men, where these very politically incorrect views can be published. Thanks, Paul!
Now, let’s see if I can get the fourth part posted, and slip past the spam filter, or whatever has been blocking me the past four times.
Part 4
I’ve headed far away from the human species and its concerns to come to the conclusion that men are mentally lazy. Do you dare to see where that is, instead of feeling hard done by?
But heck, if you’re already tackling Woman, then I think you’re fair and ready.
By men’s rationality, I mean: able to understand the self in relation to the Infinite. To Reality itself, not any particular reality, or to the known cosmos, but to the totality of *all* things, known and yet unknown (empirically). Can you even conceive of understanding the Totality as a valid knowledge? If not, you’re selling yourself short.
Also, if men here are trying to look after the future of the species, then how can one’s children see the value of thought and the great prize of reason, if all one uses it for is politics? Kids are important, but wisdom is more important.
And stay away from the beer. You need those brain cells, don’t you?
Kelly Jones
Mentally Lazy… Afraid of reality…. Got it!
If your reality included being constantly portrayed as an abusive,hate-filled sex criminal by society, who could suffer beatings, imprisonment or death on a whim by the false allegations of some attention-seeking female, you might be afraid of reality too.
If your reality included having your entire life’s saving and your childres stolen from you, while being sentenced to 20 plus years of slavery because you promised to love someone and they changed thier mind, well you might be afraid of reality too…
If your reality included being shot at, stabbed, kicked, bitten, pissed on, puked on, bled on and spat on by people whom you were trying to provide aid to… Only to be cast aside by everyone when your injured body could no longer do the work… Yeah, that’s some pretty scary reality right there.
Oh, and how about the reality where you risk death every day by drowning in a freezing sea, or getting ripped in half by heavy machinery, or burning to death in an engine room fire, or catching cancer from noxious chemicals? Black lung? Dehydration? Afraid of reality? You’re god damned right I’m afraid of reality. And you know what? I have it better than most men. My reality is pretty sweet compared to some guys. But I am so glad that you told us men how fearful and mentally lazy we are.
You forgot to include our ‘fragile male egos’. Women never do – and Ms Jones is no exception.
What possible reason could an intelligent and articulate woman like Kelly Jones possibly have for hurling this hoary old chestnut onto the bonfire of discourse?
I doubt it was invoked in the manner popular with many women to silence men by shaming us with gay-slurring accusations of fragility – Ms Typhon Blu’s Pink Whip at its laziest and most predictable. Nor was it intended to deny us our essential humanity by dismissing our pain when any of us dare to express it.
Kelly Jones referred to our ’fragile male egos’ because, like most women I have met, she has no fundamental understanding of men. Let me give a basic example of the kind of conversation I, like all of the men on this site, have had a thousand times.
Woman: Men are emotionally retarded.
Me: That is completely untrue.
Woman: You can’t take criticism. – must be your fragile male ego.
Women have been told so many times that men don’t have any feelings, that women have come to believe it. When I express even mild dissatisfaction about anything, there is always some woman on hand to invalidate my feelings and relate it instead to my ego. For MHRAs that means being told by feminists that we’re not really angry about unfair family court rulings – no – we’re just upset about losing our patriarchal privilege.
I am a gay man who doesn’t need even the tiniest grain of validation from women – and I certainly don’t want to go anywhere near their lady parts. Yet, even women who know me very well – and should have no doubts at all about my robust self-esteem – make reference to my ‘fragile male ego’ in order to avoid dealing with my feelings, especially about men’s issues.
This avoidance is due to fear. Women are very, very fearful of male feelings. I have often wondered if this is because they know that if we expressed our feelings the way they did, the world would have been reduced to space dust long ago. We tend to express our feelings differently, that’s all.
The same can be said for how we tend to face reality. I have well-meaning women friends who think that because I face problems with a positive, practical approach, then somehow I am not dealing with reality of those problems. For them, facing reality means blubbering and seeking reassurance. There is nothing wrong with that, sometimes. It is just that I, like most men, are fed up with women interpreting my behavior as wrong or aberrant just because it is different from theirs.
One of distinguishing features of the best women in the MHRM is that they have a profound understanding of, and sympathy for, men. Dr Palmatier, Suzanne McCarley, Typhon Blu, 100%Cotton, GWW and Kristina Hansen, to name a few, do not write about ‘fragile male egos. They know that when it comes to the fragility of egos, women should not be pointing fingers – if you know what I mean.
Dr Elam’s post presents a cogent argument which will have feminists stewing in their own bile for years. Excellent work, sir.
Be fair, Andy Bob. I think Paul Elam misunderstood my comment about the fragile ego, because he wrote “This is not a matter of some innate, characterologial deficiency in the male ego.” I never said it was.
He goes on to write: “Intact egos are a product of healthy emotional and psychological development. Most men, since the industrial revolution, have had healthy ego development sabotaged from birth.”
So, Paul himself is confirming this notion of the fragile ego. I don’t think anyone is arguing with this fact, here. Neither of us were overlaying it with any pejoratives. The ego of a child brought up to feel as if emotionalism and lack of reason is the normal ground for human psychology, is definitely psychologically fragile.
Some really heavy shit there Kell. I sort of get the lazy thing. Sort of. I figure it means not lazy in the conventional sense, not the way the average Joe would mean.
The fear factor and the biological inherited theories have a lot of weight with me as well. Lets face it, the guy that hung around pandering to his women’s wants and needs, probably got to reproduce more, and his kids probably had more chance of survival. So there is probably a factor of inherited chivalry involved.
Anyway, it doesn’t matter what the cause of the situation is really. What is is important is that men realize what is happening and fight against it, both within themselves, and outwardly.
Given the laziness lol, and cowardliness, and chivalry……I think I’ll call that combo, “The Mangina Syndrome”, and the vast majority of men giving a hell of a lot more weight to what women think of them, and a lot less to what other men think of them, whatever the reason is for that is, having a growing army of women who are supporting our cause, and calling a spade a spade, and a mangina a mangina, can only help……a lot.
I suspect that assuming the mangina role of being the more loving, self-sacrificing and supplicating partner in a relationship is secretly a misplaced form of control or dominance.
That may sound a bit like victim blaming, but I’m speaking not as critic or accuser, but someone who went that path.
“And stay away from the beer. You need those brain cells, don’t you?”
Watch out, she’s taking over already!
I agree. No man can allow a woman to stand between him and his invariably well-deserved beer. If necessary, he’ll just have to walk around her to get to it, and ignore the inevitable whining. I find ‘shotgun earplugs’ useful at that point.
I know right? Apparently there’s some women who have a pathological need to overtake and subvert any male space they enter.
Come on, Sting. It’s no accident that people turn to alcohol to drown their sorrows; it dulls the pain of a hurting mind. Hence, the legions of dipsomaniacs and men of sorrow down at the pub (perhaps refreshing their psychological meters to push the stresses of the work day out of mind, and make themselves impervious to the coming domestic scenes).
But my closing remark was partly tongue-in-cheek. I have an ironical sense of humour. I wouldn’t want you to waste any brain cells on it.
SOME women?
lmfao!
What Kelly characterizes as mental laziness might better be termed both mental and emotional exhaustion. Back in my computer programming days, when crashing a deadline I could go 36 hours straight at the keyboard before mental numbness overwhelmed me – I would rebuild my mental faculties, sure, but it might take days.
Dealing with recalcitrant idiots is draining. Minds break if forced to it; they eventually withdraw to save themselves if they can. So sorry, Mommy, if that sounds lazy to you.
Exactly, there comes a point where you emotional and mental resources simply become depleted and you need to find some respite. And we’re taught that the only way to find such respite is to conform to the gynocentric imperative.
Her problem was in poorly communicating the idea in the first place.
She has great ideas, and has obviously put a lot of thought into this, but if you use certain types of verbiage, like lazy, then it is only predictable people will take you at your word.
Still, it was some useful stuff.
I can’t be expected to convey my entire philosophy in 24 minutes. It’s very difficult inspiring people to overcome their brainwashing about the concept “truth”, for starters. If many here have leapt to conclusions about what I meant by “lazy” — well, I think it’s a good idea to look for more information, ask questions, not assume malice, etc.
But I agree, part of it is poor communication (sort of). I sometimes have a few false starts working out where other people are at. Typically, I find there is a huge gap between what I’m familiar with, and what others are. A great deal of the problems come from other people leaping to conclusions, I’m sorry to say. But I’m delighted that these issues haven’t been as ginormous, on AVfM, as it normally is in my discussions withe people.
And anyway, if people take offense at being called mentally lazy, when they obviously *are* mentally not making an effort to bite down on the serpent they’ve swallowed, and to spit Her out — then, Jesus Christ — that’s not my problem. Getting offended because I’m telling them they’re foolish for not doing what will cause them an immediate pain and which hurts, and that not doing it will create a worse pain?
Don’t shoot the messenger, pals.
Yes, the pain is huge, and it’s a mental pattern. But it’s not going to help to keep focussing on this mental pattern, and using it as an excuse. One has to stop letting the fear control.
Frankly, if I’m letting old unhelpful mental patterns take over, and not making the effort to kick myself up a notch, then I accept I’m being lazy. It’s no big deal, but I have to make the effort if I want to improve.
I hope this response can be heard using the same kind of well-intentioned spirit in which it is being thought.
Kelly Jones
Part 4
(Have you made it this far, by_the_beer — oops, sword…?)
To present this issue, I’ve headed far away from the human species and its concerns, so you’ll have to dare to risk something that goes against the contemporary memeworld, to grok why I talk of mental laziness. But heck, if you’re already tackling Woman, then I think you’re fair and ready.
By men’s rationality, I mean: able to understand the self in relation to the Infinite. The Absolute. Reality itself, not any particular reality, or to the known cosmos, but to the essence of everything that exists. This is a philosophical approach to the totality of *all* things, known and yet unknown (empirically). Can you even conceive of understanding the Totality as a valid knowledge? If not, you’re selling yourself short.
But do what you like. Hang around attacking the feminists (those dolts). Frankly, I don’t see the point, nor the attraction, but that’s just me. How can one’s children see the value of thought and the great prize of reason, if all one uses it for is politics?
Kids are important, but wisdom is more important.
And stay away from the beer. You need those brain cells, don’t you?
Kelly Jones
Beer might kill brain cells but only the already sickly ones that lack the manly Y chromosome.
This notion that beer (alcohol) kills brain cell is an old one but patently as false as “lazy men”:
“The quantity of alcohol you could possibly take in, without killing yourself, does not introduce enough alcohol into your bloodstream to kill brain cells. This was proven by a study by Grethe Jensen and co. (1993), who meticulously counted neurons in matched samples of non-alcoholics and alcoholics. What they found was that there was no real difference in the density or overall number of neurons between the two groups. Various other research since has backed up Jensen’s findings. Thus, even alcoholics who are continually taking in unhealthy amounts of alcohol aren’t going to see brain cells die because of their drinking problem. However, alcohol does have other effects on the brain, both positive and negative, that have nothing to do with brain cells dying…”
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2010/10/beer-doesn-t-kill-your-brain-cells/18748/
A glass of milk is a lot more dangerous because someone has to be in the company of a female to get it.
A glass of milk is a lot more dangerous [then a glass of beer] because someone has to be in the company of a female to get it.
Another addition to “The World’s Greatest Quotable Quotes!”
Excellent article Paul! The path forward is daunting, feminists have placed themselves everywhere from the brainwashed single mother hero/victim archtype to the demogauges and propogandists holding the make work jobs in our in public schools. Every time it seems i see a district attorney, judge, or now even politician on the news it seems they are either a woman or from some self-proclaimed special victim group posing as a hero…to make a difference of course. I say the energy and the mass builds beneath the surface and eventually the volcano will erupt, my hope is the lies and deceptions become unsustainable.
Equalizer, that’s a great idea. And of course ManWomanMyth has produced many awesome videos.
Other readers of this thread, in case Mike’s comment above referring to my idea is confusing, I deleted my comment to Paul in which I said how about an Essential Viewing section on this website devoted to required MRM videos new and old – because I hadn’t noticed that there was already a selection of videos top right, where I had thought there was only one featured recent vid. But perhaps it could still be made more prominent and/or renamed and/or revamped to comprise true classics old and new (including new instant classics such as Kelly’s). Perhaps we could have a poll of readers suggesting what their top 10 MRM vids of all time would be, and compile a selection of the overall top ten. What do people think? Paul? Dean?
Mr. Elam, you should place this piece on the preferred reading list. Even if you wrote it, so? It is just THAT good. Your understanding, coupled with superb clarity makes it one of my favorites on your site.
You iterate many things I also believe is true and that have been “proven”, starting from explanations by Lionel Tiger, Robert Bly and beyond.
It is also commonsense, which is why you likely WILL get a feminist trying to comment (in order to “remake” the truth—whatever revolves around her feelings). They hate truth and commonsense. They do not know it, but they hate it.
Once, when in high school, we students were tasked with answering this: “What is the biggest reason that families are changing. ”
I answered and explained in detail, at that early age, that the industrial revolution is the “culprit”. I had thought it all out already. Not with the clarity and sensibility that you exampled, but nonetheless, I was on the right track.
I want to dissent from something you said, which is also my own observations, not proven by scholarly work. But, male egos, healthily-derived, or not, must be tied somehow to the feminist-mayhem-tolerance issue. “His” success, in a way, is the substance of his ego and success is determined by how successful he is with women—doing whatever it takes to remain in approval.
Also, the worth, and MANLY worth particularly of males is superficially but trustingly gauged by his perceived attraction to females—which in turn keeps him from doing anything that could hamper the process. Aren’t worth and ego interwoven?
I can’t quite put my finger on it with such a short time to think about it, but there has to be a connection. Perhaps I am confusing details, but I can’t be THAT far off from it.
I have often said, and you restated it in my opinion: feminism isn’t winning because it is right. You just substantiated those words in an additional way.
“These, I believe, are the questions of the century for modern men. And this venue is one of the few places that they have a chance of ultimately finding substantive answers.”
—I often say things on this site that echo the above quote from you. I believe that of getting men to see the truth, themselves in it, and what needs to be done, is at the very heart of our hope.
Thus, when I write on this superb site, “When men can make the women in their lives cry, we will begin to make much larger inroads”, echoing your piece here is what I intend to convey.
Men ARE too afraid to make women “cry”, (not literally, but such could happen too). Their whole worth is reticulated with female approval. This is why I say over and over, that when we change men, we change the world.
Not an easy task, but the answer lies in really getting out the message to boys and young men, to rethink the rules, question what is expected of them in order to actually “become men” in the eyes of society.
I will close by saying your site—our voices—is the best example thus far that is trying hard to get males to wake up and DO something before it is too late.
I thank you so much for that, and for all you to do help men and boys. Keep on educating.
I have seen women cry at the drop of a hat. And they would drop that hat.
I was listening to an interview with Dr. Warren Farrel where he stated that crying was a purging of emotions and that men are required to hold their emotions in check to do life’s dirty work.
No one begrudges a woman her tears but when a man finally has enough and breaks down he is judged rather harshly. Perhaps it would be better to allow men to cry, not during perious times that require action. But allowing us an occasional emotional releif?
On the subject of male tears, here is a beautiful poem by Les Murray – one of the world’s finest poets, followed by a poem on my father’s tears by me – one of the world’s poets
AN ABSOLUTELY ORDINARY RAINBOW
The word goes round Repins,
the murmur goes round Lorenzinis,
at Tattersalls, men look up from sheets of numbers,
the Stock Exchange scribblers forget the chalk in their hands
and men with bread in their pockets leave the Greek Club:
There’s a fellow crying in Martin Place. They can’t stop him.
The traffic in George Street is banked up for half a mile
and drained of motion. The crowds are edgy with talk
and more crowds come hurrying. Many run in the back streets
which minutes ago were busy main streets, pointing:
There’s a fellow weeping down there. No one can stop him.
The man we surround, the man no one approaches
simply weeps, and does not cover it, weeps
not like a child, not like the wind, like a man
and does not declaim it, nor beat his breast, nor even
sob very loudly—yet the dignity of his weeping
holds us back from his space, the hollow he makes about him
in the midday light, in his pentagram of sorrow,
and uniforms back in the crowd who tried to seize him
stare out at him, and feel, with amazement, their minds
longing for tears as children for a rainbow.
Some will say, in the years to come, a halo
or force stood around him. There is no such thing.
Some will say they were shocked and would have stopped him
but they will not have been there. The fiercest manhood,
the toughest reserve, the slickest wit amongst us
trembles with silence, and burns with unexpected
judgements of peace. Some in the concourse scream
who thought themselves happy. Only the smallest children
and such as look out of Paradise come near him
and sit at his feet, with dogs and dusty pigeons.
Ridiculous, says a man near me, and stops
his mouth with his hands, as if it uttered vomit—
and I see a woman, shining, stretch her hand
and shake as she receives the gift of weeping;
as many as follow her also receive it
and many weep for sheer acceptance, and more
refuse to weep for fear of all acceptance,
but the weeping man, like the earth, requires nothing,
the man who weeps ignores us, and cries out
of his writhen face and ordinary body
not words, but grief, not messages, but sorrow,
hard as the earth, sheer, present as the sea—
and when he stops, he simply walks between us
mopping his face with the dignity of one
man who has wept, and now has finished weeping.
Evading believers, he hurries off down Pitt Street.
(by Les Murray)
MY FATHER’S TEARS
Yesterday I heard the news that Shaun, the teacher
who led me out of fear and into love so many times
had died. I was sitting right next to my son and I let out
a sigh. Sometimes before rain the wind will make space
in the air. When I cried, he laid his twelve year old hand
on my forearm and I remembered the first and only time
I saw my father’s tears. I was sitting just behind him
at his father’s funeral. In my eight year old mind a man
was dissolving in front of me. My father. The architecture
of my childhood collapsing into a sobbing sound, a river.
My boy has seen me cry all of his life. I said, it doesn’t
shock you, does it? and he laughed and reassured me
like he does when I ask him if I hug him too much:
Oh, Daddy, as if to ask how could I ask him such a thing.
We’re men and we cry, it’s that simple. In that church
I had a glimpse of how I’d one day be a father to the child
inside my father. When he lay dying in the hospital
and I held him and told him that I loved him, he let himself
say it at last. We lead our fathers on, as they led us
until one day they leave us, to lead and be led by our sons.
(by The Equalizer)
Very nice indeed.
This line—in particular—struck me.
“In that church I had a glimpse of how I’d one day be a father to the child inside my father.”
Thank you very much indeed
South African girl who was raped: “They say I cry too much.” The older rape crisis center woman supporting her: “Then cry some more.” Sums up feminism nicely.
I don’t think this phenomenon is confined to laziness or approval-seeking, though both of those are certainly a part. In the past I probably idealized women too much, but I have always expected them to be “strong and independent” and stand on their own two feet. I’ve gotten a lot of shaming tactics directed at me over the years for this from both men and women.
Kowtowing male behavior towards women is enforced, through indoctrination, shaming, and physical threats by both men and women.
Our fathers, mothers, and overall upbringing often enforce this behavior. So a boy growing up, wanting to receive the approval of his peers and his mentors and avoid punishment, will do what he feels is expected from him.
And as most of us here have experienced, these expectations to put women on pedestals never really go away in adulthood.
Of course the proper response to that is to counter their expectations with logic, and perhaps a politely-raised middle finger.
Loved the article, have discussed the same points with male friends many times, it has only been 150 years or so since we have seen this shift in nuturing …
Some of the earliest records of this come to light in the Hebrew scriptures that can be dated back 3000 years where fathers played a major role in nurturing children within the family unit ..
I can only relay my own experience here and personal observations with the subject of male “fear” and the lack of action when confronted with childish narcissistic partner …
For me my fear was initially the self validation aspect, but how quickly this fear evaporates when faced with losing contact with your children, your home, your financial assets, your work, your friends, your self respect as your ass is kick up and down a roller coaster of family law that annihilates your rights as a human being!
Being a man and especially a seperated father in this culture is like being in a centrifuge of hate that seperates your self worth and your goodness and only leaves a pulp of a human being …
So sons that experience a father being torn assunder in this fashion, or male friends of the “centrifuged” man creates a social memory of “fear” in all that view the spectacle … With this in mind one can understand how a man can come to fear a woman in a relationship! Yes there is self validation but there is also the family court
Kelly’s article has taught me not to use the mangina term as much is I have been using it lately, I can understand married men fearing their partner in these terms!
So Paul I would agree it is fear and not laziness that mostly leads men into putting up with their treatment by a woman … great article by the way.
Kelly, I noticed in your video you were scathing towards people with nonsensical spiritual beliefs , yet here you are lecturing us on “becoming conscious of the infinite”, what hypocrisy
I believe the term ‘infinite’ used in the context Kelly uses it is philosophical not religious. Were it me using it, the Infinite would be interchangeable with the Divine or the Light
Steveyp333, the reasoning behind this concept of the Infinite, should you care to explore it, is as simple as the following:
1. A thing is defined as finite, because it exists relative to other things, and is bounded by them.
2. The totality of things includes all things, so cannot be finite.
Conclusion: the totality is not finite, ie. infinite.
Paul, my friend,
You have Hit it man!!! After a lot of pain I had reached the conclusion that my caregivers f*cked me, out of hatred for husbands. Today I realize that I am not alone and there are many like me.. What a relief!!
Thaks mate.
I HATE hearing the term “mentally lazy” being resurrected.
I remember the severe beatings I used to get as a kid getting an F in math every report card day because I was “mentally lazy”.
NOBODY is so “mentally lazy” they’d subject themselves to severe beatings repeatedly, time after time, year after year.
“Mental Laziness” is a mentally lazy theory that predates “learning disability”. I haven’t heard that term used since I was a kid.
It should remain buried in the past along with lobotomies and Commie scares, where it belongs.
Good point. While I think she has some very insightful things to say and I will watch her future videos, my impression is that perhaps in this case she’s trying a bit too hard to avoid admitting that “lazy” in neither the correct word nor concept for her to have used (unless we abstract the concept to the level necessary for it to cover what she wants it to. That way, one employs the connotative punch the word provides without having to use the term very carefully).
I think you make an excellent example of how fear is translated to “laziness.”
How does one study any subject when it is a threat to personal safety?
I’ve read that abused children often become controlling adults. It’s a painfully recognized and very undesirable trait in myself I’ve spent a lifetime trying to, uh…control…
Boys in this society, being taught from early childhood that “boys are bad and girls are good”, goes unrecognized as abuse I think.
Most men and boys have been shamed and punished for outward signs of any dominating or controlling tendencies.
“If I grovel at your feet, give you whatever you want, agree with whatever you say, live for you, die for you” – may just be an unconscious form of control over another person or outcome. On the surface it appears to be selfless, self depreciating and self sacrificing White Knight traits which are highly encouraged in men, but…you notice those same traits are currently discouraged as beneath women’s dignity.
Embracing those traits may work out in varying degrees of success for some men, but for too many it’s a prescription for disaster.
The Pedestal Perch-er either begins to disrespect, resent and rebel against the control, or becomes bitter at the broken promise of eternal adoration when those lofty standards can’t be maintained long term.
What you are saying about abuse is why I don’t buy into this “rational males controlling irrational females” hokum.
Abuse is an underlying thread to irrational behavior. Abuse is not gender specific and neither is irrational behavior. I don’t like the terms “victims” or “survivors” so I would say “those schooled in abuse” have a keen understanding of the applications of irrational behavior and the destructive course it can take.
In my mind “fear” is much more compelling than “laziness.” In fact I see the use of the word “laziness” as a privilege set to dehumanize.
100%: Boys in this society, being taught from early childhood that “boys are bad and girls are good”, goes unrecognized as abuse I think.
Evidently not just boys. It is pernicious and subtle. I used to think: if I ever have children, I want girls, not boys. Since I got involved in the MHRM, I’ve come to realise that the reason for this is related to what 100% Cotton said: Boys are bad, girls are good.
Just look at the article Peter Lloyd’s AVfM recent post (Kentish Town Sports Center to Men: GET OUT!) mentioned (It’s taboo to admit it, but I wish my unborn baby wasn’t a beastly boy! via ‘A bigot in a bra!’: A male writer responds to Esther Walker’s ‘toxic and chauvinistic’ admission that she doesn’t want to give birth to a little boy) and some of its comments:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2245681/Its-taboo-admit-I-wish-unborn-baby-wasnt-beastly-boy.html
What astonishes me is that I wasn’t alone in thinking that sort of thing. It is a symptom of a perverted view of men.
Paul – This is excellent work. Let’s remember that children learn to please their mothers from the earliest days of their lives. From breast feeding and toilet training, and countless other examples of behavioral learning, children learn to please their mothers. Crying and other bids for help, attention, comfort, etc. become tailored to what works not with Dad or someone else, but with Mom alone, because she’s the one who’s there. Because this learning begins literally from Day 1 of a child’s life, the need to please the important woman is as deep as it gets. It’s part of the bedrock of our psyches.
During feudal times, when Dad was at home, the child had another adult to turn to. Children form attachments to both Mom and Dad, again during the earliest days of their lives. So when Dad was present, he could serve as another source of succor. Therefore, if the child didn’t learn to please Mom, he/she might learn to please Dad which was just as good.
No more. As you say, since the dawn of industrial capitalism, Dad’s not been available to provide that other resource children need. So children are stuck with Mom. I’d say this goes a long way toward explaining both misandric culture and its twin, the culture that privileges women, believes what they say about DV, gives them a break in sentencing for crime, makes special accommodations for them in the military, the workplace, etc.
And of course all this argues powerfully for equal parenting. The more fathers are involved in the lives of their children, the more children will learn that men matter, that pleasing Dad is as important as pleasing Mom. And that will go a long way toward our learning to treat men and women equally, to stop seeing women as special, idolized creatures, to stop making excuses for them.
Women resent men who treat them like “equals”. Women reward men who treat them as superior beings or special.
This, along with our media and govt, has created a class of women that is hopelessly conceited, narcissistic and entitled.
She wants the man’s pedestal of honor, bravery and fortitude – while remaining on the female pedestal of sexual allure, helplessness and motherhood.
Aligning Feminism with female sexual power over men, was the smartest manuever they could have ever thought of – much to the chagrin of the haggard, barren old spinsters of the 60′s and 70′s.
(groan, this is going to be long)
Paul, you asked us a few questions but set out to answer them all yourself. And well it must be added.
Once out of the starting gate and past a small fork in the road this article picked up a compelling to read momentum and passed the finish line with little to look back upon.
Unfortunately little is offered as a critique to your writing as I tended toward agreeing with mostly everything expressed. Time worth reading and time well spent constructing this insightfully concise essay, it must be said. Good reading for the younger men in the audience.
“It’s a complicated matter [disapproval fear], and one that cannot be explained without an understanding of men’s collective, historical experience, their education, and their personal family experiences”.
– Obviously, obviously is this, and more, lacking in the collective ‘gendered’ zeitgeist understanding. This understanding of men in general or specific. The ‘gender’ collective are not the victims of their own lack of this understanding of men but more the obvious proponents of it. This will be to their everlasting and deserving shame.
Back to understanding the male dynamic in an ever-evolving social structure.
An addition to your “prose”, – if I may:
“For the first time in western history women, unlike men, began to have options about what to do with their time. Some chose to work, many others chose to settle in to a new role, as a housewife.
Why is this important to this discussion? Because this is the time in history that women began to experience a more idle time than ever before. That idle time, I think, was the beginning of trouble for men, and for all of us”.
– In, “The myth of the monstrous male and other feminst fables”, John Gordon http://www.conncoll.edu/directories/faculty-profiles/john-gordon/ suggested the reading of, “The feminization of American culture” by Ann Douglas.
http://books.google.ca/books/about/The_Feminization_of_American_Culture.html?id=csMxLlLd05kC&redir_esc=y
Google Books:
“This modern classic by one of our leading scholars seeks to explain the values prevalent in today’s mass culture by tracing them back to their roots in the Victorian era. As religion lost its hold on the public mind, clergymen and educated women, powerless and insignificant in the society of the time, together exerted a profound effect on the only areas open to their influence: the arts and literature. Women wrote books that idealized the very qualities that kept them powerless: timidity, piety, and a disdain for competition. Sentimental values that permeated popular literature continue to influence modern culture, preoccupied as it is with glamour, banal melodrama, and mindless consumption”. [italics mine]
I wouldn’t say the “only areas open to their influence”. Birth, motherhood, values instillation, home tending, domestic thrift, family cohesion, spousal influence, charity time (volunteerism), societal respect, etc. are not areas to disregard. Women had a profound influence upon mid 19th century N.American social culture. This, while the men were busy loosing limb, life, self-autonomy, identity, family time and social influence while endeavouring to, at first, simply earn a few coppers for the land lease, early tax coffer and a few luxuries not afforded without evolved industrialztion but later to become family absent but dominant industry present.
I had read this book by Harvard scholar Ann Douglas many years ago. I snored through some of it but what was absorbed left an impression. In retrospect, what I find worth noting is the sentiment of a powerlessness theme evident in the idle female “reading class” during the mid 19th century. Many writers and readers of this documented (but anti-male) woman’s tract were the first to mass publicly hoist themselves upon a pedastal while degrading the image of men. A self-imposed pedestal employing the feelings of being downtrodden but angelic like in a belief of being righteous as the pure driven snow. The pedestal sentiment merely rubbed off into the minds of men who were away from the simmering action within the reading parlours and busy in saloons and other diversions of the day. This being more a developing urban phenomenon. The rural areas were still dominant population wise but more family freindly dependent and less aware of the growing urban female centered hostilities toward their husbands and sons.
There arose a sentiment that influenced many in the day and still carries forward now – those ‘beastly’, brutish, awful terrorizing men who kept women, realistically, out of the dust and danger of the rudimentary industry of those days, out of the raw political structures and kept women riding side-saddle through the mud streets of the early urban society.
But was it just men who did these things, and more? No. Basis their new-found literary genre some middle class women were simply too good to stoop to the levels of such ghastly primitive men. With their newly minted and book distributed superiority some women entered into the professions seeking to improve them where others were content with guiding the culture on the coat-tails of their industrious but clue-less husbands. Clueless to the mini-fictional plots being played out from right under their industry tending noses. While absent to the parlour games the idle reading class were indulging in it’s likely that men failed to properly notice the hostile attitude shift in their middle class women and through time succumbed to the well established deference to things female. Afterall, women were like unassailable angels in need of protections to maintain their own image.
Is this undeniably solipsist literary period merely the genesis of what ails us today or evidence of a continuing biological imperative from time immemorial that the ‘evo psych’ crowd could play with?
Cannot hazard to answer this. But our culture will have to come to such conclusions and more. Currently humanity is circularly adrift in hostile winds blowing us toward despotism because the culture’s rudder is tilted in one direction only (to the left). The ‘captains’ are not up to the challenge of proper navigation and basis their substance we are about to go over the falls of a flat-earth scenario.
Good understanding is the key. We got closer to this today basis the article above.
Paul, I can somewhat agree with the text, but conclusions were to far reaching.
The way you wrote all evil (current social disorder) in modern society came from idle housewives, I think that is a flawed assumption.
Also, to not overcome this fear of not being approved is a kind of laziness I think.
And if the problem was approval an organized solution was easy to come by, why didn’t we do that? The same reason we do not solve poverty, we are selfish and in some level, at least that is what I think, we see all other men as some kind of enemy.
So, even though I don’t agree with Jones, I think it is a mix of her ideas with yours that gets closer to our problems.
This thought provoking type of article is why I love this site. It challenges me to look at my life and what it amounts to. It’s not very flattering and it can be difficult to digest my mind knows it is nutritious and so against mainstream crap that just strengthens my autopilot and gravitates towards devolution.
Thanks Paul. You give me much to think about.
“The way you wrote all evil (current social disorder) in modern society came from idle housewives, I think that is a flawed assumption.”
LOL, please refer me to where I said anything like that!
Sorry for not quoting:
“This effectively left boys alone with quietly disgruntled, idle mothers who used their sons to buffer the emotional emptiness that arose from a life with too many options and too little to actually do.”
And:
“And what change did this effect on the psyche of boys? For one they went from measuring themselves by pleasing their fathers with demonstration of competence in a skill or trade, to measuring themselves by pleasing mother in emotional terms.”
That was the impression I got. What I disagree is how far reaching were these effects and if they are the source of anything really. Until feminism started I think the “housewife” might have done very little social damage.
Anyways, perhaps my phrase lacked the “I think this is what I understood from the text”
Until feminism started I think the “housewife” might have done very little social damage.
Housewives/mothers already done what is meant by Dr. Elam, the damage is just not appeared before feminism.
The Dam Was already cracked. It’s just reservoir didn’t have enough water.
“Why do so many men go as far as to idealize this kind of woman, catering to every capricious whim and seemingly having no limit of what they will endure or surrender in their efforts to please her?”
I thought i would share all the questions, and some comments, that popped into my head as i read this question and article (which is convincing and informative). I am sorry if it’s already been addressed in the comments. I didn’t have time to read them all.
What if men are so overwhelmingly attracted to this “type” of woman because this IS the most attractive type of woman? What if a childlike woman makes sense? What if her natural role as a ‘translator of baby talk’ is well served by maintaining a level of maturity that appears ‘carefree’ to the masculine man? What if the problem is not actually with women’s natural immaturity nor with men’s natural choices. What if the real problem stems from all of the government and feminist (and masculinist) meddling in people’s natural lives?
I have personally met and dated a lot of mature, ‘accomplished’ and respectable women (by modern standards). Although they would talk of marriage and family, they would not be my first choice as a mate (yawn), nor a mother to my children (brrr). They often tend to be emotionally distant, ‘too’ independently minded and somewhat neurotic. These are the ones that often choose career over being a mother (allowing the state to do that chore). The immature ones are simply being pushed around by a bully ‘state’ and spitting toxic spears at any man that gets near her…..as directed.
So you’d rather leave the well-being of your children in the direct hands of another child?
Interesting.
Yes, such women defer choosing a mate in earnest until they’ve climbed the work hierarchy so they can cross the paths of the high-status men they’re after; but by the time th y get there they’re starting to get on a bit, and these guys are looking at young, fit girls; and anyway the execs wouldn’t trust these climbers not to have extra-pair sex with their equally senior colleagues. So they tend to get left high and dry, and from that can spring resentment — man-hatred, even? The cuties sitting on reception have a rather better strategy!
OO, I’m the last person to claim maternal tendencies having never had more than a passing interest in being a mother, but I’m repeatedly remarked on as to how I am ‘good with children’
Here is my secret – I don’t rely on ‘emotional intuition’ to read kids, I read their body language and I treat them as having autonomy. So as my great-niece who was clearly trying to puzzle out who this younger version of her adored Granny was, refused to make eye contact, I respected her need to ‘look without being scrutinised’ and I sat back and talked with my sister and ignored wee J…who climbed onto Granny’s knee and stared at me long and hard. ‘Whatcha looking at J, this is my little sister, just like you are L’s little sister’ her Granny said as we finished our first cup of tea.
‘Yeah, and Gran is our Mum’ I added. J slid off her Granny’s lap and went away to draw. Before I left she gave me a picture of 3 people ‘Gran,Granny and You’ she said.
Oh, I’m mature, accomplished and respectable too…
I didn’t need to be childlike to translate that child, I just needed to respect her personhood
I could not agree more Aimee, I cannot stand seeing adults talk to children like they would talk to there pet dog. Treating your child like a baby just inhibits their ability to grow and learn. It is one of my pet hates, like seeing a 3 year old in a pram with a dummy.
I don’t know Turbo. I think a child needs both polarities of parent. One that motivates them forward, and one that ‘catches’ them when they fall. If a child doesn’t ‘know’ mother will be there with open heart (no matter what), that child is less likely to move forward in life. An acrobat will not ‘learn’ much if he can’t practice with a net first.
Rubbish, traditionalist role models are not essential.
I know ‘not all men are bastards’ in part because my Dad demonstrated unconditional love for me. My Mum has always challenged me and questioned me to determine the rigour of my rational processes, in fact she did it just last weekend on the phone over a new idea of mine.
You seem to assume that gender determines skills and abilities. Equality is about letting people do what they are good at, regardless of gender, rather than trying to force them into predetermined roles
It’s feminists like you that are pushing women into predetermined roles. I am 100% in favor of equal and free choice for women to choose their own roles. The problem is, a society ‘bent’ on pitting women against men, in male roles. The ego non sense that ensues is what is destroying relationships. Women advertise themselves one way, but act totally different. Men get rightfully confused and angry.
Yes, children do need both parents, but why do you insist that it is mother will be there with open heart (no matter what). Why can it not be ‘father’ there with an open heart.
This is the whole problem with your line of reasoning. You diminish the role of fathers in their children’s lives whilst escalating to dizzy heights the importance of “mother”
The father’s natural masculine qualities of worldly, rational thinking are well tuned to ‘provide’ a comforting and safe environment SO THAT the mother is protected from having her ego energized, thus enabling her to remain intimately connected to the child, ensuring it’s greatest potential to become a well adjusted adult. As the child matures, he/she will naturally drift toward the father. A move the mother would not interfere with (and even encourage) because her ego is thoroughly in check and she doesn’t feel a need to “compete” for their affection. She would also care for the father’s emotional needs thus allowing him to feel ‘grounded’ after a day of wrestling ‘ego’ temptations.
“It’s feminists like you that are pushing women into predetermined roles. I am 100% in favor of equal and free choice for women to choose their own roles. The problem is, a society ‘bent’ on pitting women against men, in male roles. The ego non sense that ensues is what is destroying relationships. Women advertise themselves one way, but act totally different. Men get rightfully confused and angry.”
This is a good comment
OO,
Ahem…have you read my posts.
I’m a human rights activist.
“I think a child needs both polarities of parent.”
Gender in a box, anyone?
Parents are people. People change.
People exist on a continuum and are not necessarily tethered for life to a particular polarity.
Ohhhhh…don’t start me on the subject of treating kids like babies for too long.
I had the pleasure of a mother with her small son in clinic yesterday. He spoke clearly and with great precision at 4 years old. Watching them, I could see why – she spoke to him in clear and distinct tones and engaged him in critical reasoning. I wanted to stand and cheer!
Yep, my friends always enjoyed talking with my daughter, they used to say that even though she is young we can have a good conversion with her. I think that just comes from speaking naturally to them, and not speaking of yourself in the third person ie: mummy wants this or daddy wants that, etc. Just logic I think.
( not meaning to blow my own trumpet )
Women are certainly better at teaching the ‘politically correct’ social graces. But it’s men that typically have the ‘vision’ that inspires children to think. No offense or anything, but even the most well traveled and worldly women i know, still talk down to kids. I point it out to them, and they appreciate that i do, but they can’t seem to stop. Mind you…..those little ‘good on ya’ type comments they always make get very tiresome. Men tend to reward honest achievement with recognition, but women seem to want to give everyone a trophy…just for trying. Kids don’t buy that stuff any more than i do. In fact, it just promotes mediocrity that the kids just end up resenting you for later in life.
Great read, Paul.
I didn’t want it to end.
“Thankfully, the red pill is now available for the minority of men who can digest it. And as more men do that then more will follow. It could take a hundred years or more to reverse in this fashion.”
Indeed.
And it will be thousands of years before we ever even begin to forget these times.
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I’m not often rude on these replies but this is the most insulting rubbish I’ve seen in a long time. As a woman who has satisfactory equal relationships with men, I can say maturity is needed in both sexes for a good relationship, be that a friendship, as a business partner, a collaborative team or as life partners and parents.
You sir, need to stop deluding yourself
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How about the potential that men connect soul to soul with their kids too…lots of fine Dads out there do that. Three men in my family have been primary caregivers to young children.
I would say the bigger problem is the sheer lack of exposure to young children before having children of their own, so no opportunity to see role modelled positive parenting responses.
Coming from a large extended family there are alway babies and teen around, and the teens regardless of gender get hands on experience of caring for younger children. Changed my eldest nephews nappy for the first time when I was 13.
Have you though that the issues you see with career women is because they fear failure because no one has shown them how to parent because of the BS notion you are reinforcing about mothering being an innocent and instinctive matter?
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OO, biggest load of BS I’ve heard in the longest time regarding connection and regarding ‘protecting women from their egos’
I’m calling you out on this traditionalist agenda crap you are spouting and the fact you can not see women as intellectual and spiritual equals to men.
Yours is a version of reality that would reinforce power imbalance by expecting men to remain as providers and protectors for ‘innocent women’. That’s a hell I would rather avoid, for the sake of both genders.
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Calm down Aimee, your natural immaturity is beginning to show.
I cannot “connect” as an adult, with a teen, in the nature of a romantic involvement, no matter how “responsible” she is.
In fact, the very idea of it makes me nauseous.
lol….sorry if i misspoke. Of course i didn’t mean an actual teen.
I don’t know about you, but emotionally speaking, I don’t meet a lot of women that ‘mature’ much past puberty. I think this is a natural way for them to understand both the higher reasoning male and the lower reasoning child. When i meet women that ‘accept’ this about themselves, i find them to be very enjoyable to be around. They love to listen, they love to dance in the kitchen, they love to be loved, they are just bursting with loving energy. It makes a day of work easy to endure if you know you are coming home to that.
And I’m keen to come home to a contented male partner who feels that he’s valued as the parent of his daughter and who is able to find time and space to recover from 18 years of abuse from a traditionalist marriage. If I have to be the breadwinner for a while its not a matter of ‘big ego’ which I need protecting from, it’s a simple matter of my greater employability at this time when he is a parent with joint custody.
I agree. It would be great if both parents were allowed to act naturally and contribute to their child’s enjoyment of life. If we could manage to come back to a truly organic ‘economy’ (one that wasn’t addicted to ego), neither parent would have to sacrifice much time for work. Technology is at a point where ‘jobs’ are quickly becoming irrelevant. Most of the ones that exist now are just “make work” non sense that do nothing constructive for society. So, yes…men can and should spend more time at home connecting with themselves and their families.
No, I got that you meant it figuratively. Truth is, I would rather try to connect emotionally with a real 18 year old than a 40 year old that is emotionally 22 years behind.
Neoteny is a given in this culture, but my preferred path is to reject the immature bullshit anyway and refrain from engaging with a child, no matter what their age. Anything else is just feeding the monster. What’s more, since I am aware of this, it makes it my responsibility.
Maturity is about responding rationally to a given situation. Women, with all due respect (and admiration), will naturally filter every thought through their emotionally enhanced minds. Some more so than others, but emotion will generally color rational thought. If it’s done organically (ie men play the rational dominant role, and women the emotional submissive one), it can add so much joy to life (but still function). If you put women’s emotionally colored thoughts ‘in charge’….well, then you get the world we live in and worse (as their coloring gets all blended together). I think it is better to embrace reality than pretend it ain’t so.
“I think this is a natural way for them to understand both the higher reasoning male and the lower reasoning child”
Stupidest comment I have heard in a long time.
By that reasoning, without women, the higher reasoning male would not be able to communicate with the lower reasoning child.
Good luck in Family Court with that reasoning my friend. They will destroy you and your children with your own beliefs. You have made yourself redundant to your own children.
As Aimee has already said you have bought into the “BS notion that mothering is an innocent and instinctive matter” and that Fathers do not communicate with their children.
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@ OrganicOne
“if you accept that women are designed to understand them better”
I don’t !! That is the whole point.
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@ OO, my last comment because you seem entrenched in your idea that nurturing is defined by gender.
You are conflating your observations of socially reinforced value systems with biologically determined behaviour – to paraphrase ‘correlation does not mean causality’
There are 1000s of men out there who lose meaningful contact with their children because family courts think how you do…awarding custody in some cases to women who are abusive of their children in ways that will permanently scar their psyches.
Oh, and on the feminist and emotional bits…
A) what bits of MHRM activism have you been up to lately?
B) ascribing emotions when I’m calling you on a flawed argument is a laughable attempt to derail a debate.
@ Aimee
Bravo Aimee, exactly what I have been trying to say.
Very interesting. If this is true (and it seems plausible), then this is the best news that the MRM had in years.
Because what it means is that the gender dynamics underlying the culture of misandry might not be biological or natural at all but just circumstantial. And that means it can be fixed within one or two generations. Perhaps even less given how fast things change these days. In any case the chance for success for the MRM has gone up 3000%
Personally? I would have quit long ago if I believed otherwise. Because why bother?
If we accept what some say, that this is all innate human behavior, there really is no point at all on this except maybe to help a few poor sots in a few places understand it’s not something wrong with them it’s just the whole human race that’s worthless and if you can’t be an “alpha” male you might as well shoot yourself, and even if you are an “alpha” male you might as well resign yourself to eventually shooting yourself since your woman will eventually dump you once you get old and sick anyway.
I don’t believe it, and it’s not because I don’t want to believe it, it’s because the harder I looked the more convinced I became that we shouldn’t believe it: it isn’t true. Male disposability is nominally true by evolution but has been grossly and horrendously exaggerated by culture to wildly unhealthy levels that aren’t good for anybody. It isn’t just making men ill either, it’s making women more miserable than they’ve ever been.
Men and women are supposed to like each other, with occasional annoyances and friction that usually works itself out. That isn’t a radical thought. Or shouldn’t be radical, anyway.
No, it’s an extreme, distorted extension. That’s why it’s been successful in seeming so plausible emotionally, even though it doesn’t bear any examination logically.
Not only is it false to try to argue that it isn’t biologically rooted, but it is a doomed enterprise in that feminists will always have the answer that what pertains now is a cultural aberration and can chnage.
So it is that Catherine Hakim’s ‘Preference Theory’ regarding work choices cuts no ice in discussion because feminists simply point out that she is merely describing what currently pertains but can and surely will change. The biological explanation of sex differences underlying work choices — that actually explain ‘Preference Theory’ — cannot be thus dismissed, and evidence in favour of sex difference and agaists feminist notions will destroy them.
Even if it were biology, that wouldn’t and shouldn’t stop us from fighting for justice. Being human is ultimately going to be about winning against biological constraints. That or back to the stone age.
Besides, we’ll never know exactly to what extent biology influences our behavior – only that it does. So we may as well assume it’s only marginal.
Experience seems to favor that. When put in exactly the same circumstances, men and women also behave exactly the same (I consider upbringing to be a part of those circumstances).
No. Work WITH biology. Working against it is banging your head against a wall — against YOURSELF, indeed.
Biological is never ‘marginal’ but absolutely central and foundational: culture IS ITSELF biology — just the manifestation of our psychology, that evolved so as to feed back to fine-tune and reinforce the underlying biology. We would never have evolved the facility for culture in the first place otherwise — and culture is not at all uniquely human (we would never consider animal culture non-biological). Culture never flies off at any sort of novel tangent except in surface detail.
It’s vital to understand all this.
We are agreed that culture is not separate from biology, but develops from it and is arguably a part of it. Although a world that can include the cultures of Saudia Arabia, Japan, and the UK shows considerable cultural variation from the baseline.
Nevertheless I note that deductive logic is easier than inductive. As ironic as it is for me to say this, I think that Lynn Margulis is right and that current Darwinian views of nature are classic black/white male thinking when expressed purely as survival of the fittest. Synergy and cooperation are prevalent throughout nature, even between predator and prey species; ruthless competition is not the hallmark trait driving evolution but merely one influencing factor. There is substantial reason to believe that cooperation between organisms goes so far back and so deep in nature it actually predates sexuality itself, and first began with asexual single-celled microorganisms and possibly even before that–so if you’re arguing that we should “go deep” on reproduction taking it to its “most basic” level then if you go ahead and go a lot deeper then you’ll find that cooperation and synergy predate sexual reproduction itself.
Dialing out to a more macro level, I can only repeat again: one of the many odd traits of Homo Sapiens is that our males like, trust, respect, and cooperate with each other to an astonishing degree found in almost no other animal species. Men crave the company of other men, in fact, and boys crave the company of each other and of men.
We are not a tournament mating species, we are a pair bonding species, going back upwards of a million years or more. The fact that we are pair-bonders is so thoroughly documented in academic evolutionary psychology circles it no longer even requires a citation it’s so exhaustively documented. Lifelong pairbonding has been the norm, not the exception, for the human animal for hundreds of thousands of years. What has been repeatedly observed of humans in the wild (hunter/gatherers) is that while there is always some cheating going on (just as there is in all pair-bonding species), human males tend to cooperate and not view each other as sexual competitors most of the time; if we did, human civilization would not, could not, have developed as it did in the first place. We’d look and act a lot more like gorillas.
Even the alpha/beta paradigm has been shown to be false, and mostly behavior found in zoo animals not pack animals in the wild.
Do we really believe the codes of conduct between men to not screw your best friend’s girl are a modern innovation brought upon by culture? I don’t. Even the biggest horndog men I know won’t do something like that casually. I believe that’s rooted in biology too, not something men have to be taught. So too with women.
I also note, again, that until quite recently in human evolution, it would be literally -impossible- for one man to amass orders of magnitude more resources than another; this one may be a bit better a hunter or more clever a gatherer, making him a little more desirable, but the comparative difference between the worst hunter and the best hunter in the tribe is generally marginal and even then what happens? Usually all the men watch the other hunter and learn from him–and lo and behold, he usually is happy to share his knowledge and pass it on to others in the tribe.
Hallmark trait of Homo Sapiens Sapiens: men like helping each other, like teaching each other and learning from each other, and derive status from doing so. They just do. They have for millions of years. In fact it’s what you were engaging in when you wrote your bloody book. It’s also probably why we’re bothering to have this discussion now instead of ruthlessly competing over which female here will give us the most attention.
Human males also bond intimately with children, another hallmark trait; the pedagogical role fathers play in children has been with us a good million years or more, and appears to start from infancy and plausibly even in utero. There is substantial reason to believe at a fundamental level, fathers are a biological necessity not just as providers but as crucial factors in child development from go.
I thus have deep intellectual–not emotional, intellectual–reservations about the notion that we can derive our most fundamental observations about human behavior as the craving men have for sexual congress with females. Yes we have it. Yes it’s a driving force. But the driving force? I doubt it. Biology to me indicates otherwise, although we would be foolish to state it is not one of the factors involved in our behavior.
Well, you misrepresent evolutionary psychology, etc, in setting up ‘straw men’: nobody ouside cultural-anthropology and sociology disputes that pair-bonding is an adaptation; nobody denies male coalitional and in-grouping behaviour are important.
It is quite false, though, to see these as foundational to behaviour and psychology, when sex and intra-sexual competition are primary. Male coalitional and in-grouping psychology is instrumental to male competitive behaviour, not antithetical to it. Pair-bonding evolved in response to the female need to displace attention from low(er) mate-value males and to project forward in time the females’s severely time-limited peak in fertility.
Yes, if you go to the deep biology below even sociality, then you see that the whole local reproductive group essentially is one co-operative enterprise. The sociality of intra-sexual competition built on the sexual divide is not somehow opposed to this: it’s anything but; it’s in the service of it.
It’s a question of level of analysis.
Once the biology is properly understood then all falls into place, and it’s a truly beautiful picture of a grand symbiosis between male and female, and a grand subservience of competition to cooperation.
Indeed, men and women are supposed to like eachother. They are designed to compliment eachother.
Although the science is still only on the fringe (it’s not being allowed into mainstream awareness), our DNA functions as the ‘mind’. Every cell ‘talks’ to every other cell in our ‘bag’ of cells we call our body. It seems it is a complex process of electromagnetism, vibration/frequency and chemical/emotion. Memories, thoughts, feelings, imagery…. it’s all born in the DNA. The brain is simply an input/output system. When you look at the fundamental difference between men and women, you see that men have one ‘x’ gene and one ‘y’ gene, while women have two ‘x’ genes. To understand/explain how it all functions takes a hell of a lot more math skill than i have, but what i do understand is that the shape of the chromosomes plays a huge role in ‘how’ we process information. In other words, men’s minds ‘function’ differently than women’s because, although men can ‘see’ (with our minds eye) what women see, they also ‘see’ another perspective that women simply don’t. It’s why arguments with women are always going around and around. They generally don’t ‘see’ all of what we are speaking toward. In this world of misinformation, the anxiety of this misunderstanding overwhelms women’s emotions and they blame men for being ‘arrogant’.
‘X gene’ ‘Y gene’. They’re chromosomes, not single genes. Minor nitpick.
It’s not just a matter of chromosomal morphology, but composition: the Y chromosome contains genes that are unique to it.
Yes, thank you Sting. An accident left some of my brain wiring crossed up and i sometimes ‘flip’ ideas as i try to express them. But the underlying concept is still valid I think. From what i understand, the brain does not seem to be the seat of ‘thought’ as much as a ‘translator’ of it. Within our bodies, there are trillions of cells that operate without any direct connection to the brain, but yet, they all work in perfect harmony (sadly, they are often working against our own egos/free will). They seem to use a varying frequency, electromagnetic communication system to ‘share’ knowledge in order to perform their individual functions. Somehow, as they change their physical dimensions, they are able to ‘store’ and direct information as needed. The one and the many are interdependent in the functioning of all of life’s systems….including our ‘psychology’. So yes, men and women ‘think’ differently.
Externally, this same ‘wifi’ system can (and does) communicate between organisms (‘can you feel me’ is in reference to this). So at a society level, the human ‘organism’ is tearing itself apart by not listening to this exchange. We are being driven to believe we are ‘separate’ from one another and that we work completely independently. If the cells of the body did this…the community would quickly die. If we as individuals loose sight of this interlink between us, we tend to feel insecure and lonely and seek out superficially ‘physical’ connections with people. If we are fully (and spiritually) engaged with it….then we can feel safe and secure, even if miles from the nearest human.
Well, if you take a Molecular Bio course you’ll learn that our cells use various mechanisms to communicate with each other (such as neurotransmitters, signal peptides and other substances). Information is stored in our DNA and transcribed by a complex enzymatic network (as a matter of fact, genes are the fundamental biological information unit). With that said, I’m not so sure about the rest of your post, it sounds a lot like pseudoscience. Maybe I’m wrong, but that’s how it comes across.
I think it can be fixed relatively quickly adi. Once the ‘tic’ is removed, the patient (humanity) will heal itself naturally. Given regular doses of the truth to aid the healing process, i believe ‘our’ generation can see a complete cure.
My head is spinning a bit with the recent posts and I need some more thinking time but here is some initial thoughts:
Paul’s hypothesis fits also with men in abusive relationships. Their fear is that the early approval they got when initially ‘lovebombed’ will be transferred onto another partner and their abusive GF/wife will be ‘happy forever’ with the next guy. So they hang around trying to win that approval again, or this fear is substituted by the fear that she will harm their mutual children.
Also, sons growing up in the household seeing this kind of dynamic are led to believe that the red flags of bad behaviour are just ‘normal’ and they don’t realise that it is not until they are deeply enmeshed in a relationship with an abusive withholding spouse.
The hardest thing is, to leave these relationships the man must realise his worth is defined by who he is, not how he is viewed by a woman. And if this is a situation where he was raised by an abusive mother he may have to do a double shift to regain his sense of value.
Beloved has gone that journey. We could not work together without him having decided he had innate value – that he was loveable as a human being not a human doing.
That’s the rub though.
It takes a while, and therapy (usually), for someone to realize these things.
And being stuck in an abusive relationship, it takes a lot more in order to really build up that sense of value to a point that a man will realize he is better off without the woman.
I speak not only from helping other men with this, but having lived through it, myself.
Remember, this man-child is building a sense of self and self worth, from the ground up.
And if he does not have good support from someone he trusts, it keeps shattering his sense of self worth (Happened to me, a lot).
Also remember that not everyone has a trustworthy social circle.
Another thing that takes time to build.
Most of us, here, have gained enough perspective to realize, to some degree, when these toxic relationships are starting to be formed.
I feel bad for the guys that still haven’t gained that.
Within my own circumstance, therapy was useless because of the feminist elements that have influenced the theories for therapists today.
What saved me from my abusive ex, was gaining a job that allowed me more time to reflect on what was really going on, and with some help from some work friends and old friends from before the marriage, I got out!
Therapy maybe useful, but a man has to be totally careful in choosing a psychologist, because the feminist influence their will justify the destructive relationship and feed the monster that is your soon to be Ex wife.
Yeah. I get that.
However, there are some therapists that won’t lead you down that road. They are rare, but they exist.
I had a good one, myself.
As a psychologist friend told me, “Find a therapist who in the first session, leads you to cry tears of joy, and you will have found one that will lead you through your pain.”
Brilliant article, Mr Elam.
Aimee I feel you are touching on something that is important to me in this discussion, you are presumably on this site because you believe in the MRM?!
So you understand that a man within a relationship can and probably will be undervalued as a human being as the prevailing social norms afflict that relationship?
For instance a man can be seen as a bread winner and not a nurturer within a particular relationship, and so on and on, the devaluation of self is a long list
My point is that many children don’t feel or haven’t been validated by a significant carer or other in their lives, but go on to live a perfectly normal and happy existence, because they adjust to the fact the deficit belongs elsewhere (having perspective) … you appear to be proof of this, and since we are talking about validation of men in a relationship I would conclude some, most or all men reach this conclusion within the dysfunctionality of their particular relationship (or women for that matter as in your case), that the dysfunctionality is totally divorced from their own self worth.
To think otherwise would further empower the abuser …I don’t believe men have some “special” emotional deficit that keeps them wanting more of the same from women (as per our subject matter – men).
Aimee for me my selfworth was dented but retrievable after my encounter with my narcissistic partner, because I had perspective, it was depleted by government departments, family courts and the prevailing social biases towards men and especially male nuturers, in this instance fatherhood …
Because I feel normal in most aspects
I don’t believe men seek their self worth from females, it may at best reinforce it in a balanced loving relationship as it adds a further dimension to male self worth as being a husband and a father, but it is not the core to a man’s identity …I won’t take one step away from this belief because it is simply empowers an abusive woman further …
Are we really talking about the lack of social validation for men here???
Enjoyed your post and only wanted to reinforce what I feel you have stated ..
cheers
One of the radical ideas I was introduced to about 20 years ago was the concept of thereputic re-parenting for those who have had traumatic childhoods with invalidating experiences.
Rather than buying in to the idea of the thereputic expert doing the reparenting in a long and expensive programme, I’ve explored in my clinical practice (both genders) the ways of getting people to reparent themselves. It means sometimes I’m coaching rather than counselling, but it about directing people towards ways of creating secure routines that both nurture and support them.
I’ve found that men once they ‘get’ where I’m coming from make huge leaps in developing self parenting.
Too many men do seek self-worth from relationships, many of them are recreating the conflict from the relationship with their mothers to try and resolve it and ‘be worthy’. Getting them to activate their capacity to create their own validation and recognise they can’t satisfy their abusive partners is the best kind of outcome from the kind of approach I use.
I know Beloved is well on his own road to recovery – he and I can disagree in how to solve a problem, but he is no longer likely to second guess himself over his decision on managing the problem – even if the choice he makes has unintended consequences.
I had almost nothing to do with his recovery, other than celebrating the steps along the way with him. It was fortunate that the combination of his psychiatrist, his therapist and his divorce lawyer(!) have helped him activate his own internal reparenting skills – 3 men who have done Beloved a great service
A Voice for Men
comapassion for men and boys
Mother fucker
What a fuckin incredibly enlightening discussion.
Kelly call me. 800-737-77387 No seriously, call me. Stu and I are gonna take you out for a drink and a really long conversation…..
Hi Perseus, I live on Bruny Island, a tiny island with a population of 600, and with one pub. It’s south of Tasmania, which is a small island south of Australia. So the drink will have to be virtual and the conversation by email (much easier to remember that way). My email: kellyjones@naturalthinker.net
Great place to live
You sure there is only one pub? Man you Aussies are getting soft if there is more than a 1 to 300 pub to people ratio! Hehehe…
Yes, only one pub, but it’s a DIYer kind of place.
Paul,
I do see where you would consider it fear for a man to keep around a woman who creates a toxic environment.
But I do not totally agree with your assessment.
Fear is what drives us away from pain and death.
And the fear of being alone is probably one of the most crippling we, as humans, will face in our lifetimes.
However, I think you missed one thing.
And though this isn’t it, I want to point this out, before I get to what I think you missed.
If you take Ms. Jones’ theory, and replace lazy with fear or fearful, it seems to be pretty interchangeable and still spot on.
Remember, these women prey on the weakness of men. And any time a man shows weakness, they will and often do, hit them right in that sensitive spot.
Talking on your connection of family, remember that as children we seek our parents approval. We want to feel loved and accepted by the people that say they love us, the most.
Now, since the move away from the father/son dynamic from pre-industrial revolution time, that has slowly degraded the ability of a boy to actively have a strong male figure in his life, in order to teach him what being a man is supposed to mean.
So, in my mind, the solution to this particular conundrum is actually very simple. And this is what I think you missed. You actually stumbled upon the answer.
Fathers taking a weekend, or week depending on availability, and go and do something primal and totally guy-centric. Not saying go build a car together, unless you are both into that. How about a weekend where you fly somewhere, and do something for just the guys.
Hit Vegas, and go drinking.
Fly to Colorado, and go skiing.
Head to New York and visit the Statue of Liberty.
But you get the drift.
Make time to just be with the guys. You and him.
And, I will never stop stressing the importance of this, communicate with each other, while you are there.
And leave anything female behind, until you get back.
“If you take Ms. Jones’ theory, and replace lazy with fear or fearful, it seems to be pretty interchangeable and still spot on.”
Confused here. The words have two entirely different meanings.
Regardless of the meanings of the words, just think about it.
If you went and re-read her words, using fear or fearful, it supports exactly what you are saying.
Yes they have different meanings.
But is fear really all that different from mental laziness?
Can you honestly say that fear isn’t, to some degree, a form of mental laziness?
As humans, we have the ability to perceive our world. And through the use of perception, change how we view our world.
And I have seen, just slightly shifting the thought of what fear is, change a lot in people.
To use PUA terms, guys who are crippled by approach anxiety, who shift their perception of fear, can turn around and talk to four really hot women.
And, the way I see it, not taking the time to change that perception, is a form of mental laziness.
So technically, you and she are both right.
Still not buying it. Not saying that I don’t see why you see it that way, but there is still something I think you are not addressing. That is not in any way I can imagine something that you can resolve by simply changing out words.
I might also ask you to consider for a moment what it means that you would ask me to set aside the meaning of words in an effort to understand something.
There remains a fundamental difference in the two proposed motivations that is quite profound. Fear is an emotional state. Laziness is a deficit in character, and one she applied to all men, without giving us a shred of her reasoning behind it.
It is not like I am nit picking between “fear” and “anxiety.” It is more like the difference between “uninformed” and “stupid.”
Even though I really enjoyed her salient points, and took time to acknowledge there were many, the fact remained for me that a critical part of her thesis was lacking exploration and support.
There is another aspect of this that plays a role. After I made the initial comment on her thread saying I felt that fear was a much more credible motivator in this case than laziness, her response, as I pointed to in the OP here was to suggest that possibly it was a matter of the stereotypical fragile male ego. But again this was offered without any discernible support, and seemed to fit the same misandric mold as the blanket insinuation of “laziness.”
I understand where you and Kimski (Hi Kimski!) are coming from, but I have to disagree with both of you. While there is plenty of room to disagree with my assessment of fear, and room to offer support for her assessment of laziness or ego fragility, I can’t buy that these are just such interchangeable terms that it amounts to nit picking to point out the difference and what that difference implies.
If Kelly wants to produce a rebuttal to this she is welcome to do so, and I will be happy to run it. I am not trying to discredit her personally or make any kind of mockery of her points. I am just trying to take a fundamentally good idea and correct what I think is a big missed opportunity in one of her key conclusions.
This discussion reminds me of this from Frank Herbert’s Dune series:
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.
Hi Paul!
@Dean Esmay:
That mantra is lot more efficient than you’d think.
I learned it by heart back in the 80′s, and it has helped me on several occasions.
I wish I could give you more upvotes for that one.
I got your point, and thank you for it, Paul.
Just offering how I see it.
Take it or leave it.
For myself, I would say it’s more empowering if I view it as such.
Like I said in my first post, it seems like replacing mental laziness with fear (or some derivative term), and you pretty much have your article.
I am one who believes the human brain is capable of a lot more than we give it credit for.
Thus why the mental laziness agrees with me, more.
It’s all good dude.
Though I am curious, what do you think isnt being addressed?
I honestly think I am missing something from your post, and am wanting to discuss it in more depth.
Okay, I’ll try to respond here, Paul. The reason why I’ve been slow to respond to comments, is because of needing to prepare for a physics exam next week, as well as other commitments. This, I hope, will be my last contribution for at least a week, so I can get back to my revisions.
It’s difficult to try to explain one’s whole philosophy in 24 minutes, or even in a few essays. In that philosophical worldview resides the explanation for why I regard men’s behaviour as the primary cause for women’s irrationality, as being driven by mental laziness.
I believe that men, all the time, compartmentalise their minds to deal with fears. A fear of heights. A fear of being hazed at work. A fear of the dark. A fear of being bitten by a crazed dog. A fear of being beaten up by an angry drunk. They get on with life, and manage the fear. Why is that? Because they see it as something chaotic and turbulent, making a mess of perception and disordering their ability to think. They control the fear like a strong man controls and contains a madman with a straight-jacket.
But this fear of women is something different. Women present more than something mad, chaotic, deranged and inconsistent; they present something enticing, *because* it suggests all the wonderful things of childhood. So that fear is greatly diminished by interest and attraction. Women’s childishness is not merely a lure to get men to protect and provide for them as the weaker and fairer sex, but it is psychologically very appealing to a consciousness beset with worries. As August Loevenskold wrote, the work-ridden mind can be driven to intellectual exhaustion. And that is why women – Butterflies of the mind – can be so attractive. Yes, men fear the loss of women, but it is not merely this sense of self-empowerment through women’s praise, adoration and acceptance that they crave. Much more importantly, I believe, it is women’s irrationality and obliviousness, their carefree and seemingly transcendant spontaneity that marks their every saying, action, and movement.
So, what I’m saying here is much deeper than you were imagining. Men troubled by their worries, seek women as relaxation, to rest in their lightness and frivolity. Nothing matters when “that” woman is around: when her mood is “on”, then it’s all fun, jokes, sexual banter and ease of mind. They give up their thinking, letting their reasoning go to the winds, because it’s much easier to flow with Woman.
And there’s an even deeper aspect to men’s attraction to women, which I regard as mental laziness. It’s their intuitive philosophical sense of how reality works: the metaphysical realm of causality. They can intuit that there is something like unchanging change, constant flux, and eternal ungraspability, to the way things work. It is like Woman: the fickle butterfly. So men are attracted to women, because, in her unconsciousness and flowieness, she seems spiritual and enlightened. She goes along with things (unthinkingly), like a stream, empty of thought and free of care. So men with that more profound turn of mind, are attracted to women.
Yet both of these attractions are signs of mental laziness, because (i) by seeking mental rest in the playfulness of something akin to a household pet, while knowing how much trouble this very pet has driven one into (all the hard work to create a safe environment, build a house, bring home a sufficient income, afford presents, a high-status car, etc.), shows that one doesn’t want to think about the ramifications of one’s attachment; (ii) imagining that women are in any way spiritual or enlightened *through* their obliviousness and flitty intellects, and being attracted to them because of this, is surely short-circuiting the thought processes.
Anyway, I won’t prolong this comment further. If anything is unclear or appears doubtful, please ask and I’ll try to clarify further when I have some free time.
Kelly Jones
Exactly!
There’s so many ways of getting that approval and validation elsewhere. Being alone doesn’t even have to enter the equation, considering how many guys out there that are not in a relationship too, or dangling from the ceiling in marital chains.
Fill your house or apartment up with animals, so you have someone who depends on you, and appreciate your being there. Join a online gamers guild or the local fishing club, or take courses in higher cooking, if that’s what get’s you rolling. Spend some of your time with buddies doing manly things, and pretty soon you won’t have time to feel lonely, because you never actually are.
The benefits of having your own time to dispose of, without having to ask someone for permission, or always having enough money to do whatever you damn well please, far outweighs the validation and approval you can get from a woman, IMO.
From what I see around me, that approval and validation very often comes with a high price of drama, moodswings, and stunningly negative comments about you as a person.
And to return to my first comment in this thread, a lot of guys find out that all the emotions, bonding, and finances invested in an average relationship or marriage nowadays, counts for jack shit whenever she decides it.
Life’s too damn short for that kind of crap.
If sex is the problem, then we all know about the oldest profession in the world, and from my point of view that exchange is a hell of a lot more honest, than the legalized prostitution marriages has become. And you’re not even guaranteed sex in those, unless you make it through the emotional gauntlet every day.
Hell no!
Make Mine A MGTOW.
http://vimeo.com/41468749
This exchange needs to go somewhere special on the site.
To many great comments and op theories to be left sitting on the side.
I can’t believe people get their panties all tied up in a knot over the (mis)use of one single word.
She has some really good points, and if you exchange the word ‘lazy’ with the words ‘scared shitless’, she’d be right on the money in most cases.
Kimski i tend to agree, and found her arguments sophisticated and buyable.
‘Scared shitless’ works for me, although I also see validity in her claim of mental laziness. It may be that mental laziness works as a psychological defense that stops one from contemplating the fear… mental inactivity as a way to banish fear.
Micro-criticisms aside I hope Kelly continues contributing here as she has a lot of thoughtful ideas on offer.
That’s exactly the way I understand her use of ‘lazy’, Tawil. I was struggling with the language barrier here, but you nailed it perfectly.
“mental inactivity as a way to banish fear.”
Beautiful, mate.
“God help us all, if we actually had to contemplate the level of shit we’ve let ourselves get into”.
And I agree on the continued contribution part a 100%
The mind shuts down in response to a threatening situation as a safety mechanism. Interesting hypothesis.
Agreed, and had she taken the care to explore her proposed concept of laziness, and to offer qualification, it would have greatly improved the message, IMO.
Well, as I’ve learnt, sometimes feedback is needed, to know the concept has been misunderstood.
It isn’t my fault, but I’m sorry nevertheless, that the term “lazy” when applied to men, is so typically applied with malice, that it was simply assumed I was doing so as well.
Hi Kelly
I’m responding to your previous post but there wasn’t a reply option there.
I think what you describe as a laziness to face the responsibilities for the provision and protection of women is better described as fear. Ester Vilar says that men are afraid to face the fact that they are in servitude to women.
I suspect there also might be a psychological apparatus that has a bias towards not recognizing the awful /awesome aspects of life. We may have a bias to look at life more positively that it actually is.
I’ve certainly been upset by the use of the terms “lazy” and “laziness”, and I’ll continue to work to get past the revulsion it causes me. It does have the strength of being sharp in its presentation and painful in a way that rouses one from slumber.
Other terms have advantanges as well as drawbacks.
“Fearful” – a little better but not much, especially for the blue-pill folks.
“Resigned” – as in, unwilling to refight a battle that never seems to accomplish much in terms of the uplift of women’s mentality.
“Unnecessarily tolerant” – clumsy, but more accurate in suggesting that men engage more vigorously the vapidity of the female intellect.
“And what change did this effect on the psyche of boys? For one they went from measuring themselves by pleasing their fathers with demonstration of competence in a skill or trade, to measuring themselves by pleasing mother in emotional terms.
It is just that simple.
And it is just that profound.”
You are on to something big here but it’s not that simple and it’s a lot more profound. What you are talking about is known as covert incest…that is the psychological reverse-role rape of sons by their mothers. Very common, very cruel and perfectly legal…and likely to cause far worse feelings than mere fear.
Not sure I agree with you Paul. Is our behaviour about gaining female approval or about fear of female rejection? A couple of years back I was in a recovery group that consisted only of men. It struck me that up until that point in my life the only conversations I had had with men had been about “thing and events”. But in the group, for the first time in my life, we men were taking about thoughts and feelings. When I think about my intimate relationships with women it was not very often I was willing to take a stand and risk rejection. I wasn’t willing to risk losing my only outlet for talking about thoughts and feelings.
I agree with Paul on this one.
Kelly, you say ~ ” Men troubled by their worries, seek women as relaxation, to rest in their lightness and frivolity. Nothing matters when “that” woman is around: when her mood is “on”, then it’s all fun, jokes, sexual banter and ease of mind. They give up their thinking, letting their reasoning go to the winds, because it’s much easier to flow with Woman.”
I’m not sure which women you’re talking about.
I find most women these days to be a source of worry, not a way to escape worry. With their shit tests, faux helplessness, moodiness and tendency to try and seduce or cajole men into subservience they’re a daily pain to be avoided as much as is practicable.
I can relate to the idea of compartmentalizing though. There’s a word many men have for it – MGTOW.
I should also add – “with their false accusations” too.
Yes, like yourself, and other men going their own way, I do try to avoid interacting with women, sometimes going out of my way to do so.
But even so, more conscious men (not the mangina who couples up with the Emotional Void that is Woman) who aren’t enlightened and aware of the nature of Reality, still express a love of the irrational mind and a will to unconsciousness, with substitute women.
For instance: music is a kind of substitute woman, with its psychological magic, sensory distractions from thought, emotional pull, and flowieness.
There are many other ways men still try to avoid thinking about Ultimate Reality. It may not be a biological female, but the need for such is sublimated in these other escapes.
Why do so many men tolerate and indeed seem to insist on enabling irrational, materialistic, self-absorbed and grossly immature behavior from women?
For those who have made the fatal mistake of legally committing to a relationship with one, it’s not for reasons of self-validation; it’s because they are all too aware that she holds ALL the power in the relationship -and that the guns of the legal system, no matter what country they live in, are firmly on HER side. Piss her off (or let her get pissed off, for any reason or none at all), and it’s all over for them.
So the vast majority simply live on in quiet desperation, praying that nature and/or karma will ultimately catch up to the demented succubus to whom they’re shackled. Not a day goes by that they don’t pray that she either drops dead from one of her self-destructive habits, or that she crosses the wrong side of someone else who will make her pay the ultimate price. Either way, they realize that there’s no deliverance from hell except through the most unpleasant and potentially destructive of circumstances.
Then, are [men's] egos so fragile that they need the psychological blow-job of being told they are good and useful slaves?
No, Ms. Jones, it has nothing whatsoever to do with ego and everything to do with male emotional (and even physical) self-preservation, the latter obviously being a concept with which you’re incapable of understanding.
And a male with a large ego would act against the bitch regardless of self-preservation.
feeriker wrote: “Either way, they realize that there’s no deliverance from hell except through the most unpleasant and potentially destructive of circumstances.”
I’ll give a personal anecdote, poor sample that it is, but something that I think is indicative that your viewpoint is too affected by emotion to be objective. My younger brother was married early in life to a young woman who cared for her two younger siblings, grandmother and great-grandmother, since her own mother and father had abandoned her and her siblings; so he became a surrogate parent, with income and abilities to match. He and his young wife had a baby, a boy. They both had emotional and psychological issues, and were codependent on each other. Their lives were difficult, with poor self-esteem, and the kinds of consequences that brings. They seemed to scrape by, with small happinesses, like buying a bush block and having their own animals. But while my brother improved his circumstances through finding greater scope at work, being trusted by his work colleagues and becoming a supervisor in an engineering workshop, she didn’t develop greater psychological resilience but developed a dependency on alcohol, and an abusive, hopeless, destructive psychology. Many of the relatives and friends saw the collapse, and eventually my brother realised it was a hopeless situation that he could no longer expend energy on to repair. He decided enough was enough. With the testimonies of relatives and friends, he was awarded custody of the child, and managed to scrape himself together to make some genuine psychological breakthroughs about his own self-image. So, I don’t believe the legal system is devoid of fairness.
“it has nothing whatsoever to do with ego and everything to do with male emotional (and even physical) self-preservation.”
But that is what I mean by the ego. The ego is a self-construct built on the core (delusional) belief that things inherently exist. That is what drives the self-protective instinct.
I think the greatest destruction comes by believing others’ lies that one has no choice. Even if one has a gun to one’s head and is told, “You must do what I’m telling you, or I’ll kill you,” there is still a choice. As long as you don’t give up your authority to others, then your will to consciousness and to truth is still preserved.
It took me so long to realize that my mother’s affection was just to manipulate what I did and how I felt. It took me so long that I had to be suicidal and come back for me to see things more clear. When I put the question in my mind that she was not so good as she had painted it then I saw the signs.
It’s like looking for an address. How can you get there if you are not even looking for it? You can’t.
After that I started asking questions. And every question led to twisted answers and I felt angry… I felt deeply betrayed by the person who I had given my upmost best and always tried to make happy. Always tried to help and held in Saint like pedestal.
She soon found out and realized that things were changing. Then she started to try to make things right. That’s when I really talked to my dad, who my mother had separated me from and for once listened before judging. Now I realize that she had taken away from me the best influence in my life.
Now I am not saying she is a bad mother. She is a good mother. Maybe I am smarter and wiser than her but I think that’s why my dad left it as is. Knowing that she had raised us before the divorce he thought that she would be of better help to us. I just wished that she would have done what was best for my sister and I and not her because that’s what I would have done for my kids.
Long in short, it’s hard to see how badly brainwashed we are. Constantly… by the media, by our peers, coworkers, bosses… It’s everywhere but some of us are fed up and starting to act. About time.
So many of the elements in your story, remind me of my own story, WWVD.
Come November, I have not spoken with my mother for twenty years.
Take care brother…enjoy the awakening, for we are amongst the lucky ones.
I think it’s more complicated than “men let women difine them”. If you’re a man, it’s not so much that she’s telling you what you are, it’s that she is telling everybody else what you are. In other words, the woman decides how other men should define you. That is where the fear comes from. If you’re stranded on a deserted island with a woman, does she have the power to define you?
So the best way to fix this: don’t let the woman decide how you should define other men. If all men do that, then women can’t define men.
The original question..
why these men (indeed all men by her later implications) assume the burden of hyperagency in their relationships with women, effectively insisting that those women lead lives of incompetence and dependence.
Looking further back into history.. prior to the period that gave the West prosperity and industrialization.. when fathers were involved with their children.. we still see the hyperagency and hypoagency.. as reflected in the writings of the greeks, early renaissance, and even in the age of enlightenment.
If we look at non-western cultures where masculine influence is an integral part of the home.. such as in Indian multi-generational families where grandfathers or uncles are always home.. (probably why I have never been able to relate to the “needing approval from women” talk in the MRM), the hypoagency is still profound. Not as bad as the West, but cant be missed.
I have personally fought with hypoagency in the adult women in my life.. for decades even.. to no avail. It seems too late to fight it in adulthood.
I have seen a father try to make his teen daughter self-reliant and she just didnt respond.. and the father relented and effectively said ‘ok..you seem absolutely incapable, and going forward ask me for permission before you embark on anything’. And the interesting thing is that female sexuality has been controlled quite well in India, and therefore teenage women can not use it to get men to do things for them either. So.. It appears to me that the hypoagency sets in biologically.
It is the madness of youth and the brainwashing cultural narrative that prevents men from seeing the hypoagency in the first place. for e.g the 1615 Text ‘Arraignment of women’
“A gentleman on a time said to his friend, ‘I can help you to a good marriage for your son.’
His friend made him this answer: ‘My son,’ said he, ‘shall stay till he have more wit.’
The Gentleman replied again, saying, ‘If you marry him not before he has wit, he will never marry so long as he lives.’”
From all the Indian families I have seen.. Once the long term relationship is entered into and the eyes are opened, there is just a stoic acceptance on the part of men to stick with the program, partly due to a dawning realization that it seems immutable, and largely due to social pressure.
From all the Indian families I have seen.. Once the long term relationship is entered into and the eyes are opened, there is just a stoic acceptance on the part of men to stick with the program, partly due to a dawning realization that it seems immutable, and largely due to social pressure.
I must say that I truly pity married Indian men. If Indian women in India are anything like the Indian women I’ve experienced in the western world, then heaven help Indian manhood. I would dare say that we western men suffer lightly by comparison.
> “you’re born into this world alone”
Actually, no. You exit a warm body and, in most cases, get delivered into the warm hands of another human. Can’t get much more un-alone than that.
> ” that is how you’re going to leave it, too.”
In many (most) people die with loved ones and/or caregivers beside/with them. Again, can’t get much more un-alone than that.
Plus during most of life, there is more cooperation than competition. So being with others is the norm. And even with competition, much involves teams. So again, little solitude (unless you seek it).
“Belonging” has much more to do with feeling fully alive than being alone does.
Some men feel the only reaction to feminism is to no longer “need” female companionship. But for most straight men, such a choice results in “half-living” or using prostitutes.
Sure, men need to give and accept more support from other men. But men also, in my experience, need loving women in their lives…romantically. The problem is, feminism has made that too risky.
Now non-lesbian fembots and ordinary women will pay the price.
Many guys don’t want to date divorced women with kids (DWWK) because feminist laws make it too dangerous. They can be forced to pay child-support simply for “acting” like fathers.
Plus Mommy Dearest probably has an “attitude” about men.
DWWKs end up cougar material for broke college guys seeking sugar mommies. And older men seeking easy pump-and-dumps.
Younger women? They tend to act like entitlement princesses. They value shopping more than reading Schopenhauer. So they attract PUAs and others who like young meat while enjoying treating pampered shitheads like, well, pieces of shite.
It’s also fun to watch smarmy, self-important snowflakes age, going from turning heads to turning stomachs. It’s like alums smiling when they see the former arrogant football captain bully show up to reunions as a bloated drunk.
Pay back!
Men who get passed over for promotions or college admissions are unlikely to marry PhD princesses, They certainly won’t want her to stay home and raise kids while he sweats the load. The guys will, instead, say “Do it yourself, byotch!”
Now, will divorced guys seriously date their female peers? Unlikely. They’d fear being burned again. Better to stay away or pump-and-dump their hot daughters.
Blame feminism for sour relations between the sexes.
There will be more hell to pay as technology flourishes. Men will watch TV, play games, fish or do whatever they like. Freed from obligations to feed families, not needing a fancy car to get poonani, they will do as they please, needing less to live on.
Having removed all incentives for men to care about societies (in fact punishing them and playing them for saps for abiding by the rules), feminist will face ever-growing bills.
Who will fund feminist outfits in the future? Not men. They won’t make enough money. Or go off-grid, to jail, or live on-the-dole rather than subsidize the enemy. So those outfits will either disappear or be funded by female-dominated enterprises…ones with less and less flex-time.
Just my thoughts, of course.
So, sure: men have much to answer for in letting feminism metastasize. I’m just saying a full-accounting will show they had at least as many, if not more, “social lessons” to unlearn as women did.
Muffin was told she couldn’t do math. Biff was told he couldn’t be afraid. Great effort went into helping Muffy unlock chains holding her back. Now it’s time for The Biffer to get his fair share of help.
One can hear feminists caterwauling already. No matter. Men will go Ulysses and, wax-eared, not heed the harridans… pressing on to assert their rights.
Laws must change!
What if any man could kill any woman at any time if he “felt” like it, cops looking the other way? Would it comfort females to know most men wouldn’t act that way?
The problem is laws exist now that allow women to hurt males any time they FEEL like it… and do so with impunity. It doesn’t matter that all women don’t avail themselves of such legislation. It matters that any woman COULD… and at any time. The laws shouldn’t exist.
Another point: DH Lawrence wrote a lot about the Industrial Revolution’s impact on men… emotionally and otherwise.
Finally, the bonding that men undergo with females starts in-utero and continues througout the early years. It is pre-conscious, pre-verbal, oceanic. At that age a mother not looking at her baby will upset him. He will cry if she looks “meanly” at him, too. This occurs at survival level. Because if he’s not held or fed he’ll die. That’s why having extended families and fathers around is/was key. All the growing male baby’s needs shouldn’t be met by one person. It puts him in too great jeopardy and gives her too much power.
> “understand the self in relation to the Infinite.”
Reason has its limitations. And “understanding” can be the booby-prize in life…what you get when you don’t get what you want.
We have a three-level brain. That’s why there’s music, poetry, and mathematics. Also logic, analogies, and fart jokes.
A swami goes up to a hotdog stand in Manhattan and says, “Make me One with Everything!”
Robert wrote: “Reason has its limitations.”
What kinds?
> “…had she taken the care to explore her proposed concept of laziness…it would have greatly improved the message”
Perhaps she was too lazy to do that. :>D
I have a problem with women telling men they’re lazy, especially since few expect women to do anything difficult. I mean hell: they’re given chairs to climb walls in boot camp!
I also don’t like women chiding guys for being afraid since females can use fear as an excuse and never be called cowards. Besides, it wasn’t guys handing white feathers to gals, shaming them to die in trenches.
I also don’t like either sex talking about the “delicate male ego.” Who besides misandrists believe women have attention-worthy “feelings” while men are stuck with inferior, expendable, replaceable modules in their noggins called “Ego-Delecato 2013″?
It’s like when war is depicted as a boardgame (troop positions marked by Legos) instead of hearing how real men really experience it: screaming, mortar whistles, shit, stench, blood, terror, chaos, confusion, rifle pops, fear, fatigue, sweat, etc.
The horror, the horror…indeed.
It’s also like hearing men think with their “little heads”…implying, somehow, that sex is bad. Or that women don’t juice up with gina-jingles.
Men are not machines!
Completely feel the same. Well said.
I won’t attempt to paraphrase as it would take too long, and I wouldn’t want to accidentally dilute or distort the conclusions and assertions, but some of you might enjoy exploring Steven Stosny and Patricia Love’s work on the “Fear-Shame” dynamic that they believe exists in intimate male-female relationships. I will comment insofar as to say it encompasses both biological and cultural bases for for gender differences (not defects) that exist outside our conscious awareness and which cause miscommunication between the genders. It makes a lot of sense to me. I’d enjoy reading comments by those open minded enough to read a bit, come back here and give an opinion.
I think that the message, “You define your masculinity.” needs to be virally spread. Of course, while browsing Youtube I came across someone prominent in the PUA community who has their own culturally-tinged version of this message, “Who controls your balls?” While I prefer the statement over the question, a mental notation has been made in the case that I would find myself selling donut holes..