The Liberation of Men
December 13, 2010
IN the previous entry, Josh F. writes,”What exactly is a man’s incentive to join a collective of hopelessness?” That’s exactly what the men’s rights movement is, a collective of hopelessness, and other commenters in that thread amply illustrate this. See the rest of Josh’s excellent observations at the end of the discussion.
Also, Jesse Powell writes: “Why is it the men’s rights supporters love to talk about the destruction of Western civilization and how great this destruction is? Why do they positively celebrate the decline in marriage calling it “the marriage strike”? I suspect men’s rights supporters know their condemnation of marriage and their refusal to fulfill their obligations as men is destructive to society and so they embrace and glorify the destruction of society in order to legitimize and glorify their own anti-social behaviors.”
— Comments —
Mdavid writes:
Laura writes: Your daughters will live as privileged citizens? But from the societal norms you describe, they have an excellent chance of living either as divorcées with no mates (divorced women are much less likely to remarry than divorced men) or as single mothers. They may suffer from the depression that is common after abortion or from infertility. Is that what you mean by living as privileged citizens?
If any of those things happen, it will be most likely be my daughters’ choice, and thus not likely. Since it’s vastly more likely it’s the woman who decides if the divorce happens, and since she holds most of the cards if a man divorces her (those two are related), why should my daughters fear divorce? There is very little chance of a decent woman divorcing.
Regarding privileged women, it’s simply a fact. They have more rights by law in every case, not just in feminine areas where it is justified: they have preference for employment, for scholarships, for child custody (think back to the era when children and property followed the father), even for not having to face the mere threat of false sexual abuse accusations (as their male counterparts face). Hence, my daughters are indeed privileged citizens. These are merely the facts; I’ve never heard anyone deny it, only try to argue that this second-class status is deserved (usually by male “natural” or “social” privilege).
Josh F. writes: I am not sure what either Max or Mdavid were offering up that suggested the necessity of a “men’s rights movement?” Just witness Mdavid’s response concerning “palefaces” not looking good from the Darwinian perspective; the Darwinian perspective is false and irrelevant, but Mdavid uses it nonetheless to give us a sense of inevitable extinction. This is the radical liberal’s subconscious desire to self-annihilate so as to realize final liberation from the burden of being God-fearing American Man. This is the essence of the MRM; a mirrored sham very much in collusion with devout dyke to destroy both man and woman.
My reply point by point:
1) I’ve never suggested a “men’s rights movement,” whatever that is. I’ve merely pointed out the reality that men face.
2) I don’t “give a sense of inevitable extinction” for mankind, only for a certain type of mankind who has lost the will to live. I address out the facts as they are happening, and why they are happening. The fact you dislike is that Caucasians have indeed fallen from nearly 30% to 10% of world population in a mere 60 years, and even wars and crushing disease can’t pull that sort of implosion off, and reasonable projections show this fall will continue. Why shouldn’t it? The reasons for the fall (which many people predicted and explained long ago and seem to have their seeds as far back as the Reformation) are still firmly in place. So keep on pretending, Josh; as for myself, I will continue to live in the real world. In fact, it’s people like me who offer the only real hope for the West.
3) If you don’t know (or choose to not believe) Darwinian natural selection, well, there is probably no reason to continue that part of the discussion. It would be like trying to discuss thermodynamics with somebody who doesn’t believe in calculus.
4) “This is the radical liberal’s subconscious desire to self-annihilate so as to realize final liberation from the burden of being God-fearing American Man” This is actually pretty funny; I’ve been called a lot of names, but never a liberal, never suicidal, and absolutely never an atheist. I have seven kids, homeschool, am well-educated religiously and historically, and am building something out of these ashes that you seem to think is home sweet home. What say you?
5) A primary problem with the West today is denial – a calm pretending that we did not create nor earn the mess we live in, and that we can just plod along and things will work out. The fact is that institutionalized sin is at the very root of the decline of the West, and feminism is a very massive reflection of this sin. The wound won’t heal without removing the thorn, and there is no intent of removing it, only a doubling down. Familial carnage in the West is so deep and ingrained that saving this toxic society in current form is impossible; rather, it must be avoided by moral or even intelligent people (and eventually transcended with a new one). That’s real hope, not a false hope of engaging in and perpetuating the mess.
Laura writes:
Your point that Josh and I are unfamiliar with the facts of white demographics is oblivious. You talk as if you are telling us something new. Could you offer some comments that I have made or Josh has made that suggest we deny these demographics and their implications for whites? Also, Josh said the Darwinian perspective, by which I presume he meant the theory of evolution, is false. Darwinian evolution has not been proven and the worldview that is based on the certainty that it is true is a form of creedal fanatacism. Your sneering comment that anyone who doesn’t accept Darwinism is too stupid to understand it suggests it is you who are narrow-minded and unfamiliar with the various positions on the matter. You speak of yourself as “well educated religiously and historically.” Then you must know the philosophical and scientific arguments against Darwinian evolution.
By the way, you say you have never been called an atheist. I don’t care what your religious views are, but it’s not possible to believe in Darwinian evolution (as opposed to simply the process of natural selection, which is scientifically valid) and not be an atheist. You seem to be in the infinitesimal minority of atheists who have seven children and homeschool them. Do you teach them that their society is dying and there’s nothing they can do about it? Do you offer them specific ways they can participate in some form of community in the future?
You are not saying anything new by stating how bad things are in the West. It is strange and arrogant that you talk as if this fact has not been recognized here of all places and that our problem is denial. It is perfectly reasonable to withdraw, but why would you disdain those who want to also articulate what is wrong and communicate with others who see the truth and are not blind? If you simply believe in withdrawing, why are you even participating in this discussion? You say the implosion of the West is a settled fact and “institutionalized sin” is at the root of it. But institutionalized sin is not subject to laws of nature, but the inclinations of the human mind and will. Therefore its course cannot be predicted with certainty.
As for your comments about your daughters and the privileges of women, these show a men’s rights mentality regardless of whether you have anything to do with the loose movement that goes by that name. The very privileges you say your daughters possess are the things that threaten their femininity. They stand to lose most that is worth having. By simply following the prevailing guidelines for female happiness, they can join the ranks of female eunuchs. Truthfully, I cannot imagine speaking this way as a father. Women are constantly exhorted to act like men. I would spend a few hours worrying about your daughters and future granddaughters.
Things are bad for men, but your description of female privileges is exaggerated, suggesting that men are never employed and educated or the recipients of scholarships. You conceive of society as a war of women against men, rather than a war of false ideas against truth. The problem with this picture is that many men are feminists.
Brendan writes:
The main problem here is that while there is agreement about the sickness of society, there is a radical disagreement about what course to take to fix that.
The traditionalist side argues that the only effective approach is to embrace traditional values on a personal/macro level, and that by doing this, a seed of traditionalism will be planted in a generation of children and grandchildren and so on, despite what the greater culture may or may not be doing, and that this has a chance to grow and influence the broader culture in positive ways (or, at the very least, lead to a well-ordered personal family life).
The MRM side argues that the culture will not be shifting back to traditional values anytime soon, and that in light of this it makes practical sense for men to advocate greater rights within the currently dominant “individual rights”-based culture (legal and otherwise) so as to prevent even more “bad situations” from developing to the detriment of individual men.
There are trads who are sympathetic to some of the issues faced by men in the culture of unilateral divorce, for example, yet they insist that men adhere to the same norms of marriage, despite the risks, because this is viewed as being moral and beneficial for society as a whole. There are MRMs who aresympathetic to traditional ideas of sex relations and hierarchy and so on, but who view these as being essentially unavailable without undue risk in today’s cultural and legal environment. There are other MRMs who do embrace radical autonomy as well, of course, and these are very much apart from the trads. There is, in general, much more diversity among the rather loose group that one can refer to as “MRMs” than there is among the more tightly bound group that one can refer to as “trads”, so that there are some MRMs who are quite far away from trads (and which tend to get the emphasis in the compare and contrast approaches like this one), while there are others who overlap quite a bit with trads in sympathies, but differ dramatically in terms of their attitude toward the here and now world.
I’m kind of a neither/nor. I’m not an activist of any sort. I’m too busy for that, and I’ve never really been a “joiner”, either. I think that the trads are right in the basic ideas of what works best and what is inherently best for any society. However, I also think that this is not a practical approach for most men in today’s culture. I don’t advise men to avoid marriage altogether, unless they wish to and also wish to be celibate, but at the same time, marriage is an extremely risky proposition for men today, and something that men need to do very carefully, if they do. I think understanding something of what is called “Game”, which is really a kind of shorthand for female sexual psychology and attraction, is critical for any man wishing to have a successful long-term relationship with a woman of any background. I think men who are entering marriages need to do so soberly, with a complete understanding of the law and how it is applied to family life and marital relationships, and evaluate their potential wife against that ruleset in terms of her persona, her family background and so on. And they also need to understand that much is not subject to their control, under the current rules — such is the nature of the risk, today, with unilateral divorce (by definition, not under the control of the spouse “being” divorced, which is typically the husband in today’s culture). All of this argues in favor of deliberateness, carefulness, scrutiny, and also soberness in terms of the possibility for things not working and the risk that such a failure would pose for the remainder of one’s life. I think that all of this is essential for any young man who wishes to enter marriage, because this sober outlook, coupled with the tools that can ensure one a greater success within marriage, is what can help a young man actually make a good decision in terms of whether or not to marry (and whom to marry, if he does) as well as equip him with the skills to make that marriage work. Simply spouting traditional values is nice because it allows you to stay in the “clean” level of things, whereas in order to actually make the right decision, and in order to make the marriage work, requires dwelling in the “mucky” level of things, like Game.
Finally, I find it very unhelpful for people to be calling guys who are in the MRM “homosexual.” I know what Josh means by using that term, and I also understand he is deliberately trying to provoke, but at the same time it’s stupid and counterproductive, alienating rather than making a point. It’s precisely that kind of discourse from traditionalists that makes MRMs put their fingers in their ears and go “lalalala,” really.
Laura writes:
I agree with Brendan’s appraisal of how men should approach marriage. They need to understand what it is they face in advance and have some basic command of female psychology. I like some of the recommendations in Michelle Langley’s book Women’s Infidelity.
Josh is not saying that men in the men’s movement are actual homosexuals, but that they are guilty of closing themselves off from women.
Josh F. writes:
I understood well what Josh meant by deploying the term “homosexual” in the way that he does. However, the term has a general use in the vernacular, and it isn’t “self-sexualizer” or “avoider of women.” It means a man who is sexually attracted to other men, at a minimum, whether or not that is “activated” by actually having sex with other men. It may also mean a man who has sex with other men, regardless of his sexual attractions, although its use in that way is less common and is more subject to explanation to clarify what is intended.
I understand it can appear to be clever to make a critical point to describe men who avoid women as “homosexual” in the sense that they are “self-sexual” (see, all the clever kids know their root words, don’t they?), but it nevertheless is needlessly provocative and distorts more than its critical value could ever justify, given the well-known and well-accepted vernacular meaning of the term “homosexual.” The basic point that you wish to make (which appears to be that men who avoid women sexually are not truly MEN as you understand it) can be made without twisting the accepted meaning of the word “homosexual” to fit a particular rhetorical agenda.
I’ll add that it’s this type of thing that turns people way off, frankly, for reasons that should go without saying, but which apparently needed to be said nonetheless.
Laura writes:
Josh has more frequently referred to “homo-ism.” That is a better term for what he is trying to describe. He also refers to feminists as “devout dykes.” I think that works as a rhetorical flourish. I myself would not call men in the men’s movement “homosexual” for the reasons Brendan mentions. I have allowed Josh to use the term here when I thought it was clear, in the context of his other language and neologisms, what he meant. He is making an important point, that men are encouraging and inciting other men to cut themselves off from marriage and fatherhood and to view all women with suspicion. In this way, men remove themselves from the chain of generations every bit as much as the actual homosexual does. Now, this encouragement is a very serious phenomenon. The recommendation to reject marriage (but not sex) and never trust women will ruin the lives of individual men far more than any evil and selfish women could. Given the gravity of this phenomenon, strong language is in order. I also welcome Brendan’s criticism and understand his exasperation.
Josh responds:
Why would Brendan intimate that by giving a fuller account of homosexuality — while being keenly aware of the very “conservative” liberal definition of such phenomenon — that I was attempting to be clever?
Homosexuality is not JUST two people of the same sex that are attracted to each other.
It is a simple fact that those who believe in sexual autonomy (fluidity) simply reject the idea of an externally imposed sexual order. This means that their sexuality is self-created. Homo-sexuality is the sexual attraction to the self, first, and only then the same when the void is felt. But make no mistake, a self-created sexual “orientation” that is sexually attracted TO ITSELF (the purely physical narcissist) is really a sexual “orientation” that rejects the externally imposed sexual order; this fluid sexual “orientation” rejects man as devout dyke and it rejects woman as radical homosexual. It is very plain to see that a self-sexualizer, even when he fills the void with something of the same, is by nature a self-annihilator.
That we see the emergence of a “new right, alt right, HBD right/men’s movement” led increasingly by atheists and homosexuals of the white male persuasion is a simple indication of two things; radical liberalism is now the attempted genocide of God-fearing white man (the “white” Supremacist) and white male liberals’ “liberalism” just isn’t good enough to save them from the radical racial/ethnic liberalism of the “other.” That these anti-Supremacists seek refuge in “white supremacy” in these last days before the onset of an absolutely autonomized “society” (a diverse and by Darwinian logic, an increasingly deleterious “society”) and bring with them their anti-Supremacy is all the evidence I need to see that many of these “men” represent something akin to the Grim Reaper.
