…until we have.
These are exciting times for men.
I know that statement will cause some people to snort and roll their eyes and start to think of all kinds of reasons that it is just plain crazy. There is a lot of gloom and doom being circulated about men and boys these days – “The Decline of Males”, “The End of Men”, the cackling of the pecking hens that men are “obsolete” because some scientist has claimed to be able to produce sperm in a lab. Most of it comes from the necrotic husk of the has-been lame-stream media. Too much of it comes from men themselves.
I don’t buy it – any of it.
I think I’m the oldest contributor here. I have lived through what many of the contributors here (and probably most of the readers) view as history and know of only through the same manner that they know of Ancient Greece, or the World Wars of the 20th century – from something they read or someone told them. The 1960s may not seem as remote as an ancient civilization, but from the perspective of a participant-observer, I can tell you that a lot of what has been said and is being said about life 50 years ago is 190 proof horse manure.
Men’s lives in the 1950s and before were not all about the much mythologized “male power and privilege,” nor were woman anywhere near as “oppressed” as has been claimed. History is always revisionist, and the revision is always done by the victor. In considering the 2nd half of the 20th century, the ideology of feminism was clearly the victor.
But, other than the ability to dictate how things are spoken about, and what things can be said and what can’t, what did they “win.” I think the real answer turns out to be “nothing”, except perhaps the booby prize. See, men’s lives for most of history have been not about “power and privilege”, but rather about bone crushing and soul destroying work, huge responsibilities, and disposability.
There has been much buzz about the internet recently about the finding that women’s happiness has actually declined during the past 40 years that they have been “winning”, becoming “liberated”, and pursuing “having it all” – both in absolute terms, and relative to men. At the same time, men’s happiness has increased – both in absolute terms and relative to women.
Now, let me say that again, and really let it sink in – men today are happier than men were 40 years ago, and women are less happy. Lots of people have analyzed the hows and whys of that to the level of terminal boredom, but that one simple fact stands alone – men today, on the average and in the aggregate, are happier than their fathers and grandfathers were.
Why?
Well, it’s really pretty simple – men’s lives today are simply better than the lives their fathers, and grandfathers, and great-grandfathers, and all the men in history who lived and died before them. Life for men, in general, has never been better.
“What??!?!” you say. “How could that be?!!?! It’s just not so! The feminists have told me!”
One of the better musical poets of my generation, Bruce Springsteen, summed up very well what the lives of average men used to be like not very long ago, in his powerful song, “The River.”
“I come from down in the valley
where mister when you’re young
They bring you up to do like your daddy done.”
Mens’ lives were incredibly constrained. What your “daddy done” was most likely what you would end up doing, and your son, and his son. For the college educated and middle class, this usually took the form of some sort of business, mercantile, management, or professional white collar job. For the working class, it meant -
“Then I got Mary pregnant
and man that was all she wrote
And for my nineteenth birthday
I got a union card and a wedding coat”
A white collar boy/man might marry Sally instead of Mary, and a get clerkship in his father’s law office instead of a union card, but both classes of men had their life script handed to them about the end of their teens. And, all classes of men were expected to spend the vast majority of their waking lives working for someone else in order to live up to the protector/provider role which was most men’s alternative to being social non-entities. In those days, the only roles which gave men any social validity at all were husband, father, and wealthy man. In order for a single man to have any social acceptance at all, he damn well better be wealthy.
Well, fast forward 50 years and we find that men have far more freedom and flexibility than any group of men has ever had in the history of the world. They can now choose to be husbands, and/or fathers, or anything else, and the social pressure and stigma which used to force the vast majority of men into early marriage (and often early graves) and the role of a specialized beast of burden bred for the specific purpose of dragging around an emotionally and financially dependent wife and family is simply no longer there.
Certainly, some men might wish to continue to choose those roles for their lives. And the social Luddites, who fear and resist change, may want to try to keep men trapped in those old roles. But, as women’s roles have changed, the system which gave men only one set of choices has changed whether people wanted it to or not.
Men may choose to be husbands and fathers. Or not. They can choose to be travelers, or explorers, or scholars, or X-box players. Or not. They can be househusbands, assuming they can find a breadwinning wife and are willing to deal with the residual social stigma toward a man who does not live up to the traditional roles. But, women have blazed the way in breaking down those old roles and in their place have left men a world of opportunities limited only by their own imaginations.
The real challenges confronting men these days are the topics Novaseeker and Prime have recently written about – defining core masculine values by which men define themselves. For too long men have been allowing women to define us – either in the negative, by giving a us a list of things they don’t like about us, or by demanding that we become more like them. Some men are comfortable with becoming more like women, and we will see how women really end up liking them once the do.
But, for the rest of us, who have never had any desire to be women, we now have the opportunity to completely define for ourselves what sort of masculinity will serve us, and those we love, best in the coming years.
We men, right now, are living through history. To most of us, it just seems like our lives. But, as time passes our lives of today will become our context of tomorrow. And, our choices of today will shape the world that we and our children will live in tomorrow. And, in far less time than they can imagine, young men of today will have become the “older generation” of tomorrow and find to their surprise that those who came after them are now judging them based on the present they created for those next generations.
Instead of watching our feet, and looking behind us, and castigating the boomers for their mistakes, our best future lies in reclaiming our authenticity from those aspects of the culture which have become toxic. We need to do what the younger men here have started to do and realize that we no longer have sustainable values handed to us – as previous generations of men did – and that we must now create them. We can seize the day and take the best from the past ideals of masculinity, reclaim them from the dishonor which has fallen on them, and at the same time shed the worst aspects which have been the source of much of that dishonor.
More than at any other time in history, we have the ability to define not just our own presents, but our futures and the futures of those we care about.
Yes, indeed, these are exciting times for men.
We are confronted with insurmountable opportunities.
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I wouldn’t be so sanguine. The primary requirement of life- the one thing a man cannot do without- is employment, hopefully at something above survival level. Traditional male employment is harder and harder to come by these days. You can’t enjoy much the benefits of being single- your own time, your own hobbies, dating, possibly travel, if you don’t have some decent aomunt of money.
And bachelorhood in the old days was not particularly stigmatized- spinsterhood definitely wasn’t, at least in the Irish American culture. I think it was more realized that marriage was not for everybody, and not affordable by everybody. I think universal marriage is a product of the widespread prosperity of the 50’s. Whereas now it’s a trope amonst women that if you are unmarried past a certain age, there must be something wrong with you.
I may choose to get married, or I may choose to spend my free time riding my motorcycle, traveling, or doing other things, but I have to get a freaking job first.
Well, I expect masculinity to reassert itself, but only after things become nasty and brutish and life is violent and short.
It is history, and I plan to ride it as far as I can
Nice piece.
It’s good to hear a more optimistic and hopeful perspective.
Excellent piece.
Instead of watching our feet, and looking behind us, and castigating the boomers for their mistakes, our best future lies in reclaiming our authenticity from those aspects of the culture which have become toxic. We need to do what the younger men here have started to do and realize that we no longer have sustainable values handed to us – as previous generations of men did – and that we must now create them.
I’ve found myself guilty in the past of assigning much of the blame for current social and civilizational ills to baby-boomers, but I’ve moved past that now into developing a more forward-looking, active mindset, more active rather than reactive. In my case it involves considering the history of mankind and his genes in relation to how certain social traditions developed, i.e. the study of evolutionary psychology.
Great article.
First, excellent article.
Men today are definitely happier than their fathers or grandfathers were or ARE. I see this in the difference between my father and myself right now. My dad’s life has been miserable. He has worked at the same place for decades which treats him like crap because they know he isn’t going to do something sensible like find a new job. Or there’s the disaster that is his current marriage after he and my mom divorced.
Of course, he doesn’t understand why I’m not following him on his path of misery. It’s because I don’t have to. I have the option now of living a better life.
As long a man is willing to throw away the idea that he must be married or must be in a relationship with a woman, all other dreams a man may have become possible. This more than anything else is why we are better off than men of previous generations.
in response to Jim, I understand the frustration, but I think for these matters men are simply going to have to think outside of the box and not rely on the system to provide them with reliable employment. There are plenty of other options available today, far more accessible than ever before thanks to the internet. We are going to have to get creative to figure out how to translate them into earning a living. Off the bat, I’d say a good first step is to acquire less expensive hobbies (or methods of fulfillment). Not that one should swear off a pricey activity they enjoy, but look to find other things when times get tight.
The next idea I’d propose is entrepreneurship. Look for a need that you have the talent to fill, and take a risk. Free from the pressures of supporting a family, men now have the freedom to do this. If you fall on your face, survive for a bit and try again. I recognize that not everybody wants to (or can) do these things, but they aren’t the only options. I think part of the freedom that Zed is talking about is that we can define ourselves outside of our employment. Sure, we have basic physical needs to be met usually via bills, but is an “above survival” job really the only way to accomplish this?
Prime: I’ve found myself guilty in the past of assigning much of the blame for current social and civilizational ills to baby-boomers, but I’ve moved past that now into developing a more forward-looking, active mindset, more active rather than reactive.
That’s exactly what I’m talking about. As a boomer myself, I can testify that we are the worst gang of knuckleheads ever unleased on an unsuspecting culture. Yet, at the same time history did not suddenly begin in 1946. We were fed a lot of crap as values by those supposed to be “older and wiser”, and it took some of us a while to figure it out . Many of us never did.
That is not to excuse my cohort, but to position the statement that younger men have the choice between learning from our mistakes or repeating them. This is why I am so excited about this blog, and about the type of critical thinking and writing I have seen from the contributors – particularly Welmer and Novaseeker. I know that “Game” has gotten a lot of bad press, but I see it as the first true innovation that men have come up with in response to the “deconstruction” of old values and roles.
Throughout this whole “gloom and doom” period of “the end of men”, I have kept saying “It is far too early to count men out.” Men have always been innovators and I always believed that men would adapt to this new social climate in the same way that they adapted to every other environment in the world. And I have no reason at all to believe that the ability and spirit to be innovative died out a couple of generations ago. I may have more faith in younger men than they have in themselves these days.
My little “pep talk” boils down to this: if you continue on thinking “gosh, there is nothing we can do”, then you are following the same path as the boomers, making the same mistakes, and in 30-40 years young men will be bitching about “those damn Gen-XYers.” You really will have no basis on which to criticize them, because you will have done exactly the same thing.
OTOH, if you get pro-active, instead of staying re-active, as Prime mentions and as some here are showing signs of doing, you will have the opportunity to move forward without some of the baggage of the past which kept the boomers stalled and trapped.
Guys like Pro-male/ Anti-feminist Tech don’t have to follow in their fathers’ footsteps, don’t have to stay stuck in jobs that suck the life out of you and kill the spirit, and don’t have to settle for a life as empty as the one their fathers led.
Guys like Pro-male/ Anti-feminist Tech don’t have to follow in their fathers’ footsteps, don’t have to stay stuck in jobs that suck the life out of you and kill the spirit, and don’t have to settle for a life as empty as the one their fathers led.
Not only don’t I have to, but more importantly I haven’t (and won’t).
My little “pep talk” boils down to this: if you continue on thinking “gosh, there is nothing we can do”, then you are following the same path as the boomers, making the same mistakes
In the case of the boomers wasn’t it a matter of they wrecked everything not that they couldn’t do anything?
In general, I agree with what you’re saying, zed. Regardless of the answer to my question we need to move forward.
I know that “Game” has gotten a lot of bad press, but I see it as the first true innovation that men have come up with in response to the “deconstruction” of old values and roles.
Wouldn’t the first innovation be the marriage strike or did game really come first?
In the case of the boomers wasn’t it a matter of they wrecked everything not that they couldn’t do anything?
The real answer to that will take an entire post of its own – which I am actually working on. I’m going to call it “The Baby Bomb: How the Boomers Killed a Culture.”
The first thing you have to understand about the vast social change which followed the boomers through the culture is that they (we) were raised under one set of values (the “old” values) and got suckered into throwing them all away without anything to replace them. The core of boomer influence came from upper-middle class kids who naively believed that everyone else believed the same as they did. They were brought up to be “nice” to people, so they assumed that if everyone were freed of all social restrictions they would just go about being “nice” to people and everything would be “groovy, man.” They really believed the Beatles when they sang “All you need is love.” Their sheltered and coddled backgrounds made them believe there just was no such thing as “badness” in the world, and even if there was it would go away if you just pretended it didn’t exist.
Once the social pathology they left in their wake like Sherman’s march through Georgia started to become apparent, it was too late to go back, what they were doing wasn’t working, and they had been so arrogant in their plans to “change the world, rearrange the world” that they had no “Plan B.” They couldn’t go back to the way things used to be, and they only had their silly idealism to go forward with. So, like a band that Novaseeker seems to understand, The Who, they sold out.
Wouldn’t the first innovation be the marriage strike or did game really come first?
I don’t consider the marriage strike to be an innovation – more like a “holding action.” I was one of the first marriage strikers, deciding the first time I heard that “marriage was oppression” for women that I would never, NEVER, NEVER “oppress” a woman into living expense free on the fruits of my labors. I’d watched my older brother get sucked in to having to support a morose, depressive, perpetually negative woman for more than 25 years, and hating it, so I knew at least that was one trap I wanted to avoid and how to do that. I knew feminists were full of BS and I was calling their bluff.
The “marriage strike” (a misnomer because I do not expect men to “go back to work” en masse even if they do get a new contract) is more of a form of passive resistance. Game is pro-active, plays on male strengths, and instead of passively responding and reacting to women on women’s terms like boomer men did, it involves tilting the playing field in the player’s favor.
There is the “old values – new values” conflict I mentioned above. When I first heard about “PUAs”, from a real sleazeball who went by Ace Poindexter, it came across as lying or doing whatever else it took to get into a woman’s panties. Like Anakin Niceguy, I had some values-based resistance to the whole idea. As I learned more about it, the surprising thing for a lot of followers of Game is how much it looks exactly like the traditional 1950s masculinity I was brought up with.
Hi Zed
There are many reasons why the boomers failed to stop what was happening. One of my recent pieces decribes just some of this …
http://www.angryharry.com/esNoMensGroups.htm
Harry
‘The core of boomer influence came from upper-middle class kids who naively believed that everyone else believed the same as they did.’
Then, too, there were malicious Cultural Marxists, such as Marcuse, doing their best to destroy Western Civilization in their Gramscian way.
men today are happier than men were 40 years ago, and women are less happy.
Are you referring to the GSS data analyzed by Wolfers/Stevenson?
That’s not what they assert. Their graphs show flat self-reported happiness by men over the past 40 years. Interpretation of the women’s data is debated.
Then, too, there were malicious Cultural Marxists, such as Marcuse, doing their best to destroy Western Civilization in their Gramscian way.
I’m glad you brought that up. The boomers were sitting ducks for the Marxists like Marcuse in several different ways. Among them were the fact that mass media was really taking off during the boomers’ childhoods, which was the perfect vehicle to fill their heads with propaganda.
Demographics is destiny.
What does it gain a man to conquer the whole world but have no heir to bequeath it to?
History is written by the victors? Will it be written in English?
Zed, are you the author of “Eye of the Mind” and had the username: thegrandcurmudgeon at the former DGM forum?
Busted.
Major kudos man, it’s great to see you involved here Zed.
Thanks, Monad.
I’m real excited about this cooperative blog, and pleased that Welmer consented to let me be part of it. One of the biggest issues facing men these days is our separation, isolation, and distrust between many many subgroups. One of the worst of these divides is the generational one. I think it is essential for men to start reconnecting with men of other generations to contribute their respective gifts and strengths to making things better for all. Older men have experience and perspective; younger men have fresh perspective, enthusiasm, energy, and motivation because their entire lives really are ahead of them and doing something to make those lives better is definitely worthwhile.
If you’ve been to EOTM, expect to see a few of those pieces reworked and brought over here.
Aye, I agree. Getting the generation divide spanned is very important because information sharing is key.
Zed,
Eye of the Mind was one of the first websites I came across in the MRM. I am looking foward to seeing them again in their new format here as they were philosophical and very poignant.
Zed and Novaseeker,
I am concerned for the guys from the former DGM, MGTOW, Mancoat et al forums. Many have been there for a long time and they still seem very angry and resentful at where they find themselves as men. It seems many are stuck and cant get past their angst at society, at women.
I have a post regarding this in my blog and was tempted to repost it in Paul’s forum, but I think it will only turn them against me rather than doing some good.
It is not about getting them involved with PUA as a solution, it doesn’t matter if they want to be involved with women or go ghost. It is about finding a way to help them out of their disempowerment.
As guys who well know the dynamics at these MGTOW forums, I would greatly apprechiate your thoughts about this.
I am concerned for the guys from the former DGM, MGTOW, Mancoat et al forums. Many have been there for a long time and they still seem very angry and resentful at where they find themselves as men. It seems many are stuck and cant get past their angst at society, at women.
Monad, you’re missing several things here. The most important thing is that a man’s problems with women aren’t limited to just is he getting laid. There are problems like unconstitutional divorce courts, the entire body of sexual harassment law, losing jobs to women due to affirmative action, government policies to unemploy men (i.e. how the stimulus is spent on women rather than infrastructure), fathers’ rights, boys who are trapped in feminized school systems under the thumbs of female teachers, false rape charges, etc.
Even for those who practice ghosting, the fact of the matter is most men still need to eat so they work. This and the fact that there are women all around everywhere means that a ghost isn’t truly isolated from most of the problems I listed.
There are no women who are interested in having sex with me. Whatever. That doesn’t mean they aren’t interested in trying to get my money. At my last job I had a variant of a sexual harassment charge thrown at me, specifically this woman claimed that I threatened her. She made stupid mistakes like claiming it happened when the guy who shared my office was there. It was later discovered that she was stealing thousands of dollars from the company. I never even really interacted with this woman. There was a good chance I was picked at random for her scheme. The discovery of her theft sealed the fact that she was lying about everything so I was fine.
Here’s an even better example. In 1993 some feminist (female) art students decided to print up and pass out fliers with a list of 50 male students saying that they were “potential rapists”. Where did the names of these men come from? They were randomly picked, probably from a university phone book.
If you really think that’s so absurd that it must be rare, think about this. A woman can pick a name at random for the father on her baby’s birth certificate. We usually think of women trying to extract child support through an oops pregnancy. However, if a woman wants your money there’s no reason she has to have anything to do with you particularly if she’s repulsed by you.
Sure, “rejecting” a woman is meaningless and no victory if she’s has no interest in you. However, protecting your money and your FREEDOM from her is a victory.
I really do understand that it is difficult and a risk just being a man in the west with sexual harrasment, affirmative action, women being the majority in University, women lowering the aggregate wage by entering the workforce and taking what were historically men’s jobs, divorce and custody rights completely biast towards women, not to mention the dismissal and denegration of masculinity in the West.
I know men need to get this out there, I know this is of paramount importance. I am not referring to this, I am referring to men who are still angry at women for rejecting them, not men who are discussing the above.
Monad, you can’t really disassociate rejection from the other issues. There is some overlap. More importantly, its one thing to just be rejected universally by women (even though that’s bad enough). It’s worse to be universally rejected plus have women who go out of their way to take your money and/or destroy you by taking away your freedom (or realize that they’re doing this to you because you were picked at random since they wanted to go after a male).
It’s also important to remember that women be universally uninterested in a guy doesn’t necessarily tell the whole story. We’re treating this as universal rejection, but as a universally rejected man gets older there are women who will feign interest in the man since they need a bail out. We can say that rejecting said woman isn’t a victory for the universally rejected man since she isn’t really interested in him, but it actually is a victory since the man foiled her real plans. If nothing else, their anger gives them clarity of vision to see what these women are really after.
Yes, PM/AF Tech, you are right the rejection is intertwined and compounded with the other issues you speak of. The anger can give clarity, but when will the anger (this anger, long term is not healthy, physically or psychologically) dissapate and become indifference? Indifference to women’s wiles, pretenses, manipulations and shaming tactics sanctioned by society.
Loosing one’s ire is not about accepting the status quo and passively letting it continue, it is about not letting women nor society to have control over you via your emotions whether it is feelings of shame, anger, resentment or what-have-you.
That is a very good way to put it, Monad. I wish I had an answer to how to help them out of their disempowerment, but I don’t. The answer that works for me, and was the standard prescription for men when I was young, is simply to take action. I think a lot of people today no longer understand the distinction between “control” and “influence.” I can influence a lot more things than I can control. Becoming actively involved in doing what I can to influence something important to me is what I regard as the secret of all power. It’s kind of like the old Nike slogan – “Just do it.” The problem lies in getting people unstuck enough to do it.
This issue is the reason behind my little pep talk above. I see a lot of guys stuck in feeling helpless and hopeless, and that certainly leads to anger. Anger can be a great motivator to get a man off his butt to take some sort of action, but it can also be a pit he slides into which just eats him alive. The trick is to find some way to channel that anger into some sort of constructive action.
What I had to do for myself in order to stay sane was to realize and accept that you can’t save everyone. What happened in New Orleans after Katrina is a perfect lesson in the long term effects of chronic helplessness. Sometimes people just lose the ability to help themselves, and get angry at and blame everyone else for not saving them. I think the only way to deal with situations like that is to recognize they exist, be sad that they do, and turn your attention back to something you may have some chance of influencing.
DGM and the forums which have come out of it’s demise seem to me to be taking a better tack than Mancoat. The Happy Bachelor’s forum seems more proactive and in its name promotes the concept of happiness. When the MGTOW concept germinated on Mancoat, I went out and set up a CMS and a couple of related websites and a forum in hopes that some of that frustration could be harnessed into doing things like building a centralized site with a bibliography of good articles, maybe a registry of false accusers, original essays, and other things of interest to men – kind of like what Welmer has set up here.
What happened was absolutely nothing. The same 4-5 guys who had carried every other effort I’d seen in the past few years got involved, built the framework, and then it just sat there empty.
Lee’s meltdown over at DGM2 is a textbook case of MRA burnout. Some guy decides to do something to “help other men”, takes some action, and ends up attracting a bunch of dead wood who don’t want to do anything except gripe about the fact that the free beer isn’t cold enough. I’ve learned the hard way that trying to “help” other men more often than not ends up harming myself.
In the long run, I think the only effective strategy will be to create a place which generates enough energy that guys will start to become attracted to it. They will see some good stuff happening and get curious – “Hey, what’s going on over there?” – and check it out.
That is why I got involved here.
Monad –
I think, along with what Zed has said, that there isn’t really an easy way to deal with the more long-term angst present in some areas of the men’s internet.
I understand the anger and resentment quite well, as well as the basis for it. But at some stage in order to live one’s life, one needs to move past the resentment and channel the anger into something that pr0pels one forward, rather than simply running in place. That can be difficult, in practice, if you get slumped down into depression a a result of some of these things, and I do think that a good number of men do suffer from clinical depression due to the situation concerning women.
I think the best we can do is nudge these guys to do something with their lives. It doesn’t have to be PUA. It can be something completely different, something for themselves that improves themselves, that keeps their lives moving towards new goals and just simply — moving.
Welmer had an excellent post last year about how men can be liberated, rather than depressed and defeated, by the current scenario. The past is not coming back, and pining for it to do so is not going to lead to anywhere useful for individual men. The present and the future, however, are more wide open for us as men than they have ever been. There is a great freedom there. That freedom does not encompass women, in some cases, due to the current distortions between men and women in our culture. But there is much more to life than women, and there are freedoms to be had in the current culture to shape our own lives and destinies in ways that men in prior generations simply did not have open to them in the same way. It’s this freedom that needs to be a focus for men, once they get past the “mourning” stage, and are ripe for moving on to the “doing” stage.
Feminists surely did win as we surely live with palpable results.
This was not a fleeting victory as in one useless political party over the other.
Rather, it was a victory in the way the North triumphed over the South. It is permanent and the culture shall never be the same – nor return to a fixed reference point of glory days.
(There’s a good Bruce song)
On the happiness of modern men, I remember my father’s generation of men as very stressed. These were successful middle-class men in Australia in the 1960s. They were often sole breadwinners and clearly under a lot of pressure. On the other hand, I have had as much success as these men, but have never had the pressure of being the sole earner (my wife has worked part-time a fair bit), and we are talking about her taking over sole breadwinning when I hit 60. In the “good old days”, I would have been expected to work until I was 65. I hope to enjoy retirement, since I have plenty of interests.
It’s amazing what you can find when you use google.
But I digress.
Monad–
allow me to throw a more direct answer regarding your concerns about the men on mancoat, etc. Simply put, what you see is water seeking it’s own level. This is better known as a comfort zone. Zed knows my internet history, but I will kick you some background anyway.
To start with, I am one of those baby boomers that fucked everything up for the rest of you guys. Sorry about that. I bought all of the sensitive nice guy shit hook, line, and sinker. Back when the earth was flat it was easy to engage in “isolate and scold mode” against any guy who dared to question what the hell was going on with any matter between the sexes. (Side note here, I refer to men and women as “sexes” instead of genders, I am a man, not part of sentence structure). Isolate and scold wasn’t performed by women, men did it to each other too. It was also very successful as there were very few outlets for communication. And NONE were of the anonymous variety. Needless to say, the pussy agenda gained a lot of momentum from the late 1960’s to the mid to late 1990’s with this lack of resistance.
Then came the internet. I joined the cyber party in 2003. One of the first discussion forums I joined was “intellectualwhores”. Minds out of the gutter, folks. Intellectual whore was another way of saying “emotional tampon”. It was my thought that an unimpeded forum would be a great place for like minded guys to discuss what the hell was going on with the hopes of mobilizing to fix it. The first few months were great, after that a bunch of women joined and it went to hell in a handbasket. The site was reduced to booger and fart jokes, women flirting and men following. Pretty soon, men were being used as intellectual whores on a site called intellectual whores. Water had sought it’s own level, so I left.
I then moved to niceguy/mancoat. Mancoat was a step up so I started posting there. I did notice a certain whiny/victimhood tone to the forum, which I did address. Even Zed starting posting there in an effort to mobilize the guys and it didn’t work. I left when more women/trolls started joining and the guys defended from my attacks. I think for these guys at mancoat, that forum and state of mind is their comfort level. So I left.
I have learned a couple of things through this process. First, you can’t save everybody. Secondly, most men are one blowjob, hell, one stinkfinger for that matter, away from quitting the MRA movement alltogether. Most guys would rather flirt or whine than do something. Don’t waste any time concerning yourself over their well being. They will navigate the process of life at the level they have chosen.
FWIW, I will address where I am in the MRA process. The best way I can summarize it is a reference base. I was born in 1963 so I have seen a lot of changes. As such, I can point to where Zed is dead nuts on, and point out where someone is about to reenact one of our generation’s fuckups. Yes, the younger guys would have every right to say “your generation screwed it up so what the hell do you know?” Well, other than the fact that we know what doesn’t work AND we didn’t have the internet, I can’t think of anything. I’ll get back to you if something leaps to mind.
Final note here, my posting style. I don’t play to the lurkers and I possess the tact of a sledgehammer.
Good to see you, Arthur. I think the time for sledgehammers has come.