Commenter Istrice at Zippy’s site levels the following accusation against the manosphere:
…the problem is that the roissysphere stands on the shoulders of giants and claims to feel the soil beneath it’s feet. These nonsense, sloppy terms like solipsism, feminine imperative, team woman, “game” are ideas with no rigor, as imprecise as the dull minds that conjure them up.
Yet all across the roissysphere no single red pill person ever recommends learning the precise terms of the great works of the ages, instead offering a bag of bullsh&t and telling you to read the rantings of a keyboard warrior from DC.
What a hollow existence it is to work oneself into a fey mood inventing tools (which they call game) to climb a mountain only to find the mountain was already home to greater men then they, and could have used tools of higher quality if they had bothered to look.
He doesn’t note which great men or works he feels the manosphere is neglecting. Shakespeare might not be old enough or great enough for him, and perhaps the same is true for Brothers Grim and the Bible. However, I disagree which is why I write about them.
While we might disagree on whether the above works are worthy of discussion, his image of the men of the manosphere climbing a forgotten mountain and rediscovering ancient knowledge to take us out of our feminist Dark Age is quite poetic. I think he may be overdoing it by suggesting that the manosphere is a modern day Renaissance, but either way the compliment in the form of criticism is very much appreciated.
Zip seems to be “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
Also, Taming of the Shrew and Othello told me everything I ever needed to know about how to treat a woman.
Also, last time I checked, Roissy didn’t coin Solipsism – that idea has been out there for ages. All Roissy did was attach it to Feminists (and subsequently biomechanics since that is the underpinning of how he attempts to validate his arguments).
An idea only has as much rigor as you are willing to invest in it. Ergo, “Game” is only going to have as robust a definition as a person gives it, since it is most often defined by how it is employed.
[D: This wasn’t Zippy, this was a commenter.]
What a hollow existence it is to work oneself into a fey mood inventing tools (which they call game) to climb a mountain only to find the mountain was already home to greater men then they, and could have used tools of higher quality if they had bothered to look.
Perhaps Mr. Istrice needs to remember that men in the past never had to climb the mountan as they were already sitting on top. It is in recent history that feminism and its inherent social effects have knocked modern men from the shoulders of those giants and from the top of the mountain. Modern men are now reclimbing that mountain and they will find the top once again. When they do, I hope that they teach feminists to never, ever try this sh*t again.
“What a hollow existence it is to work oneself into a fey mood inventing tools (which they call game) to climb a mountain only to find the mountain was already home to greater men then they, and could have used tools of higher quality if they had bothered to look.”
Feminism is the modern day mountain men have to climb and conquer. This is our Crusades,
I for one would be glad to hear and discuss some of “the precise terms of the great works of the ages” that apply to these topics. Like most people, I had a crappy education that didn’t touch on much that happened before 1960, with a few exceptions like the founding of the USA. I’ve since become aware that St. Thomas Aquinas and some other doctors of the Church have spoken on these subjects, but to be honest, the Summa just isn’t as accessible as the likes of Dalrock.
Perhaps this commenter would deign to educate us on some of these hallowed concepts so that we can base our research and claims on a more solid foundation. I wait with bated breath.
(By the way, I have nothing against Roissy, but I’m so tired of hearing him portrayed as the source and center of all things red-pill, just because he’s based in D.C. and has an engaging writing style. Of course, it’s only people outside the “game-sphere” who are clueless about it that say this. I was learning about hypergamy and game when Roissy was probably still in high school or younger, thanks very much.)
The expression ‘standing on the shoulders of giants’ was coined by Isaac Newton and he is largely referring to Copernicus and Galileo. In the quotation Istrice fails to reveal the identity of any of these giants, to which the Androsphere is indebted, becaus eit is certainly not those distinguished scientists, and thus it is a little difficult to grasp what s/he is getting at, although the term solipsism certainly dates back to mediaeval philosophy. The only person obliquely alluded to seems to be Roissy/Heartiste whose prognostications frequently take the form of commenting on scientific surveys that appear to support his stance. One learns a lot!
So, who are the intellectual predecessors of the Androsphere (I approve TFHs term). Perhaps GBFM (who if I have ever read him I have never understood) can assist with a list, but until he does so, may I suggest, some of the following might be the giants that Istrice ought to have been referring to:
Hesiod in Works and Days
Ovid in The Art of Love
St Paul in various letters
Shakespeare in the Taming of The Shrew
Schopenhauer in his Essay on Women
Byron
Dryden
Richardson in Clarisa
and so on
What would be helpful (as youth wants to know) is exactly which epithet is inadequate and why. Perhaps Istrice could start with Feminine Imperative – I hope his knowledge of evo-psych is up to it.
My view is something like this: you can show a man the red pill, and he either gets it or he doesn’t get it.
Zippy and his followers like Istrice can’t see what’s happening on the ground and why our society is falling apart. It’s painfully obvious to anyone who cares to examine the issue with an objective and open mind.
These blue pill guys will never see it. If they don’t want to take the red pill, they won’t take it. It really is a choice. If they want to pretend that it is still 1955, nobody is going to convince them otherwise.
The only thing one can hope for is that all these white knights are the first against the wall when the revolution comes. And it’s coming: the welfare state is coming unglued, just like the welfare state in the Soviet Union did. It’s obvious to anyone who understands math and looks at the statistics. Just give it time…
Dalrock, I commend your persistence in arguing with these folk. Honestly, I don’t know where you find the passion. I’m too busy unplugging from society and enjoying my life to argue with these retards…
Interesting… I am a member of Mensa and have a doctorate in arguably one of the hardest hard-sciences and I find what is said in the manosphere accurate and concise. Unfortunately, it also goes against every belief of the types of idiots that stick their heads in the sand and refuse to see reality. Now, I am a lot older than most of the guys that learned from The Game and other books. I learned from reality, and was enjoying women long before there was a community dedicated to teaching younger guys how to interact with women to their advantage. I learned by empirical observation, and trial and error.
And, it has been heartening to see this information is finally getting out there. Of course, I see backlash like that of Mr. Istrice – but that is to be expected. There was the KKK as a reaction to the civil-rights movement, and these people are like the KKK – failing to see reality and grasping at their failed ideology while refusing to see, and denying. But that is to be expected – there are always those small minded individuals who cannot deal with change, or reality. Those of us who live in the real world, use it to enhance our lives. So you can call it what you will – Game, seduction, whatever – it doesn’t matter. Women lap it up, and the man that is serving it, can use them as he wants. That is reality – and it is truly wonderful…
Uh, maybe I’m wrong but aren’t the primary tools of Game intended to understand and manipulate how the female mind works? Istrice’s statement referring to “fey moods” and greater men on the mountain is pretty much bullshit spritzed with perfume to keep people from smelling it. It’s still shit, now it’s just a little harder to smell.
What historical greats are being referred to? He probably doesn’t know himself. This is the main problem with the manosphere and why we will not bring about a Renaissance in the foreseeable future. The Renaissance was a time when people actually worked, made change happen, then reflected on it afterwards. Today’s manosphere reflects on itself incessantly then reflects on itself some more, with no practical change in women or men ever actually taking place. Most manosphere sites are filled with articles and comments from men trying to be funny, witty, angry, ironic, intellectual, spiritual, religious and, while there is a lot of digital peacocking going on, absolutely no change is being made. A lot of confirmation bias within the sphere itself but not much change outside of it.
While logic is a virtue, we mistake it for sound strategy. I’ve seen entire articles and threads minutely analyzing ad-nauseum what solipsism (or pick any other term) actually is while women change definitions of the same word within a paragraph, yet they lose no ground in the gender war. Why, because their strategy has been effective. We need to be more than this.
Most people, when referring to the great works, are referring to books found in The Great Books of the Western World. Not all of them apply but very many of them do. While this person is frustrated, he makes a very valid point. Men have been discussing these things for thousands of years. I see someone asked for a list and these are organized quite well in the Great Books. I don’t have time to compile a list right now, but I will look it up late today and write it out for those interested.
An excellent resource on the teachings of great opera was published by “Carnivore” on The Spearhead in 2011. Well worth your time.
http://www.the-spearhead.com/2011/04/06/an-operatic-point-of-view/
Hesiod in Works and Days
Ovid in The Art of Love
St Paul in various letters
Shakespeare in the Taming of The Shrew
Schopenhauer in his Essay on Women
Byron
Dryden
Richardson in Clarisa
———————————————————
So where do black guys get game?
Because they sure don’t read any of that stuff.
Game is not rocket science.
Paging GBFM for some bernankified butthexting, lzzlolzzolz.
You could add Homer to the list, there were many more women than Helen that he wrote about, and their impact on the men in the story. Even read what Helen said in the Odyssey as to compared to the Helen of the Illiad to see repentance and understanding for what she had wrought.
Doc, I hate to be pedantic, but “There was the KKK as a reaction to the civil-rights movement, and these people are like the KKK ” is not on. The KKK was way older than the civil rights movement, starting as sort of a southern gentlemen’s club post civil war (largely of old Confederate officers, IIRC), over the decades morphing into a big Democrat get-out-the vote machine in the south a few decades later. I’ve seen some pictures of huge KKK gatherings, all mom and apple-pie with kids and everything, from the 20’s portraying some of these gatherings, having bake-sales, etc. Nothing to do with anything I guess, but I don’t like how revised history has become.
@Greenlander
This is something which frustrates me when done to the manosphere, and I don’t see it as fair the other way around. Zippy is interested in the conversation or he wouldn’t be here*. He could quite easily be playing the role of champion of the old order showing that Dalrock is the scourge of the earth. His desire to continue the conversation despite our previous strong and at times personal disagreement is the best proof of his sincerity I can imagine. He may not agree with parts (even large parts) of what you or I believe, but he sees enough value that he wants to engage, even though this means leaving the comfort of his own element (and you and I don’t agree on large parts, but that is the point).
As a courtesy to me personally I would request that we make this a discussion about what Istrice wrote and not where he wrote it. Zippy and I have agreed to disagree, and I plead with my readers to respect that. I hesitated to bring this quote up so soon after my own at times intense disagreement with Zippy, but Istrice’s quote was something too tempting to not discuss. And it really is Istrice’s quote. Similarly, when you or anyone else here hits the “reply” button and writes a comment, Dalrock isn’t there with you. It is all you. This was as you might recall one of my main disagreements with Darwin Catholic. He saw a new commenter on his site which he suspected was part of my “fold”, and let him have it before (temporarily) banning him. But GKChesterton isn’t “my” man, he is his own man, or as he would probably put it God’s man.
*In my mind Zippy’s engagement in the conversation already makes him a part of the manosphere, but this is due to how I define the sphere. This is a conversation among men (and some women) interested in better understanding truths about men and women, the understanding of which is at present extremely socially discouraged. While very few of us here will agree on all items in discussion I hope we can agree on the common goal of the discussion.
It is true that there is nothing new under the sun when it comes to human nature. However, every generation adapts to the realities they face and communicates in the medium and language of the day.
Dalrock, and others, are doing a great service by making ancient truths accessible to today’s masses.
@Dalrock
I would argue that we are indeed doing something new, if not by concept, then by scale. Never before has such a large group of men gathered in one location to bring ideas together and to learn on so focused a topic as this. I am currently teaching a guy from Thailand game from my house in the States that I met on your website. While I agree we do stand on the shoulders of giants, the reality is that we are indeed standing and the next generation of men will rise even higher than us.
The core propositions of the androsphere are like diamonds in the stream beds of South Africa. They are just there, for anybody alert enough to use them as seen fit. Chimpanzees will throw them at hyenas, tribesmen may use them to sharpen iron tools, “civilized” men will kill each other for the value they are assigned within a closed system of exchange and obligation.
“The Feminine Imperative” is an unfortunate meme, and polarizing. ‘Evolution’, as far as I can understand it, doesn’t reward the behavior of either men or women, but rather that of couples, however ephemeral. Men and women, and their behavior, have co-evolved. That we find ourselves today in a society that largely violates our instincts is a major problem, but the way forward is not the way back. The path to the garden is blocked by the sword-wielding cherubim. The real imperative is the same one it has always been: adapt or perish.
Treating women in the aggregate as the enemy is counter-productive, as is treating men as ‘a breeding experiment conducted for the benefit of women’. The struggle between Love and Power, between Christ and Nietzsche’s Antichrist, though, is eternal.
I’ll add my own reading list here
The Allegory Of Love by CS Lewis. This is as good an antidote to Rollo’s portrayal of courtly love as 12th century feminism as I can think of.
The Abolition Of Man by CS Lewis. What has been done to us and why it hurts so badly.
Tao-Teh-Ching. On finding the empty space between the bones where your cleaver can penetrate, thus maintaining its edge.
The New Testament No religion has placed such an importance on the primacy of love as Christianity, nor has anyone defined it so well as St Paul in I Corinthians 13. Do you really want to live in a world without love? There are plenty of roads leading in that direction, and most of them have the exit sign clearly written: ‘Protect thyself at all costs’.
The Figure Of Beatrice by Charles Williams. Describes the vital cord between sexual desire and divine αγάπη. Why Dante could see the eternal rose blooming at the center of all worlds in the smile of a [hypergamous] Florentine girl.
Anything you can get your hands on by Owen Barfield or Michael Polanyi, if only to clear out the fog of reductionism that clouds most minds in a way to which feminism cannot even aspire.
That’s the real red pill, cabrones. Buen provecho.
@b-166-er
I am shocked to learn that ‘Black guys’ – and I wasn’t previously aware that race was a bar to reading – have not read Homer et al, but I wonder if their alleged reputation for Game is not dare I say it, a little racist and largely exagerrated? – I for one was pulling chicks long before I had read those guys either – not quite sixteen summers, as Shakespeare would have said – and I am hardly an Alpha cad yet perhaps that is why I am always rather in two minds about Game – some of us ‘White dudes’ are just naturals or at least learned through experience.
On a related note – Nice Guys (again) get called out:
http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/01/sympathy-for-the-nice-guys-of-okcupid/266929/
Its cheap. The call to ancient, or historical reference suffers the fallacy that old means quality. This is not to doubt any writer or philosopher nor to disparage them, it is to say that the type of reference made by that commenter is actually worse, more cheapening, than any omission of classical references. It says this commenter is impressed by name and quote dropping, the veneer of deep thinking.
Anon66 adds correctly It is true that there is nothing new under the sun when it comes to human nature. However, every generation adapts to the realities they face and communicates in the medium and language of the day.
That’s it. Enough said. Question the efficacy of the terms used in the sphere, fine, question them by pointing to a dearth of references to classic writers…..cheap.
Besides, I am unaware of a preponderance of claims to originality regarding the aspects of gender dynamics that are written about.
This tendency is tiresome. It is dime store arrogance.
OrdinisNyx
Yessssssssss +100
Most manosphere sites are filled with articles and comments from men trying to be funny, witty, angry, ironic, intellectual, spiritual, religious and, while there is a lot of digital peacocking going on, absolutely no change is being made.
digital peacocking: Like obsessing about reading lists and study of the masters
whatever that means. After all, there may be nice lists but will everyone even agree on the content? If one does agree without any critical thought, is THAT a sufficiently thought through reference? And in the end……
If change is possible, will any of that matter in driving it?
@Opus:
It’s not racist, just something of a sub-cultural difference. Further, it’s actually a development that has to do with black women, not men. Especially inside the larger cities, black girls have been “feral” for going on 60 years. Over time, the guys simply adapted. If the girls want “Thugs”, they got “Thugs”. The system just became reinforcing. The Gangs, and the drugs & violence they peddle, are in many way a result of this same issue, since a Gang operates much like a surrogate family for their members. Being one of the few places to get any insights into “being a man”. It’s an interesting and complex issue, but it is slightly real.
But don’t let the comparison of the “median” black man against the “median” white man for Game or Attraction issues fool you. I’ve known quite a number of black men with very little game. The more middle class their background, the much more like that “median” white guy they appear, just with different skin tone and less stilted movements.
If one looks back at Roissy’s earlier writings during his heyday of 2008-early 2010, he doesn’t claim credit for inventing or discovering anything. What’s going on here among the men in the manosphere is a rediscovery of what Biblical writers and the authors of the “great books” knew all along about intergender relations.
Dalrock says:
January 9, 2013 at 8:57 am
“Zippy is interested in the conversation or he wouldn’t be here*.”
Or… Zippy is so much dumber than a bag of hammers he can’t recognize when his ass has been kicked from one article to the end of the comments on a second article.
Don’t assume inteligent purpose that which can be explained by stupidity.
[D: Zippy isn’t the topic here. I ask again that he not be made into the topic and further derail the discussion.]
Istrice seems to be on the same line as commenter Bob Wallace. Mentions great works of the past, says gamers lack perspective, can’t figure out what the newfangled terms are…the only thing that’s missing is the obsessive mentioning of how he’s smarter than everyone in the mannosphere.
From what I see, women have been busy selecting out the most diligent and moral members of society for involuntary celibacy. If things don’t improve, our society will collapse sooner or later. “Renaissance” may not be such a weak word for a discipline that may yet prove able to save society.
As a former liberal arts major and longtime professional writer, allow me the honors to pick apart the premise.
These nonsense, sloppy terms like solipsism, feminine imperative, team woman, “game” are ideas with no rigor, as imprecise as the dull minds that conjure them up.
First, the word “nonsense” is misused. All of those terms have concrete meanings. This writer just does not approve of them. So like a scolding teacher, he or she breaks out the word “nonsense” to criticize what he or she doesn’t like.
Second, calling such phrases “ideas with no rigor” is just that: calling them something. You could just as easily call Madonna’s lyrics or the concept put forth by tech blogs “ideas with no rigor.” So fucking what? What s/he means here is “this does not fit into my idea of rigor.” And of course rigor to this commenter means conventional, conformist ideas pre-approved by Women’s Studies professors.
Finally, the use of “dull minds” is an attack — just the type of insult people lob when they have no (ahem) intellectual rigor behind their arguments.
As one who has studied the language, it’s my opinion that the manosphere is pioneering new ideas, not rehashing old ones from textbooks. If “intellectual rigor” means parroting concepts put forth by old guard writers, then that concept needs to be re-examined. Academia always lags behind real thought anyway, since it takes time for texts to be written and classes to be planned.
Finally, having read and reviewed almost all the Bard’s plays at one point or another, I can safely say that a lot of his portrayals of women did, in fact, inform what the manosphere is doing right now. After all, what is the manosphere but an attempt to figure out how in the real world men can make like Petruchio in “The Taming of the Shrew” and work their own brand of magic on their personal Katherinas of the world? Ol’ Billy Shakespeare would have fit right in here.
That’s why I tend to see the repeated calls for detailed definitions — usually from outside the sphere, as I said — as an attempt to distract from the matters at hand, and ultimately to stall the real debate for good.
It’s not that precise terms and definitions aren’t helpful. They are, and they’re being developed as we go. But if we accept the premise that we shouldn’t even be talking about these things until we have those precise terms worked out, that will never happen (which I’m convinced is usually the real goal of these objections). If we have to spend a week compiling a list of Great Books to draw from, that’s a week that we weren’t figuring out how to deal with rebellious wives. If we all have to go get a BA in philosophy with a minor in classic literature, that’s 4+ years before we can proceed. Ultimately, we’ll never have perfect definitions because we’re dealing with imperfect subjects, so we’ll never get back to the topic.
It’d be great if we were all better educated in the classics, and if the 60s hadn’t destroyed most of our connection to the heritage of our ancestors. But we are who were are, when we are, with the tools we have at hand. We can decide that we’re not worthy and shut up, or continue to muddle through.
@empathologism
There is an incredible smugness in the detachment. He isn’t saying what we are trying to accomplish isn’t a worthy goal, and he is in fact implicitly acknowledging that it is worthy. He also isn’t saying he can do better, or even pointing to a contemporary who is doing better. He is watching from afar as men work at building something great, and tisk tisking that we aren’t as good as other builders he has read about in the comfort of his parlor.
This doesn’t make him a better man than those he is desparaging. It makes him smug, detached, and lazy.
Ordinis:
“women change definitions of the same word within a paragraph, yet they lose no ground in the gender war. Why, because their strategy has been effective. We need to be more than this.”
You’re correct that there’s probably a lot more navel gazing than actual personal development going on. But some navel gazing is probably necessary when a lot of men spent the first 10 or 20 years of their lives absorbing cultural lies by osmosis. They come for cleansing and “reeducation”, if you will. The lies need to be unlearned and the truth not just learned, but absorbed by immersion and marination. That process can take time. Most probably don’t learn anything, some learn a little and get a little better, and a few effect real change.
Whatever change results from the manosphere will be in individual men, learning the truths, and making individual choices for their own lives. We aren’t going to see change or legislative reform on a massive scale in our lifetimes or those of our children. The work is done on the margins, at least with men. We’re already seeing this in the US in age of first marriage creeping up and the number of children they have decreasing. The other reason the changes will be individual is that men don’t organize as a large scale bloc to effect political change, as feminists did. Small interest groups comprised of men don’t claim to speak for or represent all men; as NOW does for women.
He is watching from afar as men work at building something great, and tisk tisking that we aren’t as good as other builders he has read about in the comfort of his parlor.
I have to ask the question.
Just what is everybody doing here, and at other similar sites, that is so great?
[D: If this is a waste of time, why are you wasting your time? What brings you here? If you aren’t here to build, are you here to tear down?]
Improving and sharing our understanding of reality.
@Dalrock & CC
I didn’t say it was a waste of time to be here. There is a difference, though, between a open Socratic forum and an echo chamber. It is, to my mind, an important difference.
Some ideas appear to be uncritically accepted [the ‘Feminine Imperative’ springs rapidly to mind], where others are hotly and just as uncritically vituperated. It appears that whether the idea is flattering or unflattering to women in the aggregate determines which way the weathervane points.
Disabuse me. I am open to instruction.
@Deti
“Whatever change results from the manosphere will be in individual men, learning the truths, and making individual choices for their own lives. We aren’t going to see change or legislative reform on a massive scale in our lifetimes or those of our children. The work is done on the margins, at least with men.”
and
” The other reason the changes will be individual is that men don’t organize as a large scale bloc to effect political change, as feminists did.”
I’m inclined to agree with you. Part of what sounded like frustration in my comment comes from the observation that, even if a few individual men manage to become free of this madness, men as a group will only ever be as free as women allow, at least as long as society remains highly developed. I’ve never heard of feminism taking root in times/areas where physical struggle against nature or neighbors was necessary.
I’m looking at the reference books in The Great Books of the World and they are extensive. If anyone would like more information let me know, but I couldn’t possibly give all of it here.
Regarding:
1. The Nature of Love (partial list)
Apocrypha: Wisdom of Solomon
New Testment: 1 John 4:7-8 16, 18
Plato: Lysis, Cratylus, Phaedrus, Symposium
Aristotle: Ethics, Rhetoric
Plotinus: First Ennead, Third Ennead, Sixth Ennead
Agustine: City of God, Christian Doctrine
Aquinas: Summa Theologica
Danta: Divine Comedy
Chaucer: Troilus nad Cressida
Hobbes: Leviathan
Montaigne: Essays
Spinoza: Ethics
Locke: Human Understanding
Stern: Tristram shandy
Fielding: Tom Jones
Rousseau: Inequality
2. Man
Definitions of Man: conceptions of the properties and quantities and qualities of human nature (partial list)
Old Testament: Genesis
Sophocles: Antigone
Euripides: Supplicants
Thucydides: Pelopennesian War
Plato
Aristotle
Epictetus: Discourses
Aurelius: Meditations
Plutarch: Pompey
Tacitus: Histories
Plotinus:
Augustine
Dante: Divine Comedy
Machiavelli
Hobbes
Again these lists are hugely extensive. Let me know if anyone would like more specific information. There is no reference for women, but part of it is contained in Man meaning human. Though some of those on the list are very specific to men only.
Some of the other topics are Truth, Desire, Emotion, Liberty, Beauty, Family, Virtue and Vice,
Wisdome
Mule
What would you have happen? Things of this nature do not go once and done. Your observations are correct in some ways, what you and many miss is the thinking that is provoked by the readers and writers, and the perspective of, over time, actually seeing some thing congeal or evolve because of it.
We are people, many men have wounded pasts, and the catharsis of reading and writing here cannot be understated. The audience is huge and diverse and in between the vituperation and the uncritical acceptance (which actually in an inaccurate observation more so than the rejection side) is a great deal of analysis, even research done while not typing here. I cannot speak for everyone, sure there is an echo chamber aspect and some folks who could be one trick ponies, but I think you are finding what you are looking for, not the corpus of what is here.
@Empathologism
“If change is possible, will any of that matter in driving it?”
That’s the crux of it. Comments on a lot of sites are simply us intellectually whipping it out and seeing whose is bigger but, as a bloc/group effecting change, we’re ineffective as hell. Frustratingly, we’re less effective than most feminists even were back in the 70s. There’s a big difference between being right and being strategically effective.
A huge part of me thinks that the Internet, while great for spreading information, has deadened our ability to resist. There was a time when people would at least go somewhere to hear others talk of how to stop injustice. Now, we bang out a witty remark in someone’s comment section and do no more, satisfied that we’ve accomplished something.
If you think “feminine imperative” has been uncritically accepted here, I can only ask where you’ve been for the last month or so.
Every conversation exists within certain parameters, or it could never exist at all. You have to start from certain shared assumptions so you have a foundation to build upon. A discussion by Christians, for instance, begins with parameters like “Jesus is the Son of God; the Bible is the Divine Word; we are expected to live by certain commandments.” That makes it possible for them to go on and discuss exactly how to apply those commandments, for instance, without getting hung up on whether the commandments exist in the first place.
A non-Christian who enters that conversation and says, “This ‘God’ stuff is all hooey,” will be chased out, because that’s not helpful to the conversation they’re trying to have. Not because they can’t handle that argument, but because a discussion of whether Christianity is true is separate from a discussion of how to live it. But from his outside perspective, he says, “Huh, guess they don’t want me interfering in their echo chamber.”
Their conversation probably isn’t an echo chamber at all; it may have great diversity of ideas — but within the basic parameters of Christianity. It only looks restrictive from the outside.
Here in the androsphere, the parameters aren’t as clearly defined yet, but I’d say a few are:
* Men and women are different, with different strengths and weaknesses.
* Because of that, things work out best if men do manly things and women do womanly things.
* Women are attracted to dominant men and loathe supplicating men.
* Men have been taught to woo women with a strategy of supplication.
* Women have been taught to covet male roles and despise female ones.
* This supplication and covetousness have been enshrined into family law and the rest of our political system.
* This is a bad thing.
Then in the Christian wing, you get corollaries:
* God designed men and women to fit certain roles, and instructed us how to do so.
* Rebelling against those roles is sin and results in consequences like broken families.
* Submitting to God’s will in accepting those roles is an act of grace that brings us fulfillment, and ultimately closer to Him.
Within those broad outlines (and others), there is still plenty of room for discussion and disagreement, which is why posts on these topics generate thousands of lines of comments, some for and some against. A true echo chamber would soon be a quiet one, as no one would need to say anything more than, “Me too.”
@Mule Chewing Briars
Then you really haven’t been paying attention. The reason the Feminine Imperative should spring to mind is precisely because it has been so hotly debated. It hasn’t just been vigorously challenged by commenters here, but by several bloggers on my blogroll as well as the larger sphere. The same is true for the supposed one true religion of the manosphere, Game. For those whose memories have already faded, see here for but one example of the latter, and lay in a supply of snacks and beverages, because the discussion is anything but short at just under 600 comments (and again it is merely one example).
If we have to spend a week compiling a list of Great Books to draw from, that’s a week that we weren’t figuring out how to deal with rebellious wives.
Why can’t we do both? Yes, it’s a whole lot of time. But dealing with rebellious wives, while worthy, is scratching the surface. The idea is to teach the future the truth, right? If the truth is found in the Great Books, we teach our children these truths so they do not have to deal with rebellious wives themselves (or being a rebellious wife).
Oh man you are reading my mail….I have expressed frustration about intellectual peacocking since MND days. I stopped even reading lots of places because of it.
I do not mean to disparage anyone, but I will use the example of the extensive reading list above…..what is the point? Lets take a month off, all of us read what we have not already, or all of it if people have never read anything, then convene back and drop sexy references in that start with “as ___________said in _________, then _____________”
Stingray forgive me please, this is not anti-anything. It is pointing to a symptom of intellectual paralysis and the measuring contest Ordinix mentions. Folks enjoy discussing things, this is not about that being good bad or neutral. It is about that crowding out anything that ever might actually impact a solitary man’s life.
@OrdinisNyx
“Now, we bang out a witty remark in someone’s comment section and do no more, satisfied that we’ve accomplished something.”
Speak for yourself. I tried teaching game to a group of men at my church and got kicked out for my trouble. What came out of it? 6 men, and yes I mean men, who have learned to better themselves very effectively and I want to turn this into a ministry (of some sort). None of this would have been possible without Dalrock and the others. If my mind is a sword, then these blogs are my whetstone.
Lord, how I love the Internet flame wars! They get the juices flowing.
what great thing are we building?
How about a growing list of men, women, and children that are spared the suffering of the divorce meat grinder and the destruction from lies they were fed their whole life.
Every name on a list like that is a beautiful and monumental testament to the ‘manosphere’ being worthwhile.
Empath,
I don’t disagree with you. I wouldn’t want to read your example, either. It’s tedious and empty. My point is there is a lot of truth dropped in the manosphere. It’s helpful (very). But . . . there is a lot more truth out there and much of it is contained in those books. I don’t think you are anti-anything. But if we can further expand by reading the great thinkers of the past, not crowding anything out, but adding on, it can only serve to take men further.
@Joseph of Jackson —
When you got kicked out… what did the church give as the reason…? How did they break the news to you…? (I’m curious about the actual defense mechanisms church groups exercise in order to preserve the feminine imperative.)
@ Some Guy
Go here and follow the links. It was detailed over at SunShineMary’s.
http://josephofjackson.wordpress.com/2013/01/07/new-years-resolution/
A useful list, Stingray. Is that from the University of Chicago “Great Books” course, or another source? Some of my relatives used to participate in Great Books discussion groups years ago, I have run across the paperbacks from time to time. As a child I was interested that adults were reading books with color-coded covers, superficially similar to books I had to read at school. It’s a good program, and an example of the post-WW II effort to educate people in the humanities. Very different from what one encounters all too often in the “liberal arts” world now.
Thanks for posting that list, Stingray.
Interesting that commenter Istrice could not, or perhaps would not, do the little bit of work that you did, and provide some names & titles of the “giants” in question. It’s a somewhat passive-aggressive approach, this “I have a list of great books in mind but won’t bother to tell you”, rather akin to the game of “you should know why I’m angry, if you really love me” that some women like to play. Someone who genuinely wanted to discuss, or educate, would naturally have provided a suggested reading list, and then the conversation would become all about books, about ideas, rather than about people, about personalities, about who-said-what-about-whom. It’s almost as if there was an intent to shut down meaningful discussion about men, women and how they should relate, rather than encourage it.
I’ve observed before that traditional conservatives tend to write like women, in more ways than one. The rhetorical question, “Why is that?” continues to go unanswered. I wonder why?
“It appears that whether the idea is flattering or unflattering to women in the aggregate determines which way the weathervane points.”
Sometimes. Not always. I think you have a good point in that it is easy for manosphere discussions to degenerate into “All teh wimminz is beyotches”. There’s some of that. But it manifests in a culture of “woman good, man bad”. So there has been some extreme counterbalance.
@Joseph
What I’m saying generally is not the same as saying that 100% of the men in the sphere are like this so please let’s not fall into this trap. My point still stands. Men in this fight are struggling to differentiate between having an active comment life and actually getting out there and doing something.
I speak for myself also. Nowadays, I butt heads with VPs and HR about the blatant sexism against men in my company (with no one at my back) but, years ago, I did the same thing that I’m criticizing against now. That’s a beautiful quote but my question is how do we make the minds of other boys and men into swords? Reading lists of thousand-plus year old philosophers? I’m mid-40s and, even though I’d read old lit, far too many guys out there wont, especially those younger than me.
Dalrock, you’re happily married. Really, I’m happy for you. And I think Zippy is happily married, too, and I’m happy for him if that’s the case.
I wanted that too in an earlier era of swallowing blue pills. I searched high and low, but women of marriageable age only wanted players. (I’d summarize a lot of the discussions in this sphere as “women of marriageable age don’t want to marry.”) The blue pill haze obscured that conclusion: I wasn’t able to excise it until simply too many personal experiences simply sharply contradicted the blue-pill paradigm and allowed me to see through the haze.
I realized that women (with rare exceptions) don’t really think that much: they rely mostly on groupthink. There are exceptions to that, but they really are exceptions. Every time some socon dumbass claims that there are exceptions, I want to point out that these exceptions really are exactly that, and in this SMP milieu there aren’t enough such girls to go around for every blue-pill stand-up beta guy. And there aren’t even as many exceptions as this hypothetical socon dumbass thinks, because he’s never had the experience of seeing how a “nice church girl” can play that act when it is convenient at Sunday mass and also take in a dozen cocks a year from smooth playas.
The only thing that constrains women’s behavior is society, and our society doesn’t constrain anything. So, obviously, we have hos running rampant. Duh.
Which is why I decided to expatriate: I live in Russia now. The girls here are conniving and cunning in a way that makes their western sisters look like amateurs. They pine for alphas as their hypergamous programming dictates, yet their actual behavior is constrained by some semblance of reality. A woman who tries to ride the cock carousel here gets kicked off very early. And there ain’t no welfare state for single mothers. So, an upper beta is a real catch here. In the west, an upper beta is just a beta who gets tooled by both women and by the system at large.
I didn’t want to change my culture: earlier I dreamed of the picket fence. If I cast aside the refreshingness of dating girls here, this place really is a bitch. Russia is just messed up on so many fronts, and it’s a pain on a daily basis just to deal with it. Yet, I do, because I still dream of the picket fence. And I blame socons and white knights for that: they threw me under the bus. I put both Zippy and Istrice in that category.
There’s something that the feminists did get right, which is this: The Personal Is The Political. And so I despise Zippy and Istrice and their ilk. For me, it is personal. If anyone (like you, Dalrock) has made some kind of peace with Zippy, that’s your choice. But I think he’s a douche and I don’t have to like him. I hope he gets run over by the bus he threw me under with his fallacious rhetoric. I had to leave my native-born culture because of douchebags like him. (With that being said, I’ll refrain from mentioning Zippy by name in this thread unless he personally engages me out of respect by our host.)
Our society really is coming unglued, and the next ten years are going to prove it. The socons who believe that doubling down with variations of the “man up” theme are going to get a real taste of what failure is all about. It’s simply not going to be a successful strategy.
Fair enough. And it’s clear we have significantly different backgrounds. As an atheist, I can’t comment on a lot of the arguments you put forth, but I respect that you don’t let your dogma blind you to why things are coming unraveled in the way most socons are blinded. And it’s clear to me that you don’t hold players in high esteem, although you tolerate them in your midst because you can understand that on some level their choice is logical.
As I write this, I’m trying to decide if there is a contradiction between the statements “I think Zippy is happily married, too, and I’m happy for him if that’s the case” and “The only thing one can hope for is that all these white knights are the first against the wall when the revolution comes”. In Russia we say of such contractions “без бутылки не обоидётся” which is something like “you won’t get clarity about this issue until you drink a lot.”
Part of what is being done here in the Androsphere is triaging the victims of the misandrist world we live in. Some can be helped and need it now, some are already dying and beyond help, and some need little help.
Someone above stated that men will only become educated to the issues at the margin; that few will take the red pill. I disagree. Like many, I did not knowingly and willingly take the red pill. I had it administered as a suppository, repeatedly, until it took. This is being done to more and more men every day. A large portion of young men are witnessing this and drawing the proper conclusions without going through this personally. I argue that it has reach such pandemic proportions that it cannot be at the margins of men’s awareness of reality. I have four sons; two in their thirties and two in their late teens early twenties. The younger ones are well aware of the situation they are in with regards to women in this society. They know they are the gender at risk. They know they have been lied to and abused by the system (especially the educational system). I try to talk to them about it, but they look on me as part of the system/older generation that has betrayed them. They are right to some extent as I am to blame for being part of the generation (Boomer) that let the culture sink to this point. The anger of the Millennial against the Boomers is palpable and somewhat justified.
Someone else above stated that massive changes to the law will not occur in our lifetimes or the lifetimes of our children. I disagree with this as well. What I see in the generation of my youngest two boys is a withdrawing from the male role of provider and designated responsible person imposed by society. Feminism and all the misandrist society has been able to prosper in redefining women’s roles only because they could count on, or force, men to uphold their traditional responsibilities. This is not going to happen with the 20 something men of today. The next generation of women will not have the unquestioning support of the men of their generation. They will be viewed as competitors and abusive users. Young men are very aware that the pretty little girl asking for them to enter into a relationship with them is holding a figurative loaded gun behind her back which she can pull out and shoot him at any time and for any or no reason. Men will have their defensive shields very high up and women that want support from men will have to work very hard to prove they are worthy of trust. In my day, and to a certain extent today, men didn’t question this. Awareness has been forced on these young men as a matter of survival. Things are going to get much worse for society, but maybe not much worse for men, before there is a reset.
I do agree whole heartedly with the comment that the way forward is not the way back. Men should not want a return to the fifties, whatever that means. Women are fooling themselves (something they are very good at) if they think that what the men’s movement is looking for is to restore the status quo ante feminism (i.e. their terror of being barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen). That ship sailed long ago. The next deal on offer will not be anywhere near so female centric.
Empathalogicalism, it depends on the purpose that one has in reading such books. If I approach Machavelli’s “Prince” as a treatise on government from a certain time and culture, that may or may not have universal application, I’ll read it one way. If I approach the Prince as one more reading assignment that I’ll have to scribble answers about into a blue book on test day, I’ll read it another way.
If I approach the Prince as a know-it-all smartypants juvenile, looking for a few obvious quotes to drop into Internet arguments in order to make someone else look dumb, and thereby stroke my own inflated ego, then I’ll read it still another way. How one approaches these works from history depends on what one expects to get out of reading them. If it’s an easy A, or scoring someone off in a net.debate, then the reading approach is different than if the purpose is actually trying to learn something.
I share your frustration with name/quote droppers. The writings Stingray referenced are worth reading for themselves, but I would be the last one to make them required reading prior to making a comment. I suspect that if completion of the reading list were a requisite prior to commenting on any blog – yes, including tradcon blogs – there would not be a whole lot of comments ever made.
I like the cut of this fellow’s jib! Istrice rightly points out that modern men do not avail themselves of the vast stores of wisdom at their fingertips — never easier access than now. This is the self-esteem movement run amok. Everyone man wants to assert himself as “independent” or “ground-breaking.” It’s in our nature. But the first prerequisite of learning is humility.
For the life of me I can’t follow the intramural controversies among you bloggers. Beware of indulging too much in obscure, theosophical, “angels on the head of a pin” debates.
Everyone brings his own agenda to this Great Awakening. Rather than picking squabbles, concentrate on what unites you and hammer out the details of dogma after the beast is put down.
Matt
[D: “Back to the parlor, driver. These manosphere fellows are beginning to bore me.”]
@OrdinisNyx
“That’s a beautiful quote but my question is how do we make the minds of other boys and men into swords? ”
You have to invest in them. Nobody seems to understand this, but one of the most important things for men is experience respect. Not just in relationships, but from everyone. We crave it at a deep level. You use this to draw men in.
The reason there are groups of White Knights in churches that two the party line is that they are in positions where they have authority. They receive respect for enforcing what the women want to see happen and thus are 100% willing to sacrifice the good of other men because they will receive the respect they crave in return for these actions. The list of men who do this is the same in almost every church, the pastor, associate ministers, deacons, elders, small group leaders. Find a man who has a position of authority in the church and you will automatically know who will be opposed to you teaching men differently about women BECAUSE they receive respect from the women for towing that line. You have to flip this script. Offer them respect, verbally and in action, for doing something different.
The easiest way to do this is build a core group of men first who have gotten their game down. Then use them to change the culture of the church. Women are like people in the marketplace, they don’t know what they want until you show it to them. Trust me, show them real men and they will want it. Make them men of character and they will follow. When the women follow this core group, the church has no choice but to follow. The leadership follow the desires of the women in return for respect, and the women follow the real men you brought in because they are attracted to them.
The tingle can be controlled, and sadly, so can the church through it.
‘Yet all across the roissysphere no single red pill person ever recommends learning the precise terms of the great works of the ages, instead offering a bag of bullsh&t and telling you to read the rantings of a keyboard warrior from DC”
I have pointed out several times there is a 3000 year written history of what a man is supposed to be. The denizens of the Manosphere understand none of it. All they can do in their confusion is memorize, i.e. imitate, the ideas of their Manosphere cult. That’s what people do: imitate each other, for good or bad.
To think the “leaders” of the Manosphere have discovered something new is a sign of their ignorance of past, and it also shows contempt for thinkers of the past who covered these problems for 3000 years.
The fact that people of other worldviews are free to come here and express themselves (if civil) is a necessary condition for intellectual rigor. Dalrock and MuleChewingBriars alluded to SunshineMary’s questioning of the feminine imperative. Go back and read her actual text from her blog here and here . You will find that SSM isn’t flamed too badly for stepping out of mannosphere orthodoxy to provide perspective on these issues.
Compare and contrast this with the likes of Istrice over at Zippy’s and Bob Wallace who still posts at Spacetraveller’s Sanctuary. Look for wording, tone, and perspective.
I’ve observed before that traditional conservatives tend to write like women, in more ways than one. The rhetorical question, “Why is that?” continues to go unanswered. I wonder why?
I’ll take a stab at this. Women are masters of rhetoric. We can, over time, make people feel what we want them to. Sadly, people no longer know how to see through this. It feels good so it must be true. This is one of the biggest reasons I am such a fan of the Great Books. They teach you how to think. If approached correctly, they can teach you how to look at an argument and break it down, discover its essence and break it apart. It has nothing to do with feeling and, as evidence of the truths presented here, can feel quite wrong. But one then has the ability to see they are wrong, regardless of how uncomfortable they are.
Is there great need for learning how to Game women? Yes, of course. But if we teach our children the Truth and how to discover it from day one, that will no longer be a need.
Anon Reader,
The Great Books of the Western World are from the Encyclopedia Britannica but it is through the faculties from The University of Chicago.
@Joseph
Exactly which church are you referring to? Women are the majority in many if not most churches now so what church/pastor is going to work against his own cash cow (no pun intended)?
Here in the androsphere, the parameters aren’t as clearly defined yet, but I’d say a few are:
* Men and women are different, with different strengths and weaknesses.
* Because of that, things work out best if men do manly things and women do womanly things.
* Women are attracted to dominant men and loathe supplicating men.
* Men have been taught to woo women with a strategy of supplication.
* Women have been taught to covet male roles and despise female ones.
* This supplication and covetousness have been enshrined into family law and the rest of our political system.
* This is a bad thing.
Then in the Christian wing, you get corollaries:
* God designed men and women to fit certain roles, and instructed us how to do so.
* Rebelling against those roles is sin and results in consequences like broken families.
* Submitting to God’s will in accepting those roles is an act of grace that brings us fulfillment, and ultimately closer to Him.
This is good. This is along the lines of what I was looking for. This is progress.
I think my problem is that I do not have to deal with young women except to correct my own daughter and attempt to correct the thinking of some of her friends.
I see a lot A LOT of what is discussed here and elsewhere as fitting within a paradigm that I have been trying to get a handle on for some time. I call it the extreme individualist paradigm. It goes something like this:
* I am my own me. Even as a Christian, I may be God’s me, but I am His viceroy in the things concerning me. I am certainly not your me.
* I determine what I want and what I don’t want. If I want it, then it is necessarily good and desirable
* My body stops at my skin
* It is a good thing to be as independent of others as possible.
* My inevitable dealings with others must be based on a principle of Fair Exchange. I must get as least as good as I give, if not better. Not to do so would be weak.
* In any subset of arrangements or possible states of affairs, the preferable arrangement is the one which maximizes my autonomy, independence, and freedom of choice.
This paradigm rubs up against the actual experience of men and women at four points that I can identify:
1) No one gives birth to himself. No one incarnates himself.
2) No one develops his own language and uses it to negotiate his social milieu
3) Men and women cannot reproduce without the assistance of the other
4) Death is final. No one returns from thither.
Numbers 2 and 3 are where the skirmishes are raging the most fiercely and where the most casualties are piling up. My son tells me that he is exhausted trying to keep up with the self-generated sexual identities multiplying among his peers, and the umbrage of such self-identified at not being taken seriously. When he says ‘there are men and women, that’s it’, he gets insulted and called a ‘gender essentialist’ as if there were such a thing as a gender existentialist.
Your proposition that “men and women are different, with different strengths and weaknesses” is a subproposition of the proposition that there are differences between individual people and that they make a difference. Differences between people implies that people are not interchangeable, or even worse, that they are not infinitely malleable, whether by themselves or by some other agency such as the state. It runs deeply counter to the tenor of our times.
The ‘exchange rate’ between men and women has altered. This is undeniable. This begs the question of whether there ever was an equitable exchange rate or whether the change has been salutatory or not. The question of whether the exchange rate between the sexes is or is not equitable is not as important to me as whether or not ‘equity’, or some other state, is the optimal state.
@Ceer
I also had the Social Pathologist’s recent post in mind. I would add that the issue isn’t if others object, or even “flame”. Those who disagree with Rollo’s Feminine Imperative aren’t excluded from the conversation we call the manosphere. That some parts of the manosphere flame other parts of the manosphere isn’t proof of the original charge, which is that there is no dissent in the manosphere on the FI, etc. It is in fact proof of the opposite. There is much dissent, but Mule Chewing Briars sees the fact that those who don’t agree with his own perspective are permitted to participate as proof that the manosphere is an echo chamber. It brings to mind another work of old by Lewis Carroll.
While we’re at it, here is my eclecticana:
The Ignatius Bible (RSV)
Homer’s Iliad, Odyssey
Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching
Sophocles’ Oedipus Trilogy
Aristophanes’ Lysistrata
Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War
Plato’s Republic, Symposium, Gorgias, Laches, Apology
Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, Politics, Rhetoric, Poetics
Sun Tzu’s Art of War
Virgil’s Aeneid
Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations
Plutarch’s Parallel Lives
Augustine’s Confessions, City of God
Aquinas’ Summa Theologica
Thomas à Kempis’ Imitation of Christ
Ignatius of Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises
Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy, The Prince
Dante’s The Divine Comedy
Hobbes’ Leviathan
Milton’s Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained
Collected Works of Shakespeare
Pascal’s Pensées
Rousseau’s Emile
Smith’s Wealth of Nations
Goethe’s Faust, Maxims and Reflections
Hamilton/Jay/Madison’s Federalist
Tocqueville’s Democracy in America
Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov
Austen’s Pride and Prejudice
Baltimore Catechism, No. 2 (1885)
Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Kipling’s Collected Poetry
Conrad’s Heart of Darkness
Boy Scouts of America Handbook (1911)
Catechism of the Catholic Church (1992)
United States Marine Guidebook of Essential Subjects
And some useful modern additions:
Allan Bloom’s Closing of the American Mind
Harvey Mansfield’s Manliness
James Bowman’s Honor: A History
Brad Miner’s The Compleat Gentleman
Cheryl Mendelson’s Home Comforts
And some pop culture primers:
Casablanca
Fistful of Dollars trilogy
Conan the Barbarian
The Outlaw Josey Wales
Heartbreak Ridge
Scent of a Woman
Tao of Steve
Swingers
Sideways
Band of Brothers (HBO)
Out of Sight
Rome (HBO)
40-Year-Old Virgin
Lost in Translation
Master and Commander
Gran Torino
I don’t get it.
Like I said. Obscurantism.
I lost a big post here. Sorry.
I’m not baling on the discussion. It will take some time to recollect the points I wanted to make, and by that time, the discussion will have, inevitably, moved on.
For the average Joe the importance is on understanding the ideas, not on using proper scientific terms. I reckon the manosphere is lightyears ahead of the bluepill masses regarding many important interpersonal subjects. For the same average Joe the words of Heartiste or Hawaiian Libertarian are probably a lot easier to understand than the dry scientific observations of a long forgotten philosopher from a few hundred years ago.
@OrdinisNyx:
The Welfare state, which is required to make the current SMP, MMP and all assorted other aspects work, is consigned to death. You can’t escape the mathematics. The hope is we all don’t pay dearly when it collapses.
However, that could still be 50 years hence. “Decline” generally takes a while for great powers, it’s rarely over night. Though when Greece, Spain and Portugal go, it’s anyone’s guess.
@Matthew King (King A)
I was adding to the metaphor I used upthread, of an above it all aristocrat sniffing disapprovingly at the work of other men, work he himself can’t be bothered to do:
From what I’ve read thus far the manosphere is mostly about who is or isn’t getting laid and what they can do to get laid. Almost everything discussed seems to boil down to this. I haven’t been reading long, so it’s likely that I’m missing something.
Add: C.S. Lewis’ The Four Loves, Mere Christianity, G.K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy, and a good compendium of classic readings on courtship and marriage, Amy and Leon Kass’, Wing to Wing, Oar to Oar.
I find Matt King’s sermons more readable (and entertaining) when I imagine his diction delivered in the voice of Dr. Smith from Lost in Space.
@TFH- what sorts of investments would be wise for a man who sees the Misandry Bubble popping soon?
These nonsense, sloppy terms like solipsism, feminine imperative, team woman, “game” are ideas with no rigor, as imprecise as the dull minds that conjure them up.
I personally have been guilty of disparaging (someone who was annoying me) because they made up words. The made up words weren’t particularly annoying; I might have done it myself. The person was annoying.
I have attempted to move past that and these words are not made up. Sloppy? Solipsism is an interesting word as it relates to the concept. It can be applied many places. “Feminine imperative”? Is it not simply a counter-behaviour to “partriarchy”? Nobody ever challenges patriarchy as a concept and as much as it is a pretty neutral word, has had a lot of connotation attached. Otherwise, these are observable concepts and deserve a term. The language is not dead.
Then, and I don’t really know Zippy’s leanings, but what about “rape culture”? What about “womyn”? Lots of new-ish ideas are named.
To bring it back, I’d consider this just a form of shaming tactic.
I disagree. Yes, the classical authors knew a lot of truths that we are discussing in the androsphere (I prefer this term because it is easily translatable to most Western languages).
In fact, I guess that the basic truths (for example, female hypergamy and male polygamy) were known by the ordinary people of yesteryear, because they are evident to anybody who has eyes. It’s only several decades of feminist and liberal indoctrination that have darkened these obvious truths.
And yes, when it comes to literary quality, it’s easy to choose between Schopenhauer and Roissy.
But, having said that, when it comes to pure information about the dynamics between men and women, the androsphere is superior to these immortal authors. So, if a nephew of mine asked me how to thrive in the world of relationships, I would direct to Roissy or Dalrock, not to Ovid.
The information discussed in the androsphere has the following advantages with respect to the classical authors:
1- It is adapted to the current feminist era, which is unlike any other era in the history of mankind. Ovid says nothing about “date rape” or “slutwalks”.
2- It is more coherent because it is rooted in evolutionary psychology. Schopenhauer or the Kamasutra are full of empirical observations about women’s behavior (that is, they explain WHAT happens) but they don’t show the causes of this behavior (they don’t explain WHY it happens).
3- It is written in the language of our age. Sadly, the ancients were subtler than us, had longest attention spans. They say things in a more paused and complex way. Today, many people don’t understand them. By constrat, the androsphere goes to the point quickly.
4- Even more important, terms such as “hamster” or “shit test” are rather silly, but they EXIST and they WORK. If, like the ancients, you don’t have a term like hamster you have to explain the rationalization mechanism, every time you have to refer to it. It is easier to say “hamster” and everybody knows. Every body of shared knowledge needs a specialized vocabulary and the ancients didn’t have this specialized vocabulary.
Were the ancients dumber than us? I am convinced they were not. The classical authors were the best of their age. But they didn’t study female sexuality like us, because THEY NEEDN’T TO DO IT. If you live in a saner society than ours, you don’t have to obsess about how to get a woman, because this is relatively easy. You obsess about God, about the meaning of life, about philosophy, science or great things, not about how to put your P in a V.
So these classical authors didn’t devote enough time to study this area in deep and that’s why I think the androsphere is superior.
@OrdinisNyx
They won’t be moving away from anything. They will be doing what all good church leaders do, following the women. You use game with a core group of men to create an environment that encourages young women to submit. Let me lay it out in a step by step game plan for you.
1) Find men who are willing to learn
2) Teach them game and offer respect for them using it to further the ends of Christ. This is a little nebulous, but essentially, they stop putting women on pedestals and instead put God on the pedestal where he belongs.
3) Use them to begin changing the culture of the church by getting the women interested in what they have to offer instead of what the church currently does (aka: high quality men who don’t put up with their crap and actually read their Bibles).
4) Attract more men to this cause slowly over time. Teach them as you did the others and have them join your ranks.
5) Begin introducing the women to principles of submission and show them the kind of men they will be submitting to (aka: the guys you are raising up)
6) Rinse and Repeat until the direction of the church has been changed from the bottom up.
7) The leaders in the church will simply continue doing what they are doing. They will rationalize previous behaviors away and begin supplying the new “product” that the women now want.
Make sense?
Dalrock wrote:
I see. Characterize the criticism to dismiss it.
I am not “disapproving[ of] the work of other men,” I am reporting that work’s poor expression and therefore ineffectiveness. Without an active effort against division, these blogs tend toward internecine squabbling rather than rallying men around what they have in common. It speaks of a deficiency in competence, strategy, and/or style.
You can’t be inside-baseball all the time. We aren’t specialized scientists splitting subatomic particles. We are aiming for broad social reform. You have to speak the language men understand. For the most part you (and Roissy, for that matter) do this well, which is why you draw big audiences of initiates and true believers. But when you start attracting pagans, feminists, heathens, barbarians, and dogmatic intellectuals, then you will be doing the Lord’s work. Christ dined with whores and publicans, beggars and Pharisees.
Commenter Istrice in your original post had that insight, only he alienated his audience as men do — by thumping his chest and using vivid personal language as a means of getting attention, which you lavished on him without addressing his very good point: if you do not set up failsafes against cultish arcana, it will eventually take over your communication, to the tempting applause of your most loyal fellow-travelers. It is better to reach into the store of common knowledge (i.e., the “shoulders of giants” who left us classical art and literature) — like you do with scripture — than to invent new terms for new controversies and debate over irrelevant nuances with your brothers. Mind you, that does not characterize the whole of your blog, but it is a tendency you should guard against.
Work I myself “can’t be bothered to do” now? What do you call this conversation?
Matt
Well, now we have some lists of great books to read, but I am going to suggest that they will largely be irrelevant, because the situation in which we in the west in the 21st century find ourselves is radically different from anything before and anything that older writers could even dream of, and for the reasons that TFH elucidates so clearly in his ‘simple summary of The Androsphere’ at 11.32 – I think T should start there, if she is serious about understanding it.
To summarise, until the beginning of the 19th century speed of travel, medicine, labour saving-devices were hardly more advanced than in the days of The Romans – it still took two weeks to drive a coach and horses from London to Scotland: Feminism had not been invented because women were largely dead-weight unless they bore children – although to their credit the Christians found in Convents an outlet for those women unwilling or temperamentally unsuited to be wives and mothers. By reason of those technological innovations – and almost entirely coming from the anglo-american/french/german sphere as is still the case, and with lowering child mortality it became possible to free women from marriage and motherhood and that trend has continued unabated – unfortunately no one bothered to consult nature, so that female nature remains unimpaired and male devotion to women likewise: this has thus produced white-knighting where a strong telling-off would be more appropriate as well as women who by reason of their financial freedom bear more than a passing resemblance to courtesans, that is to say whores.
All this seems to be unnoticed by Istrice.
@Imnobody
“In fact, I guess that the basic truths (for example, female hypergamy and male polygamy) were known by the ordinary people of yesteryear, because they are evident to anybody who has eyes.”
The reason we don’t pick up on these things so easily today is because of our addiction to media. It’s hard to watch the world around you when you aren’t actually watching the world around you.
Aaand here comes Rollo, mimicking voices in lieu of argument.
Eighth grade, dude, that’s when I stopped doing that, pretending it was responsive. For all of your intellectual pretensions and self-referential, circular “wisdom” (check out the links to my three essays on that topic!), you can’t help but expose yourself when encountering rhetoric you have no ability to engage.
Matt
@Joseph
I understand what you’re trying to say. Game for Christ. Is this what you were trying to implement when your Church stopped it? If so, what objection did they have against it?
“@empathologism
Its cheap. The call to ancient, or historical reference suffers the fallacy that old means quality. This is not to doubt any writer or philosopher nor to disparage them, it is to say that the type of reference made by that commenter is actually worse, more cheapening, than any omission of classical references. It says this commenter is impressed by name and quote dropping, the veneer of deep thinking.”
This attitude is profoundly feminist (perhaps marxist) and it permeates our current culture and is an example of the rot that decays it. The idea that somehow we know better than previous generations. That because some of us have been technologically clever ( a small few) we are somehow wiser than those that did not watch t.v.
I have heard people referring to past intellectuals called a “fetishist of the ancients” I have heard priests talk about how we are coming to a “greater understanding of God” as time progresses.
“The best tactics are passed on by the survivors.”
The best wisdom is the stuff that is passed on. That which is not wise, which is foolish tends to get forgotten quickly. The stories that resonate with truth tend to last.
I perhaps feel this way because of my advanced age, but to discount the past simply because it is past is foolish, and Orwellian.
Well, I look around at the world, and I think it’s remarkable that anyone thinks we are standing on the shoulders of anything when considering the state of sexual relations. Most of the Manosphere is not guilty of claiming to reach great heights, but of daring to pick up their heads and see that the truth is they’ve laid down in the dirt like dogs. From this perspective, the molehill of feminism has seemed like a mountain to conquer. I’m sure it feels nice to have Istrice’s lofty perspective, but (If I might make an assumption that Istrice is a Christian, as he visits ZC’s very good blog, which I enjoy heartily) the Christian is not called to make himself/herself feel nice, but to stoop down and raise each other up. G.K. Chesterton says something to the effect* that the world has a habit of making out successful men to be good, but we Christians are to be doing the heavy lifting of making good men successful.
Christ says is this way: “The kingdom of heaven is at hand.” At hand. It is not in the future; the kingdom is now. Repent now, for this moment you may lay hold of the kingdom of heaven, and be saved. This includes from the bondage of sexual idolatry of women. The Manosphere, when it is good, is about calling out in the modern wilderness, “Get up, men! Awake, you sleepers!” and it lends a hand at doing so.
Istrice, it seems, scoffs at such as our Lord who would call the filthy gentiles in the Manosphere to repentance and holiness. “Why,” he might ask, “does your master dine with sinners and tax-collectors? They should follow the law, like we pharisees do so well!” He doesn’t correct because he wants to see men–any man!–do better, but to tear down anyone else in the fear that they might obscure him.
To Hell with that.
In truth: I’m more than doubtful that Istrice has escaped the current malaise, and such smugness is rarely born of a wealth of wisdom, and almost never a hoard of practice.
@Dalrock
Let’s not recall that embarrassing incident too often. Man, I wrote that poorly.
@Mule Chewing Briars
The feminine imperative is this: “You shall want your husband…” This isn’t new: It’s as old as it gets. From my perspective, the problem some Manospherians run into is trying to weave a tapestry of explanation from the barest threads of evo psych.
*I cannot find the quote; I believe it is in The Everlasting Man; which has a good deal to say about standing on giants.
@OrdinisNyx
Here read my post and the links on it. It details all the important stuff. Essentially, I didn’t cover all my bases by telling my guys not to blab about what they were doing. It’s been a hard won lesson, but I think we can make this work on the next go around. Unless I decide to start this as a separate ministry and approach it with some different tactics.
lzozozlzlzzzlzzl
yes that is what I HAVE BEEN SAYING!!
but when i tried to post da great book of MOBY DICK at Zippy cpatholicz site blog, it became MOBY (REDACTED) lzozozlzozozolzllozzllozoz
anywho, i have said, over and over that the KEY to the MANOSPHERS is SIMPLEZ!!
implely embrace our true fatherz
HOMER, SHAKESPEARE, DANTE, MOSES, JESUS, VIRGIL, and then
ADAM SMITH JOHN LOCKE THE FOUNDING FATHERZ GBFM AND HERMAN MELVILLE
true story, one time in washing dc i wastrying to get a major conservative site to write more about the great books. thy simply said, “sorry we’re into politics, not litetureaz. lzozlzlzllzzloozo”
basically eveyone always tellz me:
“We really love the great books gbfm, but sorry, we are into butthext, not litertaurez lzozlzlzozz”
long story short,
you can get all teh pusysyys you want
and sit in church every sunday
but until you have read da GREAT BOOKS FOR MENZ
you are fialing to reach your apotheoisiiz apotheoesososiz
lzozlzzozl
at least some peoplez are listsneingz:
http://thesoulisnotasmithy.blogspot.com/2012/11/great-books-for-men.html
here’re some great bookzkz for menz–GBFM’s ULTIMATE MANLY READING LISTZ– which exalt MAN’S NATURAL RIGHTSZZZZ:
1. Homer’s Iliad
2. Homer’s Odyssey
3. Exodus, Ecclesiastes, and the Psalms
4. Virgil’s Aeneid
5. Socrates’ Apology
6. The Book of Matthew & Jefferson’s Bible
7. Plato’s Repulic
8. Seneca’s Letters from a Stoic
9. Dante’s Inferno
10. The Declaration of Independence
11. The Constitution
12. John Milton’s Paradise Lost
13. Shakespeare’s Hamlet
14. Newton’s Principia
15. Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations and Theory of Moral Sentiments
16. Shakespeare’s Hamlet
17. Ludwig von Mises’ A Theory of Money and Credit
18. F.A. Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom
19. Herman Melville’s Moby Dick
20. Einstein’s The Meaning of Relativity
21. The Analects of Confucius
22. Huston Smith’s The World’s Religions
21. Joseph Campbell’s The Hero With a Thousand Faces and The Power of Myth
24. Ron Paul’s Revolution
If ye read all these bookzz, insteadz of purusing buttoholified pussysysuuyssu, dne you will be a step closer .
The Fatal Flaw of the MRM/Manosphere is that they do as they are told and they ignore the GREAT BOOKS FOR MEN. They ignore their Fathers and their Rightful HEritage, instead, choosing to bicekr on blogz like a bunch fo zlzoozlzoz womenzzozmlzlzlzoz
Heartsitses alone stands like a towering ligthhouse as he enever bickerz but stands liek Captain Ahas, his hand firm on the wheel, guinding his vessel forvers towardz truth ane d buetayiez zzlzoozozozozooz
while the other “menz” shut down tehir belogz zlzozozozoozzo
Are the lengths being measured in metric or English units?
Well, now we have some lists of great books to read, but I am going to suggest that they will largely be irrelevant, because the situation in which we in the west in the 21st century find ourselves is radically different from anything before and anything that older writers could even dream of
Yep. And in as much as the, I suppose, core humanity of men and women has been sorted, translated and filed dewey decimal, the interactions born of modernity have not. Outliers are the norm.
We have an uneducated population. Please dispute that. And pointing that bunch to truths written in the contexts mentioned is folly. Unless the desired effort is so basic and fundamental as to start with babies and redo literally everything, the rest as a form of outreach is pretty silly to imagine as effective. But, masturbation is indeed a compelling urge, even if it is mental.
@Joseph
I am glad I posted here today. After reading through your posts at SSM’s I have to say that I think your idea is excellent.
Absolutely nothing to do with today’s topic, but interesting none the less.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/quora/2013/01/04/what_does_it_feel_like_to_be_a_hot_girl_who_gets_old.html?wpisrc=obinsite
I agree completely, and I cringed a little when I wrote my comment because I didn’t want it to sound otherwise. To the extent that we — those of us involved in the conversation — educate ourselves in those sources and pull them into the conversation, that’s awesome.
But usually, it’s someone from outside the conversation or at least new to it, who condescendingly disparages us for using “made up” terms like Istrice did in that comment. (To be fair, he wasn’t pretending to be objecting from inside the group, so I wouldn’t call him a troll.) When someone like that demands that we go back to the sources (or The Source) and dot all our I’s and cross all our T’s before making any claims of our own, I suspect that’s almost always an attempt to throw a sand in our gears.
Wordsworth said about Coleridge’s reluctance to speak that it was due to the contents of his mind, and the connections between its diverse components, being so different from the compositions of the minds of other men that in order for him to say anything it was necessary for him to say everything. Since life afforded Mr. Coleridge few opportunities to say everything, he frequently settled by saying nothing.
Since I cannot say everything I want , I will try to be clear about what I do say. I hope I succeed.
TFH mentioned a “misandry bubble”, although he did not invent that phrase, as a sort of social singularity distorting the flow of goods and services which will inevitably have to burst (As has been the case with many other bubbles, it will not be the culpable who will suffer when it does) .
I cannot help but wonder if there are not a number of other bubbles which are on the verge of bursting shortly. People in my acquaintance have mentioned “Peak Oil” (or peak hydrocarbon), and “Peak Finance” (which is actually peak usury, a concept which is built into any Petri dish), but yeah, “Peak Feminism” is nigh as well, where any additional curtailing of “male privilege” is unlikely to produce any additional benefit to women, as is “Peak Politics”, where the continual application of some political process will result in a diminishing return and the authorities will be sorely tempted to exchange the vicissitudes of legitimacy for the certainties of the exercise of violence.
Add to this the certainty of Peak Individualism. I read in a business magazine about the CEO of a hedge fund who devoted a quantifiable percentage of his considerable resources to insulating himself from the rest of the world (Howard Hughes, anyone?), to the point of employing his own programmer whose only responsibility was to ensure that his private elevator would only be functional at a random ninety second opening during the day. What is this man so afraid of? If he is returning to the rest of us as much as he is receiving, he should have no worries. Let things get bad enough, and no medium of exchange will be able to purchase a trusted friend with whom you can leave your 13 year old daughter and rest easy. This goes, I think, to the root of what Christ was talking about when He commanded us to make friends with the Mammon of Unrighteousness.
Certainly there has been a change in the ‘exchange rate’ for the interactions between men and women. Whether or not there has ever been an equitable rate of exchange or whether the rate has gotten fairer or unfairer is not so much an issue to me as to whether the whole idea of ‘equity’ can continue to serve as a model and end for our transactions. In a sense, both sodium and chlorine have to die to themselves as sodium and chlorine to become salt, and the fault of a cancer is that it refuses to die to itself as a cell in order to become, say, Mule or Dalrock.
We are increasingly coming to the place where we are experiencing the Other as Obstacle. When this penetrates to the level of exchanges between the sexes, the prognosis is grim indeed. It happens all the time, though. You are floating along in an environment where your every need is attended to. Then suddenly, you are forced into a narrow, constricting place at some discomfort. Suddenly, you are thrust unwilling into a cold place full of strange lights and noises. You open your tiny mouth and register your disapproval, but the strange cold world is a much larger and far more exciting place than the place you just left. Narrow is the gate and straight is the way that leads to life.
We will learn to love each other or we will perish.
@Ordinis
Glad you came too. We need more guys willing to at least try something.
“and could have used tools of higher quality if they had bothered to look.”
I’ll get right on that with the chocolate and flowers and diamond earrings. DERP.
As I posted last year lzozozlzlozl:
http://greatbooksformen.wordpress.com/2012/07/29/as-time-goes-on-men-will-find-a-rebirth-and-renaissance-in-reading-the-great-books-and-classics-lzozozozzlo/
As time goes on, men will find a rebirth and renaissance in reading the Great Books and Classics lzozozozzlo
As time goes on, men will find a rebirth and renaissance in reading the Great Books and Classics in their original languages, or in translations penned before 1950. For the bible I recommend the KJVB, or, if you must, the NKJVB. The Judeo-Christian tradition contains man’s greatest assets–his greatest myths–the very souls and spirits of his exalted fathers–their trials and tribulations–their exalted advice on women, marriage, justice, money, and life. Beside your bible, keep a copy of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey and Socrates’ Apology, for you will find that they have far more in common than not.
The Bible begins with Moses’ heroic, physical journey–liberating his people from the corrupt King. On the first page of the Iliad, Achilles rebels against his corrupt King. Both Moses and Achilles appeared to exalted Natural Law–of Zeus and Yahweh–and tough Mill and Locke would expound upon Natural Rights millennia later, Jefferson referenced not Mill and Locke, but our Creator in the Declaration of Independence. Indeed–liberty’s poet Thomas Jefferson wrote, “As we advance in life, they all fall off, one by one, until we are left with Virgil and Homer, and perhaps Homer alone.”
So fellas, go forth and read Shakespeare and the Bible as the Men that You Are. Read Homer and Virgil. Exalt in your classical, Judeo-Christain Heritage, for it was paid for in blood, sweat, and tears, and then given freely, to you.
And as Dalrock points out in the above video, understand that you will be attacked–often to the degree that you serve the spirit of Socrates and Jesus who internalized the external voyages of Moses and Achilles and blazed the hero’s journey of the spirit–understand that you will be attacked and persecuted by the false prophets, pedants, scribes, and pharisees–by the state officials who wash their hands while the feminist scribes author your crucifixion.
And remember, that even Jesus lost faith at the end. After the chief scribes and pharisees persuaded the people to free the murderous sinner Barabbas and leave Jesus to die, in the same way they do today, Jesus asked, “My God, My God, why has thou foresaken me?”
One can easily imagine the following playing out in our own time, with the controlling feminist’s/woman’s/corporation’s/university’s/mob’s preference for the perverse and sinful–for the debauched and degraded:
27:20 But the chief priests and elders persuaded the multitude that they should ask Barabbas (the murderer/buttcocker), and destroy Jesus.
27:21 The governor answered and said unto them, Whether of the twain will ye that I release unto you? They said, Barabbas.
27:22 Pilate saith unto them, What shall I do then with Jesus which is called Christ? They all say unto him, Let him be crucified.
27:23 And the governor said, Why, what evil hath he done? But they cried out the more, saying, Let him be crucified.
27:24 When Pilate saw that he could prevail nothing, but that rather a tumult was made, he took water, and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, I am innocent of the blood of this just person: see ye to it.
27:25 Then answered all the people, and said, His blood be on us, and on our children.
27:26 Then released he Barabbas unto them: and when he had scourged Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified.
27:27 Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the common hall, and gathered unto him the whole band of soldiers.
27:28 And they stripped him, and put on him a scarlet robe.
27:29 And when they had platted a crown of thorns, they put it upon his head, and a reed in his right hand: and they bowed the knee before him, and mocked him, saying, Hail, King of the Jews!
27:30 And they spit upon him, and took the reed, and smote him on the head.
27:31 And after that they had mocked him, they took the robe off from him, and put his own raiment on him, and led him away to crucify him.
27:32 And as they came out, they found a man of Cyrene, Simon by name: him they compelled to bear his cross.
27:33 And when they were come unto a place called Golgotha, that is to say, a place of a skull,
27:34 They gave him vinegar to drink mingled with gall: and when he had tasted thereof, he would not drink.
27:35 And they crucified him, and parted his garments, casting lots: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, They parted my garments among them, and upon my vesture did they cast lots.
27:36 And sitting down they watched him there;
27:37 And set up over his head his accusation written, THIS IS JESUS THE KING OF THE JEWS.
27:38 Then were there two thieves crucified with him, one on the right hand, and another on the left.
27:39 And they that passed by reviled him, wagging their heads,
27:40 And saying, Thou that destroyest the temple, and buildest it in three days, save thyself. If thou be the Son of God, come down from the cross.
27:41 Likewise also the chief priests mocking him, with the scribes and elders, said,
27:42 He saved others; himself he cannot save. If he be the King of Israel, let him now come down from the cross, and we will believe him.
27:43 He trusted in God; let him deliver him now, if he will have him: for he said, I am the Son of God.
27:44 The thieves also, which were crucified with him, cast the same in his teeth.
27:45 Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land unto the ninth hour.
27:46 And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
Now think about that. Jesus Christ–the man who has single-handedly influenced and exalted Western Civilization and the World as no other, lost faith in God in his final moments.
Aye, but let us explore one layer deeper, as we realize that “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” is but the beginning of the famous Psalm 22:1:
22 My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring?
We don’t hear the rest, as Jesus has passed through the other side, but yet, we know what Jesus is saying, as we continue on in Psalm 23:
23 The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
2 He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.
3 He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.
4 Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
What this means Men, is that as long as you hold true to your ideals, the false prophets and apologists have no power over you, neither in life, nor death. For as Jesus, the King of Ideals stated, “My Kingdom is not of this world.”
Thanks again to Dalrock and Heartiste for bringing those classical, exalted ideals to life with with and humor, day in and day out.
“Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.” -Herman Melvill
While I can appreciate what Ras Al Ghul is saying, the issue is as “empathologism” points out. We live in a world where technology has not changed human nature but has changed how we approach it. Further, we’ve been taught to “look away” from the obvious issues that is presented to us on a daily basis.
We live in a world where some of the basic, and straight forward, Christian doctrine is rationalized away. Even growing up in a much more theologically conservative tradition, I still got a massive dose of that type of thinking. The Proles will always know they’re at war with Eastasia. You won’t fully register the issues so long as the “authority” is up there telling you X and is reinforced by everyone you talk to. Thus is the nature of groupthink, and the power it holds on all of us.
So, while I appreciate the old works (and many of them are very, very good), they can’t be prescriptive in the way we would like them to be. Insights into nature are great, but how does that deal with a woman that’s a Facebook Attention junky? You can’t isolate people out from the “World” very easily these days, massively limiting a lot of the practical application of the old insights. Thus, what we will produce is New Applications of Old Insights.
Plato’s Symposium and his insight into the nature of love were an inspiration for more than a few of my post.
That’s said, I’m fairly certain Socrates never got a same night lay from an HB 9 he met at a club in South Beach.
We have an uneducated population. Please dispute that. And pointing that bunch to truths written in the contexts mentioned is folly. Unless the desired effort is so basic and fundamental as to start with babies and redo literally everything,
I don’t dispute that for one single second. I posted the books in the context simply because those contexts would be of the most interest to those here, but it’s not the ideal way to approach any of these books. Ideally, they would be approached as a whole, from a rather young age with many truths taken from them. As you said, going back to the very basics and starting with babies. We can’t do that without learning them ourselves. To start actually educating our population on how to think would be a stellar way to some kind of an awakening. It would be fought tooth and nail. The way our education system is set up it is built to pump out non-thinkers who will stay in line, who will work in a gray cubicle day in and day out, vote for the guy with the good hair and winning smile and never, not ever, question “Could there be something more or different that this?” To have a population that will begin to question, seriously question, is a very dangerous thing to those in power today. But one cannot learn to question until one learns to think, to actually realize there are lots of questions to be asked. That is what the compilation of these books was designed to do.
Isn’t questioning everything a huge part of the what the Men of these parts has learned to do? I think that there is so much more to learn and learning to really think is at the very heart of it.
I was hoping GBFM would show up to this conversation. Nice to see you here!
@TFH –
I see that you did. I don’t know why I thought Warren Farrell coined that phrase. I see now that “Misandry Bubble” serves as a handy shorthand term for his whole opera
In a sense, both sodium and chlorine have to die to themselves as sodium and chlorine to become salt, and the fault of a cancer is that it refuses to die to itself as a cell in order to become, say, Mule or Dalrock.
We will learn to love each other or we will perish.
Indeed. I think Dalrock has been pointing out for a long time that the chlorine women have for a long time now been refusing to die to themselves. Instead of wanting to bond hard to sodium, Chlorine now fancies itself an inert gas, not needing to bond to anything, poisoning what it touches and altering its environment where it goes. Sodium men, not being able to bond to any chlorine atoms in the vicinity, remain as they are when unbonded: unattached, volatile, unstable and explosive.
Merely observing this to be the case isn’t hateful or destructive, I think.
There are few places exhorting men and women to learn to love each other than this one. The love goes both ways, however — or at least it should.
That’s the crux of it. Comments on a lot of sites are simply us intellectually whipping it out and seeing whose is bigger but, as a bloc/group effecting change, we’re ineffective as hell. Frustratingly, we’re less effective than most feminists even were back in the 70s. There’s a big difference between being right and being strategically effective.
Because it doesn’t work that way for us — we will not have anything like the feminist movement because men do not join together as a group — that is, as men in total — like women tend to do. We compete with each other — you can see that in any discussion among men, even here on the internet. It’s a constant jockeying — my c*ck is bigger than yours, my brain is bigger than yours, my ideas are bigger and better than yours, my GF is hotter than yours, my Game is better than yours and so on. We are in a constant state of status jockeying amongst each other. Men cooperate with other men *against* other groups of men — not together with all men as a whole. That will never happen. That is why a strategy to be a kind of male counterpart to feminism in strategic effectiveness, in terms of political changes and pressure groups and so on, is, while understandable, quite ill-suited to the task. We wil simply never get a critical mass of men to agree to bind themselves together politically in the interests of men as a class.
So where does that leave us? It leaves us with individual choices and individual change in our own lives, however we wish to do that. I have long (for years now) seen the manosphere as a clearinghouse rather than a movement. It is a clearinghouse of ideas, strategies, approaches, tactics, and the like, that any individual man can pick and choose from in a way that makes sense for his own life and his own goals. It is a set of alternative coping mechanisms and approaches to adaptive living, some of which contradict each other (which is ok) — and it’s up to the individual guy to make the changes he wants to in his own life to get what he wants from his life, whether that involves women or not. This is a strength, not a weakness, because it plays to the strengths of men, which are, in our better moments, based largely on individual initiative and discipline, rather than trying to play on a complete weakness, as would be the case if we were to try to get a majority of men to band together politically about issues impacting men as a class.
In short, we can’t do things the way that the feminists did, because men don’t behave like women do when it comes to members of their own sex — women are basically an “in-group” of their own, whereas men are anything but.
==================
As for the OP, I read it when he posted it over there, and considered it to be arrogant, condescending trash, really. Look, I’ve read the Great Books, I read them in college mostly either as part of various requirements or as a part of my own major. It’s true that there is truth in them, but it isn’t realistic in this culture to use them as a primary pedagogical tool for the kinds of issues that are discussed here. It just isn’t practical in terms of the time it takes, and the people who would be excluded by keeping the discussion on that intellectual plane. Restating the same basic truths in a contemporary idiom isn’t the same as dumbing them down — it is making them accessible, which is necessary if they are to be useful for most people.
Isn’t questioning everything a huge part of the what the Men of these parts has learned to do? I think that there is so much more to learn and learning to really think is at the very heart of it.
Yes, but right now I personally am more concerned with the 30-40 year old guy who is rererererererererererere-doubling down his efforts to pander to his wife because the church is telling him to, while we know the road to divorce hell is paved with circles rubbed on backs.
It may be the height of altruism to seek to educate the babies, good points and good observations, but its not a Christian sphere button issue nor is it a prescription for the sphere that has much efficacy.
Brendan….yes
lzozozlzlzlozlz
do you not realize why the federal reserve had to deconstruct the great books and classics?
it is because they get in the way of the CODES OF HONOR by which the average, honorable man–the risk taker–gets to own his reward.
think about it.
as fiat inflation degraded “THOU SHALT NOT STEAL,” their tucker max rhemeys with goldman sax butthextual fifty shades of gray lit degraed “Thou ashalt not covet (butthtext) thy nieghbor’s wife,” and thou shalt not commit adultery.” today woemn are buttehtxed and converted into mere vehicles of welath and aset transferz as tehir ased s are ebenrnakififkeid tucker maxed rhyeems with gdodlam saxed in secrteev taping s of butthext, in the same way the fed has sectrieve mettings to debase the currency zllzzozo
lzozlzlzozllzlzolzo
http://greatbooksformen.wordpress.com/2010/06/07/how-da-university-works-feminism-debt-debauchery-divorce-desecration-machinearmy-lzozlzlzlzlzl/
lzozlzlzlzlzlzlzlzlzlzozllzlz
univeristies are at the tip (tit lzozlzlzoz) of our debt empire
over the past thirty years or so univeristies desouled women in prima noctae assocking sessins (some of tehm secretly taped iwthout thei girls conthent as the neocons like it best) and they sent the army forth to 1) transfer assetts form menz, 2) destory the family, 3) murder 50,000,000 unborn innocent souls, 4) hype and sell sub prime loans while wearing short skirts lzozlzlzlzllzlzlz 5) lure men into marriage iwth their coconpirators the ministers who front the legal system that does what no pimp would wever do–charge men for past use of a pussy lzolsoslslslslslslslslsls
the fembot army;s main corporate state job is to create debt debauchery destiutution debt divorce deconstruction and devastation lzozlzlzlz
and they have succeeded!! lzozlzlzlzlzlzl
today our debt deficit will be greater than the gnp!!!!1
the feminsimt movement cooinnded with the largest greatest increase of debt ever known to namankinds lzozlzlzlzl this is because womenz who stamp their little feet and bitch and complain and tranfer and destory welath and say “me me m em e more material welath for me me me me for my gina!!!! it’s for the children (even though women aborted/killed/vacuumed 50,000,000 fetuss by their choice alone) lzozlzlz it takes a village–fund my village where we get to bang alphas and the betas pay for it whether we cuckold them in tehir homes or via the welfare state zlozlzozlzzlzl” and they bitch and complain and talk about handbags and butthex and twilight vampires and enocurage girls to long for and lust after undead bloodsucking vampire twilight monsters and butthexing douchebags and otehr things which make their bginas tingle repalced menz at univeristies menz who built invent iengineer buuikld invent reason truth write great books read great bookz think lzozlzl eb=engineer lzozlzlzozlzl replaced exaltation eand greatness with bdebt debuachery destitution lzozlz
short beta men rose fast in teh unievristy as they were handed fiat bernanke cash fronm helicopter ben and they used it to surrpound themselves with syocphantic harems of womenze as all teh betas love honor worship tucker max their ultimate master because he rhymes with goldman sax and also he butthexes girls and films it woithout teh girlths ocnthent and the weekly stanadrd neocns repeat his lies lzozlzlzlzzl that he is six foot tall zlozzlzllzlzlzlzl honoring their #1 butthexual hero lzozlzlzl
so anyeways teh fiat masters trianed owmen in the arts of divorce debuachery deseefxation destruction lozlzolzlzlz and abortion and debt creation, and as womenze rose to power on teh ffront lines of the epreemptive wars against teh unborn they murdered 50,000,000 since rose vs. wade they deconstructed and debuached tehc ulture on campuses as when yhou put womenze in charge it soons becomes all butthex all the time as priscilia paintion woemnze editor in chief of simon and schuster is publishing tucker max’s next book zlzolslssslslsoslsoslzozlzlzlzlz c hecks che-=checks it out peoples are saying and speaking out about the way womenze are debucahing defiling and butthexing the culture lozlzlzlzlzl:
Unlike Thomas Jefferson some pople think thy are better than Homer, Moses, Jesus, and Socrates, whnce they write “As for the OP, I read it when he posted it over there, and considered it to be arrogant, condescending trash, really. Look, I’ve read the Great Books, I read them in college mostly either as part of various requirements or as a part of my own major. It’s true that there is truth in them, but it isn’t realistic in this culture to use them as a primary pedagogical tool for the kinds of issues that are discussed here. It just isn’t practical in terms of the time it takes, and the people who would be excluded by keeping the discussion on that intellectual plane. Restating the same basic truths in a contemporary idiom isn’t the same as dumbing them down — it is making them accessible, which is necessary if they are to be useful for most people.” lzozolllzlzlzozlzlzlzozo
Why dost ye hate the great bookz for menz?
lzozolzlzloz
Anyone remember the Moonlighting episode which was the show’s take on The Taming of the Shrew? I haven’t seen the episode since it originally aired, but I don’t remember it being close to “Game,” just Bruce Willis being nice to Cybill Shepherd. Could be wrong, though.
@empath
“Yes, but right now I personally am more concerned with the 30-40 year old guy who is rererererererererererere-doubling down his efforts to pander to his wife because the church is telling him to ”
How widespread is this?
When I was an evangelical I was exposed to the pestilent Every Man’s Battle ideology, but it never gained any traction with me. The doctrine is too Pelagian by several degrees and is almost certainly a prescription for marital misery. I had a couple of “Men’s Ministry” types try to get me involved in an ‘accountability group’, but I dropped out because the strength or weakness of my marriage was really none of their business.
As an Orthodox Christian, I now take such matters to my confessor, who tells me not to mention a thing to my wife.
empath,
That is exactly why we need both. We need both what the manosphere teaches and The Great Books. Mr. EverStable needs to learn to game the sh*t out of his wife. Then he needs to teach his sons about masculinity and women while he needs to teach his girls about submission, femininity (heh, my spellchecker kept changing that word to felinity. Coincidence?) and how to take care of a man. Both sexes need to learn to think. It’s not all or nothing. It’s a combination of all of the very best sources.
pb: Sure do remember that episode. In fact Willis as Petruchio was running solid aloof I-don’t-give-a-sh!t and I-won’t-put-up-with-your-sh!t game on Shepherd’s Kate.
The whole series was Willis running nonstop cocky-funny Game. Willis essentially played a smart-ass version of himself.
@Brendan
I agree with what you’ve written.
I’ve thought lately about Moses, the Exodus and why (depending on your religious POV) he didn’t try to stay in Egypt and change it. Instead he chose to go across the sea, close enough to be an annoyance yet far enough to be a separate community. I believe he knew that having an enemy so near allowed them to maintain and enforce traditional gender integrity. A people under attack need their men psychologically intact and it seems to me that ease, prosperity, and no enemies, creates a social gender reversal.
@Deti
Glad Willis got a mention because I just saw the new Die Hard trailer: no sign there of the sort of Feminist influence at all.
I must also say, that when Moonlighting was new, I said to myself that Willis had Movie Star written all over him. Just oozed it, so I am glad I was right – always fancies that Demi Moore.
Ah ok Deti, I’ll have to see if I can rewatch that episode somehow.
@Brendan –
Oh, I dunno.
I think men are very capable of bonding together to accomplish common goals, but the hitch is, we only do this well when women are excluded, and we are allowed to exclude (or represent) their concerns. That is when you see the true male genius emerge. Hierarchies are forged, usually based on merit or something approaching it, and then all the men unite for the task.
Including women throws this whole delicately balanced machinery off.
My question:
I’ve observed before that traditional conservatives tend to write like women, in more ways than one. The rhetorical question, “Why is that?” continues to go unanswered. I wonder why?
Stingray:
I’ll take a stab at this. Women are masters of rhetoric. We can, over time, make people feel what we want them to.
Not all people. Only those people who care what women have to say are so influenced. When someone no longer cares what women as a group, or as individuals, have to say, then that person is no longer affected. This is one of the lessons of the androsphere, and IMO it is one reason why so many women and white knights fear, and lash out, in various ways.
Sadly, people no longer know how to see through this. It feels good so it must be true.
Heh. The pretty lies…
This is one of the biggest reasons I am such a fan of the Great Books. They teach you how to think.
I am a fan of the Great Books series, as noted above some of my relatives were active participants in book groups off and on for years.
Teach one to think? I do not agree. I no longer believe that anyone can be taught how to think. What does work is some version of the Socratic method, where by answering questions, the student comes to learn how to think. The best that can be done is creating conditions where thinking is encouraged. People can be taught certain cook-book methods of problem solving, but that is not really “thinking” any more than following a recipe by rote makes one a chef. This is a subtle difference but a crucial one.
If approached correctly, they can teach you how to look at an argument and break it down, discover its essence and break it apart. It has nothing to do with feeling and, as evidence of the truths presented here, can feel quite wrong. But one then has the ability to see they are wrong, regardless of how uncomfortable they are.
I will agree with this. I will go further, and state that the majority of men and women may not be disposed to read these works, but that is no reason why more people should not try. However, it doesn’t address the original question. I understand why women – even traditional, conservative women with college degrees – tend to write and speak like women. Game informs me that even the most intellectual, even nerdy, pre-med or accountant or computer scientist woman who really can think through logic puzzles is still a woman, with the female limbic system, monthly variations in estrogen, and so forth. Even women with PhD’s will start twirling the ends of their hair, in the right setting.
But this does not explain why traditional, conservative men – many of whom pride themselves on their masculinity, and even their patriarchal family structure, so often write or even speak in elliptical, feminine, passive-aggressive, “guess what I’m thinking” style. More than once I have read text from some traditional political or other site, “hearing” the voice of a middle aged woman, only to find at the end that I was actually reading the text of a man. An aging boomer, or an X’r, or even a millennial, but someone with a Y chromosome. It is very odd.
Is there great need for learning how to Game women? Yes, of course. But if we teach our children the Truth and how to discover it from day one, that will no longer be a need.
Stingray, that last statement is just nonsense. No matter how much we teach children and young people, estrogen does different things to the body and the brain than testosterone. There will always, always be a need for men to know the true nature of women. To assume otherwise, one has to take the blank-slate theory as a premise, and if there is any notion from the glorious thinkers of the past 250 years that has proven to be utter bunkum, it is the blank-slate theory. Rousseau and his followers were and are not only wrong, but absolutely wrong. The blank-slate theory is one of the fundamental premises of feminism, it is where the insane notion of “gender as a social construct” comes from. We can see that playing out even now in Sweden, where December’s catalogs were carefully patrolled by feminists in order to make them as gender-neutral as possible. I have to wonder if the Swedish birth rate won’t fall even lower than that of Japan in the next generation…
The Great Books of the Western World are from the Encyclopedia Britannica but it is through the faculties from The University of Chicago.
That’s the curriculum I was seeing as a child. There was also an older “course”, the Harvard Classics a.k.a. the “Harvard 5 foot shelf of books”. Reading through that was purported to be a classical education in the humanities / liberal arts. I’ve seen some sets over the years, it was intimidating to look at as an adolescent – “that’s a lot of big books!”. The Great Books series does a good job of breaking big rocks into smaller ones that are easier to handle and master.
A couple of questions:
1. Does Game include any knowledge of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP)? It seems they would complement each other.
2. Are there any good books on Game? Amazon links would be ideal.
Opus says:
January 9, 2013 at 9:19 am
@b-166-er
I am shocked to learn that ‘Black guys’ – and I wasn’t previously aware that race was a bar to reading – have not read Homer et al, but I wonder if their alleged reputation for Game is not dare I say it, a little racist and largely exagerrated?
————————————————————————-
Opus,
here is why the black game reputation is not racists or exagerated and I can sum it up in one word:
necessity.
Im a black male and Im here to tell you ni88as don’t have time to find all the hidden meanings about “game” in the stuff we study for the SAT.
Chaucer, Shakespear, Homer… We just want to pass the test; and thats hard enough for us.
Im in my 40s, I see the hell and the blame white males are catching for everything they had nothing to do with; and I don’t like it. Because I know if they can do it to white males, they can do it to me!
Game is a compensatory behavioral system. A system of thought, speech and action to make up for whats missing.
You can rock the “Great books for men” all you want; but I predict more white males are gonna adopt game to compensate for a society and a culture that tries to treat them like a bitch.
How do I know?
Because its what happened to black guys and its whats happening to white guys RIGHT NOW.
I don’t know if you guys have a functional definition of “game”, so I will present mine for consideration.
Game = The totality of everything I think, say and do to guarantee I am not abused for trying to be a good man.
Does anyone have a better one I can use?
Ordinis:
1. The Game, Neil Strauss (mostly about pickup and PUA)
2. How to get the women you desire into bed, Ross Jeffries (also pickup and PUA, relies on NLP)
3. Married Man Sex Life Primer 2011 (and 2012), Athol Kay (see his site marriedmansexlife.com)
4. Ian Ironwood is coming out with a book soon, Don’t know the title. Check his site at theredpillroom.blogspot.com
You should read heavily at the old Roissy/Chateau/Heartiste site, heartiste.com. The writing is brilliant. It contains many of the theoretical underpinnings of Game.
@Matthew King (King A)
Yes, I was dismissing the dismissal. This is basic social skills but when you approach a group as if you are above them, especially if you haven’t convinced them that you really are above them (and you certainly haven’t), they tend to react negatively. Likewise, for those few who didn’t see my response coming 100 miles away, when you take an “I’m above the rest of you” attitude on a post where I’m calling out this very attitude, I’m going to call you out on it too.
Of course men band together to accomplish common goals — I said as much in my post. However, it’s pretty much never as *men*, and on behalf of *all* men — it’s on behalf of a group of like-minded men over and against other men who are differently-minded. This is the difference.
Stingray, that last statement is just nonsense. No matter how much we teach children and young people, estrogen does different things to the body and the brain than testosterone. There will always, always be a need for men to know the true nature of women. To assume otherwise, one has to take the blank-slate theory as a premise, and if there is any notion from the glorious thinkers of the past 250 years that has proven to be utter bunkum, it is the blank-slate theory.
I’m not talking blank slate. I didn’t write what I was thinking very clearly. The Truth I was talking about is the very nature of men and women (the estrogen and testosterone you are talking about) and how they optimally interact with each other. Plus, so many of the other truths that are lacking today. One wouldn’t need what we today refer to as learning Game, because it wouldn’t be taught against in an effort to confuse. Think of how it would be if men were taught the essence of game from toddlerhood? There would be no Game per se only because it would be innate much like the blue pill has become today (innate is a poor word as it’s not really innate from birth but has become a rather innate part of men as they age, same with what woman have been taught). Basically, I mean there would be no term for it, much like there wasn’t 50, 80. 100 years ago. It was masculinity. Game would still be taught and used, but not inked out as it has been today. Our society today has created this need for Game to be inked out to counteract where we find ourselves. It’s very important. But if we started to teach our children this Truth it would just be, again (I hope this makes sense?)
Not all people.
No. Of course not. I was speaking generally. 😉
Teach one to think? I do not agree.
Ok. I won’t argue this. It won’t teach everyone to think, but as you said, they would be an excellent boost for many people in at least the right direction. Some people will get a great deal out of them, some not as much. I think they will get far more from them than from any classroom today.
But this does not explain why traditional, conservative men – many of whom pride themselves on their masculinity, and even their patriarchal family structure, so often write or even speak in elliptical, feminine, passive-aggressive, “guess what I’m thinking” style.
I should not be posting with my kids upset behind me. I get distracted. What I meant to add above is that I think many of these men learned this from the women in their lives. These women make their men feel what they want them to. Even many traditionally conservative women teach that woman are the basis of morality, etc that we see so often discussed. These men believe their mothers/sisters/wives are authorities and then learn to emulate them.
Men are taught that to communicate like women is the epitome of enlightenment. This is especially true in the church. Why is it a surprise?
Stingray, let me point out that mine was never an either/or posit. You found subtext where none existed, which, may i add, is a feminine if not feline tendency.
A couple of add ons to my above comment. Regarding the GB not teaching people to think, I do think they can teach some people very well, but as you said, not all.
Also, as to the Truth I was speaking of, the Truth is that blank slate itself is pure bunk. Men have a nature as do women. A nature that has not changed since recorded history. This needs to be taught as well as how to best relate to one another as men and women.
Stingray, let me point out that mine was never an either/or posit. You found subtext where none existed, which, may i add, is a feminine if not feline tendency.
Fair enough.
@tfh –
“You are missing about 90% of it.
What about educating men about the law? Isn’t that valuable? How on earth could you miss the invaluable work the Androsphere has done in exposing how shockingly unfair the laws are to men.”
I thought that the “unfairness” of the laws was well known and had been for sometime. Like the old song goes, “Its Cheaper to Keep Her”. It seems that there are a lot more people talking about unfair laws than there are people being treated unfairly in their divorces. Those laws are great if you are a woman with an upper middle class or better husband as a provider, who is capable of earning enough money to support yourself well. Then you can divorce, get child support, alimony and a job (if necessary) and end up living as about as well as you were before with no annoying husband to deal with. Remarriage to another good provider and you are even better off financially because there are now two men supporting your household. The upper middle class rarely divorces despite this, which is why I don’t buy the “women divorce for cash and prizes” argument. The women who would collect the most cash and prizes are least likely to divorce.
If you are the average woman married to the average man then divorce will leave you both broke and benefit neither of you. Chances are both husband and wife are working and both of your incomes are needed to support the family. When the same income has to support two households you’ll both suffer. At this point you can hold the suffering Olympics and argue about who wins gold, but the entire family will medal. A lot of poor women divorce, if they bother to marry at all, because there is little to no benefit to being a poor man’s wife.
“… The androsphere is. . . the very first awakening in the process of correcting this now obsolete misallocation of resources…”
Spoken like a true Austrian! I look forward to the exposure of truth, but add that the (sexual) market can stay irrational, much, much longer than you or i can stay solvent…
As such, i’m not counting on the misandry bubble popping anytime soon. There’s probably a final blow-off (so to speak) to come (double entendres unintended).
Back in Ye Olden Days when game was called seduction or ‘sarging,’ Ross Jeffries was sort of the Roissy of the day, and most of the conversation took place on the Usenet group alt.seduction.fast, NLP was one of the main topics. The focus was mostly on techniques, how to meet a woman and escalate the encounter as far as possible — to getting a phone number or getting her into bed, whatever. So NLP was commonly discussed as a tool to build rapport and subliminally put thoughts in her mind. (By the way, Kevin Nealon had some fun with the concept on SNL. He’d talk to a hot woman and occasionally drop phrases like ‘hot sex’ into inappropriate places. Of course, the joke was that they never noticed and it worked great.)
But game has evolved since then, and NLP has receeded for a couple of reasons, it seems to me. One is that the “players” who are looking for the quick lay have found techniques that are much easier than NLP, which isn’t a simple thing to learn to use effectively. Something like “cocky & funny” is a lot easier to do, doesn’t require that you calibrate to the woman so much, and may get you equally good results. Techniques like negs and venue changes are very powerful for the small effort they require.
The second reason is that game has moved into the marriage/LTR sphere where NLP, like other at-the-point-of-contact techniques, isn’t that applicable. You can’t use NLP on your wife all day every day (or if you did, it’d be exhausting). So this long-term game focuses a lot more on the man making internal changes to himself that make him more attractive to women even when he’s not actively trying to pull them. Short-term techniques just aren’t useful there.
I could see NLP still being useful as one tool in the box, but it’s one that takes a lot of practice to handle well; so unless you’ve already learned it for some other reason (you’re a shrink), it’s probably not one of the first ones you should try to master.
I thought that the “unfairness” of the laws was well known and had been for sometime. Like the old song goes, “Its Cheaper to Keep Her”. It seems that there are a lot more people talking about unfair laws than there are people being treated unfairly in their divorces. Those laws are great if you are a woman with an upper middle class or better husband as a provider, who is capable of earning enough money to support yourself well. Then you can divorce, get child support, alimony and a job (if necessary) and end up living as about as well as you were before with no annoying husband to deal with. Remarriage to another good provider and you are even better off financially because there are now two men supporting your household. The upper middle class rarely divorces despite this, which is why I don’t buy the “women divorce for cash and prizes” argument. The women who would collect the most cash and prizes are least likely to divorce.
If you are the average woman married to the average man then divorce will leave you both broke and benefit neither of you. Chances are both husband and wife are working and both of your incomes are needed to support the family. When the same income has to support two households you’ll both suffer. At this point you can hold the suffering Olympics and argue about who wins gold, but the entire family will medal. A lot of poor women divorce, if they bother to marry at all, because there is little to no benefit to being a poor man’s wife.
The “cash and prizes” come from the way custody generally works, which means child support. In your example of non-UMC “both worse off” case, the man still generally lacks physical custody, which means he pays the ex-wife a flat tax on his income as child support. That means that if they both earn the same, the wife gets more money of what they both earn, and the husband gets less of what he earns. If physical custody were more balanced, that would less often be the case — and it is the case in reverse in the rare instances where the husband gets full custody and the wife earns as much or more than he does –> the law today is basically that whomever gets physical custody of the kids gets a financial annuity paid to them for which they are not accountable and which is paid until 21 in most states regardless of whether said kid(s) are even living with the payee. The following study is insightful (http://aler.oxfordjournals.org/content/2/1/126.abstract) — it isn’t just the manosphere that has anecdotally noticed that women are incented to initiate divorce because they get the kids. We’re just the ones pointing out that there is a financial incentive as well that is tied to the overwhelming award of physical custody to women.
If you want to cut down on unfairness in divorce (and lower divorce rates in general) make shared custody the norm.
@brendan – I don’t think it makes sense to change the way that custody is awarded just because of the tax laws. Do these men even want custody? Are they interested in being the full time caretakers of their children 26 weeks out of the year or however it would be divided? If they are capable and willing and it makes sense for the children in question then by all means, shared custody. If this isn’t the case then they have my sympathy, but the tax code isn’t fair to most of us, and what up you’ve described is the least of it.
I agree with Brendan regarding the concept of the manosphere as a clearing house of ideas and concepts that men can use to live the life they choose in the modern world. Similar concepts may well be contained in the Great Books but the true value of the manosphere when compared to Great Books is it’s practicality. The analysis being undertaken and the theories being suggested and debated in the manosphere are worthy and fascinating. But I suspect most men arrive at the manosphere seeking understanding, and more importantly real world solutions for their problems. Game / Manosphere analysis is providing the toolset for them to do that – but on an individual level, unique to each man. As I have said before, this is an incredible strength, because men are acting as rational individuals, not as a movement. So there is not a figurehead or central target for feminism to attack. Just millions of men doing what men always do; survey their environment, understand it and behaving rationally on it.
But the effects on society will be as powerful (maybe more so) as if men were formally acting in unison. For all the ways men are reacting have one thing in common. They are defining their path in life with less and less reference to what women want, and increasingly (willingly or not) without a women at all.
As Mikediver5 alludes to above, this is particularly true amongst young men. My son is 19 and this seems to be the default attitude amongst him and his male peers. Feminism is being killed not by mass demonstrations and appeals to government, but by a million male voices simply saying; ‘No’.
If you want to cut down on unfairness in divorce (and lower divorce rates in general) make shared custody the norm.
I would say the goal here at Dalrocks would be to cut down on divorce, fair or not.
Shared custody just means making the State the Father, while Mom and Dad become nothing more than warring siblings fighting for their Father’s favors, and the children are still nothing more than pawns in the perpetual struggle.
T – ” I don’t think it makes sense to change the way that custody is awarded just because of the tax laws.”
By this, I would assume that you are referring to the mechanisms which, as now applied, serve to further disadvantage the non-custodial parent (typically the father) in favor of applied advantages which accrue to the custodial parent (typically the mother)?
Are you arguing for sticking with a system that taxes a man’s earnings before he must pay a significant portion of the remainder to his ex-wife in the hope that she will use at least part of that wealth transfer for the care and provision of the child(ren) – who may, or may not be his biological off-spring? Or are you just concerned that true joint-custody would interfere with the custodial parent’s (meaning, the mothers) to claim the dependent tax credit for themselves?
Okay, I admit it. I’m just being snarky. But…I am wondering, do you actually have some information to share as to the effects of joint-custody on tax issues, or was that just a smoke screen?
Oops! in my snarky haste, I forgot to add the “pot sweetener” regarding the fact that the already-taxed wealth transfer to the custodial parent (mother) is not included in her taxable income.
If you think about it, the gross unfairness of how non-custodial parents get screwed over via the tax system is one of the more compelling argument FOR going to joint-custody – at least from the male/MRA perspective.
T:
You didn’t read Brendan’s response. Child support is a flat amount paid from the noncustodial parent to the parent with primary residential custody. That’s why he called it a “flat tax”. It’s not a “tax” per se, but it is an amount deducted from the paying/garnished parent’s paycheck.
It has nothing to do with income or other kinds of taxes, or tax laws. It has to do with the unfairness of the wealth transfer and the incentivization of divorce for women because they know custody will be theirs for the asking. And with residential custody comes the income stream.
Fathers often are deprived of custody not because they are unwilling, but because they usually have demanding, time consuming jobs and therefore are deemed “incapable” of being full time caretakers for children. Add to this the recent “research” which suggests mothers are more caring and nurturing, and custody defaults to the mother at least 80% of the time.
@ deti – you’re right I skimmed it while doing something else. I was thinking about complaints I read about how the noncustodial parent pays taxes on the money and the custodial parent gets the additional income tax free.
I don’t see what’s unfair about paying child support in general. It isn’t free money, children are expensive and unless you are getting child support from a man with a really high income, the expenses of the children will probably exceed the amount of the child support payments. In the right state with a rich man it might be profitable, but for most people? There is a reason that single women with children are most likely to be poor.
I don’t see what’s unfair about paying child support in general.
Members of Team Woman never do.
It’s only the members of a Team Her Man, in which the man must pay child support to another Team Woman member, do they begin to see the unfairness the system perpetuates.
T – “the expenses of the children will probably exceed the amount of the child support payments.”
As well they should. Try to remember that the child in question is also the mothers child/financial responsibility. Child support should not cover 100% of the costs of care and feeding of the child. If both parents make the same amount, they should be contributing equally to the child related expenses.
Joint-custody is the perfect solution to this. If each parent has the child in their home and care half the time, they will, largely by default, both provide half of the living and feeding costs, with no court-ordered transfer (which, by the way, WILL get skimmed by the child support apparatus) to have to worry about. And, other expenses (piano lessons, for example) will have to be negotiated – just as if the parents were still married, both actively involved in the child s life, including extra-curricular activities.
Or, is there some “tax” argument against that too?
@T
Are you married?
I find it hard to feel much sympathy for the societal breakdown that’s heading toward white America as a result of feminism gone wild. See Returnofkings.com for a recent post on where things have been and where they are heading.
When black American men suffered the same, they were maligned (just as blue pillers malign red pillers); called deadbeats and worse, and treated unjustly by the courts.
When black men attempt to join this discussion, they are ignored (on this blog and others) or insulted (on CH et al).
These are the reasons for the well-deserved terminal decline of the Republican party.
It’s not that the idea of child support is unfair, it’s that it’s calculated as a flat tax on income, regardless of “need”, it isn’t accounted for in terms of whether it is spend on the children or not, and it has a disparate impact on men because of the way custody tends to be awarded.
Look, T, the vaunted “studies” even notice that women file because they get the kids. There is a financial incentive to file. It’s true that if Mr and Mrs Poorhouse have a combined income of 40k, 20k each, they are financially better off staying together so they each can live with a 40k lifestyle. That isn’t the point. That’s the case all the way up and down the pole, income-wise. The point is that Mrs Poor, if she becomes unattracted to Mr Poor, can live without him, keep the kids and get ~15% of Mr Poor’s income ( the same percentage of income, on a percentage basis, if Mr Poor were Mr Rich, actually), so net/net she ends up 15% better off, financially, than Mr Poor is after the divorce. The stats that point out how badly women are after divorce financially generally don’t take the C/S payment into account at all. And that money is provided tax-free to the woman, but isn’t deductible for the man, and is not accounted for at all. Heck, it’s payable from 18-21 even if the kid isn’t living there any more, and it’s also paid even if there are other sources of income to pay for the kids needs. And, of course, the kid is relegated to seeing Dad very infrequently.
The system is jacked to beat the band. Even in the best case outcomes (and I am among those) the system is jacked. It hurts kids and dads and benefits women, full stop.
Here’s why child support in practice tends to be unfair:
1. The child is the mother’s financial responsibility. She should also pay her share of the support.
2. Child support is almost always a flat percentage of the payor’s income. It is not need based or determined on a case by case basis.
3. The payee need not account for how the money is spent.
4. The flat amount can often impoverish a payor (almost always a father).
5. Fathers can be imprisoned and lose professional licenses for failure to pay child support — even if they are unable (as opposed to refusing) to pay.
6. Child support is often based not on the father’s actual income, but instead on his IMPUTED income — meaning if he loses his job or takes a lower paying job, the court can determine the father is capable of earning more than he actually is earning, and therefore he should be required to pay support based on the amount the court believes he SHOULD earn.
@Slwener – I agree that two parents who earn the same amount should split the costs of raising a child equally. I suspect that custodial parents in this situation end up paying most of the costs. I also think that it is uncommon for a husband and wife to earn the same amount of money. In general one parent works more and earns more while the other parent works less and does more child care.
I think that joint custody is a great idea most of the time. More men should ask for it. There are some situations where it doesn’t make sense, but wherever practical joint custody. I don’t think that joint custody should automatically mean no child support however. If you’ve married someone who makes a lot less than you and can’t afford to cover half the costs of caring for children then you likely knew that before the decision to have children was made. You’ve basically agreed to cover more than half and are stuck until the children are grown. I don’t think that this is unfair.
T:
It’s worth pointing out that the mothers are filing and divorcing. The fact that the mothers get an automatic income stream which the children represent to the woman departing the marriage, suggest the true motivations for moms seeking custody. It’s not that mom wants the kids; she wants the MONEY that will come with the kids on their way out the door.
@T
Because you are failing entirely to have any empathy for fathers.
It has entirely escaped you why men marry and have children. They do this to lead an intact family. They don’t do it to become one half of a broken home, whether that is the half with custody or the half without. Since you can’t empathize with a man, you can’t understand why a legal structure which takes everything he wanted away based strictly on his wife’s whim and requires him to foot the bill for her doing this is profoundly unfair. It is adding insult to injury. All most women can see it as is punishment for a wrong the man must have committed, whether he committed any wrong or not. This as I have explained one of the best examples of female solipsism I’ve ever encountered.
I don’t think we’re saying women often divorce specifically for cash & prizes, as if a woman is relatively content in her marriage, but she thinks, “Dang, I like my husband well enough, but if I divorced him I’d be rich.” It’s more that a disgruntled wife who’s already considering divorce and weighing the pros and cons sees her post-divorce financial future as a much rosier prospect than she did a few decades ago. If divorce were likely to leave her living in a poorhouse or taking in laundry to survive, she’d be much more hesitant to pull the trigger.
Also, it doesn’t matter whether the cash & prizes really exist; it only matters that she perceives that they do. So studies may show that women are actually worse off after divorce, especially in the lower classes (which aren’t exactly blessed with careful decision making). But she’s not consulting studies when she’s thinking about getting divorced; she’s talking to friends and remembering the plots of movies. Hearsay and fantasy matter more than reality.
T – “I think that joint custody is a great idea most of the time.”
Well, I’m glad you agree…but, it was you who said: ” I don’t think it makes sense to change the way that custody is awarded just because of the tax laws.”
Default joint-custody represent just such a change as you previously argued against.
Perhaps you had assumed that joint-custody was the norm?
The first two commenters summed it up nicely:
“Zip seems to be ‘full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.'”
“Perhaps Mr. Istrice needs to remember that men in the past never had to climb the mountan as they were already sitting on top. It is in recent history that feminism and its inherent social effects have knocked modern men from the shoulders of those giants and from the top of the mountain.”
In addition, Zip should be the one providing a list of classics that teach game. Anyone can make such a claim. I can say that everything you need to know is in cheesy 70’s and 80s movies. Without examples, that doesn’t help anyone.
As a side note, I’d like to see you touch on the ridiculous Brent Musburger/star quarterback/hot QB girlfriend situation. He simply said “…you see that lovely lady there? She does go to Auburn, I’ll admit that, but she’s also Miss Alabama, and that’s A.J. McCarron’s girlfriend. Wow, I’m telling ya, you quarterbacks, you get all the good-looking women. What a beautiful woman! Whoa! So if you’re a youngster in Alabama, start getting the football out and throw it around the backyard with pops.” It’s hard to believe that would cause a controversy, but such is the age we’re in.
[D: Welcome John. I want to reiterate that the quote in the OP wasn’t from Zippy but is a comment made by Istrice on Zippy’s blog. Zippy had no more to do with writing the comment than I had to do with the comment you are posting now.]
@ deti – I am pretty sure that most women want their children because they want their children. Women have children even when there is no financial benefit to doing so, and even when having a child is to their financial disadvantage. Women have children with poor men, and with no men. (Sperm banks) Also in most cases there isn’t much financial benefit to a divorce even when you get child support, unless we are only talking about the UMC and better where divorce rates are low. Women divorce to get rid of unwanted husbands, but for most there is no financial benefit.
“So studies may show that women are actually worse off after divorce, especially in the lower classes.”
Because child support isn’t included in a divorced woman’s income for tax purposes. So child support is gravy, free money, a windfall. Divorced father is taxed on it and then pays it. The ex wife receives it as pure profit and need not pay any tax on it whatsoever (at least for federal purposes).
Slwener – I think that there was no default custody arrangement and that it was decided case by case. I think that’s how it should be as each situation is different. If both parents want custody and joint custody makes sense then they should have joint custody.
@T
Yes. And therefore why shouldn’t the unwanted husband be forced to pay her for the pleasure of the experience of being jettisoned from the family in this way? Your argument is that so long as she isn’t profiting “excessively” from this the process is fair. But fair requires that you consider all of those other people in the family you aren’t considering. Those little people and their pesky need for a father. And that “unwanted” adult whom she deemed to “get rid of”. I know I probably will fail to convince you, but those are real life people, with hopes and dreams of their own. If you can ever fathom this, then the profound selfishness of your thinking will gradually sink in.
Cail Corishev – ”But she’s not consulting studies when she’s thinking about getting divorced; she’s talking to friends and remembering the plots of movies.”
Yes, quite true. It’s not (always) about what she’s calculated that she’ll get, but what she thinks she can get.
But (for the record) all those studies which purport to show that women are worse-off than are men post-divorce ALL rely on looking at the differences in taxable income. As noted before, his taxable income will include the amount he must pay in child support (we really need to get back in the habit of calling it what it is, de facto alimony or “childimony”, as we routinely used to); while her taxable income will not reflect any of the childimony she receives – nor, for that matter, will it reflect any public assistance she may receive. On paper, she looks like she has less that the father. But, in the real world, that guy that looks to have it better pre-tax, pre-childimony is usually living at a lower standard than is she.
Why should I pay for things which are not mine?
Before you answer, understand that for something to be “mine,” I have to be able to have it with me and hold it and look at it and talk to it when I want to. I once bought a stereo when I was dating a woman, thinking it was “ours.” After we split up, it stayed at her place. It’s no longer mine. Likewise, it really doesn’t matter whether I helped conceive a child; if you take that child away from me and don’t let me see him, he’s no longer mine. Why should I buy shoes for a child who isn’t mine?
The answer is: because I have a biological urge to see my offspring do well, so the system takes advantage of that fact to squeeze men to support children who no longer belong to them in any real sense. If we didn’t have that urge, which also manifests as duty, we wouldn’t be in this situation because we’d be able to recognize when a child is no longer ours.
Now, if I have shared custody and get the kid half the time, then I could see paying half his expenses, but he’s half mine. But paying for the majority of his expenses when I’m only seeing him every other weekend, making him one-seventh mine at best, is just insane.
@ deti – child support is not free money. The expenses of the children offset it. Do you think that child support payments are usually so large that the mother gets more than what is reasonable to cover a child’s expenses. I’ve not seen that happen very often, even in UMC divorces. I’d be shocked if middle class women were actually coming out a head financially, and we all know that poor women aren’t going to make money off child support.
“I am pretty sure that most women want their children because they want their children.:
In a divorce situation, at least the mothers have a choice about it. Most fathers do not.
“Women divorce to get rid of unwanted husbands, but for most there is no financial benefit.”
Not so. As I said above, child support is a windfall. It’s free money. it’s not considered taxable income.
@T
You have a heart of stone. Even when it is repeatedly pointed out to you, you simply can’t consider that there are other people than the woman involved. They are merely character actors in her grand play of life.
“Also, it doesn’t matter whether the cash & prizes really exist; it only matters that she perceives that they do.” “Hearsay and fantasy matter more than reality.”
These two statements define the how the female psyche works in the majority of US women and why many of their bad choices, from divorce to feminism, were so successful in the first place. From what I see, women are easily sold on an idea if you make them feel good about themselves while you sell it OR make them feel they will be worse off without it. This is the tactic that allowed feminism and divorce to spread so quickly. It’s why Game works so easily. It’s why so much advertising of non-essentials works against them.
There is a reason Eve was the target of temptation and why Adam was to be in charge.
“Women have children even when there is no financial benefit to doing so, and even when having a child is to their financial disadvantage.”
So do men. Children are a major money-suck. They are enormously expensive. I didn’t have my two kids because I wanted to spend a neverending river of money on them every month. Nor did I have them because I wanted to work my fingers to the bone so I could earn the money to comprise that neverending river. I had them and have them because I love them, want to live with them and want the best for them. Millions upon miillions of men are not nearly so fortunate because they must pay, yet cannot even parent their children.
That you cannot see this, T, shows your profound lack of empathy.
Nice of you to admit that the man would have to ask for such a radical thing. I’ve seen a man ask for it, by the way, in a custody dispute with a woman who had recently spent time in jail for fighting and drug use. He got the usual fortnightly weekend.
If the system were at all fair, wouldn’t you think 50/50 custody would be the default, and the mother would only get more than that if the father said he didn’t want that much (or vice versa)? Yet that’s not at all the case, is it?
T – “I am pretty sure that most women want their children because they want their children.”
Hum? I notice that a significant portion of children with lower-class mothers are actually living with and being raised by grandparents. I wonder if they feel wanted? And, let’s not get in to the Casey Anthony’s of the world (’cause there’s sure a bunch of them that just kill their “wanted” children who impinge on their “lifestyles”), or those like one on not far from me who killed her two children on the eve of a custody hearing in which she feared her husband would be given partial custody.
Of course it’s free money, T. That’s exactly what it is — she pays NO TAXES ON IT AT ALL. It’s a freebie. And it comes even if she is remarried to Marty McRichie, and de facto spends the C/S on the trip to Aruba. It’s 100% unaccountable free money. It’s an absolute joke to call this “child support”. It’s ex-wife support, and is alimony by another name. Child support would be splitting expenses of the child based on income — this is NOT what the current system does. What the current system does is apply a flat tax on the non-custodial parent after the divorce, it really is that simple. And if you’re about to suggest that it is impractical to divide expenses, the current system provides for this exact thing for “extraordinary costs” like private tuition, nannies and so on. But that is ON TOP OF the “base payment”, which is in almost all states a flat percentage of the non-custodial parent’s income that is simply transferred to the custodial parent.
It is an utter waste of time to debate morality with T. She demonstrates, as many other women do, that their entire moral framework revolves around their own safety, security and comfort and any morality without those three at the core is simply immoral to them. Many are just not capable of understanding that men are human too (or their children for that matter).
How many of you remember this quote from the 80s, “A child is happy if the mother is happy”. This was the statement made in defense from the criticism of the numbers of children being raised by single-mothers. The feminist response, they simply defined a child’s happiness as being a reflection of the mother’s. Narcissism in the extreme. You can’t have a discussion with that.
Cause and effect are hard for women to get. Husbands and fathers contribute much more than a paycheck, but this is often the chief, or only frame for their input. Solipsism-addled minds cannot perceive of childrens needs for a father, or male input beyond solely financial contributions.
The insurance industry taps this sentiment with this line: “One day, we had a great life, and then. . .”
The implicit message of the advertising is that the husband is just a utility to be insured, lest he fail by inexplicably getting injured or killed and the wifes life be ruined. No mention of or consideratuin for the damn selfish man whose life has just been screwed, or ended.
Those same selfish bastards often work years at jobs they hate, endure nonexistent sex lives after the last child, only to be divorced for no sound reason, jailed for non payment, of alimony because they literally have nothing to live on and end up old and broke. But many women probably think thats a fair deal, because after all, his job is to provide. And he ‘failed.’
Facts are that wives initiate most divorces, keep the house, the kids, most of the goods and escape censure from other women, many men, churches and benefit from unearned wealth transfers. They are no longer accountable to even the most supplicating of beta husbands, who is required by law to pay money to the wife who kicked him out when he became ‘unwanted.’
Clearly, an inability to understand cause and effect is compounded by a complete solipsism and lack of empathy for anyone else. Exemplre of a divorcee in the making.
Thanks for a fine example of why younger men would well advised to carefully vet any ltr prospects, and in my opinion, forego the whole shoddy deal entirely.
Ordinis:
Note that a woman’s “safety, security and comfort” almost always revolves around money; specifically the man providing money for the woman’s safety, security and comfort. It is simply viewed as a right that a woman has from a man. “He fathered the children. He’s gotta pay.”
But in T’s world, if a man wants sex from his wife, enthusiastic sex, he’s a beast, an ogre, a jerk. He has no right to sex, affection, intimacy or anything else — not even from his wife.
@Stingray on January 9, 2013 at 1:13 PM:
Ideally, they would be approached as a whole, from a rather young age with many truths taken from them. As you said, going back to the very basics and starting with babies. We can’t do that without learning them ourselves.
In this connection, I’d recommend C.S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man:
St. Augustine defines virtue as ordo amoris, the ordinate condition of the affections in which every object is accorded that kind of degree of love which is appropriate to it. Aristotle says that the aim of education is to make the pupil like and dislike what he ought. When the age for reflective thought comes, the pupil who has thus trained in ‘ordinate affections’ or ‘just sentiments’ will easily find the first principles in Ethics; but to the corrupts man they will never be visible at all and he can make no progress in that science. Plato before him had said the same. The little human animal will not at first have the right responses. It must be trained to feel pleasure, liking, disgust, and hatred at those things which really are pleasant, likable, disgusting, and hateful.
And, later in the book, speaking of the teachers of old:
In the older systems both the kind of man the teachers wished to produce and their motives for producing him were prescribed by the Tao — a norm to which the teachers themselves were subject and from which they claimed no liberty to depart. They did not cut men to some pattern they had chosen. They handed on what they had received: they initiated the young neophyte into the mystery of humanity which over-arched him and them alike. It was but old birds teaching young birds to fly.
@Deti
Yeah, I’ve noticed that. The more I see, the more I’m inclined to agree with TFH’s view of women’s capacity for morality and love.
Jones says:
January 9, 2013 at 4:14 pm
I find it hard to feel much sympathy for the societal breakdown that’s heading toward white America as a result of feminism gone wild.
When black American men suffered the same, they were maligned (just as blue pillers malign red pillers); called deadbeats and worse, and treated unjustly by the courts.
———————————-
slo your butt hurt bro; do you realize how easily things can get worse?
this ain’t the bridge over river Kwai.
Pingback: How should the orthosphere engage the manosphere? « Zippy Catholic
@TFH:
It’s less we want to “arrive” at the conclusion and more just saying it states the obvious of what we’ve seen most of our lives but are told never to believe.
I do quote you a bit already, in that regard.
@b-166-er on January 9, 2013 at 2:07 pm:
Game is a compensatory behavioral system. A system of thought, speech and action to make up for whats missing.
You can rock the “Great books for men” all you want; but I predict more white males are gonna adopt game to compensate for a society and a culture that tries to treat them like a bitch.
You’re quite right…but there’s a connection between these two things that you didn’t come right out and say. It helped me to understand how we got in this mess once I made the connection in so many words.
In days of old (pre-feminist), the society was set up so that the overall decisions for the culture, and the default behaviours expected “of all normal people”, were defined by men. Yes, in some ways, they allowed more leeway to man individually, in the mass. But there were still more rigidly defined social roles for men and women in public: and decorum and chastity were not considered “optional”, still less “weird”. So there was a tradeoff: women didn’t have economic freedom as they do today, but on the other hand, they were free from *constantly* being hit on with the expectation they would have intercourse by the third date. Pump-and-dumps and divorce (and single motherhood as we have it today) and sexual diseases were *much* rarer. So there was a tradeoff.
As part of men making the decisions for the culture, and gender roles being defined, men were *socialized* into masculinity, independence, self-sufficiency, reliability, and the like: a mix of alpha and beta which naturally delighted women, who had not yet been propagandized out of being feminine, but rather, were encouraged into femininity. It wasn’t perfect, but everyone pretty much knew a standard template for behaviour where they wouldn’t stick out like a sore thumb, which produced stable families, and a strong society which didn’t have a need for an intrusive government.
The problem now is twofold : first, the unified societal voice which says “Men: BE MASCULINE.” “Women: BE FEMININE” is gone, replaced by a din of competing voices which all disagree with the former consensus, and also disagree with each other. This is made worse by the implicit message that all men are bad, potential rapists, stupid, clumsy, insecure, bullying, inept, you name it, while women are pure, wholesome, self-assured, more capable, yada yada yada. And then, as the icing on the cake, individual men and woman are no longer taught *how* to play the traditional roles, either in public or private.
So, returning to your comment, what is game?
Game is a system of nonverbal communication by men — a vibe, an air, an attitude — which communicates by gesture, tone, voice, clothes, and so on: “I am confident, I am strong, I am masculine.” Since women are attuned to nonverbal cues, rather than the words within spoken statements, they can interpret this message. Secondly, since the message given is *emotional*, and not logical, it resonates with the way they relate to the world.
But, since the culture has devalued men, and sought to keep them from learning how to act masculine, we need an antidote at both levels: the first, at the individual level, so the man can learn how to act like a man; the second, at the societal level, so we can change the rules, if not all the way to male-led society, at least to one where men and women can be taught, learn, and practice traditional gender behaviour, roles, and attitude.
If we try to change the individual men and not the society, it will be like a campfire with small sticks, which will burn up before starting a large fire. If we just try the society-wide message, we can be accused of just grasping for power, and the message won’t “catch”, just as if we used a match to try to light a large log in the campfire ring without any kindling.
We need both.
@Stingray on January 9, 2013 at 1:41PM —
See my post at 6:07PM — you said what I did before me, and in a *lot* less words.
Tfh
Perhaps the cash and prizes on offer are insufficient to pull the trigger.
@Brandon on January 9, 2013 at 2:30 PM:
Of course men band together to accomplish common goals — I said as much in my post. However, it’s pretty much never as *men*, and on behalf of *all* men — it’s on behalf of a group of like-minded men over and against other men who are differently-minded. This is the difference.
Here’s a quote from a mystery novel, Gaudy Night, written by Dorothy L. Sayers in 1936. It illustrates your point quite well:
A dim recollection of something Wimsey had once said lit up the labyrinth of Harriet’s mind. Money. That was the connection between the two men. […] Peter had money, and Freddy understood money; that must be the common interest and bond of mutual confidence that explained an otherwise inexplicable friendship. She admired the strange nexus of interests that unites the male half of mankind into a close honeycomb of cells, each touching the other on one side only, and yet constituting a tough and closely adhering fabric.
Dalrock:
[Zippy] could quite easily be playing the role of champion of the old order showing that Dalrock is the scourge of the earth.
When my fellow tradcons do that sort of thing I think they aren’t being helpful.
[D: Excellent post.]
Dalrock patronized:
Oh, geez. Not another insecure webhost.
How about instead of “call[ing]” people “out” and instructing them on proper etiquette, you lead by example and stick to the substance? For a group that calls itself the “manosphere,” you certainly display little mettle for the fight. No wonder feminism rides roughshod over your little community of peeps and plaints.
Matt
@Dalrock on January 9, 2013 at 4:24 PM:
It has entirely escaped you why men marry and have children. They do this to lead an intact family. They don’t do it to become one half of a broken home, whether that is the half with custody or the half without.
There is an eerie parallel here with the man playing the role of the prostitute with the living child, and the woman playing the role of the prostitute with the dead child, in 1 Kings 3:16-26.
“He shall be neither yours nor mine, divide him.”
greenlander:
The Personal Is The Political. And so I despise Zippy and Istrice and their ilk. For me, it is personal. If anyone (like you, Dalrock) has made some kind of peace with Zippy, that’s your choice. But I think he’s a douche and I don’t have to like him. I hope he gets run over by the bus he threw me under with his fallacious rhetoric. I had to leave my native-born culture because of douchebags like him.
Sorry if I hurt your feelings somewhere along the line, Cupcake. Take it for what it is worth, but you might try owning your own decisions rather than blaming the things you don’t like about your life on complete strangers whom you know absolutely nothing about. It’ll open up a whole new perspective for you: not always pleasant, but much more real. You can think of it as similar to taking the Red Pill in the movie The Matrix.
@John on January 9, 2013 at 4:30 PM:
As a side note, I’d like to see you touch on the ridiculous Brent Musburger/star quarterback/hot QB girlfriend situation. He simply said “…you see that lovely lady there? She does go to Auburn, I’ll admit that, but she’s also Miss Alabama, and that’s A.J. McCarron’s girlfriend. Wow, I’m telling ya, you quarterbacks, you get all the good-looking women. What a beautiful woman! Whoa! So if you’re a youngster in Alabama, start getting the football out and throw it around the backyard with pops.” It’s hard to believe that would cause a controversy, but such is the age we’re in.
Two ways to approach this — Rush Limbaugh’s undeniable truth of life #24, “Feminism was created to give ugly woman equal access to the mainstream of society”, or game, that the supplicating betas and ex-Carousel riders can’t stand to see a beautiful feminine woman matched up to an alpha…
Up above I enjoyed a great list of books, many of which I have yet to read, with (veiled or overt) manosphere themes. Glad GBFM got in to say his piece. I always enjoy his contributions. Always funny and insightful.
One title that I enjoyed very much, which nobody has noted, was Traumnovelle by Arthur Schnitzler. People who can read basic German will understand it in the original. I don’t know the quality of the English translation, but those who have seen the Kubrick film *Eyes Wide Shut* know the basic story. It diverges in some places, in others the dialogue is pretty much word-for-word. It’s a seedy but realistic view of a neurotic couple who just can’t get all the way out of the sexual marketplace, despite their vows. If you don’t know the story, see the film and read the book together.
Regards, Boxer
Slightly OT but I can’t resist, this zinger was just posted on FB:
Mark Driscoll
For the first time in US history, single women are more likely than single men to go to college, go to church, have a job, or have a driver’s license. A lot of 20-something single guys are about as useful as a potted plant.
@Zippy: How much more insulting/patronizing can you get? The red pill isn’t just about seeing what’s out there, it’s also about what you gonna do with that knowledge. I grant your point if you want to say many men don’t do much more than pass gas and hot air. But … but … Greenlander took action; he chose to leave the country and if you have ever read substantial numbers of his comments, he firmly owns that decision. He even occasionally says it ain’t perfect where he went, but there is at least a market for the kind of hard working beta men who are commonly rejected here You don’t need to agree with that decision to respect that he did something.
@Matt: Answering a perceived attack with another attack. Nice. At least I’ll always defend your right to be as insufferable as you are…
Stingray
I’m not talking blank slate. I didn’t write what I was thinking very clearly. The Truth I was talking about is the very nature of men and women (the estrogen and testosterone you are talking about) and how they optimally interact with each other. Plus, so many of the other truths that are lacking today. One wouldn’t need what we today refer to as learning Game, because it wouldn’t be taught against in an effort to confuse. Think of how it would be if men were taught the essence of game from toddlerhood?
That is much more useful, thank you for the clarification.
I wrote:
Teach one to think? I do not agree.
Ok. I won’t argue this.
We’ll agree to disagree. Lead a horse to water, etc.
It won’t teach everyone to think, but as you said, they would be an excellent boost for many people in at least the right direction. Some people will get a great deal out of them, some not as much. I think they will get far more from them than from any classroom today.
Some people will. But some can’t. As fond as I am of classic philosophy and literature, I won’t push Plato or Homer or any other such work into the hand of the welder who wife has left him and taken their child to a different city. He needs knowledge, sure, but he simply isn’t going to read old books that use words he isn’t familiar with. But he does need to know about women, and about Game – and it would have been better for all concerned, especially the child, if he’d known those things before his wife frivorced him and went to work for the next county over.
I asked:
But this does not explain why traditional, conservative men – many of whom pride themselves on their masculinity, and even their patriarchal family structure, so often write or even speak in elliptical, feminine, passive-aggressive, “guess what I’m thinking” style.
What I meant to add above is that I think many of these men learned this from the women in their lives. These women make their men feel what they want them to. Even many traditionally conservative women teach that woman are the basis of morality, etc that we see so often discussed. These men believe their mothers/sisters/wives are authorities and then learn to emulate them.
This is plausible. It is also hugely ironic, given the amount of yak-yak-yak about “Patriarchy” and “Real Manliness” that traditional conservative men are prone to blab. I see a man in kitchen, putting his Manly Navy Blue apron away after finishing the dishes, asking his wife if she minds terribly if he uses the family desktop computer for a time to thrash the childish MRA’s a bit, before he gives the children their bath and tucks them into bed. And, of course, if she says “no, dear, not tonight” then he naturally Mans UP and submits to her Goddessly authority…
@Random Angeleno:
Greenlander took action; he chose to leave the country and if you have ever read substantial numbers of his comments, he firmly owns that decision.
I didn’t criticize his decisions and actions. I suggested that he’d be happier if he didn’t blame his personal life’s tribulations on particular total strangers he encounters on the Internet, in this case myself and someone who commented at my blog. The fact that he does that is contrary evidence against the contention that he “firmly owns [his] decision[s]”, though for my part I fully acknowledge that all the stuff he’s written that I haven’t read may paint a different picture.
Anon Reader,
Heh, when I said ‘I won’t argue this’, it was missing the word “with”. I meant to say I wouldn’t argue *with* this. I should’ve take more time to edit my comments today. Sorry about that.
Experienced readers of the androsphere will note that T has managed to monopolize conversation for quite a number of postings by the simple expedient of articulating the feminine imperative, and being unwilling or unable to see any other perspective. Well, she did get all that male attention.
Now, where’s Jennifer when she would fit in so well, I wonder?
Skeptics of the concept of the feminine imperative are invited to re-read T’s obstinate positions on divorce, custody and childimony, and explain them in a different way, i.e. assuming there is no such thing as a feminine imperative. Bear in mind that T’s positions in this thread are extremely common, even the tradcons who live in some catacomb somewhere still are around women who hold such positions.
In fact, they may even be married to traditional, conservative men…
In other words, I see your point, Anon Reader. Especially when it comes to Mr. Welder and his need to learn game. Game must come first for someone in his position. Then the choice is (hopefully) his to make where he goes from there.
@AR
Who allowed her to dominate the conversation? Is it the so-called FI, or is it that men are just as easily led as women? It seems a lot of you don’t even stand on solid ground – it’s “Women are master manipulators and dumber than a bag of hammers and don’t know anything but we’re powerless against their evil plans that go back hundreds of years to dominate us, which they’ve done because they have a canny ability to see the future implications of their diabolical schemes while they lie to themselves and listen to their hamsters and cannot envision the consequences of their own actions.”
Sorry if I hurt your feelings somewhere along the line, Cupcake. [blah blah blah empty smug bullshit blah blah blah]
For the record, Zipster: Despite your sucking up to the big D, I’ve spotted you for a douche, too. Why don’t you go blogwhore somewhere else?
@CL
Who allowed her to dominate the conversation? Is it the so-called FI, or is it that men are just as easily led as women? It seems a lot of you don’t even stand on solid ground – it’s “Women are master manipulators and dumber than a bag of hammers…
Pretty much.
It basically boils down to a few points.
1.) Women are more predisposed than men to ask for things.
2.) Men are predisposed to give women what they ask for,
3.) Men are fascinated by women, so women can effortlessly distract a group of men.
This is why highly functional organizations kept women out, and why the entry of more and more women into public life has been correlated with the increasing dysfunction of just about everything. The much discussed FI, AFAICT, is just the tendency of (1) and (2) to manifest as social norms that advance women’s interests at the expense of men’s.
Stingray, you remind me of the story of the man who forgot to say “not”, as in “I did not do it”.
Next up, commas save lives…
OrdinisNyx says:
January 9, 2013 at 12:55 pm
@Joseph
I am glad I posted here today. After reading through your posts at SSM’s I have to say that I think your idea is excellent.
OrdinisNyx ! You have just added another brick to the manosphere’s building project.
CL writes about T
Who allowed her to dominate the conversation?
Men who perhaps believe they can show her the error of her ways, men who see a problem they can solve, men who enjoy playing whack-a-mole, and so forth. I’m merely pointing out that the much touted “misogyny” of the androsphere often fails to manifest itself, and that men are often quite willing to engage women in discussion and even assume they are interacting with an adult human.
Of course, other conversations are going on around T’s little salon’.
Now, where’s “Jennifer” ?
@ dalrock – I assume that unwanted husbands are unwanted for good reason. I understand that there are other people involved which is why I mentioned that custody needs to work for everyone involved.
@deti – my position was not that a man had no right to expect sex from his wife. It was that if she isn’t attracted to him, or doesn’t want sex pointing to Bible verses isn’t going to make the sex good. Basically telling her that she isn’t in submission because she hates having sex with you isn’t going to make her like having sex with you.
Back to the child support thing- I never said that men didn’t love their children. I disagreed with the idea that women only want their children for the child support check. I am fine with agreeing to disagree.
Anon Reader,
Yeah, those small little words impart one heck of an impact. Wish their was a face palm smiley I could put up to show my embarrassment. 😉
@T
Of course you assume that. That was my point.
In my mind Zippy’s engagement in the conversation already makes him a part of the manosphere, but this is due to how I define the sphere. This is a conversation among men (and some women) interested in better understanding truths about men and women, the understanding of which is at present extremely socially discouraged. While very few of us here will agree on all items in discussion I hope we can agree on the common goal of the discussion.
bump. worth re-rereading
“good reason” as determined solely by the woman, who is not even accountable to provide such reason.
lzozozozzlozlzlozo
the FED does not want u reaidng MOSES HOMER JESUS SOCTARECZZESSZZZ!!!!!
zlzozooz
https://www.google.com/search?q=bel+air+camera+rentals&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&channel=fflb
how the federal reserve system created the PUA community lzozlzlzloozlzllzll!! they DO NO wan t the men to read mises or hayek or jefferson or the us constitution lzozlzlzlz they want to keep the men in the fiat masters’ cave — the fiat butthex matrix — “gaming” and fighting over the table scraps of all the desoulaed, haggaard, std-ridden, vicious, gold-digging, cold, defeminized, prozac-addled womenz the fiat masters buttthexed and deosuled in college during teh primae nocate ceremeonies, instead of manning up and fighting for their dvine irght to something far greater — an honorable, virtuous wife. lzozllzllzllzozzlz
omg i cannot beleive how many betas think that peacocking and wearring furry hats like mystery is being an alpha! lzozllzlz it’s almost as bad as neocons trying to herald and exalt secrteive tapers of sodomy as butthexual heroes while repeating the butthexers and secretive tapers of butthexer’s lies in their “conservative” magaiznes lzozlzozlzlzlzl. omg it makes me lzolzlzozzlozol so hard that my ribs hurt zlozlzlzl
anyways teh federal resevre system not only creates money form thin air but that money is debt based and thus they can charge interest on it zlzozolzl and bankrupt and vampire suck an entiure oucntry of not only its property but its soul which is why neocon womenzs encourage young girls ot lust after undead vampire monsters in twilight who wear way too much makeup lzozlzozlzl and make the teen gina tingles lingles as teh federal reserve dicattes that all of entirety must be ruled by gina tingles and thus when a owmenz gina tingles in marriage she should act on it as the fed ahas funded and trained lawyers abd judgeds to seize her husbands promperty ieven if she is found fuciki9ng his best firend ojn tehir coffee table when he comes home agter a hard day;s work zlozlzlz the entire feminist moveement was created to expand teh police state into the home turning mwomenz against their husbands shidlerns god and the fmaily and the unborn as the neoocns trained put womenz on the front linez of their preemeptive war against the unborn in which women gallently and heroically murdered 50,000,000 unborn since roe vs. wade and were rewarded with lotsa butthex on demand from tgeh neocons favorite secrteive tapers of butthex for doing so lzozlzozlzozzlozzlozzlzozzlzozo. the neocns are good at math an dthey calcualted and determined it would be cheaper to train women to kill their kids and seize tehir husband;s property than it would be to train an army of jack booted thugs to dod so lzozlzozlzlzlzozoz and also the neoncs could have the womenz wear skirts and makeup and act like innocent little girls just killing their unborn chicldren for the greater good of humanity as it is chepar to hire pre-grown mexican labor wall stereet determined and claulated, tahn it is to take owmen out fo the fiat masters workforce to rais etheir own chidlren.
so how does this relate to the PUA movement?>?!?!?
i’m getting there so clam the fuck down!!
many of youse have been rwsiased on ritalin with no dads to tell you to fucking work hard and fucking shut up and fucking pay attention, and thus you act like little ritalain addicts which is the way the fed wants tit mashing buttons in your menaingless videogames in your single mom’s basmemnt turning up the playsattion volume to drown out the sounds of your mom upstairs banging biker cock which teh fed funds anmd encourages to put it in her butt and which your real dad is forced to pay for and asubsidize after he cuaght her cheating with the pool boy lzozlzlzlzllz and never nmanning up and going forth and finidg your true ftahers and the reading the constitution for yourself nor homers odyssey in which telemanchus must also rid his mhome of teh false suitors and teh us constitution which states that only congeress shall eb able to coin money and that it must be gold or silver but not fiat butthexing paper lzozlzlzozlzlzlzlz.
anywaz so the fed desouls womenz form an early age via numerous methods:
anywaz so the fed desouls womenz form an early age via numerous methods:
1) the slutting up of teen pop culture heroes lzozlzlzolzzlolzlzl brittany and now miley as disney is used to baiut and witch and sluttify children zlzozlzlzl
2) teh asscocking and anal sexing of girls with the assockcers and secrteive tapers of butthex who lie about tehir heiaght and are short, lying, douchbages being promoted as heores, while those bleeding to death in the neocns wars on foreign shores are ignored lzozlzlzlzzlzo
3) the constant barrage of ant-soul eductaion telling girls that their strong father who is trying to keep the short, lying docuhebag’s cock out of her ass and teh storng father who would beat the shit out of the assocker and short, lying secretive taper of butthex is really just oprressing her, and after ahwiel girls really ebgin to beleiev that teh fiat dollar is god and that ass cocking is tehir divine right and that any one who comes out agiants secrteiev tapings of asscockinsg is really just repressed. lzozlzlz
4) freud took everyying virtuius like love and committment and refusing temptations and labeled it a “repression” in the same way a fiat dollar takes everyoneg good like a hard day’s work and renders it worthless as the fiat master hire a police force to sezie the property ans assets while trianing women to lure men into marrigae and to “tame them” in jonah goldberg’s words and seize their asstts lzozlzlz. for the only problem with a fiat debt based dollar i=s that it is the opposite of welath lzozlzlz and thus the fiat masters devote tehir lives to rtrying to conbevert debt based fiat dollars into physical wealth and property which is why they come up with mba buzzwords and mba bubbles as the dot com bubble and real estate bubble and al l bubbles are the conscious mechanism via which fiat debt is covnerted into phsyical property as all teh risk is socilaized an dall teh profits privataized as worthless debt rtickles on down and phsycial proeprty and welath trickler on up form teh workwer creater artist and musician to the ifat matsers lzozlzozlzlzl and so the world is inverted as those who create are robbed, and those who bullshit are rewarded lzozlzlzozzlzlzl that is why leftists come out againats property rigts amnd anyone who advocates a fiat currency is aginst property rights lzozlzozzlzl as they want to be able to buy and seize your property by doing nothing but cxreatinge fiat debt zlzozlzl which is why they had to kill the family and debauch teh cultrue and currency lzozlzozlzl and kill teh heoric spirit and replace homer moses socrates aeneies with tcuekr max lzozllzlzl their butthexual secrteive tpaer of sodomy without teh girl’s conthen “siux foot tall” hero lzozlzlz
which brings us to the PUA movementy
as girls are deosuled and desouled and trained by the fed to seize a man’s assets and use their sex appeal not to serva a husband abnd fmaily but to transfer assets and weatlth form men to their pimp daddy ben beranke lzozlzlzlzlzl, by and by trhey lose their worth to men.
i mean lzozllzzl we’re not all that stoooopid lzozlz.
as a girl is deosuled in teh fiat fed noecon assocking secrteive tapings of butthex sessions, and converted into a soulless instrument of wealth transfer, her only value lies in the titllation that she provides, while the enertal chance for immortal love that our grandparenst knew and which fmeinsit professors label opression as the fed funds them to do, is lost forever lzozlzlzlzlzl!!
like a wise ghirl who wnats to live the glory honorable story of bride wife mother must strt as a vergin and then forver sevre and be loyal to one man lozzllzlzl
lzozlzlzllles! go all the femtards who are stoo stoopid and take lotsa cocka in all tehir orifices na dthen go “where idd lal the good men go?” when they hit 40 lzozlzlz google that roissy cartoone “where did all teh good men go? ms paint roissy cartoon” lzozlzlzl
http://roissy.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/2.jpg?w=500&h=375
http://roissy.wordpress.com/2010/05/11/ms-paint-windows-to-the-soul/
well anywayz as behind every woman now stands a banker pimp going “BE SURE TO GET AS MUCHMONEY OUT OF TEH BETAS AS POSSIBLE AND IN RETURN WE PROMISTE YOU SECRETIVETAPINGS FROM ASSOCKING ALPHAS FILMED WITHOUT YOUR CONTHENT,” it only makes sense that a man’s goal by and by beocmes to get a smuch sex as possible without paying for it lzozlzlzozlzlz.
and that’s where game comes in.
becayuse teh federal reserve funded feminisma nd cretaed feminisms to transfer welath from men to the fed, break up teh family, but teh kids in corprate state daycare, and expand teh powers of teh stae into teh home, repalcing teh classical rugged fateh with fiat cash, the fed created the PUA game by changing the game and stakcing it against men lzozlzlzlzllz
now the fed also supports the PUA game as men wearing furry hats and spenidng tehir days working wmeiangless jobs while buying books on game purporting to help them get tehir cocks wet onece every two years is exactly what the fed wants. they DO NO wan t the men to read mises or hayek or jefferson or the us constitution lzozlzlzlz they want to keep the men in the fiat masters’ cave — the fiat butthex matrix — “gaming” and fighting over the table scraps of all the desoulaed, haggaard, std-ridden, vicious, gold-digging, cold, defeminized, prozac-addled womenz the fiat masters buttthexed and deosuled in college during teh primae nocate ceremeonies, instead of manning up and fighting for their dvine irght to something far greater — an honorable, virtuous wife. lzozllzllzllzozzlzl
and so you get what we have here, which is the wya he wants it, well he gets it. some men you just can’t reach. lzozlzlzlzlzlzzlzl
Dante’s Inferno is another one of my favoirte gRGEAT BOoKZ!!! lzozozlzlz
O pueriles ineptias! In hoc supercilia subduximus?
The Genius of Great Books For Men GreatBooksForMen GBFM (TM) GB4M (TM) GR8BOOKS4MEN (TM)
http://luciussomesuch.wordpress.com/2011/12/21/the-genius-of-great-books-for-men-greatbooksformen-gbfm-tm-gb4m-tm-gr8books4men-tm/‘
lozlzlzlz Dante recognized that in order to prop up the false value of their fiat lzozozlzl butthex regime, the MBA must naturally commit violence and butthex assrape against art—one can see the financial motivations for the deconstruction and dumbing down and butthexing of the academy—for the butthexing removal of Zeus’ lightning and butthexing Moses’s thundering justice—for the concerted butthexing attack on the exalted, masculine soul which passes judgment on FRAUD:
The monstrous shape lands on the brink and Virgil salutes it ironically. It is GERYON, the MONSTER OF FRAUD. Virgil announces that they must fly down from the cliff on the back of this monster. While Virgil negotiates for their passage, Dante is sent to examine the USURERS (The Violent against Art). . . These sinners sit in a crouch along the edge of the burning plain that approaches the cliff. Each of them has a leather purse around his neck, and each purse is blazoned with a coat of arms. Their eyes, gushing with tears, are forever fixed on these purses. Dante recognizes none of these sinners, but their coats of arms are unmistakably those of well-known Florentine families. . . Having understood who they are and the reason for their present condition, Dante cuts short his excursion and returns to find Virgil mounted on the back of Geryon. Dante joins his Master and they fly down from the great cliff. . . Their flight carries them from the Hell of the VIOLENT AND THE BESTIAL (The Sins of the Lion) into the Hell of the FRAUDULENT AND MALICIOUS (The Sins of the Leopard). –p. 133, The Divine Comedy (The Inferno, The Purgatorio, and The Paradiso) by Dante Alighieri and John Ciardi
Stingray says: “I was hoping GBFM would show up to this conversation. Nice to see you here!”
thankzz youz mmr. stingrayz!!!!!!
glad to be here!!!
and ye should know
i am with ye, alwayz zlzozozzollozlozoz
Who else thinks that all of Matthew 23:23 was penned for KING A MATTHEW KING AHOLE zlzozozzl?
zlzozozzozoz
34 Wherefore, behold, I send unto you prophets (Dalrock), and wise men (Heartiste), and scribes (GBFM lzozlzooz): and some of them ye shall kill and crucify; and some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues, and persecute them from city to city:
13 But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in.
14 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows’ houses, and for a pretence make long prayer: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation.
15 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves.
23 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone.
24 Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel.
25 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess.
26 Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first that which is within the cup and platter, that the outside of them may be clean also.
27 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness.
28 Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.
29 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because ye build the tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous,
30 And say, If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.
31 Wherefore ye be witnesses unto yourselves, that ye are the children of them which killed the prophets.
32 Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers.
33 Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?
34 Wherefore, behold, I send unto you prophets (Dalrock), and wise men (Heartiste), and scribes (GBFM lzozlzooz): and some of them ye shall kill and crucify; and some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues, and persecute them from city to city:
lzozozozozozozl
it is nice too know dat jeejssyth wulll enurudre an dtitrumphz!!!
lzozozozlozllzollzoz
http://greatbooksformen.wordpress.com/2013/01/10/how-the-great-bookz-for-men-teach-game-zlozozlzozozozlzlozololzz/
HOW THE GREAT BOOKZ FOR MEN TEACH GAME!!!! zlozozlzozozozlzlozololzz
OK EVERYONEZ!!
CLASS IS IN SESSION!!!
IN THE COMMENTS, leave samples and excerpts from the GREAT BOOKZ which teach game!!
HEre is one for starters:
lzozozlzozozoz
read homers lodysysyey!! duh!!!!
homer’s odysysey teaches that if you stand up to womenz you get to FUCK them lzozozozo
if you don’t stand up to dem dey turn you into pigs
yes homer was alomst as brrilliaaiant as heartistse lzozozozozo:
HOMER’S ODYSSEY:
“‘And I will tell you of all the wicked witchcraft that Circe will
try to practise upon you. She will mix a mess for you to drink, and
she will drug the meal with which she makes it, but she will not be
able to charm you, for the virtue of the herb that I shall give you
will prevent her spells from working. I will tell you all about it.
When Circe strikes you with her wand, draw your sword and spring upon
her as though you were goings to kill her. She will then be frightened
and will desire you to go to bed with her; on this you must not point
blank refuse her, for you want her to set your companions free, and
to take good care also of yourself, but you make her swear solemnly
by all the blessed that she will plot no further mischief against
you, or else when she has got you naked she will unman you and make
you fit for nothing.’ ”
-http://classics.mit.edu/Homer/odyssey.mb.txt
zlzozozozozoz
ANOTHER GREAT PLACE IS IN GENESIES GENEIS IN DA BIBLE:
16 Unto the woman GOD said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.
is it no wonder sad benerneiannkieirz funded fmeinnisnsmz to deconstruct the GRETA BOOKZ AND CLASSIZCXZ? zlozozzlzol
lzozoozz
OK SHARE ALL OF YOUR GREAT BOOKS TEACHING GAMEZ EXAMPLEZ!!! THANKSZ! share ether here: http://greatbooksformen.wordpress.com/2013/01/10/how-the-great-bookz-for-men-teach-game-zlozozlzozozozlzlozololzz/
zlozzoz
Opus says – Hesiod in Works and Days
Ovid in The Art of Love
St Paul in various letters
Shakespeare in the Taming of The Shrew
Schopenhauer in his Essay on Women
Byron
Dryden
Richardson in Clarisa
and so on
Opus, you forgot The Fonze!
T is really turning out to have an execrable case of “typical modern humanistic woman”.
Anonymous Reader
Sometimes a woman like T is extremely valuable just as they are. As TFH as stated she is everything said about the nature of women on display and in real world action. She was doing the same thing yesterday on the submissive chistian wife topic. A very good training aid for new guys just coming to the manosphere. She is a perfect example of an unworthy wife. Even so I think she is married. I bet she found this site following the lead of that woman preaching control techniques for the modern woman stuff (fireproof) She is most likely not happy and the essence of her being that she has nutured all of her life is being challenged for the first time. You don’t argue with women like that. She has no empathy because women are not really capable of empathy. What has happened is the femminist imperative is so about empowering women that reality is even denied so she never developed the sense of self preservation that comes from being hooked up with her man. He is competition for her empowerment and her strength is measured by her ticket punch credentials against his. No way in hell you can have empathy for that especially if it is not normal to be empathetic.
If preventing the foul cunts that inhabit the US from taking advantage of me makes me a clueless loser, then so be it.
Anything that causes people to post such an effete analysis is a good thing in my book.
“T” is a gift from God. She, it, is heavens way of talking to the internet to say as clearly as possible:”Run guys, run!” Marriage today is a wholly-owned division of the kingdom of satan..
Trad Coms are worse. They still think that we can learn something useful from looking the mating schemes of apes and proto-humans.
Effective, BC, free abortion, financial independence via beta guys = modern chicks can bypass their human and even simian level sexual instincts and freely indulge/act on their bitch -rat-in- heat hind brain programming.
For the first time in roughly 75 thousand years. I mean, modern apes are ashamed of having to watch their human sisters misbehave. They make them all look bad. Like they are all raving cum slurpping monkeys unable to stand properly because of their constantly distended girly bits.
Aeschylus:
“So,you hear your love feast,yearn to have it all?
You revolt the gods.Your look,
Your whole regalia gives you away–your kind should infest a lion’s cavern reeking blood.
But never rub your filth on the Prophet’s shrine.
Out,you flock without a herdsman-out!
No god will ever shepherd you with love.
Proverbs 11:12
He who belittles his neighbor lacks sense,but a man of understanding remains silent.
All of these insults and negative assumptions about my personal life because I don’t think that child support is inherently unfair. A bit of an overreaction. I can only assume that there are a lot of men whose divorces were especially rough here? I’m sympathetic to that, and will happily drop the child support issue, and simply agree to disagree. I don’t care to trade insults.
@T: I feel bad for your children if you believe that. Believing in your entitlement to child support gives you the back door that allows you to rationalize sabotaging your family if you’re not feeling turned on by your husband anymore.
“I’m not going to discuss this any more because i can’t refute any of your arguments. I am obviously in rebellion against the natural order but i refuse to acknowledge any wrongdoing. My slacker husband isnt worth divorcing yet, so he better bust his ass getting that promotion so i can finally get rid of him and make it worthwhile. Meantime, chew on these shaming generalisations. I’m outta here!”
[exit stage: stamps feet for effect]
With regard to feminism being effective and its enemies being way too ineffective – it’s worth pointing out that Western traditionalism/socon-ism isn’t a bit more effective than the men’s rights movement -, we always have to keep the underlying economic realities in mind.
There’s no doubt that feminism has been very effective, but feminists wouldn’t have gotten anywhere on their own. After all, they were disunited on lots of issues – that makes no difference from the average man’s perspective, of course – and most of them weren’t exactly political geniuses, I suppose. But virtually all conceivable factors were clearly in their favor: the invention of the Pill, the deindustrialization of the West (which primarily hurt beta males), the ballooning state bureaucracy (providing subsidized paper-pushing jobs for single women), you name it. The Four Horsemen of the Sexual Apocalypse hardly needs another mention here.
Another reason for their total victory is, as Vanessa/Alte once pointed out, is that feminism basically demanded nothing of women. Instead the message they got was simple:
1. Have as much sex as you want with alphas.
2. Shit all over betas and steal their money.
…which is exactly what women have always wanted to do. They hardly needed any encouragement when their sexual utopia was finally in sight.
It all comes down to the realities of the economic system and the bargaining position you have. The time to promote men’s rights has not yet come because that requires the average man to gain more economic leverage and basically have something to blackmail the rest of society with. Western governments can still print money to prop up single women. Technological progress is still ongoing, so a growing segment of beta males are left without economic opportunities due to rising productivity. The male birth control pill and the artificial womb are yet to be marketed. And so on. But time is on men’s side.
At this point, only a Khmer Rouge-style wholesale slaughter of useless eaters and ideological enemies could possibly avert the decline of Western Civ, and I’m not counting on something like that. Civilizational collapse is the only way beta males can regain their influence. Only then will they be able to bargain with the powers that be. It’ll be simple: annihilate women’s privileges for good and put them where they belong if you want to harness our labor and sacrifice for your survival and power. And harnessed it’ll have to be, because otherwise it’ll be total chaos with nobody being able to concentrate power.
That means two things need to be done:
1. Beta males need to do everything on a personal level to avoid getting victimized and exploited by a regime that heads straight towards collapse.
2. Once the collapse comes, make sure that the losses of beta males stay minimal, because they’ll be needed to rebuild civilization. The loss of alpha thugs, their sluts and their spawn don’t matter; in fact, the more of them get killed, the better, because the civilization that emerges from the ashes will be free from ballast.
Another lesson is that the Manosphere can be as successful as feminism only if it basically demands nothing of men and encourages them to follow their gut feelings. Yup, that’s the way to do it; morality doesn’t matter.
What is the beta male’s gut feeling about women?
1. Sluts are worthless, they’re only good for pump & dump.
2. Single mothers are sluts and deserve none of my tax dollars.
3. None of my tax dollars should go to affirmative action benefiting single women (sluts) who view me as a waste of space.
4. The only way a woman can protect whatever amount of human dignity she has is by staying chaste.
5. Rape should have a narrow definition, as it used to be. “I changed my mind afterwards” isn’t rape.
6. Most women are only sufferable if they behave nice, pleasant etc. and keep their weight in check.
No amount of feminist brainwashing can eliminate these inborn attitudes. It’s in our genes. Let them thrive and define our attitude towards women completely.
T is so lame.
“my position was not that a man had no right to expect sex from his wife. It was that if she isn’t attracted to him, or doesn’t want sex pointing to Bible verses isn’t going to make the sex good. Basically telling her that she isn’t in submission because she hates having sex with you isn’t going to make her like having sex with you.”
Ok, but let me ask you this: if a woman suddenly finds herself sexually unattracted to her husband(due to age, baldness etc), why should she be given cash and prizes for exiting a marriage through no fault of his own? Doesn’t that strike you as being wrong? Or do you feel so entitled to a man’s money and assets that it doesn’t even occur to you?
Personally i think for the law to be fair, if a woman denies her ex access to his children, or restricts it to such a point that he is viewed as a pay cheque rather than a parent, the man shouldn’t have to pay much, if anything at all, for the child.
While we might disagree on whether the above works are worthy of discussion, his image of the men of the manosphere climbing a forgotten mountain and rediscovering ancient knowledge to take us out of our feminist Dark Age is quite poetic. I think he may be overdoing it by suggesting that the manosphere is a modern day Renaissance, but either way the compliment in the form of criticism is very much appreciated.
*scrolls back three posts*
I see what you did there.
I assume that unwanted husbands are unwanted for good reason. I understand that there are other people involved which is why I mentioned that custody needs to work for everyone involved.
Back to basics eh? Why do you assume that the reason is real or compelling? Why is it compelling enough to eject a man and destroy a family? T, the statistics are available, they show clearly that the most divorces are filed by women, most of those are for reasons that Christians wouldn’t call grounds, and further reasons that are not adultery, physical abuse, or addiction. They also show her likelihood to do this is directly impacted by her likelihood to receive the kids.
You ask why more men don’t ask for joint custody? Really? Technically men receive joint custody even under the standard 35% time share scenario, it means nothing unless you add the word PHYSICAL, and then you are in for a multi tens of thousands of dollars fight.
You cannot make a woman want sex? Correct. You neither can make anyone want to do or not do anything that is covered by Biblical admonishment. And all these years I thought we were listening to these instructions and attempting to take them on board when we read our Bibles or attend church. May as well pack up. Oh, sorry, you meant that sex thing, not all those other things.
Hullen hound
You were did on about the beta male gut instinct. beta males created civilization. A few years ago I had the same thought that beta males left on their own don’t need women alpha’s or any elites it is they that will die off if the beta males all disappeared. As TFH as said flip the cion and have feminism laws of misandry made into laws of mysogony (what ever the fuck) And women that followed scripture would live well. Compare that to men that follow scripture today.
So, he thinks a man’s goal in life should be to be “useful.” Useful to whom, I wonder? To women who don’t want to “settle” and marry them yet? To a government that wants to tax the crap out of them so we can afford to go on paying for military bases in dozens of countries they’ve never heard of and health care and education for millions of border-jumpers who will compete with them for entry-level jobs? To churches that see them as nothing more than troublemakers who should probably be chased away before they molest the nice young girls?
Yeah, I can’t imagine why 25-year-old guys today don’t feel like being “useful.”
Also, his logic implies that, since women were less likely to do these terribly important things throughout all of human history until now, they were previously the equivalent of potted plants. You heard it here first: Mark Driscoll thinks women have finally risen above the potted-plant level of existence.
Who are the misogynists again?
@ Höllenhund
“Another lesson is that the Manosphere can be as successful as feminism only if it basically demands nothing of men and encourages them to follow their gut feelings.”
The core weakness of feminism is that women can only be “equal” if they are standing on the shoulders of, or are shielded by, men. Feminism only took hold now because men made society safe and comfortable enough for women to flip men the bird. Feminism can only take root and be maintained if two criteria exist:
1) Men have sufficiently technologically developed, fought and died for a nation.
2) Men continue to sacrifice themselves after feminism has taken root.
My suggestion, and practice for the last decade, is to stop criteria number two. For years I have motivated guys in my personal sphere to do this and they are truly surprised when they realize how much sacrificing they had been doing without thinking about it. I’d go a step further and suggest that we should also NOT assist women unless they are family or close friends. In other words, we help only those women who we have a stake in and not just any human with a vagina. Fixing flat tires, carrying boxes, and acting as bodyguards for female strangers need to become things of the past until society normalizes itself. And yes, women will go ballistic if you are not sacrificing at the vaginal altar. Watching the meltdown is part of the fun.
Ordinis, have you not encountered one of several reactions from clueless men, even those in our own spheres, when you tell them this? They glaze over, change the subject, make a joke, refer to the “weaker vessel”, so forth.
I work with a guy whose wife is a teacher at the high school. She will call her husband and he will leave work to go to the school and fix her AV equipment, he will stay up all night making crepes for her french classes, he actually gets up and walks her into the driveway to her car each morning….they live in an upper mid class safe neighborhood and the driveway is a typical stub to the street, on and on the hoops he jumps through grow. She is retiring this year, he will be practically unable to function at work thereafter I think.
Mention any manosphere concepts to him and he glazes over, or worse makes disparaging remarks about men….maddening and oh so common. I doubt he has had sex in years. He is an elder at his church and she is a women’s leader. It is quintessence writ large.
@Empathologism
I have encountered the nervous laugh and the “weaker vessel” argument but surprisingly I’ve encountered almost no resistance and here’s why. Only guys who benefit in some way (typically Alphas) have a reason to resist and I NEVER bother with them. I purposely approach only the guys who are frustrated, angry, and fed up with banging their heads against walls and show them how much they are contributing to their own suffering.
You already know I don’t care as much about winning a fight of convincing someone; I care about the strategy and the numbers so I share this mindset with men who are already inclined to accept my point. If I spend a few hours at Starbucks (true story) talking shit to a regular there who is pissed that his wife left him and his 4 kids for another guy, she has already done most of my legwork for me. I was only needed to introduce the idea and you can imagine that it took hold very quickly and easily. If I tried to tell him this when he thought his marriage was fine he would have argued til the cows came home. And he will share his view of women with his sons.
Anonymous Reader, on “T” and the men who engage her in debate – “Men who perhaps believe they can show her the error of her ways, men who see a problem they can solve, men who enjoy playing whack-a-mole, and so forth.”
I believe this is largely true. As one of the offending parties who did engage with her, I can attest that I interpreted her comments regarding the fairness of childimony and her back-handed attempt to negatively compare fathers (who don’t, in her estimation) ask for custody to mothers who she gives the typical “Team Woman” benefit of the doubt as the only ones who (she would suggest) truly want their children (despite her recent back-peddling on this), to being a sign that she simply was not educated about the issues, and was simply buying into the myths about divorced fathers that have long been peddled by the triad of Feminism, the Main-Stream Media, and the American (psuedo-)Chirstian Church. You know, the ones about how men walk away from their families to live playboy lifestyles while the poor abandoned women and children struggle to cope and get by.
She seemed to simply have no grasp on what actually goes on in the real world around her – women tearing families apart, and actively (even aggressively) keep the fathers out of children’s lives often for little more reason than that they are unhaaaaapppy.
I though it might be possible to shake her out of her blissful fog of ignorance and reminder her that she need only look around to see the truth.
But, as has been suggested, she may simply be here to incite conflict and to distract.
She does seem to acknowledge some realities, but still seems determined to cling to a general view of men=bad, women=good as instructed by the triad.
Also, in my partial defense (of violating THF’s wise suggestion to not engage until they had lasted 72-hours), I had noticed her posts in previous days, and thought she had already become a regular poster here.
Its not about winning an argument, I agree. Its sad that a man must lose so much to have his eyes opened.
@Empath
Also, someone shouldn’t lead with a statement like “You shouldn’t sacrifice for her without reason” because guys like to butt heads. Some subtle questions can be asked that can help someone see what they are doing:
1) If she were married would you try to help her?
2) If she were fat or unattractive would you try to help her?
3) If she were middle-aged would you try to help her?
I might ask these three to a guy with a chivalrous bent towards attractive women. Some guys will lie and say “sure, I’d help them” but a lot will be honest about it and say “probably not”. Once they know they can be honest without being attacked or criticized then things get easier. Different people will require different questions but, years ago, question two was one that really started me thinking about my own morals and sexual motivations.
I’ve been a fan of NLP for a few years now and know that some reframing techniques can work quickly for this sort of thing.
OrdinisNyx – “And he will share his view of women with his sons.”
Much of the supposed work of the MAndrosphere is actually already being done as men and boys easily observe the bad behavior of woman around them. A whole generation of young men no largely eschew marriage. Dalrock feels it’s not a strike, as such, perhaps only because it lacks any formal organization or stated goals, but the numbers tell the story. young men are not marrying, and a significant portion even express a strong reluctance to marry – must of them will specifically cite their observations of woman and how other men they’ve known were maltreated by women and the horribly mis-named Family Courts (Courts which have no role in family formation, only the disintegration of existing families – I will only ever know them as Anti-family courts).
Some have challenged that there is no empirical evidence of anything being “built” by the MAndrosphere, but I would counter that all the MAndrosphere need be is that clearinghouse (H/T to Brendan to putting a meaningful descriptor to it) of ideas for men who are out there looking for answers. What the critics don’t see, or won’t acknowledge is that a significant portion of those in the MAndrosphere are sharing ideas through personal human contacts, providing a means for the confused and hurting to make sense of what they experienced. I doubt 1/20th of the men I’ve shared such ideas with have ever bothered to visit the sites I’ve suggested, but the ideas which I’ve gleaned from the Internet portion of the Mandrosphere have never-the-less resonated with them quite readily.
The numbers of internet participants may not be exploding, but the idea – the truths – are spreading. Individual men instinctively realize that they are powerless to make sweeping changes, and that men, as a whole, are unlikely to officially organize into a socio-political movement; but, they are tending to do as TFH suggests as the 4th Horseman of Male Emancipation, they are resolving to disengage from activities which empower feminism, Churchianity, the corrupt government, and even the Main-Stream Media. If pollsters and researchers were asking the right questions, this phenomena would be more evident. But, even if it is unacknowledged, it still persists and grows.
In the end, to be truly effective, the MAndrosphere clearinghouse need be little more than a steering mechanism for the growing dissatisfaction and alienation of millions upon millions of young men. We don’t need to promote great leaders to lofty positions, organize mass protests, form a socio-political party voting bloc, nor erect any physical monuments of self-congratulations. We need only spread the truth. We can build men of true and independent character, against the concerted efforts of feminism and Churchianity to tear them down, emotionally defeat them, and beat them into submission.
In a totally unrelated and completely off-topic vein, National Father’s Day Council has cemented their standing as a completely irrelavent puppet to Democratic women by naming Bill Clinton as father of the year. Perhaps in acknowledgement for his efforts to make a good feminist out of Chelsea by giving her a piss-poor example of fatherhood and male moral character, and for being the bad-boy alpha that women most admire.
Be sure and contact the National Father’s Day Council here (info@fathersdaycouncil.org) and tell them what you think of their choice of Bill Clinton as representing the best-of-the-best amongst us fathers.
slwerner, there’s nothing “offending” about interacting with T per se. If nothing else, restating the now-well-established arguments from time to time can only be useful for those lurkers – male and female – who read Dalrock’s site but don’t look at any older articles. I keep nagging Dalrock from time to time about needing a sidebar of some sort for key postings, such as the “interviewing a wife” series, “the whispers” and others.
I just thought it was time to point out what was happening.
@empath – “Back to basics eh? Why do you assume that the reason is real or compelling? ”
I assume that the reason is compelling because most often the divorce is financially detrimental to the woman and her children, and her children suffer emotionally ( supposedly the death of a parent is easier to deal with and has better outcomes than divorce). As there no benefit, financially to divorce in most cases over staying together then the relationship must be so unbearable that the one or both spouses want it over. Filing for divorce is not the same as causing the divorce. Although one person may be more at fault than others in the failure of a marriage in general both spouses played a significant role in the relationship’s demise. I think that cases where one spouse is an innocent victim and the other a conniving marriage wrecker are rare.
From what I’ve seen, if a person cannot think of something that they are doing wrong in their marriage and their marriage is going badly the problem is probably them. Normal, functioning spouses make mistakes and can usually tell you what those mistakes were and how they will go about correcting them. A sure sign of a problem spouse is pointing at the other person and declaring that it is all their fault.
slwerner, to the point that the ideas are resonating, i add that we frequently find the comments areas on ever main stream media sites, following feminist tripe about family law or whatever, filling early with men sensing or knowing something ain’t right. These pedestrians are partially accounted for in just the overwhelmingly obvious state of things, but also memes spread one kernel at a time. Heck look at the other side. Christian women spread DISinformation in that way when they rail about the dire need for easy divorce to avoid patriarchal abuse…women propagate that with nothing more for a source than having read its assertion in a combox somewhere. While I hesitate to celebrate ignorant parroting of ideas as a win, it is at least one way things spread in addition to the man to man phenom. you mention.
@slwerner
My specific posts arguing against the existence of a marriage strike were in 2010 when the most recent data was from 2009. At the time the data just didn’t confirm the claims that women weren’t able to marry. As I pointed out then, we would have to wait several years to see how the data developed. In the meantime I’ve tracked and shared the new data as it came in, and I think we all agree that something very important is going on. The only remaining question is what exactly is going on, and would you call it a marriage strike. You are free to suggest the narrative, and I’ve already shared the data you can use to back it up.
To me the data clearly points to women intending to delay marriage, but some argue that it is outright lack of interest in marriage by women. Either way, it appears to me that women aren’t interested in marrying when they are young and most attractive, and I think this is the overwhelming reason why men aren’t marrying in their early to mid 20s. Additionally, the late 20s/early 30s carousel jumpers aren’t generally interested in marrying a young 20 something man. She wants the man roughly her age who has the established career and is killing it with the “ladies” (preselection plus alpha widow effect). However, by the time a man reaches that stage he has seen too much of the script to be able to deny it, and a large incentive to marry in the form of desire for sex is already being met quite well, thank you. Additionally, the opportunity to lead a family is one of the prime motivators for men to work hard to be prepared to become a provider. A generation of young men receiving a decade of no attention from the opposite sex will tend to reduce that motivation, because when the preparation needs to be done they don’t see the eventual payoff as proximate or likely. So as I see it young women are waiting to marry, and by the time they are ready to look for a husband the pool of potential husbands has shrunk significantly due to many of them either learning how to become players or never having established themselves professionally.
Props to Susan Walsh on her latest acknowledgement regarding the state of misandry in this nation.
Well, I did not know there was a National Father’s Day Council until today, and in a sense – no such body really exists. But thanks, slwerner, for the alert. That org clearly needs enough email to cause a system failure in the mbox.
As there no benefit, financially to divorce in most cases over staying together then the relationship must be so unbearable that the one or both spouses want it over. Filing for divorce is not the same as causing the divorce. Although one person may be more at fault than others in the failure of a marriage in general both spouses played a significant role in the relationship’s demise. I think that cases where one spouse is an innocent victim and the other a conniving marriage wrecker are rare.
From what I’ve seen, if a person cannot think of something that they are doing wrong in their marriage and their marriage is going badly the problem is probably them. Normal, functioning spouses make mistakes and can usually tell you what those mistakes were and how they will go about correcting them. A sure sign of a problem spouse is pointing at the other person and declaring that it is all their fault.
I am not going to snipe, but I am going to say that you are adding absolutely nothing but conventional wisdom to this topic. Your notions are the notions found in casual uninformed discussions, the type of assumptive easy to swallow tripe that makes everyone feel like they have insight (maybe I’m sniping, sorry)
There is actual data to refute this, unequivocally. I suppose the relationship was :unbearable” to the women filing because she fails to see the effect of what she about to do…until its too late.
Query divorce attorneys, they will tell you women overwhelmingly call near the final date of the divorce and seek to either extend the drama, or in some cases float the idea that reconciliation is a good idea, because during the temporary orders part, guess what, her life is EXACTLY the same……minus the jerk.
Like fish don’t know they are wet, women run around submerged in the ideas you just typed, blissfully ignorant of their inaccuracy. I beg you do some checking instead of standing on cliches. You couldn’t be more wrong. Your belief set is fundamental especially among churchians to rationalize the sin of frivolous divorce. Lacking the sin aspect, your belief set is low viscosity salve for the secular women doing same.
in the end its totally irrelevant if you split actual fault 50/50, 60/40….whatever. No filing, no divorce. One way to prevent divorce is DO NOT FILE ONE. You are probably accustomed to hearing divorce spoken of as a sentient thing…”divorce is rampant”. This makes no one responsible, including the ultimate one who IS……the one who files. Think through any other issue that you would examine, and if there was a figure like 75% of a subset initiating that problem, would you reflexively dissemble, equivocate, or would you think hmmm, perhaps that BIG number justifies looking into further?
Women do not even consider the financial aspects, which you may think shows that that is not an incentive. Wrong. It shows that they do not fully even ponder the future and act impulsively, emotionally. Christian women get past the harm to the kids with platitudes like “we’ll I have an army or prayer warriors gonna pray my kids through it” in the face of undeniable statistical indicators its bad for the kids.
Conventional wisdom is a comfy chair, and no more.
“in general both spouses played a significant role in the relationship’s demise. I think that cases where one spouse is an innocent victim and the other a conniving marriage wrecker are rare.”
Why do you think that? Surely there are some reasons where they are both “at fault”, and usually those are the marriages that break up for “irreconcilable differences” or “incompatibility” or “grew apart”.
Most of the time when the man is at fault (really at fault) it is for adultery, real violent physical abuse; he’s a drunk or a drug addict and won’t get better, or he’s abandoned his wife and kids; or he’s a lazy, worthless layabout who can’t hold a job and squanders his money and time. It’s a pretty good bet that if the man is engaged in those behaviors AFTER the marriage, there’s a good chance he was doing them BEFORE the marriage. If he was a dirtbag AFTER they got married, he was almost certainly a dirtbag BEFORE they got married. So perhaps the wife bears responsibility for selecting a completely unsuitable man for marriage.
Perhaps if more women chose not to screw dirtbags, refused to make children with dirtbags, and would not marry dirtbags, there would be fewer divorces because the man is a dirtbag.
Dalrock – “To me the data clearly points to women intending to delay marriage, but some argue that it is outright lack of interest in marriage by women.”
Some years back, Glenn Sacks did a post detailing the results of a poll of young men regarding there views on marriage. Most of the majority of those who expressed personal reservations about marriage specifically cited negative observations of the fates of other men in divorce and custody issues. I do wish I had had the foresight to have saved that post and poll results for posterity.
Perhaps another “old-timer” might have it?
@Deti
This loops back around to the moral hazard created by trying to make it “safe” to marry said dirtbag in the first place. In the past women who married dirt bags bore much more of the cost of doing so. Now they can transfer more of this pain onto their husband and children. Hence T’s blithe What, me worry? attitude. She isn’t the one queued up for a potential trip through the meatgrinder, so what are you losers whining about? Besides, the kids want her to be haaaaapy, right? What’s a little meat grinding as a price to pay to make mommy happy?
@ deti – so basically if a woman ends up with a bad husband it is her fault. I agree with that for the most part. I also think that if a man is married to a woman who would divorce him for little to no reason then that is his fault. He should’ve chosen better.
To boil it down to essentials, T, what you’re talking about is this:
The problem is women doing one of two things: either:
1. Roping attractive and tingle-inducing cheaters, bad boys, and unemployed layabouts into marriage (less common); or
2. Marrying available men to whom they aren’t sexually attracted (much more common).
Many women much more often do 2. because they have already had sex with the attractive men fitting the 1. category, who would not marry them. I suspect there is a sizable number of women who do not have (a lot of) sex with men in the 1. category and so they aren’t carousel riders or carousel jumpers. But the men in the 1. category are totally unavailable to these women for anything other than pump & dump. So these women look down a bit to lesser alpha/greater betas looking to marry; but these men are selecting more attractive women. These women then have to look further down still to the men in the 5-6 category. They are not very attractive, but they are available for dating and marriage; and so these women settle for these average men.
I suspect this is what is going on to a great extent. What’s going on now is that women have much more freedom to pursue NSA sex if they want, or a string of LTRs which might or might nor end in marriage. And these women are exposed to many more men than their grandmothers were. More variety leads to more selectiveness. So when these women end up with an average 5-6 man, which is where they would have ended up anyway after being so selective, it can result in profound disappointment. I think this is much of what is happening.
@T
“From what I’ve seen, if a person cannot think of something that they are doing wrong in their marriage and their marriage is going badly the problem is probably them. Normal, functioning spouses make mistakes and can usually tell you what those mistakes were and how they will go about correcting them. A sure sign of a problem spouse is pointing at the other person and declaring that it is all their fault.”
That paragraph, especially the last sentence, makes our case more strong: this is largely true of a woman initiating the the destruction of a marriage. Thanks for the contribution, even if unintentional.
That is probably the most idiotic complaint against the manosphere that I have ever seen. This person really needs to come down from their ivory tower of great philosophers and whatnot.
T – “I also think that if a man is married to a woman who would divorce him for little to no reason then that is his fault. He should’ve chosen better.”
I sense that few men would actually disagree with this suggestion. Perhaps that’s why fewer men are choosing to marry – the dearth of women worth marrying. I’d suggest that in choosing not to marry, many men ARE, in fact, making better choices as to marriage partners.
To a government that wants to tax the crap out of them so we can afford to go on paying for military bases in dozens of countries they’ve never heard of
Prior to the recent withdrawal from Iraq, about 70% of military personnel stationed in the United States. The bulk of the remainder were in one of five countries he likely has heard of: Germany, Japan, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Kuwait. The Southern Command, covering Latin American and the Caribbean, had about 2,000 billets (of 1.5 million military personnel), of which nearly half were at Guantanamo Bay, an American possession since 1902. About 5,000 personnel were billeted in tropical and southern Africa. About 15% of all public expenditure is allocated to the military; about 6% of all public expenditure could be fairly attributable to foreign deployments (‘ere the withdrawal from Iraq); the share devoted to deployments to truly obscure places is minimal.
“I also think that if a man is married to a woman who would divorce him for little to no reason then that is his fault. He should’ve chosen better.”
Yes. To continue the dialog in the same vein: When the woman is at fault (really at fault) for causing the divorce it is almost always because
1. She cheated on him
2. She’s a bitch to him
3. She has frozen him out sexually
4. She is irresponsible or negligent or some combination thereof.
But as for women who divorce for unhaaaaappiness there are usually other things going on there.
Again: If she was a slut before marriage, she’s probably got baggage that might lead to 1, 2, 3 or 4. If she can’t handle money BEFORE marriage she might not be able to handle it AFTER marriage. If she cheated on a prior husband or BF, odds are she might do the same to you. If she’s got sexual hangups before marriage, they will continue in the marriage. If she’s prone to bitchiness before marriage, it will likely continue. This is why men around here are exhorted not to be a Captain Save-A-Ho, to inquire into sexual pasts, and to examine her life carefully.
@slwerner
I think the problem here is that those in the weaker SMP power position tend to answer that they don’t want marriage. Whether this is sour grapes or a realistic response to actual prospects at the time, there does seem to be something here. My skeptical response to young men claiming they don’t want to marry is the same as to older women claiming they don’t want to marry. Individually there will be honest answers here, but I’m hesitant to take survey results as conclusive for a given group.
Either way, I do still think that young women are looking to postpone marriage. The only common counter argument is that they don’t want to marry at all. So it could be a sort of mutual strike when women and men are young. But this doesn’t explain why so many still do marry in their late 20s. Basically we would have to assume that men prefer marrying older, less hot women so they can play the field at exactly the worst time SMP wise for them to do so.
Part of me wishes I did believe that young men were driving this, because we need some sort of pushback against what has been many decades of redefining marriage to the point of absurdity. Young men as a block catching on and saying “no” would be the kind of pushback we would need to get women like T to suddenly notice that men are living breathing human beings, with feelings and hopes and dreams of their own. However, either way the pushback is already happening as for whatever reason marriage delayers are starting to have good reason to sweat.
@ deti – I think that you are correct that marrying a man that you aren’t very attracted to is common. (Or maybe the attraction fades after the newness of the relationship wears off in some cases.) The point of marriage is not, and has never been great sex. I think the idea that you marry someone that you are passionate about is relatively new. The women of my grandmother and great grandmothers generation married for practical reasons and not for love. That’s not to say that they isn’t love their husbands, but it wasn’t the point.
I think that people need to realize that feelings are not the point of marriage and stay together even when the romantic in love feeling has faded.
T, slwerner:
“Perhaps that’s why fewer men are choosing to marry – the dearth of women worth marrying. I’d suggest that in choosing not to marry, many men ARE, in fact, making better choices as to marriage partners.”
Just so. Most women coming into a marriage now have a sexual history and all the attendant baggage. Most women are not marriageworthy just for that very reason: perhaps they aren’t alpha widows or have a partner count in the dozens. But they were on the receiving end of a pump and dump, or two or three. Or they are flaky, flighty and irresponsible. Or they don’t trust men in general. Or they are entitled princesses, demanding supplication and tribute at every turn. Or they are around 30 and just need to lock down a guy, any guy, so she can quiet the tick tock of the bio-clock roaring in her ears.
@ deti – so basically if a woman ends up with a bad husband it is her fault. I agree with that for the most part. I also think that if a man is married to a woman who would divorce him for little to no reason then that is his fault. He should’ve chosen better.
Rather more difficult to detect in advance than are tomcatting, alcoholism, and a spotty employment history. Next excuse.
If frivolous divorce was rare, and women usually had a “good reason” for filing for divorce, then the no-fault divorce laws today wouldn’t exist, because women wouldn’t have voted and fought so hard for them.
They did so just as they fought to legalize discretionary abortion. They didn’t want to have to have a legit reason, they just want to be able to do whatever the hell they want and answer to no one.
I suspect that if you did a covert study by asking 10 women why they divorced you will get one almost universal answer: “I wasn’t happy.”
They might whine about how he was lame in this way or that, the flimsy complaints they have which were not deal-killers meriting divorce, but simply attraction killers that made him undesirable, killed the tingles, and caused her “unhappiness”.
This is now the rule, not the exception.
@ Solomon –
some women file when they have no good reason and other women fight to save marriages where there is a good reason for divorce. For example many women try to work out marriages where the husband has had an affair. Don’t 50% or so of married men have affairs? I’m sure that all of these cheaters aren’t divorced.
women try to save marriages after the guy has cheated because it hits their attraction switches, though they’d never admit it. Seriously, a guy would have a better chance saving his marriage to an unhappy wife with an affair than he would by more supplicating and ass-kissing.
T – “For example many women try to work out marriages where the husband has had an affair. Don’t 50% or so of married men have affairs?”
And nearly as many woman are doing the same anymore…but nice try at male-shaming anyhow.
Brendan once did a very detailed synopsis of why a woman’s infidelity was much more likely to lead to divorce than was a mans. The bottom line IIRC was that when women cheat, they are more likely to be done with the marriage, and no longer in love with their husbands,; whereas men who cheat are more likely to still love their wives and even report that they were happily married. As I recall, even Susan Walsh posted about a study which indicated the same within the past year.
in short, the reason that a woman’s infidelity is more likely to lead to divorce is that cheating wives are less willing to try to work things out, even with husbands who would forgiven them.
You just cannot put that one on men.
@dalrock
Although I think we have been here before, it is clear that young women are choosing to marry later, but what a fair number are finding is that if they do not catch men whilst those men’s hormones are raging, they are going to find it harder to do so when older, wiser, and more sober, they, the men either choose not to marry or decide to pass over their own generation and marry younger women. So many, men have watched their fathers, brothers, and friends divorced for no reason beyonf fickleness and will have taken note. In addition the behaviour of so many younger women is verging daily into the Marie-Antoinette sphere such that even at the height of their horniness young men are simply avoiding females. The next generation of women are certain to observe what happened to their older sisters and thus I think that there is inevitably bound to be a correction, but a vast number of women who eventually decide to marry are going to find that there are no takers – a quick perusal of OK cupid reveals the situation – the women put on a brave face, but they are I am afraid staring permanent spinsterdom in the face. In this respect I believe you have may have missed Liz Jones’ latest moan-fest in The Mail a day or so ago. Not only was there no man, she, since she moved to Yorkshire had only gained one female friend. It was cruel not to laugh.
lzozozolzoz
deti writes: “Just so. Most women coming into a marriage now have a sexual history and all the attendant baggage. Most women are not marriageworthy just for that very reason: perhaps they aren’t alpha widows or have a partner count in the dozens. But they were on the receiving end of a pump and dump, or two or three. Or they are flaky, flighty and irresponsible. Or they don’t trust men in general. Or they are entitled princesses, demanding supplication and tribute at every turn. Or they are around 30 and just need to lock down a guy, any guy, so she can quiet the tick tock of the bio-clock roaring in her ears.”
lzozozolzozozoz yah!
the corprate state bernankifies and edeosulz womenz in serteievly taped buttcoclkcing sessionsz so that they serve the bottomline (pun intended zlzlozzooz) instead of the higher ideals of fiath and family that moses and homer and jesus all sugegstetedz lolzlzlolzozoz
There’s also Michelle Langley’s frank book “Women’s Infidelity” (http://womensinfidelity.com/), where she pretty much lays it all out when it comes to women’s affairs and why they basically crater marriages. Langley is a feminist who thinks this is a good thing, both to put men in their place, level the playing field and so on (and she has an obsession with her size-queen-ism), but she nevertheless nails down how female infidelity works, how it tends to play out, and why the marriage is almost always toast afterward.
And, of course, it goes without saying that Langley is neither a misogynist nor a manosphere sympathizer — she’s anything but.
@Dalrock
“Part of me wishes I did believe that young men were driving this, because we need some sort of pushback against what has been many decades of redefining marriage to the point of absurdity. ”
Something I’ve noticed over the past two decades may shed some light on this. I remember the 80s and 90s when some a common complaint from women was “men are afraid to commit” (won’t marry). Within the economic framework of diminishing manufacturing jobs and the switch in emphasis from hiring men to hiring women, men got their financial legs under them later in life. Between then and mid-2000s, feminists rebranded the rhetoric to “women are choosing to marry later”.
Compare it to the Japanese herbivore men in the 90s. The headlines a decade ago said the women were pissed off because they wanted to marry but that the men weren’t career driven and too effeminate. These men were the first generation after an economic recession that reduced their ability to support a family so, among other things, they didn’t pursue families like their fathers did. Now, if you read the later headlines, they will say “women choosing not to marry in Japan”.
I bring these points up because I think that both men and women are choosing to marry later but, because they are not “active” choices, it’s harder to see. Looking at the context of both situations from a high level, the economies for both countries limited men’s ability to support families. The men became less-willing and less-able to form families at the early age of their fathers, so they waited. The women had less choice in mate selection and therefore “chose” not to marry. The rhetoric surrounding both circumstances was rebranded to make it look like “the women are choosing not to marry or to marry later”.
It seems to me that the economic circumstances of men are driving this, just maybe not by their choice and so when women are confronted with the new realities, they may be forced by circumstance to choose to not marry or to marry later, just not by choice (as odd as that may sound). I think the feminist rhetoric machine makes it look a little confusing by forcing us to believe that women are making active choices.
I know there are holes in my observation but I believe there to be some merit in the similarities of both situations. My apologies in advance for any typos and for such a long post.
Most young men (particularly more devout men) are willing to marry younger, but young women are not ready. There is a correlation between marriage and men’s prosperity (born of necessity when supporting a family). So while young women are building their feminist portfolio, young men are working just enough to support themselves. This is fine as far as I’m concerned, it’s not a judgment.
By the time the young women are ready to settle down, the most desirable young men have moved on to someone who was willing to build a life with them from the ground up. The men left a are often fine, upstanding, attractive individuals, but they lack the credentials the unmarried women desire in a husband. Especially if the husband hunter has amassed multiple degrees, a decent career, etc.
All that to say I agree that women are the driving force behind plummeting marriage rates; not men.
T:
The marital infldelity rate is more like around 20 to 30% for men and women (self-reported).
When a man cheats it’s because he wants variety. He doesn’t necessarily want out of his marriage. Men have far less opportunity to cheat because most simply are not attractive enough to pull a concurrent sex partner.
It is far, far easier for a wife to cheat on a husband than it is for a husband to cheat on a wife, simply because men are far more sexually available to women than vice versa. Any woman a 4 or above in physical attractiveness can get a willing sex partner anytime she wants, 24/7/365.
When a woman cheats it is because she wants a new lover/sex partner, she isn’t bonded to her husband or does not want to be, and she wants out of the marriage. She almost never wants a concurrent lover with her husband. By the time she makes the decision to cheat, she is 100% done with the marriage.
Zippy should chill… more people are talking about “game” (or just being a douchebag thereof) mainstream…
“The 5 Commandments of Being a Jerk,” by John Hawkins, PJ Media, 9 Jan 2013
http://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2013/01/09/the-5-commandments-of-being-a-jerk/
Deti – “When a woman cheats it is because she wants a new lover/sex partner, she isn’t bonded to her husband or does not want to be, and she wants out of the marriage. She almost never wants a concurrent lover with her husband. By the time she makes the decision to cheat, she is 100% done with the marriage.”
A good example of a woman actually admitting to this that many here are already familiar with would be Sandra Tsing Loh, who openly stated that although she had the opportunity to work at reconciling with her husband, she just really didn’t care enough about him (nor their children it seems) to even want to try to do so.
Even though doing so in her back-handed stye, “T” was, of course, trying to suggest that male infidelity leading to lower rates of divorce than female infidelity was due to (better by nature) women being more forgiving than men. There is no evidence to support that notion. There is, however, the evidence provide by cheating and divorcing women themselves that they are simply less interested in reconciling than are men who’ve cheated.
I also think that if a man is married to a woman who would divorce him for little to no reason then that is his fault. He should’ve chosen better.
They are choosing better, they are not marrying.
This is more platitudes and conventional wisdom.
The only exception I would make to that, Deti, is that a non-trivial number of men cheat on their wives with hookers. From what I have read based on what hookers themselves have written about this, a large majority of their clientele consists of married guys. Some of these guys could probably have affairs and for them it’s just easier with a hooker (no risk that she goes all Fatal Attraction on you), whereas with other guys it’s likely that they are in the majority of guys who would have a hard time finding a voluntary cheat partner who is anywhere near as visually/physically attractive as a call girl, so he opts for the call girl. These aren’t “affairs” in the way that women’s paramours tend to be, but they still count as infidelity.
Women file 75% of the divorces. Of the other 25%, the ones filed by men, some are due to the woman cheating, being addicted, or being abusive. Subtracting those female filed divorces that were mutually agreed, the subtracting those female filed divorces where the man cheated, abused physically, or was an addict, the rate stays at about 70% of divorces being female filed or caused.
T, unless and until you get these numerical facts, you are wasting time even posting about marriage and its demise, because you are so ill informed there is a disconnect with reality.
Anonymous – “Zippy should chill…”
That those who consider themselves part of the Orthosphere would criticize the MAndrosphere as one big echo-chamber of whiny, disaffected individuals who don’t accomplish (build) anything is a total hoot. There is no better example of an impotent echo-chamber than a bunch of like-minded socially-cloistered Catholics making inaccurate, yet entirely unchallenged, commentary on those they know little or nothing about. The dictionaries might as well say: “see Orthosphere” in the definition of “echo-chamber”.
There’s also Michelle Langley’s frank book “Women’s Infidelity”
Is that on the Great Books list?
Dear GBFM, Opus, et. al.:
Thanks for the book titles. I’m ashamed to note that I’ve never read Clarissa. It looks first rate.
Another favorite of mine which GBFM will enjoy is Misogyny In The Western Tradition (Routledge, 1999, Clack Ed.). This is a reader which is probably assigned to beginning wimminz studies majors, freshman year of university. It contains priceless selections from Plato, Nietzsche, Kant, Hume, and a dozen others, which reveal what the greatest minds humanity has ever produced has thought of the wimminz. Not only is the text funny and truthful, but the (feminist) editor leaves humorous notes, raving about wimminz oppression and trying to “explain” the great thinkers from a feminist perspective. Two thumbs way up as it’s both informative and educational.
Now back to the regularly scheduled flame war…
Boxer
T, you are arguing that no fault divorce with near guaranteed wife custody (with the father paying child support) is fair, because women don’t divorce frivolously. Sure the system is designed to be abused in exactly the way Joel and Kathy advise, but women aren’t like that. Ordinary people (men) would be tempted to respond to this kind of corrupt incentive if it existed, but not morally superior women. In fact, you explain that women do everything they can to hold their marriages together even when faced with addiction, infidelity, and abuse:
Besides, when women divorce frivolously, it isn’t really frivolous. If she was unhappy and the husband can’t point to something concrete he did like infidelity, abuse, or addiction, this proves the husband must be to blame:
Sorry for the interruption. I now return you to our regularly scheduled hamster hunt. Tally ho gentlemen.
Don’t everyone forget one of the bestest books ever: H.L. Mencken’s In Defense of Women:
“A MAN’S WOMEN FOLK, whatever their outward show of respect for his merit and authority, always regard him secretly as an ass, and with something akin to pity. His most gaudy sayings and doings seldom deceive them; they see the actual man within, and know him for a shallow and pathetic fellow…”
There’s also Michelle Langley’s frank book “Women’s Infidelity”
Is that on the Great Books list?
Not exactly a “Great Works of Western Civ”, but on the required reading for all men list nevertheless.
Did you read it in the original Papiamentu or the poorly translated English version?
It has so much more to say if you read Papiamentu.
@GBFM
I trust you enjoy Clarissa but you will need patience as it has the reputation of being the longest English Novel (at 1400 pages) is not always easy to understand – it desparately needs some good notes which the Penguin edition (no space) does not have. However *spoiler alert* notwithstanding its length its plot can be summaried thus: first seven hundred pages – Clarissa is desparate to elope with Alpha-cad Lovelace, second seven hundred pages – Lovelace having snatched Clarissa from the bosom of her family, as desired, she, Clarissa prick-teases Lovelace until driven crazy he eventually forces her. I have no sympathy for her at all – sorry feminists. Clarissa was obviously slut-walk material.
My favourite line – and this shows how impossible Clarissa is – is early on when a Curate called, I think, Wickham vists Clarissa’s parents house for breakfast. Naturally Clarissa loathes him and complains, ‘He did stalk me; he moved his chair six inches closer to mine’. We thus see women were as barking then as they are now.
I think that cases where one spouse is an innocent victim and the other a conniving marriage wrecker are rare.
From what I’ve seen, if a person cannot think of something that they are doing wrong in their marriage and their marriage is going badly the problem is probably them. Normal, functioning spouses make mistakes and can usually tell you what those mistakes were and how they will go about correcting them. A sure sign of a problem spouse is pointing at the other person and declaring that it is all their fault.
There is some truth to the idea that a person placing all the blame for a marriage fail on the other spouse is probably pointing fingers and not taking personal responsibilities for their failings.
But the idea that this is rare is truly ludicrous. Divorce happens in 98.9% of cases because one or both spouse is upset that the marriage is not meeting their perceived needs. This is considered legitimate because almost everyone has a utilitarian view of marriage…(you give me x and I give you y) and if one person lets down their side of the bargain they end the arrangement.
The fact that you consider this ok shows that you don’t consider marriage an indissoluble union.
@dalrock – I did not argue that no fault divorce with near guaranteed mother custody was fair because women dont divorce frivilously. I argued that child support is not inherently unfair and that there is no financial benefit to most divorces.
The part of my comment that you removed directly contradicts the claims that you made about my position. The entire comment to soloman @12:13 reads :
“@ Solomon –
some women file when they have no good reason and other women fight to save marriages where there is a good reason for divorce. For example many women try to work out marriages where the husband has had an affair. Don’t 50% or so of married men have affairs? I’m sure that all of these cheaters aren’t divorced.”
Obviously I am not arguing that frivolous divorce does not exist if in the beginning of the comment I say that some women divorce when they have no cause. My point there was actually that women staying married when they have reason to divorce is probably a lot more common than women divorcing for no reason at all.
No one is talking about divorcing for no reason at all……oy
@ deti – in response to your comment at 1:02pm –
I agree that women who cheat are probably on their way out of the marriage no matter what. In general two men won’t share a woman and women don’t want to be shared. Women who cheat probably want a divorce because that’s the only way that they can move on. Men don’t want to move on, they want more than one woman, so they have no need of divorce in that situation. I am not surprised that more women would want to divorce than men. Cheating women need divorce and cheating men don’t. Most studies on adultery show that women are less likely to cheat even though cheating is easier for them.
T – “Most studies on adultery show that women are less likely to cheat even though cheating is easier for them.”
Yes, but those studies have recently been demonstrating the there is little disparity in rate anymore. And, further, since those studies tend to be of total life-time rates, they necessarily include many from prior generations where women did cheat substantially less (that they are willing to admit to, even anonymously, that is), the fact the the overall numbers are nearing parity likely also suggests that younger women today may, in fact, cheat more often than do their male peers. If a study were to be conducted today, that controlled for ages wherein women were more likely to have children, such a study might very well find that women out cheat men in that age range.
But, that’s largely irrelevant. You’d like to suggest that men give women more reason to divorce than do women. But your most heartfelt beliefs may not square with reality. Dalrock has previously provide a more detailed breakdown of reasons for divorce, and women cited their husbands infidelity in something like 13% of instances wherein they file. Abuse and addiction had even lower rates. That data tended to point to women simply becoming dissatisfied with their marriages, and wanting out. This does not suggest that women are necessarily more dissatisfied than are men, but rather that women tend to see divorce as preferable to sticking it out than do men. That men tend to rightly believe that they and their children will be substantial hurt in divorce, whereas woman seem more prone to believe that they and theirs will not might well skew this result. if divorce were more equitable, perhaps just as many dissatisfied men would file as would dissatisfied women.
But your repeated appeals to the notion that women are intrinsically better than men hold no water.
@slwerner- the point was not that, “women are intrinsically better than men.” I never said that. I also never mentioned that women were more likely than men to forgive infidelity. Go back and reread. I am not sure why you are arguing those points with me as if I made them. Again, my point was that women often remain in marriages where they have grounds for divorce and that this is much, much more common than women divorcing frivolously.
T – ” I am not sure why you are arguing those points with me as if I made them.”
I’ve seen the same tactic too many times to miss it. You suggested that if men wanted custody, all they would have to do would be to ask for it. This implicitly suggests that men do not ask, because they do not want it. And, you state that women truly want their children (clearly suggesting that this is somehow different from men, who do not).
Then, your suggest that women stay in marriages even when their husbands have been unfaithful can hardly be seen as suggesting anything other that that women are more forgiving than are men.
True, you never explicitly state these things, you just “suggest” them in a commonly-seen back-handed fashion.
“Again, my point was that women often remain in marriages where they have grounds for divorce and that this is much, much more common than women divorcing frivolously.”
You claim this based on what information? You simply assume it to be so, because you sincerely believe that women are just better people, and would be more likely to stick it out than to divorce. I would counter that the limited statistic available suggest rather that women are more likely to opt for divorce when dissatisfied than are men. I do not suggest that men are better people n general than ore women, simply that men are more likely to understands the potential costs of divorce an escape route than are women.
I argue so as to not let unsubstantiated assertions which are suggestive of men as “the problem” go unchallenged.
If a man on this forum were to spout off claims that women are more at fault, wouldn’t you argue the point? (or, should I have asked, “didn’t you?”)
Opus, “Clarissa” is a fascinating piece of work, I am astounded that it has not been made into an absurdly long multi-part series either on PBS / BBC, or on the likes of “LIfetime”, “Oxygen”, etc.
For those who wish the ultra-Cliff’s Notes version:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarissa
@Anonymous Reader
The BBC have filmed Clarissa. There are also Opera’s on the book from Bizet (lost) and Robin Holloway.
ONE OF THE MOST HILARIOUS THINGZZ IS HOW
SO MANY FATHERLESS RITALIN RAISED PUSUSYSYSYYSS FANBOYZ SAY
“WELL THE GREAT BOOKS TEACH NOTHING OF GAMEZZZ lzozozlzolz”
THIS IS WHY THE MODERN CHURCHIANZ HAVE BANISHED THE BIBLEZ: lzozozzozo
http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/says_about/womens_rights.html
“Genesis 3:16Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.
Isaiah 3:12As for my people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them.
1 Corinthians 11:3But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God.
1 Corinthians 14:34-36Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience as also saith the law. And if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church.
Ephesians 5:22-24Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body. Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing.
Colossians 3:18Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as it is fit in the Lord.
1 Timothy 2:11-15Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression. Notwithstanding she shall be saved in childbearing.
Titus 2:4-5Teach the young women to be … obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed.
1 Peter 3:1Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands.”
SOMEDAY WHEN ALL D PUASZ GET BORED WITH STERILE BUTTOCKINGZ SESSIOZN tehy will return to d a GREAT BOOKZ FOR MENZ RENAISSANZESZ zlzlzlzllzlzlzz
THE GREAT BOOKZ FOR MENZ TEACH GAMEZ AN DMORE!! lzozozz
http://greatbooksformen.wordpress.com/2013/01/10/how-the-great-bookz-for-men-teach-game-zlozozlzozozozlzlozololzz/
@slwerner – “You claim this based on what information?” –
If every wife who was cheated on divorced her husband as a result then every divorce and then some would be for cause.
I do not suggest that men are better people n general than ore women, simply that men are more likely to understands the potential costs of divorce an escape route than are women.
I am curious how either of you are defining “better” people.
It is my theory that women are probably average in goodness, and men are both more likely to be desperately evil (cannibalistic serial killers) but also more likely to be heroes of virtue. I am willing to bet that if goodness was plotted on a bell curve it would look similar to the IQ curve..with men more to the right or more to the left and women dominating the middle. Men just have a general tendency to be more extreme in one direction or another.
ONE OF THE MOST HILARIOUS THINGZZ IS HOW
SO MANY FATHERLESS RITALIN RAISED PUSUSYSYSYYSS FANBOYZ SAY
“WELL THE GREAT BOOKS TEACH NOTHING OF GAMEZZZ lzozozlzolz”
THIS IS WHY THE MODERN CHURCHIANZ HAVE BANISHED THE BIBLEZ: lzozozzozo
http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/says_about/womens_rights.html
“Genesis 3:16Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.
Isaiah 3:12As for my people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them.
1 Corinthians 11:3But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God.
1 Corinthians 14:34-36Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience as also saith the law. And if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church.
Ephesians 5:22-24Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body. Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing.
Colossians 3:18Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as it is fit in the Lord.
1 Timothy 2:11-15Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression. Notwithstanding she shall be saved in childbearing.
Titus 2:4-5Teach the young women to be … obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed.
1 Peter 3:1Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands.”
SOMEDAY WHEN ALL D PUASZ GET BORED WITH STERILE BUTTOCKINGZ SESSIOZN tehy will return to d a GREAT BOOKZ FOR MENZ RENAISSANZESZ zlzlzlzllzlzlzz
THE GREAT BOOKZ FOR MEN TEACH GAME & EVEN MOREZ!!!!!
http://greatbooksformen.wordpress.com/2013/01/10/how-the-great-bookz-for-men-teach-game-zlozozlzozozozlzlozololzz/
T –“If every wife who was cheated on divorced her husband as a result then every divorce and then some would be for cause.”
But, this is not the case, no is it.
Let’s face it, there was no other purpose to your bringing up that men cheat more (even thought not much more) other than to continue to suggest that men cause more marital discord than do women.
As newcomer, you missed quite of bit of very revealing information – provided by women, no less.
For instance, there was a piece in the Huffington Post wherein women openly revealed that they were merely dissatisfied in their marriages, but wanted a more palpable explanation to give to friends and family. The title was something along the lines of “I wish he would cheat” – providing them with a better reason than just being unhaaaapppy.
Another item was about the reasons women had decided to divorce, starting off with one women’s account of how watching her husband chew food made her realize that she was going to have to divorce him (it wasn’t the only reason – she had a litany of petty complaints, which, by her own admission, she had never bothered to discuss with him).
There are lots of things which might cause marital discord, and there are no doubt men who are unhappy for equally trivial reasons. The real point is that the available evidence points out that, even if men are equally dissatisfied, they are less likely to chose divorce as a result.
Now, as I suggested earlier, this might be skewed by men’s greater awareness of the potential harms of divorcing, either to them, or to their children. Or, the aggressive marketing of divorce to women (see Dalrock’s excellent series) might be what “tips it” for many dissatisfied women. Whatever the reason, the data objectively point to women “frivolously” divorcing much, much more than do men – irrespective of how many wives are willing to stick it out and reconcile with philandering husbands nor how many wives do chose to stay married as opposed to the number of those who opt to divorce when they become dissatisfied. Women still divorce frivolously quite often, while men do so much less often. There just isn’t any reasonable, logical way to “spin” this reality in a female-friendly way. Men are certainly not all saints, but when it comes to divorcing for the slightest of causes, it’s mostly women who will do so.
Gabriella – “I am curious how either of you are defining “better” people.”
I cannot speak for “T”, but I am referring to the culpability in causing marital discord and divorce. As I interpret multiple postings by “T”, she is suggesting that the majority of marital discord can be blamed on men, justifying the higher rate at which women file for divorces as being more than for often frivolous reasons and/or for perceived financial gains.
@slwerner – “Let’s face it, there was no other purpose to your bringing up that men cheat more (even thought not much more) other than to continue to suggest that men cause more marital discord than do women.”
I brought it up to point out that women are much more likely to stay and work on a marriage where a man has given them grounds for divorce than they are to file for a frivolous divorce.
T – “I brought it up to point out that women are much more likely to stay and work on a marriage where a man has given them grounds for divorce than they are to file for a frivolous divorce.”
It may well be that women, in general, are more likely than not to work through such real marital issues. However, your saying so doesn’t make it so. And, again, the only reason to even state than men cheat more often was to try to make the point of men being more guilty.
Yes, men may cheat slightly more often than do women overall, and even if most women who’ve been cheated on are willing to stick it out, all that does is point out that women are more likely to divorce for frivolous reason than for righteous reasons.
Bottom-line, women who just want out are more likely to divorce. Either they’ve cheated, or they just aren’t attracted any more (if they ever were), either way they seem more ready to pull the trigger than are women who actually have good reasons.
I brought it up to point out that women are much more likely to stay and work on a marriage where a man has given them grounds for divorce than they are to file for a frivolous divorce.
This is why your credibility is extremely low. If the dude gave her grounds, then it is NOT a frivolous divorce.
You are offering cliches and platitudes, thoughts that fill the box you want to fill at the moment you fill it.
You can continue running on the wheel, or you can go do some real investigation. The men here are not arguing from lack of facts or from conjecture, saying “there are many ______ who ________” which is nothing but a meaningless statement albeit true, no matter what is claimed.
There is a difference between “bringing” something up and “making” something up. One has a basis in fact which can be referred to (what slwerner asked for) and the other is fantasy at best and, worse, a lie (what he got).
Actually there is a point to be made, a point that buttresses our argument, in the idea that a woman who was cheated on would stay. The frivolous unhaaaapy divorces are more compelling to the filing women than any real fidelity infraction by the man.
Frivolous divorce is maybe a term you are not getting T. It is not about dirty socks and toilet seats, its about what is often called emotional abuse and emotional neglect, made up terms that really mean he is not stocking her raging emotional maelstrom sufficiently. That is frivolous though the women will deny it vehemently. They, in groups will escalate the nomenclature until it has the veneer of not being frivolous, hence folks like you exclude those from consideration. You may also fall prey to the feminine tendency to appeal to anecdote “I dont know anyone who has ever done that”….(see the escalation of nomenclature).
He points to women writing about this. Go read that. I wrote about a woman whose blog began “no one imagines they will wake up divorced one day”….and the female readers and comments then go on the assumption that that’s exactly what she did, she woke up divorced, nothing frivolous right? Yet you find in the details that she was just profoundly unfulfilled and unhappy. That is frivolous divorce. MOST are….by a huge margin. I know it doesnt feel right when conventional wisdom is challenged, but those feelings wont change it
Stoking, not stocking
The leading reason for divorce is women becoming unattracted to their husbands. This is the typical “I love you, but I am not in love with you” scenario — that is a very prettied-up way of saying she isn’t attracted to you “like that” any longer. You are LJBF’d by your wife, in effect.
There are various reasons why this happens, but it generally isn’t related to abuse, addiction or adultery.
@ empath – “This is why your credibility is extremely low. If the dude gave her grounds, then it is NOT a frivolous divorce.”
The point is that women are far more likely to stay even when they have grounds to divorce than they are to divorce when they have no grounds. This is true despite the supposed financial incentive to divorce. Reread the entire conversation if my point is unclear to you.
@Brendan – “There are various reasons why this happens, but it generally isn’t related to abuse, addiction or adultery.”
Yet statically there is enough adultery alone to justify the women filing for divorce rate, and then some.
Yet statically there is enough adultery alone to justify the women filing for divorce rate, and then some.
Not true.
“Most studies on adultery show that women are less likely to cheat even though cheating is easier for them.”
T, it may come as a surprise to you, but adultery by husbands requires a willing accomplice.
@T – slwerner made this point above:
I’ll leave it to Dalrock to point you to specific posts where he pulls out the data. I’m just going to say you’re being extremely obtuse to the issue of women filing due to unhappiness.
[D: Could it be this post?]
Someone or other writes:
“Most studies on adultery show that women are less likely to cheat even though cheating is easier for them.”
Then Art Deco replies:
adultery by husbands requires a willing accomplice.
One amusing thing about women (aside from the current illustration here, of the fact that they’re so eager to deflect criticism by men of other women) is the lengths they can be expected to go to in order to justify their immoral behaviour. I almost suspect that the gene for recursive self-criticism and self-reflection (maybe just simple self-awareness) is located on the Y chromosome.
There was an article years ago on Roissy about the prevalence of pretend virgins. Women run through all the men they’ve blown, tugged off, fucked drunk, given up their rectal canals to, and cross them off one by one for various technical reasons, and end up saying with a straight face “Yup! I’m a virgin!”
So, of course, the statistics (which seem to exist only between this female’s ears) prove that men are the problem in every case. It’s obviously true because, like, she feels it, and no more evidence needs presenting. Never mind all the exhaustive, asperger’s-level statistical detail that the admin here somehow finds the time and energy to analyze and print up. Those numbers don’t trump feelings, and feelings are reality, because she feels it, so we need to just take her word for it.
Regards, Boxer
Dear Random Angeleno:
I’ll leave it to Dalrock to point you to specific posts where he pulls out the data. I’m just going to say you’re being extremely obtuse to the issue of women filing due to unhappiness.
No, don’t you see? If they’re unhaaapy, it’s because their husband did something wrong. Never mind no one can point to anything specific. Female’s feelings are the ultimate arbiter here. Dalrock’s endless number crunching and exhaustive numerical analyses can’t trump feelings.
Now be quiet. You’re just a man, which is a woman with testosterone poisoning. Go back to your man cave, you soulless bastard.
Regards, Boxer
To say that women are incapable of self-reflection and self-criticism because they don’t publicly reveal their self-critical thoughts is a bit like saying men don’t care about their sex life because they don’t complain about it in public.
Since women generally want to be lovable, most don’t walk around advertising why you shouldn’t love them. The great majority of us save our self-flagellation’s for our closest girlfriends.
Of course it is! Ok, maybe not great sex, but certainly good sex (if it’s not good, what’s the point?) is one of the main purposes of getting married for a man. According to St. Paul, it’s the primary — maybe only — reason to marry: it’s best to stay celibate, but if you burn with lust for a woman, marry her so you can sex her up without sin. Lack of consummation has long been grounds for annulment; a marriage wasn’t considered complete until the couple had sex for the first time. Marriage without sex is like a sandwich without the meat: dry and leaving you feeling cheated.
Yes, crude as it may sound to people who prefer to talk about soul-mates and destinies and unicorns, regular sex with a woman he’s attracted to is the #1 reason a man gets married. And if he’s attracted to her and she’s reasonably enthusiastic about it, it’ll be great sex and he’ll be happy. It’s really not that complicated.
Gabriella:
Ordinarily I would never respond to anything you said. This is a particularly interesting example of exactly what I was talking about, though; and I thank you for posting it so swiftly.
And now a message for the boys who are stuck in occupied territory… Gabriella writes:
Since women generally want to be lovable, most don’t walk around advertising why you shouldn’t love them. The great majority of us save our self-flagellation’s for our closest girlfriends.
The younger and less astute brothers might be tempted to take the statement, reproduced in part here, at face value. Note, though, what Gabriella has done. She has subtly shifted the locus of personal responsibility away from the woman in question, and from women in general.
We might argue that since women generally want to be lovable, they ought not do things which their desired objects of affection will find unlovable. Gabriella has skillfully reflected this into a supposition that women’s natural behaviour is found abhorrent to men, and they are forced to commit a form of soft-fraud in order to garner commitment. True or not, it’s a prism which has distorted the original point, made years ago on Roissy, that women are too dishonest about their promiscuity, into one which paints men as too critical of women’s promiscuity.
The answer, of course, is for more women to quit acting like whores, and not for men to accept whores as worthy of commitment.
This has been a public service announcement from the People’s Cultural Marxist Republic of Boxertopia. Some words for the men behind enemy lines: John has a long moustache. (crackle, crackle)… The chair is against the door…
@8oxer
“There was an article years ago on Roissy about the prevalence of pretend virgins. Women run through all the men they’ve blown, tugged off, fucked drunk, given up their rectal canals to, and cross them off one by one for various technical reasons, and end up saying with a straight face “Yup! I’m a virgin!””
I like when one tells me “I’m a model” simply because they want to be one. The female mind, where wish and reality collide and the wish comes out on top.
Boxer. Thank you.
and +1 for the Red Dawn reference.
Boxer- You are so silly. Explaining behavior and excusing it are not the same thing. Do the men here excuse infidelity when they wax poetic about the male love for sexual variety? I never assumed so.
T – “I also think that if a man is married to a woman who would divorce him for little to no reason then that is his fault. He should’ve chosen better.”
This statement from T is the damn truth of reality that the bluepill hides. That statement combined with all of the other comments on family and divorce would make a great high school boy’s sex education class. The idea that no men can be victims is also the foundation of the laws of misandry. And with that only about 2 to 5 percent of all women are worthy of marriage. (T is not in that group based purely on her comments here)
I’m glad she made that point for as was said Our ground work as been laid out for us. To teach a man to understand T’s statement and all of the implications in the reason the manosphere exist.
“The leading reason for divorce is women becoming unattracted to their husbands. This is the typical “I love you, but I am not in love with you” scenario — that is a very prettied-up way of saying she isn’t attracted to you “like that” any longer. You are LJBF’d by your wife, in effect.”
“There are various reasons why this happens, but it generally isn’t related to abuse, addiction or adultery.”
Yes. It’s a prettied up way of her telling you she loves you, but she just doesn’t want to have sex with you anymore.
This is why no fault divorce was created, and why the language is “irreconcilable differences have caused the irretrievable breakdown of the marriage”. It’s a nice way of saying one of the spouses (usually the wife) just doesn’t want to be married to the other spouse (usually the husband) anymore.
Yet statically there is enough adultery alone to justify the women filing for divorce rate, and then some.
You’re ignoring the stats about divorces. You’re basically saying “Look, 50% of marriages end in divorce, 50% (or more) or marriages feature male cheating, statistically there is enough adultery to justify the divorce rate”. But adultery is not cited as the reason for divorce in more than a relatively small minority of cases. The leading reason is the “we grew apart” type of reason (I’m not talking about the legal ground, but what people report in surveys) — i.e., the wife fell out of love with (became unattracted to) the husband, and that was that. It’s not adultery that drives the divorce rate, at least not male adultery. I know you basically want to make the point that “hey, men behave badly enough in marriage to justify the divorce rate, even if that isn’t the reason women are divorcing, so shut up, boys, cuz you have it comin’!”. But that ignores what we are saying — we aren’t saying that men don’t cheat. What we are saying is that when you look at the reasons given for divorce the leading ones are not relating to male cheating, but the falling out of love type thing — which is either a prelude to or concurrent with *female* cheating –> that is, she either has dipped someone else’s wick already or wants to so she wants to get divorced. In these cases, obviously “adultery” isn’t cited, because the woman herself is overwhelmingly the instigator of the divorce — she isn’t going to cite her *own* adultery as the reason for the divorce, she’s going to cite the reason why she no longer wants to be married, which is either the basis for female adultery or the longing for it. The reported “adultery” as cause for divorce, which is a low number, relates to male adultery because women are overwhelmingly the instigators of divorce, and most of them are not doing it for reasons of adultery, addiction or abuse. They’re doing it because they don’t love the H any longer (if they even ever did).
The point is that women are far more likely to stay even when they have grounds to divorce than they are to divorce when they have no grounds. This is true despite the supposed financial incentive to divorce. Reread the entire conversation if my point is unclear to you
This fact comes from where? I absolutely cannot stand it when people use “source?” as their front line of defense, and I have not done so. You are however telling us what you THINK, and nothing more. Am I correct in that, or not? Please answer honestly.
Your statement here is simply, empirically, verifiable as wrong, unequivocally wrong. Further, it is utterly irrelevant to whats being stated to you.
Again
70 plus % of divorces are filed by women
Of that number, a significant majority of them have no grounds…adultery, addiction, beatings….
There may be some that were mutually agreed, insignificant number
Of the male filed ones, some WERE for grounds
The net of all this is that women overwhelmingly file the most divorces AND for groundless reasons.
Im not what exactly you are equivocating about. You are chasing little rabbit trails of things you FEEL are true. You offer not a single numerical reference, let alone its source. We have heard all of the things you say too many times to count. I could walk into an average mixed gender random group, mention the truth on divorce stats, and get each and every platitude your responses contain back in predictable fashion.
@T
I had missed this one. So to sum up, men having to pay for the privilege of being kicked out of their own home and having their children ripped away from them is fair because they must have done something wrong. As I quoted upthread, if there is nothing concrete the husband can point to which he did wrong, she offers this as proof that he did something wrong. Of course, if there is something concrete that he did wrong, this is also proof that he did something wrong. And then there is this one, which states that in the unlikely event that he really didn’t do something wrong, he did something wrong by marrying the kind of woman who would abuse an unjust system.
Note that T isn’t really arguing that the system isn’t unjust, she is just claiming that women wouldn’t use it that way, and if they do, it is obviously the man’s fault.
So quit whining you losers. Like I wrote above, this was the very example I used to explain female solipsism, and I can only assume she is auditioning for the role of poster child. It also is an uncanny example of what I wrote about in another post, Pathological Denial.
See Also: Everyone Knows.
Here is where I described (predicted) T’s entire line of argument from my Solipsism post:
I have a good one for you, Dalrock..
I know a guy who pays almost 2k a month in chilomony to a woman he was married to for less than a decade. He is military and upon his complaining about the egregious amount of money she gets she replied “It isn’t you who is paying me, it is the government!”
And you should know when I heard that I instantly thought of your blog.
“They can’t understand that a system which always punishes a man as if he committed something egregious is inherently unfair.”
There’s nothing unfair about it because the woman always gets what she wants — which to them is the very definition of ‘fair’. So how could it possibly be wrong for the woman to get everything she wants, after all? I mean, other than her personal desires and whims, what other legitimate concerns could ever possibly exist?
This comment that it isn’t the man but the employer paying the child support is perfect in that its a pass through of her complete obliviousness to his work, his earning. Men leave the house and come home, but somehow the money just shows up.
It also illustrates how assigning some third thing responsibility is a last ditch effort. In that case the employer, similar thinking is if you try and discuss filing of divorce with one who filed, you will never ever get admission that that action is one done by a sentient human being….it’s some third thing.
Poster child indeed. May I assume T has filed a groundless divorce? Yes. Though occasionally a second wife will benefit from the first having thrown away a perfectly good husband, and have an epiphany, most walk blissfully unaware of things outside of things stated prefaced with “I believe/feel”
>>@T: Basically telling her that she isn’t in submission because she hates having sex with you isn’t going to make her like having sex with you.
Doggone good reason to GTHO. In places like rural Mexico, most women don’t decide they do not want sex with their husbands. It is only when dealing with AW like T this becomes an issue.
Let me add that some years ago I saw my own sister with a calculator and pencil and paper, doing the numbers to see if she should divorce. It is common. Attempts to say otherwise are pure fiction.
Let me add a comment on why more men don’t ask for custody, for those who know nothing about the divorce process. THEIR LAWYERS TELL THEM CORRECTLY IT IS A WASTE OF TIME AND MONEY TO EVEN ASK. Which women twist around as proof men really don’t want the kids.
Now, down to who is more fit for primary care. Nearly 20 years ago, one day, I told my sister, who did child care for years, that society had changed much more than many people think. And, at least 25% of all kids in divorce should go to the father.
Since she was twice divorced and got the kids both times, I assumed she would be angry. She did puff all up and told me society had changed more than I realized, and at least 50% of all kids should go to the father.
She said when there was a mother and father involved, at least half the time when the father picked them up, you could tell he ran out of work the first possible minute, and came directly there. He would come in with lots of kissing and hugging, and gently put their clothes on them, saying sweet words to them.
When highly superior mommy came in, she’d usually be half an hour late, grab the kids, snap at them, and jerk them around getting their clothes on them.
I mentioned this to my son’s day care provider, who was also a divorced woman. Not only did she agree with my sister, but said at a recent monthly meeting of the city day care provider’s organization, there was a general discussion, and a majority of day care providers said the same thing. That the fathers were actually doing a much better job with the kids than the mothers were.
Let us be blunt. Narcissistic princesses don’t do a great job of caring for little kids.
@Dalrock: As I pointed out then, we would have to wait several years to see how the data developed.
Only those with no knowledge of calculus had to wait to see how it developed. Those of us who begged you to talk to someone who knows math knew how it was going to come out immediately, and you dismissed us as angry men. That is why advanced math exists, so people don’t have to wait for the rainy season to know if bridges and houses will fall down when it rains.
@T
In the 90’s, a feminist group asked a significant number of wives if they were 1 to 5 from very unhappy to very happy. They noted all the wives who said they were unhappy or very unhappy, and contacted them five years later.
Many had divorced, and were still unhappy or very unhappy. Many had not divorced and over that five years, most had become happy or very happy. Thus showing there is little real reason for divorce.
Amazingly, the feminists who did the study also admitted that fact.
@Elspeth: Actually, it is very apparent that the theory that women postpone, and men don’t wait for them is true. Too many women who postponed in their thirties freak out when they realize they jumped the shark by waiting. Thus, women start the marriage strike by postponing marriage, men complete it by refusing to take them when they get darned good and ready.
I filed for divorce back in 1973 after 6.5 years of pure hell. My first wife screamed profanities and insults at me all day every day. I have been told that I was as responsible for the failure of the marriage as she was. Bravo Sierra. This is just more female trickery that even when a failed marriage is the total fault of the woman, it’s still the man who is at fault. Somehow.
Minor details. She told her best friend not long before I filed that she did not respect me because I wouldn’t hit her. She also several times asked me to violently rape her. Only years later, reading Pizzey’s PRONE TO VIOLENCE did I understand her. I suppose the dearies would say I failed, because I refused to hit her or rape her?
Actually, I filed only when I realized after 6.5 years of major abuse I realized I was going to kill her if I did not get away from her, and that frightened me very much.
Only this year, 39 years later, did it register on my brain that she was trying to get me to kill her, or close to it. If you haven’t read Pizzey’s PTV, you won’t understand that.
And, I also will not take a hit because I chose to marry her. Like most men, I had no knowlege, nor should have had, of women who are prone to violence to that degree.
Thus, women start the marriage strike by postponing marriage, men complete it by refusing to take them when they get darned good and ready.
Hey man don’t be letting out that stuff. Involutary childless spinsterhood until the male pill is available depends on women empowering themselves with postponement. There’s a war on you know.
Dear Grey Ghost:
Even without all that stuff, we’ll win the war, and the women are our greatest allies.
http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/comm/haselton/webdocs/pillsworth_haseltonARSR.pdf
Women cheat because it’s hard-wired into them.
Well I’ll be. ha ha ha ha
@Anon age 70
As I’ve been pointing out for over two years now, I do understand calculus. However, calculus can’t predict the future, especially when we are talking about the behavior of human beings. I know this because I studied calculus to get my degree in Economics. If you could predict the future from trends of the past, then every mutual fund prospectus wouldn’t be required by law to state that past performance doesn’t predict the future. Don’t take my word on it, ask whoever you think knows calc better than I do.
I included the chart from the Spearhead post in my OP on the marriage strike projecting the declining marriage rates. However, as I pointed out then the ever married rate for women over 35 still hadn’t declined in a meaningful way. Even so, I said that it seemed highly unlikely to me that it wouldn’t decline going forward:
The other problem with extrapolating the marriage project data in question was with the metric itself. I explained this in the original marriage strike post, and then provided data to prove the point on a follow on post after you made the very same challenge you continue to make over two years later. The metric is flawed because it is extremely sensitive to women spending less of their lifetime being married. Women who postpone marriage and/or divorce and don’t remarry pile up in the denominator, and this will cause the metric to steadily decline even if the number of marriages is steady. No amount of calculus can fix a flawed metric. It isn’t magic, it is only math.
“It is my theory that women are probably average in goodness, and men are both more likely to be desperately evil (cannibalistic serial killers) but also more likely to be heroes of virtue. I am willing to bet that if goodness was plotted on a bell curve it would look similar to the IQ curve..with men more to the right or more to the left and women dominating the middle. Men just have a general tendency to be more extreme in one direction or another.”
It’s false because virtue and goodness is not reducible to matter in the way that animal cognitive abilties are.
Zippy, is what I refer to as a Convincer
Rather then think something through for himself, he wants to be convinced, preferably by a skilled salesman, or an expert persuader, ie bullshitter …
Wanting to be convinced instead of thinking something through for himself, a sign of 1st world entitlement …
Essentially all sheeple want the truth handed to them on a silver platter, without disturbing their retarded mollycoddled sensitivities
In short they have no imagination, to think for the truth for themselves …
Zippy essentially, like most 1st world idiots, cant handle the real world, which is why he demands the truth on a silver platter …
Its precisely because he doesnt know how to dominate, he cant handle the truth
You need masculinity to assert the truth
Knowing the truth is an act of dominance, where you willfully assert the truth over a persons subconcious
Which is why most sheeple want to be convinced, they dont know how to dominate
You need to assert your imagination & ingenuity & brilliance, to not only know the truth, to also create the truth
In order to know the truth, you have to superimpose your imagination on your reality
Using your imagination & its infinite capacity & thinking for yourself, are the ultimate forms of dominance
Which is precisely why the average sheeple, like zippy, dont have the imagination or the streak of brute will-power & a sense of infinite adventure to seek & find the truth
This is essentially why men create & women give birth …
Submission allows a woman to create & rationalise, as an experience of being dominated
Without dominance & the experience of dominance for a woman, there is no imagination or higher cognitive function
Hence the rise of the sheeple, & the mass feminisation of mass media & television
Fight the propoganda, & programming, Dominate & assert your frame & reality will follow your frame… the first step of game & pua & radical intellect
Mass media is a war for your right to Higher Cognitive Function
Anon age 70 at 8.28 says (and in caps locked!) that lawyers tell their clients who would seek custody of their minor children that it is a waste of time and money, and that women then twist that round to suggest that men do not want their children. I swear that I did not pay him to say this, but it is absolutely true. In the days when I practised matrimonial law, that is exactly what I would have told any man. It is not impossible for a man to gain custody of children, but a woman has to be so far off the richter scale of absent or bad-mother, that it is virtually impossible for her to lose. There is in practice an inbuilt assumption that women should more naturally have custody, and were it my court, in the absence of overwhelming evidence that the child would be at physical or other risk to remain with the mother, I would surely award custody to her – and for those who might think I am some sort of crypto-feminist – there would be no point in my doing otherwise as I would be sure to be over-turned on the inevitable appeal.
Sometimes, you find a lawyer (possibly from the First Self Righteous Church – I just cannot get enough of that Ray Stevens video) who attempts to interpret the law in a way that no normal lawyer would, that is to say, with some attempt to suggest that the marriage has not irretrievably broken down and that the matter should be fully aired in court, or that the man’s behaviour in any ordinary ‘unreasonable behaviour’ petition is so bad that this should entitle the wife to even more financial assets. This is a case of putting his own beliefs before reality, for it is a waste of time and his clients money and even if you can find some Judge wou would go along with it, it will again be overturned on appeal.
I am not suggesting by the way that I neccesarily approve of this, and I am certainly not, like T, who from her comments appears to be some sort of cheer-leader for divorce – and like Beckmesser in Die Meistersinger – keen to mark down every minor transgression and publicly. The reality is that most women (effectively) are the first to want into marriage and the first to want out. Most divorces are on the grounds of unreasonable behaviour and that behaviour is always no more serious than ‘left the loo seat up’, ‘failed to put the toothpaste cap back on’ and ‘was not sufficiently supportive when I had a disagreement with my mother’. I am not exagerrating here and it is always that and never anything more serious, which shows that divorce is entirely frivolous, at least by male standards because no matter how badly women behave men will never divorce. TFH has mentioned that where there is default male custody divorce is no higher than 5%: I can well believe it. Divorce is driven entirely by women and for no objectively good reason other than fickleness. Further, women never divorce men for adultery, (assuming they are even aware of it) unless the man has gone off with that younger and hotter women – yet that is comparatively rare. Most men (on the receiving end of divorce) always struck me as not merely perfectly decent (and half of the time the man would be my client) – and noticably much nicer than their female counterparts – but always so decent that they effectively refuse to fight and simply cave in to their bitch wife’s demands. Men after all are programmed to protect and not attack women. The only thing one can say is that they are obviously better off without these women than with them, and another curious thing I noticed, was that when a woman was on the receiving end of a divorce or divorced her husband because he had gone off with another woman, the women were pleasent and nice looking: the women who want divorce on the grounds of their husbands unreasonable behavoiour tended to be unattractive, and aggressive. I am sure Heartise could explain that strange phenomenon – that it is the hotter women who tend to get dumped.
that it is the hotter women who tend to get dumped.
The reason is hotter women are attracted to the same men women in general are attracted to,alphas. hotter women can get them and hotter women stay with them and behave in a way to be attractive to them. One problem alphas are alphas becuse they don’t give a fuck, they love top flirt and as alphas another hot girl is always available. The best thing to happen to the church would be to have thing good solid beta males learn game (simulated alpha) have a more attractive wife and will have the skill to remain attractive to her not to supllication and entertainment. But herd inspired gina tingles by being attractive to other women. Fear is a bad mutha fucka. That selfish streak woman have can be very powerful in maintaining loyal stability in the home. Only a christian beta can handle that power.
@greyghost
I entirely agree. The top guys get the hottest women, but because they can do that, they can always get more. Hot women tend to be more pleasant because being attractive they do not need a bitch shield and find that men are nice to them because they are interested in them – life’s doors open for them. It is the unattractive ones who cannot get men – find themsleves marrying men who do not make their Gina tingle (because they cannot get those they do) who go on slut-walks (to protest a non-existent interest) fabricate instances of Rape (to show how desirable they are) and become feminists – in a pathetic attempt to raise themselves to the level of the hot women.
I have been following a certain blog (which I have briefly mentioned before) containing some now very old love-letters from a woman. I was recently much struck by a certain part of one of these letters which perhaps is not off-topic to this thread. I set out below the relevant passage, and I should say that the woman writing is thirty-five years old who had been briefly married some ten years earlier and is about to marry a single man aged forty – after having known him for just five days – before this series of letters:
‘In her letter she said you were touchy – well that is nothing to how I felt concerning her remark as to my previous marriage – not at her but whoever had been discussing my affairs and presumably passing judgement on me. I suppose it is only natural that people would make some remark about me and my previous marriage but I strongly object to such remarks being made in front of a child who will then go and tell every one else. Whoever made the remark that “wouldn’t it be awful if the marriage does not last any longer than her last” must think that I am extremely fickle. I certainly have my faults but fickleness is not one of them. Now you know how angry I will get on any particular subject when I feel so motivated’.
By good fortune my Q36B is returned from the repairers following a disaster on an earlier thread and so I will now get it to hamsterlate the above message. This is what it produces:
‘In her letter she said you were coming to your senses and getting cold feet. I was furious. How dare anyone go off me or criticise me, or attempt to remove your vagina goggles – don’t you realise I am offering you pussy! – which is the only thing I have going for me so as to remarry before I hit the wall especially now that I have the baby-rabies and am running out of time. I have many faults but I won’t tell you about them and you will have to discover them after we are married and there is nothing that you can do about it then, and one of them is of course that I am fickle as I have spent the last ten years prick-teasing/riding the carousel, but you are the first man I have met who has his own home and business – how dare anyone suggest that I am anything other than god’s gift to matrimony – especially as I sing in the choir at church – and try and talk you out of it. I am dealing with this on a need to know basis – have completely erased all details of my love-affairs from these letters, so that you will think I have not so much as looked at a man these last ten years – and all you need to know is he made me unhaaaapy, and if you do likewise I will be sure to make your life a misery as I did his. I am so anggggggggry, that a child could be the reason my plans could go so wrong’.
I had better stop there as the Q36B was beginning to over-heat again.
If you could predict the future from trends of the past, then every mutual fund prospectus wouldn’t be required by law to state that past performance doesn’t predict the future.
Well, you actually can. The mutual fund example , you maybe realized, is a bad one. The funds future cannot be predicted by the funds past because the constituents of the fund are changing….the actual investments. You may then make the point that you cannot predict the behavior of an individual equity, or futures contract, etc., and that would be correct as well, but (realizing this is weak language) less correct.
We are not trying to get to Laplace’s Demon here.
Though economics cannot predict the future based on gazillions of transactions being made , the reason for that is not dissimilar to what the mutual funds suffer, changes in the constituents and other factors.
Regression can be done on familial trends using set populations and better predictions made than those regarding funds and economies, even if not absolutely perfect. Bring sigma.
Anyway, I wouldnt know what value these regressions would have, really. Perhaps men could appreciate the predictions and react, I don’t know, and I doubt it.
I meant to add that many feed forward loop control systems depend on exactly these types of calculations. Where once they may just have measure a temperature in a pipe and feed changes forward to correct that, they now (and for quite some time) take many variables, rheology and a host of physical parameters ever changing and often unrelated, and feed predictive solutions forward, doing exactly what cannot be done in economics.
I know people are not chemicals in reactors precisely. But a community of people, or a set data population in a sense, is. Sociology relies on that fact, as does psychology, psychiatry, and pharmacology.
It’s been 25 years since my last calculus class, but I think its predictive power is being overstated. If you have a curve, calculus can tell you where that curve will be in X years IF it continues accelerating at the same rate. It’s that second part after the IF that you can’t count on when you’re talking about societal changes. If you could, someone in 1978 could have looked at the steadily climbing sales of disco records and predicted that by 2012 every home would be full to the rafters with disco albums.
A current example: fertility rates among white Europeans have been declining for years. If you calculate the future of that curve, you find they’ll be all but gone in a few generations. Would you predict that, or would you predict that something — economic hardship, a religious revival, government changes — will cause that curve to turn upwards again? Who knows, but calculus can’t tell you.
If men are refusing to man up and marry the sluts at a particular rate, then you can calculate the effect of that on the future IF women don’t react to it and change in some way, and IF there isn’t some outside force — an economic crash that destroys half their make-work office jobs, for instance — that forces them to change. Those are pretty big IFs at this point.
@ anonymous age 70 – “@T
In the 90′s, a feminist group asked a significant number of wives if they were 1 to 5 from very unhappy to very happy. They noted all the wives who said they were unhappy or very unhappy, and contacted them five years later.
Many had divorced, and were still unhappy or very unhappy. Many had not divorced and over that five years, most had become happy or very happy. Thus showing there is little real reason for divorce.
Amazingly, the feminists who did the study also admitted that fact.”
Not at all surprising. I think that a lot of women understand this is, which is why they are more likely to work with their husbands even when they have grounds for divorce than they are to divorce when there are no grounds.
The reason is hotter women are attracted to the same men women in general are attracted to,alphas. hotter women can get them and hotter women stay with them and behave in a way to be attractive to them.
The first truly hot (near ten) woman I dated, about three years ago, had one of the lowest notch counts of all the women I had ever known. Her only physical flaw was her height (she’s 6 feet tall, though she tells everyone she’s 5’11”). She showed me what you’re talking about, and what Roissy writes about, first hand.
Women who are marginally to very hot, get hit on by ever tom, harry and cock in the place, every time they walk in. When this particular woman walked into a night club alone, men within a certain radius pretended they didn’t see her, and men outside it (way outside any social contact) gawked at her like she was some sort of celebrity. The radius moved with her. If a man seemed interested from afar, she would walk over to him and suddenly he’d blush and look at the floor. It was the damnedest thing.
If I walked in to the same night club with her, men would be more free to look at her, but they’d look at me as well. I assumed at first they hated me, but in fact it made me more popular with men to be with her. After she left, other dudes would buy me drinks and make small talk. Preselection seems to work with men as well as women.
If she came in with one of her female friends, then men would flock over and try to game her less hot female pal, in an attempt to impress her.
In any event, we don’t see each other socially any longer, but she’s still my friend, and she is no feminist.
@8oxer
My obervation confirming your experience is that really hot women have low partner counts and presumably because they do not need to have sex to feel validated; neither do they need to throw themselves at Alpha males – because Alpha males will approach them.
I think that a lot of women understand this is, which is why they are more likely to work with their husbands even when they have grounds for divorce than they are to divorce when there are no grounds.
Except they aren’t. The survey Dalrock cited came up with 28% who cited adultery, alcoholism, or drug use as the primary motive for their divorce. A large mass (16%) cited ‘abuse’, but that term is so elastic that it renders the responses useless for ascertaining what was actually occurring. A miscellany of causes (‘different lifestyles’, &c) was cited by 56%. Bracketing out those alleging ‘abuse’, one third of the respondents cited actual grounds. At current rates, about 40% of first marriages end in divorce; 2/3 of these are discretionary divorces, or about 27% of the total. Were troubled but surviving marriages equal in number to discretionary divorces, about 27% of first marriages would fall into that category. About 60% of first marriages do not fail, so it would be your contention that a minimum of 45% of those in successful marriages have grounds for divorce they do not exercise. Alcoholism is not that common. IIRC, the sociologist Edward Laumann found that lifetime prevalence of adultery among married men was around 20% of the total (as reported in Sexual Organization of the City). The 50% figure you cite originated with Alfred Kinsey and his confederates, who were exposed as incompetent social researchers decades ago (not surprising as Kinsey was an entomologist by training, expert in the taxonomy of the gall wasp).
By the way, the sampling frame systematically excluded younger divorcees. Divorce suits are modally filed and litigated when the parties to the marriage are around age 32. These respondents were generally older, which is to say that the pool was composed of people who married later or who had put more time than is usually the case into their (failing) marriage.
I should also note that the median lapse of time (among failing marriages) between the time of the marriage and the time of separation is about 4.6 years; another 1.7 years is spent in proceedings. Somehow I tend to doubt filing parties are working very assiduously on their marriages.
@MackPUA:
Zippy, is what I refer to as a Convincer
Your wee tirade is unconvincing.
I think of myself more as a reasonably well trained bullshit detector. Having started and run a couple of startups and made a nontrivial number of investments, I am reasonably able to spot not just smoke-blowing but also the delusions of true believers.
I can’t help it that society’s sexual garbage collectors have delusions of grandeur. Heck, from their point of view there is plenty of work. I am sure the hyena on top of the landfill feels like a king.
It’s been 25 years since my last calculus class, but I think its predictive power is being overstated. If you have a curve, calculus can tell you where that curve will be in X years IF it continues accelerating at the same rate. It’s that second part after the IF that you can’t count on when you’re talking about societal changes. If you could, someone in 1978 could have looked at the steadily climbing sales of disco records and predicted that by 2012 every home would be full to the rafters with disco albums.
A current example: fertility rates among white Europeans have been declining for years. If you calculate the future of that curve, you find they’ll be all but gone in a few generations. Would you predict that, or would you predict that something — economic hardship, a religious revival, government changes — will cause that curve to turn upwards again? Who knows, but calculus can’t tell you.
It would be nonsense to predict a curve that goes straight trough zero, like the birthrate curve. This is where you get an asymptote. That detail aside, a true multi-variable curve fit regression would have triggers for all the things, government actions, etc, and would have predictive capacity for scenario A,B,C…etc.
The disco album example is also a flawed analogy for a host of reasons…..its not important.
Anyway, I am sorry if I caused this focus.
@Art Deco
The 32 year stat may be a bit older now. When I charted out the latest data from the Census here, it looks like it probably is:
However, the 10 year age brackets are much longer than I wish they were. It could be hiding something very interesting. But either way, when you are only looking at the population which is at risk for divorce, age of the wife is a very strong predictor. The AARP focused on people who had already divorced and who were 40 or over when they divorced. Even with the over 40 focus, the vast majority of the divorces they found occurred during the years closest to age 40. 73% of the divorces examined in the study occurred when the respondent was in their 40s. Another 15% of the divorces they studied occurred when the respondent was 50-55. Only 11% occurred when the person answering the survey was over 55.
All of this reinforces your core point. The AARP was looking at divorces of people who married at a time when people married much younger, and those who divorced over 40 either married very late for their day or spent many years being married.
This may also have increased over time. The latest stat I’ve seen from the NCFMR is 11 years for first marriages and 9 years for second marriages.
@Empath
You mean like this curve:
This is what Anon age 70 is talking about. I rejected that curve, and instead looked at ever married rates by age bracket. His argument all along (see the comments from 2 years ago) has been that if I understood calculus I would understand what the Marriage Project data was proving. As I explained, there are two problems with this. The first is the problem of prediction, and the second is the metric itself. I explained all of this in the original and follow up posts.
@Opus: You (one) could top-and-tail Clarissa with Cleland’s Fanny Hill for a bloke’s contemporary telling of a similar story. Just for a laugh, of course.
“Fanny meets Charles, a 19-year-old wealthy nobleman, and they fall in love instantly. Charles helps Fanny escape the brothel the next day.” and he vanishes when she “falls” pregnant.
Fanny goes back on the game. and takes up with “a tall, rich, muscular hairy-chested man” and she “concludes that sex can be had for pleasure, not just love.”
” Fanny discovers that Mr. H has been having sex with her maid, so she resolves to seduce Will, Mr. H’s 19-year-old servant. Will has an extremely large penis:”
“A short time later, Fanny participates in an orgy with the three girls and four rich noblemen. Fanny and her young nobleman begin a relationship, but it ends after a few months because the young man moves to Ireland.”
On and on and on. It’s strictly Alphas (landed gentry and noble rakehells, and any yokel as long as he’s got a biggun) all the way down.
Luckily she has a deus ex machina of an old geezer cark it and leave her his fortune after a few shags. Sorted!
And what’s this? Why, it’s literally Cap’n Save-a-Ho! Huzzah!! God Save The King! After years on the (professional) Carousel, she accidentally bumps into the long-lost Chaz.
“Fanny and Charles get a room together and make love several times. Fanny tells Charles everything about her life of vice, but he forgives her and asks Fanny to marry him, which she does.”
Clap clap clap The End (and no doubt a few doses of other stuff as well).
No need for the ould dead feller in these here Modern Times, of course.
Get pram-faced, and you’re set for life, local authority house, dole, Child Benefit, Tax Credits, free this and that (including all sorts of contraception and abortion on demand; can’t be having that; no more brats=less free stuff, and eventually a forced-labour stint at Tesco, for nowt, like her disposable, reviled and hated male peers).
My data were from the National Center for Health Statistics and the Statistical Abstract and I culled them for an analysis I did in 1997. I am somewhat skeptical that there has been a 25% increase in the duration of marriages in the last 25 years and cannot figure out how their common statistic can have the value it does since their component statistics are higher. Medians are useful as they exclude outliers, but their data set is such that 3d and 4th marriages are able to drag the median duration from north of 10 years to 8 years. This perplexes me.
Correction: a 25% increase in the duration of failed marriages.
Forced labor at Tesco…..priceless
T is a practical example of the way American women think and are. First, I thought it was a MRA in disguise mimicking the thought processes of AW to mock them. But no man, no matter how able is to understand women, is able to produce such amount of solipsism, selfishness, rationalization and plain dumbness. So now I accept that it is a woman.
The more T speaks the more she reveals her game. Good.
imnobody
it is really amazing how aware we are. At first it really looked like a joke. I made a blue pill joke comment to Natalie and she took it serious. They will die in the dark just knowing everybody else is wrong.
The hypergamy crunch is already happening. University grads are now about 65% female, and that trend is expected to peak at around 70% in the coming years. Now education is not an attraction trigger at all, but it is a filter that women use when husband selecting, especially educated women. There are some cases where an educated woman will marry a contractor or fireman, but there aren’t a whole lot of these guys, either, and a majority of educated women want to marry a similarly educated man, if not a more educated one.
What this means is that the “where are all the good men?” crisis is about to hit the upper SES, where marriage has been doing the best of all SES segments so far, in a big, big way. This is a trend that is being underplayed so far because the upper SES people who are 35+ didn’t have these ratios, and so they do not really understand what is going to come in the rising upper SES. The same trend as currently exists in the low and middle (i.e, where are the “marriageable” men) is coming to the upper SES bigtime in the next 10 years, and the same norms of single motherhood and female complaint about lack of men (as we see among educated black women today, for example) are coming with it to the upper SES. The hypergamy crunch is already here, it’s just not that visible to people who are 35+.
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Brendan, let me amplify one point you made:
The same trend as currently exists in the low and middle (i.e, where are the “marriageable” men) is coming to the upper SES bigtime in the next 10 years, and the same norms of single motherhood and female complaint about lack of men (as we see among educated black women today, for example) are coming with it to the upper SES.
Women want to have at least one child. It’s in their genes. GIven a choice between childlessness, and having a bastard child but never marrying, some number of women will choose the latter rather than the former. It isn’t just those trashy poor women in trailer parks who think this way, as we shall begin to see.
The normalization of homosexual marriage is still ongoing, as many Defenders of Marriage tirelessly remind us. Meanwhile, 40% of children born in the US in 2012 were birthed by unmarried women. 50% of the children born to women under 30 were to unmarried mothers.
The Defenders of Marriage will be caught by surprise once again, when the never-married career woman with a child becomes an acceptable alternative in the Upper Middle Class. Naturally, this development will be all men’s fault, and miserable, no good, Peter Pan, video game playing, MRA’s will be blamed.
Think the main stream media is filled with misandry now? Wait until it isn’t just the junior blogger/reporterettes who can’t find a “good man”, but it’s the feature editor as well. Doubling down on the man-hate is inevitable.
And the Defenders of Marriage will continue to be utterly without a clue as to what happened, and how they themselves contributed to the situation.
@Brendan
Yes, I think the data makes this undeniable. However, for the UMC single motherhood will be much harder to accept. UMC mothers compete like crazy to give their children the best odds. Growing up in a broken home can’t be erased by going to a better school. Over enough generations, single motherhood will prove a nearly guaranteed exit from the UMC. This will greatly limit the acceptance of UMC single motherhood and also raise the volume of the din you are predicting. These are two tectonic forces colliding, and unlike with the lower SES groups there isn’t an easy solution for would be mothers.
@Anon Reader
How can you possibly say that! What about meeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
Just kidding.
Dalrock
However, for the UMC single motherhood will be much harder to accept. UMC mothers compete like crazy to give their children the best odds. Growing up in a broken home can’t be erased by going to a better school.
It is true that Upper Middle Class mothers compete to benefit their children. But they have to have a child to compete with in the first place. As the pool of eligible UMC men continues to dwindle, UMC women will have a choice: single motherhood as a never-married woman, or childlessness. Some will choose one, some will choose the other. UMC couples in urban areas already hire people to raise their children – go to Central Park in Manhattan and count the nannies on any sunny day. It is not that big of a step, from the point of view of the female imperative, to get pregnant from a sperm bank and hire the best nanny money can buy, the best therapist, the best pre-school preparation, and so forth, all the while rationalizing how good this is for the child.
And given that the UMC mother is very likely the only child, or the only daughter, in her family, what will her parent(s) do? Why, they will accept the only grandchild they are likely to get, and pour more resources into supporting that child.
The UMC has come to terms with homosexuality, homosexual marriage, carousel riding so long as it is discreetly done, and other things. Why do you doubt that single-mother child bearing will be impossible for them to accept? Especially given the fact that it (a) benefits professional women (b) provides aging UMC couples with the grandchild they yearn for?
Over enough generations, single motherhood will prove a nearly guaranteed exit from the MC.
Maybe. But maybe not. When I work with college students, all of whom aspire to at least the middle class, I now routinely inquire in as roundabout a way as I can, how many come from divorced parents. The percentage so far as been between 35% and 50%, varying with venue. I think we can take as stipulated that 20-something college men and women come from broken homes in 40% of cases, and they are the future MC. These are the babies of 1992 or earlier.
Broken home or not, they aspire to the MC.
This will greatly limit the acceptance of UMC single motherhood and also raise the volume of the din you are predicting. These are two tectonic forces colliding, and unlike with the lower SES groups there isn’t an easy solution for would be mothers.
Disagree again. You seem to be assuming that women who are in a difficult situation, of their own making, won’t be willing and able to demand more resources to supprt them. More resources from parents and other relatives, more resources from institutions, more resources from government. That assumption is directly contradicted by the last 60 years of history, not to mention the feminine imperative.
“Julia decides to have a child”…
Anonymous Reader wrote:
Disagree again. You seem to be assuming that women who are in a difficult situation, of their own making, won’t be willing and able to demand more resources to supprt them.
They’ll certainly be willing to demand more resources, but whether they’re able to is another question.
More resources from parents and other relatives,
I’d say it’s possible for them to demand help so their parents can have their single trophy grandkid. Having one child like that by definition puts them in a shrinking, increasingly irrelevant demographic.
Ray Manta, I agree that one-child families tend to dwindle to irrelevancy. See the upside down pyramid structure of Europe – 4 grandparents, 2 parents, 1 grandchild – for example. The point I’m trying to make to Dalrock is that the Upper Middle Class (UMC) women will increasingly have the same choice that middle class women have – no child, or a child as a single woman. This is what I expect to see as what TFH calls the “misandry bubble” plays out. An ever increasing investment in fewer and fewer children.
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>>As I’ve been pointing out for over two years now, I do understand calculus. However, calculus can’t predict the future, especially when we are talking about the behavior of human beings.
I think your root problem is becoming apparent with that second sentence from the quoted here. It may not be a total lack of understanding calculus, but the more serious mistake of imagining somehow perhaps by magic calculus cannot be applied to anything involving human beings.
If behavior of human beings is totally consistent, you certainly can predict the future using calculus. There is nothing random or extremely variable in the marriage rate, which I have posted quite a number of times. It is strictly down; down; down, and very rapidly so in the last decade.
That marriage rate is not random, and it does not bounce up and down. It is consistently down year after year. And, the average age at marriage has changed very little.
Thus, the never married at 40 MUST increase steadily in the future, and this was apparent several years ago to anyone who applied calculus concepts to it.
So, perhaps you are correct. It isn’t that you don’t understand calculus. You for unknown reasons imagine calculus cannot apply to anything involving humans.
For those who don’t remember the numbers let me post them again.
Number of Marriages per 1,000
Unmarried Women Age 15 and
Older, by Year, United States:
1922 99 (found on Web)
1960 73.5
1961 72.2
1962 71.2
1963 73.4
1964 74.6
1965 75.0
1966 75.6
1967 76.4
1968 79.1
1969 80.0
1970 76.5
1972 77.9
1975 66.9
1977 63.6
1980 61.4
1983 59.9
1985 56.2
1987 55.7
1990 54.5
1991 54.2
1992 53.3
1993 52.3
1995 50.8
2000 46.5
2004 39.9
2007 39.2 (Rutgers 2009)
2008 37.4 (Rutgers 2009)
2009 36 (UVA 2010; project moved from Rutgers)
2010 34.2 Unverified estimate from Pew
From a peak in 1969, the rate has been going steadily down. That is 43 years on a curve. Calculus can indeed predict the future of human behavior, when you add a fairly steady average age of marriage.
@Anon age 70
And I’ll point out yet again what the problem is with that metric. The metric is highly sensitive to changes in the average duration women remain married. A woman who waits until age 30 to marry still marries, yet from age 15 to 30 she is part of the denominator. The same goes if she divorces at age 31; from age 31 on she adds to the denominator. When you sum all of the later marriage and early divorce up it makes a very big difference. As I showed in the second post in the series, if you look at the table the marriage project cites as the source for the bulk of the years in that series, the absolute number of marriages actually increased slightly during that time period, yet the metric as you show was dropping like a rock. Part of the increase in the denominator was due to women spending less of their adult lives married (either before marriage or after divorce). Another part of the increase is due to population growth. However, you can’t easily tease the two apart in the marriage project data.
One more thought Anon age 70. If you want, why not email the Director of The Marriage Project. This is his data set you keep pointing to, and analyzing this kind of data is his profession. I’ve emailed Dr. Wilcox before and he was very helpful. Then send me his reply and I’ll post it on the blog.
@Dalrock
But GKChesterton isn’t “my” man, he is his own man, or as he would probably put it God’s man.
That’s downright sweet and you are correct that I prefer thinking of myself that way. I’m waiting for Cane to point out though that I’m the Devil’s Man and God merely puts up with me. BTW I came to this post because Social Pathologist mentioned it. I’m happy to see here that people are putting forward the great works and how they_do_ illuminate classic and present behavior. Three cheers for all of you here who did that.
As you know I’m not thrilled with the rather amorphous nature of some terms “Game” uses. But, the comment that you cite and the response here shows that many that are involved with the Androsphere do indeed have our feet slopped over with the Mud of Ages.
@Mule,
That the “Feminine Imperative” _is_ being hotly discussed right now implies that the foundation of your question is wrong. Count me as one who believes the “Feminine Imperitive” is too murky to be useful.
@Empathalogicalism,
Great books should be read even if only you quote them. They contain thoughts distilled through ages of criticism. Everyone likes to criticize so after a few hundred years if the worst criticism you can heap at something is “its old” then it likely has valuable information to be mined. If you then quote, even to be a smart ass, one would hope that the core idea sticks in your craw and makes you think in a different way over time.
@Zippy,
You’re engaging folks that are trolling or in general angry. Don’t. Engage the OP it makes your post stronger. Your responses aren’t sounding much better because you aren’t following the right method.
Only because I’ve seen you at the meetings.
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Anyone else read Juvenal? Satire six is the one relating to women, but they are all fun. You need a footnoted version to get all the references and allusions, many of which concerned people of the day.
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