Question Time: MRAs and PUAs in the real world
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And now back to our regularly scheduled post:
Reading through some of the stranger comments from MRAs and PUAs and other manospherean types I often find myself wondering to what degree this “new misogyny” reaches beyond the internet. I don’t mean old-fashioned misogyny and sexism, which are obviously fairly common offline. I mean the elaborate misogynistic ideologies we discuss here – the “feminism runs the world,” “all women are hypergamous bitches who will dump you in a second for an alpha,” “we hunted the mammoth to feed you” kind of stuff.
I run across much less of this offline than on, though the people I hang out with aren’t exactly a representative sampling of the general public.
So I’m asking you, dear readers, to tell me a bit about your own experiences. Do you run across MRAs/PUAs in the real world on a regular or even an irregular basis? Where (online or off) did you first encounter MRAs and/or PUAs? What aspects of what we might call the manosphere ideology are the most common offline? If it seems less common offline, is this because the beliefs are not that widespread, or is it that people are less willing to say the kind of horrific misogynistic shit they say online to other people face to face?
Thoughts?
Posted on February 19, 2013, in misogyny, MRA, PUA, question time. Bookmark the permalink. 466 Comments.
And yes, I probably should have phrased the question better.
@Nitram
(re: sheltered)I just considered it sheltered because I don’t interact with people much, I dropped out of school a couple years ago before I was diagnosed and my only interaction outside family is mostly at karate or a couple short two hour classes somewhere else.
And you’re co-worker…ugh. Glad to hear you have support with your hubby though
@ellex Seconding (or whatevering by this point ;p) glad for the glove recommendation. I showed them to my sister (who has bad joints) and she thinks they might help
@carleyblue eww the guy in college. *shudder* Mostly on the deserve-to-be-raped and forced to get abortion. (those one’s I’ve luckily never heard in real life)Sounds terrible interacting with that guy. *shudder* Not really adding much except complaing… *blushes*
(Every time I comment here I feel like I’m butting in. I should probably be less shy, but in the off chance I am bugging anyone please tell me).
Pecunium, I think you’re right on the black work thing. I like how small modifications of a simple pattern can give graduated shading diferences, or the appearance of a cross hatched effect. That and the patterns within patterns thing.
I finished a blackwork butterfly on forty count linen not too long ago. Good thing it was a relatively small project because headache due to very fine thread. I want to do drawn thread embroidery, but I’m not going to start that until I have a magnifyer. I can’t imagine trying to remove one thread at a time without being able to easily see it.
So I think for now my stitchy little fingers will have to content themselves with applique and a combo of crazyquilt and freeform embroidery.
I just wish there weren’t so many types of embroidery out there! I could live another hundred and fifty years and not learn them all!!
Oh. Wait. I have the stuff for a stumpwork project…
Marie, come on in. Have a complimentary colorful towel, a scented motherfucking towel and a seat on a hard wooden chair!
You know, it would be easier to welcome people if we just gave cupcakes…
Wait, that should have been a scented motherfucking CANDLE. Geesh.
@Pillow in hell
Thanks for the welcome
And I’ve seen people be welcoming here before, so I don’t think you guys are all gonna bite my head off, I just tend to get really shy when finally posting. I might be weird that way.
Scented candles are handy, especially in a power outage. Is not just sitting around in the dark misandry?
As far as I can tell, its always misandry if someone finds contentment or joy in life because anger and spite isn’t the rule. And its triple billion misandry if a woman finds contentment and the MRA finds out about it.
What if we gave colorful, scented cupcakes, just to cover all our bases?
That might work… We could serve them with cute little candles on a wooden plate?
With tierra shaped candles, on mini wooden thrones…
A wooden plate painted in bright colors. Maybe with a little rainbow, just to make sure the homophobes don’t feel left out.
Hmm, maybe glitter instead of rainbows? I suppose we could test both.
Oh, and don’t forget that we need trained penguins to serve the cupcakes!
I learned about the MRA because of a male friend of mine. He started spewing off all this alpha, beta stuff and I’m like “what’s a beta male?” He regaled me with tales of men sitting in rows of cubicles, fettered, while toiling there lives away providing for single mothers of children of alpha males. Women who after years of riding the cock carousel would find a beta male to help them raise their children. He had been living on his own for many years and was romantically interested in me. I was like “I don’t know what a alpha male is and I have not impregnated myself by a man…” He was like “oh it’s not you, it’s women in general.” As part of his study into women he thought that pua’s understood how the sexual network functioned. I came to understand he is more interested in both a mother at home, and random women to stare at then other people and relationships which is likely why he’s not in one.
This whole thing is rather creepy to me, so now I just study more and work on my own life. I have trouble connecting with people in general anyway, without all kinds of paranoid delusion being mixed into small chat. It was hard for me to accept, for a long time, that this person actually regarded me as a person to try strategies on. That; because I didn’t conform to the standard of what he considered to be a “woman” or “female” (which seemed to translate to “object” in there mind), I was “other person” because I was nice. Being nice in there warped, socially inept view meant that I was to be a mother to them and console them when their pornography failed them and women they hit on, turned them down. So eventually he just started finding excuses to spend time with “women in general.” Appearing for all intents and purposes to pay for the privileged. This is not something I’m interested in this life.
I tried for a long time to involve this person in social things and find out what they liked. Trying to humanize the experience of their company but in the end they saw me and women in general differently and insisted that a person couldn’t be a woman. The nicer I was, the less they wanted a romantic relationship. It couldn’t work that way. This person also read spearhead and feminist bloggers as well as pua’s. The investment I made into this person eventually is wasted. Time no one should waste on someone with a) a pornography addiction or b) anyone in the manosphere. I believe they are cut from the same cloth.
Oh well. Delusion is a sad thing. I hope sanity helps men in the manosphere to eventually work on the social skills. That would ultimately bring them success in life rather than focusing on imagined power and imaginary soulless people.
Cupcakes! *drools* Of course if one really wanted to increase membership they’d give out kitties!
(Sad, because I do not have money to take care of a cat…)
I’ve got it! We need specially trained kittens to deliver the cupcakes. Only then will the Feminazi Revolution be complete.
Buntzums, I think that just finding a passion in life that makes them happy would work wonders. Focusing on that while working in small ways on things that aren’t going so well is a recipe that works for me.
Also, I really think society needs to more thoroughly examine the idea of success. It would help if these guys didn’t see themselves as failures because they don’t have the job/relationship/sex/money/power that men are pushed to have.
Cassandra! That’s it! You’re a GENIUS!
@cassandrasays
That would be so adorable. <3
Now I am going to figure out how to scent my special colored towels just to piss off whatever special snowflake was going on about pillow and towels and how you have to have model trains in every room to make men feel welcome. SCENT ALL THE THINGS!
Lavender scented spray. Not only is it associated with women, it’s usually associated with old women, for that dose of extra boner-killing power.
Now I wonder if I’m a failure as a feminist because I avoid scented things. Or are my allergies one of the things that make me tend to register as “not a woman” on the radar of MRAs and PUAs?
I finally went and looked up the hard chair thing. Now I’m wishing I hadn’t.
Oh come on Ellex! Tom Martins chairs were hilarious. At least as far as showing how far one human being can stretch what was a valid point (that hard chairs are uncomfortable and need replacing).
It wasn’t the chairs, pillow, it was the rest of Martin’s idiocy. It left such a bad taste in my mouth, and it was so clearly coming from a place of multiple privileges even beyond the basic white male privilege. He comes at everything from a particularly abhorrent type of “Let them eat cake” attitude, with absolutely no understanding of life outside his tiny little world.
The chair business was just silly, and nothing I haven’t seen before – only the justifications regarding ass padding were new.
ZOMG!!
Cliff Pervocracy blog is featured in a post on Psychology Today!!
@pillow in hell, That’s fantastic!
Here’s the link:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/thinking-about-kids/201302/lessons-kinky-sex-blog
If you take “politicians” and substitute “MRAs” you get the perfect argument that should shut up an MRA about this supposed goal women have to live on on public assistance.
http://www.cracked.com/blog/4-things-politicians-will-never-understand-about-poor-people/
How about penguin kitties to serve the cakes? Twice the misandry!
And if it’s glitter vs rainbows, well, the solution to that is glittery rainbows.
On the flirting – nobody’ll be surprised to hear I hate it when someone tries flirting with me (apart from the usual suspect, lol). From anyone else it makes my skin crawl, however nice he is about it. I say “he” because I’ve never had a woman try to flirt with me and can’t say how I’d react.
@Kitteh’s
I’ve now reached the point where any man trying to flirt with me in public is assumed to have skeevy intentions, because in the past they generally have (or it just gets into completely weird I Plan To Be Pope And Rule The World territory).
It’s an almost Pavlovian reaction now.
That’s pretty much my gut reaction, too. Mercifully it’s rare, and brief, since I’m not in bars or clubs where they’re as appealing as bathroom mold and just as hard to get rid of.
I had a man, less than two weeks ago, offer to fuck me in a public men’s bathroom. I, of course, politely (the phrase “not even if I were fucking dead” may have been used) declined. He, misunderstanding my hesitation, took great pains to point out how convenient it would be for me because the bathroom was “right there”. I had, I admit, been under the assumption that public bathrooms only existed in other cities (Dave, can you insert your sarcasm GIF here, please?).
I am seriously not making this up. Dude thought I just didn’t realize how geographically attractive the men’s room was. He truly seemed to believe that pointing out its enviable location would change my answer to “YES! You have won my heart with your degradation of me, let’s get married tomorrow and have lots of sex and babies!”.
URGH doesn’t even begin to describe that.
But… public loo… oh… oh god… oh god… why… eww… eww… oh gross… eww… eww…
*washes hands*
That penguin kitty is somehow completely adorable.
Don’t anyone tell Owly, but it’s a SUPERPENGUIN.
The only reason to be in a loo with Creepster there would be to see him get a swirly. Okay, I know, that’s nasty, but oy, it might clean his brain out.
*passes everyone brain bleach*
Welcome to Alberta.
My first thought is that old quip, “cats aren’t clean, they’re just covered with cat spit!” But aside from that, I can think of a few reasons to bathe a kitty regularly:
*Kitty can’t groom itself
*Kitty has really a really dirty mouth/bad breath and would stink without the baths
*Kitty has a skin condition that requires a medicated bath
*Kitty gets a lot of hairballs so fur needs to be removed early and often
At the clinic where I volunteer, we have a cat-in-residence who gets regular haircuts and is discouraged from grooming himself, because his uneven teeth make him drooly and he gets all wet and gross when he tries. (He’s also incontinent and has stumpy little legs and a funny, raspy purr. We love Butters, but he’s definitely from the shallow end of the gene pool)
Here’s somthing on-topic for you, courtesy Heartiste (pussy be upon him):
“Put your number in my phone.”
“Why?”
Cause I said.
Bugger off.
Why?
Because we said.
Hermn… I suspect that won’t really work any better than Roissy’s scam.
I happen to have the local PD’s direct line memorised. Handy for all sorts of things.
Ahahahaha!
Ninja’d by pecunium!
Unfortunately the Canadian carrier is something something, so the Hotline is looking for a new carrier, but this is the best service ever.
http://www.humorhotlines.com/RejectionHotline.asp
Only in the States and Canada, as far as I know, but I’m sure if there were enough interest they would consider expanding.
I worked at at a pizza shop and had an MRA coworker. He didn’t admit he was “MRA” but held almost identical views about Feminism and “Men’s Rights.” I also had a heated discussion one night with him and another male co-worker about rape and CHILD rape! They were being rape apologists disguised as moral relativists, denied rape culture and were getting very defensive about the notion that women and children could never enjoy/consent to rape? Morons.
I think this anti-feminist (anti-woman) attitude is very pervasive offline.
The thing which amuses me about Roissy is that he (to a lesser degree than Roosh, but only in degree) has every reason to lie to his followers.
He’s a guru. He’s offering “salvation”, and the trick is that if you do it, “right” it works. But (as with any other form of cultic thinking) if it doesn’t work, you did it, “wrong”.
So he doesn’t need to tell the truth. The truth, in fact, would be counter-productive to his standing. So he has incentive to make shit up.
@emilygoddess – the thing that always strikes me with our kitties is that even when their breath is bad (Hadji ‘cos he only ate red meat, Fribs ‘cos she’s had tooth trouble all her life) their fur smells gorgeous. Stinky cat spit changes when applied to cat fur!
@cassandra: If you’re still around. I’m a tad confused about “were getting very defensive about the notion that women and children could never enjoy/consent to rape?”. I’d like to know the details, if you’re comfortable sharing.
I want to click on Inconvenient’s link, because it seems to me that there’s something there in the dynamic of what he has posted that would interesting to analyze, some kind of power play. Intellectually, I want to analyze it.
But every time I mouse over the link I feel dirty, and can’t click.