I'm really glad you see through the games and shtick because you're refusing to let men be sidelined or vilified. I think the culture's doing this on purpose to make all men a problem to further justify your disposability as the culture gets more controlling and surveilled.
This has been done to colored men and now all men. I've seen it felt it before.
Then it's done to any of us who share your traits of individuality assertiveness logic and so on.
A lot of the trouble around all of this has to do with the way that speaking frankly about what's been happening between men and women remains outside of the Overton window of the milieus that have a chance in hell of getting men onto the other side of the divide of no longer having to worry about what's been happening between men and women. So on an individual level, men are incentivized to avoid speaking up and expressing themselves honestly about how things are going, because when you do that, you run the risk of being blackballed from a lot of the better educational and professional opportunities.
So you can talk about this and make that your whole thing - and in that case you're incentivized to goad the attention economy with antisocial extremes that take advantage of the resentments that have developed as a result of the institutional silence around it all; Tate appears to be perfect for this role because he seems to be a genuinely dispositionally antisocial guy - or you can just avoid mentioning it and toe the PMC feminist line (unless of course you've managed to pull a life together in a blue collar environment or have found some other way to do well enough for yourself that you can get away with it, but that's simply not something most men are going to be able to do in the sort of dog eat dog economy that billionaires have imposed upon this country).
Even now, should I press that "also share to notes" button? I think it's a worthwhile point, but I also have a grant application out; what's the over-under on someone with any influence on that process coming across this? Of course the arts grants people discriminate against me as a standard practice these days and I've already covered forbidden subject matter in my work, so maybe it doesn't matter anymore; the odds of me being able to make much happen through that path are already remarkably low, at least for the time being, simply as a result of the ideology that's captured the relevant institutions.
So I have to give guys like Reeves and Galloway credit for finding ways to broach the subject in the mainstream, but at the same time, shouldn't this subject have been broached years ago? Sure, she was a bit abrasive at times and ultimately ended up a Trump supporter, but Karen Straughan was having a go at directly addressing all of this fifteen years ago (and received radio silence from the mainstream; no dialogue took place). Seems to me that the only reason these non-marginal milieus are even beginning to get at it has to do with the way that difficulties that men have been facing for the past fifteen years or so are finally coming around to cause professional class women some noticeable problems.
I remember a Karen Straughan appearance at the libertarian Porcfest over a decade ago, debating Naomi Wolf whom she called a rich out of touch Manhattan liberal. All these years later and they’re considered to be on the same political side.
Funny you should bring that up. I interviewed Straughan an hour or two after that event, in hopes of making some kind of documentary that would feature dialogue between people on either side of these issues (at the time I guess this would mostly have consisted of feminists and men's rights activists, but personally I thought Straughan was more interesting as a lone blogger, before she threw her lot in with the MRAs). I tried to get hold of Wolf as well, but she didn't respond to my email.
Not long after that I decided the plan was career suicide (and also ran headfirst into some severe difficulties in my personal life with people I never should have trusted in the first place), and pivoted to what somehow managed to seem like the safer path, shooting a retrospective documentary about a (mostly) fake environmentalist suicide cult from the 90s. More on how some of that ultimately went here:
Straughan told me she'd love to talk with Paglia, and would even be willing to sit down with the likes of Judith Butler. If I remember correctly she wasn't familiar with Julia Kristeva (not too many people are), but I always thought Kristeva seemed like one of the more reflective feminists (mostly because I read her book on depression and melancholia in my early 20s and liked it and because she apparently was very aware that identitarian political assertions are ultimately totalitarian), so it would have been cool to get her on board too.
But probably the whole idea was a pipe dream. At least at the time, there was way too much opposition to these conversations taking place (almost exclusively from the popular feminist side of things). The social justice movement was ramping up and would turn into an exceedingly antisocial monster over the next few years. Vampire's Castle. Social Justice Warriors. Metoo. Cancel culture. Woke. Paving the way for Trump Round II. The whole social, psychological, political disaster that nobody's really even properly articulated a postmortem on yet.
I guess in 2016 we got that documentary "The Red Pill," about that woman who was a feminist getting to know the men's rights activists and realizing they had some valid points to make. I still haven't gotten around to watching it. And that probably has to do with the extent to which I was embedded in milieus that treated any questioning of standard feminist narratives as sacrilege throughout much of the 2010s. It's pretty easy to want to avoid third rails when you know damned well that you're going to be hated, bullied, ostracized, and character assassinated if people know you've gotten anywhere near them, even if you're repressing parts of yourself in the process of that avoidance.
In retrospect of course I should have just gotten away from these people - sometimes, apparently, you just have to accept that people around you have gone mad and cut ties - and these days I actively make a point to screen anybody who exhibits these sorts of interpersonally authoritarian tendencies out of my life, or at least keep them at a distance.
Reflecting on all of this makes me a little angry, so I want to end this by saying "hindsight is a bitch," but I'll try to maintain a more positive tone and just say "hindsight is 20/20" instead.
If you listen to Walt Bismarck, the alt-right guys used to have different levels of edginess they could refer appropriate listeners or readers to, but each one would only refer one level down to avoid driving people off. Each one moved the Overton window a little.
I'm not a far-rightist, but it occurs to me the same could be done for men's issues.
It could be. The biggest roadblock I’ve seen with men’s advocacy groups is that they form after family court problems, and have a difficult time focusing their anger…
The anger is understandable, most of these men have lost everything; but to get anything done they need to reign in their inner hulk, focus, and reach out to other men and other groups.
A lot of the time the courts make them feel isolated, and their own family may see them as failures, so they kind of succumb to those feelings, and nothing goes anywhere. (Some of this started 2 decades ago in California and went nowhere)
Men who haven’t been destroyed by family court should be stepping up to help before they’re the next victim.
Women can help by normalizing prenups. Really, no girl who believes her guy is her soulmate is going to balk at signing a prenup… it’s only the women gunning for resources that do.
It's more than just prenups and family court, though that's one of the big ones. Sentencing disparities, the whole dating issues...
BTW I'm not denying women have lots of problems too (I'm pro-choice for example), I just think we need our own movement. in addition to that. Unfortunately while I'm not in mourning over a lost marriage (I never had one to begin with for the reasons you mention), I have enough exes who could be paid off by hostile forces (or dislike my actual politics) if I started being prominent I'm not going to be launching a movement under my real name. (And I don't have the charisma anyway., frankly.)
Oh, you wouldn’t have to. Dozens of people read these comments, maybe it’ll inspire one of them.
Curious what you mean by dating issues? Surrounding things like consent, consequences of cohabitation, or in another sense?
(I’ve always felt men had the upperhand in relationships, in the way women have the upperhand once it becomes a marriage. Is that incorrect in your view?)
Women’s “rights” are generally overcompensated for… I’ve been concerned with men’s rights since my family had been collateral damage in the early 2000s California family courts. Family law has been where most men’s rights work has focused thus far
This is a good one. You hit the nail on the head with what’s felt so disingenuous about Scott Galloway (and everyone like him). It’s JUST CONTENT. Not new, not radical, barely helpful. Just keeping the podcast mic’s warm
Don’t really disagree with the content of anything you’re saying, but I think Scott Galloway is trying to be a “gateway” to the red pill for more people within his bubble. He can’t full on tell them truths we know because they will be rejected. Rather, he probably seeks to hopefully, gradually changed the narrative, or maybe provide off ramps for people in the NYT liberal bubble who observe the incongruent between reality and narrative in their own lives.
Maybe some of these people will start with Scott Galloway, then make their way to Chris Williams who is popular on YouTube, then be primed for the more moderate manospherian voices .
Exactly. You only point one level down. Everyone works at the level of men's-advocacy they work best at. I've spent way too much time in Deep Blue American to ever be a real manospherian, but I've managed to make liberals reconsider some things on occasion.
Tell every woman her entire life ‘you go girl! You are perfect. Whatever you desire, you deserve!’ Then tell them ‘men suck, they have it super easy. And you deserve a 6’ tall, 6 pack, big penis, 28 year old making bare minimum $160,000 a year.’ What could possibly go wrong? Average woman ends up with average guy, lives in an average house IF they both work really hard, and they save up to buy a BBQ and hang with average neighbours. That is the reality for almost everyone.
I think the big takeaway is that online dating sucks and men and women are whiny in different ways. I am pretty sure a lot of men are getting married/having decent long time relationships. And for a lot of the ones who aren’t there is a reason things are that way.
Care to expand on this? Why are you sure that a lot of men have decent long term relationships?
Your last sentence sounds like victim-blaming. As was pointed out, if boys are told all their lives that they are defective girls who don't deserve to be treated as human, how can you reasonably expect them to be anything other than depressed and hopeless?
I am sure of that because I’m not a terminally online shut in and know a lot of men who are in fact in good relationships and generally reasonably happy. I think polling bears this personal observation out.
In my experience, it is usually not hard to figure out why chronically single men can’t find anyone. Sometimes it’s just hygiene, sometimes a complete inability to connect with women (ie going on an hour long speech about something only they are interested in), and sometimes it’s being morbidly obese. But even those folks often eventually find love.
I'm not even sure I get the point, but I think what the Galloways and podcaster-Chris Williamsons and before them, Jordan Petersons, and before them, nobodies who no one listened to have been trying to do is breach the mainstream and the longhouse-dominated fields (and political party) with the important message that men are struggling, and this is a serious topic. It's taken too long to take hold, and I can remember echoes of it from as far back as the 00s, referring to Columbine, things like that, and is part of why I thought teaching would be something worthwhile investing time in.
I doubt it now, and I never heard of B2B and still don't know what it is or how to "get into" it, so the writing here seems pretentious, cynical and narrow to a specific audience--and this is what I hear the mainstream voices like Galloway trying to avoid. Are they succeeding? That's another question and the answer is probably not.
I don’t know what young men’s problems are. I am elderly, average looking, not tall, and I could get ten dates a week if I wanted to. I am reasonably interesting, reasonably funny, and maybe at best sort of cute. Yet women continually convey to me they are open for something. It isn’t hard. Be open, learn how to converse and you are nearly there. Oh…I am kind of rich too. So being wealthy and being a good conversationalist and be at least average looking is all it takes. Or, you could be a homely mute and wealthy. That works too.
Money solves a lot of problems even outside of dating. Waiting for women to change their dating preferences will not do anything for you. What is more actionable to the average man?
I do find it funny that many movements, in an attempt to invert the thing they claim they oppose, reify it even further.
Feminism demands to dismantle patriarchy ... and for failing to materialize its goals ... holds men responsible in the final assesment.
What one resists, persists.
I'm really glad you see through the games and shtick because you're refusing to let men be sidelined or vilified. I think the culture's doing this on purpose to make all men a problem to further justify your disposability as the culture gets more controlling and surveilled.
This has been done to colored men and now all men. I've seen it felt it before.
Then it's done to any of us who share your traits of individuality assertiveness logic and so on.
A lot of the trouble around all of this has to do with the way that speaking frankly about what's been happening between men and women remains outside of the Overton window of the milieus that have a chance in hell of getting men onto the other side of the divide of no longer having to worry about what's been happening between men and women. So on an individual level, men are incentivized to avoid speaking up and expressing themselves honestly about how things are going, because when you do that, you run the risk of being blackballed from a lot of the better educational and professional opportunities.
So you can talk about this and make that your whole thing - and in that case you're incentivized to goad the attention economy with antisocial extremes that take advantage of the resentments that have developed as a result of the institutional silence around it all; Tate appears to be perfect for this role because he seems to be a genuinely dispositionally antisocial guy - or you can just avoid mentioning it and toe the PMC feminist line (unless of course you've managed to pull a life together in a blue collar environment or have found some other way to do well enough for yourself that you can get away with it, but that's simply not something most men are going to be able to do in the sort of dog eat dog economy that billionaires have imposed upon this country).
Even now, should I press that "also share to notes" button? I think it's a worthwhile point, but I also have a grant application out; what's the over-under on someone with any influence on that process coming across this? Of course the arts grants people discriminate against me as a standard practice these days and I've already covered forbidden subject matter in my work, so maybe it doesn't matter anymore; the odds of me being able to make much happen through that path are already remarkably low, at least for the time being, simply as a result of the ideology that's captured the relevant institutions.
https://cinematimshel.substack.com/p/ideologically-out-of-line-and-insufficiently
So I have to give guys like Reeves and Galloway credit for finding ways to broach the subject in the mainstream, but at the same time, shouldn't this subject have been broached years ago? Sure, she was a bit abrasive at times and ultimately ended up a Trump supporter, but Karen Straughan was having a go at directly addressing all of this fifteen years ago (and received radio silence from the mainstream; no dialogue took place). Seems to me that the only reason these non-marginal milieus are even beginning to get at it has to do with the way that difficulties that men have been facing for the past fifteen years or so are finally coming around to cause professional class women some noticeable problems.
I remember a Karen Straughan appearance at the libertarian Porcfest over a decade ago, debating Naomi Wolf whom she called a rich out of touch Manhattan liberal. All these years later and they’re considered to be on the same political side.
Funny you should bring that up. I interviewed Straughan an hour or two after that event, in hopes of making some kind of documentary that would feature dialogue between people on either side of these issues (at the time I guess this would mostly have consisted of feminists and men's rights activists, but personally I thought Straughan was more interesting as a lone blogger, before she threw her lot in with the MRAs). I tried to get hold of Wolf as well, but she didn't respond to my email.
Not long after that I decided the plan was career suicide (and also ran headfirst into some severe difficulties in my personal life with people I never should have trusted in the first place), and pivoted to what somehow managed to seem like the safer path, shooting a retrospective documentary about a (mostly) fake environmentalist suicide cult from the 90s. More on how some of that ultimately went here:
https://cinematimshel.substack.com/p/ideologically-out-of-line-and-insufficiently
Straughan told me she'd love to talk with Paglia, and would even be willing to sit down with the likes of Judith Butler. If I remember correctly she wasn't familiar with Julia Kristeva (not too many people are), but I always thought Kristeva seemed like one of the more reflective feminists (mostly because I read her book on depression and melancholia in my early 20s and liked it and because she apparently was very aware that identitarian political assertions are ultimately totalitarian), so it would have been cool to get her on board too.
But probably the whole idea was a pipe dream. At least at the time, there was way too much opposition to these conversations taking place (almost exclusively from the popular feminist side of things). The social justice movement was ramping up and would turn into an exceedingly antisocial monster over the next few years. Vampire's Castle. Social Justice Warriors. Metoo. Cancel culture. Woke. Paving the way for Trump Round II. The whole social, psychological, political disaster that nobody's really even properly articulated a postmortem on yet.
I guess in 2016 we got that documentary "The Red Pill," about that woman who was a feminist getting to know the men's rights activists and realizing they had some valid points to make. I still haven't gotten around to watching it. And that probably has to do with the extent to which I was embedded in milieus that treated any questioning of standard feminist narratives as sacrilege throughout much of the 2010s. It's pretty easy to want to avoid third rails when you know damned well that you're going to be hated, bullied, ostracized, and character assassinated if people know you've gotten anywhere near them, even if you're repressing parts of yourself in the process of that avoidance.
In retrospect of course I should have just gotten away from these people - sometimes, apparently, you just have to accept that people around you have gone mad and cut ties - and these days I actively make a point to screen anybody who exhibits these sorts of interpersonally authoritarian tendencies out of my life, or at least keep them at a distance.
Reflecting on all of this makes me a little angry, so I want to end this by saying "hindsight is a bitch," but I'll try to maintain a more positive tone and just say "hindsight is 20/20" instead.
If you listen to Walt Bismarck, the alt-right guys used to have different levels of edginess they could refer appropriate listeners or readers to, but each one would only refer one level down to avoid driving people off. Each one moved the Overton window a little.
I'm not a far-rightist, but it occurs to me the same could be done for men's issues.
It could be. The biggest roadblock I’ve seen with men’s advocacy groups is that they form after family court problems, and have a difficult time focusing their anger…
The anger is understandable, most of these men have lost everything; but to get anything done they need to reign in their inner hulk, focus, and reach out to other men and other groups.
A lot of the time the courts make them feel isolated, and their own family may see them as failures, so they kind of succumb to those feelings, and nothing goes anywhere. (Some of this started 2 decades ago in California and went nowhere)
Men who haven’t been destroyed by family court should be stepping up to help before they’re the next victim.
Women can help by normalizing prenups. Really, no girl who believes her guy is her soulmate is going to balk at signing a prenup… it’s only the women gunning for resources that do.
It's more than just prenups and family court, though that's one of the big ones. Sentencing disparities, the whole dating issues...
BTW I'm not denying women have lots of problems too (I'm pro-choice for example), I just think we need our own movement. in addition to that. Unfortunately while I'm not in mourning over a lost marriage (I never had one to begin with for the reasons you mention), I have enough exes who could be paid off by hostile forces (or dislike my actual politics) if I started being prominent I'm not going to be launching a movement under my real name. (And I don't have the charisma anyway., frankly.)
Oh, you wouldn’t have to. Dozens of people read these comments, maybe it’ll inspire one of them.
Curious what you mean by dating issues? Surrounding things like consent, consequences of cohabitation, or in another sense?
(I’ve always felt men had the upperhand in relationships, in the way women have the upperhand once it becomes a marriage. Is that incorrect in your view?)
Women’s “rights” are generally overcompensated for… I’ve been concerned with men’s rights since my family had been collateral damage in the early 2000s California family courts. Family law has been where most men’s rights work has focused thus far
Damn, that’s a sophisticated algo and diagram, but if I can crack it, it will be quite useful for my own purposes.
Banger.
This is a good one. You hit the nail on the head with what’s felt so disingenuous about Scott Galloway (and everyone like him). It’s JUST CONTENT. Not new, not radical, barely helpful. Just keeping the podcast mic’s warm
Don’t really disagree with the content of anything you’re saying, but I think Scott Galloway is trying to be a “gateway” to the red pill for more people within his bubble. He can’t full on tell them truths we know because they will be rejected. Rather, he probably seeks to hopefully, gradually changed the narrative, or maybe provide off ramps for people in the NYT liberal bubble who observe the incongruent between reality and narrative in their own lives.
Maybe some of these people will start with Scott Galloway, then make their way to Chris Williams who is popular on YouTube, then be primed for the more moderate manospherian voices .
Exactly. You only point one level down. Everyone works at the level of men's-advocacy they work best at. I've spent way too much time in Deep Blue American to ever be a real manospherian, but I've managed to make liberals reconsider some things on occasion.
Brilliant piece.
Regarding men opening up to women - https://open.substack.com/pub/rohan62442/p/the-double-mask-of-emotional-vulnerability?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=2iok87
You're absolutely right.
Tell every woman her entire life ‘you go girl! You are perfect. Whatever you desire, you deserve!’ Then tell them ‘men suck, they have it super easy. And you deserve a 6’ tall, 6 pack, big penis, 28 year old making bare minimum $160,000 a year.’ What could possibly go wrong? Average woman ends up with average guy, lives in an average house IF they both work really hard, and they save up to buy a BBQ and hang with average neighbours. That is the reality for almost everyone.
Logan Ury is a porn-brained demon.
I think the big takeaway is that online dating sucks and men and women are whiny in different ways. I am pretty sure a lot of men are getting married/having decent long time relationships. And for a lot of the ones who aren’t there is a reason things are that way.
Care to expand on this? Why are you sure that a lot of men have decent long term relationships?
Your last sentence sounds like victim-blaming. As was pointed out, if boys are told all their lives that they are defective girls who don't deserve to be treated as human, how can you reasonably expect them to be anything other than depressed and hopeless?
I am sure of that because I’m not a terminally online shut in and know a lot of men who are in fact in good relationships and generally reasonably happy. I think polling bears this personal observation out.
In my experience, it is usually not hard to figure out why chronically single men can’t find anyone. Sometimes it’s just hygiene, sometimes a complete inability to connect with women (ie going on an hour long speech about something only they are interested in), and sometimes it’s being morbidly obese. But even those folks often eventually find love.
I'm not even sure I get the point, but I think what the Galloways and podcaster-Chris Williamsons and before them, Jordan Petersons, and before them, nobodies who no one listened to have been trying to do is breach the mainstream and the longhouse-dominated fields (and political party) with the important message that men are struggling, and this is a serious topic. It's taken too long to take hold, and I can remember echoes of it from as far back as the 00s, referring to Columbine, things like that, and is part of why I thought teaching would be something worthwhile investing time in.
I doubt it now, and I never heard of B2B and still don't know what it is or how to "get into" it, so the writing here seems pretentious, cynical and narrow to a specific audience--and this is what I hear the mainstream voices like Galloway trying to avoid. Are they succeeding? That's another question and the answer is probably not.
I *got* semi-rich, and I'm not getting married.
Why? So you can pretend to love me for a year and a day and dump me and take half?
I don’t know what young men’s problems are. I am elderly, average looking, not tall, and I could get ten dates a week if I wanted to. I am reasonably interesting, reasonably funny, and maybe at best sort of cute. Yet women continually convey to me they are open for something. It isn’t hard. Be open, learn how to converse and you are nearly there. Oh…I am kind of rich too. So being wealthy and being a good conversationalist and be at least average looking is all it takes. Or, you could be a homely mute and wealthy. That works too.
Money solves a lot of problems even outside of dating. Waiting for women to change their dating preferences will not do anything for you. What is more actionable to the average man?