The Obamacare Ruling and Associated Hysteria

Many are upset about the Obamacare supreme court ruling, claiming that it paves the way for the government to force any type of purchase on its citizenry. The manosphere is no less shrill in its dire warnings. WF Price believes that it sets the stage for various future anti-male laws, such as a mandated extension of child support to age 26, or even a Rome-style bachelor tax. Are such concerns valid, or overblown?

Clearly, the purchase mandate is shaky from a legal perspective. I'm not sure I agree with Roberts' idea that it constitutes a "tax," either. In the case of healthcare, though, there really is no other way to spread out costs and keep them under control. Would you rather instead risk losing your house and life savings when you get sick?

It really depends on what your priorities are. If you're fine with a shaky system that allows insurers to jump out and leave you with a huge bill the moment you get sick, then, I suppose something like Obamacare is a bad idea. If, however, you want some semblance of normalcy and predictability in your health care costs (and health care period), then Obamacare is a good thing.

This "bloated bill," as WF Price puts it, has many good things in it. Things that honestly should have been implemented decades ago. Yes, there are (minor) aspects of it that grate on my manosphere sensibilities, such as the requirement to charge men and women exactly the same (women cosume more in health care costs.) But people with cancer cost more than the average person, and if we're going to flat-line costs for them, then we might as well do the same for women.

The requirement to cover kids up to age 26 helps young men who are struggling to find a job immensely.  The manosphere comments on this particualr aspect are extremely exapserating, but revealing, and warrant a dedicated post.

See Also
Health Care, the Lack thereof, and how it Impacts Young Men

Is Cad and Bitch Culture Intractably Horrible for Everyone?

Commenter fschmidt brought up a good point in response to a previous post:

What the average woman experiences in the feminist world is being hit on constantly by players. The feminist world is bad for both decent men and decent women. The feminist world is designed for sluts and cads (players). Women in feminist societies have a bitch shield because they need one to discourage constantly being hit on. Women can't be particularly blamed for this, the whole society and culture is rotten to the core.

Once I spent a short amount of time in a bar with some women who were not used to the scene. They emerged completely distraught, almost as if they had been violated. Apparently, they were constantly being hit on in the short time span we were there. They were not immodestly dressed, either.

The only women who seem to voluntarily enter such establishments are the bitchy, conceited types. You can almost feel the bitchiness radiating off of some of them. One wonders if they were originally "good girls" who ended up ruined by the environment.

As far as I can tell, this problem is not so bad if you avoid the nightlife (nightmare?) scene. How long will that last, however? PUAs are already promoting "day game," which threatens to bring this monstrosity out onto the streets in broad daylight.

I just wonder how it is possible to have a long-term relationship lasting more than a few years with this kind of social climate. If a woman is hit on all the time, even if she's modestly dressed, how is she going to remain bearable in a relationship? How will she resist cheating with so much temptation? Just like I'm tempted to eat a whole bag of chips if the bag is right next to me, I think even the most self-controlled woman is tempted to cheat if guys are constantly coming on to her. Especially if her partner is not really high-status.

I see almost no way out of this aside from transplanting yourself out of the current culture to somewhere isolated and leading a self-sustaining pastoral lifestyle of some sort. The Amish seem to have figured this out, and will probably fare better because of it.

"Guys only want one thing"

How often have you heard this line from women? Aside from the fact that it's a smear, and arguably dehumanizes men, it fails to recognize reality. Imagine you were surrounded by a bunch of very hungry people. Would you exclaim in exasperation, "all they want is food!" Of course not.

One of the problems with today's society is that women have zero concept of male sexual needs. If men aren't sexually satisfied enough, you'll start seeing widespread sexually desperate behavior. Women fail to see how they contribute to this problem via hypergamy and other self-imposed barriers. Apparently, most guys (variably the bottom 50-80%) should just shut up and keep their dick in their pants. Problem is, it doesn't work that way. Guys can't just "shut it off." And so you're going to see more yearning and desperation from those men.

This is one of the reasons why the whole "nice guys suck" narrative from women is so cruel. They fail to see how they created this problem of sexual desperation among men. The average guy no longer gets married at 18-22; that system was scrapped, for better or worse. In its place is a sexual "free market" that disproportionatly rewards naturally skilled and attractive men, and leaves most others stewing in varying levels of desperation.

Women who complain about men coming on to them should realize that they can't have it both ways. They can't have sexual freedom into their early 30s or beyond and then just expect most men to be tame and docile, and not come on to them (or employ less aggressive ways of coming on to them like the "nice guy" stuff). Want men to leave you alone? Then make sure they have somewhere to put it!

The demands of the modern female are just totally unreasonable.

Problems with the Mainstream PUA Prescription

When a woman complains that there are no good men out there, my rebuttal is simply:

They are right in front of your face, but you refuse to see them.

In other words, there are legions of sexually invisible men that would long to be with a woman. This is proven by the hordes of "forever alone" men on the internet, and the extremely high male-to-female ratios on dating sites.

Women believe that most single men out there are just out for hanky-panky, but I dispute that. Is it really the case with most men? You see PUA forums chock full of guys who want to improve their game. But do they really want to bang one chick after another endlessly? I don't think so. I think most men just want a loving relationship with a woman.

In a way, I blame the PUA crowd for perpetuating this myth. PUAs, by and large, emphasize hookup and bedding a large number of women. Most men who try to do so fail miserably if they weren't already somewhat attractive. Bottom line, subtle sexual overtures just don't work if you're not considered attractive, end of story. Hitting on legions of women will simply end end in failure and further reinforce the myth that men just want sex.

This is part of why PUA forms a major component of the "Misandrist Dating Advice Distraction."

1. It blames men for their problems with dating.
2. It distracts male attention from pro-male causes and diverts it into female pussy-begging.
3. It reinforces the stereotype that men are desperate and just want sex through its prescription to hit on large numbers of women.

A recent BP post questions if non-misandrist dating advice can even exist in the current cultural climate. It's a good question, because all "advice" presumes that there is something wrong with you that needs to be fixed. What if the real problem is that womens' priorities are screwed up? Should you mold yourself to those screwed up priorities? In my opinion, hell no. Sex is not worth selling yourself out, violating ethical principles, or butchering your personality to the point of being unrecognizable.

Don't take this the wrong way. I believe that there are still a fair number of women out there with decent personalities and priorities. And people (both men and women) should always work on making themselves as attractive as possible. But beyond that, it gets very murky, and that's where a positive environment (read: shaming hypergamy/adultery) can make a huge difference.

The Alt-Right and its Failings, Part 2

In The Alt-Right and its Failings, Part 1, I wrote about how the alt-right prescribes regressive solutions to problems like college costs, essentially arguing for a drastic reduction in scope, and a return to IQ-based employer screening. What I did not mention is that this is based in a sort of hereditarian, elitist argument.

Unlike mainstream conservatives, alt-righters believe that well-adjusted, functional behavior is biologically ingrained, and that some groups of people (particularly blacks) are notoriously poor at it due to some kind of biological shortcoming. The alt-right's "objective" means for claiming this is the one-standard-deviation difference in IQ between whites and blacks.

The problem is that, as Robert Lindsay and others have pointed out, IQ scores are not a reliable means for predicting maladaptive behaviors. Yes, the White->Hispanic->Black hierarchy holds, but once you start throwing other races in, the picture gets much murkier. And then when you compare the IQs of, say, middle easterners to that of American Blacks, the latter actually score higher. Yet middle easterners commit far less crime.

This leads me to believe that the IQ theory of alt-righters is another just-so story that doesn't come close to explaining the full truth. It is true that blacks suffer more social dysfunction than whites, which is reflected in crime rates and the rates of single motherhood. But they should be doing far better if one takes their IQ into account.

I have an alternate explanation: Many of our problems in society are caused by underinvestment in infrastructure and other public goods. Blacks, who tend to be quite poor, suffer the most from this deficiency. How easy is it for them to get from point A to point B? How intellectually stimulating is their environment, or is it just a run-down ghetto? How good is their health care, and the quality of their food? By many objective measures, these areas are in dire need of improvement.

There is also the cultural aspect. How are the relations between the genders, and parents/children? Are kids seen as a society's future, or just something that a babymomma takes care of? Do women select for intelligent, caring men, or do they just go after thugs? This is all stuff that can be fixed with the right attitude (read: shaming.)

So while some black problems could be due to genetics, I think the vast majority of them are because of 1) a poor environment and 2) poor cultural attitudes, both internal and external. Alt-righters are not helping in this regard. They want to starve the state, which will cause poor black areas to crumble even more. They also promote the idea that most blacks essentially "deserve" their status, instead of it simply being a consequence of unfortunate coalescing forces.

I think this is one reason why the alt-right disparages the manosphere. You see, the manosphere is trying to fix the problems of societal decay, which begin with environmental and familial decay. Some prominent manosphere commentators are black, and have come from broken families. Yet the alt-right sees them as "blacks" instead of "men."

I don't think there is much in the alt-right sphere for people for actually want to improve the general well-being of society as a whole. Their prescriptions are all backwards, and won't do a lick of good for anyone in the long run.

The Alt-Right and its Failings, Part 1

You will note that some of the blogs in my sidebar are "alt-right" blogs. The alt-right is essentially an "underground" that sprang up in opposition to the cultural left's domination of mainstream discourse. Alt-righters reject political correctness of all stripes, and tend to strongly reject egalitarianism. They also tend to be highly skeptical of mainstream medical science, especially in the realm of nutrition.

Their opposition to the current orthodoxy is driven by the perceived failure of it to fix the problems that plague modernity. It is indeed true that many societal organs are in serious trouble, and headed in an unsustainable direction. Everywhere one cares to look, there are bloated systems that cannot possibly continue in their current state. The health care system is one. The military is another. The education system is yet another. All of these systems are in need of serious reform, or they threaten to topple the country.

The alt-right viewpoint is that this rot is the result of egalitarianism, excessively large government, and ethnic nepotism. For instance, they believe that the obscene cost of college is the result of both student loan subsidy and the banning of IQ tests as a legally valid measure of competence. Their prescription is to end student loan subsidy, essentially "starving the beast," which will supposedly bring education costs down. They also want to reinstate employer IQ tests.

The problem with these prescriptions is inherent in the reactionary viewpoint of those advocating them. People in the alt-right, much like those in the mainstream right, want to claw back to a time when certain "things" were not "foisted" on them. If only we went back to the way things were, they say, all of these major problems we now suffer will be solved.

It does not take much thought to see where such ideas are problematic. Generally speaking, people like education, and enjoy the broadened opportunity that comes with it. I have been around poor families, and one their greatest joys is to see their child with a college degree that they were not able to obtain themselves. Going back to some sort of IQ-based system seems horribly backward and inadequate given how technologically advanced the world is becoming. Engineers don't train themselves, and most employers will jump ship if they have to train their workers from step zero.

Of course, the reactionaries don't seem to grasp this. They see college as an institution of the cultural left that needs to be starved as much as possible. But one reason why college tuition is increasing so much is because state governments are continuously being drained of tax revenue. It's not hard to see how this hampers competitiveness, and why businesses are clamoring for skilled immigrants.

Compare our college attendance rates to, say, Europe. They're abysmal, and this directly due to the anti-education attitude in the country. I know people left and right who are more than smart enough for college, but can't get in because they can't afford it. This is horrible and needs to be reformed. And the direction it needs to go in is the direct opposite of what the alt-righters (and right-wing people in general) propose.

Today's Young Men Face an Uphill Battle

A recent Mangan's post on declining birthrates listed all the usual suspects, but one comment in particular caught my eye:

Subtle little things like seat belt laws make it difficult to have a large number of kids and be able to transport them around. Not to mention costs of food, clothing, health care, education and so on. Our society is designed for a low number of children per family.

That got me thinking. If you're a young man today, drowning in college debt, where are you going to get the money to pay for a kid, let alone two, three, or four? Even if you managed to graduate debt-free, your income is still likely to be lower than your equivalent in the "baby boom" years. In other words, kids are going to be put on the back burner in favor of more immediate concerns.

But that's not even the beginning of it. Insidious things like the non-dischargeability of student loans in bankruptcy look set to keep many kids in financial dire straits for a long time to come. And the cost of everything keeps going up like crazy. It's almost like it's by design.

I think there is a growing tide of resentment in young men against all this bullshit. Men now want to get married more than women, an exact opposite of how it was in the past. But they're more or less shut out, because women are at parity or above them in status. This can't last. Men don't like being crippled and emasculated, and eventually they're going to boil over.

We're probably already seeing some subtle effects of this. The gerontocracy is turning increasingly reactionary and unhinged, desperately holding onto its ways, oblivious to the fact that it is obsolete. Its actions can be seen in almost every entrenched rent-seeking institution, be it banking, academia, government, military, or the courts. On the other hand, there is room for reactionary thinking among young men as well, in the direction of dismantling feminism.

Which form of reaction will win out? Who knows, but young men must figure out a way to free themselves of their burdens. Their emasculation inhibits their emancipation.

Unnecessary Effort and Ways Around It

The Problem with PUA Advice is a good short series by blogger Advocatus Diaboli explaining how many of the teachings of PUA are logical-sounding but based on false premises. One of the main myths he tackles is this idea that women are a mystery sauce, and that you have to work hard on "self-improvement" to get them. This myth keeps getting proliferated by both mainstream "dating advice" people and PUAs. In reality, as long as you have a decent getup and aren't slovenly looking, flirting will get you decent results, but you have to flirt a lot. AD describes this as "putting in 23 hours of work for every hour of pussy you get."

AD believes this labor-intensive process is not necessary, or at least should not be relied on exclusively. His solution? If you have a middle-class income, you can consistently get better-looking girls for a lot less effort by simply paying for sex. It doesn't have to be that much, either- you can get creative with it, and AD has written a lot on just how you can do that.

PUAs seem to be obsessed with getting "free" women, but they are investing large amounts of time for fleeting pussy. It strikes me as a scam where men have to put in huge amounts of effort, and women get to pick and choose. AD's alternative sounds much better.

The Problem with PUA Advice Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6.

Material Incentives Against Divorce?

One of the main topics in the manosphere is the harsh divorce regime that every married man risks being  subjected to. Since family courts can be quite arbitrary and tend to be pro-female, a man could face a serious reduction in the quality of his life if his wife decides to divorce him.

Some manosphere commentators, notably TFH, have argued that the main reason why divorce is so common is because women do not face a reduction in their standard of living when they divorce. They point out that the divorce rate in many third-world and second-world countries is quite low compared to many developed countries (the Status of Men Index backs this up). I find this assertion difficult to dispute. It seems that once again, economics rules.

This got me thinking about how to set up an economically-based anti-divorce incentive system in a first-world country. Obviously, you can't make it so that the woman is impoverished if she divorces you, nor can you really make it so that her standard of living drops below your level. This is in part because women have extensive access to high-paying employment, despite the gnashing of teeth over the 77-cent statistic. My idea (tell me if it's been mentioned before) is to set up cash incentives against divorce. In other words, elevate her standard of living ABOVE yours while she is married to you, so it drops to your level if she divorces you.

Now there are several problems with this. Family court judges can be arbitrary, and may order you to still pay these incentives after the divorce. However, I don't think they would have much legal precedent to do so, and a good attorney could probably shift things in your favor. The details of how it would be setup are also murky; I am no expert on these matters. You'd probably have to divide assets 50/50 in the beginning.

There is also the problem of feeding an entitlement complex, since she would come to expect the rewards, and could decide to divorce you if she stops getting them for whatever reason (say you lose your job or something). So you can see that there are some questionable aspects to such a setup, and I don't even know if it'll work. I need feedback.

Why is the American Public becoming so Reactionary?

Between the 30s and the 80s, America was moving toward the Left. Social Security, Medicare, the welfare state, Civil Rights, Feminism, Environmentalism, and other left-like movements were all either established or became mainstream in that time period. And many, many things improved during that time period. The economic security and freedom of the average American improved dramatically. Everyone's lot in life was improving, no matter who they were. The whole country was booming and improving in every measurable way.

Then, ever since the Reagan revolution in the 1980s, America has been slowly drifting ever-more rightward. The lot of the average American has slumped. Costs of things like education and healthcare are insane, because they were not allowed to reach their natural conclusion of full government funding. Basic female rights like abortion and contraception are being threatened. Men are exposed to harsh and punitive regimes in the areas of divorce, child support, sexuality, and law enforcement.

Ever since Reagan, every president has had to work within a small "box" that has drifted slowly rightward. Even Clinton was not able to break out of this box, and had to triangulate with a reactionary House of madmen led by Newt Gingrich. Clinton was nearly hanged for getting a BJ (compare this to countries like France, where political leaders are almost expected to have lots of sex on the side.) After that, Bush II pushed all kinds of bizarre crap like abstinence education, which kids like me fell for. Now that Obama is in office, people are complaining that he is too far to the right, and that he is breaking his campaign promises in areas like Marijuana seizure and corporate pandering. The problem is, he too is confined to that little box that's almost impossible to break out of. There was a brief period of respite when the Democrats controlled congress, but now it's back to the rightward drift.

There are numerous political and economic reasons for this rightward drift, such as the 1970s oil price shocks, fears of Communism, and fears of Japanese dominance, but they themselves do not explain why America, and America alone, drifted so far to the right. After all, western Europe was exposed to all these risks as well, even more so due to its proximity to the USSR, but it didn't go all Reagan (the UK did a little bit with Thatcher, but it's still far to the left of the US).

So what caused this? Well, one major culprit is religion. You'll notice that in western Europe, many countries have state-supported religions. In fact, clergymen are actually government employees! There is a natural, deep-seated suspicion of religion in Europe due to all the shit that it caused over the past few 800-plus years or so, and this reflects in religious attendance rates, which are abysmal. Put simply, religion doesn't have much sway over Europeans. As a result, they are very unburdened by religious baggage.

Contrast that to America, where there never was a state religion. Religions basically had to compete with one another on the free market, and this led to a big battle to create captive markets. Since religion runs on fear, they amped up the fear to 11, keeping people hooked (and psychologically screwing people up, but that's beside the point.) It wasn't too difficult to stir strongly religious people into radical reactionary fervor.

Also, there is a demographic shift. In Europe, I don't think there is a strong dichotomy between people who are reproducing and those who aren't. In America, however, it's pretty clear that strongly religious people are reproducing like flies, while less religious (and importantly, more liberal) people are barely reproducing at all. So more and more people are raised with right-wing thinking; kids who barely have a handle on reality get this stuff basically shoved down their throat. I don't think this will be good for men because of the issues I discussed in "The War on Sex."

The War on Sex

In "The Prudes are Winning," Salon.com writer Tracy Clark-Flory interviews sex therapist Marty Klein, asking him how the mainstream views of sex have changed in America. He first mentions that Republicans have been quite successful at threatening rights that used to be a given, such as contraception and abortion. In fact, Arizona recently successfully passed several abortion restrictions. More - not fewer - things can put you on a sex offender list. Banning porn is becoming a legitimate topic of political discussion.

Why is this happening? Well, according to Klein, people have all kinds of sexual hangups because of the misinformation that is being fed to them. Due to the insane emphasis on extended abstinence that I mentioned earlier, people are growing up sexually fucked-up with a huge number of hangups and neuroses, because it's an unrealistic goal. How do they cope with this? There are two possibilities: 1) Confront the reality of their sexuality and deal with it out in the open or 2) try to deny it and sweep everything under the rug. Apparently, there is a big emotional desire for the latter:

We’re looking at people who are desperately frightened and lonely and sad and upset about their own sexual impulses and they’re turning to any place they can find to comfort themselves. Ironically, the religious right and the extreme right-wing of the Republican Party and Fox media, they’re offering a kind of comfort. It’s a Pyrrhic victory because the public doesn’t walk away feeling, “Oh, I have this wonderful sexuality and this wonderful body.” No, no, no. People get to walk away with, “Phew, I dodged a bullet, here are the sexual restrictions that alleviate my guilt, lower my anxiety about my neighbor’s sexuality, that make me as a parent feel less anxious.” People walk away with their sexuality diminished but they feel less anxious about the complicated world in which they live.

So you see how such neuroses drive unhinged policy, but policy is not the only area where damage is caused. Women are strongly driven by emotion, and this feeds into their treatment of men. If women see sex as disgusting, they will tend to see men as disgusting. Every man suffers somewhat as a result, especially men who end up in relationships with such women. I have not met a religious woman who was not somehow sexually hung up in a weird way, and who didn't see natural male sexuality as predatory and perverse.

This manifests in ways such as the following, where a man is unwilling to admit that he goes to strip clubs to supplement his sexual appetite:

As long as you have homes where Joe goes to strip clubs on his lunch hour and his wife doesn’t know, because if his wife knew she’d kill him, as long as you have a home like that, Joe is not going to want to go to a city council member or his county board of supervisors or his state assembly member and say, “Excuse me, I go to strip cubs, cut it out.” Joe’s going to have to say to his spouse: “Honey, don’t take this personally, but every once in a while I go to a strip cub. It’s really a lot of fun. If you want to come that’s great, if you don’t that’s OK with me, but I just want you to know that I go to strip clubs.” Believe it or not, that would be a building block toward political action on the legislative level. Because right now, people can’t go to their legislators because they’re not willing to come out.

If the average American guy today admitted that he went to a strip club, his wife would crucify him. She might even divorce him (note that the traitorous churches support divorce based on such premises). So due to the ruination he risks, he doesn't push to maintain strip clubs and other male sexual outlets, and they end up being restricted/dismantled by legislation. I think a similar thing is going on with the (almost literally) Puritanical war on prostitution.

So you see how this stuff is directly relevant to Men's Rights. Abstinence brainwashing makes women sexually frigid. They see men as disgusting, which probably means that they need harder "gaming," and less-aggressive guys are left out in the cold. Men are seen as sexual predators, which leads to severe sexual harassment laws, child porn hysteria, and porn hysteria in general. Divorce laws are made extremely pro-woman, and sex offender lists nearly include sneezing in public. Low-status men are seen as dirt and scum even more so than they otherwise would be (probably one reason why the prison system is so draconian).

And men who try to relieve themselves from their sexually frigid wives are punished harshly (viewed porn? went to a strip club? DIVORCE TIME!) Men who try to get action outside of "sanctioned" methods are punished because sex is seen as dirty and sinful (see: severely-enforced prostitution bans.) They then become mentally fucked-up themselves and become more likely to commit sex crimes. See how this stuff feeds back on itself? In the end, everybody is less happy.

Barry Goldwater was right when he said that the dominance of the Religious Right would be one of the worst things to happen to this country. And Dalrock is right in that social conservatism and feminism are practically linked at the hip. "You hold him down while I rob him" indeed.

Mike Stone and the Traditionalist Oppression of Low-Status Men

Last month, a kid from a Minnesota high school named Mike Stone made national news for successfully asking out a porn star to prom. Apparently, none of the girls in his area accepted his simple invitation to be his prom date, and so he got the idea to ask out hundreds of porn stars on Twitter. Megan Piper, a young starlet, accepted his invitation because she had never been to prom herself. Amid the fanfare,  the school board found out, and promptly banned her from attending.

Megan Piper (19) and Mike Stone (18).

Now this post wouldn't be complete without an analysis of the societal reaction to this kid's breaking out from the shackles of rejection. Many bloggers in the manosphere, yours truly included, have documented the harsh treatment low-status men suffer from all corners of society. We have also noted how psychotic and panicky some people, mainly women, become when a low-status man acts "out of key" with his status.

In addition, I think that America, at present, is set up as an anti-fun society, and this is the result of a weird combination of ancestral Puritanism and middle-age-bitch feminism. Just check out this screed from Ms.  district superintendent:

"This prom date will not be allowed to attend the Tartan prom as her attendance would be prohibited under Tartan's standard prom procedures and would be inconsistent with two school district policies," Phillips writes.

Notice how there isn't even a hint of happiness or, "this is cool, but we can't allow this" in the writing. It's just an emotionless, mechanical rejection, oh-so-similar to the rejection he faced at the hands of so many of his female "peers." The reaction of his parents was one of embarrassment and shame, instead of support. The only people backing him up were his male peers, because they know how hard it is to get women, and are much more in touch with things.

So you see how society is setup to be against male liberation, and especially low-status male liberation. This is part of their whole hysteria against porn- it frees men of some of their desperation. Traditional society is set up to step on low-status men as much as possible, which is why I'm against it.

Where is the outrage at the women who rejected him? Where is the "embarrassment" at the community for providing no woman was willing to go on a prom date with him? He's not a bad-looking guy. As usual, none of the blame is heaped on the women, but this guy suffers all the ill effects of not having a date. He turned to Twitter because no one in his community was giving him a break. They should be embarrassed at themselves, not him.

Here's his twitter. He's hosting his own prom with the girl on May 12, and is having some sort of fundraiser for it. Of course everybody's jumping on board now that he's famous. Kid could use a different getup and maybe lose some weight, but otherwise he's okay.

Feminism and the Something-for-Nothing Mentality of Humans

Humans, by and large, are driven by a desire to get something for nothing. This is reflected in all advertising, which is designed to make people feel like they're getting a "good deal" (for less than it's worth).

I believe that this attitude is reflected in social movements as well. People support social movements in part because they believe they will come out on top if the movement is successful. And that is the attitude that feminism is increasingly representing.

When feminists started out, they wanted to achieve equal access to employment, freedom from sexual harassment, and other noble, practical goals, but I don't believe those things in themselves gave feminism the "kick" it needed to truly become popular among women. Plenty of women wanted to remain homemakers; plenty dreaded the workplace for legitimate reasons (office work sucks). Plenty wanted to keep their feminine charms. There had to be some other motivating force to get them to support the movement, and that was the desire to get something for nothing.

If you look at the modern-day legal system, hiring system, university system, benefits system, economic system, and just society in general, you'll notice that it's all geared toward women.

• Legal system: Women are given automatic benefit of the doubt in custody (default mother custody.) Women are recipients of both formal (Title IV) and informal (boss wanting to fill up his office with hotties) affirmative action. Women are given the benefit of the doubt in rape accusations. creating a perverse incentive to inflict suffering on innocent men, even if the charges are eventually thrown out.
• Hiring system: As stated, the soft affirmative action. Women and feminists are constantly pressuring various industries to accept more women in their ranks, despite the fact that many women just don't match up. Women are often fast-tracked to managerial positions quicker than their merit warrants.
• Benefits system: Women receive arbitrary child support awards that are often disconnected from the economic realities of the father. Men who discover that their child is not theirs are left few options once they are determined to be custodial. More on why child support is so punitive in another post.
• Economic system: TV and a large majority of consumer goods are marketed and geared almost solely toward women. Women have ancient foraging instincts and this leads to a compulsion to go shopping and buy things, and businesses have long been aware of this. It's interesting to note that if anything, feminism has magnified this female tendency by giving women direct economic power. Women never shamed other women for compulsively shopping; men were the only restraint.
• Society in general: Women are just given the benefit of the doubt. Not only that, but they have a strong lobby as they are 50% of the population. Anyone who runs afoul of the opinions of the female horde, or criticizes the excesses of female behavior, is practically crucified (see: the Slutwalks.) Women have also gained an enormous number of privileges that used to be the sole domain of men, but have acquired few of the responsibilities expected of men. For instance, women don't have to register for selective service, and are not expected to approach men to achieve romantic happiness (if a woman is single or not approached by men, it is blamed on men.)

This setup sure looks like women getting "something for nothing!" In fact, many of these "gains" came at the expense of men. How many of them are legitimate? In my opinion, very few. A lot of this stuff is very questionable if looked at from a neutral perspective. I won't deny that women have difficulties in the current system, but a large number of their gains are ill-gotten, and seriously degrade the quality of life of many innocent men.

I doubt all these freebies and benefits are an accident, since they were required to get women on board with feminism. Or, less politely, they were required in order for feminists to ram through their agenda in a society that was skeptical of their aims. Now we have a system that's biased towards women, but is everybody really better off? Or has society become more atomized and ruthless?

Health Care, the Lack thereof, and how it Impacts Young Men

This may not be something solely affecting young men, but it does affect them and their health outcomes.

In a word, the health care system in America is insane. The resources are completely mis-allocated. From a wealth standpoint, there should be no problem providing health care to everybody. Yet there are literally tens of millions of people who are uninsured, and are one serious accident away from bankruptcy.

A lot of young men I talk to seem afflicted with a combination of youthful indiscretion and frankly far-right-wing beliefs. Many don't have any health insurance at all, because they don't think they'll need it. What will they do if they, God forbid, get in a serious accident and require hundreds of thousands of dollars in surgeries? This insane level of recklessness is only one side of the coin, though. The other is the far-right-wing belief that if you can't afford health care, you deserve to die.

Why do I call this far-right-wing and not simply right-wing? Because condemning people to death for a weakness is a far-right idea. They couch it by claiming that someone who cannot afford health care must not have their shit together, but that's basically saying the same thing. It's not even a true retort because in many cases, the people who can't afford health care are upstanding members of society, and do have their shit together. They got in an accident, or suffered cancer, and their insurance company decided to cut them off because it deemed the treatment too expensive. Such people have to declare bankruptcy to fund their treatment, and that's if they're lucky.

I guarantee you that VERY FEW young guys today can afford to treat themselves for cancer, or after an accident. Many are saddled with huge amounts of student loan debt to begin with. If they want to get married, buy a house, etc. they don't have the money to pay for extremely expensive medical care! Heck, it's doubtful they'd be able to afford it even if they lived in a trailer. Yet many adhere to insane far-right-wing ideologies that could condemn them to bankruptcy and ruination at a moment's notice.

Now is not the time for far-right-wing ideologies in youth. Young men are already being impacted by the harshness of these ideologies - in addition to the heavy student loan burden, their jobs are being taken away from them by less expensive H1-Bs. Snickering twits like Eric Cantor threaten to destroy their Social Security and Medicare guarantees. In a word, they're being screwed, and screwed badly.

Now I say that these ideologies are far-right wing, and not right-wing. Why am I making that distinction? Because I don't think that any decently sane conservative would support the current system, or a "You can't afford it? You die" system. A sane conservative would recognize that things like the Hippocratic Oath don't only apply to the rich, and set up a charity to guarantee health care to everyone.

It could be very simple. Have a means test. You can't afford insurance? Health insurance drops you because you're too expensive? You get care. Why hasn't something so simple been set up?

There is the argument that such a charity would make it more palatable for insurance companies to just drop people, but it's not like they aren't doing it anyway. No, the simple fact that such a charity doesn't even exist reveals a serious gap between conservative ideology and reality. Then they to normalize this absence with far-right justifications.

Then of course there's the triage argument of "oh we can't afford to treat everybody." That's obvious bullshit. Triage is only valid when there are literally not enough resources to treat everybody. Sorry to sound like a Leftist, but companies are making record profits, the richest have never been richer, and the wealth distribution disparity keeps widening. They have more than enough money to help people in need. I'm not advocating widespread redistribution of wealth, but I think there should be a minimum requirement, such as when a person needs health care.

When the health care act was signed in 2010, Republicans were in an uproar. All of them voted against it- both in the House and Senate. But even a cursory glance at the provision reveals how much safer health care will be, especially to young men, under the act. First, you don't have to buy separate insurance until you're 27. That helps a LOT and you can use the extra money to pay down student loan debt. Insurance companies can no longer drop you or refuse to take you up because of conditions that you have no control over. Yeah, you have to pay in. So what?

The Republicans just hate it because imposes a large number of regulations on insurance companies. They're not against forcing people to pay for something - see the huge military tax burden. In fact, a system similar to this was their idea. Somehow I don't think they really care about the young men they send to wars, nor do they care if a young man is ruined by college and medical expenses and lack of job opportunities. Fuck them, honestly. Not that the Dems are much better, but they at least pass things that help young men, despite their overbearing feminist tendencies.

The Status of Men Index and the Need for More Data in the Manosphere

I've long had a link to the Status of Men Index in my sidebar. It's a tabular ranking showing how various countries match up based on various statistics, such as how well educated men are, how their life expectancy matches up to women, what the rate of divorce is, and the like. Countries are given ratings based on these statistics, as well as a cumulative rating (the soMENi, or Status of Men Index). Countries with a higher soMENi are, at least in theory, better places for men to live. Based on 2009 data (the last time the index was compiled), the following countries rank in the top 10:

1. Ecuador
2. Qatar
3. Netherlands
4. Peru
5. Kuwait
6. South Korea
7. Nicaragua
8. Singapore
9. Japan
10. Turkey

The countries that do the worst:

72. Saint Lucia
73. Kyrgyzstan
74. Ukraine
75. Kazakhstan
76. Moldova
77. Latvia
78. Estonia
79. Lithuania
80. Russia
81. Belarus

The US ranks #52, closer to the bottom of the list than the top. Keep in mind, of course, that this rating system isn't perfect - it doesn't, for instance, measure the subjective treatment of men, which is questionable in some of those top ten countries. Many countries aren't fully measured (most have at least 7/10 attributes measured), nor are many third world countries included, due to the lack of data.

Attributes like physical longevity, divorce likelihood, and suicide likelihood are important objective indicators for measuring the quality of a man's life, and are reasonably well-recorded in this index. Sure, there are lots of gaps, but I think it's a good general gauge of where countries lie, or is at least a start.

It's unfortunate that more effort isn't put into compiling lists like this. One of the areas the manosphere is deficient in, in my opinion, is data-driven statistical support of arguments, as well as the use of data to see where men stand, period. Men's rights bloggers are good at elucidating many of the issues, but there needs to be a more readily-available backup of arguments with data. Dalrock is good at this, but off the top of my head, I can't think of anybody else. Of course one recognizes the problem with "official" statistics in these matters, as A Voice for Men and Pierce Harlan's False Rape Society point out.

I urge everyone who comes here to visit the Status of Men Index (soMENi) site. You can sort the countries by various categories and where they stand on them. The guy who compiled it seems to recognize the problems with the incompleteness in the data, as well as the need for additional categories, and is calling for help. Help him out!

Also, the site has a good list of male-friendly airlines (airlines that allow men to sit next to children.)

Modern Marriage and the Dilemma Younger Men Face

As many of you know, marriage, in its modern form, is on the rocks. Fewer and fewer people are getting married, a trend that does not look to end soon. But what about people who want to get married? What about people who want to create a stable, healthy environment for raising children in?

It looks like those people are SOL. Feminists are clearly hellbent on eliminating (traditional, male-friendly) marriage; one even admitted as much to me. How does that work out in practice? Are they pushing to ban marriage? No. But they are forcing changes in the laws ("marriage reform") that make it increasingly unlikely for a marriage to remain stable, especially in the face of societal propaganda and social exposure (read: opportunities to cheat.)

You see, what feminists have claimed to be doing all along is ridding marriage law of the parts that inhibit a woman from leaving an abusive husband. Increasingly, though, their true colors are showing through. They're all but admitting that it's about making it as easy as possible for a woman to leave marriage, no matter what:

The switch to a unilateral divorce regime redistributes power in a marriage, giving power to the person who wants out, and reducing the power previously held by the partner interested in preserving the marriage.

In the vast majority of cases, it's the woman who wants out. And it's great for her, too: Presuming there is no abuse, she gets automatic child custody, which usually means that she gets the house. The ex-husband has to pay child support and alimony, among other things, all based on a decision that she makes.

This would be a great system if every husband was an abusive brute, or a loser who quit his job and cooped himself up all day playing video games. But that's far from the case. Evidence shows that women are divorcing because of vague feelings of unhappiness in otherwise functional relationships. This may not be the husband's fault at all (e.g. she may have come across a more attractive male) but it's still treated as his fault.

And this is where my critique of people like Athol Kay, Hawaiian Libertarian, and the like comes in. These people claim that you can use "game" to rescue a marriage that is on the rocks. The problem with this mentality is twofold: 1) It is not possible for every man to execute "game" properly, and 2) the incentives for female-initiated divorce continue to be enriched.

So while these guys may have had some success regaining attraction from their wives, who is to say they won't get burned in the long run anyways? Sure, if I were in a marriage and had everything to lose, I would definitely try to follow Kay's and HL's advice. But I don't think that game is enough to make marriage have a reasonable risk profile for men considering it. This is the message that the Black Pill has been trying to get across in his admittedly inflammatory posts,* and I think Ferdinand is smart enough to realize it as well.

You can see the dilemma us younger men face: We want to have a healthy, loving relationship down the road (I think even BP wants it, despite his claims to the contrary) but we're faced with an environment that threatens relationship stability across the board. We're faced with an environment of reduced male mating choice, making the relationships we do get into more dull and boring. We're faced with women who, on average, aren't working nearly as hard as they should be on making themselves attractive, and as a result just don't have the "spark" that they should. We're faced with societal propaganda that both encourages and  forgives female cheating and trading up, which most women have internalized.

What to do in reponse? That is one major question of this blog.


*I think BP takes it too far when he says that "game doesn't exist." But he has a point in that game is NOT enough to rely on in marriage, especially when huge amounts of financial resources are at stake.

Economics drives Female (mis)-Behavior

Any man who has been alive in the past twenty years knows that something strange is going on with women as a group. Their behavior is questionable, their empathy towards male problems (especially low-status male problems) is almost non-existent, and they have a tendency to be extremely narcissistic and boastful. This is combined with a marked incompetence at traditional female tasks like cooking.

I literally haven't met one girl around my age who was a good cook in my entire life. Oh, I've met lots of girls who are tremendously proud of waltzing into unimportant low-level administrative jobs, and many who enjoy the drink-and-talk nightlife scene. But girls who can cook a good, healthy meal, and who I can be confident will help raise any children I might have to be functional human beings? I haven't seen them. A few of the more religious girls come close, but they just don't have the pull that I feel women from the past would have.

But just why are women failing to present a palatable long-term option to many men? The answer, I believe, is simple- financial independence. Sounds rotten to say, doesn't it? But the fact is, people who are humble are more often than not in a humble position. If you're a woman in an "empowered" position - one that feminists love boasting about - you have absolutely no need to even exhibit basic human decency to live a comfortably middle class lifestyle (H/T Advocatus Diaboli). This is why women are becoming less and less appealing as long term prospects to men. This is why they have lost certain valuable homemaker abilities, like the skill of cooking healthy food, as well as many of the more subtle, ethereal, intangible qualities that attract men.

To make an analogy, I'll give the example of water use in the desert. Taking 30-minute showers or having a huge, water-guzzling lawn is rather irresponsible wherever you live, but it's especially harmful in the desert, where the environment is at a constant risk of becoming more desert-like. You'd think dire warnings of desertification and water shortages would significantly alter water consumption patterns, right? Wrong. Evidence shows that most people are unlikely to significantly pare down their water consumption until they suffer additional imposed financial burdens. In other words, their behavior is only seriously changed by economic force.

The exact same thing is going on with women and their attitudes toward men. Their behavior sucks because frankly, they can get away with it economically. Think about it- what has all the religious and cultural shaming of this behavior accomplished? Absolutely nothing.

Virginity and the Paradox of Modernity, Part I

Virginity is something that has a strange status in modern society. Not too long ago, it was expected that both men and women be virginal until marriage, but gradually that expectation has faded, with the sexual revolution accelerating it. Conservative-minded people tend to believe this was due to fading moral values. I used to agree with this, but am not sure anymore.

I've come to believe that everything is more or less driven by economics. Compare the average man in, say, 1650 to a man today. In 1650, a man spent all day laboring on the farm, glad that the land he tilled was finally his. He married early, at around 13 or 14 years of age, and had children soon afterward. It was ordinary and routine.

Doing something like that now would be considered not only absurd, but pathological. Teenage pregnancy is almost on par with a criminal record in how it ruins your life prospects. Having to work all year on a farm at 13 or 14 instead of going to school would be seen as child labor- a crime. What changed?

It's simple: Technology advanced, making old jobs redundant. Around 100 to 150 years ago, automated machinery started replacing jobs that previously needed a large number of farm hands to perform. The population did not go down; instead, it skyrocketed upward, and large numbers of children found themselves  unemployed. This advancement of technology resulted in increased complexity, which required more intelligence and skill. Hence, the public school system was born, and marrying at 13 or 14 soon became  history.

Fast forward to the 1940s and 1950s, where housewives found themselves increasingly redundant. In eons past, tanning hides, preparing meals, and washing clothes took all day, and were full-time jobs for a woman. With their children at school all day, and with the advent of factory-manufactured clothing, supermarkets, and washing machines, housewives found themselves with nothing to do, and became restless and upset. Enter feminism, women joining the workforce en masse, and an enormous demand for education.

And now we're in the present. You see what is happening here? Economic forces are coalescing to push the age of marriage farther and farther back. It's getting to the point where many people don't even have a decent job until they are in their early to mid-30s. More and more jobs require increasingly lengthy periods of education beforehand. How can people settle down and marry at some pre-ordained young age in such an environment? It's simply too much to expect of all but the most economically-fortunate people.

It could be argued that in the past, people were better at being chaste until marriage. That has to be put in perspective with the average age of marriage, however. It's much easier to be chaste if you're getting married at age 13 or 14- you've only been a sexual being for a year or two! By your mid-teens, your hormones are in full swing, and you want to have sex. A strong shaming culture can maybe keep the lid on things until you're about 16, but that's when it starts seriously breaking down.

People who are sexually mature need sex. It's not as urgent as food, but it needs to be sated in order for a person to be happy. The old, conservative ways of doing things - imploring people to be virginal for years, or even a decade or more, is unrealistic, callous and almost sadistic. People demanding extended chastitiy are basically stuck in time, not realizing that the train has left the station a long time ago. Their ideas worked in pre-industrial or pre-globalization times. But we live in an industrialized, globalized world of global competition.

People are adapting by engaging in premarital sex, which is also partly enabled by birth control technology. This has its major down sides, up to and including a potentially fatal one - the likely inability to form quality, lasting relationships. But such is the paradox of modernity.

Flirtatious Signals, the Lack thereof, and Consequences

In "Reading Women Correctly," Robert Lindsay discusses the kind of flirtatious signals women give when they are interested in a man. At the end he notes how some commenters complain about not getting any signals at all. These guys, known as involuntary celibates or incels, are basically invisible to women sexually.

Robert describes instances where women are almost literally attracted to him in a carnal sense- in one case, a girl was staring at his chest hair as if it were a prime rib. This type of animal sexual attraction is rarely experienced by incels, and is a huge stumbling block for them because it's very difficult to flirt with to a girl when she isn't putting out any signals of interest to begin with.

Furthermore, this lack of interest prevents an incel from fine-tuning his attraction radar, so he can better piece apart when a girl is flirting or not. This causes the incel to stumble badly whenever an opportunity arises, if it ever does. In the best case, the incel ends up broadcasting his sexual inexperience, and the consequences can be far more severe. These types of outcomes only reinforce the incel's sense of inadequacy,  as he is already suffering from a lack of affection and validation to begin with.

I consider this phenomenon to be the core problem of incel. It is a vicious, self-reinforcing circle, that only gets harder to break out of with time. Poor attractiveness (for whatever reason) leads to a poor reading of signals, if any are sent by girls to begin with, which often results in harmful psychological repercussions.

I will discuss ways to break this vicious circle in a future post.

Problems with the "Don't Generalize" Dogma

Say a man somehow manages to get out of a toxic relationship with a woman. This may be a sexless beta-orbiter type situation where he was subjected to emotional manipulation, or it may be something more serious like an acrimonious divorce. The man is aware that this particular woman is toxic, and should be avoided. Without any exterior guidance or warning, however, he is bound to get into a similar situation again. Why is this?

The oft-cited example is of men who are brutalized in divorce court, only to line right up for marriage again. Some of these men have multiple strings of child support and alimony obligations. Other less extreme examples include the eternally-clueless beta, who keeps getting "lets-just-be-friend"-ed over and over again, without learning. Heartiste recently had an admittedly good post on this very topic, attempting to distill why it occurs.

Of course, what Heartiste doesn't mention is how many "alphas" are caught up in the same type of thinking. I know of very few "alphas" who do not get into emotionally abusive relationships with women. The core problem seems to be a societal hegemony of the "don't generalize" dogma. How many times have you been shut down by the armies of "don't generalize" people, also known as the NAWALT people, both male and female, every time you mention harmful female tendencies?

It's a problem of frame. Of course one shouldn't assume that all women are abusive because one woman is abusive. But somehow this gets twisted into seeing every new woman as a blank slate, and not remembering  the warning signs from previous experiences. I think society encourages this unhealthy attitude, which is why you see men falling into the same traps over and over again. The whole "this time it's different" belief is a natural tendency in humans that needs to be fought, not encouraged.

STEM, Sexism, and Asian Women

Women and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics - a term describing technical fields) has always been a hot topic among feminists. Despite a large amount of effort, including female-only scholarships, female admission preferences, hiring preferences, and endless propaganda campaigns, women are still drastically under-represented in STEM fields. Feminists have spilled a lot of ink over why this is, usually coming up with convoluted "sexism" and "patriarchal culture" explanations.

I'm afraid the real explanation is much simpler, based on what I've seen. Few women have the mindset necessary to excel in a highly technical field. It requires looking at the world a certain way - shall we say, a somewhat detached, analytical, unemotional way - that is just not natural to most women. They hate it, and it's not the way they think. This is the primary reason why they gravitate away from STEM.

I know some women in STEM fields who are very good at what they do. Almost universally, however, their mindset is qualitatively different from that of the typical woman. The women I see in very technical STEM sub-fields like engineering and physics are also heavily Asian. You see few white women there, and I doubt it's because of sexism. Immigrant Asian women are marrying white men in droves, in part because they see white men as less sexist than (culturally) Asian men. If sexism is what's keeping women away from STEM, why are most of the women in STEM Asian? This whole "women and STEM" topic just seems like another thing to club innocent white men over the head with.