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.