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.