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Here’s the thing: Men don’t like women, and women don’t like men. Men like vaginas and women like shoes. So let’s fucking fight.
That’s about how stupid this whole thing is.
The ‘manosphere’ isn’t offering affection, it is offering solutions (real or not) after repeating a problem that lonely men feel (true or not) is true.
How people don’t comprehend the so called manosphere is puzzling to me. It is very very simple.
Men have real problems and these people are offering those men solutions.
Men are driven to find solutions and they’re finding them in the manosphere because no one else is offering any.
To act like the manosphere created all the problems is just insane. That’s not to say the manosphere isn’t full of problems, or creating new problems, but there are serious problems that preceded the movement.
I don’t think noone else is offering solutions. The problem is that the other solutions are harder to implement or take more time and effort. “Women are at fault and you need to hit the gym.” I can fix that in half a day, just get mad at women and fill out an online application for a gym membership in my area. The solutions of the manosphere are easily solved with capitalism: just buy product abc and pay to train your body.
Meanwhile, the real solutions are much harder: build a community. Find people in your area for a hobby, commit to regular meetings. Get to know people, manage disagreements, have uncomfortable conversations, invest time in others until you’ve slowly built a group of people around you that trust each other and are open about their feelings. Communitybuilding takes a long time. Compared to that, the manosphere’s solutions are quick and easy and you can already get yourself started at home.
This is the trick of Jordan Peterson. He offers sound advice: make your bed, get a hair cut, wear clean clothes. Then mixes that good advice with some truly misogynistic garbage.
Yep. I remember when the “manosphere” was still young. I went through a terrible breakup. I was looking for support. They offered commiseration.
Things can get better. You’re going to be ok. Start working out (great advice). Get your place in order (I needed to hear that). Delete social media, stop comparing yourself to them (oh hell yeah).
They validated my anger and sadness. I started to feel like I belonged. I was actually starting to do well. There had been no mention of women yet, just dudes who are going through or had been through some shit. Then when I went a level deeper I started getting the truly misogynistic garbage. But I wasn’t angry at women. I was angry at a woman. An individual. I grew up around enough women to know that AWALT was an absolute lie. I had enough friends that were women to know that. The fact that I was half an inch shy of 6’ never stopped me before.
So I was out of it quickly. But I know how easy it is to get wrapped up in it. I could easily be one of those people today.
Note for everyone else confused:
AWALT = All Women Are Like That
And certainly not Anwalt, the German term for attorney/lawyer.
Yeah, I could have explained. Thank you, kind friend, for handling that for me.
You’re 100% right, and I’d like to add that these problems men are experiencing are caused by capitalism and the patriarchy, which is ironic because the manosphere is clearly capitalizing on their loneliness. It’s a cycle of abuse literally just to take their money.
The solutions the manosphere is offering were never intended to work.
The cause doesn’t really matter to men experiencing these issues, as there’s no path to a solution through that. At least not one that is personally attainable.
The men who want a solution to these problems want a solution that is theoretically attainable by their own efforts, rather than requiring something like a complete overhaul of the existing societal structures.
“Cool, we found the source. Now what’s happening about that which will help me in my lifetime? What can I do against the patriarchy beside not perpetuate it myself, while my prospective partners are still living in a society controlled by it?”
You can’t tell a lady her expectations are unfair because of the patriarchy and use that to get a girlfriend.
A lot of men see posts like yours and feel like they’re being told that you think the problem’s solved because you found the source. And some of them feel like just tossing it on the abstraction of “patriarchy” is an excuse to try and blame the problems they encounter on themselves. “We wouldn’t hit you if you behaved right!” or “You men made this bed, now get fucked in it” sort of shit.
Or it just means that they have to become part of those powerful men, part of that patriarchy, in order for things to work out in their favor. Because it’s too big for them to somehow slay and then reap the benefits of a patriarchy-less society. That’s where some parts of the “alpha” bullshit comes from.
I get that’s not what you’re trying to do, but it’s worth saying. I’m happily married for almost a decade now, but I spent far more time than is healthy on 4chan growing up, so I’m somewhat familiar with the mindset, and I’ve seen plenty of men heading down this path express these sorts of feelings when they see comments like yours.
Thank you, seeing people who can see beyond blaming capitalism or the patriarchy is like finding an oasis in the fediverse.
Life is much more complex than that and it gets exponentially more complex the more personal it gets, but you gave a great explanation about it. Bravo.
It’s amazing how often this plays out politically; people have a problem and the right has a bad answer while the left takes too long to look for the right answer. The end result is the only people who have an answer gets attention/votes. The other side will look like complainers who are trying to tear down the solution and become “the bummer” that becomes the butt of jokes and general animosity.
The left needs some answers to big problems before the right can make up some snake oil solution.
The right always has a quick answer because they are throwing the same shit at every problem.
“It’s the foreigners/religious group abc/political group D! Just get rid of this one group of people and all will be good.”
Housing crisis? It’s the immigrants. No jobs? It’s the immigrants. Lonely? It’s the left and also it’s your own fault, just hit the gym.
It’s easy to have a solution for every problem within seconds if you just claim every problem is the fault of the same 3-4 groups of people.
Look up "The Ghost Shirt Society.’
Native American movement that promised to kill all the settlers and bring back the buffalo.
Desperate people will jump on solutions, whether or not they are viable.
To be clear this was not a violent attempt to kill settlers by the Lakota people. These shirts were thought to protect from bullets and the Ghost dance was believed to bring back spirits of the dead to protect the land settlers were expanding into. It was in this context that the US army massacred 153 people, mostly women and children and ~20 soldiers were given medals of honor for what is known today as the Wounded Knee Massacre.
I mean engaging with someone’s problems and trying to “help” with them can be a form of care or affection.
I think both you and the post are 1000% right. I do wish society was able to have larger and less dysfunctional conversation around the issues men face.
They are not the persistent threat of danger that women deal with, but cultural norms around men, masculinity, and how they’re treated are also deeply toxic and do a huge amount of harm.
I’m gonna be honest, I’ve never watched these manosphere losers, but there are enough “no manlets” or “nobody under 6ft” ass women out there (mostly on dating sites, unfortunately which have become the primary way people meet partners these days) that the manosphere doesn’t need to try hard to sell that one, women sell it themselves like an updated version of men wearing “no fat chicks” shirts in the 80s. Never seen “only short guys” or “nobody over 6ft” either, in contrast. There’s “chubby chasers,” where my “shorty seekers” at?
I know there are women out there that do date short guys and one shouldn’t let the demoralizing messages from what I’m sure are horrible people anyway get to them, but ask a girl who was fat in the 80s, it isn’t fun to see even though there are guys who are fine with fat chicks.
Vulnerable people tend to be the target of abusive ones. They’ll basically reinforce that vulnerable person’s beliefs from their experiences to say they shouldn’t risk anything but to stick with that abusive partner. So they tend to reinforce the focus more on anyone else being oppressive, to create a sense of “why should you bother?” Also those women who care so much about height tend to be assholes. I saw those types from Twitter a long time ago and I would roll their eyes whenever they, at the same time, sexualise asian men or are outspoken about racism even though asian men tend to be shorter. Also one thing that’s almost a parallel to the manosphere are the radfems (or at least they call themselves that way, because whatever they are seems different from what radical feminism is supposed to be). A lot of these radfems tend to just only see men in a bioessentialist or utilitarian way, because they think men are incapable of genuine connection. And it too, is a pipeline of sorts (which I encountered firsthand through Pinterest) because they start with women voicing out real concerns, to “rule of thumbs”, to defending the use of generalised language such as “men are…”, until they become prejudiced and start seeing individual men as only a part of a greater whole for this perceived collective identity of a “man”.
Didn’t see much of that and I was on 5 or 6 dating sites a few years ago. I’m 5’8" and dated 3 women that were 5’10".
Funny thing is, it never occurred to me that I was short until around 35. Despite being broke I always had a pretty gf, never thought I needed to be taller. My first wife used to joke about my “short ass” and it finally hit, maybe I am a little short. Still, never bothered me. God told me I could have long femurs or a long dick.
I’m seeing it a bit now on Tinder. There’s been a few profiles that have straight up said “Under 6’ swipe left” and others that have said something like “I like to wear heels so nobody short”. Pretty sure I didn’t see any concerns about height like 10 years ago.
Tbh it was less of an issue for me myself until the dating sites, back when it was acceptable to politely approach women in public places it was easier to get them to see you as a human and while you may not be their ideal height,
A) It’s harder to screen for 6’ irl because they don’t carry measuring tapes
B) They’re more likely to look past your shortcomings (pun so very intended) because they can see your personality or whatever.
But now it’s just a meat market list of demographics for them to make their decision on, no real personality, no connection, nigh impossible to jump the gap and have her go slightly outside of her height expectations of “tallest 14% of men only” simply because it also says you have blue eyes and like hiking or whatever else it lists.
My problem isn’t women, it isn’t even being short, my problem is the commercialization of human connection and interaction and society’s acceptance of it, the fact that you’re basically forced to pay for a spyware app that treats you like shit or die alone, your pick. It would go a long way towards alleviating our current loneliness epidemic (it ain’t just men, so not “male loneliness epidemic”) if it were societally acceptable for people to approach others in public spaces and respectfully shoot their shot. Even a “good” dating app would still be an app that can’t truly portray a human outside of statistics and a few pictures.
Lucky you if you didn’t see any of that years ago, but I promise I’m not just making it up out of thin air lol.
On the other side, it never occurred to me that I’m short until I got on the original craigslist.org, back when it was Bay Area-only. The number 5’10" was absolutely ubiquitous. If I searched the w4m personals, it’d match about half of the postings. Searching for 6’ matched quite a few more.
Some of the dating sites back in the day allowed people to specify their requirements in a partner. I noticed that the taller the woman, the taller her height requirements, of course. But also, the shorter the woman, generally the taller she wanted. It seemed like the minima was a height requirement of about 5’8" for men. (This was the Midwestern U.S.; results may have varied elsewhere.)
Wow! Never saw it dialed in to the inch. Only ever experienced “6’ or GTFO”.
I haven’t seen this mentioned elsewhere, but at least in my anecdotal experience women seeking taller men is another symptom of patriarchy being toxic to everybody.
When I was growing up the pressure on women was to be as thin as possible - in essence, take up as little space as possible. I love the body positivity movement for starting to change that mentality but for me the damage was done in my formative years and has never gone away. It has resulted in me being physically uncomfortable if I am the biggest person in the room. The taller/broader a guy, the smaller I am by comparison. It’s completely fucked up, I’m quite tall so there are LOTS of incredibly attractive men shorter/thinner than me but I could not have been comfortable dating any of them without a lot of therapy for myself first.
I never put anything like “nobody under 6ft” on a dating profile, though, so maybe I’m off-base.
That is a perspective or lens through which to look at the issue that I wouldn’t have considered, thank you for sharing your experience
The “grain of salt” with YouTube is watching with an awareness that each video seeks to make you the product. Chris Williamson is paid, and well, for those views. Being provocative feeds the algorithm and wins more views, more income. He can’t do it without you. Same with the more incel leaning fellows like Asmongold, who will tell you his income.
Guys with views in that range do this full time. It’s their job. You are their income.
90% of the popular woodworkers are selling you products even as they make you the product. In addition to other crafting channels.
It’s not altruistic. These people are getting paid.
One of the initial promises of capitalism included the alignment of altruism and profit, like providing a good or service to the community that they need and did not otherwise have, and they all pay you enough to live, meanwhile they all do the same with other goods and services, creating a big virtuous cycle.
I know that has largely broken down and been perverted as more and more market segments collapse into monopolies like black holes, but I think you can still see some of that “making money doing something good” spirit out there, even on YouTube. The first YouTuber that came to mind was “Dad, How Do I?” for example. I am pretty sure that guy’s getting monetized and he’s wholesome as hell.
Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” - Individuals pursuing their self-interest can lead to mutual benefits for society.
Nah it’s worse than that.
They’re telling to ignore all the real shit that’s causing their issues, even to double down on them and blame not just an immutable characteristic (height), but something a lot of women (especially the really attractive ones) don’t really give a shit about.
Like, I’ve always had a lot of women friends, and a higher than average amount have been ridiculously attractive, because absolutely more than anything else, most really attractive women want to be around people that value them for anything besides their physical attributes. The vast majority then also look at stuff other than physical attractiveness for potential partners.
All the shit about picking up women is pretending to care about the other stuff to try and get a date.
Just treat women like that in general, and women will be all over you.
Now, for disclosure I am ridiculously tall. But even my short friends did well with the same attitude
But the billionaires paying for this shit don’t want men and women united, they want the average person to feel isolated and part of a small group so they can be manipulated into working against other average people instead of uniting against billionaires.
They spread sexism for the same reason they spread racism and religious bigotry.
If there’s any two groups, the wealthy will try to put them against each other just so they don’t unite against the wealthy. The sooner we realize that’s what happening, the sooner we can actually fix shit: by taking our wealth back from Smaug.
In case you want a woman’s view of this stuff:
I think (at least for me & other women I’ve asked) looks work differently for women, it’s a primary filter, like you have to look good enough, but not a scale - better looking than “good enough” doesn’t make a guy more attractive to me, it’s a yes or no on looks only. So it’s not that I don’t care, exactly, but there is not any man on earth who is so good looking I would want him because of his looks (I might want to look at him, same as I like looking at beautiful women, but looks don’t cause me to be attracted to someone). And there are some who are so unattractive physically to me that they would never dig out of the “no”, it’s a scumbag brain deep illogical screening.
Height, as long as not much shorter than me, it doesn’t matter. Weight, as long as not too fat (and honestly weight is probably the one criteria I can change mind on - fat and active is A-OK, my immediate knee jerk reaction can be overriden, and no guy has ever been too skinny, I have such nice memories of one guy who was like 6’5" and 140lb, when I was 5’9" and 115lb, it was like two skeletons, lol but he was so hot in so many ways not related to looks). Skin color, eye color, hair texture, bald, I don’t care, those are not factors. Overall build and features yes, but nothing outrageous, average is good looking if the guy is good in other ways (considerate, thoughtful, competent at something, good lover, funny not in a mean way, there are so many not physical qualities that are attractive).
It’s my understanding that guys are more like - better looking is more attractive, and that it’s weighted heavier - so a lady who was better looking could be attractive with fewer of the other good qualities, and also that a lady who did not at first be so physically attractive to you could become so if she was awesome in other ways, that she could climb out of the immediate “no” and into the “yes”. That doesn’t happen for me - I can like those guys so much but won’t want them.
That is exactly how I figured women viewed attraction. Thanks for writing that all out, guys rarely get to hear your side.
it’s a scumbag brain deep illogical screening
Don’t beat yourself up. We don’t get to choose our attractions.
Height, as long as not much shorter than me, it doesn’t matter.
And I’m saying for other women, they don’t even care if they’re taller, especially if it’s just when they’re in heels. Even more so when you get to ridiculously attractive women who have already been able to be very selective on just physical traits.
Same way a man that can walk into any room and get the attention of the most beautiful woman, eventually has the novelty of physical beauty wear off compared to someone who’s never experienced a partner like that
It’s a human thing, there’s not really a gender difference. When you can always “get” the most physically attractive person, you start valuing other charecteristics more when looking for a longterm partner.
It starts out looking for a physically attractive person who also has those other qualities, but as you value those more, you relax the other standards without even knowing you’re doing it.
That makes sense. I figured on height I just couldn’t really ever be selective, I’m around the average height of men in my country, and tall guys seem to favor short women, and short guys usually seem to want women shorter than them, so have just always ended up with guys around my height with a couple of outliers (two legit short guys, two really tall). So as I am used to being around guys my height that is what my mind perceives as the space to find attractive guys.
Really haven’t ever pursued a guy for his looks and don’t think I personally am in the turning heads level of attractive, wasn’t ever mainstream majority attractive anyway, though averagely good looking.
tall guys seem to favor short women, and short guys usually seem to want women shorter than them,
That’s a misunderstanding that everyone keeps assuming. But because it’s so prevalent, people keep making the assumption about others.
If you’re into a short guy, don’t just assume he’s not into you just because you’re taller. He might be into you but assume you’re not into him for the same reason.
Be into whoever you’re into, just don’t press it if they’re not interested.
That kind of circles back to what I said about especially attractive people caring less about looks. They have the confidence to not give a fuck and just shoot their shot without ruling themselves out first.
Most people’s problem is just their own fear of rejection, doesn’t matter what gender.
20 years back I subscribed to a dating coach’s mailing list, Dave somebody. The manosphere is like that dude’s evil twin.
He’d tell you it was OK to tease women. Pretty woman are so used to men fawning over them and kissing their ass, a guy that challenges them a bit is novel and interesting. Teasing turned into “insult the shit out of them”.
Be decisive. Women don’t like wishy-washy men. This turned into “order them around to assert dominance”.
He often stressed that he wasn’t proposing to tell you how to get laid, only how to get more dates, you take it from there. That turned into “get money, fuck bitches”.
It’s like they took the guy’s material, didn’t understand any of it, went off the deep end.
One lesson that really stuck with me all these years; “Attraction is not a choice.” No one gets to choose who and what they are attracted to. In the context of dating, “If she’s not into you, move on.” But it makes sense for all genders and orientations (and kinks!).
Interesting guy, wish I could remember his name. I looked at my past relationships that started strong and later turned sour. In every case, no exceptions, I had started with his advice (not knowing it) and ended doing the sorts of things he said not to do.
Here’s a discussion thread about a video that presents aspects of “healthy masculinity” and contrasts them to their “near enemies” - corrupted versions of those same points.
It basically is going over what you said, how the manosphere takes something like perseverance and changes into stubbornness, assertiveness into dominance, etc.
This is on point!
I was never a soldier, but what the incel culture tells men sounds pretty much like what the military tells recruits in basic training. The accounts I’ve read from DIs is that you want to break them down to rebuild them. Take away the family/social structure they grew up in and replace it with the military. The difference is that the military wants them to be proud and adaptable. The Army wants a private who can grow and move up in the ranks; the manosphere wants permanent peons.
Hmmm you might be polishing the intentions of the military a little bit. The Army wants a private who will follow orders without hesitation or even thought. You break down a person and build them into a tool, a cog in the machine. Yes, some will grow and advance, some will gain valuable skills that promote lifelong achievements, some will rise from a life devoid of options to become contributing citizens. But also, some will become cannon fodder, sent to secure a hill or defend an oilfield or depose a democratically-elected socialist.
But otherwise, yes. Incel culture and basic training have a lot in common with cult indoctrination.
The difference is that the military wants them to be proud and adaptable
Lol
Bro, there’s a shit ton of military/veterans in America.
Please stop randomly guessing what it’s like, what it causes, and why it’s happening if you have no real idea and only assumptions.
