Sunday, February 24, 2002

Zenpriest #55 - Now, Please Explain to Me What the Hell Men Need a "Movement" For?

QUOTE: The one area where we get snagged: relations with women. That's because that's the one area where women have incessantly redrawn the rules in their favor. As a result that one particular area is a minefield for men, but otherwise in life, things are pretty good for us, hence why we are reportedly happier than women are, overall.

Read that about 50,000 times and really let it sink in. Men’s lives really are better today than they were 40 years ago, and can’t even be compared to 100 years ago when life was so tough for men that thousands of them would sign up to work on construction of the Panama Canal despite the fact that the work was so dangerous that more than 25,000 men would end up dying in order to get it built.

What is bizarre is that if there ever really had been a MRM that really worked for the best interests of men, it might have actually worked for exactly the same results we have today – increased happiness of men, less pressure to live up to the protector/provider role, more options for our lives, etc.

If you look at the reasons men used to marry, they basically boil down to 4 reasons:

1) desire for sex
2) desire for intimacy with a woman (homophobia ruled out getting it from men)
3) desire for children
4) social pressure to live up the protector provider role

Women themselves ruled out #2 by becoming so unrelentingly selfish and self-centered. #3 got pretty much destroyed by family courts. And, women themselves destroyed #4 because they really don’t need us to do that any more. In the US women are poised to become the majority of the workforce, and have pushed so hard and so long for “e-kwuhl pay fer e-kwuhl werk” that women in general have better opportunities to make a decent living than men do.

That leaves #1 and women’s attitudes and marital rape laws have pretty much demolished that as a fundamental aspect of marriage. High status men can shag their way through hundreds of beautiful young women and the only pushback they get is from conservative men and their dowdy wives. A lot of the rest of women are busy fantasizing being one of these guys’ harems – and of course being the one to “tame” him.

In the “goodle days” a man had to marry if he wanted a sex life, but he was buying a pig in a poke. The sexy young woman he married could devolve into a fat nagging shrew and he was stuck having to provide for her for life. Marriage was very difficult to get out of. Now, if he gets conned by a real loser, as long as he bails out before she spawns any annuities, he comes out pretty unscathed.

Yeah, the animosity, contempt, and often outright hatred of women gets a bit old to deal with, but there are lots of ways to avoid it.

QUOTE: There will be no men's rights movement that will demand changes to laws and so on - that isn't going to happen, folks. It is not in the nature of men to run to the state for protection, not least for protection from what women are doing to men with the power of the state.

Men don’t need protection by the law, mostly what we need is protection from the law. In the US, we used to have some pretty strong protections against runaway government interference and control of our lives. But, as women demanded ever-increasing government intervention into people’s lives to protect them from us, the systemic rights that people once had got entirely stripped away.

When we talk about “men’s rights”, it automatically assumes two tiers or sets of rights – one for men, and one for women. That goes against every foundation principle of US law and thinking – everything about it generally tries to establish one set of laws which apply to everyone. So, any true MRM would really have to be about re-establishing consitutional rights and reducing the size of government.

What amazes me about the people who think more government is the answer is that “government” is not some mystical, magical, inherently ethical ethereal entity. “Government” is a bunch of functionaries drawn from the very same population which supposedly cannot be trusted on their own. So, we take people who can’t be trusted with their own lives and put them in charge of other people’s lives.

Go figure.

The real MRM has being going on for years – millions and millions of individual “movements” (choices) by individual men. Men seek individual solutions, not collective ones, because we are so individualistic by nature that we don’t want to be forced by goverment to live the same life as the guy next to us. For every change in law that some men will fight for, there will be an equal number of men fighting against it.

The original MRAs were the first “marriage strikers” – like me. We simply implemented what the feminist movement was promising men in our own lives right away. Women don’t need us to provide for them or protect them – because the government will now do both? Cool! That frees up a whole lot of time to spend fishing or motorcycling. But wait, that makes us “Peter Pans” who “can’t make/are afraid of a commitment.” Why, yes it does, as a matter of fact. What can we say besides “First Star On The Right, Then Straight On Til Morning!”

Social pressure and social acceptability used to be the primary means of keeping men trapped in their old roles. But, women blew this when they started with the wholesale man bashing. Men got clobbered just as bad, or worse, for being upstanding guys than they got clobbered for being cads. Given that they were going to get clobbered no matter what they did, men naturally chose to do what was the most fun.

The culture used to have a “carrot and stick” approach – if you were a good beta provider you got – 1) sex, 2) family stability and intimacy, 3) children you could pretty well count on being your own, and 4) social respectability.

Then women and the culture said – “To hell with the carrot, gimme two sticks!” and figured they could keep browbeating men into living up to their old roles and the same time they browbeat men for living up to those roles.

It was confusing for a while, but now several distinct strategies have emerged for men which men choose based on their individual preferences. If a man wants sex, he learns Game. If he wants peace and quiet and freedom from nagging, ragging, bitching, complaining, whining pissing and moaning – he becomes a MGHOW or a Ghost. If we wants a family, marriage, and kids, he goes expat or imports a foreign wife.

Men have tons of options today and really don’t need the goverment to do squat. Meanwhile, the women who have “won” the gender war and now have “A Woman’s Nation” are left holding the bag of being the breadwinner and raising the kids by themselves, and some of them are still up for quick lays but not marriage – in other words, they are fine with being pumped and dumped.

Now, please explain to me what the hell men need a “movement” for?

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Further Reading:

The Pitfalls of Inviting More Government Into Our Lives

Zenpriest #47 – The Future’s So Bright, I’ve Gotta Wear Shades

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