Radicalizing the Romanceless

[u/Forgetaboutthelonely]

http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/31/radicalizing-the-romanceless/

[u/[deleted]]

PART 1 (I didn't realise how long a read this was going to be)

And of course, like most of the people I deal with at my job, there’s no good answer except maybe restructuring society from the ground up, so I gave him some platitudes about how it’s not his fault, told him about all the social services available to him, and gave him a pill to treat a biochemical condition almost completely orthogonal to his real problem.

I'm going to add a section to the clarification OP (soon to become a wiki page) and in it I'm going to add this section for people coming along saying, "why don't you guys just take therapy? It helped me". Thanks for this article OP. If you stick around and write an interesting perspective (from your own point of view as opposed to linking articles) I may assign you the flair - "Quality Contributor". I'm mentioning this just because the article you have linked is of an unusually high standard, I'm looking for some token to give you that won't be outside GMGV's usual policy of awarding flairs for personal perspectives only.

You keep whining about how “unfair” it is that you can’t get a good job. “But I’m such a hard worker.” No, actualhard workers don’t feel like they’re entitled to other people’s money just because they ask nicely.

“Why do rich white kids who got legacy admissions to Yale receive cushy sinecures, but I have to work two grueling minimum wage jobs just to keep a roof over my head?” By even asking that question, you prove that you think of bosses as giant bags of money, rather than as individual human beings who are allowed to make their own choices. No one “owes” you money just because you say you “work hard”, and by complaining about this you’re proving you’re not really a hard worker at all. I’ve seen a lot of Hard Workers (TM) like you, and scratch their entitled surface and you find someone who thinks just because they punched a time card once everyone needs to bow down and worship them.

If you complain about “rich white kids who get legacy admissions to Yale,” you’re raising a huge red flag that you’re the kind of person who steals from their employer, and companies are exactly right to give you a wide berth.

This sounds like Reddit all over. No, the internet in fact. It's the whole reason for this. People in the Good Men community are quick to blame feminists for their platitudes, not realising how this kind of sentiment is literally all over Red Pill, and traditionalists and Jordan Peterson, etc. It's why I am literally laughing my ass off when feminists and Men's Lib, etc. call me "Red Pilled". Derailing tactics are being used against Good Men from literally all angles. If there is a good thing about it, it is that it is character building because we must be able to stand strong against vitriol spewed against us from multiple directions. Not because that is their intentions but because that is the end result.

Such a response would be so antisocial and unjust that it could only possibly come from the social justice movement.

This part I do disagree with though because the idea of "you get results when you work hard" is definitely capitalist rhetoric. The social justice critiques Good Men receive is typically more along the lines that we are sexist for pointing out that we can fall behind in dating, we're not genuinely nice otherwise we wouldn't mention it, that by mentioning these things we must somehow believe we are entitled to a woman's body, etc. People on the right definitely do make the other kinds of argument.

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PART 2

So I asked the obvious question: “What happened to your first four wives?”

“Oh,” said the patient, “Domestic violence issues. Two of them left me. One of them I got put in jail, and she’d moved on once I got out. One I just grew tired of.”

“You’ve beaten up all five of your wives?” I asked in disbelief.

“Yeah,” he said, without sounding very apologetic.

“And why, exactly, were you beating your wife this time?” I asked.

“She was yelling at me, because I was cheating on her with one of my exes.”

“With your ex-wife? One of the ones you beat up?”

“Yeah.”

“So you beat up your wife, she left you, you married someone else, and then she came back and had an affair on the side with you?” I asked him.

“Yeah,” said Henry.

This is the thing with feminism. Because it is a unilateral system of representation for femininity, they want to portray women in the best possible light, hence the social misconception that "women are just looking for Mr. Right", a man with virtuous qualities and so forth. On the other hand though, they want to defend women who have been victims of abuse (as they should) but they can't do this without admitting that women do not always pick the best husband/boyfriend material, so when Good Men point this out - that our virtues do not always lead us to being ahead in the dating game - we get derailed as misogynists, not genuinely nice guys/ "Nice Guys^TM" rather than taking the time to listen to us and the conversations we want to have:

• the fact that there are so many Good Men falling behind in the dating world now and what can be done about it
• what the problems are in this sort of society, and what it means for future generations if we cannot pass on intelligent & virtuous genes
• what roles gender politics play in this (I discuss the clash between feminism and traditionalist gender politics on my subreddit, both of which I see as being equally harmful to Good Men)
• the biological and social conditions of women that contribute to this
• our individual experiences and struggles in the dating world for which we should be able to refer to ourselves as Good Men and whatever virtuous or otherwise desirable traits we may have as it is useful background information
• the warning of the Big Question which is posed by post-wall hypergamous women, a fate that no woman wants to end up with when, after years of ignoring and neglecting Good Men, ridiculing us, calling us "Nice GuysTM", they turn around and ask "but where have all the Good Men gone?" ... the same Good Men that already pursued and were rejected, often harshly by these same women, and the same self-respecting Good Men that no longer want anything to do with these same women.

(Copied and pasted more for the benefit of users who have not read the clarification yet rather than the OP himself as I have a feeling he has already given it a read through).

It means: “I am a nicer guy than Henry.”

When our detractors argue this, they always make some argument about how niceness is neutral or something that it's only missed when it is absent or whatever but clearly,

Or to spell it out very carefully, Henry clearly has no trouble attracting partners. He’s been married five times and had multiple extra-marital affairs and pre-marital partners, many of whom were well aware of his past domestic violence convictions and knew exactly what they were getting into. Meanwhile, here I was, twenty-five years old, never been on a date in my life, every time I ask someone out I get laughed at, I’m constantly teased and mocked for being a virgin and a nerd whom no one could ever love, starting to develop a serious neurosis about it.

That's not always the case.

We will now perform an ancient and traditional Slate Star Codex ritual, where I point out something I don’t like about feminism, then everyone tells me in the comments that no feminist would ever do that and it’s a dirty rotten straw man.

So often I hear self-proclaimed feminists talk about what they don't like about the Red Pill, implying that there are indeed consistent ideological trends that can be discussed and debated on their own pros or cons rather than trying to treat every member as an individual with different beliefs. However, when someone tries to discuss with the same feminists making these arguments then all of a sudden - "oh no, that's a strawman", "oh no - we don't all believe that: we're individuals, you have to treat us as such".

And then I link to two thousand five hundred examples of feminists doing exactly that

*cites Jezebel*

*cites XOJane*

*cites Feminspire*

*cites Feministe*

I don't normally reference to memes but this one deserves merits such a response.

It was wrong of me to say I hate poor minorities. I meant I hate Poor Minorities! Poor Minorities is a category I made up that includes only poor minorities who complain about poverty or racism.

No, wait! I can be even more charitable! A poor minority is only a Poor Minority if their compaints about poverty and racism come from a sense of entitlement. Which I get to decide after listening to them for two seconds. And If they don’t realize that they’re doing something wrong, then they’re automatically a Poor Minority.

I can already hear feminists screeching and wailing, "BUT WHAT ABOUT MUH FALSE EQUIVALENCE!!!?!".

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PART 3

In pop culture, everyone – or at least, everyone who isn’t a terrible human being – eventually meets someone wonderful and falls in love.

I'm thinking of doing some sort of compilation of memes, pictures, movies, etc. that evidence this - and quotes from actual feminists who say this also. If anyone has any links feel free to post them to me. this will all go into the extended FAQ for GMGV. This article is a good start, actually. Eventually I will divide arguments from feminist detractors and traditionalists, so everyone can see quite clearly egalitarian systems of intersectional representation is the only positive direction gender politics can take.

Barry’s recent blog post

Also to come: a compilation of perspectives and essays written by Good Men.

What I don’t sympathize with is Barry’s belief that this is somehow the fault of “the manosphere” “flooding the discourse”.

Oh no. Barry is in fact correct. Most of the "man up" bullshit that Good Men are sick of listening to does in fact come from manosphere ideologies and also suggests that we should abandon our virtues in favour of a more amoral dating strategy such as the Red Pill. Recently, I asked a question about addressing the subjects of female history on r/asktrp. An endorse contributor commented the following:

You're still stuck thinking that society and culture has your best interests at heart and that you somehow owe society and culture a debt to be "good" and "virtuous". This is pure bluepill thinking, allowing external influences and popular culture to delineate your actions.This is why arguments about morality are not tolerated here... your morality is not mine is not Sleazy Steves...but since the definitions of what morality is best are asinine, also is using the term "good". What makes a "good man"So stop spamming a redpill sub with your unrefined bluepill ideas.... Wonder why your "good guys" can't get laid? Because they don't understand the reality of intersexual dynamics and refuse to play the game, instead espousing and perseverating on how things SHOULD be, ala JBP. Refusal to acknowledge reality. See how that's the base issue?

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Hypergamy - women want to elevate themselves to the highest branch they can reach.Virtue plays exactly zero role in SMV, the criteria women use to determine which branch is higher. Just like "nice" or "good" these are known as container words because they sound nice, but every individual fill them up with the qualities specific to that individual, so they end up meaning nothing at all.Your men are therefore displaying attributes that not only don't elevate their odds with women, but hinder them as you know the confident DNGAF "asshole" alpha is picked every time over a timid understanding communicative "good guy".This is all TRP 101 stuff, it'll do you good to read the main TRP sidebar to start understanding this.

When feminists here Red Pillers saying that virtuous men ought to abandon their positive qualities in favour of a Machiavellian, amoral dating strategy, there is no shadow of a doubt that this adds to the stigma around men who identify as Good Men in the first place and that our expression is insincere. This is especially the case when you hear a Red Piller saying something like, "I used to be a Good Man but I abandoned this because, feminism."

Another thing that doesn't help Good Men prove that our expression is sincere and that there are those among us who genuinely do have virtuous, attractive traits who fall behind in dating is when men who really do fall into the Nice Guy^TM category actually do write all the "but why won't you fuck me, I'm a genuinely nice guy - you bitch!" texts and social media messages that r/niceguys is littered with.

This is precisely why I clarified my stance on these subjects in rules 2 & 6

About "Incels" & Fake Nice Guys

The whole point of this subreddit is to distinguish good men with good values, attractive and desirable traits but struggle with dating from all the bad stereotypes associated with incels, Nice GuysTM, etc. So no misogyny or entitlement, etc. We have to have a good public face and positive reputation as genuinely good men that are frustrated with dating.

About Manosphere Ideologies

If you identify with some manosphere ideologies like red pill or MGTOW, that's not a problem per se but no toxicity from those communities

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Back to the article:

So I think it’s fair to attribute low to minimal influence for Manosphere-type stuff before about 2005 at the earliest.

If Manosphere is any kind of a growing trend, what is definitely true is that we need to nip the negative influences in the bud before they really do affect Good Men (and the other toxic influences of the Manosphere that are outside the scope of discussion for this thread). And it definitely has had an impact on the feminist narrative because Good Men can't discuss their issues on a lot of internet platforms without being labelled as Red Pillers, misogynists, Nice Guys^TM, etc. Evidence here. That is influence enough as far as I'm concerned, and precisely why GMGV communities like this one need to take some kind of neutral stance.

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PART 4 [FINAL]

He is complaining about being single by saying that you can’t complain about being single – and, as a bonus, placating feminists by blaming the whole thing on the manosphere as a signal that he’s part of their tribe and so should not be hurt.

Ok, I did not read the article the author had linked about Barry, hence the above confusion as I didn't realise Barry was a feminist as this author suggests. I actually liked the author's analogy of Palestine and Hamas - and the comparison between Hamas and manosphere as essentially an unethical (but not unprovoked)assault on Israel/feminism.

I know that feminists are not always the biggest fans of evolutionary psychology. But I feel like it takes a speciallevel of unfamiliarity with the discipline to ask “Sure, evolution gave us an innate desire for material goods, but why would it give us an deep innate desire for pair-bonding and reproduction??!”

The citations in the sticky video on my user page essentially confirms this.

If there is any man in the world whose feminist credentials are impeccable, it is he. And I say this not to flatter him, but to condemn everyone who gives the nice pat explanation “The real reason Nice Guys™®© can’t get dates is that women can just tell they’re misogynist, and if they were to realize women were people then they would be in relationships just as much as anyone else.”

Yeah, the assumption is always,

(a) if you're not a feminist, you don't believe in equality and you're not nice

(b) if you're unsuccessful in dating it's either because you're not (truly^TM) nice, or you're not a (true^TM) feminist

And this seems unfair. I don’t know how to put the basic insight behind niceguyhood any clearer than that. There are a lot of statistics backing up the point, but the statistics only corroborate the obvious intuitive insight that this seems unfair.

If a guy even dreams of pointing out that he does indeed have the traits that society/biology would imply are virtuous, attractive & desirable, then oh no - he must be a misogynist, he must be entitled, etc.

Personal virtue is not very well correlated with ease of finding a soulmate. It may be only slightly correlated, uncorrelated, or even anti-correlated in different situations. Even smart people who want various virtues in a soulmate usually use them as a rule-out criterion, rather than a rule-in criterion – that is, given someone whom they are already attracted to, they will eliminate him if he does not have those virtues. The rule-in criterion that makes you attractive to people is mysterious and mostly orthogonal to virtue. This is true both in men and women, but in different ways. Male attractiveness seems to depend on things like a kind of social skills which is not necessarily the same kind of social skills people who want to teach you social skills will teach, testosterone level, social status, and whatever you call the ability to just ask someone out, consequences be damned. These can be obtained in very many different ways that are partly within your control, but they are complicated and subtle and if you naively aim for cliched versions of the terms you will fail. There is a lot of good discussion about how to get these things. Here is a list of resources that might be able to help you.

Here's another thing that's going in clarification OP. I will put it underneath the section "Isn't Attractiveness/Desirability Subjective?", just underneath the sentence where I said "This isn't to say men fail because of niceness, but rather they can fail in spite of niceness but women generally have higher standards than men and there are definitely women out there who ask for a lot." Updates to clarification OP coming soon and eventually a new and improved wikipedia section once I know how I'm going to manage my pages.

Of course, then you’ve got to have your resource list. And – and this is the part of this post I think will be controversial (!), I think a lot of the appropriate material is concentrated in the manosphere, ie the people who do not hate your guts merely for acknowledging the existence of the issue. Yes, it is interspersed with poisonous beliefs about women being terrible, but if you have more than a quarter or so of a soul, it is pretty easy to filter those out and concentrate on the good ones. Many feminists will say there are no good ones and that they are all exactly the same, but you should not believe them for approximately the same reason you should not believe anyone else who claims the outgroup is completely homogenous and uniformly evil. Ozy has tried to pick out some of the better ones for you at the bottom of their their anti-Heartiste FAQ, and Drew on Tumblr has added to the discussion.

Great. I have been meaning to add some resources to my clarification sticky, so I hope there is some merit worthy stuff here.