Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Elam's separatist response

A couple of months ago I wrote a criticism of certain trends within the men's rights movement (MRM). This post has now been replied to at The Spearhead by Paul Elam.

Elam pushes a hyper-separatist line. According to Elam we have hit an apocalypse. He agrees with Hanna Rosin that the "end of men" is inevitable. He's not sure why it's happening, but he believes that female dominance and male subjugation is an inescapable destiny.

What does that mean for marriage? Women will choose to have sex with thugs and will coerce a few lapdog beta men for supplemental income. There will be just a handful of alpha men who might be able to support a woman in marriage in the traditional way.

So there's no room for marriage in the future and as for masculinity Elam declares himself to be unsure of what that term refers to.

What does Elam advocate? This:
What we need, assuming there is a “we,” is a chivalry strike, which is to say a total abdication and rejection of any responsibilities to women, individually, and as a group.
Elam doesn't seem too confident that men will heed this separatist call. He writes:
Most men, especially traditionalists, will do what men have done in the face of gender feminism for half a century now; that is, follow their instincts to please women and wait for Hannah Rosin to tell them what to think about their own lives, how to live them, and what their place is.
That's confusing. Elam had previously called traditionalists "patriarchs" who would be "intellectually culled" under future conditions. Now he is identifying us as lapdogs who follow along after feminist women doing their bidding.

Elam's approach is not uncommon in the MRM. He takes certain real trends and makes them absolute and inescapable. He does so because it fits his programme, which is a radical separatist one. Being a radical separatist he has to justify men having nothing to do with women.

Elam's justification is sophisticated compared to some others in the MRM. Sometimes what you hear are coarser claims such as "all women are whores" or "all women are gold diggers".

Radical separatists aren't going to like traditionalists like myself. Our aim is to return to the ideal of distinct, complementary relationships between men and women. Although such relationships have been made unnecessarily difficult in modern liberal societies, we don't hold them to be impossible. Our position, therefore, is incompatible with that of the separatists.

As for separatism, it's difficult to see what it's going to achieve. If a Western man drops out, there'll be someone else to take his place. By itself separatism doesn't challenge either the ideas or the institutions on which the current social order is based. This order will carry on whether or not Paul Elam and a few other MRAs decide to marry or not.

46 comments:

  1. What people like Rosin and Elam overlook is that the trend toward female dominance, which is real, is unsustainable. It's now clear that the birth rate in "developed" countries is generally below replacement level. That's because, as women become better educated on average than men, they opt for careers, thus either forgoing childbirth or postponing it until an age when their fertility is in decline. Societies that carry on like that will cease to exist after several shrinking generations.

    The root problem, as you argue, is the liberal ideology of personal autonomy. Wherever that ideology dominates, women and men will tend to value individual self-fulfillment over the transmission of life. What's often overlooked, though, is that the trend is self-limiting. The future is not the self-annihilation of humanity, but the replacement of liberal societies by more traditional ones.

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  2. "Radical separatists aren't going to like traditionalists like myself. Our aim is to return to the ideal of distinct, complementary relationships between men and women. Although such relationships have been made unnecessarily difficult in modern liberal societies, we don't hold them to be impossible. Our position, therefore, is incompatible with that of the separatists.

    As for separatism, it's difficult to see what it's going to achieve. If a Western man drops out, there'll be someone else to take his place. By itself separatism doesn't challenge either the ideas or the institutions on which the current social order is based. This order will carry on whether or not Paul Elam and a few other MRAs decide to marry or not."

    Well said Mark.

    And the order WILL carry on..

    Men will always have something to do with women.. It was ever thus...

    What bothers me is this false kind of hope perpetuated over at The Spearhead.. This "these women will get theirs"... kind of attitude..

    Many young guys are waiting for the bubble to burst..
    In the meantime life is passing them by..

    It is one of the reasons that I stopped reading and commenting on The Spearhead.

    The old boys who had been married and had kids, were offering nothing to the the younger guys who would like to marry and have a family one day..

    Just the ridiculous don't marry meme..Instead of advice and real help.

    It's a rather depressing and hopeless site for a young guy, I think..

    Many of whom will inevitably marry anyway..

    So frustrating..

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  3. I think this is the first time I have visited your site and it's odd that a post about Mr. Elam brought me here. He has begun posting someof my articles on his site. I like Paul and we share many of the same views. We also disagree ins ome respects. While I'm every bit as cantakerous, I'm a bit less radical and don't advocate seperatism. However, I also don't see the possibility of a return to traditional patriarchal values either. Women will never allow it and seperatism will only benefit women. In fact, I posted a reply to one of Paul's articles outlining a future where women seperate themselves from men. This is where I think feminism is taking us. Admittedly, my reply is a "worst case scenario" and I caution that it shouldn't be taken too seriously nor dismissed to lightly.

    The way I see it, men need to find some other way to contribute to society. We must find a way to be valued in something other than the traditional provider and protector role. Whatever it is, it will have to be distinctly male or women will simply assume it into their role, which is what they have done to the provider/protector role of men.

    Kathy stated the men will always have something to do with women. to this I say yes. but I answer that women will not always have something to do with men. Once science makes it possible for women to reproduce without us, we had better have the answer to the question of value. If not, we will become irrelevent.

    TDOM

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  4. TDOM:
    "women will simply assume it into their role, which is what they have done to the provider/protector role of men."

    Women are incapable of protecting themselves from men. Especially in societies where gun ownership is illegal. Hence all the SWFs (Single White Females) getting raped and murdered in the news.

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  5. @ Simon

    My remarks here are fairly brief and not fully explained. You are correct to an extent. What I am discussing here is the individual woman's ability to rely on the police state for protection instead of an individual man in the home. The idea is that any woman can be either self- or state- supported and self- or state- protected, therfore having a spouse is not a necessity. In the future, having a male spouse will become even less desireable because women will be capable of procreating without men. I envision the acceptance of same sex marraige will lead to "convenience marriages" between women in order to raise their children. It's an idea I've been kicking around, but haven't fully developed. If you want to read more, follow this link to Paul's post and scroll through the comments to mine. there are several in the thread.

    http://www.avoiceformen.com/2010/12/16/the-end-of-men/#comments

    At some point I'll be posting a more thorough account on my own blog.

    TDOM

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  6. "The future is not the self-annihilation of humanity, but the replacement of liberal societies by more traditional ones."

    "And the order WILL carry on."

    'A Brief History of The Future' by Jacques Attali:

    "It will not be tomorrow's Africa that will one day resemble today's West, but the whole West that could tomorrow evoke today's Africa."

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  7. TDOM - I think you'll find it likely that patriarchy and Christianity will return little by little after the West collapses. The comments above are basically right. Liberalism will destroy itself sooner or later. They have this idea of progess, society going in an ever linear direction and utopianism when in reality societies go in cycles. Also interesting comment on reproduction. Reminds me of evolution and transhumanism.

    www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/018162.html

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  8. TDOM - Liberals will achieve the means to develop technology and the sciences to it's fullest. Sure they may do some minor developments but they have delusions of grandeur about global warming/global cooling/climate change/overpopulation/underpopulation/AIDS and what not. They are far too obsessed about equality and reaching Muslims (NASA) and things alike to push any major breakthroughts.

    Nevertheless interesting talk. There's a novel based on what you said --- www.brusselsjournal.com/node/4505

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  9. TDOM - Sorry I meant progress (not progess) and I meant ''Liberals will NOT achieve the means...''

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  10. Mark said:

    ""Although such relationships have been made unnecessarily difficult in modern liberal societies, we don't hold them to be impossible.""

    If you remove the power of the Liberal State practically all people would gradually move towards a MORE traditionalist lifestyle than the one they currently live, simply through economic pressures.

    I know many traditionalists are wary of "small government" talk because of the sometimes whacky ideas that the libertarian groups can throw up, but less government means less liberal interference in the lives of people whose biology would have led to mostly traditionalistic outcomes in any case.

    Let people live their lives without the government trying to "fix" them and everything about them, and you find people will live more traditionalist lives.

    It is not the total answer, there are many factors in the decline of the West, but the gradually growing size of government and the fact that publicly funded bodies always eventually swing liberal-left because of economic pressures of their own means that small government as an argument for traditionalism works, and fits better than most alternatives.

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  11. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  12. Elam's article inspired me to do some research to find the least, and most, chivalrous countries.

    What do you think of it?

    Wil

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  13. What's wrong with a man not being stupid and avoiding divorce court and/or prison. Women of generation y are sadistic whores who want to make men slaves. I refuse to be a part of it. Every generation y woman is a feminist who hates men even the ones who believe they aren't feminists.

    Your daughters are all sadistic man hating whores but you believe them to be pure virgins. And you attack men for doing nothing but defending themselves. There's no such thing as "separatism". There are only men defending themselves. I know plenty of men who used to talk like you traditionalists. They're in prison or living in a van by the river or living in a small studio apartment because their ex wives divorced them and in some cases made up false abuse charges.

    Life may be passing me by. I'm fine with divorce court, false rape charges, having my kids taken away from me, paternity fraud, false sexual harassment charges, STDs, the bastard spawn of women, etc. passing me by.

    I have no doubt that the feminist order will collapse. Western Civilization will die and the Chinese and Muslim hordes will give Western women what they deserve by raping and slaughtering them. I will be watching this in 2160p with 10.2 surround sound safe in the Chinese empire since I will be able to purchase a place in the Chinese empire. Until then I will play Xbox.

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  14. "Until then I will play Xbox."

    Phew! That's a relief.

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  15. Kathy, that's a relief for you? I am denying women the ability to use me like a parasite uses a host. That doesn't sound very relieving to women as far as I can tell.

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  16. Anonymous,

    Your account of the situation is too pessimistic.

    I was disappointed in and frustrated with the behaviour of my female peers in my 20s. It's a shame that women often behave the worst at a time that we should be most enjoying personal relationships.

    But I live in a suburb in which the average woman is a hard-working, self-sacrificing, loving wife and mother. There have been no divorces, none at all, so far amongst the many couples I know either here or at work.

    My own family life is very rewarding. My little daughter is tremendously cute and when she sees me she gets excited, flaps her arms, kicks her legs and her face lights up in a joyous smile. Just one of these smiles is worth so much, it justifies the work I'm required to do as a husband and father.

    Men are not defending themselves by giving up on the greater good in life. They are surrendering to all those who are opposed to them.

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  17. Anon said...

    ""I am denying women the ability to use me like a parasite uses a host. That doesn't sound very relieving to women as far as I can tell.""

    You don't understand women, you assume because they screwed up your life through evil bitchness that they share your obsession for sexual warfare.

    Women don't care mate.

    If every bloke in the west suddenly "withdrew" the women in the west would simply import substitutes, just as some men have done the same due to the "withdrawl" or delay by modern women of family creation.

    The way to fix the system is not to blindly rant about women being whores.

    Women are products of their biology mixed with the society in which they live, just as men are.

    Remove those parts of society which are undermining biology and a move towards traditionalist lifestyles becomes not just likely but practically inevitable.

    In short, don't get mad, try your best to get even instead by destroying the system that has destroyed the souls of our peoples women.

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  18. Wow!!! I do not know what to say. I may disagree on some issues, but I 100% agree about MRA being liberal.

    I am an MRA, but that has caused me very much distress to no purpose. If I could forget about it, I would. I am also mostly very liberal.

    I came from the most conservative culture -- Russia to the most feminist culture -- USA. I have much interesting experience.

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  19. >> What's wrong with a man not
    >> being stupid and avoiding
    >> divorce court and/or prison.
    >> Women of generation y are
    >> sadistic whores who want to
    >> make men slaves.

    I disagree with your sexism 100%. Do not count me in.

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  20. Another anonymous

    "Women don't care mate"

    Obviously you don't know any chicks hitting the 'wall'.

    I've currently got three birds hanging on me to propose marriage, ain't gonna happen.

    Oh they care, importing men? I guess if chocos are your cup of tea.

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  21. Anon said:

    ""Obviously you don't know any chicks hitting the 'wall'.

    I've currently got three birds hanging on me to propose marriage, ain't gonna happen.""

    If that's what you like be my guest, but "Chicks hitting the wall" is not a large enough demographic to make a difference to anything.

    Women may care when they hit the wall, but by that stage who wants them anyway? Mid to Late 30's women don't deserve a good marriage and they tend not to get one.

    Publicising this fact and the reasons behind it would probably be of very little use, but it would still be more useful than trying to organise the unorganisable male masses to strike against marriage.

    Upopeznik said...

    ""but I 100% agree about MRA being liberal.""

    Then what possible appeal does it have to men?

    What appeal would a MRM that denies that men are naturally manly have when it is obvious to most males without university degrees that this is not the case?

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  22. Personal anecdotes about your daughter and neighbors do not count as arguments, Mark.

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  23. You should have bothered to read this comment:

    http://www.the-spearhead.com/2010/12/17/the-end-of-men/#comment-58921

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  24. "But I live in a suburb in which the average woman is a hard-working, self-sacrificing, loving wife and mother. There have been no divorces, none at all, so far amongst the many couples I know either here or at work."

    Well, I have had the same experience as Mark, and I live on the other side of Australia.

    I live in a suburb not far from the beach. I too am not aware of any divorces amongst couples that I know in this neighbourhood. My children once went to the local primary school(which is situated a few hundred meters away in the same street) for a time,so I know many of the families in my street. None are divorced.

    Most of the women work part-time to supplement the family income. There are a couple of stay at home Mum's but no career women..

    Personal anecdotes do count especially when one can corroborate another person's experience.

    My kids are always happy to see their Dad when he gets home after a long hard day at work too.. And, so am I ;)

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  25. I find it ridiculous that Mark thinks men who reject marriage 2.0 and go their own way are giving in to feminism.

    Marriage 2.0 is a feminist institution which gives all the rights to the wife and all the responsibilities to the husband. A man who signs up for it becomes an easily victimized slave to his wife and the feminist legal system. Now feminist women are concerned that there aren't enough men dumb enough to sign up for this, hence more and more women are complaining that "men avoid commitment".

    I can assure you feminists are happy whenever a dumb American man enters marriage 2.0. One more man completely at the mercy of a woman and the legal system, one more idiot who will become a wage slave of the feminist system, one more victim for the nanny state vampire to suck dry.

    Men who think for themselves, reject a sham institution created by feminism and decide to go their own way are looked upon as enemies by feminism. They need slaves and useful idiots to maintain their system, not individualists.

    As far as chivalry is concerned, Paul is right. It has no place in current American society where women are the privileged class of the state. Chivalry was accorded to morally pure women who had an inferior legal status. There are no such women in the US.

    I'm surprised you don't see the parallels between MGTOW and the Christian desert hermits of the late Roman Empire. Both groups are forging new ideals and abandoned crumbling system which could not and did not want to be saved.

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  26. *abandoned a crumbling system*

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  27. Höllenhund wrote:

    Personal anecdotes about your daughter and neighbors do not count as arguments, Mark.

    OK, so a commenter makes some very definite claims, namely that "Every generation y woman is a feminist who hates men" and that "Your daughters are all sadistic man hating whores".

    If these claims are true then all of the Generation Y women I meet should be man hating whores.

    But they're not. My own experience is sufficient to disprove the claim.

    That doesn't mean there aren't problems and issues for men out there, but it does mean that the anonymous commenter is wrong in making such absolute claims.

    His claims do not match reality as I experience it. So I won't accept them as they stand.

    Höllenhund also wrote:

    You should have bothered to read this comment

    As it happens, I read that comment by Paul Elam some time ago.

    I don't know why I'm supposed to be so impressed by it. We all know that the general divorce rate is too high (Elam states that it is more than 50%, though on current trends it is more like 40%).

    I've written and published articles on the need to bring down the divorce rate since the late 1990s.

    Does the high divorce rate make it logical for all men to avoid marriage as Elam claims?

    No, as for some men the risk of divorce remains relatively low. My own risk of divorce, for instance, was calculated to be about 10%. Was it reasonable for me to risk the 10% figure in order to have a happy family life? I think it was.

    So men do, at least, have the option of putting themselves in the low risk, rather than the high risk, category.

    If that doesn't sound like a perfect solution, what is the alternative offered by Elam? It's a 100% failure in family formation.

    So, yes, we've been put in a difficult situation by liberal modernity. But the traditionalist option of marrying well and pursuing reform still makes more sense than the Elam option of having no chance of having a family of your own combined with a passive and pessimistic view that nothing can change.

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  28. I find it ridiculous that Mark thinks men who reject marriage 2.0 and go their own way are giving in to feminism.

    We only get to live once. Why would you let a group of feminists, many of them lesbians, deprive you of the opportunity to be a husband and a father, and to have the love and respect that these roles afford you?

    Let's say that a group of MRAs do decide to abandon marriage. Will the Western elite care? At all?

    The answer clearly is no. There are hundreds of thousands of men eager to migrate to the West to take their place in the economy and as husbands of Western women.

    The decision of these MRAs won't even cause a ripple on the surface of Western society. And even if it did, the truth is that liberals don't care if there is a human cost to their version of "progress".

    What did the feminists say to those women in their ranks who complained that they had been encouraged to delay marriage too long?

    The feminist answer was that such women should stop whining and show gratitude for all the "progress" that feminism had brought them.

    There was little human concern; the unhappily unmarried and childless women were treated as expendable.

    Those MRAs who similarly delay marriage too long are likely to face the same cold response.

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  29. "My own experience is sufficient to disprove the claim."

    It's just that I find it kind of ridiculous and cheesy that you need to brag all the time about your baby daughter, how wonderful she is etc. Obviously parents do that all the time but usually in front of their friends and not anonymous commenters on their blog. Susan Walsh of HUS occasionally did the same, stating that her daughter is a "10+" (I kid you not)who would never fall for alpha males.

    "I don't know why I'm supposed to be so impressed by it. We all know that the general divorce rate is too high (Elam states that it is more than 50%, though on current trends it is more like 40%)."

    Wow, great news, Mark! It's ONLY 40%! Is that supposed to cheer us up?

    "So men do, at least, have the option of putting themselves in the low risk, rather than the high risk, category."

    Novaseeker, Susan Walsh and others were indeed correct to state that the divorce rate remains relatively low - among higher-class, college-educated and high-earning couples (Ms. Walsh said cited a figure of 17% in the US - that's still a bit high for my taste). That will always be a small social class that most people won't ever enter. We should also keep in mind that their marriage rate, already low, is destined to collapse due to the growing dearth of such high-status men as compared to high-status women.

    "But the traditionalist option of marrying well and pursuing reform still makes more sense"

    Has that pursuit of reform ever achieved anything? Are you even aware that you are putting young men at great risk by imploring them to marry?

    "Why would you let a group of feminists, many of them lesbians, deprive you of the opportunity to be a husband and a father, and to have the love and respect that these roles afford you?"

    I'm not sure you even bothered to read my post. The entire Western legal system and media are stacked against marriage 1.0, not just a few feminists. (And why did you mention lesbians? What was that?) And being a father no longer "afford" you anything. You will need tight Game, just like in any other relationship, to keep your wife attracted.

    American men don't even have any legal rights over their wives and children. From a legal POV you cannot technically "have" children as a man in the US due to the laws. Your sole legal right is to impregnate a woman. After that the child is hers entirely. She can abort it, she can extract child support from you if she decides not to, she will get custody of them if she divorces you, you are unlikely to get visitation rights and they won't be enforced anyway.

    "It's a 100% failure in family formation."

    Cohabitation is rapidly becoming a routine arrangement for family formation. Yeah, neither Elam nor you are promoting it, but it's still lower-risk than marriage 2.0.

    "Let's say that a group of MRAs do decide to abandon marriage."

    Do you ever read the news? Young men are avoiding and delaying marriage in high numbers. Most of them haven't even heard of the MRM and probably couldn't name a single feminist ideologue. They see that marriage 2.0 is a high-risk, high-cost,low-reward investment. Entitled and slutty Western women do about a 100 times more to turn men off marriage than the MRM ever could. Incentives drive behavior. All the MRAs are doing is spreading the word about anti-male legislation and propaganda.

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  30. "Will the Western elite care? At all?"

    Yet again I suggest you read the news and watch TV. Widespread hand wringing, unease and complaints about men avoiding commitment are more and more palpable and frequent in the feminist-dominated media.

    And what if they don't care? It matters not. Men who avoid marriage 2.0 normally do so for entirely personal reasons. That's to be expected and MRAs acknowledge that.

    "There are hundreds of thousands of men eager to migrate to the West to take their place in the economy and as husbands of Western women."

    Yes, immigrant men from the Third World will marry Western women and aging, desperate cougars in particular - in order to rip them off and get a green card. Do you seriously believe that such men, who normally come from patriarchal cultures where unchaste women are considered to be whores, will sign up for marriage 2.0 and put up with Western women's shit? And do you believe that single and educated Western women, with their hypergamy in overdrive, will marry such low-status guys?

    Taking Western men's place in the economy? Are you kidding me? Most Third World immigrant men are low-IQ, low-skilled worker drones and have a high unemployment rate.

    Well-off non-Western men have high-value women at home? Why would they emigrate to the US in order to get women when many American men are EXPATTING precisely because the women are so horrible? It would be comparable to moving to North Korea in order to escape hunger.

    "the unhappily unmarried and childless women were treated as expendable.

    Those MRAs who similarly delay marriage too long are likely to face the same cold response."

    Men aren't herd creatures who routinely blame others for their problems like women do. No young guy will decide to forego marriage just because of MRA rants on the Internet. It will probably have an impression on him, though, if he reads about anti-male laws and women's bad behavior on MRA sites. But for that you have to blame the legal system and women's bad behavior, not MRAs.

    You are just angry at the messengers, Mark.

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  31. It's just that I find it kind of ridiculous and cheesy that you need to brag all the time about your baby daughter, how wonderful she is etc.

    I think I barely mentioned my family life until very recently. I made a decision to begin doing so in response to relentless claims about marriage being such a bad deal for men that men shouldn't marry at all.

    I was reading these claims whilst having a very happy home life and experiencing the joys of fatherhood.

    The disconnect was so great I thought I ought to begin speaking up.

    Do you really want a situation in which only negative experiences of women and relationships are allowed to be mentioned? Are personal experiences OK only if they are negative ones?

    That will always be a small social class that most people won't ever enter.

    It's true that I socialise amongst a white collar professional class. But it's not the upper elite. The people I know are teachers, policemen, scientists, engineers, computer programmers, accountants and the like, rather than investment bankers or surgeons etc.

    There are lots of us. However, I do agree that for lower-earning, unskilled men the situation is more difficult. The latest research I've read shows a 30% increased risk of divorce for those on low incomes.

    You will need tight Game, just like in any other relationship, to keep your wife attracted.

    Early on perhaps. But if you put a woman in certain circumstances there's a good chance she'll develop a traditionally wifely persona. What she needs is a nice home in a nice community, children and the chance to be at home with her children at least when they're young, and a reasonable relationship with a husband. Over time, women in this situation tend to relax into a more family-oriented, nurturing, accepting, loving personality.

    American men don't even have any legal rights over their wives and children.

    Agreed. It's something that needs to change.

    Cohabitation is rapidly becoming a routine arrangement for family formation.

    But the laws that apply to marriage also apply to cohabitation (at least in Australia they do). Furthermore, cohabiting relationships are less stable than married ones. So cohabitation is more likely, not less likely, to put a man in the situation of having to pay maintenance.

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  32. Young men are avoiding and delaying marriage in high numbers.

    As young women have been doing for some time now. Family formation has been pushed back increasingly until some time in a person's 30s.

    It's not a good thing. As a man you still go out to work, you still make the marriage commitments, you still make the sacrifices men make in marriage, but you're unlikely to get the number of children you want and you don't get to spend your most passionate years with the woman you eventually commit to. (Nor do you get later on to enjoy being a physically active grandparent).

    Although it's better late than never, it's a bad deal compared to men being able to marry at some time in their 20s.

    Widespread hand wringing, unease and complaints about men avoiding commitment are more and more palpable

    There's a concern at the underachievement of boys. If that grows, then we might see a change of emphasis (I recently wrote a post, for instance, about the German Minister for Women who declared that the focus of her politics in future would be the advancement of boys).

    The elite in countries like the UK seem to have been willing to simply write off a layer of drop out working-class white men. But if the underachievement moves up the social scale (as it seems to be doing) then there might be a more proactive response.

    As for men not committing in marriage to women, no I haven't noticed that contributing to any great change of heart by the elite.

    What's more significant, I think, is a trend for even liberal men to detach themselves from feminism. That's a real change from the 1980s and early 1990s when being on the left meant automatically supporting the latest feminist policy.

    Do you seriously believe that such men, who normally come from patriarchal cultures where unchaste women are considered to be whores, will sign up for marriage 2.0 and put up with Western women's shit? And do you believe that single and educated Western women, with their hypergamy in overdrive, will marry such low-status guys?

    This might be a difference between America and Australia. In Australia a lot of our immigration comes through overseas students at university.

    These are people who are effectively buying their way into the professions. They will not be low status.

    Being fair-skinned is considered an attractive feature in much of the world. It gives Western women an advantage in attracting male attention.

    Nor are men from other countries as demoralised by feminism. They might well be willing to have a go, and at an earlier age, than men brought up within a feminist culture.

    You are just angry at the messengers, Mark.

    No, because most men still are marrying, albeit at a later age.

    What concerns me are two things. First, I don't like to see young men being given advice that might deprive them of the chance of familial happiness.

    Second, I don't want the MRM to go off the rails politically. The logic of a separatist politics is to push the line to men that women are so depraved that there is no point having anything to do with them and that this is not something that is open to efforts of reform.

    Already I get comments at this site from MRAs who have taken these ideas to extreme levels (e.g. "all women are man hating whores").

    It's going to end up in a darkly pessimistic, dank, nihilistic corner of politics.

    Up to now, the MRM has been able to right itself when it looks like tipping over in this way. I hope it does so once again when it comes to separatism.

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  33. While I disagree with Hollenhund we need to seperate ourselves from the liberal perveted state sanctioned form of marriage. It's a heresy. We should instead create a privatized form of marriage (segregation/seperation) true to it's purpose (traditional marriage). The younger Christians all over the world (including myself) are moving in that direction. The West is in decline and we cannot reverse it's course. It's too late. It is suicidal to be married in today's atmosphere. And while it's true that foreign men are still fairly not influenced by feminism, equality, non-discrimination, affirmative action, multiculturalism and liberalism in general it's going there. And fast. I'd wager that Brazil, China, India and others currently experiencing an increase in wealth are going to be dramatically different in 20 years. If we want to combat liberalism we need to reject it in our daily lives and seperate ourselves.

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  34. Sorry I meant separate ourselves.

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  35. Sorry I meant perverted.

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  36. Mark,

    the only realistic chance you traditionalists have to resists the current feminist Zeitgeist is to hunker down in a counterculture of isolated religious communities. You basically admit that only higher-class, high-earning men can who can afford "a nice house in a nice community" and a SAHM wife to take this route. You make no mention of the obvious fact that marriage 2.0 will collapse even among this upper class as such men become increasingly scarce when compared to the number of similar women.

    So your proposal is kind of difficult to implement right from the start but nevertheless you are assuming even more, namely that you can isolate your wife and children from the corrosive influence of a feminist culture. That doesn't seem very likely.

    Moreover, you need to keep in mind that the laws will always apply to you no matter what you do. Your wife will always have the option of obliterating you in divorce court. Traditionalists have so far had zero success in reforming marriage 2.0 into something more patriarchal.

    The ideas you are proposing are much less likely to gain significant traction than those of the MRM.

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  37. "But if you put a woman in certain circumstances there's a good chance she'll develop a traditionally wifely persona. What she needs is a nice home in a nice community, children and the chance to be at home with her children at least when they're young"

    As I've said, the great majority of men will never be able to support a SAHM wife and a McMansion in a nice higher-middle-class suburb - because that's what you're essentially describing.


    "and a reasonable relationship with a husband"

    In other words, she needs to be gamed. No need to beat around the bush, Mark.

    "Are personal experiences OK only if they are negative ones?"

    My simple point, Mark, is that personal experiences aren't arguments.

    "As for men not committing in marriage to women, no I haven't noticed that contributing to any great change of heart by the elite."

    The complaints of higher-class women that they are unable to find "eligible" men have been growing more and more shrill in the past couple of years.

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  38. The idea that only rich men can afford for their wives to stay home is ridiculous. I know enough women of the working class background who choose to stay home, and they manage to do it on the husband's income alone.

    Of course, they can't afford Mcmansions, have to drive used cars and generally go on vacation but once a year, but they don't starve, either.

    Where is the will, there is a way.

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  39. "Nor are men from other countries as demoralised by feminism. They might well be willing to have a go, and at an earlier age, than men brought up within a feminist culture."

    I think most non-Western men from patriarchal cultures won't sign up for marriage 2.0 precisely because they have not been indoctrinated with feminism. Only a pussified, demoralized American beta male would willingly enter marriage 2.0.

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  40. "Of course, they can't afford Mcmansions, have to drive used cars and generally go on vacation but once a year, but they don't starve, either."

    And how many Western women will be satisfied by that?

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  41. ''I think most non-Western men from patriarchal cultures won't sign up for marriage 2.0 precisely because they have not been indoctrinated with feminism.''

    You do realize the speed at which liberalism is spreading outside of the West now that it has destroyed Western civilization? I live outside of the West and it's coming rapidly.

    Traditionalist conservatives need to separate and segregate themselves. We need to create our own communities. Does that mean we have to reject everything of modern society? No. But we do need to reject basic liberal principles in our daily lives.

    If things get really bad (worst-case scenario) then I would support creating a country for traditionalist conservatives.

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  42. "In short, we aren’t causing anything here. We are just giving it a name, a voice and a language.

    We chronicle what is happening; document it, and perhaps in our own way urge some men to reconsider what has been happening in their lives. But for the most part, I think that many men, when they stumble on our literature, aren’t convinced by it, nor do they need any such persuasion. They just find something that finally puts some pieces together for them; something that articulates the unnamed knot that has been twisting in their guts for a while.

    That is why I don’t give advice, don’t see myself as a leader, and don’t want to.

    Men don’t need advice or guidance near as much as they need information. And if there is anything that most of them actually need to learn, it is that the only real leadership is in the mirror. Our agenda is defined by our own choices and actions. Our “cause” is our own life, on our own terms."

    Paul Elam's own words (from one of his best articles IMO)

    http://www.the-spearhead.com/2010/09/25/shrugging-misandry/

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  43. May I ask why you deleted my last comment, Mark?

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  44. It's restored. Didn't mean to delete it, am still having troubles with the spam feature of blogger.

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  45. "This might be a difference between America and Australia. In Australia a lot of our immigration comes through overseas students at university.

    These are people who are effectively buying their way into the professions. They will not be low status."

    I suppose most of them are East Asian men. The problem with them is that they're low-testosterone, hardcore betas. Hypergamous Western women will never be attracted to them.

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  46. Hollenhund, you are concerned about the use of anecdotes as evidence but you do not appear to be trying to make an honest argument. Going into a marriage completely blind you have a 60% chance go things turning out just fine. Those numbers are going to be significantly better for the traditionalist. You can give up and make yourself a eunuch if you like but as for me I'll be literally breeding trouble for the matriarchy. Opting out of the most basic functions of manhood does not make you clever, it makes you a loser in the most fundamental sense.

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