It can be confusing at first glance, as the reasons aren't always stated openly. For instance, a recent post at a site called Pro-Male Anti-Feminist Technology (which I'll call PMAFT) claimed that "Trad-cons let feminists define their reality". But what is meant by this?
A lot of the comments at the site don't help - they are just wayward insults (trad-cons "submit to the feminine collective" or "They don’t seem to have any other values than misandry just like the feminists.")
I made some comments at the site in an attempt to tease out what was really going on and I finally had some success. The site owner stated his opposition to me as follows:
Your arguments against “autonomy” assume that feminists are living autonomously (or honestly trying to). You have let them define your reality as well. To those of us speaking in standard English, it sounds like you have a problem with “autonomy” as it is in actual reality. This doesn’t surprise me since traditionalism is a collectivist ideology.That I get. He is someone who wants to stick with the liberal emphasis on autonomy. So when feminists use arguments based around female autonomy he has a problem. His way out is to claim that feminists are lying when they claim to be promoting autonomy for women.
But he has observed me doing things differently. My response to feminism is to criticise the overriding emphasis on autonomy, and to the PMAFTers that means that I am allowing feminists to define my reality.
Is the PMAFT approach the way to go? I don't think so. Let me point out just two immediate problems with retaining a modernist emphasis on autonomy. First, note the criticism made of traditionalism, that it is a philosophy that is "collectivist". Well, in an important sense that's correct. After all, the family is a collective. So is an ethny. And a nation. A church too is a collective institution.
If you think the individual is important you have to support the collectives which give the individual his significant social roles; which provide the stable social relationships that individuals are created for; which deepen the identity of individuals; which anchor individuals by providing a sense of belonging, attachment and connectedness; and which link an individual's nature (his essence) to a social function and to a set of higher values.
The PMAFTers apparently believe that you can think in terms of the individual alone, having abolished collective forms of existence. But that diminishes the individual rather than liberating him, and it allows social function to shift away from ordinary men and women and toward an elite class of administrators (i.e. the individual doesn't play such a role in society anymore).
Second, what does autonomy mean when it comes to relationships? The PMAFT site owner takes this approach:
It’s after Valentine’s Day so I have been on the lookout for a new woman. (I dumped my previous girlfriends before Christmas to avoid the Christmas, New Years, and Valentine’s Day holidays.)It's similar to what college women are "supposed" to do in relationships with men: they are supposed to avoid entanglements by making sure relationships don't get too serious (by limiting themselves to occasional hook-ups, or by dating the wrong sort of men and so on).
That way you do get to preserve your independence, but you do so by degrading a culture of relationships. But if you think what matters most is preserving your own autonomy, that may not be such a concern.
I know some of my readers will react by dismissing the manosphere altogether. I don't think that's the way to go: it's a politically diverse movement and there are aspects of it we can support. Even amongst those who criticise trad-cons there are important distinctions (see here for an interesting comment on this by David Flory).
Women are selfish so I can, nay must, be selfish too. Society doesn't support me therefore I should be selfish. There is only me in the world anyway therefore I should be selfish. Selfishness is moral, the evolutionary scientists teach me this. Anyone who disagrees with me is a hypocrite or my enemy, also lets attack the right as everyone else is doing it. Equals manosphere.
ReplyDeleteWas having a conversation last night with some people, and we got onto the top of how people are often not getting married until their mid-30s, and even then they're apprehensive.
ReplyDeleteThere was some questioning of why people in their twenties don't seem keen to get married these days...
I have thought about this because I've noticed it on the MRA blogs.
ReplyDeleteI think it is the compounding of expectations on men.
One you have the original traditional expectations of men. Traditional expectations that Trads espouse.
In society that is run by men their are tangible benefits to the Traditional expectations.
However now there is the secondary set of modern expectations.
All the unfair rules,laws and social expectations that men are forced to burden. That they never had to before.
So modern society is making it twice as difficult for men with virtually no reward.
On a very basic level why would anyone want to play that game?
I hate to disagree with you Anonymous but this is a blame society approach. This is a way of sitting back and waiting for things to be given to you. Today it is more challenging to be a man, have a successful marriage etc, but it is not impossible. The rewards are self respect and the passing on of your tradition.
ReplyDeleteWhat are the rewards of not marrying, as difficult as it is. No children, and who would want to have children that you don't raise, cosmic irrelevance and national suicide.
Anon,
ReplyDeleteI understand the point you're making perfectly. I was forced to confront the same reality in my 20s.
My own solution was to marry along traditional lines, whilst at the same time committing myself to criticising and challenging what was happening - I didn't want a future son to have to go through the same thing.
And it's been well worthwhile. Political progress has been slow, but it's happening. And I've had a good marriage and enjoyed being a husband and father.
We have to try to sort things out whilst making the best life for ourselves that we can in the circumstances. I would counsel a young man to put himself in the best position to marry well and to fight hard for the marriage.
There do still exist tangible rewards for marriage. You get a sense of using your strengths as a man for their intended purposes of leading a family and keeping it prosperous and secure. You get the rewards of fatherhood. If you keep the marital relationship strong, you get the daily emotional and physical relationship with a woman you love. And you have a sense too that you are giving your own tradition another chance to perpetuate itself.
Anon,
ReplyDeleteI'd like to stress as well that things are happening politically - still in the very early stages, but we are definitely heading toward getting things happening on the ground. There are likely to be more encouraging things happening over the next few years.
I didn't make myself clear. The solution to what I was saying is actually just accepting only one set of expectations. The traditional ones.
ReplyDeleteTwice the amount of expectations is untenable in the long run for men.
Giving up the extra set of demands and expectations for the traditional can but new ways of understanding the traditional and new institutions need to be formed.
For instance I can't see the point of marrying if marriage burdens you with the unjust marriage laws.
So marriage could still be achieved informally. Keeping the spirit of the concept.
I was trying to explain why some men hate traditionalism because they feel its carrying the unjust expectations of old (without the rewards that balance them) with the new expectations (that largely caused the stripping of the old rewards)
So I was not arguing for not marrying or not having kids. Quite the opposite. I'm arguing for more traditionalism.
The problem with TradCons is that it proposes men behave according to traditional behaviours while the underlying rules that supported that behavior doesn't exist.
ReplyDeleteHow many TradCons have argued for removing joint management of communal and common property in marriage?
Or reinstating 'alieni juris' (under the legal authority of another) for wives?
You can't expect men to behave traditionally when the underlying rules that create traditionalism don't exist.
And in a democracy you can't change the rules when females have the majority vote.
Johnny puts what I was trying to say well.
ReplyDeleteI feel the only thing people can do if they want to oppose this is shed the connections with mainstream society and start a new.
New communities, towns, institutions all need to be rebuilt. Successful ones that will transfer resources and energy from the decaying mainstream society to the fresh traditional society.
Quite a few years ago, I 'published' a webzine called Mrm! in which I included your articles on a fairly frequent basis. This carried on to the successor webzine, MenZ. I did this for a reason.
ReplyDeleteYou may also recall that time when the Manosphere did not exist, and instead the Roissysphere was the name for PUA and Game-centric blogs. As well, at that time, the Mens Rights Movement was a nearly entirely separate entity.
I created those webzines specifically to connect these disparate groups, and to cross pollinate among what I could already see becoming what is now known as the Manosphere.
The long and short of this is that Trad-Con blogs to some degree already are part of the Manosphere.
As to the debate at hand, here are a few thoughts:
Tradcons in the main are gynocentric in the extreme. Everything is about serving women, and society, and children. Which, while Biblical and all that Jazz, is also flat out being both taken advantage of, and criminalized. This assertion you guys keep making, that men should just be stand up guys and keep their women happy, and all will be well, is absolute bunk, and the wilful blindness nearly every last TradCon bases their ideology on is every bit as dissonant as the most radical of feminists.
Take your assertion that Feminists argue for 'autonomy'. PM/AFTers' arguments are not wrong, just poorly stated (in your examples at least). Feminism is a collectivist ideology, based on Marxism, that makes whole segments of society 'guilty' and others 'innocent', based on Identity Politics. Feminism, in short, is about as Collectivist as one can get, in the Political sense. Feminism does not preach 'autonomy', Feminism preaches 'Freedom to do as you choose, and be spared the consequences'. Yes, it's wordier, it's also more accurate.
Feminism doesn't preach individualism, it preaches Institutional Polygamy, with Big Daddy Government keeping his Harem in comfort. Feminism is Identity Politics, and Identity Politics is Collectivism.
Hmm...maybe my attempt to 'clarify' just stirred up more mud...
At any rate, you Trads are correct that Civilization depends on the Family Unit. Where you go wrong is in continuing to allow gynocentrism to both spoil the power balance between men and women, and treat all men as guilty. There is a reason Religious institutions repel a larger and larger percentage of men, and it ain't cause Religion speaks to them....unless it's some form of condemnation.
I've recently become more aware of Spiritual things, and have been sort of casting around for a Church to attend that doesn't vilify men and masculinity, or try to put women on a pedestal so high you can see up her ankle-length skirt. It is THIS wilful blindness, usually defended as 'love' of women, that makes you guys such Pariahs among the rest of the 'sphere.
Instead of self examination (which was my intent with all of the groups I tried to mash together in those 'zines), many are retreating into ideological hidey-holes, defending their most dearly held preconceptions. Oh well, can't say I didn't try.
But you really are dead wrong that Feminism promotes autonomy. That's the lie...the thinly applied facade used for plausible deniability. Look deeper.
I really don't think that being a tradcon is all about pleaseing women. It is about living up to male roles which revolve around strength, and in turn expecting women to live up to female roles. If she doesn't want to then move on. As divorce is so easy these days do your best to see if she's likely to bail prior to marriage and if she looks like she'll stay get married.
ReplyDeleteThe additional difficulty these days is men have to be more selective to limit the chances of divorce and also having to be stronger to impress women and keep them that way. I certainly don't pretend its easy.
On the point about pleasing women I would hope that some degree of that is a reasonable exchange for her pleasing me. Women are still attracted to strong and dutiful men so there's no reason why such marriages can't work.
Jesse_7....you are an excellent example of the TradCon blindness I referenced....even to the point of providing a talking point list of the ways you delude yourselves.
ReplyDeleteNotice there is no solution in your stance, no reaction against the Status Quo, merely an exhortation to accept the burden and try to be a 'better man' than the 'rest'.
Those of us in the Manosphere call this White Knighting for good reason. You are literally advocating for nothing but the support of those who are making society unbearable. Christ himself wouldn't put up with it from Romans, but you will...in the name of Religion.
This is the very heart of the antipathy referenced in the OP.
Notice how Factory just conflated a concern for society and children with pandering to women. Hoo boy.
ReplyDeleteLeft liberals, including most feminists, place the emphasis on being independent of family, church, and all other traditional and informal institutions. Of course, this pragmatically means dependence on the state.
Right liberals place the emphasis on being free of government. Of course, in practice this means most people are dependent on traditional and informal institutions.
Both really are about autonomy, but, of course, as Mark points out this is an impossibility, so the two different sides emphasize different threats to their autonomy. Autonomy being illusory, both are pretty hypocritical too.
Left liberalism is the child of classical liberalism (libertarianism).
ReplyDeleteI'd also cite the research of Jonathan Haidt which shows that left wing liberalism and right wing liberalism (libertarianism) proceed out of the same set of moral intuitions. They're brother and sister.
Some genuine traditionalists (not mainstream social conservatives)
ReplyDeletehave objected to "game." But the reasons haven't really had anything to do with white nighting or pedestalization. I think there are two reasons for this. First, because game treats relationships between men and women in a mechanistic way. Second, the principles and techniques that make up game were discovered and propagated by mass fornicators, so they are strongly associated with things traditionalists consider immoral. Both objections may be overstated, but they aren't the same as the objections of mainstream social conservatives.
Larry Auster, for example, hated game, but was as enthusiastic in highlighting examples of female misbehaviour as any manospherian.
it's nothing to do with autonomy or non-autonomy, that's just cover-up talk
ReplyDeletemen are now seeing that conservatism in secular or churchian terms is just the right-wing of the dragon, just another collusion with matriarchy, and that "conservative" men have filled their pockets and bought lotsa toys and lived comfy lives, while the Gynogulag was constructed and completed on the backs of OTHER boys and men
many of these conservatives were (and still are) in positions to oppose or overthrow the Gynarchy, but they didnt, and still dont, b/c their wives and daughters and themselves are profiting quite well from tyranny, and for all their yapping they like the Sistem just fine
these men are friends of THEMSELVES, and not of their brothers, who they stabbed in the back legally, economicaly, politically, and spiritually over the past half-century, while bleating about law-and-order and trickle-downs and libertarianism and yammer yammer yammer
the "hostility" towards them, so well-deserved, hasnt even begun yet, but obviously they are getting nervous about having to answer for their collusions with the gynarchy
many of these conservatives were (and still are) in positions to oppose or overthrow the Gynarchy
ReplyDeleteI find this claim bizarre. I'm no defender of mainstream so-cons in general, but the idea that they could really have done much to resist these large scale changes in society laughable. They would have been thrown out of office long ago.
I also note that the inability of people to separate mainstream so-cons from traditionalists like Mark continues on unabated in this thread.
ReplyDeleteAlso what a lot of people don't seem to realize is that the current situation is really just the logic of the free market applied to sexual relations.
ReplyDelete“It's a fact...that in societies like ours sex truly represents a second system of differentiation, completely independent of money; and as a system of differentiation it functions just as mercilessly. The effects of these two systems are, furthermore, strictly equivalent. Just like unrestrained economic liberalism, and for similar reasons, sexual liberalism produces phenomena of absolute pauperization . Some men make love every day; others five or six times in their life, or never. Some make love with dozens of women; others with none. It's what's known as 'the law of the market'...Economic liberalism is an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society. Sexual liberalism is likewise an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society.”
― Michel Houellebecq, Whatever
Ray,
ReplyDeleteLook at who has power in society. You have universities and media which are about 80% controlled by the liberal left. You have the Democrats which is a left-liberal party. You have the Republican Party which is controlled by right-liberal "establicons", who are interested in free trade above all else.
If you want to seriously look at why society got to where it is you have to look at the big players.
Too many MRAs choose instead to look at the more socially conservative fringes of the churches in the U.S. They do find there an unhealthy spirit of compromise with feminism. It's worthwhile criticising this, but it's a mistake to believe that this is the driver of changes to society.
It's an even bigger mistake to believe that this fringe represents a principled traditionalism. That means that the focus of these MRAs shifts from the really big players, down to the fringes of the churches and from there to the very people who have put up the most resistance to feminism over the past 20 years (I include myself in this).
Why would MRAs do this? I think the reason varies. In some cases, it's because the manosphere recruited people who were long-time lefties from the 1960s. They wanted to continue the same anti-traditionalist focus they were used to.
Perhaps another reason is that people have been raised to believe that "conservative" equals "traditionalist" which equals "establishment" - and so it is assumed that traditionalists have had it within their power to do something but haven't out of greed - that they have sold out their fellow man.
For some individuals it might be that they are most focused on getting the church aspect of things right and so their focus is on separating themselves clearly from the church compromisers.
Feminists promote (female) dependence on the government. Therefore, in reality, feminists have no interest in "autonomy". (This is consistent with feminism being a identity politics and collectivist, as Factory said.) This is a simple concept to understand, but as a self admitted collectivist you will never understand and/or admit this.
ReplyDeleteI am against all forms of collectivism as collectivism is synonymous with big oppressive totalitarian government.
It's similar to what college women are "supposed" to do in relationships with men: they are supposed to avoid entanglements by making sure relationships don't get too serious (by limiting themselves to occasional hook-ups, or by dating the wrong sort of men and so on).
It's not what most women are doing in reality. Most women are following the nazbol misandrist (hybrid of feminism and traditionalism) script where they have fun on the carousel and then marry a poor schmuck at the end. Obviously, I am not doing that as marriage 2.0, the only form of marriage currently available, for men is a one way ticket to getting sheared in divorce court.
The real problem here is government. Fix that and you will get more marriage. If you instead continue to write reams of philosophical treaties, you will just get more men thinking (correctly) that tradcons are nothing but right wing feminists.
Factory wrote:
ReplyDeleteFeminism does not preach 'autonomy', Feminism preaches 'Freedom to do as you choose, and be spared the consequences'.
But that is an ideal form of autonomy for liberals. If you want to have the maximum freedom to choose in any direction, then you will want these choices to be "enabled" as much as possible.
Feminists have argued that women as a class are disadvantaged when it comes to autonomy and therefore it is just if society and the state enable their choices at the expense of men as this then creates sexual equality.
And so if a woman wants to become a single mother, this choice is propped up. If she wants to divorce, this choice is propped up. If she wants to have children whilst still being careerist, this choice is propped up.
MRAs and traditionalists agree on combating the idea that men are privileged oppressors and that this justifies propping up female autonomy at the expense of men.
But traditionalists go further in arguing that the focus should not be on maximising autonomy to begin with.
I am against all forms of collectivism as collectivism is synonymous with big oppressive totalitarian government.
ReplyDeleteThe very opposite is true. If there are no collectives then you have no choice but to concentrate power and authority in a centralised state.
That's one reason why the family has come under such sustained attack. It is a collective institution with a group loyalty and authority that is not controlled by the state.
The trend of modernity is to hollow out society whilst strengthening the hand of a class of state administrators.
PMAFT,
ReplyDeleteWhy not come out openly as a libertarian? That way there is less shadow boxing (maybe you have at your own site and I've missed it).
"That means that the focus of these MRAs shifts from the really big players, down to the fringes of the churches and from there to the very people who have put up the most resistance to feminism over the past 20 years (I include myself in this)."
ReplyDeletethe collusion between feminism (actually, womanism) and conservatism/the churches is NOT fringe -- it is the very backbone and foundation of the churchian takeover of what was supposed to be worship of God, and the reason why sane and Godly men fled the false congregations long ago
the churches were supposed to be the last line-of-defense against tyranny by womanState; instead, they enabled and enforced the gulag, full of rules and laws for other men, and not for themselves
and didnt the ladies cough up the tithes for that bullshit! and buy the "pastor's" books... and the DVDs... and organize the church activities... and go the "Prayer Cruises" while the streets and mancages were filled with their betters
the vast (lemme emphasize vast) proportion of conservative men may verbally reject "feminism" (as do their "pastors" during sermons) but fully embrace womanism -- and the deal they have struck with Team Woman is NO different than the cowardice and avarice evidenced by leftist "men"
at least the leftie emasculates admit to their bargain with the gynocracy (or extoll it, more like)
the conservatives, otoh, cling to the self-serving notion that THEIR wing (firmly attached to Ms Dragon) is the GOOD wing
the evidence of the past half-century belies such surface rationalizations, and so do their bank accounts
conservative men in the classrooms, the courtrooms, the workplaces, at home with their families, are just as corrupt in their servitude towards, and fear of, women (esp wives and daughters) as the loony left
"libertarianism" is just more Teflon Coating that really means, hey maybe we can keep this evil going long enough to play with my toys another decade, and luxuriate in my soft materialistic life, while pretending i'm actually against the gynocracy of left/right
conservatives tossed the sons of america under the bus, right along with the prog frogs, the elite, the fems, and the rich n empowered Monstresses that infest the beltway and the heartland
"Too many MRAs choose instead to look at the more socially conservative fringes of the churches in the U.S. They do find there an unhealthy spirit of compromise with feminism. It's worthwhile criticising this, but it's a mistake to believe that this is the driver of changes to society."
satan is the driver of your beloved western societies, not the sellout males "leading" the churches . . . theyre just petty collaborators who sold out for a nice "family career" teaching others about a God they know not themselves, a God who gave them no such authority, as their actions have proven
The Manosphere mocks traditionalism because your institutions capitulated to Feminism and female supremacism. Your leaders have served as the Right hand of female imperative, working in partnership with the Left to give women what they want. Your traditions washed away like tears in rain in a few decades after women started stamping their feet. Your way of life, however noble and practical it once was, is gone, gone, gone.
ReplyDeleteSadly.
The mango sphere particularly mra with its pua rootstalks a lot of **** . They seem to have forgotten to turn off their false bravado.
ReplyDeleteMRAs don't offer any alternative lifestyle to men. Trads do. MRAs suggest living symbiotically with a feminist society. That is why it is referred to as male feminism.
Really can mra present a viable alternative at all? Never heard them actually present this.
Pardon the mistakes that is apples useless auto correct
ReplyDeleteAlso I don't agree with anon saying noble institutions are gone never to be seen again that just reeks of liberal desire/gloating.
ReplyDeleteYou don't want a viable traditional society. I do. So we are polar opposites and nothing personal but technically an enemy in politics.
"The very opposite is true. If there are no collectives then you have no choice but to concentrate power and authority in a centralised state."
ReplyDeleteThe Great Deal and WWII saw US Goverment spending go from 7% in 1902 to 30% of GDP in 1960 to 40% today, of which some 65% is attributable as payments to individuals (wealth transfer, predominantly women).
The same period 'human rights' and changes in marriage law were promulgated.
http://carriedaway.blogs.com/carried_away/2005/04/us_government_s.html
The simple fact is that women are net consumers of wealth and men are net producers. Distribution either happens through families will male headship (traditional) or government collectives (progressive).
Which one is it?
Feminism comes in both liberal (individualist) and left-collectivist varieties. What both have in common is their shared assertion that traditional social arrangements have been unfair to women and need to be altered to conform to the feminist ideal of the equality of the sexes. Exactly what that conformity looks like is a bone of contention between the different kinds of feminism.
ReplyDeleteFeminism, in all of its forms, has had very ugly consequences for Western societies (the only societies to have fully embraced it). It has undermined important social institutions and the traditions that support them. This is the primary reason for antifeminism among traditionalists. It has also produced various sorts of unfairness towards men. Indeed, the basic feminist reading of history as a conflict between an oppressor class (males) and a victim class (females) is implictly unfair towards men. A more concrete forms of unfairness - and this is hardly the only example - is the way many laws and courts after the introduction of easy divorce (a feminist demand) have tended to favour women and often burden men with the cost of supporting children they have no legally recognized right to see or influence. This is the primary reason for antifeminism among those who self-identify as being advocates for men.
One would think the two groups would be natural allies because of their shared enemy. It is not that simple. Men's advocates and traditionalists often mistrust each other.
The perspective of the men's advocate begins with the perception that in the present situation, the cards have been stacked against males. From such a perspective traditionalism, which supports such things as chivalry, behaving honourably towards women, and sending men and only men off to wars to protect their women and children, may appear, however illogally, to the men's advocate as an ally of feminism in promoting unfairness towards men.
From the traditionalist perspective, it is the men's advocate who may, counterintuitively, appear to be the ally of the feminist, for his complaint that present arrangements are unfair to men raises the question of what arrangements would be fair to both men and women alike. The traditionalist would say that for arrangements to be fair to both men and women they need to take the different natures of both into account, and that traditional social arrangements, while imperfect, do this better than any proposed replacement. The men's advocate, however, might say that fair arrangements are those in which men and women are treated equally, in which case he has claimed the feminist ideal as his own. The traditionalist also tends to distrust movements whose sole cause is a complaint of unfairness, real or perceived, towards a particular group in society, such movements being ordinarily the domain of the left.
Both groups have been known to join forces with specific feminists. Men's advocates and liberal feminists have joined forces on libertarian grounds against the kind of feminism that seeks to engineer sexual equality through intrusive government. Traditionalists have sometimes found themselves on the same side as certain feminists on specific issues of policy, such as laws restricting the production and sale of pornography. In the latter case, the reasons for which the traditionalists support the restriction of pornography and the reasons for which feminists support such restrictions are radically different. In the case of the liberal feminists and men's advocates, it is a shared classical liberalism that brings them together on certain issues.
Nevertheless, just as feminists come in different varieties, so do men's advocates, and an anti-feminist alliance of sorts between us traditionalists and the right kind of men's advocates should be possible.
Johnnycomelately,
ReplyDeleteObviously we both want a smaller state. But I don't think it's useful to use the term "collectives" in a negative sense.
A family itself is a collective. So is a local community. So is a school. So is a local business. They are all associations of people working toward a common end.
The problem is not the existence of collectives, but a process whereby social functions that are normally held by individuals working together in smaller, local collectives are withdrawn,.so that a society is ordered instead more formally by a centralised bureaucracy.
In a sense social function is "socialised" - it is taken away from individuals and made the responsibility of the whole society as represented by the state.
I should have mentioned too that Johnycomelately is absolutely correct that a society that is serious about a stable family life will allow the wealth that is earned by men to be distributed by men as husbands and fathers.
ReplyDeleteAt the moment men go out to work and are taxed heavily by the state and the state then redistribtues this money, so that it is the state that gets the credit rather than the man who actually produces the wealth.
A traditionalist community would do whatever it could to keep the credit where it really belonged.
Hostile anon wrote:
ReplyDeleteYour leaders have served as the Right hand of female imperative, working in partnership with the Left to give women what they want.
OK, so we observe that the right-wing parties have gone along with feminism.
The next step has to be to ask why. What you discover it that although much of the voting base of these parties is socially conservative, the politicians themselves often identify with some kind of right-liberal politics. They therefore share many of the political assumptions of their left-liberal opponents.
So the aim then has to be to break through an orthodoxy that limits political debate to second tier arguments between left and right liberals.
In short, there haven't been traditionalist leaders in the mainstream right. It's up to us to create those leaders.
MRAs don't offer any alternative lifestyle to men. Trads do.
ReplyDeleteAnon, I think you're right and that this will prove to be a significant difference in coming years.
MRAs don't offer any alternative lifestyle to men. Trads do. MRAs suggest living symbiotically with a feminist society.
ReplyDeleteI don't agree. Guys like Roosh offer the alernative lifestyle of living in foreign countries. Other guys suggest a strategy of minimalism, i.e., earn the smallest amount of resources necessary to support yourself in a frugal manner, thus denying resources to the greedy parastical state.
As for "living symbiotically with a feminist society", they argue that feminism cannot be rolled back, so you have to come to terms with this fact one way or another.
The strategy of creating traditionalist leaders to break through the liberal orthodoxy fills me with profound skepticism.
The "traditionalist" lifestyle is not a real alternative because it exists only at the sufferance of the female. The instant she decides she's unhappy, she can bring the coercive power of the state to bear, and boom you are dispossessed of wealth, possessions, and children.
One of the only things they get right is that all, if not most, political and religious philosophies right now are being attacked and pushed by the feminine imperative (and the Femme Empire is strong).
ReplyDeleteOut of all branches of the manosphere, the MRAs are perhaps the most disagreeable and hostile to the dark contra enlightment.
That sector has the same egalitarian/individualistic views as feminists, and are liberal in essence, they just argue which part of liberalism they don’t like or don’t feel good about, meaning arguments over tactics. They really, really don't like feminism.
But at the same time, they want to have a part of liberalism intact. In other words, adopting female/feminine language (tactics) and having it both ways.
Instead of turning to God and others, they turn inwards, unto themselves, mimicking the natural state of women. That's the problem with MRAs.
For now they're alright, but unless they move into the direction of bloggers like Elusive Wapiti, The Spearhead or Dalrock, various of them are going to be more trouble than it is worth.
Good post Mark Richardson.
ReplyDeleteAlcestiseshtemoa,
ReplyDeleteThanks.
Nah,
Well, you see for us living in a foreign country doesn't cut it. That means giving up on the idea of a future for our own tradition.
It's true that the law and the reigning culture put men in a vulnerable position. But that doesn't mean a traditionalist lifestyle can't be done. I've done it and the men around me have done it. And if we can begin to create communities, then we can begin to have some control over the culture within these communities. We can begin to do things differently.
I'm confident that in a few year's time there'll be more happening on the ground to give confidence to those men who are currently uncertain about the future.
My first reaction on reading Mr. Richardson's post was that it is obvious that the "manosphere" seeks its own autonomous condition. Women's autonomy v. men's autonomy = epic fail.
ReplyDeleteThe problem with the "men's movement" is that it never makes any positive statements about women, i.e., declarations of how relations should be ideally, except for mostly very grim and dysfunctional types of relations. Maybe they don't believe in "shoulds" at all?
I suspect that the Christian tradition underlying traditionalism is what drives much of the hostility from the "men's movement". Feminization of churches aside, a traditional renaissance just is not possible without obeisance to Biblical ideas of equality between men and women, among other things. Read the book. It's not shy on *equality* in its proper application.
Hannon
The pathetic whining that dem librulz run stuff right now and therefore will run stuff forever is itself why the 'dark enlightenment' will never bear fruit. Scared whiners never effect change. All you need is a few low-level clerks to consistently lose certain forms and the entire edifice is undermined without even having to change tax structures, policy, etc. The trads on the ground appear to be coming to understand this. The manosphere, not so much. Which is why they'll be left in the dust.
ReplyDeleteThe Manosphere mocks traditionalism because your institutions capitulated to Feminism and female supremacism.
ReplyDeleteThat's really the toughest challenge, I think. Namely, this: if traditional institutions (note, "institutions", such as family, community, churches, rather than political parties per se) were not strong enough over the past 100 years to prevent the rise of feminism to its fully-blown state, why should we think they will be strong enough in the years ahead to reverse, or roll back, what they could not prevent from rising in the first place?
To me, that's a serious problem, and it's primarily a cultural problem, albeit one with a political aspect to it. I'm sympathetic to the idea that a traditional life is what a man should choose, regardless of whether this succeeds as a means of cultural change or not, but I'm very skeptical that the feminist genie can be put back into the bottle at this stage without the proverbial "internet doom-porn" collapse which many seem to wish for (in a misguided way, in my view). I mean, look at gay marriage -- it went from a joke as recently as 15 years ago to an inevitability today. That was fast, Mark. This is not a culture that is moving in a traditional direction at all, from where I am sitting.
In any case, this is, I think, the source of the hostility. Guys don't see the "value add" for themselves of behaving traditionally in a culture that doesn't support it (there I would somewhat disagree with them, but advise caution in any case), and also are skeptical about the prospect of traditionalism being able to reverse a cultural war that seems completely lost and as hard to reverse as the result of the American Civil War at this point.
Brendan's comment is disingenuous in the extreme. Leftism and liberalism require vast amounts of leisure time and wealth brought by technological innovation. We can't walk back the innovation, but we can go Amish and be more choosy about what pieces to keep, as they are not all equally worth keeping.
ReplyDeleteIt is even possible to go better than Amish and preserve much of the innovation and still provide male and female spheres of power outside of a consumption/proletarian base. We could have the techno-distributist utopia where there's plenty of internet and penicillin, but women are secure and happy in home-based endeavours, contributing to the soft-social structures that would allow men to run a productive mixed economy that supported early, fecund marriage and kept out both the worst female and male behaviors from normal society.
What you discover it that although much of the voting base of these parties is socially conservative
ReplyDeleteI'd agree with Mark here, but the problem is that social conservatives are not even close to a majority anywhere in the West. So, I'm not sure there is much of anything that can be done on a political level.
Living in a foreign country, learning game etc. do work but are really only stop-gap measures for a small number of men. They don't scale.
ReplyDeleteI love how all the manosphere libertarians completely ignore the evidence (Jon Haidt etc.) that right liberalism (libertarianism) and left liberalism are really coming out of the same world view. Not to mention the historical development of one out of the other. Any differences are just the old dispute over negative vs. positive freedom repeated again and again and again.
ReplyDeletePeople like PMAFT are just going to repeat talking points they've picked up on other websites til the cows come home. There's really no there there.
ReplyDeleteI've added more comments to the thread here, which might be interesting to people here:
ReplyDeletehttp://orthosphere.org/2013/04/27/our-place-in-the-anti-liberal-blogosphere/
People like PMAFT are just going to repeat talking points they've picked up on other websites til the cows come home. There's really no there there.
ReplyDeleteThe facts don't change, so what I say doesn't change either.
MRAs don't offer any alternative lifestyle to men. Trads do.
ReplyDeleteThat's because MRAs aren't interesting in micromanaging the life of men (or women). They are trying to solve a set of problems. How a man chooses to live their life beyond that isn't their business. MRAs aren't control freaks.
Also what a lot of people don't seem to realize is that the current situation is really just the logic of the free market applied to sexual relations.
Women are dependent and get free handouts from the government so we neither have a sexual free market nor an economic free market now. In a truly sexual free market, women would be forced to make hard choices they don't have to make now because government subsidizes them. (Also, prostitution would be legal in a true sexual free market.)
The very opposite is true. If there are no collectives then you have no choice but to concentrate power and authority in a centralised state.
ReplyDeleteYou just said here that you need collectivism (which automatically comes with tyrannical government) to defend against collectivist tyrannical government. That makes no sense.
Why not come out openly as a libertarian?
I agree with science fiction author, Jerry Pournelle, that libertarianism is better thought of as a vector rather than a destination. Otherwise, I'm fairly libertarian, although neolibertarian would be a bit more accurate to describe me.
The facts don't change
ReplyDeleteWhat facts?
The end result of femininsm/matriarchy is laid out nicely in the classic Garbage Generation treatise. Women working at housework or low skilled employment while men drink, socialize or fight. There is no monogamy and no paternal investment. Our society has not degraded completely to this level so we have a mixture of dads and cads outside of the inner cities. MRAs would have you believe that they are angry at the imbalance. All men should go ahead and give into the incentives to become exclusively cads and thugs. To do otherwise is to be taken advantage of. Of course, no MRI is going to up and move to Tijuana or Detroit to enjoy the fruits of his philosophy. All they really want is the tiny bump in internet status they get from crying "sucker." That's still not enough to explain why they are angry when men get married, have children and enjoy a normal life. While having a clearer view than most of what is going on in the sexual marketplace, they are unredeamed children of this world. They enjoy sexual sin and they enjoy pride. You will find much in Roissy's 16 commandments etc that would fit very well with the lust of the eyes, lust of the flesh and pride of life. MRA's fall along a continuum between the hedonists pleasure at any cost and the Epicurian's balance of maximal pleasure with minimal pain. While the Christian can appreciate the forces at work in society we must reject the satanic response to our circumstances.
ReplyDeleteLets look at a case study in game...Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. He dressed like an Armenian pimp and was a gold gloves champion. Using his alpha charisma he got an upper class American girl to convert to Islam and marry him. He sent her to work 60 hours a week so that he could sit at home. That's alot of alpha street cred. Was he happy? I would say his final acts were an elaborate suicide by cop. Was he fighting for some sort of traditional society? What kind, one where every man sits around the house all day in his cowboy hat and track suit? What if he had gone out and tried to find a decent job to support his wife and family. What if he had put his energy into making a better life for his kids and their kids? That may have made him a sucker but wouldn't he have found a fulfillment that his cad/thug life couldn't give him?
ReplyDeleteDzhokhar was not "alpha". MRA/PUAs that admire him have lost their mind and are admitting their life is more pathetic than that murdering loser.
ReplyDeleteGet a grip on your dumb selves you are worshipping dead beats like you say women do. You are now the women.
Also to show that the regurgitation of this faux alpha worship is prevelant I repeated your misinfomation. The guys name was Tamerlane not Dzhokhar. Dzhokhar was the younger brother.
ReplyDeleteTamerlan was a loser. Get you facts straight.
Barnabas, April 30 10:25am, said:
ReplyDelete"While the Christian can appreciate the forces at work in society we must reject the satanic response to our circumstances."
Hear hear.
On the point about the older Boston bomber Barnabas is quite right, an inability to work and a thuggish pride brought about the violence. Islam has always had a useless work ethic and would rather conquer than produce, consequently he couldn't deal with a suburban life. Hardly a good outcome for him or society but he can't be described as simply a "loser".
In relation to women relying on the state who in their right mind would want to do that? There is no pride or self respect in being a welfare recipient and I doubt most women want that. I think lower class attitudes are being extrapolated to all elements of society. I don't see State enforced alimony as being the same as State welfare dependance.
You just said here that you need collectivism (which automatically comes with tyrannical government)
ReplyDeleteI'll say it again. A family is a collective (a group of people working toward a common end) as is a school, a business, a sports club, an ethny, a nation.
We are supposed to live within collectives of various sorts. It's almost inconceivable for a person not to (yes, there are hermits, but it's not possible for everyone to live as hermits).
So the question becomes not whether you have collectives, but what kind of collectives are permitted to fulfil important social functions in society.
The trend in a liberal society is for the intermediate, independent collectives to be hollowed out and for their functions taken over by a centralised state.
That leaves the individual with less of a significant role in society.
You just said here that you need collectivism (which automatically comes with tyrannical government)
ReplyDeleteI'll say it again. A family is a collective (a group of people working toward a common end) as is a school, a business, a sports club, an ethny, a nation.
We are supposed to live within collectives of various sorts. It's almost inconceivable for a person not to (yes, there are hermits, but it's not possible for everyone to live as hermits).
So the question becomes not whether you have collectives, but what kind of collectives are permitted to fulfil important social functions in society.
The trend in a liberal society is for the intermediate, independent collectives to be hollowed out and for their functions to be taken over by a centralised state.
That leaves the individual with less of a significant role in society.
I don't see State enforced alimony as being the same as State welfare dependance.
ReplyDeleteIt may apply to a different social class, but it is wealth transfer all the same. There is no reason why a woman who was married to a man for 5 years should be paid alimony for the rest of her life (happens in some US states). That's some very, very expensive sex.
See, I can get the criticisms of the MRAs you guys have, but when you spout trash like that to someone who is divorced like me, you lose massive credibility as a group. Just saying.
Well, you see for us living in a foreign country doesn't cut it. That means giving up on the idea of a future for our own tradition.
ReplyDeleteYou're already living in a foreign country. One that is utterly hostile to you, your beliefs, and your morals. You're just under the delusion that Australia is "really yours" and you'll be able to take it back someday.
It is just as easy to preserve your tradition in another country as in Australia, and in some ways, even easier. For example, your children will have less incentive and ability to defect to liberalism if you're not in Australia (or Britain / Canada / America).
The problem with the "men's movement" is that it never makes any positive statements about women, i.e., declarations of how relations should be ideally, except for mostly very grim and dysfunctional types of relations. Maybe they don't believe in "shoulds" at all?
It is YOU who has the problem if you're basing your decisions on what female behavior SHOULD be rather than what it IS.
You just said here that you need collectivism (which automatically comes with tyrannical government) to defend against collectivist tyrannical government. That makes no sense.
No, it makes sense. You can't fight a powerful collective with individuals. You have to fight a powerful collective with an even more powerful collective.
"It is YOU who has the problem if you're basing your decisions on what female behavior SHOULD be rather than what it IS."
ReplyDeleteThe question is who and what determines women's behavior and men's behavior, as men and as women. Whatever the behavior is I do not have the power to "should" my way round it. But I have thoughts on ways it could be much better than it currently IS.
Do you?
Actually, I'm not sure if PMAFT is really part of the manosphere. See here. He seems more like a regular MRA with a little bit of 'game' thrown in. Guys who lean towards the MRA side of things are often quite hostile to traditionalism, but that's because they are thoroughgoing liberals, albeit sometimes of the right wing/libertarian sort.
ReplyDeleteI'd note that the men's rights movement has been around for awhile and achieved pretty much nothing. Us Trads are just getting started, and our focus on building communities will hold us in good stead.
Whatever the behavior is I do not have the power to "should" my way round it. But I have thoughts on ways it could be much better than it currently IS.
ReplyDeleteDo you?
Yes but I don't base my actions on it.
I'd note that the men's rights movement has been around for awhile and achieved pretty much nothing. Us Trads are just getting started, and our focus on building communities will hold us in good stead.
I hate to break it to you, chief, but "traditionalists" have a much, much longer record of achieving nothing than MRAs. In one form or another, "traditionalism" has been around for over 60 years, and has an unbroken record of total and unmitigated defeat. The current social, political, economic, and sexual status quo is perfectly evolved to destroy YOU... but you have only just started to fight.
LMAO, good luck with that.
Oh please, old style religious people are only just now divorcing themselves from the mainstream "conservative" political machines. You might also want to take a look at this. And, as Mark has noted, settling down into a traditional lifestyle is very doable.
ReplyDeleteAs Kaufmann notes, Israel is about to flip from a secular liberal society to a traditional religious one. It's not a pipe dream; it can be done. It may take 100 years or so, but the path has been laid out.
ReplyDeleteIn one form or another, "traditionalism" has been around for over 60 years, and has an unbroken record of total and unmitigated defeat.
ReplyDeleteI disagree with that. The process in the twentieth century was that the liberal political class gradually discarded the non-liberal principles in society to rule ever more exclusively on liberal principles alone.
There were no significant non-liberal institutions to oppose this (with the partial exception of the Catholic Church in the mid twentieth century). The media acted as a liberal gatekeeper, the two major political parties were both liberal, the universities and schools swung increasingly toward a left-liberalsim, and the churches in Australia swung left from about the 1970s.
In Australia it was particularly true that the orthodoxy in society was not only liberal, but it was left-liberal. If you were a uni educated, middle-class person in the 1970s and 1980s you were simply expected to be a left-liberal as part of your class identity.
Even 10 years ago I can remember a fellow teacher being very puzzled by a Liberal Party (right-liberal) electoral victory. "But I've never met anyone who is not left-wing" he told me.
In the 1990s, there was a backlash against the left-liberal orthodoxy, but mostly to the benefit of right-liberals supported within the Murdoch press. But that did help to open up politics a bit.
I think it's possible that I was the only self-identifying traditionalist in Australia for a decade or more. Things gradually improved from about 2005, but we were still scattered individuals communicating through the internet.
It's only really been in the past year that we've reached numbers that the aim of getting together and forming associations has become a realistic one.
The aim is to start forming local groups and then when adequate numbers exist to begin forming an institutional base (media and publishing, education, politics, the arts, foundations etc).
A healthy momentum exists at the moment - I'm confident that we're going to reach the local groups stage over the next few years.
I do hope you're following Vanessa's excellent advice to economically support each other where applicable (buying from and selling to each other preferentially, which is very easy to do without running afoul of anti-discrimination regulations.)
ReplyDeleteAh, I found the link:
ReplyDeletehttp://traditionalchristianity.wordpress.com/2012/11/29/tuning-out-rather-than-moving-out/
Brendan,
ReplyDeleteMy apologies, I meant to refer to child support not alimony.
Matters such as alimony lose credibility the moment the man stops being seen as the primary breadwinner. Why shouldn't a man get alimony from his spouse if he isn't employed? The whole concept of alimony is irrelevant if both people are in the workforce.
If this is the major concern with traditionalism, that it encourages women to sit around and fleece men then its understandable. But the question is the response to the current situation and traditionalism doesn't support maintenance of exwives on the simple basis that they were married to you once.
Equity issues for men are important in the marriage sphere regardless of a traditional or other approach, however, this can be focused on without rejecting the concept of marriage in its entirety or a total retreat into unethetical indiviudalism.
I'll say it again. A family is a collective (a group of people working toward a common end) as is a school, a business, a sports club, an ethny, a nation.
ReplyDeleteNone of those things are separate now since they're all under the control of a feminist tyrannical government (at least in the West). For example, families should be voluntary associations of people, but currently they are extensions of the feminist state (which is by definition collectivist) ruled by a dictatorship of the wife/mother in that family. If you live in the West, there is no such thing as a family that isn't a part of the (collectivist) feminist state. (This also means that telling men to get married and form families is telling them to submit to feminist dictatorship.)
For good reason collectivism, in common language, has become synonymous with totalitarianism. The history of the 20th century from nazism to communism guaranteed that.
Actually, I'm not sure if PMAFT is really part of the manosphere. See here.
ReplyDeleteI'm definitely not part of the manosphere anymore. It started off promising, but ended up being a vehicle for entryism for white (knight) nationalists, tradcons, and other marginal groups who were trying to take over the MRM. Plus, that link you gave is apt since it's from Matt Forney who we recently found out was Ferdinand Bardamu. This isn't relevant except that he supported various individuals such as myself and Paul Elam under his Bardamu persona while attacking us under his Forney persona. You can count me out of such entryist deception.
I'd note that the men's rights movement has been around for awhile and achieved pretty much nothing.
The MRM has achieved more than traditionalists have. You can't even roll back abortion and gay marriage where you have a much wider base of support.
Even 10 years ago I can remember a fellow teacher being very puzzled by a Liberal Party (right-liberal) electoral victory. "But I've never met anyone who is not left-wing" he told me.
The teaching profession is extremely leftist (and collectivist) so this is only evidence of that teachers are totalitarian by nature, not progress towards anything.
Saying society is "Totalitarian" leaves you no response but to grab a gun and head to the hills and wait there untill you're rooted out. There are many political options, however, they will require sustained work and commitment. Saying its all hopeless because of a conspiracy of Trads or whomever undermines that ability. The work is going out there, building community support, dominating the institutions of society, and that is all effort.
ReplyDeleteOn a previous post it was mentioned that the Gay marriage issue used to be a joke but now seems "inevitable". It used to be a joke because noone was promoting it seriously. Now the Left have turned their attention to it with all guns blazing. So now its not a joke. It seems "inevitable" because not enough people are willing to stand up and seriously contest the Left. Unless you are you are a passive spectator to whatever they try to introduce. After Gay marriage they will move onto something else, which now seems bizarre but after their attention will seem reasonable. After that something else, that's what they do and unless they're opposed they will keep going. We should be impressed at their powers and seek to imitate them rather than seek reasons for surrender.
For anyone who thinks everything the left proposes is inevitable keep in mind that a Republic in Australia was recently considered inevitable, as was major environmental industry takeovers. Both of those issues are now receding as a consequence of sustained opposition and lack of popular support.
The MRM has achieved more than traditionalists have.
ReplyDeleteLMAO. Like what?
I really couldn't care less about these kinds of debates anymore, but let me correct something:
ReplyDeleteThis isn't relevant except that he supported various individuals such as myself and Paul Elam under his Bardamu persona while attacking us under his Forney persona. You can count me out of such entryist deception.
There was no deception involved. By the time I'd made my decision to jettison IMF and start writing under my real name, I'd already grown sick of the MRM (along with most of the blogosphere in general). The main reason I didn't connect IMF to my real name initially was because a) I wanted to make a clean break from the site and its legacy and b) I was being targeted by the SPLC at the time. My finances are secure now, so I have no reason to care about what my enemies think.
PM/AFT, I called you a parasite because that's precisely what you are. The sum total of your MRM career is picking fights with people like Mark Richardson, posting hate mail and lying about your sexual exploits. That's it. You have not contributed one iota of independently verifiable activism or a single original idea, yet you strut around like you personally led the Million Man March.
Thing is, your Napoleon complex is de rigeur for this part of the blogosphere (traditionalists, white nationalists, HBD nerds etc.), which is precisely why I pulled the plug on In Mala Fide. None of this online activism is going anywhere. It never will, because as zed put it, no one will shut up and shove the [CENSORED] gravel. No one wants to do the work.
If you want to keep pretending that posting emails about you being an Illuminati reptile alien constitutes activism, be my guest. But don't expect me to be an accessory to your stupidity.
You can make a very strong argument that feminism and MRA are two sides of the same coin. Just as feminists tell women that they owe it to their sisters to get advanced degrees, avoid entangling romantic relationships and avoid procreating until late in life an MRA will tell you that you owe it to your brothers to give up on any idea of a traditional future and fight the power through pump and dump. Those aren’t opposing views, they are exactly the same. Once all I saw were divorce and destruction around me but now I realize that I was just associating with the wrong people. Now I’m surrounded by traditional families. PMAFT would have you believe that that is impossible based on family law. Not only does that not bear out in what is clearly observable in traditional pockets of society in the USA, it is not even logically consistent. MRA will tell you that a woman is so controlled by her hormones that she will throw over her family, culture, religion etc to follow a strong man but at the same time we should give up on trying a long term relationship with any woman because of the influences of the family court structure. That’s like saying that since taxes are high don’t get a job and go on welfare. You might score some theoretical points against the system but you are going to have a shitty life.
ReplyDeleteAny you don’t need to join the Amish or some offshoot Catholic group to find a traditional community. Find the most zealous Bible believing church in your town.
The main "activism" of trads should simply to have as many kids as you can. See here for an example of someone putting this into action.
ReplyDeleteNo, Thursday, forcing women to kill themselves slamming out 2 babies a year with no social or husband support to stick it to the librulz is not a real solution. That whole subset really is as bad as internet snarkers claim it is.
ReplyDeleteThat's not to say having a large family is bad, just that there is no good structure for it except in individual families and that itself is something traditionalists need to organize more effectively since we can't keep hoping select individual families will work it out on their own.
ReplyDeleteForce has nothing to do with it.
ReplyDeleteI don't think you are familiar with the life situations of any of these people. Quiverfull aren't like the Mormons, they are much more disordered and it can get very ugly.
ReplyDeleteThe Botkins are hustlers exploiting the hapless. The daughters are childless and unmarried. The sons are not exactly making grandkids happen either. They make money selling stuff to broke women popping out 2 kids a year on 25k and a credit card (at best) in near total isolation.
The Mormons still have some solid support structures, but their own wealth and success are undermining them (women are throwing away their soft power, thinking there will be no cost, and both the men and women are caught up in Amway style schemes and credit addiction).
Equity issues for men are important in the marriage sphere regardless of a traditional or other approach, however, this can be focused on without rejecting the concept of marriage in its entirety or a total retreat into unethetical indiviudalism.
ReplyDeleteThat is certainly true, and I agree with that.
I don't think you are familiar with the life situations of any of these people. Quiverfull aren't like the Mormons, they are much more disordered and it can get very ugly.
ReplyDeleteThe quivers do seem to present a lot of issues, I'd agree. Although there could be other models. The mormons are very fem-centric, in my own personal experience with them -- the man of the house has about as much real power as the queen of england.
One question, though, Thursday, about the "long-term out breed them by forming separate and parallel community and other support structures" strategy for social change is that I thought that evangelicals at least had been doing this for a few decades with very mixed success. That is, intentionally living apart, having most social interaction with others from church groups, camps and so on, a network of evangelical camps, colleges, theme parks, businesses and so on. That doesn't seem like it's something that's new, but it also doesn't seem like it's been very effective in terms of having a significant "recidivism" rate among the children who themselves in significant numbers fall back to the huge, ambient broader culture at some stage. Certainly not all of them do, but I thought that the "parallel structures" approach had in fact been tried already.
It seems to me like the kind of separation you really need to have some kind of real stability and separation socially is more like what the Amish do, and not very many contemporary Christians want to live like that.
The sum total of your MRM career is picking fights with people like Mark Richardson, posting hate mail and lying about your sexual exploits.
ReplyDeleteU mad bro?
It's not effective because they send the kids off to college and act surprised bad stuff happens. It's not effective because the women have no actual respect for their roles as wives and mothers and thus have to sink or swim based on inner resources and individual family support. It's not effective because it's a cargo cult halfway version of what would be effective. They ape a few little bits of functionality and remain dysfunctional and right-liberal at their cores.
ReplyDeleteBleargh, I messed up my last comment, it should read 'the men have no respect for the womens' roles as wives and mothers, so it's reliant on an individual woman having a strong family and friends network to be effective'.
ReplyDeleteThursday wrote:
ReplyDeleteAs Kaufmann notes, Israel is about to flip from a secular liberal society to a traditional religious one. It's not a pipe dream; it can be done.
By shiftless bums like the Haredim? You've got to be joking. Maybe you also believe that tapeworms can hatch offspring that sprout fangs and hunt down gazelles.
It may take 100 years or so, but the path has been laid out.
Razib has an effective rebuttal to the mantra that "the religious will inherit the earth".
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2011/01/the-inevitable-rise-of-amish-machines/#.UYHkF2bJCPc
PMAFT,
ReplyDeleteDo you really think there would be a massive change in gender relations if we eliminated the welfare state?
In Japan companies discriminate pretty hard against female employees and that don't have a very strong welfare system. They still have the herbivore/low TFR issues.
The simple truth is that even the most backwards poor people in the first world can afford food and shelter. If we eliminated welfare all those capable of finding jobs might find them, but it wouldn't change the fact that Malthus is dead, at least for our generation. Women don't need men to survive. This is a technogical, not political, change.
Even within the realm of material comfort, women are pretty competitive with men. 20 something women are out earning 20 something men. To be honest women make better cubicle drones in most offices. The only areas men still have a competitive advantage are dangerous/dirty jobs and high end abstract jobs like STEM. The former is getting automated out of existence every day and the latter is only the realm of a tiny group of high IQ men. Women do tend to choose easier jobs and suckle at the government teet more, but if they had to get higher earnings jobs most could do them (before the last several decades they could not). This is a technological, not political, change.
What you seem to be pushing hard is the idea that women will all of a sudden change their tune if they need men to survive/be comfortable. However, this isn't true anymore. And it would still not be true if there wasn't a welfare state. Fact is women throughout all of history have tried to get the best combination of genes/resources they could. The relative value of genes and resources have always varied over time and circumstance. Modernity simply kicked that roller coaster into overdrive. Right now resources are lower value relative to genes (specifically, the kind of genes women evolved attraction to because they meant survival in a harsh, brutal, and short pre-modern existence).
And I get why. Because you are probably a high resource low genes male. Perhaps a STEM nerd or someone who is not averse to doing really shitty jobs if they pay well. You want to trade those resources for pussy and you think the exchange rate sucks. You think political change XYZ will lead to a better exchange rate. What you fail to realize is that the exchange rate is mainly the result of technological, not political, changes.
ReplyDelete"Civilization" has always been composed of four types of males:
High Resource, Good Genes (apex alphas)
(Good is defined as good for the pre-modern world we actually evolved in, namely the ability and willingness to bash another mans skull in with an axe. Betas are mostly people with good genes for the modern world but bad genes for the pre-modern world.)
High Resource, Bad Genes (betas)
Low Resource, Good Genes (alphas)
Low Resource, Bad Genes (omegas)
Apex Alphas have always gotten plenty of pussy. Monogamist religion mostly tries to keep the size of the harem down to a reasonable level.
Omegas are just meant to work, die, and be quiet.
So the central conflict is always between alphas and betas. They fight over the bulk of the bell curve of the female population.
Religion/tradition is mostly societal rules that promote betas over alphas. You see we already went through this when we switched from hunter gatherer to agricultural societies. All of a sudden we had these betas that were good at being productive in a civilized setting but bad at bashing men's skulls in with axes. Women didn't like their lack of axe skills but they did like all the resources. Religion sprain up to try and find a way to organize society such that a balance could be found between betas and alphas.
In the modern world the beta resource provisioning value has been weakened, and religion has not found a way to deal with it. The days of just getting a good job and a woman falling in your lap are over.
However, doubling down on resource provisioning power that will be of continuously diminishing value doesn't seem to work. You need a cultural solution. And we know game doesn't have one. It's led to the dysfunctional hookup culture. Roosh recently posted what a "game" world would look like extrapolated, and its one in which you need to be a celebrity roided meathead who spam approaches. Even Roosh's method of fleeing to third world hellholes to bed poor chicks only puts the issue on time delay (eventually those countries develop). An actual solution is required, and it isn't going to come from thinking you can buy a GF if only the welfare state was gone.
Razib has an effective rebuttal to the mantra that "the religious will inherit the earth".
ReplyDeleteI've been reading Razib since forever and your interpretation of that article is typically idiotic. The gist of it is: either the current differential between current seculars and the religious is erased by the seculars becoming more religious in general, or else the differential stays the same. Either way: traditional religion wins.
In any event, the Quiverfull or the Mormons are not dependent on being radically apart from mainstream society like the Amish. Eventually people will have to stop breeding, but that's aways off.
By shiftless bums like the Haredim?
ReplyDeleteUh, yeah. They're already 35% of Israeli school children, dude. Things are far gone at this point. They're going to be forced off government assistance, of course, and that will mean a decline from their radically high fertility, but there will still be a differential and seeing where they're starting from right now that will be enough.
ASDF:
ReplyDeleteYes, blaming welfare and affirmative action etc. for the mess in the sexual market never made much sense. Yes, welfare is screws things up for the bottom 25%, but the real problem across society is women being able to support themselves and put off pregnancy. That would happen even in a more capitalist society.
ASDF,
ReplyDeleteThe way you describe alpha, beta and omega might work to some degree, but it has its limitations.
One of the things I noticed when I was at uni in the late 80s and early 90s is that the women weren't so much going for "good genes" in the sense of men who could physically dominate other men.
I was surprised that they were going for men who simply played around with bad boy insignia. For instance, these men might wear motorbike gear, or affect a minor drug habit.
But they were not strong men, either physically or otherwise.
I think part of the explanation is that the idea of "sexual liberation" was at a peak at that time amongst young women. Sexual liberation meant having sex for the sake of sex rather than connecting it to marriage or to romantic love.
If young women are selecting for sex alone, then they don't have to consider character or resources, they can go for "outer markers" of masculinity - and these can be quite shallow.
It's a bit like a man who has decided he'll just pursue a one night stand. He no longer needs to consider whether a woman would be a good mother, or is nice, or has class or intelligence.
He might look instead to outer markers of feminine attractiveness; it could be hair, fingernails, heels, legs or whatever. If he finds those things attractive, and he is only looking for a fling, then what does female character or compatibility count for?
The thing is, I don't think it's easy to keep women sexually "liberated". For most women the desire for marriage kicks in and that means women then consider other factors. For example, assortative mating starts to matter, so that educated women might appreciate intelligence or educational attainments in men, or markers of social class and so on.
There are still large numbers of women who don't want to do parenthood alone. So it still is important for men to put themselves in a position to marry by getting an education and a job.
They key thing we have to overcome are the fatal delays that some women make in shifting to family mode - particularly uni educated women.
Mark Richardson,
ReplyDeleteDark Triad is "good" from am evolutionary perspective. Something like 0.5% of Asians are DIRECT descendants of Ghenghis Kahn, the most brutal man in history that probably killed 50 million people. Immorality, so long as one has the self control to apply it in instances where they won't get blowback, is evolutionarily favored.
Over short periods of time, when a woman is DTF, its not surprising that men can fake dark triad/strength. Yes, if condoms didn't exist women might do a double take and inquire deeper, but they do exist so they don't.
Whether or not dark triad is good from an evolutionary perspective, I do agree that women aren't generally as attracted to men who come across as too safe and predictable.
ReplyDeleteThat's one thing that concerns me about the feminist rape and domestic violence campaigns. Conscientious young men tend to respond by wanting to reassure women that they are harmless.
But they aren't doing themselves any favours by orienting themselves this way. Harmlessness is not the quality you want to convey.
Do you really think there would be a massive change in gender relations if we eliminated the welfare state?
ReplyDeleteNot just what is traditionally called the "welfare state", but big government in general. It isn't just welfare that should be eliminated, but useless jobs in all levels of government, useless quasi-government jobs like those at universities, in education, & in healthcare, and useless government mandated private sector jobs (both directly and indirectly mandated such as HR drones).
In Japan companies discriminate pretty hard against female employees and that don't have a very strong welfare system. They still have the herbivore/low TFR issues.
When the entire array of female welfare and government support goes away, I don't expect it to lead to more families and children. If nothing else, the large mass of men who have been spit upon aren't going to take back their female counterparts just because they're desperate.
Women don't need men to survive.
Men don't need women to survive, either.
To be honest women make better cubicle drones in most offices.
We don't need an army of cubicle drones now. We will need even less of that in the future. Most cubicle drones now could be replaced by a computer program now if there was a serious effort to produce an alternative.
What you seem to be pushing hard is the idea that women will all of a sudden change their tune if they need men to survive/be comfortable. However, this isn't true anymore.
I quite frequently meet upper middle class women in their late 20s and older who despite have "good" jobs, prove that isn't true. They're riddled with debt and desperately looking for a man to bail them out. Despite what Forney thinks, I have manipulated them into putting out without expending real resources on them. These chicks should be "independent", but they're really not.
I have no clue if a mass of unemployed chicks will get together with a mass of similarly unemployed men. That's not the point, although, a man will have a much easier time scratching out an existence in such a situation.
If you really want to talk about technical changes, then you can't stop half way like you are now. That's where your analysis falls apart.
Pro-Male/Anti-Feminist Tech,
ReplyDeleteI listened to a podcast awhile back on the Second Punic War. The author had been quoting from a famous Roman historian who was extremely detailed about the events of the war down to a very personal level. He also had no problem talking about terror and horrible events.
After the Roman complete defeat at Cannae, when Hannibal's army was five days march away and the Roman people thought the city was going to fall, the normally verbose historian has only one line describing the mood, "any words that could describe the terror of the citizens would be a diminishment of the real thing."
That's how I feel with your comment. To pick it apart, to try an digest the hate & death worship that fuels it would diminish the source. I ask only that people read your reply and decide who won the debate.
Thursday wrote:
ReplyDeleteI've been reading Razib since forever and your interpretation of that article is typically idiotic.
Hmm, I think the adjective 'idiotic' much better describes someone who touts the proliferation of a dysfunctional group like the Haredim as a positive development.
The gist of it is: either the current differential between current seculars and the religious is erased by the seculars becoming more religious in general, or else the differential stays the same. Either way: traditional religion wins.
Read through the entire article (again) and he never specifically said that. All the differential in the world won't do anything if they have to pay to raise their kids but can't afford to.
He did seem to believe that a genetic propensity for religion would tend to increase in the modern world and I think he may be right. But it doesn't follow that the simple-minded conclusion "That the religious will inherit the earth" follows. It's pretty clear that he believes that ecological constraints and other factors will prevent this.
In any event, the Quiverfull or the Mormons are not dependent on being radically apart from mainstream society like the Amish. Eventually people will have to stop breeding, but that's aways off.
The whole Mormon thing is exaggerated from what I've seen. They're hardly immune from the typical issues that plague fundamentalists, which include but aren't limited to proneness to defection. I'm less familiar with the Quiverfull movement but find it hard to believe they don't have similar issues.
It's that way with all fundamentalist groups, which is why they have such a strong tendency to isolate themselves from mainstream culture - it's pure poison to their way of life. But that's a double-edged sword that further serves to limit their population growth.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/2821221/posts
The URL above puts the number of LDS church members nationwide at 3.2 million, a bit more than half of the official church stats of 5.9 million. It's attributed to the way the church counts its members - it considers all members on record, while the study quoted only counted those who actively identified as church members.
So while a good case can be made that the Mormons will increase their numbers over the next 50-100 years, going to something like 40-50 million just isn't going to happen.
asdf wrote:
ReplyDeleteThat's how I feel with your comment.
Kind of womanly of you, isn't it? No reasoned rebuttal, it's just wrong because it upsets your feeewings?
To pick it apart,
Oh well, if you don't want to do it, I'll be happy to take up the slack.
Here's a capsule summary along with my comments :
(1) He believes useless jobs should be eliminated.
Completely on board with him there.
(2) Welfare should be eliminated.
Yes, with qualifications. As more jobs are eliminated, I'd favor replacing it with a basic monthly income (Google Marshall Brain for more info) to any man or woman. It would be enough to survive on, but those who were ambitious would have the opportunity for entrepreneurial work or to compete for the remaining jobs available.
(3) Men don't need women to survive.
Simple statement of fact. Men do not need women to survive and never did, only to reproduce.
(4) Washed up women are looking for a man to bail them out.
Another statement of fact. We're going to see a lot more of this in the near future as more are unable to get a job to pay off their student loans and other debts.
(5) Men will be unlikely to want to have anything to do with the same women who treated them like dirt in the past.
I think with the spread of the MGTOW ethos this attitude will become much more widespread. F. Roger Devlin himself said that the best time for a man to marry a woman is before he understands too much about them.
(6) Men will survive far better than women under hardship conditions.
No argument there. Men are designed to interact with and master the real world, women are designed to attract men to get their resources and bear and raise children.
(7) Your (asdf's) analysis falls apart because you aren't taking into account further technological advances.
Emphatic agreement there. The 21st century is going to see tremendous advances in automation, bioengineering, and nanotech. It certainly isn't going to remain the way it is now. One thing it will do is make female sexuality an easily replaceable commodity.
Now that I've summarized everything, where's the problem?
The Dark triad is a myth. It is circular logic.
ReplyDeleteAlso the apparent disparaging of "nice" men and the literal autism of commentators.
A good man is not a "nice" man. There are men that are orderly and civilized that put down "Dark triad" men.
These men are foundations of civilisation.
The circular reasoning of people who throw all worth into "dark triad" men. Will then exclaim that good men that reproduce and beat the criminally inclined are "dark triad" themselves.
Circular logic.
This seems pretty prevalent in the MRA.
The process in the twentieth century was that the liberal political class gradually discarded the non-liberal principles in society to rule ever more exclusively on liberal principles alone.
ReplyDeleteThere were no significant non-liberal institutions to oppose this (with the partial exception of the Catholic Church in the mid twentieth century).
Are you kidding? ALL the institutions were non-liberal at the beginning of the 20th century. Over time the liberals infiltrated them, hollowed them out, and generally turned them into a mockery of their former selves. Conservatism (like the British Empire) went from penthouse to outhouse over the course of the century. You are deluded if you think you can get back into the penthouse when you couldn't even defend it back in the day you actually owned it.
In Australia it was particularly true that the orthodoxy in society was not only liberal, but it was left-liberal. If you were a uni educated, middle-class person in the 1970s and 1980s you were simply expected to be a left-liberal as part of your class identity.
You are picking up the narrative in mid-story. Before the 1970s it was not normal or expected at all to be left-liberal.
As for the 1990s onwards, forget it. The Left had won by that time.
I think it's possible that I was the only self-identifying traditionalist in Australia for a decade or more. Things gradually improved from about 2005, but we were still scattered individuals communicating through the internet.
OK, but you are aware that the world existed before that time, right? And that the world was not created from the void at the moment of your birth? Because the fact is that in decades before your birth and political awareness, the majority of the people were not Leftists, and Leftists did not control the institutions. People back then were, in today's terms, hopelessly reactionary. Yet they were totally defeated.
It's only really been in the past year that we've reached numbers that the aim of getting together and forming associations has become a realistic one.
The aim is to start forming local groups and then when adequate numbers exist to begin forming an institutional base (media and publishing, education, politics, the arts, foundations etc).
Good luck with that. Everyone should have a hobby, I guess.
ALL the institutions were non-liberal at the beginning of the 20th century.
ReplyDeleteNo, unfortunately not. We sometimes forget how far back liberalism goes. For instance, there was a major, radical wave of feminism that took place between about 1860 and 1940. Remember too that the 1800s were the heyday of classical liberalism, until it was challenged in the late 1800s by the newer social liberalism.
In Australia at this time you had protectionist Deakinite liberals up against the the free trade liberals - with the Labor Party about to burst onto the scene. Those were the three main political currents within society. They were joined soon after by the communists. There was no organised traditionalist movement to stand against any of this.
Everyone should have a hobby, I guess.
ReplyDeleteSee, this is the thing. There are so many types of political understanding floating around right now that end logically in passive defeat.
The thing about traditionalism is that it is an active, spirited kind of movement. The logic of a traditionalist politics is to build and grow.
See, this is the thing. There are so many types of political understanding floating around right now that end logically in passive defeat.
ReplyDeleteI'm of a fairly suspicious mind when looking at alternative left-liberal movements.
A lot of the MRA sphere is starting to sound like left-liberal propaganda.
It is completely defeatist and has the slight feel of reveling in the demise of the west that is too similar to leftists to ignore.
alternatives to left-liberalism
ReplyDeleteI mean.
No, unfortunately not. We sometimes forget how far back liberalism goes. For instance, there was a major, radical wave of feminism that took place between about 1860 and 1940. Remember too that the 1800s were the heyday of classical liberalism, until it was challenged in the late 1800s by the newer social liberalism.
ReplyDeleteIn Australia at this time you had protectionist Deakinite liberals up against the the free trade liberals - with the Labor Party about to burst onto the scene. Those were the three main political currents within society. They were joined soon after by the communists. There was no organised traditionalist movement to stand against any of this.
The presence of a few liberals in the institutions before the 1960s does NOT mean the institutions were liberal. In fact they were overwhelmingly conservative in outlook. Obviously the liberals didn't suddenly take control overnight; there was a period of transition between conservative control and liberal control.
Your comment here is akin to the liberals who attempt to deny liberal control of academia by pointing to one professor, somewhere, who is supposedly conservative, while ignoring the other 99% of the faculty who are liberal. In other words, you can point to some liberals in the pre-1960s era but the institutions were overwhelmingly run by conservatives.
As for the "classical liberalism" of the 1800s... that is exactly what is known today as conservatism or traditionalism. Is this really what you oppose? If you are against "1800s liberalism", exactly what are you in favor of? What kind of "traditionalism" are you talking about if you exclude everything that happened in the English-speaking world in the 1800s?
that is exactly what is known today as conservatism or traditionalism.
ReplyDeleteNo, we are not classical liberals.
he never specifically said that.
ReplyDeleteBut it is there nonetheless.
Thursday said...
ReplyDeleteBut it is there nonetheless.
I'm sure it must seem that way, especially if you repeat it to yourself over and over enough times.
That's how I feel with your comment.
ReplyDeleteRay Manta already covered what would have been my response to this comment. You opened the door to talking about technological change, but you are afraid of going through that door. I am not. You think technological development will reach some steady state before it starts affecting biology. I know you're wrong.
Your feelings will not change the reality of this situation. Accusing me of "death worship", whatever that is, will not change the reality of this situation.
Ray Manta already covered what would have been my response to this comment.
ReplyDeleteIt's funny how after bloviating about the uselessness of men in the modern world, he hobbled away like someone drop-kicked him in the balls after you said that the same is true for women. How dare you commit sacrilege against his goddesses! Everybody should know that women are the center of the universe!
You opened the door to talking about technological change, but you are afraid of going through that door. I am not.
My impression is that tradcons have little or no understanding of how technology impacts social change. Women currently "rule the roost" (and tradcons are correspondingly obsessed with them) mostly due to a confluence of technological and social factors. There's no reason to believe that will continue in the future. Vast improvements in automation, entertainment technologies, and bioengineering in the 21st century virtually guarantee this. Anybody who disbelieves this will have to explain why even primitive online porn is causing so much controversy.
I can't see how traditionalism can be a collectivist ideology. Collectivist ideologies want to replace the family with the state. They are always hostile to the family. Traditionalists want to strengthen the family at the expense of the state. That's surely the opposite of collectivism?
ReplyDeleteI can't see how traditionalism can be a collectivist ideology. Collectivist ideologies want to replace the family with the state. They are always hostile to the family. Traditionalists want to strengthen the family at the expense of the state. That's surely the opposite of collectivism?
ReplyDeleteIf you can. Imagine an ideology that isn't hostile to the family.
"If you can. Imagine an ideology that isn't hostile to the family."
ReplyDeleteThere are certainly no major political parties in the western world today that aren't effectively anti-family. It's got to the stage where government childcare can be sold to the voters as a family-friendly measure when in fact it's one of the most destructive anti-family measures imaginable.
I can't see how traditionalism can be a collectivist ideology.
ReplyDeleteWell, I wouldn't say that we had a "collectivist ideology". However, we do support collectives, such as families, churches, local communities, local businesses, schools, community organisations and, at a higher level, ethnies and nations.
Such collectives are important for the individual. Specifically they are what provide the individual with a social function, giving the individual a more important role in society.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtSOb_ee2a8
ReplyDeleteI HOPE YOU LIKE IT REDONKULAS.COM