Yes, All Men

According to Karen Straughan, Feminism was Never Not Rotten:

They sought, and received, the automatic right of mothers to custody of children after divorce, but did nothing to change the financial obligation of fathers to provide all material necessities to said children. 

They sought, and received, the right within marriage to hold and keep their own property and income untouchable by their husbands, but did nothing to change the legal obligation of husbands to financially support their wives, to pay their wives taxes, or to repay their wives debts.

They sought, and received, the right to vote, but did nothing to change the civic obligations of men toward the state, including military conscription, which had informed the primary justifications for universal male suffrage, nor did they campaign to impose any such obligations on women. 

While men were dying in their thousands to win the right to form a union and earn enough to support their wives and children, early feminists were campaigning for a woman’s right to take a man’s children away from him through separation or divorce, and still enjoy the same access to his wallet she’d become accustomed to in marriage. 

While men were dying in their millions to protect societies in which most men didn’t have the vote, early feminists were terrorizing and injuring innocent civilians, demanding votes for women.

I believe nothing to be above criticism, and there are few cows more sacred in protestant Christendom these days than feminism of any wave.   But I can't help but feel that Ms. Straughan might be being just a wee bit harsh here.  One can't blame feminists for agitating for women's right to vote, own property or have custody of children over whom they are the primary caregivers, after all.

Feminists knew what their interests were and were prepared to fight for them.  They haven't changed. Claire Berlinski, in a recent opinion piece in the American Interest, writes of the recent wave of sexual harassment allegations:

Women, I’m begging you: Think this through. We are fostering a climate in which men legitimately fear us, where their entire professional and personal lives can be casually destroyed by “secret lists” compiled by accusers they cannot confront, by rumors on the internet, by thrilled, breathless reporting denouncing one after another of them as a pig, often based only on the allegation that they did something all-too-human and none-too-criminal like making a lewd joke. Why would we even want men to be subject to such strenuous, arduous taboos against the display of their sexuality? These taboos, note carefully, resemble in non-trivial ways those that have long oppressed women. In a world with such arduous taboos about male purity and chastity, surely, it is rational for men to have as little to do with women as possible. What’s in this for us?

Claire's article is a good read, and kudos to her for speaking out against the moral panic. The problem she has, though, is that women have thought this through.  This is exactly what they want.  Some variation of "now men understand the fear that women live with all the time" is the stock response of women online to the capricious nature of some of the allegations, among those that are targeting genuinely degenerate behavior and egregious abuses of power.

Neither gender can claim real innocence here.  We were warned.  I recall reading feminist author Daphne Patai's Heterophobia all the way back in 1998, wherein the ideology behind the radical feminist take on sexual harassment and cavalier disregard for due process was laid out very explicitly, and the dangers of what we're now beginning to see made absolutely clear.  Patai was not alone. The now famous Christina Hoff Sommers and Camille Paglia said many of the same things in books also written back in the 1990s.

None of this was accidental.  Feminism wanted to make rape and sexual harassment allegations into a club that they could hold above the heads of all men, as just desserts for how they believed and rationalized that all men held rape and sexual harassment themselves as clubs above women's heads. I would agree with Straughn and Berlinski's criticisms of the ethics, or lack thereof, in abusing the concepts of rape and sexual harassment in this way.  But I also can't help but think that I don't really blame the feminists either.  As I said, feminists know what their interests were and were prepared to fight for them.

Nonfeminist men and women need to complain about that less and learn from that more.

The burdens that men of the lower classes bore as described by Karen Straughan and Warren Farrell in his seminal work The Myth of Male Power were and are certainly unjust.  But as I've argued elsewhere, is it honest or accurate to blame the feminists for those burdens?  They should not be let off the hook for their actions, of course.  But neither should they bear the brunt of the blame for what their critics and opponents have done and failed to do.

To read antifeminist material these days, you'd think that feminism was this semi divine force, a power of nature beyond the reach of us mere mortals that has recently turned hostile towards the male of the species and afflicts him with woes of all kinds. To the extent that this is true, antifeminist propaganda would lead you to think that human agency and choices made by flesh and blood people has never had anything to do with it all. Reminiscent of neoliberal propaganda in the 1990s surrounding globalization, a political construct is recast as something akin to a law of nature, irresistible as it guarantees its own fidelity at all times. Best not to argue or try to resist, but rather to simply accept and adjust to the new reality as best you can.

Nonsense.  We have to start talking about male (and non feminist female) complicity in the excesses of feminism. Failing to speak out against something you think to be wrong helps to enable it, especially when it becomes a culturally ingrained habit among the general populace.  Feminists own no trademark on the concepts of organizing, activism and lobbying for the changes they desire.

By male (and non feminist female) complicity, I don't mean simply the odd male feminist sympathizer. I mean a very systemic hand-in-glove ongoing support for and enabling of feminist activism on part of powerful social and political institutions that were predominantly, sometimes exclusively, male in the composition of their executive and governance bodies, at least at the time the reforms in question were enacted.

Predominantly male legislative bodies passed laws that gave mothers primary custody and levied onerous alimony requirements on divorced men. Male governments and heads of state made decisions about how and when to go to war and who to conscript for said wars. Laws that allow men to face civil or even legal repercussions for polite civil greetings towards women in the workplace, or consensual sex that was subsequently regretted the next day were similarly passed by predominantly male governing bodies. Male bashing in media - corporations whose shareholders and upper management were, probably still are at least majority male. Women's studies courses and academic speech codes enacted by male deans and boards of governors in academia. I could go on, but I think you get the point.

In the face of ongoing feminist absurdity, a reasonable yet no-nonsense pushback from the male population and female sympathizers remains almost nonexistent. This is puzzling because, as Ms. Straughan's article points out, organizing a workplace and going on strike was a potentially fatal endeavor for working men up to the passage of the Wagner act in the New Deal era. Yet this did not stop many more strikes from occurring than we're seeing today. Defeat of the male working class manifests across multiple vectors. Civil rights workers were similarly taking their lives into their hands well into the postwar era, trying to register poor minorities to vote. 

To my knowledge, nobody has ever been killed for being an MRA. Doxxing and dismissal from employment is about as bad as they've gotten it to the best of my knowledge.  As far as systems of power go, western feminism, though contemptible in endless numbers of ways, is relatively mild. I won't end up in a gulag or being machete'd or stoned to death for criticizing feminism, like I would have been for criticizing the regime in a communist, military junta or Islamist dictatorship. Yet there's an ongoing paralyzing unwillingness on part of men to stand up for themselves vis-a-vis radical women. Why?

There are many explanations.  That women control access to sex and that men capitulate for fear of being denied sex.  As laughable and stupid as the most absurd plank of gender feminism.  The entire purpose of what's been called feminism for the last century and a half has been to reduce male sex with women to a vanishing point, though they'll never admit this.  To fail to resist for fear of losing precisely what you will lose if you don't resist is the definition of cowardly foolishness.  Other explanations are that we evolved to instinctually place a greater premium on female life, as the bearers of future generations, or that being raised by mothers primarily leads to a subconscious association of women with moral authority.  Perhaps it is being raised with chivalrous attitudes, internalization of feminist narratives of male guilt and so on.

Any or all of these may be true.  But ultimately they're no excuse.  With awareness comes responsibility.  Instinct and upbringing are hard (at first) to go against.  That's what collective support and consciousness raising are for.  

In the case of feminism, the benefits of men showing collective backbone go beyond simply curbing misandrist nonsense in the public square.  That women are naturally more attracted to men with spine enough to at least stand up to them is not exactly a well kept secret.  This simple insight is pretty much the basis of a lot of redpill and PUA game theory. I'll not be the first to hypothesize that the juvenile, stupid and standoffish elements of feminism are largely a collective "shit test" aimed at forcing men to actually stand up and speak out against it.  A man who cannot stand up to his woman cannot stand up for his woman, and not surprisingly few women actually find that attractive.  More than one woman has actually explained that to me in exactly those terms.

I do not let feminists and their numerous excesses off the hook. This isn't about victim blaming. But there needs to be more acknowledgement in MRM and antifeminist circles of male complicity in even the worst excesses of feminism. Andrea Dworkin was married in life, as is Clementine Ford married with children today, last time I checked. So what does that tell you? It does not reflect well on us men, that is for certain.

Radical feminist ideologues of that nature were a tiny minority of the population in the 60s and 70s when their influence peaked, and have never been anything approaching a majority of the population since. They won and they continue to win because they consistently face little or no opposition that's organized and strategizes. I find it utterly astounding that so neurotic and screwed up a segment of the population has managed to dictate gender and sexual mores to whole populations.

There simply has to be a taking of ownership on part of men, individually and collectively, for their role in enabling or at least failing to speak out against the excesses of feminism. In the age of social media, it should be easier now than ever for men and sympathetic women to organize and begin exerting pressure in a more reasonable direction as far as gender politics goes. I can't believe that it can't be done when I look back on historical revolutions, the formation of the industrial unions, civil rights and the end of segregation and apartheid, the fall of communism and see numerous instances of very corrupt, unjust and autocratic systems of power gradually yielding to sustained populist pressures. 

It's almost as if the bulk of the population is asking permission of feminists to dissent and criticize, or are simply content to navel gaze and wait for the radfems to come to their senses on their own. We'll be waiting a damn long time the way things are going.  

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Beyond Feminist vs. MRA

Opinion: The Alt-Left should be neither feminist nor for men's rights. It should be for good relationships between the sexes.

It's a familiar story for anyone who's been online for any length of time. A discussion starts over a gender or feminism related topic.  There've been plenty of these lately since the Harvey Weinstein sexual harassment scandal broke in Hollywood and the me too hashtag campaign, so there's no shortage of examples to choose from.  There's nothing unique about these conversations, however.  They've been taking place on social media since Facebook and Twitter first launched, and were commonplace on bulletin boards long before anyone knew what a comments section was.  The basic conversation hasn't changed much in the decades since Al Gore invented the internet. <grin>  A typical conversation will go something like this.

Feminist: Men rape and harass women. <subtext> That's why men suck and women should reject them.

MRA: But not all men.  <subtext> But not me.  That should give me an advantage in the mating game with women, should it not?

Feminist: But only men.  Plus patriarchy, power, privilege, rape culture, etc. <subtext> Not so fast, buster!  You're part of the segment of the population that does the most rape and who benefits from rape, and are therefore not so innocent as you'd like to believe.  And therefore suck no less and are no less deserving of rejection.

MRA: But what about false accusations? What about women who sexually assault men? <subtext> This nullifies the advantage you claimed in your previous statement.  Therefore, women should more readily accept and sleep with us.  I mean me!

It's never long before a conversation like this breaks down, and school yard level copypasta insults break out.  "Boo hoo!  Teh poor menz!" "Enjoy your cats!" So on and so on.  It'll inevitably come down to one or both sides being ugly, living in their parent's basements and being unable to get laid. This is due to the fact that the surface conversation is never nearly as important as the subtext that continually underlies conflicts over gender theory and its real world implications.

The unstated but nonetheless omnipresent axioms that are revealed when any kind of deconstructive analysis is applied to such discussions are that male power is expressed through sexual conquest of the female, and that female power is expressed through sexual rejection of the male.  All else is ancillary.  Which is largely why pro and anti feminists talk past one another and at one another far, far more than with one another.  The legitimate issues raised by either side fall by the wayside because they're obviously being weaponized to one or the other of those two ultimate effects.  The real purpose for bringing up rape, harassment, divorce, child support or any other issue, at least in online discussion, is to lower the value of one gender relative to the other, for the ultimate purpose of making sex either easier (in favor of men) or harder (in favor of women) to attain.

There's just one problem with this paradigm, however.  It doesn't work.  It's not making anyone happy.  It's based in a glaringly flawed assessment of human nature, and is much more rooted in ego than in reason or human empathy.  Men are not going to be rejected into sympathizing with women's concerns.  They go their own way instead, doubtlessly with the intent of bringing those pesky, uppity women to heel.  No dice: women are angrier now than ever.  Who'd have guessed?  The result is that heterosexual activity has been driven into a kind of moral black market, wherein most people actually do it at some point or another, but also have to conceal it, rationalize it or engage in it under some kind of false pretenses much of the time to avoid social censure. "An Ashtray With a no Smoking Sign," as Slavoj Zizek recently described the emerging rules of sexuality.  No wonder bad behavior abounds.

It's time to smarten up, people.  Get out of the grade school mentality.  Let's at least try and hit puberty, okay internet?  Human nature is not especially complicated.  We tend to simmer down when we feel that our concerns are being heard and taken somewhat seriously, even if disagreed with in some ways.  The natural response of people when faced with a lecturing, condescending tone is to get defensive, not to open one's heart or mind.  This is true however legitimate the surface grievance actually is or is not.  Which isn't to say you accept bullshit uncontested.  Rather, let your assessment of what's bullshit and what isn't depend on honest appraisal, which you can't get without listening and understanding.

Whatever your claim to victimhood, past or present, however poorly you were treated as a child or in your past relationships, other people, even the opposite sex, will not accept your shitty and abusive behavior. Not indefinitely, at any rate.  However much you feel entitled to it.  Two wrongs don't make a right.  This is something we feel instinctively, if not intellectually.  It stops mattering who started it, or who inflicted or suffered the greater suffering after a point.  Neither women nor men will accept the other's claim to morally superior status based on previous victimhood and grievance, even if real.  

It is easy to say that we should set our fragile egos aside and listen seriously to the other side when they lay out their grievances and issues.  This is true.  But when the other side does not expect this of themselves, even the most legitimate gripe becomes tainted by the ultimately self-serving purpose to which it is put.  The kinds of behavior displayed by feminists and MRAs alike in most internet discussions between the two would be emotionally abusive were they done in real life, and increasingly these kinds of relationship dynamics are spilling out of cyberspace and into the real world.  It is no wonder that growing numbers of people, especially the young, are eschewing relationships with the opposite sex all together, and claiming to be happier doing so.

And that's fine for some individuals.  If you're happier going it alone, and I think some people are naturally disposed this way, have at it.  But that'll be a disaster for society as a whole.  Fewer lasting successful marriages and long term relationships (LTRs) are poised to cause all kinds of problems down the road.  Demographic and economic dependency ratios are bound to get worse, and socially destabilizing levels of mass immigration will need to be employed to compensate for falling birth rates.   Frustrated romantic and sexual drives will find expression in other, usually more antisocial ways, from mounting political or religious extremism to mental health problems and increased cynicism.  Even many, though not all, of those who claim to be happier being single are not so much once you scratch the surface. A certain regret often, though not always, presents itself. And why not? Humans were not hardwired to live alone and not pass on their genes to future generations. A society losing its capacity for love and empathy is not one we should aspire to be a part of.  

So here's a proposal.  The alt-left should be neither feminist nor MRA.  Not exclusively. We should be instead for healthy and good relationship dynamics, be they platonic, romantic or erotic.  We should listen to the concerns of both sides and sort the valid and legitimate grievances from the entitled whining and vapid boasting.  It should not be a concern of the alt-left which of the two has the more legitimate grievances and is therefore more deserving.  Ten years and God knows how many flame wars into the social media age later, we should know by now that ideological partisanship and competitive victimhood isn't actually helping anybody. It's driving a spiral of mutual frustration that is causing increased polarization and extremism. 

Even if one gender really does have it worse than the other by a wide margin, our approach should be one of mutual listening and empathy, not one of grievance and vengeance.  This is not to say that we can't prioritize some issues over others or that wrongdoers can't be called out and exposed to such sanction and censure as their actions warrant. But it should never be an ego stroking exercise.  Even if you've had it worse or your sex or gender has been on the receiving end of injustice.  The world doesn't owe you anything, whatever you may think.  Success, be it alone or in partnership, derives from responsibility, not entitlement.

So if you're single or attached, male or female, here are some things you can do vis-a-vis the opposite sex to improve the situation.  And in case you are wondering, this is over twenty years of relationship success (I've been with my present wife since 1995) and a decade of every mistake imaginable leading up to it, talking.  There's much I learned the hard way:

• Listen.  Nothing is more effective at defusing anger.
• Do not stereotype the opposite sex unironically or for non-comedic purposes.
• Stop with the vain, stupid games. Crushing some young man or woman's confidence in him/herself won't bring down the patriarchy or gynocentrism, and it doesn't make you strong or independent.  It makes you an asshole, be you male or female. 
• Do not participate in discussions that tend to descend into pissing contests of competitive victimhood, and clearly state this.  Ask instead, "what do you want?"  That's a powerful question that can very effectively shut down entitled whiners with weaponized grievances.
• You are owed nothing.  Approach all relationships with the opposite sex, or with anyone, with that in mind.  This is not to say that you should tolerate shit and abuse. Don't. But don't expect to be put on a pedestal either.
• Do not have as an expectation from an ideal partner a trait you do not have or can not match.  Half of our problems stem from 6's thinking they're actually good matches for 10's, so to speak. Do not expect a prince if you're not a princess, or vice versa.  And assess yourself honestly to save a lot of trouble.
• Live a good life outside of a relationship context.  This signifies that you will not be dead weight but instead a net asset in other people's lives.  No one wants a needy dependent.
• Trust must come before any kind of relationship intimacy, be it physical or emotional.  Always. Take it upon yourself to earn rather than demand trust.  Decide at what point your efforts are in vain and when to move on.
• Do not expect from a relationship partner anything that you can do for yourself.  Relationship success thrives best when free of contrived obligations and expectations.  Otherwise resentments creep in and do damage.
• Do not be afraid to point out the <subtextual> elements and their underlying axioms (see above for examples) in gendered discussions, but do so only if the person you're discussing things with becomes obstinate, obtuse or clearly hostile.  The underlying pettiness and stupidity become readily apparent when brought to light.
• Likewise, if need be, remind people that two wrongs don't make a right.  Plus, no man was ever rejected, nagged, scolded or castrated into liking and respecting women.  No woman was ever convinced by rational argument or else likewise rejected, scolded or shamed into liking men.  People don't work that way.  Don't hesitate to point this out.
• Make your disdain for passive aggressiveness clear, if need be.
• If people insist on dominating conversations with socially destabilizing displays of rudeness, sarcasm or hostility, do not be afraid to call them out on it and exclude them from further social activities.  If you moderate or administer an online or social media space, you have a special responsibility here.  Trolls thrive on the emotionally destabilizing effect that their refusal to be decent and reasonable people has.  Do not tolerate it and ban them at once.
• Admit that the opposite sex doesn't always have it easy.  Try to replace resentment with walking in the other man or woman's shoes, as the case may be. This isn't to say it's equally bad on both sides, all the time.  Occasionally people will need to be told to stop whining.
• Do not attribute to malice what can be attributed to clumsiness or ignorance without evidence. This is especially true with flirtation, flattery or the like.

And above all ...

• Get the f**k off the internet every once and awhile.  Yeah, I know.  It's hard.  But there are numerous dynamics that contribute to the internet being a relatively uncivil place where your faith in humanity can easily go to die.  Meet people in the real world from time to time.  They're usually (though not always) not what they appear to be when seen as just a social media profile.

So that in mind, get out there and see the world, dear reader!

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Why I am not an MRA.

Why I am not an Intersectional Feminist.

Why I am not an MRA

Doesn't it make you swoon?

I know I'm going to catch flak for this, but I don't care much for the men's rights movement. I do think they make good points - I've read Warren Farrell for example and found his work quite profound. In fact, it really takes a wrecking ball to this idea that men have conspired to make the world a wonderful place at the expense of women. You can't reasonably believe that after reading Farrell's works.

Why I don't really relate to the MRM is rooted in my overarching distrust of identity politics. I do think that there's all kinds of room to criticize the excesses of feminism, and some points made by the MRM are valuable in that regard.  Decades of ideological protectionism has produced a very real feminist echo chamber with next to no external checks on its claims.  The MRM can by helpful in remedying that.  The MRM also brings our attention to real issues that men are confronted with.  Glaring disadvantage (to varying degrees depending on jurisdiction) in divorce settlements and child custody arrangements being the most obvious example. 

The feminist demonization of male heterosexuality; this presumption underlying much of feminist theory that male sexual attraction towards women is somehow demeaning and objectifying of women is something else that needs to be challenged and the present taboo against disagreeing with feminism desperately needs to be broken here.  The MRM can help in that regard.  The equation of compliments and polite civil greetings on part of men towards women with harassment, objectification or even oppression, commonly seen on social media, is a manifestation of this.  If taken at all seriously, especially in any kind of public policy context, this kind of thinking could effectively close the door on prospects for male-female encounters of all but the most institutional kind. 

The ever expanding definition of rape, and the ever narrowing definitions of consent, and the increasingly onerous requirements for obtaining legal consent - an express verbal "yes" given for every touch, kiss or caress, and even that be nullified if there's any alcohol or mental illness or any factor that could in the slightest call into question the strict legal capacity to give consent, constitute another manifestation of this.  The end game here, I suspect, is to make legal intercourse, for all intents and purposes, impossible for men.

Although most feminists profess to disagree in principle with the notion that all things "boy meets girl" are inherently sexist or oppressive - and may even trot out their own relationship as proof of this, the restrictions imposed on gender dynamics by these kinds of very popular demands made by very widely circulated and credible media outlets that represent the mainstream of liberal opinion on gender issues, would make establishing even platonic, let along erotic relationships extremely difficult.  That many feminists choose to make exceptions to their own rules for themselves and the men they get the D from should not be taken as proof of feminism's flexibility and open mindedness.  It should be taken as proof of moral hypocrisy on part of the feminists so doing, and a tacit admission on their part that their system of sexual morality and conduct is no more reasonable and in alignment with human nature than that of the religious conservatives they so smugly see themselves as superior to. 

Compound that with inundation of  feminist perspectives casting heterosexual relationships in so consistently negative a light; as being about nothing other than unequal distribution of domestic labor, unequal pay, riven with male insecurity and unreasonable male behaviors contrasted to the relief women are expected to seek and experience in all-female spaces, as characterized by universally poor male sexual performance and an expectation of female preference for marital celibacy, dildos, lesbianism, asexuality, promiscuity, anything other than relational intimacy - all hermetically sealed by a propensity to yell "fragile male ego" at any dissention from any of the above on part of men - as if this kind of petty weaponized rejection is something we should just sit back and relish, and feminist gender dynamics become a mortal threat to healthy heterosexual relationships, even if it turns out to be death by a thousand cuts rather than a swift beheading. 

A strong MRM could be a countervailing force for reason and love in gender relations.  On the other hand, groups like MGTOW could just up the ante and make things worse rather than better.  Don't get me wrong: you, dear reader, be you male or female, have every right as far as I'm concerned to live your life as you see fit, and if that involves not having a significant other of the opposite sex, good luck to you.  I once wanted an unattached life myself.  May you succeed where I failed.  But to advocate widespread rejection of the opposite sex, as feminism often implicitly and, in the case of separatist feminism, explicitly does, and MGTOW likewise does, is to advocate for the infliction of protracted neurosis and frustration culminating in a demographic holocaust upon whichever population is to embrace this as a form of gender based political activism.  It would inflict incalculable and irreparable damage on the psychological fabric of such a society.

But even a less strident form of male activism than MGTOW could end up becoming a gender flipped version of the worst aspects of feminism.  I've noticed that in every debate I've ever read between feminists and MRAs - though flame war is a better description in just about ever case, since debate implies a reasoned exchange of views and that's most definitely not what happens - the exchange always boils down to each side saying to the other, "you're just ugly and can't get laid" - with cats and mother's basements figuring in there somehow. Inevitably, one side resigns in frustration over the strident unreasonableness of the other, and both remain more convinced than ever that the opposite sex is hopelessly screwed up.  There's not much of a future in this.

Taken to their logical conclusions, demands upon heterosexual relationships would end up more closely resembling shari'a law than they would anything previous generations of liberal feminists struggled and fought for.

Wait a minute ...

Of course,  feminism - in its more reasonable forms, is still needed to protect and safeguard the rights of women. Life is certainly not all wine and roses for all women at all times, and men are not blameless. This is especially true in communities where, for religious reasons, women still very much are second class citizens.  This is what I find both astounding and disturbing about What looks like an alliance of feminists and Islamists, particularly in opposition to the Trump presidency.  While I don't condone the more boorish things Trump has said about women, you can't compare the danger posed to women by macho locker room bluster with the danger posed to women by shari'a law.  Given the dour attitudes that both feminists and Islamists appear to have towards free and fun expression of happiness and attraction between the sexes, however, I can see the kinship the two might have with one another, though from where I sit, it promises to be a stormy relationship.

What I worry about regarding the MRM, though, is its own potential to become a kind of rank gender partisanship. That "Male good female bad" thinking could, and does, easily arise from it.

Because that, in its own way, is exactly what happened to feminism. What began as being "just about equality" or just about "the same treatment of women as for men" has become a blinding and fanatical form of gender partisanship. Motivated by dogmatic adherence to feminism, whole cohorts of young women (and their male sympathizers) have circled the wagons and harnessed collective groupthink to hermetically seal themselves away from any kind of criticism or dissent. Driven by a sense of universal and historical mission, these women regard themselves as quite entitled to ceaselessly make unilateral demands of men with no countervailing concessions, tar all men with collective responsibility and guilt by association for the very real crimes and misdeeds of some men, and to effectively kill any prospect for intimacy and trust between the sexes by making militant confrontation the permanent and universal norm for gender relations. Backed by unilateral academic and media support and an arsenal of canned responses and copy pasta with which to respond to nay-sayers, the impact that this has had on gender dynamics is nothing short of devastating.

As an antidote to this, we need to step back from identity politics. We don't need a male version of the same thing. Given what we should now know about ideological and identitarian polarization, feminism and the MRM will most likely feed off one another and each further radicalize in response to the other. This is certainly what I've seen in every single exchange between MRMs and feminists that I've ever seen. If that process becomes normalized, it could well mean the death of heterosexual love in its entirety. The prospect of this worries me greatly. I really hope people of both (yes, both) genders can learn to take a step back from their attachments to gender ideology and start reasoning honestly about these kinds of issues.

Thinking Outside the Vox

Way back in the halcyon days of 2010, when hope and change were still things in the democratic party, blogger Julian Sanchez used the term epistemic closure to describe the crisis he saw on the political right in those days.  Long story short, epistemic closure refers to the insulation of both a belief system and the media built up around that belief system against any further knowledge, ideas or lines of reasoning.  Naysayers and dissenters are best ignored alltogether, or tarred by association with the enemy - whoever they are.  But it goes deeper than that: once an ideological system is firmly commited to, lines of thought that even potentially threaten it simply can't be given even the slightest legitimacy.  The rapidity with which the USSR unravelled after glasnost was introduced illustrates the risks invovled.

Hence epistemic closure.  For the American conservatives, the Reagan Era only really ended when our favorite reality T.V star won bigly over the GOP establishment.  Up until then, there was nothing a tax cut couldn't fix and the democrats were forever coming to take everybody's guns away.  Argue with them about any of it, and you'd had the wool pulled over your eyes personally by Obama, Hillary or Nancy Pelosi, who were nothing but Marxists out to destroy all things American.

When Sanchez described this phenomina on the right, he saw little comparison on the left in 2010.   As perhaps a foreshadowing of what was just around the corner, he cited liberal obsessions with racism as being the sole motivation of the tea party as the closest that the left, such as it was, came to its own brand of epistemic closure.

He would not have to wait long for the leftist equivalent to epistemic closure.  Allow me to explain.  Or perhaps I should say, allow me to voxsplain:

One of the most striking examples of this epistemic closure among liberal writers are their forays into “explanatory journalism.” The idea that many people might like clear, smart explanations of what’s going on in the news certainly has merit. But the tricky thing with “explaining” the news is that in order to do so fairly, you have to be able to do the mental exercise of detaching your ideological priors from just factually explaining what is going on. Of course, as non-liberal readers of the press have long been well aware, this has always been a problem for most journalists. And yet, the most prominent “explanatory journalism” venture has been strikingly bad at actually explaining things in a non-biased way. 

I am, of course, talking about Vox, the hot new venture of liberal wonkblogger extraordinaire Ezra Klein. It was already a bad sign that his starting lineup was mostly made up of ideological liberals. And a couple months in, it’s clear that much of what passes for “explanation” on Vox is really partisan commentary in question-and-answer disguise.

The article also mentions the fact that most "voxsplainers" - the tired pontification of liberal canards to the ignorant masses as if they've never heard it before - cannot pass Brian Caplan's Ideological Turing Test, defined as the ability to convincingly and authentically relay their ideological opponent's position on the relevant issues.

Perhaps the most quintessential Voxsplaining I've yet encountered is Aja Romano's protracted voxplanation of How the Alt-Right's Sexism Lures Men into White Supremacy.  It's what you'd expect:

In many alt-right communities, men are encouraged to view women as sexual and/or political targets that men must dominate. The men in these communities don’t see themselves as sexist; they see themselves as fighting against their own emasculation and sexual repression at the hands of strident feminists. 

So called "manosphere" concepts are then used as a kind of gateway drug to interest socially isolated young men deeper into an esoteric politics of crypto fascism and white supremacy.

Well, duh!

The alt-right and the manosphere are full of what the internet nowadays calls cancer - content that is light on intellectual content and heavy on cringe.  But the deeper point here can be summed up in an old African proverb that warns that if you don't initiate your young men into the tribe, they'll eventually come back and burn your village down.  Experts on gang, cult and extremist recruitment tactics have long understood this.  Alienated young men with no roots in the community and little prospect for a good life are easy marks.  Ironic then that the most strident on the alt-right, and their Islamic Jihadist nemesis, are ultimately drawn from the same ranks of humanity.  Ironic, but hardly without precedent.

Absent from Romano's analysis of the Alt-Right and its origins is any prescription of actually countering this that might actually reduce the propensity of young men to be drawn to extremism.  Targets are described as being sexually frustrated and often raised by feminist single moms, and the lure of being a real man as opposed to being weak and emasculated is what's used to draw them in.  The only difference between "Sieg Heil" and "Allahu Akbar" in this case could well be whichever one gets to them first, and what color their skin is.

The article chides the alt-right for offering alienated young men no real advice for dealing with loneliness, emotional issues and relationship difficulties and instead simply scapegoating independent women and minorities for their personal problems.  While this is a fair criticism, it's one that could as easily be leveled against Vox, and its countless clones across the internet.  Apart from scolding young white men for their racism and sexism, what is the mainstream left really offering them by way of an alternative?

Especially since the Vox article traces the history of the Alt-Right through Donald Trump's victory, through the Brexit vote and back to the GamerGate online movement, and to the various segments of the "manosphere" that existed prior to that.  The numbers and influence of these angry white dudes - the rank-and-file, or mooks - to use online video game terminology - of the forces of oppression only grew, despite all of the efforts made by Vox, Slate, Salon, Everyday Feminism, Occupy Democrats, Jezebel, The Mary Sue and other outlets of enlightened progressivism to tell them how very, very sexist, racist and fascist they were being all the while.  In fact, how very Nazi they had always been simply by virtue of being white males.

And now they're surprised when these same angry young dudes turn out to accept and embrace an ideology that actually promotes racism, misogyny and fascism.  They're surprised that the generation of young men these single feminist mothers raised have become exactly what single feminist women have been telling them they were since they were old enough to pluck letters off a computer screen: racist, misogynist and fascist.

Who would have guessed?

That, folks, is what epistemic closure on the left looks like.

Young white males are quite within their rights to reject the online left's obsessive and compulsive idealization of women and minorities.  They are well within their rights to reject the ceaseless narrative of white male "power" and "privilege," especially when it comes from credentialed academics and pundits who have way more power and privilege than many of these young white dudes will ever have.

They are not entitled to have the women to whom they're attracted reciprocate that attraction.  That much is true.  But they are entitled to not have their natural instinctive urges tarred as misogyny, entitlement and objectification.  They are entitled to pursue love in a culture in which all the weight of mass society is not behind the demonization of male sexuality and the equation of female rejection of men with female power and independence.  And they sure as hell are entitled to not have to function in a society that brands their own similar rejection of women (or men passing themselves off as women) to whom they're not attracted as being misogyny, "fatphobia" or "transphobia."

Alternative online communities are not attacking "social justice warriors" because they're all - to the last, racist, mysogynistic and otherwise deplorable.  People of all descriptions object to the SJW's self righteousness, their hypocrisy, their arrogance and their propensity to milk privilege theory and "power plus prejudice" rationalizations for all the self serving double standards and get-out-of-jail free cards they're worth.  This, it would seem, is the real gateway drug to bona-fide fascism, racism and misogyny if indeed there ever was one.  And that should concern us all.

Fighting the alt-right cannot be done by further pontificating to angry white dudes on how very deplorable their anger, their whiteness and their dudeness is.  Perhaps the wisdom of Lao-Tsu could be of help to us - and the wisdom he conveyed in The Tao Te Ching, not The Art of War.  Sometimes the way to victory is by not fighting, but by offering an olive branch; membership in the tribe before the village gets burned down.

The mainstream leftist media shows at best a mixed inclination to do this.  Perhaps the real antidote to the alternative right is an alternative left.  One that might think that full employment, maybe even a job guarantee, might be a more effective way to get young men out of their parent's basements than yet another lecture on girl power would be.  One that has not yet succumbed to epistemic closure and is thus able to think outside the Vox.

The Other Red Pill: Engendered Failure

In 1993, Warren Farrell, Ph.D. exposed us to many poignant truths about the reality of being male in America at the time.  Among them are:

• 94 percent of occupational deaths occur to men.
• Every workday hour, one construction worker in the US loses his life
• Men have been the overwhelming majority of the cannon fodder in every major war ever waged.
• Most successful suicides are male, and unemployed males commit suicide at twice the rate of their employed brethren.
• 96% of the adult homeless in San Francisco are male.  The national median at the time of writing was 85%.

And more besides.  Things have not improved either.  Not for most men anyway.  Eighty percent of job losses in the 2007 to 2009 time span were male.  This led to the coining of the term "mancession", which did not end until 2015, according to some sources.  Except for black males, which must doubtlessly be the fault of white privilege.  

Some men have done quite well through it all, however.  Which ones?   Probably not the ones reading this, despite what the feminists are no doubt telling them about their male privilege.  Which all men have, regardless of race, sexual orientation or physical ability.  Or, you know, anything else that might impact social inequality.  If you're still confused, go and take a cl ... I mean course on it.  The important thing is that men as a cl ... as a group supposedly have all the power and women have none.

And the statistics bear that out, as any woman will tell you.  Women still suffer from a very real wage and wealth gap compared to men.  Which can only be explained by men, all men, hording all the money to themselves.  But not evenly.  White men, quite naturally, have the most.  Even the homeless white men referenced above?  Well, yes I suppose.  The historical reality, after all, is that blacks were slaves and were discriminated against in the Jim Crow era while whites were not.  That's the only real explanation open to us, since race and gender are the only social axes upon which wealth and power are distributed.  So all white males benefited, and benefited equally.  Or so the best social commentators of our time will tell us.  The ones who graduated at the top of their cl ... I mean, got the best marks while in college.

The Myth of Male Power was a book not lacking in power.  It quite effectively takes a wrecking ball to notions popular at the time of its writing, and still popular today, that men have gone and made everything wonderful for themselves at the expense of all women.  Which needed to be said.  It apparently still does need to be said, and even I've said it.  But not nearly as well as Dr. Farrell said it.  In some respects, The Myth of Male Power is in a cl ... a category by itself.

Men continue to be the disposable sex, and growing numbers of men continue to be mad about it.  And so they should be.  Though the mancession is over, most men are finding job prospects limited and wages stagnant.  If you take the "red pill" and go into the online "manosphere", you will find that feminism has been responsible for most of men's woes over the years.  We can only guess that all of those military and workplace fatalities and the economic struggles that working cl ... I mean just men face are due to feminism also.  Even though feminism is scarcely more than two hundred years old and men have been dying in wars and working in drudgery for a lot longer than that.  

And I don't blame the manosphere types.  They do have legitimate gripes with feminism.  No, really.  They do.  Because many feminists have been blaming all men, at least collectively, for their own struggles, which are sometimes different but quite frequently look the same as well.  Lagging wages, declining opportunities, all too frequently outright poverty.  Whose fault could all of this be?  After all, corporate profits are up again.  Who could be making it if not white men and their centuries of privilege?  It's not like there's any other cl ... I mean category of people who could be benefiting at the expense of women?

Well that's obviously preposterous, and you'll learn that quite quickly the deeper into the underworld of the internet you go.  You'll find that it goes beyond feminism.  The deeper problem is "cultural Marxism."  Or should I say, (((cultural Marxism))).   You see, this "Marxism" has to do with this guy in the 19th century who must have figured that white western civilization was a bad, BAD thing because it oppressed and colonized women and people of color.  And what's funny about it is that if you go to college and take a cl ... course on critical theory, for example, or women's or black studies, they will indeed teach you that those terrible things did happen.  And the only reason they happened was because racism and sexism.  For the benefit of white males, just for being white males!  After all, it's not like there's any other way that any other cl ... group of people could have benefited from the dispossession of indigenous people and African slavery.  

Or so the cultural Marxist colleges will teach you.  But it's all a lie, don't you know?  A (((lie!)))  Any fool worth his salt knows that white males are struggling to get by these days.  Well, most white males, anyway.  The real blame lies with the Jews, or so I've read, because I can't imagine any other cl ... category of people who might benefit from stagnant wages and unemployment among the white male working cl ...

One other thing that I've run into with all of this study of the politics of race, gender, culture and oppression.  And that's this idea of linguistic reclaimation -  a once dirty, derogatory or forbidden word being brought back into acceptable use by the communities that experienced oppression under that word, or perhaps by the absence of that word.

Right off hand, I'd say there's one word that people of all races, genders and sexual orientations have been far too afraid to say for far too long now, and our racial and sexual politics have been distorted almost beyond reason and recognition as a result.  The first task of the Alt-Left should be to reclaim that word.

A good place to start might be to take a look at what that Marx guy (Karl, not Groucho, in case you were wondering) really had to say.