Gynocentrism

Before the Isla Vista Killings of four men and two women committed by Elliot Rodger in 2014, he uploaded monologs to YouTube, leading to the usual speculation on his motives. In this case, the revelations that he was an "incel" (involuntary-celibate) and of his comments regarding women led many to #YesAllWomen, a hashtag meant to express that all women fear misogynistic violence. It was based on a narrative that Elliot Rodger was a Men's Rights Activist motivated by angry, misogynistic conspiracy theories.

But Rodger wasn't an MRA, his rants targeted men as well, and the majority of his victims were male. There's some controversy as to who exactly started the rumor of Rodger's connection to the MRM, but it spread, repeated as late as the Summer of 2016, the Second Current Year. I personally reviewed all of his YouTube subscriptions at the time and again this year. Not only were there no Men's Rights channels, but I couldn't even find a channel connecting him to either Feminism or the broader Manosphere. He did make some posts in an anti-PUA (Pick-up-artist) group, but, given that these groups are specifically dedicated to the percieved misogyny of pickup artistry ("game"), that doesn't mesh with the misogyny theory. To be charitible, we might assume (correctly, I'd guess) that the majority of people who retweeted on #YesAllWomen had the purest of intentions. At the same time, no movement is a monolith, and there was a case to be made that labelling Elliot Rodger an MRA was no innocent lapse in judgment. After all, the gender war online did not begin in 2014. Both sides can list a litany of mined quotes, vitriol, harassment, doxxes, and dirty tricks that we'll call "discourse," if only to avoid getting censored, swatted, called mean names, or whatever sometimes-petty-sometimes-draconian horror the internet has in store this hour.

Alison Tieman, founder of a popular men's advocacy group called the "Honey Badgers," painted a stark picture of the birth of the YesAllWomen hashtag: "They're stepping over the bodies of Rodgers' male victims to hold the females up like ghoullish trophies."

Let's set this on a broader stage: the new "poster child" of male-on-female violence, an example meant to illustrate how a member of one class (Rodger as male) is prone to perpetrating violence against members of another class (women) due to a variety of factors pertaining to each parties' membership of their respective classes by linking Rodger's female-targeted gendered rhetoric to his female victims while neglecting to link his male-targeted gendered rhetoric to his male victims while linking gendered PUA rhetoric to Anti-PUA's to the broader Manosphere to attribute Rodger's views to those who advocate for men and boys. Are you dizzy yet? In other words, the issue got stuffed into a one-sided gender narrative it had no business in, then got shackled to two claims: that women are under siege, and it's men doing the sieging. This general perspective is widely shared, and skepticism toward it is met with hostility. But, in light of the basic facts highlighted earlier, I found myself at an ideological summit overlooking the other side, a frontier of unending new questions:

From where did the drive to gender this incident come from? Why doesn't the disparity of violence toward males trigger a reciprocal reaction? Is it the same reason we saw no such reaction to Sharon Osbourne joking about a male victim of horrific, unthinkable sexual violence? We imagined this disparity in care and concern could not have been any more clear when Boko Haram's sustained campaign that involved burning young boys alive was "business as usual" until they had the audacity to kidnap girls, when Michelle Obama infamously took a selfie holding a sign that read "Bring our girls back." For me, it did become more clear when I realized that pointing this particular example out often did little to persuade others. At the first international conference on men's issues hosted by A Voice for Men later that year, I remember Dr. Tara Palmateer mentioned Boko Haram, adding that a feminist online casually dismissed it, adding "besides, it's not like you can bring back the dead."

I've personally found similar reactions when pointing out the vicious double standard implied in the words of Hillary Clinton, when she referred to women as "the primary victims of war" because their men lose their lives. The intention of her remark was obvious: it highlights the traditionally female side of war's burden. The implication of her remark is paradoxically glaring yet not at all obvious: the male side of war's burden was a mere prop. The point, it seems, isn't the pile of dead male bodies but the emotional, social, and financial fallout of those spared the horrors of war in-person. Now consider the fact that many women supported Clinton knowing she was the pro-war candidate, knowing, also, that it is not themselves who could be subjected to the draft. The "draft our daughters" campaign suggested a hypothetical scenario that some found so horrific that Phyllis Schlafley may as well have pussy-grabbed the pussy-hatted from the grave. The mere suggestion for girls carries more emotional weight than the reality for men and boys.

The new men's movement is undeniably characterized by harsh condemnation of mainstream attitudes toward gender. Many are drawn to an outrageous headline from a Paul Elam or Milo Yiannopolis article that shakes them into a new perspective only so they can return to such sensational, satirical, or, perhaps "truthfully hyperbolic," claims however many months later to delicately repackage them into a word salad labyrinth of milktoast ambivalence, also known as "tone policing." When and to what degree an MRA should distance themselves from "extreme rhetoric" (and what that even is) is a perennial subject of MRM in-fighting.

If you've had a pulse on the sweaty and complicated live action drama called the internet for the past few years, you might have noticed that the old battle between theists and atheists has left the stage only to be replaced by a Gender War, not between the sexes but about them. Depending on who you ask, it's a struggle between Feminists and Anti-feminists, or between "Gender Feminists" and "Equity (or Freedom) Feminists," or between Gynocentrism and Traditionalism, or perhaps between Egalitarianism and "Substantive" Equality. It's a war with multiple fronts and factions, but it is safe to state that most people identify with one loose coalition of awkward bedfellows or the other.

In the conflict between Feminists and Anti-feminists, I must side with the anti-feminists. How can I accept an ideology whose fundamental assumptions are not only untrue, but are often the opposite of the truth? How can I take seriously someone who voluntarily identifies with a movement that has prepetrated as much evil, across so many generations, as Feminism? I have nothing good to say for it. Feminism is an assault upon humanity and ought to be remembered as such.

The MRM and MGTOW do not conflict- in fact, they are quite complementary. Where there is disagreement might be understood as Optimism vs Pessimism or perhaps a focus on society vs a focus on one's own life. I believe it is appropriate for MRA's to support MGTOW, to accept it as one of the few solutions we can offer. Many MRA's argue that MGTOW are misogynists. I believe any form of misogyny that could concievably end with a man initiating violence against a woman is inconsistent with both the rhetoric and principles common among self-identified MGTOW... namely, the fucking name. MGTOW warn men of the dangers of associating with women and deliberately avoid them. It is undeniable that women are the ones with the power in that relation as they can initiate proxy-violence with no repurcussions, whereas a hypothetical red pill rage meltdown certainly ends with the man's punishment. In other words, in this equation, you need MGTOW violence against women to outweigh female-initiated government violence such that the disparity in men's vs. women's punishments is irrelevant. As an MRA, my goal is to prove MGTOW wrong. Unfortunately, they seem to be largely justified in their pessimissm.

Anti-feminists and MRA's sometimes clash, and I believe the most common situation is that the Anti-feminist views the MRM as a gender-flipped Feminism. Such a person is likely to be an anti-feminist who only rejects the third wave of feminism. They likely self-identify as a cultural libertarian egalitarian who advocates for both men and women. I prefer to call them "coffee shop anti-feminists."

They will laugh at and mock a feminist who complains about the anxiety of living in a rape culture, knowing 1 in 4 women are raped on the grounds that her fear is based on inflated statistics. In other words, we typically refute the actual evidence, the actual fact-based claims made by feminists. The implication is that if the things they were complaining about were real, then their reaction might be justified. Can you blame Andrea Dworkin or Valerie Solanis or Robin Morgan for hating men if you were to assume their claims were true? But when these coffee shop anti-feminists lazily mirror their criticism of feminism, directing it at the MRM, they do not refute the evidence. Usually, they had to accept the evidence in their refutation of Feminism. Instead, they percieve a problem with the validity of the argument. I believe that their brains are performing this logical sleight of hand while they are distracted by their emotions, which, as I've mentioned in previous videos, lean gynocentric. An intactivist can point out that 1 in 2 males in the United States are victims of genital mutilation. The bloodstained men are often criticized as "just like the feminists" for their provocative style of peaceful protest. Are these protests really the proportional equivalent, knowing that the men's issue affects roughly twice as many people and far more severely and, on top of it, is based on a claim that is true rather than inflated? Take any men's issue that these people reject on the grounds that it's "too much like feminism," and I would bet you will see this pattern. The vast majority of these anti-feminists more closely resemble a feminists' stereotype of the anti-feminist in that it is most likely based in traditionalism.

In the conflict between traditionalism and egalitarianism, I see only one of these as compatible with the non-aggression principle, unless the traditionalist has explicitly limited the scope of their advocacy to making the case for traditionalism such that people voluntarily adopt its principles. You may have watched Lauren Southern's recent "Electric Boogaloo" stream. Many people were critical of Theryn's reaction to Nick's statements as well as her criticism of Roaming Millennial for hosting Richard Spencer on her channel. I think the one thing everyone can agree on is that just about anything could have been handled better, in hindsight. However, I think something very important was lost on a lot of people: the conversation regarding traditionalism veered into territory where the kind of government traditionalists advocate for could violate the rights of trans people. When Theryn pushed for clarification in this territory, Nick could not even deny this. I can understand why that might upset a trans person, and it does trouble me that more people on the right do not condemn the authoritarian aspects of traditionalism. A great illustration of this is gay marriage: did anyone else notice all the Christians started pimping the libertarian position that government shouldn't be involved in marriage only after they realized they couldn't have their cake and eat it too?

Of course, egalitarianism in practice is a total failure. I believe that the ideal is voluntary traditionalism paired with true equality under the law. But how do we combat gynocentrism without destroying traditionalism? And can we truly promote traditional values without compromising equal rights?

I do not believe humans will ever completely erase their gynocentric attitudes. However, I think that the attitudes can be acknowledged and resisted. I also believe that the world we are living in now is one where this is still a novel concept; something that has yet to be seriously tried. I understand quite well that the odds are overwhelmingly stacked against the entire manosphere. Each generation of the men's movement was strangled in the crib by a wave of feminism. They destroy their enemies then erase them.

But this time is different. This is the first generation of the MRM with the internet. You can throttle us, call us names, blacklist us, pull fire alarms, whatever. You can't erase us anymore. We will be here. We will remind you of the fact that you are operating on only half of your humanity. Because we want a world with care, concern, and compassion for all humans.