The era of chivalry, of men protecting all women just because they are women, is coming to a close. In the time of growing gender equality women are no longer the loving partners of men, they are our competitors. One core principle of competition is that you don’t give aid to your competitors unless you are forced to.
One barrier to gender equality is the strong instinct in men to protect the women around us even if it puts men’s own lives in peril, and the strong instinct in women to seek a man’s protection at the risk of the man’s life. The human practices that come from these sexist instincts must come to a halt if we are serious about working towards gender equality in society.
Put simply, women who need men’s protection are not, and never will be, worthy of equality with men. This weakness, left unaddressed, will always make women seem inferior and infantile no matter how much we try to pretend as if it doesn’t.
To begin the process of weaning women off the lion shield of men’s bodies and physical prowess, MRAs in India are advocating that on the 19th of each month, men withdraw from protecting women. As women are forced to adapt and learn to become responsible for their own safety and security absent the security men provide, more days will be added until finally, men and women will stand as equals when confronted by the dangers of the world.
I call this idea/proposal “YOYO 19” after the urban slang term that translates as “You’re On Your Own,” in this case, on the 19th of each month. “Yoyo” can also refer to a sort of untimely bowel movement, which I imagine feminists will have when their fearful reaction to this article takes hold.
It is the Spring of 1984. I’m on vacation, diving for sea shells about two hundred yards off the shore of South Padre Island. As I surface for a gulp of air, I hear a tiny cry for help – a short, heavy Hispanic woman is caught in a rip current and is being pulled out to sea. There is no one else around us.
Her face is barely and briefly visible above the waves and her efforts to swim against the current have failed. I drop my bag of shells (and the unopened can of Coors Light I had found in the warm gulf waters) and swim toward her; as I reach her the rip current takes me as well. I grab her right hand with my left and tell her not to worry, I’ve got her. Her grip is steady but weak.
Instead of fighting the rip current by trying to swim to shore, I swim parallel to shore and perpendicular to the current, dragging the woman behind me. I’m now crushing her hand in mine; the pain in her hand and shoulder must be horrible but she is too weak to protest.
Progress is slow at first and the shore begins to grow more distant as the rip current carries us away. After several minutes, the rip current declines and I begin to curve toward the shore. Twenty minutes later my toe touches the sea floor and the woman can now walk to land. I release her hand and she walks back to her family without even a word or glance in my direction. I never see her again.
Men’s instinct to protect women is closely identified with chivalry in our culture but this instinct appears to be much older and more fundamental than that – before civilization, a man who failed to protect his baby mama and children would not have had genes that survived long. Chivalry extended this instinct to protect familiar women to the general protection of all women. Despite feminism’s ambivalence toward men’s protective instincts – radfems reject men entirely and Anita Sarkeesian rails against men learning to rescue damsels in distress in video games while “HeForShe” feminists seek to enlist men as protectors – those instincts endure for now, but for how much longer will men be willing to protect women if men get nothing out of it? Feminists feel entitled to men’s general protection no matter how badly women treat men. This entitlement is about to come to a swift and screeching halt.
The general protection of men freed women from having obligations familial or sexual to one or more dedicated protector men, what feminists call patriarchy – the rule by fathers. In seeking equality, however, feminists overlooked the necessity of their learning to protect themselves in the world. Older school feminists like Susan Brownmiller, who played a prominent role in creating feminist rape farming, think the current feminist concerns that women protecting themselves is “victim-blaming” is unrealistic:
Susan Brownmiller, who published the groundbreaking Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape in 1975, takes issue with the current conversation around sexual assault. She believes it’s unrealistic for women to think they can drink like men and still be safe, and that women are responsible for keeping themselves out of dangerous situations….
They have been tremendously influenced by the idea that “You can drink as much as you want because you are the equal of a guy,” and it is not true. They don’t accept the fact there are predators out there, and that all women have to take special precautions. They think they can drink as much as men, which is crazy because they can’t drink as much as men. I find the position “Don’t blame us, we’re survivors” to be appalling.
Of course, in response, today’s feminists are savaging Brownmiller as a “victim blamer” for suggesting that women should be held to the same standards as men.
To get an idea of the relative worth and necessity of men’s protection, let’s compare and contrast housework (that is stereotypically and optionally associated with women) to security services that women and society demand from men.
Feminists argue that women are uncompensated for the housework women do in domestic relationships and that men should shoulder more of the housework burden, even if men have lower standards of cleanliness and domestic order than women have. This demand for more male participation is usually made despite men’s reluctance, passive-aggressive feigned incompetence, or even outright refusal. If men forced women into such service, feminists would be quick to call it abusive or even rape, yet feminists feel free to demand it of men anyway. That is what feminist entitlement looks like.
Desperate attempts have even been made to tie housework to the sexual interest and consent in women: phrases like “women would rather have unsatisfying sex in a clean house than hot sex in a dirty one” were once common and men are often told that they will have more frequent and satisfying sex with their partners if they help out more around the house. Studies published in scientific journals show that this is a lie: the more housework men do, the less sex they have. As expected, feminists like Sheryl “Lean In” Sandberg openly lie about these studies and assert just the opposite of what actual studies show.
What feminists ignore is that men are not compensated for the domestic security men are expected to provide for women, both in the home and in the nation. In the United States and some other countries, men – and NOT women – are legally required to register for selective service (the military draft) and be ready to go to war on a moment’s notice. When a father departs the home for a long trip or upon death or divorce, a son is told “you are the man of the house now,” meaning it is now the son’s responsibility to keep the women of the household safe from the dangers of the world. I heard this phrase at age 16 when my father died – my grief and fear over my dad’s passing were compounded by new responsibilities I never asked for. I had no time to grieve, I was “man of the house” however poorly I was equipped for the job.
It is March, 1992. My girlfriend and I are in Dallas at a Greenville Avenue restaurant eating dinner with Carol, one of my girlfriend’s friends who is hobbled by a cast on her foot. Carol, slight and thin, is unsteady on her crutches so, after dinner, I am asked to carry her across a busy street.
As we cross the street a car screeches around the corner aimed right for us. I twist around, tossing Carol out of harm’s way while the car draws near but the recoil leaves me directly in the car’s path. The car stops suddenly, clipping my shins as I jump onto the hood. Carol and I are both bruised but alive. I never see nor speak to Carol again.
Providing security for women is a 24 hour / 7 days a week job that offers no money nor job satisfaction, but a lifelong stain of guilt or cowardice if the man should fail at his gender role and the women he is supposed to protect get injured. Men will march off to do bloody battle, cover their girlfriends’ bodies with their own to protect them from bullets, and run up the staircases of burning, falling buildings to try to save women they don’t even know rather than risk failing as protectors. MGTOW and MRAs who have liberated themselves from the onus of being involuntary security guards often catch hell for it even though we owe women nothing in any objective sense.
However onerous and exacting women make their job of cleaning, they have complete control over how much cleaning they do and a woman can at least pause for rest from the task every evening. She is rewarded with the sight of a beautiful home if she succeeds at it.
Men get no rest from, and no real nor psychological reward for their security job except the rare and often forgotten gratitude of their spouses and female relatives, but feminists are even trying to stamp this out: feminists now argue that “men shouldn’t be thanked for doing the right thing” as if men were emotionless slaves fit only to have our feelings ground into emotional dust under their Birkenstocks. Men are forced to live with the daily terror that the expectation of their heroism can be turned against them, or stripped from them at any time.
The loss of women’s open gratitude for men’s security services can only have a corrosive effect on men’s willingness to put ourselves at risk in the service of women’s safety. There is a chilling phrase from psychology that describes this situation: “the behavior undergoes extinction.” A pigeon can be trained to peck at a button to earn a food reward but when the food stops, eventually the behavior undergoes extinction – the pigeon pecks at the button no more.
The capsizing of the cruise ship Costa Concordia in January of 2012 proved that the extinction of men’s protective instincts is already happening. One author even characterized the wealthy vacationing men who failed to put women and children first as “white trash.”
Because the protection that men provide to women is largely invisible in everyday life and only becomes clear in disasters and other dire straits, it is perhaps unexpected and unfair to women that we withdraw our protection from women without serving notice to them.
So, here it is, ladies. Don’t be stupid. Don’t be a victim. From this day forward, on the 19th of each month, you will enjoy no protection from men at all. You’re on your own – YOYO 19 – for 24 hours. You need to slim down, muscle up, and purchase weapons, Columbian-made Kevlar fashions and floatation devices if you want to survive the Purge. You can also buy a chastity belt on Amazon but hurry, there were only 4 left the last I checked.
It is the Spring of 2013. I’m in the bar late after talking to a tipsy, young and attractive feminist for a couple of hours. She says she’s never met an MRA nor a MGTOW before and she is fascinated by my perspective on gender equality. She is also flirting outrageously while I’m playing it cool. Judging from her sidelong glances and racy talk, the sexual tension is clear.
2 AM – closing time – rolls around and it is time for me to walk home, 4 blocks away. The feminist is parked in the same general direction and she asks if she can walk with me. She takes my hand and we start walking. Three blocks later we reach the crossroads – her car is a full block up Commerce street; my apartment is a block down the perpendicular Crowdus.
Rather than go out of my way to walk her safely to her car, I release her hand, tell her to have a nice night, and turn towards home. She stands for a moment, slack jawed and sputtering. No man has ever violated chivalry and dismissed her so callously, nor rejected her when her sexual overtures were so clear. I don’t look back. I hope I never see her again.
Are there some women still worthy of protection?
Women in my family have gone out of their way to protect me when I’ve been ill. Those women have earned my protection as equals.
There are a number of women MRAs who work tirelessly to protect men from both feminists and their gynocentric allies among traditionalists. Those women MRAs have also earned our protection as equals.
But the feminists who hate men, refuse to protect themselves from rape, make false accusations against men, demonize men’s sexuality, compromise due process for accused men, and lie to our faces?
No fucking way. YOYO, baby. You’re on your own. Get used to it.
This article grew out of discussions held at the Men’s Only Retreat held in North Carolina in September 2015 – MORNC 15.
