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OK, it’s time for my final say in this debate, and thanks to Frost I have the perfect lead in to the note on which I wanted to end my part. But first, a couple of brief items of house cleaning.
“I think their failure to incorporate risk management calls irrefutable bullshit on that.”
I am not sure where you are getting the idea that Game does not incorporate risk management. Your initial article referenced Roissy. Did you go his site and search for anything on risk management. I did.
http://heartiste.wordpress.com/2009/10/19/repeal-the-imbra-now/
http://heartiste.wordpress.com/?s=false+rape
http://heartiste.wordpress.com/2011/09/22/the-anti-false-rape-accusation-campaign/
http://heartiste.wordpress.com/2009/09/26/film-your-bangs/
http://heartiste.wordpress.com/2011/07/13/potential-rapist-syndrome/
http://heartiste.wordpress.com/2011/06/22/a-blatant-case-of-sex-discrimination-in-the-law/
http://heartiste.wordpress.com/2010/05/13/spinsterhood-bastard-children-are-our-future/
http://heartiste.wordpress.com/2009/10/21/the-beta-crisis-of-american-men-marrying-older-women/
There are so many more. It took me three minutes to find these.
I have already addressed this in the comments, but it is worth a little expansion. If you want to understand the impact of literature, then look at the cultural norms that are commonly demonstrated by people who follow it. In other words, don’t take anyone’s word for what they say they believe in, watch what they actually do.
You want to know what this site is about? Skip over our mission statement and look through the entire body of literature and comments. You will see the prevailing ideas and mentality expressed consistently. The proof, as they say, is in the pudding.
Klansmen will tell you they are not racist, and give you some examples to back it up. What does their actual, consistently expressed worldview tell you? Women will tell you they love sensitive men who are in touch with their feelings (pause to laugh). Feminists will tell you they don’t hate men (laugh harder), that they have brothers and fathers and sons, just like Hanna Rosin. Is she a misandrist? Bet your ass on it. Watch what she does.
Read through the comments on any Game site, as well as the vast preponderance of the articles posted. What you will find is pussy centric redundancy and little else. Lip service to risk management doesn’t count unless you can prove that it serves to influence the culture and shape the overall message.
Note, I am not making a value judgment on pussy centrism (though perhaps a judgment about the wisdom in it). Getting laid is normal and healthy. I am just saying pussy centrism is what it is, and all you have to do is some reading to prove it.
The same applies here, both in regards to this “debate” (in the form of Frosts goals and objectives) and what has transpired in the comments.
With NAAGPUAALT stipulated, two of the most active proponents for Game in this discussion both present with the most sociopathic mentality I have even seen on the pages of this forum. Ever. That is not to say that Game/PUA culture is driven by psychopathology, but I do suspect that sociopaths are the ones driving the economic ends.
We have been informed by supporters in this debate that all relationships are based on dominating someone; that if a man is attacked with false rape claim, he must not have done “it” right.
And these are the worldviews that some MRA’s see as the natural co-partner to men’s activism? Ah, dude, whatever.
I also note a great deal of desperation in the dissent, most blatantly in the attempt to paint anyone anti-game as pro-celibacy. Frost has used this particular canard as a crutch throughout his presentation. We see it echoed in the comments and indeed Donlak carried it over to his blog, fitting a pattern of over-the-top-reactions that have characterized the Game/PUA reps here.
It’s a reaction reading somewhat like a conversation with Andrew Dice Clay.
[box type=”alert” icon=”none”]MRA: Getting laid, in these times, requires some caution on the part of men.[/box]
[box type=”note” icon=”none”]Gamebot: You are asking me to be celibate. Whoa![/box]
[box type=”alert” icon=”none”]MRA: No, I am saying that the mindless pursuit of as much pussy as possible without regard to possible consequences is probably a bad idea.[/box]
[box type=”note” icon=”none”]Gamebot: You’re saying that getting laid is bad. Ohh![/box]
Again, as I said in the beginning, not much to work with there. But it does bring me to what I think is the core of what actually needs to be addressed. That would be risk assessment and, just as importantly, how we regard and address the role of healthy sexuality of young men in MRM literature, at least this corner of it.
What comes out most clear for me in this debate is that despite some articles hoisted up as a façade, the Game community is lacking in the concept of risk aversion and it is centered on pleasing women, routinely by the surrender of personal integrity.
No Dan, we are not just talking shoes and beards here, and you know it.
It is also clear that there is a sociopathic flavor, at the very least in what I have read here and several places elsewhere, in the Game/PUA community. Whether that is an artifact of youth, or of the commercial roots of that community, I don’t know. But I do know that sociopaths get others to take risks, or profit from their risk taking, and that is of concern here as well.
GL Piggy has launched his own personal invasion of my inbox, kind of like a rabid chip monk stalker with a crank habit, demanding that I document precise levels of risk for young men with regards to false rape claims, etc.
I can’t do it. Nor can anyone else document any such thing. What he is asking for is tantamount to telling young men to sit in a river in Australia covered in chicken guts and demand documentation on the possibility of a croc attack before exiting the water, or even washing off the chicken guts.
Needless to say, the risks of relationships are not contained to false rape claims, paternity fraud, divorce theft, emotional, psychological and physical abuse, PAS, jail, poverty, depression, suicide, homicide or any number of other potential pitfalls. We just know this shit happens with enough frequency to fuel an emerging social movement. So I suppose it is a judgment call on whether we should encourage young men to consider all this, develop real tools to spot troubled personalities in advance, etc., or whether to yield to Piggy’s conclusion that this is all just histrionics that we should ignore as we traipse off into Vaginaland. My judgment favors caution and thoughtfulness.
But on that point is where I have to admit that the MRM has failed younger men. I know for a fact that I have, and I think this debate drove that home to me. Actually Frost, you did.
You were right about one thing for sure. While I don’t agree with every aspect of how you characterize the world of young men, I completely agree that you guys got no less than a shit deal. Two full generations men before you that completely failed to tackle the forces that left you with no avenue but a life of self-indulgence, where ambition is defined only in short term goals and instant gratification.
I am not being patronizing. I mean that literally. In fact, I wrote about it some time ago in The Plague of Modern Masculinity. It’s lengthy and verbose, but I think it describes what happened to you, and who did it to you, effectively, in my opinion.
You come from a fatherless world, Frost. I am not talking about whether your father in particular was involved in your life. But I would bet (and no, GL, I don’t have the Harvard study handy) that most all the young men in lifestyle Game or PUA had absent or systemically marginalized fathers. Even young men who have their fathers are impacted greatly by fatherless culture because of the kinds of social forces that culture creates.
And this addresses what I think is the real disconnect between us. I mean, no, I don’t ever see the day that Game or PUA will be a part of what AVfM does, or that we will ever acknowledge it as a viable part of the MRM. But the fact is, funny as it may seem to you, the demographics of this site don’t reflect a group much older than yours.
This from Alexa regarding AVfM:
“Compared with all internet users, this site’s users tend to browse from school, and they are disproportionately childless men aged under 25 and 35–45.”
With our level of traffic here, that is a boatload of young men emerging from fatherless culture.
The question I need to take out of this is “What is AVfM doing for them?” Other than the activism we do on their behalf, it is quite frankly hard to answer, except to say “not enough.” I am real clear that we can’t and won’t provide a platform for men to get and use tools for a lifestyle of fucking increasing numbers of good looking women. But of course the answer is neither for me or anyone else here to simply and solely lecture them either.
If I were 25 I would not trust a fucking word out of the mouth of a man my age, and for good reason. I don’t think that the generation of men before Frost, my generation, have done anything more than stand by as these young men were thrown to the wolves.
It is fair and correct to impugn the “manipulate, shape-shift and fuck your way to success” drivel posited by the Game/PUA ideologues. What is not fair is to condemn these things without offering a viable alternative or acknowledge how things got so fucked up. Which is to say that AVfM, Paul Elam specifically, has thus far failed.
In my visceral, virtually autonomic aversion to suggesting how anyone should define manhood, I have neglected, in the course of this movement, and in the history of this website, to adequately address what I think of inherently worthwhile human values. I know, these kinds of words are like fingernails on a chalkboard to moral relativists. But they are still part of who I am, and they have been neglected.
In The Plague, the very article that introduced and coined the term “Zeta Male,” I addressed this. In fact, I closed with the following:
He doesn’t seek power, but justice. And he has one overarching feature largely absent in the world around him. He cares about those lost young men who were ambushed coming out of the womb. And he will strive to make himself an example, living proof that there are other roads to take than the ones that lead to self-hatred and self-destruction.
Keep in mind here that when I said “self-hatred and self-destruction,” I was not referring to Game or PUA. Rather I was talking about the effects of being abandoned by the men who came before them and the influence of the men who took their place; Kimmel, Kilmartin, Smiler, et al.
And I do believe that by trying to seek justice and trying to help men who have been ambushed and destroyed by feminist governance, that I have set an example. So do all the men and women who write here, I am proud to say.
But I also see clearly that in my distaste for the sociopathic mentality that drives Game/PUA, and that emerged during the course of this debate, I did not keep my own words enough in mind. That failure, which failed the young readership of this site, is one for which I have to take responsibility, and for which I have to take action.
I can’t do that by tacking on a lecture about values, and the value of values, on this post. That would be pointless.
Frost and other young men like him are struggling for significance in a world that now regards them as disposable pack animals and criminals; unfit to be educated, employed, given rights or cared for. Are they struggling against that in a way that will ultimately work for them? Obviously not. In fact, I think they are being led to undermine the only kind of skills development that will ever make a difference for them. In short, they are being Gamed into developmental stagnancy by the most revered and rent seeking among them.
Now my message here, and my personal lesson, is more complete. I will continue, indeed intensify my efforts to reach younger men with the message that there is an alternative to misandric culture, and that it isn’t in the self-hating path of feminism, or waiting for them between the legs of a woman. That won’t be easy. It’s hard to compete with endless supplies of “quality” pussy.
But I will do my best to remember that these young men are the dysfunctional results of being hated, not the hate itself. And I will be more mindful that time spent pointing at their wounds would be better spent trying to do something about them.
In the meantime, I will do what I think is integral to any idea of success that I ever thought was worthwhile. I will look inward and constantly seek to measure what I know to be my values, one of them being a premium on justice, against what I actually do in life. And right now there is a lot of work to do.
