The Manosphere Celebrates Self-Destruction

September 13, 2012 America, Blog, Christianity, Family, Family Issues, Marriage Print Page

This post is making the rounds as a man explains his decision to have a vasectomy, despite not being married or having children.

A few observations:

1. The author, Mentu, admits to sleeping with a woman, who apparently is a Christian, but lets her (apparently fatherless) children listen to Lady Gaga and Britney Spears.  I am perfectly aware, of course, that many Christians have fallen to the temptation of fornication (a non-capital offense under the Law), and refraining from it is not strictly a condition of salvation.  However, being publicly callous about it, i.e. lacking all shame, is a further step away from any real external evidence that one’s faith has any meaning in terms of one’s behavior.  As it appears from reviewing other posts of his, Mentu is definitely not Christian, but rather is somewhat associated with Christian Men’s Rights types, while still finding their emphasis on marriage and family off-putting.

2. These two passages, I believe, are particularly telling:

The only reason I even speak to her is because she looks good on my arm at work parties, and she’s one of the few women I’ve met who can hold an intelligent conversation with my boss while still being sexy and feminine. I’ve met tons of women who could do one or the other, but not both. . . .

I realized that I can (and have) found women who would probably make a decent wife, but I have yet to come across a woman who I would want to be the mother of my children.

I think what he’s getting at here is that he is of two minds when it comes to traditionalism.  On the one hand, he wants to be an urban sophisticate and attract status at trendy parties at his workplace.  On the other hand, he wants a traditional mother for his children.  The women who would make good mothers are presumably not sexy/feminine/intelligent enough to impress his boss.

3. Has he really exhausted his opportunities?  Before destroying one’s entire genetic line, it would make sense to search the ends of the earth for a suitable wife and mother of his children.  Or does he attend a typical seeker-friendly suburban church (or any church at all) and then assume that his sample of women there are representative of all Christian women?1  Has he attended any churches where homeschoolers are predominant, for example?  The opportunities for fornication would certainly be reduced (and the fathers of these homeschooled girls would be rightly concerned with his sexual history).  I’m an action-oriented kind of person, and if single I would personally visit every candidate church in my area before simply giving up.  That’s a lot of work, though, and uncomfortable, when an unmarried mother with a nice “rack” is already willing to sleep with you.

4. The MRM, despite its essential correctness in pointing out the need for divorce law reform, has degenerated into somewhat of a self-referential, fully unfalsifiable ideology.  Anyone trying to make a point to a Marxist or feminist has experienced this: any “argument” you use is just the “language of oppression.”  Similarly, Men’s Rights Advocates consider any criticism of any individual man’s choices to be “shaming” language, a feminist plot to oppress men.  There are simply no irresponsible, foolish men.  All are victims of feminism because of the wicked structure of our society.  I predict I will be accused of telling men in his situation to “man up and marry those sluts,” to use the preferred slogan of the MRM.  No, I’m saying that he should stay away from sluts, stop being a slut himself, and find the pockets of people out there who still believe in traditional values.  We are still out there, but we largely, out of disgust, do not move in fashionable circles.  Your children are worth the risk of a divorce, which can be minimized statistically with proper mate selection.

5. The most straightforward explanation of MRA’s who choose this sort of behavior is that they are not really traditionalists.  They use the ideas of traditionalism to point out problems in our society, which are then used to nurse a sense of despair that there is no use in trying.  Like picking at a wound or eating hot food, there is a sort of pleasure in wallowing in despair, as the brain produces opiates to dull the effect of unpleasantness.  Once this despair is believed – that relationships between men and women are hopelessly defective – there is perfect justification, not for silent, noble suffering or castration (much too pre-modern), but rather for postmodern indulgence, whether through the path of fornication and pick-up artists or with pornography.

This post, more than any other, shows the dead-end of the Men’s Rights Movement and much of the manosphere.  They point out legitimate injustices that overwhelmingly favor women, such as our no-fault divorce laws, and use this to indulge a sense of despair that justifies self-defeating behavior, in this case literal self-mutilation and destruction.  Young men, entertain this dead-end worldview at your peril.

Footnotes
  1. I would even question this.  In my experience most men are pretty happy with inaction.  Has he really had a five-minute conversation with every woman he might find attractive at his church?  That’s work too, I know, and uncomfortable, but it’s the same thing any small-town insurance agent would do to drum up business: visit different churches and talk to people.  Isn’t a wife worth that much effort?  It’s amazing how motivation drops when a man spends his vitality. ↩

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About Generation 5

Generation5 is the pen name of a mid-30's business owner in rural Georgia, husband of one beautiful woman and father of four children, two girls and two boys.

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  • Yan

    Mentu sucks and is an evolutionary dead-end. Nothing more needs to be said to rebuke him. There is a reason God told us to make babies. God willing I’ll be able to make up for his loss.

  • Caradoc

    Gen 5, love the Welsh flag.

    This is, I think, THE issue facing our folk. The outside attacks are bad enough, but understandable and to be expected. It is the white women that are destroying us. This problem with white women is what is going to end it. I am not defending Mentu, and I am not defending what he did. I think it is wrong for religious reasons. He is a heathen. Saying that, I think your advice is incorrect. Relationships between men and women are defective, and always have been. You are perhaps unaware of it. Women are hypergamous and men have to have some kind of social dominance to be thought attractive. The glue that held the whole leaky mess together was social shaming and economic dependence. That is all gone. Every woman in this country, of every race, creed and colour, from the Independent Baptists wearing cullotes, to the RPCNA elder’s daughter, to the Amish milkmaid, has a nuclear hand grenade in the divorce laws that she can pull at any time for any reason. In comparison a man doesn’t have a BB gun. Will she or won’t she? Do you feel lucky? I can’t give any advice to young men. Is MRA a dead end? I am not going to argue with you. But what is worse; this, or producing a child to be ripped from your influence (other than the influence of your money) and fed to Moloch while having the effete impastors tell you to “man up?” There simply aren’t enough “good women” for every good man to have his own wife. I suspect there are statistically zero. it doesn’t matter what she thinks today, because tomorrow is a brand new world.

    Your line “Your children are worth the risk of a divorce” gives it away. That is irresponsible. What about the men who guessed wrong? What about the white men persecuted because their “imputed income” doesn’t allow them to pay child support and eat and live under a roof? Let me ask you a question very few have answered. If all you can do is “minimise” the risk of divorce, then where does that leave so-called love? What sort of house will the children live in if Mommy and Daddy’s relation is based on risk management? Children are very perceptive. Do you see the madness of the world and the danger of telling boys to just look harder? It is the women that have created this hateful hell. Men have marched blindly for centuries thinking the little delicate flowers cared about them, and now when they can show their true colours without repercussion, we have this. Men need to walk away, and most haven’t the self discipline for it.

    • Nil Desperandum

      Why do you think that risk-management in terms of divorce is incompatible with genuine love?

      • Caradoc

        Nil D, I will answer that and hopefully answer Gen 5′s points later today.
        What is love? Is it funny feelings or is it action? Maybe we can all agree that love is (or at least a great part of it is) loyalty. Divorce is an extreme act of disloyalty. For an illustration, how about this. Do you have to “risk-manage” whether or not your male friends are going to attack you from behind with a 2X4? What kind of friendship, or phileo, would that be? I don’t need a friend like that. Similarly, what sort of “love” is it that requires keeping one eye on her grenade hand? Even if there is only a 10% chance she is going to pull the pin? I don’t want to go under fire with something like that. I don’t want a friend who has a 10% chance of hitting me from behind, I don’t want a dog with a 10% chance of biting my hand off, and I don’t want a woman with a 10% chance of destroying my family and finances in divorce court. In Biblical terms, the heart of her husband cannot safely trust in her.

        A few months ago I had a similar conversation at Dalrock’s site. At this point, I do not believe women are capable of love as a man understands it. Their loyalty is always conditional and always fluctuating. It is what it is.

        • Nil Desperandum

          So your concern is not simply that any form of risk management for divorce ipso facto excludes love (which would presumably make every possible marriage for any two possible people into a loveless relation, since there’s always some risk of divorce), but that genuine fear of divorce in a marriage breeds the distrust which is incompatible with marital love. And in that sense, any serious engagement in risk management — that is, conscious, periodic assessments of the risk of divorce in one’s marriage, with an intent to lower it — is incompatible with the selfless love that ought to characterize the relationship.

          Is that what you’re saying?

          • Caradoc

            Partially, yes. The root of what I am saying is in my last paragraph. It worked out fine on the plains of Israel and in Britain in the days of the Dane raiders. It was fine on the Western frontier. Women did what they needed to to survive and thrive and men wove fantastic fantasies about the fairer sex, and lied to themselves about their real nature. The high culture of Victorian Britain and the Antebellum South marked
            the pinnacle, in my opinion, of the “companionate love” form of
            marriage. But all these periods have characteristics we lack: women could not divorce except in the most extreme circumstances, and all children belonged to the father. In other words, the velvet glove of male chivalry was worn by an iron hand of control. The Industrial Revolution and the triumph of the Marxist dialectic shattered it, and all the King’s Horses and all the King’s men cannot refit the pieces.

          • Nil Desperandum

            Okay. I would like to get back to your original comment about love and risk-reduction, since you indicated the gravity of that by noting that you’ve been asking it a lot but haven’t received any suitable answers. You also linked the idea of domestic distrust to Gen 5′s suggestions for taking action to reduce the risk of divorce, which I think is a mistake. I’ll state my thinking in separate points.

            1. It is important to note that there must be a balance between actions taken to reasonably reduce the risk of some harm, and over-action which signals distrust. Or, in other words, the virtue of proper risk management mediates the vices of careless inaction and distrustful over-action. The pursuit of lowering the risk of divorce, therefore, cannot be seen as inherently bad, such that we should get married only if we have to do nothing to reduce the risk of it. This is obvious upon reflection, but still worth noting.

            2. There also is a big difference between the actions taken to reduce the risk of divorce within marriage and those taken to reduce the risk of it before marriage. Most of what Gen 5 mentioned about reducing the risk of divorce involves judging the traits of a potential wife before one gets married (e.g. whether she is a virgin, whether her family background is stable, whether she would be submissive, whether she would perform domestic duties), and those are far different from whatever actions one might perform within marriage to incentivize the wife from exploding her nuclear divorce-grenade. The most important ways to reduce the risk of divorce come in the premarital period, and they can easily be done without producing distrust, since they simply involve learning more about her. And to whatever extent they do produce distrust (say, if a girl does not like that her suitor is finding out about her family life or her past sexual encounters), it’s most likely because that distrust is going to lead him to break it off anyway. So, it is not as if managing the risk of divorce produces some palpably unstable domestic atmosphere which inevitably hurts the children.

            3. Once you conceive of the actions a husband might perform within marriage to reduce the risk of divorce, it seems evident that they are all entirely compatible with, and even productive of, conjugal love. He can use some game on her, increasing her attraction and making sure he does not degenerate into a princess-worshiping lackey. Moreover, he can fulfill his role in Eph. 5:26 by warning her of the vast dangers of female discontentment today and the utter destruction which reckless female lusts have produced. That is, he can reduce the risk of divorce by being honest with her about temptations women face due to the entitlement mentality which feminism causes to flourish. By being honest with her about her own lusts, not shamelessly pretending that she is perfect, he will simultaneously be reducing the risk of divorce and expressing love to his wife. There is no need to see the two in conflict.

            4. But another important distinction is between actions taken to reduce the risk of divorce, and the very existence of a risk of divorce. You might concede that actions taken to reduce the risk of divorce do not produce feelings of domestic distrust and bitterness — but, you would still insist that the looming risk of divorce in itself is sufficient to cause distrust, in the same way that a looming potential of a 2×4 to the back of the head can breed distrust among “friends.” And now this is a different issue, because you are basically implying that the very risk of divorce is itself a cause of divorce (the existence of the risk produces an atmosphere of distrust rather than love, and the atmosphere contributes to the risk of divorce). I would like to hear you elaborate on this more, because I just do not see good reason to believe it is true. I could see distrust build whenever preliminary signs of a divorce-minded wife manifest themselves (e.g. if she starts to become more openly discontent), but I couldn’t see distrust reasonably accumulate in a household where there are no such signs of looming divorce.

            5. Now, suppose that a man does all that duty requires of him in picking a suitable woman to marry and in acting masculinely as her spiritual authority within marriage. Suppose that he successfully reduces the risk of divorce by taking various actions within marriage, never breeding distrust by going too far in his risk-reducing activity (which is probably impossible anyway, since distrust intrinsically raises the risk of divorce, but I digress). Suppose that even with all this risk-reducing business, there still looms a 5-10% risk of divorce. You might think that even such a risk is too dangerous, due to the immense destruction which divorces can effectuate. And while I agree that it is horrible that the best which Christian white men can attain is 5-10%, I still think that it’s worth the risk. It is not like choosing whether to have any friends who might smash your skull with a 2×4, or choosing to have a dog that might bite you. Both of those, especially the second, can be rejected. But white Christian men cannot reject marriage without rejecting any hopes of resurrecting Christendom. But in any case, this major point about whether or not men should assume the risk today for the sake of Christendom is already being fleshed out in your dialogue with Gen 5, so I won’t go into that here.

          • Caradoc

            Nil, I will answer each numbered point.

            1. I disagree. There is one sure-fire way to negate the risk of divorce. Anything else is a discussion of how many chambers are there and how many are loaded in a game of Russian Roulette. Sure, I’d rather play with a LeMat with one loaded than a Python with three loaded. But a more intelligent choice is to not play.

            2. Yes, I realise that. What he does not do is tell us how this can be reliably done. Where I come from, people lie. I imagine that is the same most everywhere. Barring a medical examination, how are you going to determine virginity? I don’t think either of you are suggesting we implement Deuteronomy 22:17. So, what, we just take her word for it? As for whether she would be submissive or keep house, again, they can say anything they think you want to hear to get the ring. A few men hear a click, many more get a boom. Now, if the actual, real implementation of Biblical marriage is being discussed, I am all for that. I think the men with weapons would take a dim view.

            3. Now that one really sticks in my craw. If you have to “game” some empty headed woman to get her to keep a vow she made before God and everybody, what kind of vow was it? Where is “love” in this whole charade? Psalm 15:4 tells of a man who “sweareth to his own hurt, and changeth not.” A vow is a vow to death. Period. I have no patience, none, with treachery, and my gut response with something that treacherous is to avoid it like a rattlesnake.

            4. Yes, I would concede that, from the female side. The man would have to know that he is consciously manipulating her, and would have to be an absolute master of self-deception to pretend that the result was freely given love and loyalty. It isn’t far from Pavlov’s dog from my point of view.
            “. . .you are basically implying that the very risk of divorce is itself a
            cause of divorce (the existence of the risk produces an atmosphere of
            distrust rather than love, and the atmosphere contributes to the risk of
            divorce). I would like to hear you elaborate on this more, because I
            just do not see good reason to believe it is true.” Not exactly. The divorce problem is produced by the fact that the fickle woman is enabled by the legal system to initiate a divorce. When she was not, we saw a near non-existence of divorce. “Love” has nothing to do with it. If she knew that she would not be granted a divorce without provable charges, or that in the event of her vow-breaking she would lose all property, all respectability, and her children to boot, you would see divorce go to next to nothing in a week. In Queen Victoria’s England for example, a “divorce minded wife” could have her mind on it all she wanted, but if she didn’t fly right she was going to face ostracism and likely poverty. That tends to control the hypergamy and the unhaaapiness.

            5. I know this. I don’t know what to do about it. It is why I said feminism is the enemy’s greatest triumph. We need them for the next generation, yet they are more hateful than an army of foreign invaders. I don’t know.

          • Nil Desperandum

            Thank you for your response.

            1. You’re not disagreeing with the point I made in #1, because you did not address what I said. Your initial point (part of your original post, and the part to which I made my initial reply) insinuates that risk management necessarily breeds distrust, and I simply pointed out — without necessarily contradicting you, just clarifying — that proper risk management for anything (including divorce) is a virtuous activity that straddles two vices, i.e. that risk management is not intrinsically wrong. But your espoused disagreement with this point is basically that you think the existence of a risk for divorce is sufficient reason not to marry. Fair enough, but that’s not relevant to what I said.

            2. Obviously, I cannot exhaustively codify the various means by which one goes about getting these questions answered. But there are various ways in which one can justifiably do so, depending on the environment where you meet her (a rural, conservative church vs. a bar), asking around, etc. Of course, there will always be some risk of deception, just as there is some risk that she is actually a demon incarnate, but that can be drastically and realistically reduced. Besides, from my reading of MRM blogs, I have concluded that the main risk of divorce consists not in the fact that most or all women are intentionally deceitful from the get-go, but in the fact that women are often so enslaved by their own lustful, hypergamous emotions that they have a huge “change of heart” a few years into the marriage, generating a divorce. These are two very different, and mutually exclusive, accusations to make about women. And except for very malicious women, only the second one sounds genuinely reasonable.

            But in any case, to return to the overarching context of risk management, you can still, I would hope, grant my main point — that the main risk management for divorce occurs before marriage, in which case it is probably false that actions taken to reduce the risk of divorce necessarily generate an atmosphere of domestic distrust.

            3. I did not say that it should be that a man needs to game his wife in order to help her keep her vows, as if she is freed from her wifely duties and vows by his inability or unwillingness to be sufficiently alpha. I simply said that a man’s doing so increases the likelihood that his woman will stay attracted to him, which thereby decreases the likelihood that she will divorce him. Even if a male is an effeminate lackey to his wife, it would be grievously and monstrously wrong for her to divorce him — it would be treacherous, destructive, evil, and (in a sense) adulterous — but, nevertheless, we understand that his being manly decreases the chances that she will do so. This is the same way in which we can say both (1) that a man ought not to commit adultery on his wife and (2) that a wife’s being always available for sex with him reduces the chance he will commit adultery. In no way does the statement about divorce risk-reduction entail anything about the permissibility of failing to keep marriage vows, nor does it entail anything about the necessity of doing certain things in order to keep one’s wife faithful to her marital vows.

            But, again, this is not really related to the original point I made. The only point I was trying to make is that the husband can take certain actions within (as opposed to before) marriage which will reduce the risk of divorce, and he can do so without generating feelings of distrust. That was the point.

            4. This is truly the crux of your original statement: whether the existence and availability of a legal axe for the wife to destroy her family is sufficient to cause feelings of distrust within the household. (This is a different issue from whether the legal availability of divorce is sufficient reason to justify men’s refraining from marriage, by the way, though they’re obviously related.) This is the question that you deemed very important, and you said that many people have left this unanswered. I want to make sure this gets answered the best it can, even if you do not find the answer satisfactory.

            You hold that, given the existence of such a risk, the man would have to simultaneously be manipulating her (presumably to control the risk) and deceiving himself into believing that this is what marital love is really all about — a tall task! But do you really think that’s a fair way to characterize it? You are basically saying that any man who is aware of the titanic legal power afforded to wives through divorce legislation has no option but to expect divorce or to treat his wife like an animal. But doesn’t that smack of a false dichotomy? (Aren’t there MRM bloggers who are happily married, and who are that way despite not trying to manipulate their wives?) It seems intuitively clear to me that a husband need not be overtly distrustful of his wife, simply because he is aware that there is some risk she could file for divorce. If she starts behaving in ways that he can concretely address (expressing discontentment, not fulfilling her wifely duties), then he might have reason to be distrustful, but it is not as if a husband needs to distrust his well-behaved wife, simply because he is aware she could do some damage. This is the same sense in which a wife need not be suspicious of the possibility of her husband murdering her in her sleep — she will lack suspicion without even thinking of the legal and social repercussions he would face, because the grounds for her trust in him is his moral inability to do such a thing. It is analogous with a wife who has been and continues to be faithful; the husband has good grounds to believe that her moral orientation of faithfulness will subsist, and on that grounds he holds no distrust. (It could be that she is not showing her true feelings, but even then, the husband will not be justified in being suspicious of her unless and until she outwardly manifests her discontentment.) At any rate, I fail to see how your scenario of a manipulating but self-deceived husband is the necessary consequence of the wife’s possessing the legal power to divorce. A plethora of other options still remain available.

            By the way, since you are a Christian, I must say that I find troubling your view that the keeping of marital vows has nothing to do with “love” — where I define “love” as the fulfillment of God’s moral law (Rom. 13:10). By rejecting love as a motivating principle in women to keep their marital vows, you are essentially denying that even regenerate Christian women act in some sense from moral principle (which is different from merely acting in accordance with moral principle), insisting instead that they are acting merely from the fear of punishment, like animals. Now, I hold with all lovers of common sense that women are more emotional creatures, and thus I concede that they do not act from principle with the same frequency or in the same ways as men do; and this might demand an extra level of social and legal threatenings for women than for men to maintain healthy gender relations in society. I concede that as plausible. But that is a far cry from saying that love — acting from moral principle, a love for God’s law — has nothing to do with faithfulness to marital vows, which easily tends toward a denial of the free agency and humanity of women. Such an extreme view leads towards your conclusion that, in the absence of such legal penalties, it is always and extremely irrational, even immoral, to enter into marriage. Really — see how your conclusion so easily follows from that anthropological premise, and I think you will see good reason to reject your stance against all marriage.

            5. Okay. I disagree, of course, but I would like to hear the points to be made between you and Gen 5 on it.

            Despite our disagreements, I truly appreciate your interaction on this, and I hope you have a blessed evening.

          • Caradoc

            Thank you. You fellows have given me some more material to ponder.

            One more thing. Our use of the word “love” shows how easily terms can get crossed. When I wrote that love has nothing to do with vow-keeping, I was using the word in the sense of marital love i.e. love for the man by the woman. I must concede that in some cases love for the Law or even for religious tradition may be a factor in keeping a woman married. A very few cases.

            I do indeed believe that in the absence of (at minimum) the 19th century codes, it is very irrational to enter into a marriage contract. If you think about it, it is the only contract in the world where one party can unilaterally break their bond and the other party will be forced, at gunpoint, to perform. Think about it.

          • Shotgun

            What are laws to a man in love? (Or a lover scorned?)

          • Caradoc

            I don’t understand the question. Are you saying that a man who fancies himself in love has his mind so fogged that he can’t think rationally?

          • Shotgun

            Or so clear that he cares less for laws than he does for his lover.

          • Caradoc

            Are we discussing the same topic? If what you are saying were taken to its logical conclusion, then a man who fancies himself in love with a woman simply ignores the Titan of the divorce/child support/alimony industry standing behind her. He ignores Briffault’s law, he is heedless to hypergamy, he pays no mind to the fact that she does not and cannot “feel” the same way about him, never mind the ephemeral and changing nature of feelings themselves. Beside this, he ignores the misandry and the egalitarian spew coming out of church pulpits. He plunges ahead into marriage. When she decides that this is boring and that he is boring and that vows are more like quaint suggestions she divorces him for cash and prizes. At that point, he will likely care a great deal for laws, after his “lover” has used them to enslave and humiliate him while taking his children, if any. A little clear headed thinking might have saved our hypothetical fellow some trouble, don’t you think?

            Gentlemen, a part of this is simple math. Maybe Gen 5 is right, in a tiny minority of cases. I can’t disprove him. He is wrong in making it a recommendation for every man. How many more Christian, Kinist, WN, Seperatist, anti-feminist (or some combination thereof) men are there than women? Does anyone know? Mathematically it is simply not possible for every decent Christian man to have one wife who shares his values. They simply do not exist. Apparently Gen5′s solution is for the genetic/mating lottery losers to be the shock troops for the winners. I could be wrong, but I don’t think that plan is going to work.

          • Shotgun

            In the religion I follow, I’m obligated to marry, even if a thousand titans stand in the way.

            Further, regardless of what the demographics of the decent look like, I believe in a God who handcrafts our mates.

            And, as to your first paragraph – I’ve never heard of Briffault, and I’ve never studied divorce statistics. I know very little about the “industry” that has sprouted from the exploitation of failed couplings. But I doubt there are many men who study these things before they marry. Are they ignoring it all, or are they neglecting their studies because they are in love and too optimistic for it? (I doubt my grandfather even knew what the word “hypergamy” meant, yet he was married for over sixty years to my grandmother).

            I will not give up the Christian marriage ceremony, or let my wife’s sinful fancies tear apart my family. And even if Satan wins the heart and mind of my wife, and uniformed thugs come to steal my children and rend apart our homestead, I’ll not give it up. I’ll teach my children to “aim small, miss small”.

            Your position (it seems to me) echos that of Adam – “That woman you gave me, God, she tempted me to eat…”

          • Caradoc

            Shotgun, what religion actually obligates you to marry? Christianity does not, unless my reading of Saint Paul in I Corinthians 7:1-9 is terribly wrong. He tells us that it is good to remain unmarried unless you can’t control yourself (short version.) This is his informed opinion as an apostle (verse 6). Is he wrong? If so, does that have any bearing on Biblical reliability or inspiration? Am I reading the Apostle wrong? If so then what does he mean?

            I doubt that either of my grandfathers knew it either. They didn’t have to. The pre-war world wasn’t completely dominated by perversion yet. Sin was more restrained, less public. They lived in a different world than you and I, and that world died with them. To try and live by the rules of their age is suicidal.

            You fellows sure like imagery of the last stand at the Alamo. That really isn’t the issue though. The issue is what about when the thugs come at the beckoning of the mother of those children? How do you “fight” a modern liberated woman you are supposed to love and who is supposed to “love” you? How do you propose fighting the mother of your children when she tells you to get out and the lawyer will be in touch? Do you boys know some advanced brainwashing techniques? Pretending to be a patriarch in an egalitarian democracy is like Live-Action Role Playing.

            No, my position is nothing like that. Were I to actually say that I would be stupid, since my entire point is to avoid these women.

          • Shotgun

            My Christianity and yours are very different, then.

            You keep your reality and your statistics and your studies…I’ll live in the fantasy land I read about in old novels.

          • Caradoc

            I don’t know what else to say. My Christianity comes from the Bible, the exact words in fact, and the Bible does not obligate anyone to marry. The Church does not either. It regulates marriage and divorce, and the church and Christians themselves generally ignore what it says.

            Adults have to live in the world as it is, not how it was or how it ought to be. I really hope things work out for you, and I mean that sincerely.

          • Shotgun

            Many people base their religion on the Bible, and are equally zealous in the belief that, out of all the conflicting interpretations, they have gotten it right.

            There is a weakness in contemporary (rationalistic) Christian constructs, in my view. They have no formal place for a regenerated heart in their hermeneutics.

            And a regenerated heart says “damn the statistics and damn the entire world, if they come between a man and his love.”

          • Generation5

            To respond to this dialogue and the points you made in response to my post:

            1. My personal anecdote is not evidence, but rather an example of something that can be proven statistically, if I had the time to tackle it: divorce risk can be managed to 5-10% with proper pre-marital filtering (even the surface level stat of 50% divorce rate is misleading…the rate for first marriages is well under that). If you think this risk is too high, I think you are irrational and value your own comfort and freedom more than you should; you should value your future children more. It should be lower, and reforms instituted to make it universally lower, but this is not a rational reason in my view to not marry and procreate.

            2. I think the MRA and MRM could actually change things if they did the following: manage risk intelligently to minimize risk of divorce, have children and raise them with the right values. If you draw the black marble and end up divorced anyway, make the system pay in a way that only a well-armed cold-blooded white man can do. There’s nothing like a few dead judges to strike enough fear into the system to get fathers better treatment. That gives you a 90-95% chance of marriage and children, and a 5-10% of striking a significant blow against the system.

            The ranks of abortionists are very thin, and very old, now thanks to just a few brave individuals who took justice into their own hands. They can’t find medical students willing to learn it any more, even though the field is quite lucrative, because of the perceived risk.

            This is a much more manly, pre-modern response IMO than simply opting out. And it would have a chance at changing things, producing more conservative families and putting the fear of God’s Law back into the system.

            In your case, it seems to me you have some deep seated issues in your view of women, as Nil hinted at; you almost deny their humanity in a way that is outside of Christian orthodoxy. It kinds of reminds me of racialists who, out of frustration with the system and to justify their own lack of practical participation beyond complaining on the Internet, take extreme positions like declaring blacks inhuman or advocating genocide. They define the necessary corrective actions so far outside of anything plausibly doable that they back-justify their own inactivity.

          • Caradoc

            1. Okay, let’s assume for a moment you are correct just for the sake of argument. You now have a contract with a 5-10% implied failure rate where your success is completely dependent upon the continued performance of the other party, a party that apparently does not know the meaning of the words “before God” and “vow” or, if they do know, simply does not care. In the event of failure, you have no recourse other than your suggestion to go on a rampage and wind up dead or worse. Do you really think this is a good foundation for a life? And would someone, anyone, please tell me where in all of this “love” is found? I think that any “risk” of your supposed helper that stands in front of God Almighty and swears an oath to do “a” and then does “b” because she wasn’t haaapy is unacceptable. Frankly I don’t even want to interact with something that treacherous. And I have neither the time nor the inclination to play games constantly to keep a hamster running so a woman will do something that SHE SWORE TO DO IN THE FIRST PLACE. They are either responsible adults or they are legal minors to be treated appropriately. There can be no middle ground.

            2. And I think you’re crazy. Nothing strikes fear into a machine. A machine does what it does until it runs out of fuel or is deactivated or destroyed. The system is a machine, not an organic entity. The ranks of abortionists are thin because there is now technology such as the morning after pill that renders them superfluous. Better dying through chemistry. As for God’s Law, we don’t fear God’s Law in our own sphere. Christians do not practice God’s Law. What does God’s Law say about divorce? What does it say about women, marriage, female virginity? Deuteronomy 22 is instructive, and so is I Corinthians 7. I would be very curious to see any Christian family or group that practiced even half of what is found there.

            3. Really now, is that a code purple, black or yellow? I’ve been through the whole catalogue. I would be interested to see how my view differs greatly from Saint Paul, the early Church, or the Reformers. Christian orthodoxy in 2012 has moved from what it was in 112, or even 1512. True Orthodoxy doesn’t change. Everything is now infected with egalitarianism. The fact that you think my position on this is extreme reveals it. My position is exactly what the position of all Christendom was prior to the Industrial Marxist age. Shoot, I’m liberal, I would settle for the laws of the Regency era.

    • Generation5

      Your mentality is typical of the sad sack ideology of the Manosphere. There are some legitimate points, but it gets taken to an extreme to support the despair. The fact is that men and women are both fallen creatures.

      Arguing logically with people sporting an ideology is very difficult. It’s like talking to a fat person about losing weight. It’s simple math to do it, but hard work. The same with marriage: proper search and planning, and yes, even elements of game can reduce the risk to about 10%. First marriages between people who attend church weekly, do not have sex or cohabitate before marriage and of similar ethnic/cultural backgrounds have a divorce rate approaching 10%, possibly even less if you are selective enough.

      If you wait a couple of years to start having kids, the risk of a divorce and a kid can be reduced even further. That’s simple math. You put a value on the 90% odds of a loving marriage and children, and a value on the 10% odds of a divorce. It’s a probability tree, simple math.

      What you’re saying is that the 10% outcome must be nine times worse than the goodness of the preferred outcome. I’d prefer to exist than to not exist in almost all circumstances, so what you’re saying is that your children’s very existence, even in a divorce situation, is worthless compared to the pain you might experience at the hands of the family courts. I’d gladly serve life in prison to preserve my four children, or to ensure their existence. And that’s not even a realistic outcome despite MRA rhetoric. There are a few outlier cases, of course, and these cases are injustices that should be rectified, but nothing comparable to the risk of a lightening strike such that it should compel you to not pursue your own future bloodline.

      To answer your question specifically, it would be worse for my children not to exist than for them to be raised in a divorced home, no matter what that means for me, because I value my children more than my own life. With 10+ years of marriage behind me and the risk of divorce approaching nil, it was definitely worth the risk. And yes, I pretty much knew that my risk of divorce was nil because of the quality of the woman I married, qualities that were obvious at the beginning of the relationship. In my experience quality women are rare, but no rarer than quality men. Our cultural collapse has affected both sexes in deleterious ways.

      I would submit that your absolutist ideology (men good, women bad) is a hindrance to your own happiness. What if you’re wrong? What if you miss out on the chance for God’s design for men and women because you took too absolute a view of the problems based on what a bunch of ideological malcontents on the Internet told you?

      • Generation5

        Let me add another analogy that might be helpful. I consider the federal government to be a criminal enterprise, and my politics are oriented against it. I hate the fact that if I build my business 50%+ of the proceeds are going to government parasites at some level. Yet, I continue to maximize my income and work as hard as I can. The 50% I keep is worth it. I hate the rules, and I fight the rules, and structure my affairs where possible to minimize the impact of those rules, but I will not protest unfair and unjust rules by refusing to do the things which are in my family’s best interest, EVEN IF the evil antichrist government gets half.

        The response of the Manosphere would be comparable to a libertarian refusing to start a business because the government treats producers so unfairly. They might even convince themselves that success is impossible. But yet, there are people who do so well they can overcome the lead weight of government taxation and regulation. And doing well within the system is ultimately the only way to change the system, because all of the political things necessary to reverse the injustice require resources.

        Men who hate feminism dying childless is not going to hurt feminism.

        The Manospehere is like the anti-feminist version of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. The odds of enough men “opting out” to change the system is much lower than any individual man’s chance to avoid the pitfalls of the system. Similarly, Rand’s novel was pure ideological fantasy. The producers are not going to opt out and move to a commune in Colorado. Incremental change is hard work and kind of boring, not nearly as exciting as escapist fantasies of immediate radical change, but it’s how we got into the mess and it’s how we will get out.

        • Generation5

          I’ll add that the most perceptive writers in the Manosphere, including Roissy/Heartiste, have pretty much accepted that the West and Christianity is going to die, and they’re here to live it up during the slow decline. They don’t entertain fantasies about mass opt-outs compelling feminism to reverse. They’re ok with it because they’ve found a hack to still get them the sexual pleasure that they serve as the highest good.

          As Christians, we can’t share that nihilism. We cannot believe that Christianity or the West will die. We must believe in something like the plot of The Lord of the Rings, that no matter how dark, there will be a remnant and the remnant will prevail, and to God and Christ will be the glory because of the incredible odds that will be overcome. We must believe that “the increase of his government shall never end.” Don’t despair. Find the remnant and be a part of it.

          • Generation5

            As you can see, I love talking to myself. Thinking about the remnant I thought this comment on Sailer’s blog was particularly perceptive:

            “So that’s the Clinton family tree – their only child locked in a childless marriage, with a husband of dubious sexuality [and dubious commitment to the marriage].

            “By contrast, this is what the Romney family tree looks like.

            “I’m telling you: These Blue State SWPLs are on the express train to extinction.

            “In another 20 or 30 years, Bill Clinton will no longer even amount to much of a memory in anyone’s mind anymore, whereas a guy like Mitt Romney will have had his seed spread all over the entire nation.

            “It’s just simple mathematics, people – the SWPLs are not long for this world.”

            I know, Romney is a Mormon, not part of the real remnant, but the point still holds. The two families are an interesting case study of what the future might look like.

            My personal vision is 100 years from now, it will be the homeschoolers and Mormons allied against the Muslims, and our droid/drone armies will wipe them out.

          • Caradoc

            Well, that is a lot of material. Let me ask you first if King Solomon is among the sad sacks of the manosphere. He wrote:

            I applied mine heart to know, and to search, and to seek out wisdom, and the reason of things, and to know the wickedness of folly, even of foolishness and madness:
            And I find more bitter than death the woman, whose heart is snares and nets, and her hands as bands: whoso pleaseth God shall escape from her; but the sinner shall be taken by her.
            Behold, this have I found, saith the preacher, counting one by one, to find out the account:
            Which yet my soul seeketh, but I find not: one man among a thousand have I found; but a woman among all those have I not found. Ecclesiastes 7 :25-28

            And Saint Paul:

            And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression. I Timothy 2:14.

            So while both sexes are fallen, the effects are not the same. Actually, For Paul’s analogy in Romans 5 to hold, Eve had to fall LEGALLY in Adam. She was deceived while he deliberately damned himself and us all.Her actions would not have drug down the race.

            Gen 5: “Arguing logically with people sporting an ideology is very difficult.”

            We all have an ideology. You are a Christian Kinist, correct? What is not logical is arguing using irrefutable personal anecdotes as argument. You are doing exactly what you say the manosphere as a whole does. To say that because you have a wonderful wife then every Christian man can do it to is ludicrous. Actually, it falls under the classic “NAWALT” argument made famous in the manosphere. No one can refute any of your points because they are based on your personal experience and not objective universals. If what you say about your family is true, then everyone else is excluded, and that is one fewer resident of mount NAWALT for the number of men at a given time. Surely you see that mathematically there is not “someone for everyone,” much less is that true in the microscopically tiny community of Christian conservative homeschoolers. So your advice to young men is like a lottery winner telling their broke cousin to just win the lottery and it will solve his money problems.

            Gen 5: “With 10+ years of marriage behind me and the risk of divorce approaching nil, it was definitely worth the risk. ” Come on man, hindsight is 20/20. Ask the man married 10 years whose wife decides to Eat, Pray and Love on his dime and with his kids in tow and let’s see if his personal experience is the same.

            Gen 5: I would submit that your absolutist ideology (men good, women bad) is a
            hindrance to your own happiness. What if you’re wrong? What if you
            miss out on the chance for God’s design for men and women because you
            took too absolute a view of the problems based on what a bunch of
            ideological malcontents on the Internet told you?

            Who said I think men are good? And who said I can’t think this out without the help of the internet? I don’t believe I can miss anything God has planned for me because he has predestinated it and will bring it to pass.

            Gen 5: “The response of the Manosphere would be comparable to a libertarian
            refusing to start a business because the government treats producers so
            unfairly.”

            In that case, the libertarian would be acting with perfect rationality. Karl Denninger has said exactly that. He refuses to deploy his capital into this crooked system. Good for him.

            Gen 5: “And doing well within the system is ultimately the only way to change
            the system, because all of the political things necessary to reverse the
            injustice require resources”

            Maybe this is the root of our disagreement. No “political things” will reverse the injustice.

            Gen 5: “The odds of enough men “opting out” to change the system is much lower
            than any individual man’s chance to avoid the pitfalls of the system.”

            I agree with the first half. Actually, I agree with the whole thing properly understood. Don’t lay down with dogs and you won’t get up with fleas. I just think it is wrong to advise others to go ahead and roll their dice. It is too much like “Let’s you and him fight.”

            Gen 5: “Incremental change is hard work and kind of boring, not nearly as
            exciting as escapist fantasies of immediate radical change, but it’s how
            we got into the mess and it’s how we will get out.”

            If you will show me any time in history, secular or sacred, where that worked I am all ears. King Josiah was one of the greatest men who ever lived. He instituted real radical change, and God almighty told him that it was too late, that the whole system was going to be destroyed, just not in his lifetime. That was all he was able to do: buy time. We aren’t going to get a Josiah. What you are saying is as pure a fantasy as Alisa’s ideological trash.

            Gen 5: “As Christians, we can’t share that nihilism.” I am not a nihilist. I am a realist. The days have gone down in the West, behind the hills, into shadow.

  • Professor Mentu

    Call me whatever you want (I’m used to it – believe me) but for God’s sake, don’t call me an MRA! Lulz.

  • Lazarus

    “Pretending to be a patriarch in an egalitarian democracy is like Live-Action Role Playing.”

    Hilarious, but sadly all too true. Try reading 1 Peter 3:6 in a group of Christians and listen to the women giggle and mock: “Sorry Honey, but that’s not gonna happen.” In our current cultural milieu, men have a severely truncated social role, and there exists neither the inclination nor the will to remedy this.