It’s been awhile. Open a brew, or pour you a shot of Jack. Bottle is on the bar. This one is on the house.
Got an e-letter the other day from a gent who asks me - in a nutshell - what happened to the old Gonz? The old MRA firebrand? Why have I just gone to doing politics nowadays?
Got me thinking.
You know, I haven’t changed a lot of opinions. Yes, I still think feminists are a bunch of whiney and useless sows who I wouldn’t screw with a borrowed schlong, or use it to cross the street and piss on them if they were on fire.
Damn skippy I still believe that bigotry against men - especially white, heterosexual, christian and conservative men - is one of the last respectable bigotries left. And I think that anyone who denies this is so damn stupid they aren’t worth attempting to have an intelligent conversation with.
While I don’t believe violence is THE answer, I can see occasions where it is AN answer; and one where I wouldn’t convict if I were on the jury.
I still do my think of helping men out - one man at a time. Sometimes it’s one of several things - running a sting on the ex or the wife. Helping a brother keep his assets. Helping him keep body and soul together in some casual labor. Giving a break while he gets his stuff together. Being there to serve as a witness.
We don’t see enough of that brotherhood. I’m not saying you should compromise your principles, but if standing by and letting a brother get the shaft is one of your principles, you are in sorry moral shape. I have my own line I draw. If I know a guy is a substance abuser and that is the root of his problems, I’m not going to enable it. If I know he is a REAL (Not just accused, but real) - no. I’m not going to stand by him. Shoving your woman away when she attacks you ain’t abuse. Hell, she comes at you with something, and you clock her, far as I am concerned it is self defense.
But I know enough about human nature to not be able to deny that yes, there are real bullies and abusers, and to deny that is dumb as a bag of hair. Granted, the feminists grossly distort and overstate the problem, but I can be convinced with REAL evidence.
I’ve hit, I think, a point of despair on a few issues, though. Number one, we have what I call the appeasers. These are the people who think it is important to “engage” feminists as anything but the intellectually and morally dishonest assbags that they are. Yes, we’re going to have to fence with them in the public sphere, and I am willing to do this to a certain point, but I am in now way going to be convinced that a feminist is anything but an enemy that should be supped with except with the longest spoon one can find.
And I am certainly not going to associate with them.
I have a problem with all the liberal MRA’s (Which I believe is an oxymoron.) Your iseology succors and supports feminism. Sorry, but you cannot consider yourself part of the solution as long as you are part of something which enables the problem. This includes those of you on board with the “Gay Agenda” (Of which I have problems with the agenda part, not the gay part). It is not pro-male or pro-family. It is steered by anti-male lesbians who want to “deconstruct” the family.
You’re not helping, and I have never seen A. Blessed. ONE. Of. You. Who did not put their leftism before your MRAism. When push comes to shove you vote for the Feminazi and Feminazi lovers every. Single. Time.
Just talking the talk is lame, and you waste my time. Stop supporting feminism. Until your ideological comrades eschew feminism, I am afraid it is them or us. It would be one thing is they were neutral on the subject, but they are NOT.
No, the right side of the aisle ain’t perfect. You fucks bat .000, though, without fail. So don’t even go there. Even batting .100 is light years ahead of you, and the right does more than merely arguably better than that.
I despair at the men who never take the advice of those like me who not only have been through it and can say “Don’t be like me” but who fail to take the advice of those who actually worked the system. Get a lawyer. Don’t concede anything. Document shit. Obey the court orders, even if they are unjust - look for the long term, and play the fucking cards you have been dealt. Yes, we need to get a new deck that isn’t rigged, but until then, this is the game. Man up. Gird up your loins, and yes it will be hard.
“What would you have them do, Gonz?” Well, wish I had a magic answer of how to solve any given person’s problems, but my crystal ball is on the fritz. Here’s a suggestion, though - how about NOT doing the same loser things that have a ROI of nil or next to nil? Kidnap your kids and live on the lam? What are the stats for success there - and the consequences of failure? Camp out on your estranged wife’s doorstep and stalk her in defiance of a restraining order? Seriously? Ever have any actual, firsthand, non-ancedotal knowledge of that actually working?
Oh, and my fave - how about NOT getting a lawyer for your divorce? Yeah, just because every book, article, or whatever for “Men in Divorce” starts with “First get a good attorney” and statistically speaking every man who has ever won a significant victory in divorce court starts out his story with “I got an attorney…”
But hey. I mean, what the fuck do we know, right? Go ahead and wallow in self-pity and anguish and show up in court a fucking mess like all your other friends who lost their house, their kids, and such. Fucking worked for them real well, eh?
Yeah, yeah, fucking brilliant. No guarantee of success with an attorney … hmmm .. let’s stick with the PROVEN LOSER! By gum, we got a guarantee there!
Finally are the fucking extremists.
I have a daughter. I have my friend Liz. I have my friend Martha. I have my friend Donna. I know several women who are decent women, who have risen above the feminist programming, who are decent, respect men, are faithful to their husbands, and who have passed by opportunities over and over to screw over the men in their lives.
However hard they are to find sometimes, they do exist.
Will I get married in a secular sense again? No. But that is me, and that is because I mistrust the system we live under - heck, if the MRA Fairy was to rectify it tomorrow - best I could say is “maybe.” I’m pretty damaged goods, and let’s face it, pushing fifty is a little late for building a life based on the fairytale. I have become comfortable with my life, and I am content. Best I can advise a young man is “Here are the traps, and yes, your sweetums can do it to you - odds are better than 50/50 she will, too.” Make our sons aware.
Of these decent women, are they perfect? No.
First, despite hysterical feminist masturbatory fantasies to the contrary, women are plain different in some small, but fundamental ways. Hell, even physically abusive w omen quickly drop the attitude around a man who they know has no qualms about hitting them back. There is a different worldview from them.
Women tend to nest. They are more chatty. These things can be irritating, true, but they are not evils. My bathroom is stark and spartan. My girlfriend’s is - well, put a daybed in it. It takes longer for her to get ready. But all in all, I’m fine with that crap. Viva le difference. If that was all I had to worry about….
A lot of these basically decent women are unaware of many of their privileges as women, but are open to being instructed to it. And usually a gentle hand is all that is needed; she starts squawkingabout how “John ignores Mary” all I have to do is point out that “Falling asleep in a chair after dinner and a 13 hour shift hardly qualifies as “ignore” I’d think.”
I reserve my ire, snark, sarcasm, and nastiness for the women-firsters who insist that chatting with her should take precedence over getting eight hours of sleep for tomorrow’s 13 hour shift. When I see the light go on, and hear a “Never thought about that…” I am inclined to believe it. The concept that the solar system doesn’t revolve around a vagina is often a novel one to many women. This isn’t taught to them anymore. When a lesson is learned, I’m happy.
I’m a libertarian, though. I don’t want women to have lesser rights than me - I just resent the special rights they have over me. I resent that I had to prove myself a good father when it was a given for them. I resent that an accusation from a woman is as good as a conviction in many respects. I resent that in similar circumstances I will be routinely condemned where heaven and earth will be moved to find “understanding” for a woman. I hold in contempt that notion that spending ten times on breast cancer what is spent on prostate cancer - a greater killer - is seen as somehow unfair to women.
Those are real things to hate. Those are things people do and society does. Women who play the system - yeah. I don’t give a fuck if the earth opens up and swallows them, but not because they are women - because of how they behave, in taking advantage of the system, in playing people, and in not giving a damn about anyone else.
99.999% of a lot of aggravation that comes is learned behavior on the part of women. Women are taught that is is expected, cute, and acceptable to behave like spoilt brats. Hell, they can be punished if they aren’t - know a lady who went through HELL for not going after her ex for child support. The government wants that money and federal matching funds. They had to work out an arrangement where when she got a CS check she cashed it and sent him a personal check back for the same amount to keep DCS from taking the kids from them both - and collecting from both.
I raised a daughter. I never taught her she was inferior for being female. I taught her that hiding behind her femininity as an excuse for poor performance or bad behavior was weak and unacceptable. When she snuck out one night she got grounded for a month and her phone taken away; when she protested I pointed our her brother got grounded for 2 weeks for coming home three hours late one night, and promptly INCREASED her punishment. I refused to subsidize almost two years of rebellion and bad behavior post high school, and expected the same standards of her as her brother. When she bitched about being come on to by creepy guys, I told her that she was dressing to get male attention, and what she really was upset about was, after all, that the guy she wanted attention from didn’t give it to her. When she complained about her brother leaving the toilet seat up, I asked her if she commonly just sat down without looking and pissed on the lid if it was down - and then when she had that wide eyed look, I said “Oh, so you checked? Here’s our rule, then - turn the damn light on and take a half second to look what you are doing, and have a hot steaming cup of STFU.” Problem solved.
She got taught by her father that not only was accepting a pussy pass not acceptable, that is was something she should be ashamed of. She was taught morals. She was taught that “keep it in your pants” meant “Keep your legs together” was the same thing . She’s a good wife and partner to her husband - and if something happened to him or them, she could survive on her own, and support herself without having to be beholden to anyone.
Not even me.
The whole notion that women are lesser moral agents is baffling - I mean, my dog has no real sense of morality. He’s a dog. He can’t. So I don’t hate him for it, it is the nature of dogs. It’s illogical - it is like disliking your coffee cup because it doesn’t cool your house down. Get a fucking air conditioner, then, you moron. That’s not what coffee cups DO.
I dislike feminists precisely because I do know that women are capable of moral agency. Feminists have chosen - by embracing their ridiculous hate movement - to be what they are. I reserve my “hate” there. The more so at the top levels of their movement. Then you have the women who have never been taught different - maybe misguided and decieved, true; but nonetheless they are still un-housebroken and unfit for most human company.
I am not about, however, to lump women who reject feminism with the feminists, nor am I about to join hands and sing kum-ba-yah with those who would. Evil is not carried intrinsically on the XX chromosomal sequences.
Absolutely. Legally speaking, no matter how decent a woman you have, the sword of Damocles hangs over your head, and it is only kept from falling at her sufferance. I’m there - it’s why I will never enact a legal marriage again. It is why I will never cohabit. I may enjoy female company, but there are a few terms I have that are mine and are not negotiable.
But I refuse to hate a woman merely for being a woman. It’s what she does with it that earns my scorn. And I scoff at “a woman scorned.” Bring it, bitches. WTF you going to do? Have a “sit in?” Raise “consciousness?” Threaten not so sleep with me?
Oooh. That’s scary. 3 billion women in the world, and if I’m hitting a different one evrey night for the rest of my life - maybe about 15,ooo. Darn. Guess I can move you to the B list. Pardon me - (grunt) - no, sorry, I tried REAL HARD to care, though.
I mean seriously, girls. I ask again, as I have asked a thousand times before - what benefit does a man get out of marriage these days that he can’t get in spades without that piece of paper. Companionship? Friendship? Regular sex? I see plenty of women staying with terminal bachelors because it is the best they can hope for. And I can pretty much find a woman to put out - and not “settle” for a schnauzer whenever I want.
Larger bills? Locked into a dead end job that sucks a soul? Loss of property in a divorce and a child support bill for up to about 20 years? Woo hoo. Sign me up.
You’ve got everything feminism wanted for ya, though. Of course, some of those choices - like slaving away for da man your adult life - kind of snuck up and became , well, not a choice, really, eh wot? Howzzat working for ya? No, by all means. Keep on beating that drum for “no fault divorce.” It’s your best trump card … um … IF you can find men anymore who are willing to play that game.
Another thing - about ten years ago? Yeah, I was pretty pessimistic. Lately, though, we have been getting traction, making gains, taking ground.
So, while on occasion I might shrug my shoulders at the one off acts of violence done to a corrupt bastard or bitch who pushes a man to the point where he has nothing left to lose, and pays a price (Provided he selectively targets the actual source of his problems) and ask, “Well, what the fuck do you expect when you keep kicking a man after he is down?” -
wholesale violence and random acts of terror are not on the table as far as I am concerned.
The Duluth model is being abandoned left and right. Attorneys specializing in helping men in divorce are becoming more common. With every Crystal Gayle Mangum, every Kobe Bryant, “believe the female” is falling more and more out of favor. Sure, it is incremental. But hell, we’v e had a lot of paternity fraud protections enacted recently. It’s snowballing.
Let’s let it work. I mean, jeez, if you can avoid war in the streets, do it. You have no idea how really horrible that is.
No, I don’t rule out a last great act of defiance. But for pity’s sake, make sure that 1) You get the actual people who fucked you, 2) you actually accomplish something in the process, and 3) THAT IT’S A LAST FUCKING RESORT and not an act of ignorance.
It’s hard to make a martyr out of a damned fool. Oh, yeah. Resolve yourself on being dead. You go after cops, judges, and expect to hear “Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Freeze motherfucker, police!” in your final seconds. If you make it past the second bang.
No - I’m not less committed - or passionate. Just tired of talking to a fucking wall. I’ve been doing this for years. When I say “That’s not going to work” it’s generally because I have seen it tried - repeatedly - and it fails. There’s a guy on the front page that beats the drum on the “Anti-Peonage act!” and while yes, it should apply - it doesn’t. The courts have rationalized that away, and it is a loser argument. Been tried, appealed, and has failed. You go into court with that, and you’ll get overruled and looked at like the tax resisters who holler about the gold fringe on the flag.
And when I say “Obey the fascist restraining order for two weeks, don’t allow yourself to be provoked, and don’t give them the excuse they need to make you a statistic” it’s generally because I have witnessed hundreds of other men decide that their one man revolution will be “different” somehow and have contributed to the statistic pool. Jeez. I’m not saying “That isn’t a new idea, and it never works” just to exercise my lungs and because I have any love for the system - it’s because it never works. Ever. And anyone who has ever said different has never actually seen it work, it’s always “a friend of a friend’s cousin’s nephew’s buddy did it…”
Anyway.
Just sharing.