This was in my high school and early college years, later on in life I was able develop romantic relationships with them and healthy platonic relationships. I’ll be upfront and say a lot of the times if a straight dude hates women vehemently, it’s probably because he’s not getting laid or able to form any semblance of a romance with a woman.
It’s good that you’ve gotten over these impulses, but i have to disagree on using sexual frustration as a general explanation for misogyny. Our gender roles and their policing have material causes. They are holdovers from forcing unpaid reproductive labor on women, and from connecting a man’s desirability to his economic success. Women’s unpaid labor was a necessity to grow and maintain the workforce, and their ideological subjugation was a consequence of that. Re-inventing man as the breadwinner and woman as his prize for financial success was not the idea of some incel, it was a logical result of economic conditions, propping up and maintaining the status quo.
This is not to say that sexism started with capitalism - it was there before, and these earlier forms had a material foundation as well (such as controlling women’s sexuality to guarantee the transference of generational wealth to a proper heir - before paternity tests were a thing, this was achieved by keeping a watchful eye on women so they don’t cuck you and let all your land go to some other man’s offspring). And some of the ideology that grew around these pre-modern conditions, such as misogyny rooted in Christian dogma, is a holdover from these earlier times. And likewise, we have seen new forms of sexism, new forms of gendered opression in the last decades, changes that align with the transition to late capitalism, where growing the reserve army of labor became a greater concern (leading to a liberal-feminist discourse where a woman’s degree of emancipation is measured in her economic success), where the commodification of beauty, romance, sexuality and gender expression was perfected more and more (leading to entire industries built around body policing), where capitalism needed to put on a friendly, woke face and co-opt women more instead of outright subjugating them. The ruling ideology of gender is a complex, historically grown, contradictory ideology. But it is, in most of its aspects, one that has direct materialist roots.
It is not possible to truly move beyond that by just getting everybody laid. A lot of married men are sexist. MGTOW’s core demographic are divorcees. If internalized rage at one’s virginity was all there was to this subject, we wouldn’t have domestic abuse of romantic partners, we wouldn’t have this whole tradwife thing, we wouldn’t have the very basic fact that being a mother damages your career in ways being a father doesn’t.
Yes, that seems at odds with your own experience. Partially, that’s because you are talking about your personal situation, i’m talking about the situation of society as a whole. Partially, that’s because the ideological superstructure erected on these material foundations takes on a life of its own - the discourse around women in videog*mes is not a direct result of the economic base, it is a distant offshoot of the directly system-maintaining ideology.
If we truly want to end sexism, if we truly want to liberate women, we need a world were reproductive labor is no longer gendered - and no longer unpaid. As long as we don’t have that, we’ll always fall back into ideas that arose from that basic division.
Misogyny is multi-faceted, you are correct. But sexual frustration is definitely a path to misogyny aided and abetted by online content.
Your last paragraph. I don’t think that would eliminate sexism, but it would be the single most important step in liberating women. Misogynist, when confronted with true liberation of women, may in fact radicalize in the short term
I don’t think that would eliminate sexism, but it would be the single most important step in liberating women.
I fully agree on that. Revolutionary class politics are the prerequisite for making marginalized groups not margianalized any longer, not an insta-fix that will magically make all bigotry go poof.
I do not want to deny the importance of psychological factors, either, or write off anyone’s lived experience. Ideology affects people’s thought processes, and therefore their actions as well, every minute every day. Critique of ideology is crucially important and something we shouldn’t forego for a vulgarized, reductive view of materialism.
What i’m saying and why i’ve written out that post and these replies is that when we look at ideology, we must not stop at ideology. It is just the totallity of OP’s conclusion that i object to. Yes, personal frustration is an important factor in bringing people under the fold of misogynist ideology. It is even actively capitalized on by campaigners who want to promote movements that incorporate these ideologies. It is a very powerful angle to work with if you want to recruit people and then drive them towards certain actions, or certain political preferences. But all of that is happening on the individual level. That is what’s closest to us and what therefore seems most important and impactful at first, because it’s right there before our eyes. But we should always aim to move beyond that, to look first at our social relationships and then at how these tie into a greater societal framework and finally at the material base that societal framwork has been built upon.
Sorry, i have no idea if i’m making any sense, i just had my first bong hit of the day lol
It is not possible to truly move beyond that by just getting everybody laid. A lot of married men are sexist. MGTOW’s core demographic are divorcees. If internalized rage at one’s virginity was all there was to this subject, we wouldn’t have domestic abuse of romantic partners, we wouldn’t have this whole tradwife thing, we wouldn’t have the very basic fact that being a mother damages your career in ways being a father doesn’t.
I get your points about how our society has placed us in these weird roles, but I think you’re conflating frustrated virgins with angry divorced MGTOW dads. It seems like OP is in the former. The topic gets complex because the angry divorced dads often become the internet mentors to the incel guys by saying things like “my wife stole everything from me so you should avoid what I did!” It also doesn’t help that if you’re a shy/nerdy/geeky guy, society has been pretty much hammering into you that you gotta be an “alpha to get chicks.” Although there’s a recent uptick in “nerd culture” and normalization of once derided stuff, there’s still the fetishization of traditional beauty standards (i.e. the “hot nerd guy” who plays games but also has a six pack and nice pecs). None of this excuses misogynistic behavior, but it does contextualize it. It seems like OP’s diagnosis of sexual frustration may indeed partially apply in some cases (i.e. young, nerdy, outcast kind of guys who never really learned how to socialize).
I think you’re conflating frustrated virgins with angry divorced MGTOW dads
No, i’m saying that the frustrated virgin, the angry divroced MGTOW dad, that these both take their individual frustration and latch onto existing ideology that permeates vast parts of our culture and has, at its core, nothing to do with their personal relationship status. These emotional issues are extremely important on the individual level, they are driving factors in manosphere recruiting, but that all comes in at a much later stage.
I see. It seems you’re pretty well read up on anthropology. It seems like, as you said, that treating women as prized property has been around since way before capitalism. So do you think the angry, frustrated male thing might be something that has just been a part of human history, whether part of “human nature” or not?
i had a semester of hating men because my friends and i kept getting sexually harassed
How’d you get out of that phase? I wouldn’t say that I hate straight men but I tend to assume negative things about them by default (that they are unconsciously sexist, that they don’t see me as a full person, that they are often thinking of me as a sexual object) and I struggle to break free of that mindset because it aligns with most of my life experiences. I keep trying to correct this by building healthy platonic relationships with straight men, but none have worked out so far - they always start hitting on me eventually, and I’m openly gay.
That’s not a phase. That’s reality. I think how you navigate it is key… it’s one thing have that in the back of your mind it’s another to be bitter about it. Does that make sense?
To be completely honest, I stopped meeting that many new men 😂 At the moment I mostly interact with men from my uni department, who are luckily all great, and established friends and family, who are also either great or at the very least I can challenge any casual sexism and they’ll take me seriously. Because of that my default expectation slowly shifted to that of being treated like a human being by men, and sexism became a (small) shock and not an expectation, so my feelings could also change. I’m sorry this is kind of a downer of an answer :')
I keep trying to correct this by building healthy platonic relationships with straight men, but none have worked out so far - they always start hitting on me eventually, and I’m openly gay.
Damn that sucks. I guess it doesn’t help that pick up artist advice makes guys think that they can “get any woman.” But I’m curious as to why they all eventually hit on you even though you’re openly gay. Do they think you’re not really gay and it’s some kind of “guy defense” because you’re actually bi? Or are they so desperate b/c of the hell of tinder that they just want something that they think is achievable to them? Or do they think that they can “turn” you?
In general, lesbian sexual attraction is not seen as valid or “real” due to, you know, patriarchy and homophobia. Women cannot be defined outside of a relationship to a man. This is why girls can kiss each other while wasted and it’s not seen as gay (or even as cheating if they both have boyfriends), but a dude would be labeled a homosexual the instant he brushed his buddy’s hand. It’s why couples look on lesbian Tinder for a female third and not nearly as often for a gay male one. And men will routinely solicit threesomes from monogamous lesbian couples, so honestly, them coming onto me while I’m single is pretty mild in comparison. On some level, yes, they really do not believe that exclusive attraction to women can exist - that’s the belief held by our culture at large - and that’s why all those “friendships” immediately ended.
I’m really sorry that’s happened to you! Sometimes I still struggle with viewing women in my life platonically, even if we’ve had a healthy friendship for a long time.
It’s definitely a byproduct of my own insecurities, but I would rank “being openly gay” as up there with “being in a monogamous relationship” or some other equally clear boundary. I hope you can find some guy friends who can respect those boundaries :(
That’s not what I’m trying to say. I meant it more like I was resentful of them because of my inability to have healthy relationships with them and I blamed them when the onus was on me becoming a healthier and more mature person. You can still disagree, I’ve just found it often to be the case that dudes who don’t know how to interact with women or people period become very resentful without fixing personality issues they themselves have.
You can still disagree, I’ve just found it often to be the case that dudes who don’t know how to interact with women or people period become very resentful without fixing personality issues they themselves have.
And unfortunately they end up turning to things like PUA or other “red pill” stuff. IMO there does need to be some kind of leftist dating advice for young men because telling an awkward guy who can’t get a date to “be himself” is like a capitalist telling a perpetually unemployed, downwardly mobile young person to “hustle.”
Yeah never went down that road of PUA redpill. By good graces I’m fairly good looking and tall, so for me I just had to stop acting like an asshole and a creep and that helped immensely. Other dudes need a little more help or they do end up in those dangerous communities.
I don’t know all the answers as to how we fix this. As you’re right, simply telling someone ‘be yourself’ is not enough, it’s more complex and the help needed is more complex.
there does need to be some kind of leftist dating advice for young men
The good news is that – like with any specialized school of self-help thought – the less-desirable dating advice canon has a bunch of “common sense” stuff that you can separate from the shittier elements without extreme effort.
I don’t know what to tell you, I’m sorry. I was not a good person back then. It took fixing of issues that had with myself to steer me right and realize I’m not owed women’s bodies.
I had a flawed perception, I can’t like turn back time and change that, I can only move forward and be the best person I can be and treat people like human beings
Fear (of rejection) and resentment (of someone not appreciating you like you appreciate yourself) are emotions a lot of people have at some point, and in some people that can fester into hate. It’s probably more common in people who have a higher opinion of themselves (whether that opinion is justified or not).
