Moving away from the marriage talk that has dominated the last few weeks, JF Sargent wrote an article for Cracked, supposedly on the men’s rights movement, which was, of course, non-flattering. The article was ludicrously stupid and was also unfunny. JF Sargent is obviously incompetent at his job and failed to do even the most basic research.
This left-wing nonsense is part of a pattern at Cracked, which has been sliding downhill for the last couple years, it’s sad because at one point they were my favourite site on the internet. Cracked has made the same mistake as many other forms of entertainment and decided the message is more important than fun. The great humour of the past is being replaced with boring SJ-stuff and snark.
Anyway, I’ll point out a few of his mistakes:
First the title: JF, it’s not uncomfortable to say something that’s the mainstream opinion. There’s no edge to attacking something most people either don’t know about or hate already and then parroting the mainstream opinion about said issue. Pretending there is, is just kinda sad.
I spoke to Frank Meeink, a former white supremacist, and Michael Kimmel, a professor of sociology, about the men’s rights movement, and I found out that it has less in common with any civil rights or equality movement than it does with goddamn neo-Nazis.
I assumed the movement was like neo-nazis, so I asked a neo-nazi about this movement, and we concluded it was like neo-nazis. Am I ever a genius.
JF, there is a thing called confirmation bias, you should read about it.
If you want to learn about a movement, why not ask someone in the movement rather than someone in a completely different movement or a feminist academic known for his hatred of the movement? I’m sure Paul Elam would be happy to talk to you. Or, given that, despite the title, your article is all about the Red Pill rather than men’s rights, I’m sure Rollo would be as well.
But it’s a trick, because that’s not what these places are really about. Check out the very first sentence on a list of the Red Pill’s “fundamental beliefs”:
…
Yes, this shit is internally contradictory and sexist as fuck, but more importantly, it has nothing to do with men.
JF obviously didn’t do even the basic research an average 3rd-grader would put into his C+ book report.
The MRM and the Red Pill are different. The MRM is about men, or more accurately, how men are mistreated by modern society, particularly the government, and possible solutions to this.
The Red Pill is (primarily) about intersexual relations; it is about helping men understand women, so of course the basics are going to be about women. A man can’t understand intersexual relationships without understanding women.
He then goes on with cherry-picking quotes, I’m not going to address all of them, because hey, some members of any given group in an anonymous forum say stupid things (shocking). Quoting people only matters if they are some recognized leader in said group (which random /r/TRP commenters are not).
But I will point out a couple times where JF writes like an idiot.
Overall, I’ve found that their complaint about women is … that they exist. It’s the old dichotomy: If they’re too selective with whom they sleep with, they’re “hypergamous” (they only sleep with people of a higher social standing), and if they sleep around, they’re “sluts” and lack any worth as humans.
…
Notice how that description is internally contradictory enough to cover every woman ever: saying someone is a “hypergamous slut” is like saying they are “elderly infants” or “freezing hot” or “a tasty light beer” or holy shit you can’t be “slutty” and “too selective” at the same time that makes no fucking sense.
You can be both too selective about how you engage in something, yet engage in that something too much.
For example, I could be a glutton who overeats but be so picky my food intake is limited to pizza. I could masturbate 12 hours a days, but limit yourself myself to German BDSM porn.
JF, the only reason it doesn’t make sense is because you lack basic reasoning ability.
I said I was going to address more, but while writing this I simply got bored. I simply don’t care enough. It’s not worth continuing and it won’t make a difference, so, I won’t continue. He’s being willfully ignorant and I’m sure anybody who takes his drivel seriously won’t care either.
I just considered not posting this, but it’s been written and I don’t have much time this week to make another post, so here it is. Bleh.
Actually, the problem is that women are even more selective when they just want to “hook up”.
Yes, they are easy, but only for the right guys.
If they actually whored around indicsriminately, most guys would consider themselves lucky.
Good post. Better than all your opinions regarding marriage.
I sometimes sit back and think about red pill pua mrm whatever…manosphere.
I disagree that red pill and MRM are different. Red pill is a basic tenet that is adopted by different groups – PUA, MGTOW, MRM, other anti-feminists. Kinda like different denominations of the same religious group.
Cracked’s been going down hill since they hired a female writer. She changed the entire tenner of the site.
@Javaloco
Not all MRM are not the same as Red Pillers. For example the holy grail of for a lot of MRA’s is default joint custody. Anyone’s who taken the red pill realize that joint custody is stupidity.
@javaloco
This is where I think I disagree. A lot of people in the MRM (specifically, it seems, those who keep referring to it as the MHRM), seem to favor a lot of policies that operate off the principle that men and women are equals and should be treated equally and hold equal status under the law.
This is of course one of the first principles that gets defenestrated in Red Pill 101. Men and women are different. We want different things out of life. Any system, regardless of how well-intentioned, that treats men and women equally (much less the same) is doomed to failure as it rejects our most basic relation to reality. I hate feminism like I hate getting stuck in a traffic jam when I forgot to fill up my gas tank before leaving, but it seems the MRM, particularly shown in the AVFM camp, tends to adopt a lot of the feminist narrative in its argumentation. Rather than rejecting the frame that genders should be treated as the same, a certain faction of the MRAs insist that giving men the legal privileges that women have (male birth control pill, creation of non-consensual sex charges against women who seduce men, state-funded male shelters and incentives will fix everything). This is far-cry from the original origin of the men’s rights movement which was primarily concerned with the pillaging of men in divorce court at the expense of themselves and their children.
Red Pill can not go where this certain group from the MRA goes because its central philosophical tenants will not allow it. Artificial birth control has proven to be a thorn in the side of Western Civilization, consent as a discussion that goes past the obvious “was it forcible” question can only bring harm and excessive punishment, and the state poisons everything it touches and involving it in male affairs by creating a mirror special interest group for meninists will solve nothing except for a symbolic victory.
@ orion
Exactly. Paradoxically, women have lower standards when they are looking for boyfriends and husbands than when they are looking for a ONS.
Men do the opposite, lowering their standards for hookups and raising them when they look for girlfriends and wives.
Lol. I get the logic and trying to pick Sargeant’s tome apart. But when viewed in a different light, your perspective changes a little. You assume he was working as an unbiased jounalist. You also assume that the manosphere even stood a chance with him. This is the writing of someone who had made up his mind about a particular issue and simply went out looking for quotes and a body of text to corroborate his beliefs. Simple.
@Red and @TKI
I still stand by the idea that MRM is a result of red pill. They see past the twisting of culture and have done their thing to work against the lie.
HOWEVER, while I stand with them on some principles, my main disagreement is that they want to be treated like women. The same benefits as women, blablabla.
Your analogous breakdown of the “hypergamous slut” fallacy was brilliant.
The article stinks on ice throughout. I’d be curious as to whether he authored any good articles. Could just be a bad writer who slipped though the cracks, or that cultural critique and comedy are awkward bedfellows. Carlin was great at it, but then again, he took the time to understand the subtleties of a given situation.
Cracked is for fags. Seriously.
Sarge is a better writer than anyone on this page, including me.
The only people who think there’s a need for a men’s rights movement are self-loathing, flabby, insecure, tiny-penised losers who can’t get women. That is a fact. Men with functioning self esteems don’t see a need for that kind of nonsense, since they understand that the first step in attracting women is to treat women properly.