This month, Netflix released a documentary called Inside the Manosphere, which inspired much pearl-clutching from the non-internet-addicted populace. “Good heavens!” they collectively cried. “Such foul language! Such misogyny! And why the anti-semitism?”
But for those of us swimming in the third-world slop fountain of Twitter dot com, Louis Theroux’s carefully curated cast of clowns in the documentary barely raised an eyebrow.
This is because the “outrageous” opinions expressed by the dusty-hued foreigners in the documentary have long since become mainstream in online spaces. Spearheaded by the “Trad Cath” and “Theo Bros” of Twitter, there is an entire conversation about what should be done with women to fix society. Western societies specifically. Despite being framed largely by nominal Christians, the prescriptions bear a striking resemblance to Islam.
Weird.
The prevailing Twitter advice for women is often as follows:
Marry young. As young as possible. On your 18th birthday if you can
Do not go to college
Do not work outside the home
Do not vote
Have babies as soon as possible and as many as possible
Be pleasant, thin, and beautiful. Always
But really, it’s for their own good. If women would only do this, they would be better off. Dare we say… they would be happy. All of them. And society would, at last, be as it should be.
It’s possible (even likely) that many of these gender-slop commenters say these things not with sincerity but to maximize post impressions and, by extension, maximize their profits. And it works.
Women roll into the comments like clockwork, calling names, citing themselves as exceptions to female stereotypes, and of course, invoking the specter of male violence as a rebuttal to this and all prescriptions for female behavior.
The anger from women surrounding these types of conversations is always most baffling to me.
My sisters in Christ, surely you realize that when these Very Online Men talk about women… they’re not talking about YOU.
When “Women” Doesn’t Mean Women
The sole non-foreign-born clown in the Manosphere documentary was Justin Waller, a genuinely successful construction magnate who came from the worst parts of Louisiana. He was already wealthy and successful, truly a picture of the American dream, when he started posting internet gender slop content alongside his friends Tristan and Andrew Tate.
Cousin Justin has prompted much anger for his takes on women due to his high-profile appearances on the Whatever podcast, the Daily Wire, Tate content, and most recently, the Netflix documentary. To be clear, he is not my first cousin, but looks as though he ought to be, so here we are.
Because he makes appearances on “normie” shows, he is the most known among non-terminally-online people and most likely to be sharply criticised for his misogyny.
If you want a good metric for how thoroughly normie women revile him, check out Galatea’s TWO-HOUR takedown of him:
HOWEVER… unlike his bestie Andrew Tate or the bestially stupid Sneako, Cousin Justin has a ready defense against accusations of misogyny. And in all seriousness, it’s a good one.
The leadership of the highly profitable construction business he owns is all women.
Yes, that’s right. His right-hand woman is a middle-aged, stocky built, highly competent woman, and his respect of and affection for her is palpable. He also employs younger women to liaise between leadership and construction teams because “there’s less friction there.”
This might seem like a contradiction from a man who says on camera that he does not participate in household chores or tending to the children; these are his wife’s domain. He also asserts the right to sleep with other women, even as his wife must remain faithful.
But his rules for “women” (and there are many) do not seem to apply to any of the women in his employ. Or even employed women in general.
He’s not alone in this seeming contradiction, as noted by Kryptogal (Kate, if you like) :
So a weird thing has happened, where in the past few months I have discovered that multiple clients I have worked for for YEARS are either hardcore right-wing ultra MAGA types…
… these are people who post as if women should be chained to a stove and are too emotional for business…who are also willingly paying me a lot of money per hour to give them advice about their business. They don’t have to do that, that’s what they choose to do.
And they’re all unfailingly polite and kind in dealing with me directly, and talk me up to others. I also know for a fact that ALL of these guys also have a female CPA who runs all their finance and accounting stuff, and half of them also have a female general manager who basically runs their operations.
So basically these are dudes who are telling the world on a daily basis how women should all be trad wives, yet are paying tons of $$$ to mostly women who are actually running their business empires.
So what is up with that?
… A ton of the supposedly ultra conservative and right-wing public figures out there spouting off about the evils of women working are paying hundreds of thousands of dollars every year to women who are running their legal, accounting, ops, and business management. Now that I’ve realized it, I can’t stop seeing it.
Don’t believe the hype. For guys who talk a big game about how women should be at home and never weigh in on business or politics, they sure have a lot of women on their payroll.
I’ve abridged her quote, so I recommend reading the whole thing (and following her cuz she always has good stuff), but her main point stands: many, if not all, of the “women shouldn’t work” types are only speaking about a specific subset of women.
In their minds, there is no contradiction.
When these men talk about “women” and what they should do and how they should look and act, they’re only talking about females between 18 and 25 who are probably white (possibly Asian), thin, bubbly, with long flowing hair, and rock the “clean girl” aesthetic.
Basically, only the girls they want to fuck. It’s horny posting cleverly disguised as life advice, driving the women who don’t meet the fuckability criteria to anger. “I can’t get a rich husband who lets me do pilates and shop all day! Not for long, anyway. How dare you suggest I leave myself vulnerable!”
And they’re right. But not for the right reasons. If you want to be mad at these posts and the men who make them, there’s an excellent reason to do so.
The Different Categories of Women
Being the disagreeable, freedom-above-all woman I am, allow me to woman-splain why these trad-man posters should be chastised: They actually think people, women specifically, can possibly exist in one specific category.
Like the factions in the Divergent series, somehow these fellas have so little experience with women that they think the foids come in one of five non-overlapping flavors:
The Wife: Dutiful, beautiful, domestic. A status symbol.
The Mistress: Beautiful, highly sexual, yet still devoted until it’s time to replace her, then she goes away quietly and with dignity
The Whore: A collection of body parts and a repository of sexual knowledge; designed to teach young boys the ways of men with women, an outlet for frustration and backed-up rage. Not really a person at all.
The Servant: The competent woman. Smart, skilled, sexless. Age is irrelevant. The servant woman is well-kempt, often a “handsome woman” but not wife material. She makes a man’s life possible and as easy as possible. She is paid for her time and knowledge, gladly. As long as she stays in her place.
The Nanny: The elder woman, past childbearing potential. Ready with encouragement and a soft smile, generous with back pats and humorous stories from days gone by. Nanny can be an employee, a relative, or a highly treasured volunteer.
This is how we get the advice of “women should be virgins upon marriage, but men should be experienced.” Like clockwork, the feminists will pipe up: “Who are the men gaining experience with? You’re obviously all FAGGOTS!”
Remember kids, homophobic slurs are okay if you do it wokely.
But what the nose-ring-wielding feminists don’t see, or what they pretend not to see, is that no, these men aren’t gay. At least not most of them. It’s just that the women who must remain virgins are an entirely different population than the women they pay to “gain experience” from.
Those women don’t count. They’re not wife material. If we’re being honest, they’re not even people. Not to these types of men.
And that is why they’re wrong, annoying, and stupid in their prescriptions for societal healing. “If only women would just…” No. You’re dumb, and it’s embarrassing. If you’re going to be an online misogynist, I must insist you do it correctly.
The “Good” Misogynists
Luckily, there are male creators who do “misogyny” correctly.
I put misogyny in quotations because the nature of internet discourse dictates that any man who criticises the behavior of any individual woman or group of women, even once, must ever-after be described as a misogynist.
If you think female child molesters should be put to death alongside their male counterparts? Misogynist. She needs therapy, not judgment. After all, she was probably abused by some man.
You think a woman who is unfaithful in her marriage should be cut off from any money from her husband’s assets? Misogynist. The husband was obviously emotionally abusive and drove her into the arms of another man.
I’m not exaggerating. And if you are as unhealthily online as I am… you know I’m not.
The right kind of internet misogynists are the men who devote themselves to the “manosphere,” that is, to helping men in their dating life or their existing marriage, and in their self-image, whether women approve of their methods or not.
Strangely, none of these men, who have been at it for years, some from the beginning, were not interviewed for Louis Theoroux’s documentary. Nor were they asked.
They have their fair share of haters though, especially among women. They are merciless to online female personalities they perceive as nags, for instance. They are blunt in their rebuttals of Christian virtue signalling. And sometimes they’re downright mean.
But they’re also balanced in how they view women. We are not one category of person, and part of their coaching is to help men realize that women are not just one thing.
We’re people. And unlike the third-world-inspired “manosphere” creators who fuel the outrage clicks, these guys aren’t mad at the fact that we’re people… with all the good and bad that implies.
A woman is both slut and angel at different points of her life and is neither to be condemned nor pedestalized. This refusal to abide by the ideological binary is what earns them the majority of their haters.
I’ll occasionally have female mutuals rage at my interview with Jack Napier or send me a tweet from one of my male mutuals: “How are you friends with him? Why don’t you call him out?”
Why would I? It’s not my job to correct men. It’s definitely not my job to teach them how to be men. Somehow women have gotten it in their heads it's our job to fix men, all men, collectively.
It’s not. And that assumption of a role that was never ours has driven us to some insane places.
It’s men’s jobs to sort themselves out, and I am giving you permission to hand that burden back to them.
Whenever you feel tempted to type a scathing comment to a man because he wished for an apocalyptic event so he can acquire grateful wives from the wreckage, don’t. Drop a link to one of Rian Stone’s videos instead.
It’s men’s job to do the hard work of becoming someone a woman would desire.
Our job is to be a prize worthy of that great feat, in beauty and in virtue.
Of course that’s also no easy task… which is probably why nagging is the more popular option.
Submissions Open
Our first PRINT EDITION of Black Market Fiction will be released in June. The theme? “No Man’s Land.” This is the issues of Westerns and their spiritual successors (Space Westerns etc.)
If you want to be a part of this issue, you can submit your short story or article/essay by April 30th.
Good article, as usual. As for the manosphere types lamenting "if women would just..." (and their feminist counterparts lamenting "if men would just..."), I can't help but think of ye olde Tumblr post:
"If your solution to some problem relies on 'If everyone would just…' then you do not have a solution. Everyone is not going to just. At not time in the history of the universe has everyone just, and they’re not going to start now."
The internet produces cultural sociopaths.
The very idea that people stop seeing people as people, but as exploitable entities says it all.
That aside, for black market fiction, instead of a short story what about the first chapter of something I have been working on?