Ferdinand Bardamu, master of ceremonies at the seminal mansophere blog
In Mala Fide, has opted to take his website to the cyber-scrapheap while he heads for some ill-defined greener pastures. I don't know Ferd personally, though he has been kind enough to link to many of my articles, and I will always adore the implacably profane honesty of the opening sentence of his review of
The Columbine Pilgrim ("Holy fuck, this is one messed-up book."); thus, I wish him well.
Ferd and I recently engaged in a vigorous exchange of ideas on the subject of embracing one's "beta"-hood vs. striving to be "alpha"; though Ferd's side of the debate isn't curently available, you can see my two articles, "In Defense of Squares" and "
Reply to Bardamu." Though we differed radically in our perspectives, it was an amicable debate. It has been eye-opening for me to discover and explore the online "manosphere" lately, as its adherents are one segment of the uneasy coalition of malcontents with modernity that make up the alternative right.
As with any social movement, be it mainstream or fringe, large or tiny, the manosphere appears to be riddled with factions, which regard one another with suspicion and sometimes outright antipathy. Indeed, these factions often seem to train their firepower with more gusto upon one another than they do upon the common enemy of radical feminism. The chest-thumping "pick up artist" types promote "game," and appear to take the view that "he who scores the most wins," much like Tom Cruise's character T.J. Mackey in
Magnolia. The less hedonistic and more earnest "men's right movement" types, on the other hand, seem fixated on addressing the egregious anti-male bias of the courts, the media, and society at large. The former faction sees the latter as whining, feminized losers, while the latter regards the former as shallow, preening phonies.
Among both factions, the dislike of the misandric abuses of contemporary feminism often shades not so subtly into an anger and contempt for women in general, to the point where they almost read as a strident and one-sided "feminism in reverse," wherein men are always right and women are always wrong, rather than vice-versa. That said, it is certainly true that feminism – like every other left-wing identity movement today – is the ascendant ideology of our age, so a degree of overcorrection on the part of defiant masculinists can be forgiven to some extent; such as these are, after all, the Rebel Alliance, a ragtag bunch of despised misfits attacking the stronghold of the ruthless Galactic Empire-like dominant paradigm, whose agents in turn seeks to wipe out dissent as surely as Grand Moff Tarkin destroyed Princess Leia's home world with the Empire's massive and deadly laser turret on the Death Star.
Now my very use of the "Star Wars" metaphor above would render me a "beta"-like geek among the manosphere's "game" followers, and being a "geek" is greatly to be shunned among "alpha"-chasing pick-up-artist types, since chicks don't dig nerds, and discussing
Star Wars arcana is no way to show that you're the dominant kind of he-man who calls the shots and won't get pushed around or manipulated or "friend-zoned" by any potential lay. In my two essays at
Counter-Currents, which led to my friendly-fire exchange with Bardamu, I explained why I found such compulsive fastidiousness in playing the "badass" in fact rather un-manly, since a real man is comfortable being true to his native inclinations, even if they are "nerdy."
Now allow me to take this argument a step further. There is, I think, something essentially degraded about a mindset which takes it as self-evident that sex in itself is a thing to be prized and sought after and salivated over, simply because cultural forces scream to us that indulging our appetite is some kind of biological imperative. It is, of course, no revelation to admit that the male libido is a potent, often growlingly insistent force, but this does not mean that it must be placated, or that it defines who we are as men.
In fact, is there not something appalling in the prospect of being led by the nose to do the bidding of our loins? Think of how easy it is for this drive to be harnassed and manipulated by those who, for one reason or another, seek control over us! I am in fact astounded that fewer manosphere-scribes and readers haven't wised up to this stark principle, stated at blogger
The Blanque's site:
"Do you want to undermine the matriarchy? Then stop fucking.
Seriously. What is it that drives the matriarchal control of men today? What is it that the matriarchy manipulates to achieve their goals?
The answer is obvious: it's the sex drive of men.
If you want to take power back, stop doing what the enemy wants you to do: Stop hooking up, stop going to bars and clubs, stop behaving like there is nothing more to being a man than dipping your wick. Stop fucking.
Watch how quickly the feminists panic when they have nothing to hold over you anymore: "Do as we say, or you'll never get laid again!"
Answer them: 'Fine-- I'll never get laid again.' Watch what happens."
The Blanque's counsel is perhaps a bit extreme. Not every display of titillation is necessarily an act of female manipulation aiming at emascuation and control. Still, it follows that if more men had the self-control and the discipline to say "no ma'am" to sex more often, some of the more repugnant elements of contemporary misandric feminism would be significantly eroded.
Could this be yet another reason why the principalities and powers of our age are so hell-bent on sexualizing everything and everyone?
