AIBU to think the Manosphere reflects mainstream attitudes about women?

[JustHadEnoughOfItNow]

I've just watched the first 10 mins of this documentary. I've read a lot of comments on fb about it over the last few days including a lot of comments from men who are in the camp of the 'genuine good guys' who don't subscribe to it and are as shocked by it as the women commenting, which a lot of women have been reassured by.

Obviously, these men are at the more extreme end of the belief system but, it got me thinking that it's actually a trajectory a lot of men are on. I'd even say most.

I have a partner of 5 years. He is 50/50 on everything including the mental load (believe it or not). We have separate laundry baskets at his insistence because he doesn't want me doing his laundry. He's out at the supermarket at the moment and always does the weekly shop. We meal plan together and write the list together but he'll often be the one who's noticed we've run out of something and he really only consults me to see if there's anything I specifically want (for work lunches or personal items) etc. He does housework, holiday planning etc and I've never left him a list...

Yet, in a conversation about men chasing younger women, he still commented that "most men become more realistic about the sort of woman they can attract as they get older," which isn't the same as preferring someone of a similar age and life stage and finding them attractive. It's about being realistic about what they can get. Eg you might want someone else but you'll take what you can get.

I've dated men who have made a point of saying they "don't mind" a bit of extra weight on a woman but have suggested after a few dates that I'd look better if I dropped a bit of weight (I'm a size 10/12).

Endless threads on here about lazy men who see the household and childrearing as the woman's responsibility. He might not introduce his partner as "Dishwasher" (as someone in the documentary did) but it's certainly who she is to him.

When i read comments on here where women express concerns about a new partner and their mum body, other women will reassure them that he will just be so grateful to have a naked woman in front of him who is willing to have sex with him that he won't care what she looks like or, that men will have sex with sofas so you've got nothing to worry about. Which isn't the positive message I think those women think it is. It says nothing about her as a person only that men will fuck anything so he'll probably be content to fuck her too. I mean, yeah, he'd rather have someone he's attracted to but he is hardly likely to be an Adonis himself so will be grateful for what he can get.

The Manosphere might have taken these ideas to an extreme but it has only taken pretty mainstream ideas/beliefs to the extreme.

These men have not come up with something brand new and that's why it has gained so much traction. Because, on a really fundamental level, it makes sense to a lot of men even if they believe the manosphere takes it too far.

I think this is the thing. Almost any extreme viewpoint has parts of it some basic parts that do make sense and that’s how they get you in. I’m sure if I read Reform’s agenda I could find something I agree with. If you look at communism and facists they had principles that made sense but the more extreme parts then obviously take over and become problematic to say the least.

The trouble is that a lot of it does make sense but most men don't get the subtleties of it.
All women have the capacity to cheat given the right circumstances (such as her husband becoming an abusive, lazy bum) which is reasonable becomes all women WILL. cheat NO MATTER WHAT and are therefore evil .in dumb men's minds.

A lot of it is just debunking lies like telling men to just be themselves and someone will love them.
Well no. That's not true.
We all know it's not true. Why do we pretend it's true? Telling young men this is not helping them.
The bottom line is that romantic/sexual relationships are not unconditional at all.

I don't see anything extreme about what I've said here.
In fact it's the people who are being 'nice' who tell young men that some girl will love them no matter what they are/do/fail to do that are failing them because they find out that it's not true and they get bitter.
Another lie is that women are attracted to nice guys. Nope. It's good that a man is nice and kind of course but niceness is not in itself attractive. So they focus on being nice and get nowhere with women and again become bitter.

What I’d say to my dd is that they can want what they want, but they can’t have it unless you’re willing to participate, and that includes in being a doormat.

I share your worry about boys (and girls) growing up on SM and the algorithms they are fed. But I think it’s dangerous to present this as the main problem, as if nice and innocent boys are being corrupted by the bad ones. I think the truth is far more uncomfortable, as you are intimating, OP. It’s a tale as old as time that men are the ruling sex class and society is ultimately set up to benefit them and their desires and instincts. This has been challenged a bit as the years have gone on, but really progress in women’s equality is nowhere near what I think most imagine it is. Misogyny and inequality vastly predates SM.

I do think sm gives some of these a platform though.
Once upon a time, sneako would be that weirdo you avoided in school, then the weirdo you avoided in the pub. Natural selection (or growing up) would sort him out.

But now he gets to be heard by other weirdos, who amplify him and reinforce him. Then he's a celebrity, who is also controversial, and that then makes him an aspirational figure.

The only thing that was shocking to me about Manosphere is that it revealed just how many uneducated and vain young men and women exist in the world. Like all cults or phenomena, they work because there’s at least an element of truth to them. Many of these men think women are inferior (by some metrics) or stupid because there are so many vapid and stupid women around them. Put Ursula von der Leyen in front of them and they’d crumble. Every one of those women is able to walk away, go for a man who’s not a roided, bigoted, money-obsessed insecure damaged boy - but they want them for the money and the lifestyle.

This all spoke to a teeny tiny demographic that’s obnoxiously loud-mouthed and takes up a disproportionately large part of public discourse because the young and beautiful (many people do find this look beautiful) always do. Meanwhile, the rest of the world gets on with its business. You can only bullshit some of the people some of the time. You can’t bullshit everyone all of the time.

Mansplaining like they're historically blessed. Abdsolute dick splits, all of them. I do wonder what they think of their Mums who may have fucked and sucked many a blessed one 🤔

I watched this and each one of these blokes were insecure little boys working under the ‘I’ll hit first so they don’t hit me’ mindset. They were pathetic and ignorant but the underlying feeling was that they're all terrified that they might be irrelevant. All of them were intimidated by someone with some actual intellect.
I agree with a poster above about banning social media and cutting the oxygen from this bullshit.
Sadly, though, I do agree that this is an extreme version of what’s likely to be going on in most blokes minds. Over the years we have been conditioned and educated to recognise that homophobia, racism, sexism is not ok and shouldn’t be articulated but many societal norms are falling away currently and social media is shining the shiny light on people who think everyone else wants their opinions and are too thick to work out that it says more about them than anything else.

I haven’t watched it yet but yeah people adjust to what they can obtain. Most of us fall in love with someone who is not exactly our ideal (if asked to write a list). I think theres a tiny speck of truth in some of it. DH would probably prefer me at the weight I was when we met, happily he loves me so it’s not that important anymore but he’s allowed to have that preference (he wouldn’t be stupid enough to tell me).

As to the age thing, healthiest pregnancy outcomes (birth at term, health of mother and child) on average occur at 25+ years so if it was just about biology then men would all be chasing 25 years olds, so anyone telling you they are attracted to a 16yr old because young women are more fertile is chatting shit.

To me it was obvious none of them had any man in their life that loved them. Therefore they were at risk from predators online.

Its a tale as old as time from Fagin, to the Peaky Blinders, to the military, the catholic church. All of these groups take advantage of scared and unconfident young boys and turn them into angry and entitiled men for their own ends.

This particular group are either getting the money off them is crappy supplements or using them to hide their pimp rings.

Sorry but I think you're incorrect.
The truth is that a lot of men even if they love their kids are shit fathers to their sons.
They love them so they indulge them, treat them like a mate, fail to teach them that work is essential to success.
The army comes in shows them consistency, rules, discipline, how overcoming challenges is key to inspiring confidence (which it fucking well is, BTW.)

And sorry but a group of military guys came into a well known venue I was at.
As it was a special day, they were all in uniform. God they looked good. Even the ones who were not particularly attractive had something about them.

I can assure you 100% that the women at the venue were looking at them and not the fat slob dads who were unable to refuse their kids anything.

It's really funny how women say they want sensitive, nice, soft men but go for the confident ones, isn't it?

With respect, what a load of balls. Feel free to slaver over military men if you want but you don't speak for all women. You can teach strength and offer challenges without including the badly-hidden undercurrent of violence. The military is not an antidote to aggression and skewed ideas about male power, it's just another expression of it imo.

If the question is would most men prefer a young sexually attractive partner who didn't expect them to do any housework and treated them like a conquering hero because they have a job, then I guess the answer would be yes. Just like women would probably prefer that too. So, yes, pretty mainstream.
What's less mainstream I think is the idea that this is an entitlement for men and they should settle for nothing less. Because most men's experience has shown them they have the choice of realism or being single.
Some of these men have enough wits about them to express their outrage at the very idea. Because they know it lands poorly with women not to.

This just sounds like semantics to me, tbh. I would absolutely describe your house analogy as being realistic?

I mean I don't disagree with your overall point - when you think it's barely 100 years since women won the right to vote it would actually be more surprising if thousands of years society's expectations and respect for women got completely overturned within a few decades and to me it makes sense that a lot of men have only pretended to change their minds.

Yes, to some extent. I think the world is full of sexism and much of it internalised by women.

What shocked me is the extremeness of the views, the entitlement, the way the views were seen as normal, acceptable, and something that should be publicised.

I agree with a PP that some of what you describe in your post feels like a dating preference- for example, maybe I prefer to date a tall, muscular man with hair; he might prefer to date a slim woman, a few years younger than him with great skin. Then again, if a man is saying this to his partner (e.g., you need to lose weight, you look old, your skin is awful) then he is a bully who should be dumped.

That perhaps feels different to men who see "one-sided monogamy" as a biological norm; think women aren't as competent or agentic as men due to biological differences; think women should obey men etc. These men just want to dominate and oppress all women. If these views are mainstream, I'm glad I don't have many acquaintances outside of work!

In the first case I'm worried about behaviour (thinking your partner might look better if they lost a few lbs vs telling your partner/making your partner feel this) but in the second case the opinion is bad enough (e.g., all women should be traditional wives in one-sided monogamous relationships because biology).

Oh believe me, I wasn't the only woman looking at them. And slavering is too strong a word.
You can indeed teach these things without the military but the point is that a lot of men do not.
They utterly fail their sons.

And what's your beef with the military, anyway?
Are you just one of those hypocrites who hate the military up until the point they're needed and then you want their help?

I think that you - and people like you- are the reason the manosphere exists.
You want to feminise men, make them more like us, tell them lies that being nice is the way to attract a woman (niceness is good but not actually sexually arousing) and entirely be rid of natural male aggression but instead of sensibly channelling into things that benefit us all you want to be rid of it completely.

Never mind, eh? I'm sure it'll all work out well when we try to empathise our way out of trouble. Lol.

Gosh, sorry about accidentally creating the manosphere. There I was thinking it was men! But no, obviously it is always a woman's fault. I temporarily forgot that it is always feminine wiles that drive men to behave like shits.

That's called selling your soul...

These men are disgusting insults to manhood frankly.

I think this is actually the crux of it.

What we consider a civilised society (as opposed to being governed by every passing biological urge) is based on people making active choices to override their instincts - instincts that reduce us all down to sexual value, power hierarchies and so on.

The manosphere (and the evolutionary psychology it draws on) lures boys in because it tells them that actually, those biological urges that they feel are actually all-important, all-encompassing, and should override the "civilisational" rules that they're taught about. And it targets them at vulnerable moments at which they're most acutely conscious of their sexual value and place in a social hierarchy (adolescence).

A lot of manosphere concepts are easily recognisable in a superficial way. I think we've all looked at a photo of friends, and thought (hopefully to ourselves), that one guy/girl outshines the others with their looks or pose. And then we've hopefully dismissed that as the fleeting, ugly, meaningless thought it was and moved on. Manosphere grifters take the fleeting, ugly, meaningless thought and construct an entire cod-philosophy around it.

Perhaps off your topic a little bit OP but I read your initial post with interest.

Do you have children with this man? I'm suspecting not because there is no mention of who does the children's laundry?

Many women enter into marriage and motherhood with men such as the one you have described secure in the knowledge that all things being equal will continue as before.

And then it turns out that covering 'their share of the mental load' for many men actually only extends to what they perceive to be 'their share' of the adult mental load and doesn't cover much of the 200% increase in the tasks that form the mental load once you have children.

Indeed many men actually reduce what they perceive as being their fair share of the mental load during the woman's maternity leave (and beyond) because they are 'at work' and she .... isn't.

Just an observation

A haughty sarcastic response that doesn't actually address any of the points I've made.
The truth is that the-largely female driven-trend of telling men that they just need to be themselves no matter how unattractive they currently are, to be nice (a good quality but not in itself a sexually arousing one), learn to cook and do chores and women and will want to have sex with them as a result does not work thus they have become bitter and disenchanted with these untruths and they've turned to the manosphere to tell them what really works.
And you know it's not all misogynistic shit, though I concede that some of it is as in any movement, some of it is right on the money.

It really is in a man's best interests to be as good-looking as he can be, charming, self-assured and just be a teeny, teeny bit cocky (in a good way) to get female attention.
I doubt that you know nothing about the manosphere's more moderate men like Jordan Peterson et al, anyway.
Just 'Andrew Tate bad!!' reflexive stuff.

Given the number of boys brought up by mothers, because the fathers have run off, taught by mainly female teachers because men are not attracted to teaching as a career, surely something has gone terribly wrong for these makes to be drawn to the Andrew Tates of this world?
Why?

They all came across as rather sad inadequates possibly some with unresolved childhood trauma and/or who are rather insecure in their own sexuality.