Comradeship // Freechat

In The Will to Change, bell hooks speaks to the ways women (in the general) often uphold and reaffirm patriarchy and patriarchal standards.

She cites examples akin to what is stated in the quora post, but analyzed through a systemic, materialist lens rather than the myopic misogynistic shit posted here.

Far be it from me as a man to tell women what they ought to be doing, but I feel prof. hooks when she deconstructs the ways women can claim to desire vulnerability and emotional openness in men, but due to internalized patriarchy wind up shutting men down for being too emotional or too open - she claims she did this to one of her partners when he finally started opening up. I've had it done to me, for sure.

I agree with what you said. As soon as I read your comment, I immediately thought of the movie and book 50 shades of grey.

I would actually argue that the foundation of fascism is purely economic -- economic crisis brought on by the problems inherent in the capitalist mode of production (overproduction and the falling rate of profit), one sector of the ruling class seizes power in order to restart the economy, and to gain power builds a mass movement among the workers. But that's in a way neither here nor there, because the things you've described are indeed features of fascism.

I will say, however, that I am somewhat suspicious of the concept of empathy, mainly because the word seems to refer to a specific feeling, and feelings come and go. Some years ago I worked with a guy who was (to put it charitably) a total asshole. We all knew it was because there were deep problems in his life, so we cut him some slack. But there were days when, if I'd suddenly heard he'd been arrested for drug possession and was facing jail time -- in a US prison, no less -- my first reaction would probably have been "motherfucker deserved it, hope he gets roughed up." Naturally, I'd try to suppress that feeling, or at least not express it openly, but I'd be lying if I said mustering empathy for him wasn't extremely difficult sometimes.

More reliable, I think, is to know intellectually and to continually remind oneself that humanity is very precious -- "the most precious thing in the material universe," according to Kim Jong-Il. To hate, really hate, any one of its manifestations is thus a kind of crime, for which one should always accuse onself and do penance. My father, who was a kind of radical Christian, once told me that to rejoice over the death of anybody, even one's worst enemy, is morally equivalent to murder; one could, he thought, be glad that justice was done, and be happy that the dead man would no longer be harming anyone, but one's overriding sense should be one of sorrow that human nature had become in that person so twisted and defiled. As a religious communist myself, I try to carry that mindset into my day-to-day life, and not to go around fist-pumping whenever somebody particularly vile, say an Azov fighter, gets wiped out in a Russian airstrike. "There but for the grace of God go I," and in a different set of circumstances that same person might have been an upstanding communist and servant of his community -- perhaps even a Hero of Labor or a martyr for the People. That to me is the main moral difference between communism and fascism (or various strands of ultra-leftism); we will use violence when we have to, to defend ourselves and those weaker than us, but we don't celebrate or aetheticize it.

You were never a beta male. The beta concept only serves to make the alpha male concept exist. The point is to make the guy who thinks he's an alpha (they're just losers who eventually joined a gym) look good in contrast. I'm going to tell you a secret: people like Joe Rogan are far from confident, but rather extremely insecure. It's all bullshit. They're not assertive, confident, or good leaders. The confidence they display is similar to that of a narcissist. In the end, it's all just a show, a performance.

These people push down others by calling them “beta”(they mostly use the insult cuck nowadays I think) to make them look superior without changing anything about themselves. Their position remains the same, they are not better than others, but they usually just go to the gym so they appear superior. The use of steroids is also a manifestation of their insecurity.

The whole "PUA" thing is fascinating in a fucked up way. The lies they tell about women, and the bullshit they tell you will get you laid all only serves to make you pretty much guaranteed to never get laid, and if you did, it would be in spite of all the PUA stuff, not because of it.

Like all good con artists, they create a problem, then sell you the solution. Society doesn't actually really give a shit if someone "can't get pussy." It's only insecure, sexually frustrated manchildren who care about that. So naturally, these con artists target that exact group and tell them things that prey on their insecurities, while also offering the solution, that they alone can teach you how to "control and dominate women" or whatever. Of course, this stuff only makes you incapable of viewing women as people, which in turn makes it impossible to actually have a genuine relationship, so the fledgling PUA strikes out, then goes back to their "guru" for more advice, leading to an endless cycle. And it isn't until someone realises that the whole thing is bullshit that they can actually step away from it.