Hugo: Wrong This Time

This is an article by Hugo Schwyzer. Hugo isn't a bad guy. He's aiming to be a centrist in the gender debate. He's married. He has a daughter. But I'm afraid Hugo is just a bit OFF on this one. He has other articles in which he is spot on.

This is not one of those articles. 

And yes Hugo, you walk dangerously close to the "Mangina" vortex.  That's why you've been divorced a few times. You started out as a man - what a woman defines as a "man" - a male homosapien with the characteristics a woman would be drawn to, the characteristics she wants to fuck and breed with (no disrespect to women; it was mother nature's decision to invest into women these instincts).

Hugo is married with a daughter and is comfortable, so mainly he takes off his diaper and waves it around and screams "Let's all just get along!"  Thanks Hugo, but when women are divorcing their husbands and stealing the couple's children (referring to typically as "her" children), the home he paid for, the diamond ring he paid for, the car he paid for, and 40% of his income until the kids are 21 (23 in MA), the battle lines have been drawn my friend. That's not a shot across the bow, that's a .357 shot through your eye and another straight through both nuts. Wake up, man. You're a sweet guy, but us "sweet guys," out there are being divorced by panicky alpha and beta females that want to upgrade their pussy husband for something more dominant, and in the process, laying financial waste and ruin to INNOCENT MEN. Men who did not lie, cheat, or steal ANYTHING. 

These things are being done every day and they are being done on a massive scale with the BLESSING AND HELP of the "independent" juidiciary branch of the union's Federal and state governments. 

Hugo? Its tough to say ANYTHING bad about the "feminsim" behind these acts and manage to be wrong. Seriously buddy. Feminism is defined as the EQUALITY of men and women. So what I'm talking about isn't feminism - its outright misandry. And if you knew the FIRST THING about the law, you could see that the GOALS of our laws and family courts has been ALIGNED with the goals of MISANDRY, and not feminism.

p.s. Your wife wants you to pull her hair when you fuck her. 

That is all.

How Men’s Rights Activists Get Feminism Wrong

March 8, 2011 By Hugo Schwyzer 404 Comments

Hugo Schwyzer explains how a handful of men are angry for all the wrong reasons.

When I was getting clean and sober in a Twelve Step program many years ago, there was one phrase from the literature that always resonated with me. We addicts have been, the book said, the “architects of our own adversity.” Yes, I thought the first time I read that. It’s time to stop blaming others for my own pain. It’s time to take responsibility.
That same phrase comes to mind when I think about Men’s Rights Activists (MRAs). I’ve been crossing verbal swords with the MRAs for many years, particularly since 2004 when I began to develop a public presence as a male feminist writer and professor. I learned quickly that not all MRAs were the same; some offered thoughtful criticism while others offered only nasty invective. (Look up “Hugo Schwyzer Mangina” if you need evidence of the latter.)
As a professor who teaches courses on Men and Masculinity, as well as a mentor to many young men (and as a man myself, of course), I’m intensely interested in the ways in which men position themselves as victims. I’ve spent years reading the literature and talking points of MRAs and “fathers’ rights” groups. I’ve spent a lot of time in conversation with men who are going through divorce, something I’ve been through more than once.


My male students range in age from 17 to 70, from bright high school students taking their first college courses to retired professionals curious about gender studies. I meet with so many of them—jocks, geeks, gamers, drifters, ambitious future politicians and wary-eyed Iraq and Afghanistan veterans.


From so many of these men—online and in real life—I hear the same thing: the narrative of helplessness.

♦◊♦

The older, angrier MRAs describe a world in which women (and their male “collaborators”) have usurped traditional male privileges for themselves. Men, they claim, are at a disadvantage in the courts, in the business world, in academia. The MRAs see public space in the Western world as increasingly feminized, and they fancy “real men” (in whose ranks they invariably include themselves) to be under attack from a dark coalition of feminist activists, cowardly politicians cravenly surrendering to the cultural left, and a media that never misses an opportunity to demean and belittle traditional men. It all provides a satisfying sense of being “under attack,” which is why many—not all—men’s rights activists use, absurdly enough, the language of oppression and resistance to describe their movement.

When heterosexual masculinity is defined by violent obtuseness, these “guy rules” rob boys of their chance to develop emotional skills to thrive in relationships with others.

These men feel victimized, they feel exploited, they feel ignored, they feel impotent. And those feelings are powerful. I don’t think these boys and men who turn to the men’s rights movement are lying about their pain. The problem is that they’ve completely misunderstood two things.
The cause of men’s very real unhappiness isn’t a biased family court system, or feminist college professors, or the perceived injustices of Title IX athletic funding. The source of men’s anguish and uncertainty is the straitjacket of traditional American manhood.

"Men are suffering because their emotional, psychological, intellectual, and sexual potential is stunted by their own efforts to live up to an impossible masculine ideal."

{JB: WHAT? Our efforts to live up to being what society defines as a man: a breadwinner who successfully pleases his wife in most ways, are what is making us unhappy? So we should "learn" to be happy with unsuccessfully screwing our bread-winning wives? Have you ever spoken to a woman? WHICH ONE told you they want a sissy husband who makes nothing, but does all the cooking and cleaning!?!?!?!?  And of course, the girls in high school and college are ignoring the jocks and lining up to screw the "sensitive" guy who just wants to cuddle and talk about their feelings. Really Hugo? REALLY?} 

Whether they got it from their fathers or their older brothers, whether they learned it from peers or pastors, coaches or drill instructors, almost all American boys grow up learning the “guy rules.” As Deborah David and Robert Brannon first showed in their landmark 1976 book on men, The Forty-Nine Percent Majority, the rules are crushingly simple: Big boys don’t cry. No sissy stuff. Be a “sturdy oak.” “Be a big wheel.” “Give ’em hell.”

Being a man, in other words, is defined by divesting oneself of anything remotely associated with femininity (like kindness, sensitivity, intuition, empathy).

{JB: No offense, but do you HEAR YOURSELF? Take those characteristics into the business world, or the football field or the battlefield and see where it gets you. CRUSHED. That's what. Why would women want to marry.... themselves!?!?!? They want someone to BALANCE those characteristics in themselves, NOT DUPLICATE THEM!}

When heterosexual masculinity is defined by violent obtuseness, these “guy rules” rob boys of their chance to develop emotional skills to thrive in relationships with others. This frantic effort to shut down a whole aspect of one’s potential isn’t caused by testosterone or Y chromosomes. It’s caused by the longing to live by the “man code.”

{JB: The man code barely exists anymore thanks to single moms raising boys without A FATHER FIGURE AROUND AT ALL, AND NO, THE FOOTBALL COACH DOES NOT COUNT. Emotional skills are FINE for men, when they develop them as they should, around the age of 32 or so, but for chrissake, don't RAISE THEM on emotional skills! And don't subdue their NATURAL AGGRESSIVENESS THAT MAKES THEM MALE! Don't subjugate the NATURAL MALE INSTINCT to that of FEMALE INSTINCTS! Just CONTROL AND SHAPE the male instincts to be CONSTRUCTIVE!!!  Women want AMBITIOUS MEN! That doesn't come with a big helping dose of SENSITIVITY!}

♦◊♦

Most MRAs agree that the “man code” exists and that it does great damage to young men.

 {JB: They do!?!? I put my son in martial arts where he gets to break boards and spar other boys. My son is the sweetest boy in the world and he LOVES FIGHTING. Why? HE'S. A. MALE. CREATURE.}

But they blame women for these cruel and limiting rules. According to many MRAs I’ve spoken to, it is women’s sexual desire for the alpha male that forces boys to compete ruthlessly with one another. “Women say they want one thing but choose another: they always go for assholes,” so many guys say. If women would broaden their sexual appetites to include “betas” and “omegas,” their reasoning goes, boys would feel less compelled to compete ruthlessly with one another. (The men’s rights activists tend to be wildly off-base about what women actually want, but that’s another topic.)

{JB: When in doubt I always trust science - you know, PROVEN FACTS! And the "wildly off base" comment about "what women want?" - cuz Hugo, the twice divorced hero knows - is a direct repeat of this snake oil salesman named DARWIN. Maybe you've heard of him? According to Hugo, Darwin was wrong and women secretly want sensitive lady boys.}

It’s a typical but tragic mistake: MRAs wildly overestimate women’s power, sexual or otherwise. Men, they insist, are helpless by comparison. But that claim ignores a long and unmistakable history of male domination in human history. And if there’s one undeniable truism about our species, it’s that the rules are made by the dominant group.

The “man laws” or “guy rules” were created by and for men. Historically, winning validation from other men has mattered more than getting sex or love from women. (If you don’t believe that, think for a moment about how hard boys will work to please a demanding football coach.) Males are raised to be “homosocial,” which means they’re taught to get their primary affirmation from other men rather than from women.

{JB: The men WHAT?!!?!?  Boys work hard to please the coach because the coach is an alpha and they want to be alphas - WHY!?!?!?! WHAT DOES IT MATTER!?!?!? CUZ WOMEN SLEEP WITH ALPHAS, YOU MORON. All of our INSTINCTS go directly to mating and procreation. IT IS MOTHER NATURE'S DESIGN!!! and has been for.... uhhhh... MILLENIA!!!  Any guy I know likes his time with his guy friends, but mostly we want to fuck a hot woman. That's got NOTHING to do with other men, other than setting us against them to compete.}

Working too hard for female approval just makes you a “mama’s boy” or “pussy-whipped,” and the frantic efforts young men make to ensure neither of those labels apply to them tells you all you need to know about who it is they are really trying to impress.

{JB: Again, YOU ARE BLOODY CONFUSED, PAL. What are you talking about?!?!  Men don't want to lose their self-respect and that's what happens when they are ultra-pleasing the females. The other men look at them and tell them they're working too hard for a woman's affection and all this effort IS THE RESULT of the woman not respecting them either. So they have no self-respect and no respect from women. Further, many of the boys of single-moms are "mamm's boys." } 
 

♦◊♦

So men are indeed architects of their own adversity. This doesn’t mean that each boy is individually responsible for his own suffering. But it does mean that the pain so many men feel from broken relationships, social isolation, and the gnawing sense of personal powerlessness is not women’s fault.

{JB: Its not ALL women's fault. It is the fault of SOME women. It is the fault of those women - and men, like you, Hugo - who deny boys their natural right to nourish their own NATURAL INSTINCTS and become the STRONG, HARD-WORKING, DISCIPLINED MEN women are naturally drawn to for food, protection, shelter, and love. Or else stop reading and just study WHAT EVERY SINGLE BODY OF SCIENCE REGARDING MALE-FEMALE MATING FOR THE PAST 200 YEARS PROVES.  Or else just go to a bar and ask yourself it the women wore clothes showing off their bodies because they are interested in a tender, emotional conversation.}

 It’s the fault of a rigid code that was set up eons ago, a code that many of us continue to perpetuate. Extricating ourselves from the emotional straitjacket the code forces us to wear requires taking responsibility for our own lives and choices. It requires letting go of blame. And it requires seeing that feminism—with its remarkable claim that biological sex has nothing to with our human potential—is the best avenue for our personal and collective liberation.

{JB: Now you're just being funny. Feminism - which has transformed into a male-hatred movement dominated by lesbians and ultra-fragile Adrea Dworkin-type rape victims - is NOT, by ANY STRETCH of the imagination, the best, or even the least worse, avenue for "our" personal and collective liberation. Liberation... FROM WHAT, Hugo? I'm not chained to anything! I'm HAPPY being a man and reveling in my male qualities. TRY IT OUT SOME TIME. Also, your wife probably hates men. I'm guessing a real masculine man hurt her badly when she was a girl, emotionally or otherwise, and so she has decided not to trust any REAL men. That is why she selected you, Hugo, a man far from possessing any REAL MANLY qualities of any kind; a man who now believes - despite dozens upon dozens of men TELLING HIM THE OPPOSITE - that men need to embrace their emotional, sensitive side, because it somehow has something to do with some mystical, spiritual, ascension into some kind of "higher being." This of course is the very definition of mumbo jumbo that has no basis in fact, science, or observable reality.}