Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Must Resist...Urge to Troll!

I've been reading "Manboobz" again. I really shouldn't, because it's depressing as all get-out to realize that there are real, genuine human beings out there so damaged and broken that they blame their mental image of women for all their problems (and frequently seem to be about one step away from snapping and committing a horrific act of violence) but the site also provides a valuable dose of perspective on these people by pointing out that no, they are not moral crusaders or oppressed masculinists or anything other than pathetic, lonely men who haven't figured out yet that the reason they can't get laid is because women don't like guys who hate women. (Funny that.)

And then there are the pickup artists. I admit, those are my favorite posts on the site, because I'm slowly developing a theory that the entire "pickup artist community" out there is basically composed of all those guys in high school who bragged about how they got laid every single night, explaining to virgins how it was done because virgins were the only people who wouldn't spot their total lack of knowledge about what an actual naked woman looked like, only it's ten years later and they're still doing it. Seriously. It would not surprise me if there was not a single one of these guys who had ever even spoken to a real life flesh-and-blood woman in a social context, and their entire "game" consisted of them repeating tips they'd heard from some other pickup artist and boasting about how well they worked for him so that people didn't start accusing him of being a virgin. (Or gay. Unsurprisingly, these guys are homophobes as well as misogynists.)

And so I am fighting the urge to troll. Because it occurs to me that if you're dealing with an entire group of people who a) have no knowledge of what they speak, and b) cannot, even for a second, admit said lack of knowledge lest they be exposed as frauds, it might be kind of interesting to pretend to be a pickup artist and see just how big a lie you can get away with spreading. You know, start going into their forums and insisting that the hardest part of picking up a woman is making sure that afterwards she doesn't inject you with her paralyzing venom, allowing her to implant her eggs in your stomach. Or stating that the external breasts are nice, but it's not until the woman gets aroused enough for her second set of breasts to unfold from her hidden hip pouches that you know you've got her turned on. Nobody would call you on it, because they'd all be afraid if they said you were a liar, a chorus of voices would suddenly say, "Oh, you didn't know about the hidden breast pouches? Geez, no wonder you have a hard time getting a second date."

The flaw of this, of course, is the same reason why I'm having an easy time fighting the urge. I'd have to spend time around pickup artists in order to make the whole thing work. And, well...these are the sort of people I avoided in high school, and y'know what? They haven't gotten any better with age.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

As a feminist,

I would remind you that it is no less dehumanizing to be treated as flawless and forever in the right as it is to be treated as inferior and faulty.

There are evil women in this world as well as good women, there are women in this world who intentionally exploit their sexuality (and men who do the same) just as there are women who exploit nothing, and there are women in this world who live down to the worst of the FOX News stereotypes as well as the majority of women who do not.

If you can not accept this, you are not a feminist, just a devotee who happens to help us out and, in the end, also part of the problem.