Reader valter07 left a link to a great article on the stupidity and unhealthiness of the people who try to court and to woo. Obviously, when you believe it’s normal to make efforts to get people attracted to you, that already means you are in need of urgent psychological help:
We are not the lovable nerdy protagonist who’s lovable because he’s the protagonist. We’re not guaranteed to get laid by the hot chick of our dreams as long as we work hard enough at it. There isn’t a team of writers or a studio audience pulling for us to triumph by “getting the girl” in the end. And when our clever ruses and schemes to “get girls” fail, it’s not because the girls are too stupid or too bitchy or too shallow to play by those unwritten rules we’ve absorbed.
It’s because other people’s bodies and other people’s love are not something that can be taken nor even something that can be earned—they can be given freely, by choice, or not.
This is a very important idea that many people are not getting. You can’t earn love or sexual desire. You can’t “make” or “persuade” or “convince” anybody to want you. They either do or they don’t. And any effort to “change their minds” or “make them see” how good you are and how deserving you are of sex or love is RAPIST MENTALITY. And the belief that they just don’t know their own mind is also RAPIST MENTALITY. Get over it now because it’s disgusting. And using the word “deserve” anywhere around the word “sex” is also disgusting.
If your sex life isn’t working out, visit a sexopathologist and leave the rest of humanity in peace. As a free alternative, read the above-said very closely many times until it becomes completely interiorized. Learn the linked article and my posts on the subject by heart and analyze the kind of diseased thinking that made you participate in the unhealthy practices described in the article.
And for the love of all that’s holy, when somebody says, “I’m not interested in you that way,” just turn around and go away, repeating to yourself, “This is completely normal and I’m over it already.”
Clarissa's Blog 
I almost left a link to the same article. I thought it was insightful. I also found it disturbing. I had no idea that some people are turning Rogers in to a folk hero; I was also disturbed to discover that some people are “exposing” women who rejected Roger’s advances and suggesting that these women are bullies and somehow responsible for his rampage.
We have had far far too many mass shootings in recent years. But the discussion surrounding Rodgers seems a bit unique to me. I don’t think I can remember quite the same rush to victim blame or rationaize the gunmen’s behavior in the past. It’s a if (some) commenters see a logic in murdering women for refusing to sleep with someone?
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This is precisely why I believe that these MRA groups need to be investigated as terrorist organizations. I’ve read a lot of their stuff over the years, blogs, discussion sites, forums, everything, and these are precisely the ideas they promote. I have read them saying that women who refuse them sex are violating their constitutional rights. One of them came to this blog a few years ago and said exactly this. I don’t remember what thread that was in right now.
These are very dangerous people with a dangerous philosophy. There is a lot of really scary stuff going on and brewing in those groups. We need a very vocal and public repudiation of them to make them unattractive to new converts.
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After 9/11 when it was brought home to everybody that terrorism is not cute, even Spain’s ETA gave up on its terrorist activities. Let’s hope this tragedy becomes the 9/11 of the rights of women and it stops being cute to be a MRA.
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I already sense that starting to happen. They are playing with dangerous explosives and hurting those the closest to them, which is bound to start to cause some pain sensations. It’s almost like Elliot was the tip of a boil with its roots deep into the skin of Western culture. Now perhaps we can see what was there and the boil may be in the process of being lanced.
For too long, when it has been women’s pain, women have been easily ignored on the basis of the facile allegation: “oh, you are just being sensitive and emotional”.
The pain really has to start to hurt the perpetrators and would-be perps before the deeper nature of the cultural issue can be realized and come to terms with.
And I think that is starting to happen.
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I read that last night and was so pleased to see something that was so no-nonsense about this specifically pertaining to geek culture, because I’ve written before about how self-described geeks love to excuse themselves from upholding and reinforcing sexism, and got rained on with threats and accusations that I had power over geeky men because I could “entice” them. I hope this changes a lot of minds, or at least plants the seeds of “maybe it’s not other people, maybe it’s me” in people like that.
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Clarissa, do I have 2 comments stuck in moderaton? They are essentially the same comment but I posted twice because I am not seeing it appear. It had one link in it. Perhpas that’s why it doesn’t seem to be posting?
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I can’t check on this phone I’m using right now but I’ll check when I get home.
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I get the feeling that a lot of MRA guys want the “hot looking chicks” because they want to impress other guys, not because they want hot sex. The MRA guys have status anxiety that they misidentify as horniness. Agreeable average-looking people can find other agreeable average-looking people and have plenty of hot sex.
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A good observation, Nancy. I know many nerdy guys who are in happy relationships with good women who love them but who are not the “hot looking chicks”. I think that if Rodger and company were really after a relationship with a woman, as they claim, they would find what they were looking for.
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I can’t imagine anybody wanting a relationship with this piece of garbage. Or any of the pieces of garbage on MRA websites.
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This is weird. I am under the impression that men’s rights advocates are primarily interested in helping make sure that a man who for whatever reason is not in a relationship with the mother of a child of his cannot prevent him from having any contact with the child for no other reason than her whim. I have never heard the term used in the way this post and these comments imply. Maybe the movement has changed drastically over the years. But I am really opposed to women’s being free to consider their children their property and forbid their fathers from having anything to do with them (except of course to pay child support.)
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“Maybe the movement has changed drastically over the years.”
Here’s one blogger who, for the past few years, has been tracking what it’s become. He links to posts from popular MRA sites and forums (the most recent posts have been about Elliot Rodgers, but you can dip anywhere into the archives). http://wehuntedthemammoth.com
In the glossary at the top of the page, he also mentions that MRAs (as a movement) weren’t always like this.
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” I am under the impression that men’s rights advocates are primarily interested in helping make sure that a man who for whatever reason is not in a relationship with the mother of a child of his cannot prevent him from having any contact with the child for no other reason than her whim.”
– I wish! That’s a movement I could support. But this infantile freaks have no interest in children.
“But I am really opposed to women’s being free to consider their children their property and forbid their fathers from having anything to do with them (except of course to pay child support.)”
– That’s my position exactly.
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I also don’t understand this post. There are many ways of attempting to convince a woman to be sexually interested in you. The most obvious is eye contact. Following the rules you propose, no man should ever make eye contact with a woman he meets, nor otherwise attempt to flirt with her, since doing so would constitute attempting to interest her in him sexually.
This is pretty much the way I was raised in a Christian fundamentalist environment. I cannot believe it is healthy.
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Americans are strange….If you engage with them joyfully, that is with a sense of emotional pleasure in their company, it can make them feel as if their emotions are getting out of control or that there is a disgusting element to the interaction. You have to treat them very flatly, in an emotionally cold range. That can be understood as being civil and polite. But Japanese, by contrast, would think you didn’t enjoy their company if you did that.
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And once again, the downvoting confirms that I am not wrong. Unless it is a congratulatory smile and a pat on the back for any nonsense, people take offence rather than responding coherently or taking in what has been said to them. Yanks.
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People don’t feel offended, they just disagree. You don’t provide any evidence or even an anecdote so why even bother commenting ‘Well, my experience has been different’.
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Ah, yes, now I see. You want to be able to say, “Wall, let’s talk about ME waaaal, maaah experience haas been diff’rent.”
Yes, yes, but I already understood that, too, you know?
I already know you think you are great and yes, yes, yes, you have very positive experiences about yourselves. 🙂
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“There are many ways of attempting to convince a woman to be sexually interested in you. The most obvious is eye contact.”
A woman won’t be “convinced to be sexually interested in you” because you make eye contact with her. You might be demonstrating your own interest (perhaps, if she can actually understand it that way), but what her reaction will be you can’t control. If she isn’t interested, then move on. That’s the point of the post – not that you shouldn’t flirt or look at or talk to anyone. Also, the same advice applies to women.
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“A woman won’t be “convinced to be sexually interested in you” because you make eye contact with her. You might be demonstrating your own interest (perhaps, if she can actually understand it that way), but what her reaction will be you can’t control. If she isn’t interested, then move on.”
– Oh, I see hkatz already said exactly what I wanted to say.
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“There are many ways of attempting to convince a woman to be sexually interested in you. The most obvious is eye contact.”
– Eye contact doesn’t convince anybody. 🙂 It establishes contact.
” Following the rules you propose, no man should ever make eye contact with a woman he meets, nor otherwise attempt to flirt with her, since doing so would constitute attempting to interest her in him sexually.”
– Flirting also doesn’t convince anybody of anything. It’s a way of signaling interest. However, if you tried making eye contact and flirting but the person averts her gaze and doesn’t respond to your flirtatiousness, I believe it’s a good idea to step back.
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if my father thought that way I would not be here, when he met my mother she was not into him, he kept at it and they were married 3 months later and stayed married for 53 years until he passed away a few years ago. they were always affectionate to each other as far back as I remember and she still get very depressed when she is at home because everything reminds her of him.. by today’s standards he would have been labeled a stalker. and I’ve heart the stories from multiple sources, I guess what was romantic in the 50’s is creepy today, how sad for the world.
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Family mythology is best discussed with a therapist and not brought into a serious discussion among adults.
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