Ex-MRA explains why he became and stopped being an MRA

[I Must Enter a Username]

Quote:A user on RevLeft suggested I write up my story. I hope it’s all it’s cracked up to be. I placed this into OI, so I could get feedback from as many people as possible. I hope that this isn't a problem for the mods. This is a long post.

Are there any ex-PUAs or ex-MRAs here? I'd be curious to hear your transition, as would that user who suggested I do this write up.

Parental Spousal Abuse

My mother was a sadistic authoritarian egomaniacal bully. She would abuse the language of feminism to justify her behavior, calling herself a strong independent woman. I did not understand until later that term actually referred to a self-actualized assertive person for that reason. I learned to associate the term strong independent woman with manipulative psychopath. You can see where I got off to bad start with my how my experiences ended up coloring and distorting terms for me.

On the contrary my father was a kindhearted, generous person that didn't have a mean bone in his body. Due to his easy-going and generous nature it is easy to see how it was taken advantage of. He was gentle, patient and never raised his voice or yelled--until my mother got involved. She was the only person that would drive my father to yell and curse, but only in very brief outbursts after she had been screaming at my dad for a while. Most of the overall screaming would be done by her. All of the physical abuse would be done by her. My father would never hit a woman, not even to defend himself. This is what the patriarchy teaches you. So-called chivalry. Only a faggit would hit a woman! What are you? A pussy? A queer?

If my father didn't do what she wanted, she would throw a tantrum like a child. There were several times when they would argue where she stood in the front doorway blocking his path, stopping him from going to work in the morning. She would stand there screaming, possibly hitting him, and would not move until she got her way.

Indeed, it was very often when she would start screaming at him she would stand in the doorway of the room they happened to be in, refusing to move upon request and menacingly blocking my father from being able to remove himself from the abusive situation, without having to physically move her. It seemed she was essentially daring him to make physical contact with her. Bullies are often experts at being abusive and manipulative towards their victims, and are also adept at pretending to be the victim themselves once the real victim starts fighting back. My father showed incredible restraint standing when she would decide to claw and slap him on his face, chest, arms, and neck during their fighting sprees, which would go on for what seemed like hours.

There was one time that my father finally fought back. He was driving with my mother and brother in the car. I was at a friends house at the time. They began arguing and in the middle of the argument, my mother began to slap and claw at my father’s arm while he was driving with my brother in the car. This caused my father to swerve and nearly crash. He was able to safely stop the car; his arm scratched, bruised and bloody. She quickly jumped out of the car, opened the back door and scooped my brother out running off down the street with him. This is considered kidnapping, a felony in Florida. My father got out of the car, chased her down, grabbed my brother while he was still clutched by my mother, and kicked her in the leg causing her to fall and release my brother into my dad’s hands.

A witness saw my father kick her and called police who showed up within just a couple minutes (the area where this happened was a fairly affluent neighborhood with an average response time of about a minute and half). My dad explained to the officer that my mother had endangered the life of my brother by hitting him while he was driving and then had tried to kidnap him, so he had used justified force in getting her to release him (in Florida, it is legal to use up to deadly force to stop a kidnapping). The officer acted as if my dad’s side of the story didn't exist, despite the obvious injuries on his arm. The officer also refused to take photos of my father’s injuries. My father, a person who never had a criminal record in his life, was arrested and booked for assault and battery. He accepted a plea deal that forced him to go to anger management class. My mother was never charged with assault and battery, child endangerment nor kidnapping.

Movement Towards MRA, MGTOW & PUA

MRA & MGTOW groups appealed to me because of this. They seemed to be the only place where it seemed like someone else understood what I was going through. A place where people understood that women could be abusers and aggressors too. That they weren't victims 100% of the time. I felt that finally someone was presenting things with balance. My experiences led me to believe that feminists were simply providing a forum for man hate. I did not recognize my own internal hatred of women.

I became a PUA because I wanted to get back at women. I wanted to get back at them for having caused my father and my brother so much pain. I wanted to fuck them all to show them who's boss. Power. It wasn’t even for myself. I made it a goal to revengefully fuck as much women as possible. The techniques actually worked. I was actually having sex for once in my life. I thought I had discovered the secret to having sex with any woman. What I didn’t realize is that I had merely discovered the secret to having sex with shallow women and it really wasn't much of a secret anyway.

Unfortunately, a large portion of the population is shallow. This isn't necessarily some kind of natural human shortcoming. It is social conditioning brought about largely through the culture of status through stuff. Plundering and having shiny new stuff gives you status and that’s somehow supposed to be important. Women are still considered property by society, it’s just not as overt as it used to be. It is ingrained in our culture to give deference and respect to people who claw their way towards what they want, without regard for others. Raw egoism The cult of the self, as I've heard Chris Hedges put it. One is automatically given status by propagandized minds by simply assuming the sophomoric quintessential individualist, extroverted, cocky & funny, rugged alpha male archetype. I didn’t realize that this knowledge (which I thought was incredibly profound at the time) was simply a special case of typical methods of propaganda, manipulation and appeal to the worst of human emotion. Politicians routinely do the exact same thing to get large portions of the population to like them.

This is how I met an extremely right-wing girlfriend and dated her for nearly two years. Precisely by assuming the alpha archetype, which was totally not my real personality. By that time I had learned to pull it off quite well. The problem was not that I couldn’t maintain the facade with this now ex-girlfriend. It was actually that one day I was talking to her and just started wondering, Who is this person? By not being who I truly was by assuming this Rico Sauve PUA role, I had ended up attracting a person who was incompatible. A rather obvious result, in hindsight.

Movement Away from MRA, MGTOW and PUA

Just like I got tired of manipulating people in my sales jobs, I got tired of manipulating women with PUA. That’s what it is. Pure and simple. It is the abuse of language and PR tactics to get sex. It works, but at a cost to your soul. Is getting laid so important that I must play psychological games to bed women? Is sex more important than meeting compatible people? I realized that it wasn't to me.

I finally did some further self-reflection. I started to debate with both feminists and MRAs. What I discovered was that real feminism was about the elimination of the patriarchy. I found that many of the legitimate gripes that MRAs have, are actually the fault of patriarchy--something feminists are against. It seems that in nearly all cases MRAs and MGTOWs simply do not understand what feminists really stand for. No reasonable feminist believes in the institution of an equally oppressive matriarchy to replace patriarchy. Rather, they believe in the elimination of the concept of gender roles (if I understand correctly). I finally understood that gender roles are the problem, and not a particular sex.

http://www.revleft.com/vb/ex-mras-and-t1...l?t=189352

[brainiac3397]

The Patriarch Will Reign Supreme!

[thewake]

I don't understand the grouping of PUA with MRA. Generally only feminists trying to paint MRAs, misguided as they are, as misogynist assholes will group them with PUAs. Kind of a guilt by association.

[danky elfman]

(06-27-2014 12:18 PM)W Kuts Wrote:  I don't understand the grouping of PUA with MRA. Generally only feminists trying to paint MRAs, misguided as they are, as misogynist assholes will group them with PUAs. Kind of a guilt by association.

This^^ The MRA movement actually has a very poor opinion of PUAs. I don't know how people keep getting this association.

[brainiac3397]

Now...what is MRA and I only know what news had about PUA.

[KFC Nyan Cat]

(06-27-2014 01:04 PM)danky elfman Wrote:  

(06-27-2014 12:18 PM)W Kuts Wrote:  I don't understand the grouping of PUA with MRA. Generally only feminists trying to paint MRAs, misguided as they are, as misogynist assholes will group them with PUAs. Kind of a guilt by association.

This^^ The MRA movement actually has a very poor opinion of PUAs. I don't know how people keep getting this association.

Same reason they associate Nazis with Communists.

[somethingsomething]

Loonyleftist? I've chatted with him several times, he's a great guy and this is a really good post by him.

[Rule_BreakerXVIII]

Great post here. It was probably tough for him to introspect till he realized that he was hating all women for what his mother did, and to improve himself...I hadn't realized how bad it was for men like his dad. Great eye-opening post.

[SoulRiser]

So much acronym... what the hell is a MRA?

[James Comey]

Men's Rights Activist.

[brainiac3397]

Ew.

Men don't need activism. Only sissy men need to make that point.

[no]

(06-29-2014 12:12 PM)brainiac3397 Wrote:  Ew.

Men don't need activism. Only sissy men need to make that point.

siiiiiiigh...
If nothing else, we need activism to get rid of this debilitating, oppressive "macho"/"sissy" stereotype.

[Gwedin]

if you don't have a beard you aren't a real man face it.

[James Comey]

The whole "be a man" is all bullshit. It only encourages men to bottle up emotions, which is psychologically unhealthy.

[brainiac3397]

I am macho man. I eat nacho and sit on a couch watching football. I am macho man. I live dirty. I am macho man.

On a serious note, this is all due to the decaying concept of camaraderie between men thanks to a mainly homophobic society. What men once did in the past, are now considered faggy, or gay, or homo.

MRA is an obvious symptom of this decay. Men are forgetting manhood and defining manhood as that of what's opposite feminism. This course leads to silly and stupid ideas.

EDIT:In fact, camaraderie across genders is best.

[Ky]

I'm a man because I'm comfortable in my own skin. Yeah, many aspects of my personality could be construed as feminine, and I'll never fit the macho stereotype, but could a man be a real man without coming to terms with that?

[James Comey]

Honestly expressing emotion and being bluntly honest is far more manly than playing the macho man when you know you aren't. In my view, at least.

[brainiac3397]

I hate macho men. I hate more the macho wannabe teens. I do love it when they get beaten up though. But I still don't like Armchair Macho-ism.

[thewake]

I don't see what's wrong with "being a man" in the least. The genders obviously have different conventions about how to act, which also vary depending on culture and environment.

[James Comey]

It's all subjective.

[brainiac3397]

Guidos.

[Trar]

(06-27-2014 12:18 PM)W Kuts Wrote:  I don't understand the grouping of PUA with MRA. Generally only feminists trying to paint MRAs, misguided as they are, as misogynist assholes will group them with PUAs. Kind of a guilt by association.

r/libertarianism, is it just me, or do women just not get libertarianism? none of them want to hear me explain why even the chicago school of economics is superior to the growing degenerate tide of cultural marxism, and when i say that associating pua with mra is wrong, they act like i haven't understood the facts correctly and am imposing a view of reality i have assumed to exist with little research. can you help me finally have sex?

r/mensrights, i feel like masculinity is under attack, because the dad is dumb in sitcoms, the girl wins in mcdonalds ads, and in girls tv shows they encourage girls to feel good about being a girl but the same isn't explicitly encouraged in boys tv shows, boys are just expected to already have confidence and self esteem in their identities and i don't know how to admit that i don't have that because womeon on the internet have problems with what cultural standards of masculinity incluude and result in. Help me get a gf because i have tfw when none.

[SwiftEscudo]

I hate MRAs as much as the next logical person but strawman/10

[I Must Enter a Username]

(06-27-2014 01:04 PM)danky elfman Wrote:  

(06-27-2014 12:18 PM)W Kuts Wrote:  I don't understand the grouping of PUA with MRA. Generally only feminists trying to paint MRAs, misguided as they are, as misogynist assholes will group them with PUAs. Kind of a guilt by association.

This^^ The MRA movement actually has a very poor opinion of PUAs. I don't know how people keep getting this association.

People get this association because actual MRAs (like this guy) have been associated with it.

(06-30-2014 03:36 AM)Trar Wrote:  

(06-27-2014 12:18 PM)W Kuts Wrote:  I don't understand the grouping of PUA with MRA. Generally only feminists trying to paint MRAs, misguided as they are, as misogynist assholes will group them with PUAs. Kind of a guilt by association.

r/libertarianism, is it just me, or do women just not get libertarianism? none of them want to hear me explain why even the chicago school of economics is superior to the growing degenerate tide of cultural marxism, and when i say that associating pua with mra is wrong, they act like i haven't understood the facts correctly and am imposing a view of reality i have assumed to exist with little research. can you help me finally have sex?

r/mensrights, i feel like masculinity is under attack, because the dad is dumb in sitcoms, the girl wins in mcdonalds ads, and in girls tv shows they encourage girls to feel good about being a girl but the same isn't explicitly encouraged in boys tv shows, boys are just expected to already have confidence and self esteem in their identities and i don't know how to admit that i don't have that because womeon on the internet have problems with what cultural standards of masculinity incluude and result in. Help me get a gf because i have tfw when none.

Hey Trar, it's been a while. I have some books that you might like.

Also, who do you think is better, Rawls or Marx?

[thewake]

(06-30-2014 10:49 AM)I Must Enter a Username Wrote:  Also, who do you think is better, Rawls or Marx?

Nozick.

[I Must Enter a Username]

(06-30-2014 10:51 AM)W Kuts Wrote:  

(06-30-2014 10:49 AM)I Must Enter a Username Wrote:  Also, who do you think is better, Rawls or Marx?

Nozick.

Interesting how Rawls shits on both Marx and Nozick from some weird moral-ethical point.
I think Marxists would simply just dismiss (as nothing to lose sleep over) Rawlsian criticism as they would if (I also think) Austrian School ethics were being mentioned, but don't take my word for it.

[brainiac3397]

I'm still downloading the 2.2gb rar you sent me...

[I Must Enter a Username]

(06-30-2014 12:04 PM)brainiac3397 Wrote:  I'm still downloading the 2.2gb rar you sent me...

When you're ready, I can send you the more recently downloaded stuff at your request.

[James Comey]

Also, Username, Trar has been on and off and at this point he's a lurker who might post at times. Long story.

[I Must Enter a Username]

(06-30-2014 12:30 PM)Hansgrohe Wrote:  Also, Username, Trar has been on and off and at this point he's a lurker who might post at times. Long story.

Yeah, I know.