This post will be a reply to Davis M J Aurini’s post “Game Versus the Reactosphere” at his blog Stares at the World.
The skirmish between the Game bloggers and the reactionary bloggers has been brewing for a long time, but the blog fights appear to have been started by the post “Pick-Up Artists and the Nature of Women” at Emashee’s blog tba. Emashee criticises Pick-Up Artists for many of the same reasons that I (and Michael Anissimov, and several other reactionaries) have criticised them in the past, especially on Twitter: that they are (and they admit this) ‘enjoying the decline’. They are not attempting to fight the rise in female degeneracy and sluttery, but rather exploiting it for their own pleasure. I have compared this in the past to Nero’s legendary act of ‘fiddling while Rome burns’. Emashee’s thesis, with which I essentially agree, is that women need to be controlled by men, and that they are not going to take the initiative to fix the societal problems caused by feminism.
What I am definitely not saying, and what I dont believe Emashee is saying, is that women are somehow excused from blame for their misbehaviour or that they will not or should not suffer as a result of acting like sluts. What I am saying is that ultimately it is men who must initiate the changes that will fix this situation, as we must initiate all significant social changes, because women simply will not do so.
Aurini makes a sharp distinction between ‘PUAs’ and ‘Gamers’ that does not reflect reactionary usage of these terms (or any usage I am familiar with). We use ‘PUA’ to mean ‘a man who makes a major study of seduction and uses his skills to bed large numbers of women’. On this definition, Roosh is just as much a PUA as Mystery and all our criticisms of ‘PUAs’ apply to Roosh and his ilk.
Aurini then writes that ‘Gamer’ types would theoretically prefer a traditional, feminine (chaste?) woman, but since they have so much trouble finding one, they figure they might as well get laid in the meantime. I hope you can see why this attitude is less than impressive, especially to the Christian traditionalists. It’s a bit like saying ‘Well, I cant put out the fire in the Imperial palace, so I might as well get a bag of marshmallows.’ Cynically exploiting civilisational decline for your own pleasure will always call your reactionary bona fides into question.
Next, Aurini argues that the ‘Gamers’ have been discouraging sluttery and promoting traditional femininity with activities such as the #BackToTheKitchen and #FatShamingWeek hashtags. Well and good. But the above criticism still holds. Moreover, they are still validating the sluts they meet in person, even as their online activities trend in the opposite (and right) direction.
In the section that follows this, Aurini makes what I think may be his most repulsive ‘point’, but one I thank him for making, as I’ve made it before, but I think it has a bit more credibility coming from him; viz. that Roosh is in Eastern Europe because it is more traditional. But Roosh isn’t there to find a chaste young woman, marry her, and settle down; no, Roosh is in Eastern Europe to convince women who are not presently sluts (or at least who are significantly less slutty than the women he could bed in America) to behave like sluts with him. If you think this is admirable you are quite simply not a reactionary. Aurini claims that ‘at the end of the day…this behaviour is completely in the hands of the women.’ And in a sense this is true; Roosh is not a rapist. But when you lead someone to behave badly, even if you dont use force, you become partially responsible for that person’s behaviour. Blame is not a fixed-sum game; you are responsible for your own sins and you are responsible if you give scandal to others. And if you as a man feel you must pursue casual sex, it’s much better that it be with women who are already sluts. I really cannot understand how Aurini expects me to sympathise with Roosh because he makes it his goal to corrupt (relatively) chaste Eastern European women.
Aurini then makes several points that I either have no opinion about or agree with, and will thus skip over. I’ll pick up my criticism of his post at the second-to-last section, viz. the one about ‘white knights’.
The term ‘white knight’, as commonly used in the Manosphere, is a pet peeve of mine. I believe it originated as a pejorative term to refer to men who tried to ‘rescue’ women with the implicit expectation that this would somehow earn them sex; in other words, this was the kind of man a real-life acquaintance of mine would call ‘Captain Save-a-Ho’. However, the term has now begun to be used to mean ‘anyone who defends a woman who is behaving badly, on any level and for any reason’ and sometimes even ‘anyone who defends a woman against Manospherian attack, even when that attack is completely wrongheaded and the woman is in the right’.
To say that the men who convince women to behave like sluts share some of the blame for their sluttery is not ‘white knighting’; it is an obvious truth. Gamers tend to want everything to be considered 100% women’s fault all the time, and while I understand the impulse (because the progressive typically makes exactly the opposite error), it’s simply not correct. Unless the term ‘white knight’ goes back to its original meaning, I think it should be scrapped; it’s not useful except as a rhetorical bludgeon to help certain men escape blame for their degeneracy.
Finally, Aurini writes the following:
At the end of the day, the Manosphere is full of men speaking Truth, and daring to live by the Truth they speak. That they fall short of an ideal is no surprise – we all fall short, at some point or another. But don’t let these minor differences drive us apart.
I am afraid I must disagree. The Manosphere certainly is full of men speaking truth, after a fashion. But it is the understatement of the year to say they ‘fall short of an ideal’. They dont even try to live by the ideal, and moreover, they openly encourage others not to try to live by the ideal. If they were hypocrites who slept around while publicly proclaiming the need for chastity, that would be one thing. Most people wont live up to most ideals. But when they encourage sleeping around as a way of life (and when they attract a crowd that often denigrates and mocks marriage) they separate themselves from the values of reaction. And while I’m not above learning from them at times (when a person is right, he’s right), I dont feel the need to accept them as brothers or colleagues, until and unless they embrace the values reaction stands for.
I therefore stand with Anissimov, Steves, and Emashee, and against Roosh and his ilk (and if necessary Aurini as well), and I remain
your humble servant,
Arthur Richard Harrison
