They live in a wholly dependent state
See this is what got me to enter that thread. The denial of this obvious fact, in the personal as well as societal context, is what got my attention.
I'm gonna spitball something:
I think that the main way that they're able to do this, psychologically, is to recontextualize the (legitimate in their eyes) male power in their lives as somehow non-hierarchical and neutered of will. On their favorite gossip websites, they can pretend that the admin is just their buddy (whether they treat him this way behind closed doors is irrelevant; the narrative works equally well as a cope or just to save face) who doesn't have
power over them that they
submit to for
privileges; he's just doing them a
favor as a
friend. It's something he's
compelled to do by
being a good person, so it's not
power; the sun doesn't have power over us just because we depend on it—it just shines. That's just what it does automatically.
They certainly aren't
only operating within the consciously pre-determined confines of a man's agency. They definitely don't
buy their security at the price of subjection to a man's (perhaps open to feedback and non-tyrannical, but still final) will.
Applied to men they know, this is "he's compelled by his duty as a man to help me". Applied to the government, it can be "we live in a democracy and they have to follow the will of the people (us)". If they don't believe in democracy (or support the current regime), it can be "they (the aspect of the power structure that they support) are compelled by 'duty' or 'the rules' or 'decency' to govern us; it's not an expression of their will".
In other words, in the world that they
posit (I'm not saying they actually want it or think it's real), is one where "good men" (strong, brave robots) protect and provide for women for the
sole reason—excluding even authentic virtue, which is an act of will—that their social-moral-consensus-programming (enforced by women) binds them to do so. This is the
only way to have a society where men protect women, but men don't have authority over women. You'd have to remove men's agency entirely.
But no woman wants a man with no will.
Their number one argument against needing men is that they aren't able to attract chivalrous gigachads to protect them (bit of a self-report IMO) and that men today are generally weak (a regime issue, which would require male action to fix). For one thing, that's totally irrelevant to the point of the discussion, which was about why men are
needed. If I'm in a desert, I don't stop needing water just because there's none around. For another, in what world do chivalrous gigachads have no will of their own beyond social consensus?
Really bizarre line of argumentation from them. I'm forced to draw a few conclusions:
- The system that they implicitly posit is only fully appealing to exclusive lesbians (whom, for the sake of argument, I'll assume exist).
- Hetero women do not actually want this system, but will cope by telling themselves that they do. This allows them to pretend to have power (which is fun), and is also a useful narrative to feed the pet spiritually-neutered robot-men in their lives who can perform many useful functions.
- Addendum to point 2: my point here isn't that protecting women needs to be transactional, but that it's not a virtue if it isn't an act of will. If a man saves a woman out of will rather than compulsion, then by virtue of his will being active the woman in "under subjection" when he defends her (the limits of her environment are defined by his will). For any women reading, this isn't about "getting sex from women". A man can have sex with a woman and still be "spiritually neutered" in the sense described. See the YouTuber "Idubbz" for an example.
- As mentioned above, whether or not they maintain this position behind closed doors is another matter: I think that in many cases it's more about maintaining face as an "independent" woman, while knowing it's not true at all; for others, it may be a useful cope that helps them maintain their self-image, even if they're clearly operating under the will of a man (and enjoy doing so).
- Due to this narrative, it is absolutely necessary that these women deny the active virtues of the men around them, especially in aggregate. The entire worldview depends on the denial of men's agency when doing good. For women to be totally "liberated", men—outside of isolated cases—must never be admitted to rise above the moral level of animals acting on instinct. This explains most of the bizarre claims in the Man-Hate thread. Feminism as an ideology dies if men are thought of as human—the only way for that to not be the case would be if they started talking about getting a woman-army together to violently overthrow the patriarchy.
Any of that sound true?
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