Okay, be prepared for a long post!

I've posted a few threads recently largely to test RPers and see what sort of reaction I got, and if the reaction would confirm my beliefs. I could have anticipated the reaction fairly accurately, but it can be summarised thus.

In this thread, I posed the questions of whether TRP is intentionally sexist, whether there is any difference between this and misogyny, and whether people understood why women in particular objected to something that was intentionally sexist towards women.

The main responses were:

(i) It's natural to be sexist because men and women are different, and sexism is just viewing the genders differently;

(ii) I don't know what sexism means, could you define it for me;

(iii) TRP is intentionally sexist because it's beneficial to the people who come to RP for assistance;

(iv) There were some really spurious arguments about women changing tyres and behaviour that is considered non-typical for a certain gender that really have nothing to do with being sexist or misogynistic. Again, it was just basically suggesting that being sexist is natural.

In this thread, I posed the question of whether the association between racism and the 'manosphere' should be of concern to people who are part of it.

It's quite difficult to summarise the responses to this thread. But most posts could be characterised thus:

(i) I'm not concerned about racism because it's inevitable;

(ii) I'm of the belief that races are fundamentally different and that what some call racism is merely 'race realism';

(iii) There was quite a lot of suggestion that racial segregation is preferable;

(iv) Some people wanted the word 'racism' to be defined;

(v) There was some denial that there is much racist material on TRP or in the manosphere.

Very, very few people, if any, expressed any concern that TRP attracted racists, in fact most acknowledged it. What they tended to do was deflate the importance of racism, suggest that racism is somehow a meaningless or misleading word, or suggest that there was some sort of PC censorship occurring. When asked for instances of racism on TRP board, this was posted.

In this thread, I posed the question of whether it should be of concern that 35% of UK women (and 45% aged 18-24) have experienced unwanted sexual touching.

The responses here are quite easy to summarise (with a couple of honourable exceptions):

(i) Women need to behave like adults, they shouldn't be 'coddled' by society;

(ii) No, I'm not concerned and men in general shouldn't be concerned;

(iii) I refuse to accept the findings of the survey;

(iv) This is probably due to men coming on to women in a dating situation (it's made clear that this isn't the case).

I haven't referenced individual posts, but this was emblematic of the general attitude:

but is ridiculous how women expect everything and everyone to change just to accommodate their preferences.

Yeah, women! It's ridiculous of you not to expect men to assault you! Wise up, for fuck's sake!

I didn't bother starting one on rape because RP's fixation with rape and generally sickening attitude towards the subject is pretty obvious.

Fascism has been described thus:

Fascism is a system of violence that emerged in Pagan societies. The basic reason for this violent tendency in fascism comes from the philosophy of “worshipping strength”; that might is right. The strong have the right to rise to the top and crush the weak. Fascists greatly admire the strong, but hate and despite the weak and vulnerable.

For example, fascism is essentially the dictum that might is right, the weak shall serve the strong, and that hierarchy maintained by force is a moral imperative.

I believe that TRP is ultimately a fascist ideology, or at least eventually results in such behaviour from many of its adherents. Racism doesn't matter, sexism and misogyny is natural, we don't need to be concerned about women being inappropriately touched sexually. This can quite reasonably be described as a bigoted mentality, and bigotry is, of course, associated with fascism.

But above all else it is a philosophy of 'might is right' as succinctly illustrated by the fact that very, very few RPers expressed the remotest concern that women were being sexually touched in an unwanted fashion. Far, far more either blamed women, or suggested that they need to learn to look after themselves better. The fault in this situation was projected onto the vulnerable; the strong were entitled to escape censure.

I also mentioned in one of the posts linked that it's also noticeable to me that, in common with fascism, RPers tend, and there are some very prominent examples, to begin to espouse views that are racist or racialist. I mentioned Chateau Heartiste as a prominent example of this, but there are several others.

It's worrying that vulnerable people can be embroiled in this nonsense and then come out the other side as an embittered, confused, prejudiced and potentially dangerous person, and indeed do so. But I suppose there's nothing I can do about that.

I predict that eventually TRP will be banned from Reddit because it will become obvious that it's not tenable for a commercial site. This has already occurred with the wonderful FatPeopleHate, which obviously RPers support wholeheartedly. (And I want to emphasise at this point that I support free speech, even hateful free speech, but commercial sites have responsibilities that will result in them deleting such pages if they have any sense).

The long-term result of this is that it will be driven further underground, and RPers will become more isolated from reality and normality (it's hard to imagine how much more this could occur), at which point their extremism will only become more steadfast. I've seen it before with the white nationalist movement. TRP board is already ridiculously extremist as it is, there is an extremely sanitised content by comparison on PPD, but I cannot imagine any well-adjusted or remotely right-thinking person wanting to spend time on TRP board, because it is just absolutely vile, hateful, spiteful, bigoted, etc. Spending a significant amount of time there and taking it seriously will not be good for your mental health.

The comedian Stewart Lee once said:

...with someone like Jerry Sadowitz, there's a part in every show of his where a little piece of me dies and I think, I wish I'd never heard that.

I would absolutely apply that to TRP, yet thousands of people are burying themselves in it. You can't do that with Sadowitz because you can't buy his shows, or view them online. You can see him for a couple of hours, and then you're thrust back into the real world (also Sadowitz is arguably satirising people with the attitudes he demonstrates in his shows). This doesn't happen with TRP, you can spend a large proportion of your life submerged in it, and people do, so it's not that surprising that they end up with this mentality.

It's a shame because there are some RPers who are decent, intelligent and reasonable people, and who I like. But I believe, with quite considerable evidence to support this, that if you submerge yourself in that ideology too deeply and uncritically then sooner or later you will resemble a fascist. The mentality of some RPers is beyond worrying, it is downright dangerous for both themselves and others. And they don't even realise it, they seemingly think that they're being perfectly rational.

There is a part of me that hopes a lot of it is just bravado and shit-posting, but I think increasingly that most of them are presenting their real views.

I was going to post this on PPD, but the thing is...there is no point in telling them. None whatsoever.