Post: #1

This Sunday, in The New York Times Book review, there was a review of She Matters, A Life in Friendships by Susanna Sonnenberg. It's a non-fiction account of Sonnenberg's female friendships.

https://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/13/books...books&_r=0

I suggest everyone read this review -- all of it. You will have a hard time keeping down your breakfast as you work you way through the paeans to this self-involved narcissistic author, but it is worth it because the review will give another glimpse into the narrow psyche of the early 21st century liberated woman.

Lots I can talk about, but two things stand out.

First, the opening paragraph. emphasis mine.

Quote:This memoir of female friendships inspired a parlor game I suspect many readers will want to play — musing about the friends who shaped our own lives. The first best friend, the one to whom you clung and whispered all your secrets, and then outgrew. The big-sister friend, who married before you, had children before you and showed you her way of navigating those passages. The friend who let you down, who vanished during a crisis, and the one who stayed by your side. The friend you wronged without understanding how. The friend you simply had fun with, and the one you called when you were in despair.

In other words, all my friends are always understood by how they affect ME...not who THEY are as people independent of me. It's pure narcissism disguised by a clever list of categories. And the failure to understand the friend you "wronged." You don't understand because you can't get outside yourself.

And then there's this -- about having babies.

Quote:As it does for many women, having children provided Sonnenberg with a way to repair childhood wounds. But she also writes viscerally about the consuming nature of motherhood, including the fiercely protective love and the relentless demands. In the land of Cheerios, dirty diapers, fleeting naps and interrupted sleep, other mothers are a lifeline. “Our husbands were undone from us, phantoms of some former interest,” Sonnenberg writes. “I had nothing to say to men. Men! I could barely fathom their use, now that we’d made children.”

This view of motherhood is both astonishing and predictable. Having kids is ALSO a narcissistic act, a "way to repair childhood wounds." It's not about creating a family or advancing the social fabric...it's about fucking therapy. And, of course, men now become superfluous once motherhood arrives because once again, it is all about ME.

This is it, guys. These are the attitudes of sophisticated educated women. These attitudes are all gussied up for the The New York Times sophisticates, but when you cut to the chase, these women are, at root, no different than the working class lizards you see on POF or OKC, or who populate the hamster thread. They have better vocabularies, they live in Greenwich Village or Lincoln Park or in university towns...but THIS IS WHO THEY ARE.

Entitled.
Solipsistic.
Totally self-involved.

This is the existential reality.

Be forewarned.

Post: #2

Yep. In the end, women are all on their OWN team. Any and everything is about them. They look at the problems of those around them in terms of how that problem affects THEM. It always come back to the ME.

Post: #3

(01-17-2013 02:20 PM)tenderman100 Wrote:  Entitled.
Solipsistic.
Totally self-involved.

This is the existential reality.

Be forewarned.

Its the solipsism that makes them so fucking annoying to argue and debate with. Watching female politicians is rage inducing sometimes. I think women should be allowed in some political things, but there should be a quota! Like 1 for every 10 men or something - women don't get anything done, they just try to not hurt ANYONE's feelings.

Post: #4

I've long suspected this. Even growing up I was confused how my own mom could spend 2 hours on the phone talking to her friends and gossiping about bullshit, and then as soon as she put the phone down she'd start talking shit about her own friends that she was on the phone with. At least to me, it came off as talking shit.

Loyalty simply isn't a female quality, and I'm not even talking about cheating here.

Male friendship is completely different, and I suspect it's due to the evolutionary requirement that men from a particular group trust each other with their lives. I certainly feel that deep bond with my best friends. If you're out hunting or going to the battlefield together, the man next to you is as important as yourself. Women simply don't have an evolutionary precedent like this.

Post: #5

(01-17-2013 04:08 PM)thedude3737 Wrote:  Loyalty simply isn't a female quality, and I'm not even talking about cheating here.

This is it right here. Women don't live by any particular code - they are "loyal" only in the sense that they'll stay by you so long as they are benefitting from something you provide. When that disappears, so do they.

Post: #6

(01-17-2013 04:08 PM)thedude3737 Wrote:  Male friendship is completely different, and I suspect it's due to the evolutionary requirement that men from a particular group trust each other with their lives. I certainly feel that deep bond with my best friends. If you're out hunting or going to the battlefield together, the man next to you is as important as yourself. Women simply don't have an evolutionary precedent like this.

That's right.

In addition, men enjoy each other's company for its own sake. Guy 1 is not a friend to Guy 2 because Guy 2 is going to help him become a more complete person, or somehow help Guy 1 along the path of some sort of narcissistic spiritual growth.

No. It's all about camaraderie.

The other day on ESPN, the NFL LIve show played one of the Atlanta Falcon's D-Block, the impromptu show put together by Sean Weatherspoon and other Falcons just to have fun. They played this clip -- Matt Ryan on guitar and center Brett Romberg singing.





After they showed the clip, Cris Carter said, "When you are finished playing, that is what you miss -- guys in the locker room."

Right. The value is in the camaraderie itself.

Post: #7

Very true, I am friends with loads of different 'value' guys. I judge them on how well we get along, not how much they will heighten or lower my social status.

Post: #8

Women don't have friends.

Post: #9

It is wrong to be racist because there is nothing fundamentally different between the different races.

And it is wrong to be homophobic because there is nothing fundamentally different between those of different sexual orientations.

But men and women. In certain regards are as different as night and day. Yet - you get bullshit like 'misogyny' thrown at you when you comment on these differences.

Post: #10

(01-17-2013 07:02 PM)cardguy Wrote:  It is wrong to be racist because there is nothing fundamentally different between the different races.

And it is wrong to be homophobic because there is nothing fundamentally different between those of different sexual orientations.

But men and women. In certain regards are as different as night and day. Yet - you get bullshit like 'misogyny' thrown at you when you comment on these differences.

The real battle of the next 10-20 years I expect will be between people like us, and feminists. Its a 1st world problem, indeed, but it is what is going to happen. Plus, when I say feminism, I include beta-orbiters and white knights. Who, I believe are much more damaging.

Post: #11

Cardguy, careful with the gender and race analogies. There are obvious differences in both which is an undeniable biological fact ( both gender and race can be deducted from skeletons or single bones of a body). Do you want to say others are " wrong" and only your chosen "battle" is righteous? I personally dislike all coddling of " protected groups" and would rather judge each individual based on behavior and merits, be it male, female, gay, white, black...
Feminism and other PC attitudes go hand in hand.

Post: #12

I've been thinking about the concept of "friendship"/"love" for awhile now (as I'm sure most of you at some point have as well), and at some level you have to admit there is, at least subconsciously, an expectation that a friendship/relationship is going to yield some kind of net positive on your end.

In fact, on this very forum, I have heard relentlessly how one should stop hanging out with their "beta" friends and instead they should associate with their more "alpha" counterparts to hit the bars with so that their game/personal development/masculinity (mindset) is not significantly hindered. Is that sort of behavior NOT selfish?

Furthermore, if there is a friendship/relationship that yields a negative result on your end, then what is the logic of pursuing that further?

I am thinking that maybe what we call "loyalty" is actually a male's propensity to remain optimistic by finding/creating value where there is little to none. Even in the worst of times with a true friend, is there not an expectation of a long term positive association with them? (ex...my boys will always have my back?) At first this mindset may seem devoid of reason, but perhaps it is just a high-risk behavior, more predominately exhibited by men.

Relevant quote by Seneca, "If you consider any man a friend whom you do not trust as you trust yourself, you are mightily mistaken and you do not sufficiently understand what true friendship means." --from Letters from a Stoic

Criticism welcomed...would love to hear some more opinions.

Post: #13

(01-18-2013 12:46 AM)Apollo Wrote:  I've been thinking about the concept of "friendship"/"love" for awhile now (as I'm sure most of you at some point have as well), and at some level you have to admit there is, at least subconsciously, an expectation that a friendship/relationship is going to yield some kind of net positive on your end.

In fact, on this very forum, I have heard relentlessly how one should stop hanging out with their "beta" friends and instead they should associate with their more "alpha" counterparts to hit the bars with so that their game/personal development/masculinity (mindset) is not significantly hindered. Is that sort of behavior NOT selfish?

Furthermore, if there is a friendship/relationship that yields a negative result on your end, then what is the logic of pursuing that further?

I am thinking that maybe what we call "loyalty" is actually a male's propensity to remain optimistic by finding/creating value where there is little to none. Even in the worst of times with a true friend, is there not an expectation of a long term positive association with them? (ex...my boys will always have my back?) At first this mindset may seem devoid of reason, but perhaps it is just a high-risk behavior, more predominately exhibited by men.

Relevant quote by Seneca, "If you consider any man a friend whom you do not trust as you trust yourself, you are mightily mistaken and you do not sufficiently understand what true friendship means." --from Letters from a Stoic

Criticism welcomed...would love to hear some more opinions.

Good quote from Seneca, and I think it hits on a key difference between men and women. For men, trust is the key feature of friendship; for women, the key feature of friendship is how will it benefit me/make me feel better/help me.

For men, as I mentioned, friendship is about camaraderie. For women, friendship is a form of therapy.

Men gravitate to like-minded men -- the selection IS the validation, and there it sits. You'll gravitate to red-pill men, because that's who you are comfortable with. In contrast, for women, friendship is a never ending series of validations, the path to personal discovery. It's inevitably narcissistic.

Post: #14

As Nietzsche wrote in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, in the chapter "On the Friend":

"If one wants to have a freind one must also want to wage war for him: and to wage war, one be capable of being an enemy.... Are you a slave? Then you cannot be a friend. Are you a tyrant? Then you cannot have friends. All-too-long have a slave and a tyrant been concealed in woman. Therefore woman is not yet capable of friendship: she knows only love. Woman's love involves injustice and blindness against everything that she does not love. And even in the knowing love of a woman there are still assault and lightning and night alongside light. Woman is not yet capable of friendship: women are still cats and birds. Or at best, cows."

The wisdom we desperately search for has always existed throughout history. Feminists like to read the greatest philosophers in history while pursuing their Liberal Arts Degrees, praising them for their remarkable theories but scolding them for there views on women. As if the greatest minds in history were right about everything except this...

Post: #15

Quote:Most movingly, she recalls a moment of confession when she and her new husband had decided to terminate an unwanted pregnancy and Patricia, who had been trying to conceive, blurted out, “Don’t do it.”

Quote:As her friend, Rachel, grows more anxious and then destructively obsessive after the birth of her child, Sonnenberg commits the unforgivable sin: she tells Rachel she is a bad mother. Sonnenberg is brave to tell this story, and contrite, since it shows her at her judgmental and self-absorbed worst. She comes to understand that part of her attraction to her friend was her passivity. “Rachel,” she writes ruefully, “did not fight me for the spotlight.”

These people sound horrible.

Post: #16

(01-31-2013 05:16 PM)Hannibal Wrote:  

Quote:Most movingly, she recalls a moment of confession when she and her new husband had decided to terminate an unwanted pregnancy and Patricia, who had been trying to conceive, blurted out, “Don’t do it.”

Quote:As her friend, Rachel, grows more anxious and then destructively obsessive after the birth of her child, Sonnenberg commits the unforgivable sin: she tells Rachel she is a bad mother. Sonnenberg is brave to tell this story, and contrite, since it shows her at her judgmental and self-absorbed worst. She comes to understand that part of her attraction to her friend was her passivity. “Rachel,” she writes ruefully, “did not fight me for the spotlight.”

These people sound horrible.

They ARE horrible. They are fem-cunts in 21st century America.

Here's the existential irony. They think their self-involvement makes them self-aware, but it only makes them more and more narrow, limited, and constrained.

They are like a lower life form -- say a fish -- that thinks the entire universe is the reef they hide in. The wider world is simply outside of their realm of perception.

Post: #17

Quote:This book is, explicitly, a memoir of narcissists seeking multiple codependents female friendships, a choice that inevitably narrows the frame even as it so richly explores a central facet of women’s lives. ...

Sonnenberg also touches elliptically on a troubled time in her marriage, but only as it is reflected in a friend’s reassurance when Sonnenberg fucked a bartender had a brief affair.

She sounds like a real treat.

Quote:There is much to admire in this book — its imaginative narrative structure, its arresting prose, its raw honesty — but some of it is exasperating, too. I wish it had been edited more tightly, with fewer friends, each one standing more precisely for a turn in Sonnenberg’s life or a moment of revelation. At times the writing grows a bit fevered, particularly in the last chapter or two. And because Sonnenberg does not spare herself, there are places where she comes off as narcissistic — a risk in any memoir.

There's a reason why women's friendships aren't themes in movies and literature. They're superficial and have all kinds of weird underlying jealousy.

Quote:Yet Sonnenberg demonstrates a self-awareness that is clearly hard-earned, one of the many qualities she has absorbed from her eclectic and generous friends. In the end, that determination to learn from the women who are close to her, to investigate where she failed and where they did, is what gives the book such resonance. “She Matters” lingers with you, inviting you to construct a patchwork quilt of your own life and salute the many women who helped you along the way.

Her friends didn't want anything to do with her. They were the ones who probably realized that she's an emotional vampire. The "self awareness" she gained was just a tool to ensure that the rest of her narcissistic supply didn't run away when she wasn't finished using them yet.

Post: #18

It is becoming more and more apparent to me that the best way to destroy, or at least harm, the feminist movement is to create infighting between each other.

They are ultimately women and do not trust one another.

Post: #19

(01-31-2013 06:21 PM)tenderman100 Wrote:  They ARE horrible. They are fem-cunts in 21st century America.

Here's the existential irony. They think their self-involvement makes them self-aware, but it only makes them more and more narrow, limited, and constrained.

They are like a lower life form -- say a fish -- that thinks the entire universe is the reef they hide in. The wider world is simply outside of their realm of perception.

I couldn't have said it better myself. This article could have been more blunt.

This book is about how I manipulated people around me to increase my status and self worth in life. If my friends didn't provide me external validation to temporarily give me an ego boost, I'd ditch them for the next sycophant. My friends gave me all the support I needed to fuck around on my husband without feeling bad about it. In short, female friendships are a contradiction unto themselves, because it is entirely conditional and it depends on what I get out of it.

me me me me me me!