DREWspective

I left out a couple of important points in last night’s post, The Valentine’s Day Lecturing.

The first point: when someone starts giving unwarranted relationship tips, or advice on how to attract women (or men), it’s purely out of self-indulgence – although they’ll justify themselves by saying

I’m only trying to help

They’re actually only interested in making themselves feel superior to someone else (in this case, single people) and making themselves feel better, especially if it means making someone else feel inferior and worse. Bear in mind that they don’t care whether that person is happy or content with being single, or if they’re completely frustrated about being lied to all the time by women – the sole purpose of the self-indulgent lecture is to make this person feel inadequate. I’d even go as far as saying that such lectures are premeditated.

If you’re not convinced that anyone who gives these lectures is being self-indulgent instead of helpful, look at what happens if you call them on their bull****. All of a sudden they’re the ones who get angry, they’re the ones who start cursing and screaming, and they’re the ones who threaten to abandon you if you don’t instantly change – which, mark my words, they’ve already decided to do anyway. (As I’ve said, they decided to abandon you when they chose to indulge themselves in the self-indulgent lecture.)

And let’s not forget: a minute ago you were “a nice enough person”, and there was supposedly nothing wrong with you. Oh yes, and they were “only trying to help“.

The second point: you might not realise this, but the other reason why people give these self-indulgent lectures is because of projection – these people themselves feel they “need” to be in a relationship, and that there’s something inherently wrong with being single.
They have a hard time imagining life as a single person, mostly because of peer pressure or social conditioning to find “The One”. It could also be said that these people are far more concerned with what other people think of them, than what they think of themselves.

Personally, although society has turned single life into some kind of solitary confinement punishment (where other people are told to stay away from single people), I don’t see anything wrong with being single, especially if it’s out of choice. But people consciously choose whom they get involved with – so singledom is increasingly more about others’ choices in favour of or against certain kinds of people, especially when they’re complaining about ending up with “jerks”.

That’s all I really have to say about that.

Drew

Thank you for letting me read your work.

SYLA receives a large number of submissions each month and, therefore, it is impossible to provide detailed feedback on every script. The reasons for rejecting submissions tend to be subjective and do not preclude a writer pursuing a writing career by seeking another literary agent’s response.

I hope you are able to find an agent soon.

Yours

Susan

Without adding any unnecessary herbs and spices to this post, I had to read this email – which came this morning, after the manuscript was submitted last Thursday – two or three times to understand it was a rejection letter.

There is no such thing as “positive” or “negative” people.

“Positive” and “negative” are states – meaning that nobody is ever 100% “positive” or “negative” all the time – and what may be beneficial for one person could be detrimental to another. So-called Positive People (or SCPPs), and anybody who publicly calls themselves “positive” and promotes “positive thinking”, are actually more concerned about being in an “elite” club. Francis Duggan illustrates this elitism very well in his poem about these “positive people”.

I don’t need women.

A lot of my major issues have been caused by the pursuit of ever-elusive women, and I’ve often been told it’s my fault for not being able to attract them. It’s also been directly and indirectly suggested there’s something wrong with me for not being able to get laid.
Back when I was engrossed in motivational speaking, I noticed that many of the speakers were married. I asked myself: were they married before they became successful, or were they married because they were successful? It became obvious, through my own experiences and those of others, that women usually come after success. In fact – and I can attest to this – most women aren’t interested in helping men succeed at all, nor do they want men to become more successful than they already are.
Feminists often like to use the quote,

behind every great man is a great woman

but it should probably read

behind every great man follows a woman.

Feminism is a bigger problem than I thought.

One day, after being engrossed in Steve Wilkos videos on YouTube, I came across barbarossaaa’s dissection of an episode, which pointed out Steve’s “manginosity” towards three young men who had been falsely accused of rape. This video was my first introduction to the Men’s Rights Movement (MRM) and Men’s Rights Activists (MRAs), and blew things wide open. All of a sudden Steve wasn’t so much of a male role model as he was a woman’s tool (particularly for his wife).
I had noticed how men were being portrayed in the media, and how women were constantly made out to be superior to men, since the mid-90s. I had even pointed this out a couple of times, only to be attacked by feminists and feminazis (men and women) and accused of being insane. But again, that was a sign of being not too far from the mark. Many MRAs will face violent opposition – and often the same template comments and arguments – from feminists, “white knights”, “manginas” and the like, when questioned about their stance.
Thanks to the works of barbarossaaa, manwomanmyth and a number of other YouTube-based MRAs, I’m now certain that what happened at university was a more a case of misandry, although I still hold that some members of staff (and some of the students) were and still are racists.

“Professionalism” is used as a stick.

As I’ve mentioned in the past: as someone who has refused to engage in office politics, my focus was more on my reputation of being a great web developer, than it ever was about my image. My move to freelancing, and more recently to starting a limited company, was about being great at my job while working the way I wanted to work.
One thing I’ve come up against repeatedly is this idea of “professionalism”, which seems to be the business equivalent of the term “real man”. Even though I’ve always brought it to every job I’ve had, I’ve been accused of being “unprofessional”, and have even had my “professionalism” called into question, simply because I wanted to do things in a different way to what the client or recruitment person wanted. It seems that “professionalism” to these people means doing what they want – and if you don’t, they’ll try to bring you in line by attacking your “professionalism”.
Yes, I understand that different companies have different ways of doing things. But what disturbs me is this idea that a company or recruitment person can demand someone has experience, yet start dictating to them how to do their job and completely disregard their input.

What did you learn this year?

So how was your 2011?

As well as being a chance to make big things happen, I knew it was going to be a scary year from the beginning. I knew that something very frightening was going to go down at some point, but I had no idea what. As it turned out, there were a few short but very painful difficult times – including the loss of a social circle, the near-loss of a £600 DSLR camera (just yesterday!), and who could forget the major screw-up (once again) by recruitment people over my pay, which they dared to call a “minor error”, that caused my financial crisis.

There were also some good times. For the first half of this year I made good on my message for 2011 (which unfortunately is no longer up) by taking action and invoking the “Yes Man” ideology. As a result: I’ve been part of setting a world record, have taken up street photography, visited the Dome for the first time, and certainly not least had exhibited at AFOLcon: my first ever public exhibit. There were plenty of other things that have gone well; I even got to see MF DOOM performing at the Roundhouse in Camden, thanks to a work colleague.

So I’ve written a post around this time for the last four years, that nobody ever reads on DREWspective, reflecting on the past year and expressing thoughts about the up and coming year. My thoughts are as follows…
More