So, the main reason I’m writing this article is for that title, BUT BOY OH BOY DO I HAVE A GEM TO SHARE. A special, very whiny gem.
I would post links, but I’d rather not pingback to his blog. I don’t feel like dealing with tiny angry manosphere bots today! If you want to read further or if you doubt what I say, you can find further information by doing a few quick google searches. Sorry!
So, for those lucky, lucky people who don’t know what Red Pill is, it’s an extremely silly and extremely abusive philosophy all about how to pick up girls. At its best, it makes the men who subscribe to it look like asses. At its worst, it gets fairly rapey. The man I speak of today does not self-identify as Red Pill, but…he basically is. He’s a weird Christian offshoot of Red Pill, and instead of talking about how to abuse your many one-night stands, this man talks about the much more moral and Christian practice of abusing your wife! A truly noble man, everyone. Ladies and gentlefolk, I present to you: Dalrock!
Now, ordinarily, when I run across Red Pill…websites (so to speak) like these, I roll my eyes, get out the holy water and crucifix, and move on with my day. But I didn’t do that with this website! Because, much to my horror and fascination, I found that this man had written quite a bit on a subject I happen to love very much–Arthurian legend. I read the articles with great trepidation. How would this internet ‘warrior’ twist the tales to fit his ideology this time around?
Much to my relief, he did not twist them to fit his ideology. No. He hates these stories. Gawain and Lancelot have managed to piss off the manosphere, and I could not be more proud of my boys. I’m a little teary-eyed at the moment.*
*With laughter. The tears are from me laughing.
So, why does this man spend so much time getting angry at two (amazing and adorable, if I may say so myself) sixth century knights? I don’t know! Why do manospherians do anything! But no, seriously: He hates them because Lancelot and Gawain respect women too much. He also finds them degenerate because they are bi. This is the BEST news you possibly could have given me. They’re medieval knights! Medieval writers told these stories and these characters are still too respectful of women–and humans, really–for this man! What does Dalrock want?
Well, he wants control, and free rein to abuse other people, so perhaps we shouldn’t ask that question. But did it occur to none of the poor men who read his blog that following a man who literally has more extreme values than men in the medieval era was not a good idea?
But yes. Lancelot loves and respects women too much. He listens to Guinevere and sacrifices for her! How dare he. He should put her in her place because she’s a woman and women are gross. Dalrock also has the, ah…interesting view that Lancelot, in rescuing Guinevere from Meliagrance, was trying to defend Guinevere from Meliagrance’s ‘slut shaming,’ rather than saving her from literally being burned at the stake. Heh. But Lancelot is not only polite to his girlfriend! He also, horror of horrors, is nice to a girl he’s not into. A girl attempts to pressure Lancelot into sleeping with her, and Lancelot is polite when he turns her down! What next, will Lancelot advocate for women’s right to vote or something?? God, the degeneracy.
I wouldn’t blame Lancelot at all if he were rude to the woman. Pressuring someone into having sex with you is a horrible thing to do. But Lancelot is not rude, and I think that says nothing bad about him, and I think Dalrock taking such offense to this says everything bad about Dalrock.
Anyway, no one tell him about Gawain, the knight who respected his wife so much that there was a whole ballad about it, and who also had a very famous story where he kissed a fairy knight–oh wait. Someone already did tell him about these stories. This should be fun.
At least in the tale of St. George there is no three way make-out session between the knight, the nobleman, and the nobleman’s wife.
–Dalrock
Amazing. It’s lucky he hasn’t heard of that time Gawain told Lancelot that he wished he were a girl so he and Lancelot could fall in love. Dalrock’s head might explode.
He also manages to miss the moral of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, of course (but doesn’t he miss the moral on everything!). It’s…not about how you should be perfectly okay with making out with another man’s wife. Gawain actively tries to not make out with the man’s wife. Gawain is caught, not between some distinction between the rules of chivalry and the rules of courtly love, but simply between two conflicting rules of chivalry. If he sleeps with the man’s wife, he has betrayed Bertilak, his host, but he cannot be rude to Bertilak’s wife, either. So Gawain compromises by giving Bertilak’s wife a brief kiss. Gawain simply finds himself in a situation where there is no good answer according to the morality structure in the poem, and he does as best as he can. The moral of the poem is not ‘making excuses for adultery.’ No, the moral of the poem is forgiveness.
Gawain messes up. He promises to give Bertilak the things he found, but when Bertilak’s wife gives Gawain a girdle that she says will save him, he keeps it for himself. He breaks his promise, and the Green Knight criticizes him for it. But the Green Knight is also not going to let Gawain wallow in guilt. He laughs at him a little and tells him, essentially, to move on with his life. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is about accepting that you’re human. It’s about not letting a mistake define you–even though it was a bad mistake! Your mistake doesn’t make you who you are, and it’s not even that important, in the grand scheme of things. Eventually you have to set down your guilt and focus on being a better person in the future.
But of course forgiveness is something that Dalrock wouldn’t understand anyway, so it’s pointless engaging with his writing in this way, and I don’t know why I bother. But it’s something that upsets me to a strange extent–although the article is certainly too foolish for me to rationally get upset over it! Perhaps it only makes me sad that someone would have so hard a time understanding compassion and empathy. And he claims to be a Christian! (I think he’s a heretic. If your only purpose in following Christianity is to take biblical passages out of context as an excuse to abuse women, then you are a heretic.)
The comment section for one of his articles on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (yes, he wrote more than one misbegotten article about this) is also rather amusing–oh look, some poor schmuck doesn’t know what a girdle is!–OH NO SOMEONE BROUGHT UP THE EASTERN ORTHODOX CHURCH AND ST. JOHN CHRYSOSTOM I HAVE TO RUN. Get your filthy paws OFF my religious doctrine.
Oh, and he also wrote more than one article on Gawain and Dame Ragnelle, and they probably aren’t worth looking up because they aren’t especially amusing, but all I’m going to say is this. If you aren’t human enough to understand why Gawain let Ragnelle decide something for herself instead of selfishly choosing what would benefit him, then you aren’t human enough to have a wife. God, I hope women stay away from these men. I hope the ones who claim to be married have made up their wives. Just…I can’t. How is it so hard for some people to comprehend making an unselfish, kind decision?
Anyway, my sons Lancelot and Gawain have made the manosphere very angry and I could not be more proud of my boys. But Dalrock is right about one thing and one thing only: The alt-right should reject these stories. If Nazis, the manosphere, and the rest of the alt-right were to truly read the tales and look at them for what they are, they could never love them. Arthurian legends are not for the alt-right to take, and they never have been. I fully believe that even Mordred and Agravaine would hate Nazis, and you cannot change my mind! But to be more serious, these tales, while certainly not always perfectly moral, are antithetical to the alt-right’s beliefs. Gawain is willing to respect his wife Ragnelle and treat her like a human being. Lancelot is willing to respect Guinevere and, again, treat her like a human being–or perhaps something greater than a human being, because Lancelot and Guinevere are Like That. Gawain and Lancelot both certainly come off as bisexual in some tales! Bedivere is disabled in some stories and everyone still treats him with a lot of respect–and he’s also portrayed as a very good fighter and quite badass. 🙂 Palomides and his brother Safir are Middle Eastern and Feirefiz is biracial! These Arthurian knights aren’t the symbols you think they are, Nazis. They’re the people you hate.
The Arthurian legends are certainly NOT perfect, morally or socially speaking. They were written by people in the medieval era, and there is values dissonance contained in a lot of these stories. But they’re also not stories that the alt-right can logically claim.
Anyway, Nazis and the alt-right need to stop misappropriating European folklore and mythology. /rant
But I digress. ‘Arthurian legends are too feminist’ is not all Dalrock has to say! Dalrock also has some…interesting ideas about the modern conservative’s beliefs. He, ah…seems to think that conservatives subscribe to some form of courtly love?
Look, I’m not conservative, but even I know that conservatives don’t have a fantasy of their wife falling in love with the company employee and having a beautiful, star-crossed romance with him until the husband’s evil nephew-who-is-also-his-son exposes the affair in a bid for power, upon which the husband and the nephew-who-is-also-the-son fight in the company parking lot and then the company falls. Or at least most conservatives don’t, anyway. And it’s possible that Dalrock is merely talking about the exaltation of the woman in the courtly love structure rather than the rest of the whole shebang, but…most conservatives don’t believe in the exaltation of women either?? There are conservatives out there who have respect for women, but show me one place that the exaltation of feminine power is embedded into conservative philosophy? (Actually, don’t, I don’t want to waste my time arguing with a bunch of angry little manospherians.) I’ve heard of conservatives praising soft feminine power, as in the power women wield within the home. But I’ve never heard of conservatives arguing that men should obey their girlfriends’ every absurd command without question. I seriously don’t understand where he’s getting this from! I will say that the mental image of every modern conservative dreaming about being able to live out the Arthurian saga has brought me much joy, so thank you, Dalrock. It’s the one good thing you’ve ever done.
Update: HE CALLS THEM CUCKSERVATIVES Y’ALL HE CALLS THEM CUCKSERVATIVES.
Hold on a second. I had an inspiration. Allow me to present a short story about conservatism as envisioned by Dalrock:
And the maiden sent her friend down the bleachers to speak with her lover. “Tell him to lose the football game for me,” she commanded her friend. The man agreed, for his heart belonged to his lady. If his heart did not belong to her, he could certainly score as many touchdowns as he wished! But he was in thrall to her, and how could he do otherwise than she wished? Her heart was his heart, and to defy the commands of his heart would be unnatural.
At half-time, the maiden sent the friend down the bleachers again. “Tell him to win the football game for me,” she told her friend. The man’s heart leaped within his chest as he looked at the fair maiden sitting in the bleachers. At the sight of her beauty, he was inspired to greater lengths than he had ever gone to before, and in a short while, the field was his.
But I must bring a sad end to this saga. Dalrock finally laid his blog to rest in the year of our Lord 2020, January 22nd. He assures us that he has not decided to become a better person embrace chivalry or feminism, because we really needed to know that. R.I.P., Dalrock’s blog. R.I.P.
So, uh…Yeah. Finding Dalrock’s blog was a very interesting and amusing experience. I enjoyed watching the manosphere get really angry over thousand-year-old stories, so I thought maybe you would enjoy it too. I also just wanted to share Lancelot and Gawain’s accomplishment in being too feminist and bisexual for the manosphere. I’m seriously so happy right now.
Anyway, don’t get into Red Pill, people! Get over your issues and learn that Abusing People is Not Okay! Go out, learn to see people as human beings, and love yourselves! Peace out.
Moth of the Day 