Money is extracted from people in love & happy people support capitalism
December 21, 2015 6:18 AM   Subscribe

Since 2006, a group of lonely single men in Japan calling itself Kakumeiteki Hi-mote Domei (“Revolutionary Losers’ League”) has been protesting against Christmas, arguing that the holiday, as practiced in Japan, marginalises the uncoupled.

Christmas in Japan is more associated with romance than in the west, and is often treated as a special date night. The Revolutionary Losers' League, unsurprisingly also protests Valentine's Day (calling it a “blood-soaked conspiracy” run by “oppressive chocolate capitalists”). The group's views have been described as “a blend of Marxist vitriol, cyber nerdiness and outright misogyny.”
posted by acb (41 comments total) 6 users marked this as a favorite
 
I wonder whether it's Japan's more Confucian/collectivist nature that causes lonely guys without girlfriends to turn towards vaguely Marxist critiques of capitalism rather than libertarianism/neoreaction as in the west.
posted by acb at 6:19 AM on December 21, 2015 [9 favorites]


"...a group of lonely single men in Japan calling itself Kakumeiteki Hi-mote Domei (“Revolutionary Losers’ League”) has been protesting against Christmas,"

WHAT A NAME! Love it.

Calling Valentine's Day "a blood-soaked conspiracy?"

HA! GREAT!

"Oppressive chocolate capitalists?"

MY NEW BAND NAME! BEAUTIFUL!

The group's views have been described as “a blend of Marxist vitriol,

HELL YEAH IT IS! THE WORLD COULD USE A LITTLE MARXIST VITRIOL THESE DAYS.

cyber nerdiness

Well, that's not a surprise

and outright misogyny.

...GOD DAMMIT NO. NO.

I was so on board until that last part. Fucking people. Take a good idea and a wonderful phrase like "oppressive chocolate capitalists" and turning it into yet another steam tray full of bubbling bullshit and evil. GAH!
posted by Harvey Jerkwater at 6:30 AM on December 21, 2015 [31 favorites]


The Revolutionary Losers' League reminds me a bit of the Sozialistisches Patientenkollektiv, another group who took what is considered to be an individual problem (in their case, mental illness) and regarded it as a symptom of capitalism.
posted by acb at 6:44 AM on December 21, 2015 [3 favorites]


It took me a second to realize that this was just a men's thing, and I had the thought that someone was going to end up with an amazing "how we met" story. (Hey, it could still happen).

It's not at all surprising to me that Japan has lonely-guy-vague-Marxism more than the US's lonely-guy-vague-neoreaction; my impression is that dating in Japan is very class-conscious, and that's on the surface (in the US it's also very class-conscious, but you're supposed to pretend that it isn't); and all of the precariat-related issues that exist in the US are even more present in Japan, and have been for longer. So if the prototypical progressive bitter Millennial is someone who's disillusioned because they'll never find a job with benefits or be able to afford a house -- in Japan, that's a guy who's disillusioned because he'll never be able to afford to have a girlfriend. (And it sounds really gross to type that out! But if the reason American misogynists latch on to for not having girlfriends is feminism, in Japan, it's money.)

...On the other hand, I would be sad and bitter too if my culture has THREE days devoted to celebrating romantic coupledom rather than just one.
posted by Jeanne at 6:52 AM on December 21, 2015 [5 favorites]


What was interesting to me about the holiday in Japan was how much KFC was a thing there during Christmas. It's really become a tradition there (at least in Tokyo), where you and your loved one pick up chicken and have a night in.
posted by xingcat at 7:51 AM on December 21, 2015 [1 favorite]


Maybe they can just date each other en masse.
posted by The Whelk at 7:51 AM on December 21, 2015 [3 favorites]


I never understood the phenomenon of masses of unhappily unattached men. Demographically speaking, there must be a lot of unattached women as well. It's not like bigamy is practiced in Japan. Where is the "Revolutionary Losers League" of women?
posted by domo at 7:58 AM on December 21, 2015 [5 favorites]


I never understood the phenomenon of masses of unhappily unattached men.

Male entitlement is at the core. The thing to remember is that they think they are entitled to the woman of their dreams, so to speak, and as such are angered by the idea that relationships take work.
posted by NoxAeternum at 8:09 AM on December 21, 2015 [17 favorites]


Well, given the patriarchial nature of marriage in Japanese society (for instance, the supreme court there recently ruled that women have to forfeit their surnames upon marriage, no ifs or buts), and the stereotype of how a marriage works (the wife stays home, keeps the house and raises children, her salaryman husband drops off his paycheck, but is rarely around, working late and/or drinking hard with his boss as is required; incidentally, some predicted a surge of divorces once retired couples have to share space with each other after several decades of near-absence), perhaps the definition of absolute loserdom for a modern Japanese woman is not being alone but being in a shitty marriage?
posted by acb at 8:11 AM on December 21, 2015 [8 favorites]


domo -
It's dangerous to generalize, but anecdotally I've heard they're mostly divided between those who prefer work (i.e. discretionary income) and active social lives over a traditional homemaker role perceived to be subordinate and restrictive and those who do want the more traditional homemaker role but struggle to find a partner willing/capable of supporting them financially in the way they want given the high cost of living in Japan.

So not too different from other places, actually.
posted by Wretch729 at 8:12 AM on December 21, 2015


We're marginalized here in the U.S., too. Being unattached sucks enough as it is, but then jamming all this happiness down our throats (Families! Children! Togetherness! Presents! Santa Claus!) makes it much worse.
posted by Melismata at 8:42 AM on December 21, 2015


Have some eggnog.
posted by jonmc at 8:50 AM on December 21, 2015 [3 favorites]


I'm with Harvey Jerkwater. I was all on board until the misogyny remark. Although the article leaves you to speculate on what that means, which I found disappointing.

Aslo, the "Oppressive chocolate capitalists" have me in their grasp. I will never escape them.
posted by chapps at 9:58 AM on December 21, 2015 [1 favorite]


Smartly rebuff the running dog lackeys of the chocolate claque!
posted by Naberius at 10:13 AM on December 21, 2015


Male entitlement is at the core.

Yeah. And I think it's telling that there are no (or few) organized groups of women doing the same thing, here or in the US.

Assume it comes from the "men are afraid women will laugh at them, women are afraid men will kill them" dynamic. Men are haunted by words like "loser" and "beta male," but are still granted the public space to complain/joke/dramatize their anxieties whether anybody wants to listen or not. And I think that's where the entitlement is strongest - even men who understand that they are maybe not actually entitled to the women of their fantasies still won't hesitate to grab a megaphone and make a big stink about how the popular girls won't talk to them.
posted by ducky l'orange at 10:26 AM on December 21, 2015 [1 favorite]


“From each according to his ability, to each according to his (sexual and romantic) needs”
posted by acb at 10:37 AM on December 21, 2015


Men are haunted by words like "loser" and "beta male,"

I have been thinking that there needs to be a campaign to redefine the term “alpha male” as a pejorative. We are not a pack of dogs pissing on each other, but more sophisticated and capable beings, and the pack-hierarchy model, which has been regrettably adopted by some people as an ideal for living, needs to be denigrated appropriately. I suggest using it pejoratively (“Did you see that? Fucking alphamale pushed in just like that.”), and perhaps linking it to the use of the term in software engineering (an alpha being primitive and barely functional).

Also, the habit of some men sitting with their legs wide apart on public transport to demonstrate primitive territorial dominance could be renamed alpha-splaying.
posted by acb at 10:41 AM on December 21, 2015 [2 favorites]


Also, alpha beta wolf dynamics ARE NOT REAL , they are utterly discredited. Wolves in the wild have multigenerational kinship groups not alpha castes sheesh.

Wait no there's one place where those dynamics are seen, it's unrelated groups of adolescent male wolves who are confined together.

So maybe it totally fucking fits them.
posted by The Whelk at 10:46 AM on December 21, 2015 [14 favorites]


The alpha wolf dynamics aren't just discredited, they're discredited by the man who invented the terms.
posted by deadaluspark at 11:11 AM on December 21, 2015 [3 favorites]


I can totally get behind railing against crass commercialization, as it accompanies any holiday more or less, but this whole thing is like a toxic mix of not just entitlement, but also the sorta "stop being happy around me!" demands from predominantly single men.
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 11:34 AM on December 21, 2015


Huh. Sounds like Men Going Their Own Way (a weird MRA offshoot) but instead of "alt-right", reactionary conservatives they're Marxists or something?

Anyways, maybe Japan could benefit from their own Singles' Day, although the blatant consumerism of that holiday (at least as it exists in China) might not gain traction with these guys.
posted by mhum at 11:35 AM on December 21, 2015


>steam tray full of bubbling bullshit and evil<

There's a band name in there somewhere...
posted by twidget at 11:41 AM on December 21, 2015


Wait no there's one place where those dynamics are seen, it's unrelated groups of adolescent male wolves who are confined together.

The human equivalent being middle school.

It's gross to say out loud but honestly I feel like the MRA types sometimes have a point, although it's really not what they think it is. Masculinity is a double bind that you can't ever "win" at, but the world is not shy at letting you know if you're losing. And much more time is spent teaching young men to be stuck in childish alpha/beta dynamics than on teaching them to how to be mature emotionally secure adults. Because the world does in fact revolve around stunted manchildren, as they have disposable income and bodies, making them useful to have around for TPTB (themselves disproportionately stunted manchildren).
/rant
posted by 3urypteris at 11:52 AM on December 21, 2015 [1 favorite]


Masculinity is a double bind that you can't ever "win" at, but the world is not shy at letting you know if you're losing.

I read Elliot Rodger's "manifesto", wherein he wrote - in painstaking detail - all the events that led him to decide he hated women. And yet, when you read the actual events he describes, every single instance was a problem caused by the patriarchy's toxic bullshit about what being a man means. But instead of taking a step back for some perspective and seeing what a stacked deck of a setup masculinity is, he struggled to be included and accepted into a hierarchy where he would never matter, and blamed women for the problems of masculinity.

I doubt these anti-Christmas crusaders' ire will lead to any bloodshed, but it does bring to mind the quote Anita Sarkeesian raised in her first vid on women in video games: "In the game of the patriarchy, women aren't the other team; women are the ball."
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 12:19 PM on December 21, 2015 [7 favorites]


I wonder whether it's Japan's more Confucian/collectivist nature that causes lonely guys without girlfriends to turn towards vaguely Marxist critiques of capitalism rather than libertarianism/neoreaction as in the west.

I don't know much about Japan, but I think there are more obvious explanations: the long history of the radical left in Japan, including a Communist Party that has representation in the Diet; the proximity/influence of strong radical left currents, up to and including and actual Communist states, in neighboring countries like China, North Korea, and the former USSR; a national history that includes not only strong class distinctions and a powerful business elite (both of which also exist in the US), but stuff like the occupation, which it would be easy to see as a form of imperialist domination...
posted by Gerald Bostock at 12:25 PM on December 21, 2015 [1 favorite]


for instance, the supreme court there recently ruled that women have to forfeit their surnames upon marriage, no ifs or buts

Thats not what they ruled. It's the usual effect of what they ruled, though. The law is that if both spouses are Japanese, they must have the same last name. Sometimes it is the woman's surname, but only 3-4% of the time (and usually when the woman is part of a family business or some other inheritance/legacy thing). But couples do have that option. (Also if a Japanese man or woman marries a non-Japanese spouse, they don't have to change their name at all). If a man really wanted to show he was interested in some non-traditional marriage, he could certainly offer to change his name instead.

However, I agree with the general idea that marriage is often a bad deal for Japanese women, especially if they want a career. While that is an issue in the US as well, there is more support both among people and companies for the idea of a working mother in the US (and especially Europe) than in Japan by a long shot.
posted by thefoxgod at 12:40 PM on December 21, 2015 [3 favorites]


“Store sign in Japan tells couples to stay away on Christmas Eve so staff won’t feel lonely,” Preston Phro, RocketNews 24, 21 December 2015
posted by ob1quixote at 5:13 PM on December 21, 2015


...another...War on Christmas: It's about fucking time. Maybe we'll win this one.

Damn You Macy's!
posted by mule98J at 6:38 PM on December 21, 2015


The idea that there's a woman for every man is not true. we should stop telling people it is true.

In other news, Outkast said "If nothing lasts forever, what makes love, what makes love the exception?"
posted by Ironmouth at 9:34 PM on December 21, 2015


I never understood the phenomenon of masses of unhappily unattached men.

Male entitlement is at the core.


This explanation assumes that every neckbeard and foreveraloner could easily find a woman of similar attractiveness if only they would pull their head out of their ass and aggressively proposition every living soul they come across on their commute.

Firstly, this isn't necessarily true. While in western countries women outnumber men,* that doesn't mean that there are close numbers of men and women who are in the same region, in the same age bracket, and actively looking for someone.

Even then, availability of partners isn't always the issue. Dating and being in a relationship requires a large number of interpersonal skills and self-knowledge that are never taught, but learned from experience. If, for some reason, you never quite develop those skills, then it becomes increasingly difficult as you age. Reasons can be: mental illness such as social anxiety, trauma from abuse, being on the autism spectrum, or even just plain bad luck, and so on. Often men are actively hindered from developing close relationships due to patriarchy, as a few people pointed out above. Several posters in the thread about women and autism pointed out that women often have to learn how navigate the social world around them, which leads to them not being diagnosed correctly.

People who have had a ton of relationship experience or haven't spent long periods of time isolated can't quite seem to fathom how others can possibly be lonely. There are plenty of reasons beyond just male entitlement (though I'm sure that's the issue for many). Like most things the MRA types go on about, there is a real issue at the core, one that I am certain affects plenty of women too. It's not useful to write it off like this.

* I don't have the numbers, but when people bring out this factoid, it's usually about 51/49, but that usually means a surplus of elderly women.
posted by Freelance Demiurge at 9:36 PM on December 21, 2015 [1 favorite]


I never understood the phenomenon of masses of unhappily unattached men.

There's a reason we don't say this out loud. Imagine telling 20% of males they don't cut it with women and never will.
posted by Ironmouth at 9:53 PM on December 21, 2015


Imagine telling 20% of males they don't cut it with women and never will.

In the past, the surplus unpaired men could always have been sent to die in wars. Progress means that this is no longer an option.
posted by acb at 2:33 AM on December 22, 2015


As thefoxgod points out, the recent supreme court decision was not that women have to take their husband's name, but that one of the people being married has to change their name to that of their spouse. In reality, 99.X% of the time that means it will be the woman who changes her name, but there are exceptions (my father-in-law, for one, for various pragmatic reasons).

One of the differences I feel between the Forever Alone guys on the net in Japan and in English-speaking countries on the net (not having met either of them in person, I don't know if there's a reality skew between net representation and actual conditions) is that in Japan there aren't many of the English-speaking net's "Nice Guys" (i.e. Friendzone people). There's hella misogyny, with people saying "women just want rich guys" and "women just want hot hunks", but the overwhelming impression you get from these same people is that they believe that even if they were rich or cute, women would still dislike them because they just plain suck as people. On the English-speaking net, there are a lot of people like that, but there are also a lot of people who seem to think that if they just had money, women would dig them. If they were just cute, women would dig them. After all, they're funny and chivalrous and have a quirky fedora and otherwise would be excellent man-material if women just weren't so shallow. Japanese Always Alone people seem to believe that women are also extremely shallow, but even if they weren't shallow, they still wouldn't go for the Always Alone guys because there's nothing redeeming about them.

I guess, in other words, a lot of English-speaking Always Alone people are egotistical misogynists, and a lot of Japanese Always Alone people are self-loathing misogynists.
posted by Bugbread at 4:42 AM on December 22, 2015 [2 favorites]


Also, to put on my nit-picking hat (hopefully not fedora-shaped):
The protest took place this Saturday in Shibuya district, where many families were doing their holiday shopping, according to AFP.
Well, I mean, technically, given that Shibuya has a lot of people period, then, yeah, "many families" were there. But when I hear "many families were doing their holiday shopping" I imagine families with kids, and I'd say less than 5% of Shibuya consists of couples with kids. The average age is probably around 25.
While it is unclear how serious the men are about their anti-Christmas cause
These kind of 2ch-based protests are 95% taking the piss and 5% serious. I'm sure the misogyny part is all legit, the specific things they are saying are probably things they actually somewhat believe but are overstating as a laugh, and the march itself is a lark. I mean, come on, from the article:
"The event this year lasted 30 minutes, at the end of which MarkWater declared, “Under the name of freedom and democracy, we managed to pulverize Christmas this year also.”"
Keep in mind, this group only consists of 20 guys. It's not some giant movement, it's a bunch of lonely trolls having a laugh.
posted by Bugbread at 5:02 AM on December 22, 2015 [3 favorites]


A friend of mine had an art project along similar lines (only without the MRA/fedora-creep angle) in Australia in the 80s and 90s. He called it LoserCorp, and, as well as putting out zines/stickers with bleak Darwinian views on life (“you have low status and will spend your life working to enrich the lives of winners”), attempted to organise a “Losers Against Evolution” rally in Melbourne in 1992. This is documented in an Australian samizdat book titled How To Make Trouble And Influence People (LoserCorp is on pages 9, 10 and 35 of the PDF).

He also had a music project named New Waver (after a pejorative term from 1980s Queensland for people who are into music rather than football and thus deserve to be beaten up for that), which recorded covers of popular songs with the lyrics changed to the aforementioned bleak worldview.
posted by acb at 7:34 AM on December 22, 2015


This explanation assumes that every neckbeard and foreveraloner could easily find a woman of similar attractiveness if only they would pull their head out of their ass and aggressively proposition every living soul they come across on their commute.

I've never taken "male entitlement" to mean this, at all. Or at least not in its entirety. There's entitlement present in the Nice Guy who does Nice Things for a girl he tells is his friend but gets upset when she doesn't sleep with him; there's entitlement in guys who are confused and bitter that women aren't beating down their door despite him having bought the latest and best accoutrements for the Successful Alpha Male; and there's also entitlement in believing chocolate capitalists and holidays for lovers are making your lonely life more miserable.

But if what Bugbread attests is the case, then this whole thing is kind of a failed clumsy joke apart from all the baggage it brings with it.
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 8:41 AM on December 22, 2015


Since making my comment, I've been looking at population stats. It makes more sense if two things are happening:

1. Older men pair with younger women.
2. The birth rate is declining.

Then, you really will have a smaller pool of "available" women. In societies where people pair around the same age, you would not have this problem.
posted by domo at 12:00 PM on December 22, 2015


1. Older men pair with younger women.

Isn't this a common symptom of increasing inequality (and specifically in societies where structural inequality prevents women from earning as much as men might)?

Anecdotal evidence from Greece (hit by the economic crisis) suggests that older man/younger woman pairings are on the rise. I wonder if anybody has done studies showing whether it correlates to Gini index, or whether neoliberalism has pushed the average male/female age difference in a marriage up since 1980 or so.
posted by acb at 2:56 AM on December 23, 2015


domo: "1. Older men pair with younger women."

There was an article about this exact thing a little while ago: What Two Religions Tell Us About The Modern Dating Crisis, and here's the Mefi thread about it.
posted by mhum at 10:20 AM on December 23, 2015


“11 ways to have a great Christmas date…when your date is a bowl of instant noodles,” Casey Baseel, Rocket News 24, 24 December 2015
posted by ob1quixote at 6:26 AM on December 24, 2015


I never understood the phenomenon of masses of unhappily unattached men.

Male entitlement is at the core.

This explanation assumes that every neckbeard and foreveraloner could easily find a woman of similar attractiveness if only they would pull their head out of their ass and aggressively proposition every living soul they come across on their commute.


I understood the "masses of unhappily unattached men" comment to refer to the.phenomenon of such men banding together to collectively hate women, rather than as confusion about why so many of them were unable to find women willing to be in relationships with them.
posted by salix at 7:58 PM on December 24, 2015


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