Scenes from yesterday’s anti-Roosh, anti-rape rallies. With bonus Jemaine Clement

Hello.

Well, as his texts are shit, it is more “sapousse” than “satire”, arh arh arh (french joke, sorry).

Have a nice end of day.

I don’t have any problem with other people eating meat. I have some issues about cruelty in farming but I don’t think there’s anything inherently evil in the practice. But for me personally I’ve been swayed by a number of factors. The undeniable health benefits. The fact that in the West it’s unnecessary to eat meat and that generally our meat eating has knock on effects that really fuck things up for people in the rest of the world (that’s part of our general tendency for over consumption and bugger the consequences to anyone else attitude generally of course)

This one has always been a tough one for me, and has gotten a lot tougher in recent years. I live with meat-eaters and don’t always prepare meals, so I don’t do the vegetarian thing, but I can’t in good conscience approve of meat eating anymore. An international gathering of neurologists and related specialists assembled in Cambridge to talk about consciousness and the like. Their conclusion was:

… Consequently, the weight of evidence indicates that humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness. Nonhuman animals, including all mammals and birds, and many other creatures, including octopuses, also possess these neurological substrates.

The takeaway from the published statement seems to be that we need to apply the same ethical treatment to animals as we would humans. It’s a fascinating general topic, and the statement is worth reading.

With that in mind, I have a hard time justifying eating any meat beyond fish, and even then I’m a bit iffy. I still do, again, because that’s the situation I’m in, and I won’t condemn anyone for doing it either. It’s a prickly question with deep roots in philosophy and ethics as well as in neuroscience.

A big takeaway of the statement is that we have no reason to believe that they have different qualia than we do; that includes suffering to my limited knowledge. As I understand the philosophy of it, qualia are really what makes experiences worthwhile, and even though we don’t know very much at all about them, we know that brains experience them, and there’s such a deep similarity in brains between us and other animals…

Like I said, prickly problem. The problem with ethics is that there are no absolute answers, and no guide book to see if you picked the right one or not. That’s also what makes it such a fascinating and important topic, though! No doubt a parallel one to your profession, too (ideally).

@Alan,

Ethics and law have such interesting intersections. You’re very right about law needing more than just ethics. My best understanding of it is that its greatest virtue is consistency, not morality. It can’t be just if doesn’t inform you what behaviours will get you into trouble, so it has to be consistent and available equally to everyone. Complex! And, yes, sometimes breaking the law is required for some moral actions – laws need to be broad and apply equally to all (relatively equivalent) situations; ethics is specific to circumstances. They can’t possibly always match.

I understand – animal rights are also pretty prickly. I’ve sort of given up on talking about vegetarianism to most people. I tend to just get shouted at about how awesome meat is and how stupid I am, so there really doesn’t seem to be much profit in talking about it. A shame, really.

I hate to bring us back to Roosh, but I couldn’t see if anyone’s posted this article yet (from the Washington Post, but I’m too lazy to do the extra clicking to find it on its original site): http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2016/02/09/notorious-blogger-pick-up-artist-provocateur-roosh-attracts-reluctant-reporters.html

If it was just a matter of intelligence or consciousness then theoretically there’d be nothing wrong with eating people in persistent vegetative states

Well, actually, there’d still be a problem. Prions.

Don’t eat people: but if you do, avoid nervous tissue like the plague.

@ scildfreja

I think progressive groups can sometimes have a bit of a fetish about ‘orthodoxy’ within groups; but there’s more willingness to set up new groups to accommodate dissent. Sea Shepherds evolving out of Greenpeace for example. That can lead to the “Judean’s People Front” cliche, but where the groups remember who the real enemy is rather than waste all their energies on civil war then that’s a great thing. It’s interesting to watch the Aurini > Roosh > Milo disintegration for example. Just waiting for that Elam bloke to chip in.

@Alan,

Orthodoxy is a thing, yes, and it’s sort of an issue. I wonder if there’s a certain amount of unthinking loyalty to an “ideal” instead of a leader or group. Given that ideals are packaged with a lot of unstated assumptions, it ends up being very divisive! We’ve all experienced that, no doubt about it. Perhaps that’s why progressives are usually seen as being less effective than conservative/reactionary groups. Quicker to focus inwards on internal differences of opinion instead of attacking The Other.

I do have to wonder how this behaviour can be shaped into something more productive. My go-to answer is “rationality training”, but since it’s my favourite toy to play with it’s probably not the right answer. Hm.

Do you see the fractures in the manosphere as being the same as fractures between progressive activist groups? Interesting; I always saw them as being rather different.

Ugh! From the article Rabbit posted:

The press conference was arranged like an undergraduate seminar, with eight reporters sitting around a table and Valizadeh standing at its head. He chose the Dupont Circle-area hotel, he said, because he used to take women there when he wanted to sleep with them.

Returning to the scene of his crimes. Skeezy much?

On the other hand, wow, 8 reporters. Much press, so conference, wow.

Before the press conference started, Valizadeh asked each reporter which outlet they represented and singled a few out for criticism, including Vice, which he said had started printing “garbage” since its acquisition, and the Daily Beast, whom he accused of being a “CIA front.”

Bwahahahahaha. As though the CIA gives a shit about him. They’re too busy overthrowing legitimately elected foreign leaders who aren’t tame to US interests, Roosh, ya moron!

He also delayed the start of the conference for several minutes while a group of five to six men in the back mic’d him — but not the assembled reporters — and set up cameras. (This had the effect of muting the reporters on the resulting video footage.) These men, whom reporters were told not to photograph, purportedly consisted of some mix of bodyguards and fans; they sniggered loudly at Valizadeh’s laugh lines and oversaw a video feed that streamed the “conference” live to viewers on Twitter, Periscope and YouTube.

Fanboy bodyguards to provide a laugh track? Let it not be said that he’s not a sad, sad clown.

Even a sentient rock would know what Valizadeh intended with a glance into the small conference room: the dozen or so reporters who showed up were synecdochically representing The Media with a capital T and M, and Valizadeh intended to “win” in a verbal battle against them.

Which, of course, he did not. Because he’s a born loser, and his image as a basement dwelling troglodyte is already set in cement.

Valizadeh did work the room, as only a man who has spent the greater part of his adult life reading pick-up manuals could. His prepared statement, which was outlined on two pages of creased loose leaf, consisted largely of the sort of disjointed paranoia that’s boilerplate in comments sections these days. But the delivery was theatrical, practiced, clearly intended for dissemination across his base. At one point, Valizadeh grandly announced that he was “the most hated man in the world” before taking a considered and suspenseful swig from a nearby water bottle.

Heh…thirsty much? (Pun fully intended.)

“You have to understand that your work, and the work of your colleagues, has incited a mob based on lies that has put my family in danger,” he said at one point, although it’s unclear if any of the assembled reporters had written any of the articles that he objected to. “If they get hurt right now, God forbid, it’s because of you.”

Melodrama llama…first he calls a presser to throw them a canned circus (snurk), and then accuses them of endangering him? Fuck off, Roosh.

He did not, however, acknowledge the fact that he and his followers have long engaged in similar online harassment campaigns against female journalists, such as the one they’ve waged against one of the Washington Post reporters in attendance and The Guardian’s Lindy West. Those campaigns were one of several reasons observers and activists raised concerns when Valizadeh announced his followers were meeting in the flesh.

Oh, but of COURSE not. Poor widdle Rooshie is INNOCENT! No real harm in what he’s doing at ALL!

(she said, dripping snark all over the floor)

“When a real rape happens that goes against the agenda of your boss, you actually hide it,” he said later, referring to the gang rapes in Cologne, Germany (which The Post has covered at length). “But then when no rapes happen and I try to do a meet-up you lose your s—.”

And of course, the irony of what he’s doing there totally eludes him. Why is what he does any less rapey than what the accused of Köln did? Because it sure as hell is NOT.

Asked, for instance, how he reconciled the cancellation of his meet-ups over safety concerns with the strain of radical aggression and masculinity that he promotes, Valizadeh asked Washingtonian’s Ben Freed “do you lift?” — an implied criticism he repeated on Twitter afterwards.

So macho, much neomasculinity, wow. Scared for his life, he claims to be. Does he lift?

Aaaaaand there goes my irony meter again. Roosh, you owe me damages.

When asked about passages in his books that describe date rape, Valizadeh first said that the passages were dramatized, then that they weren’t fiction, then that everyone had got it wrong: They were being taken “out of context.”

Oh, they were, were they? Except that the whole “context” is all about creating a perfect set-up for legalized rape that, despite it being illegal, he’s so far gotten away with anyway, so that excuse doesn’t wash.

Meanwhile, in response to a question about why readers might think Valizadeh supported or promoted rape, the blogger shot back that it was all an elaborate smear invented by the media’s corporate ownership.

Yuh-huh. Like the corporate honchos even know who he is, much less give a shit.

No, Roosh — it’s because feminists made a noise and the media heard it and came running to see what was up, you unwashed unwiped ass. Turns out that since there are more of us than there are of you and yours, our voices simply carry better than yours! Ha, ha.

After the conference ended, the Post reporters in attendance had a good laugh over the notion that Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos knows we, let alone Return of Kings, exist. Equally humorous was the presence of a writer from Martha Stewart, who earned condescending guffaws from Valizadeh’s cronies every time she was mentioned — everyone apparently unaware that the woman was in town visiting another reporter and wasn’t remotely interested in covering the event.

Delusions of adequacy: He has them.

Valizadeh believed he was schooling “the media” and exposing a powerful global conspiracy; in point of fact, he was holding court over a pack of online writers and freelancers, at least two of whom were eager to escape before he ruined what remained of their evening. It makes sense that these two competing narratives could coexist in one room: Valizadeh’s delusions, of grandeur and other things, are well documented by Valizadeh himself. The aching question for us was whether we had legitimized or even amplified those delusions by choosing to write about them.

Well, when in doubt, ridicule the fuck out of him. It’s not like he isn’t handing you the material!

But no, they piously weasel out because he’s not a big enough fish. Boooooring. What was the point of that whole piece then, anyway? It’s not even like the media know how to shame the REALLY big bastards. Looks like if anyone’s gonna do the job, it will be the bloggers…again.

> Bernardo Soares
Thank you. Well, it is just a child-level two-tiers pun, hence the “arh arh”.

Anyway, it seems that the Man thinks of himself as a bit of Howard Beale (from Network)… And after, he is going to rant about the so-called “attention whores”, eh…