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douchebaggery Jared Loughner MRA violence against men/women

>A failure of empathy: Misogynists respond to the Arizona shootings

>

One thing I am struck by again and again as I read the blogs and the message boards of the manosphere is how little basic human empathy I see there, towards women in general and towards feminists of both sexes. We see it in the routine references to women as “whores” and “cunts” and other terms that reduce them to their genitalia.

We see it in the profound lack of empathy for women injured or killed. You may recall my recent post about an MRA blog that basically celebrated the possible death of a missing Las Vegas dancer. The body of the murdered woman, Deborah Flores-Narvaez, has since been found. The news inspired a moderator of the Happy Bachelors Forum to start a topic entitled “Dirty skanky whore found dead.”

And of course we’ve seen similar reactions to the attempted assassination of Gabrielle Giffords and the murder of six others. While many in the manosphere responded to the shootings like normal human beings (displaying honest shock and horror) and others responded like typical internet paranoids (wildly speculating on how this meant the government would take away all our rights), there were others who found ways to blame women for the shootings or to twist the issue into one of men’s putative oppression. On NiceGuy’s MGTOW Forum, one commenter found an ingenious way to blame women for the shooting:

He [was] probably dumped by a girl and that’s what started him on the road to crazy batshit loonery. I can’t think of any other factor that could more quickly drive a man to violence than women.

Others complained that the news coverage was slanted by evil feminism. From the MGTOW proboards forum:

it pisses me off when i see all this outrage on the news and from the public knowing that if it was a congressMAN who was shot, everyone would be wondering what he did to deserve it.

this really shows you how society values women over men. and she’s not even dead!

Over on NiceGuy’s MGTOW forum, one member complained that Giffords was getting most of the news coverage and that the six others who were murdered in the attack, most of whom were probably men, were being ignored:

This is yet another example of how Femerica values female lives more than male lives. In the eyes of most Americans, men are less human than women.

The male judge gets a mention because he is a lackey for the interests of the elite. Even though he is dead, since he is a male, his death is presented by the media as less of a tragedy than the non-lethal shooting of a female politician with a good chance for recovery.

The death of the young girl was portrayed as third in line in terms of level of tragedy. By American standards, it was a tragedy because she possessed a vagina, but since she was not grown enough to be a full-fledged feminazi, her death was less of a tragedy than the non-death of the female politician.

It wouldn’t be surprising if the four unnamed dead people were men. If they were men, they would be considered less human than the others. They are not even human enough for the media to investigate and name. Their death, by American standards, was a tragedy but less of a tragedy than the non-death of female politician.

This comment is jampacked with an assortment of bad assumptions. To correct the most obvious of them: Giffords has gotten most of the coverage because this was not a random murder, but an attempted political assassination. Gender has nothing to do with it. When people talk about the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan, they rarely mention the three others who were also wounded that day. (Except for James Brady, and that’s because he has gone on to be an influential gun control advocate.)

The male judge has gotten a good deal of attention, but isn’t the main focus of the coverage because he was not the target of the assassination attempt. The girl has gotten attention because she was a child. The other victims were not named at first because authorities had not yet notified their next-of-kin. There were three men killed in the attacks, two women, and one girl.

Meanwhile, on this very blog, a regular antifeminist commenter who calls himself Random Brother has made clear that he doesn’t extend basic human sympathies to feminists. Asking whether or not Giffords is a feminist, he explains:

I want to know if she has spent her whole career passing laws that harm men. I want to know this before I commit any sympathy to her. If she was a great politician who tried hard to help her constituents, was fair and just then she has all of the sorrow in the world from me. …

If she was a typical politician, a bigot or a man hater, why should I care?

Setting aside for a moment the fact that there is precisely zero evidence that Giffords is any any way a “man hater”: Because she’s a human being?

Sadly, this failure of empathy isn’t confined to the manosphere, as Marianne Kirby notes on The Rotund:

Empathy is, in its simplest form, the ability to acknowledge the thoughts/reasoning/emotions of another person as valid. It is, so to speak, being able to see where they are coming from even if you do not agree. … Empathy is, I think, coming to the realization of our own humanity and the humanity of other people – we are all simply people. …

[W]hen politicians depend on hate and violent rhetoric to stir up their followers, no good can come of it. … It teaches them that these people who believe different things are “the enemy” – that they are a danger and must be eliminated.

Is it any wonder that some people reach a point where the literal elimination of those who are different becomes the end goal?

For a long time I labeled the MRA/MGTOW blogs I’ve put in my sidebar as my “Enemies List.” It was a partially tongue-in-cheek reference to Nixon’s famous “enemies list.” But many people took it literally, and some (even if they didn’t) worried that this kind of terminology could lead to precisely the sort of dehumanizing of the “enemy” I’ve been criticizing here. In the wake of the Arizona shootings, and after pondering several eloquent emails sent to me on the subject, I’ve decided to change my “Enemies List” to, well, a “Boob-roll.” The American Heritage Dictionary defines “boob” as “a stupid or foolish person; a dolt.” The people I write about may be — at least in my mind —  wrong, and foolish, and sometimes hateful assholes, but they are people.

If you enjoyed this post, would you kindly* use the “Share This” or one of the other buttons below to share it on Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, or wherever else you want. I appreciate it.

*Yes, that was a Bioshock reference.

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nicko81m
13 years ago

>It's very ironic how the meaning of empathy comes up when feminists commonly say "what about teh menz" when ever a male issue gets raised.

Sandy
13 years ago

>Nick, we've talked about that over and over. "What about teh menz" doesn't mean "fuck men's rights." It means "what about problem's in men's rights?" is not a solution for "how do we solve this problem in women's rights?"It's also completely ridiculous that you would compare "what about the menz", even if it WAS dismissive of men's rights, to a person not empathizing with the death or serious injury of someone else simply because that person is a woman, and therefore a suspected feminist.

booboonation
13 years ago

>I thought women said "what about teh menz" when issues get raised *out of context*.Woman, "MY sister got decapitated for not submitting to a rape."MRA "YOU NEVER talk about when I stubbed my toe while trying to kick my wife. It's not EQUAL."Yeah, that's not equal. Women's issues do not always need to include a nod to anything man related. It depends on the topic.

John Dias
13 years ago

>Before, I was an exalted "enemy" on the Futrelle enemies list, locked in a pitched battle between world views and philosophies. Now, I'm just a member of the "boob roll." Why, I've never been so insulted! I say bring back the enemies list.

nobody
13 years ago

>I love how MRAs have convinced themselves that they are living in a female-dominated world. Its so bizarre and hard to understand.

avpd0nmmng
13 years ago

>There was a thread in Antimisandry 2 years ago (it was removed) started by fschmidt (the guy that created the co-alpha brotherhood) that said that American women deserved to be raped. The thread degenerated in a flame fest between men and women. One female poster explained that she was involved in the MRA movement since 4 years and she discovered that the MRA movement has nothing to do with men’s right or men’s issues it’s a victimisation movement by guys that cannot get laid and she compared it to the many minority rights movement that exist and that see their member as perpetual victims of society. She said that at the beginning she refused to admit it – women that are attracted to the MRA movement are socially conservatives and sexually experienced since they had been in relationships and expect male members to be like them – but at the end she had to accept the truth that most MRAs cannot get laid. And she explained that if there are threads like that it’s because of these guys are losers that cannot get laid.I've been reading shyness/dating forum since three years and it's always angry guys that have no success with women and cannot get laid that say things like that.It's also the reason why MRAs are fascinated by PUAs.

magdelyn
13 years ago

>@nobody,It's also amazing how college educated, upper middle-class white women can portray themselves as victims of Western society.

booboonation
13 years ago

>magdelyn, If you think that's amazing, you don't know much about women's issues. Have you ever listened to a woman who entered a major not gender typical, like science, one of the sciences, or geology, something like that? And I wonder what you consider "upper" middle class? I would like to know because most women now a days barely give a nod to feminism. I wonder if you could give any amazing demographic/victim examples, or if you're just trying to be cute.

booboonation
13 years ago

>avp, I find it VERY VERY disturbing that the founder of the coalpha male site would say that about any human being. How could someone deserve to lose agency over their body? Under WHAT circumstance is this ok? In captivity, but even then, not THAT kind of agency does one lose. That this could even enter these people's MINDS is, well I'm speechless. It's VERY TELLING. What does this person think sex is, or bodies are? What? And this magdelyne posts her nonsense after this revelation? Come on. I know that all men aren't like that (I'm getting married), but how does even ONE MALE get that confused?

magdelyn
13 years ago

>@booboonation:What, pray tell, about white college women's issues am I missing? Please tell me what is keeping women out of physics, chemistry, geology, mathematics? I am dying to hear your answer. Since urban women in their 20's out earn their male peers, and have done so for over a decade now; since they do much better at every educational level; since they attend college in disproportionately greater numbers, get more graduate degrees, live longer, commit suicide less (by a factor of four), what is keeping a sister down? Let me guess, "rape culture." Bah! The wage gap? If the argument wasn't so disengenous on its face, it would be worth mentioning that women spend the vast majority of discretionary income, resulting in a "vast transfer of wealth from men to women." Even social security is a program that redistributes income to women. Not to mention the one sided enforcement of title IX, a gender neutral statute that hasn't been used to investigate why girls are doing so much better in school. Yet, whoa, if so private universities are letting some boys with lesser credentials in to even out the population, whoa, then the office of civil rights has a problem.This very blog is a testament to the vilification of men. It attempts to dismiss legitimate issues by pointing to anecdotal baffoonery of some whack jobs. The plural of anecdote is not data. This blog takes a few nut jobs and attempts to slander a whole movement.

evilwhitemalempire
13 years ago

>"This very blog is a testament to the vilification of men. It attempts to dismiss legitimate issues by pointing to anecdotal baffoonery of some whack jobs. The plural of anecdote is not data. This blog takes a few nut jobs and attempts to slander a whole movement."Outstanding summation.

Sandy
13 years ago

>Magdelyn, what you're saying does not make sense. Women are out performing men academically and more women are going to college. Yet women are still not represented in fields such a s physics, chemistry, and mathematics, and women are still not equally represented among equity partners in large law firms, and women are a small minority of ceos.What's keeping women out? Sexism. No, the difference cannot be entirely explained by personal choice. No, not even the wage gap can be entirely explained by personal choice. Furthermore, if a woman faces an environment hostile to her career progress, she may choose to focus on other areas of her life.If you want data on the wage gap, see other posts on this blog about that topic.Nothing on this blog vilifies men. This blog is about highlighting the rhetoric in the men's rights movement that is poisoning the movement.

Yohan
13 years ago

>avpd0nmmng said… There was a thread in Antimisandry 2 years ago (it was removed) started by fschmidt (the guy that created the co-alpha brotherhood) that said that American women deserved to be raped. What was EXACTLY said there? Feminists are often putting untrue words in your mouth.And why do you think, moderators removed that thread?About this thread here, well, 1 woman is glorified, another one – a girl of 9 is mentioned because of her parents, and a male judge is also mentioned.And what about the others, who are dead or injured? I have not seen any media cover yet about them. Just forget about them? About the victim, the female politician – regrettable she took threats against her and the attack of her office not enough seriously.Obviously she ignored the fact that being an US-politician is sometimes a dangerous job.Interesting that feminists avoid to talk about crime-prevention and I wonder why? Internationally USA is known for its crimes and its gun-culture. Nowhere else are so many men in jail than in USA. Nearby Mexico with over 30000 murder cases during the last years related to drugs and other illegal activities – often over the border into USA – should be another reason to be concerned about your own security if you are a politician talking with ordinary people in a supermarket.Politicians, businessmen etc. are a target for kidnapping and killing not only in USA – Like it or not, but this is the reality.

booboonation
13 years ago

>mag You're dying to hear my answer? You're ignorant of these subjects,and I told you that you are. You can do your own research, since you clearly don't like to think about these things on any real level. I also am not going to deal with you because you said that this blog testifies to men's villainy. So you just project and are very prejudiced and shockingly hostile to any talk of these issues obviously. What on this blog is not true? If this blog makes MEN look bad, I don't even want to live. If I thought all men were like these FREAKS I would have problems living another day. Not only that, but ALL women can care about feminism even if the movement only served the demographic that get roped into prostitution or sexually assaulted (which happens at all levels of society). I don't even see why you had to say "Upper" middle class. You think that any woman identified as feminist does so for selfish reasons? My life is fine. I just don't get your attitude or beliefs on any level.

richard
13 years ago

>@ DavidLet me see if I can grasp this. I need to have empathy for people who are actively trying to disenfranchise me? I need to have empathy for people who in every word, every policy, every utterance view me, as a male, as a defective, as an inferior, as someone suffering from "testosterone poisoning" as someone whose sexuality, aggresiveness, hell even film choices need "correcting" and I should show empathy for them? I need empathy?!?! When something bad happens to the aforementioned people who are actively disenfranchising me I have to put aside their politics and actions and pretend to be overwhelmed with concern form my enemies? Really? Fucking really?When Adolph Hitler bought it did jews feel empathy for him? If Jesse Helms had caught a bullet in his prime should African Americans have wailed for him?How about you show some fucking empathy for father's who aren't allowed to see their children, David.How about you and your feminut followers show some empathy for men who are living hand to mouth because of excessive child support and alimony payments, David. How about you and and the rest of the man haters show some empathy for the men falsely imprisoned on trumped up rape charges, David.The same place your empathy is for these people, well that's where my empathy is for some feminist. Random Brother

Ernest Chatham
13 years ago

>Dave, as a freelance writer, how much are they paying you to ghost-write this agitprop?

David Futrelle
13 years ago

>richard, how the fuck is Gabrielle Giffords disenfranchising you? Your vision of feminists as "people who in every word, every policy, every utterance view me, as a male, as a defective, as an inferior, as someone suffering from "testosterone poisoning" as someone whose sexuality, aggresiveness, hell even film choices need "correcting"" is utterly at odds with the feminism I and virtually every feminist I've ever met supports. It's a caricature, not a reality. As for the Hitler reference, well, that's what Godwin's Law is for. As for empathy for the falsely accused, read the work of Debbie Nathan, a feminist who fought against the "satanic ritual abuse" hysteria. Or check out the organization she's a part of, the National Center for Reason and Justice, which fights for justice for those falsely accused of sex crimes. It's in my sidebar as well. http://ncrj.org/Or fucking read what I've got in my further reading sidebar. I challenge some of the wildly misleading myths set forth by the MRM, but nowhere do I deny the real suffering of men. And show me some people in the MRM — not the father's rights movement, which actually does engage in real activism, but the MRM — who are actually doing anything about any of the issues they claim to care about — that is, besides complain to each other online about how unfair everything is and what horrible bitches women are. Ernest, who is this "they" you're talking about? I'd like to meet them, as I'm currently being paid zip for doing this blog.

Yohan
13 years ago

>David: …..how little basic human empathy I see there, towards women in general and towards feminists of both sexes. We see it in the profound lack of empathy for women injured or killed.We are all equals, David.Where are all these feminists (of both sexes) who show basic human empathy to men? I do not talk about ordinary men who have a job and a trouble-free family life. – I talk about men who need help. Feminists do not even care about young boys accused for sexual harassment, old and sick men missing medical care, fathers who are victims of paternity fraud, men innocent in jail for not existing sex-crimes…—–The two examples of David are badly selected.1.http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2011/01/10/general-lt-congresswoman-shot-world_8248919.htmlOne is a politician, who was attacked because of her political function, nothing to do with her female gender. Unfortunately for her, she took threats and violent actions against her office not seriously, and she was talking with ordinary people without considering any security issues in a border town, Tucson, near to Mexico…Women who want to be politicians, CEOs etc. are exposed exactly to the same danger of crimes, like kidnapping and killing as their male counterparts.2.The other woman was a stripper for a cheap sex-show in Las Vegas, a city full with criminals. It was her own decision to live with violent thug boys. It was HER decision, and it is her risk if something is going wrong – nothing what MRAs, including myself, can do about it.

Yohan
13 years ago

>David: And show me some people in the MRM — ….. who are actually doing anything about any of the issues they claim to care about — that is, besides complain to each other online about how unfair everything is and what horrible bitches women are. So, and what is David doing, except complaining online, how bad all these MRAs are?What are YOU doing for poor women? And I am not talking about poor men, as I know you don't care about them at all.

Dr. Deezee
13 years ago

>Go with "enemy," Dave. The Biblical concept of Perfect Hatred is all the justification you need.

avpd0nmmng
13 years ago

>Fschmidt explicitly said that he knew a guy that kidnapped a woman to have a sex slave and he thought doing the same thing.===============================================Robert Tashbook worked with me at Nextag. He worked in QA but was very creative. Nextag's original business model made no sense. Tashbook found the business model that made Nextag work. He realized that there was an opportunity to treat comparison shopping as an arbitrage business, taking the profit in the difference between the cost of buying ads and price that we could sell ads to merchants. If you look up Nextag, you will see that it was valued at $1.2 billion. What did Tashbook get for making Nextag so valuable? He is currently in federal prison for unlawful sexual conduct. He tried to kidnap a girl using the Internet to be his sex slave. While at Nextag, we never discussed our personal lives, so I didn't know this side of him, but I completely understand where he was coming from since I considered a similar option myself before deciding to try finding a girlfriend Mexico instead. Luckily for me, I had better judgement than he did. This side of Nextag's history is unlikely to make it into the popular media. ===============================================http://www.coalpha.org/Intelligent-men-I-knew-td2773539.htmlThe admins of antimisandry didn't want their site to be TOSSed. Most web server have a TOS that forbid people to say things like that. Fschmidt started posting on love-shy.com and he, and other guys started flooding the forum with posting about rape and murder. Love-shy.com had a huge conflict with two other forums (whygodwhy.org and fstdt) and it was TOSSed and they had the find another forum.Some of the quotes of Fschmidt are still on fstdt:http://www.fstdt.com/QuoteComment.aspx?QID=71305http://www.fstdt.com/QuoteComment.aspx?QID=71363

avpd0nmmng
13 years ago

>If you wonder why MRAs (and many PUAs) hate women and believe that women are conspiring against men, it's because they have narcissistic personality disorder :http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/6-5-2002-19793.asp

wytchfinde555
13 years ago

>"I've been reading shyness/dating forum since three years and it's always angry guys that have no success with women and cannot get laid that say things like that."—avpd0nmmng saidNice to see some joker in the crowd.

wytchfinde555
13 years ago

>" . . .it's because they have narcissistic personality disorder."—avpd0nmmngThe typical Ameriskank suffers from this in spades.

wytchfinde555
13 years ago

>Sandy says:"Nothing on this blog vilifies men. This blog is about highlighting the rhetoric in the men's rights movement that is poisoning the movement."And then avpd0nmmng states not much later:" . . .If you wonder why MRAs (and many PUAs) hate women and believe that women are conspiring against men . . ."Uh huh.

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