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Anyone who’s seen Taxi Driver will remember Travis Bickle’s late night soliloquy on the “whores, skunk pussies, buggers, queens, fairies, dopers, [and] junkies” he saw every night driving his cab. “Someday,” he told himself, “a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets.”
Of course — SPOILER ALERT! — what he really meant by “a real rain” coming was that he, Travis Bickle, would lose his shit and start shooting people.
Bickle wasn’t the only one to mix his predictions with a heaping helping of threat. Those who predict the end of the world at the hand of gods or men or some vague terrible cataclysm are all too often rooting (secretly or openly) for the civilization-destroyers they are ostensibly warning against. We saw this the other day amongst those MGTOWers who are now talking giddily about how complete economic collapse will serve to put foolish women and their “mangina” pals in their proper place.
And we see it again and again in the Men’s Rights movement, when MRAs sternly warn their detractors that if people don’t start listening to them, and pronto, the men of the world will rise up and, well, kick the shit out of everyone who opposes them. This is a warning only in the sense that a mafioso telling someone that, if he doesn’t pay what he owes, his legs just might possibly get broken, is a warning; by all reasonable definitions, it is a threat. As opposed to the leg-breaking, the threats of these MRAS aren’t very specific threats, but they’re threats of violence nonetheless.
I ran across one recent example of this sort of “warning” in the comments to Paul Elam’s piece on misandry — or at least what he labels misandry — in the Good Men Project’s package on the Men’s Rights movement. (My own contribution to the debate is here.) Here’s “Factory,” responding to another commenter who pointed out that some of his wording in an earlier comment had been awfully violent:
Who said I was interested in proving I wasn’t violent?
In point of fact, I continually warn people that if these issues are not MEANINGFULLY addressed, and soon, there will be a LOT of violence (see: Middle East) that we MRAs won’t be able to stop.
And frankly, if it comes to that, society (and all the women in it along with the men) flat out DESERVES whatever is coming.
Your hubris as a movement is causing a lot of men to be angry. You all vastly underestimate both the anger, and the ubiquitous nature of this anger.
We MRAs do nothing except act as weather vane and map. That’s why we have no central authority, or funding, or organization of any kind. We are average guys mad enough to stand up like we do. There are a LOT more guys that are just as mad, but content to let others lead.
And there are a growing number of men that take Feminist (and ‘official’) dismissal of mens issues as indication that ONLY violent revolution will lead to change.
And speaking for myself, if it ever comes to violence, I will stand aside, and feel bad while all manner of nasty things are done…but I won’t lift a FINGER to stop it.
Just like people like you are doing right now.
Notice the not-so-subtle, and rather thoroughly bungled, rhetorical sleight of hand here. Factory paints the violence as something he won’t indulge in (but won’t stop) — forgetting that in the very first sentence he admitted that he was himself violent. He refers to MRAs as little more than a “weather vane” for male emotion — but somehow later in the paragraph they are leading things. He claims that he will “feel bad while all manner of nasty things are done,” but this is only after stating in no uncertain terms that he thinks “society … flat out DESERVES whatever is coming.”
So, yeah, this is as much a “warning” as the hypothetical mafioso’s reference to broken legs.
Naturally, Elam himself stepped up to second Factory’s emotion, declaring that “[m]en, when disenfranchised and pushed to the edge, have frequently become violent.”
On his own site, Elam has been much more frankly threatening. Recently, telling off one commenter who had the temerity to actually question the gospel according to Elam, he finished off a long rant about male anger with this:
I would not suggest that treating half the population, the stronger half at that, with too much continuing disregard is a very good idea.
Thinking they will never come out swinging is a stupid, stupid way to go.
This kind of logic might best be called the Appeal to an Ass-kicking. The structure of this argument could be broken down as follows:
1) Source A says that p is true
2) If you don’t agree that p is true, Source A (or perhaps some other dudes) will do you bodily harm.
3) Therefore, you’d better fucking agree that p is true.
This is probably the oldest and crudest form of logic there is, and one that is popular amongst many animals as well. (My cat is a master of it, at least when p = “you will give me treats now.”)
Perhaps the best way to respond to it is the way that the commenter calling herself fannie responded to Factory on the Good Men Project:
You’re arguing that men are going to be so angry they’re not going to be able to control their rage and are therefore going to start inflicting mass amounts of violence upon others.
I’m not sure a feminist could be more defamatory of men than you are being.
MRAs sure are misandrist.
I, and feminists like me, think men are better than that.
Me too.
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>@thevagrantsvoice"Just needling" someone with no intention of actually making a point is considered to be trolling, as is the use of intentional logical fallacies. Unless you are so ignorant that you had no idea that the "right" in "might makes right" refers to political/legal rights(the right to rule in particular) and not to any kind of moral sense of "right", you deliberately committed the fallacy of equivocation for laughs and that makes you a troll by definition. I'm just going to ignore if you're not going to bother actually saying anything of substance.
>No, because the unstated premiss isP: I have the right to tell you what to do, based on laws given to me to uphold by our legally elected government.This is what I mean when I talk about using lofty, subjective ideals to dress up the "might makes right" argument. That unstated premise has no impact on the power of the argument unless the recipient recognizes that claim to legitimacy, and if everyone recognized the claim then we wouldn't even need law enforcement.OK, Cold, so your argument does in fact come down to Might Makes Right. I guess there's really nothing more to be said, then, since argument and ideas are therefore obsolete. I will refrain from engaging with you in the future and instead concentrate my efforts on those who are amenable to reason, or at least fun to mock. Sadly, you are neither.Translation: Waaah! How dare you not regard my subjective ideas of morality and legitimacy as objective truths! Don't you know that without those, I am unable to establish any meaningful difference between the violent threats made by the government on behalf of feminists and the violent threats made by some revolution-minded MRAs? You're not being anenable to reason if you don't recognize me as a moral authority! Screw you, Cold, I'm taking my ball and going home!
>the practical effect of you not paying taxes means that you are taking advantage of govt. services (roads, fire departments, safe food and water, national defense, etc etc) without paying for them. Doesn't that make you a leech?So what if it does? Am I supposed to feel a sense of investment in a society that treats me as a disposable, second-class citizen because I don't have a vagina?
>“Vision Forum and the Quiverful movement are pretty out there, but my limited forays into that whole area haven't netted me much in the way of blatant, over-the-top misogyny”The brand of religion these movements are based on are blatantly over-the-top misogynistic. “Bet your also glad your new girlfriend is reading this ain't ya?”She introduced me to this site. See, I do this thing called "talking to her". She knows all about my misguided foray into the He-Man Womun Haterz Klub. Thanks for playing. “Am I supposed to feel a sense of investment in a society that treats me as a disposable, second-class citizen because I don't have a vagina?”Wow. Cold, have you ever considered psychotherapy? There’s got to be a sufficiently manly male therapist you can go see to help you with these intense delusions you’re having. Or is therapy also a feminist conspiracy?
>@Elizabeth, on the Revolutionary War issue, many of the soliders fighting for the British were not British, but rather paid German mercenaries. The exact number of Hessian mercenaries is disputed, but it is generally put somewhere between 16 and 30 thousand. The revolutionary war was not actually very popular in England, where majority sentiment tended towards reconciliation and concession of demands, but a tiny but powerful rich minority opposed it. This made recruitment of actual British soliders rather difficult, as the House of Commons was not playing along well. So, killing the "British" military prisoners often would have just meant slaughtering a bunch of random Germans rather than actual British loyalists. Not inconsiderable amounts of Hessians defected and remained in the US after the end of the war and brought their families over to live with them. This large, often solely or primarily German speaking, population was a source of a lot of political and ethocentric angest in early America. There were isolated incidences of murders of civilian loyalists. However, these were relatively rare and would not be aptly described as "wholesale slaughter".On another note, I fail to see why I should be concerned about this panic about the "fall of western civilization"!!! First of all, wouldn't that leave me with all of the other civilizations, such as Eastern or Indigenous ones? I live in an area that used to be ruled by the Iroquois, I fail to see why women should think such a system would be to their loss rather than their benefit. White supremicist patriarchy holds little appeal to me. But what the MRA seperatists here are advocating is not actually letting the rest of us free of colonial patriarchy and moving out of our socieites, but rather leaching on our societies as much as possible while trying to impose colonial patriarchy as much as possible. On that note, the fact that EWME invokes slavery, claiming all women are the masters and all (especially white) men the slaves (while ignoring the fact that black women and children picked cotton as well) and then turns right around and fearmongers about the power of black and brown men should win some sort of irony award.
>Cold mistakes what feminists try to do with what men (and the support of women like Michelle Bachman) actually do do.
>Unless you are so ignorant that you had no idea that the "right" in "might makes right" refers to political/legal rights(the right to rule in particular) and not to any kind of moral sense of "right",The problem is, my point applies to this as well. The feminists, in your view, are "ruling" because they're backed up by the guns to do so and that will likely remain the case for the foreseeable future. They have the right to rule and kick you around because they have the power, and as I mentioned above, even "second-class citizens" can profit more by sucking up to the rulers than opposing them.Still, though, given how you've already ignored much of what I've said (still waiting for a response to my question of why we should regard MRAs like you much differently than groups like the KKK), I suppose if you simply ignore me entirely it will be neither unexpected nor that much of a loss. Now, if you could only ignore everyone else and Go Your Own Way back to whichever MRA/MGTOW site you originally came from rather than bother with the hoi polloi like us, so mired in our logical fallacies and unable to grok your superior intellect, that would be even better. Please leave, we're not worthy of your presence :'(Still, so long as our host tolerates, it's not as if we can do anything about it–his blog, not ours. Thus, we'll be relying on you to exercise your better judgment and leave this moteley collection of trolls, ignoramii, and people who "don't say anything substantive" to stew in our own misfortune. :'(
>MGTOW ought to expand their acronym to MELIGNATOW:Men Endlessly Lobbing Invective Going Not Actually Their Own Way.Best part is the name honors a very clever misogynist, one who killed several women and got off on technicalities.
>Correction: Mel Ignatow, of Louisville, KY, only killed one woman but got off on lack of evidence.His last laugh: he'd kept that evidence as a cherished memento – hidden in his house, which he sold after his acquittal, to see it discovered and made public. Musta hated that biatch. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mel_Ignatow