In the wake of the shootings in Aurora Colorado, pickup guru Roosh “No Means Yes” Valizedah quipped on Twitter: “I bet $100 the shooter was getting no play.” The implication being: had the shooter been trained in the fine art of “game,” and thus presumably scoring with women, the massacre would never have happened.
There are a few problems, to say the least, with Roosh’s crass comment, one of the most obvious being that training the sort of person who becomes a mass murderer in a set of manipulative techniques of sexual aggression in which a woman’s “no” is treated as “last-minute resistance” seems a little less than wise. Best case scenario? He becomes a serial rapist rather than a mass killer.
The other obvious problem is that it suggests the murders are, in a way, the fault of women for not paying the shooter more attention. The logic here is abuser logic: if you gals don’t put out for awkward nerds, there will be hell to pay, and the blood will be on your hands.
Yesterday, someone calling himself Throwaway72212 brought Roosh’s “meme” to the attention of the Men’s Rights subreddit. His concern? That this kind of “vagina-pedestaling” (!) from pickup artists makes sexually frustrated men look bad; it’s a “virulent form of creep shaming.”
Yeah, really. Apparently the true victims here are “creep-shamed” dudes.
Here’s his whole post, which at the time of this writing had gotten 204 upvotes and 74 downvotes from the r/mensrights masses:
Some highlights – by which I mean lowlights — from the discussion.
TommyGun991 took aim at Big Vagina and what he sees as its enablers in the PUA community:
Leylen decided to attack the hypothetical women sending hypothetical love notes to the shooter:
MauraLoona, meanwhile, found a possible silver lining in all this: Maybe it could be used to argue for the legalization of prostitution!
Men’s Rights Redditors: Always looking at the big picture.
I actually kinda agree with throwaway dude? I would nod along to every one of his points except for the implication that society normally treats women like men’s salvation. But other than that:
1. I wouldn’t use “creep-shaming,” because that’s ridiculous, but it is virgin-shaming and masculinity-enforcement, and it is unfair to guys who get no “play” but aren’t mass murderers.
2. Yeah, implying a woman could’ve “saved” this guy does imply women are something other than ordinary people.
3. Factually true–lots of horrible murderers haven’t lacked for sex.
4. Yeah, and it’s goddamn disgusting how PUAs come out of the woodwork to say “if only he’d learned Game” every time a man commits a conceivably-sexually-motivated crime.
So… I’ll pretty much take that dude’s side on this one.
Roosh, Tommygun, and Leylen are definitely still full of shit.
I kind of wonder where the Dalai Lama fits into the whole “men need sex to be happy and productive members of society” model of reality.
I actually think he has a point? I mean, points 1 and 4 are pretty solid. Apart from the bit where he used the ridiculous phrase “creep-shaming.” And, of course, “vagina-pedestaling.” Because you can’t be an MRA without signing some kind of secret pact to torture the language till it screams.
Point 2 is just… almost fascinatingly reasonable. Women are people! Vaginas are just a body part! These are excellent points that MRAs are generally incapable of understanding. I mean, the bit where “men are in dire straits” is weird but overall, good work, Weirdly Reasonable MRA.
Point 3 is stupid, of course. He’s completely misunderstood the Genghis Khan thing which is that everyone who was alive at the time of Genghis Khan who has present day descendants is an ancestor of some ridiculously high percentage of the world’s population, because math. And more to the point if he believes Genghis Khan was a pussy magnet he hasn’t got even a rudimentary understanding of consent.
That’s almost a relief. Finding a reasonable MRA would have really shaken my worldview. But still, he’s better than the usual. The people responding to him are as contemptible as the general run of MRAs.
Of course he’s ignoring all the misogyny in the idea to concentrate on how it harms men, but even non-MRAs miss that. And he’s actually right that it does harm men. Sexually frustrated virgins (of either sex) don’t deserve to be stigmatized.
eh, ninja’d much more concisely by Cliff.
I also think Throwaway has some valid points about women being just people and not blaming women for men’s bad behavior. What is interesting to me is when it’s dressed up in MRA language, those ideas get overwhelmingly positive responses. Were a feminist to suggest these things using feminist or non-MRA language, the ensuing shit-storm would be incredible.
For the record, the woman in the AdultFriendFinder profile photograph is a famous glamour model in the UK, and needless to say she has been ‘photoshopped’ into the picture.
I seriously wonder about throwaways thoughts on feminism. Some of his points are dangerously close to seeing the complememtary double standards which gender roles create.
I dislike his framing, but “Sex is over-emphasized.” could be a nice point of overlap.
What? People disagreeing with David about the mockworthiness of targets? THAT NEVER HAPPENS!
Srsly, love this place. 🙂 And I agree with Cliff and Alex. It’s like this guy has had the moment of clarity where “Hey, this definition of masculinity hurts men too!” and then charged off yelling “Come on guys, let’s make sure this only hurts women from now on!”
I’m actually not surprised that some MRAs are pushing back against PUA, because PUA makes any movement look bad. Look at our friend Eurosabra – he epitomizes the PUA belief system in all its cult-like glory, and I’m pretty sure that most MRAs think he’s as pathetic as we do, even if it’s for different reasons. But really, PUA and MGTOW are positions that are impossible to reconcile no matter how much pretzel logic you use – at some point, those two positions are going to come to a head, because they can’t coexist within the same movement.
So to a certain extent, yay? Because PUA is despicable any way you look at it. But then, as others have pointed out, there’s the Genghis Khan thing. Which makes me wonder if the guy who wrote that is agreeing with the PUA position that all that matters is that a man gets his dick wet and whether it’s via consensual sex or rape makes no real difference in terms of how the guy feels about himself, or if he’s trying to critique that position. It’s possible that he’s trying to critique the idea that how much sex a man is getting determines whether or not he goes postal in general, which is indeed a sexist idea that makes men look very bad.
Cliff said exactly what I was going to say far better than I could have ever imagined putting it in a million years. So there’s nothing I can really add here, yet again… it’s really no fun being 18 in a commentariat full of people who have degrees and tons more knowledge than you do.
You have to say my name 3 times. Three.
aworldanonymous: Heh. I suggest just diving in with a willingness to be wrong.
Having said that, I was having similar thoughts and decide to wait to see what other people thought, because sometimes I’m spectacularly wrong. 😛
Much as there is some sense in what the young man says I’m pretty sure that once the dust settles on this PUA/MRA disagreement they’ll all shake hands and agree it was women who are at fault. It’s about the only thing they can all agree on.
Wait…
Did Mr. Futrelle just say a mass murderer is better than a serial rapist?
I guess this is why Mr. Futrelle is okay with promoting feminism.
Annnnddd…if I were a sexually frustrated man, with enough venom to be looking for targets, and presumably thought women were at fault for my not having enough sex, I don’t think I’d look to target a midnight showing of Batman.
I mean, I don’t remotely understand what’s going through the head of a mass murderer, but surely the more rational thing to do would be to target a group with a higher ratio of women in it? He was shown to be very rational in all other aspects of planning, so I don’t think sexual frustration had much to do with it.
I’ll just say that the reporting of this incident is a massive media fail, and adding sexual frustration as a motive is not helping at all. We have his “loner” status, his apparent “madness” etc etc…these things are designed to paint him as a loser type, rather than help people understand why a person would choose such a route.
So is there an established connection with the Batman movie, or was it just a “movie-theaters-have-more-people” thing?
Yeah, Bill Maher tried this same thing a long time ago. I can’t remember who it was he was talking about. Maybe Timothy McVeigh? Can’t remember but it’s as stupid now as it was then.
@whataboutthemoonz
Too soon to say, but my initial speculation based on early reports is that he timed his attacks to coincide with gunfire/explosions onscreen, to maximize confusion and give himself more targets who didn’t realize they were under attack. So it seems more like the latter. But anything’s possible.
Gonna have to concur with Cliff and others here and say that I to don’t see anything wrong with throwaway dudes comment except for some problematic language.
Yeah thats really all I have to say.
I hate when society does this, mainly because I have social anxiety so I know how it feels when you’re painted as a “loner”. All throughout high school people thought I was a creep because I was too shy to go up and talk to anyone, It fucking sucks, but it never drove me to murder. People being socially ostracized and people becoming murderers are mutually exclusive things, and while there may occasionally be overlap, correlation does not imply causation. I am a perfectly well adjusted, if cripplingly shy, individual, and I don’t appreciate people assuming that I’m going to murder them just because I’m afraid to talk to them in real life.
Re: loser = killer thing
I think people have it backwards. There’s this assumption that if you’re a loner then you’re more likely to be a violent criminal, but if you’re a violent criminal (or so inclined, anyway), then aren’t people less likely to want to spend time with you? Having the potential to be a violent person is a (just one of many) reason why someone might be a loner.
As yet, there is no information to support the idea that this crime was in any way sex-related. Roosh is full of shit.
Cliff et al, I do agree that beneath the really problematic language throwaway does make some legitimate points. Roosh, not throwaway, is the biggest asshole here.
It’s just, get some sense of proportion, dude. People are dead.
On the photoshopped pic. I assumed his photoshopping was obvious to everyone — her head is much bigger than his, for example, and her pose makes no sense in relation to him.
From whatI’ve read, Holmes had his hair dyed and called himself The Joker. Given that his hair was dyed red, rather than green, it’s likely that his attachment to the Joker was superficial at best.
whataboutthemoonz,
I think your take on it makes a lot of sense. Also, from what I have read and the reports I have heard, this guys plot would have taken a decent amount of planning. It seems that isolation/loner status would be required to create the plan and take all the necessary steps to implement it rather than the other way around (i.e., he was isolated which makes it possible so, why not?).
So, for sure, I think it could be a combination of a proclivity toward violence (or something) which results in the initial isolation and then later cultivating that isolation in order to carry out whatever plans he made without interference.
But then again I don’t really have a good understanding of why people who do things like this. So I guess I’m just adding my own speculation to the heap.