Men’s Rights activists and others in the manosphere often complain that it’s unfair to link their movement to killers like the virulent antifeminist mass murderers Marc Lepine and Anders Breivik, even though the antifeminist, anti-woman ideology of these killers is oftem indistinguishable from MRA thought.
But the plain fact is that they make the links themselves. Whenever there is some sort of mass killing by someone who is driven at least in part by the hatred of women, it seems like it’s only a matter of time before some MRA steps up to, if not explicitly endorse the killer, at least suggest some sort of sympathy or empathy with him and/or to suggest that the killing in some way is an understandable or justifiable or even praiseworthy reaction to the the alleged oppression of men.
This time it seems to have happened with record speed. Over on the A Voice for Men forum, one commenter, GregA, compares the mass killer in Newtown today — whose motives are still completely unknown — with oppressed people rising up against tyranny in the Middle East:
So far the only reply he’s gotten challenges this odious comparison, so that’s a tiny bit comforting.
Naturally, the MRAs will say that this commenter is some sort of feminist troll. But he’s made dozens of comments on the AVFM forums that are standard-issue MRA stuff – he seems to be a bit obsessed with the notion that feminist commenters online are being paid for commenting – and his comments in the past (at least those that I looked at) seem to have been generally well-received there.
EDITED TO ADD: If you would like to discuss the Newton shootings without having to think about this horrible comment of GregA’s, I’ve set up a separate no-trolls, no MRAs, thread for that.
EDITED TO ADD MORE: Meanwhile, over on A Voice for Men itself, one of the first commenters in a thread on the subject blames the shootings on, you guessed it, misandry:
Meanwhile, AVFM “managing editor” Dean Esmay complains that feminists “will find some way or other to blame us in specific for this.” In case Esmay is reading this, I am not blaming the Men’s Rights movement for this shooting, mainly because we have absolutely no idea what motivated the shooter. What I am doing is pointing out that someone on AVFM’s own forum, someone who has previously posted there extensively, is comparing this murderer of children to some kind of freedom fighter, and another in the very thread you are posting in has decided (based on absolutely nothing) that “misandry” is to blame.
You may also recall the numerous comments from MRAs justifying or at least excusing, the Seal Beach shooter.
Here are some more MRA comments on the Seal Beach murders which I chose not to post at the time. These are from A Voice for Men. (In the original thread they weren’t next to one another; there’s more horrible stuff in the thread besides these two comments.)
Are these guys “feminist trolls?” No. They are both long-time commenters at AVFM.
But again, pointing out these horrible comments is not the same as blaming the MRM for that shooting, or for the shooting today.
In the case of Lepine and Breivik, people linked them to MRAs because they had (or in the case of Breivik still has) virulently anti-feminist worldviews virtually identical with much of the stuff posted regularly on Men’s Rights sites, and other “manosphere” sties generally.
Presumably we will learn more about this shooter’s motivations, and then we can decide if anyone besides the shooter himself is to blame.
EDITED TO ADD ONCE MORE: Elam has now shut down the thread on A Voice for Men; as I write this the thread on the A Voice for Men forum is still up. I suggest you take a look at it and make screenshots. Elam says it’s because I’m “using comments from the thread in order to push his lies.” It’s not clear how quoting his followers (in full, without edits) is a “lie.” Apparently he’s unwilling to let his followers continue to post comments because, we can only assume, he knows they will say more horrific things, and people outside the AVFM cult might see what those inside it actually think.
Not, at this point, that there’s much doubt about what they think.
EDITED TO ADD STILL MORE: Meanwhile, over on The Spearhead:
As most of the readers here will know, the shooter was 20 years old, wasn’t a father and the shooting had nothing to do with any custody battle.
Regurgitated troll, sounds like I feel after chemo. Tried to take my aggression out with the alt-fighters, (it’s all the juuus) and the refugs, (arm all kiddies) but now I’m tired and sad and I just want to kick fake feminists arse while I still have the strength.
Cassandra – see, your comment t’other day about mayo being Satan’s spooge has been BURNED INTO MY BRAIN.
Yoyo — Feel free to eat the troll, trolls are crunchy and good with ketchup (or as soup crackers, depending what you’re up for). Or ignore the troll and let the rest of us have crunchy troll, whichever works for you (basically, the troll is yours if you want to play).
Hope chemo goes well for you, and doesn’t make you feel too awful.
“Wow, that’s some epically bad grammar in the bit Argenti quoted.”
Remind you of any previous troll’s grammar? I’m really hoping I’m wrong here, said troll was epically annoying.
Yoyo – internet hugs if you want ’em. Chemo is a horrible horrible thing. I hope its working for you.
I saw your message about Jack Irish, haven’t been watching it, though. Now that New Tricks is over we’re just watching DVDs.
*it’s
Thank you argenti, when I think of eating troll, which is seldom, I think of the fabulous movie, ” the cook the thief The wife the lover”. Mmmm runs to toilet xx
Might have to add that to my movie queue, though it’s a few miles long already!
And I must be wrong on my troll guess, or we’d have had a troll-splosion by now.
is this fucker on “the spear head” for real?!
“DW3 December 14, 2012 at 19:54
Fuck you, feminists.
Every second I spend with my young son, is in spite of the best efforts of the feminist system. I value my time as a family man more than all of the rest of my life combined. If the feminists involved in my court experience in the world of family law had had their way, I would continue to be excluded from my darling son’s life.
Actively working to keep men away from their sons and daughters is unspeakable evil, the worst evil I can imagine. It is far, far worse than any other crime, especially far worse than any rape. Fuck you evil scumbags for being so keen to harm children for your violent ideology.”
Kaitlyn, that is par the course over there, so quite possibly. They seem to be unable to grasp just how much you have to fuck up to have only supervised visits — most divorced couples split weekends and holidays, or similar arrangement (eg school year in one place, summer the other, if the parents live rather far apart). So for all they say they love their kids, they only seem to “love” them as pawns in a bitter divorce. Which will, of course, not please the judge, which, in turn, makes them think the system is biased towards women // run by feminists.
As far as “worse than rape” — it’s that they are unable to fathom rape as anything beside “we had sex, she lied and said it was rape” — rape doesn’t exist to some of them, at all, and the rest seem to stupid to grasp that date rape is rape (and gods forbid they ever mention male rape victims, then they’re all about how feminists ignore the real numbers and how common this is and generally they become frothing rage while sucking at math).
And that was one hell of a run-on sentence, my apologies.
Wow, sucks for him that they have Amber Alerts now. They even have Amber Alerts on cellphones now.
To MRAs, everything is worse than rape. Stubbing your toe is worse than rape. Missing your bus is worse than rape.
What’s funny is that they don’t realize what this tells everyone else about them.
That last link was a bit heavy on the acronyms so I wanted to give a little context. There’s a new emergency alert service that just recently rolled out for things like severe weather warnings that can send messages out to everybody’s cellphone in a particular area at the same time, called “cell broadcast”. The emergency feature is called CMAS.
Anyway, AMBER Alerts are a component of the system, so now that this piece of the system is turning on, in the future whenever some asshole abducts his kid(s) from whoever is supposed to have custody of them, and they get an Amber Alert called on them, then a whole bunch of people’s iPhones and Android phones are going to get a little notification with their license plate number (unless you unsubscribe from the feature in the correct settings panel) so they’re not going to have anywhere to hide for very long.
I happen to know more about this feature than anyone should have to learn, since I wrote the code for Google for the CMAS support in the Nexus models of Android phones. It’s based on some work I wrote in 2011 for Japan called ETWS, for Earthquake Tsunami Warning System. The U.S. version features the infamous DTMF tone dating back to the original Emergency Broadcast System, you know, “this is a test, this is only a test…” So as the first severe storm and flash flood and tornado warnings are getting broadcast on the system, I know it’s working because I’m getting bug reports of little things not working quite right. It’s extremely rewarding to have worked on something that could literally save people’s lives that wasn’t there before.
It’s interesting that in Japan the most important categories for their emergency broadcast system are Earthquake, Tsunami, Earthquake & Tsunami, and
GodzillaTest Message. While in the U.S., owing to our different preoccupations and fears, the categories are, from highest to lowest, Presidential Level Alert (the one category you’re not allowed to unsubscribe your phone from, so when Obama tells everyone he’s coming to take all the guns for the New World Order, you’ll know about it, man), Extreme Alert, Severe Alert, then AMBER Alert. Then within the Extreme and Severe priorities, you have subcategories for things like fires, floods, tornados, Chem/Bio/Radiological/High-Explosive Threats, and other cheery things to think about.I’m just waiting for the NWO conspiracy types to discover all of this Big Brother stuff lurking inside their new smartphones and link it with the preexisting FEMA camps and “false flag ops” and whatnot. I’m sure false Amber Alert accusations will be the new false rape accusations. Ugh. Glad I had the opportunity to give them something new to fear before they go abducting their kids (or someone else’s).
“Ugh. Glad I had the opportunity to give them something new to fear before they go abducting their kids (or someone else’s).”
Pardon my crassness, but fuck them. You get ALL THE INTERNETS for coding something designed to save lives. That’s awesome!
I’m curious — just smartphones, or will my new shiny iPad be able to get this system too? Thing’s still wrapped and waiting for the 25th, so idk what it’s really capable of (cellular with a pre-paid plan is a go, so I assume it can do most things a smartphone can do?)
Jake, that is super cool. All the internets + all the cells to you.
Why am I hated for being female.
It doesn’t matter how many times I’ve been hit, or hurt, strangled by my husband, or how many times he’s raped me while out on bail threatening me with things that would scare anyone, or my fears for my preschool-aged children.
All that matters is that it’s my fault.
These men go and shoot women and kill them because they are mad at us for living.
They have no idea how hard it is – living.