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.
I DON’T EVEN.
No, wait, I see where they’re going. Since they assume that anything bad that a woman does anywhere is the fault of feminism, of course they assume that everyone else will blame anything bad done by a man anywhere on the MRM.
Here begins a list of bad things done by men that have nothing to do with the MRM! Oklahoma City bombing, sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway, Jonestown massacre.
Well aren’t you a fuckin’ hero?
I knew a guy with a martyr complex once. Annoying as fuck.
Other bad things done by men having nothing to do with the MRM:
serial public nose-picking
pissing in public fountains (saw a student do that one evening. I assume beer.)
failure to pick up dog poop in the park
farting in elevators
puking after too many drinks
saying rude things on the internet
running red lights
jaywalking
Nothing whatsoever to do with the MRM.
Of course, women do these things too (except the pissing, maybe), but that’s totally different!
I just can’t figure out how.
again, WTF?
@BigMomma, it only has to make sense to them, not the outside world.
But it is now obvious that David Futrelle is teh AntiChrist-thingy. Who else would do such a vile thing?
Yep, he’s not just “closed” the comments, he’s removed them all. Don’t imagine the ghastly things being said in there if even Elam realised they were an embarrassment.
@titianblue, I wish I’d saved screenshots. They weren’t violent or anything like that, except in that coded way Cliff used to describe as “Nice gender you’ve got there. Shame if anything were to happen to it.” Basically the message was “This is a terrible thing. And as long as feminism keeps oppressing men, we will see more of it, which is terrible.” I think most of them honestly don’t realize that is problematic, because they have so internalized the idea that feminism is this terrible force for evil.
Still, the comments were generally better than Owly’s over on r/mr — this whole thread is triggering, so I’m not putting a separate warning on this, but you may want to avert your eyes from this anyway:
I wish it was a sense of “maybe you fuckers should shut the hell up about it being all a woman’s fault” and not “this gives me another reason to bash David Futrelle for pointing out what evil assholes we are.”
I’m going to be this person and just remind everyone that LAST I HEARD, THERE WAS NO EVIDENCE THAT THE SHOOTER HAD A DIAGNOSIS OF MENTAL ILLNESS. Sorry, but “extremely violent and disturbing acts” are not evidence of mental illness. Frankly, most people with mental illness diagnoses aren’t violent, and are more likely to be the victims of violence than the perpetrators. So to go right to “this was a crazy person” is extremely ableist.
If evidence of mental illness does come to light, I will happily concede the point. I’m mostly responding to some mentions of mental illness care that I saw in this thread. I think greater access to quality, affordable mental health services can only be beneficial, but that’s not the issue here, as far as we know.
I don’t understand why they don’t just take AVfM private, since they seem to be far more concerned about outsiders seeing and repeating bad stuff that’s said there than about the fact that bad stuff is said there.
It’s not bad stuff that’s said there, it’s David cherry-picking to make them look bad.
Psych major here pointing something else out – if someone suffers a psychotic break and does something awful, that’s often not something that even the best mental health services could have prevented, since it’s hard to predict when a psychotic break will happen.
(Not that we have any idea what motivated the killer in this case anyway.)
In 2011, roughly 19000 under 5s died a day. They reckon 2/3s are preventable with fairly low-tech solutions. Why do we not have massive outpourings of grief for all these children? Why aren’t we crying our eyes out about that? 20 little western kids get killed by a psycho and it’s a monstrosity. Thousands across Africa and Asia die due to our own indifference and we don’t really care. Why? I genuinely want to know why. It doesn’t make me cry. Why doesn’t it? Should it?
@Cassandra, they can’t do that. Remember that their goal is to reach all the oppressed and abused men out there and foment non-violent revolution. And avoid David Futrelle’s notice, of course.
There is so far no evidence that this was an act of terrorism, politically motivated, etc. Yet before they took it down, AVfM was worried about this being blamed on the MRM. This is puzzling, but as cloudia pointed out, since they blame feminism for all evils, they think that the outside world will likewise blame the MRM.
Oh, and before I log off, one of the posters goes by the handle “RapeyBeatyGuy.”
Fellow psych major // psych patient here — seconding what Cassandra and MKlien said, and adding that even if the shooter was mentally ill, it really isn’t right to paint all mentally ill people as violent — at my worst I’m only a danger to myself.
And a tangent on this — “it’s hard to predict when a psychotic break will happen” — plenty of psych drugs come with a suicide warning, and less commonly, a warning that aggression may occur. So even demands that the mentally ill be “properly medicated” wouldn’t really help (if that’s relevant here, which it may not be).
Motty, that is terrible. Maybe you should go talk about how terrible it is elsewhere.
Motty: because no-one chose to pull the trigger on all those children. That’s why.
I added some more to the post, including one screenshot from the AVFM thread before it was closed. I also added some horrendous comments from AVFM regulars made about the Seal Beach shootings.
That’s the thing – you can’t always predict how a specific person will react to treatment, and some of the people who end up doing bad stuff because of mental illness never come to the attention of the healthcare system in time for anything to be done to help. And I don’t see any way around that without creating massive violations of people’s civil liberties. The system can only help people who either ask for help or get referred for help by the criminal justice system after an incident (or possibly by their school). If the first incident is a murder, well, too late to help then, but there’s really no way around that without compulsory screening of the entire population.
You don’t think any of those children due to violence? And is our own refusal to take any kind of responsibility for the damage the way we live our lives any better? The end result is the same. You think a grieving mother feels better because her child died of malaria and not a bullet wound?
I think not taking responsibility is less bad than shooting a child. I don’t think it’s morally exemplary, but there’s clearly a difference.
I am not that grieving mother, but yes, she will feel *different* about a child dying of malaria, rather than a gunshot. One of these is the act of one; the other is the inaction of many. When things feel personal, they feel different.
I think this is not the thread to have that discussion, Motty, and I say this as someone who is probably sympathetic to your point. In addition, you probably shouldn’t assume that people here are “indifferent” to the suffering and deaths of other children, or that we don’t work to prevent them.
They are using the Gingrich ploy: “Anyone who quotes me is lying”.