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.
Dear MRA’s- I know you aren’t responsible for every evil that happens in the world. Because I operate with a mode of world analysis that allows for complexity rather than an ‘us vs them’ mentality. Further, your knee jerk reaction to every evil in the world shouldn’t be ‘the feminists are somehow to blame’! That makes you seem crazy and paranoid. Lastly, in the interest of not sounding like evil fucking jackasses, stop blaming anyone for five seconds and just allow people time to grieve. Love, TTF
I can’t even begin to fathom how these people’s warped minds work, looking at those comments.
It’s like some kind of extreme-level DARVO normally impossible for the average person.
Those charts a few posts showing a rapid decline of interest in ‘men’s rights’ gives me hope, though.
From the AVFM thread:
Ye-eah, assuming this actually happened, I get the feeling the HR department must have gotten some interesting reports that day.
MordsithJ – Except of course it didn’t: the murderer was 20, so unlikely to be in custody battles. Not that the MRM is on speaking terms with facts. And even if he were … how the HELL do they justify murdering children?
Zimmer – I hadn’t seen the term DARVO before, but after looking it up, it really sums up the whole MRM, doesn’t it? Not just in this instance, it’s their whole attitude.
I think the commenter was talking about the Seal Beach murders earlier this year, but I still doubt this conversation actually happened.
Very long-time lurker, but I’ve never posted anything until now. My heart goes out to the families of these people and I”m not at all surprised that the MRAs are using this in their messed up agenda and as a means to make themselves look even more like victims. It’s very sad and a while ago, I would have been very surprised, but not anymore.
I looked up DARVO and the third link that comes up is from Dr. Tara Palmetier. I honestly couldn’t believe it and had to post since that woman really just makes me angry. I’m not sure of the website it was published on, shrink4men, but I could definitely see her using this excuse to protect MRAs and the like.
My bad! I don’t remember if the Seal Beach murders were reported here. I’d better do some Googling.
Interesting what the Orange County DA, Tony Rackauckas, said at the time murder charges were laid:
Which seems exactly the answer to the fuckers at AVfM and the Spearhead and so on, ranting about child custody. Love doesn’t come into it. I’ve yet to see a definition of love that includes “murdering random people because you don’t get ownership of someone”.
Source: http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?section=news/local/orange_county&id=8391756
I hope the following is not considered off-topic. Reading these posts and comments brings me to make observations about misogyny in general, which I hope are not irrelevant to the current events in question.
When I was going through late-elemtary and junior high school in the 1970s, I suffered horrific bullying from both sexes, but the bullying from the boys, with its violent sexual language and degradation of me as a female, left an impression on me which has affected me for the rest of my life. As an intellectual, introverted girl who read piles of books and did not understand the point of competitive sports, I would have been bullied even if I had had the best home life imaginable. Unfortunately, I also suffered abuse, physical, sexual and emotional, at home.
The misogynist language I grew up was as bad as anything we read today on the internet. The difference now is that we do have the internet, and what boys learned to say, and men said, in more restricted contexts, is now broadcast out for the whole world to see and react to.
Back then, I wondered if men were even human. At the same time, I had unmistakable evidence that they were: authors and artists I admired for their sensitivity and insight, a few male teachers who I now look back on with gratitude, my youngest brother…but I remember wishing that there was some kind of course for men, to teach them how to be human.
Misandry/Misandrist: decades ago, a female who expressed discontent at men’s treatment of women was called a “man-hater.” “Misandrist” is the new version of the term.
I made a comment earlier about how the general disintegration of society is fueling events such as this most recent shooting. I would like to add some clarification: there is as yet no evidence that the shooter in this case was expressing any overtly misogyinist tendencies. What I am thinking about is the fact that in a period of increasing economic inequality and desperation, women are being attacked for allegedly taking away men’s dignity and power. There are two enemies here: misogyny and the wider social context in which it is being encouraged.
A few more things that come to mind, hope you don’t mind this long post.
Equality does not mean that men and women are the same. This applies no matter what gender identification one has (e.g. you may be a gay or transgender male or female), because we are dominated by either male or female hormonal responses (and other forms of sex-specific biology that affects our physical and psychic life). The MRAs like to attack women with this knowledge in hand. The male sense of entitlement to sex, and anger at women for not providing it, is an example. The male gaze, when devoid of any respect, also affects women adversely (i.e. leering, which can be almost as bad as physical assault).
I would suggest that we need to regain something precious which is in danger of being lost–the sense of respect for the opposite sex. This is what made love between men and women possible. As the great Stendhal wrote, “Love is the miracle of civilisation.” The fact that men are capable of it shows that they are human. Stendhal’s insight was that civilisation is fragile, and that humanity will disappear if we are not vigilant.
I didn’t mean to write all this, but it’s been on my mind. May be will help provide food for thought.
Kamilla – I am so sorry about what you went through. Internet hugs if you want them.
The only thing I’d question in what you’re saying is the idea that there ever was much respect between the sexes. We live in a patriarchy and men’s “respect” for women has been heavily dependent on women doing what we’re told, living within sharply defined, narrow confines, and even then, it only applied to upper or middle-class women: working class women and peasants had little or no respect at all. I don’t think that sort of respect was genuine, or something we should aspire to; it wasn’t based on the idea of women as equal human beings (even just within the same social levels) at all.
The conservatives in my fb feed are already saying ‘nows not the time for a discussion on gun control’ and usually I have no strong feelings on the topic, but the in the very first article I read the juxtaposition of ‘his brother claims there is a history of mental illness’ with ‘the guns found at the scene were legally registered to the mother’ jumped out at me. Right now the implication is that every gun he had was legal, and it seems like kind of a large collection of serious guns for people who may have had a mentally imbalanced person in the household. It struck me because I have known gun-nutty people in much more gun-nutty cultures than Connecticut who have reduced or eliminated the household gun collection when they became responsible for the care of impaired or imbalanced family members.
This is what a .223 Bushmaster is. That is not a deer-hunting gun. It seems like an excessive thing to have in a house with a troubled family member. It seems like a completely unnecessary thing to own in Connecticut. The NY mayor was right – every tragedy is “just not the time” yet in the spaces between tragedies we never seem to get around to it.
My god, wtf does ANYONE need a thing like that for?
I agree the .223 is not a deer hunting rifle. People don’t need semi automatic weapons that can fire 100 rounds in seconds to kill a deer. A weapon like that is meant for a war situation and it’s designed for killing people. For deer hunting, people only need shotguns or bolt action rifles, and they would never need armor piercing bullets either.
The only reason anyone needs anything like that is if they’re in the military. I keep coming back to the questions of why guns that aren’t intended for hunting are even available to civilians.
My husband’s facebook “friends” were going “more children are killed every day by abortions.”
No one needs a .223 or something like an AR-15 in the house. Not at all.
AHHHHHHH. There’s a pretty big head-exploding overlap between gun nuts and the anti-abortion crowd.
They’re “pro-life”, don’tcha know!
I did not know what a Sig Sauer was. That’s two assault rifles, and that makes the Glock the most reasonable gun he had on him. To me that raises some serious questions about how nosy the assault-rifle background check people should be.
So … the anti-abortion mob can dismiss these murders because … what? They don’t value post-birth life at all? It can’t be because they really think fetuses are children, because if they valued children they’d be back at being horrified at these murders.
Once the kid is born, it’s clearly on it’s own as far as these fools are concerned.
I told him “I’m sure that makes the parents whose kids were killed feel much better.”
There’s that Muslima argument again.
I’m having a drink. This is all ghastly.
It should be one question: “Are you in the military?”
If the answer is no, you don’t get one.
If the answer is yes, you get the one the military issues you.