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.
FTR — I don’t see the need for guns outside of farmers defending their livestock, but in the current politic climate, the risk of more gun owners using them because they feel like they’re being attacked, the risk of the right-wing in general claiming this is an attack and liberal propaganda…there’s too many other important things potentially up for “comprise” already.
Also, I’m not comfortable with the idea of armed police and an unarmed society — that one may well be cultural divide.
I feel like, at this point in history, the idea that lots of people are actively entertaining the idea of hoarding guns so that they can potentially get into a shootout with the government is fucking terrifying. I’m far more scared of those people than I am of even the nastiest Republicans.
(I might feel differently in a country where the rule of law was a complete joke, and I’ve lived in one of those. In the US, though? That mindset is ridiculous.)
These *are* the nastiest of Republicans btw — they think it’s reasonable because Obama is proof of how stupid the country has become, that abortion and gay marriage prove how immoral we are, and that the US has, in general, gone to all the wrong kind of people. And that they’ll soon have to defend themselves from violent hordes of non-white liberals (I guess GLBT folks aren’t in these hordes because gay men are too effeminate or something? My father rants about how all French men are gay…hard to fit his bigotry on GLBT issues into this end of the world view)
Only good part about all this is his stockpile of water means I have plenty of aged water for the fish tanks XD
And yes, it is fucking terrifying, problem is that they’re a small subset of gun owners — there’s the set that just want to shoot targets, either for self-defense (since we do have plenty of criminals with guns, thus people think guns would help in home defense), as practice for hunting, or, I would guess, for the Freudian “enjoying the power trip” reasons.
Though honestly, there’s something quite satisfying to hitting your mark, I’m perfectly happy doing such with a bow and arrow though (just find me a nice left handed one please? I shoot lefty for some strange reason)
I meant Republican politicians. The own-guns-with-intention-of-forming-militia people are terrifying because they represent societal chaos and the breakdown of law and order, and they actually WANT that to happen. I’ve lived in places where society is less generally orderly than the US, and it sucks. So people actively trying to create those conditions tweak my “WTF is wrong with you, and are you going to kill me?” radar.
“I meant Republican politicians.” — ahh, my mistake.
“So people actively trying to create those conditions tweak my “WTF is wrong with you, and are you going to kill me?” radar.”
Yeah, my father definitely pushes those buttons for me (gods, every time I’ve thought I might be about to die it’s been because of him, and accident or not, I’m never getting in a car with him driving again)
There is definitely something seriously wrong with that type of person, problem with basing gun laws on them though is that they’re a tiny subset of gun owners. Most are more like my grandfather, with one rifle somewhere (he won’t share that info) and the bullets elsewhere — and his old service revolver is in storage someplace or another, again, he gets real cross about how no one else needs to know where. Most he’s ever going to shoot is that damned fox that keeps going after the local rabbits.
But allowing people like your grandad to have guns helps create the conditions in which people like your dad thrive. That’s the problem – the whole cultural relationship that America has with guns is just really weird.
Perhaps? My grandfather isn’t real fond of my father’s collection, and I can’t get behind taking away service revolvers, or hunting rifles. And I don’t even really approve of hunting, other than to protect livestock // scare off larger predators.
For example, I have an aunt in upstate NY, cow land — the farmers all keep rifles to kill gophers (their burrows will seriously injure a cow) and to scare off coyotes and the like (I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase “fox in the hen house”? yeah, it’s a Bad Bad Thing)
And I do know people who’ve never held a gun and probably never will, and maybe it is a cultural thing, as even they think that hunting rifles have a logical purpose (defending livestock // killing problem critters)
I think we’re hitting that cultural divide again.
Probably — doesn’t the UK and Australia allow rifles for farm defense though? I’d always thought they did, but maybe I misunderstood.
Guns for hunting are definitely allowed in certain circumstances, though I don’t know what the rules are. Upper class twits in the UK love shooting things.
(I love how right as we’re having this conversation Jeff shows up in the other thread to illustrate every single dumb and simplistic argument in favor of why guns can never go away. But then only criminals will have guns! Jeff makes the babylogicJesus cry.)
Maybe banning // limiting non-hunting ammo would be the solution here? Allow replicas for collectors, and hunting ammo as that does have its purpose, but make non-hunting ammo expensive or impractical to obtain?
Outlawing guns really isn’t practical, not with the second amendment and the current political climate.
And as for skeet shooting, I suspect there’s some sort of ammo that’d crack plaster without doing grievous bodily harm. Don’t they usually use rifles anyways though? Idk how outlawing rifles could/would work, what with it being an Olympic sport and all.
Things like this are hardly new, or specific to the MRM. I mean, some people actually blamed the Virginia Tech shootings on mercury laden vaccinations. There’ll always be some people who’ll see any tragedy through the lens of their pet cause.
Well, gotta give Jeff this much, his idiocy is what prompted my previous comment about ammo.
Here’s the thing, Argenti, we can’t get rid of guns. Changing the US Constitution in this climate would be fricking impossible. But a semi-automatic rifle ban could probably get past the Supreme Court if people got to keep their handguns, shotguns and Brit-defeating muskets. Everyone knows that the traditional reasoning for the 2nd Amendement is laughably out of date. It does’t matter how much surplus military hardware that could be hoarded even by a small community: a well-armed citizenry is not what’s keeping us free from the spectre of King Obama. He’s got the missile silos and space lasers and weaponized pop music and whatever else the military spends their giant ass share of our tax money on. And tradition is no reason to go easy on a modern gun that is favored by spree killers because the mighty musket in the hands of a determined population is how the United States avoided being Canada.
There is no defensible reason for normal civillians to have easy access to a bullet-fountain. People like them because they’re cool and badass. Normally I think guns should be a state thing – this is a case where what’s right for Rhode Island might not be right for Texas, and that’s fine. But a federal ban on assault rifles? Yeah, everyone but a specific group of gun nuts would be fine with it.
Maybe this would be a good opportunity for gun control advocated to use parody to get their point across. Mock up a video of someone using an assault rifle to shoot foxed/possums/whatever other small animal is bothering your livestock. Target practice with the assault rifle. Make the hardcore gun nuts look ridiculous for wanting the damn things and take away their “but it has practical uses!” excuse.
Was that supposed to be directed at me or Cassandra? I ask because that’s basically a summary of my mismash of thoughts in multiple comments…maybe I just didn’t make sense while working things out in comment form?
In any case —
Agreed, on all of it (so long as we continue to make mental illness a separate issues, that was what had concerned me with your earlier comments) — though, I’d say that trying to change the constitution currently wouldn’t be just impossible but irresponsible, with birth control, abortion, medicare, civil rights, etc all up for debate.
Cassandra, can I email your comment, in full to my lighting designer FWB? He does filmography on the side, he’s probably busy, but he could do it if he had time.
Also, airsoft guns pack enough punch for target practice, while just stinging if you get shot with one (quite the sting, but you’ll recover with nothing worse than a bruise, just remember your eye protection!)
Sure!
Not promising he’ll ever do anything with the idea, but I’ll send it to him now, thanks!
And as a warning, not that you won’t see my comment saying such — I just asked Jeff to please come comment on this thread instead of that one.
Argenti – yup, guns are allowed for farm use, definitely. And there are shooting clubs and the like – plus professional shooters who go killing kangaroos (shudder – please, anyone reading this, if you’re ever tempted to eat kangaroo, DON’T. There’s nothing humane about the way they’re killed). And yahoos who think pig-shooting is macho. We do have a lot of trouble with feral animals – gods I hate that word, like it’s the animals’ fault – but the need to control numbers is an excuse for some real lowlife shooters.
Your father thinks all Frenchmen are gay? How’d he get his wires so crossed, given the usual Frenchman = great lover trope? Not that either’s true, or that it should be surprising, given what you’ve said about him. It just caught my eye ’cause Mr Kitteh is French.
Argenti I know you want to keep your guns but if the gun-having people can’t be trusted to keep dangerously unbalanced people away from dangerous guns, then the government will step in. They have to, because there are clearly enough careless people willing to pass legally-obtained semi-automatics to people who absolutely should not have them. Will they do a shitty job? Almost certainly! Is our mental health system in any sort of shape that such a rule could be fairly and reasonably enforced? No. Does ‘keep medicated people away from guns’ sound like the kind of simple solution voters would love? Yes, yes it does. You’re a mentally ill person who will defend the rights of gun nuts to have guns, but are you completely sure the gun nuts would do the same for you?
Hateful cultural stereotypes never make any damn sense. I once ran across a really obnoxious woman who went on and on about how “asexual” she thought Chinese men were (she lived in Singapore). She seemed a bit confused when I asked her how, if that was the case, there ended up being over a billion people in China.
Let me guess – she didn’t find Chinese men appealing = they’re asexual-seeming. Or something equally dumb.