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.
@thenatfantastic, I’m a Scot and I’m kinda with you on this (given the Dunblane context). I take Wetherby’s point about the laws should have been applied but after having 2 kids 6 years apart, I’m all for avoiding complicated rules and having really straightforward ones that everyone can follow easily!
@cloudiah, I know I’m going back 2 pages, but I found that I had the first 30 comments from the AVFM thread up in a tab. I saved them for posterity and refreshed and sure enough, Elam had shut the thread down.
It’s worth remembering that what we have here in the UK isn’t an armed police force and an unarmed populace. It’s an unarmed police force. The copper who knocks on your door to ask if you heard anything when next door got burgled hasn’t got a gun. There are specific firearms officers for when a particular job really calls for it.
It’s also worth remembering that fatal shootings of police officers – hell, even non-fatal shootings of police officers – are vanishingly rare in the UK.
One of the reasons the recent double killing of two police officers in Manchester had such a seismic impact wasn’t because they were women (although this was obviously good tabloid fodder in itself) but because it was apparently the first time that more than one British police officer had been killed in a single incident for several decades.
But the cultural divide between the US and UK is unbridgeably vast when it comes to this particular subject.
@viola, I *heart* that it’s an unarmed police force.
Speaking of getting guns from across the border, America’s gun laws are so lax that Mexican drug cartels actually send people to US gun shows to buy guns.
I agree. It’s just not quite the same in Canada. I know ppl who have guns (for hunting), and there isn’t the fetishization of gun ownership here.
To me this U.S./guns love affair is best summed up by watching the military channel, which busband does often. Show after show about weaponry, esp.different types of guns. Some of it is interesting, sure – but wow, a whole channel! About guns! And some war stuff now and then too, of course.
There seems to be a mythology in the US (among some people, not all) that involves a ‘guns made us what we are’ viewpoint. Imagine it’s hard to give up guns of any sort if they are embedded in your (personal) national identity, ie: “we’re a nation of scrappy bootstrappers who fight for what’s ours”, and such.
Hunters do a lot of good, and that’s part of why the US has a love/hate relationship with guns. Deer hunters in the midwest donate their extra venison to our food pantries, and one deer makes 200 meals. Deer hunters also prevent overpopulation of deer, so fewer deer die from starvation or getting run over. That’s part of why I cringe when people have the reaction of “Ban ALL guns” rather than “Figure out which guns are practical and which are completely unnecessary for civilians”.
So a .22 to shoot squirrels makes sense. A .223 makes no sense unless you’re trying to kill a lot of people in a short time.
Hunters help food pantries
I can also understand when some people want revolvers and pistols for self defense. Our police refuse to enforce restraining orders, so it leaves abuse victims to fend for themselves. I personally rely on pepper spray for self defense, but I also understand the idea of “Better to be judged by 12 than carried by 6”.
I guess it’s different everywhere. As a teen, I found it was easier to get booze than weed. Meth, on the other hand, is the easiest to get of all. I don’t know a solution on that, because it really is dangerous but it’s also very easy to cook. With the new shake and bake method, it’s even harder to fight.
Agreed.
IIRC, here in Canada a lot of people have guns – we have one of the highest rates of gun ownership. What we don’t have are super-high rates of gun violence. That’s not to say we don’t have any, just that it’s much lower. Something like 30% of homicides are committed with guns here, closer to 70% in the US.
Differences are that we can own pistols, rifles, shotguns. No fully automatic weapons. Also can’t carry concealed weapons. You have to take a safety course, be background checked, and wait 28 days to get licensed to own a firearm. I think you have to renew your license every few years (5 years?)
Teal Deer: totally cool with ppl owning guns as long as there are enforced controls on type, carrying, etc.
Yeah… and I saw a statistic today that said that 95% of all statistics are made up on the spot. I’d like to see the cite on that, because 8 does not pass the sniff test even a little.
The WHO reports 138 gun fatalities in 2009 in the UK. http://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/region/united-kingdom
I was trying to illustrate the disparity between outlawing and restricting ownership.
That link puts the number of homicides by gun at 18 in a year, 138 is where suicide is included. If you include suicide deaths in the US stats it bumps the number up from 11,000 to 31,513.
So 18:2200/90:11,000 without suicides, 138:6300/690:31,500 with.
That link’s borked sorry, should lead here: http://library.med.utah.edu/WebPath/TUTORIAL/GUNS/GUNSTAT.html
Yes, I was very suspicious of that 8 figure – if true, 2011 must have been a pretty exceptional year.
So I looked up what appear to be the actual figures for the last decade or so (the figures run from October to September), compiled by the UK Home Office, and found these:
2002/03: 80
2003/04: 68
2004/05: 76
2005/06: 49
2006/07: 56
2007/08: 53
2008/09: 39
2009/10: 39
2010/11: 58
NB: These are figures for England and Wales only, though apparently there were just two firearms-related homicides in Scotland in 2010-11, making the total 60. I imagine Northern Ireland statistics are compiled separately, but probably won’t be that different – the days when fatal shootings were tragically routine over there are thankfully long gone.
The silly thing is, 60 is just as potent a figure as 8, as it’s still clearly a minuscule fraction of 10,000 – so why did they feel the need to exaggerate?
According to this study by a Swedish criminologist http://www.criminology.su.se/polopoly_fs/1.65985.1323954414!/2011m2_Elisabeth_Norden.pdf , there’s a correlation between lethal violence and frequency of ownership of, er, small firearms… don’t know the correct English word here… you know, the ones you hold with one hand only? But not with ownership of firearms in general.
That kind of makes sense spontaneously. Sweden has a pretty high rate of firearms per capita (can’t find the statistics right now). Still, that’s mostly because a large percentage of the population are hunters. If you have a hunting license, you’re allowed to have certain firearms suitable for hunting. That’s basically long rifles, that you can’t possibly carry around under your jacket or anything. So it would be pretty complicated to use them for illegal violence.
^Handguns?
*lol* Katz, that would be the word I was looking for! Ridiculous that I couldn’t come up with it since it’s so simple… Like “what are they called, these GUNS you can hold with one HAND…”
Woa, Dvarg, English is your second language? That is about the first time you’ve ever given any indicator that
oops. To continue- that is the first time you’ve given any indicator that I could tell, and I teach ESL. Fantastic!
Thanks Timetraveller! You would know if you could hear me though. In Sweden it’s mandatory to study English in school, but I only really learnt to speak it after I’d moved to a student dorm where about half the students were exchange students. There were an American girl, an Englishman, a Dutch girl, a Spanish guy, a Swiss guy, a Polish girl, a Russian guy, a French guy and a Bulgarian guy. And a few Swedes. We spoke English all the time since that was the only language everyone knew. However, everyone using English as their second language (that is, everyone but the American and the Brit) soon mixed up our respective accents to form one big mash-up accent. I lived there for three years. Now, it’s been twelve years since I moved out of that dorm, but that accent is still with me. Everytime I speak English with native speakers they try, in vain, to figure out where I come from…
@ Dvarg- tell them Atlantis!!
OMG, you lived in L’Auberge Espagnole!
I’m actually not sure if availability/legality has a direct connection with the use of drugs… Where I live you can buy pot from almost every corner of the city, but to be honest, it’s mostly tourists that buy it. There’s a pot culture, of course, and it’s used alongside booze and tobacco at pubs. But it’s by no means as popular as beer and wine is. And then we got Portugal that went even further and took penalty off hard drug use, too, and they didn’t get a massive surge in drug use. And as yet another example I have personal experience of is Finland, where people drink almost as much as in Russia and booze is highly restricted and taxed (unlike in Russia) and it doesn’t prevent people from drinking themselves to death.
I’d wager other social issues and cultural things have more to do with it than availability and legality alone, to be honest. But which cultural things etc. in which countries is another question.
I want an edit button…
Anyway, had to say about the guns as well, as I saw a comment about Sweden and guns. Right next door in Finland we got, if I recall right, the highest gun ownership rate AND the highest gun violence rate of Europe. But aside from the well-reported school shooting incidents, a good part of firearm violence happens when… yes, wait for it: a father kills his entire family, and then himself. Or cousins kill each other etc. violence that mostly affects the relatives of the perp.
I’m a bit distracted now to dig up statistics, but they’re out there, somewhere.