So The Spearhead has weighed in on the Cleveland abduction cases, and has not failed to disappoint.
Spearhead head boy WF Price uses the terrible unfolding drama as an opportunity to attack the notion of patriarchy. His logic: the alleged abductors weren’t rich dudes, so therefore patriarchy is a lie. No, really, that’s his argument:
Feminists love to point to these incidents and use them to discredit the overwhelming majority of ordinary men, as though they have anything in common with the Castro brothers. They are used to portray every middle class guy as a potential menace to society and freak who would keep girls in a sex dungeon. But it turns out that, in fact, the fellows who kidnapped these girls are about what you’d expect: a few disheveled, low-class weirdos.
So why is it that despite the fact that the guys who commit these crimes are almost always on the bottom of the male power and privilege scale, feminists are constantly linking abuse of women to men’s power, and agitating for stripping what remaining male privilege exists?
It’s time for the patriarchy/male privilege narrative to be exposed for the sham it is. Privileged men are least likely to abuse women; patriarchal types are most likely to protect them. It is overwhelmingly the powerless, those without privilege and the undesirable who resort to crime to obtain sex. The few others, like Ted Bundy, are simply the exceptions that prove the rule.
Price ends his post with an especially nasty bit of victim blaming that seems to be a favorite trope of MRA types:
But perhaps the real issue here is that women aren’t as interested in making up stories about guys like the Castro brothers, because those guys don’t turn them on like Christian Bale in American Psycho.
Yes, that’s right: Price thinks that women worry about rape and abuse because the thought of being raped and abused by Christian Bale turns them on.
Of course, The Spearhead being The Spearhead, the comments are even worse. Norm starts the party off with this:
The Castro bros. will have many women getting their panties wet over them, especially when their trial is over.
Daniel, meanwhile, is angry that Ariel Castro’s alleged crimes have done real damage to … men. That is, if the whole thing isn’t a big false-flag fake:
The truth is, this was the worst that could happen for anti feminist public relations at the moment. If this guy – Mr Castro – only knew how much damage he has done to men by doing this.
The case is such a gift basket for feminism, that I almost suspect it is fabricated.
Groot blames feminists for driving non-alpha men to desperate measures to obtain access to “multiple women”:
What feminists fail to see is that as men are driven more and more by their agenda to the bottom of the power and privilege scale, more and more crimes like this will be committed. Unchecked hypergamy ensures that men like these have no real chance for healthy relationships and often take through criminal efforts what alphas and the elites have access to; that being multiple women.
MRA agrees:
Heroic singles moms created most of these men, we can say that is women exploiting women. The Betas and Omega that commits such crimes are the results of 40 years of feminism raising the number if these low privilege class men.
Keyster offers up this miniature manifesto blaming feminism:
Of course feminists have been playing a game of “self-fulfilling prophecy” with regard to disenfranchising men and destroying the concept of the nuclear family. This can only manifest and perpetuate itself through more instances of disaffected and socially pathological males acting out. The male/female relationship is what tames the male. And so there will be more cases where feminists can say – “See, men are the problem.” But of course there will also be more females acting out that will not be reported or discussed – such as the recent proliferation of female teachers sexually abusing students.
Jacob Ian Stalk — you may remember his 12-Step Program for Recovering Feminists — moves beyond blaming feminism and “single moms” to blame the literal victims themselves:
I have to ask, how did three adult women with at least one child between them fail completely to make their distress known, if it ever existed, to anyone in their own street for ten years, unless they themselves had no intention of being found?
There’s a great deal more this case that we are being told by the hysterical press. Call me a trafficking apologist if it satisfies your need for drama, but I suspect we’ll find the women are nowhere near as innocent or as victimised (if at all) as the cutesy-pie pictures being plastered all over the papers suggests.
Doc, meanwhile, uses the horrific story as an opportunity to brag about his alleged success with the ladies:
The fact is that men who are desirable to women have no need to resort to these types of crimes. I pretty much have my pick of women for my bed, who will pay their own way so that they can have sex with me on trips that I take, and otherwise do whatever necessary to be with me.
So thanks to feminism I have an unending supply of 18-25 year old women who are more than willing to share my bed. Why would I want to commit a crime to limit myself to one, or in this case 3? Seems way too limiting to me – it would be worse than being married. No thank you…
That’s nice, Doc. You’re a moral monster.
EDITED TO ADD: And here’s a late-breaking extra-creepy comment from Darryl X, edited slightly (and paragraphs breaks added) because he’s not only creepy but very verbose. Also, as you’ll see, he apparently thinks Jerry Sandusky was innocent too.
I have a sneaky suspicion that these women (when they were still girls) selected these men. The same way more than half of all women in the US during the past forty-five years selected men for marriage knowing darn well they were going to divorce him later, take him for everything he’s got and then marry up. Too many things don’t add up about this case. So many that I am even willing to question whether or not these girls were even kidnapped. More likely they are runaways who thought they were getting a better deal with these men than with their own parents. And when they got old enough to realize that they can do even better still, they stuck it to these guys (never underestimate the irrational boundlessness of hypergamy). … I don’t think these men are as guilty as the media portrays them and I don’t think the girls are as innocent as the media portrays them. …
When I try to think about how I would go about kidnapping just one teenager and hold her for a decade into her early 20′s in a suburban neighborhood, I am presented with so many logistical obstacles that it would seem near impossible to overcome all of them. Just for a few months let alone a decade. Then throw two more into the mix and that isn’t just near impossible but almost completely so. Not without their voluntary complicity. None of these guys looked to be of any excessive financial means. They weren’t rich. None of them looked like Einstein to me either. There was nothing accommodating about the geography. Their home wasn’t isolated from the community. It wasn’t off in the wilderness somewhere. It wasn’t remote. Think about how hard it would be to hold just one captive for a decade under these circumstances. Then think how hard it would be to hold three. The problems with that don’t grow linearly but exponentially. The cost. The risk of escape. Many other logistical problems.
I don’t buy any of this for a second. As soon as I heard this story, little red flags went up all over the place. Same with Casey Anthony and Arias and Strauss-Kahn and Sandusky (yes, I know). Too many red flags in this culture of feminism usually means something. I’m not sure what it means here but it definitely means something.
So, yeah. Actually, the other brothers aren’t being charged, so even that aspect of Darryl’s disgusting bullshit is off the mark.
Joeb, meanwhile, has a completely surreal and fucked-up Evo Psych take on the whole thing. It’s possibly the most perverse comment in the whole thread, which is saying something.
These men picked these women as sexual companionship , Not mating stock .
If they where looking for mating stock the number of off spring would have been Higher .
I think some men today get confused with Mating and breeding . VS sexual entertainment.
These men are predators but , They have Truly deprived themselves of the one thing men should be looking at , The quality of offspring .
I know its eugenics , but we all look for the best possible outcome when choosing . We want large Male children .
These men choose what I would consider ” good entertainment” but , Not worthy of my DNA .
We make suggestions ever so lightly around the MRA , the modern Male being smallish and effeminate, But when the Modern Male chooses his stock for procreation we chose fucking stock over breeding stock .
I would consider this an evolutionary sickness . A mental illness or defect . Witch is obvious in this case but,It gives us a chance to look at The problem ” for what it is , Inferior males seeking sex . Or like we hear a lot of in the MRA , Pussy hounds , Pussy beggars , These might have been white Knights if put in a social setting that lets them flourish .
Most Likely they would have been The same ,pussy beggars :with the ability to influence any social setting .
What the hell, dude. I don’t even know where to start with this crap.
It probably runs the usual gamut of “What’s the fuss about?” from those who don’t think women are living beings, to the ones who’re fantasising about doing it precisely because they want to hurt women. And of course they all wrap it up in the “you’re forcing poor betas to do this” bullshit.
‘My bad. But you should have clarified, because most MRA shitheads I’ve talked to love to point at a few women who express their attraction to such men and then conclude that this is some kind of trend among most women.’
You made an assumption based on nothing and I should ‘clarify’?
And, you all will take one post (usually extreme) by one MRA and claim that all MRAs think that way. How is that different? Are you really unconscious to the fact that you are doing the same thing?
The MRM is a movement. ‘Women’ is not.
Newcomers are trolls until proven otherwise.
See why?
One post? Try a whole fucking blog.
And did you read what anyone else wrote? Privileged men are the least likely to BE CONVICTED for abusing women. That doesn’t mean they don’t do it.
Okay, some women have crushes on people who commit crimes (I’m guessing that’s what you mean when you say thugs?).
How much fanmail did these guys receive? 50 letters? 500? 1000? Even if they got that many (any number) that’s still LESS THAN ONE PERCENT out of all of the women in America.
I mean, I bet you MRAs would freak out of someone was like “some men do X (thing that less than 1 percent of men do”
Heck, you already freak out at “some men are rapists” when waaaaaay more than that percentage are.
This.
Funny, there’s more than one dude quoted above, and they’re all pretty extreme. Try harder.
We can now add the following to the may-be-an-MRA-warning-list:
* Compares himself to a lion as if this were an appropriate metaphor, and compares women to another species of prey
Ariel Castro’s alleged confession/suicide notes have been found, and it’s looking pretty disturbing. http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2013/05/ariel-castro-confessed-suicide-note/65038/
“Castro writes “They are here against their will because they made a mistake of getting in a car with a total stranger.” — profound victim-blaming.
http://gawker.com/the-bone-chilling-letter-found-in-ariel-castros-house-498115719
Vile.
@lightcastle and everyone – the article in question (Whitaker 2007) seems to be available in full for free here:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1854883/
I already frisked that Whitaker study if anyone is interested. It starts here — http://manboobz.com/2013/04/08/an-unsolicited-update-from-paul-elams-pnis/comment-page-8/#comment-284122
I wonder if David would consider booting crella out of here. Turning up in this particular thread and reciting a “women who love thugs” list is beyond the pale. Also, how many more assholes do we need asking about reading comprehension? I mean, we’ve heard it before boys.
Thank you Argenti and also Aaliyah. Problematic measures. And Crella is gross. Seriously, you’re vile.
Also, I got my dog one of those yak milk bones, and I think she’s allergic to it. Every time she touches it, she then ends up wiping her nose over and over again all over every pillow and blanket it in sight. I’m pretending it’s because she is itchy? But it’s really funny. Just wipe, wipe, wipe.
Crella –
That lone dumbass comment does not explicitly make you a misogynist. However, CONTEXT changes things. You came on a website and read a post mocking the misogyny of some nasty assholes. You then want to defend their point of view, defend the disgusting statement that women will get “wet panties” for these criminals by offering your anecdotal “evidence.”
In a thread where we, in this community, are all expressing horror and disbelief at the magnitude of victim-blaming going on and at the sheer horror of these crimes, your pointless comments are misogynistic. And inappropriate. And disgusting.
Not to mention I’m losing my wits over the idiotic racism and tokenism being directed at someone who should be called, simply, a hero.
I think they meant ‘scary black people.’
@crella
“And, you all will take one post (usually extreme) by one MRA and claim that all MRAs think that way. How is that different? Are you really unconscious to the fact that you are doing the same thing?”
These aren’t the only MRAs I’m looking at. I have yet to see a single MRA I know is a decent human being. I know that technically doesn’t mean that all MRAs are terrible, but so far I’ve been severely disappointed. At the very least, all the major MRAs out there are disgusting.
*sigh* faith in humanity lowered a tiny bit more. I know “thug” is normally MRA-speak for n-word, but it doesn’t make sense in this context. Unless I’m mistaken, the kidnapper wasn’t even black, so if they meant “black people” its doubly racist.
Fade: Well, it pretty much means “any non-white, non-Asian man”. So blacks, Middle Easterners, American Aboriginals and Hispanics are all pretty much interchangeable in their minds. Their tiny, pathetic, disgusting minds.
And I see bahumbugi already made the reply I was gonna say to Crella, so that’s that, then.
And now there’s a Dispatches From the Culture Wars piece up dissecting a columnist who isblaming feminism for the Boston Marathon bombings.
This stuff is just horrifying, and I’m very happy today for gender performativity theory, so I don’t have to actually try to cope with thinking I’m somehow like as these guys.
I just hope everyone realises that these bastards do speak for a certain pathetic sub-group of people who define themselves by their penises alone, but they certainly do not speak for ‘Men’, masculinity or male identity any more than a suicide bomber speaks for all of Islam.
>The MRM is a movement.
Yeah a bowel movement.
Maybe it’s just because I spend so much time here, but my first thought on seeing this story on the news was “I wonder how the MRAs will blame this on women”. I was worried I was being too cynical :-/
Still confusing male privilege with class privilege, I see. If anything, this argument proves that patriarchy and material privilege are not the same thing: you don’t have to be wealthy or have access to the upper echelons of social power to decide you’re entitled to keep women as sex slaves, or to pull it off.
Right, because men have never kept sex slaves before now. Or maybe it was only sad, powerless omegas like Agamemnon and Achilles who would feel the need.
So now they’re rightfully entitled to multiple women? Nope, no male entitlement here.
FFS, why don’t these guys just admit they’ll accept any explanation except the one where these women are actually victims?
Huh.
Huh.
Huh.
Yes. Indeed. Mature and thoughtful.
I’m going to ignore you now.
Andrew Johnson
I would recommend you do not read that post. There’s a few passages I did not quote that are… the kind of stupid shit people say to other people in order to wreck their entire emotional cores. It’s poison.
@Crella
So if those people and their activities do not speak for all women, at all times, everywhere, but only the subset of women who “fall for thugs”, what’s your point?
… Some people like people? You will find examples of people liking murderers?
Don’t play coy. Your point is not “Actually, some people do find things attractive that other people find quite weird, like that one instance of tumbler groups being set up for the lovingly named “Carrot Top””.
Your point is: “Ha ha, yeah, women dig thugs and believe weird things and can’t be trusted”.
What actual issue is this, again? The fact that some women love thugs?
Okay.
Some women love thugs.
Now you have two options: You can accept that statement as an indictment of those people and their preference, or you can use it as a springboard for an indictment of all women, everywhere. What’ll it be?
I found some words! Not particularly coherent, more than a little bit rambly, but words!
You know, I think that we really need to remember that only one of these women was an *actual* woman when she was snatched off the street…a very young one, mind you, but she was an adult. The other two were teenagers, they were *children*, for fuck’s sake. Not that it would be any less atrocious if they were fully grown adults, but when I hear people saying “how could three women be held with no one knowing, why wouldn’t these women try to escape” it drives me bonkers. These girls were just kids. Kids who were taken, terrorized, brainwashed, and broken.
I’m honestly not certain where I was going with this, maybe it’s the fact that Mr. “I-think-they-chose-this” made me quite literally see red, or just the ongoing references in mainstream media about why they didn’t escape sooner. These girls survived *hell*, and we should be celebrating their strength rather than questioning why they didn’t get away sooner.
I’m going to touch on something maybe sensitive here, and possibly share a bit TMI, but it needs to be said. These guys seem to latch on to the idea that women have rape fantasies like rabid wolverines. You know what? Yes. Lots and lots of women have rape fantasies. Lots and lots of women don’t. Lots of people have fantasies about lots of things. The fact is that of those women who fantasize about rape (and I will admit to being one of them), 99.9% of them know the difference between fantasy and reality. Yeah, okay, I fantasize about being helpless, but does that mean that I want some asshole to come up to me on the street and brutalize me? HELL NO. There is a HUGE difference between having the occasional naughty fantasy, and *actually* wanting to be locked in a basement, terrorized, tortured, and raped. I’m perfectly happy with my beta (?) husband, who loves me even though I’m more than half way through my 30’s, who likes to listen to me, who treats me like a human being, and who is more than happy to roleplay in the bedroom from time to time. Even if he doesn’t look like Christian Bale or make a pile of money.
Ah, I’m conflicted. I see where you’re going with the problems of calling them women where the youngest was what, 14? when kidnapped, but they are all women now. So idk, calling them girls now would be infantilizing adult women, but questioning why women did nothing is putting the role of “adult” on mostly teenager.
Idk if the youngest was really a “young woman” when she was kidnapped, but maybe just using “young women” versus “women” for then versus now is a way to parse this?
Of course “why didn’t these women try to escape” is just plain victim blaming, so maybe parsing the tremolo guy for teenagers, young women, and adult women is moot.
There’s also the fact that some women don’t have rape fantasies. Some of us don’t have a submissive bone in our bodies. And these guys use “some women have rape fantasies” to mean “so shut up and go along with what I want”.