So apparently domestic violence laws are a crime against nature. Who knew?
Well, the repellent “game” guru and all-around human stain Roosh Valizadeh knows, or thinks he knows, and he devoted a long and strange post yesterday to explaining just why. Oh, and why laws forbidding bees from attacking ants are a bad thing.
We’re going to skip the bugs — they’re the main characters in a bizarre fable Roosh uses to start off his post — and move right on to the part of Roosh’s post that deals directly with human beings.
Here is his thesis, baldly (and badly) stated:
Creating laws to prop up the weak is like playing a game of musical chairs. … Domestic violence laws are a great example of this phenomenon. Assault and battery is already outlawed, but by creating a new class of laws that create privilege for a specific group, a new immunity is formed. The ecosystem is damaged, unprepared to take on the unintended consequences of misguided intervention.
Of course, by this logic, you could argue that pretty much all laws interfere with the “ecosystem.” Interesting that he only applies this argument to female victims of domestic abuse. (He seems unaware that male DV victims even exist.)
In Ukraine, I witnessed a man slap his girlfriend on a crowded pedestrian street. Over 20 men must have witnessed the event, but no one rushed to her aid. She also did nothing, not screaming or running away. With primitive (i.e. rarely prosecuted) domestic violence laws in Ukraine, you’d think that this sort of thing would happen all the time, but it was the first time I had seen it in a country that I had spent 6 months in. Men show surprising restraint when it comes to violence against their women, something that may be a shock to people living in countries with advanced domestic violence laws.
So … a guy hitting his girlfriend in public is proof of the restraint of Ukrainian men?
In the USA, with nearly two decades of such laws on the books, what do you see? Women hitting men and women attacking men they don’t even know. I’m sure you’ve seen many such videos on Youtube and LiveLeak, which make it seem like women are warriors, completely fearless of men.
Really? Argumentum ad YouTube? On YouTube, you can find videos of dudes farting on other dudes’ heads, dudes shooting bottlerockets out of their own asses, women climbing into plastic bags for no reason, and, well, these ingenious masochists.
I’m really not sure you can attribute any of these activities to specific pieces of legislation.
With their elevation as a special victim in need of state protection, there is usually no punishment for hitting men, even if the man hits back only to defend himself. Girl hits man, man pushes girl away, girl calls cops, man goes to jail.
The idea that a mere accusation from a “girl” will send a man to jail is simply not true. Yesterday, George Zimmerman’s estranged wife accused him of threatening her and others with a gun, and punching his father-in-law in the nose. He did not go to jail.
If she’s married, she gets an additional bonus of monthly cash payments once the divorce is settled. Encouraging a man to fight has become financially beneficial for women.
She may get awarded child support, which she’ll be lucky to collect. Very few women get alimony.
Like the ants, women know that the laws give them a pass. They are taking full advantage of it, predictably conforming to their environment. Men are demoted to second class citizens and live in fear of going to jail while women have impunity to act in any way they want. The result? Less marriage, more violent marriages, unhappy relationships, and more single parent households.
Yes, that’s right. Roosh is seriously arguing that domestic violence laws lead to “more violent marriages.” Never mind that, in fact, domestic violence has fallen dramatically in the US in the last two decades, in part because of laws like the Violence Against Women Act (which also protects male DV victims). According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, “the overall rate of intimate partner violence in the United States declined by 64%” from 1994 through 2010.
But Roosh doesn’t let things like facts get in the way of his rant.
Nature, while not perfect, has spend hundreds of thousands of years optimizing sex roles through trial and error to facilitate human reproduction. … Recent utopian schemes to “protect” women have ushered in policies that have no proven effectiveness, whether increasing the happiness of women, protecting the family unit, or advancing society in any form. They might as well have been pulled out of a top hat, an experiment done on the masses by those in power.
Yeah, “no proven effectiveness” — aside from the fact that they actually seem to have cut DV in half in less than 20 years.
Progressives, through their tinkering, are introducing disincentives that destroy even basic relationships instead of stabilizing them. Their policies have helped create men such as myself, who see absolutely no incentive to pursue a relationship in a country where I can go to jail and be robbed blind from a failed relationship or from a woman lying about how I treat her.
I don’t know what creates men such as yourself, but I’m pretty sure it’s not feminism.
Roosh goes on to note that in Ukraine, the kids he sees walking around with their parents “seem quite happy.” Oh, the kids you observe at a distance and know nothing about “seem happy?” That settles it! Top notch social science research work, dude!
Moreover, he adds,
In a place where women are not considered protected, some may even be surprised to never see women with bruises and black eyes, or see them getting beat up every day, screaming for help.
Yep, that’s right, so long as women aren’t walking around with visible bruises and/or getting beaten up in public, all is well and we can assume that domestic violence is not a problem at all.
In fact, as even a quick visit to useful web site known as “Google” will reveal, domestic violence is in fact a huge problem in Ukraine. Indeed, according to one 2009 survey cited here, a staggering 44% of Ukrainians have been victims of DV; 75% of them never sought help for it — not altogether surprising, for while the country does in fact have laws against it, they are generally fairly ineffective.
As Amnesty International noted in a recent report on the subject,
Perpetrators of domestic violence in Ukraine act with impunity. The Law on the Prevention of Violence in the Family does not provide adequate protection to victims of violence and perpetuates the myth that women are to blame for the violence that is perpetrated against them. Police often fail to take action when women report domestic violence and sometimes react inappropriately. Women who attempt to take the perpetrators to court are hampered by widespread corruption or find that the punishments imposed are inadequate.
And while DV in the US is down, government officials in Ukraine warn that DV rates there may be rising.
Roosh, if he knows any of this, doesn’t really give a shit.
There will always be an unfortunate level of violence between man and woman, but any attempt to fix it through random laws and policies, as has been done in America, will only make it worse. Nature, in spite of its flaws, is more often right than wrong.
Forgive me, but I really hope that Roosh is eaten by a bear.
Often Partisan – hi, are you newly delurked? 🙂
I get that impression of Dennett, too, without following that much about the atheist movement (bein’ as how I’m not atheist). I certainly haven’t heard anything worse than that about him, and yes, he does seem an odd fit with the three ranters. The whole Brights thing was so eye-rollingly silly. I don’t think he came up with the term, did he – just supported it? And whoever-it-was saying that the term for “supernaturalists” wouldn’t be Dims or Dulls or whatever is obviously implied by atheists being Brights – oh no, it’d be “Supers.” Um, yeah, right, welcome to the real world. Very ivory-tower, lol.
I get the feeling that if whoever coined the term had read the slimy rubbish of characters like the Amazing
AtheistAsshole, they’d have dumped the term at once. Granted they were presumably looking for something positive in the face of too many USian attitudes, but wow, that term missed the mark SO badly.Yeah I read some Dennett and Dawkins for a philosophy course in college and lost my copy of Dennett’s Kinds of Minds when I loaned it out. Dawkins I “lost”, Dennett I liked enough to loan out and lose that way.
Idk what that says about him as a person, but as a writer he’s far less annoying. One of the arguments he made was does it really matter if animals like frogs have much simpler minds? Aren’t they worthwhile in their own right anyways? And I’ve always liked that one, being a fish keeper and all — no, my babies aren’t capable of human thought, but they aren’t furniture either (I hold a special place of loathing for people who treat aquariums as decor)
*as purely decor
I just accidentally lumped in those of us who show off are pride and joys, and nothing wrong with putting your beloved tank in a visible spot!
Dennett does have a very creepy beard, though.
What I always notice about Roosh is his crappy sartorial style. His looks he can’t do much about (well his choice in beards is dubious, but even that’s not as malleable as all that), but his clothes? They look like the last rummage through a charity shop’s bargain bin.
Without any skill, some of my favorite shirts are Salvation Army purchases (and nearly everything I own clothing wise is clearance or at least one of my 15%+ off coupons [I have the shopping gene])
He looks like he thinks he’s going casual when he’s really going sloppy.
And if his beard is Dennett’s creepiest feature, I’m gonna call that a win. Considering, you know, Dawkins.
Logic fail
“They look like the last rummage through a charity shop’s bargain bin.”…without any skill. Etc.
Hey, I look like I last rummaged through a bargain bin about five years ago and haven’t bought anything since. Currently wearing my literal last pair of jeans (knees and hems long since gone) and a humane society volunteer shirt.
I meant the “Last Rummage”. As in there was nothing decent left, and he’s not the wit to think about coming back in a couple of days.
Some of my better looking clothes are from charity shops (I need to find some good ones here), or surplus stores (reminds me, I need to go to the button district to get new ones for my reefer)
What sort of buttons? I have a collection, including far too many of the navy peacoat design.
I need something gold (or real silver) that I like the look of. They can’t be Navy buttons, unless it’s Her Majesty’s Royal Navy.
Definitely give him props for that one! That’s a major plus.
Speaking of animal minds, Louis and I played a new kind of chess last night – Cat and Dog Chess. No idea what the rules are, if there are any other than “move these things”. Quadrille tended to whine and nudge my elbow as hints, and Katie took the direct route of battng pieces with her paw, then sitting looking smug.
I asked Louis who won. He said they did. 😛
That sounds about right 🙂
Pecunium, there are buttons in your inbox.
I know David skipped over it, but everyone go read the ant/bee fable Roosh opens with because it is amazing. He started with a metaphor, and then thought far too hard about the logistics of it as a literal thing.
When she sees someone not properly dressed/ groomed, my mum scornfully describes them as a “refugee from a ragbag”. (When I was a kid, I always imagined some little fairy style person escaping from the bag of cleaning rags that always hung in the laundry.)
RE: Michael
Where are you going, though?
EVERYWHERE. 😀 Well, all around my country, that is. So far, the rough brushstrokes of our itinerary is here.
Hey, do you need anything else I might have? Cuz I have access to a wealth of nonsense currently and you may as well ask, worst case is I haven’t got it. Toothbrush case? My electric doesn’t fit in it. Any sort of small bags for sorting stuff in your backpack?
Consider me a freebie variety shop and ask away 🙂 (and since I know you worry about strings being attached, the only string is the one you know — I gotta see Sneak’s tentacle impersonation)
RE: Argenti
Hmmm. I actually might be in the market for small, light bags; our backpack is about 85% one enormous pocket, and while I have a lot of plastic grocery bags, I’m not sure those would be best, and my hygienics bag is… actually really disgusting, after being used for years and years on end.
I’ll dig through my box of bags! (Yes I have a collection of assorted smaller bags, old purses, etc, and could seriously use with a clear out anyways, we both win!)
Cerberus: ‘a guaranteed living wage’? there is no way to do that for many companies- it’s a great idea, but if you implement it, you will force many small companies out of business that just can’t pay that to everyone.
That is calling FORCING a company to do business by mandate- look at the Canadian medical system.
DV is everywhere in Ukraine
http://www.undp.org.ua/en/media/41-democratic-governance/915-ten-unknown-facts-about-domestic-violence-in-ukraine-a-joint-euundp-project-releases-new-poll-results
Tan: The Canadian Healthcare System works fine (a damned sight better than the US System, if you are a patient. A bit less-so if you are a Health Insurance Executive looking to get multi-million dollar bonuses).
Living Wages work well too. The places which have them are doing well. Look at Santa Monica Calif. Against strong “business” opposition they passed one. Shock of shocks, there weren’t any businesses which went under. They didn’t move across the border either. In fact there are more people who want to start a shop in Santa Monica than there is space to put them.
Why? Because it’s a self-supporting (or defeating) feedback system: people who have money can spend it, those who don’t, can’t.