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YouTube MRA Stefan Molyneux blames Miriam Carey’s fatal DC car chase on “rank female evil.”

The face of "female evil?"
The face of “female evil,” according to Stefan Molyneux

When Miriam Carey died in a hail of bullets after leading Capitol police on a car chase from the White House to the Capitol last Thursday, the incident seemed to make no sense. Why had Carey done what she did? She had no weapons on her. She seemed to have no political motive. There seemed to be no real plan to her “attack” on the White House security perimeter. There was a baby in the car with her.

As reporters began to look into her story they discovered that Carey had been suffering from serious mental illness and that her ill-fated trip to Washington DC may have been driven by delusions about Obama. One of her sisters told ABC News that Carey had been diagnosed with “postpartum depression with psychosis” after the birth of her child about a year ago.

Her delusions seem to have centered around Obama. According to CBS:

Law enforcement sources confirmed to Orr Friday that Miriam Carey, 34, a licensed dental hygienist of Stamford, Conn., told police in December that she was a prophet, that President Obama would place the city of Stamford under a “lockdown” and that he had her and her residence under electronic surveillance.

While the details of Carey’s illness or illnesses remain unclear,  what was clear,and quickly, was that Carey had been a deeply troubled woman who may have had only a tenuous grip on reality during the frenzied car chase that ended with her death.

But Men’s Rights videoblogger Stefan Molyneux isn’t having any of it. His explanation for the events in Washington last Thursday? A spontaneous outburst of “rank female evil.”

In a video titled “No Excuses for Female Evil!” Molyneux complains that the media “rushed in to defend, to explain and to strip the woman’s body of any moral responsibility for dragging a child into basically a suicidal death-by-cop situation.”

So, in other words, a woman, for no reason other than pure “female evil,” decided to attack the White House with her car and put her child in jeopardy in the subsequent car chase. As he puts it:

It may be hard for you to process just how evil this is because there’s so much propaganda shielding women from actually having any moral responsiblity.

Molyneux then compares her to James Holmes, the young man who marched into a movie theater in Aurora Colorado, armed to the teeth and wearing body armor, and deliberately murdered 12 people in cold blood before being taken down by police. Molyneaux asks us to imagine if Holmes had gone into the theater with “a baby in a little backpack. … would we not find that even more appalling?”

He asks a similar question about Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber.

So I guess the implication is that she was somehow worse than these two monsters?

Molyneux handwaves away the talk of postpartum depression — he somehow fails to notice that Carey was apparently diagnosed with the rarer and more severe condition of postpartum psychosis — as a “hormones made me do it” excuse.

“What happened to women being morally responsible for what they do?” he asks incredulously.

It seems a strange question to ask about a woman who in fact died in a hail of bullets at the hands of the police who were chasing her. Clearly, they considered her responsible for her actions, and she was confronted, and chased, and killed because of them.

When someone commits a crime, we judge them in part based on what they do, but we also judge them in part on their state of mind at the time.

Carey is being treated differently than Holmes and McVeigh in the media not because of her gender but because her actions, her motivations, and her state of mind all seem to have been dramatically different from the two male mass killers.

Holmes and McVeigh committed crimes that were carefully and methodically planned; both intended to kill as many innocent victims as possible. While McVeigh was obviously troubled, he doesn’t seem to have been seriously out of touch with reality. And while Holmes’ lawyers argue that he was in the midst of a psychotic episode at the time, it’s hard to reconcile this argument with the months of planning and preparation that seem to have preceded the shooting rampage.

Carey, by contrast, didn’t kill anyone and didn’t have any weapons. There’s no evidence that she planned anything in advance, or that she had much of a plan at all; she seems to have simply driven down to Washington and up to the entrance of the White House. All of this is consistent with someone in the midst of a psychotic break.

It’s not an issue of gender. Clearly someone who is not in touch with reality is not morally culpable for their actions in the same way the rest of us are.

But Molyneux isn’t really interested in making fine moral distinctions. He is more interested in using Carey’s case as an excuse to rant about the evil that is woman.

The evil that women are capable of and the evil that women do — not all women — but the evil that women do is generally invisible to society which is why there’s so much violence in society.

Uh, come again?

Molyneux then trots out the standard Men’s Rights argument that women are responsible for adult male violence because women commit more child abuse than men. Of course, this is because women are more likely to be the ones taking care of the children and thus in a position to abuse the children. Men who are never around children are not likely to abuse them, just as people who don’t live in France are unlikely to commit a lot of crimes in France.

Molyneux purports to be flabbergasted by this sort of argument, and suggests that it’s similar to arguing that men beat up their wives “because wives are so innately annoying, of course they’re going to beat them up, because they spend time around them, and so it’s the wives’ fault for being annoying.”

Never mind that no one is suggesting that children are to blame for being abused, simply that people who are not in physical proximity to children aren’t able to abuse them.

At this point Molyneux seems to be overwhelmed by his feelings about all of this, and collapses in a heap of mixed metaphors:

See, men have moral responsibility but we have to build these little shimmering cathedrals around the sensitivities of these little dandilions called women who just float around without any responsibility just being pushed and buffeted around by hormones and society and patriarchy and oh my God.

I stopped taking notes at this point as he babbled on and on.

Here’s his terrible video, in case you want to watch the whole thing:

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Ally S
11 years ago

Just letting you know that the embedding isn’t working. (Not that I care to watch the video, but still…) You forgot the ‘http:’

ltkessler
11 years ago

Wait what? Goshdammit these guys confuse me. If they want to talk about the face of female evil, can’t they post videos of Michele Bachmann? (Topical Burn!)

Christo
Christo
11 years ago

Ironically, on the same day blogger Paul Elam highlighted this video on his blog, this video of a man engaging in a shootout with a state trooper endangering THREE children in his car was released. No mention of this by an MRA, of course.

http://www.kgw.com/news/Police-release-video-of-I-84-shootout–226380111.html

SittieKitty
11 years ago

🙁 Postpartum psychosis is terrible. I feel really sad for her and her family. It’s fairly rare afa things go, especially compared to postpartum depression, (0.1-0.2% vs 10-25%) but incredibly serious. Women are more likely to experience psychosis during the period following childbirth than at any other time in their lives. So this guy can go fuck himself.

leftwingfox
11 years ago

While McVeigh was obviously troubled, he doesn’t seem to have been seriously out of touch with reality.

No more than the average tea partier or MRA at least. I’ve been trying to figure out a non-abelist way to describe that… Invaders from the Tea-Dimension is the current favourite.

lionicle
11 years ago

This is just so incredibly sad and PREVENTABLE which makes it even worse. When are people going to learn that mental health care is a neccessity?

Nitram
Nitram
11 years ago

Ok this pisses me off. An unarmed woman who is gunned down us not taking responsibility. Terrorists and gunmen killing innocent people? Totes the fault of women somehow.

And I’m really getting tired of the vilification of single moms. These guys are more overt about it but I can’t count how many times I’ve heard people verbally bash women around them who “keep popping out kids” with all “different fathers”. I don’t think anyone should have more kids than they are able to take care of, but the fathers aren’t even part of the conversation! Single moms are called single moms because they are there, they stick around to raise all those men’s kids. But the men aren’t slut shamed or shamed for anything! Just reverse it: a man is raising 3 kids from 3 different women, he’s a saint! No one’s telling them to close their legs, (or cross them? What’s the equivalent?)
The absentee moms are satan.

Even to reverse the genders in this DC event: an unarmed man with a baby in the car gets gunned down by a bunch of female police officers. MRAs would flip the fuck out crying “misandry!”

Btw, how is misandry even pronounced? Is it MISandry, or misANDry, or MISanDRY?

Athywren
Athywren
11 years ago

just as people who don’t live in France are unlikely to commit a lot of crimes in France.

Speaking as a Non-French-Person’s Rights Activist, I take deep offense that you would attempt to justify the crimes of those vicious frogs by implying that the fact that the majority of crimes that take place within France are committed by French people is entirely down to the fact that that is where they live. Why are we making excuses for the evils of those who parlezvous francais? The evil that French people are capable of and the evil that French people do – not all French people – but the evil that French people do is generally invisible to society, which is why there’s so much violence in society! Look at this logically, almost all crime in France is perpetrated by the French, so they’re obviously the most violent civilisation and should be treated as such by all right thinking peoples!

Lurking MRA Disclaimer – I am mocking you: This is not how rational people think.

In rational person news, since when is this the first time it was suggested that a person in such a situation was mentally ill? Since when is it unique to women? The fact that it may have been true in this case is kind of beside the point, people are always asserting that terrible acts are done because of mental illness. These guys are just scrabbling around in the dirt, desperate to find individual examples to justify hating women – not all women – but women. That alone would be pathetic enough, but how often do they actually find an example that’s actually worthy of that hatred? How many women have gone up the clock tower with a sniper rifle? I’m not going to pretend that it’s men – not all men – but men who are responsible for all the bad things that go on in the world, because that’s nonsensical and is shown false by a minute’s research, but to pretend that it’s women – not all women – but women who are responsible for all the bad things is pretty ridiculous too. More ridiculous is to pretend that the bad things that women do are utterly ignored. Case in point, we know about this particular event… that’s not a thing being ignored. In order for you to know about it, you had to be there, know people who were there, or have access to a news source. Only one of those is consistent with a cover up of “women’s evil”, and I’m fairly sure I wasn’t there… so…

Ironically, on the same day blogger Paul Elam highlighted this video on his blog, this video of a man engaging in a shootout with a state trooper endangering THREE children in his car was released. No mention of this by an MRA, of course.

Well of course not! That video was only released to divert attention away from the eeeeevvvvvviiiiiiiills of women – not all women – but women.

Athywren
Athywren
11 years ago

Btw, how is misandry even pronounced? Is it MISandry, or misANDry, or MISanDRY?

The pronunciation is not obvious from the spelling. Repeat after me: No. Really. I’m. Oppressed. For. Serious. Now. Those. Women. Have. It. Made.

It’s amazing how many syllables you can cram into a single word.

Shadow
Shadow
11 years ago

Welp, add psychology to the list of things that the MRM knows shitall about. I’d expect Elam, at least, to call out this bullshit, but maybe that’s why he’s an ex-therapist.

@Nitram

I may be mistaken, so take this with a huge grain of salt, but I believe misandry is pronounced “mis-and-HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHA” 😛

Shadow
Shadow
11 years ago

@Athywren

I do believe you ninja-ed me, sirrah. *walks off muttering “Bloody foreigners”*

Athywren
Athywren
11 years ago

@Shadow

I believe the accepted etiquette for ninja-ing is to shout, “nerr nerr nerny nerr!”
For my next trick, I shall place my towel on a deck chair before you can get to it. HAH!

Alice Sanguinaria
11 years ago

Because obviously everything is a woman’s fault. And if you look REALLY carefully, you’ll also conclude that everything that a man does is ALSO a woman’s fault.

Why do MRAs not notice that while they blame society for not blaming women, that they’re doing all that they could to allow men to not take responsibility for their own actions?

Dvärghundspossen
11 years ago

Here in Stockholm, in the summer of 2003, a man drove a car in high speed on a crowded pedestrians-only-street, killing two and injuring fifteen. He claimed in all earnest that an evil genius had taken remote control of his car via satellite, it was all part of some big conspiracy or whatever. Because he was a man, he was deemed fully responsible for his actions and sentenced to prison… OH NO WAIT HE WASN’T! He ended up in an institution for the criminally insane.

Shadow
Shadow
11 years ago

@Athywren

0.o Is there no depth too low for you feminists to sink to?!!!! Why can’t you just threaten me like an ACTUAL social justice activist?

wereterrier
wereterrier
11 years ago

>

Alice Sanguinaria
11 years ago

Shadow – You want a real threat? Fine. I hereby ban you from looking at cat videos. MUHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. >:D

Chie Satonaka
Chie Satonaka
11 years ago

I look forward to hearing how John Constantino’s self-immolation is also the fault of women.

(His family indicates that he, too, had mental health issues)

Athywren
Athywren
11 years ago

Alice… you… you monster! I thought I’d joined a nice, respectable hate group but that? That’s a leap too far! Cat video access is a human right, missy! I’m out of this feminazi business!

SittieKitty
11 years ago

Misandry: miss-ing-the-point

adjective: portmanteau of a system in where men are left missed and high-and-dry by society. See also: Fairy tale.

(I personally pronounce it MISandry)

swankivy
11 years ago

She was shot and killed for her terrible crime of driving around! Clearly there was a more severe punishment this guy was hoping for, but everyone refuses to acknowledge women’s capacity for violence, so she totally got away with it (except for that whole death thing)! Why oh why is this severe inequality never addressed! Why couldn’t they have like, killed her harder or called her a slut in the media or something? Women must PAY!!!!

Shadow
Shadow
11 years ago

@Alice

You have just made a very powerless enemy!!! *shakes fist vociferously, then impotently crabwalks away*

Ian
Ian
11 years ago

As someone whose emailed you about Stefan Molyneux I am very happy to see you take him down. For anyone interested in seeing the rest of this guys work check out

The True Cycle of Violence

Nitram
Nitram
11 years ago

“For my next trick, I shall place my towel on a deck chair before you can get to it. HAH!”

LOL is losing its impact. I really did lol, but it’s been used far too many times as a mere smile or snicker and not in actual cases of lolling. This made me chuckle.

sarahlizhousespouse
11 years ago

Postpartum psychosis is very real and very dangerous. Dismissing it as “hormones” is foolish. It’s that kind of attitude that allows people suffering from psychosis to end their lives or the lives of others.

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