The gentlemen bloggers of the Manosphere — particularly those obsessed with pickup artistry, a.k.a. “game” — like to pretend that they’re part of some sort of reactionary intellectual renaissance. Indeed, some have even convinced themselves that they’re part of a new “dark enlightenment.”
These intellectual pretensions are undercut rather thoroughly by the often puerile content of their blogs, in particular the bloggers’ obsession with cheap insults of the “yeah, well, you’re a fattie who can’t get laid” variety. Indeed, sometimes this seems to be their only real response to their many critics.
Some of these “dark enlightenment” intellectuals have discovered that crude, cheap, offensive insults garner more attention from the wider world than their sad attempts at serious philosophy. Witness some of Matt Forney’s dumb, attention-seeking provocations aimed at “fat girls” and female self-esteem.
Now “game” guru Roosh Valizadeh has decided to gin up some pageviews by launching a week-long assault on fatties, which began on Monday. In a post on his Return of Kings blog announcing the start of “Fat Shaming Week,” Roosh argues, with the utmost insincerity, that this is a public-minded intervention designed to make the world a better place:
We at ROK fully understand that the reason women are so against fat shaming is because it works. Mocking someone for lazy and slothful behavior is one of the best ways to motivate them to change and appear more pleasing before our presence. If a fat woman goes to the bar with attitude, thinking she’s a great catch, but several men check her for that arrogance by calling her a grenade launcher, do you think she’ll feel comfortable the next day for her scheduled cupcake and ice cream binge?
Even setting aside the fact of Roosh’s extreme assholery, this is simply not true. Fat shaming doesn’t work. In fact, as a recent study by Angelina Sutin at the Florida State University College of Medicine in Tallahassee found, it can actually lead to weight gain. Looking at data from more than 6000 participants in the nationally representative longitudinal Health and Retirement Study, Sutin found that
Participants who experienced weight discrimination were approximately 2.5 times more likely to become obese by follow-up … and participants who were obese at baseline were three times more likely to remain obese at follow up … than those who had not experienced such discrimination. These effects held when controlling for demographic factors (age, sex, ethnicity, education) … .
She concludes:
The present research demonstrates that, in addition to poorer mental health outcomes, weight discrimination has implications for obesity. Rather than motivating individuals to lose weight, weight discrimination increases risk for obesity.
In other words, fat shaming makes people feel like shit, and it causes them to gain weight, not lose it. This is obvious to anyone who thinks about the subject for more than a few seconds: after all, we live in a society in which fat shaming is ubiquitous, and rates of obesity continue to rise.
But of course Roosh isn’t really interested in making anyone’s life better except his own. Indeed, it’s fairly clear that what’s really motivating his little campaign is a desire for revenge on the women who have turned him down over the years. He more or less comes out and says it:
Hurting people’s feelings is the quickest way to get them to change, as any man who has been rejected by women can tell you (we can get laid today only because we’ve adapted to being shamed and punished for our appearance and beta male behavior over the course of many years).
Huh. Does Roosh really want to create a world full of bitter, angry women who are essentially female equivalents of him, using and manipulating men for their own pleasure without remorse?
Well, no. I’m sure he didn’t think it through that far. He just wanted an excuse to post a bunch of crap making fun of fat women.
So what sort of public spirited content did Roosh offer his readers during Fat Shaming Week?
A post urging men to take unflattering pictures of fat women without their permission — and post them on Twitter in order to shame them.
A post, evidently inspired by Matt Forney’s “Why Fat Girls Don’t Deserve to Be Loved,” titled “5 Reasons Fat Girls Don’t Deserve Love.” In it, semiliterate dating coach Christian McQueen explains, among other things, that “fat girls” smell (because “[i]t’s impossible to be that fucking fat and be able to wash your ass properly”), are bad at sex (because he cannot find their vaginas “unless I roll you around in flower [sic] and look for the wet spot”), and eat too much. He concludes:
Your fatness is the human version of a dead hippo, a beached whale, or to put it more bluntly, a human size cupcake: spongy on the outside, round and full of crap.
Really? Where exactly are you buying your cupcakes, dude, because normally cupcakes are delicious.
Another “humorous” post compares “fatties” with wild animals and suggests ways to kill them if you’re the victim of a “fatty attack.” Douglas writes:
Fatties tend to have poor hygiene habits so physical contact can be unsanitary. Their physiology provides many unique difficulties to overcome. Their thick skull is an effective counter to blows to the head. Their bulk is a good defense against projectile weapons. While big game cartridges such as .300 Winchester magnum and .338 Lapua can put a fatty down, a man would have a difficult time explaining to a grand jury why he was packing such a weapon outside of Africa.
“Emmanuel Goldstein” contributes “5 Ways To Bully Fat Sluts On A Date,” full of hilarious suggestions like “Go Bike-Riding Together” (because fatties can’t ride bikes!), “Go For A Hike Together,” (because fatties hate to walk!) and “Go Ice Skating Together” (because she’ll fall through the ice!).
There are several more “fat shaming week” posts up; they’re equally puerile.
Roosh and his pals have also taken their campaign to Twitter, posting such gems as these, using the hashtag #fatshamingweek.:
#FatShamingWeek selfish cunts. Children from fat mothers probability wise, are dumber, fatter, more prone to depression. Wipe de sperm off.
— Francis Begbie (@BegbieBegbie) October 8, 2013
https://twitter.com/Beppo_Venerdi/status/387635431283515392
https://twitter.com/JacquesJournal/status/387844928052543488
https://twitter.com/RealCMcQueen/status/388494710580326400
https://twitter.com/Feisty_Woman/status/388458961705250816
https://twitter.com/EsotericTrad/status/388331081344487425
Even Tom Leykis, the semi-popular radio misogynist, has gotten into the act:
#FatShamingWeek what a great idea! If your girl looks like a human Cinnabon or a Butterball, make her feel like shit! http://t.co/cjbLvvNKeB
— Tom Leykis (@tomleykis) October 11, 2013
Happily, the hashtag has been pretty much taken over by feminists and fat acceptance activists and other people countering the douchebaggery of Roosh et al.
And the only real media coverage the campaign has gotten — from Buzzfeed and The Daily Dot — has focused on the sheer douchebaggery of the fat shamers.
So it seems that the main effect of Fat Shaming Week has actually been to advance the cause of Fat Acceptance, not to undermine it.
Brilliant, dudes. Just brilliant.
There’s also people who turn towards eating for comfort, so if they were fat-shamed and made to feel bad about themselves they would most likely to towards binge eating for comfort and thus gain more weight. Not that these retrograde bullies care.
Exactly. I mean, let’s say one of them wrote a rant about a woman exactly like me and how he would never date such a woman. So? First of all, I’m married, and second, even if I wasn’t, why would I care what some random dude on the internet thinks? OMG not every man in the world likes me! I am so shocked and so heartbroken.
Totally Alfalfa:
People come to you of their own volition and ask you to help them lose weight and you provide that service in a professional, helpful, manner. That’s a good thing to do. It’s not at all like harassing women about their weight either online or on the internet. Some people like to train, they enjoy it and that’s great. If people want to then training is a good thing to do but that doesn’t give other people who chose not to the right to shame those who don’t.
Sorry, that should be “offline or on the internet”
They’re pissed that any woman could have standards they don’t meet, but fat women telling them to fuck off is especially galling. Sorry dudes, even women you don’t find attractive can decide who they want.
The “Fat Shame Week” nonsense makes me want to go eat some cake and then have sex…just to stick it to these assholes.
I have the exact same reaction!
I think I will buy some macarons in their honor.
I want to eat cake, get fat, then eat cake while having fat sex.
I say the solution is to eat ice cream in bed, post-sex.
Hm……Starve and deny myself in order to win the approval of abusive douchebags? That sounds like a totally worthwhile prize.
I’ll take self respect and the occasional cupcake, thank you.
For no good reason I checked out FeistyWoman’s twitter feed and, boy howdy, FW is firing on all cylinders.
Her Profile: “I write about relationships. I’m a far-right traditionalist wife and mother. Blessed.”
Her Wisdom: “Maybe if you loved Jesus you wouldn’t be such a fat disgusting pitiful diabetic loser.”
“My husband says fatties are remorseless scum who deserve to be punished for destroying American society.”
“I know all there is to know about cultural Marxist feminism manufactured by the Frankfurt School.”
“I love white men. Because white men hate fatties.”
She seems fun.
Shaming doesn’t solve obesity, or did you miss that in the OP?
Tom Leykis kicking ass as usual.
Headed straight to heaven, she is. Really doing the Lord’s work.
Seems to me Jesus sided with the losers, not the winners.
I suck at pecunium’s biblical citations, but yes…”blessed are the meek for they shall inherent the earth” seems to ring bells.
Hellkell, I think auggz meant they’d be equal opportunity assholes, not that their “tactics” have merit.
And Mike is today’s necromancer, for which he gets brownie points!
Maybe us bigger folks should proclaim this as our anthem. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nvAkWB1ESI
FYI, the grenade launcher as insult thing, which is lame, actually is an attempt by PUAs not, apparently, in the know about slang to up the ante on the slang term “grenade”, used to describe any unattractive or annoying woman regardless of weight, though of course weight is included in “grenade”.
It comes from the cute idea that you and yr boyz are out, you hit on some chicks, onez got an unattractive friend, so you do yr more depressed boy a solid and throw yrself on that grenade so he can nail the hot chick.
“Grenade launcher” obviously makes no sense in that context, but that’s where grenade comes from.
Imma go out on a limb and guess none of these dudes knows what a grenade launcher even looks like, or what it is for.
I think auggzillary was talking about their intentions. If they truly cared about solving obesity despite the fact that their methods are wrong and harmful, they would shame both men and women.
“But of course Roosh isn’t really interested in making anyone’s life better except his own.”
I wish I could give Roosh that much credit, but I don’t think he’s interested in making his own life any better (and if he is interested in doing it he’s unable to effectuate his goal). I think he’s interested in expressing spite, full stop.
“Huh. Does Roosh really want to create a world full of bitter, angry women who are essentially female equivalents of him, using and manipulating men for their own pleasure without remorse?”
Yes. That way there would be more creeps in a less pleasant world, and a step would have been taken towards the creation of the Crapsack Planet on which Roosh feels that everyone (including himself) deserves to live.
Incidentally: Tom Leykis is a terminally vicious prankster. I used to listen to his show (which proves that I love to suffer) and got very familiar with his routine. There’s only one thing he loves more than persuading dumb young men to do stupid things by egging them on while pretending to be on their side. The one thing he loves more than that is to break people up when they’re, um, together. Draw your own conclusions about his motives.
“I know all there is to know about cultural Marxist feminism manufactured by the Frankfurt School.”
Somehow I doubt that they know anything more than Frankfurt School = COMMIES.
OMG she reads Pierre!
Also something about praying in a closet, and not trumpeting your religiosity to the entire world.
I can’t believe the way these Twitter bullies are so mortally offended by the existence of women who they, personally, are not attracted to. I mean, I don’t care for Brussels sprouts, but I don’t throw hashtag tantrums or declare stupid “shaming weeks” to abolish them. Even if I don’t eat them, other people love them. The world is a richer and more diverse place simply because they exist. Same with different body types. MRAs would sneer at fat acceptance as being squishy new age thinking, but population diversity provides sound biological protections.
MRAs need to stop thinking they’re the lifeguards of the gene pool. Nobody asked them.
*reads the cast page* NWO, afraid of freshwater fish. My work here is done!
Bekabot, you are exactly right. Roosh is a miserable guy who lives a nightmarish existence (loitering in FSU clubs and cafes, hitting on teenage girls when he’s not stirring up via his laptop) — a life that no one could rationally envy. He appeals to other miserable guys who are flattered to imagine that their misery is proof of their exceptionalism. They want more miserable guys to join their cult. Once they get their heads stuck in those manosphere sewers, they get stuck.