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.
By which i mean stress contributes a lot.
Z Mike Buchanan is a real prize.
At least Ally is promising us he’ll do a response to Buchanan’s “challenges” to all those horrible feminazi folks he’s been pestering.
I really don’t understand how the damaging effects of fat-shaming are so rarely acknowledged. Fat-shaming during puberty is one of the main reasons I have self-hatred to this day.
Nope. Totally disagree. She should charge much much more for her advice. That way, she never spews it unless someone pays, which I can’t imagine anyone ever doing. The higher the price, the less she’ll say and that would benefit everyone.
My first visit to this site, with all the preventions because of the name (i have “man boobz”), and i find this.
A website that shames male fatness with its very name, against female fat shaming.
So it seems that at the very least you people are perfectly aware that fat shaming is cruel and utterly useless, as it doesn’t motivate to get a healthy weight. But then why do men need to be shamed when we are fat? A man with “man boobz”, a reason for scorn, because a man can actually be successfully shamed into not being fat? Male and female brain are essentially equal! Our emotional reactions are the same? Why is it right to shame us?
Beauty comes in all shapes and sizes. I believe in that. But you people apparently do not.
I think the idea that fat-shaming makes people thin is connected to the idea that going from fat to thin is easy. If it WERE easy, it actually MIGHT work. For instance, if you’re bullied for your glasses, it might cause you to get contacts instead. So although shaming is always cruel and wrong, it might cause people to change if the shaming is for something that’s easily changeable. And these people imagine that getting thin is easy… There’s this stereotype of people being fat because they eat ridiculous amounts of food all the time, like they literally stuff themselves with food, but if you shame them they’ll be like “oh, perhaps being fat is bad!” and then they go back to normal eating habits and become thin.
reading the fat-shaming post left me confused, had to check what date it was because i feared of having fallen into a worm-hole and involuntarily traveled back some 40 years – back to junior high. what a snoot-factory – ya had to be not only thin, but have well-to-do parents. yep, lori was skinny but poor. seriously, these are grown men acting this way – then again, perhaps it’s they who were caught up in a time-warp and haven’t come back to 2013.
fat chicks? it’s the pathetic-execuse-for-clothing available for women. and the sad thing is, even in the so-termed “better” stores, the garments are whack. the fabrics, the cuts look like crap even on the slender young women – let alone the fat-n-50+ crowd 🙂 .
Jorge, boobz doesn’t refer to what you think it’s referring to. This is in the FAQ:
“The term “boob,” in addition to meaning “breast,” can also mean “a nincompoop.” “
Hmm… two drive-by trolls so quickly.
Figure I’ll answer this one…
Manboobz is called manboobz as a self-identifier, because “manboobs” as an insult is frequently thrown around in the manosphere as an insult for feminist men and/or actual decent guys who think MRAs and their counterparts PUAs, MGTOW, ect, are misogynistic assholes. David is frequently insulted because of his weight, and (I’m assuming) chose the word specifically because he’s proud to be identified as someone manosphere assholes hate. This site is based on satire, and that’s the reason for the name.
The term is being used here to identify people who would be labelled as “manboobs” by the manosphere assholes. It’s not a shameful term on this site to be referred to as a manboobzer (in fact, frequently people here self-identify as that). It’s a compliment, it states that you aren’t an asshole MRA/PUA/MGTOW/ect, and that those people, who hold abhorrent views that you disagree with because the views are misogynistic, can do nothing to argue against you except to resort to picking on your weight or other physical/sexual factors. We would never use the term to denigrate someone because of their weight.
Does anyone read the FAQ or just troll it?
“David is frequently insulted because of his weight, and (I’m assuming) chose the word specifically because he’s proud to be identified as someone manosphere assholes hate.”
Idk on that, but he does say in the FAQ that calling him fat is the only true thing an MRA has ever said about him, so he doesn’t seem to be upset by it.
I mean that he’s proud to be identified as someone manosphere assholes hate, I wasn’t making assumptions on any other thing David might be proud of.
(Except maybe kitties or ferrets)
No, I got that, I was just noting that we can be sure that them calling him fat doesn’t bother him.
Also, count me among the proud manboobzers! (Or did we determine it should be menboobzer and internally pluralize?)
I vote for German pluralization; then we can collectively be manboobzern 😛
Jorge, you probably didn’t get it because it’s a pun in English (“boobs” referring to either “stupid people” or “breasts”) and definitely not an insult to fat guys.
@Susanblochie: No, you haven’t fallen into a wormhole and traveled involuntarily back to Junior High. Due to extreme arrested development Roosh V never left Junior High, he’s a 12 year-old bully in the body of a 35 year-old man. And since internet = Junior high, he’s got plenty of dopey sycophants following his lead, LOLing and piling on.
This is from “Some Myths and Facts About Bullies and Victims” from education.com (Sorry, I’m not adept enough to provide a link.)
It seems kinda wrong to group up Less Wrong as a whole with “dark enlightenment” reactionaries…
According to the 2012 survey (the latest yet, I think), the largest political group in the site is liberals (36%), compared to a 3% that calls themselves conservative.
A more specific alternate politics question also revealed “Progressive” was the most popular answer out of the ones provided, with 36.3% of the votes. Only 2.5% answered reactionary.
Completely off topic, but could you guys answer a question regarding Deviantart for me (I mean, it’s related to Manboobz in general since it’s for the Manboobz art gallery, but it’s not specifically related to this thread)? I can’t really find a place on that site which says “this is the site policy” (but maybe I’m just blind?) but… If you draw a pic of people fucking, do you HAVE to label it mature content? I’m sort of against the idea that you gotta be eighteen to watch people fuck because it’s ridiculous. But at the same time, I figured that if I don’t label it mature, maybe I violate some rule of theirs and will be expelled from the community, so in the end I did label it that way.
Whoops, it’s @susanbotchie. Sorry!
@Buttercup – um, yeah, it’s not this tiny group of MRAs who do this. It’s vast groups of men and women all over the globe. Fat shaming is particularly common on the internet but I walk outside existing while fat and I get crap said to me for it.
@totally alfalfa – you said “Im obviously biased to wishing more people would train and get healthier” and my reply (and probably the reason you get this negative vibe from a lot of people is) “define healthier.” Because “healthier” does not always mean “active” any more than it means “thinner.” Also the implication that training in a gym which is something a tiny minority of people have the money to do is the best way to achieve health is problematic and gets made a lot. There’s a great deal of gendered, ablist and classist attitude that comes from a lot of people who go to gyms regularly. It’s easier for those of us who get
Yeah, I’m going to have to second the comment above. totally alfalfa, maybe the reason you get pushback on feminist blogs isn’t because you’re a trainer, it’s because you drop privilege-blind nuggets of “wisdom” like “wishing more people would train and get healthier”, as if working out in a gym with a trainer was a. universally possible and b. universally desirable. It’s great that you like your job, but stuff like that makes you sound like a salesman, in addition to the other issues already pointed out.
Fat shaming week is awesome. A few days ago, a Peruvian girl told me she felt beautiful in the USA because all of the girls around her were fat.
@Dvärghundspossen
Yes, but they won’t usually ban you for that, unless you do that repeatedly after being told not to.
I’m not gonna comment on Totally Alfalfa specifically here (others have already made good points), but make a general comment: Just like some people push back against fat-shaming by saying that thin women aren’t “real women” and curvy women are way more attractive, some people push back against the male ideal of muscles by saying that muscled men are totally unattractive and they only want skinny androgynous guys. That’s not okay.
In addition, I sometimes see critique of body-builders that seem to try to question male ideals but merely end up reinforcing them. I think of people who argue that body-builders are a) vain and b) not strong “for real”.
Obviously critiquing men for being vain feeds into the stereotype that only women are supposed to be vain. Also, the idea that body-builders aren’t strong “for real”… Body-builders are good at lifting very heavy weights a limited number of times, because that’s what they do to build big muscles. They may be less good at lifting a light weight a hundred times, like you do when, for instance, chopping wood or doing some other chore at home, or like you do in many physical jobs. So critiquing body-builders for not being strong “for real” just reinforces the idea that a real man is strong and muscular, but since a real man isn’t vain either, he built his muscles by working hard at the farm or in some physical job.
So I think that kind of critique ought to go.
Here’s another problem – preferring men who’re not muscly isn’t actually an evil attack on men who’re more buffed that must be stopped! Some people aren’t attracted to guys with big muscles, and they’re allowed to feel that way. Now, if they express that preference in the form of “ew, muscles, gross” that’s not very nice of them, but people aren’t actually required to find every different body type attractive.