So our old friend Roosh Valizadeh seems to have fully embraced the Matt Forney school of misogynist internet celebrity, posting over-the-top offensive posts in a transparent attempt to gin up controversy and blog traffic. And it’s working: he’s brought an avalanche of well-deserved hate down upon himself. But don’t worry: he’s still got some supporters — not only on his own blog but in the Men’s Rights subreddit.
The post that’s been keeping the servers hosting Roosh’s Return of Kings blog busy lately is a guest post by Tuthmosis with the title “5 Reasons To Date A Girl With An Eating Disorder.”
It’s pretty much as awful as you’d imagine. Reason 1: “Her obsession over her body will improve her overall looks.” Number 2: “She costs less money” because she’ll only order salads at dinner. Hilarious. It’s all so predictably “provocative” it’s not worth quoting in any more detail.
Roosh has responded to the controversy with an, er, “Publisher Response” that was clearly designed to further stir the shit. In it, he claimed that the original post
contains value for men who want to date thin women in America, a country that is currently facing a devastating obesity epidemic, which we recently highlighted with Fat Shaming Week.
He followed this by claiming that Return of Kings wasn’t promoting eating disorders, merely trying to help women struggling with eating disorders find happiness in love:
We are educating our masculine readers not to pass on eating disorder victims just because they have an illness, yet instead of receiving thanks, we’re receiving hate instead. If we all had cancer, and someone wrote an article titled “5 Reasons To Fornicate With A Man Who Has Cancer,” we would spread it far and wide to make fornicating with us a better proposition for women. We would not send death threats or calls for censorship like is happening to us now. I think a bit more graciousness is in order for our unorthodox method of outreach.
As a much less obnoxious internet celebrity once put it:
Despite setting out to offend as many people as possible, Roosh reacted with indignation when he discovered that someone on the Men’s Rights subreddit had dared to suggest that perhaps he had stepped over the line a bit.
https://twitter.com/rooshv/status/403290871854280704
What’s doubly ironic about this tweet is that he actually has a lot of defenders in that thread — and that the thread itself has gotten twice as many downvotes as upvotes. Only a few found the Return of Kings post offensive; the others dismissed it as clickbait — or agreed with it.
One commenter, posting under the name of a famous turn-of-the-twentieth centuryantifeminist and opponent of women’s suffrage, apparently sees Roosh as some sort of heroic defender of anorexic women:
Meanwhile, the ironically named LogicalDebater beamed us this message from his home planet:
And our old friend Demonspawn, quoting from a commenter on Return of Kings, blamed the outrage on fat, ugly feminists jealous because men would rather date thin women.
![Demonspawn [-1] 1 point 21 hours ago (8|7) This comment on the followup article nailed it to the wall: The anger was only thinly veiled by the eating disorder arguments. Ultimately the original article was about accepting women albeit with the benefit that she's thin and won't cost as much, but I think that is the rub. The feminist hate speech directed in the comments and emails to this site was latent anger at a man's desire to date thin women. Since feminism encourages the destruction of female beauty and femininity most feminists have a hatred toward anything that encourages or accepts women for these traits. The hate directed at this site under the guise of "eating disorders" is just that, the article hit a rough nerve with feminists who hate beauty and acceptance when it is defined by men.](https://i0.wp.com/www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/demon.png?resize=525%2C242&ssl=1)
Men’s Rights Activists often complain about being lumped together with pickup artists; here, many of them have chosen to associate themselves with Roosh at his worst.
The greatest human rights movement of the 21st century, folks!
EDIT: Belated thanks to Snork Maiden for pointing me to Roosh’s tweet and the Reddit thread!
Mike reminds me of a sadass blog called Toronto Men United. It’s a mixture of PUA, MRA & MGTOW talk (pretty sweet, I know) but mostly it’s men complaining how women they randomly approach in the streets of Toronto are total bitches (aka won’t chat, then agree to date and/or fuck them).
“John” has written blog entries for years regurgitating every misogynistic gripe about the endless flaws, moral failings and utter horribleness of all women (except imaginary docile women non-Western women of their dreams). But this short one is a beaut:
Wake up stuck-up women of Toronto, this catch
might bemust be still available.I don’t advocate raping women at all, I don’t know where you are getting that from.
Show me where I said that raping women was a good idea, I’m waiting.
Brooked: sex with guys like that has got to be the worst.
Oh wow Brooked. That is incredible. Seriously, if I wasn’t a stuck up bitch who ignored men already, I’m certainly going to become one soon. I’m glad all this seems focused in Ontario and Alberta and not in my province…
Toronto Men Unite dipshit link for those looking for a laugh
What’s your question. Loads of people are asking me questions.
I guess, at least being honest about being an asshole. But see, when you specifically say you are “targeting” women with mental illnesses for sex, you are being a creepy, sleazy asshole. A stupid creepy, sleazy asshole.
Aaand facepalm. Did I mention stupid, yet.
Yes, for everyone’s sakes, please follow auggzillary’s advice and get a doll.
Dude, you fail at humanity.
Because I need to write:
Dehumanization
My skin is plastic,
Cold and hollow.
My mouth has been
Formed into a smile.
I do not think,
I’m not allowed to,
I do not speak,
I’m not able to.
My body is molded into the perfect shape,
My hair is styled in the perfect way.
My clothes have Velcro straps in the right places,
My mind has been erased and left spaceless.
The eyes on my face are vacant and empty.
They are dead and expressionless,
Stickers to make me look more real,
But what is reality anyways?
I have no goals
And I have no wants.
I have no history
And I have no personality.
My state is blank
Reformatted and clean,
My face is forever left
Calm and serene.
The plastic is hard and inelastic.
It constrains and conforms me to an ideal that’s not mine
But what do I have that is called mine anyways?
I do not need, I just obey.
I do not want, I just obey.
I do not speak, I just obey.
I do not feel, I just obey.
I just obey.
I fade away,
I just obey.
That is literally the justifying that you just said you wouldn’t do.
Fuck you, dude. Your reading comprehension skills appear to be on par with your ‘treating women like people’ skills.
D’oh, italics and blockquote sorta cancel out. Whoopsie.
Sorry, I misread Mike’s comment. It’s marginally better that he excludes rape from his tactics. Though I wonder if his definition of rape and mine line up.
Alice, that is sad and lovely.
I don’t get how we got from “Roosh is right, women with eating disorders are good for men” to “I just like attractive women is all and you can’t even tell some women with eating disorders have them.”
I just love the fact that this dude has been complaining about how hard it is to meet women and writing endlessly about his asinine theories about women’s psychology/sexual behavior for YEARS.
Yes, that’s true if you want to be really shitty in bed.
@Noadi
I really doubt it. Anybody who’d say “I’ll do anything, excluding rape, to get sex” … well, I mean, there’s a whole bucket of things I’d call ‘morally and ethically reprehensible, but not rape.’ And there’s a whole bucket of things I’d call rape that MRAs always say isn’t rape. And then there’s even more things I’d call sleazy.
I’m betting Mike is full right to the brim with those things. I’d love to ask him some specific questions and watch him explode, except, yanno, for the part where it’s all terribly sickening and I’m going to puke a little bit first.
Mike: The problem is that your creepy, creepy posts read like those of someone whose idea of consent is so horribly fucked-up that while you may not think of yourself as a rapist, you very likely would be in practice. (I, for one, suspect that ‘too drunk to consent’ or ‘too frightened of possible harm to say no’ are in the list of ‘issues’ that ‘aren’t [Mike’s] problem’.)
Brooked, the fact that he’s having a hard time meeting women is a huge relief.
@Howard and Noadi
Yea, phrasing like that makes me think getting a woman hammered out of her face isn’t out of question.
baileyrenee – Thank you.
Mike, what is your definition of rape?
Is Mike gone? I think he might be gone.
:'(
Ah well, now I can go get some food. A fuck-tonne of food. And make a man pay for it!
When I wrote Roosh has hinted at ED I meant “erectile dysfunction” not an eating disorder. Although it actually seems more like a libido issue: he writes that he has a hard time being aroused. Which, at age sixty and hormonally flat-lined, I can actually relate to — but he’s only 34.
(BTW sorry if that sounded way more tasteless than I wanted. That was not a dig at people with eating disorders, but one at how super-important men not paying for food apparently is)
Mike induced a vomit-reaction in me too, but that might be some residual nerves from the job interview. Thanks for all the “good lucks” by the way — you’re all very sweet, no matter what some of our trolls say.
As someone who is very close to a person with an eating disorder, I cannot express how big of an “are you fucking kidding me?” this post deserves. Straight from the mouths of the people Roosh claims to be trying to help: this is not helpful or wanted. And even if it wasn’t just clickbait, most of the points are plagued with bad information and show that Roosh knows diddly squat about eating disorders other than some vague stereotypes.
It’s not even worth the effort to directly address because ugh.
I’m going to go ahead and preemptively not believe any claim Roosh makes about wanting to help anyone other than himself.