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!
I thought she was trolling from pretty early on, honestly, which is why I wasn’t feeling the “let’s cut her some slack about the first stupid comments” thing. Technically it’s possible for someone to be that stupid, but how likely is it?
There was an oddness I couldn’t quite place, something a bit side-eyeish, at first, but I didn’t think “troll” until the meltdown. What got me was that there were a few valid points floating around in the initial response to hry, but the racist stuff (which I confess I missed) and more particularly the response to being called out on it at all, was just troll trolly trollness.
I think Cassandrasays was referring to the prison rape comment which was either trollish or very, very stupid. Condoning prison rape after a bunch of regulars condemn it and even pointing out that zie was the ‘Am I only one who didn’t care about what happens to rapist’ definitely smacks of troll.
Yeah, that comment read as really blatant trolling to me, so I was surprised that people were being so patient with her.
I guess I was patient with her because I’ve heard the prison rape thing from people in real life who don’t know better (although they should). They’ve heard other people say it, they’re looking for someone to hate, and they haven’t thought it out. Moma Sita did remind me of Ruby in that way. I always thought Ruby was someone very young who lived with a Rush Limbaugh supporter and didn’t realize how much bullshit-hate she had absorbed.
It was in the middle of a discussion about how one’s first reaction might be let the perpetrator suffer what the victim suffers (revenge fantasies) but that is not a practical solution for many reasons. People mistook the trolling for someone who may not have thought out why the emotional knee jerk reaction was IRL a bad idea.
I think it was the “Am I the only one who…” that made it read as trollish to me. It’s kind of like “not to be offensive, but…” – the way the sentence is structured implies that the person knows damn well that what they’re about to say is going to piss people off, and they’re looking forward to it.
@Cassandra
True, but at that time zie didn’t keep going on about it, didn’t apologize, but didn’t keep digging that hole- unlike the ‘yo, that’s racist’ meltdown.
I read that business pretty much as serrana did, because 1) Ruby, 2) I’ve had that sort of revenge wish often enough and 3) it gets said a lot on Raw Story, f’rex, by people whose comments are by and large decent. It’s common enough that the “Am I the only one who” phrasing came across to me as someone surprised about the reaction. It’s how neuroticbeagle described it.
Also, some people have a more finely tuned trolldar than others.
http://media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/736x/31/59/e0/3159e011cc3f14f2073c1e88758d9863.jpg
Yeah, it was the fact that zie didn’t melt down the first time that made me wonder if zie was stupid rather than trolling for a bit when the meltdown began, since having some people go “it’s OK, we still like you” seemed to pacify hir the first time. But then it got progressively more trollish.
It can be hard to distinguish deliberate trolling from childish tantrum-throwing sometimes, probably because a lot of trolling basically is a tantrum in elaborate and extended form.
Temper tantrum brain bleach:
http://media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/736x/db/1b/74/db1b7483a4d15088c63ab68e7bf8b0da.jpg
Dogs can throw some epic tantrums too.
Definitely- so far my (third) bedroom door is holding up with the extra sheet metal attached. The beagle does NOT like being alone.
I love that baby elephant pic. It’s had some great comments along the lines of “MMOOOOOOOOMMMM I don’t wanna go to Grandma’s!”
@kittehs
More like “MOOOOMMM I don’t wanna take a bath!” 😉
LOL true!
Not to mention all the “You are so going to get a spanking” comments from Mama.
Mama looks ready to start the spanking.
RE: Kittehs
But he can’t, cacti don’t get eating disorders! How can he fuck someone or something if he doesn’t think they/it are vulnerable?
It’ll be a good learning experience.
And oh, thank god, Moma Sita’s gone. She really got up my nose, with that ‘ED = broken’ crap. I’m okay with educating people, most of the time, but not when they’re clutching their pearls like they’ll fly away.
And in regards to “people with EDs are too miserable to want sex with you,” I’m someone who actually tends to panic and initiate sex MORE often when I’m sick. Not because I want to, but because I feel the need to “make up for” being sick. It’s not something I’m proud of, but I’m trying to get better about it. Plus, sometimes, even when I am really sick, I still care about my husband and want to be with him and enjoy him, sometimes.
I mean, come on. I was living in a fucking closet. Being together was one of the few things we could still HAVE, even through the horror.
Zing!
Regarding the cutting board: Roosh is actually following the best practice for avoiding delayed contamintion of food:
UC Davis links to studies on Wood vs. Plastic with an abstract on the various researches.
This is a somewhat more detailed breakdown of wood vs. plastic from a caterer/modern homesteader.
Wood is, for all that is has a bad rap the safest material to cut food on. I suspect the bad rap is in part because makers of non-wood have an interest in keeping it that way, combined with both the lack of play these studies got (I think I read about them ca. 1997, when the initial ones were already old news) and our germ-phobic culture,
I have very thin hair, and it tends to get dry. I wash it once, maybe twice a week, but only apply shampoo to the scalp. What suds move down, move down. I condition every two-three days, and use two conditioners (one all over, one just from the chignon down). Every so often I use a leave in conditioner (more in the winter).
That keeps it manageable.
That’s fascinating, @pecunium, but why are you telling us?
Just try boneless skinless thighs as a substitution for chicken breasts one time. If you don’t prefer them, I won’t push the issues. But trust me, you don’t know what you’re missing.
As a cook, they are different. They are not the same. This means they can’t really be used one for the other in all places. In some things (say a stir fry) the greater collagen in the thighs will be advantageous (the fast cooking of small pieces can toughen breasts), but in others the smaller size of the thighs, and the concomitant increase in surface area, means they overcook, and become… tough.
In other things the connective tissues mean thigh will overcontract, again becoming tough; and taking on a less than ideal appearance/bite.
So, for meats that marinate, thighs are better. For things which cook on moderate to high heat; until just done, I prefer to work with breasts. For applications where I want to serve pieces of a given size/have a sauce, breasts, etc.
Also, telling people, “yur doin’ it wrong” isn’t actually the best way to present a case. Breasts are perfectly fine cuts of meat, provided one treats them with some respect and takes their properties into account.
Cassandra: If we’ve moved on to recipes, anyone have any suggestions for potato dishes that would be particularly good with roast pork and red wine? We’re going to rub the pork with smoked paprika and something herby.
I do… if you like mushrooms:
Get some good potatoes, of the “fluffy” sort.
You will need to boil and mash them (use some butter, and a bit of ground pepper).
Those are used to line a casserole, reserve enough to cover later (as with a shepherd’s pie).
Take some heavy cream (I use TJ’s), and over a moderate heat (cream won’t scorch, so that’s not an issue), toss in sliced oyster mushrooms.
They will, of course, shrink. Keep tossing them in until you have enough to fill the hollow in the casserole.
Cover with reserved potatoes, bake.
A bit of cheese can be added at the end, if desired.