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!
Roosh is the Platonic ideal of a scumbag and not just because he’s an admitted rapist, though that’s main reason he should be discarded by humanity.
What’s pathetic is that so many MRA’s truly believe that somehow their blogging really is going to return U.S. society back to good ol’ days before 60’s. They believe that getting 15 minutes of fame is the same as success.
I admit that I went over to Roosh V’s site to see what the fuss is all about. If you read between the lines you can see that he’s no where nearly as good at Game as he says he is, even in countries like Ukraine and Poland. How does he get the money that enables him to travel and live abroad like he does?
… I’m sort of guilty of not washing my hair that often too. Shampoos are actually pretty harsh, so I end up washing my hair once a week to not dry it out too much. >_> <_<
RE: Alice
Yeah. And contrary to popular myth, eating disorders aren’t restricted to just wanting to confine to body image ideals. I starved myself pretty regularly for a long time, but it had nothing to do with my weight. No kidding, my body image was warped, because I never noticed how sickly I was looking, but I did it for reasons pretty much completely unrelated to my weight. That was just the side effect everyone else noticed.
(On a side note, I decided that I wanted to spend today sitting in the sun and not going out to do my usual exercise. It is INCREDIBLY HARD to resist the panicky voice in my head that says if I don’t exercise, TERRIBLE THINGS will happen.)
As a woman currently suffering from anorexia this just makes me ill.
Also, I just remembered that there is a certain coterie of MRAssholes (or PUAssholes? or both?) who literally fetishize eating disorder victims. They troll these poor girls’ selfies for their porn, and I’m pretty sure they have a subreddit (or used to; they’re on the order of creepshots types). These girls are dying, and they call THAT beautiful.
A more clear and obvious misogyny would be hard to find.
LBT – Want a hug?
In my experience, I’ve used food to punish myself. Besides the loss of appetite thanks to depression (yayyyyy, not), I’d often not eat because I felt as if I didn’t deserve any substance. I’m glad that I actually want to eat now, but I still have self-punishment tendencies.
Not everything is related to body image issues, you’re right. But Roosh is a shithead for thinking that we should encourage women to become anorexics.
Kate – *offers hugs*
We knew he was a douche, and we knew there would be douches on r/mr to support him, so I am also fixating on WHY ISN’T HE WEARING A HAIRNET??!!?!!?!!?
(And I think it’s hilarious how two manboobzers pointed out the problem with the wooden cutting board. Feminist food-safety fanatics for-the-win!)
Dry, flyaway curlyhead here, so I hear ya. I keep the ‘poo down to once a week, follow it up with a good heavy conditioner, and in the meantime, I freshen my head up once or twice a week with a baking soda wash (concentrating on the scalp, then working my way down to the eds), followed by an apple cider vinegar rinse combed through and left on for a minute or so. A tablespoon of either in a cup of water, rinsing well after each. Nice and gentle, and keeps the Rooshy-douchey grodiness away!
Watch their income?! WTF?!
Roosh can go fuck off for this crap seriously.
And hugs for anyone who wants them.
And even MORE HUGS.
I also noticed the food safety issue but a. given how he looks I suspect raw chicken is the least of the potential hygiene-related hazards in his apartment and b. he deserves food poisoning. Hey, if he pukes for a few days it will make him lose weight and thus become a more valuable member of society!
*ends*, grrr
cloudiah – Regarding wooden cutting boards, my mother uses one cutting board for everything—vegetables, meat, seafood, poultry (cooked and raw), duran, sugar cane, etc—and as far as I know, so long as you wash that board really well with warm, soapy water, you should be okay. The only bout of food poisoning I got was because I accidentally took a small sip of expired milk.
That being said, I have two color-coded plastic cutting boards for raw veggies and raw meat and I wash the one I use for meat in warm soapy water.
Yeah, Roosh, please keep cooking your chicken that way; eventually, salmonella will deal with you.
I doubt Roosh washes anything much with hot, soapy water.
Bina – I have very fine, straight hair, and even when I don’t wash my hair for a week, shampooing strips away all of the oils and makes it feel so dry. 🙁
I might want to borrow your idea for keeping your hair nice and fresh.
cloudiah – Unfortunate implications abound!
N’thing the “ewww that hair is gross ewww” response. He looks like a bloke I used to work with. A co-worker described that guy’s hair as a bowl of oil with salt spread on it.
Bodycrimes, loved your blog article. 🙂
I shampoo twice or three times a week, and just rinse my hair in the shower in between times. Luckily my hair’s thick, and doesn’t get oily or dry these days. If I shampooed every day it’d get eaten: Mads has decided shampoo-scented hair is the BEST.
I think he should be covered in a full body condom at all times to protect members of the public. Like in Naked Gun, but tragic instead of funny.
With a full-length hessian sack over the top, preferably, so we don’t have to see him at all.
Another good thing for dry flyaway hair, that I learned about by googling no-poo and curly hair, is conditioner-only washing. Most drugstore conditioners are pretty thin soups anyway, and you could have knocked me over with your pinky when I learned that they all have a slight surfactant effect. Some curlyheads wash only with that! And it gets the hair clean. Also worth a try!
There are some nice leave-in conditioners around, too. I use one called Revitafoam; it’s a sort of conditioner and very soft mousse, and good for adding curl to the ends, without being stiff or heavy.