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!
Well I just know I’m going to be yet again accused of having no reading comprehension, but Moma Sita just implied women with eating disorders are broken, right?
Or am I just still crispy over PTSD => broken // oh wait PTSD doesn’t exist?
Yes, she implied that women with ED are broken.
The thing that really is starting to piss me off about the mra world is that they constantly talk about “crazy women” being “good in bed”. Blah blah meow chow, “it’s so hard to resist crazy girls because they’re so good in bed”. But then they turn around and yell about women “only dating assholes”.
That’s not even getting into the discussion about how they like to label women crazy, then rationalize staying with then because they’re supposedly great in bed, and then cry foul when they have a child (or multiple children) and the stress of carrying a child puts someone suffering with some mental afflictions in an even more compromising position potentially and then she does things they deem “crazy”. And thus, the courts are to blame – misandry! Boooo women – they’re all crazy!!
Why not try putting your dick back in your pants and being safe with someone you so easily disparage? Or having some responsibility for your shortcomings when it comes to picking mates?
* I would like to add that the majority of “crazy” behavior men claim women exhibit isn’t actually crazy. And likewise there is nothing wrong with having any form of mental illness and men who prey on that for whatever reason are incredibly foul.
I would also like to add that I tried to not offend anyone with my statements and choice of words and I am sorry if I have done so with this post
Gizwardo — this crazy thinks you described their attitudes quite well
Argenti –
I was just getting worried as I wrote that post that it might offend some, and really did not want to hurt anyone.
Dealing with my own depression and eating disorder I can sometimes get a little morbid with the language to cope but I understand it may not be a pleasant thing for others to be accosted by my language.
As an aside – my ed definitely hasn’t made me very docile in relationships and the notion that we are fragile and breakable is funny. At least in my case try more paranoid and argumentative (about literally everything including compliments). Eating disorders, especially anorexia are actually a form of anxiety disorder, so… Good luck dealing with that coming from the point of view of predation.
cloudiah: good luck on your interview!
Good luck on your interview, cloudiah!
La Strega, when you wrote that Roosh had all but admitted to having ED problems, I did not read it as ‘eating disorder’. I’m torn on whether that’s more pitiable than what I thought you meant. Frankly, if he abandoned ‘banging’ and focused on food, the women of Europe would be better off. IMNSHO, of course.
“Crazy women are good in bed” never made sense to me. There stronger my various affective/anxiety-disorders become, the less I want to have sex at all. This goes double for when they manifest as eating disordered behaviour, because it’s hard to feel sexy when you’re cold, tired and vomiting all the time. And, contrary to what Roosh and similar assholes seem to think, most people are way more likely to have sex when they feel sexy than when they feel insecure and worthless.
Also, I’m eating disordered (in recovery) and fat and didn’t fall for PUA tricks even when I was at my illest. I like when being me feels like it’s actively working against people like Roosh.
Good luck, cloudiah!
(Also test of my old/new avatar!)
He’s preparing chicken on a porous wooden cutting board. Nothing good will come of that.
Heh!
Finding good quality mangoes in stores is usually such a fruitless task that I can forgive people who think they don’t like mangoes.
They also shudder at the name of Lord VETinari.
Well played.
Was that intentional?
Either way, it made me smile.
I don’t usually intend to pun, it just happens.
That’s pretty much the best pun ever.
Sorry, but no. The benefits that have accrued to you because of your frame are simply invisible to you because you have no basis of comparison. Fat people are paid less for the same jobs, less likely to be hired, more likely to be thought stupid or incompetent, etc, etc, etc. Bias and discrimination against fat people is just as real as that against women and people of color (and intersects with those biases).
Since I was overweight when my worst eating disordered periods began, I got to experience first hand how differently one is treated when one is thin. And no, people were not nicer to me because I was “more confident” when I was starving myself, over-exercising, and self-harming.
I just had the lovely experience of almost failing a lab because my assigned lab partner would not look at me or speak with me. And it’s not because he’s socially awkward. He’s perfectly fine around the thin women in my class. *spits*
/rant
@ Nepenthe,
My heart twinges in empathy. When I was in massage school, some classmates simply refused to touch me (although, oddly, they would often allow me to practice on their bodies). A horrible memory.
La Strega
🙁 That sucks. What the fuck is wrong with your ass of a lab partner?
Nepenthe, I’m sorry that happened to you. Your lab partner is a bully.
Nepenthe: In the obvious shit is obvious category, your lab partner is both an ass and an idiot.
That said, I do get some of what Gia’s talking about, too (note: I am not, and have never been thin, myself). It’s a different form of misogyny that assumes that ANY conventionally attractive woman–a set of traits which includes ‘thin, yet busty’ very prominently–only got their achievements because they either manipulated guys by offering sex, or they actually slept their way up.
I do think there’s a bigger prejudice against overweight people, and particularly overweight women, but one of the ‘joys’ of patriarchy is that no women get free rides. The closest to that are the FeMRAs who just have to sell their souls to get praise from the peanut gallery.
Oh, other stuff!
Cloudiah, hope you knocked the interview out of the park, and they realize what a catch you’d be.
On the matter of potatoes:
Potato packs are good, too. Chop the spud into bite-size bits or even thick slices as for roasting. Put a small handful on a sheet of foil. Dollop on some butter/oil, then add bell peppers, onions, garlic and/or spices to taste. Fold the corners of the foil over the contents, twisting any extra foil at the center–ideally, the whole thing should be covered. I usually do these on an open grill, but with a bit of tweaking I’m sure an oven or broiler would work well, too. Takes about 10-15 minutes to cook on the grill. Just drop the whole packet on the plate, let people open them when ready to eat (keeps the heat inside).
As someone who’s struggled with body image issues my entire life, I find this appalling. Men like Roosh are the main reason that these issues have continued into adulthood. I’m “too ugly, too masculine, too fat for love,” they say. And despite the fact that the doctor says I’m at a normal weight and my friends think I’m pretty, I sometimes feel I just can’t bring myself to believe that.
PUAs and MRAs who have the same body image issues that women do, have no right to be so hypercritical of a woman’s appearance. You’re doing the exact same thing that you say women do to you. You don’t have to be mean to others because you have suffered.
cloudiah: Good luck with your interview! Fingers crossed!
Nepenthe & La Strega: I’m sorry, the lab partner and the classmates were asses. I’ve always been fat, so, yeah, people can be asses. Total asses.
And, is Roosh going to use the chicken, erm, drippings in his hair? The way he’s bending over it, he looks so confused.
Geez, are you trying to ruin Team Jacob for me???