Over on the Men’s Rights subreddit, the regulars are discussing the case of a Japanese man who set himself and his nine-year-old son on fire on a playground in an attempted murder-suicide; the man died, but his son, while severely burned, managed to survive.
The discussion amongst the Men’s Rightsers is actually less awful than one might expect, with only a few commenters making excuses for the man, or blaming his ex-wife. Many of the regulars are actually condemning his actions straightforwardly.
And then there’s TyphonBlue, the highly inventive female Men’s Rights activist who is one of A Voice for Men’s self-proclaimed “Honey Badgers.” She thinks the fact that the man tried to kill himself along with his son is a point in his favor and, more than that, a sign that men are better than women.
No, really. She blames “pedestalization” for it all.
![typhonblue -12 points 1 day ago (18|30) He didn't kill his son. Unlike mothers, fathers don't scrimp on the suicide part of the suicide-murder. permalink source parent save give gold hide child comments [–]osbe 11 points 22 hours ago (15|4) He didn't kill his son What the fuck are you trying to say? The son didn't die (yet) so this is not "as bad" as what women do? permalink source save parent give gold [–]typhonblue -1 points 8 hours ago (2|3) Little more time today. Am I puncturing your vision of women as the "more moral gender"? How about this, when you give a group of people an automatic "more moral than thou" card, they become worse human beings. The pedestal creates the monster.](https://i0.wp.com/www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/typhonmurdersuicide.png?resize=496%2C407&ssl=1)
You see, if you didn’t put women on a pedestal, they’d kill themselves along with their kids, and all would be well in the world. I guess? I really don’t see why this would be better.
Later in the thread, TB tries to explain her peculiar logic further:
I think it’s time to pull out the old Don Draper “what?!” gif again.
I will grant her one point: she’s correct that, while fathers and mothers are roughly equally likely to kill their children, men are much more likely to kill themselves as well. Why this would be a sign of moral superiority I don’t know.
I should also note that this doesn’t mean that the men and women kill children equally: while 57 percent of those who kill children under 5 are parents, the non-parents who kill children are mostly men.
In any case, “pedestalization” has pretty much nothing to do with it — unless you’re talking about the tendency of fathers who kill themseves and their children to overrate their own indispensablility.
So why do parents kill their children? Not surprisingly, mothers and fathers tend to have wildly different motivations. In Slate, Dahlia Lithwick summarizes what we know:
Researchers, building on the work of Phillip Resnick, have shown that women tend to kill their own offspring for one of several reasons: because the child is unwanted; out of mercy; as a result of some mental illness in the mother; in retaliation against a spouse; as a result of abuse.
It may be hard to understand how a mother can come to believe that killing her children would be an act of mercy, but that’s what postpartum psychosis can do to your brain.
The motivations for fathers tend to be rather different:
Most frequently … they kill because they feel they have lost control over their finances, or their families, or the relationship, or out of revenge for a perceived slight or infidelity. … more often than not, men kill their children to get back at a woman—to take away what she most cherishes.
As Charles Patrick Ewing, a University of Buffalo law professor and psychologist, told Elizabeth Fernandez of the San Francisco Chronicle
“These are narcissistic, self-centered guys who see themselves as the glue of the family. They feel they have to take their own life, but first, they have to kill the children. To them, it seems rational. They think they can’t manage and the family can’t manage without them.”
It’s also worth pointing out that when you look at murder-suicide in general — and not just when children are among the victims — it is almost exclusively (roughly 90%) a male crime, with the victims almost always female, generally the man’s wife, girlfriend, or ex. Not surprisingly, disproportionate number of those responsible for murder-suicides involving intimate partners were also domestic abusers. (As was, reportedly, the Japanese man who set himself and his son ablaze.)
The only heartening thing here is that TyphonBlue actually got downvoted in the Men’s Rights subreddit for spouting her toxic nonsense.
EDITED TO ADD, 12/30/13: The son, who had been in critical condition since the incident, has now died.
@ Unimaginative
Agree
We often lump all “primitive” cultures together as interchangeable, but they can be just as different from each other as Sweden is from North Korea. I actually just started reading Jared Diamond’s book The World Until Yesterday and one thing he points out is that on the island of New Britain there is one tribe where widows are ritually strangled by her sons after the death or her husband, yet none of the other tribes (or maybe cultures is a better word) do this despite living in the same environment and lifestyle.
That’s just horrible.
And by most I mean that the farmers had the highest populations, not there weren’t plenty of non-farmers around.
That poor kid. I can’t even read the story. Part of me hopes he never regained consciousness and the realization that it was his own father who did this to him. I hope his remaining family members can find comfort and peace.
That poor boy & his poor family.
Sorry, the child’s remaining family, not the murdering dirtbag
Here’s hoping there’s no equally repulsive follow-up opinion piece from Typhoid.
Followed some links on the site David linked to and either Owly has developed an interest in the issue of pollution in Japan or he has an ideological twin (check the comments).
http://japandailypress.com/fukushima-residents-allowed-to-spend-the-holidays-in-own-houses-2641486/
Oh. Oh.
My heart goes out to his mother and brother. I can’t imagine what they must be going through. The story said the boy never regained consciousness. I’m sure they kept him pain med-ed good, too. But I just….
This is just a horrible thing. And this is the guy TB’s using as a springboard to argue that men are more ethical than women? I don’t get it. How do you read about this and not be totally disgusted and horrified? How do you not see this as a case of an asshole murdering his son in a horrific way? There’s really no “grey area” in this. It’s pretty much a no-brainer that the man was an asshole murderer, not some illustration about how men are better than women.
It’s because the ex-wife accused him of abuse. By MRA logic all accusations of abuse in divorce proceedings are false, therefore the ex accused him of abuse to get custody of the child, therefore the father was justified in making a grand political statement, plus he owns his children therefore he can do what he wants to them.
At this point I don’t think there’s anything that a man could do to his children or wife that they would consider unjustified or unreasonable. The case of the guy who sold his son to pedophiles, where some MRAs made excuses for him, was pretty much the nail in the coffin for me in terms of giving these people any benefit of the doubt.
Cloudiah, the article says the boy never regained consciousness.
@unimaginative
Idk, personally I’m relieved when they do, since it’s just like “thank god that person isn’t here anymore, they were fucking horrible.” And I guess in my mind I think it means they won’t escape or have a chance for parole later. If that makes any sense?
@david
FUck 🙁 that’s terrible. That poor kid.
Marie –
Same here. It’s “Good fucking riddance you piece of shit, I hope you’re slammed with TOTAL self awareness now and have to work through that.”
That poor, poor child in Japan, and his mother and brother. Yeah, makes total sense that a totes innocent man who’s accused of abuse would respond by burning a child to death. What a fine, upstanding citizen that makes him.
@skye, I actually feel bad for the dad’s family, too. They’ve lost a grandson/nephew/whatever the boy was to them, and a son/brother/whatever the dad was to them, all while finding out that someone they knew and loved was capable of something horrific.
@cassandra, I don’t remember that story, but I can imagine MRAs defending something like that.
That poor kid and his family…someone please tell me that Japan’s mental health system is good enough, and not shunned, that they can get adequate help for any survivor’s guilt.
“I don’t think you can really make an accurate statement about “most” north americans.”
TRUFAX. And yeah, written records are scarce, but oral ones are abundant (generally speaking), plus anthropological data. Afaik there’s no real question that some tribes were in near constant conflict with their neighbors, while others worked together with neighboring tribes. We’re talking about hundreds of different groups here, covering the vast range of human behavior (hmm…afaik cannibalism was limited to Central America, but I could be wrong on that, either way, everything from peace treaties to war existed before Columbus showed up)
@CassandraSays, I have blocked that story out of my memory.
@David, That is some small comfort that he never regained consciousness. Thanks for letting me know.
@ Argenti
It’s probably going to be a “no” on all the questions in your first paragraph, unfortunately.
@titianblue Well of course, I’m discussing this in the terms originally used. There is no way to redeem yourself after such a horrific act, but at the very least, owning up to what you did and suffering the consequences seems like the better option in such a bleak situation rather than killing yourself, avoiding what is coming to you on the plane of existence you chose to commit the crime. But because TB insists that it’s somehow “noble” to kill yourself after, as a way to make men seem somehow better in even in committing the worst possible actions, I’m countering that with, “Wait, isn’t that taking the easy way out?” In any case, I think taking the easy way out of a situation could never be considered a “more noble” act.
It’s sort of like when I watch the show Criminal Minds. Spoiler alert: Almost every single serial killer winds up dead rather than arrested, and that has always kind of left me unsatisfied. Not that I want the serial killer to be tortured the rest of their life, but to somehow be held accountable for their actions. Because I straddle the line of agnostic and atheist, and see death as just a void, the idea that someone gets to ruin the lives of many people by murdering them and their loved ones, and then just blink out of existence, is not a comfort to me in the same way that, maybe, those who believe in a heaven and a hell, or multiple lives or whatever believe they will get what they deserve when they meet their maker. The only small comfort to be taken is that such a person can never commit such an act again. I don’t know, I’m just rambling now. The truth is that no outcome will make any of it any better, or bring anyone back from the dead, but to frame killing yourself after as the better option just rubs me the wrong way.
And, conversely, if there’s no chance for due process, then justice isn’t being done on the side of the cops, either.
@EmilyGoddess, I agree with you there. I only meant the man himself. No sympathy for him.
Cassandra — well fuck. Guess that’s part of how the so called suicide forest exists though?
Is Typhon Blue another screen name for Geisha Kate, the woman who’s marrying Mark Minter? They both have thin lips, light hair and what Roissy calls a “manjaw?
Also, does anyone know if Geisha Kate ever actually married Mark Minter?
A little while ago Mark’s ex-wife told us he hadn’t married his Internet bride.
I have never seen what Geisha Kate looks like, so I don’t know if it’s the same person as typhonblue. That would be interesting though.
I think they’re two different people…and as for the latter, I don’t know. But if any two people ever deserved each other…well…
It is a nice thought, those two miserable excuses for human beings making each other miserable, instead of making other people miserable.
As to this TAs to this TyphonBlUre person, I would Rather more of “us” progressive thinkers thought A little more interms of reaching out to Women like her. Women like her are very clearly exhibiting theworst traumas of misogyny, and its not Men who are going to do that. they exploit if, maybe, out rarely actually help. BTW, him using chapter’s device that snakes writing painfully slow. And lends itself to grammatic error.. Where are the feminists on yotube who challenge TB’s nonsense? I think of a case like her as one needing “debriefing”. Icould care far, far less about “reaching” Elam. But TB” turning around” ** matters* I believe it’s horribly dispassionate) and so unsympathetic to thinks otherwise. Elam and his ilk merely preach to the choir. Feminists cannot afford to make that mistake anymore, and make it many of us have. I’m sure TB is horribly unpleasant. We’d be surprised by this why, exactly? Repudiating her is one thing.. Shutting her out and shinning is another. She’s a cult member-) an addict even. Nobody “dealing “to her or ignoring her “high” is gonna help her. She’s not benefitting being in the company of sexists, she’s being destroyed.