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.
RE: Barb
Worse, though, she was that writer who said she didn’t want anyone to be able to understand her writing.
*snort* Sure. That’s why she went to a writer’s group to share her writing with other people. (I’m not snorting at you, just the dissonance between words and action on her part.)
Oh man, same person? How bizarre, Barb. Sounds like she’s no more pleasant offline than she is on. Ech!
I don’t think “herdlike” and “sheeple” have the same meaning as tribal at all. They’re talking about the majority of people in the speaker’s society, who aren’t the geniuses like the obnoxious speaker. If anything, it refers to the bigger out-group than the speaker’s in-group, so yeah, it’s related in that way. But when tribal is used of modern societies, it refers to the small, distinct groups, whether we’re talking fans of a sports club (Manchester United vs Arsenal fans, or Collingwood vs Carlton here, for instance) or interest groups like Goths. They may or may not be villified by the mainstream of society, or be violent themselves (criminal bikie gangs, for instance).
Yes, it does hark back to descriptions of primitive societies. But primitive societies were no more pristine and wonderful than modern ones, and tribal societies were violent, and those loyalties can still fuel horrible violence – it’s another name for ethnic violence, often enough. I’d say nationalism and one country at war with another has elements of tribalism in it, under the more obvious land/political power causes; that horrible term “ethnic cleansing” involves the same thing, I think.
MRAs fit the modern, minor sense of tribal very well. They are a small group and think they’re special and put-upon; they definitely have in-group and out-group notions (and Pauly boy shows how easy it is to mark someone as out-group, Freeze Peacher though he claims to be).
Re: LBT
Up until I met her, I thought writers saying they didn’t want to be understood as sort of an artsy-fartsy boogieman against creative writing, but she actually said in a direct quote that she was not trying to be understood. (her story was about a priest and a nun flying around in space. Why they needed to be in space to talk about a woman’s place, I have no idea)
She was there to masturbate in public with her fiction though, that was for sure. She wanted an audience, not a critique group. I see that hasn’t changed.
Barb – yay for scaring TyphoidBlues out of your writers’ group!
WTF is the point of writing so nobody can understand it? If she’s hoping to earn money from her writing, way to fail. I’m betting she’s no Joyce.
The idea of using “tribal” to describe negative types of group behavior bugs me. There are good and bad things about societies that follow that method of organization, it’s icky to have the concept appropriated to mean things that people who you don’t like do but you’re so much more of an independent spirit so you would never have similar motivations. Basically it feels very libertarian-influenced to use the word that way.
“I hope you don’t understand,” she said with her larynx. “Women who are not me are not worthy of understanding my writing I write with my fingers.”
Very, very similar in style *and* tone!
I think Clannish is a good replacement word for tribal it has a similar meaning but I don’t think it has the same racist undertones.
I presume that when people refer to behavior as “tribalistic” – it’s referring to biased treatment of an in-group towards an out-group. Not that they are equating those people to being primitive. It’s been used in just about every context from political parties to social cliques to sports fans, so it’s pretty clear to me most use it neutrally to describe group dynamics. If it was to imply primitiveness – that would be based on the context of the argument made than the term by itself. Speaking of which…
Admittedly, I’m getting kind of exasperated over these long asides about certain terms. I understand trying to eschew purposefully offensive terminology (“retard”, “cunt”, etc.) and don’t mind doing that here, but goddamn, it seems almost every discussion is becoming about whether or not a term is offensive enough to certain people to not use than about the subject on the OP (which, honestly, would be more interesting to talk about). Moreso when the context of someone’s comments are ignored for simply having used a single term others were not fond of, which comes off as both hyper-sensitive and nit-picky. It seems like a lot of misunderstanding could be resolved by asking the person why they used that word specifically, than to assume they’re just trying to agitate others.
Anyway: I’m not sure how killing yourself along with taking another person’s life is somehow moral, but we’re talking about MRAs – who may as well live on Bizzaro World. It’s good to see some of them were bothered by TyphonBlue’s comments but, at the same time, this doesn’t excuse the fact these people have supported using violence against perceived enemies in the past. Of course they’re bothered that a child was involved in this, like any decent person would, but I doubt they’d still feel the same if the kid was out of the picture. They’d probably make him out to be a martyr and as a supposed sign of how Teh Menz are being oppressed.
“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.”
So men and women are as likely as each other to kill their kids, but next you say that mostly men kill kids? WHICH IS IT?
Tribal doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with race, though. British tribes, anyone? I know if I think of tribal warfare, it’s likely to be them I’m thinking of, though I’m probably in a tiiiiny minority there.
Clannish does have an unfortunate history too, because of the way the Highland clans were so despised by the Lowlanders and the English.
Unimaginative – win! 😀
Actually the MRM fails at being tribes, clans or anything else, ‘cos they’re just as keen on doing each other down as on hating everyone who’s not a misogynist. Their in-group loyalty is wobbly at best.
Tribal is a neutral term. Strictly speaking it has no relationship to the nation state idea, because tribes are comprised of families and bands of families and combinations of bands with common interests/goals, and nation states are patriarchal hierarchies for which the common interests of the whole are totally irrelevant.
Tribal is definitely not synonymous with “herd mentality”, even though many folks like to use tribal in that way. I theorize they are unfamiliar with the actual makeup of a tribe.
Clannish again implies family and common interests, but in a more closed-off sense, though in point of fact a clan and a tribe are nearly identical.
Clique might be a term to look up. Club isn’t half bad. Herd often applies.
And for the record, I’m so badass I wrote all of that with my larynx.
Feh, that’s nothing. MRAs talk entirely with their asses.
Oh also, Dean Esmay wrote something on AVfM about how MRAs need to poop on Twitter more, and Fidelbogen is pretty (unintentionally) hilarious in the comments. Sorry I can’t copy/paste some of his bogenisms, but I’m on my tablet…
I’ve leaned most heavily for cliquish, although that also tends to have more negative overtones than the neutral, “tribal”. And I think tribal has been used in this sense since Ancient Rome, with their complicated tribal voting system.
It’s really only that tribal has developed this newer, strong association with certain political structures that makes me seek out another term. Most of the other contenders are more strongly hinting of direct kinship, from what I’ve seen. (Clan, phyle).
Kitteh — race as a concept is really wishy washy the world over though, for example, two neighboring African tribes are both African (obvious thing is obvious), but likely think of themselves as different ethnicities. So maybe ethnicity is closer than race here?
“But primitive societies were no more pristine and wonderful than modern ones, and tribal societies were violent, and those loyalties can still fuel horrible violence – it’s another name for ethnic violence, often enough.”
Ack. No, primitive =/= better, but likewise, tribal societies 1) still exist and 2) aren’t, on average, any more violent than “modern” societies (and that itself is problematic, not like the tribes in Africa that’ll be seeing sunrise soon aren’t as modern as we are, industrialized is a better word there)
And all too often, the violence they face from industrialized societies, or rather, industrialization itself, is worse than intertribal violence. Like, Amazonion squabbles over land don’t even begin to compare to what logging has done to the region. (That one is a pet peeve of mine, bulldozing the amazon makes me stabby)
Also, yeah, tribes are family groups, or larger ethnic groups, or similar. But a neutral term describing people with some sort of shared lineage. Which MRAs utterly lack. Using the term tribal where clique is far closer just links actual tribes to those cliques, which, you know, sucks when the clique in question is a clique of asswipes (and isn’t that much better when the clique isn’t united by bigotry).
…only about half of that is actually directed at you kitteh
*Amazonian
I can spell, I swear!
Eh, it all makes sense anyway, Argenti. Whether it’s on a small local level, or societies with vastly different levels of power/technology, it still comes down to humans being violent douchebags to The Other. I’m just wary of “don’t say tribal” falling into the Noble Savage nonsense. Humans are too often and too easily a rotten bunch, regardless of the type of society and technology involved.
Your point about MRAs having none of the binding elements (let alone the shared history) of actual tribes, clans, families, or whatever, is saying in more depth what I said before, that MRAs fail at this in-group thing anyway. They can’t create the history out of nothing – though they love trying to rewrite history, non? – but when it comes to any ties that bind, they fail, fail, fail. Their dislike of each other is only overcome by their hatred of anyone who doesn’t hate women.
THANK YOU !!! I got an easy ab work out from spontaneous hard laughter! (Oh and endorphines so a natural buz to go with it)
Kitteh — oh I certainly wasn’t thinking Noble Savage but rather People That Exist (and have some sort of family/ethnic ties). So yeah, neutral term, but describing groups that are not, remotely, like the in group behavior MRAs (or sports fans or goths or whatever) display.
They do barely qualify as a group even, sports fans are called fans, but they’re a group of people who are fans of a specific thing, goths/similar are again a group of people with shared views. Feminists even, we’re a group of people with, to some degree, shared views (e.g. You won’t find many pro-life feminists), MRAs can’t seem to agree on ANYTHING besides that women suck for doing this thing (that other MRAs say women suck for not doing). They don’t even have a core set of values, or any sort of shared views, or anything of the sort, let alone a shared familial or ethnic background.
Unless asshole is an ethnicity. Which, really, nicely sums up my issue with using the word tribal to describe people that are not an actual tribe of people.
But yes, humans can be horrible to The Other. Not just wary, the supposed evolutionary basis of that, but cruel. Makes enough sense that in group members will behave in a manner you can predict, while the out group is unpredictable and thus it’s logical to be wary, that makes sense, or, at least, makes sense from an evolutionary view. But to go from wary to violent? Wtf is with our species? Why can’t we act more like bonobos and be all “oh, are you fighting? I know how to solve this, wanna have sex?” (Ah bonobos, anyone who says only humans have sex for pleasure should go study how much sexytimes they have…but I digress, massively)
Heh.
RE: Barb
She sounds like a real piece of work, and that your writing group is well rid of her.
That’s the other thing . How many women are burning their children to death or shooting them in the head because they cant get laid ?