The We Hunted the Mammoth Pledge Drive continues! If you haven’t already, please consider sending some bucks my way. (And don’t worry that the PayPal page says Man Boobz.) Thanks! And thanks again to all who’ve already donated.
If anyone was hoping – against their better judgement – that Men’s Rights activists would be inspired by the tragedy in Isla Vista to reconsider any of their beliefs, or even to reflect for a moment on the many striking similarities between passages in Elliot Rodger’s book-length manifesto and comments posted every day by MRAs and others in the manosphere, well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you should not keep that hope alive.
It’s not that they’re not talking about the tragedy. A look through the top 100 posts in the Men’s Rights subreddit, the largest Men’s Rights forum online, reveals that roughly a third of them, including the top stickied post, relate in some way to Elliot Rodger’s rampage and the discussions that have come up online and in the media in its aftermath.
But the message of virtually all of these posts is: “Nothing to see here! Move along!” There are numerous posts expressing outrage that anyone would see any connection between Rodger’s toxic misogyny to the Men’s Rights movement; there are others mocking and attacking the #YesAllWomen hashtag; there’s even one suggesting that Rodger, who wrote about how he longed to watch all the women of the world starve to death in concentration camps, wasn’t actually a misogynist at all.
Take a look. One post, with more than 500 upvotes, complains:
Another post makes a strikingly similar complaint:
One angry MRA asks:
Another wonders:
Sorry to break it to you, fella, but that’s not how defamation suits work. If it were, all of us who call ourselves feminists would be collecting millions of dollars from the Men’s Rights subreddit for all the patently untrue things you guys say about us every day of every week.
Still others make sure that everyone knows that Rodger hated men too – not that this has actually gone unnoticed in the media or in discussions of the tragedy.
And then there’s this fellow, who seems to think that Rodger only hated men, and that his big problem with women was that he loved them too much:
There are, it’s true, two posts that raise the issue of what might be done to prevent tragedies like this from happening in the future. One of them takes on the issue of “virgin shaming.” (Sure, I’m against that, and against slut shaming too. Odd that roughly 100% of the virgin shaming I’ve ever heard in my life has come from MRAs and other non-fans of this blog, even though — sorry to break it to you fellows — I’ve not been a virgin since the early Reagan administration.)
Meanwhile, the other “positive” suggestion — the stickied top post, submitted by one of the forum’s moderators — is pretty transparently intended as a PR move – and an excuse to bash feminists.
Yep, “creep shaming.” That’s the problem! Way to cut through all the bullshit and get to the heart of the matter! The problem isn’t that some men — well, a lot of men — think and act in predatory and entitled ways towards women. The problem is that sometimes when they do, women call them “creeps.”
The problem isn’t that the world’s creepiest and most entitled man just killed 6 innocent people, the problem is “creep shaming.”
After killing his roommates and a friend of theirs, Rodger attempted to get inside a sorority so he could massacre the women inside it. But he couldn’t get anyone to let him in. Probably because, well, whoever was nearest the door thought he looked a bit, well, creepy.
“Creep-shaming” isn’t some insidious form of discrimination against awkward men. It’s a defense mechanism that women develop to protect them against predatory men. And in the case of the Isla Vista murders, I’m guessing that the willingness of women to go with their gut sense that Rodger was a creep literally saved lives.
But the mods of the Men’s Rights subreddit would rather moan about “creep shaming.” They would prefer that women lower their defenses against men like Elliot Rodger — because it hurts their feelings to sometimes get called a “creep.”
Guys, this is why people think Elliot Rodger was an MRA.
EDIT: I added more to the conclusion because I had more to say about creep shaming.
@Anand
MRAs continue to baffle everyone with their terrible sense of humor. Seriously, dude, this is just sad.
I think the White House probably would lend less thought to this cause than it did to deporting Justin Bieber, Anand.
Is it even normal for male students to visit sororities uninvited? I’m not familiar on how this kind of housing works. Apparently, nobody in the sorority knew him, except maybe as “that weird quiet guy who hangs around staring at women and once threw his latte at Kate for no reason”.
Did he pretend to be visiting one of the women living there? Or was it more like, “OPEN THE DOOR DAMMIT I’M ELLIOT RODGER AND YOU’RE BLOCKING MY WAY”?
Sadly the petition probably wont be reviewed by the white house due to the lack of votes. Nevertheless, its pure entertainment for me. LOL.
How exactly is it entertaining? Watching the signatures increase by, what, one person every four and a half hours?
Hey Anand, are you the same person who keeps spamming that link, or are there a team of you now dedicated to spamming something that has already gotten one person kicked out? Hell, we even discussed your terrible PR skills in the last thread. Thanks for proving my point, though, about how MRA’s will do literally anything for attention except help a man.
Anand, you do realize that Dean Esmay posted that he wants that petition to go through as some kind of ill-advised publicity stunt, right?
Magnesium, im not an MRA and this is the first time i posted the link here.
Sparky, i know. I just read that post on avfm.
As a regular reader of this site, i thought i should post it here. I honestly didn’t know many people had the same idea. LOL.
Bunnybunny, read the post by dean esmay on avfm.
Then why would you think we’d do something that Dean Esmay thinks is a good idea?
Oh, it wasn’t just a publicity stunt; he genuinely believes that if someone in the government had to read ‘A Voice for Men’ then the justice of the MRAs complaints would be obvious and a converted government would save America hand in hand with the MRAs.
It’s a fantasy but Esmay isn’t noted for his rational outlook…
Sparky, I just wanted to point it out. I didnt know trolls already did that for me. Way to ruin my fun 😛
Go away Anand.
We’re not here to entertain you, Anand.
Oh man, coming into a thread on the morning after a meltdown that resulted in a bannination and posts deleted is a little like archaeology or forensics. I had to reconstruct what happened*, and I don’t have the details exact but what I do have is kind of sickening.
What a sad, sad person.
*Big thanks to whomever it was who described what happened — you just saved me a lot of investigative work! 😛
Hey Argenti! Long time! I take it the relationship is working. Leaving one’s toothbrush at their place is one thing, but booze? That’s a commitment! 😛
To be fair to the sock currently known as Blog Herpes, he did a pretty good job. It was glaringly obvious that Steele was a troll for all sorts of reasons (the total lack of logic and consistency being the usual giveaway), and there was a fair bit of speculation as to his identity, but I don’t think anyone successfully outed him before David’s IP check, and he stuck around for months.
The trolls who claim not to be MRAs might be the most annoying of all. They spout all the talking points and get all “who me?” when called out for it.
Stop trying to trick us into signing that stupid petition Anand. We already know all about it.
Isn’t the grandiosity of Dean Esmay hilarious? He seems to think that if the petition succeeds and the WH has to respond that means Obama is going to call a big press conference and the whole world will have to stop and listen to MRAs. Yeah, right.
David, does that post by hellkell count as creep shaming? Be genuine.
Creep-shaming: The worst human rights violation in the history of everything. Like, seriously and fer sure.
Sarcasm, in case it wasn’t apparent.
Why would David care if anyone creep shames? That’s not a thing. Everyone has the right to their boundaries and no one is required to be nice to somebody who is violating them. Creeping isn’t a human right.
By the way, you’re trolling a thread about a misogynistic mass murderer. This is a crime that has upset us a lot. For someone who claims not to be an MRA you sure share a lot in common with them. Like creepiness and lack of empathy.
Fuck off. You’re boring.
Wierdwoodtiger, the mass murder is mentioned in the petition.
Im new to creep shaming. I just discovered its existance from david’s article.
For those of you who still havent figured it out. I was satirisising dean esmay through the first post. But nevermind. -_-
LOL, you’re a desperate clown. Here’s a hint: stop being creepy.
Anand thinks of himself as a creep? Well, self-awareness is important.
Anand,
Satire: you’re doing it wrong.
On an tangentially related note, it seems like cooking up trollish petitions (e.g. “lulz you should check our sites out for ‘terrorism'”) is a great way to get the WH to give up on the current change.org protocol and make it harder to get online petitions through. “This is why we can’t have nice things” and all that.
Long time lurker, first time posting — I just wanted to say how cathartic it is to see you all giving trolls the smackdown. Especially this week, after everything that’s happened. Thanks for being awesome 🙂