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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.
“The right to rub one out ends where my body begins”?
Well, I like to think I’m working on it, although probably I have way further to go than I think.
I hope I can teach it to my children.
BLS: In fact men and women are entitled to sex and attention because guess what, those are natural human needs.
Nope. Desires yes (and not all people share them, nor to the same level when they do). But if I have a need, that means it’s essential to my survival. Sex ain’t like that.
And if I have a need, it’s proper to insist that others help me obtain it. With sex/attention that, somewhere along the line, means someone else loses autonomy. At which point it’s not an equal expression of “need”.
So logically (as well as morally) this is nonsense.
I didn’t claim any of those things. In fact, my argument is that you people DO NOT represent real feminism. You guys are frauds.
(putting aside the problematic “represent feminism” We don’t claim to represent it. We claim to be feminist):
How so? Why should we care that you have declared us to be non-feminists? Are you from the Central Committee? Will you take away my membership card? Evict me from, “The Movement”? Am I to be shunned wherever Good Feminists Gather?
Nope. Because there isn’t any such metric.
I say I am feminist because I think men and women deserve to be treated as if they were all people, with the rights, privileges and responsibilitie which come of it.
Fuck off creep to you right back. Isn’t there someone else you should be telling that to?
I don’t know, is there another person being creepy to her?
What? The opposite assertion would be that if person A doesn’t want sex, they are entitled to not have sex. (since you posited sex was a need; and so a person who wants it is entitled to it).
How, pray tell, does someone being able to not have sex deprive anyone else of bodily autonomy?
And no I am not a PUA, you should know, you talk to them all the time. Do they talk like me? Do their arguments sound anything like mine?
Anything like implies a difference, so no, they don’t sound like your arguments. They are identical to them.
Like last time, I’m not coming back.
The essence of the flounce, distilled.
Just like pecunium said, there needs to be a distinction between urges and basic needs. You are not going to die without sex, lack of sex doesn’t lead to death, therefore it is not a need, it’s a DESIRE. Yes, it is essential to the survival of the species, but not to the survival of the individual.
By saying that sex is a basic human need, we’re also stigmatizing asexual people who don’t even desire sex.
Not getting the opportunity to reproduce because of a lack of desirable traits or possessing undesirable ones is selection. That’s natural too. Elliot Rodger not getting laid didn’t effect the survival of the species nor did it kill him. There are already too many of us and most of us will get the opportunity to reproduce more than once meaning Rodger’s participation is entirely unnecessary for the survival of the species.
Rodger didn’t kill himself because of bullying. He killed himself because other people didn’t give him that which he felt entitled to. That’s entirely on him, not anyone else.
marinerachel
That’s absolutely correct. There are still a lot of people who argue otherwise, though. It’s depressing.
I just have to commend the commenters here for their work on all these threads of late. I don’t even have the stomach to read troll’s comments except when they are being quoted and ripped to shreds by you guys.
Even if the arguments presented don’t sink in one bit for the trolls, it is being read by lurkers like myself and I think that is important. Thanks for that. 🙂
Nailed it! XD
I’v been reading this for awhile and I thought its great but I think there a few men on here who seem to have misandry so trigger warning
menagainstassholesandmisogyny.tumblr.com/
http://youtu.be/0Bmhjf0rKe8
Fuck off with your gross mental gymnastics. If this is all so hard for you to comprehend (which it isn’t), here’s a simpler version of what we’re trying to tell you:
Don’t sexually abuse people.
Got it? Good. Now get the fuck out of here, creep, and never show yourself here again.
Ally: Troll boy didn’t quote Kitteh properly, that was her original quote.
@hellkell
Oh. Oops. Sorry about that, kitteh. I’m currently in rage mode towards trolls today, and evidently it can make me jump ahead carelessly.
They say don’t feed the trolls, but here I am.
I just wanted to address the bodily autonomy question because it seems your tiny little pea brains don’t get it.
If I concent to sex with someone and they do too, we are entitled to and have a right to have sex with each other. So that is the different context I was referring to. Now burn in hell with your worthless abstractions, I prefer to live in the real world.
I mean I never thought I would be arguing with a bunch of “feminists” about whether women are entitled to sex if they consent, and what I’m reading is consistently no.
@emilygodess was close but she too forgets that women actually do consent to sex from time to time and a lot of times people get in the way, even if the other person agrees.
Can I ask what this website’s agenda is? You guys seem really suspect from a real feminist perspective. Especially in your trollish immature responses.
Can I ask what your agenda is? You still haven’t told us what a “real feminist” is, or whatever that porn thing was you were going on about.
Dude, what?
Sheety is a bit transparent. The linen he’s made of must be awfully poor quality.
“If I concent to sex with someone and they do too, we are entitled to and have a right to have sex with each other”
wut
Where did anyone say women can’t consent to sex? I think BLS does not quite understand the definition of the word ‘entitlement.’
As for the porn star thing; I’m assuming BLS is one of those people who gets angry if a blog doesn’t cover each specific topic zie wants at any given moment. Zie needs to understand that this is a niche blog for mocking the manosphere misogyny and not a blog that covers general social and political issues.
I just literally don’t know what BLS is on about half the time. I think they posted a comment that David didn’t let through, and it had something to do with porn performers and suicide. And yeah, it’s a “why aren’t you talking about my pet issue” thing, because now BLS wants to know why we don’t care about whatever it was. I think. It’s really hard to tell, and my repeated requests for clarification have gone unheeded.
I have no idea if I care about whatever it is that he’s on about, since I still don’t know what that thing is.
No, that means those two people are consenting to sex, which is great. But that doesn’t mean that either one are “entitled” to sex from the other. Consent can be withdrawn at any point by either part without the other party being “entitled” to sex when that consent is withdrawn.
This is pretty basic human decency, really. And it’s really not abstract in the slightest. It’s pretty easy: no-one is entitled to another person’s body. Simple.
BLS, you seem to not understand the difference between “consent” and “entitlement.”
Sparky, I can help BLS with that confusion:
Note the difference there BLS?
Argenti,
Of course I do. Consent is a condition for entitlement when talking about sex. Sparky just doesn’t get it because I am clearly putting consent as a precondition to being entitled to sex.
But what about rights? Because sex is part of human nature and humans have a right to their human nature. But that could change. Not only our rights but our human nature. Science is scary.
Maybe I was too harsh calling you guys fake feminists, but you guys definitely are rhetoric heavy. That’s what I mean when I say I would rather live in the real world instead of the world of abstractions.
Most premises based on abstractions, especially ethical ones, can easily be turned upside down and result in an equally valid assertion.
So my belief is that a lot of rhetorical feminism simply results in retributive finger pointing in an opportunistic way that actually ends up serving patriarchy.
Think about MRA’s. Do men not deserve rights? Of course they do, everyone does, but what really matters is not the words men and rights but what those words end up encouraging in the real world.
And my belief is that a lot of rhetorical feminism is guilty of this too, just from the other side of things.
The fundamental problem with Rodger and similar cases is this imo:
Pull up any porn website and you see millions upon millions of young women, often very attractive, doing horrible things for chump change much of the time. Some have even been bullied and shamed to suicide. Rodger was a nice middle (upper-middle) class kid that wasn’t noticeably messed up or unattractive.
But if women are treated like property, then the laws of capitalism apply to their bodies, not the law of consent and human rights. And in that case, that control is in someone else’s hand, just like when they say there are more empty houses and apartments than homeless people.
What I’m obviously referring to is ideology, that is, the way that an obvious truth is consistently denied and swept under the rug, even violently sometimes. And with all the insults and response from this blog, how can any of you claim to be any better than the MRA’s, PUA’s, etc? I don’t think you are (except maybe that other one that was real shitty with the guy that said Rodger didn’t kill enough women).
Instead of feeding the phony psychiatric industry lie machine with the smug and smarmy criticisms of Rodger’s misogyny and mental health problems, why not highlight Rodger as an example of how patriarchy harms men as much as women sometimes. And in this patriarchy, different sorts of mental health issues develop with an industry not willing to honestly deal with them since they too are invested in patriarchy and misogyny. Well, that would make too much sense, wouldn’t it.
And I’m not excusing what he did. But that sort of response is typical of how patriarchy socializes young men, isn’t it. And so was the response on this website. Angry scathing invective at what is obvious and self apparent.
But it isn’t always so I think it deserves to be mentioned.
JFC, are you serious? I was reading this comment and even agreeing with some of it, until I got to this part. TIL that calling misogynists names is just as bad as calling for the right to beat and rape women.
Because Rodger is a crystal-clear example of how the patriarchy harms women, and I refuse to focus on the poor abused murderer over his victims.
BLS, bullshit.
This isn’t rhetoric of abstraction, it’s women’s lives and bodies.
Nope. Sex is not a right. I don’t know why you don’t understand this, and it’s frightening that you don’t appear to. Yes, sexuality is part of human nature and everyone is entitled to their own sexuality (and, different people have differing sex drives and likes/dislikes and some people don’t have a lot or any sex drive and all of that is okay), but if an act includes more than one person, then all parties must consent to the act.
No, no one is entitled to the use of another person’s body without their consent. No, no one has a right to another person’s body without their consent. It doesn’t matter how badly one person wants to have sex with another person, no one has a right to use another person’s body.
Because people are not things to be used, to satisfy one’s needs.
Again this is pretty damned basic. This is treating people like people. The fact that this very basic part if being a decent human seems like abstract rhetoric to you is very telling.
Again, this is not an abstraction, and this is bullshit. The only way to turn “no one has a right to the use of another person’s body without their consent” upside done is to say, “one does have a right to use another person’s body without their consent.” Which is not valid, but is fucking wrong.
We are better than MRA’s and PUA’s because we believe that women are human beings just like men are. The fact that you can’t see a difference here just because we swear and use snark and mock the hateful and ignorant says way more about you than about us.
Why do you keep bringing up adult entertainers? No one here would say that adult entertainers being bullied into suicide is okay. We would all condemn it, and the societal double standards and sexism that lies behind the bullying. But there is absolutely no parallels between an adult entertained being bullied into suicide and Rodger. Rodger chose to kill people because he was an entitled, misogynist shit. The only thing that the two cases have in common is misogyny.
No one here is arguing that women’s bodies are property. We are arguing the exact opposite. Where the hell did you get this from?
Yes, the obvious truth that Rodger was a misogynist who killed because he hated women is being swept under the rug. We’re not the ones who doing it here.
Because Rodger clearly wasn’t harmed by patriarchy. He had a charmed and privileged life, being given anything he ever wanted. Patriarchy never harmed Rodger, he actively benefitted from it. And men are not harmed as much as women under patriarchy.
That makes no sense. You appear to have no understanding of what a mental illness is and what patriarchy is.
[A discussion of how mental illness and misogyny intersect in the patriarchy would be interesting, but this isn’t whats going on with Rodger. Rodger was not disadvantaged by the patriarchy, nor did mental illness cause his hate or his actions.]
Oh yes, pardon is for being angry when a privileged man kills people after explicitly stating he is going to kill people be because he hates women. Excuse us for being angry when everything under the sun is being used to excuse this man’s actions in order to not place responsibility on him or the misogyny that inspired. Excuse us for being angry at having to live in in a world saturated with misogyny, that is excuses men’s violence against women in all it’s forms and refuses to see a pattern or care very much when women’s bodies are used and abused. Oh yes, what typical stooges of the patriarchy we are to be pissed off at the patriarchy!
BLS, you make no damned sense.
Sheety should hire himself out as a contortionist. He sure is pretzelling his argument to a remarkable degree in order to try to justify the idea that unequivocally condemning murder motivated by misogyny is similar to as just as bad as writing date rape how-to’s/instructing your readers to never convict a rapist. What really not particularly demanding ethical bar will he attempt to limbo under next? Find out on the next edition of As The Troll Whinges.