Was Marysville school shooter Jaylen Fryberg trying to exact revenge on a girl who had rejected him? Various news accounts suggest that Fryberg was reeling from a recent breakup; a number of angry, anguished, and frustratingly enigmatic recent comments on Fryberg’s Twitter account seem to back this up.
So it may be that the shootings on Friday were yet another reworking of an old story.
It’s no secret that many men, for an assortment of reasons, react badly and often violently to romantic and sexual rejection. This can range from self-described “nice guys” of OkCupid sending vicious messages to women who say no all the way to angry men who stalk and harass and sometimes kill ex-wives and girlfriends. Women who leave abusive relationships often suffer greater violence at the hands of exes unwilling to let them go.
I’ve written before of the striking ways that Men’s Rights Activism recapitulates the logic of domestic abuse; it’s no coincidence that so much MRA “activism” consists of harassment of individual women. So the question naturally follows: does the rage that drives so many MRAs come from the same dark place in the psyche as the rage that so many romantically and sexually rejected feel towards their exes?
Think of the fury many divorced MRAs feel towards their exes and women at large. Think of the self-pitying rage of “nice guys” MRAs in their teens and twenties who feel they’ve been unfairly “friendzoned” by stuck-up women.
As I pondered the tragedy in Marysville, I found myself thinking again about a disturbing short story written by A Voice for Men’s Paul Elam several years ago (and which I posted about recently).
In the story, you may recall, a jilted husband tells the other men in an anger management group session just what had landed him there. His story, as rendered by Elam, is a melodramatic and often mawkish tale of a man betrayed by a narcissistic “hypergamous” wife who left him for his business partner while he had been out of town at the funeral for his father. Oh, and she stole all his money, to boot. (Elam is not what you’d call a subtle writer.)
When the story’s hero finally confronts his ex, whom he finds ad his business partner’s house, she comes to the door in a nightie and tells him she left him because he just wasn’t cutting it in the sack. Then she makes a point of refusing to kiss him goodnight (and goodbye) because, she tells him sadistically, he probably wouldn’t like “the taste of another man’s cock on her lips.”
And so, the hero tells the other angry men in his group, he punched her in the nose so hard he broke it.
It’s clear Elam identifies wholly and completely with the hero, and we are supposed to see his punch as a form of righteous justice administered to his sadistic, emasculating ex.
There are a lot of angry divorced men in the MRM – including some with several divorces in their past. The standard MRA explanation is that these men come to the Men’s Rights movement after being “raped” — their word, not mine – in divorce court, or kept apart from their children by angry exes.
But I don’t think that’s it. Many of the angriest don’t even have any children. I suspect that the rage they feel is more like the rage of Elam’s hero – a rage borne out of a deep sense of sexual humiliation and the loss of control over the women who have rejected and abandoned them.
The anger of many younger MRAs seems to have a similar psychosexual source. These are the young men who rage against “friendzoning” and wax indignant about “false rape accusations” and “yes means yes.” In their mind, women are the “gatekeepers” of sex, and this frustrates and sometimes enrages them.
On some level they feel that women are collectively depriving them of the sex that they deserve, and they feel resentful they have to, in their mind at least, jump through so many hoops to get it. Some, I suspect, think that there’s no way they can actually “get” sex without cutting a few corners, consent-wise, and resent feminists for making this harder for them.
The self-righteous rage of the rejected is a dangerous thing. It’s dangerous when it’s directed at individual women. And it’s dangerous when it’s directed at women at large.
@ pawjones
“he’s the type of man that deliberately looks for relationships where the women have as little power as possible and he himself as much as possible”
It’s not my problem if you jump to false conclusions about somebody whom you do not know.
I feel like we should put together some sort of a care package for John’s ex, including a card congratulating her for having gotten away from him.
You don’t understand the term mansplain, mister. That is all. And I thought you were exiting this site because we were giving you too much attention. What gives?
Is John a sock? He reminds me of that other dude who’s only method of argument was saying “no I didn’t” and posting a billion times. On the other hand, this dude does have a blog… Ooh look, he’s a homophobe who thinks you can cure the gay away. Wonderful.
Now to catch up on the thread so I can play around with the troll too.
I would not be at all surprised if he has told his ex, more than once, that he would leave her alone, and then just couldn’t stfu.
Ah, but can you pray the misogynistic creep away? Perhaps he should try that instead.
John, being asked to back up your claims with some real numbers, not anecdata, using an unbiased source, is not actually something that was done because we don’t care about men and boys. You STILL have not backed up your claim that women are more favored in the courts at all, with any kind of data beyond ‘well it happened to ME’. You refuse to look past yourself and your situation, and then you blame US for not caring. I’ve asked you repeatedly, and politely, to provide some kind of unbiased data on the distribution of custody, and the fact that you can’t find real data to back you up doesn’t mean we don’t care about men and boys, it means you’re fucking wrong. Full stop. But your childish, self-centered views on what happened won’t let you see that.
Seriously. Give us some unbiased data that backs up your claim, or begone with your egocentric gasbagging.
Pretty late to the party here, but way back John described the “threat” he felt his child was in as a dire peril by describing his ex as an “alienator.” And red flags spontaneously sprung out of the ground all across the land.
I think the red flags have raised children of their own by this point, to be honest.
@cassandrakitty:
Do you think red flags are patriarchal?
John hasn’t lost child custody in the divorce courts. He was never married to his ex.
What happened is this: A woman had a relationship and a child with an older man. She later became pregnant by the same man and considered terminating that pregnancy, which turned out to be non-viable. The man regarded this consideration as exactly equivalent to considering murdering his born children, and probably made this opinion clear, and further considered that as the probable genetic donor he ought to have legal rights to control the woman, and probably made this opinion clear. Later still, the woman cut off contact with the man, helped by the lack of legal ties between them, and began raising her child alone. The man called social services to claim she was abusing his child, although what he meant by this was that she was not letting him raise the child. Social services may or may not have investigated the woman; either way they were unsympathetic to the claim of abusive behaviour and did not remove the child from her custody.
The man is now engaged in legal proceedings, attempting to gain legal force for his view that raising the child without input from its biological father constitutes abuse.
Hey John, why didn’t you marry her? Was she your bit on the side? Did you think she was too young to be mother to your other kids? Was your youngest boy an accident?
If you were a politician, just having your youngest would be grounds for a scandal, and it wouldn’t be his mother at the cenre of it.
Oh. I see I made my first sacrifice to the blockquote mammoth in some time. Drat!
You think a woman is the property of a male fetus inside of her? OH, HELL NO. Please stop pretending you aren’t as misogynistic as you are homophobic. This right here gives you away completely.
That limit is zero. You are refusing to see the misogyny underpinning your “civil” teal dears. We never asked you to come here and teach us anything. Patriarchy being good and glorious is something we’ve all heard and rejected long ago.
This is a blog about mocking misogyny. It’s not a forum for respectful debate. It’s not a social justice education space. We mock misogyny. The top of the page makes that very clear. If you come here spouting MRA nonsense, expect to get mocked. If you can’t deal with it, by all means, leave.
Little did he know that his ex, despite being young did in fact know her own mind and didn’t acquiesce to his glorious patriarchal manliness. I guess the problem must be with women these days. They just don’t know their place. He reminds me of Shigeharu, the male lead in Audition. Lucky for him, his ex is probably not Asami and it was just a movie.
Hahaha! John is mansplaining mansplaining to us!
No dear, mansplaining is when a man tries to educate a woman on a subject she knows more about than him. This occurs because men are socialized to believe that they are the authority on everything and the more rational gender and because they are socialized to believe that women are inferior. This is something many men do unconsciously. An enlightened will stop doing it when it is pointed out to him. You, I’m guessing will not stop.
We’re calling you a mansplainer because you don’t know anything about feminism and you keep trying to educate us about how feminists should act. Cut it out.
He thinks he needs to teach us things.
http://media3.mic.com/ZWZmNjJiZjY4ZiMvOU54QzNDRWFqMXNHa2E5c3hXc29ELTZPRi1nPS82MHg5OjU4M3gzMzkvODQweDUzMC9zMy5hbWF6b25hd3MuY29tL3BvbGljeW1pYy1pbWFnZXMvNWQ5ZDhjMTI2M2FiZDZiYzVhZGVkOTM1ODJhOTg2MDYyZjJjNGQwOWM3Njk3MjkwNzJkMWJkOWViNmUyNzJlMS5qcGc=.jpg
*wonders why earlier comment is still awaiting moderation*
*realizes it’s probably because she recounted an insult*
Edited:
proxieme on October 28, 2014 at 8:04 am
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
MTSJR – It’s funny how they do that.
And by “funny” I mean “sad and painful.”
My husband’s father was horribly physically and verbally/emotionally abusive.
Fell off of his bike and cried?
That’s a beating while being called a crybaby f—-t.
Making too much noise?
That’s a beating.
Sister spilled some coffee?
That’s being thrown up against the wall so hard that you’re knocked out…followed by a beating.
It all culminated (honestly, perhaps mercifully) in his father taking off, popping in and out for a few years, and then disappearing completely for most of a decade.
My husband /still/ attempted to reestablish contact (several times) only to be repeatedly brushed off.
But in his dad’s eyes (according to secondary sources) my husband’s the one who’s “abandoned” him.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!! LOL!! ROFLMAO!!!!!!!! Hahahaha!! Oh, dear dog, I can’t stop laughing!!!! ::gaspschokes:: LOL!! ::gasp::
Ow. My tummy hurts, now.
@cassandrakitty
As I said on the other thread, he’s much more entertaining when you replace “masculinity” with “miso soup.” I guess we can start on that, since he’s already in the cauldron.
LET THE MISOFICATION COMMENCE!
@ DuckBunny
“What happened is this”
No. that’s not what happened.
Whoops, wrong troll.
I wonder if he realizes how creepy his avatar looks? It really is a bit “why were the lambs screaming, Clarice?”
John: Which bit did I get wrong?
@weirwoodtreehugger
I want to marry your post and have it’s babies. If it continues to be awesome it can have shared custody, if not, all the spawn are belong to me!
@ SarahRocco
“Give us some unbiased data that backs up your claim”
What “claim” are you asking me to “back up” with “unbiased data”? Have I even made the sort of quantitative “claim” that would be capable of being backed up using data? What “data” is there to back up David’s claim that the men’s rights movement is driven by “the rage of the rejected”, the claim in the headline that I am disputing?
I am asking you to back up your claim that women are more likely to get custody in all cases, including when men actually bother to ask for it. This is now at least the fourth time I’ve spelled this out for you.