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.
This is strangely timely! In another thread, the dust up over Anita Sarkeesian using her twitter to *gasp* promote books she likes, led me to purchase and read one of those books; Gender Knot by Allan Johnson (purchased through Amazon Smile where proceeds go to my local Planned Parenthood for extra misandering).
The chapter ‘Why Patriarchy’ has a really good section (Patriarchy as a Men’s Problem) exploring the source of the system we have (namely, Patriarchy, duh) and how socialization, personal choices, and the path of least resistance (made so by our relationships to others and enforced primarily but not exclusively by men) create a feedback loop that not only produces toxic masculinity but also perpetuates it. The end result is often tragic, as everyone has pointed out.
I haven’t finished the book, but it is well worth a read. I’m learning new things, or at least getting better ways to articulate ideas. It helps make the attitudes and problems being discussed in this thread come into sharp focus.
These guys don’t seem to get that pretty girls experience their share of rejection, too. I was overweight and plain-looking until about age 16, but by the time I was in college I was very attractive. I wanted a relationship, but the guys I attracted were the frat-type guys who were only interested in hookups. Meanwhile, plenty of plainer-looking men and women had successful relationships. According to the manosphere, this is the time when I should have been able to have whatever I wanted, but it simply wasn’t the case. I’m 30 now and much more successful in relationships than I ever was in my late teens/early 20s.
And something about the “friend zone” – yes, I did have several very close guy friends who expressed an interest in me – but they didn’t make their intentions known until after we’d been friends for well over a year! It’s hard to switch gears after being friends with someone for that long, and I would venture a guess that many of these guys complaining about being “LJBF’d” haven’t even communicated their interest, and the woman may have no idea (I sure didn’t). My boyfriend made it clear he was interested in me soon after we met, and I communicated the same to him – no games! Women aren’t mind-readers!
Can someone please please please do a web comic for ‘Rage-Boner’?!
I’m picturing some ineffectual un-superhero who when his un-superpowers kick in runs off to post on Reddit.
“Oh no, I’ve been called a creep for catcalling women in the subway! Time to go bitch about women on the internet!”
As an added twist, I think “Rage-Boner” should be a deluded guy full of projection who thinks he has superpowers but everyone else can see he doesn’t.
@ Kevin K: Yeah, I’ve basically stopped watching movies. I started watching Twin Peaks on Netflix, though. I have high hopes.
The vast majority of men are born with two hands. if you feel like you are entitled to sex, the tools are right there attached to your arms.
No parent at all, neither fathers nor mothers, has any absolute, enforceable “rights” against the state, in relation to bringing up their own children, or any other aspect of their private or family lives.
I also discovered that the state routinely withholds from fathers more often from mothers, the privilege that is in the gift of the state, of being allowed to bring up one’s children. In attempting to understand how this damaging state of affairs could possible have come about, I stumbled across MRA sites that documented the “feminist” movement to smash any form of fatherhood that is anything more than powerless sperm donation, to smash marriage, and to smash the nuclear family, as aspects of “patriarchy”. I discovered, through MRA sites, the shocking extent of this feminism’s stranglehold on the popular conscientiousness and public policy, and the great harm that this movement has inflicted and is still inflicting upon little children, including (now) my own youngest son.
I cannot speak for anybody else, but my personal interest in the Men’s Rights Movement (MRM), of which I had never heard until I discovered less than two years ago that I didn’t have any rights at all myself, has nothing at all to do with any anger on my part at rejection by any woman. I am not experiencing any such anger. There is therefore zero truth in that hypothesis as far as I am concerned personally. My *only* interest in MRM, is that MRM documents the true nature, intentions and effects of modern feminism. The MRM has explained to me, as nobody else could, *why* the *state* want’s my son, and the rest of his large family, including me, to *suffer*.
The state wants to smash patriarchy, despite how unhappy that will make children. I want to defend patriarchy, because only the defence of patriarchy stands a chance of rescuing the present unhappy generation of youngsters from their miserable condition.
@samantha: I LOVE that article: clearly have mentioned it here before! I don’t even think women need a specific pass to leave “abusive” men: I think we all need the right to quit situations for whatever reasons we see fit, partly because there is a vexing tendency for people invested the the status quo to define abuse so tightly and set the standard of proof so high that it’s all but impossible for a victim to prove they “deserve” to be free… at least til they wind up in a hospital or dead. Then all of a sudden we’re like, “why did you stay with him/her so long?!” as if they are stupid.
(Personally I think anyone who thinks most people break off marriages or committed LTRs on a whim (“frivorce”) s deluding themselves. I don’t know anyone who’s initiated a major breakup and didn’t agonize about it for months or YEARS first, trying a lot of different methods to fix things on the way down. Breaking up a long-term relationship is very expensive for most people, financially, emotionally, and socially.)
Anyway, I wanted to share this article, too, which I think is pertinent and really good:
http://www.thegloss.com/2012/11/12/career/bullish-life-men-are-too-emotional-to-have-a-rational-argument-994/
Oh, good, another mens-rightser admits that the MRAs are not about equality at all, just good old tried-and-failed patriarchy. I appreciate the honesty.
Wow. At first I thought that guy was angry about something, because of the paranoid and embittered content of what he was saying, but then I noticed that he wasn’t using contractions and realized that he’s actually very logical and unemotional!
John: but your motivation is still a feeling of anger, although it is at the state instead of women, no? Or at least, you feel cheated.
Well guess what. You’ve been lied to. Going to MRA sites to learn about feminism is like going to white supremacist sites to learn about non – Caucasian races. What they spout in the manosphere is biased, bullshit, and has no roots in reality. The writers almost never provide credible sources, only twisted facts or links to more opinion pieces by their peers.
Go to a real feminist site and ask about custody for fathers and you’ll find that they are in support of the idea. Why? Because feminists want the best for children too, see men as more than sperm donors (whereas MRAs/PUAs often see women as no more than sperm recepticles) and reject the underlying Idea that women are primary caregivers which feeds back into patriarchal SAHM ideals. Not that there’s anything wrong with being a SAHM, but patriarchal rhetoric says that’s all women are good for. The same patriarchy that you say you support, yet youre upset that she got the kids.
Just this part, right here:
Did it ever occur to you that no one else was saying these things because they’re false, John?
That right there? That’s horse shit from beginning to end.
from Allman’s blog:
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xCkhE5RHy8A/U9LJeb1qnAI/AAAAAAAAUqk/Tp0zuNQoTik/s1600/well,+there+it+is.+the+stupidest+F'cking+thing+I'll+read+all+day.jpg
The state wants to smash the patriarchy so much that they haven’t even passed the Equal Rights Amendment yet. And hundreds of new abortion restrictions have passed across the US since 2010. And the supreme court has decided that if your employer is religious he tell his female employee she can’t get access to birth control coverage.
Sure, the state wants to smash the patriarchy since some bitter dude didn’t win his custody case. That just has to mean women have all the rights and men have none.
Thanks ceebarks, for reading through that stuff, cuz that’s way more stupid than I can wade through.
I’m perfectly happy never having given homophobia a serious try.
Well, damn. There was an interesting discussion about where the rage comes from. Then along comes a comment about the feminist conspiracy that makes me not much care about understanding anymore.
But I love @tedthefed’s notion about an individual default setting for negative emotions. Mine’s a sort of anxiety. It’s only recently that I’ve started to train myself to look for the item or items that are triggering that particular form of anxiety when I notice I’m not enjoying the present moment despite nothing noticeably bad going on.
Oh, they can just have Mr. Allman. My eyes just ache…
I do think this describes a common and worrying dynamic in the MRM. Of course it doesn’t explain all of it, there are men who are (at least self-reportedly) happily married and there are women supporting the MRM as well. The rejection/resentment dynamic seems like a running theme in a large segment of the MRM I’ve met though.
John, when it came to your divorce and the question of child custody, how did you approach it? Did you opt for mediation and a reasonable attempt to develop with your divorcing wife a mutually agreed upon co- or at least parallel parenting plan, or did you go in with lawyers blazing, threatening to take the children away from her so that she’d never see them again? In my personal experience, men do that kind of thing when they view a divorce as a loss of personal control, and it almost invariably backfires. Judges don’t like displays of asshole-ish behavior, and many a man has done himself no favors by thinking his ‘power’ could win the day.
Women, of course, do go in with lawyers blazing, too, with no interest in mediation — divorce can make people nasty or nastier than they normally are, there’s no denying it — but how did you and she build your lives up until that point? Did you build it on a patriarchal premise that the Little Woman stays home and is almost exclusively responsible for child rearing duties? If so, you should now be able to see how ‘the patriarchy’ can bite men in the backside; the idea that women should be the one-and-onlies who do baby/child duty gets applied in custody battles, and the person who was expected to stay at home with the children gets to keep the children with her in a primary or sole custody arrangement. That this comes as a surprise to patriarchally inclined men is kind of surprising.
Getting rid of patriarchy does not mean stamping out the nuclear family, or stamping out fathers. There are plenty of nuclear families that aren’t patriarchal families.
Wow, an MRA that actually admits that they want to keep patriarchy in place at the same time as pretending that they’re a reasonable one. Have I collected a teal deer, or is this guy not long enough?
Anyways, dude, thanks for letting us know about your disconnection from reality. Have fun with that.
That’s a lot of smashing.
Me feminist, me smash. Marriage? *smash* nucular family? *smash* men now powerless sperm muaha-ha-ha-ha
Me also smash load of bollocks that is pseudo-righteous rant! Rant now powerless sperm too.
Anyway, I wanted to share this article, too, which I think is pertinent and really good:
http://www.thegloss.com/2012/11/12/career/bullish-life-men-are-too-emotional-to-have-a-rational-argument-994/
And thank you for that! Rachel Maddow is one of my hera’s. She is bright, brave and articulate. I thoroughly enjoyed that.