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.
He searched and finally found someone who would tell him what he wanted to hear. A conspiracy theory! Danger!! Red flags flying!
We as a society teach this stuff and then of course blame the kids for what they learn.
The adults require attendance at pep rallies for the elite athletes and then pretend the kids are all on the same team. No they aren’t. Most of them are not on the team at all.
They teach that discipline is punishment. That is a terrible thing to do, generation after generation. Some kids figure out for themselves that discipline is actually making a choice, considering and accepting the consequences of that choice.
It was right after Columbine when I saw adults, parents, talking about it on the teevee and realized these people were saying discipline when they meant punishment.
That is what school shooters do. They dish out punishment. That is what the MRA advocates.
And I want to smash it, too. You know why, John? Because patriarchy – which is rule by the father – is the primary force behind war, poverty and so many forms of injustice. Not the least of which, by the way, is slavery and the control of women.
I have been happily married with my husband for 43 years. We have four kids and four grandkids. Thirty three years ago we decided to end our marriage. We did separate and, like the majority of people who really love their kids, we chose to allow the kids to be with whichever of us they wanted, when they wanted. We ended up back together again and the kids were happy. But NEVER would EITHER of us have tried to take the kids away from the other. Nor would either of us refuse to pay child support while the other had the living with him or her.
Neither patriarchy nor matriarchy are healthy choices. We MUST evolve a new, truly free and loving way of living our lives. But…if I HAD to choose one…I would choose matriarchy.
” patriarchy – which is rule by the father – is the primary force behind war, poverty and so many forms of injustice. Not the least of which, by the way, is slavery and the control of women”
I beg to differ.
Hi everyone! I’v been gone for several days in New Mexico to see my brother, his wife, and my two nephews. They are so cute! I got to go trick n treating with them. One dressed like a lion and the other dressed like a fireman.
So what did I miss? ::reads::
https://www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/2014/10/21/gamergate-in-35-seconds/
Lol funny!
https://www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/2014/10/21/the-first-sarkeesian-effect-teaser-trailer-is-a-masterpiece-of-experimental-film-some-notes-from-a-big-fan/
I was too nervous to watch it.
https://www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/2014/10/21/these-mens-rights-activists-get-off-literally-by-fantasizing-about-sexually-humiliating-feminists/
Mras and gamergate are being violent rapists. Nothing new.
https://www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/2014/10/22/teacher-dont-be-a-creep-embrace-women-in-gaming-gamergaters-welcome-to-the-house-of-pain/
The c-word and treating women like people! Oh the horror!
https://www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/2014/10/22/gamergater-declares-the-only-harassers-are-anti-ggers-then-sexually-harasses-an-anti-gamergate-woman/
Oh dear lord it’s another JB
https://www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/2014/10/23/a-voice-for-men-has-set-up-a-phony-white-ribbon-website-to-coopt-the-international-anti-violence-campaign-of-that-name/
A Voice for misoygnists are really asking to be sued/put in jail aren’t they? And *Squeee* on elvis presley! But I prefer Dean Z and Joesph Hall and of course the real one!
http://www.beliefnet.com/columnists/news/files/2011/11/Elvis-Presley.jpg
Anita talking about misogny and the Misognists, being the morons that they are, are proving her right. Nothing new.
“Nice Guys” and paul freaking me out with his pop out eyes. So far nothing really new
One of the interesting things I’m learning in law school is how to argue. One of the methods we learn and apply to closing arguments is the Toulmin method of reasoning. When one uses the Toulmin method, you present claims of fact and claims of value to back up your thesis.
The problem with trying to use any method of reasoning with MRAs is that it can’t be done. Their facts aren’t reality, and their values are so far off the mark that common ground can’t be found.
You can’t reason with people who want you dead or in chains. That’s why I don’t engage with MRAs. I just laugh at them until they slink away to whine on reddit.
John, a few things:
1. Please back up your claim that the state withholds children from fathers more than mothers when fathers ask to share custody. Also I’d suggest you find out real numbers from an unbiased source on: how many fathers ask to share custody and the percentage of divorcing couples that agree to joint custody without interference from the court system.
2. Please share documentation from an unbiased source that shows how feminism has acted to “smash any form of fatherhood that is anything more than powerless sperm donation, to smash marriage, and to smash the nuclear family”.
3. Please explain why you think smashing patriarchy makes children unhappy.
Note: unbiased sources do not include sources from the MRM.
@ John Allman – then differ! Give us a counter-argument, man! Don’t just say that you think she’s wrong and expect us to just agree. Is that how things work in your regular life?
I think John prob. left the bldg. already; his comment sounded like something “hit&run” posters say. Btw, David, love this site; keep up the good work!
I am surprised that david hasn’t done a review of Warren Farrell’s Myth of male power’s KINDLE edition which was this year, in 2014 and has around 200 more pages!
*released this year
I don’t think it’s rejection per se. Everyone gets rejected. I think the root of misogynist and racist rage and violence are the same: the misogynist/racist doesn’t feel the beings he considers “lesser” than him are being sufficiently obedient or submissive to him and therefore they must be put back under control (or made an example of, to terrorize others into submission). Rejection is just one way a woman is being disobedient.
This study found father’s get either full or joint custody 70% of the time when they ask for it
So, no, men aren’t being denied custody by “feminists.”
@John Allman
The majority of US custody cases don’t even reach courts, meaning fathers gladly minimize their future contact with their children out of their own free will.
Plus why’d the MRAs be mad about that in the first place? Folks who put paper abortions on top of their agenda don’t exactly sound like they’re crazy about getting custody.
Borked the link:
http://amptoons.com/blog/files/Massachusetts_Gender_Bias_Study.htm
So much THIS. I used to kind of envy Pamela Anderson when she first became famous. Man, I thought — how great it must be to just get “discovered” by a modelling scout on the jumbotron at a hockey game, and to have all those guys at your feet without hardly lifting a finger. LUCKY DUCK! But then she wound up dating and marrying all these absolute douchebags, and I began to feel bad for her. I thought, damn — she can do so much better than these guys, so why is she always gravitating to them? (And all that plastic surgery that did nothing to improve an already lovely face and figure, to boot…she didn’t need that!)
Then, just recently, she came out with the revelation that made it all make sense. She’d been molested by a babysitter when she was very young, and raped by her boyfriend’s buddies as a teenager. That explained all the d-bags. Yes, she was pretty, and popular, and no doubt made a ton of money just for being that. But there was also a painful pattern in her life that no one else knew about. She “gravitated” to d-bags because that was all she knew from an early age. It made her insecure and possibly-probably body-dysmorphic. And as you say, she had a shitty life and it hurt her so badly. I stopped envying and just felt so, so sad for her.
And at the same time, I realized that she was doing whatever it took to feel good about herself, away from all this unhealthy male attention she just seemed to attract like a lodestone. She became an activist for her own inner satisfaction. She loves animals because they never hurt her or demanded anything of her; they just accept and love her as she is. Humans let her down at every step of the way, but critters didn’t. So she’s moving out of the shadow of being-defined-by-men-and-what-they-do-to-one. It was a powerful lesson in self-esteem and all the places it DOESN’T come from.
I don’t think that it is helpful for others (for example Mary at 3:09 pm today) to engage in speculation as to what my circumstances are.
I cannot tell you what other people’s motivations are, only my own.
I would not describe myself as an MRA. If others *interpret* my activism (about a range of different topics) as MRA, then that is up to them.
My only reason for having discovered MRA sites at all, late in life, was nothing to do with the anger of rejection, or any anger at all. My reason was the onset of circumstances when something had gone very badly wrong in my own family life that threatened, and still threatens, the welfare of my youngest child, who is only four.
I sought help from the public sector as soon as I discerned the severity of the threat, in order to get help protecting my little boy, whom I regard as being in serious peril, because his mother is behaving as a classic alienator. I learnt about alienation when it happened to me, and not by reading about it on MRA sites.
It is my honest belief that, as a father from whom the alienating mother was seeking to alienate the child, I received an entirely different and inferior “service” from that *typically* received by mothers from whom alienating fathers are trying to alienate their children. (Alienation is not gendered in its prevalence, but the *detection* and *prevention* of this serious behavioural problem that affects millions of children *is* (in my experience) highly gendered.
I don’t blame my ex for that gender bias in public sector child safeguarding that detects and thwarts fathers who try to alienate children from mothers more readily than vice versa. I don’t think that she can help herself from being an alienator, and it is alas predictable that any alienator will exploit gender bias (or anything else) to get his or her own way.
I do blame professionals with conspicuous gender bias, for allowing themselves to be deceived by an alienating mothers more easily than they would allow themselves to be deceived by an alienating father.
Rightly or wrongly, I attribute that gender bias to the permeation of attitudes documented by MRAs, using real quotes. The MRAs document, accurately so far as I can tell, that the attitudes that lead to public sector gender bias in child safeguarding are peddled by those whom the MRAs denounce as “feminists”, whom they regard as misguided – all of them – not making a distinction between nice feminists and nasty feminists, as I have been encouraged here to do, and might do, if I cared about gender politics per se, rather than caring about children. There cannot be any doubt that feminism has a dark side. (Citation needed? Make my day!) Neither MRAs, nor feminists from the light side, if feminism has a light side that MRAs don’t talk about, are in a position to help me to save my son.
I discovered this site, by the way, because I was looking for criticism of Manhood Initiative, in case it wasn’t going to be a good source of help for me. Another post on this site does happen to criticise Manhood Initiative.
I would be grateful if any comments about the content of my blog, on unrelated topics, could be posted on my blog, rather than here. I do not moderate severely or unfairly.
My comment here is very simple. I am not angry. I discovered MRA sites, because I had a problem that MRA sites talk about enough to come up on web searches, which feminist sites do not talk about. If feminists talked about my son’s problem and mine on their sites, I could well be calling myself a feminist by now. But, if the nice feminists, from the light sight, do already talk about gender bias against fathers within child safeguarding (as something bad, rather than as another a source of male tears in which to bathe), they need to buy some search engine optimisation if they want fathers in my position to find out how much they care about us, and our alienated children.
“My comment here is very simple. I am not angry. I discovered MRA sites, because I had a problem that MRA sites talk about enough to come up on web searches, which feminist sites do not talk about. If feminists talked about my son’s problem and mine on their sites, I could well be calling myself a feminist by now. But, if the nice feminists, from the light sight, do already talk about gender bias against fathers within child safeguarding (as something bad, rather than as another a source of male tears in which to bathe), they need to buy some search engine optimisation if they want fathers in my position to find out how much they care about us, and our alienated children.”
I’m sure it’s possible for someone to come off as more self-centered than this, but it’s hard for me to imagine how.
Also again, dude, writing like Data the Android does not effectively make you seem like you’re not angry, especially when you’re talking about how screwed over you are. People see through that shit pretty easily.
tl;dr – The MRM confirms all the awful things I think about my ex-partner so they must be right! Also I am completely uninterested in gender politics except inasmuch as feminists are to blame for everything bad, like the MRM says. Also feminism working to abolish the “women = primary child-raisers, men = breadwinners” social norm is completely irrelevant to my problems with custody.
@ Kakanian
“… majority of US custody cases … paper abortions …”
I live in the UK. We don’t have “custody” here. I don’t know what a “paper abortion” is.
I believe in equality. Obviously that means that I am against abortion.
Maybe I shouldn’t have come here. Maybe I shouldn’t have subscribed to this blog. People seem to want to argue with me about topics I know little or nothing about, assuming that they can make correct guesses about my circumstances and attitudes. I even sense that some might be angry with me, for having visited MRA sites, despite the fact that I am not angry myself.
Uh huh. Is this the way you treat women who question your version of reality? Not even an unbiased source to link to?
No wonder you love patriarchy. No man should ever have to explain himself to a woman, right? We should just nod our wittle heads and agree that we are wrong, you are right.
Bleahhh!
@John Allman
Anecdata is all you have?
I am genuinely interested: what is your activism? MRA “activism” is almost entirely limited to making posts on the Internet and asking for money for those posts. That’s not what the term “activism” normally means. If you are actually going out and providing material assistance to fathers who need legal aid, you’re already a couple of light years beyond any MRA of my knowledge.
Honest beliefs can be wrong, especially when based on anecdata.
If all you have to go on is your own experience, you need to be pasting this onto every statement you make, and not issuing pronouncements as though they were settled fact.
Such as this, for example. You cannot make a universal statement of this type if you have no information to go on except your own experience.
Personal experience is important. Personal experience is powerful. But it’s not the same as universal truth.
Despite what MRAs would prefer, feminism is not all things for all people, and is not a universal force that attacks equally every form of injustice. It’s not actually the obligation of feminism to go out and advocate for fathers’ rights, and only an MRA would complain that women aren’t setting aside their own problems to work on mens’ problems all the time.
What feminism does do is attack the social pressures that force women into an exclusively caregiving role, which courts do take into consideration when couples split up and custody is contested. Who is the primary caregiver? That person is going to be favored for primary physical custody (although you’ve already been given a link that shows that men usually get custody when they bother to ask for it). Changing social roles so that men and women provide equal caregiving time and effort would redress most problems you might see in this area.
lol, there is no freakin’ way anyone who thinks patriarchy and homophobia are both super neato would be a feminist, if only feminist bloggers talked “less about what is interesting to them and more about… the attitudes of social workers towards people in my very particular set of circumstances that I am not very specific about.”
Also, just FYI … this is extraordinarily offensive.
I assume you meant “light side” here. You don’t get to decide who is a good feminist and who is a bad one. That is not a judgment that you are qualified to make, nor do you have the authority to make it.
Clearly you think it’s perfectly fine to accept the MRA definition of feminism and there is no need to consult feminists themselves on anything, which says a whole lot about your gender assumptions (namely that men get to say what women are and what women say isn’t important). If you have any desire at all to understand feminism, you first need to give up your presumption that dudes (including yourself) are automatically authorities on everything.
Also, John, I’m curious what you think of the pervasive, detrimental, and blatantly obvious anger and hatred that is so endemic to the MRM.
@ Seraph3477
“Give us a counter-argument”
I replied to a bare assertion. If I had been replying to an argument, I might have used a counter-argument, or at least a refutation of the argument advanced in support of the proposition that the argument purported to prove.