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.
Actually feminists talk about alienation quite often. Not so much in public blogs as in the abuse forums. That would be a better place for you to go to get the assistance you so obviously need.
Many men are shocked to discover that when their children no longer have to answer to them at the end of every day they want as little to do with them as possible. You may call that alienation if you wish but the dads are the ones who did the alienating.
Ten bucks says that by “Nice feminists,” Not Allmen means Christina Hoff Summers and JB.
He thinks being for equality is being against abortion? Sorry, you are not qualified to judge that unless you are a uterus-haver.
That got creepy fast, eh?
John, I can certainly understand a frustration with speculations, having been on the receiving end of some rather imaginative speculations-presented-as-fact built upon incomplete information, myself, but MRA sites do not reasonably address issues of child custody, generally speaking, much less feminism. And while people doing nasty things to each other in divorce via children is not particularly gendered, the nature of the relationship prior to divorce is likely to be reflected in what happens during the divorce. I find it highly unlikely that you suddenly ‘discovered’ the beauties of patriarchy when you discovered the manosphere echo chamber. It resonated with you, because you were already there.
It might prove very useful to you to question the patriarchal assumptions that were in play during your marriage that might have contributed to your wife’s objection to your participation in post-divorce childrearing, as well as how you might have behaved during the divorce proceedings that led a court to make the ruling it did. These responses and decisions don’t happen in a vacuum or just because you have hangy-downies. I’m not saying that there don’t exist people who subtly or not-so-subtly do things to “alienate” their children from the other parent — my own husband experienced that to a subtle degree for a while there with his ex-wife, and that was even with full 50/50 joint custody and a decree telling both parents to refrain from that behavior — but more often than not, it’s either the “alienated” parent doing something that makes him or her vulnerable to being alienated (e.g. acting like a jerk), or it’s the kid taking it upon him or herself to pass judgement on one parent or the other without any prodding. Why would a kid do that? Because he or she is pissed off about the divorce, and blaming it on Parent X is more tolerable than blaming it on him or herself (which kids sometimes very erroneously do).
No one here can definitively say what has been going on in your case, but the fact that you embrace the paranoid-conspiracy-theory, misogynistic rhetoric of MRA sites — whether you call yourself an MRA or not — does suggest that you may not be as absolutely the innocent and blameless victim that you seem to think you are.
Has anyone or any group attempted to find out if the shooter was reading MRA material, especially A Voice for Men? If so, the bane of feminism – Paul Elam – will be shut down. Finally.
Not that I know of, nor do I think that would be particularly interesting information either way.
Um. Um. This is fractally wrong.
Lol I wouldn’t call Paul Elam the bane of feminism. Mostly like a long-running joke that was never funny to begin with.
Oh wow. This guy is like a case study in the impact/legacy of living totally and unquestionably steeped in patriarchy.
“In some ways, “not getting it” is part of privilege – the “luxury of obliviousness.” It is also an effective way to defend privilege, a kind of dead-weight passive oppression that leaves to women the hard work of consciousness and understanding. No matter how much energy women expend to get men to “get it”, it won’t amount to much unless men want it to, which, most of the time, judging from their behavior, they don’t.” – Gender Knot, Allan Johnson.
Hey! I agree! Don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out. Or do. Whatever.
@ Policy of Madness
“you think it’s perfectly fine to accept the MRA definition of feminism and there is no need to consult feminists themselves on anything”
No I don’t. (Yes, I did mean the “light side” of feminism. Thank your for spotting my typo.)
What do I do? I am involved in McKenzie Friend/paralegal advice and litigation, amongst other things.
“give up your presumption that dudes (including yourself) are automatically authorities on everything”
I find that cheap, because it is untrue, baseless, ad hominem, provocative, and mere point-scoring. I cannot think of *anything* that I am an “authority” on, actually. But that doesn’t mean that I know nothing at all, about anything, either.
I am finding it hard to work out what it is that I have said with which anybody *could* disagree, because I have mainly talked only about why I started to read a few MRA sites myself this year, for the first time in my life, explaining that MY reasons have nothing to do with “the rage of rejection”. I would not presume to try to explain what other people’s reasons are, for their reading MRA sites, or even running them. I do not think that David Futrelle has attempted to prove anything that even *could* be proved, namely that the Men’s Rights Movement was “driven” (either entirely, or mainly, or even largely) by the rage of the rejected. What I have proved (by citing myself as a counter-example) is that the rage of the rejected isn’t the ONLY driving force behind the MRM. I even donated £10 to J4MB once, helping the MRM to stay in business, albeit ever so slightly. I did not do so because I had the rage of the rejected myself. If that isn’t useful to a discussion of David’s proposition, please feel free to ignore it. But nobody can contradict me.
The rage of the rejected may be one factor in driving the MRM. I came here to tell you, as a matter of provable fact, that the rage of the rejected is not the only factor driving the MRM. I am open to good arguments that a real *need* for an MRM isn’t after all one of the factors driving the MRM, and that I therefore wasted my £10, which did harm, not good.
@ Sarahrocco
“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.”
I disapprove of that anger and hatred, of course. They are, as you say, “detrimental”. I am suffering from MRM fatigue myself. However, it is fair to say that I have not yet found like-minded people here, either.
Really. Then do explain the reference to good/bad feminists (or light/dark feminists, pick your model). How are you able to label some feminists as belonging to the “light side” if you acknowledge that you are not an authority on this at all? Where did that statement originate?
Good! You don’t belong with MRAs. They can only drag you down. They do nothing but post screeds on the Internet and blame women for all of life’s problems.
And take your money. They will happily take money from you, a person who takes concrete action, and do nothing concrete at all with it.
Personally I think the main drive behind MRAs is their massive sense of unwarranted entitlement. This is the underlying force beneath the “rage of the rejected,” because why would anyone feel rage at being rejected (as opposed to sad or disappointed)? Only an person who believes that they are entitled to acceptance will react to rejection with rage.
The context of this article is a school shooting. Maybe you missed that, being in the UK and maybe not closely reading the article. “Rage” was very much the motivation of the shooter, insofar as his motivation can be determined after the fact.
I’m glad that you see the hatred and anger exist! So many associated or defensive of the MRM do not.
Did you do any of the research we’ve suggested regarding the statistics of which parent tends to get custody in a divorce? And I am curious, what do you do for men’s activism in your neck of the woods? I’m not terribly familiar with the specific concerns of men in the UK (though I imagine they are similar to the concerns of men where I’m from, which is another predominantly white, predominantly middle-class society).
Seriously, Johnny, you’re here, on a post about mass shooters and the sense of enraged and aggrieved entitlement that drives them and how a lot of men in the MRM also display this sense of enraged and aggrieved entitlement – and you’re talking about how your ex-wife and the courts are screwing you over.
People give me shit about this all the time, but I blame porn. Yes, seriously. Young men nowadays have been practically breastfed porn, 99% of which is male dominated, 99% of which is humiliating to women (even the stuff that isn’t “humiliation fetish” porn), 99% of which, a guy just shows up in a place and women instantly jump on his cock. They think this is how women really are. They think this is what life is.
Despite the popular misconception, not all women can get laid whenever they want. I am living proof. I have NEVER been treated terribly well by any man in a romantic situation. I’ve been dumped, insulted, rejected, laughed at, told I”m too ugly to love, told I’m too fat to love, told all kinds of nasty, horrible things………and yet, I’ve never written a manifesto, shot a bunch of people, started a man-hate blog, or encouraged women to abuse men…..because I was never taught it was ok to abuse men. Boys are taught from the time they can use a computer(which is what…3 years old these days?) that women are objects for them to use and dispose of as they see fit…all thanks to the proliferation of porn.
OK, John. You come here saying that you strongly approve of patriarchy. I will give you the benefit of the doubt that you might not understand what patriarchy is. It is a system where men have more or less absolute authority over women and children. If you did understand that, then we understand why your ex probably doesn’t want you infecting your son with this disease, because men who suffer from it are doomed to bad relationships and unhappy lives.
You also come here spouting the sort of deranged anti-feminist version of feminism that is common among the MRA/MRM. You obviously have no idea what feminism is, and youi have clearly been getting your opinions from people who are consumed with hatred of women in general and feminists in particular.
Yes, you certainly came to the wrong place for garbage like that.
I agree, GrumpyOldMan. This is only the place for you if you’re willing to learn, John – and to learn by doing your own research. No one here is going to hold your hand and teach you Feminism 101.
We’ve learned that John works as a legal aid (a McKenzie friend is like a doula but for court procedures). At this point my working theory is that he is suffering from an unidentified selection bias – he encounters men who are having legal trouble in their divorces, and assumes that all men have these troubles because men who don’t have these troubles don’t call on him. It’s the same problem my mom has when she assumes that all poor people are scamming welfare, because those are the sorts that appear on Judge Judy and she doesn’t comprehend that this isn’t a representative sample.
@ Mary
“you embrace the paranoid-conspiracy-theory, misogynistic rhetoric of MRA sites”
What makes you think I do anything of the kind?
“I find it highly unlikely that you suddenly ‘discovered’ the beauties of patriarchy when you discovered the manosphere echo chamber. It resonated with you, because you were already there.”
You are right.
My childhood was idyllic. I spend a lot of time remembering it now that I am 61, and especially remembering my father, and my precious relationship with him as a child. I have three sisters and two brothers, making me one of six siblings. I have lost count of my nephews and nieces. I have five children of my own, three women, one man and one still a boy, and eight grandchildren, five girls, two boys and one don’t know yet. My parents were married for over fifty years. There was nothing dysfunctional about my family.
On my father’s 80th birthday, my mother organised a surprise birthday party for him. He made an impromptu speech, in which my mother was the star of the show. He talked almost the whole time about meeting her, falling in love with her, during the war (World War 2) and their happiness together. He marveled at the sheer number of people at the party who were his and my mother’s offspring, or spouses of the same, about 47 out the 50 or so present, including their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
I remember calling my father a “patriarch” often in jest and with fondness, from childhood onwards, until his death in 1999. It was a term of affection.
During my lifetime, relations between men and women seem, to me, to have deteriorated, to the point that one’s chances of living the glorious life my father and mother led, that brought so much happiness to so many new people, is nowadays very slim. My large family is disgusted that the youngest half-brother has such an impoverished life, at four years old, and that none of his siblings, nephews and nieces have any contact with him at all, and nor do I. He is like a prisoner of his controlling mother.
When I was eleven years old, I knew that how I earned my living was secondary. What I wanted most out of life was to be what I meant by the word “patriarch”, when I called my dad my “patriarch”, humorously and affectionately.
So, yes, my concept of what the words “patriarchy”, “marriage” and “the family” mean, is indeed something beautiful. I cannot think for the life of me why anybody of good will would want to destroy something as beautiful as patriarchy, marriage, or the family.
Contrast feminist writer Kate Millet. It might help you to know what HER agenda was. I learnt this myself not from an MRA site, but by an article drawn to my attention by J4MB, written by her own sister, Mallory Millet. You can read Mallory’s whistle-blowing on the conspiracy that she herself once went along with, long before there was any internet or MRM, here:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/mallorymillett/marxist-feminisms-ruined-lives/
I quote a key passage from Mallory Millet’s article:
66
It was 1969. Kate invited me to join her for a gathering at the home of her friend, Lila Karp. They called the assemblage a “consciousness-raising-group,” a typical communist exercise, something practiced in Maoist China. We gathered at a large table as the chairperson opened the meeting with a back-and-forth recitation, like a Litany, a type of prayer done in Catholic Church. But now it was Marxism, the Church of the Left, mimicking religious practice:
“Why are we here today?” she asked.
“To make revolution,” they answered.
“What kind of revolution?” she replied.
“The Cultural Revolution,” they chanted.
“And how do we make Cultural Revolution?” she demanded.
“By destroying the American family!” they answered.
“How do we destroy the family?” she came back.
“By destroying the American Patriarch,” they cried exuberantly.
“And how do we destroy the American Patriarch?” she replied.
“By taking away his power!”
“How do we do that?”
“By destroying monogamy!” they shouted.
“How can we destroy monogamy?”
Their answer left me dumbstruck, breathless, disbelieving my ears. Was I on planet earth? Who were these people?
“By promoting promiscuity, eroticism, prostitution and homosexuality!” they resounded.
They proceeded with a long discussion on how to advance these goals by establishing The National Organization of Women. It was clear they desired nothing less than the utter deconstruction of Western society. The upshot was that the only way to do this was “to invade every American institution. Every one must be permeated with ‘The Revolution’”: The media, the educational system, universities, high schools, K-12, school boards, etc.; then, the judiciary, the legislatures, the executive branches and even the library system.
99
This conspiracy, hatched in 1969, is documented here, from the horse’s moth, so-to-speak. This is not the figment of the imagination of a young MRA of the 21st century, motivated by “the rage of the rejected”. This is history. My son is living in the hell-on-earth that Kate Millet and others have created for him.
I have no “privilege”. I have never had any “privilege”. Nowadays, not one single member of my son’s family has any right to speak to him, except his mother, whom I loved and to whom I entrusted my seed in good faith, never suspecting for one moment that the whole of officialdom would conspire to deprive him of his entire extended family, of every relative he has (including his mother’s side of his family, apart from his maternal grandmother and his socially isolated mother, to whom I was not married, and whom I was foolish to trust. She is an alienator. He is alienated. That is what “smash the patriarchy” means to me, my son’s suffering, his blighted future.
There are millions of children as deprived as my youngest son. I have wept for him until I have no more tears left.
Forget feminism. Forget MRA. A plague on both houses. How am I going to rescue my son? Who will defend the right of the child, to which lip service is paid in Purpose 6 of the UN Declaration on the Rights of the Child, to be brought up by *both* his parents? Feminists won’t. They oppose equal parenting. MRAs would, but cannot, because they don’t have the ear of government the way feminists do. I will be dead before long. When my youngest son is my age, he won’t have the same find memories of me that I have of my father. He will die never having known his family, apart from his mother. What sort of life is that?
The rage of the rejected doesn’t enter into the equation, as regards my seeking for *somebody* who could explain what had happened to society. In the end, it was Mallory Millet whose explanation, as a whistle-blower on the very conspiracy in which she collaborated in her youth, who gave me the explanation that makes the most sense.
Creepy d00d is very very creepy. The skin is crawling right off my body.
Mallory Millett is well-known for her envy of and hatred for her famous sister.
I can see why you would want to have your father’s life. I really must have been beautiful. Your mother’s life — maybe no quite so much.
Have you ever asked yourself whether your ex’s attitude might be partly or mostly your fault? that’s certainly the vibe I get. “entrusted my seed” – wow, just wow.
Forget feminism, but feminists oppose equal parenting?
No, feminism does not, and has not ever. That is why people are saying that you’re swalling the MRA lines.
The first book I read on feminism when I was in my very early twenties is titled Revolution from Within by Gloria Steinem. Get that book and give it a chance. Feminists have always supported the onus of parenting be taken off the woman and applied more equally for OBVIOUS reasons. (yes, I need my all caps word).
Yep, patriarchy is super-awesome for the patriarch. Less so for the folks who are forced to depend upon the patriarch’s good will and skill as a provider. Patriarchy supports patriarchs who beat and terrorize their wives and children just as much as it supports ones who engage in benevolent sexism. It supports men who choose to be drunk layabouts just as much as men who work for their families. But it does not support women who try to get away from these men and make their own lives. It reserves well-paying jobs for “family men” and shuffles women to support positions.
Ever notice that the phrase “family woman” doesn’t seem to exist? This is because women are presumed by the language to be “family women.” That’s just their normal role. “Family men” are distinguished from other types of men and given special adulation. Women who support families are just doing what is expected. The basic minimum requirements are far higher for women than they are for men. This is patriarchy: where women who take care of families are only doing what is expected of them, whereas men who take care of families get special praise. Great if you are a man. Not so much if you are a woman.
Let’s talk about benevolent sexism.
Benevolent sexism forces men and women into restrictive gender roles. Men are breadwinners, and women are caregivers. What about women who don’t want to be caregivers? What about women who want to be engineers? Patriarchy does not support that, and will punish a woman who chooses not to have a family so that she can focus on her career. A man who focuses on his career is just doing a normal thing – he doesn’t get the special praise of being called a “family man,” but he isn’t punished either. Women are punished and called selfish if they don’t want children.
What about men who don’t want to be breadwinners? What about men who would prefer to stay at home and take care of their children? Patriarchy doesn’t support that, and will punish a man who chooses to quit his job and be a stay-at-home-dad. He’ll be called a lot of names (most of them synonyms for “woman,” because in patriarchy being like a woman is the most terrible thing ever).
The short version is that patriarchy is great if you are a man, and if you happen to both want to be a breadwinner and are skilled at this. That’s what you are saying you support: restrictive gender roles that tell people that if they don’t happen to fit the mold, they need to be unhappy their entire lives and society is going to do it’s damnest to make them unhappy until they conform.
You want to make people unhappy. You want women and children to be unable to escape abusive men. You want women to be shoehorned into caregiving roles regardless of whether they want to do this or are any good at it. You want men to be shoehorned into breadwinning roles, and punished if they aren’t good enough at this.
This is you. Pro-unhappiness. Look at your life and think about this.
Aha! John is a conspiracy theorist. I just saw that. He lives in daily terror of the ebil females who belong to the Daughters of the Feminist High Command.
John, you DO know that things don’t work that way in real life? This vast all-powerful conspiracy can’t keep many states of the US from taking away their hard-worn reproductive rights.
John, you seem totally unwilling to look past yourself and your circumstances, and you admit that this apocryphal story you found on a website that admits to being completely biased is where you got your interpretation of feminism from, rather than from extensive research on the movement. Have you ever heard of confirmation bias, John? Might interest you, as you seem to be mired in it.
Whenever someone refers to a real-life, alive person as a “patriarch,” I remember the story of Judah and Tamar in Genesis 38. Judah, the patriarch, slept with his daughter-in-law without knowing it was her, then when she turned up pregnant, knowing that she wasn’t married but not knowing that this was his kid, he decided to have her burned alive. He only changed his mind when she proved that the kid was his.
That’s patriarchy: where the patriarch can sleep around without repercussion, but if a woman does the same thing she gets burned alive.