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.
@sarahrocco
7. He acted like a complete jerk during the proceedings, and the judge was not favorably impressed.
Agreed, Mary. 🙂
Congrats on confirming my suspicions and throwing up some abuser red flags too. You might not be an abuser, but you sure value the same things as one.
“As a result, controllers come to see themselves as subjects who intend and decide what will happen, and to see others as objects to act upon. The controlled are seen without the fullness and complexity that define them as human beings. They have no history, no dimensions to give them depth or command the controllers’ attention or understanding except by interfering with control. When parents control small children, for example, they often act as though children aren’t full human beings, and justify punishment by saying that children can’t reason and don’t understand anything else.” – Gender Knot
“The abuser does not believe, however, that his level of authority over the children should be in any way connected to his actual level of effort or sacrifice on their behalf, or to how much knowledge he actually has about who they are or what is going on in their lives. He considers it his right to make the ultimate determination of what is good for them even if he doesn’t attend to their needs or even if he only contributes to those aspects of child care that he enjoys or that make him look like a great dad in public.” – Why Does He Do That, Bancroft
But don’t you see? That’s what we eeeeeevil feminists have been missing! If we’d only paid attention to that, he’d be one of us right now! And also, the Moon would still be made of green cheese, and there’d be cows jumping over it every hour on the hour!
I’ll send out the feminist bat signal (it’s actually shaped like a scented candle instead of a bat). We’ll call an emergency meeting and let all the feminists know they must, from now on mention John’s problem in any comment they make online. Maybe then will we finally earn his approval, something we have been striving for all these years.
In fact the British custodial court system is based 100% entirely on the health and well being of the children. The reason John did not get custody under British custody laws is because their mother was proven to be far better equipped to provide safety and security for the children. British custody law is awesome.
Therefore I posit that John’s problem is that he is an entitled portion of fecal matter and we should all flush immediately to solve his problem for him. And then he’ll be a feminist!YAY! *throws confetti*
Also, a large number of fathers who divorce or are widowed are actually far more interested in dating and finding a new woman or three to sleep with than they are spending time and money with and on their children. While providing emotional support for a woman who was finally taking her ex husband and father of her kids to court for non-payment of child support, her lawyer (a man) made no bones about the fact that so many men, no matter how much they claim to love their kids, scream and moan when it comes to paying for them. The same guys, btw, who would spend the money that they could not bear to part with for the kids on booze, lap dances and other necessary and manly entertainments.
As one of many kids in this country who were raised by a single mom, I know firsthand what it is like growing up poor and waiting every year for even a birthday card or a visit from the father and step-father who would get all gooey-eyed when they were telling me to my face how much they loved me, but would forget me as soon as they left.
At least my father had the integrity to never demand that I love and respect him.
Everything is about men. Except for violence committed by men. That couldn’t possibly be about men. You’ve got to love misogynist logic. Or not.
So, while we’re humouring John with our own personal anecdotes…
[TW: Physical abuse.]
Growing up, my dad was a classic case of – yep – toxic masculinity. He was a self-admitted narcissist who demanded authority with raised voice and raised fist; I was a “Failure” in his eyes in that I was a girl, I was “Lazy” and “Rebellious” (rather, I just couldn’t hold an interest in what he wanted me to do; I was later diagnosed with Asperger’s) and I wasn’t his biological daughter anyway, and for that, I had to be punished. His seven years of abuse left me disabled for life, with a TBI, PTSD and detached retinas (I’m legally but not totally blind). As my dad was a high-ranking member of the very small community, my school and the police looked the other way no matter how many times I gathered up the courage to report it. I finally escaped after graduating from high school and moving away for college, and I haven’t spoken to his ass since.
And according to my mum and siblings, to this day, he still insists that I alienated him.
I am so sorry he did that to you, M.
John doesn’t seem to realize that we were all kids once and we remember.
Holy mack, that is just worlds within WORLDS of wrong.
Glad you escaped him, and sad that it left you with disabling health problems.
M. oh for fuck sake. Hugs if you want them.
Since we’re sharing I’ll go in with a huge TW for oh everything.
My father is a sado sociopath. He once beat my mother, cut her clothes off with a butcher knife, and raped her in front of me while he held the knife to her throat. He molested me, beat my brother, my mother, and I brutally. I dropped an egg on the floor, he punched me until I fell down and then started kicking me while he was wearing steel toed boots. We escaped when I was ten, and when we were misandristly awarded the farm in the divorce settlement (which he had in our absence remortgaged) and went back home, my mother lit the furnace and got hit by a massive fireball when it exploded. She was covered in bandages for weeks and it took a long time for her hair to grow back. He is still, to the best of my knowledge, employed by Children and Family Services, and to this day says that my mother stole us and alienated him and that my memories are clearly false. Because he was an MRA before MRA’s existed.
Or, in other words, shut up John.
I know, right? There is not a man alive who has the moral or ethical right to either push or prevent an abortion. Yet they even go so far as to try to prevent birth control! It looks to me as if they really believe that a woman ending or preventing a pregnancy is 1) committing spermicide (as if the embryo is a little homunculus, created by only sperm) and/or 2) killing the man himself.
Whatever they believe about the embryo itself, they also seem to believe that a woman is a walking incubator, with no other reason for living, and is the property of the man who owns her. Also, and this I think goes closer to the heart of the matter, the taking of life is a male prerogative. Just as women do not have the right to defend themselves against abuse, rape and, potentially, murder by their owners, they have no right to deny DudeMaster the manifestations of HIS seed.
Hugs for M and Shaun if you would like them.
That sort of thing is exactly why I’m skeptical of John’s tale. Abusers always seem to act aggrieved.
And hugs for Shaun, for sure. That is fucking horrendous.
On a positive note about a father who was not a patriachal sort, mine was and is a really nice guy who largely tended to the domestic sphere stuff while my very career-driven mother pursued the bacon*. And that was in the 1970s. They’re both pushing 80 now, and my mother is still career driven, but she did it and does it with my father as a full-on partner.
*It has to be said, too, that their roles were natural fits for both, if for no other reason than my mother, while a great bacon pursuer, can’t fry it up to save he life, and my father, while not big on the pursuit of the means, is one heck of a fantastic bacon fryer (i.e., he’s an amazing cook and my mother is not).
Yes, you have to feel sympathy for John – not. Obviously he thinks he was a perfect partner/father, but it is not my experience that women get rid of such men without good reason very often.
@Mary, my marriage is much the same. If I had had to be the breadwinner we would have been very poor, but I was better suited temperamentally as a primary caregiver while my wife would have been bored out of her skull after a couple of months. Why anyone would think it was a good idea to force both members of a couple to perform the role each is less suited for totally escapes me.
I think what gets to me most is that John showed up here with the idea the *women are supposed to be solving all of his problems*. If that’s not entitlement I don’t know what is.
And thanks for the hugs, but I’ll be more receptive to taking them tomorrow when I am less triggered so put them in the TARDIS for me?
Ok, one more…
“If feminists talked about my son’s problem and mine on their sites, I could well be calling myself a feminist by now.”
And if weasels talked about your…oh…they did…I SEE WELL THEN GOOD DAY SIR.
Hugs to M. and Shaun. I’m really sorry you both had such shitty lives.
omg shaun weasels lol
Sooo, John…your picture of feminism has been formed by reading a treatise by Mallory Millet.
Well, I looked it up and have a few comments to make. Thank you, by the way, for including the reference. It makes it easier to have a conversation when we understand where we are all coming from. And I am truly happy for you that you can look back to you childhood with happiness.
I am almost 64 and have been a feminist since the the mid-1960’s. I have attended many consciousness raising groups in states from Maryland, Massachusetts, New York to Chicago, Illinois. Never…not even once…did any of them begin with “Why are we here today?” she asked,” or anything even remotely like it. Sounds to me as if she was attending a socialist or communist cell meeting, not a feminist one. Destroying the family has never been a feminist goal. Changing the dynamics within the family to include the full humanity and civil liberty of women was and still is. The right to choose whether or not to marry was and is.
It is reasonable and right to challenge and end patriarchy or *any* -archy that concentrates power and choice in one person, to the detriment of the other(s). To say that one person, that person almost always being the man, should control the finances and makes all major decisions for the family basically tells the world that the woman is, essentially, a child.
Never did we discuss destroying monogamy. We did discuss the right of all people to make their own decisions concerning their own bodies and sexuality. We also explored polygamy, polyandry, polyamory, celibacy (some happy couples choose that), hetero- and homosexuality, and other sexual expressions. Included in these were explorations of different kinds of families and what actually was meant when we talked about family.
Much of our time was spent talking about actual experiences, both good and bad. We talked about how to get away from mates who were abusing us and threatening our children. We talked about the economic oppression caused by inequality of pay, making it damned hard to get away when we were threatened, or support ourselves and our children if the marriage failed. We talked at great length about rape – incestuous, marital, friend/date and stranger. We cried over the fact that reporting a rape opened us up to being treated like criminals ourselves, by the police, our families, our teachers.
And we discussed education and every other aspect of modern life.
Ms. Millet admits to being tormented by her sister. If this is true, that is terribly sad. But most of
what I read sounded like pay-back, not reality. And she is a member of The David Horowitz Freedom Center, which is classified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as an extreme right-wing organization. Unfortunately, when I tried to go to the Law Center, it would not open. Of course, you can try it, if you like. http://www.splcenter.org
Jedi hugs for M & Shaun. And for all the others who didn’t want to post about their personal horror stories. Hell, hugs for everyone except the trolls. They do not deserve hugs.
After starting to read creepy troll’s first post, I have to admit I gave up really reading it and just skimmed. His totally derailment of the discussions wasn’t without use though. I wouldn’t have thought about elephants living the feminist utopia without it!