[CONTENT WARNING: Misogynistic violence, rape apologia]
His complaint was a familiar one:
I think every girl is a type of slut, they are fussy with men nowadays, they do not give boys like us a chance.
You can find nearly identical laments in the profiles of self-described “nice guys” on OkCupid, on Men’s Rights blogs, and on forums for self-described “Incels” comisserating about their “involuntary celibacy” and what they see as the shallowness of young women.
But these words actually come from a video filmed by Ben Moynihan, a British teenager who was convicted of attempted murder earlier this week after stabbing three women in an attempt to take a sort of revenge upon the “weaker” gender he felt had made his life miserable by denying him sex. Another young man trying to punish women with violence for the “crime” of not dating him.
“I am still a virgin,” he wrote in one note. “Everyone is losing it before me, that’s why you are my chosen target.” In another note, he declared that “all women needs to die and hopefully next time I can gauge [sic] their eyes out.”
Moynihan’s twisted logic is of course eerily similar to that of Elliot Rodger, who went on a shooting spree in Isla Vista last spring in an attempt to “punish” women for their lack of interest in dating him, which he declared to be “a crime that can never be forgiven.”
Thankfully, Moynihan, unlike Rodger, was captured by police before he actually succeeded in killing anyone.
Not so thankfully, both of these men have their fans, including some amongst the usual suspects I write about on this blog. On the incel hangout slutHATE – the successor to PUAhate, on which Elliot Rodger was an occasional commenter – both Rodger and Moynihan have become heroes of a sort to some of the more bitter commenters. Or at least the source of much amusement.
In response to news about Moynihan’s trial, one slutHATEr posted a thread asking “Okay, which one of you did this?” “A new supreme gentleman rises,” wrote another in a different thread devoted to the would-be killer.
A third commenter, going by the name Homesick Alien, asked the question “Are Females days numbered?” listing an assortment of incels who’d killed “females” in an act of twisted “revenge” for their lackluster or nonexistent dating lives. In the comments, Homesick Alien chillingly wrote that
I’m sure someone somehow is rightfully very rageful currently planning the next shooting spree . We can only hope it’ll be more elaborate. Female entitlement is off the charts now, they are out of control,. It’s about time they are put in their fucking place.
Another posted a link to Rodger’s 150-page manifesto, suggesting that “it has the potential to motivate incels to damage the females.”
In a thread from several months ago, a slutHATEr calling himselt NewGenious119 went after fellow incels for not supporting shooting sprees enthusiastically enough.
Seriously, is there something mentally wrong with you? Thinking that a school full of sluts and frat stars getting slain by an incel is a bad thing is characteristic of a normalfag mindset. Our ONLY hope for ever getting to fuck multiple hot sluts is if there are enough incels in the western world who snap and cause bloodshed. It’s the only way that sluts and alphas will realize and accept that there are serious consequences for allowing so many males to live their lives in misery.
Emphasis mine.
As it turned out, there was no need for him to worry that other incels didn’t support spree killngs aimed at “sluts,” as assorted commenters soon let him know.
The rogue MRA and American-Women-Boycotter who calls himself John Rambo seconded his sentiment, writing
I wouldn’t do one myself. But I wouldn’t prevent one from happening if I knew it would as long as I wouldn’t die or a girl that willing to fuck me would. …
Honestly, I truly have very little sympathy for the victims.
A commenter calling himself Worthless Trash only had one complaint: that the death tolls weren’t higher.
I just wish these guys would make better plans and kill their targets and more of them, but sadly most of them have a weakened will-power after all the years of rejections and maybe bullying.
Also i don’t care if it will solve the problem or not, i just feel better hearing this, it’s like divine justice, they feel so superior but in the end they die like worms, just like they treat other guys, like worms, so in the end we are all equal.
Still others offered their assent:
I personally rejoice whenever I hear news of a school shooting.
The higher the death count, the better
i like their kill count high, because it’s always satisfying seeing someone arrogant going from rich to poor, beautiful too ugly from popular to dead
While a few commenters spoke out against the idea of mass murder as a reasonable response to a lack of dates, they were in the distinct minority.
And then there was this guy:
i support ERism [Elliot Rodgerism], but I would never do it myself, my brother is a doctor and his career would be ruined if our family name ever got tarnished
It would be a little easier to dismiss all this as merely internet dumbassery, were it not for the fact that Rodger went out and killed 6 people after posting similar comments on the message board that later became slutHATE.
While commenters like these are a distinct minority even in the sordid world of the manosphere, the sad and scary fact is that there are a frightening number of young and not-so-young men who have embraced one of the central assumptions of the murder-spree-supporting incels of slutHATE – the notion that women who put “nice guys” in the “friend zone” are committing some kind of crime against them, and deserve to be punished for it, individually or collectively.
You can see variations on this in assorted memes attacking women – much as Moynihan and Rodgers did – for supposedly preferring “bad boys” and assholes over the “nice guys” of the world.
Other “friend zone” memes are a bit darker.
And darker still:
And somehow even darker than that:
And we’re just begun to scratch the surface here.
In a followup post, I will look at the ways in which the rampant “slutbashing” of Men’s Rights Activists and other manosphere denizens helps to feed the toxic culture of aggrieved sexual entitlement that has contributed to violence against women.
I see we’ve reached the point in the troll life cycle when he’s shocked he’s being mocked at a site expressly for mocking misogyny. Is a flounce imminent?
“Blah, blah, blah. I didn’t want to listen to what you silly wimmenz had to say anyways! I just wanted to come in here and wave my dick around and not read your posts because I’m always right because penis and libertarian!
Why won’t you listen to me?! I’m only trying to HELP!”
Dude, you said in your first fucking post that you didn’t actually give a shit what we had to say, and you only keep coming in here and proving it by not even bothering to read what any women have to say.
Flounce and stick it, Tommy Boy. You’re fucking dull.
Spaces like sluthate.com?
Quarterback? Are you literally in high school?
Also: if women only date assholes, shouldn’t you be drowning in chicks?
Emily: I should go to bed but I for one am having fun.
*sigh* You know, a list of assertions isn’t going to work as a response to people when they’ve already addressed every element of your list already.
Let’s repeat ourselves again!
No it’s not, by any measure. Mental health care keeps you alive and functioning. Education enables you to operate in our society. Sex… is a pleasureable activity, one of many. Intimacy is a need, sex is not, and sex is not the same thing as intimacy.
You’ve got it upside-down. A life without sex can be terrible when you live in an echo chamber constantly telling you how miserable it is. It’s terrible because of the “support system” you’ve chosen, not in spite of it.
Hey, maybe you think that sex is the same as intimacy, and you’re personally really devestated that you aren’t getting it. Seek therapy. This is not a justifiable attitude to take the way suffering from something like solitary confinement is. Because sex is not the same thing as human contact.
Nope. “Nice guys” who rage at women and have violent fantasies about them for not boning them while claiming to be “nice guys” completely deserve the demonization they get. They’re assholes, and feminists aren’t responsible for coddling them while they’re being assholes. If they are assholes because they truly feel like them not having sex is the worst thing in the world, they don’t need feminist kindness, they need therapy.
Those instances are never brought up in the incel community (from what I’ve seen), and their frustration and anger is anything but benign. Even if it doesn’t turn into outward violence, their frustration and anger builds on itself and on others’ rather than being vented and them getting over it. That is not benign.
source
These stats may be a little old, but I highly doubt that human sexuality has changed a whole lot over the course of a decade or so. Your preconceptions about who has the easier time getting sex are colored completely by the fact that you are a dude; you couldn’t imagine a woman walking up to you desiring sex and you refusing, but you can imagine the reverse. Sorry, but the stats don’t support your theory.
Honestly, you don’t need to expand. Feminism is not the group that wants to define masculinity by the number of partners they’ve had. That’s… pretty much the opposite of what they want to do. That’s toxic masculinity, and it isn’t the product of women.
Sometimes the sex-positive community can be a little over-zealous, and can trample over asexual folks a tad, but they aren’t the ones to blame for age-old patriarchal concepts.
I think if he could wrap his head around this one basic thing he might have a hope of understanding. But while he’s resting his argument on a faulty premise he’s never going to get anywhere.
Let’s see if he sticks the flounce Emily!
I like the part where he ignores everyone’s points, restates his own ad infinitem, then claims we’re the ones who aren’t using Logic or Reason.
Anyone want to bust out the BINGO cards?
That’s the problem with responding to a gish gallop. When you’ve finally cobbled a response together you find that every point you made has been ninja’d in the meantime. Good job, everyone! XD
As for Tom’s lament at the utter lack of logic and reason in his opponents… *ahem*
“What, you don’t agree with me yet? But I put together a numbered list! A numbered list! See that? That’s a 1), and that’s a 2)! How could you not be convinced by this? NUMBERS! Feminists are so illogical.”
@emilygoddess:
It’s too late for BINGO cards. Everyone has already gotten blackout.
I like the part where he’s asking us to consider the feelings of men who are threatening to kill people.
I’m gonna have to make a new box on my cards….
“Fifth. What exactly are feminists proposing to stop these men from being violent? Do you really think that calling them entitled or having culture teach them that their anger is just entitlement is going to prevent violence?”
Oh! Hey libertariandude, share with us what you thought about the Charlie Hebdo thing, wouldja? I bet you went out and found some extremist Muslims and said super-nice things to them to placate them, right? After all, it’s the only way to prevent future violence!
“Also, what about the fact that this anger ISNT entitlement in any meaningful sense. For the vast majority of non violent men who are involuntarily celibate, some frustration is justifiable and NOT entitled.”
No. It doesn’t make any goddamn sense if there isn’t either entitlement or the inability to introspect. Not getting something you wanted has an emotion associated with it. That emotion is called disappointment. Disappointment is closer to sadness than it is to anger.
This is the thing that always blows my mind, here. I’ve certainly gone through periods where I wasn’t getting laid. I felt sad and I talked to my friends (mostly ladies) about it, and I felt better. The concept of being ANGRY about the situation is completely bizarre.
emilygoddess
I like how he came in here and completely poisoned the well by saying we think he’s “evil” (I prefer “deluded” and “‘splainy” myself) and feminists are all circle-jerking and illogical, then gets mad that we don’t agree with him, repeats his points some more only for us to repeat that he’s full of shit, and thus, are only Proving His Point about how “illogical” feminists are.
Yeah, because the best way to change our minds is to come in here and tell us how “illogical” we are and how we “circle-jerk” when you come into our space to tell us off.
@Emily
I am in favour of him being modded since we’re just repeating ourselves hear and everything we say is bouncing off his thick skull. BUT I would be in a favour of a mod challenge where he has to answer that question about why they don’t just have sex with each other.
I vote for the hammer. Also, please enjoy this musical interlude, doubtless inspired by boring-ass trolls:
WE ARE NOT TALKING ABOUT THEM. We are talking about MURDERERS and their FANBOYS.
I second Bina’s call for the hammer. Tommy Boy’s boring and he’s not gonna listen.
I am greatly in favor of a mod challenge. How about responding directly to someone’s critique of his assertions for the next five comments? Maybe that’s a little too easy… but then again, sometimes trolls have trouble with the stranges things.
I just wanted to say I really enjoyed reading everyone’s responses to Tom. It’s great reading other people’s perspectives 😀
I’ll probably try to stay out of it if Tom does reply again (I should actually be asleep right now…), though I will probably be tempted to make smart-ass comments here and there.
Unfortunately I can’t ban people (I can only moderate their comments as they’re posted), and I have to go to bed. I’ve emailed David about the troll and hopefully he can step in.
Night, everyone!
I think that any mod challenge would be equivalent to a ban. Tom’s reading comprehension is very poor and he’d probably respond to any mod challenge with another numbered list.
Tedthefed: anger is a common response to two things 1) a sense of injustice, against yourself or another person 2) when something or someone is blocking you from reaching a goal.
When dudes believe that it is just and fair for women to sex them just because they asked, and their “no” is getting in the way of them having sex, you can see why they’re angry instead of sad.
Heh, I missed this part.
Yup yup. “I’m right and I know it, so all your myriad of responses are just lack of logic and reason. So nyeeeaahhhh.”
*disappointed, not sad.
http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m6i75j6WXs1qfph1s.gif
Oh, the thissitude of this.
I’m currently living a life without sex. If what our troll says about needs is true, I should be dead by now. Yet strangely, I’m surrounded by family, friends and cats who love me, I have enough to eat, I’m warm and comfortable, and if the urge arises, well, I can handle it even with no HB10 dude in sight. All because I don’t live in an echo chamber that tells me that sex is supposed to be my validation as a woman.