[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.
Argenti, your tortoise is a little darling! And I peeked at your Instagram and saw some axolotl pictures, too.
Wow. This troll is teal deers all the way down, isn’t he? I have to admit that I cheat; instead of reading them, I scroll right through knowing the choice bits* will get quoted in the fisking.
Of course, this only works because I’m always so late to these trollfests.
*for a certain value of choice.
Fuck off, Tom. Way off… Farther, keep going. Still not far enough. Go on now. Shoo!
And shut up, Woody, while I’m at it.
Man, I need new Nivi pics. My little axolotl is getting big, and has nice healthy red gills with a gorgeous, almost albino, pink tone (leucistic, so most of the skin basically is albino). Not right now though, the menagerie is asleep. And Darwin is apparently sleeping in his food dish tonight? Well, okay then dude, just, you know, try not to poop in it again? I just washed it *sigh* Kids these days!
Wow, this thread exploded while my net was out (again). o.O The troll’s already been shown the door, but big-L Libertarians annoy me, so I’m gonna have a quick snark at him anyway.
Don’t Libertarians constantly wail that government regulation is the worst thing since sliced Hitler? How does your argument for government-regulated sex gel with that?
Why, it’s almost as if “Libertarian” just means “Wants the world to cater to them and only them”… Couldn’t be.
No, we’re telling you that you’re wrong because YOU’RE WRONG. Indeed, every single word in your last post, which I’ve quoted in its entirety, is based on a demonstrably false premise.
By your own admission you have no female friends. I strongly, strongly doubt that you’ve ever tried to empathise with a woman in more than the most superficial possible sense – because if you had, you wouldn’t have posted half the shit that you did. Maybe three-quarters.
But here you have lots of women telling you about their experiences, telling you about women’s experiences in general, building a very consistent picture about the kind of crap that women have to put up with on a daily if not hourly basis, and you have the absolute fucking nerve to describe this as “a nice little circle jerk”?
Read the replies to your posts, and read them properly. Your demonstrably ignorant, lazily clichéd babble has been forensically taken apart by people who are not only smarter than you but have a far greater understanding about how people actually behave, what people actually need and what a moral compass actually is. And it’s been done with ruthless logic and overwhelming reason, and if you didn’t have your head wedged so far up where the sun don’t shine you’d recognise this. Because being intellectually honest means recognising when the evidence all points in the direction of you being wrong – and believe me, buddy boy, YOU ARE WRONG.
Oh, and I’m not one of those awful cootie-riddled feeeeeeemales – merely someone who can distinguish between evidence-backed arguments and self-serving bullshit. There have been plenty of examples of the former posted here, but none with your name attached (except in the middle of the post with the word “drivel” in close proximity).
I hope for your sake that you really are as young and immature as you’re coming across, because you’ve got a lot of growing up to do. You might as well start now.
M.
Oh, but he doesn’t want government-regulated sex! He just wants wimmenz (and feminists) to coddle violent men and their entitlement, or else they might get more violent!
Because, you know, it’s not like WE’RE doing anything about it except exacerbating the issue with wimmenz (and feminists) wanting sex positivity and sexual freedom, but they don’t want to fuck any man who asks, so it’s our fault when we get stabbed/raped/murdered/tortured/called horrible things!
We’re so illogical and cruel to the poor widdle incels! [/sarcasm]
Every time someone says they’re a libertarian I feel like there is abruptly a glass wall between us, muffling the noise. At that point, a good portion of my mind just wants to nopetopus right out of there. The strangest incident is when a friend of mine told me that she’d realized her political identity was Libertarian. I knew she didn’t relate with either the Republican or Democratic parties, and had voted for the Green party during the 2012 presidential election for that reason. But Libertarian? I just felt my face freeze into a mask, smile firmly in place, because I didn’t even know how to respond to that one. I sort of told myself that she’d find out more about the type of people who claim that label and reconsider, but I haven’t brought it up since. I just don’t think the Libertarian stance even jives with the Green party, and this friend is a biologist/fine art major. How she thought Libertarian suits ANY of her values is beyond me.
I just think a lot of young people are getting tired of Republicans because they are absurd, but everyone is getting frustrated with Democrats whose primary value now seems to be compromise with the other side. So there are a lot of young people who just want to find something else, and the Libertarian focus on ‘freedom’ (one version of it, anyway) appeals to a lot of people who don’t follow social issues very closely. Mostly because they have the benefit of being privileged and don’t see it.
As for Tomsaw…Wetherby, I am so with you in your frustration! I can’t STAND IT when people show up, spit up some talking points, refuse to acknowledge half the points made in opposition, and pretend they won. It doesn’t work that way. Anyone who actually cares about a debate and finding some sort of resolution or mutual understanding will try to address all of the points made that are in alignment with the topic of discussion. Sure, sometimes people who are on the right side of things get frustrated and leave, but only after the topic is allowed to derail or stagnates as the other side refuses to address related topics. Logical, well-mannered people TRY, damn it! (at least until they learn to recognize an intellectual brick wall when they see it) Tomsaw demonstrated the use of formulaic, stiff talking points quite well, but that’s it. There was no logic there, no understanding of nuanced conversation, no real understanding of how good debate works. Nothing. Nothing of value. It was awful.
…but so, so rewarding to see everyone show him exactly what it looks like to be the pillar of reason and all that is right that he dreams of being. This community makes terrible things bearable.
@mildlymagnificent
Yes, absolutely. I’ve never had a one-night stand with someone that I didn’t basically like. Even if we slept together on the same day that we met – something that applies to me and my wife, incidentally – there’s inevitably some sort of getting-to-know-you process and a mutual assessment of attractiveness and chemistry.
Of course “attractiveness” doesn’t mean “underwear model” (of either sex), it means “someone with whom you feel relaxed and comfortable enough to shed both clothes and inhibitions”. Many of the most inventive and imaginative sexual partners I’ve had have been women that these bozos wouldn’t even register because their horizons are so appallingly self-limited. Which is very much their loss, although I doubt the women in question are losing any sleep over it.
This should be glaringly obvious, shouldn’t it? And yet we get troll after troll saying “well, I feel the urge to tell women what to think, but I don’t really know any women in real life besides female relatives, and I’ve never taken much notice of them”, as though this is completely normal and not PART OF THE PROBLEM.
I’ve still got a close female friend who I first met in 1976, when we were both in single figures, and loads more from only a decade or so year. I’ve barely had sex with any of them, haven’t wanted to have sex with most, and have only idly and privately fantasised about a single-figure handful because I know them well enough as friends to know that it wouldn’t work out in real life. But we’ve been hanging out together for decades because we genuinely like each other’s company, we’re mutually supportive, and the more we talk about absolutely everything under the sun (and we’ve known each other long enough for there to be very little that’s off limits) the more we understand each other’s experiences and what makes us tick.
Like many people posting here, I took a very long time to lose my virginity, but instead of ranting and raging about it online (not an option for me back then), I used the time to gain a far deeper understanding of human relationships and how they worked (or didn’t). When dealing with the emotional fallout of a friend’s relationship, I wasn’t listening to her in the hope that I’d get into her pants now that she was “available”, I was listening to her because she was a friend and I cared about what happened to her. Indeed, when a friend who’d had a seemingly endless stream of wildly unsuitable boyfriends finally hooked up with a genuinely nice guy, I couldn’t have been happier for them both – they got engaged shortly afterwards and it’s their twentieth wedding anniversary this summer. And when I finally did get hooked up with someone, it was a huge success – we ended up living together for eighteen months and are still in occasional touch to this day, and I doubt this would have happened if I’d been a few years younger and considerably less mature.
And yes, you’re absolutely right – the more people you know who like you as a friend, the more opportunities you’ll get to meet people who might like you on other levels. Why do people regard this as a harder concept to grasp than quantum mechanics when it could hardly be simpler?
There’s also the flip side of being friends with people you’re fooling around with — if it turns out that the sexytimes just aren’t working out, hey friend, wanna put on pants and order a pizza? That’s the part I understand the least, why is having female friends they aren’t fucking such a damned horrible thing?
Cuz like seriously, being good friends with a male ex comes in handy when you’re short a pallbearer (no way in hell was I letting my father have the funeral home provide pallbearers for my grandfather’s funeral, I’d’ve sooner gotten pecunium to make the two hour trip [and, because there are actual honest to good nice guys in the world, I don’t doubt that he’d have done it])
Whee! Nested parentheticals! And I should go to bed before timers start going off and my various pet enclosures start lighting up like a Christmas tree! G’night 🙂
If you want to get laid, keep asking, politely.
It’s like sales.
13 no answers to every yes is the rough ratio.
Take a no and move on, don’t nag, it’s creepy.
Through trial and error you’ll learn how to approach better, also get used to hearing no so much that it stops mattering.
Again, I couldn’t agree more. Both my wife and I remain in regular contact – and face-to-face contact, not just online – with an ex-partner apiece. In both cases, as you put it, the sexytimes didn’t really work out, they were very brief, and are long buried in the past – but because everything else worked out beautifully, we’ve not only stayed in touch but maintained them as best friends even after our marriage.
And I think it’s really good for both of us – my wife and I have only known each other since 2001 or thereabouts, but our friends go back much further, and although those friendships can’t match the intimacy of our marriage, they have the huge advantage of much greater longevity – so to a certain extent they do know us better.
Obviously, there’s a trust element whenever we one of us goes out with one of them on a one-to-one basis, but I know I haven’t done anything untoward and I’m pretty sure she hasn’t either – not least because her ex is very happily married and we’re both good friends of his wife, who everyone agrees is a far better match for him.
blahlistic
It took me a few read-throughs before I understood you meant that you should take a no and move on from that particular woman to another.
I know you didn’t mean it this way, but it sounded like you were advocating asking the same woman over and over thirteen times before she said yes, and I was really confused (and kind of horrified).
“Let’s look at a model that isn’t used as anything other than a teaching tool in introductionary courses as we found that it doesn’t actually describe people’s needs with any useful accuracy.” Yes, let’s. Great idea.
The actual definition of “a nice guy” – someone who does something decent without any likelihood of any return beyond the knowledge that you’ve reinforced your credentials as a genuinely nice guy simply by doing something decent.
An online acquaintance of mine was a casualty of recent British unemployment statistics, and took to posting a laceratingly honest account of his day-to-day experiences of trying to find a new job. At one point he wrote, entirely casually, that he’d read a review of a new book that sounded fascinating, “but I just can’t afford it”. So I bought it for him as a thank-you for what were often genuinely eye-opening front-line posts that personally taught me a huge amount.
And of course being genuinely nice doesn’t have to involve monetary expenditure: merely being a good and sympathetic listener without even the tiniest glimmer of an ulterior motive counts for one hell of a lot – and Nice Guys™ might also like to know that in my personal experience getting that kind of reputation actively helps rather than hinders your chance of later romantic success. You just have to stop regarding every woman as a potential sexual partner who is worthless to you if she doesn’t reciprocate. Statistically, most won’t. That’s life. Deal with it.
One of the many, many things I don’t understand about Nice Guys™: Being nice for the sake of being nice feels good. Feels great, even. When I buy a friend or stranger a surprise gift, lend them a shoulder and an ear, stop by for coffee and a chinwag – I don’t need anything in return to make it worth my while, the warm, happy feelings of generosity and friendship are more than rewarding enough in and of themselves. And I say this as a shy, nervous introvert. How can they not feel the same way?
I kind of hope Tom Troll bothered to stick around and read the rest of the comments, because here is exactly the kind of compassion and practical advice for lasting, healthy relationships with women.
Aww, who am I kidding? He didn’t even bother to read the comments that were a direct point-by-point response to his teal-dears. He doesn’t care about being a better person surrounded by a social web of other nice people. He wants to stew in his own self-invented misery and fantasize about the nasty, despotic things he would do if he ruled the world.
What I find infuriating about “Nice Guys” is the idea that female friendship is some kind of awful consolation prize. Yes, how tragic that you had to put in all that hard labor relating to us on a cerebral level and pretending to like us. (And we’re the phonies?!). You poor dear. Have some hot tea and a medal. Your statue will be erected shortly.
Whenever a troll uses “logic”, it’s usually a synonym for “agrees with me”. Tom didn’t read any of our responses, he just saw that there were some responses and decided to double down on his wankery. These guys aren’t interested in debate or persuasion. They’re all talking to the people in their heads, telling themselves just-so stories about why the world is so unfair. So it’s extra scary when unreachable assholes start talking about violence and harming women. How do you persuade them that the shadow-world of asshole quarterbacks and mean cheerleaders and everybody, everywhere having lots and lots of sex from the age of 14 onward isn’t real?
@hambeast
Is it mean of me to think “if he did, he’d no longer be an incel?”
@ParadoxicalIntention. AHAHAHAHA at the bingo board! It’s wonderful! My favorite is the “Free M’Lady Square”. 😀
Hey, mrex, you want to point out where anyone said that men shouldn’t ever get angry? I’m getting a little sealion vibe here…
Because I doubt very much that they’ve ever thought about anyone other than themselves. But surely one of the core definitions of “niceness” is a willingness to help improve the lives of others at little or no reward to yourself, besides the satisfaction of having done this? What do they think “nice” means?
This is a nice person.
Three nice people, in fact, since the act that triggered the news report was itself in direct response to a mother teaching her child the virtues of niceness.
Buttercup
Thank you! It’s a little off in places now that I look at it, but it’s not that bad for something I slapped together on short notice.
And it actually says Free M’space. ^___^;;
I know the troll has been put in time out already, but I still would like to say:
I (a feeeemale) am on the cusp of being too old to matter to PUAs. I also have made it this far through life without sexing anybody. Now, if everything had gone according to younger-Kootie’s plans, I would be married by now, and maybe we’d have a kid or two, or at least a puppy. As it is, I am still single, and still inexperienced in the ways of gettin’ it on.
In the past, I’ve had my fair share of pity parties about “What’s wrong with me?” or “Is it because I’m really ugly and nobody has told me?” or just that gnawing feeling of loneliness when I irrationally feel like literally everyone else I know is happily coupled (hint: they’re not). I’ve wondered if anyone will ever like me enough to marry me. I’ve wondered if that will happen while I’m still young enough to have kids. At different times, I’ve felt insecure and afraid. I’ve felt ignored, overlooked, and rejected.
So I suppose (were I male, anyway), I would qualify for identifying as incel. But here’s the thing: my lack of co-op pantsless playtime has 0% to do with the awfulness of men, and 100% to do with the fact I have certain specific ideals for sex that my life circumstances have not accommodated.
Partly because of my reserved personality, and partly because of how I philosophically think of it, sex is only something that I’m willing to do with someone I am in a committed, exclusive relationship to. I am straight, so that limits my options to men. My job (which I love) has me up at weird hours of the day and night, so I miss out on a lot of the social mixers that would help me meet lots of new men. I much, much prefer to date someone I already know a tiny bit, so I haven’t been going on many blind dates.
And this? Yes, this has made it harder for me to get laid. Like, a lot harder. But this isn’t because life is unfair, or because men are shallow meanieheads. This is because I have decided that the ideals and circumstances I have chosen for myself mean more to me than having sex does.
In other words, yes, I’d love to have sex, but not at the cost of having sex with someone I barely know or trust. Not at the cost of taking a different job to broaden my prospects. Not at the cost of running against my personal ideas of what role I’d like sex to have in my life, or who I’d like to do it with.
So I’m not incel. I’m vol-cel. Sure, it would be nice to be un-cel, but I acknowledge that if I’m only willing to take limited measures to address that, my odds are low, and I’m going to have to be patient in my search for someone who shares my ideals. Which, fortunately, means that today I’m actually pretty darn content with my life, because I’m sticking to what’s truly important to me.
Thus, incels are also not really incels. If they want sex—the actual, literal act of rubbing their bits against someone else’s bits—they have to change their standards. They have to quit evaluating women on the HB scale, and/or ditch the allegiance to PUA techniques, and/or learn in which contexts they are likely to find women who might be up for a casual fling, as well as when it’s appropriate to approach them for one, and/or come up with some money to pay a woman who’s willing to take the job.
Not willing to do those things? Then your celibacy is voluntary. Your determination to avoid healthy introspection at all costs, or to stick to your pickup techniques despite all evidence that they don’t work, or to secure yourself only the hottest of babes who will instantly and unwaveringly regard you as the Prince Charmingest dude to ever grace the earth—all of those things obviously hold higher priority to you than actually having sex does.
If a man holds those values, and owns them, then okay, that’s his business. His lack of sex is his problem, and his alone. But if he lashes out at women for not making sex happen for him, despite his restricting priorities, then that becomes women’s business, because it’s affecting us now. Especially if his lashing out looks like stabbing people, or cheering on other dudes who stab people.
Same. Friendship is magic, don’t you see? Plus, they never quite realize that real friendship is a two-way street. I’ve had my female friends help me move into my apartment, or drive me to the hospital when I’ve gotten sick (I don’t have my own car). I’ve done similar sorts of things, but it was never framed as a “this-for-that” thing. We’ve just done stuff for each other. Completely different from the “guy gives girl lots of presents” dynamic these guys think is the only relationship model in existence.
Ok, so I didn’t eventually have sex with them. So? That’s not the goal state for every person you’re sexually attracted to.
Actually, I’m starting to get the feeling that when these assholes talk about “friend-zone,” in reality it’s women wanting to reject their advances in a polite way, not women actually wanting to be friends…
Why the hell can’t these degenerate men have normal depression, and just die quietly and alone?
I think it’s a combination of two things:
First, it means being generally kind to people in your clique.”I’m nice because I’m civil to all my friends. Not like those dumb jocks or spoiled rich brats or pretentious ‘artistes’ who look down on us. Why would anyone want to date a not-nice person like that?”
Second, it means being superficially nice to others. “Whenever I tell a racist joke, I always look around to make sure there aren’t any members of the target group within earshot.”
The first aspect of niceness is kind of useful – you need to be able to do at least that much in order to maintain a relationship.
The second aspect is what trips up Nice Guys. The first rule of dating is “Be Yourself”. If you’re a horrible racist nitwit, then you should take pride in that, instead of hiding it and letting it come out later.