[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.
This is, in my experience, largely correct. “Let’s just be friends” is a polite way to say “I’m not interested in sleeping with you, period.” Given that these guys suffer from serious entitlement, and one never knows how an entitled guy is going to react to rejection (is he violent, or going to turn into a stalker?), this extremely soft no is often the safest option.
Wat? I’m not sure what you’re saying here, but it sounds not-okay to me.
@PoM:
Hmm. Maybe it’s better not to inform them what real friendship looks like then? Maybe it’s better they believe “friend” means “cutting off most contact” rather than give them another reason to accuse women of lying or something…
@Pelagic:
Yeah… this? Don’t do any of this. No diagnosing, no wishing death.
I regularly meet up for lunch with a friend, and our policy is that we each take turns to pay for the entire meal. But we can’t always remember who was the last one to pay (especially if there’s been a big gap), and we never keep track of how much each meal cost, so I’ve no doubt at all that when totted up over the years it would be surprising if there was a perfect balance.
But neither of us knows, and neither of us cares.
As for Kootiepatra: yes, exactly.
Even if someone wants to define sex as a “need” – and I agree with some around here who say it’s an urge or a strong drive, but that could be interpreted as “need”, so whatevs – there are ways to satisfy that need that don’t entail other people (hands, sex toys).
Your need for sex does not justify requiring someone to give you what you want.
To use a food analogy, hunger is a need, but there is no requirement for me to have the type of food I crave. I may want a porterhouse steak, but I may not have the money for it. I cannot force someone to serve/sell me one. I may need to settle for a loaf of bread.
But a person needs to seek out help from a professional if they think that their unmet need for sex justifies killing or punishing anyone, and they should rethink their world view if they think their need for sex requires that a portion of the human race lose all agency and choice in order to become sex dispensers for their needs.
For realz, people, what is so hard about understanding that we are all individuals with personal preferences, desires, ambitions, stories, and fears?
Oooooo, cute tortoise, Argenti! And imagine that, Russian tortoises like Crocs. LOL!
Excellent. “Free M’Space” cracked me up!
@Pelagic
Gonna have to second Policy of Madness here. Not cool.
Sorry, m’mistake!! I wasn’t quite awake when I posted that, apparently. But it’s still hilarious.
@Paradoxical
That bingo square is perfect .
@Pelagic
Like it’s been said, that comment is not cool. Don’t wish death on others, don’t diagnose from a distance, don’t make a generalisation about actual depressed people.
Still a little freaked that this whole stabbing thing took place in the same area of the same city at the same time I was living there.
@emilygoddess, what’s “sealioning”?
Off the top of my head, “tedthefed” for example seemed to question the validity of feeling angry over sexual rejection. Although I kind of skimmed the thread last night; it’s possible I misread some other responses.
@Pelagic
… Yeah, seconding everybody else. I’m not sure why you’d even think that was close to appropriate.
Same here. I’ve actually had to parry (insistent) come-ons from guys I simply could not feel more than plain old friendship for. It was NOT FUN. And it didn’t make me feel powerful; it made me feel awful. Like the baddie in the whole scenario. The fact that I didn’t handle it well (because, as an Ugly Duckling, I had no experience in that field during my earlier years) made it even worse. If a guy can’t value a friendship for what it is, rather than what he wants it to become, he’s not a very good friend. And in fact, the friendships that went that way wound up petering out anyway.
Oops looks like I accidentally entered my email wrong. Damn autocapitilization.
@ScarlettAthena
Well said. I mean, i can sympathize with the view that sex is a need, but to think others owe it to you to give you sex because it’s a need is ridiculous. As my example said; organs are a real physical need, but to think that others owe someone their organs because they need a transplant is absurd. Bodily autonomy FTW.
And of course a libertarian would think that being forced to pay taxes for other people’s education or healthcare is the equivalent to what, at best, amounts to sexual coercion. Of course. Taxes=rape. It’s all so clear. 9_9
@Pelagic
10 troll points for being obnoxious enough to warrant a response. Anger, rage, and even murderous thoughts are “normal” for depression. What is not normal is being so self-absorbed that you don’t recognize that murder is bad and spending your days happily fantasizing about hurting others. Even if you (unhealthfully) blame everyone else for your problems, you should at least realize that hurting others is bad.
I could be totally wrong here, but I am pretty sure that Pelagic’s comment was meant to be, directed at us meanie feminists. Something like: “you meanies won’t sit quietly by while we wish death, rape, and torture on you. You just want us to die! You poopy-heads are as bad as Stalin!”
@Pelagic
In other words, the problem is being selfish and entitled, not being angry and depressed. Their problem is their behavior, not their feelings. Bad feelings and/or mental illness don’t justify bad behavior.
And yes, “spending time fantasizing about hurting/killing others” is a chosen behavior, and yes it is a bad behavior. Mental illness doesn’t explain why men CHOOSE to indulge in it, and it doesn’t excuse it either.
Guys need to understand that we’re socialized to be nice and give a soft no. We also sometimes give a soft no because a hard no was met with verbal or physical abuse and a soft no is safer.
“I don’t want to ruin the friendship” does not mean that women never become sexually or romantically interested in a friend. It means she’s letting the guy down gently. It means she’s not interested in that specific guy. It doesn’t mean she’s disinterested in all men who are nice to her.
Since research shows that people do understand the soft no in a variety of contexts, there’s some part of the Nice Guy that understands this. But they can’t deal with it. So they tell themselves “it’s not me. I’m not the problem. Girls just don’t like nice guys.”
The Nice Guy resentment isn’t necessarily out of a feeling of wasted niceness. Or at least not always. Being nice might generally make him feel good on its own. Rather, the resentment might come from a side effect of objectifying women. He’s not relating to the woman as a person — he’s using her as a metric for comparing himself to another man. If she prefers that man to him, it means (in his head) he’s not as good as that man. And if that man is the guy (or “type” of guy) who, for example, dumped the Nice Guy’s books in high school, the fact that she prefers him can be galling.
At least, I think that’s the mental process I was going through many years ago when I went through some variant of Nice Guy syndrome myself. (I’ve been happily married for a long, long time – so I guess a guy can mature out of that type of pity party). As my son approaches adolescence, I’m trying to think these things through a little bit in case he comes to need guidance. The back-and-forth here has been helpful.
For Nice Guys™, nice is the absence of bad. As proof, they’ll list all these faults they don’t have. THEY aren’t bullies or thugs or greedy or shallow or abusive or racist. It’s those other jerks! Since they aren’t shoving people into lockers, dealing drugs, and stabbing people (yet), they think they deserve a gold medal and a Bestest Person Evah trophy and the adoration of women. When that doesn’t happen, they angrily think “Well, I might as well do all that stuff, because those types of jerks always get women!”
(Never mind that most of those “jerks” have much more concrete things to offer women than inner “niceness”, and that Nice Guys™ are particularly prone to the Just™ World™ fallacy™.™ That guy looks like he used to shove people into lockers in high school! He doesn’t deserve a girlfriend!)
So yeah, nice isn’t a default state that we’re born into. It has to be earned through action, through doing things out in the world for other people with no expectation of return. It’s what you bring to the table in a relationship. What do incels have to offer? They spend 100 hours a week obsessing over reasons why they’d reject a woman, and zero hours thinking about why someone would reject them.
@Fatman Yeah, I kind of got an inept Poe vibe too from Pelagic. Because the only possible alternative to stabbing women is to die a horrible, lonely death surrounded by empty Cheetos wrappers.
Kootie’s “co-op pantsless funtime” made me giggle. So did kirby’s “Friendship is magic!” And Shaenon’s random FEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEMAAAAAAAALES cracks me up.
I just thought I’d, you know, throw that out there. I like letting people know they’re funny, even if I have nothing else relevant to say.
PS. feeeeeeeeeemaaaaaaaales
Interesting – this guy lives in a country with much stricter regulation of private ownership of firearms than the U.S. (admittedly, that includes most of the world that has functional government). So he had to carry out his wishes with a knife. No one died, and the guy was captured alive.
I’m sure someone will be along shortly, if they haven’t been, to bemoan how the outcome here would have been improved if only private firearms were as readily obtainable in the U.K. as they are in the U.S.
I also sometimes feel like trolls come into the comments section sometimes as a sock, and make some atrociously inappropriate comments, to set themselves up for a “gotcha!” They assume that because everyone here is opposed to the ideology, we’ll get just as nasty as the people we mock, and then they can point out that we’re no better than they are, see?!
But I’ve never seen anyone fall for it. Any time someone starts in with body-shaming or death wishes or ugly shit, either they’re soundly ignored (rare) or someone calls them on it. Which I imagine frustrates the hell out of trolls.
Rule: mockery is fine and well and good, but only if it can effect change. Shaming someone’s behavior is useful; they can change that. Shaming someone’s looks or medical issues is not, because that is beyond their control. My rule for myself (and those I choose to surround myself with) is that you can only hold someone accountable for the choices they make, not the ones they can’t.
Hi jeevmon
For reasons I will won’t bore you with I have to study the use of violence. There’s some interesting research about knife attacks.
One aspect is that whilst men are quite content to stab women it’s very rare for them to stab other men as opposed to using slashing attacks. It’s to do with psycho-sexual aspects regarding penetration. Weird huh? There’s probably an article to be written there.
I got that vibe from them myself, but wasn’t sure if I was jumping the gun or not.
Oh, just looked up “sealioning”. I certainly don’t want to suck anyone into an unwanted debate or waste anyone’s time. My bad. I’ll shut up now.
Some men are…
Complaining if women do not “give” them sex.
Calling them sluts after they “gave” it to them..
Or: calling them sluts because they choosed the “wrong” men.
Calling them sluts because …vagina.
Or sometimes even calling them sluts because they WON’T have sex with someone.