[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.
(First time commenter, just want to say that this site has helped me understand parts of feminism that I was confused about, keep up the good work.)
When I was in high school, which really wasn’t that long ago, I never encountered this level of hate. Sure, my friends and I would be irritated if we couldn’t “get with” the girl we wanted and it did suck watching nice girls get treated like shit. It especially sucked watching your friends go through that. The thing is, they got treated like shit and left the guy in a lot of cases and then find someone better. Even if it wasn’t you, it was likely a friend who you trusted. (that I personally experienced, obviously it’s not the same for everyone). Of course I would get jealous if I had a crush on a friend and she dated someone else in my social circle but that faded quickly because friendship was more important.
…….And do these kids even realize that high school girls hang out with…other high school girls? Befriending a girl instead of terrorizing her is a great way to increase their options for a relationship. In my social group there were better things to do than think about girls, and yeah we did quite a bit of that, but Smash Brothers wouldn’t play itself and there were horrible home movies to be made!
I know I am generalizing a bit, but I really just want to believe that there is no one over the age of 18 on those message boards.
I still don’t understand how a large community of “incels” can exist. Can’t they just arrange meetups where they have sex with each other?
Some of them might use an argument like, “I only want to have sex with people I’m attracted to, and I’m not attracted to any of the incels who have offered to have sex with me.”. But that means they’re voluntarily celibate. Those people could form a “temp-vol-cel” community, for people who are temporarily and voluntarily celibate, and then trade tips for making themselves more desirable to other people.
It all just seems so obvious! Maybe there’s some kind of subtlety I’m overlooking.
Not to mention the number of enablers one can find in any of their echo-chambers who simply reinforce those attitudes. It’s like right-wing talk radio, except worse.
Either way? It’ll melt your brain.
Both of those things sound way more interesting than shit like Knocked Up.
It bugs me when people argue that making more gender- or race-conscious stories in entertainment is “ruining” some artistic medium, as if anything that tries to be anything other than pure entertainment is “SJW pandering”.
Well, yeah, sorry to say – but all those beloved tropes are overused and their continual usage is a sign of creative stagnation. We’ve already had a billion versions of “Boy Meets Girl” that often play out the same exact way and rarely ever resembles a relationship between two people. Along with that, it doesn’t help that these people are generally both attractive – when they aren’t, it’s only the guy who is allowed to look schlubby. I’d honestly love to see more romance stories about people who generally aren’t considered attractive by social standards, where they form a relationship because they actually have things in common and not just about the dude finally getting laid (as if getting to know the girl was some obstacle he must overcome).
Why the fuck do some people just want the same shit over and over again? Do they ever get tired of the formula and say “it’d be nice if they shook things up”? I understand they lack any actual appreciation for Art as is, but this weird need to have movies or videogames or comics play out the same way endlessly is beyond bewildering. Even I get sick of seeing the same thing several times over, despite still enjoying it.
*Rarely ever resembles a relationship between REAL people, I mean…
First, Elliot Rodger was 22, and second, even kids 18 and under are capable of murder. So … your heart’s in the right place in hoping that they are just kids who will grow out of it, but it’s not a helpful hope.
So.
Girls who won’t have sex with them are sluts
The best way to achieve the goal of sex with multiple women is to kill all the women.
Men who think that all women are sluts, see murderers as heroes and fantasize about raping and killing women are nice guys.
And yet, how much do you want to bet that these guys think they’re more logical than all women?
I’ve been wondering this as well. Also if they’re so desperate for sex, but can’t convince anyone they know to sleep with them, why don’t they hire escorts? They work mostly through websites now, so it’s not like incels don’t have the means to contact them.
Those fucking guys are half the problem in my opinion. Self-pity is one of the most powerful emotions there is, and if you have people willing to reinforce it you’ll have a hell of a time gaining any real sense of perspective about yourself (which is what most MRAs/incels etc need more than anything).
There are movies in which nerdy awkward girls get the cute guy. Unfortunately, they either have to get a makeover to stop looking nerdy like She’s All That or Miss Congeniality. Or they never bothered to make the conventionally beautiful actress look nerdy in the first place. Like Mean Girls or Easy A.
I keep hearing about millennials who think they “deserve a gold star just for showing up.” Supposedly because they were praised for everything they did growing up. I don’t know if this is true, but I get that vibe from these people. The world owes them sex with partners of their choice, everyone is mean to them for not giving them everything they want. And of course it’s not simply about sex, or else they would seek out prostitutes (or even commit rape). They demand to be wanted, as if any of us have control over what (or whom) we want. They seem aware of this illogic, too, and they don’t care. Reality itself has to bend to their will and human nature has to change to accommodate them.
So… is anyone actually surprised? The vast majority of men think this way. I can literally count on one hand the number of guys I’ve met who don’t agree with at least part of this scumbag’s bullshit, or the comments mentioned in this blog post. But who cares, right? It’s not like women should actually have any rights, like, you know, people or something.
Feeeemales should all just be federally assigned to random dudes b/c sex holes or whatever.
Sigh. Not even caring about life anymore. This shit is everywhere. So glad I’m an alcoholic and I can drink until reality fades. Glug glug.
“The vast majority of men think this way.”
No, I can’t believe that. They may have internalised some of the “Me man, therefore deserve woman” bullshit and might have considered the Friend Zone as a real thing when they didn’t know any better, but I can’t believe that the vast majority of men want to murder all women everywhere because they aren’t banging a hot blonde chick and her twin sister 24/7.
“The Breakfast Club” is a pretty egregious example.
The whole point to the movie was the fact these high school archetypes could be more complicated as people than the stereotypical traits attached to them. Except, for whatever dumb reason, Ally Sheedy’s character has to get a make-over by Molly Ringwald to impress Emilio Estavez…except he already liked her and didn’t seem to really care about the way she dressed. I mean, no one else in the movie needs to get a make-over but she does – just to look more like Ringwald’s character? Why? It doesn’t even matter because it’s by the end and doesn’t suggest a change in personality, which such things usually do and kind of goes against the point of the movie.
It’s because their favourite formula is their emotional pornography, and they’ve indulged in it enough for it to become a sort of security blanket for them, which they will fight to protect. It’s why zombie fanboys all but claim some sort of cultural appropriation over 28 Days Later’s monsters moving faster than 1mph.
The vast majority of men in your experience may think this way, but the vast majority of men in my experience do not. I encounter men every day, and have heard hints of this kind of entitlement from only a tiny fraction. Why are you surrounded by men who feel this way? That would be a question worth examining, to me, if I were in your position.
If that’s the case, it’s more the fault of the people who did the praising in my opinion.
This is why I run like hell when I see a fedora. I’ve been harassed for over two years by someone well on their way to becoming a slutHATEr. He genuinely believes he is some sort of tragic hero that will one day spark a revolution. More than once he has hinted that I would be on the “losing side” as both a woman and an emergency responder. And that’s scary. I think that’s what the MRA’s don’t get. As a woman I’m not overly privileged – I’m scared. I’ve trained in self-defense, I own a gun, and I was raised to be tough as nails, but I know that even the most cautious people can get taken by surprise. I know someone with stronger arms can choke the life out of me. I know that at any given moment, a self-entitled little boy can walk into a store and shoot me dead because I had the audacity to fall in love with someone that was not him.
Mod note: I screened Vanir’s gross-ass comment and the comment quoting it. Let me know if I missed anything.
God, I can’t stand those people – especially when they start claiming it isn’t a zombie survival movie…even though it is. You have humans who are infected by something that make them act like ravenous beasts, with others who are hiding and whatever resources they can get to deal with said infected humans. That’s a zombie survival movie whether they stumble around like drunks or run about frantically like meth-heads.
I actually came across someone who claimed comicbook movies were cultural appropriation too – though I explained to him that all the material used for those movies are owned by a company, who can do what they wish with it and continue to as long as it makes money. But apparently comics are too good to ever be adapted to something as (God forbid) filthy and popular as cinema!
It was hilarious that he actually tried arguing Groot in the Guardians of the Galaxy movie wasn’t like the one in the comics. Even though the film portrayal is about as faithful an adaptation as you can get.
You can’t fucking discuss anything with these people, when they constantly move goal-posts or base everything off a personalized criteria no one else can possibly get.
The whole point of this is to make women too afraid to say no. That’s what they mean when they talk about ‘female entitlement’ – the fact that she can say no and doesn’t have to feel bad about it either. Being put ‘in their fucking place’ is about frightening them into realizing they can’t risk using their right to say no, otherwise there might be ‘serious consequences’.
They know perfectly well that no woman who possessed even the slightest amount of self-respect would concede to the sort of nonsense that would be involved in a relationship with them, and they know that no man with an ounce of respect for women would expect a woman to do so, and it infuriates them. The whole reason they’re incel is that they are unappealing to the sorts of women they feel entitled to (mainly the self-respecting ‘arrogant’, beautiful, rich young women), and they never stop to think why that is.
And then people like me have to step in and remind them that the “zombies” in that film aren’t actually zombies. They’re not dead, just infected.
People argue that 28 Days Later is cultural appropration? What? Zombies, being fictional are not a culture. Also, the whole zombie concept could arguably appropriation of voodoo culture even though they’ve become extremely different.
I was aware that there’s a fight over whether the movie should be classified a zombie movie or an infection movie though. A distinction that I don’t personally care about even though I’m a big horror fan.
Hi NPS, I don’t want to be ‘not all men’ and all of that but I truly believe that the majority of men don’t think this way… I have to confess I struggled with relationships when I was younger and used to believe in the friendzone and being “too nice” but I’m certain I didn’t think about murdering anyone for it. It’s difficult feeling powerless, and I can only imagine what women go through knowing people like this exist… an open question, how can men who aren’t like this best make themselves heard to stand up against them?
Come to think of it, I might register avoiceformenwhoarentbastards dot com.
I’m snickering at the idea of modern zombie fans claiming cultural appropriation when zombies originated in Haitian folklore.
N.P.S.: Bullshit. Some men may think that way but by no means most.
@Jenny
Precisely. It boggles the mind when these types say that they’ll go on a murder spree and kill women because they wouldn’t date him, “because those sluts are too entitled.” Choosing who you do or don’t have sex with is a basic human right for everyone. Laying the hot high school cheerleader isn’t. It takes two yeses to make consensual sex but the one who says “no” is the one whose choice carries more weight, according to law and being a decent human being. It’s how civilised societies work. It’s how animals work for fucks sake! Most of them anyway.
Also, I think the reason assholes call a woman who won’t sleep with them a slut is because they automatically assume she’s slept or is sleeping with other men that aren’t him. They take it extra personally that way.