[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.
You doubting it does not make it untrue. Women are just people. Most of the people replying to you are women, and we are telling you that a vagina does not mean that you have your pick of partners, that you aren’t rejected, or that you will never be lonely. Even if what you’re saying is true, and we get more “options,” but when most of those options are unsolicited dick pics and people threatening you with violence, calling you horrible names, and insulting you for saying no, that’s not exactly any better. When you’re starving, people offering you rotted, maggoty, poisonous food is not actually an improvement over no food at all.
I approached my partner. Like, just opened my mouth and said, “goddamn, your eyes are pretty. We should go out sometime.” He isn’t exceptionally good looking. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I think he’s sexy as fuck, but I’m into short freckly redheads with bratty senses of humor. Objectively speaking, he is never going to be an underwear model.
Maybe your experience isn’t universal? It’s okay, mine isn’t either. But part of growing up is realizing, and truly understanding, that your story is not the only story. Your experience is not more or less important, true, or central than anyone else’s. You get hurt and rejected and frustrated and lonely. Lots of dudes do. Lots of ladies do. Lots of non-binary folks do. That’s not part of being a dude. That’s part of being a person.
Maybe try reading more stuff from women for a while? I think that would help.
Viewaskew, first of all, it is not up to the women you’re asking out to boost your confidence by saying yes because OMG SOMEONE ASKED ME OUT. Confidence comes from understanding your value and your contribution to the world.
You need to back up your claim about needing sex for psychological health with science, not your assumptions about the dudes of your acquaintance.
It sounds horrible because it is horrible. You’re basically saying violence is acceptable because dudes have wounded egos.
This really epitomizes your problem right here. Assuming your personal experience is global, banking on stereotypes rather than statistics, and refusal to believe something is true unless it happens to you personally.
Hi, man here. Haven’t had sex in quite some time, and yet that has not affected my psychological health in the slightest. You’ll find many men here with the same experience. In fact, you’ll find the vast majority of men have the same experience, depending on where you look.
Who are your friends, exactly, and who are you reading online? Because my personal experience of male friends, family, and online voices are basically the opposite of yours.
Send cheetos then because my brother is totally bigfoot and will quite happily sit around eating them! I think I had a point…might’ve been about the sorts of situations people of various genders approach people in, but I’m rubbish at approaching people in general — most of my lovers have either been classmates, or friends of a friend where “pass the pizza” turned into “you wanna go out for pizza, just us?” Afaik, that’s how women tend to do things, and it’s how most people I know who aren’t cis and straight do things — make friends, gauge the safety level, see about a date night in a public place, go from there. It’s just plain not safe to approach a random guy in a bar or anything like that.
So, idk, like birdwatching? Join a birdwatching group? Maybe someone there will find you interesting and ask if you want to continue the conversation over coffee.
Christ this is skeezy, especially given the topic of the OP.
*high fives Mouse Farts* redhead fans FTW! Too bad the only redheads I know are pecunium and my brother’s best-friend >.<
Speaking of pecunium, has he been around these parts lately? I assume not since whenever I talk to him it's mostly "gah holidays working retail is so busy!"
@Alan–
I understand better now, and I do appreciate you being rceptive.
I think the issue is much less these Nice Guys being able to live up to X, Y, or Z sexual standard and much more with them failing to be decent human beings, personally.
If you’re miserable, attention from and sex with pretty girls will at best temporarily relieve anxiety.
That need for the approval and time of conventionally attractive women is the product of insecurity, not any human need. No one else can give you a sense of self-worth and when you use other people as crutches to make you feel more fulfilled and confident you’ll ultimately just hurt them and prevent yourself from finding the self-acceptance you’re missing.
… good?
???
???
I mean, what can I say to that? What can I say to the fact that you view stabbing women to punish them an “aspect” and not a horrific hate crime?
Okay, moving on from that:
Since you identify as being in maybe a similar situation, here is my advice to you: get some fucking hobbies. Define yourself in some way that doesn’t require the validation of another person. Take up gardening. Learn to knit. Put together model aircraft and get super-geeky about that. When you find yourself in a conversation with another person, have something about yourself to talk about, something that generates passion in you, something other than “I like your face and would enjoy sexual intimacy with you.”
Be a human being, in other words.
Being able to be with someone conventionally attractive does not open any doors for me with respect to my 1337 container raspberries and indoor citrus garden. You see how this works?
Alternatively, men could stop telling themselves and one another that sex is the most important thing ever, and how much sex a person is having determines their value as a person. Maybe men could start telling themselves and one another that sex is a cooperative activity that one does because it’s enjoyable, and because it’s enjoyable to the other person(s) involved, much like a game of pick-up basketball.
Just a thought!
You doubt this only because women who are not conventionally attractive are literally invisible to you. You don’t get how a sexy underwear model could possibly experience rejection on a regular basis, and you don’t even see the multitude of women who are not underwear models and who deal with rejection on a regular basis.
Women approach men every day. They may not be approaching YOU. You are not representative of the human race. I mean, by definition, you are one person, and your circle of friends represents a self-selected, non-representative sample experiencing a miniscule fraction of the total human experience. I don’t want to make you feel insignificant or anything, but you cannot, cannot generalize your personal experience to the world. Doing so erases the experiences of people who are not you, and those people are just as human and just as valid as you are.
I mean, we had this conversation way back upthread, and it’s still true.
Citation needed. Show me the scientific studies demonstrating that a lack of sex, ceteris paribus, leads to psychological ill-health in men.
In other words, a tiny sliver of the male gender, self-selected with zero attempt at randomization.
And no matter how you phrase this, your attempts to excuse a STABBING ATTACK ON WOMEN because: circumstances, is generally going to get pushback from PEOPLE WHO THINK STABBING WOMEN IS MORALLY WRONG REGARDLESS OF THE CIRCUMSTANCES.
I have hope for viewaskew – I am kind of naive and optimistic that way.
What I’m guessing is that he read the comments here and got really uncomfortable and anxious because he saw himself in the complaints. So he started a conversation to essentially say, “here is what I think; please tell me that I’m not a terrible person and you think I’m one of the good ones.”
If you are seeking reassurance that you are not like those other people (who you admit are seriously out of line) then on some level you know that something about your attitude may be off. You’re at least thinking about it.
So you can either double down (which is what most people do when faced with mental dissonance, at least at first) or you can try to reconsider your position. It’s okay if you don’t want to do that here; nobody wants an audience for soul searching.
But think about it, yeah? Read, like, Captain Awkward or something. Think about it.
I believe in you. I believe you are, at heart, a good person, and that you want the world to be a better place. Even if it’s hard.
“Most men have [no power]” in our system? How are you defining power? How could you possibly define power in a way that includes most men in particular but not most of any gender? Especially in order to claim that most men have “no power”?
@viewaskew (and how skewed they are!)
1. I have been sexually rejected. It sucks. But because I have been socialized as a female in the very conservative South, my first responce is “it is my fault/something is wrong with me” not “it is the other person’s fault/they owe me sex/I should hurt them.”
2. I have approached and been rejected by average men. Neither Bigfoot nor Cheetos were involved and now I kind of feel ripped off.
3. It must be very hard for your psychological well-being to be tied to sex. That is a really narrow, unfulfilling measure of psychological life. I believe someone suggested bird watching–seconding that.
4. I am sorry you define power avilable to men only by attainable sex. Men have so much more exciting privilege to exploit! You are really missing out.
26 year old woman here. Reasonably conventionally attractive. Never had a boyfriend, never had sex or been kissed, been on one date and it went pear shaped after 30 minutes. I am certainly passive – although I wouldn’t call myself asexual I find myself with little attraction to anyone. Very minor crushes sometimes but not enough to make a move on. This, and the fact that I didn’t ask out the guys that I was head over heels for, is partly the reason for my continued singleness. I blame no man. I’m not even fussed about being single. Like other people have said, it’s given me great opportunity to work on myself and develop as a person.
My most important point? Being “passive”, as viewaskew put it, has yielded me zero results. Buddy, actually listen to women when they talk to you about their experiences. Don’t assume based on what your mates and the manosphere has said.
Are you effin’ kidding me? As a middle- and high-schooler, I was routinely rejected, out of hand, by ALL the guys, without so much as saying a word to them. If you’re a scrawny little non-blonde girl who wears glasses, guess what? You’re ugly, and even the shyest boys will sure as hell let you know it. Add to that the fact that my hair was frizzy and there was an obvious brain underneath it, and you’re looking at someone who never got asked to dance as anything other than a joke. Between the guys, that is. Once I found out that they were paying each other to prank me, I stopped going to school dances. Try being a girl who doesn’t fit the existing, extremely narrow beauty standard, bucko. You won’t like it, and it will leave you with even less confidence than any of these silly dudes who call themselves incels. It certainly had that effect on me. A part of me still feels it to this day, and I’m now 47.
And if you think most men have no power, again…TRY BEING FEMALE, BUCKO.
Fuck you viewaskew.
I didn’t have a boyfriend until I was 23. I didn’t lose my virginity until I was 19. Before college the only male attention I got was from street harassers. The one exception being a boy I “went with ” for about a week when I was 14. And we were friends first by the way.
When I lost my virginity, I was the one who suggested it. We had been talking at a party but he was kind of shy. My friends talked me into going for it because I was shy too. Until I was well into my twenties all the guys I had a crush on didn’t like me back. And I wasn’t ugly. I wasn’t a supermodel or anything but I was cute. Just socially awkward.
If you bothered to read this thread, you would see that all women don’t have dozens of suitors at all times and we get rejected too. But we aren’t killing or raping men because of it. Or cheering those who do. We don’t feel entitled to sex or romance. If you ever fucking listened to women or saw us as fellow humans, you’d know that dating is hard for everyone no matter the gender or orientation. But no, it’s easier to just whine into your echo chamber about the cruelty of feeemales.
WWTH: spot on. Easier to assume that the wicked wimminz are giving sex to other men (they make it sound like sex is goddamned candy bars) and being mean, than to accept that really, NOBODY has control over who they are attracted to and who likes them back.
Is Viewaskew TomSaw under a sock? Because he seriously just sounds like TomSaw under a sock.
@Mouse
Oh, sure! Ask away, I’ll try to answer what I can. ^^; (Sorry for the slow response, went to change the bedsheets and my cat decided that meant playtime.)
I don’t know, if they are the same it would seem that TomSaw has learned to communicate without numbered lists, and I am skeptical of that development.
@Mouse
Ditto on the boundries thing. Your speaking up made me feel comfortable to speak up, just fyi btw. I meant to add that in, but this thread went from slow to fast when Jerkface posted again.
@M.
Well naturally. One of my cats as a teenager would actually get seriously offended if you changed the sheets without him – like truly, he’d sulk in a corner and sit next to you juuuust until you tried to touch him, just so he could pointedly snub you. It was hilarious.
*uncertain* Should – should I ask you questions over email? I don’t want to derail the thread. My email is fartsmouse at gmail. Anybody else can email me too! I like talking to people! I am super nice, honest!
I should add that I’ve been rejected in some hideously cruel, to-my-face-in-front-of-a-roomful-of-others ways. Did I want to kill the guy who called me that awful name, just for looking at him and liking him, silently? No. Actually, the only person I wanted to kill in that moment was myself.
But what am I saying? Everyone knows that feeeeemales never face rejection or sexual humiliation!
This idea that women never face rejection is really insulting to men, even if we exclude all of the women who aren’t size 2 underwear models. In order for this scenario to work, men have to be willing to have sex with literally any woman who inquires, and I mean 100% of men have to be willing. Men aren’t allowed any personal preferences or quirks in what they find attractive, and they aren’t allowed to have any boundaries or be in monogamous relationships, because any of those things would lead to even size 2 underwear models facing rejection.
What kind of idea about men is that? It doesn’t mesh with reality, but it’s also super-insulting to men to suggest that they are slaves to their peens. Why would anyone advance this idea without any evidence?
Also, unlike the pathetic incels, I did not end up socially isolating myself or hating men, even though an awful lot of dudes over the years have given me every reason to suspect the entire sex of being basically the worst. I don’t even hate hot men for having it so good. What I hate is the stupid, sexist idea that women can’t face rejection. Yes, we do, all the time…even those of us who are “good girls”, who never make the first move (because we’re socialized to fear a righteous slut shaming if we even so much as ask a guy to have coffee with us). The idea that we never get rejected just because we’re not the ones who are supposed to do the asking is such an obscene lump of bullshit, and I wish it would die the hell in a FIRE.
I get rejected too; I don’t have a bunch of guys following me, giving me things and telling me how wonderful I am and neither does the girls at my schools even the most beautiful girls get rejected and don’t have it so good.
Seriously what fantasy world does these guys live in because sign me up!
Hugs if anyone wants them
http://mrmom.amaonline.com/images/gif/importD17.gif