[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.
Feeling powerless and being powerless are two different things.
Sorry, but being the target of coercion, threats, or having to preen and wait in hopes that a man that we like might notice us, is not a position of power. I admit that it’s hard to risk rejection, and endure rejection, but being hurt/afraid is not the same as being powerless. If you haven’t noticed, women face being insulted and losing face while dating just as much as men do.
Then you should probably stop right there. No-one deserves to have their feelings invalidated; not women, not men.
Feminism shouldn’t be in the business of policing men’s emotions. Their feelings aren’t the problem, anyway. The problem is their beliefs, and the behaviors that follow them.
Any CBT therapist would tell you that it’s healthy to feel anger when you are prevented from realizing a goal, even a small goal like getting a date or being unable to scratch an itch (of any kind) and bring relief. It doesn’t matter if it’s not rational to do so, feelings are not rational. Not to mention that anger can be used to “cover up” pain, because some people would rather be angry than hurt.
What isn’t normal, or healthy, is a belief in the need to get revenge, or the need to reassert dominance (ie. salvage their sense of entitlement). Thwarted entitlement can cause anger, but so can hurt, or any other number of beliefs/thoughts. Lets not confuse the issue by invalidating other’s feelings, because the feelings are honestly not the issue. Honestly. 🙂
Ways women get rejected, Part One (of how many? I dunno…)
1. If we aren’t HB10s, we get totally ignored.
2. Even an HB10 can be someone else’s “2/10, would not bang”.
3. Slut shaming. Yes, this is a mode of rejection; and even though the MRA/incel definition of “slut” has so many variations as to make the word essentially meaningless (seriously, how can one be a slut both for having sex and NOT having sex?) Whenever a guy says “ugh, she’s a slut”, he’s basically dismissing her from consideration.
4. Being the butt of cruel jokes. Guys making bets with each other to pretend they like you, as a means of “putting her in her place”. I got subjected to this particularly humiliating form of rejection several times in middle school.
5. Being told not to even LOOK at a guy you like, because you’re not worthy. I got this one in middle school, too.
6. Rape threats. Because what’s more rejectable than being “damaged goods”? NOTHING.
7. Being told you’re “too ugly to rape”. Srsly, WTF???
8. Being called pretty much every degrading name in the slang lexicon. Variations: Ugly, Slutty, Bitchy.
9. Being hit on in skeevy ways, by skeevy dudes. They know damn well that you wouldn’t do them; they’re just doing it to gross you out, because they fucking hate you and simply must degrade you somehow. Got this one in high school.
10. Inanely unattainable beauty standards. If you don’t look like [insert supermodel name here], you’re shit out of luck. Nobody will even look at you, except maybe with pitying contempt.
11. Being hit on by guys who really seem to like you, only to later be told something along the lines of “Sorry, I can’t be seen with you, you’re not hot enough.”
12. Being used and then tossed aside by guys only looking to increase their notch count.
13. Having a guy seem to be madly in love with you, only to turn around and dump you “because I love you too much”. Figure THAT out. It’s happened to me twice, and I’m still WTFing after all these years. For a gender that claims to have a lock on logic, that’s fucking pathetic.
14. Having a guy bail on you because you wanted to have sex and that somehow freaked him out. For a gender so obsessed and fixated with getting sex, guys sure are afraid to do it.
15. Having your every flaw, whether actual or imaginary, be picked apart in minute detail, within earshot, as though you weren’t even there. And whenever that happened to me as a girl, I knew damn well that the dude meant for me to hear that.
16. Being made to feel, every day and in every way, that you’re just not ever gonna be up to scratch. Whatever “scratch” is to this or that particular dude, you’re not it. You’re not ever gonna be it. Go die, homely girl.
And that’s just off the top of my head. I’m sure there are others. Anyone else care to add your own examples of how women get rejected, please do.
There’s the whole “no fatties” thing. Of course, the definition of fatty is arbitrary and ever shifting. Witness the thigh gap fad.
Oh yeah. And AGEISM. That’s a big one right there. Try being a woman over 25!
Getting fired because your boss wanted to sleep with you and you said no.
Seeing a guy you thought was genuinely into you, only to have him drop you like a hot potato when you aren’t ready to sleep with him yet.
Having your opinions be utterly dismissed until a man says the same thing, whereupon he is heralded as a genius and original thinker.
Saying “no” to someone, only for them to hear “try harder.” (What is that if not a rejection of my choice?)
@bina, in middle school I had one guy yell “ewwwwwww” and literally run away. That was actually funny.
I feel that men have more leeway in letting girls down nicely because they don’t have to worry about being accused of “leading the girl on” if she doesn’t take the hint. Usually a girl that’s mean when rejecting a guy is a girl that’s been burned by being gentle before.
The only time I really put myself out there to be rejected in my school days was in Jr. High, and that one experience made me never want to do it again.
Long story short: I got a crush on a guy in my art class because he was super nice to me. On Valentine’s Day, I gave him a card (a little one from a classroom box deal), and because I was super shy, told him it was from someone else and I wasn’t allowed to say who.
He and his friends bugged me all day about who it was from, and I finally told him it was me. They laughed in my face for the rest of the day. I wanted to just curl up under a desk and die on the spot.
I did end up dating two other guys in high school, but they were already friends and they didn’t end well. (One guy’s family was very into their religion, and I wasn’t a part of that, so they convinced him to break up with me, and the other broke up with me because he was told that I was spreading rumors that he was gay (Which turned out to be the fault of someone else, another one of my “friends” who wanted to date him). He then moved back to his home state and came out of the closet, so I’m happy for him. We had a bitter break-up, but he wasn’t a bad guy. Neither of them were.
He’s also the guy who helped me get the authorities’ attention when he found out that my stepfather was abusing me, so I feel like I owe him my life right there.)
Mouse farts,
Or there’s the guys who seem really into you and then they drop you like a hot potato once you do sleep with them.
I had a crush on someone in 11th grade, and I tried asking her out in front of my entire class, and yeah, I got laughed at. It’s something I’ve never been very good at.
In sixth grade, I had the most enormous crush on the most popular kid in the school. He was a snotty little brat, and I knew that, but…yeah, sixth graders are not known for being super rational. (I also think that part of the appeal, at least subconsciously, was my knowledge that I did not stand a snowball’s chance of hell with him; I could obsess and fantasize and daydream and never have to worry about what I’d do if he reciprocated.) In retrospect, he had some pretty severe issues going on himself; he was pretty horrible to everyone, and from some shit he said in class, I feel pretty safe guessing that his family was abusive, and a lot of his bullshit came from desperately needing some help. But oh my lord he was so pretty. Like, boy-band pop-star pretty. Dimples, chiseled jaw, big blue eyes, the whole bit. I was obsessed. It’s kind of embarrassing to remember. I was not one of those kids who gets a new crush every week; I liked to really settle into an infatuation and carry it around for a couple years like a security blanket. I was emotionally invested and honestly, kinda creepy.
I was also kind of awkward looking – little bit of a unibrow thing going, really bad skin, those awful super-thick bangs that were popular in the eighties (but this was the nineties and bangs were way out of style) and everything I wore was at least ten years out of date because my mother would only buy me clothes that she’d wanted to wear when she was my age and couldn’t afford. And I had terrible, terrible social skills because my parents were abusive and I had no idea how to relate to people. I had no friends. I was also a nerd.
So I’m in english class, and the teacher decides to assign a group writing project. She fucking announces, TO THE CLASS, that she is going to pair her worst student with her best writer – because that won’t offend anyone or anything. I was the best writer. I mean, that didn’t surprise anyone; like, she said “the best writer,” and people went “so who’s stuck with Mouse?”
The worst student was my crush.
I had about thirty seconds to turn bright red and get really excited. Then the guy stands up and begs the teacher to pair him with someone else – ANYONE else, please. She says no. He stands on a goddamn chair and argues passionately that she cannot do this to him, seriously, it’s cruel. “Why?” she asks. “I can’t say,” he says. So he goes up to her and whispers his reason in her ear, and she decides that she’ll put me with someone else.
Please bear in mind that everyone in my class heard this entire conversation. I was sitting right there. I was in tears. I wanted to curl up in a ball and just stop existing, and it just kept going.
TL;DR girls deal with rejection too, bro. It’s not a gendered experience.
Really. The only means? Are you trying to tell us that these men are so shallow, so unaware, so completely dependent on one activity with others to know that they are valid and real that their anger – even rage – is justified? I hate to be the one to break it to you, but most people, male and female, are quite able to feel reasonably comfortable with themselves without placing the responsibility for their self esteem on someone else…and only sexually, at that. So, your little pity party is not washing with me.
By the way, most men who feel the way you are describing are only trying to impress other men. We women do not even exist except as a means for you to tell other guys how cool you are. Feh. That is why only “babes” count for you.
Again, really. If you were not so full of self-pity – and if you stopped for a moment to realize that women are people and not some prize to shine your “self esteem” with – you would get that women all deal with rejection and all the sad little and big things that life throws at us all. So, duuuuuude, get off your pity pot, look around you and grow up. No woman will ever walk into your life, kiss all your booboo’s and make them better. YOU have to make your life worth living. You can either screw or kill all the women in the world and you will not be any happier.
Oh mang, Mouse, you’re practically me. I routinely got the class clown seated in front of me (I had to sit at the front of the room, because glasses, ugh) in the hopes that my brains and diligence would rub off on the little fucker. And of course he was invariably the cutest guy in the class, and also the biggest asshole because he knew damn well he could get any girl he wanted. And that girl, of course, was never going to be me. But I had the thankless task of trying to help the teacher smarten him up. There really is a special circle of Dante’s Inferno for that kind of situation…or ought to be.
Well, one time, the class clown did ask me to go with him during lunch time, and I nearly choked on my strawberry yogurt granola bar in shock and disbelief when he bopped me on the arm and just straight up asked. And then he proceeded to humiliate me in third period by sending two of the popular girls — real bitches, the worst in the school — to ask me if I was going to make out with him after class. Of course that was none of their business or anyone else’s either, so I said no. Instant, horrible rejection ensued. I would have felt worse about it if he didn’t make a big show of parading around with one of them on either arm in a “look what you’re missing” show of pathetically overblown 12-year-old ego. I thought, Yeah, I’m missing out all right…on the biggest baby in the class. He thinks I’m immature? He should look in the mirror.
Oh, it still stung, all right, and it stunk to be labelled a prude on top of all else. (Yup: Prude-shaming, it is a rejection thing, too.) But it would have stunk worse if I’d said yes and had everyone else snickering at my lack of pride.
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t: yup, definitely a female thing.
Ugh, Bina, that’s horrible. There is no good way of responding to that question, is there?
So, um, yeah, middle and high school boys aren’t known for being overly gentle with girls’ feelings when dealing out rejection. A lot of boys seemed to think it was the worst sort of humiliation to be “liked” by the social outcasts in our class, so they’d go out of their way to be as loud and cruel as possible when rating and rejecting them. I wasn’t hideous, but I wasn’t exactly a hot property either, being brainy, tomboyish, and introverted. As a result, I learned to clam up about my crushes. I’d moon around them, looking soulful and tragic, putting out tiny ambiguous signals of interest that could be quickly disowned if he wasn’t receptive. To this day it’s still very hard for me to come right out and tell a guy I like him. It feels like I’m naked and vulnerable.
Even if a miracle happened and a boy you liked also liked you back, he could suddenly and unceremoniously dump you without a word of explanation. I’ll never forget arriving at a party and finding my boyfriend snuggled cozily on the couch with a cuter, younger girl. There was no word of explanation, no eye contact when I went over to ask what was going on, nothing. He never talked to me again. It was as if I’d been thrown in the trash. Ninth grade boys aren’t socialized to let girls down gently.
I’ve always appreciated the bravery of anyone who plucks up the courage to ask someone out. Most people are flattered when that happens (who aren’t eighth grade doofuses). The problem with Nice Guys is that they often don’t even get to that step. They just hang around hoping their friend will eventually notice, by osmosis, how great they are. Or they assume women are rejecting them without even talking to them, as Eliot Rodger did; or they’re using a cold approach at bars, which has about the same success rate as Nigerian spam.
If your feeling is “murderous rage at the smallest slight,” then yes, yes you do.
Also, Katz, I laughed out loud at your Inpup blog. Everyone knows tabbies with white and torbies are the worst, right? Ugh.
They are the absolute worst, which is why they got adopted the first day they were available.
Yeah, they resent the options that either get us killed or the options that get us called all sorts of nasty things.
Yeah…we’re so lucky. [/sarcasm]
Women don’t have the “options” of being “proactive or passive”. At all. We don’t have ANY options when it comes to men.
If we approach a man, we’re seen as “desperate” and “needy”, and some men will head for the hills, if we wait for him to approach us we’re “cold bitches” because we couldn’t read his mind and come over to express interest.
Speaking of expressing interest, I saw the most disgusting ad on television the other day for a dating site for “cougars”. It pandered so hard to men it physically made me sick to watch.
*Goes to Google it* And guess what? It’s been banned in Australia!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/28/cougar-ad-banned_n_4169773.html
Are other people on board with me about the feelings thing, or am I being unreasonable? I mean, “sneering condescension whenever a woman speaks,” “sexual attraction to children,” and “reflexive fear at the sight of a black person” are all feelings, but I don’t think any of those deserve to be validated.
Just a quick addition to the list of ways women can get rejected: Being asked, pointedly, by the guy you like, about which of your friends he should try dating.
katz
I agree entirely. There are certain feelings and “opinions” which shouldn’t be validated.
And I feel that any feeling or “opinion” that can cause harm to someone like racism, pedophilia, or sexism are those which fall under that category.
@katz – From my (definitely-not-a-proessional) opinion, I think that being generally angry that your romantic situation is bleak could be okay. But being angry *at* women in general (or a woman in particular) for not solving that, is unfair.
And as a caveat: having that general anger would be okay, as long as one recognizes that said anger is not rational, is by no means to be acted upon, and needs to be worked through (rather than stewed in).
Having a feeling is okay, but that feeling can absolutely indicate that you have unreasonable expectations that must be changed.
@katz–I am with you. I didn’t want to touch it because I am pretty sure mrex is trolling due to other shite they have posted, but yeah. With you.
I def don’t think anger, in this case, could be described as “healthy.” While to some extent, I think it might feel reasonable, it falls squarely in to the “not helpful” category (rolling with the DBT model).
And further, I don’t think anger is the actual root here. It’s probably closer to the fear piece.
Nah Katz, you’re being reasonable. Having a feeling is one thing, be it anger, fear, or whatever, acting on it may or may not be reasonable, and expecting to have your anger validated is particularly touchy. If it’s a legit thing to be angry about, then yes, it should be validated, but “can’t get my dick wet” is not one of those legit things.
Back on the actual topic (me, redirecting the convo back on topic? Wtf?), no way in hell should anyone be validating anything resembling “they deserve violence”, regardless who they is. There’s a reason curses around here involve legos and cactī — uncomfortable, annoying, but seriously unlikely to be harmful, and, notably, “go pet a cactus” versus “I just wish these guys would make better plans and kill their targets and more of them”? First one is “I hope you do something dumb and regret it”, second one is “I hope someone does something horrible to you” — even our curses give people more agency than MRAs do!
Does that make sense outside my head? Anyways, point here is that no, any emotion gone to the extreme of hoping people get murdered is not an emotion that should be validated.
Oh sure, I don’t mean that it’s never okay to be angry about your circumstances. (For instance, if I get rejected by this agent after she’s made me do two rounds of revisions for her, I’ll be rather miffed.)
But even if it’s reasonable to feel that way, at the end of the day, you can’t change your circumstances; you can only change how you respond to them. I learned that as a long-term unemployed person: It’s totally reasonable to be frustrated that you can’t get a job (though not to be angry at specific employers for refusing to hire you), but when I got into a downward spiral of frustration and misery, I had to find a way to deal with my feelings that didn’t hinge on getting a job. So also to people who can’t get dates.
I have been so much happier since I stopped looking for work and became a full-time writer. Not that it’s an option for everyone.
My rejection anecdote, as an adult, in a relationship, being repeatedly knocked back when I tried to initiate sex with my partner. I tried to get him to tell me what I was doing wrong, what I could do to be more attractive to him, etc etc. Never thought of stabbing him for rejecting me, although sometimes I did cry because I felt so ugly and like there was something wrong with me for wanting sex. Turned out he was a porn addict, and had used so much porn that he was just not interested in ‘regular’ sex any more, and I wasn’t going to let him do all the nasty things he said would turn him on.
The reason these men get so irate when they are rejected by women is because they BELIEVE that they are entitled to have sex with whoever they want. So when they are denied, they feel like they are being denied a basic human right – by someone who is inferior to them. Women cope with rejection much more passively, even if they think it is unfair, because they are never taught that sex is their god-given right in this world.