[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.
@Samantha
I don’t know how serious you are about the trank gun thing but I want to put two warnings out there. 1. Trank dart doses are based on weight, so to little you just piss your target off and to much you kill them. So in practice they are not very useful. 2. Any trank gun or any weapon at all that claims 100% non-lethal effectiveness is lying and could get a user in serious trouble. The true term I believe is less lethal.
Amen.
Sigh. I broke my rule against reading this blog late at night.
Here’s my favorite lolcat ever, or possibly a link to my favorite lolcat ever because I’ve never embedded here before (advance apologies):
¬.¬
http://itsfuriousbalancing.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/it-suspects-nothing.jpg
Yeah no, that’s just something baby boomers say when young people dare to complain that they kind of ruined everything.
“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.”
Because I work in the tech industry.
But I’m sure it’s totally our fault that there are so many men like that around.
Always women’s fault. Even among commenters of blogs like this.
Ken L.
So what you’re saying is that it’s actually a male thing, because men are the majority.
But that’s not really the case, is it?
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP.TOTL.FE.ZS
If you look down towards the United States, there are .8 percent more women than men, so women are the majority here in the U.S. (If you look at the other countries across the board, they’re about even as well, and have been for the past few years. The smallest female population I saw on that list was about 42 percent, which you can still say is a little less than half).
And yet, we’re not baying for the blood of men who refuse to date us, are we? No. There’s a simple reason for that: Women are taught “he’s not that into you, so cry about it and move on”. We’re taught that if a man rejects our advances, we’re to move on and not pester him further, lest we be labeled as “creepy” and “desperate”. I’ve had boys laugh in my face when I told them I liked them before. Not once did I wish death on them. I was embarrassed, yes, but I went home, cried, read a book, and got over it, because that’s what women are supposed to do.
Men are taught “that bitch owes you because you were nice to her, but she won’t put out! Slut!”. And in the eyes of these men, that’s worthy of death.
There are plenty of men who, like women, will understand that that’s not the case, and will move on if rejected. But the fact remains that men like this are still a very real threat, and the only time the police will do something is when there’s either a body, or a very bad assault.
It’s not that it’s a “majority” thing. It’s that men have been taught since birth that they need to have a woman in their lives to have worth, and these particular males are taking that to extremes, and, unfortunately, no one’s doing anything about it because apparently women aren’t worth protecting from reality-deviating, violent men.
Simple as that.
There is significant evidence from European Intelligence Agencies that gamer(gate) style forums are used for message passing and planning . It looks to me that this lot as well will be ripe for the picking to turn into lone wolf terror cells too, time for, I hope, GCHQ, BDN and DGSE ramp things up. Worrying very worrying.
So these guys’ theme song is that hideous Guns ‘n’ Roses Song “I Used to Love Here (But I Had to Kill Her)”
“HER”, not “here”, obviously.
Quote from the terrible excuse for a human being calling himself Homesick Alien:
I have never understood how a person can use language like this and still honestly think they count amongst reasonable, good and decent people. How can anyone not see that such phrases come from a place of privilege, not oppression? How can anyone think they’re being good people unfairly treated if their reaction is “this person whose natural place is under the heel of my boot has talked or acted in a way that jeopardizes this natural, God-given order of things, so I am justified in using violence to force them back into their subservient role”?
“To put someone in their place” and “uppity”. Said no decent human being ever. No, I dare you: Find one instance in which those phrases are morally justifiable.
Sheesh. This is why I believe strongly in anarcho-feminism. Give anyone power and privilege over another human being, and sooner rather than later, they’ll start confusing said power and privilege with honest-to-god human rights that they are entitled to, in a way anyone is entitled to air to breathe. Like any MRA and anti-feminist ever, every racist, every asshole born into wealth, etc, etc, all evil has its roots in power, privilege and the will to dominate.
Then again, I also have massive problems understanding how anyone can honestly justify their claim of being a “nice guy” when they fantasize about raping and murdering women who have supposedly slighted them in some way. I mean, that last meme. You can see from the choices of words that the woman uses to reject the man that it’s not something she likes doing. She’s outright apologetic for not feeling anything towards the guy. She gets no rush from it, she’s feeling terrible, despite nothing in the whole affair being her fault. How do you justify the belief that she deserves to get shot?
Ugh. I feel sick.
Ej: I think the most overwhelming question of that entire “hamster episode” is: why is Dr. Who narrating racing/wrestling hamsters?
Thank you, that was genuinely hilarious.
Anarchonist: Amen!
Only someone in a privileged space can come up with this idea of:
1. Deciding that other human beings have a place and where that place is.
2. Deciding that the person is out of the place they should be (because they assigned it to them, whether it’s known about or not.)
3. It’s their prerogative to put them back in the place they assigned for them (whether or not they even know about it.)
This attitude smacks of an enormous amount of I acknowledged privilege, all while screaming that their the victims of people who aren’t in their proper place.
The irony meter has been broken.
Sorry, I meant “unacknowledged” privilege.
“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.”
That’s a horrible thing to say. I have also met a disproportionate number of men who have felt that way at least to some extent, with horrible consequences.
As if I don’t spend enough time thinking “what’s wrong with me?”
Thanks.
Above comment is re: Policy of Madness.
ketamine would be good to use in a tranq dart. If someone got injected with 500 miligrams of ketamine they would almost certainly be rendered completely harmless for a significant period of time, and a very reduced risk for even longer. Also, it would be very unlikely for them to die given the safety profile of ketamine.
The problem is ketamine is a schedule III drug so it is illegal to use in such applications I suppose. I’d certainly buy the darts just to shoot myself with them, I love taking ketamine :P, though at much lower doses than that (even at much lower doses than that you are completely disconnected from the real world and rendered incapable of functioning in it whatsoever).
Isn’t Ken L. that guy who acts agreeable for one or two posts before breaking out the disgusting sexual harassment apologia and victim blaming every time he shows up?
There was a curious reference to Tomb Raider in one of his letters to the police. I wrote of it shortly in a post because I’m sure it’s not a “casual” or “random” thing, but I have no idea of how Moynihan linked those two facts (his own misogyny and a video game with a female protagonist).
I can think of a lot of crimes (including murders) commited in the name of male entitlement, but none in the name of feminism. Not one.
Ikeke35
Just…bless your face.
You hit the nail right on the damn head.
M.
Yup. And he just made two posts. *checks watch* Let’s see how much longer he lasts. Especially after I told him his “men only do this because they’re the majority!” line is bullshit.
Elektra Kenway
Amen to that.
Which is why I find it hilarious that men like this like to pull the “But you did it to us first/are doing it to us currently!” argument.
I don’t see any feminist arguing that men should be killed if they turn down a woman, nor that men deserve to be raped or beaten for disagreeing with us, nor that men are somehow inferior to us because of “biotruths”.
Not a damn one.
@ Elektra – MRAs always drag up Valerie Solanas’ attempted murder of Andy Warhol as the spectre of violent, militant Feminism to prove how we’re all evil and literally seek to Kill All Men, etc. Because one individual with their own train of thinking behind their actions represents all of Feminism, but Elliot Rodgers is Not All Men… except for when he embodies why all hot women should submit to be fucked by “incels”. And then he’s just the natural product of uppity wimminz not knowing their place.
Ugh. I hate the fact that these people exist in numbers which are not limited to a few isolated individuals. And I hate the fact that despite their being found in neat little clusters all over the manosphere, there are no obvious attempts to monitor their behaviour.
It’s not all men, but murder and physical violence is just on a looong continuum of harm that is done to women. It starts with benevolent sexism and it ends in misogyinistic brutality.
I’m sorry, but the majority of men are totally sexist. Everyone is affected by Patriarchy without even seeing it, in the same way that fish don’t see the water. Even the most enlightened Feminists have absorbed its influence at one point or another. And every single person on the planet reinforces it.
So, no – Not All Men believe they should kill women. But all men are affected by sexism in their thoughts and actions, and that is part of the fucking problem.
Shut up, Woody.
I am so glad that at least there wasn’t a fatality this time, and I am really sad that three stabbings can be called a good outcome compared to other such incidences.
policy of madness
This. This is where even someone like doctornerdlove gets it wrong.
He does the occasional post talking about how to identify which women are and which women aren’t amenable or open to a “cold approach” in a public setting. When you read that stuff, you might even agree with his reservations, provisos and conditions for selecting against approaching women “cold”. But he still advocates “cold approach” as a valid, useful dating strategy.
Even if you think this is a desirable skill, it should be perfectly obvious that it’s in the highly advanced category in a personal skills repertoire. Think of how many doctors can simply look at a (potential) patient and instantly diagnose diabetes or hypo- or hyper-thyroidism. There are some who do this pretty accurately on a regular basis. Most can’t (and no one would prescribe without testing anyway – but they can save you or the system some money by accurately identifying which tests should and which shouldn’t be undertaken.) And I reckon this is much the same level as reading body language and facial expression and tone of voice. All at once. In a split second.
No matter how often dr n runs these articles, he can’t override the PUA it’s a numbers game strategy. Groceries? The servo? How on earth would anyone think this was a reasonable place to approach people? For anything, let alone the beginning of something “wonderful”. Most of us are thinking, maybe worrying, whether we’ve forgotten something or about the time or the traffic on the way home or to wherever we’re going. Not looking for a date.
(I just might be a bit irritable. We’ve got the tv on a completely stupid God-led-me-to-search-for-this program which appeals to my husband’s not-very-nice sense of humour, laughing at fools. It just gets under my nails.)
You have captured it perfectly. The vast majority of MRA online “activists” carry on like they’re on a weird gender version of World of Warcraft or Call of Duty. Defining an evil, all powerful enemy, themselves as the resistance and the ridiculous posturing about “false flag ops” and so on.
With misfits like Rodger and Moynihan, the problem is that they’ll have been conditioned in part by “frat” depictions of student and general media focus on female sexuality being pathological and in part by their own narcissistic entitlement. I think that the dysfunctional bitterness and warped worldview of the wretched “manosphere” might well have acted as a catalyst.
I am writing the following in no way to diminish the responsibility of those prominent or active in the manosphere, but I believe the majority of MRA/PUA/MGTOW bloggers, commenters and Redditers are trolls who recognise the theories and theorists as childish nonsense but nevertheless jump on the bandwagon to get attention. They can only get negative attention, but for life’s losers, that will suffice.
Tragedy occurs when the toxic mess combusts in a personality type like Rodgers/Moynihan. Clowns like Elam and Price will disown responsibility because they are actually true believers. The trolls, depending on their respective humanity levels, will thirst for yet more attention or rapidly disperse.
Either way, the consistently low and dysfunctional calibre of individual to be found within all online facets of the mercifully tiny manosphere gets another public outing.
The big film of my teenage years – to the extent that I think it was watched by pretty much every Briton in their mid-teens when it came out in the early 80s – was Gregory’s Girl, whose message seems to me to be far healthier.
The hero may be a total klutz, but he’s also genuinely nice, and while he signally fails to pair up with the girl of his dreams, that’s because she’s astute enough to know that they’re not right for each other – and so instead she concocts a scheme whereby he ends up with the girl who really is a perfect match, even if she’s not the one who’s the constant centre of attention. And it’s all written and performed so naturally that it seems entirely credible – Gregory’s slightly younger but conspicuously more mature and level-headed sister is just one of many beautifully drawn characters.
Even the two “incel” characters maintain a sunny optimism despite their conspicuous lack of success – to the extent that I genuinely don’t think you can interpret their final attempt at hitch-hiking to Caracas along sleazy MRA lines of finding a compliant Ukrainian or Thai bride: they’ve just heard that there’s a bigger female:male ratio there and think that that might increase their chances of finding someone who actually likes them.
So now you’re a slut if you say *no* to sex, too?
The sad thing is, the vast, vast majority of single men aren’t like this. They may be lonely and feel desperate to get a date, but they would never stoop to absurd and horrifying behaviour like murder or rape, or glorifying those crimes. These incel morons are hurting the normal single guys.
Also, is it just me, or do people who believe in some sort of female conspiracy sound more than a bit like the people who believe in a Jewish conspiracy? They’re clearly people who feel they don’t control their own life, so they jump to the conclusion that it’s all a conspiracy controlled by some mysterious and all-powerful group (even if, if you were to use logic, that group has been generally oppressed throughout history, rather than doing the oppressing).