[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.
I’m not sure I agree that this is a far healthier plot resolution. It still teaches men that they are entitled to female companionship, and furthermore includes the message that if the lady you want isn’t interested in you, she ought to at least try to set you up with someone who is. There’s still a “women have to cater to the desires of men” message embedded in there. Is that healthier? I have my doubts.
POM: I think I agree. Ideally it would be been “healthiest” for Gregory to, upon realising he won’t be with his initial crush, see that there is a less conventially perfect girl who likes him and for him to give her a chance. That’s also much more realistic.
“Did I say there was something wrong with you if you encounter a disproportionate number of men who felt that way?”
Pretty much, yes. You were just as cowardly as your line was awful, so you didn’t state it directly, but indirectly like this.
Here’s your awful little quote: ‘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.’
For one, you’re implying that the woman in question (unlike you, probably because you think that you’re totally not like THOSE women!) didn’t even *think* about why she’s facing a lot of terrible men, and you’re focusing on that as if it’s something she can change. And if she can change it, it’d logically follow that it’d be her fault.
Classic victim blamer logic.
And now you’re doing the typical next step, doubling down and pretending you didn’t just say what you did. Of course you didn’t, it’s just evil, shrill women misunderstanding you, right?
Whistling past the graveyard, I think. Otherwise one has to consider the fragility of their own employment and it’s not at all reassuring.
Is it possible to post cities with some of those female Kurdish soldiers? Guys like Elliot roger and this kid are making me fearful.
every time something horrible like this happens, i have to hear everyone writing it off as an isolated incident, the work of a “crazy”* individual or whatever bullshit.
it’s like everyone is *wondering*, incapable of figuring out what the heck is with that dude’s thinking, all while ignoring all the other factors that make stuff like this possible, and i don’t mean just the small community of “incels” reinforcing each other’s misogyny, but also the culture that makes such thinking possible.
like, it’s so obvious that educating men to see themselves as deserving of sex/women’s attention in general just for being men will lead someone, somewhere, to rape or kill for it, believing they are doing an act of justice.
but no, for some people we’re well into the “we don’t need feminism anymore” age already. ugh.
(* : i don’t subscribe the crazy = violent association myself)
Had I wanted to say that, I would have just said it. You wouldn’t have had to read it into what I did say.
She thinks that the majority of men in the world are exactly like the the terrible men she encounters. What conclusion am I supposed to reach from that? Do tell me the logical steps I should take to conclude that she has thought long and hard about why she encounters men who are, in the main, terrible.
Did I say she can change it?
Did I say she can change it?
I used to wonder why I don’t encounter tons of men who are terrible. They clearly exist, and I have encountered them, but not in the numbers some women do. I thought about it, and concluded that it’s because I mainly work with people in the public sector. People typically go into public service because they are civic-minded and possibly civic-mindedness does not mesh well with aggressive misogyny. Note that I am not talking about law enforcement or the military, as I have little experience with those divisions of the public sector. I’m talking about people who work in government.
Prior to that, I worked in an industry that was overwhelmingly populated by women, so the men I encountered were generally married to people I liked and respected. It made sense that these women hitched themselves to not-terrible men. The creepers I have encountered were mainly in that industry.
“I work mainly in tech” seems like a solid explanation for running into a disproportionate number of terrible men, and a good reason to think that this population is not representative of the entire world. “I encounter mainly terrible men” does not lead to “all men are mainly terrible” when one knows that one mainly hangs out with a sector that is famous for attracting terrible men.
*stares*
Did you just say that to PoM of all people?
which i think nails what it is about. Like an adventure game “present proof of straight intercourse with attractive girls, to the Bro council; then you will be rewarded with the achievement and title of “Real Man” and can progress.
Yes, please! And count on a large female contingent of non-bastardettes, too.
Oh, worse. MUCH worse. He’s demanding a kind of universal prostitution in which all women are prostituted, and their “remuneration” is the mere presence of this god-man dudebro whose dick is his sole and entire source of virtue. It would almost be funny if it weren’t so terrifying. It puts all women way below even the worst man.
Funny how these guys claim that sex is a human right but they only think of it in terms of men’s rights to sex. What would they say if women started claiming this? Women who aren’t manic pixie dream girls but women who have committed the great crime of being old or fat or having short hair. I’m guessing it wouldn’t go over well.
Is anyone getting a weird doxing vibe from LouLou? I followed her link and didn’t see any proof other than someone claiming to be dude. It mostly was just discussion about hiding their identities from the FBI. Although, to be fair, I was horrified enough that I didn’t read much.
Also, if we argue that most men think like this because men internalize sexism, then we should argue that most women think like this because women are the products of patriarchy just as much as men are. Most boys and men are able to own their disappointment and anger that life is unfair.
And while its never anyone’s fault when assholes are assholes, everyone has some choice in who they associate with and where they work. Take some responsibility for your experiences in life. 🙂
Policy of Madness, saying “did I say that? Did I say that?” is like a double slap in the face. I read that into it because that’s a) how it strongly came across, b) exactly what dozens of people have said to me and c) what my toxic internal ptsd monologue says constantly. Idk, consider taking that on board? Maybe? You came across appalling. If you didn’t mean it………getting more snarky and just trying to point out why I’m wrong for reading it like that just makes it feel way worse.
I don’t know why I’ve met so many men like that. I’ve spent years poring over it and I’m no closer to understanding it. They haven’t fallen in one demographic. Maybe I live in an entitlement hotspot. Maybe I’m an easy target. I HAVE ‘examined’ it. Sometimes I think it’s just that I push guys’ buttons and their worst sides come out. I don’t think that perspective is any more valid than yours which appears to be (“did I say that?”) that because you haven’t met that many entitled men, something must be wrong with either me or my sample.
This is not strictly true, in my experience–the point about having choice in association/work. While I can chose who I hang out with, I still live in the American South, where some pretty crap ideas about women are the norm and where I am exposed to them involuntarily on the daily. Work is even more problematic, for a variety of reasons which is way too much to unpack.
While accountability is important before making sweeping assumptions, true, there are certain things that are out of individual control when it comes to exposure.
Oh, let me clarify; i meant that as products if patriarchy, women should feel that it’s reasonable to be shamed/killed for rejecting men, not that the would do the shaming/killing themselves. Point being, despite patriarchy, most people, men and women, are empathetic beings. The idea that men are intrinsically not empathetic because of biotroofs is one of the worst parts of toxic masculinity.
Yeah, that’s not true. We get to pick our friends, but we don’t get to pick our families, and we don’t always get to pick our professions or the places where we live. This statement is not significantly different from saying that people who are poor are choosing to be poor, on the grounds that they could choose higher-paying jobs but just don’t want to work them. That’s an argument that some people make, and it’s not a valid one.
Let’s review what initially brought this up.
This is from N.P.S. My post was a reply to N.P.S. I just want to remind everyone of that. I was not replying to you, Kat.
My reply was to N.P.S. Has N.P.S. pored over it and examined it? I have no idea, but given that the original statement, to which I was replying, completely generalized one person’s individual experience to everyone and thereby completely erased everyone who might have had a different experience, my inclination is to say that that there is no evidence of examination there.
I would never generalize my life experience, in which creepers and misogynists are quite uncommon, to everyone and erase the experiences of everyone for whom terrible men are common. I’m not going to allow someone else to erase mine.
I’m sorry that you have had bad experiences. You didn’t deserve it. You don’t deserve it. I don’t know you and I can’t answer the question as to why it happens to you. It may just be bad luck and nothing you can control. I’m sure that my relatively privileged experiences wrt misogynist men comes down to at least some degree of luck. I’ve had a lot of bad experiences with terrible men, but I’ve also had some great experiences with fantastic men. Why is that? I don’t actually have an answer, and I won’t invent one that attributes it all to my cleverness. That’s not what I did and it’s not what I’m doing.
Buttercup Q. Skullpants:
I rather like this. I think it’s an appropriate turn of phrase for the absolutely ass-backwards wrongness of MGTOWs. Sorry you have the flu. :/
From dorabella’s link:
Well, gee, how about because it leads to the idea that women are non-human sex dispensers and it’s perfectly right and reasonable to murder women because they think they’re human beings who get decide who they do or do not sex with?
Except, of course, that no one just goes up to someone and demands that they, say, teach them algebra or cure their sinus infection, and then goes into a violent rage when that person refuses. Doctors and teachers are people who have consented to be doctors and teachers, and when someone needs healthcare or education, they go to people who have chosen to provide those services.
I wanted to weigh in on this a little. I read a great description of these guys a while back and it was from mental health professional who thought that these were mostly young men with personality disorders who also were on the Autism spectrum, in other words they have toxic personalities and struggle with maintaining a tight grip on reality. That is a really good description of Elliot Rodger too. They all float around with the MRA’s and the PUA’s and MGTOW and Incel but it is a relatively small group of men and I also feel/think that most people with Autism are not violent, but may use the language of violence because 1) they hear it from others like themselves 2) they are all using video games most of the time because they prefer an inner world over the hard to understand outer world (gamergate once said they were WEAPONIZING AUTISM). My point is as creepy as this sounds it really is how men who can never really be men and struggle with that project that fantasy world onto women. The fantasizing about women being historically “good in nature” or “quality women” they probably learned from floating around the cesspool I mentioned earlier. We all now the MGTOW are famous for a revisionist history of women being always thin and beautiful and agreeable. I have noticed that in MGTOW revisionism women were handed out like Pez from a Pez Dispenser but in reality even in times when there were arranged marriages plenty of men got no wife. It was never a given that a man would have a wife, getting a wife was a historic victory for a man either through negotiation with her family or through achievement and the like, (i.e. winning her hand). Many men ended up alone going west (in the USA) or working to death in coal mines or on railroads. These men do not see that, they do not see that were it not for modernity they would not be here to complain about what they don’t have, they would be alone and lost to society since most families don’t hand their daughters off to little men with special needs and no accomplishments or prospects and who display some toxic personality characteristics which is what they are.
I hope that wasn’t too long.
Doctors and teachers also have the right to refuse people who demand that the service be performed according to their terms only.
The most awful thing about sex = healthcare is that, even if we want to consider sex a benefit, it is a MUTUAL benefit. I have sex with you and you with me. I have fun and you have fun. I make you feel good, you make me feel good. This is the absolute best thing about sex, the one that makes it so completely different from anything like healthcare and education, and much more like a game we play together, or a tennis match (minus the competition), or getting into a kajak and going down a bumpy river together, or parachuting together.
And these idiots complete miss this. Completely. It’s like they want sex and don’t even know what sex is.
We should start a candid camera show where we have an overweight actress aggressively come on to MRA’s, and watch them flee in terror.
I also wanted to share this link to an article about teaching girls how to say NO so they can protect themselves
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2015/01/teaching-girls-to-say-no-in-virtual-reality-cuts-sexual-victimization-by-half-study/
This … makes me really uncomfortable. Why is a mental health professional diagnosing people they have never met in person? That’s unethical. And that’s only the first of many different ways this is wrong. “Toxic personality” is not the same as a personality disorder, and neither of those things is equivalent to being, or requires a person to be, on the autism spectrum. This is kind of throwing people with autism and personality disorders under the bus, and in the process giving a “but they just can’t help it” excuse to terrible people. I’m confounded as to what kind of mental health professional would do this.
People, like me, who have autism spectrum disorder, run the same full gambit from wonderful people to violently toxic people. Nothing about ASD makes us any more likely to view women as sex-dispensing objects. Sheesh.