[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.
Mrex,
There’s plenty of rape apologia coming from women such as Janet Bloomfield or Princeton Mom. Because, yeah. The patriarchy causes internalized misogyny.
Let’s not with the notion that autism is somehow a factor in violent misogyny.
Anecdote is not data, and I know plenty of hardworking people who could not get jobs when the economy was poor, or right after a recession; also older people who are downsized and have a hard time finding something else. It’s a tough world out there.
However…
I have had a few friends or spouses of friends (all male) over the years who chronically “can’t find jobs” or are “underemployed”. Any job they will even bother to apply for, though, has to pay above a certain amount, cannot include night, evening, or weekend hours — ever — and must be worthy of them (i.e., no cashier work, administrative assistant or similar). Plus each one generally has a few more individual stipulations for any potential job before they will even apply. Then the longer they are unemployed, the less likely they are to get called for an interview, and what’s more, they don’t see any of this as a problem behavior.
They feel entitled to a specific kind of job, and feel entitled to calling the shots once they have a job, which often means they are then the first to be let go when the next recession hits because they’ve pissed off too many people above them in the hierarchy, which is then interpreted as something like “I’m so good they all hated me”.
I don’t know any women who have this mindset when they are out of work (though I am sure they exist), not even the nurses. Most of the women and many of the men I know take the first job they are offered (when jobs are hard to get, at least), and then keep looking if it isn’t right. But for a few men, this entitlement thing is a big problem for their ability to be employed.
It’s my guess that men who feel entitled to sex with a specific sort of woman probably feel entitled to other things as well…and I wonder if they tend to be less employable than others and if that feeling of entitlement extends to employment.
… Do I have a toxic personality? Do I have a loose grip on reality? What about my little brother, the feminist rocket scientist doing a bang-up job of balancing his engagement to his childhood friend with his job at NASA? Because we have autism – we’re autistic gamers, even! – and that’s not just wrong, it’s fucking offensive.
Yes, trolls and assholes have been using “Autism” as a bullshit excuse for years, but only because they know that it’s an easy out, that people will let them do their thing as long as they have that excuse to hide behind. Would you judge black people by the false stereotype thrust on them by Fox News? Would you judge gay people by the false stereotype thrust on them by the religious right? Because you’re judging autistic people by the false stereotype thrust on them by trolls. The same trolls who, by the way, also use “Autistic” as their go-to insult.
Being a sexist piece of dog shit stuck to humanity’s collective shoe has about as much to do with autism as my bra size.
(Nothing makes me break out the teal deer of rage like “Autistic = jackass” bullshit. Fuck fuckety dick arse fuck.)
No doubt our MRA friends will bring up Valerie Solanos. Of course it’s worth remembering that we’re still talking about her decades later because this was such a rare event (“man bites dog” in journalistic parlance)
There’s simply no equivalence when women are killed at the rate of two a week in England alone.
Anyone who works in the intelligence field will be familiar with threat assessment categories and the difference between ‘not when but if’ and ‘not if but when’.
Women live in one category and men another.
Policy Of Madness I was quoting someone else’s ideas but I apologize if I offended if the mods want to remove my post I am ok with that.
I apologize to everyone I was not trying to offend. Nor was I implying that a personality disorder is toxic only that some people with personality disorders are toxic. I know most people with autism are fine that was not my point. I again am ok if the mods remove my post
Urgh, this kind of BS needs to be on a laminated sheet for everyone to whip out when the issue of ‘toxic masculinity’ gets questioned. On the surface I’m not so different from these people, I’m a introverted nerd with an unfortunately short history when it comes to dating. but do you know whose fault that is? mine. Even when it comes to my introversion and aspects of my shy personality that I can’t easily control, that’s still me, the women I’ve dated don’t owe me anything, they don’t owe me due consideration or understanding, they don’t owe me sex or attention, I have to earn that and I’m glad to otherwise dating and getting to know someone that closely would be boring. Sure it can be hard for some of us, but it shows monumental entitlement to assume you’re being denied something when in all honesty it’s your own failing that’s at play.
Also glad to be in the U.K. The difference between this a-hole and Elliot Rodger shows what tighter controls of firearms can do for a country when you add crazy people to the mix. I’m looking at you America…
“Insecure employment and unemployment are caused by people not having their shit together apparently, nothing to with economic cycles, capitalism etc. Mass layoffs and businesses going bust, it’s just the workers being immature.”
Okay, that’s not what I meant, but I should’ve worded it better. I’m talking about how the typical protagonist in these Judd Apatow-style films doesn’t take his work seriously, or keeps getting fired for goofing off, or is unemployed but does nothing all day (like, you know, HOUSEWORK) except smoke weed, while the girlfriend works and is painted as a huge b*tch because she interrupts his videogames to ask him to take out the trash. I’m talking about how he’s basically an overgrown boy who expects his girlfriend to behave as a mommy substitute while at the same time resenting her for doing so. Plenty of people who are un- or underemployed pull their weight around the house while their partner works.
Gee, anonymous, thanks for stopping by and demonstrating everything that’s wrong with sl*thate and the whole “incel” thing.
Yeah, wow, that’s not dehumanizing at all. Yeah, it’s not like the “females” are human beings or anything, they’re just resources for governments to distribute.
Nope, no misogyny here at all.
It is not women’s job or sole purpose in life to “distribute sex.” Women are not “sex distributors.” Women are people.
Bingo. Families that arranged marriages tended to have sufficient resources to do so. If they didn’t, their children remained unmarried. These guys all clearly assume that women are commodities to be distributed in some “fair” fashion, and nope, that has never been the case. Even in the “good old days” when women were given no choice in the matter, there were those who remained unmarried due to cold, hard circumstances. No looks + no dowry = no marriageability for a woman; no property/title/profession = no shot at it for a man, either.
Everything that came after this sentence demonstrated that I actually understand it perfectly. It is, indeed, exactly as wrong-headed, logically-challenged, foundationally morally bankrupt and soaking with entitlement as I had believed.
Thanks for the confirmation that you’re an idiot, anonymous. I feel much better about my contempt for you and yours now that you’ve proven that the contempt is not misplaced.
@Ken L,
I’m getting kind of tired of men mansplaining how sexism isn’t really a problem.
@M.
Yes. Yes he is.
@Samantha,
What the everloving fuck, anonymous troll? Women don’t distribute sex. It’s a mutual activity that both parties want. Although sex can be commodified, it isn’t inherently a product or service. Because it’s our bodies. Bodily autonomy is a fundamental human right. Sex never can be, because to make it so would mean violating the right to our own bodies.
Nobody is entitled to sex with a hot woman. Anyone who desires sex with a hot woman will just need to figure out a way to become attractive to one.
I wonder if the troll is ggg. I really don’t want to believe that the belief that the government should provide men with sex partners is shared by many.
On a side note: I’m glad I owned a fedora before assholes claimed it as their own.
I was just into ska, it was the fashion 🙁
*rolls eyes*
So, according to anonymous troll, it is a bad, awful, no-good thing that a not-very-hot girl can successfully sleep with a dude who is two! whole! points! hotter than she is.
However, it is also a bad, awful, no-good thing that hot girls won’t sleep with un-hot guys, and therefore the government ought to distribute them as prostitutes, because any goober who happens to be male deserves to sleep with the hottest of feeeemales.
And this is “sexual equality for males”. Right.
It can’t be GGG. This one is calling for govt funded prostitutes, whereas GGG finds them icky and wants the govt to get him a date.
But if you say that in the US, you’re subject to frothing, projectile-spittle “rebuttles”, or “This is not the time to make this political…” (Well, when, then? Because it seems like we’re generally on the back end of some mass shooting.)
“People go on killing sprees in countries with limited access to guns! Look at China [when there was a spate of people going on stabbing sprees in schools].”
“But…while they’re still awful, you generally have multiple people stabbed with limited /deaths/, whereas here you have a bunch of bloody fucking corpses and a few survivors.”
*apoplectic rage and/or deflection*
And I write this little rant as a gun – yea, assault rifle – owner.
Seconded. Whenever the incel bullshit crops up, I question if my disinterest in sexual/romantic relationships bleeds over into a lack of compassion for lonely people who are in pain. But not right now.
Not when the topic of this thread is the stabbing of three women.
Not when there is a community (however small) delighting in vicariously experienced “revenge” against complete strangers whose crime was not being interested in someone.
Not when there is larger cultural background noise of feeling wronged, outraged, irreparably wounded, when a woman just doesn’t want to fuck you.
Not when some jackass, bristling over the term “male entitlement”, equates sex with essential resources and having sex with being a teacher, and can’t seem to grasp as simple a concept as bodily autonomy.
No, I don’t think there’s much of a misunderstanding.
What the hell are you talking about Anonymous. I thought all you asswipes were libertarians, which is typical “get the gubment out of everything but the bedroom”. Pay for your own hookers, you even imply, I think anyway, that all women would be participating in this nonsense. For your information hot chicks are not all hookers and you are not entitled to them. You even say something like all the men would be “sharing” the women. But what is in it for the women?????? NOTHING, that is a literal prescription for slavery.
I am sorry about my post offending you POM I hope all is forgiven.
I’m not offended, laughnwitch. I’m sorry I gave you that impression. It wasn’t my intention.
I saw you all quoting anonymous, but had somehow missed the post.
I thought, “Oh, no! Was it deleted before I could partake?”
But it wasn’t.
Oohhhh, it wasn’t.
That’s some quality trolling and/or asinine wrong-headed stupidity right there. I mean, it’s like:
http://imgur.com/JTWFzyC
I mean, really!?!
This guy is like COMEDY GOLD.
WOMEN and our precious, precious velvet slippahs are like FOOD and WATER!
(No, they’re fucking not. If you’re that pent up, get a pocket pussy and a healthy imagination…you’ll be happier, we’ll be happier.
Everyone will be happier.)
I mean,I’ve heard of the commoditization of sex, but this guy’s just like…well, just like
http://imgur.com/JTWFzyC
To bastardize an offensive saying:
You can go asshole, just don’t go full asshole.