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Spoke once the woman, and the man bent over his knees in order to please: A strange sermon from Return of Kings

rooshandeve
Kino-escalating in the Garden of Eden

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I feel I need to start this post with a warning. And I hope you will take it seriously. Because someone at Return of Kings, Roosh V’s horrendous Red Pill megasite, has decided to try to write fancy.

And what they have produced instead is some kind of Lovecraftian monstrosity.

So, brace yourself, because you and I are going to read “Bad Things Happen When Women Lead And Men Follow,” by someone calling himself Elrit Frisia.

I will remain by your side the entire time.

Take a deep breath, and let’s begin:

For the largest part of known human history, it has been men who have been the riders of civilization.

And we’re off to a really perplexing start. The … riders of civilization? Men are “riding” civilization? I thought they were all out hunting mammoths and building pyramids and inventing “spread spectrum” technology.

Oh, wait, that last one was Hedy Lamarr.

Anyway, back to the dudes riding civilization and all that.

The luminaries of the torch, the undying flame of kin, brotherhood, leadership, and order.

What? That’s not even a sentence.

It has been because of their innumerable sacrifice as men; men of their family, men of their country, and men of their culture, that we can now enjoy and afford the luxuries of what modest living affords us.

Uh, a sacrifice is one thing. It can’t be innumerable. I think you meant “sacrifices.”

I don’t even know where to start with the rest of this, er, sentence, so I won’t.

But as I’ve written before, something seems amiss in our modern world.

Ok, fair readers, let’s see if you can guess just what that “something” might be.

Did you guess “women?”

SURPRISE! It’s not women. Well, sort of not women.

Ok, so it’s true that “our” women are in an “absolutely unacceptable state,” at least according to Elrit. But, you see, it’s not really their fault. It’s the fault of men for letting “their women” go bad. You know, like when you leave a gallon of milk out overnight. Women are the stinky milk of our modern civilization. And men are the ones who left them out:

Men are responsible for this. It is not women. Men are responsible for their household, responsible for their affairs, and responsible for the state of their nation.

And for their women becoming stinky milk.

Alas, once women become stinky milk, well, the whole society goes to H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks. According to “sermonist R.G. Lee,” whom Elrit quotes approvingly,

Women women women women women I hate women.

Ok, that’s not the real quote. But, honestly, the real quote isn’t much on an improvement:

When women sag morally and spiritually, men sag morally and spiritually. When women take the downward road, men travel with them. When women are lame morally and spiritually, men limp morally and spiritually. The degeneracy of womanhood helps the decay of manhood.

Somehow I can’t imagine that R.G. Lee — a famous fundamentalist preacher best known for an oft-delivered sermon promising that the world’s sinners would face a terrible “payday someday” — would approve of Roosh’s fornication-heavy lifestyle. But what the heck, Lee seems mad at women too, so why not bring him along for the ride?

So, women are degenerate stinky milk. How, oh wise Return of Kings douchebag, did we get to this terrible state?

Walk with me to the Garden. The Garden of the East. About six thousand years ago. One fine noon, under the auspices of cold river air and soft patches of brightly-colored leaves, there lie two: one man and one woman.

Oh fucking hell. Are you serious?

A serpent creases by, sneering and seductive, making jests toward the woman, or so we are led to believe.

No, no, no, no, no. You’re not really going to

The woman seems frightened at first glance, but slowly eases into the serpent, laughing at what the serpent whispers into her ear and paying amusement to its performance.

All right, that’s it, I’m stopping the car.  She “pays amusement” to the snake’s performance? You don’t “pay amusement” to a performance.  THAT’S NOT HOW WORDS WORK IN ENGLISH.

Anyway, so this unnamed woman in the garden dallies a bit with her amusing snake friend and the next thing you know …

the woman walks along the man, both with a strange fruit in hand

The woman walks WHAT the man? You don’t walk ALONG someone. You walk ALONGSIDE someone.

Sorry, sorry, back to the story

the woman walks along the man, both with a strange fruit in hand, the serpent now seen nowhere, and the skies clouded with darkness and thunder. In a fit of lunacy, the man and the woman both shower themselves in leaves and balk, and take to rummaging across the Garden like utter mad fools.

Huh. So the snake seduces the woman, and the woman seduces the man? Kind of sounds like you’re blaming the woman, not the man, dude.

Oh, and I’m not sure what you think “balk” means, but it’s wrong. (And you use it incorrectly twice, so I don’t think it’s just a typo.)

What we have witnessed is the timeless, bleeding edge of human naïveté. It is a fact of nature that man is at odds not only with himself, but with others: both those above him and those below him, for there are in truth no equals. And for order to triumph, not only must man triumph over himself, but everyone must also triumph for the good of something beyond themselves.

You get a triumph! And you get a triumph! And you get a triumph!

This arrangement can only be sufficiently well-maintained if we obey the wishes of our zealous god: tradition.

What?

Dude, tradition is not a god, “zealous” or “jealous” or any other sort.

It is no accident that the institutions most central to Western tradition have been found in virtually all civilizations worth writing a tome about. They have been dictated to us by the lips of our most highest himself: whether that be evolution or a single, conscious power in charge of designing the universe. It is an optimal ideology that accounts for the nature and sexual strategies of both men and women, and incentivizes them to care after a garden of their own.

Wait, what just happened here? It seems like god basically turned into an Evo Psych textbook about halfway through that paragraph. This is becoming a very strange sermon indeed.

Men hold a very special place as protectors and enforcers of this tradition. So that folly may not rule in those who dare not triumph.

Uh, “those who dare not triumph?” Who the hell are “those who dare not triumph?” What does that even mean? Are you just throwing random words together at this point? Do you not have an editor?

But, we see, that the serpent so loves to play with our wit, and to that end he knows women are the most apt at play, and the easiest to lead far from the narrow gate. And when man trusts more in the warmth of hand of her woman than the path she leads him to, that is when thunder falls from the heavens and the paleness of sky becomes overturned.

Ah, I remember this, this is from Paul’s Epistle to the Slutty Ladies who Cause Ice Particles in Clouds to Become Positively and Negatively Charged Thus Creating an Electrical Field that Discharges in the Form of Lightning Strikes, or Something Like That, I’m Not a Meteorologist.

Anyhoo, so these slutty ladies have been causing all sorts of problems.

And after a long walk through history, it is clear that we have been lulled by the serpent’s song. Spoke once the woman, and the man bent over his knees in order to please.

Huh. Apparently these slutty ladies are into pegging.

We failed to be discriminating in the company of poor ideals, and gave the woman her promiscuous zest with which she later robbed us (and in a fit of divine irony, herself) of our dignity, hoping we would gain power, acceptance, and a serviced libido in return.

Wait, “promiscuous zest” is bad? Uh, doesn’t the publisher of Return of Kings make his living selling e-books on how to have sex with what he might call “promiscuously zesty” women?

And while Roosh doesn’t exactly seem like the zestiest dude on the block, isn’t he, er, a bit promiscuous himself? Didn’t he recently publish an e-book called “Poosy Paradise,” telling the story of how he traveled to “a grisly city in Eastern Romania” in search of, er, a “Poosy Paradise?”

I mean, it seems to me that a dude who literally moves to a city he describes as “a place that no sane man would voluntarily live in had it not contained the best fruit of what the human female species can offer” has kind of disqualified himself as an arbiter of anyone else’s “promiscuity.”

But I digress. Back to Elrit’s little sermon on the evil sexy ladies.

We gave them a voice in the state, a voice in our churches, a voice in our halls of learning, and what has really been heard?

Oh, ok, the evil sexy voting churchgoing teaching ladies.

We’ve heard cries of foolishness, of bad apples and false burglars in the night, but the matter is that men have compromised everything they knew to be certain in order to gain nothing of lasting import.

BAD APPLES AND FALSE BURGLERS IN THE NIGHT!?!?!?!???!

Are you on the drugs, young man? It seems like maybe you’re on the drugs.

Certainly, we have known the pleasures of what women have to offer, and perhaps more now so than anytime else, when they fall off by the numbers into our nimble hands, but yet we hesitate to take more than a few, singly bites.

Singly bites? Singly bites?! WHAT ON EARTH ARE SINGLY BITES?!!?!??

When in times past we would have snatched an agreeable one and faithfully planted the seed of our future castle.

The SEED of our CASTLE?! Dude, castles DON’T GROW FROM SEEDS. People build them. Plants grow from seeds.

Even our own veteran maverick, despite his notable experience with the fairer sex, seems unable to see women as anything else but “a form of entertainment and distraction instead of significantly adding to my life.”

Well, yeah, but that’s because Roosh — the “veteran maverick” being referred to here — is a gigantic douchebag.

There is not much to be done, once we have sowed the seeds of our garden into the rocks.

Wait, I thought you were planting the seed of your castle. Now you’re planting a garden?

In all seriousness, though, I hope you dudes are literally ejaculating onto piles of rocks. The thought of you reproducing makes me shudder. Hell, the thought of you having any sort of sexual contact with other human beings makes me feel vaguely ill.

But let it serve, as a painful reminder, that women are meant to be enjoyed and to be cherished as any other pleasantry, but be careful of where she might stray you along because in the end you’ll share more than the blame and wish you had not followed her deep into the thicket.

Wait, what?

That’s the ending to your post?

What the hell kind of fire and brimstone sermon is this, anyway?

Here you were, working up to what I thought would be a call to swear off evil women, or deprive them of their right to vote, or, I dunno, something along the lines of R.G. Lee’s “payday someday” scenario.

And instead you’re all like, hey, go ahead and “cherish” the “pleasantry” that is woman, just don’t fall into their evil lady thickets?

You guys are terrible at being fundamentalists.

NOTE: I’m thinking this might deserve a dramatic reading. And that if someone delivers a nice dramatic reading, I might have to make it into a little animated video. (Oh, and if you want me to be able to turn your dramatic reading into a cartoon, you should either not include music, or should include the music in a separate sound file.)

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davidknewton
davidknewton
10 years ago

Just testing if this works better:

contrapangloss
10 years ago

David, not quite.

Good try!

correcty fairy
correcty fairy
10 years ago

I was going to leave a comment about Sarah Palin level word salad, but in all fairness to Sarah Palin, as inarticulate and misinformed as she can be (and smug about it too), she has never turned in this many malaproprisms per paragraph as this guy. (Elrit? Is that his LARP name? Frisia is a plant? Okay, google says it’s a place but it’s also a tree.)

So you know what, Simple Sarah, Princess Quitter of the Northwoods? You talk English gooder than Red Pill man cave fancy tome scribe.

Orion
10 years ago

Mark Zvi Brettler and some other serious academics now say that “tree of knowledge of good and evil” is a bad translation. It’s a faithful word-for-word translation, but English readers have traditional interpreted it to mean “knowledge about goodness and badness; moral knowledge.”

Annotations in the JSB suggest treating it as a “merism.” Merism is a figure of speech where you list two opposites as a poetic way to say “everything.” “Heaven and Earth” is a great example still in use. If I told me little brother, “No force in heaven or earth could kee me from you if you needed me,” I wouldn’t mean to say “I’m there for you unless you’re trapped in a submarine, in which case you’re screwed.”

So, the new argument if “knowledge of good and evil” is just a fancy way of saying “knowledge of everything.”

correcty fairy
correcty fairy
10 years ago

Ugh. Reminds me of my cousin’s wedding several years back, in a Catholic church, where the smarmy old priest shoehorned in a slam-dig at the Christ-killing Jews.

I think I would have walked out. I’m prepared to hear a lot of hateful stuff in a Catholic Church but ragging on Jews is a bridge too far. It’s not a “difference of opinion.” People have died over this garbage. Europe was torn apart. No. Mas.

Tina S
Tina S
10 years ago

For those interested there is a town called Hell in Michigan and they do weddings.

Lady Mondegreen
Lady Mondegreen
10 years ago

I feel I need to start this post with a warning.

Too late! I already saw Roosh’s face shopped onto a picture of a naked man.

And then I died of disgust. I hope you feel properly guilty, David. I’m dead now.

Bina
10 years ago

Don’t worry, Lady M — I’m sure Adam has a MUCH better body than Roosh.

Bina
10 years ago

I think I would have walked out. I’m prepared to hear a lot of hateful stuff in a Catholic Church but ragging on Jews is a bridge too far. It’s not a “difference of opinion.” People have died over this garbage. Europe was torn apart. No. Mas.

Yeah, those were MY thoughts, too. Pity I was jammed into a pew by my big ol’ mostly irreligious family.

Viscaria
Viscaria
10 years ago

Bette Hopper, that was pretty great.

KSRay
KSRay
10 years ago

we have sowed the seeds of our garden into the rocks.

Don’t mind me. I’m just sowing my rock garden.

http://www.natgeocreative.com/comp/MM6/803/956604.jpg

contrapangloss
10 years ago

KSRay, that’s a beautiful garden. They wouldn’t do well in this climate, unfortunately. Leave your car parked unprotected for a week, and you get moss growing all sorts of places.

contrapangloss
10 years ago

Also, does anyone else every once in a while just feel so bad for the awfulness that you kind of want to edit it, because it’s just too sad?

I almost started, only it was too awful for me to take more than a paragraph of edits. Come on, dudebros. YOU CAN DO BETTER.

Kootiepatra
10 years ago

*reads article* *walks away* *flips a few tables* *calms down enough to comment*

Okay. So. Religious rant incoming.

I’m a Christian, and my faith is very important to me. And it bugs the snot out of me when fundamentalist preachers/teachers/writers use the Garden of Eden story to try and humiliate women. They always insert paragraphs upon paragraphs of color commentary, and then teach it as if it’s plain Bible teaching.

No. Not even a little bit. The whole Eden story, in my opinion, demonstrates over and over and over the profound equality between the man and the woman. God shows Adam all the animals, then creates the woman from his side, not because she belongs to him, but because she is like him. The point is that she is not an animal—not a pet, not livestock. She is not a bizarrely different “other”. He immediately recognizes her as his equal, made of the same stuff he is.

When it says she is his “helper”, that word in the rest of the Hebrew Scriptures refers three times to military allies, and every other time to God Himself. So she is an ally, a partner, not a subordinate. Both humans are explicitly created in the image of God. Neither one is given any kind of authority over the other.

People speculate as to why the serpent approached Eve, but the Bible doesn’t give a reason (I have my theory, but it is tl;dr). The exchange between them is straightforward, and completely devoid of weird seductive or conspiratorial language. While the Bible later makes reference to Eve’s deception, it does not blame her femininity for it. Adam tried to shift the blame onto her when he sinned, but, crucially, God didn’t accept it as a valid excuse. Both people were held responsible for their own sin, and neither was rebuked for the sin of the other.

So as much as it infuriates me to see preachers misuse this text, it goes doubly so for this author, who clearly doesn’t take it seriously beyond his ability to smear women with it. DUDE. If you’re not religious, that’s fine. That’s your business. I don’t expect you to treat these scriptures with reverence or to have studied them in any sort of depth. I don’t expect you to approve of, agree with, or live by them. But you don’t then get to appropriate them and use them to support your own vile prejudices. If you want to think and behave like a grade-A creep, then that’s your business. If you want to cite people of my faith who also thought and behaved like grade-A creeps, okay, that’s up to you, because they really did think and behave that way, and I have no interest in defending them. But don’t drag the Bible itself into it, and DEFINITELY don’t preach from it like you have any idea what it’s about. Not cool.

Religious rant over.

Now, as a writer, I’m offended for a boatload of entirely different reasons…

And also, someone please develop a snack food called “Singly Bites”. We can eat them along with the bon bons, while sitting on hard chairs and burning scented candles that our feminist friend Katie gave us. We’ll have a whole misandry buffet soon, at this rate.

Arctic Ape
Arctic Ape
10 years ago

I think the sowing seeds on rocks thing was stolen from another popular Biblical metaphor, it was a sermon by Jesus somewhere in the Gospels. Something about how some people just cannot be truly converted because their mind is a poor “substrate” for the “seed” of faith to grow.

Here it seems to be used synonymously with the Original Sin to mean that humans have collectively always made poor choices blah blah everything is going to hell and it’s the fault of women but also men but also our natural destiny blah blah…

friday jones
friday jones
10 years ago

There was also the Parable of the Sower.

ej
ej
10 years ago

Yeah, I’m sad we don’t have any awesome native american women on there either. And, if you get down to it, the entire suffrage movement was pretty racist.

Yes, you are all right. The suffrage movement and feminism were and are not perfect and it’s important to recognize those failings as we move forward. It would have been nice to see at least one Native American woman on that list.

Sacagewea and Susan B. Anthony are actually already featured on $1 coins; they just aren’t well circulated because people prefer to use paper money. I think the main point of this campaign is to get a woman on currency that people actually use on a regular basis. Just one more step to make us more visible.

Kootiepatra
10 years ago

Looks like they are going to include a Native American woman in the final ballot (source: http://www.womenon20s.org/primaries)

She’s just one, so that could be a lot better, but just FWIW.

ej
ej
10 years ago

@Paradoxical Intention

WRT weddings, there are so many things you can do that aren’t a traditional wedding. I’ve heard about people getting “wedding-ed,” where they are already legally married, but then have a separate ceremony to share with family and friends. I guess it takes a lot of the stress out of the ceremony, since they are already married.

I do read Off Beat Bride from time to time to see all the lovely things people have done for their weddings. I know my partner doesn’t want to make much a fuss when we get married, so we are looking at eloping, possibly with a few close friends and family members.

Also, I’m proposing to him when he visits next month. Shhhhh…it’s a secret!

lith
10 years ago

for there are in truth no equals.

Liar. There are, in truth. I use them in programming every day.

And when man trusts more in the warmth of hand of her woman than the path she leads him to.

I couldn’t help interpreting this as ‘He would rather have a handjob from her maid than go where she wants him to’. Which sounds a lot like PUA culture, so maybe.

Also, I think ‘balk’ was meant to be ‘bark’.

sunnysombrera
10 years ago

@Kootie
Genesis can be used to preach some very twisted misogyny and it pisses me off too. Especially since the story and later verses just don’t support the idea that original sin is all Eve’s fault and poor Adam was strung along by that tricksy female.

Some versions of the Bible say that Adam was actually with Eve when the snake showed up and had that dialogue with her. Many versions say that she simply handed him the fruit and he ate it, no persuasion required. Some fundie preachers try and preach that Eve talked Adam into doing it even though it’s not a consistent feature of the text. Even so, later in the Epistles Paul says that the woman was deceived but the man wasn’t, which means that Adam ate not because he believed it was OK but, well, why? Out of rebellion? He disobeyed God’s instruction knowingly? That’s worse! Also if Eve was so much to blame then 1) why do later verses refer to Adam as the one through whom sin entered the world and 2) God initially commands “send the man out of the garden”? We don’t know why Eve left. She followed Adam maybe?

For the record, I’m not a Young Earth Creationist and I instead believe that Genesis was a metaphor. But I fully respect others’ literal belief in the creation story and will happily debate with them about it.

Kootiepatra
10 years ago

@sunnysombrera – Yeah, I largely avoid the YEC question as being beside the point. The bigger point is what the text actually says and the implications it carries down the road.

lith
10 years ago

@ej:

Yay!

sunnysombrera
10 years ago

@Kootie
I understand. And you’re right. In this case it’s not so much about whether it actually happened as what can we take away from the text. To be honest I don’t see how anyone can read anything other than equality when it comes to how God made men and women.

skiriki
10 years ago

@Tina S:

For those interested there is a town called Hell in Michigan and they do weddings.

But can you rent a car that’s shaped like a handbasket?

About weddings:

When I got married to my Significant Otter, we did it so in a civil magistrate, on account of both of us being, well, atheist-y sort. About two minutes before ceremony, the civil servant booked to do it asked if we wanted this or that, a poem read, or music or whatever, and we said “no, nope, no”.

I should have asked if we could have done Spaceballs version of the wedding ceremony.

Minister: Do you?

Lone Starr: Yes

Minister: Do you?

Princess Vespa: Yes

Minister: GOOD, you’re married. KISS HER!

Although I also considered using this song as a wedding song. 😀 😀 😀 (I did have with me on my cell phone, but I didn’t want to deal with the audio system, so opted out of it.)

https://youtu.be/s2resBFG53k