French prosecutors are saying that the co-pilot of the Germanwings Airbus A320 that crashed in the Alps brought the plane down deliberately, after locking the pilot out of the cockpit. If so, this was one of the most horrific cases of murder/suicide the world has ever seen.
At the moment, we don’t know enough about the co-pilot, 28-year-old Andreas Lubitz. to know what motivated him to allegedly crash the plane. French authorities are saying that they don’t think it was an act of terrorism. But that may be because they have a rather simplistic definition of terrorism.
Murder/suicide is an overwhelmingly male crime; studies suggest that men may make up 90% or more of the perpetrators. While most of these cases — excluding suicide bombings — involve a man killing himself and a partner or ex-partner, there have also been cases in which men have resorted to mass murder in order to make some twisted point about what they see as a world unfair to men in general and them in particular. These acts aren’t generally considered terrorism, but they should be.
You know the names: Elliot Rodger, who killed seven, including himself, as part of what he called his “War on Women.” George Sodini, a would-be pickup artist who opened fire on an LA Fitness aerobics class because he couldn’t get a date. Marc Lepine, who killed 14 women at the École Polytechnique in Montreal in an attempt “to send the feminists, who have always ruined my life, to their Maker.” The list goes on.
Whenever one of these horrific massacres occurs, there are always some who rush to excuse or defend or even lionize the perpetators. And there are those who argue that these tragedies could have somehow been averted if women had just treated these poor men better.
In the case of this particular tragedy, reactionary fantasy writer Vox Day — real name, Theodore Beale — is literally suggesting that it could have been prevented “if the sluts of the world were just a little less picky and a little more equitable in their distribution of blowjobs.”
Here’s his, er, argument, from a post on his Alpha Game blog today:
Why he did it, no one knows yet, but it won’t surprise me to learn that Lubritch [sic] was a deeply angry and embittered Omega male. There is a reason Omegas frighten women merely by existing; they are capable of terrible and merciless acts of self-destruction. You can see Lubritch is a small and prematurely balding young man, possibly somewhat overweight, his occupation indicates that he was more intelligent than the norm, and the uncertain smile he has on his face tends to indicate low socio-sexual rank.
Good to know that Vox — who himself has an “uncertain smile” in some photographs I’ve seen of him — can x-ray someone’s personality by glancing at a snapshot.
Now, obviously no one else was responsible for Lubritch’s actions if it indeed was Omega rage at work. He alone bears the blame. But it is somewhat haunting to think about how many lives might be saved each year if the sluts of the world were just a little less picky and a little more equitable in their distribution of blowjobs.
So he alone deserves the blame — but somehow his actions are also the fault of unfair blowjob distribution by the “sluts of the world?”
As a 28 year-old airline pilot, Lubritch would likely have been married in a more traditionally structured society. It’s not impossible that the Germanwings deaths represent more of the indirect costs of feminism.
Oh, and it’s ultimately the fault of feminism.
Now, Vox Day is a famously terrible person, and something of a troll.
But the fact is that similar — if generally less explicit — apologias for male violence are common in the “manosphere” and amongst Men’s Rights Activists.
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There is no bar for decency so low that Vox Day could not trip over it.
I know it is a futile measure in the age of the internet, but could you still refrain from posting the full name of the co-pilot? At this point, the whole story is still not known, there is a lot of speculation, and the charge is horrible. Even the worst German tabloid still abridges his last name.
Unfortunately, pilot suicide isn’t an unheard of cause of plane crashes. Rather terrifying thought, that.
I also love the rallying cry of these rocket surgeons: “FUCK THOSE SLUTS WHO WON’T FUCK ME!”
Yes, that’s exactly how promiscuity works, and I’m sure had he been married it still would have been a woman’s fault– er, his, rather, entirely his fault. But definitely her, too.
This pathologically obsessive scapegoating of women, without a shred of logic or empirical evidence, is pure Goebbels. Yep, I’m godwinning, but consider: the Nazis weren’t some anomaly from outer space. Their group pathology wasn’t unique to them. It lives on here.
Well it goes without saying how tragic this is and how disgusting Vox is being, but I can’t help but be amazed how these people tie everything into “misandry”.
translation: “I don’t know anything at all about this man and his life, but I’m sure it has everything to do with my obsession of blaming those slutty slutty feminists for not sharing their sluttiness.”
(Fun fact: autocorrect does not like “sluttiness” and keeps changing it to sultans – which makes me think of dire straits…)
Also, I find it highly problematic at this point to speculate about his motives. We don’t know if this was a murder/suicide, and if it was, it seems to me significantly different from premeditated, planned massacres with guns, especially those targeting women.
German media have the habit of referring to people by first name and last initial, but English media give the whole name. It’s standard operating procedure. I first read his name in the Toronto Star, for what this is worth.
And yeah, fancy trying to extrapolate a man’s whole sex life based on the last thing he did on the job. These bastards simply have NO shame.
And maybe also take the photo down.
I cannot say that I am surprised that Vox Day took that route. Disheartening, yes but not surprised. When someone commits a horrific act, it is simply their fault alone, full stop (I know I’m being captain obvious but apparently it is needed for these knuckleheads).
The MRA really do have a low opinion of men. Apparently they think men have no agency of their own, since it is always women who spur men on to do anything. They can never accept responsibility for anything they do-it’s always some woman’s fault. Ugh, depressing news.
Bernardo Soares:
It’s Vox Day that’s doing the speculating. The point of this article is that his speculation is terrible. If you have a complaint, complain to Beale.
Blowjobs: not a deeply personal act of love and/or passion between partners, but a commodity in the possession of women that needs to be “distributed equitably” among men. What an utterly miserable way to view the world.
“But that may be because they have a rather simplistic definition of terrorism.”
For boring legal reasons we’ve been struggling for a definition of ‘terrorism’ here in Europe and the UK over the last few years. There were over 225 different definitions. There still isn’t a completely definitive one but currently the elements are that:
1. The actions must be driven by an ideological, political, religious or similar motive, and;
2. The act must be calculated to put pressure on a Government to change policy.
So that’s why the French prosecutor will have been careful in bis choice of words (and also the political aspect)
So terrorising for its own sake isn’t terrorism in the technical sense. Of course people can use the word in a looser sense, rather alike how people use ‘murder’ as a synonym for killing or ‘robbery’ for any sort of theft, even though both of those terms have strict meanings in law.
[Legal nerd mode: Off]
I don’t know about you ladies, but being thought of as a slut by a hateful misogynist totes makes me want to give out blow jobs :/
Moving this over here just to keep the discussion in the right thread:
Yup. At this point, for all we know, he could’ve been an airborne Elliot Rodger or he could’ve been abducted by three-headed plaid-print aliens. Vox just has some need to make everything, everything, about him and his boner.
What is the blow job quota? Do only single women have to fulfill it since married or partnered women are another’s property? Who enforces and tracks the quota? Do lesbians have to contribute to the blow job distribution quota? Are only HB 8 and higher women required to distribute blow jobs, or are all women subject to it? Do men have to equitably distribute blow jobs to prevent gay omega male violence or are only straight men omegas?
So many questions!
Seriously though, if being incel is the main cause of violence, then why is partner violence one of the most common types of violence? It just makes no sense.
Also didn’t the sexual revolution and second, third, and fourth wave feminism make getting laid easier for men since feminism is partially about not tying chastity into a woman or girl’s worth?
I agree with much of this in principle, but the evidence is mounting that Lubitz’s actions were deliberate. Enough evidence has now emerged to suggest that:
(a) he changed the trajectory of the plane so that it was heading straight towards a mountain;
(b) he locked his co-pilot out of the cockpit;
(c) he switched on a five-minute lock that prevented the co-pilot from opening the door using an override code – presumably this was to prevent terrorists gaining access to the cockpit by forcing a member of the crew to punch in the number.
Lufthansa say that it’s impossible that all three actions could have been accidentally triggered in quick succession, and the third seems to be a bit of a clincher.
Obviously, speculation about his motives is another matter altogether, and Vox Day’s speculation is particularly ludicrous because of the total lack of supporting evidence – or nothing more useful than the internet-diagnosis equivalent of phrenology.
Sorry, poor wording on my part – I should have added an “originally installed” in there: I wasn’t suggesting that Lubitz thought that his co-pilot had been overpowered by terrorists. (For which there’s no evidence at all.)
I wonder if our MRA friends will jump on the fact that the pilot subscribed to the website “Wenn Männer Allein Sind” (Literally ‘When men are alone’).
Before they read too much into that they should know that it’s just a forum for amusing photos of men either doing ‘blokey’ stuff like playing with power tools or showing incompetent babysitting skills.
Bernardo sure is giving out a lot of orders today.
Right at the top of the page it says this site isn’t run as a safe space. Why there is a sudden expectation that something terrible not be covered, I don’t know. Covering terrible shit is the whole point of this site.
Blowjob distribution? One does wonder how he would see this working, would it be a government program (government gloryholes and some kind of benefit card you scan?) or perhaps a more ad-hoc system where it’s somehow the social responsibility on the part of people that get defined as sluts… somehow? (“Hi! You look unhappy, do you need a blowjob?”)
@Bina: True. But I find the German practice commendable, even if it’s not perfect (most media right now give enough details that people who want to will easily figure it out, even if they didn’t read English sites).
@KSRay: Saying that we don’t know about the guy’s possible motives and then writing two paragraphs about murder/suicide and gun massacres is still speculation. I realise that this is about Beale, but David is still taking up the cue about murder/suicide and connecting it to the story as if it were the most likely motive.
Um. My understanding is that only the voice recorder has / had been recovered at the point when the French “prosecutors” (difficult to translate because of the odd crossover of roles) offered their interpretation. It is just an interpretation. There hasn’t been anything like a full crash investigation yet, just a bit of evidence that points to a particular narrative. The much-used headline construction of “Fact + according to X” is particularly misleading in this case. The officials claiming that this is what happened aren’t speaking with the same sort of authority that a group of specialist crash investigators would.
Obviously what Vox has done with this information is far worse, but really it’s too early for anyone at all to be speculating or repeating speculation about what caused the crash.
It just makes me really sad, because I read an article discussing two other instances that to this day are still under contention regarding whether it was mechanical failure or the pilot was suicidal. So likely all the victim’s families are not going to have closure for some time, and to have to see some of this hateful and ideologically driven speculation must be extremely painful for them.
It’s true that we don’t know for sure it was deliberate — hence my use of terms like “alleged” — but from the news accounts I’ve seen and what the French prosecutors are saying, it certainly sounds as though it was.
But if it was deliberate, it was by definition a murder/suicide, the deliberate killing of all those on the plane including the co-pilot himself. We don’t know the motive, but I’m not sure why that would make it different than premeditated. planned massacres. It’s seems highly unlikely that someone would do this on the spur of the moment, or out of anger at some person on the plane.
Also, at this point, the guys name is out there, as is the photo; I have MSNBC on at the moment and that picture was on screen 30 seconds ago.