As the news broke this morning that the Germanwings plane crash may have been a deliberate murder/suicide caused by the flight’s co-pilot, readers of the leading Men’s Rights website A Voice for Men were greeted by a post from site founder Paul Elam titled “A little blood in the mix never hurt a revolution.”
The headline on Elam’s post, a muddled mess that’s mostly a response to recent infighting amongst MRAs, recalls a disturbing post of his from several years ago titled “How to Build a Man Bomb.” (Archived here.)
Ostensibly a warning about the cost of ignoring male rage, it read a lot more like a threat.
[W]e are building a man bomb. And when this one detonates it could make the American race riots [of the 1960s] look like a Thanksgiving Day parade.
The misandric Zeitgeist, the system of feminist governance that most are sill loathe to acknowledge is about to head toward its inevitable and ugly conclusion, and the results of that will inflict another deep wound on the psyche of the western world.
The post continues on for some time in this melodramatic vein:
The ranking members of the matriarchy, like social terrorists, are partnering with and guiding government toward the inevitable explosion, and when it goes off they will be the first to point the finger at men, even at MRA’s, for the fallout.
It won’t help them, though. Because whatever tragic end this comes to, it will not be at the hands of MRA’s, but in spite of our efforts to prevent it.
All this would be a little more believable as a “warning” if Elam and other MRAs didn’t devote most of their energy to cultivating exactly this kind of male anger — and in some cases lionizing those who have acted out this rage.
The problem goes well beyond the few — on the fringe of even the already extreme Men’s Rights movement — who glorify misogyny-driven mass murderers like Marc Lepine or Elliot Rodger. Or those “Red Pillers” who declare that if they were going to kill themselves they would take some woman with them.
No, the problem comes when those in the mainstream of the Men’s Rights movement celebrate men like Tom Ball, a troubled father who set himself on fire on the steps of a New Hampshire courthouse in an attempt, as he explained in a lengthy manifesto, to inspire other men “to start burning down police stations and courthouses” to protest what he saw as a misandrist court system.
He followed this call to arms with instructions on how to prepare effective Molotov cocktails, and a lengthy plea to men to “finish the job” he had started:
There will be some casualties in this war. Some killed, some wounded, some captured. Some of them will be theirs. Some of the casualties will be ours.
Now, nobody wants to get killed. But let us look at your life. You are broke after paying child support. … Face it boys, we are no longer fathers. We are just piggy banks.
So you are not losing anything by picking up the Molotov cocktail. …
I only managed to get the main door of the Cheshire County Courthouse in Keene, NH. I would appreciate it if some of you boys would finish the job for me.
In other words, Ball was a would-be suicide/murderer who hoped others would do the murdering for him.
Ball’s manifesto was posted on AVFM’s “Activism” section for several years, taken down only after the Boston Marathon, and he was widely hailed by others in and around the Men’s Rights movement.
Helen Smith — an AVFM ally, the author of Men on Strike, and the wife of “Instapundit” Glenn Reynolds — wrote that Ball’s
statement is not the ramblings of a madman, it is the mission of a warrior in some sense. He was fighting for his rights and for yours, if you are male. He was trying to bring some urgency to the male plight in this country … .
She somehow neglected to mention that he was trying to do this by urging men to firebomb courthouses and police stations.
It’s striking how often MRA manifestos shade into vague threats of violence. One recent case, of many: Jeremiah True, the MRA-adjacent Reed College student banned from the discussion section of one of his courses after unnerving everyone in the class with his rants on rape, warned in one recent online manifesto that “[i]f you exclude me from the campus, I will rain hell down upon you all.”
True’s melodramatic insinuations of apocalyptic retribution might be amusing if declarations like these didn’t so often precede actual violence.
Unfortunately, when they aren’t making vague threats like these, MRAs are often found offering ingenious excuses for actual murderers. In an online discussion of the case of Chris Benoit, a pro wrestler who killed his wife and his son before hanging himself, AVFM’s Alison Tieman (a.k.a. Typhonblue) suggested that men who kill their families were men “backed into a courner [sic].” In the case of Benoit, she wondered
what horrific thing this woman did to this man to make him snap like this? I know, I know… “blaming the victim”. But I’ve seen too many “victims” grinning and pulling strings in the back ground to really feel sorry for them any more.
Her solution to male murder/suicide?
It’s obvious from this that men need to step away from women and start developing a male society outside of the auspices of women. That way they can support eachother when they get kicked out of female-society.
Murder/suicide isn’t the result of “misandry,” of evil wives “grinning and pulling strings in the back ground,” of men being “kicked out of female society.”
All too often, it’s the result of aggrieved male entitlement, of old-school “macho” attitudes that teach men that any sort of failure (from sexual to financial) is shameful and that anger is the only acceptable emotion to show the world.
Unfortunately, the Men’s Rights movement does nothing to challenge any of these toxic notions, all of them legacies of patriarchal thinking. All too often, MRAs celebrate them, helping to make the world a more difficult place for men, and a more dangerous place for women and children.
Male rage is not part of the solution. It is part of the problem.
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My previous post on the Germanwings Flight 9525, and one “manospherean’s” appalling response to it, can be found here.
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Today I read another blog by a girl who says she doesn’t need feminism.
Was I wrong to call her a coward and willfully ignorant?
Just… Do these anti feminist girls think that the Paul Elam’s and roger Eliots of the world are harmless? That they’ll just choose to spare them?
One quick typo: you might want to specify that the Ball manifesto was taken down after the Boston Marathon bombing, not just a Boston Marathon.
@Dan
That was maybe a bit more antagonistic and less convincing than you might have been hoping. Anti-feminism almost certainly comes from an ignorant place, but not always a willfully ignorant place.
Strident and strong-minded ignorance should never be conflated with willful ignorance. Not knowing the history of feminism isn’t a crime. Being exposed only to PCU-style strawfeminism thanks to popular culture isn’t a crime either.
I mean, if you’ve looked into their views, they tend to see feminists as man-hating harpies, because that’s all feminism is ever shown to them as. That’s an easy thing to hate.
Oh his poor poor parents.
I have nothing but bewildered desperate sympathy for everyone involved in this awful thing.
And just when I think I can bare it no more along come the MRAs.
How is it possible that they haven’t learn the taking a shit in public is never appropriate, especially at funerals.
What the ever-loving fudge…
An excellent and important post, David.
Reading that people like Paul Elam are glorifying men killing themselves and taking other people’s life makes me shake my head in shame.
We all perfectly know, and Elam too, that he would be the last person dying for the cause he flaccidly take action for .
Eh, the sweet sweet money his followers gave to him isn’t going to spend itself on HD tv…
That was almost like reading a screed by Tyler Durden. I wonder if these man-boys were just boys when they watched Fight Club and somehow they internalized it in a bizarre manner?
Honestly…no. When a woman or girl says “I am not a feminist”, she’s giving aid and comfort to her enemies, quite frankly. She may not realize it, but that is what in effect she is doing. She’s encouraging these guys to think they are some kind of Silent Majority, when they are in fact a Very Vocal and Noisome Minority.
And, in the case of Paulie & Co. above, objectively stochastic terrorists.
No, you’re not wrong at all. On the contrary, you were far too polite with her.
Sometimes I wonder if these yahoos haven’t inadvertently stepped into our corner of the multiverse by mistake, and they really hail from some other pocket of it.
Not only is it full of feminist tyrants, but somehow they are also made to write the most purple, overwrought prose I have ever had to see. Try as I might, I just can’t reconcile the two. Surely the feminist overlords (overladies?) would make them write clearly and concisely, no? I would if I were in charge.
Also, to call Alison Tieman a fucking idiot is an insult to fucking idiots. Chris Benoit didn’t die because his awful, ungrateful, female-dominated family backed him “into a courner” (sic); he had a combination of dementia pugilistica brought on by years of hits to the head in the ring, plus steroid-induced rages. He could have had the meekest, most undemanding wife on the planet and he still would have killed her. That’s the problem with dementia and ‘roid rage; the victim is impervious to reason. And his victims die for NO reason.
@ Bina
It’s not so much that anabolic steroids cause ‘rage’ (although that’s a nice tabloid friendly phrase) more that they inhibit impulse control. A naturally placid person wouldn’t become violent if they took steroids (so just the organ damage to contend with!) but someone who has underlying violent tendencies that they keep in check for whatever reason would lose that restraint.
Thanks, Scott, typo fixed. Thanks, Aunt Edna.
I can’t even put into words how this makes me feel. I’m so sick from utter disgust…
Asking what a murder victim did to deserve her fate…this is the people we’re dealing with. Nancy Benoit I might add tried to divorce from Chris Benoit in 2003, citing domestic abuse, but withdrew it. She tried to stay with him, for reasons that were her own, and these “human (men) rights activist” will actually ask, “What did she do to him?” after she is tortured and murdered.
How come they don’t ask what Chris Benoit’s 7 year old son, who would be only 15 this year, did to deserve being murdered by his own father? Or maybe they do wonder that. These people are beyond contempt.
I hope all these people stay online in their little manosphere corner, and stay as far away from the real world as possible
God, I have to do something to get these people out of my mind. This movement is the most ghoulish, hateful thing I’ve ever seen.
Ok, they are officially getting into lizard-people territory here. Whenever a man does something awful, it’s because a woman or women are pulling the strings and causing it to happen. We’re all in cahoots.
I bet if I showed Paulie a red rubber ball, and then put the ball behind my back, he’d be amazed and wonder how it vanished like that, and where did it go? Like, this is the level of thinking being engaged in. Astonishing.
What do you call a lizard-person MRA?
A redpillian.
Um, I’ll get my coat.
Lame Elam & Co. just get more and more creepy….Thanks for your post David, and keep’em coming.. 🙂
I don’t know that I automatically disagree with anyone who doesn’t claim feminism. Of course, I don’t see how anyone could look at the same feminist movement I see and dismiss it, but I do understand that not all people view it from the same angle. I think they are wrong. I think they are misinformed, but they can’t be all bad. Not feminist =/= MRA.
@KSRay, for what it’s worth, I laughed out loud at the thought of redpillian reptilians.
@AllieCat84. Agreed. I’d first want to know why they didn’t identify as feminist. I can coexist with non feminists, it’s anti feminists who get my back up.
I’ll add this terrible tragedy that happened here in Melbourne.
*****Very Big Trigger Alert on this one*****
http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/how-adrian-bayley-was-transformed-from-cocky-and-arrogant-to-a-whimpering-emasculated-shell-of-a-man-20150326-1m5gcv.html
Snippets:
“The trigger for the murder of Jill Meagher was that she disregarded him. “She flipped me off,” Bayley told police, in an attempt to limit his responsibility, “and that made me angry, because I was actually trying to do a nice thing”.”
….by raping her…
“But what is interesting is that this notion of men’s violence as a reaction to perceived ‘disrespect’ or a challenge to their honour is a remarkably common feature of men’s violence both against women in the home and against (other) men in the street.”
” He seems to see himself as somehow feminised and disempowered. The way he seems to deal with this is to seek to control and abuse women – he’s empowered by that and it reasserts his idea of masculinity.””
As I said, some (many?) of these MRAs (etc) are just one tiny step away from rape and murder.
Even here in Melbourne, with it’s very low murder and violence rates by most of the world’s standards:
“Yet the statistics prove that despite the spectre of the stranger in the night, the main danger to women is a man they know. VicHealth research shows that the most common form of death for Victorian women aged 15-44 is not road trauma or anything else but “intimate partner violence”.”
We’ve still got such a long way to go.
One word: Patriarchy.
These guys deny patriarchy but they are patriarchy supersized. The irony never ceases to amaze me.
Dominance and submission. That is the paradigm. In their fantasy, in the glory days of old, women didn’t work and had to depend on men. That way each and every beta and iota male still got his assigned womanbot, as promised by patriarchy. Now women are disrupting the “natural order” of things and don’t have to marry anybody if they don’t want to—at least young white women, which is all they’re ever talking about when they say “women” and bemoan the state of fair blow job dispersion—and boy are they pissed. That’s really all this is about.
Yeah, yeah it’s about child support and alimony and all the things that were put into place precisely because women didn’t work and had no protection from men leaving marriages/abandoning their children. But mostly what I hear is “I want sex because men are supposed to get sex and if women won’t give it to me I’ll kill a bunch of people and don’t say I didn’t warn you.” Wait, that’s exactly what Elliot Rodger said.
But oh no! It’s about mental illness! It’s about gun control! It’s never about the toxic, entitled misogyny that’s born, bread and baked into culture everywhere you look, from porn to Hollywood to advertising to the wedding industrial complex to Wall Street to Silicon Valley and every nook and cranny in between. Women aren’t doing what they’re supposed to do! They’re denying me what’s rightfully mine (as I was brainwashed to believe by other men in control of selling all this shit)! Blame the women! Blame feminism for enlightening them to their potential and humanity! If I pretend like I’m an “alpha” male I’m supposed to get a womanbot! Wah wah wah where’s my womanbot?!
tl;dr:
God, the stupidity and the raging entitlement from the need to DOMINATE at all costs! So much violence and hate and destruction of the planet. Patriarchy: The deadliest disease of all time. (And sorry for preaching to the choir. Male entitlement sets my hair on fire.)
Preach, Bette, preach!
@Lisa:
“As I said, some (many?) of these MRAs (etc) are just one tiny step away from rape and murder.”
There is no doubt that many of them already are rapists and abusers. Maybe not murderers — yet; but everything they say indicates an unmistakable propensity for violence, sexual and other.
There are many who openly advocate violence, sexual and other, against women (Mark Minter, Roosh, Rollo Tomassi of The (ir)Rational Male, Vox, and countless others), and then there are those who openly brag about perpetrating rape and other acts of violence against women (Roosh, etc.)
As Bette said (paraphrased), male entitlement written into patriarchy is quite possibly the deadliest disease of all time.
I’ve read a number of interviews by women, some prominent, where they say they’re not feminists. Yet, when asked what their views are, invariably list everything that feminism stands for. Seems to me there’s a misconception of perception when it comes to the word “feminism.” Not sure what can be done about it, though.
@Joe: I was a “not a feminist” for most of my young adult life. Certain factions of the “culture war” have managed to get it out there that feminism is allllll about hating all men all the time.
So, the solution?
Education, if they’ll listen.