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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@ foe (sorry can;t reproduce that font)
A lot of my friends who clearly subscribe to what feminism *generally* stands for won’t identify as feminists. I’ve asked them about this. They believe that the word had been ‘hi-jacked’ by people with particular viewpoints (not all the same) that they don’t subscribe to.
I suppose it’s a bit like how you wouldn’t expect Alex Salmond (A politician over here) to identify as a ‘national socialist’ although he is in the literal sense and there would be nothing wrong with that but for the unfortunate history of that phrase (I know I’ve Godwin’d myself there but it’s an obvious example).
They just see not using the word feminism as quicker than saying “Well I’m a feminist in the sense that…..but not….”
I don;t identify as a feminist for various reasons (I am at best a pro feminist) but I have no problem with the word.
Here is yet another contradiction about them, they advocate a patriarchy where the majority of males suffer too.
Given their ‘Alpha’ nonsense they are advocating (what?) 75% of males are losers, with an ever decending hierarchy. These ‘losers’ will only get women after the ‘alphas’ are finished with them.
So that is 100% of females are losers (and at the absolute bottom), and 75% of males are losers (rising from the bottom in stages). Only this mythical 25% of ‘alpha’ males are going to ‘win’ out of this ‘perfect society’ .
What do they think they are? European nobility in the 1700s, with the ‘devine right of kings’ backing them up?
Yikes. Dude. Take this down.
We don’t know the reason Andreas Lubitz decided to crash his plane. We may never know, but if we do, the reason is going to be something closer to “he’s totally crazy” than “he listened to some Men’s Rights Group.”
When you bring up Men’s Rights and this horrible, awful mass murder in the same sentence, you are capitalizing on the senseless deaths of a hundred people. You’re doing that. Not the Men’s Rights people–you.
I get that this comes right after your post about some MRA immediately jumping to the conclusion that Lubitz just needed a blowjob or something (which was disgusting and difficult to read). I get that this would mean that they brought it up first–but that’s not how this article reads.
The title of this post makes it sound like you’re making the same mistake Vox Day did–jumping to the conclusion that this plane crash is somehow male-rage-related. But the content of the article makes it even worse–there’s no connection back to the premise. It looks like you brought it up just to get clicks. And that’s gross, dude. Take it down.
There’s no evidence that Lubitz has anything to do with Men’s Rights. You know this. You just got finished taking the piss out of someone else for making that same connection. It’s wrong to do that and you know it. Take it down.
[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.
I’m basically numb to Elam’s misogyny at this point but the way he endlessly compares his trolling internet fanclub to the Civil Rights movement in a failed attempt to gain respectability still annoys the fuck out of me. Paulie is always shameless, but the way he tries to appropriate the historic struggles of Black Americans in order to fake oppression is the Mt. Everest of shameless assholery.
Is the Blockquote Monster giving me the silent treatment now?
[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.
I give up, you win internet.
@Oh Hi There
Standard practice here is to be careful to avoid blaming tragedy on mental illness.
I know that there are women of color who don’t call themselves feminists, but rather “womanists” because feminism can be (and does) exclusive for them. There’s a bit of a rash of “white feminism” (being exclusive to white, middle-class, cisgendered women rather than focusing on women as a whole) going on, and it’s been going on for a while.
I can understand rejecting feminism as a self-descriptor, or a term, for its lack of intersectionality.
I can also understand that some feminist women aren’t comfortable with men calling themselves feminists (for various reasons) and ask that men refer to themselves as “feminist allies”.
@Lisa: The thing is, I don’t think they care that other men are suffering (they’ll say they will, but it’s obvious to anyone that they really don’t), so long as they win above everyone else. They believe that they are indeed the “alpha” males, and they’re righteous and will be victorious in this “war”.
Oh Hi There, if you think that those mass murder-suicide cases are not driven by male rage, then you are choosing to be willfully ignorant. There is an undeniable and well-documented link between aggrieved male entitlement and those horrific acts of violence where a suicidal man sets out to exact revenge on the world for his unhappiness by taking other people with him.
Whether this case is just such suicide remains to be seen, but David’s point about the undeniable connection between male aggrieved entitlement and acts of mass murder stands.
OhHiThere
I scrolled back up to re-read the article after reading your comment, and I honestly don’t see any connection between Lubitz being made beyond the fact that Elam made a post shortly after this tragedy calling for and advocating for violence?
The only time Lubitz is mentioned is the first paragraph, the rest is Elam.
Sorry, but I only see a connection of violence to violence, not the reason behind the violence. David made no postulations to the reason behind Lubitz’s actions.
They talk like it’s a whole new thing, men murdering women for crimes against their masculinity, and we’ll be so horrified and shocked when men start killing us, and then, oh then, we’ll be sorry.
@ Paradoxical Intention
Inter alia, one of the reasons I don’t call myself a feminist is that it would seem like I was co-opting someone else’s oppressed status, when I don’t have to suffer that. It would feel like ‘cashing in’ if that makes sense. It’s a bit like when some white people start wearing African apparel. I’m sure they’re worthy anti racists, but if they get pulled by the police on the drive home their experience will be somewhat different. [I had a very interesting chat with some Palestinians once about their ‘supporters’ wearing the keffaya; they weren’t too impressed by it]
My feeling is that whilst I support the team, I’m not on the team, if that makes sense.
This sketch sort of illustrates my feelings on this:
@Bette
Just want to say I love your post.
You know what bugs me about this excuse? (Other than the obvious ableism and demonisation, I mean.) Even in (the comparatively very rare) cases where it turns out that the killer was mentally ill and not just angry, everybody just shrugs, blocks their ears and continues on instead of, y’know, working to fix America’s third-world mental health system. And hey, a working mental health system would help to minimise the amount of murders by angry men as well! And don’t forget the millions of people who aren’t potentially violent but still need help! It’s win-win-win!
But no, of course not, because waah waah communism waah liberals waah fart.
@technicolorstatic:
Right. It’ll be a totally new and horrifying development, unheard of in our species. And it’ll show us, fer sure.
@Lisa
This cuts across cultures. There was a case in Korea last month where a woman’s former common-law husband shot and killed her father, brother, and current boyfriend before he burned down her place of business and killed himself. http://news.khan.co.kr/kh_news/khan_art_view.html?artid=201502252207075&code=940202 The police said that they would investigate in depth once the woman had “regained her calm.” I can’t imagine the shattering grief and undeserved guilt behind those words.
And to think there are people who are going to say this has nothing to do with misogyny because the murderer only killed the men in her life. Like the fact that he killed her family and boyfriend had nothing to do with punishing her for leaving him, in the worst possible way anyone could ever dream of.
@Paradoxical Intentions
>Sorry, but I only see a connection of violence to violence, not the reason behind the violence. David made no postulations to the reason behind Lubitz’s actions.
That’s kind of my point. The connection is made in the title but not supported by the article or by facts. This post has the appearance of using this horrible, horrific thing, the deaths of 150 people, as clickbait for an article about what David really wants to talk about. I know he can’t mean to appear this way, and it seems as if he was just upset by the content of the post that precedes this–in fact, it seems like he was going for a kind of response to the other article.
That’s not how it looks, though, and really, that’s not how it is. He’s using people’s deaths to talk about his own, totally unrelated (as far as we know) causes, and that’s wrong. It’s wrong for the same reason it’s wrong for Vox Day to do it, and that’s why I’m continuing to urge him to take it down.
Men commit suicide not only because of entitlement….
The ones who take people ”with them” do this because of entitlement, but not all of them…. some do commit suicide because of love. Yeah it sounds bizarre but a man kills his children and wife too because he wants to take them with him, so that he isnt alone. Its a sick minded love, but thats how some men think.
But I guarantee you that only few do it because of ”misandry”.
Yeah, I usually agree with David’s take on things, but I basically agree with OhHiThere on this one. Something about making the connection here is unsettling to me – I definitely started reading expecting to see that some manifesto had been found. I would rather see an article decrying the MRAs making the connection, and not make the connection our selves. After re-reading the article a couple of times I get what David was going for, so maybe it needs a bit of an edit or something?
I don’t call myself feminist but a human rights activist.. Well Im not a real ”activist” since Im only online and writing comments or writing german articles. So I won’t claim to do real activism…unlike the holy mens rights ”movement (lolz)”. However this is what I’d consider myself. That doesn’t mean that Im anti-feminist.
It’s a provocative headline. It doesn’t literally say that “male rage” caused the Germanwings crash, but it does strongly imply it. I would change the lede.
That makes perfect sense, and it’s a good reason a lot of men who support feminism do so under the title of “Ally”. It’s also a way to show that they’re going to step aside and let women talk about women’s issues and not speak over them, instead of claiming that they’re feminists and try to butt in to give their two cents on every conversation about feminism, mansplaining everything away under the guise of helping.
Ah, that makes more sense then. Sorry for my earlier confusion. I agree with you on this then.
I would say that being online and writing articles and engaging in discussion is very much something that modern activists do. It’s a good way to gain knowledge and discuss topics with lots of people online, some of them you wouldn’t be able to talk to otherwise.
It always rubs me the wrong way when I hear people decry being on tumblr, twitter, or any other online group or website (like WHTM) as being “slactivism” because some of us can’t get to protests or marches or things like that for a variety of reasons. Some people are disabled, others don’t have the money to be traveling around and helping others, and others still can’t be open about supporting things where they are now, or they’re too young to do so.
This is a form of activism. It’s not a huge thing, and it’s on the internet, but it is activism.
Well, we probably do now.
And yes, the MRAs are already all over this, looking to exploit this awfulness for their own profit. What we saw today is just the tip of the manure pile. Tomorrow it will be worse, since it’s now been revealed that Lubitz had just split up with a live-in girlfriend.
Why are you so opposed to anyone putting out an antidote to their toxic nonsense? That’s what I’d like to know.
@Bina:
“Why are you so opposed to anyone putting out an antidote to their toxic nonsense? That’s what I’d like to know.”
Yeah, me too.
@Bina
Yes it will. So let’s rise above.
The assumption that sexual frustration is responsible for all male violence is part of the MRA worldview. Why should we make their points for them? And why, immediately after making fun of an MRA for making that assumption, should David turn around and make the exact same assumption?
Projecting your opponents’ worldview onto a mass murderer, absent evidence or consideration, cheapens the deaths of those murdered. The families of those killed deserve an honest appraisal of what happened. Their society deserves assurances that we’re trying to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
What they don’t need, what no one needs, is for everyone with a mouthpiece to say that their deaths prove something about someone they don’t like–to use their deaths to get attention for whatever cause they think is important.
So we should urge caution talking about Lubitz’s motives for the same reason we’re going to roll our eyes and write mean things to the MRA’s tomorrow. We can’t let our side devolve into the same disgusting rhetoric, the same profiteering over misery, that we so hate from the other side.
I’m asking David to take this down because he’s better than that.
Oh Hi There:
I think you’re making a good point. David’s overarching point of “violent manosphere rhetoric feeds into the system of toxic masculinity that causes some murder-suicides” is true, but not really relevant or appropriate here.