Less than 24 hours after an apparent white supremacist murdered nine black churchgoers in cold blood during a prayer meeting in a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina, one prominent MRA is trying to put the blame on feminism, because of a remark the killer reportedly made about rape.
One of the survivors of the church killings reported that, before he began shooting, the killer told those in the prayer group that “you rape our women and you’re taking over our country. And you have to go.”
Dylann Storm Roof, the accused killer, wore his racism on his sleeve, almost literally: a former classmate tells the press that Roof “made a lot of racist jokes”; his license plate featured the Confederate flag; his Facebook profile picture shows him in a jacket with patches representing the flags of Rhodesia and apartheid-era South Africa.
But Dean Esmay, the second-in-command at A Voice for Men, probably the most influential Men’s Rights site, thinks that Roof’s killing spree may be the result of too much feminism. Earlier today, he posted a link to an article on the shooting to the Men’s Rights subreddit with this headline:
To their credit, the Men’s Rights subreddit regulars voted his comment down; one told him “[n]ot everything is about us, man. This is distasteful.”
Two hours later, apparently undaunted by the criticism and oblivious to irony, Esmay returned to the Men’s Rights subreddit to make another accusation:
No one has declared the shooter to be an MRA. The little we know about Roof right now suggests that he was a garden-variety old-school racist. The paranoid notion of black men raping “our” white women is one of the oldest racist tropes out there; as Jessica Valenti noted on Twitter, Roof’s language is “the language of white supremacist patriarchy.”
The alleged threat to “our women” was used for generations as an excuse to lynch black men and terrorize the black community as a whole. In the case of Roof’s shootings, it’s an even more transparent ruse. As Rebecca Carroll notes in The Guardian, it’s hard to argue that these killings had anything to do with real fears or even paranoid fantasies about the rape of white women when most of the victims were not black men — the symbolic “rapists” in the equation — but black women:
There is something inconsistent with the Charleston shooter’s alleged evocation of the historical myth of black man as beast and rapist of white women, and the fact that he killed mostly black women. Did he only shoot black women because there were no more black men to kill? Because black women birth, care for and love black men? Or because he didn’t see black women as women at all …
The idea that white women’s bodies represent that which is inviolable while black women’s are disposable hasn’t changed enough since it was first articulated by white men; but again, aimed at black men on Wednesday night, it was predominately black women who suffered by their invocation.
We will find out more about Root’s twisted beliefs in days to come. But it is clear already that they had nothing whatsoever to do with feminism.
H/T — r/againstmensrights
EDIT: I’m making this a NO TROLL, no-derailing-with-idiotic-MRA-or-incel-talking-points thread.
The “black men rape white women” excuse has only ever been an excuse. The real motive is almost always a perceived lack of respect. Occasionally a white woman who had consensual sex with a black man would be held up as the victim of rape, because who would ever believe that a woman would want sex, let alone sex with a non-white man? However, the majority of the time, the true motive was just the perception that black people weren’t accepting their assigned place, with all of the racism that implies. The true motive was, and is, almost always terror.
I love how his first instinct is to blame feminism based on zero evidence and then immediately follow up with “Hey people are probably going to blame MRAs without evidence”.
Everybody is rushing to claim this tragedy as their own, what with Fox News presenting it as an attack on Christianity. Shameful.
“The Media will be claiming the South Carolina shooter is mentally ill in 3..2..1”
FTFY
Esmay is digging himself a hole here. This is obviously a racist tragedy. Esmay must think all his followers are self absorbed fools. Keep digging, dude. They’ll figure you out.
This angers me almost but not quite as much as the hundreds of comments about his supposed (and inevitable for a white murderer) mental illness. I have lived with mental illness for over 40 years, some better than others. I don’t comment or tweet much because I have become isolated and withdrawnnbut today I haven’t been able to shut up.
Esmay and his ilk would love for this to be about them. Much like the Brevik and Rodgers responses they had, in their twisted minds that would be one more rock to pile on us nasty unrapeable women. But Root is a racist executioner, a hateful person, nothing more or less.
I looked around for a response from them about the NJ cop who shot his ex wife in broad daylight yesterday because he was “sick of going to court”. He did this in front of his 7 year old daughter and after he decided not to kill himself, the cops he surrendered to gave him hugs and pats on the back. It will come, I’m sure.
Thanks for this and every post and comment.
What. People are somehow blaming this guy’s racist ass motives on feminism.
http://www.reactiongifs.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/orly.gif
All Valenti said “this the language of the white supremest patrarchy”
She didn’t call white men “supremists” geez the people in the comments need to take a chill pill.
@zennurse,
Agreed. I’m also tired of hearing that Roof is mentally ill sans any actual evidence of this. He’s just evil. I won’t assume otherwise until we have more evidence.
MRAs are getting more like fundamentalist Christians when they blame everything on their favorite boogeyman. It won’t be long before they start blaming hurricanes and earthquakes on feminism.
Snuffy
Yeah, Esmay has some lovely projection going on.
At what point does it stop being paranoia and self-martyring and start being a suspiciously specific denial (TV Tropes link =P)?
That’s not quite right. It’s the idea that white women’s bodies are white men’s property. It isn’t white women who are violated when they engage in consensual relationships with black men, it’s male white supremacists sense of ownership.
Policy of Madness:
Don’t forget. It’s an excuse AND a projection of their own behavior towards a (literally) captive population of women they could abuse, at will. Yet it’s Black men, captives as well, who are doing all the raping.
Anybody notice a theme here:
Mexicans come to this country and do all the work that many White men think is beneath their status, but it’s the Mexicans who are lazy.
White men came here and stole the land away from the Native peoples who were already here, but it’s the Natives who are the thieves.
It is primarily the men in this society doing all of the raping, thieving, killing and assaulting, but it’s women who can’t control their emotions.
It is primarily straight men doing almost all of the assault of female children, globally, but gay people are the ones who are sex maniacs, trying to recruit kids.
Just about every ‘ism is some form of projection onto others of what people refuse to deal with in themselves.
The crazy blaming is strong every time there’s a mass shooting.
The technical assignment of Roof to the category of killers known in the psychological literature as “pseudo-commando” I’ll leave to the professionals, but from what we know of Roof in the media, he appears to my imperfect gaze to be a pseudo-commando killer.
If he is a pseudo-commando killer the problem is not feminism or mental illness.
James L Knoll IV on Seung-Hui Cho, the Virginia Tech killer:
Knoll argues that this is characteristic of the motivations of the pseudo-commando killer.
Of course not every pseudo-commando killer is an MRA pseudo-commando. At first blush Roof appears to be a white supremacist pseudo-commando. But the psychological process of assigning all blame outward, insisting that many chances have been given, fantasizing about the horrible, ongoing consequences one’s enemies/persecutors will suffer “after the revolution,” these are all-too-typical of the words of AVfM contributors and commenters I see quoted here.
If Knoll’s analysis of the pseudo-commando killer is correct, and if Futrelle’s quotes of MRAs are representative, the mindset of Roof, specifically, isn’t caused by AVfM or MRAs generally, but Roof’s toxic mindset is certainly shared with too many in both those circles.
He’s not an MRA (that we know of) and nobody said he was. But, is a misogynist. “Our women” says it all. He thinks that white women are the property of white men.
Another entitled white American man with a gun goes on a killing spree.
I don’t know whether to cry, scream or throw up.
Dean Esmay is a tone-deaf idiot. News at 11.
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Agreed. I’m also tired of hearing that Roof is mentally ill sans any actual evidence of this. He’s just evil. I won’t assume otherwise until we have more evidence.
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I’m not sure if calling them “evil” is really a good idea either. I’ve been told in the past by Politically Correct types that referring to people as evil leads to the demonization of some minority cultures and puts barriers in the way of mentally ill people who need help. Granted, I don’t really hear that anymore, so I’m not sure if it’s a minority view, or I didn’t really understand what they were saying at the time, or the viewpoints and dialogue have changed.
It appears that Dean was demoted.
Hmmmm.
They are. He won’t get called out. They’re as racist as they are misogynist. Most of all, they’re fools.
@Lea
Yes.
I did anyway.
In other words, he stepped in it and his penance is that he’s not allowed to speak too much in public for awhile.
I’m assuming that Elam is doing this as a PR move. Not because he disagrees with Esmay’s toxic and disgusting thoughts.
@Fnoicby
Really? They’re doing spin control for a racist mass murderer, casting him in their fake “War on Christianity” in order to side step addressing violent white supremacists?
That’s one of the most awful things Fox News has ever done. It’s usually hard to identify Fox News’ worst moments, but this is clearly one of them.
@Aunty Alias
Is that their main LLC? It sounds like a shell corporation but they’re probably just being comically pretentious.
Sorry, you can’t kill people, especially multiple people, without being insane. And yes, many mentally ill people aren’t violent. I’m trying to paint with a vary narrow brush, but the appalling lack of empathy, of human decency, IS a mental illness.