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.
There was also a comedian at the mic last Friday that was complaining that people are afraid to laugh at funny sexist jokes and it’s OK because he’s Mexican and he just loves to joke about Mexicans, har, har. I have a no heckling rule, but I was so tempted to say, “It’s not that we’re afraid. It’s that you aren’t funny.”
Seems I missed the troll. I wonder if some MRAs would look at pictures of war ravaged places and complain it made their boners sad?
On the subject of getting help – I often ask my housemate to deal with stuff up high (getting glasses down from the cupboard, changing light bulbs etc). It’s not that I particularly *need* help, but I’m 5′ 7″ and sometimes I can’t be bothered to get the fucking step ladder out. (He doesn’t need one, being 6′ 3″)
I’m much more likely to offer help in public than ask for it though. I’m slightly over average height and I’m quite broad, so I figure I might as well literally throw my weight around if someone needs it. But I always ask. If someone doesn’t want help, that should be respected.
Help – it’s not automatically your right to give it, it’s a privilege and an honour.
*slightly over the average height for women
Oops.
Note unlike unarmed black teens simply walking around, the killer was safely apprehended.
Micheal Brown definitely did NOT rob any store, look it up, the store owner himself said so. He wasnt accused or suspected of anything.
We dont know that Til did anything either.
Please dont allow yourself to be led into false victim blaming BS by murderers.
Lea – wow.
….He wanted to kill women for being women…?
…”as a joke”…?
….how does someone even….
I recall the store owner said he was afraid to come forward and dispute the cop’s lies because he was afraid of the police too.
I apologize for making a pedantic comment, but there is a difference between entitlement and false entitlement. Entitlement means that a person deserves or has earned a distinction. When a person earns a doctorate, he or she is entitled to the distinction of being called “doctor” (gaining the right to a “title” such as royal titles is literarily where the term comes from). Elliott Rodgers was entitled to nothing. He only thought he was. He indulged in a false sense of entitlement that was encouraged by media and toxic people around him.
Darren Wilson stopped Michael Brown for walking in the street, not for suspected robbery.
btw, about homelessness? One of the leading reasons women are homeless is domestic violence. Another is income inequality. Homeless women are more likely to be sexually assaulted. Many homeless women have children in their care. Homelessness is not a men’s issue.
They don’t like hearing others point out that, in fact, they’re not the unique little snowflakes they think of themselves as – that they’re just hopping on a band-wagon and adopting others’ arguments.
Two former friends of mine on Facebook did that: apparently not treating each and every thing they said as being profound was wrong of me, even though everything they stated as “their” opinion were ones I had heard endlessly from numerous people in different discussions. I guess it was my job to sit on my hands, nod my head, and act amazed at their one-of-a-kind “wisdom”…
It doesn’t help that, here in the U.S., that behavior is enabled and lionized.
Even our history is more about the supposed feats of specific individuals – all while ignoring the fact that there were many under them who, without their participation, would not have accomplished what they did. We’ll talk about how Abraham Lincoln “freed the slaves” despite the fact it was the efforts of many, many abolitionists or how Henry Ford revolutionized the automobile industry while leaving out how that’d of been impossible without a labor force who was compensated and benefited well for their efforts.
Hell, Steve Jobs took the credit for other peoples’ work – including Steve Wozniak’s – and built a cult of personality around himself. Same goes for Thomas Edison, a slimy businessman that also kidnapped and killed animals with electricity to “prove” Nikola Tesla wrong – but who nonetheless goes down in texts as being some great inventor despite all that.
Definitely. It’s also why they often love to self-victimize over things that, well, aren’t exactly legitimate grievances. They have to make everything about themselves right down to being “oppressed.” They can’t allow themselves to think of anyone else as being oppressed, as that would make them feel less like a Randian ubermensch.
Like, I have problems when it comes to dating and romance myself, but for fuck’s sake – that’s nothing compared to actual cases of certain groups being victimized due to bigoted attitudes and institutional biases. I know my problems are wholly personal and not the end-all and be-all of a discussion, especially when it comes to things like Charleston.
I’ve always been rather suspicious of people who need to wave around ideological credentials in a discussion, in order to convince others they’re like-minded. It always comes off as disingenuous – especially when their arguments don’t sync up with their claim of being a “egalitarian” or a “humanist.”
One of the former Facebook friends I mentioned, for example, loved to bring up how he was supposedly a “socialist” whenever I or someone else pointed out how reactionary his sentiments were on issues (he was one of those FREEZE PEACH! guys too – except when it was speech he didn’t like, ’cause of course).
You’d think ideology would be evident from how one composes themself in a debate. I’m a democratic socialist, but I shouldn’t have to state that outright – it should become clear through the statements I make.
I have to disagree, it was really helpful and productive when a troll told us he was “an individualist” 17 times in recent thread. If he didn’t keep reminding us of that we might have forgotten the reason he wasn’t an MRA and was always right.
I mean that someone who’s arguing in good faith wouldn’t do that.
Keith is much too complex for my simple labels. He’s read Thoreau. He’s heard of Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr. Wow! My lady brain and it’s child like need to call someone who repeats every right wing talking point known to man a right winger simply cannot compete with such stunning Vistas of manly wisdom.
Hey man, I just found this really sexist apologetic post by Karen Straughan on Disqus. Here’s what she wrote as one of the comment:
“karen straughan itdarestospeak • in 9 days
What’s the most frightening to me is that our civilization, and our biological advancement, was built on father investment. Our closest relatives are chimps and bonobos. Both systems are systems of single mothers with little to no investment in offspring from fathers.
“Patriarchy” is what made us human. It made bipedalism a success, rather than just another dead end (which has happened in a couple of hominid branches). It gave mothers the extra help they needed when that crisis of obstetrics occurred due to our changing skeletons. It gave kids the extra resources they needed when our changing pelvises made us be born prematurely. It was the precursor to our big brains, and to language, and to writing, and to sentience.
And we treat it as if it’s worthless, even though it’s one of the reasons we aren’t building nests in trees and digging grubs out of rotten logs with bent sticks.”
Link: https://disqus.com/home/discussion/phillyvoice/dear_angel_soft_i_am_a_single_mother_and_i_do_not_endorse_your_message/#comment-2087344100
@Lea,KL
Sorry about that! I’m probably wrong.
Nonetheless, even IF Brown had just robbed a store, the police still wouldn’t have been justified in shooting him in cold blood. Just because a victim of injustice isn’t perfect doesn’t mean they’re to blame.
@NickNameNick
Don’t worry, I got actual point. I just couldn’t resist making fun of a recent, particularly pompous troll.
While the Individualist was likely downplaying his actual MRA leanings in order to pretend to be impartial, there were times when he geniunely seemed to believe simply saying “I’m an individualist” was a solid counter argument to any and all criticism. Granted he’s a poor conversationalist who thinks he’s both a good debater and a great thinker, so it was a disaster from the start.
I’d go so far as to say he considers himself a master debater.
http://media.giphy.com/media/SUeUCn53naadO/giphy.gif
http://motheremanuelhopefund.com
Folks please consider donating: “This city’s fund will provide direct financial support for the funeral and burial expenses of the nine victims of the senseless tragedy. Any funds remaining after the funeral and burial expenses are paid will be donated directly to the Emanuel AME Church for use as determined by its governance board.”
No amount of money can bring back a loved one.
but we can show love in the face of hate at least.
For the record, that video was deliberately edited to take out most of the white catcallers. So, Divided Brain’s basis for being racist is… Another racist.
(I know Divided Brain’s been banned and there’ve been like 5000 new posts since I went to bed, but I don’t think this was pointed out and it needs to be, because fuck the racist shitstain that edited the video.)
‘It seems to me like black women have more to fear from white men than white women should fear black men.’
I had a lovely house in Treme, New Orleans, for a few years. Some of my white friends wouldn’t visit me there, and I can’t tell you how many times acquaintances and strangers finding out that I, a white woman, lived alone in a black neighbourhood, would ask ‘aren’t you afraid?’ I had to point out to them, ‘look, all anyone in that neighbourhood has to do is look at me funny and I could have their ass in jail with a snap of my fingers…and THEY ALL KNOW THAT. They have a lot more reason to be afraid of me than the reverse.’
Wow, comparing people disagreeing with you on the internet to a lynch mob, WHILE ON A THREAD ABOUT BLACK PEOPLE WHO HAVE BEEN MURDERED BY A RACIST. You’re a real class act, aint’cha?
I hope you step on all the legos.
Gotta love how MRAs make all these evopsych arguments about how men are “naturally” attracted to teenage girls who fit the standard of modern conventional attractiveness, and how we have similar dynamics to (misconceptions of) wolf packs with ‘alphas’ and ‘betas’, etc etc etc.
…Aaaand then whip around and go “okay, I don’t like THAT animal behavior, so not doing that one is what makes us human!”
I always seem to miss the good trolls – not the the latest one was good at all. In fact, his spiel seemed to be almost 100% perfect projection — basically every thing he said about women described himself.
I find Evopsych interesting at times, but at best it can help us understand how we got to where we are and what tendencies we might need to overcome to get to where we want to go. It simply cannot tell us WHERE we want to go. To a certain extent, it reminds me of the old joke about the Canada goose who always flew backward — he didn’t care where he was going, he just wanted to know where he’d been.
Evopsyche realtalk: there is tentative evidence that primates with large and complex social networks have larger brains, which develop in response to a need to keep the various relationships between all the members straight. Some primate groups have rank systems, for instance, in which a daughter’s rank is inherited from her mother, and she passes it down to her own daughters. These primates not only keep track of who ranks whom (which is done by tons of animals) but who each member’s mother and grandmother was and what those animals’ ranks were. This is a complex system (it’s always matriarchal), and these primates have more-developed brains than primates with otherwise-similar living conditions but less complicated social structures.
So when evopsyches come out with their “we are human because menz” I laugh, because it is much more likely that we are human because of women caring about the interpersonal relationships of other women.
Evopsych (as mangled by redpillians, especially) is one big naturalistic fallacy. “We evolved this way, therefore we ought to act this way.”
Not to mention that most of it seems to be non-falseifiable just-so stories.