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.
Care to explain how saying that I personally find it more ethical to allow your children to decide for themselves what they want to believe is Stallinesque? Even though I specifically said it’s out of line to call raising your child in a religion abusive and I don’t think it should be outlawed. I’ve certainly never advocated for killing people of faith or putting them in gulags.
What the fuck? That’s so offensive. It’s right on the level with calling someone you disagree with a Nazi or comparing a law you don’t like to the Holocaust.
So unless you can find something other than not being a fan of organized religion that Stalin and I have in common, you can kindly fuck off.
And I know a couple of people have expressed an intent to back out of the thread, but I find it personally very offensive that EJ and I are being compared to mass murderer right now, so a little back up would be nice if anyone is up to it.
In fact, “I had no idea” probably explains a lot of my stances on this thread, given that I have experienced near-zero negative social consequences from my deconversion and subsequent atheism, painful as it was personally. Thanks for opening my eyes to a reality different from my own, I actually learned something. Shutting up for realz now.
Yeah, that’s not okay. I don’t like to get involved in religious debates for exactly this reason. I am fine with saying factual stuff about religion (like the post I made before about fundamentalist Christian eschatology) but a debate on the relative merits always somehow seems to devolve into theists implying (or outright saying) that atheists are mass murderers waiting to happen.
@WWTH I’m very sorry. I shouldn’t have done that and I regret it, and I am fucking off.
I didn’t take it personally.
I talk to privileged people about their privilege a lot. I’m a white man, so people see me as an ally and then have the shock of discovering that in fact I don’t support white supremacy or don’t support male supremacy. They generally react harshly: “You’re a mangina.” “You’re a race traitor.” “You want to end western civilisation.” “You’re a cultural Marxist.” “You’re a Nazi.” “You’re like Stalin.”
In those cases I try not to take it personally. The privileged person in question is literally seeing the worst thing in the world: a world in which reasonable adjustments need to be made in order to prevent them personally from having their way all the time and to prevent other people from being trampled. It’s a shock because they’ve never considered themselves privileged. Privilege is invisible, after all. That’s just the way things are, and surely you wouldn’t want to change things, would you?
Men really, really dislike being told that they aren’t allowed to catcall or to tell women that they look nice when those women are trying to be taken seriously. White people really, really dislike being told that they shouldn’t tell black people to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. These aren’t big things, they say. They’re just words. Words don’t hurt. They miss the point: these words are important precisely because they’re insidious and they underlie everything else. They underlie all the more overt and hostile things.
Religious people really dislike being told that they shouldn’t teach their kids religion. It scares them, and they lash out. They call me a Nazi, accuse me of wanting to wipe out civilisation, accuse me of wanting to destroy entire cultures, of wanting to abuse their children, of wanting to take them away so that I can brainwash them. I try not to take it personally.
katz, PussyPowerTantrum, you know what privilege is. You’ve seen it from the other side. You currently have it and you’re speaking from it.
Learn, guys.
This is the absolute last thing I’m going to post in this thread. WWTH, I’m sorry but you’re on your own from here in. If this doesn’t work for backup then I’m afraid I’m going to have to disengage because I don’t want a screaming match with people that I could regard as allies. I’ve had that exact same thing before over in the atheist community and it’s deeply ugly.
Judging from what I’ve read, I figured it was because it was close to the winter solstice and a few Roman holidays and when some pagans converted, they still participated in some of the old traditions and eventually they were adopted, even though Christmas wasn’t an actual Christian day of worship for quite some time.
I did look some stuff up though, and apparently, this is why the date was chosen, despite the fact that the church is claiming no one really knows when Jesus was born:
Emphasis mine.
So, judging from this, it was because they wanted to replace the sun as an object of worship for pagan religions. During the solstice, pagans worship the sun’s “rebirth”, as the winter solstice is the longest night of the year.
But hey, I could be wrong. It’s been known to happen. XD
I wasn’t aware of this. 😀 So thanks for bringing it up, PoM!
Dude, not funny.
I’m not against people teaching their kids religion unless they push it on them. I want kids to be able to choose whether to go along with their parents or not. I’m struggling to put it into words here, hmmm. I think it’s okay for religious parents to demonstrate their faith i.e. “this is what we believe and this is why we go to church/participate in this holiday or custom. Join us if you wish” but not to go “XYZ is real and you’ll go to hell if you don’t follow every aspect of everything we teach you”. And most certainly not to preach intolerance/hate against certain groups of people, good grief. THAT should require intervention for sure.
I hope that makes sense…I just don’t want to escalate things any further…
@Divided Line
Inappropriate as fuck, dude. And I recognise your name – you’re not a new troll to this blog, are you.
Isn’t @DividedLine the same asshole who who shit up the Grace Mann thread?
@Paradoxical Intention
You’re right. It isn’t funny.
Yes he is, I just checked the thread:
https://www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/2015/05/10/feminist-activist-grace-mann-murdered-blogger-blames-her-death-on-feminist-jokes-about-misandry/#comments
Yeah, comparing atheists to Stalin is a pretty classic silencing tactic. But thanks for apologizing PPT and I accept. I’ll drop the topic from here on out if that’s the prevailing mood of everyone. But this and trans issues are two subjects that seem to get discussed contentiously and then dropped, leaving them to fester. There’s a vague idea that we should take care of it another day but that day never happens.
Oh well. A troll has come along and dropped a turd to reunify us against him. Very charitable, divided line!
What does this even mean? Are you agreeing with the premise that this is to blame on feminism and not racism because one video of catcalling disproportionately showed black men doing the catcalling? Considering that Roof was said to have been fond of racist jokes at least as far back as high school, it doesn’t seem likely that he was turned into a racist by a Holler Back video.
Or are you saying that the video is proof that black men rape white women more than white men do? Because most violent crime is intraracial.
I’m guessing it’s the former and this was a really weak attempt at a joke at feminist’s expense.
He also thinks it’s our fault men kill themselves because we’re allowed to say no to sex.
https://www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/2013/09/30/the-freak-out-artist-julian-from-real-social-dynamics-takes-gaslighting-to-a-new-level/comment-page-8/#comment-548512
@ POM and Paradoxical
The interplay of early Christianity and the older beliefs is pretty interesting.
Over here for instance it’s a common story about the building of a church that the Devil kept moving the building stones. Now, the historical theory is that the newly converted parishioners were happy to take up the new religion but wanted to remain in their old places that were sacred to them.
So whilst it’s true that a lot of Christian buildings overlay pagan site, whether this was the church trying to take over a pagan site or the pagans trying to keep the worship on the site is open to debate.
It is probably true that churches take their designs from Mithraic temples though. Most pagan worship had taken place *outside* the temples; the inner sanctums being reserved for the deities and/or the priestly classes. Followers of Mithras though worshipped in special buildings meant to emulate a cave. In fact Christianity is in many ways just Mithraism without the, rather strict, entry qualifications. That may explain why it caught on in Rome.
@PI
Yeah, and Mithraism was huge, huge, amongst Romans. It was especially popular in the military. Control of the military is of paramount priority under all circumstances, and if Christianity could make inroads into the Roman military by conflating Christ with Mithras, it was definitely in the faith’s interests to do so. The Roman state would not be able to effectively suppress Christianity if a large fraction of its soldiers were Christians. Jesus and Mithras already had a lot in common, so conflation wasn’t hard.
I actually don’t think that December 25th was specifically selected to increase the similarity between them, but a result of the conflation. If they are the same person, and Mithras was born on the 25th, it stands to reason that Jesus must have been born on the 25th. So it wasn’t a conscious decision, but something that just sort of happened as a result of the conversion of Mithraists.
@weirwoodtreehugger
First of all, claiming that we’re talking about “sex” is a way of dehumanizing men generally and people who disagree with you. When a guy says “I can’t get laid,” what he is actually saying is “I’m afraid I’ll never experience love, have a wife and family, experience relationships and intimacy,” or he’s saying “I’m afraid I’m unattractive to women.”
It’s not really a conversation about “sex,” it’s really a conversation about things which are basic to emotional and psychological well being of bother genders. Men have no other language to talk about such things, and typically, people like yourself work hard to deny them that language.
Second, the male suicide rate is 3 times that of women and we know there is an increased risk of male suicide after divorces, 70% of which are initiated by women. We also know that suicides increase during recessions and economic downturns. We further know married men out earn women and unmarried men. So put the pieces of the puzzle together. I guess men face a real risk of being weeded out of this aspect of social life because the strong independent women don’t particularly have much interest in men who are underemployed, unemployed, and so on.
It’s pretty clear that women create the social landscape in which men experience gender. It’s an open question as to if masculinity ever even belonged to men to define or redefine. Men don’t get to decide what women want and expect and their entire lives are typically spent trying to qualify for women. That is in fact why they work more hours, why they subordinate their career choices to making money, it is why 90% of workplace injuries and deaths are attributable to men. It’s because women impose a set of gendered expectations on them, a male gender role that they never even asked for in the first place.
The idea that the male suicide rate being triple that of women isn’t a gender issue is, quite frankly, absurd. And since gender is a two way street and our identities are really adopted when we experience the opposite sex’s expectations of us, it’s equally absurd to think that women’s expectations of the opposite sex wouldn’t contribute to that statistic. It would be just as ridiculous to assume that male preferences for women’s physical beauty wouldn’t contribute to women’s eating disorders and self esteem issues.
The cognitive dissonance must be unreal. It must be difficult to on the one hand pretend that you care about equality and justice on the one hand and then to on the other find so many elaborate excuses to deny.
That’s all from me. It’s no fun talking to an ideological wall. Throw your little outraged, bigoted lynch mob party. I won’t be attending today.
@ madness,
I am trying to have a discussion here. I know I got started badly and again, my apologies for that. I want to understand your point and I don’t.
I honestly don’t understand why trying to figure out what makes someone carry out a mass murder and being able to stop them is a bad thing.
I understand we all have a dark side, that I am capable of horrible actions. I have developed my own checks and balances. I think everyone does, what I’m wondering is what happens to a person’s check and balances when they decide to kill and how to keep those checks in place.
If you’re trying to to tell me that the entire culture has to change for mass murders to stop, OK, I understand, that, what will ultimately make a difference is having everybody treat others with love and respect.
I’m also very hopeful that humans as a whole are good and that culture will change with time. I think the good guys are winning and, in a generation or two, the world will be a much better place to live.
So, yes, I should work to eliminate racism at every level-worldwide down to my own, work for sane gun control laws here in the US, to treat everyone as an equal. I do the best I can at that, one day at a time.
Enough people do that and the world changes. Enough people are doing that and the world is changing for the better. We, as a species, can still destroy ourselves, but I think we’ll make it through.
So, I think that the objection to the shooter being different is that we are all part of the same culture and the entire culture has to change. Am I correct? If not, and I mean this, please tell me, or at least point me to where I can learn what you mean.
Hey @DividedLine maybe women reject you and your ilk because you’re horrible human beings? Stop derailing this thread about a tragedy to be about your penis.
Promised… not… to… post… but… must… mock…
Should be please tell me why….
There is plenty of language available to talk about these things. How about “I feel lonely and that makes me sad.” That men feel unable to discuss feeling sad is down to toxic masculinity, not people like me. That many men are only able to express their insecurities, fears or sadness by feeling resentful of women for having agency and being able to choose our partners just as men are, is a function of patriarchy. It is not feminists who tell men that they have the right to get the girl just because they’re nice. It is not the fault of feminists that that promise was a lie fed to us by popular culture.
First of all, why should you get to decide what we want? And we don’t all want the same things, by the way.
Second of all, qualify for women? What the fuck? We’re people. Not a bank loan. There’s no equivalent of a credit score that magically allows you access to all the women. People meet. They connect. Sometimes that connection lasts long enough for a long term relationship. Sometimes it doesn’t.
If the men are providers, women stay at home and allow men to provide for them model is so advantageous for women, why have feminists had to fight so hard for the right to have an equal chance at a career?
Men like this often dont see consent as a thing. people are only objects to be abused. The white supremacist fear of black men “raping OUR (white) women” was never out of concern for women, not when the men who said it raped, enslaved, abused, oppressed, and murdered black women and girl without a care. Instead, there is no distinguishing between a white woman consensually having romance or even just friendship with a black man and rape, because women are property of white men and the issue is the white man’s feels. White women in this equation are used as a prop. And that isnt feminism.
Headline: Prominent MRA tries to blame Charleston shooting on feminism and its alleged “lies about rape culture.”
Divided Line: WHAT ABOUT THE (white) MENZ!?!?!?
@berdache
I don’t hold it against you. Please don’t misunderstand me. You did get off on the wrong foot, but I actually don’t (normally – sometimes I am not in the mood) mind having this conversation.
It’s not a bad thing. What’s a bad thing is starting that inquiry from the assumption that this person must have been different from the rest of us in some way. That this person was in some way “other” than us. Othering outliers is a natural impulse, but one that must be resisted. It might come about that someone who commits murder turns out to be mad. It might come about that someone who is racist is in some way wired differently in the head.
However, you should not begin by assuming this is the case. That’s the point I’m trying to make. The majority of the time it is not the case at all, and making that assumption from the beginning in the absence of evidence is a reflection of one’s beliefs about oneself and about the world. We all want to assume that someone just like me could not possibly walk into a church and shoot it up because the people inside it are not in the same racial group. We all want to look for reasons why we, ourselves, are not actually capable of doing that. We want to believe that we would not do the same under similar circumstances.
The reality is that people just don’t radicalize themselves in an environment of other people who don’t put up with that shit. Radicalization requires people to hang out with others who are at least enabling of radicalization, if not radicals themselves, or else the total withdrawal from society to nurse one’s umbrage in solitude. Society – both the larger society and the smaller interpersonal societies in which we are intimately immersed – bears enormous responsibility for this kind of thing.
Incidentally:
Did you notice that you equated insanity with irrationality there?
Snuffy,
To be very undeservedly generous to Divided, I’m the one who opened that door by bringing up his comment history.
Sorry.