Roosh Valizadeh — the racist, woman-hating, fat-shaming pickup artist and rape legalization proponent — is trying to reinvent himself as a philosopher of sorts, a man with unique insights into the perils of masculinity in “a degenerate world.” He seems undaunted by the fact that his unique insights are neither unique nor, well, insights; he’s little more than a regurgitator of a lot of old, bad ideas, and a not-very-competent regurgitator at that. If he were a mother bird, his chicks would all die.
Part of Roosh’s attempted reinvention is a “world” lecture tour this summer that started in Berlin in late June and that will, barring mishaps, end in Toronto in mid-August.
Tomorrow, he’s making an appearance in Manhattan, where he will be making a canned speech on “The State Of Man” followed by several hours of Q&A and mingling with his fans. Or at least that portion of his fans who have managed to stay awake through 40 minutes of Roosh droning on in his characteristic monotone.
On his “Roosh World Tour” website, Roosh highlights some of the topics he addresses in his speech, including
- “How to mentally approach living in a degenerate world”
- “An examination of three different time periods men faced in the past”
- “The overall benefits we can expect from women in the pursuit of relationships with them”
- “One important need that all men require in life”
Based on the portion of Roosh’s oeuvre that I have managed to force myself to read, I’m going to guess that this “need that all men require” — isn’t a “need” by definition something that is required? — is women touching their boners (no fatties). Or something else equally stupid. Honestly, I don’t care. I feel a bit sorry for any man pathetic enough to pay the $47-$59 he is charging for his “4-hour event.”
Roosh is keeping the exact location of the event secret until the last minute “to prevent unattractive feminists from petitioning the event,” as he puts it on his reservations page.
Roosh’s so-called World Tour is only hitting 4 countries in total. One country he is not visiting: Iceland.
Why might this be? Well, the last time he went to Iceland, Roosh convinced a woman who’d lost her phone and been abandoned by her friends after a night of drinking in a Reykjavik bar to come to his apartment. Then this happened, as he himself tells the story in his Bang Iceland eBook:
I hooked her arm and off we went. … There had to be a moment when she realized that all her friends are gone and the only reasonable option left was to go home with a strange man she had just met.
While walking to my place, I realized how drunk she was. In America, having sex with her would have been rape, since she couldn’t legally give her consent. It didn’t help matters that I was relatively sober, but I can’t say I cared or even hesitated.
I won’t rationalize my actions, but having sex is what I do. If a girl is willing to walk home with me, she’s going to get the dick no matter how much she has drunk. I’ll protect myself by using a condom (most of the time), but I know that when it comes to sex, one ounce of hesitation or a feeling of morality will get me nothing.
Quotes his, emphasis mine.
This isn’t philosophy. It’s not even pickup “artistry.” It’s just what rapists do.
EDIT: A few tweaks and a fixed typo in the headline; added the bit about the “secret” venue.
I might say I have a couple of other visual quirks. When the kids were young we used to spend a lot of time at the art gallery in the city. One thing that mr and I constantly disagreed on were a couple of fairly large, modern spotty swirly thingummies … no, not the indigenous dot painting kind of spotty swirly thingummy.
In the end we worked out that he enjoyed spending time in front of paintings where your eyes kept moving all the time because there was no focal point anywhere. I didn’t mind there being complexities and confusions (think Escher, I even buy Escher colouring books) but he was right that I couldn’t stand there being no point anywhere in the image/ surface/ whatever for the eye to rest or pause or refocus.
Having a nurse daughter who’s also horribly dyslexic — like her father and her sister, surely Goddess or feminist central could have allowed me one child who could spell or write neatly or both — I’m fairly used to ghastly images of burns, wounds, skin diseases and all the rest because I used to have to edit all her assignments and papers and presentations. Couldn’t have done it without seeing some truly awful things. Means I can’t resist putting my hand in my pocket for the “Shake the Boot” fund raisers for the burns unit — even though daughter now doesn’t spend the whole of the Firefighters Ball night out with the firies demanding donations from all and sundry.
Blimey – that comment from GetItGoing was polite and reasonable. Trouble is it bore NO relation to reality. I had the displeasure of discovering Roosh long before I found WHTM, the Denmark article, and it is a vile piece of misogyny.
Roosh is ‘well travelled’ because he wanted to rate ‘bangs’ around the world (white women only, of course). I am sure that he IS well read, but that makes him simply better informed as to the many ways to despise women – there is no shortage of misogynist writings to inform his obnoxious worldview – you can start with the Ancient Greeks perhaps, but really you could pretty much start anywhere.
Catalpa,
It’s kind of like Pontypool.
Spoilers
Where the plague was spread via the English language instead of bites, like most infection horror.
End spoiler.
Now for the storm update nobody asked for, we lost power around 2 AM. It still isn’t back. Apparently 42,000 lost power, so hopefully it shouldn’t take too long. The last time a storm knocked out my power it was from Friday night to Sunday afternoon, but that was hundreds of thousands of people.
Ugh. My dad got wrong info somewhere. 225,000 lost power. They restored 92,000 and have 130, 000 to go. Crap. They said they brought in crews from the five neighboring states, so fingers crossed. I just want it back before it’s dark.
@Lea, how is JB able to start a hashtag, wasn’t she permabanned from twitter?
Not that it doesn’t sound exactly like the kind of thing she would do. It’s almost like she wants her personal information plastered all over the internet.
He does say in America this would be considered rape does anyone know if this is the same in Iceland. If so then he should be punished but if not then this article could be considered libel. Best to check these things.
@dhag95
I dot think a decreased risk of stds is a small factor, the other desiease I mentioned would be one but the stds are a serious issue. It is a judgment call, which do you think is worse, and like most things related to a child’s health it is left up to the parents. Plus the negatives get worse the older you are when you have the procedure.
I am saying you should discuss it with your doctor first and only let a trained medical professional do it. But I don’t think it should be omg what horrible parents. It’s no more mutilation then any other medical procedure would be.
I’m also not saying get it done for cosmetic reasons. Specifically talk to your doctor about it and weigh the pros and cons, including whatever the latest studies show the decreased rate or stds vs negative affects will be. It is a heated topic in the medical community but not a cut and dry simple solution one.
@the bitterest pill
It isn’t libel, and I doubt it would be even if having sex with a drunken woman weren’t considered rape in Iceland. Roosh is a U.S. citizen, and our libel laws would apply to this scenario. He’s a public figure and an admission of rape is a matter of public importance. Thus, Roosh would have to prove actual malice on the part of David and anyone else who called him out. This means folks would have to not only say something false about him, but we’d have to *know* of its falsity and say it anyway. In other words, since Roosh is a public figure a court uses a *higher* standard to prove libel. Furthermore, a reasonable person could conclude that Roosh is, in fact, a rapist since he admitted that under our laws what he did would have been considered rape. That he couldn’t be charged in another country is not much of a defense, and anyone who calls Roosh a rapist could easily argue that they’re telling the truth. [/lawyer]
Fuck off, reddest pill. If you can’t consent, it’s rape. No matter where you are. No matter what the law is.
And I’m probably not the best person to discuss this. I’m just premeditated and this has only come up a few times in class (well 2 really, anatomy professor said consult doctor due to pros and cons undergrad lab tech made fun of all circumsized men and said to take children away from parents , which was kind of insulting really.)
Consult your doctor when you have a child. Their are people who know much more about the pros and cons then you or me, and the medical community shifts back and forth every few years.
And I wouldn’t consider it mgm if it’s being done in an honest attempt at increased health. Their are horrible things done to men and we mons genitals that will scar them for life and are done for purely cultural or relgious reasons.
Like I saod, talk to your doctor. They know better then you or I would.
Man, I would LOVE to see Doosh come after David for “Libel.” Because then Doosh would have to admit to being a rapist in a court of law.
@the bitterest pill
I’m not a lawyer, but.. If someone steals a car in a hypothetical country where car theft is not legally called “theft”, surely we could still call them a “thief” without committing libel? They did in fact steal, right? And Roosh did in fact rape, whether Icelandic law calls it rape or not. If you rape someone on the moon, it’s still rape. Etc.
“This is one of the reasons David laughs at this lecture tour. There is no shortage of venues for for cranky, frustrated men to complain. You even complain in forums that explicitly aren’t for whiney dudebros. Tim Hunt did it at a conference for women”
no he didn’t. He was taken out of context.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3138311/Does-new-evidence-prove-sexist-Prof-just-joking-Official-says-Sir-Tim-Hunt-s-comments-taken-context.html
Also from the Icelandic Penal Code:
Chapter XXII. [Sexual Offences]
Art. 194 [Anyone who by means of violence or threats of violence forces a person to
have carnal intercourse or other sexual intimacy shall be subject to imprisonment for no
less than 1 year and up to 16 years. Violence is considered to include the deprivation of
independence by means of confinement, pharmaceuticals or in other comparable ways.]
It’s not slade to call roosh a rapist, he admitted to rape. At the most you’d just be pointing our a flaw in whatever country he committed it in a didn’t charge him. It definitely falls under what any normal person would consider rape so I don’t see how he could have any case for slander.
Oh and about my last post. I mentioned being premed, but I am not planing to work with children or really with stds so I haven’t studied this much. It’s not where my interest are so like I said, consult someone who does specialize in this.
Bitterest Pill – Truth is the ultimate defense against libel, in the US, at least. It simply isn’t libel if it’s true, and David is only reporting what Roosh himself has admitted to.
Nah, it just sounds like a complex Markov chain-type algorithm to me. About as intelligent as the subreddit simulator.
@katz
“Nah, it just sounds like a complex Markov chain-type algorithm to me. About as intelligent as the subreddit simulator.”
It’s a a highly complex visual processing neural network where they’ve deliberately fed way too much of the output back into the inputs. It’s nothing like as simple as a Markov chain algo.
@Lea,
I checked out JB’s blog, I see her hashtag is in relation to her latest desperate attention seeking ploy, she’s set up a Patreon asking for money to buy a crossbow, alleging that her life is in danger for pissing of The Feminists.
So far she’s raised $15, there are some gullible people out there.
Any chance asking for money to buy weapons goes against Patreon’s T&Cs?
@Robjec
What Nop said. Also, you’re conflating actually contracting an STD (which would be a big deal) with a possible, slight chance of decreasing your risk of contracting certain specific STDs in the event that you fit into the very specific categories of boys/men for which the studies have shown any benefit (which would be a small factor). You can’t just say it’s “not a small factor”. It is a small factor because if there even is any effect at all, it’s tiny and doesn’t apply to everyone. Taking into account that there’s also a risk for complications and even death, the claimed positive effects become even less significant.
Also, that thing about bodily autonomy. It’s pretty damn important. For me it clearly outweighs even the most outrageous claims of benefits.
“Complicated” doesn’t mean “intelligent.” It’s still algorithmic.
About the pics: personally, I’m not bothered by patterns with holes or spots (like lotus seeds or beehives), but I can understand being grossed out by certain patterns or textures. When I was a kid I used to hate the idea of pouring milk into a clear glass or cup. It had to be an opaque cup, or else I’d think the residue the milk left behind was super gross. That’s pretty strange, isn’t it?
wwth: grrr, I hate power outages in the summer! I hope you can find somewhere to put your food so it doesn’t go bad, and that the power comes back on soon.
My son is circumcised. All this talk of me violating his bodily autonomy is really upsetting me. I won’t go into all the reasons we did it, but I did research it, and weighed all kinds of pros and cons, including looking up local circumcision rate, and talking with pediatrician and my ob. I’m Thinking future, im thinking health, I’m thinking other boys in locker room, and I’m thinking actual men’s thoughts on it.
I get very weepy over the whole circumcision thing. When I was pregnant with my son back in the 70s, I did as much research on the issue as I could, as well as consulting with more than one health care provider. It was agonizing. My husband and I were trying so hard to do the right thing. I read journal articles etc. and this was before the internet. Now it seems so obvious that one should think immediately “Really? You want to cut off bits of your child without his say-so?” But back then . . . I regret it to this day and I really resent that people blame parents who that many years ago may have done the best they could to figure this out. We didn’t do it for aesthetic or religious reasons, but because at the time we were persuaded it was for his health. Sure it seems obvious now but as a 20-something I did the best I could to research the issue. Back then it just didn’t seem that the choice was an obvious one. I’m totally prepared to get slammed for this but I’m sure there are many parents of my generation who really thought they were doing the best thing.
sn0rkmaiden:
A crossbow? Are these feminists working for the Sheriff of Nottingham?