John Russell Houser, who gunned down 11 moviegoers at a showing of Trainwreck in Lafayette, Louisiana Thursday night, killing two young women, was a volatile, violent, woman-hating, anti-Semitic, far-right loser given to dark and bitter diatribes against what he saw as cultural “immorality.”
It’s a safe bet that if Houser had stayed for the entire showing of Trainwreck, instead of pulling out his gun, he would not have enjoyed the film, a comedy about a young woman living an unapologetically “promiscuous” life in New York city, written by and starring Amy Schumer, a feminist comedian famous (or infamous, depending on whom you’re talking to) for her frankly sexual humor.
A more important question: Did Houser deliberately target viewers of Trainwreck as a sick protest against its “permissive” politics? And if so, was he inspired by attacks on the film from right-wing media and misogynists online?
Trainwreck has been a lightning rod for right-wing “moralists” since the first trailer for the film came out five months ago. A glance through the comments to the trailer on YouTube reveals months of sniping at the film by an assortment of angry misogynists decrying Trainwreck as “propaganda” and a celebration of “whores.”
“This is unbelievably degenerate,” one would-be cultural critic on YouTube wrote shortly after the trailer came out. “No respectable man would even touch an overweight whore.”
“Movies like this are the reason people can’t have normal, old fashioned relationships anymore,” another YouTuber complained. “Thank you Hollywood for yet another huge, stinking, steaming pile of crap contribution to society whose sole purpose is to teach women to act like men, be sluts and take relationships for granted.”
Still another attacked the film as subtle “propaganda” encouraging women to “behave like sluts” — even though Schumer’s character repents and gives up her “slutty” ways at the end. As this non-fan of Schumer saw it, the fact that the film has a happy ending
encourages the viewer to partake in her abominable behavior, because the message is that such behavior has no consequences: everything will go your way in the end. This gives young women a license to party, do drugs and whore around in their 20s, because they believe they can count on a Prince Charming to rescue them when the time is right.
The apotheosis of this kind of, er, criticism comes not from some irate, anonymous YouTube commenter but from Armond White, movie reviewer for the paleoconservative National Review, who, in a review last week, blasted Schumer for turning “female sexual prerogative into shamelessness” and promoting “the degradation of sex.”
And he was just getting started:
Trainwreck should be a wake-up call for anyone — especially for any conservative — who thinks pop culture is guileless, harmless fun. …
Not really a sex comedy, Trainwreck is a comedy that uses sex to promote feminist permissiveness.
Like the angry YouTube commenters he almost seems to be cribbing his critique from, White is especially offended that Amy — it’s not clear if he’s talking about Schumer or the character she named after herself, or both — can be so unapologetically sexual without suffering “social stigma.”
As White sees it, Schumer is “a comedy demagogue who okays modern misbehavior.” Apparently confusing Trainwreck with the Chinese Cultural Revolution and Schumer with Madame Mao, White concludes that
Schumer doesn’t simply use humor for social readjustment; like all Comedy Central performers from Jon Stewart on down, she aims to acquire cultural power. … As the latest model of Comedy Central’s stealth comediennes (following Janeane Garofalo and Sarah Silverman), Schumer disguises a noxious cultural agenda as personal fiat.
Now, we don’t know if Houser was directly inspired by White’s antifeminist-diatribe-cum-movie-review; we don’t know if he even read it.
What we do know is that over-the-top attacks on feminism and feminists like his have helped to contribute to a widespread backlash, online and off, against outspoken women, a backlash that has both encouraged and excused attacks on, and outright harassment of, individual women who have challenged male cultural authority — from women daring to offer opinions about video games that offend misogynistic gamers to comedians like Schumer who challenge old-fashioned slut-shaming by joking unapologetically about female “promiscuity.”
No, movie reviews don’t cause terrorism, not by themselves, anyway. But John Russell Houser was a veritable rage bomb that had long been ready to explode, and “cultural critics” like White and his ideological fellow travellers online may well have inspired his choice of targets when he finally did.
—
Please read the newly revised COMMENTS POLICY before commenting.
Well all those misogynist asshole aren’t deterring me from seeing train wreck. In fact I’m watching it BECAUSE of them.
“whose sole purpose is to teach women to act like men, be sluts and take relationships for granted”
So men act like sluts and take relationships for granted? Is that commenter quite sure that’s the argument s/he (but come on, obviously he) wants to make?
Does the title of the movie seem to escape them. Now I haven’t seen the movie but something tells me that it is called train wreck for a reason. As to whether or not this inspired him to commit this act, I cannot comment on. I simply haven’t read enough about this to offer anything of value.
The manosphere can’t make up it’s mind.
Feminism is apparently something that makes women never want to have sex ever while making them want to fuck everything that moves.
“Thank you Hollywood for yet another huge, stinking, steaming pile of crap contribution to society whose sole purpose is to teach women to act like men, be sluts and take relationships for granted.”
“women to act like men”
“women to act like men”
“women to act like men”
And they say that feminists are misandrists.
So, were there similar moralistic meltdowns over ‘Ghosts of Girlfriends Past’ about an unapologetic player starring Matthew Mcconaughey a few years back?
Now I actually want to see this movie.
Misogynists can’t make up their minds. Do they hate women because we don’t put out, or do they hate us because we put out too much?
Men are promiscuous, that’s their prerogative.
Women are promiscuous (without being shamed, or suffering for it) OMG CULTURAL DEGENERACY.
The fucking double standard. Still flying after all these years.
It’s because they put out too much with people who aren’t ME, even though I’m a nice guy, hold doors open for people behind me and own my own fedora D:
AAPB-
They hate us because we put out or can be presumed to put out for the wrong people (i.e. anyone who is not them).
Honestly, is it so much to ask that every woman, but only the women that make his boner happy, drop everything they’re doing and devote themselves to his sexual desires completely, being wholly accessible, but then also avoid any single thing that could ever make him feel self-doubt, like he’s incorrect, or otherwise feel like he’s being questioned and for every woman who doesn’t make his boner happy to disappear from the planet while he’s interacting with it.
Gawd, us women are so entitled.
Lady Mondegreen, here’s how one of the commenters on youtube “explained” it:
Regarding double standards, has anyone been following the internet storm about the girl who was filmed having a three way in a Canadian back street?
All the moral outrage has been directed at her, none at either of the men who showed just as much agency as she did. Nor are many people pointing the finger at the person who chose to film the throuple without their knowledge and post it online.
She’s showing a lot of strength by facing off against the trolls. But I feel bad for her because this is going to define her for years to come.
“Sluts!”
“Whores!”
“Cunts!”
“BUT IT’S NOT WRONG WHEN MEN DO IT!”
(Honestly. If it’s not wrong when MEN do it, then who on Earth are they doing it with, and how the hell can they expect women to “be better”?)
And another biot00th-moron proves himself as much of a misogynist as any religious-text-thumper.
To any women haters reading here, be they traditionalists or neoreactionaries: Yes, women should be able to live out their sexuality without double standard, without slut-shaming. More women will in time embrace such sexual freedom as men take for granted, regardless of women hating creeps who want promiscuity to a “men’s only club”.
If you hate women “acting like men”, and if you hate feminism for giving women the freedom to do so, your opinion is thankfully becoming irrelevant. Now, have a good day… and GO AWAY!
Bina-
Well, you see, the women men do it with are the aforementioned derogatory phrases. And owing to how they’ve been ruined by this sexual activity, they are therefore worthless and of no value to anyone. Because of this lack of value, they should have no honest lover and no “honest” career and should have no ability to stand for their boundaries or consent as they have revealed themselves to be soiled, so how dare they presume to be too good for the creepy “nice guy”.
CW: Victim Blaming and Rape Culture from here on out.
It’s basically the tool they use to justify rape culture and we see it in every sexual assault trial everywhere. But you see your honor, the woman attacked was a slut because she once had sex with another man and therefore was open season for anyone and couldn’t possibly have been raped.
So these arguments that there are huge amounts of “sluts” everywhere serves a purpose beyond just trying to shame women back into a tightly controlled box where she presumes her own desires don’t matter. They are also used as the self-justification they can use to justify their rapist ways and to justify looking down on women they view as being in a “slutty” category. (There’s a reason a lot of groups of marginalized women are often conflated with being hypersexual (WOC, queer, trans, young, etc…)
Um, I don’t think “biology” really gives a rip about those things, bud.
I like how they use evo-psych to rationalize the bad behavior of some men, but refuse to admit that the same evo-psych would suggest that women have just as much biological imperative to ensure that their offspring has as broad a pool of genetics as possible, to avoid putting all of their eggs in one basket, so to speak. And centuries of male fear over cuckholding says I’m not off-base on that.
And it also reveals quite clearly that MRAs want control and dominance over women more than they want sex (though their claims about sad boners would seem to suggest otherwise). Because more women being honest and in touch with their sexual desires and feeling safe enough to explore them and to explore alternate relationship structures like poly or sexual friendships would lead to their being more consensual sex and more varied consensual sex that is more willing to be exploratory.
But to get to that world, MRAs would need to treat women like people, equal people whose boundaries and desires mattered and that is so emasculating they can’t trade that at the toxic masculinity bank for free manliness points and so instead we get this double message that women are cockteases for turning men on and not fucking them and are also worthless because they fuck too many men.
When are double-standards going to be called out for what they are: HYPOCRISY. That’s it, that’s all, that simple. “Do as I say, not as I do.” When sexist assholes use “biotoofs” to perpetuate it, or when religious dudes use “theology-toofs” to do it, it’s still hypocrisy.
Sexist assholes are nothing more than hypocrites. Oh, sure, they try to cloak it in some illusion of validity by using evo-psych-bio crackpottery, it’s remains hypocrisy.
And I can’t stand it. Maybe it’s because I’m your “typical Gen-Xer,” or perhaps it’s just because I’m a reasonable person, but nothing chafes my rear more than when people talk out of both sides of their mouths, or people making up rules for other people that they themselves have no intention of following. It’s just disgusting to me. One guy (a proud, unapologetic sexist) I knew actually told me that the double standards are put in place to “protect women.” I said “what you just told me made me throw up in my mouth a little. You do realize you’re a hypocrite, right?” (our conversation ended rather abruptly, at that point).
Really, if biology makes women act a certain way, there’s no reason to police their behavior, biology would do that.
Evo-psych is the atheist Book of Genesis: Gotta blame women for original sin somehow.
I have no evens to can’t. I really don’t.
LOL. A perfectly circular argument – ladies shouldn’t do X because ladies don’t do X. Take that, libruhls.
What’s hilarious is that the same evo-psych bullshit would justify “hypergamy” which is totally “unfair” and “mean” to men. Funny how they never defend that with “bio-troofs”.
Nope. Just like there was no hand wringing over the loveable womanizer character present in just about every sitcom over the past few decades. Like Barney from How I Met Your Mother. Joey from Friends. Charlie from 2 1/2 men. Jerry Seinfeld was never presented as a womanizer on his show. Just a picky commitmentphobe. But I’d say he was one. He had a different girlfriend in practically every episode.
Interested how the gendered terms differ in tone. Slut is so much more loaded and derogatory than womanizer is.
Yes.
Lol. Citation needed there, buddy.
Class is a social, not a biological construct. The available evidence suggests that most Paleolithic cultures were pretty egalitarian and communal. It was when agriculture developed in full that we started to develop class hierarchies.
Same with the word “lady.” That word is associated with medieval feudalism. It’s not a biological construct at all.
Cerberus: exactly!
Really what they’re trying to argue is not so much that once you’ve given consent to a guy he can do whatever he wants to you thereafter, without your consent, but the argument that, if a woman gives consent to one guy, she just gave consent to EVERY guy that shows the lightest interest in her.
Giving consent once is apparently like opening the door to some kind of sexual convenience store, where all men can just walk in and take whatever they want, according to their logic.
When there was no real way of accumulating wealth (apart from the odd bit of personal adornment) you were judged on your skills. Your merit was determined by how much your day to day hunting or gathering brought into the tribe/clan; or perhaps whether your fighting or tactical skills protected the group from the dangers from human or natural stessors.
With the invention of farming and agriculture however all of a sudden it was how many ox you had that gave you status or how much grain you had in storage.
Of course, with the invention of agriculture it all went downhill anyway. We lost years off life expectancy and had to work for more than 8 hours a week to survive.