Apparently worried that not enough people were conflating the woman-hating, reactionary assholes who call themselves Men’s Rights Activists with the woman-hating reactionary assholes who call themselves pickup artists, MRA stronghold A Voice for Men has come rushing to the defense of PUA skeezeball Roosh Valizadeh, in the wake of his recent troubles in Canada.
In a post titled La défense de Roosh, Roosh fan and recent Bill Cosby defender Jonathan David Farley reports that
I attended Roosh’s World Tour in Washington, D.C. At a last-minute-buyer’s ticket fee of $60, I thought the price was well worth it─not just for the information, which I knew already─but for the comedy. As a former professional comedian, I know comedy: I wouldn’t have paid $60 to see Chris Rock, one of my favorite acts, but Roosh V’s speech was better.
But Farley doesn’t just see Roosh as a brilliant comedian (?); he also, well, just read this, because, what?
While I no longer have a need to do what Roosh advises in his book Day Bang, which I have a signed copy of, I have a longing to do what Roosh does: help men become happy. Roosh is in that respect much like the Buddha or Dalai Lama.
That’s right: “ROOSH IS … MUCH LIKE THE BUDDHA OR DALAI LAMA.”
The rest of Farley’s post is a weirdly perky defense of Roosh and some of his, er, teachings, with Roosh’s abundant misogyny surgically removed.
Far from promulgating “hate speech,” Return of Kings tells men that if they want the highest-quality women, they have to improve themselves, whether it’s through starting an internet business to become financially independent, lifting weights, or learning the wisdom of classical philosophers.
Do you even lift, Athanasius of Alexandria?
He goes on to suggest that Roosh’s, er, teachings may help to prevent mass murders in the future.
Far from creating another Elliot Rodger─the murderer who joined a forum dedicated to hating pick-up artists and their ideas─Roosh’s speech, books, and website may prevent one.
Roosh does life-saving work.
The whole post is so ridiculous — even by AVFM standards — that I found myself wondering if Farley isn’t just a very committed troll. Nope. He’s real. I’m not quite sure what strange path led him to Roosh.
EDIT: Changed the end.
This is true. Roosh V, the Buddha, and the Dalai Lama all have metabolisms that require them to eat at least once a day, and drink plenty of fluids. In that they are very much alike.
… What? You want more? What more is there?
Gotta work in that frame somehow!
Also gotta insinuate that what makes men go on shooting sprees is women refusing to have sex with them.
Lovely.
I don’t know why you are making fun of this, I frequently get Roosh and the Dalai Lama confused.
But, Feminist Moray, the Dalai Lama is so darn cute! You surely cannot say the same for Roosh; his personality renders him as unattractive as cow flops.
Serial rape really isn’t that much better than mass murder. It’s kinda like choosing between rabies or ebola: Neither, thanks.
From the site that brought you “Having to Wipe My Own Ass is Misandry”…
Buddha had some serious Day Game in his time.
An article both Roosh & Elam loved that Jonathan David Farley published last year with Susan Patton: “Do the math: Rape stats don’t add up.”
http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2014-09-26/news/bs-ed-rape-statistics-20140928_1_22-percent-13-percent-30-percent
How is constantly calling women sluts, whores, cunts, bitches, fatties, and past the wall doing anything to improve men? I’ve never understood this defense of PUA. It does nothing to help men improve themselves.
Well, to be fair, Buddhism is actually deeply misogynistic. The light version as practiced in the west leaves out plenty of the more unpalatable for the audience tenets.
WWTH: I’m sure it’s all that same thing that schoolyard bullies do. Put other people down in order to make themselves feel better, in order to build themselves up. In the real world, where the rest of us live, it doesn’t work because most people think people like that are assholes. However, in their little assholish echo chamber made by 100% bona fide assholes in the asshole factory and filled with nothing but a choir of assholes, it makes perfect sense…
That’s why Rooshie wants to keep women and “homos” from commenting on his blog posts–not to create some “male-only” safe space, but so that no one challenges the asshole-choir, with, ya know, stuff that actually makes sense.
Sounds exactly like something the Dalai Lama would do../s
Actually it’s about ethics in transcendentialism.
@WWTH
Highlighting the faults of another group (whether those failings are real or not) makes some people feel better about themselves. They don’t really have to grow, they just have to feel they are better by comparison.
To be fair, I think this is supposed to make men feel like they are valuable and shouldn’t accept every woman just because they want to have sex, which is a fair point by itself. But this particular way of going about it not only treats women as objects, this mentality also tells men that there is a specific type of women they should pursue. “Are you into women who are sexually experienced? Well, too bad, you can’t anymore. Are you into large women? Eeeew!” I’m not sure how telling men which traits they should find attractive, especially when those traits are so arbitrary, helps them improve in any way.
Oh, and I have a question too!
What “bitch” and “cunt” are even supposed to mean, really? Because I’ve seen those words and synonyms being used to insult any woman for any goddamn reason, so much so that to me it only sounds like they are saying “Well, you made me upset and I’m going to tell mom!”
Also, just to avoid confusion, when I said “accept women”, I meant accept as someone to have sex with.
You know, the MRA idea of “self improvement” seems so constricted…Sun Tzu quotes, bench presses, peddling Three Wolf Moon ripoff shirts and clickbaity Adsense blogs to fellow misogynists (because the market totally isn’t saturated already). It’s all about performing masculinity more loudly than the next guy. “Notch improvement” would be a more accurate term, because that’s what the real aim is.
And that’s why the world remains unimpressed by these efforts, and why MRAs continue to be baffled when they venture out of their echo chamber after the makeover and aren’t greeted by wild applause. It’s really not much of an improvement.
This did occur to me, too. There’s a lot of issues with Nepalese Buddhism, in particular–the monks benefited greatly under the feudal system there (which, to be clear, was still strong within the last generation).
Well, this is AVfM we’re talking about here. To them, making sure women are “put in their place” is always great for men!
When I think of people who are zen the person who has previously stated that he would enter a violent protest to satisfy his ego is not what comes to mind.
I don’t think he realized that PUAs and people from PUAhate are identical except for when they repeat pua talking points.
If it makes them happy, PUA, if it makes them frown, puahate.
I mean, I get that punching down makes them feel big. But it doesn’t actually improve them. Talking about how terrible “western” women are won’t make them any smarter, more attractive, richer or stronger. It’s absolutely ridiculous to claim that any part of the manosphere is about self improvement. If that’s what they were after, they’d be spending their energies learning new things, getting better at their hobbies, volunteering, whatever.
Not that I’m saying anything everyone here doesn’t already know.
@Knitting Cat Lady @freemage
I just want to join in and agree. It’s tantric buddhism and specifically the Tibetan local version (Kalachakra Tantra), that has some dark spots in this regard. Specifically there’s a theory in tantric Buddhism about Yin and Yang: that you need to combine female and male sexual fluids to achieve the unification of the female with the male energy. This, however, needs to happen in the body of the monk. Although Tibetan monks practice celibacy, this is not understood as having no sex, but as having no desire. The woman is simply a vessel, through which the monk reaches a higher state of consciousness. They practice to suck fluids through the penis, so that they don’t ejaculate, but suck female fluids to achieve the mixing of the fluids in their own body. (I have no idea if this can actually work)
To practice, they raped children and young women (from surrounding villages) from the ages of 8 to 25. There are “recommendations” to “use” specific ages for specific practices, but from the age of 30, women become “manifestations of evil spirits” and are to be avoided generally.
This is tantric theory, and it refers to interpretations of old texts; it is unclear to what extent this is still practiced. To be fair, no one has proven that the current Dalai Lama engaged in this. There are also passages in the Kalachakra Tantra that refer to a future Holy War between Buddhism and Islam, and while they are still part of important rituals today, these can be seen in hitorical context – they refer to a period of Islamic incursion into Tibet in the Middle Ages.
@WWTH
Maybe they think the things they say would supposedely open men’s eyes to how bad feeeeemales are, and thus they would improve their judgement? Idk, that’s my best shot.
@ Bernardo
Ah, this takes me back to the ‘Tantric Sex’ craze that was so popular for a while. Remember all those article about Sting and his wife?
Of course, being up for most things we did give it a try. There were lots of ‘techniques’ for delaying ejaculation for hours at a time. We weren’t that impressed though; that had been a side effect that had got quite annoying in those days when you could get decent MDMA (“Sorry, going to have to take a smoke break” etc.) The romance of it all 🙂
Couldn’t Farley find a good old fashioned White American to compare Roosh to? Why a brown skinned, non-Christian foreigner?
/snark
Wow, this is just…sad. I’ve never been such a mindless cheerleader of anyone or anything in my life the way this guy is with Roosh. How much of a pathetic loser do you have to be that this world-class pig anus is your hero?
I’d say that this is probably just Roosh posing as a fanboy to convince people to pay too much to go see his little…stand-up comedy act or whatever, but I think recent events prove Roosh is too much of an asshole to even pretend to be a decent guy for a while.
I don’t know how good Farley was as a professional comedian, but if he means what he writes here, I’d be surprised if he’s still any good. He exhibits a feature common among MRAs and other right-wing extremists: an amazingly faulty sense of perspective, such that a skidmark like Roosh becomes a towering religious figure. Much comedy relies on exaggeration, but in order for that to work, you need to be grounded in reality first. How can you know how far to push hyperbole for comic effect, if your normality meter is that badly miscalibrated?