Yesterday was a big day for Roosh Valizadeh, pickup artist, rape legalization advocate and would-be philosopher of “neomasculinity.” Some highlights:
Roosh was the inspiration for a demonstration against rape culture in Montreal.
Roughly 100 demonstrators held a peaceful demonstration in Montreal’s Norman Bethune Square targeting rape culture in general and Roosh in particular. It is not known how many of the demonstrators were undercover Roosh operatives dressed as “a homosexual hipster (i.e. male feminist).” Best estimates put the number at zero. The rally was covered by both CTV News and The Montreal Gazette.
The mayor of Montreal weighed in on the issue, declaring in a tweet that as far as he was concerned Roosh was not welcome in his city.
On the Roosh V forum, meanwhile, Roosh’s fans scoured the news footage for identifiable faces of people they could smear, and debated whether or not they WB (“would bang”) or WNB (“would not bang”) various women who had attended the demonstration.
Roosh (apparently) gave his talk, celebrating afterwards by posting a video claiming a “historic victory in Montreal.”
After calling on his followers to spread false information about the super seekrit location of his talk, as part of what he charmingly called “Operation Goebbels,” Roosh apparently gave his talk in a rented room at a Montreal restaurant.
Afterwards, evidently quite proud of himself, Roosh posted a victory video on Youtube. On the Roosh V forum, his fans happily posted celebratory gifs, including this one.
Donning a wig — no, really — Roosh hit the bars in an evident attempt to find a woman in Montreal who was not repulsed by him.
He failed, as this video of a woman tossing a drink in his face suggests.
Roosh went on Twitter to report being assaulted by “a mob,” and apparently reported the incident to police.
He might have undermined his case a little by suggesting it was “worth” it because, well, he got some action out of it, sort of.
https://twitter.com/rooshv/status/630245564983169025
The woman with the “sexy legs” responded, and suggested that Roosh had in fact put his hands on her first.
On the Roosh forums, Roosh’s fans urged him to file charges for assault and to sue everyone in sight. And debated whether or not they WB the alleged beer-pourer.
Meanwhile, Roosh’s plan to smear his opponents online continued apace.
“By Monday,” one Roosh fan wrote, “we’ll have identified every single one of these pieces of garbage and work on decimating their future career options.”
According to this Tweet, Roosh himself was threatening to falsely report one of the organizers to social services as a bad mother.
https://twitter.com/ashleylynch/status/629954266380271616/photo/1
On Twitter, the #IStandWithRooshV hashtag has been having a little trouble getting going, generating all of 3 Tweets as of noon on Sunday.
This does not look like a grand victory for Roosh, unless his aim was to show the world what terrible shits he and his supporters are.
*my comment
Gaaah.
@Hypatia
There’s a terrible story I found on Facebook about a man in Dubai who let his 20 year old daughter drown. He physically prevented lifeguards from saving her because he believed that she would be “dishonoured” if strange men touched her. He actually said that he’d rather she died than was touched.
While it’s an extreme story, I think that Roosh might have a slightly similar attitude towards his daughter – instead of seeing her as a whole person, he might be more focused on keeping her “pure” than making sure she was happy. If she WAS raped, I don’t see how he wouldn’t blame her for it in some way. After all, he thinks that any rape that isn’t “dragged into an alley by a stranger” is something the woman did to herself. Why would he change his extremely loose definition of consent for his own? :/
@sunny
Yeah, about that Dubai man, I’m not surprised, some cultures are obssesed with honour of their women to the extreme and then things like that happen (also honour killings, acid attacks etc.) because they don’t see women as human beings, but more as a property which needs to be kept safe, pure and hidden from the world.
I think Roosh doesn’t really plan on getting married or having children (even better for the woman he might potentially marry and the kids which would come out of that marriage) but yes, I agree with you. I don’t think he would change his attitudes. After all, there are many misogynistic man who, unfortunately, have wives and daughters. Remember how a man in 2014 AVfM conference told how he mocked his own daughter when she told him she was raped (I don’t know if that story is true though), nevertheless, I don’t think Roosh would react much differently.
I’ve already encountered this attitude from manospherians that rape is rape only if it the rapist is a stranger who jumps out of the bush and assaults a girl walking home alone at night and only if the girl is “innocent”, that is, not promiscuous because apparently for some people, having a number of sexual partners which they perceive too high for a woman means you can’t get raped.
You’re a slut and sluts can’t get raped because they want sex always with everyone anyway right???? /s
@Hypatia
Yeah I highly doubt Roosh will actually want/have kids. But still.
If manurespherians only see rape as “stranger in bushes” rape that might give one reason why they don’t believe women are raped as often as stats say. Roosh said it himself in that Daily Dot interview: “I don’t think it’s 1 in 5 because I highly doubt there are that many instances of men dragging women down alleys at night. It just doesn’t pass the smell test.”
Of course, any other instance of rape he’d hand wave away with “well she was in his presence so of course she wanted sex/it’s her fault for being there and thus not protecting herself.”
The thing that made me angry about his statement of “women should only go out chaperoned with a man she wants to have sex with” was a) it’s STILL ignorant to instances of rape from say, boyfriends or husbands b) what about women who aren’t sexually attracted to anyone at that point? Are they supposed to just stay at home and only let women through the door? What the fuck?
@sunnysombrera:
To Valizadeh, rape seems to be framed in terms of theft: some other man (because only men have agency) is lowering the SMV of his woman, and therefore reducing the quality of his future sex. In order to prevent this, he will chaperone said woman and kick the ass of any rapists who jump out at her. The possibility that he might lose said confrontation does not, of course, exist.
Naturally, one cannot steal from oneself; therefore there cannot be such a thing as rape within a relationship.
Is it just me, or are there also some pretty ugly racial undertones to Valizadeh’s attitude on race? One can imagine the word “white” written next to “woman” and “black” next to rapist in that scenario, but if you invert the races then suddenly it doesn’t fit the narrative at all.
@ EJ(TOO)
That’s inherent in the very word; Rape means theft (well, literally ‘carry off’ but it’s the same thing). It’s always been about removing women from their rightful male owners; consider the Sabines.
In societies that had/have a concept of wergild, it’s the men who get the compensation for rape, not the women.
@Hypatia, @Sunny
I don’t think that Roosh is capable of the kind of intimacy required in marriage or parenting. And of course he won’t try to change that situation. He’s a “pick-up artist” (where is the artistry?) because he can’t have any other kind of relationship. Twenty minutes is his limit. He’s made a virtue of a necessity.
@Alan Robertshaw
Interesting. I’d never heard of wergild before, so I had to look it up. Britannica.com doesn’t say anything about rape but it does say this: “The wergild of a woman was usually equal to, and often more than, that of a man of the same class; in some areas, a woman’s wergild might be twice as much as that of a man.” No explanation why.
@ Lux
Been thinking about our equality discussions (got loads of work to be getting on with but this is more interesting).
I think I can explain my position with this tortuous analogy.
Let’s say that for the last year we’ve been going to the cinema. Every time though I’ve got to choose the film.
We eventually agree that that’s not fair. So how do we rectify that?
Option 1 – From now on we take turns in choosing.
Option 2 – For the next year you get to choose every time; then maybe we start alternating.
I’m an option 2 guy.
Interesting. I always thought “rape” meant “abduction”; but then the distinction between that and theft is always narrow in a society where women are seen as property.
@ Kat
Obviously yet another example of female privilege!!!!! 😉
Actually I suspect it’s more related to the idea of women as property. The great thing about this site though is that there are loads of clever people, so I bet somebody knows the correct answer.
@ EJ
Even abduction has connotations of taking from the rightful owner.
The theft aspect is reflected in words like ‘Oviraptor’ for egg stealing animals or, as everyone likes dinosaurs, velociraptor (speedy thief).
So if rape was considered theft originally, kind of ironic how nowadays rape is always being compared to breaking into a car. It still carries the undertone of women = objects though.
Huh. Raptor = Rapist. I’ll never watch Jurassic Park the same way again.
He went to Canada and was showered with gifts.
Hope it was cheap beer!
@Hypatia
In this model, rape isn’t about what women want or don’t want. The reason why a promiscuous woman “can’t be raped” is because her value has dropped through the floor. Kind of like an old car that you no longer insure for collision because the cost to fix it would be more than the car is worth.
@Ibis
Exactly. We’re back on that “women as property” bullshit.
Wow. You leftist anarchists really are quite retarded… Roosh and his followers didn’t attempt to harm anyone while in Montreal, but you feminazis and white knight eunuchs (*cough*.. david.. .) tried to hunt him down and physically attack him because… wait for it….. his non-feminist views make you feel sad. :-s
Bottom line? 3rd wave feminism stands for absolutely nothing. Why don’t you go where women actually need help, like Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia? Of course, some of you may die there, but don’t you really believe in your ’cause’……. ?
That he suggested that a woman’s children should be taken from her just because she tweets about him a few times in a span of four hours is just disgusting. Nevermind that they could be in school, taking a nap, or happily playing right behind her, no, listen to the guy who makes a joke comparing himself to a pedophile because he had sex with a short woman.
As for telling Roosh to ask himself if he’d like if an hypothetical daughter of his was treated by other men like he treats women, I don’t think it would to work. He’d probably make a bunch of excuses if he had to answer.
I propose the alternative:
“Roosh, imagine you’re at a bar in some foreign country, trying to get a girl to go home with you. The night isn’t going so well; you couldn’t get any girls, and you feel a little too dizzy. Suddenly, this woman walks in, and she’s fat. Like really fat. She sits down, right next to you [You can even make a few fat jokes to keep his interest] and starts up a conversation [and here, anyone who knows more about PUA can describe how she would speak to him]. You occasionally feel her elbows bumping against yours. Then her thighs rub against yours, and she touches your shoulders ever so often. Before you can excuse yourself and leave to look for another bar, she drops the bomb: She’d like to take you to her hotel room to have sex with her. She further explains that, since you’re at a bar, you are obviously looking for someone to have sex with, and, being a man, you should be okay with having sex with pretty much anyone. How would you feel about that?”
Then again, he might just whine his way out of it.
So they are now whining about a ‘mob’ and planning to make a false accusation against someone?
Come on guys. Do you see yourselves? Do you?
Also, for Montreal? He got off easy. 😉
Neither could Roosh, by the looks of that video.
Clap, clap.
This from a “man” (note the quotes, there for a reason) who came out of an alleyway to drag a woman by the waist, into a bar.
And speaking of smell tests, he doesn’t pass them in any sense of the word, including the most literal.
@Rosa
I think he’d bloviate his way out of it, as in: “I’m so alpha I’d never let that happen to me! Dizzy or not, as soon as a fat chick came up to me I’d be gone in a flash. Pah! No wonder you wimminz get raped, allowing strange men to talk to you in bars! Rape would halve overnight if you just stuck to talking with your friends!”
@sunnysombrera
Ha, that seems likely! I’m sure he really wants women to stop talking to strangers in bars 😉
Well done, a!
You gave me troll bingo in one short paragraph. Next time, try to space out your talking points. Slow and steady wins the race.