If the almost universally despised pickup artist and rape legalization proponent Roosh Valizadeh is able to deliver his planned talk tomorrow at some as-yet-undisclosed venue in Toronto, he won’t just be talking about the unoriginal blend of warmed-over misogyny he perplexingly calls “neomasculinity.”
He will also be selling his infamous “Bang” books, a series of pickup guides aimed mostly at North American tourists hoping to score easy sex in an assortment of countries in Europe and South America. These guides seem to have been Roosh’s main source of income for the past several years.
So it is worth asking what exactly Roosh is selling here.
Most of the “Bang” books are country-specific guides offering Roosh’s, er, insights into each country’s nightlife, dating mores, and women. “The best way to describe a Ukrainian girl’s personality is that of a corpse,” he explains in Bang Ukraine. “They really don’t show any emotion, interest, or spark when you first approach them. They just stand still with their eyes darting around.”
Alongside Roosh’s recommendations on cities to visit, bars to prowl, and dating “logistics” (rent an apartment near the bars you intend to frequent so you can easily get “girls” back to your place before, you know, they change their minds), Roosh also provides case studies of his sexual, er, conquests of women in each country.
Judging from Roosh’s own descriptions of them, many of these alleged conquests might better be described as rapes.
Again and again in these stories, presented as true, Roosh literally won’t take no for an answer, pressuring reluctant and resistant women into giving him what he wants, in one case using outright physical force in order to continue intercourse with a woman who had changed her mind.
In many of these cases Roosh tells us or at least implies that the woman in question consented to sex, but it is worth asking what kind of “consent” is preceded by literally hours of struggle against a physically imposing man who refuses to believe that no means no. It’s also worth asking what the woman’s own account of the experience would look like.
Are Roosh’s Bang books essentially how-to guides to date rape? Read some of his stories and decide for yourself. [Trigger Warning for the quotes that follow.]
The most notorious passage in any of Roosh’s Bang books comes from Bang Iceland, in which Roosh describes sex with a drunk woman he ushered to his apartment after she was left behind by her friends at a bar.
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.
Sex with women too drunk to consent is considered rape in Iceland as well as in the US.
Roosh continues:
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 figure my dick was inside her about forty minutes after meeting her, likely my fastest bang ever. The sex was as good as drunken sex can get, but I did notice her pussy was drier than the Sahara desert.
Roosh’s sense of self-awareness is as underdeveloped as his conscience.
With another Icelandic woman, Roosh reports:
In the middle of the night I got another boner, put on a condom, and jammed it back in while she was half-asleep. I came and passed out again with the condom still on my dick….
Roosh’s accounts of his sexual escapades in Iceland are sadly rather typical for him. In Bang Poland, he makes clear that the word “no,” won’t stop him, no matter how many times it’s repeated.
We moved to my bed. I got her down to her bra and panties, but she kept saying, “No, no.” I was so turned on by her beauty and petite figure that I told myself she’s not walking out my door without getting fucked. At that moment I accepted the idea of getting locked up in a Polish prison to make it happen.
After more such “foreplay,” Roosh gets what he wants:
I put on a condom, lubed up, and finally got her consent to put it in. … I put her on her stomach and went deep, pounding her pussy like a pedophile. She took it like a champ even though I imagine it must have felt like being fucked by a telescope. My orgasm was from another world.
This is what passes for a happy ending in Roosh’s stories.
In 30 Bangs, a collection of Rooshian case studies, Roosh gives his excruciating account of “sex” with an anonymous Catholic girl a similarly “upbeat” ending:
After dinner we went upstairs and I eased her onto my king-size bed. It took four hours of foreplay and at least thirty repetitions of “No, Roosh, no” until she allowed my penis to enter her vagina. No means no—until it means yes.
The sex was painful for her. I was only the second guy she’d ever had sex with. … She whimpered like a wounded puppy dog the entire time, but I really wanted to have an orgasm, so I was “almost there” for about ten minutes. After sex she sobbed for a good while, talking about how she had sinned in the eyes of God, but in an hour she got horny again and we went at it once more.
In Bang Ukraine, Roosh describes how he used “some muscle” to hold a woman down after she changed her mind during sex.
I was fucking her from behind, getting to the end in the way I normally did, when all of a sudden she said, “Wait stop, I want to go back on top.” I refused and we argued. … She tried to squirm away while I was laying down my strokes so I had to use some muscle to prevent her from escaping. I was able to finish, but my orgasm was weak.
Afterwards I told her she was selfish and that she couldn’t call an audible so late in the game.
Again and again in these stories – and there are more of them — Roosh misleads, manipulates, cajoles, pressures and intimidates women until he gets what he wants. The women could not be clearer in their refusals, telling Roosh no and pushing him away. He doesn’t care.
To judge from his own accounts of his sexual exploits in the books he published himself, Roosh is a dangerous sexual predator who has been getting away with it for years. In his Bang books, he teaches young men that they can get away with it too.
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I know this is a big old Black Forest Gateau of a shit cake, but that put her on her stomach thing is another layer of shit icing on the shit cake. Apologies if this is TMI but being face down, flat on the stomach, is just guaranteed pain for me. Nothing to do with the size of my partner, just the angle hurts. Would not do this ever again. That he has that as a go to move for his own pleasure is no surprise. Not only must it please him, it might hurt the girl.
I understand that your mileage may vary but it should definitely be checked for consent first.
Oh what am I saying…
IMHO this entire article should be prefixed with “TL;DR: Yes.”
“They just stand still with their eyes darting around.”
Or maybe they could just tell that he was a rapey scumbag.
I should have said, I *hope* these are at least partly Rooshy fantasies, for the sake of the women potentially involved. And no it doesn’t really matter in the sense that he’s encouraging other men to behave this way.
I read this awful story and immediately wondered if this was some guy all hyped up after Rooshy’s little conference:
http://www.cbc.ca/m/news/canada/montreal/montreal-woman-punched-in-face-in-bar-fight-offers-warning-to-other-women-1.3189501
The police reaction is appalling. Don’t even read the comments.
Knowing what I know now, and feeling what I feel now; if I met Roosh on an elevator I would probably end up in jail. and if Roosh was lucky he’d wake up from a coma before I got out of prison and went to finish what I started.
But I do believe that most people are fundamentally decent, I believe people are basically good. Once you remove pernicious influence they’d be okay people. People like Roosh aren’t like most people. They’re a genetic misprint.
Rather than “Bang [Insert Country Here]” the books should be a series titled “Confessions of a Serial Rapist.” Time to deactivate his passport.
All of the encounters described above are rape, plain and simply, and he’s fucking BRAGGING about it.
I don’t want to speculate on his mental state because I am not a mental health expert, but I am pretty sure that the lack of any remorse he feels for his actions (and the sick pleasure he seems to get from them) is a clear indication that he is lacking basic empathy for other human beings, specifically women.
More than ever, I am utterly convinced this person should not be roaming the streets. He is dangerous.
I feel sick to my stomach. Why in the hell is he getting away with this?!
@dankasteray Most people are fundamentally good in my experience. Don’t ever lose sight of that.
Doing bad things to this shit in a lift would hurt you and give him release from his own awfulness. The thing I wish on these people is self awareness. Imagine the horror.
If any part of those accounts is made up, I’d be betting it’s the part about Roosh’s victim getting horny a few hours later and asking for more “sex”. If anything, he likely just decided HE wanted to go again and steamrolled over her protests again.
I don’t have strong enough words to describe how deeply I revile this disgusting rapist waste of matter.
Doosh et al’s efforts will bring about the death of sex worldwide.
Why am I sitting at my computer trying to think of *any* small thing positive about what these women experienced – things like “at least she didn’t have to look at his face or into his eyes” – !?
Just knowing that the guys that read Roosh’s “how to-guide for rapists”-styled books and posts, attend talks he gives, and consider him “alpha” aren’t misguided, they’re just as disgusting as he is – simply not having an opportunity present itself doesn’t erase the intent. And even confronting him or his minions with the fact that it’s all Roosh describing these sexual assaults he’s committed not stories made up by his personal version of the boogeyman (the rabid feminists out to destroy him…sigh…just trying to stop the rapes dude.) – seem to be too ineffective. If they won’t be taught what rape is and not do do it EVER, why are they being allowed to freely move about in any communities? Shouldn’t they be subject to monitoring to make sure that women in an area are given ample warning to be on the lookout and make any preparations necessary for their safety to be ensured?
I know you’re just describing how you feel, but let’s stay away from the violent language. I know “go step on a lego” feels really, really inadequate for Roosh, though.
According to Roosh’s twitter he lives in Poland?
I’m surprised given his writings about “degenerate Polish women” that he has not attracted more controversy there.
I know, I know, we should be above threats of violence, but if anyone wants to set up a Kickstarter to build a rocket to shoot Roosh V into the sun, I’m there.
Holy shit! How have none of these other passages besides the first Iceland story gone viral? I honestly thought that the Iceland story was the closest that he ever came to admitting to rape, even though I was pretty sure that he frequently did similar things to other women. I never realized that his books were full of similar stories and admissions.
The other thing that struck me is that the women in these stories rarely seem to consent to the things that he insists means that they’re consenting. Someone already pointed out how the drunk Icelandic woman clearly wasn’t consenting to go back to his place because she was too drunk to control where she went with him.
But there are passages like this:
Here, it sounds as though she kept saying, “No, no,” as he moved her to the bed and as he was stripping her. She was refusing the whole time, not just refusing the sex.
Here, it doesn’t even sound as though she said, “Yes,” after being worn down for four hours. It sounds like he kept ignoring her, “Nos,” and penetrated her anyway, especially when one considers that she was whimpering in pain the whole time and that she was crying afterwards.
And even if she really did want to have sex with him “an hour later” (which claim I absolutely dismiss), that doesn’t change the fact that she said no and then he raped her.
@Fnoicby
that account about the assault in the bar is appalling, she was clearly acting in self defense. I wonder if the man who attacked her was a Roosh fan?
http://media.giphy.com/media/idMzcwy6ZxPYA/giphy.gif
That is all.
Absolutely sleazy acts by this guys. However, I don’t believe any of them meet the legal definition of rape to be honest. And he certainly wouldn’t be convicted on any of those.
Oh god.
The “whimpering like a wounded puppy dog the entire time” bit made me feel like I’m about to puke. I’m writing this from the bathroom in case I vomit and I’m shaking. That sentence was the worst to me. I’ve been that girl when I was 15. At a house party I went for a lay down because I was too drunk. A guy who was a friend of a friend came in and started kissing me. We started having sex and then I had a sober moment of clarity where I realised what was happening and that his girlfriend was downstairs. I asked him to stop but he carried on. I said I’d call for his girlfriend so he put his hand over my mouth. That’s when I just lay there and whimpered.
The next time I saw them at a house party his girlfriend freaked out at me for “coming onto [her] boyfriend.
I’d never even thought of that incident as rape until just now. At 15 I still had so much internalised misogyny as my dad is pretty sexist and wanted boys (I have 3 sisters, no brothers) so I just figured it was my fault for not saying no to begin with. I hadn’t thought about it for years so have never questioned my initial victim blaming.
Think I need a hot shower and a scrub now, I feel really shitty.
I just fucking *HATE* that Roosh can write about being a serial rapist and not only does he get away with it but he actually fucking makes money off it! MRAs love to say that women get money and presents for saying they were raped, I’ve certainly never been given any money for it and I don’t know of any woman who has. Roosh is the one profiting from rape.
I hope every time he has sex from now on it feels like he’s fucking a pile of particularly sharp legos.
Actually, I change my stance, some of those could be sexual assault.
One thing that I’ve noticed is that, even in regards to non-sexual things, there are far too many people who treat capitulation under duress as being a form of consent. Even people who do know better are not always immune – call them out on it, and they’ll be full of excuses why that situation was “different”. Combined with the fact that some people effectively get it beaten into their heads throughout their childhood that bodily autonomy is a meaningless concept… is it really all that surprising that some people find the concept of consent to be hazy at best? That doesn’t excuse those people at all, of course.
That being said, Dooshbag here seems to go beyond “duress = consent” and into the realm of “existing in my presence = consent” which is… urgh. I think “wronger than wrong” is the appropriate phrase here.
Gah… I just can’t. Who describes anything sexual with “[I did this] like a pedophile???” I didn’t know this was so bad. I thought there were only two situations where the sex (real or imagined) he described was actually rape, but… wrong wrong wrong.
At first I thought of Roosh V as a character like Tucker Max. I browsed through a book by the second guy in Coles a few years ago, and the narration of one-night stands and gross-out drunk escapades was pretty funny until I came across things like him bossing around a woman he’d slept with just because she was fat – apparently he’d given her “pity sex” so he didn’t owe her any human niceness – WTF now?
That was bad enough (Max also had a 1-5 “rating scale”) but at least he seemed to respect sexual consent. Roosh doesn’t, from what I can tell.
I mean, the problem isn’t men having a lot of sex, or wanting to have a lot of sex, even if the bragging part is a little juvenile. You can do goofy, hedonistic things, but when there’s other people involved you need to be somewhat responsible. And if you’re really a pleasure-seeker, presumably you want your partners to share that pleasure. Roosh V just seems to do the PUA thing out of spite, which is already messed up. I guess it shouldn’t surprise me that much to see this.
@NicolaLuna – Shit, I’m really sorry that happened to you. It’s not fair, and it’s not fair you had to be reminded of it. I hope you can do something this afternoon that makes you feel better. At least, please be encouraged that people are protesting Roosh’s tactics and the mindset behind it, so things are more likely to get better.
*begins to read article, gets to the trigger warning*
Nnnnnnnope!
http://www.reactiongifs.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/didnt-read.gif
I’ve read parts of the comments that quote that shit, I don’t need this on my plate today, thanks, bye.