As many of you no doubt know, the BBC’s Reggie Yates recently did an hour-long documentary about the “manosphere,” paying particular attention to the rapey, repellent pickup guru Roosh Valizadeh. I’ve pasted the video below.
I have, well, lots of thoughts about it. It’s really pretty compelling, particularly the segments involving Roosh, which essentially offer him a nice sturdy — albeit figurative — rope with which to hang himself. Which he of course does. More on that, and Roosh’s response, below.
The non-Roosh segments are a mixed bag. Yates’ not terribly enlightening discussions with proudly reactionary GamerGate panderer and ostensible journalist Milo Yiannopoulos are pretty skippable.
More compelling is Yates’ interview with an infamous online bully who actually served a brief stint in jail for the threats he’d Tweeted to two prominent women, one of them a Member of Parliament. Their crime, in his eyes? They wanted to put Jane Austen’s face on the ten pound note. There’s something a bit chilling in the blase way the troll, a shaven-headed sad sack by the name of John Nimmo, recounts his vicious harassment campaign.
But most chilling of all were the segments with Roosh, which take up a hefty chunk of the program. Yates attended one of the little speeches Roosh gave on his “word tour” last summer, interviewing him afterwards; several months later he traveled to Poland for a followup.
Yates memorably introduces Roosh with a snippet from one of his videos in which he complains about how much effort it can take “to access [women’s] warm, moist cavity holes.”
Such a romantic!
We then get to see some snippets of Roosh’s mysterious speech, ostensibly on “The State of Man” in the world today. Nothing he says will be particularly surprising to anyone who’s familiar with his odious writings.
Still, seeing him present his ridiculous “philosophy” live highlights not just how noxious his ideas but also how incredibly, well, dumb they are. Roosh clearly wants to upgrade his status from that of a burned-out, rape-apologizing pickup artist to that of a great thinker. The only problem is that thinking isn’t something he does particularly well.
But it’s Yates’ interview with Roosh in Poland that really stands out.
In his hotel room before the interview, Yates reads out some of the more repellent and rapey things that Roosh has written.
“This isn’t about confidence,” he says, holding aloft one of Roosh’s slender volumes of dubious pickup wisdom. “30 Bangs isn’t about making young men feel as though they have value. This is about making young women feel as though they have none.”
Later, in Roosh’s apartment, Roosh waxes indignant about the public reaction to his infamous proposal to fight rape by making it legal. Roosh insists it was satire, but, as Yates tells him, it’s “quite hard to find the satirical angle to it.” (A point I and many others made at the time.)
And then, just moments after telling Yates that “I advocate for consensual sex,” he presents his own version of “no means no” in which no actually means pause for a moment before returning to doing whatever she said no to.
Yates asks him about a story in one of his books in which Roosh writes about penetrating a woman who is half asleep.
“Haven’t you done that?” he asks Yates. “When a girl is half asleep, when you’ve already had sex with her?”
Yates tells him that no, of course, he hasn’t. Roosh keeps digging his hole deeper, seeming genuinely puzzled that Yates isn’t nodding in agreement.
“So if you want to examine every instance, every thrust, maybe you can find something,” Roosh tells him. “But this can happen to every man.”
By “something,” Roosh seems to mean “an instance in which you put your penis in a woman without permission.”
In Roosh’s mind, evidently, rape (that’s really not rape), is something that happens to the rapist, not the woman he rapes; it’s the rapist who’s sort of the real victim.
On his blog, Roosh has denounced the documentary as a “hit piece,” suggesting that Yates — whom he describes as a “BBC host of questionable sexuality” — simply wasn’t man enough to really understand him or his comrades in the manosphere. (Yates isn’t actually gay, not that there’s anything wrong with that.)
By “hir[ing] a non-masculine man to report on masculinity,” Roosh argues, the BBC is doing the equivalent of
hir[ing] a carpenter to review an Italian opera. Besides a handful of exaggerated facial expressions made for the camera, the carpenter will not be able to analyze the opera on a level above that of even a grade-school trumpet player.
That’s a new one, I guess.
Roosh then goes on to declare that this “hit piece on the manosphere” is actually a giant victory for him, because
it gets my ideas across to those who have yet to see it. Even if 0.1% of people who watched the BBC documentary become readers of mine, it’s still a huge win, since doing it only cost me a couple hours of time. …
The BBC program tried to paint me as a criminal, but instead I gained more fans and sold more books. As long as my name exits the mouth of my enemies, I win, and I will continue to win.
Didn’t Charlie Sheen once say something similar?
I hate to have to tell you this, Roosh, but no, you’re really not winning at all. Repulsing the general public with your repugnant ideas is not a victory. Every thought of yours that you put on the internet makes ever clearer what a huge loser you are.
Here’s the documentary. For anyone who doesn’t have time to watch the whole thing, I’ve attached a second video below that features nothing but the segments featuring Roosh.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8RxL9kuBs4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsUh-Qisg2Q
On a very tangentially related point (since this is what started the “sorry MRAs, you’re Kleenex), I finally got around to watching Mad Max: Fury Road. Sooooo good!
@Paradoxical Intention
I recall that article! Should have linked it with the comment I was making. Somehow, though, I think we might have frightened OTD away. Though it could be holiday festivities!
I hope everyone here has a lovely holiday, if you are having one. If not, then I hope that your weekend is equally lovely.
On the subject of holidays: I’m officially three hours away from presents. My family opens the family presents on the Eve, then we open presents from Santa on Christmas morning if we have small ones.
The adults just usually spend Christmas playing with their new toys and fucking about doing generally nothing and relaxing.
Though, this is the first year I can kinda celebrate Hexmas instead, which is a Halloween/Secular Christmas mashup. My family and I have never really been Christian, but my family celebrates Christmas, and I don’t feel like Halloween gets enough time to be celebrated properly, so I figure this is a good compromise.
I also want to get to the point where I can celebrate Yule, but due to money and location restraints, that might not happen for a while. Though, it’s the spirit that counts, I s’ppose.
And of course, I’m imagining what will happen when I can have the freedom to celebrate Beltane and it’s traditional dick-bread. Sounds like Walter’s kind of holiday.
http://i.imgur.com/JqYTmjn.gif
What a grotesque guy.
No wonder he needs to rape people.
As a former reader of Roosh’s what I’ve realized is that he assumes that women would never want to have sex with him, unless… he uses subterfuge (“game”), or resorts to rape. He cannot fathom that a woman would be attracted him or choose to have sex with him.
Of course, the BBC video is a massive victory on the scale of the epic Toronto victory for Roosh, and only helping him sell more books!
In the BBC video and elsewhere Roosh fancies himself a writer. Yet he relies on troll level pieces (like the pro rape piece) and nothing of substance. Basically he’s devolved into a professional troll (and recreational rapist).
Meanwhile, many former Roosh readers and members run for the exits.
@Pandapool
He has a 15 minute limit from getting a strike on his channel for being DMCA’d
I’m guessing that’s from people flagging his video for offensive content.
KC
Let’s not call his pro rape ideas “troll level pieces” it just makes them look like they’re no big deal when his ideas are pretty much terrorism.
Anarchonist: I’m going to make the argument that that’s how all such people, from misogynists, to most racists, to homophobes think all activism works. That if they get online and bitch, whine and moan, long and loud enough, the ptb will see it and change their minds about stuff.
They really do think that social justice of any kind is simply a war of words, a changing of minds, and think that’s all they have to do to change the world, just change the minds of people on Twiiter or YouTube.
There’s no marching, no organizations get formed (beyond angry Twitter mobs) and no petitions. Since they spend all their time online,,they think that’s all there is to it. I think most of you guys are correct. These people don’t get out or interact with the real world much at all don’t know how.
The very definition of “Armchair Activism”.
So many things they could be active for that would make men’s lives better. Not a single one of them have marched or petitioned for gun control, male sexual assault, or prison reform. Not one. Technically they can’t even be called “activists”.
Roosh is actually closer to being an activist than Paul Elam. Roosh’s “legalize rape” post is, after all, a proposal to change laws for the benefit of some men (who are rapists). Elam can’t work up the energy to even propose a law.
Hey, I too watched it, only last week! Super awesome, it made me feel terrible I missed the 3D experience!
I just got back home from christmas toast, I didn’t buy presents but I did give away a few plants from my garden, mostly cuttings from aromatic herbs.
My family loved them even when I didn’t have time or money to add a tag with the plant’s name (mint was the most popular, by a large margin).
It also occurred to me I could try to sell cuttings from my garden to make some extra money, and maybe that way next year I can add tags to them 😛
Despite being in a mostly catholic country I’ll wish a happy Summer Solstice to everyone in the south hemisphere, and happy Winter Solstice to everyne else ^^
Hand of Hate?
Marvelous!
I just opened presents with my family. I got a ton of clothes (including an awesome Team Pony shirt with the Mane 6 on it), a Hello Kitty speaker for my MP3 player, some Hello Kitty leetle loofahs, and A MOTHER-HUMPING PS4!
No Fallout 4 (yet), but it did come with all 3 Uncharted games, so I haven’t played them and they seem interesting.
Yay Paradox! Enjoy the PS4.
@Paradoxical
Hah, I got the same one! Uncharted bundle FTW! Enjoy, they’re basically “Indiana Jones: the video game” except with a lot more nazi killing.
@orion
Yes, but on the Reggie Yates video, Roosh says that the “legalize rape” post was satire.
Reggie Yates pointed out that it was hard to see it as satire.
My question to Roosh is, What are you satirizing–yourself and your hateful ideology?
@OTD
“He was talking about never seeing your kids again, the bit about also paying child support was just an add on but the main thing was never seeing your kids again being worse than being raped.”
For women the real fear here would be that the kids would be well taken care of. I think that if you could guarantee that they will be, a significant portion of women would prefer to be permanently out of their kids lives than to be raped every day. They may not say it out loud because it’s not socially acceptable to say so, but most mothers realize that they would be unable to function if raped every day and therefore unable to parent in any shape or form. This simply doesn’t fit society’s script; “good” mothers are supposed to be willing to give everything to their kids, for any reason, and not have any needs of their own, including shutdown from trauma. Giving your kids a good life, away from you, because a woman recognizes her inability to parent, is not part of society’s script, so it doesn’t even occur to these guys that women would make this choice, or even are capable of this kind of cost-benefit analysis.
Most people who make the “divorce-rape” analogy severely underestimate the long term trauma of rape; it’s worse than other violent crimes. With that being said, I do think that as a society we underestimate the amount of trauma men undergo as a result of divorce. And I think if we showed a little more compassion towards those men other than assuming that they “deserve it”, that it would go a long way towards making men feel like they can legitimatize their feelings, and make them more comfortable seeking support.
As for men having their kids taken away “on allegation”, this happens to women as well. Someone makes an anonymous complaint of abuse or neglect to CPS, and the overworked CPS officer can’t take a chance, and preemptively removes the kids. Yes, it happens. (Of course, abusive men never make malicious false complaints about their ex’s, right?) Still better than rape.
The poverty thing is just part of being a single parent. (Yes, single mom’s are poor as well. Any “benefit” single mom’s get generally disappear and then some once you factor in any conservative estimate of the cost of taking care of the children, which is something MRAs refuse to do.)
Yes, being poor sucks, but it’s still an relatively easy life. Anyone who thinks being poor and in “financial slavery” is the equivalent to being raped is a complete moron. I’ve been poor, and I’ve been sexually-assaulted. I’ll gladly take starving under a bridge to getting raped, than you very much.
This isn’t even getting into how the claims of the financially damage from child support are exaggerated. Divorce is expensive, yes these guys probably are poor, but child support is capped so these guy’s claims of living on the streets are either lies or a a result of their own shannagians in court. (ie. They played games with their finances in court so the judge disregarded all of their expense claims).
It occurs to me that Roosh, Paul Elam et al. are all Ebenezer Scrooge.
When we meet Scrooge on Christmas Ever, he’s old and rich, and all he cares about is money. When he’s asked to contribute to charity, he says that the poor should be in workhouses, and if the poor would rather die than go there, then they should die. Celebrating Christmas is a waste of time. “Bah, humbug!” Just like the manosphere, he’s got an answer for everything–a nasty, hateful answer.
And just like Scrooge, those in the manosphere care only for themselves and how they can win. They exhibit little feeling toward others with whom they share the planet. Even others in the manosphere are their allies only until the bickering and name-calling commence.
Once Scrooge lies down to sleep, his late business partner, Marley, shows up as a ghost. Scrooge tells him that he was always a good man of business.
Lucky old Scrooge: He gets the chance to redeem himself. And so do the members of the manosphere, every day of their lives. Will they grab their chance to think of others? To do good for others? Stay tuned.
To everyone who celebrates it, Merry Christmas! And to everyone else, I hope your 25th of December is kickass!
@Kat
I’m gonna open presents right NOW!
@dhag
I’m off to bed — and I’m hoping that you got some awesome presents!
God Jul to you and your wife and 4 kittyz!
I GOT A WII U
@Kat
Only 2 kitties here. 🙂 The others are extended family cats. Merry Christmas!
Actually, not gonna lie, I’m already bored with it about two hours in. The story’s kinda interesting, the puzzles are fun and not too hard, but I draw the line at that much cover-based shooter action. 🙁
I will say it looks good, and the voice acting is great (Nolan North, FTW! Although, I only heard Deadpool since Nolan voiced him in his game. :U) but I’m not into it.
Being surrounded by 20 guys in a dense jungle I can’t see, crouched behind a wall waiting for my unknown health bar to recharge so I don’t die for the fifth time, and being in possession of a pistol with two bullets and three bullets left in my AK-47 is not fun. Neither is sitting through really long cut scenes to get right back to the cover-based shooting I hate so much.
Cousins and I will see about taking it to trade it in and see if we can’t get something we’ll enjoy more. None of us are really into shooters like this.
@ KC
No one needs to rape people. It’s a choice.
If Roosh has trouble finding women who want to have sex with him, he has the option of visiting sex workers. But he prefers to coerce women into having sex with him. He enjoys treating women like shit. He rapes because that’s the kind of sex he prefers.
Not quite caught up, and epically off topic, but our former stray got catnip toys from
her humansSanta and is in her fucking glory.