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
@weirwoodtreehugger
I think that’s exactly what Roosh meant, and it was part of his spiel about how women are no longer raised to be submissive to men. Roosh thinks women’s existence is (or should be) solely about pleasing men, and since he (and so many other misogynists and male supremacists) hate fat women, any woman who’s fat isn’t living her life to please men. Women are, after all, simply walking ‘warm, moist cavity holes’ to be accessed by men like Roosh, and I assume he thinks that a woman who ‘gets fat’ is not only purposefully making herself unappealing to him, but also trying to block access to those cavity holes. (Now I’m not going to be able to say the word cavity without following it up with holes.)
Roosh is so woefully estranged from reality.
Just like after his pathetic appearance on Dr. Oz, here too he is shocked! by the (incomprehensible, to him) fact that people everywhere (that is, away from his sycophantic circle) are repulsed by him and his views.
Well sure, but mens’ rights activism has buggerall to do with MRAs. We aren’t accusing Roosh V of activism, which leaves him in the same ballpark as the rest of the manosphere. It’s like looking at people who attend a concert and trying to differentiate between who’s there because they like the bass guitarist and who’s there because they like the lead. At the end of the day, they’re all fans of the band.
Also:
In the last thread, you were initially insisting that the Honey Badgers were unaffiliated with AVFM. When we enquired about this, you initially claimed to care mostly about the accuracy of the statement, but later said that you were a fan of the Honey Badgers and didn’t like seeing their good name besmirched by association with AVFM.
Here you are initially insisting that Valizadeh is unaffiliated with the Men’s Rights movement. When we enquire about this, you’re going to claim to care most about accuracy; then when we enquire further you’re going to turn out to be defending one of the two from the other.
Let’s just skip to that bit. Are you sticking up for Valizadeh or for the MRM?
http://38.media.tumblr.com/def8c7273fee76a65663cb64b283500d/tumblr_nrmuplh3e61tpri36o1_400.gif
Hello EJ nice to see you again too!
I agree that they overlap, but accuracy and fairness is also important. The only people who should count as MRAs are people who advocate for mens rights and also ID as MRAs.
We can call them the manosphere when they are summed together
I am sticking up for the MRM
I was about to go “Aww! Someone ordered a troll for Christmas, and Santa delivered! Let us gnaw!”
Then I realized that clearly, we’ve all been very bad this year and that instead of Santa bringing us a nice chewy troll, Krampus just brought OTD back from the dead.
Orange Tango Drinker and Walter: Did you know that they have never been seen together?
OTD, in what way does making the distinction actually benefit the MRM? Is there some appreciable difference that makes it meaningful to point out that Roosh isn’t an MRA? Because sorting out the rabbit poop from the deer poop doesn’t make any of it less shitty.
(Long time lurker, first time poster so erm…. Hai)
Personal favourite moment from the Doc (I’m paraphrasing)
Roosh: “so you must have achieved a level of fame here, I assume you’ve used this to sleep with any woman you want”
Reggie (deadpan): “no, I’m engaged”
For those not in the UK & questioning his interview style- Mr Yates is a former child actor, kids TV presenter & Radio DJ, hard hitting interviews wouldn’t be his style at all.
Final point- moar kitteh gifs please!
Yes because Roosh V is a horrible sod
As ever, thank you for your honesty. It makes this vastly easier.
I’m afraid that I agree with WWTH here. The internet contains many places in which one can do many things. There are forums for discussing being an atheist, for discussing being a Christian, for discussing video games, for discussing movies, for discussing the creation of fictional languages, for discussing the geology and tectonics of fictional worlds * and many more. There are places where one can discuss the men’s rights movement, and even places where one can defend it.
This website is not a place for defending the men’s rights movement, it’s a website for mocking it. Coming here and defending the men’s rights movement is, therefore, impolite. It’s like going onto a forum dedicated to building model trains and telling people that the building of model trains is a bad thing to do: it’s disruptive and will shut down conversation. Since the people who want to go to such forums derive pleasure from their discussions, you are making them sad by preventing them from doing something harmless.
This matters to me, because to quote Randall Munroe, humans being happy or sad is literally all that matters in this cold, cruel world.
If you would like to defend the men’s rights movement, there are doubtless websites you can go to in order to do so. If you go there and do that, then other people there will take pleasure in what you write and you will increase the sum total of human pleasure instead of decreasing it. You might even make friends. Doesn’t that sound like a far more pleasant thing to do?
—
* I lied, there isn’t one of these as far as I’m aware. But if I’m wrong and there is one, please link me because I have so many feels about this topic.
@Rabid Rabbit:
And how does that make him different from all the horrible sods in the MRM?
edit: Also I agree with EJ; you’re really barking up the wrong tree here.
‘Fess up, EJ. What did you do?
Wait, it’s all that gay sex you’ve been having with Moocow just to discombobulate Walter, isn’t it? I guess Santa didn’t hear that your girlfriend was fine with it.
OK, seriously, I’ll stop with the jokes about that now. Really I will.
I see what you mean. I wasn’t trying to defend the MRM in general, I just wanted to correct some inaccurate info from GQFem who called Roosh V an MRA.
From the Roosh’s mouth:
“This is what happens when you let women have a choice.”
And he apparently means when you “let” women have a choice about anything.
Much provocative! So philosopher. Very thinker. Snort.
orange tango drinker
OK.
1) Does the “and” mean that they have to do both?
2) Exactly what do you mean by “advocate”? Just publicly endorse? Or actively do activism?
Well David, I was going to call you out on posting a pirated YouTube video, but then I visited the BBC iPlayer site (which you can’t use in the US anyway, I know), and for some reason as of right now they have episodes 1 and 3 up for viewing, but not the relevant one here, episode 2:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06ryrz2/episodes/player
So, go ahead, I guess.
It can’t be that the BBC is worried about complaints, because I listen to their “feedback” shows and they DGAF, it’s great.
1-yes they have to do both
2-just publicly endorse is enough
OTD, it’s quite obviously going to bother us when we’re discussing a serial rapist and actual advocate for rape, and you bumble in going “one of you called Roosh an MRA! Accuracy is important!”
In this context? No it’s bloody well not and it doesn’t matter what we call him. As pointed out, every group of misogynists are still misogynists. Now stop derailing and leave us alone please.
i’m not going to post any more comments defending the MRM because I think EJ was correct. But if any of you have any questions for me like Tessa’s I will stick around and answer them.
Can I just unlurk briefly to point attention to Roosh’s ‘Twitter poll SCIENCE!!1!1’ about rape accusations?
I mean, really?
Roosh wants all the things MRAs want. He’s an MRA. In addition, he’s a rapist. But that doesn’t make him not an MRA.