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
OTD-
*Ahem*
*Point up two comments*
Already saw your attempted dodge coming and saved you the effort of having to actually try.
i watched plenty of his videos, the posters were something he did 2 years ago on facebook not on youtube. I only recently started following his facebook page
I don’t have the energy to go look through all these videos on Christmas Eve. But I checked out Theryn Meyer and Billy Clement, and I’m not impressed. Same bad arguments we’ve seen over and over. Same lack of understanding of basic concepts.
Ah, but 11 days ago is TOTALLY “the past.” Sheesh, why can’t you let anything go? People change, if you would just give them infinite chances with every new second that passes.
Dudelogik = Uncritically believe whatever is most comfortable for you and then, when challenged, admit that you didn’t fact check any of it. Go back to your douchebro friends and have a good chortle about how dogmatic feminists are.
Apparently if OTD doesn’t notice something, it doesn’t exist, it doesn’t matter, and he doesn’t need to worry about it.
http://i52.tinypic.com/332qz6h.jpg
LG-
I know, I know. I’m being so so unfair.
After all, I’ve changed so much in the last 11 days, it’s been downright spiritual. I used to have fins, but now I’m running on land fighting seawitches for my voice, it’s fucking magical.
/sarcasm
theryn explains why she has no problem with terfs
https://twitter.com/TherynMeyer/status/680108336889511936
sevenofmine-
It’s more sciencey because they thought it while being cisdudes with cisdude penises and therefore are 100% logical doubleplus good.
I mean, why do you need the “FEELS” of “facts” when you can just assume what you’ve always assumed, dismiss any evidence to the contrary and listen to only things that continue to support your conspiracy theory worldview of how the world works.
And that leads to an interesting aspect to all of “manlogik” TM.
That it’s all about their fear of knowing less than a woman. If a woman knows something more than a man does. If things like sexism are true and there are life experiences women know more about than most men, then there could be moments where men would be expected to turn to women as an authority on a subject.
And to the insecure toxic masculinity chasers, this is the most emasculating act anyone can ever do ever.
So instead, there’s this chosen ignorance, defended with self-delusion and excuses all to avoid the terrible reality that all men don’t automatically know more than all women by virtue of being men and the even more terrible reality that because they are privileged, there may in fact be things they know less about than any given marginalized individual simply because they never had to learn about it to fully operate in modern society.
I understand, but also
http://i.imgur.com/zEjPkg1.jpg
Please tell this guy you can upload videos longer than 15 minutes now. Been like that for several years.
I don’t need to click that link to tell you that her telling everyone why she has no problem with TERFs means shit because everyone should have a problem with TERFs.
Fuck TERFs.
They aren’t excluding her from feminism, they don’t even think of her as a woman. That’s why everyone should have a problem with fucking TERFs!
Something tells me she’s an MRA for the same reason some trans men are TERFs. 😐
I know that the discussion has moved away from the Yate’s docu, but I want to make a few comments on it.
It is lightweight because it is a BBC3 programme. BBC3 is primarily focused on ‘youth’ programming.
Yates is never going to do a hard hitting report – I appreciate the ‘give them the rope’ approach – it engaged one of my sons.
I don’t think it will be lost on anyone that Roosh’s pathetic attempt to discredit Yates is simply proof of his homophobia as well as his far right misogyny.
(The MGTOW’s,conspicuous by their absence and their racism, prove their extraordinary similarity to PUA’s by focusing on the sexual use of women – their focus is on a commercial exchange, rather than a process of manipulation and coercion, but clearly no more healthy.)
OTD-
Inventive dodge.
Shame about your words here then:
And also here:
But I get it, 11 minutes was so very long ago and you were a different person back then. So much younger and more ignorant. And you’ve really made a lot of progress since then and are really worth listening to.
Hey, listen, I got a question for you since I’ve done you the favor of saving you the terrible fate of clicking a link or having to scroll up to see your words on this very thread. And it is:
You know you’re being intellectually dishonest. We know you’re being intellectually dishonest. So why is it important to you that we believe you’re not being intellectually dishonest?
Is it because you want to feel like you “tricked those dumb feminists” in order to keep deluding yourself about your mental superiority? Is it because this practiced ignorance is part of an elaborate self-defense mechanism in your mind protecting you from realizing that you fell for a hate group? Is it because you just don’t like being wrong or thought of like an idiot?
And I’m genuinely curious here, because frankly, there’s nothing much we can gain from you, but there’s a lot we can gain analyzing you. Seeing how someone becomes a willing apologist for hate groups and for bigotry. How one practices turning a blind eye to hate. That has real political value.
So indulge me, sea lion, if you will.
Cerberus:
Yes, not stabbing the object of your hate during a pre-arranged, public and recorded face-to-face meeting must mean there is no hate. Obvs.
OTD:
“Nice debunking” really isn’t when it’s based on tendentious and/or hateful lies, despite being insult-free.
Any inhumane and hateful message can be delivered calmly and ‘rationally,’ or even with a smile. Please do not confuse form with substance.
Pandapool-
There could also be a clinging to privilege angle. It really does suck coming out and getting hit with all the crap women get put through and trans people get put through all at once. The total loss of privilege.
So, I can see the attraction for someone scared to cling to a hate movement and making soft noises that you aren’t like all those other mean trans people out there, you’re good and hate all the right people, even others like you, if they’ll just give you a slight reprieve on ending up with all the social hits of being a woman all at once.
It’s a similar draw to that which draws FeMRAs, but with extra fearing being murdered by the exact type of people in the hate movement.
On the bright side, this list of lesser-known MRAs that Kool-Aid’s given to us should be enough Dark Lord fodder for the next three months. Seriously, it’s like Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Bigotry.
newbie-
Yeah. Duh.
I mean, everyone else finds it super hard to not stab marginalized group members, right? Like it takes effort to be cordial and not outright murder or assault them when interacting for a pre-arranged “look how civil and nice we are” meeting?
That’s what non-hate group members struggle with right?
Fuck, it’s just Roosh’s “oh haven’t all men raped at least once in their lives” bullshit repeated ad nauseum. Haters can’t believe that everyone who shares their identity doesn’t think exactly like them and that these monstrous urges in their heads are not what non-haters struggle with at all.
Ellesar-
Yeah, I definitely see that. It’s also the case that that affable “british guy just trying to understand” gets him in with a lot of awful groups and allows him to expose them a lot more than others would be. After all, he was invited to Roosh’s home and got to attend that closed-door Roosh meeting and get some video of it. And in another video, he gets really deep into the Russian neo-fascist movement.
And at the end of the day, he gets across a lot of good strong main points, even if it is under the guise of someone “just trying to understand”.
Honestly, it’s a similar pose I use sometimes when educating a student on why something is a slur. Oh gosh geewilikers, I can see how that could be funny, but I’m just so troubled by the context of that word. Let me share it with you so you can see why I’m so gosh darn troubled. Works a lot better than just saying the word is bad and they should knock it off.
SFHC-
Yup. Also really telling how many on the list are Gators. I mean, if you want to claim you only follow the non-harassing non-bigoted members o your hate group, maybe don’t cite people actively involved in a year plus long harassment campaign based on bigotry and literal attempts to “cleanse” a hobby of everyone who isn’t white, male, cis, and anti-feminist.
@Cerberus
That’s true, but it takes a wonderfully self-centered individual to throw everyone else under the bus while clinging to the bumper, especially when that bus is filled with people who likely don’t actually respect your gender identity and likely think you’re, to put it lightly, “mentally unwell”.
That’s why we should ride the Down with Cis bus.
I say, dragging Tumblr memes onto this website, like the joke I am. I just couldn’t resist making it since I made the bus metaphor. Sorry everyone. Sorry. I’ll just enjoy my miso soup in silence.
Speaking of dodging. I’m shocked – shocked! – to see that OTD has been awfully quiet about Alison Tieman, the supposedly ‘decent MRA’, declaring that women gaining the right to vote was an act of ‘female supremacy’
Pandapool-
Oh, I can see it, doesn’t mean I for one second respect it. It’s a cowardly delusion and the hate group doesn’t even think of them as people, merely a tool to hide behind and pretend that vaguely tolerating one marginalized group member as long as they hate themselves as much as they do makes them somehow not bigoted.
We trans women get hit with a lot of shit, especially when we come out. But that means we need to fight to change that, not cling to a delusion and a fantasy of ever being respected by people who despise us and want us to die.
Moocow-
I know. It seems like something he’d really care about debunking what with being such a big fan of how not bigoted she is.
Ya know what? I’m starting to suspect he may not care as much about intellectual honesty as he first led on.
*gently says “right on” while slipping a spoonful of soup*
The acidic sarcasm just ate through my monitor and I love it.
I find it telling that we’re pointing out all the terrible misogynist things his favourite MRAs have been doing, and instead of him going “oh dear I didn’t realise they were like that, guess I should re-evaluate my opinion of them” he goes “oh well I didn’t realise they did those things but they’re not all bad okay? Here’s a couple of examples where they weren’t absolute fuckwits, so they must be alright after all.”
I love how much the MRA/MGTOW/RedPill groups have imploded over this documentary.
Let’s see: Reggie gave interview subjects plenty of space to make their claims, defend their stances, and speak their beliefs. Then they’re mad because they came off poorly as a result?
And they whine about the fact that the documentary didn’t speak to issues of child custody or circumcision when the interview subjects failed to bring it up? Almost as though they don’t really care about those things and just want to yell about women being fat?
It’s like they’re so close to figuring it out, and then they fall at the last hurdle.