This is just getting surreal.
The Daily Mail — yes, that Daily Mail — has tracked Roosh to his mother’s house in Silver Spring, Maryland, where he is currently living. In the basement.
The location of the pet shop has yet to be determined.
So, yeah. The Daily Mail literally staked out Roosh’s mom’s house, and snapped a few pictures of the man himself answering the door, looking a bit flustered, in a pit-stained t-shirt, after he called cops to the house to discuss the threats he’s been getting from people around the world unamused by his allegedly satirical article advocating the legalization of rape on private property.
Meanwhile, in the House of Commons — yes, that House of Commons, the one in London — Members of Parliament have been mocking the size of Roosh’s … following. As reported on Metro.co.uk,
Labour MP Chi Onwurah went a step further than this, suggesting he was ‘so insecure in his own masculinity’ that he felt the need to ‘augment the size of his… following’ – prompting giggles from around the Commons chamber.
Home Office minister Karen Bradley joined in, adding: ‘I join her in her comments about perhaps the reasons why this individual is doing what he is doing, ensuring he is getting publicity, in a way perhaps he needs for other reasons. I’ll say no more.’
Wink wink, nudge nudge. Say no more!
Oh, and Anonymous — yes, that Anonymous — now says it plans to dox Roosh’s supporters. Highlighting the many ironies here, their announcement of what they call Operation Glasgow Kiss borrowed most of its language from Roosh’s plan, announced several days ago, to dox journalists who’ve written about him in ways he doesn’t like.
Anonymous Operation all can participate in. #OpGlasgowKiss#TurnAwayReturnOfKings #ReturnOfKings #RooshV pic.twitter.com/dxIO4PzrYF
— Anonymous (@YourAnonCentral) February 3, 2016
Also, Roosh’s mom — no, not really Roosh’s mom — now has a Twitter account.
Have I missed anything? I’m pretty sure I have.
What do I make of all this? I’m frankly torn.
I’m certainly heartened to see so many publicly rebuking Roosh’s truly abhorrent ideas. Even if Roosh’s call to end rape by making it legal were absolute, 100% satire, he’s written literally hundreds of other things just as bad, if not worse, a point I made in my International Business Times piece yesterday. (For many more examples, take a stroll through my posts on him in the We Hunted the Mammoth archives, or read through the posts I highlighted here.)
It is also a little hard for me to feel much sympathy for Roosh on the doxxing question, given that he and his followers are simply having done to them what he has already done — or tried to do — to those he considers his enemies, including, well, me.
Does anyone remember the time he launched a campaign to “destroy” (his word) the life and reputation of a female journalist by falsely accusing her of (anti-white) racism?
“How far lost is Western society,” Roosh asked on Twitter, “if fat, ugly Indian [name and gendered slur redacted] has a platform to denounce a productive, intelligent white man?”
In a followup post, he explained that
Unless she’s applying for a position at Jezebel, no respectable company will touch a toxic individual who has been linked to racism. …
It’s a slow-burn attack that will effectively punish these writers and scare their co-workers , whose income is low enough that they need to depend on corporate employment indefinitely … It won’t work on the big liberal writers like Jessica Valenti or Naomi Wolf, since any attention they get just helps them sell more books, but it does work on the young girl out of college trying to win feminist brownie points by denouncing a man for being “creepy” based on a bad joke.
And then he compared it with something he seems to have a certain amount of experience with:
Having your name destroyed on Google is the internet version of getting raped.
That’s right. He was comparing the smear campaign he was launching to rape — in what he saw as a good way.
I discuss some of Roosh’s other harassment campaigns, (as well as a violent and creepy revenge fantasy he posted on his blog) here and here.
So, yeah, Roosh isn’t having anything done to him that he and his followers haven’t done to others, with the exception of having actual MPs make unflattering insinuations about his penis in the House of Commons. Then again, if some MP were to call the target of one of his harassment campaigns a “fat ugly” c-word, I’m sure he’d be cackling with glee.
But at the same time, the public shaming of Roosh makes me deeply uneasy.
The Daily Mail literally staked out his mom’s house in order to get photos of him answering the door. He’s been doxxed; no doubt some of his followers will be as well. And I also have little doubt that Roosh is indeed getting the threats he says he’s getting. The answer to Roosh’s internet bullying isn’t to bully him back.
While some of the ironies of the current situation are admittedly a bit delicious — the man who preens on Instagram holding wads of cash turns out to be literally living in his mom’s basement — let’s not lose sight of the real issues here. There’s nothing inherently shameful about living in mom’s basement, or having a small … following. Indeed, jokes about Roosh’s penis rather trivialize the issues at stake here.
We should be exposing Roosh’s noxious ideas and behavior, not his mom’s address.
The real issues here are, I think, fourfold:
Roosh is teaching an abhorrent, woman-hating philosophy that encourages men to bulldoze past a woman’s no’s in order to, as Roosh puts it, “get their nut.”
Roosh is preaching bigotry — against women, against people of color, against LGBT folk, even against that familiar scapegoat, the Jews. Already a conduit for many of the noxious ideas of the “alt right,” Roosh seems well on his way to becoming a literal Nazi.
Roosh is a bully, using his followers as his own personal army in an attempt to “destroy” individuals he doesn’t like, most of them women. He was a supporter and enabler of the roving internet harassment squad known as GamerGate
Roosh’s own writings strongly suggest that he may be a serial rapist.
It’s that last one that troubles me the most, as it probably does most of you. If it’s true, I hope that the police return to his door, not because of threats he’s been getting online, but to arrest him. Will the current media firestorm over Roosh encourage women to come forward with specific charges against him? We will see.
I agree with all those who have said that doxxing and threatening people is wrong and that they are worried for Roosh’s mother.
But the ridicule and the exposing of him not actually living the lifestyle he claims to live is really fucking important.
It’s necessary that people who didn’t know that this PUA-crap existed now are informed about the awfulness that is out there.
It’s necessary that not only ordinary people but also the police is aware of the tactics Roosh and his followers use to get away with raping women.
And it’s necessary that Roosh and his followers get to see that the rest of the world is disgusted by them. that there is no silent majority of men who think as they do but are oppressed by evil women into being “manginas”. they need to see that people are laughing at them and that their guru is not what he claims to be.
And it is vital that victims of PUAs see that society as a whole does reject Roosh and his ilk.
In the UK there’s a (admittedly limited) right to privacy.
One of the legal justifications for breaching that though is to correct a false representation or to expose hypocrisy.
I suppose that’s maybe relevant here. Just calling someone out for their home circumstances and providing details generally doesn’t sit well with me. I wouldn’t even think it was justified if all someone had done was exaggerate but not for any sort of gain.
However, Roosh didn’t just lie about his lifestyle, he used it as a justification for his horrible actions and also as a lure to exploit idiots who wished to emulate him.
To me it’s a bit like that woman who said people could live on air and sunlight but then was caught out eating biscuits.
Thanks for the info on Emma T., Bina.
And WWTH, I hear you.
That bothered me too, as well as her general musings on misogyny, a term that has been so “overused” that “we no longer know what it means.”
Given her manosphere-sympathetic views, it is perhaps even more remarkable that she condemns Roosh and believes the publicity around him is justified.
I don’t support doxxing and I society needs strong laws that harshly punish those caught doxxing others, but I can understand the urge to doxx a slime ball like Roosh.
This from Roosh’s “Everything You Wanted To Know About The Gloriously Spectacular Moi But Were Afraid To Ask:”
Yep.
I’m filing it under “I Can’t Even.”
I don’t know where the Daily Mail got their info from, but there is a video on his ‘about me’ page of his website, filmed by his sister, where he shows off his worn-out bedding (seriously, this guy either buys cheap sheets or knows nothing about how they wear- I suspect he tore the hole out himself).
He explains that he ‘chooses’ to live in the basement rather than the ‘master bedroom’ because of the view.
Do adults who own their own houses spend much time in their bedrooms in the daytime?
No shame at all in not owning a property and living with your parents at any age and for whatever reason. I know people in my family who do it (my 27-year-old son for one). But he does like to flash his cash as though he has money to burn. That’s why it’s ok to mock it. Most people spend most of their money on property. My brother-in-law chose to spend his traveling the world instead. That’s ok too, but he doesn’t try to deceive people to make money.
I find it hard to understand why he and his ilk get so angry about being rejected by women (he claims he was incredibly shy and socially awkward and rejected in his youth, and spent years learning how to overcome this). Is it the rejection that makes them misogynistic and the ‘pump-and-dump’ approach is revenge?
So many men who were socially awkward teens end up happily married by their twenties/thirties/forties without going down that road, I wonder what makes these dooshes turn it all around and blame women? Maybe it’s the manosphere itself. If so, it’s like a cancer.
It’s also this obsession with ‘thin, beautiful, young women’ that dooms them to failure IMHO. I’d love to have a Chris Evans/Hemsworth/Pratt lookalike hubby but I’ve always known I’d never get one and got over it by the age of 18. You learn that looks aren’t that important in the overall scheme of things. They never do, it’s like they think they’re entitled to one and women/feminism are to blame for their not getting one.
Maybe they really do long for days of yore when women didn’t have sex until marriage, and are punishing women for being more relaxed about sex because they choose not to have sex *with them*.
Ugh.
Roosh should be facing social condemnation for advocating rape, not as a sideshow for the media to hunt down. You don’t need to stake out his house to spread his name and criticize his ideas.
Learning that he lives in his mother’s basement is like seeing evidence obtained from an illegal search; interesting and condemning given his ideology (and only in the context of his ideology), but obtained under immoral means.
Except this puts Roosh’s life in danger. Nobody can deny that there have to be people out there who think harassing, abusing, or even murdering a big sleazeball would be worth the effort.
I just can’t support any of that, and frankly it horrifies me despite all I know about Roosh as a person.
Penis jokes made by some politicians don’t phase me as much, and I do love that the public seems to agree that Roosh’s ideology is monsterous and he’s awful for promoting, but goddamn. Can’t we just not sink down to the level of a blood-thirsty mob that thinks this shit is ok because the target is actually awful?
MexicanHotChocolate:
Oh, sure, the urge to step over the line in retaliation for some genuinely heinous offense is such a human one that we encode it into laws as a defense or mitigating circumstance (depending on the details). It isn’t right, even when it’s understandable.
Just a thought: as many people have said, there’s no shame in living with your parents; it’s the hypocrisy of pretending to be rich while doing that. He’s also writing constantly about women being only good for one thing, while a woman is providing a roof over his head.
Assuming the Daily Fail are telling the truth for once.
@the Emma Teitel article
The apologia and implicit victim blaming were bad enough, but this was the part where I had to stop and shake my head:
Yes, her examples of “Political correctness run amok!!!” are… Date rape, sexual harassment and flashing. Wut. Wow.
Call me cynical, but frankly, I think she’s just doing the same No True Scotsman othering as Elam.
@ Carrie
Alleged human beings.
People keep bringing up the thing about him being found at his mom’s house. But everyone that’s familiar with Roosh knows he’s spent most of the last decade living in Europe and South America. He goes back to DC occasionally to visit his people. Everyone makes it sound like he’s never moved out of home. From his blog comments it sounds like he came back to DC from Poland a few weeks ago. So maybe he’s just staying with relatives until he heads abroad again. Not sure why so much is being made of this.
Maybe they really do long for days of yore when women didn’t have sex until marriage, and are punishing women for being more relaxed about sex because they choose not to have sex *with them*.
Never was such a time. Shakespeare is among the many, many people of the past who got married when he got his wife pregnant, remember.
To be fair, I think she is talking about manspreading, not flashing. But that doesn’t make the statement any less asinine.
It’s worth noting that, apart from the other arguments (it’s illegal, it makes feminists look bad, and it’s morally wrong even if it doesn’t make feminists look bad), violence has unintended effects and people often get hurt who aren’t responsible for anything the targets are doing.
Manspreading is one of those things that anti-feminists hold up as an example of “political correctness run amok” and “hysterical, shrieking feminazis.” But really, anti-feminists are way more upset and emotional about it when we are. It’s pretty much
Feminist 1: “Hey, have you ever noticed that men use up more than their fair share of space on public transit when they’re sitting near women?”
Feminist 2: “Yes! Isn’t that annoying? Especially when it’s a thinly veiled excuse to grope you!”
Anti-feminists: “First world problems! Feminists are crazy!” Spends months and months obsessing over and ranting about how much feminists talk about manspreading even though it’s just something we occasionally kvetch about.
It’s in the same category as elevatorgate and shirtgate. Feminists say “hey guys, maybe cut that out?” and anti-feminists throw months, even years long tantrums. Then completely unironically call us crazy and irrational and oversensitive because we asked them to try and be a little less self involved and a little more considerate.
When I said ‘days of yore’, I wasn’t really referring to the whole of history. I was thinking more along the lines of Queen Victoria up to the 1960s. Victoria famously was disgusted with the licentious behaviour of her uncles, I think. There were men with venereal diseases at the time who believed that having sex with a virgin would cure them. She was instrumental in raising the age of consent to sixteen. OK, maybe society went too far, and the backlash has been extreme, but that’s thanks to the contraceptive and morning after pills. Thank-you science.
I was born in the 1960s, and had many friends at school who were adopted. To be an unwed mother was shameful and they were forced to give up their babies. There were no children of single parents in my peer group. Of course it hasn’t always been that way, but it was the way of my parents and grandparents. Those attitudes take a few generations to disappear.
I would love to think that his books were all made up, but that just seems too good to be true. He is confirmed to have been in Ukraine at the very least. (Didn’t he used to live there?)
You know, I think it says something, really, about our complete and total inability to refrain from feeding trolls, when all some obscure, washed-up loser who literally lives in his mom’s basement has to do to create an international media circus is write a few clickbait blog posts and then announce he’s gonna get together with a few of his buddies to gloat about them. All this guy wanted, right from the start, was his 15 minutes of fame, and lo and behold, he duly received it.
Mocking Roosh’s dick is exactly like mocking Chris Christie’s weight. I mean! His opinions and policies are shit, and he yells in people’s faces when they confront him in person, and you’re gonna criticize his figure? Unserious, unhelpful, and distracting.
(Sorry, that analogy is for United Statesians.)
Talking of which—oh christ, Roosh lives right on the other side of DC from me! I just realized that I’ve been picturing him in a galaxy far far away, all this time.
Incoming rant warning
Here’s the Cracked piece I was talking about if anyone is interested
http://www.cracked.com/blog/7-ways-you-can-accidentally-become-social-outcast/
The offending paragraph
Sure, he clearly recognizes that it would have been wrong and bad if he had become an MRA.
But there is just so much fail in this paragraph anyway.
It assumes that only conventionally attractive women receive unwanted sexual attention or get misogynistic reactions when we say no.
It assumes that when we talk about male entitlement, we’re talking about men we don’t like asking us out and making fun of them for being losers when really we’re talking about men who fake being a friend to get in our pants or rage about what bitches and cunts women are for not liking them. We’re talking about being viewed as a reward for chivalrous behavior, not humans with our own priorities and desires.
It assumes that “snark” means we’re just mocking men for being unfuckable to us. It completely fails to acknowledge that sometimes humor and mockery are a defense mechanism that makes some genuinely hurtful and threatening aspects of womanhood just a bit more dealable.
Plus the whole piece frames being an outcast as not being able to get girls (but only ones of course) and having to see other guys who are huge assholes get girls instead. Not only does it play into the whole narrative that women like assholes, therefore we are bitches who deserve to be mistreated by men, it completely disregards the fact that it isn’t only straight boys who experience being an outcasts as youths.
But of course, female misfits and queer misfits are completely invisible in popular culture. They might get to be the sidekicks to the more conventionally attractive non-misfit characters or misfit characters who are cishet guys, but they’re pretty much never the main focus of the stories and when they are it’s only if it’s a Pygmalion kind of story. Nerdy or socially awkward girls can’t be okay the way they are and still score with a hot dude. They have to get a makeover and be revealed as conventionally beautiful under the glasses and frumpy clothes.
The most famous example is She’s All That. There’s also House Bunny, which has nerdy girl protagonists but their stories are subplots compared to the star, Anna Farris as a playboy bunny who got demoted and kicked out of the mansion. Also, one of the nerdy girls is Emma Stone (very conventionally beautiful).
Then there’s My So Called Life. Mostly a fantastic show, but it takes them awhile to give Ricky his own storyline. His story is hinted at in the third episode “Guns and Gossip.” But him being bullied at school for being gay is paralleled with people thinking Angela slept with Jordan. I suppose it was quite progressive at the time for a three dimensional gay character to exist on network TV at all, but still, his main function in the series was to be the support system for the white cishet Angela and Rayanne. They were getting better towards the end of the series and I like to think if it had lasted longer than a season, they would have made him as important a character as Angela and Rayanne. Still, as much as it hurts to criticize one of my favorite shows, I feel as though I must!
Anyway, I’m getting way too teal dear now. So I’ll stop. I just was upset by this because usually the men who write for Cracked are quite pro-feminist, but even our male allies just so often refuse to really get it and it’s frustrating.
@Alan
” Comparing rape victims to paedophiles may have given the MRA readers a chance to share a sneer, but primarily it was intended to abuse and victimise rape victims even further.”
No, that was more to point out the hypocritical ablism that pops up surrounding sexual compulsions. You know that whole “SJWs don’t really believe anything they say” thing? MRAS enjoy poking holes. Unfortunately, this is a hole that feminists don’t seem ready to fill.
Glad I’m not a pedophile, but I don’t mind being compared to them as sufferers of a mental illness. Why should sexual assault victims like me care about being compared to non-offenders? Actually, since I believe treatment (and sympathy) towards non-offending pedophiles will prevent abuse, compare away.
I do mind being compared to rapists.
I don’t wish doxxing on anyone, but count me among the people that are glad that Roosh’s *lifestyle* (not personal information) was exposed. He uses his financial “success” to justify his teachings. This sounds like one more nail in the coffin exposing him as a fraud.
I’ve never seen a situation where “don’t feed the trolls” actually works. Like people who are bullied being told “Ignore them and they’ll go away” or “stand up to them and they’ll stop,” it seems to me to be a way to blame the victim for the aggressor’s conduct, and both seem to embolden the aggressor.
I’m positive that wasn’t your intent here, mind you. I just think “don’t feed the trolls” and “ignore them and they’ll go away” are myths.
@weirwoodtreehugger I’ve found the people who like to complain about “Tumblr feminists” all the time are the ones who are thin skinned and irrational.