CORRECTION: The original version of this post contained a picture of someone who was not “Jack Corbin.” I have removed it. My apologies.
By David Futrelle
Fascist shitposter “Jack Corbin” — a serial harasser of antifascist activists and a onetime online buddy of Pittsburgh Synagogue shooter Robert Bowers — thinks he’s found a solution to the problem of mass shootings by angry, bitter incels. At least the white ones.
He calls it “sexual reparations.” And he may have sort of stolen the idea from Jordan Peterson. Who may have sort of borrowed the idea from the incels themselves.
In a post on Gab today, Corbin spelled out the basics of his plan:
In a Gab post yesterday, “Corbin” — whose real name is
Daniel McMahon, according to Right Wing Watch — explored this lovely idea in more detail, suggesting that it would play a central role in his presumably never-going-to-happen run for the presidency in 2024.
A presidential run? 8-10 white children? Rapists allowed to sue their sex slaves if their perfume makes them sneeze? Is this all just one big shitpost?
Well, yes and no. We can dismiss posts like these as jokes only if we ignore the fact that Nazis and “edgy” racists use humor as a way to normalize their hateful ideas and make them go down easier, as writer Tauriq Moosa has noted. Daily Stormer publisher Andrew Anglin is a virtuoso shitposter who learned his craft on 4chan; he’s also deadly serious. Both the Toronto van attacker and the Christchurch mosque shooter made references to memes in the messages they left behind to explain why they decided to commit their acts of terrorism.
Another reason we can’t dismiss “Corbin’s” posts as jokes? Because his words online — however hyperbolic or ridiculous they may sometimes sound — have already been used to cause harm in the real world. He’s terrorized antifa activists with threats and by posting their personal information online.
And his words may also have helped to influence Pittsburgh synagogue shooter Robert Bowers in his decision to take his hatred offline, murdering 11 in a shooting rampage only a little more than five months ago. Bowers was a regular on Gab, and while he interacted with a number of well-known far-right figures on the site, the person he interacted most with was “Corbin.”
While “Corbin’s” rants are simultaneously horrific and ludicrous, it’s worth pointing out that his plan for “sexual reparations” is in many ways just a more carefully thought out version of the notion of “enforced monogamy” as a solution to incel killing sprees that was set forth last year by supposedly serious thinker Jordan Peterson.
In order to work as planned, both, er, “solutions” to the problem of incel violence would require women to be somehow compelled to have sex with the sort of men who think a killing spree is an appropriate response to not getting laid.
“Corbin” is fairly clear that these women would be literally forced to have sex, with an implicit threat of violence or jail hanging over their heads. Peterson, for his part, denies that his version of “enforced monogamy” would be, well, enforced in this way, but has offered no suggestions as to what non-coercive mechanism could somehow, er, inspire the women of the world to have sex with men who are presumably having some trouble getting laid now because women may just be able to sense that they have secret shrines to Elliot Rodger hidden in their closets.
Versions of the “sexual reparations” and/or “enforced monogamy” have been common on incel forums for years now. Now these incels have the explicit support of a dangerous self-described fascist with a direct connection to the man who carried out an anti-Semitic mass shooting that took eleven lives. No way this could end badly, huh?
H/T to @scottkernest and @AntiFashGordon, who highlighted “Corbin’s” Gab posts on Twitter.
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I fucked up. I inadvertently used the a picture of the wrong person in this post originally. I’ve removed the picture from the post and added a correction. My apologies.
I’ve deleted my tweets containing the picture, and edited my original Facebook post on this so that it doesn’t contain the picture as well.
Again, my apologies for the fuckup.
@Anonymous
I think part of his behavior is motivated by money, or at least it has been since he discovered people will pay him for this drivel, but it started out as just plain bigotry.
As for his book not being transphobic? I doubt that, based on the wikipedia description.
Sounds like, from what I know of his views on gender, he’s very likely transphobic and misogynistic in at least parts of the book.
Not that I actually advocate giving these people anything, but just as a thought experiment: what if there was a “sexual welfare” program, but it was just as miserable and debasing as any other form of welfare in the US?
It would have to start with a thorough vetting process, of course, to make sure that your celibacy is truly involuntary and you’re not just too lazy or too picky to get a girlfriend on your own. I’m thinking that would take at least 18 months, longer if there’s a backlog of applications. If, after all that, the state is satisfied that you are truly unfuckable, you would receive your “Government Girlfriend”–a dollar-store blow-up doll with a stock photo of a woman taped to it. But that’s not the end of it. Every week, you would have to submit proof, in writing, that you had tried and failed to get a woman to sleep with you. If you succeed in getting laid, you lose your benefits. If you turn down an offer of sex for any reason whatsoever, you lose your benefits. If you become so discouraged that you stop trying to talk to women at all? You guessed it, you lose your benefits. And God help you if you’re caught having any kind of interaction with a woman while still in possession of your Government Girlfriend, because not only will you lose it, but conservative politicians will spend years using you as an example of why the budget for the sex welfare program should be cut to the bone.
Still sound like fun, incels?
Kupo – I see your point, but the weakness of the book is, to me, much more general. The book seemed to me full of “good ol’ days” nostalgia, when all of this bad, modern stuff didn’t happen.
To be sure, the “good old days” had their share of bigotry and opression which Peterson ignores. But he ignores EVERYTHING bad about the “good old days”, such as, oh I don’t know, the misery of the great depression and the slaughter or WWII.
It’s the usual hankering for a magical, perfect world which never existed, with the belief that if you just “stand up straight”, you will conjure it into existence. It’s the same attitude that makes some people wish they lived in the middle ages… as lords and ladies, of course, never as the illiterate peasants that made up 99% of the population.
@Anonymous
I mean, yes, the entire book and the entire man are garbage. I hope I didn’t give the impression I thought otherwise. You asked what the appeal was and the answer is, he’s a bigot. Period. That’s the only appeal he has. And because he uses a university professor position as a platform for his bigotry, people look up to him. It doesn’t take a lot to impress bigots.
@LeeshaJoy
*bows over and over saying “I’m not worthy!”*
That is just the perfect response! These guys don’t have any real clue of what it really is like to be on social assistance, and their ignorance shows when they have ‘ideas’ like the one above. You are a beautiful human being 🙂
I have no wish to restart the argument from a few posts back, but seeing this post I just want to say that when I initially said that I thought society normalizing men buying sex could harm a lot of women and spread misogyny, it was exactly people like Jack Corbin I had in mind.
Just the way he describes women’s bodies as just a resource to be re-distributed, and not living and feeling people, calling it “reparations” and asking women to “simply opening their legs” and allowing the men they’d normally reject have sex with them, emphasis on simply because he treats it like just a bit of work, and not the rape that it would be, and referring to all women collectively as “whores” makes my skin crawl.
It’s scary that he can so thoroughly dehumanize half of humanity that way.
Elliot Rodger’s “alleged” victims??
“Alleged?”
That’s really the cherry on the shit sundae, isn’t it?
(Yes, I know that you should use “alleged” when referring to the actions of living people who haven’t been to trial, in order to minimize jury bias and highlight the presumption of innocence. But Rodgers is dead. There is no jury involved that we can unfairly influence by relating events as they provably happened.)
@Scanisaurus
May I ask why you keep bringing this up? I’ve been debating talking about this ever since it was brought up in the Foot Dude article, and since that comment section has covered nearly all of what I would have talked about, I’ll just address this one point, the idea that the normalization of buying sex from women will spread misogyny inherently. This isn’t meant to talk about whether specific instances of decriminalizing sex work are correlated with increases in specific forms of misogyny like sex trafficking, because cause-and-effect analysis of public policy is very complicated and I think the other comment section has that discussion pretty well covered. It will just be about whether greater acceptance of sex work is inherently beneficial to the ideology of misogyny as we know it today, as so frequently displayed on this site.
I started reading this site regularly around summer of 2017, but the first I heard about it was during gamergate, which I kept somewhat of an eye on. I also — and I increasingly feel like this is against my better judgment — read forums that have large portions of right-wing “gamer” types on them. On top of that, I interact with the religious right on a regular basis. So I think I have a pretty decent idea of what both this site and the current shape of the right are about.
One key takeaway for me is that guys like this don’t want to pay for sex. A lot of guys don’t seem to like the idea of directly paying for it (I say “directly” because of course you generally have to spend money to go on dates, groom yourself, etc. to help ensure that “free” sex occurs), but reactionary guys are especially averse to it. They want women to do a variety of things for them for free, especially sex. Having to pay for sex not only means giving the sex worker money that they can use however they want afterward, but also means giving them the power to set the price. Having a price that they set gives them power. Despite the coercive nature of work under capitalism, and even for the ones who can’t charge hundreds of dollars because they can’t afford a fancy room, that’s not nothing, and these guys know it, and they hate it.
Ironically, these same people either are, or are frequently ideologically allied with, the religious right, which is actively opposed to pretty much all sex work. This ideology goes back to puritanism, which publicly shamed women for having extramarital sex, and witch hunts, which killed them. Sex work has existed and even thrived prior to these periods. I’m not saying sex workers weren’t abused in the before times, and it’s difficult in general to talk about these things outside the context of modern western capitalism. I can, however, only conclude that this ideology of misogyny is overall threatened by sex work, not strengthened by it.
Just look at some of gamergate’s targets. Zoe Quinn and Allison Rapp did sex work. In fact, for the latter this was precisely what they used to get her fired from Nintendo. And that’s just the well-known ones. Misogynists are very hostile to sex workers, and they’ll have their awful attitudes and views toward women whether or not more sex workers are visible.
Just a nice little hidden weapon thing for defense for anyone woman or man with long hair. I found these really cool hair sticks that are meant to go into buns. I have two different kinds that are made out of metal and made to look like swords. It’s like wearing little daggers in my hair and they make me feel a lot safer especially with my creepy co worker. Since they just look like hair accessories it’s not like carrying around a knife or pepper spray. but they are the perfect size to go for the eyes if someone messes with you and I highly recommend them.
@Meteor
Please abide by the comments policy and avoid blaming misogyny on mental illness.
At last, I am called upon to fulfill my true purpose… hah. no.
I don’t see why they think they’re the only ones who can’t get a date. Anyone can lack intimacy.
@David: You mean you realized you’d made a mistake, apologized, and corrected it? The alt-right are sure not to understand this strange behaviour.
@rhuu
I know. It can be daunting to look at evil.
Sending you positivity. ♥♥♥♥
@An Impish Pepper
I see, and you do make good points.
However, I still think that in order to divorce sex work from entitlement and misogyny, it needs to be treated differently form other types of work and unlike nearly all other capitalist services, which are standardized and the customers have a right to demand any form of service on offer from any employee, sex work by it’s nature requires the right of the workers to refuse any client for any reason and change the boundaries for what services they are willing to offer at any given time in order for it to be ethical, and the problem I’ve seen with some people arguing for the right to buy sex is that they don’t treat it as a personal and mutual negotiation between them and the sex worker, but instead treat the workers themselves as a product to be bought and consumed for their enjoyment (just think of every time someone lists “women” as a treat to be bought alongside alcohol, drugs, luxury foods etcetera), and more horrifyingly, people saying that sex workers can’t be raped and that doing it to someone selling sex as part of their job is no worse than say, running from the bill at a restaurant.
And while conservatives and puritans are indeed hostile to sex workers, at the same time they often also want them available, often using the argument that it’s their job to put up with dangerous or immoral men in order to protect “proper” women and act as a punchball for people who can’t find a willing partner, and it all boils down to the idea that sex work is an inevitable and necessary part of society in order to help keeping male urges in line, and you also have creepy evo-psych guys arguing about hypergamy and how all women would trade their bodies for resources if only the offer was good enough and sex work was just the logical endpoint of “natural female behavior”, and they treat the prevalence of sex work as proof of their point instead of a choice on part of the workers.
In my first comment here I just wanted to highlight the worrying parallels I saw between the stuff I’ve mentioned, and I was hoping it would give you an understanding of where I was coming from, but if anyone feels like I’m trying to restart an unwanted argument I will not post more about this.
Jack, thanks for enlightening me about your presidential campaign platform. You’ve obviously put two or three minutes of thought into your plan to force some women to have sex with incels to prevent incels from committing mass murder.
Allow me to enlighten you about reality. It seems to be more or less legal to shitpost. But if you try to carry out your plan to deprive women of their right to feel safe in their own bodies — in other words, if you do anything other than bullshit your readers — that’s a different matter.
Have you given any thought to what kind of prison sentence you might receive? What correctional facility you’d end up in?
Incarceration is extremely unpleasant. Guards bark orders all day. You see the sky for only a little while each day, if at all. The threat of violence from other inmates and from guards is constant. The food is terrible. The smallest pleasures you once enjoyed — buying a candy bar, walking around the block, looking out the window — are no longer yours.
Glad I could provide you with some reality therapy.
opposablethumbs:
I also think that many, or likely most incels are wannabe abusers (and Corbin certainly is). However, I suspect that even more universally, incels want to feel socially validated by having sex and girlfriends.
It’s been often noted how incels scorn sex workers because they feel entitled to “free” sex (and they fervently deny that getting sex via conventional relationships is mostly a matter of effort and luck, rather than one’s inborn traits). They are delusionally jealous of the mythical “Chads”, men who supposedly are getting endless, effortless sex with conventionally hot women.
I think, ultimately, incels feel entitled to “being as good as any other man, and better than most”, so to say. If they were given some reluctant pity sex (much like some of them actually already visit sex workers), they might enjoy any opportunities for sadistically abusing women, but they wouldn’t actually feel any more validated.
I presume that even if incels had loving, conventionally hot virgin girlfriends with endless sex appetite, many of them would be still unhappy. These would be ones with deep underlying personal problems, or a really serious abusive streak, or just a personal tendency to be eternally unsatisfied with anything.
Hold up.
If the discussion is about Left Wing Traitor Women: wouldn’t that imply that the women at issue are no longer left wing or at least that they betrayed the left wing somehow?
That seems like a very small pool to draw from. Then again, if it is to be like any other US government benefit, a small pool makes sense.
@Scanisaurus
I would suggest that sex workers are more akin to professionals (lawyers, dentists, architects etc.) than workers in the classical sense.
Viewed this way, even modern capitalism provides a template by which sex workers can maintain full control of their work.
Other professionals can, and do, refuse clients (for example) based on their own -entirely subjective- definitions of a ‘good client’. Further, other professionals do not offer cookie-cutter services and are expected to set their own rates for their work.
Professions are also generally self-governing, which (considering the history of outsiders attempting to govern sex work) would seem like the best way to govern the sex work profession.
@Scanisaurus
I feel not only this but that you’re also making it worse by implying thst voluntary sex work is anything like these disgusting rape ring fantasies the alt-right conjure up with their ‘sexual redistribution’ rhetoric. Just stop.
The humor thing.
The problem with the “it’s just satire/humor” defense is that the writer has to be making fun of something. For example, anti-feminist Charlotte Allen once wrote a WaPo column arguing that women are so dumb, men should be the bosses; when people pointed out all her facts were wrong, the editor claimed it was satire (as did a couple of people when I pointed it out). But Allen’s a firm believer that Man In Charge is the way it should be, so was she satirizing her own views? I think not.
Likewise, the bozo in the OP does not appear to be satirizing how stupid the sex redistribution arguments are, so even if he later claims it was a joke, he’d better explain why it was supposed to be funny.
Well yeah!
It’s an ego blow to have to pay for sex.
A persons’s body is their private property. So why should the rest of society get to decide that said person should not be allowed to rent their body to others if they wish to do so? Men buying sex are buying a service. When you rent something you don’t own it, you’re paying for permission to use it and the owner gets to decide at their sole discretion, the TOS and can refuse/revoke access for any reason they see fit.
FYI: “Jack Corbin” is actually Daniel W. McMahon.
No one cares about your fragile ego.
@doethreetwoone
Very well. The main reason I referred to them as sex workers was that’s what other people on this forum said was the correct term for people selling sex.
I will not try to argue one way or the other, but I could easily come up with plenty of examples of various trades and professions, left to govern themselves without government interference, have led to various forms of abuse and self-governing is no guarantee against it.
@kupo
Once again it feels like you have completely misunderstood what I’m trying to say. What I’ve been trying to ask is how could society normalize men buying sex without it resulting in a large number of said men starting to treat women’s bodies as a product to be bought as opposed to a mutual transaction between two persons?
But I just feel like whatever I say you will interpret it in the most negative way possible, so I will not argue further on this.