Incel rage: Man who threw child off balcony at Mall of America driven by anger at women, police say

@rhuu

It’s weird, because I don’t know how to define positive masculinity either, but gender identity is still important to me as well.

I wonder whether personal names would work as an analogy for gender in this situation? Some are assigned, some are chosen, they all tend to come with cultural baggage and a set of expectations about what the name-bearer is like which may or may not be accurate— however, people generally consider their name par of themselves and don’t like to be called by the wrong name.

@John

She wins the interaction by swatting away the creep, but certainly is no better off having had the interaction,

How is it a “win” if she is certainly no better off? It is not a “win” to be forced to be rude or violent, to have to “swat” somebody, when you are just trying to have a conversation with friends, get a job done, or have a thoughtful drink by oneself.

In point of fact, she is not only “no better off”, she is worse off, if only by the waste of time. She may well be worse off, because being creeped on is all about the creep letting the creepee know that they are only “game tokens”. Your words, John. Being creeped on, being treated as a thing and not a person, can make the creepee feel awful, and if it happens over and over it can be very harmful. This is not a win for the woman, or even neutral.

As other commenters have pointed out, your analysis is not based on actual Game Theory which is all math and logic, rigorously developed and debated. This is just a small-t theory of yours based on the crude metric that putting somebody down, or turning them down, is a “win”.

It can be a win only if the “game” is scored by power moves – if it’s a game of pure dominance. Which is how the PUAs, incels and other assorted misogynists are scoring it, for sure. By phrasing it as you did in the quote above, you’re pretty much saying that that women who are creeped on are “winning” unless a creep succeeds in forcing or manipulating their submission. Do you realize what a toxic idea that is? That idea is the heart of incel thinking: that if a man cannot subjugate women, it means the women are winning.

And as other commenters have pointed out, she did not agree to play this dominance game.

It is not a “win” to be forced to play somebody else’s game; it is a waste of my precious time. Men waste women’s time this way constantly. It is not “winning” if you can’t finish a goddamn conversation, or the task you came to do, without being creeped on. It is not “winning” to go out for a pleasant drink, or to a meeting, and find yourself in a combat situation, no matter how well you handle it.

But your statement assumes that women are “playing games” with men even when they have not been asked to or consented to join the game. Do you realize what a toxic idea that is? That women are always “playing games” with men implies that no doesn’t always mean no, and that women are generally not acting in good faith.

I expect you’ll want to reply “but that’s not what I meant!” But that’s what your words imply, John. I do not for a second think you are an incel or a misogynist. But these ideas are in our air and our water, and we all have to be alert to the ways they warp our thinking.

John:

Life is one big game, filled with a multitude of smaller games. You win some, you lose some. What matters most is how you play…
To me, much of the fuel of toxic masculinity is throwing tantrums when you don’t win, and the rest is when you cheat to win. …
To those who do not like my redefinition….well, you win some, and you lose some.

WTF? Google translate, can you help with some mansplain to english work?

:click: :whir: TRANSLATION FOLLOWS:

Hey, ladies and feminists! Your problem is that you simply don’t have the analytical tools to understand events like this, thus all your “toxic masculinity” and “sexism” etc. will ultimately fail to explain anything, despite the fact that there are some things in the real world that you might describe that way. But describing isn’t understanding. So I, the man with the most classic MANNAME™ in the english speaking world am here to help.
It’s all about sportsball. But don’t get yourself in a tizzy, now. This is the abstract, philosophical sportsball of great thinkers. Rather than pinning yourself down in the weeds of some real-world rules that don’t apply and asking yourself why the wide-receiver didn’t catch the kid or something, see if you can be as abstract-y, analitical-y as me and picture all of life as a sportsball contest. Got that? Now everything that happens within life is a series of smaller sportsball contests?

There! Now you feminists can begin to appreciate the genius that is manly analyticalizing! With a little training even you could understand these otherwise incomprehensible events that you’re trying to understand like throwing a child off a balcony!

Rhuu:

So, to continue with your ‘game’ analogy… … because he lost that [pick-up] game, he decides to play another game, one in which he kills someone.

He throws a child off of a high place.

Who won?

Hmm, yes. John did come in here to explain this attack to us. And John did assert that understanding these things required sports ball analiticalizing. Please, share us your wisdom, John! How can us poor women and feminists finally understand what’s happening when angry men throw children off balconies! We promise, we will accept your metaphor because of its power to make sense of exactly the things that you insisted we cannot understand because we were discussing actual psychological phenomena prone to investigation that rigorous research has already linked to increased propensity for violence like masculinity and entitlement instead of the ONE TRUE METAPHOR of sportsball abstracted by the disciplines of mathematics and philosophy which are entirely coincidentally fields where social pressure have kept women under-represented.

PLEASE JOHN! YOU’VE GIVEN US THE METAPHOR, WE’RE READY TO UNDERSTAND THE TRUTH THAT FEMINISM CAN NEVER HELP US UNDERSTAND. GIVE US THE ONE CLEAR VISION OF HUMAN BEHAVIOR THAT ONLY SPORTSBALL METAPHORS CAN PROVIDE!

John:

In this situation, it all honestly breaks down. I mean, the guy seemed to have fed his anger until it snapped, and it’s hard to understate how much of a problem that is, to put it mildly. Everyone was left worse off because of this event, not least the poor child. I try not to look at his picture.

Wait, what? These words do not help me with the one true sportsball understanding. Google Translate, can you help again?

:click: :whir: TRANSLATION FOLLOWS:

Look, lady. I’m talking to prove that my understanding of things is better than yours. It doesn’t mean I actually understand anything. Obviously my “everything in life is a sportsball contest” doesn’t shed any light on the actual example you were talking about. The point isn’t that you understand anything. You’re a lady-being. Obviously you’re not going to understand anything. The important part isn’t that you end up understanding anything. The important part is that you treat me as a wise patrician, acknowledge my genius, and express gratitude for my willingness to spend my precious time in conversation with you.

I mean, there wasn’t any chance a stupid, abstract sportsball competition metaphor was going to actually explain something as stupid and awful as men’s tendency to disproportionately attack, injure, rape, and sometimes kill random innocents! I sure as hell don’t know what you’d have to study to understand men’s belief in their own right to dominate women and children, and their devaluation of others to the point of willingness to do violence unchecked by anything except the threat of being thrown out of the masculinity club for not manfully restricting one’s violence to other RealMen™ targets.

But whatever could help you feminists understand men committing violence against others, it sure as hell ain’t my sportsball metaphor! So stop trying to challenge me on that. It gets awkward when I’m establishing my superiority and you ask me a question I can’t answer! I mean shit, you’d probably have to establish entire university departments to investigate a social/behavioral phenomenon like that. The important part is that if I can’t answer it, you ladies shouldn’t think that you can answer it better than me. I mean, obviously.

Why else would I show up to talk about metaphorical sportsball when it has no possibility to answer a question about fragile masculine entitlement and the tendency to treat women and children as props to make men feel better about themselves which then disappoints and angers any reasonable men who are denied their “victories”?

So STOP ASKING DIFFICULT QUESTIONS AND JUST ACCEPT IT. Jesus. You ladies.

Ah. Okay. I’ve got it now, “John”.

Crip Dyke: happened to me a few weeks back.

Shooting David an email (link by the mammoth head, sidebar or bottom) generally works best, to make sure he sees it!

Probably got bumped to spam or something. 🙂

@lysistrata

Good job. My fast just ended and I don’t yet have the mind power to form that anwser myself and you did it beautiful sugar! ❤

I enjoyed your translations Crip Dyke! Just a note for the future, I’m sticking with not gendering myself under this ‘nym on this site, right now. I’m sure i’ve gendered myself here in the past, but this is my current state.

The state of UNDECIDED. XD

Hope you’re having a good day!

@Crip Dyke
Excellent reply. Worth the wait!