By David Futrelle
Last Friday, a man walked up to a mother and her five-year-old boy who were standing outside the Rain Forest Cafe on the third floor of Minnesota’s Mall of America. Without saying a word, he grabbed the boy and threw him over the balcony.
Luckily, the boy survived the fall, and is being treated for multiple severe injuries at a local hospital. His assailant, a 24-year-old man named Emmanuel Deshawn Aranda, was captured as he tried to flee the mall, and has confessed to the crime, according to police. He’s been charged with attempted murder.
As unsettling as all this is, what makes it even more unsettling is the apparent motive for the attack. According to the Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman, Aranda was driven by rage over being rejected by women.
A statement put out by the Attorney’s office says that
Aranda told police he had come to the mall on Thursday intending to kill an adult, but that it did not “work out,” according to the complaint. He returned Friday and chose the boy instead. He told police he knew what he was planning to do was wrong. Aranda said he had been coming to the mall for years, tried to speak to women there and they rejected him. That made him lash out and act aggressively.
According to the complaint itself, Aranda had been previously banned from the mall “for throwing water in a woman’s face and destroying property. He has a warrant for his arrest from Illinois for assault. …”
It’s not clear if Aranda had any connection to the incel “movement,” such as it is, or if he was inspired by previous incel acts of violence like Elliot Rodger’s 2014 killing spree or the van attack in Toronto a year ago. But he was clearly motivated by the “aggrieved entitlement” that is rampant among men in America and throughout the world today.
On the Braincels subreddit, the site’s main forum for incels, the regulars seem most concerned that they will get “slammed” for the brutal attempted murder. While no one in the desultory discussion of the case there is glorifying Aranda the way that incels have glorified Elliot Rodger, one commenter is offering him a certain degree of sympathy.
“I think not getting pussy does something to the brain,” writes BBCislaw, “it’s a legitimate issue that will be ignored in favor of mocking the afflicted.”
On Incels.co, the largest incel forum off of Reddit, they don’t seem to have discovered the story yet, though the regulars are currently celebrating the pain suffered by a 22-year-old “Stacey” who apparently fell from a clock tower while attempting to take a selfie, and voting in a poll on what they see as the proper punishment for couples who kiss in public. (At the moment, “torture/death by soldering iron” is in the lead.)
The incel ideology is pure poison.
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@Lumipuna – oh boy, my brain managed to skip right over the link as if it weren’t there, sorry. The joys of ADHD. I’ll read it; thank you.
@kobun37
*barf* indeed.
This guy isn’t the only one engaged in violence apologia. The literal head of safety & security for the public schools in liberal Madison, Wisconsin just told the media that “kids will be kids” so we can’t expect them not to commit rape now and then.
I think the worst part of it was actually that he avoided saying “boys will be boys” even though media are reporting this as a rape committed by two boys against a single girl (and the school district has not contested that).
It has all the accountability-avoiding bullshit of “boys will be boys” while at the same time screaming #notallmen with how it goes out of the way to avoid associating two boys raping a girl with any hint of sexism. And people wonder where men get this idea that they can and should be able to commit violence.
I’m just going to randomly guess that this guy’s “approaches” to women were (a) at random, (b) rude, and (c) heavily overlaid with misogyny and entitlement. And possibly also (d) violent, or at least intimidating. In short, your standard destined-to-fail PUA “beast mode” stuff.
No wonder none of them were willing to entertain the prospect of a hookup with him.
I think there’s two things at play here:
-Male entitlement: Women owe me sex and attention
-The only proper emotion for a man to show is rage
Men, from a very young age, are taught to suppress and deny any emotion except rage and anger. They’re not taught how to deal with any emotion constructively. Only to make their anger and rage someone else’s problem. And to swallow down and ignore everything else.
So when a lack of healthy coping mechanisms is coupled with aggrieved male entitlement we get things like this.
I can’t believe women didn’t want to talk to such a NICE GUY(tm). It’s all their fault!
Thoughts & theories:
This guy obviously doesn’t have his own computer. It’s natural that he would destroy a computer at the library. Solution: The government needs to send a new computer to all American men every year.
Okay, the guy doesn’t have the kind of drinking glasses he needs at home. Solution: The government teams up with a purveyor of luxury items to send new drinking glasses to all American men every year.
Note: This is not nanny-state socialism. On the contrary, this is the kind of government (black box) every red-blooded American man demands.
http://www.startribune.com/suspect-in-mall-of-america-attack-was-looking-for-someone-to-kill/508596352/
Incels claim they are just like the poor under unjust economic systems. Many things are wrong with this analogy, women being seen as property above all. But one reason they are not like the poor is that I’ve never heard of a poor man throwing a random person off the third floor because the mall has stuff he can’t afford.
Are they, cat lady? I was taught that showing anger and rage is a *bad* quality, showing lack of self control.
Slightly OT: Great, the incels are going to claim there’s scientific proof of Chad’s existence. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/apr/17/cheating-men-can-be-spotted-by-their-face-type-study-suggests
@Anonymous
Sure. But abusers and batterers use their anger and rage — not to mention their manufactured outrage — to control others. It’s not uncommon.
@Anonymous
A man yelling angrily might be acting badly, but his manhood is not questioned. A man who cries, or cowers in fear, is publicly dismissed as unmanly. That’s where the difference lies. Anger is taught as being in the scope of male behaviour; other emotions are not.
Surely the manly ideal had always been, justly or unjustly, *control* of emotions, whether sadness or anger? You’re not supposed to cry *or* to rage. At least that was my education.
@Anonymous
You’re also not supposed to take any supposed insult lying down. Gotta defend your honor (or that of your family or other tribal group you are associated with), and an appropriate way to do that is of course with threats, anger and violence.
Indeed, fighting is considered more “manly”. So does honor. But while you are supposed to protect yourself and others, and their honor, from threats, it is dishonorable to be the one who fights without self-control, i.e., for no good reason or out of proportion to the provocation.
You may not react with insensate rage or violence to an insult. That is not manly. It shows lack of control over one’s emotions. It is especially dishonorable to fight those weaker than you, i.e. women (physically) and children or the old. Boys are taught they need to be strong; but they are also taught they musn’t hit girls.
In any case, being too angry or raging too much is considered a flaw, but nowhere near as bad as being effeminate for example.
@Anonymous
Maybe so. But surely you don’t deny that batterers exist? Surely you don’t deny the need for shelters for survivors of domestic violence?
They say women love assholes… I’m beginning to think they may not understand what the word means.
TheKND – the key word in your post was “impulses”, as in a *momentary* and self-confessed *irrational* desires.
You are afraid you *might* get an *irrational mpulse* to kill someone, and are therefore treating yourself to make sure you never do, and surely never act on it.
This is, needless to say, miles away both morally and psychologically from someone who *deliberately planned* to kill someone as revenge for his anger.
P.S.
I suspect getting such impulses is more common than you think.
re: what men are ‘posed to do…
Michael Kimmel’s Angry White Men had a pretty fine discussion on this, with the conclusion being that to have one’s manhood questioned is a slight that cannot be ignored. A lot of the problem with toxic masculinity is exacerbated by extending that “manhood” element to include having one’s correctness questioned, as well.
We had an example of that here the other day , (without specifics), when a male-presenting commenter made a point, then that point was questioned emphatically. The commentor’s response is what’s telling: he responded “… was I just supposed to let that slide?”
@ Anonymous:
You contend that
While I agree in principle, I also believe that “provocation” is entirely in the eye of the provoked. When violence is invoked (or even the direct threat of violence), it can only be rescinded when the provocateur retreats. In situations where masculine ego is involved, “letting it slide” is an active relinquishment of one’s manhood.
…
And, from a parallel universe, here’s some fashion advice from a misogynist icon:
https://splinternews.com/heres-some-deeply-cursed-fashion-advice-from-misogynist-1834095120
# Yutolia:
Kat –
I absolutely, totally, do NOT deny rapists and wife-beaters exist, or the need for protection to the victims. How people behave is, sadly, far away from their ideal. “Thou shall not kill” is the most basic law there is, yet murderers exist.
P.S.
Thinking about it, perhaps the problem with the stiff-uper-lip stereotype is that it is misused. It was intended to make men *control* their emotions, which is good, but was distorted into suggesting men must *suppress* all their emotions, which is bad. A common case of an ideal, good in itself, becoming bad because it was pushed to extremes.
@Anonymous
There’s what men are told in plain words, and then there’s what they are and are not reprimanded for doing. These things often contradict one another, as is typical in all things around socialization. Here are a couple of articles you might find interesting.
https://everydayfeminism.com/2015/06/men-and-emotional-literacy/
https://everydayfeminism.com/2015/06/the-media-mens-emotions/
Weird Eddie –
I agree some men tend to see a “justified” provocation in anything when their ego is involved. This is because they *like* to feel provoked, because they like violence and like to feel their violence is “really” justified.
Yet they are wrong (not that they care). To accept such a thing as provocation, is also to accept there is an objective standard involved. It is simply *not* true that just because you feel you were provoked you were.
@Weird Eddie:
Yay Inigo Montoya!!
I was going to include something to that effect in my original post but I got distracted and forgot. Thanks!