CONTENT WARNING: This one is just brutal. If you’re feeling even the slightest bit queasy about the headline, please don’t read any further.
By David Futrelle
Sunday morning, a young man named Brandon Clark allegedly murdered 17-year-old Instagram “e-girl” Bianca Devins, apparently a friend of his, brutally slashing her throat and then slashing his own in an attempt to kill himself. Sometime between the murder and the attempted suicide, he took a photo of her bloody body and uploaded it to 4chan.
The photo quickly spread across social media, including the Incels.co forum, where it was evidently found by a commenter calling himself canino1997, who reacted to the horrific tragedy by masturbating to the picture of Devins’ lifeless body and sending a picture of the resulting “cum tribute” to the girl’s mother (or perhaps her stepmother) as a sort of ‘”lesson” for her.
He attached a screenshot of what he said were the messages he’d sent to the mother along with his “tribute.”
Naturally, other incels applauded canino1997’s initiative. “[Y]our doing god’s work,” wrote one commenter. “Based as fuck,” added a second. “Based kikebook Stalkercel,” agreed a third, which is the Incel way of saying he thought that canino1997 is was an excellent Facebook stalker.
On Facebook, Bianca’s stepmother didn’t say anything about
canino1997’s particular act of malicious harassment, but she did post at length about the anguish of seeing the photos of her stepdaughter’s corpse — an anguish amplified by the knowledge that countless strangers were passing the pictures around in an attempt to shock others and, in some cases, to garner new Instagram followers.
It is absolutely disgusting that people are sharing, screenshoting the pictures of Bianca’s (tragic) death!! Wtf is wrong with you people!!?? … I will FORVER have those images in my mind when I think of her. When I close my eyes, those images haunt me. …
Imagine sitting there, in disbelief and praying to God that this is all some mistake and that your baby will walk through the door any minute. Now imagine seeing those pictures and having everything in you break. Imagine not even being able to yell out and scream or cry because your soul has now just been broken.
After writing this blog for eight years, and watching the political developments in the US over the last three, I can’t say I still have a lot of faith left in humanity. But discovering the incel and his “cum tribute” hit me like a punch in the gut; in some ways it feels as gratuitously cruel as the murder itself.
There’s a lot more to say — none of it good — about this case and the assorted reactions to it online. But I will save that for later posts.
NOTE: Canino1997’s original post was taken down by the Incels.co mods, though evidence of it remains in the responses to it from other commenters. I borrowed the screenshots from a post in IncelTears, a subreddit devoted to monitoring and mocking incels.
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Here’s the thing, bunky: I kissed one girl in high school and then was “KHHV” until I was 38, and things have been dry in the year-plus since.
I didn’t go on a single date in college. (The fact that I had terrible gaydar and asked out 12 lesbians may have been a factor.)
I’m autistic and have major medical issues that have done fun things to my body, leaving me feeling pretty repulsive.
And yet, apart from a brief flirtation with mild “Nice Guy Syndrome (TM)” in college, I have never blamed women for this.
Never decided that women were just too shallow to date anyone with a less-than-perfect appearance.
Never thought that men were being held to unreasonable standards while women could get dates any time they wanted.
Never declared that being rejected was the Worst Oppression Ever.
Never thought that my lack of a romantic life meant life wasn’t worth living – DESPITE clinical depression that has resulted in me checking myself into a psychiatric hospital on two occasions.
Never referred to women with dehumanizing slurs like “females” and worse.
Never fantasized about hurting the women who rejected me, or who I believed would reject me.
And never, ever associated with or identified myself with a group that preaches all of the above day in, day out, when they’re not venerating murderers like Elliot Roger.
Because all that is what incels do. That’s their “thing.” And it’s vile, and so is anyone who identifies as such.
Don’t want to be seen as a misogynist? Stop identifying as one, for starters.
I’m in my early 40s, and the last time I kissed somebody who wasn’t a familial relation was 2002. I’ve not been in a relationship for a long time and at this point, I don’t necessarily see one in the cards. I stil haven’t had sex — and again, I may never.
But I still don’t want to identify with a moment that venerates murderers and dehumanizes half the population.
It may change things if I say I’m female, but given various medical conditions, I’ve been *ahem* blessed with particularly masculine features. I’ve had a bad illness/drug combo that caused me to gain a hundred pounds on top of an already large frame. I’m not the avatar of female beauty, and I think, if I were a dude, I’d be — passable? Definitely not a Chad.
I still have a draft post on my blog attempting to respond to Elliot Rodger’s manifesto. It’s not much beyond a title, but that title is simply “He doesn’t mean me.” All that ranting about how he couldn’t find a date — and he only wanted the hot women, the Staceys. He didn’t want somebody like me, who would simply be dismissed as a fat *bleep* if not worse.
Does it bother me? I’d be lying to say it didn’t. But I’m not going to claim all men are shallow, ignoring people like me in favor of the hot chicks. I know there’s guys out there that can look behind that — like my ex.
Anyway, all that rambling to basically say this — I can’t really change how I look. Sure, there’s plastic surgery. There’s dieting. But to fix some of the things that I feel are wrong with my looks would be difficult to change. I’ve found that it’s easier to change how I feel on the inside about myself, and strive to be a fascinating person to meet than it is to complain in a circle-jerk about how ugly I am and how nobody will date me with people who are holding up funhouse mirrors.
Change the attitude, and y’might change your life.
@Rhuu
I know this is off-topic, but now I am really curious, what is the reason the TERFs are aphobic?
@Beyond Ocean – It’s because they’re trying to convince people that trans people don’t belong in the LGBTQ+ category. So they’ve started a campaign on tumblr (and maybe other places? Twitter? Probably twitter too. And youtube. And facebook. Probably everywhere.) to try to drive a wedge between ace people and the rest of the LGBTQ+ group.
Well, they might not have started it, I don’t have any sources for that. But I know that they embrace it.
If they can manage to snip off the A on the acronym, and maybe the B, they can probably convince people to get rid of the T.
It’s a reason why they are also trying really hard to convince people that words like ‘queer’ are a slur. Queer doesn’t give any gender information, like ‘gay’ or ‘lesbian’ does. (Gay is debateable, it’s pretty much shorthand for queer at this point, but that’s ANOTHER story. Centering cis white gay dudes, hmmph.)
But people can go “I’m queer”, and they don’t have to say “I am a woman who likes women”, they can go “I’m someone who likes people in a non-hetero way” and other people can go “Wheeee! Us too!” and there’s a big party with music and fun and dancing… Also the TERFs are there but stuck FARTing up the corner.
It’s also why they’re trying to convince people that both TERF and ‘cis’ are slurs, because they are recognisable labels. TERF works to identify people, and it’s a bad identity, so they’re trying to erase it. Cis works to just give a shorthand for saying ‘I’m not trans’, so they hate it.
And that is my rambling! I hope it answered the question well enough. I don’t have sources right now, I don’t really want to search to find them on the computer I’m on right now. :/
@Rhuu – Thanks. But I can’t wrap my head around it, how would it work?
Trans folks are much more established part of the Acronym, they have been for a long time. Asexuality is a more recent addition, and if people include the A in LGBTQA+ at all, it seems that most of the time they think it stands for “Allies” – at least it was like this only a few years ago.
I’m not even sure if it didn’t start out like that, since I’ve seen the LGBTQA version of the acronym long before I’ve heard about asexuality – and from what I could gather it was supposed to be “allies” and only included sometimes for solidarity. But then again, back then I wasn’t very involved or informed.
And even if TERFs were successful in driving aces away from the community, how would it serve as leverage? I mean, at most they could argue that asexuality is not a real sexual orientation, or that aces don’t deserve to be a part of the community because they’ve not been oppressed enough, but none of this applies to trans people.
@Beyond Ocean
I’m not trying to be rude or mean but maybe this isn’t the best place to talk about this since it’s about this poor girl’s death and she was ace. She came out before she was killed. Just might not be an appropriate place to talk about the people who think ace isn’t a real sexual orientation.
Sorry, Lainy. That’s a good point.
@Lainy
Sorry.
(re: the actual article/blog post)
I’ll take “ways to go to Hell” for five hundred, Alex
(seriously shit like this makes me hope that some form of Hell exists)
@Beyond and Rhuu
No problem. I don’t want to make anyone feel bad or guilty. You’re not doing anything wrong, it just seemed like a time and place kind of thing.
Dear God, how do such creatures exist?
I think it’s clear, with the links between this type of sick behavior and mass shootings in America, that any sort of harassment as disgusting as this needs to result in arrest. The arrest needs to be followed by a very long perp walk in front of mainstream media with plenty of photos of the harasser made available to the general public, as well as his real name, his face, and specifically shown to his landlord, his employer, his family, his bank, his doctors, and everybody else on the planet. I think, by that point, mother nature takes its course.
So, this is a crime so severe we should forget due process and subject suspects, even ones not convicted (yet) in a jury trial, to extrajudicial punishments that render them unable to earn a living or to maintain a roof over their head?
Why not just go straight to summary execution? Or even torture?
Or, maybe we should still observe due process but perhaps put them on a watch list that results in heightened surveillance, looking out for stalkerish behaviors, stockpiling ammo, and the like. How about that?