When Harry Styles agreed to model a series of dresses and skirts for a Vogue cover shoot, he knew it would stir up controversy. He probably didn’t think he was going to be blamed for undermining civilization itself. But that’s what some right-wing opinion-havers would have you believe.
“Blexit” leader Candace Owens started the brouhaha with this melodramatic tweet:
She followed up with a swipe at feminism:
It wasn’t long until fast-talking dunderhead Ben Shapiro decided to chime in.
But Ben wasn’t content to simply share a couple of tweets on the issue, and so he took it to his podcast today, delivering a nearly half-hour rant on the subject, interrupted only by Shapiro reading out ads for luxury bedsheets and his publication the Daily Wire.
He began by not-so-subtly suggesting that men wearing dresses might deserve a punch in the mouth, and followed with a rambling, repetitive rant taking on what he, likes Owens, sees as a dire threat to western civilization: men in “floofy” frocks.
This excerpt will give you some of the flavor of the thing:
But Shapiro wasn’t just annoyed; he presented himself as a noble guardian of civilization fighting off the cross-dressing barbarians.
“This stuff matters,” he declared.
It matters. Because these are fundamental ideas for the preservation of civilization. Boys and girls are different. Boys and girls are different. And it’s important to inculcate in your children that boys and girls are different. And any parents who fail to inculcate in a boy that manliness is a good thing, and that responsible manliness helped build civilizations … any parent that does not teach their girls that femininity, meaning the protection of hearth and home in a different way than masculinity, is a good thing. Any parent that doesn’t teach their girls that is not doing their kid any favors. They’re undermining the civilizational compact that men and women [have], based on biology and in every human culture.
Dude, it’s just a man in a dress. Cis male musicians have been donning dresses for decades — from David Bowie to Kurt Cobain — and somehow civilization hasn’t come tumbling down.
But Shapiro thinks this is a Very Important Topic.
We shouldn’t be shy about discussing these issuesl the left certainly isn’t shy about discussing these issues. They’ll put these [ideas] in public schools, they’ll tell your kindergartener that real men wear dresses. And then you’ll be explaining to a five year old that real men don’t wear dresses. And I don’t feel that’s an acceptable ramification of our cultural discussion.
I really don’t think there’s much discussion of cross-dressing in kindergarten.
Shapiro throws in a weird racial aside:
Harry Styles is a free man, living in a western country, in a west by the way that is defended by white masculine men, as a general rule.
Shapiro insists he has nothing against Harry Styles. It’s just that when Styles puts on a dress he is TEARING APART THE VERY FABRIC OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION
I’m not saying don’t pick up his CDs; I’m not saying don’t listen to his music; I’m not saying don’t watch the movies he’s in. All I’m saying is that when you put out an argument that men ought to act like women and that this is a good thing you’re doing something that tears at the fabric of not only civilization but family and the fabric of childrearing and everybody with half a brain knows this.
Again, Ben, it’s just a man in a dress, a playful tweak of conventional notions of masculinity. How fragile is masculinity — how fragile is civilization itself — if it can be brought to its knees by a handful of pictures of a man in a dress?
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I love how they’re making blog posts every time we comment, and the content makes absolutely no sense except to the authors.
Not that the blog gets any traffic besides the two of them.
Alright, here’s a takedown of the posts so far:
Post 1:
Off to a great start. Definitely a thing real people say.
As I mentioned before, it’s interesting that Igor wrote this. Does Eric still have access to the blog?
This doesn’t prove anything. It’s possible Eric’s parents are waiting to tell him or planning. I know I’d be shocked if I had children and found out they were doing this.
I find this hard to believe given that 90% of men have at some point watched porn.
Says the Q head. Presumably the evidence is that mail will arrive.
Does he know mail isn’t like email? It takes time.
Well, she wouldn’t have had one if you didn’t put it all over the Internet. If you meant that Lainy has no address, presumably she has a home address, she just isn’t as careless with it.
This makes me way more suspicious. Eric seems to be a bit of an unreliable narrator, but even aside from that, the fact that they opposed it then supports the idea that they would listen to Lainy.
It doesn’t prove anything, but fine, Igor is real. Doesn’t change what happened.
I will bet $10 he’s a Ben Shapiro fan.
Post 2:
Curious that it’s gone from the blog then. Too long the Internet is forever.
Mind if I call the school and ask?
Wow, the school should definitely know that you invited a bunch of strangers. Massive security risk. I’ll call Monday.
Post 3:
Eric: I clearly have proof that there were no phone calls coming from you
This is a really weird pivot given that Eric is a Trump fan. But also, Lainy didn’t actually say anything resembling that.
Post 4:
Not much to say about this one. The sentence at the bottom translates to “I have a video in Serbian on my mgtow.tv channel.” Of course, it’s made more suspicious by the fact that the text is not in Serbian but in Croatian.
@naglfar
The dramatic child response shows you no he didn’t tell his mom that he was giving out personal information because he knows ots wrong and he’d get in trouble
@Lainy
Yes, he’s definitely acting very guilty. Presumably if he had had nothing to hide, he wouldn’t have had an issue with you calling his mom.
It’s also very suspicious that Igor has taken over today. Presumably Eric would be the better source of information on Eric’s life.
I will call his school Monday when they open and tell them what he’s up to and explain why they shouldn’t host a MGTOW day. If he actually has invited strange men from around the country that’s a serious danger to the school and they need to know.
@naglfar
Christ, yes do that. This kid is going to get himself, his sister, and other students of that school killed with his irresponsible actions. I will call his mom again Monday and tell her about that. No wonder he deleted that post. I bet they started going through his websites and he tried to throw away the evidence of that
@Lainy
In case he takes down the page where he says it is open to all MGTOWs in the US, here’s an archive link.
@Naglfar
I agree, it does appear that Eric isn’t able to post on his blog right now, and that’s why Igor has been summoned. Curious.
Your takedown is excellent. Some additional thoughts:
What constitutes “widespread evidence” of someone mailing a letter? Major news networks reporting on it?
Yes, I’m sure the middle school has officially sanctioned a totally clandestine, underground event that has to be kept secret from the masses. And “certified”, wtf does that even mean. Did he get a notary to witness it or something?
I’m sure Eric wouldn’t mind if you double checked with the school. Since they’re totally cool with it and all.
Yeah right. That happened. Because that’s what parents do. They object to something harmful their kid is doing and try to stop it. Then they just give up after a month and say “you win, I accept this as the new status quo”.
This sounds suspiciously like a 12 year old’s fantasy.
These guys always post the most weaksauce nonsense and then high five themselves with verbs like “destroyed”. MGTOWs want the bar set really low for themselves and complain bitterly when the real world doesn’t accommodate them.
I’m still laughing over the fact that Eric thinks he was banned from WHTM for “chad energy”. Towards the end, the kid was posting stuff like “I just took a big fat ~~~~ in my pants”, basically hopping up and down to get attention. That’s called having a tantrum, not winning a debate.
PS Check out Igor’s LinkedIn, where he claims to have attended Harvard University for “MGTOW/RedPill Sciences” from 1995 – 2019. So smart, he matriculated 13 years before he was born! But not that smart, since it took him 24 years to graduate. And I thought he lived in Serbia, anyway?
I screenshotted it just in case, but go take a look before he takes it down.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/igor-mgtow-9b94a119a/?originalSubdomain=rs
Clearly, we’re dealing with two reliable narrators here!
I get these kids have never sent a letter. But it was standard postage that will probably take up to two weeks together because i don’t live anywhere near new York. I’m southern. And i wasn’t paying extra to send a letter of concern.
This was weird too:
Imagine how the conversation would go if Lainy hadn’t called:
”Mom, did anyone call you today?”
”Like who?”
”Someone named Lainy?”
”Who’s Lainy?”
”Oh, nobody. Just some weird stalker. But I really need to know if she called.”
”Why?”
”No reason. So, did she call you?”
“Why would this Lainy person call me? What are you talking about? What’s going on here?”
”Nothing! I’m going back to my room now, bye.”
What parent would just shrug that off? Wouldn’t that raise some red flags and lead to a followup investigation?
@Buttercup
It’s a Ben Shapiro thing, I think. He’s not the only one to do this but the most prominent.
He didn’t even put the word itself.
Re: LinkedIn
As for the school, I tried to call but they were predictably closed for the weekend. I’ll call when they open at 8 tomorrow. Now that I’ve said that I bet Eric goes to the office to try to disconnect the phone line or something else sophomoric.
EDIT: He has a new post. Which directly contradicts what he previously said about it being at school. The cached version of his other site (which is still up and is now archived) show this:
Caught in a lie again. I’ll be calling the school to warn them about this and also about how he might be proselytizing MGTOW to other students.
EDIT 2: reposted the image a different way, not sure what just happened but it broke.
@Lainy Did you send the letter to his mom’s workplace? Eric is probably going to haunt their home mailbox for the next two weeks, waiting to intercept it.
(It’s cute that he thinks it’s arriving by FedEx.)
For some reason my last post is caught in the filter, sorry if this double posts:
@Buttercup
It’s a Ben Shapiro thing, I think. He’s not the only one to do this but the most prominent.
He didn’t even put the word itself.
Re: LinkedIn
He also claims to still be a student, despite having graduated in 2019. Odd.
As for the school, I tried to call but they were predictably closed for the weekend. I’ll call when they open at 8 tomorrow. Now that I’ve said that I bet Eric goes to the office to try to disconnect the phone line or something else sophomoric.
EDIT: He has a new post. Which directly contradicts what he previously said about it being at school. The cached version of his other site (which is still up and is now archived) show this:
Caught in a lie again. I’ll be calling the school to warn them about this and also about how he might be proselytizing MGTOW to other students.
We have another post. Very generic, by Igor. They’re running out of road at this point, which probably explains it.
This is a bizarre concession, since previously he was talking about how feminism is so horrible and destroying society. Now it’s okay?
MGTOW is very different than feminism, though. Look on any MGTOW forum and you’ll see a lot of posts about how awful women are. Most feminist sites don’t have many posts about how all men are awful and should be replaced by sexbots, etc. Many do call out abusive or misogynistic men in particular, but that is not the same as calling out all men, unless you think all men are misogynistic abusers (in which case you are a misandrist).
@Naglfar
I wonder if his teachers are aware of the dark hole he’s fallen into. He has a few posts further down bragging about “roasting” his science teacher and calling his English teacher a “coexist SJW”, and some screen shots where he’s inserted climate change denialism and MGTOW content into his online schoolwork (which he probably later chickened out and deleted before turning it in).
It’s not overtly threatening content, but it’s pretty douchey and disrespectful, and might be construed as harassment. Anyone who posted stuff like that about their employer would be fired. The school should probably know about it so they can take the right steps.
I don’t take any joy in this whole episode. It’s disturbing and sad. This is exactly how young boys are radicalized and go on to destroy their lives and the lives of others. It needs to stop.
As for Igor’s latest response, it goes beyond “just an ideology”. There are millions of self-help philosophies out there which don’t turn people into angry, bitter trolls. There is no version of self-improvement which requires you to turn your back on society and go underground so you can be lazy and self-congratulatory and insult women and shirk responsibility and blame the rest of the world without pesky people telling you to be better. That’s the opposite of self-improvemenf.
I think we’ve done all we can here. There’s no point in poking the bear further. Igor and Eric know they’ve done wrong. Best thing to do is let his parents and the school handle it.
@buttercup
I sent it to his home and he probably won’t know who its from since the address on it has my real name which isn’t close to the name i use here. I think he’s to chicken shit to just throw away mail to his mom cause he’ll know he’d get in trouble if he threw something away from a client
@Buttercup
Exactly. If he made a school event, I can almost guarantee he’s sharing this with other students.
@Lainy
I’ll bet you anything he’s looking for a letter that says “Lainy from We Hunted the Mammoth” that arrives on a FedEx truck. So long as your letter doesn’t look like that, he won’t throw it out.
@The DerisionFetishist:
Oh no, you played the Galileo card! Whatever shall we do?
Truer than heliocentrism? Exactly how does that work?
@Policy of Madness:
Nazis. Nazis use Gab.
OT: Something is screwy with the pagination of this thread. Stuff has been rearranged, and not in a way consistent with moderated posts being inserted on earlier pages. For example, a post that was on page 8 is now on page 6. It looks like something in the new site code gets unstable if a thread gets long enough. The “incels wonder” thread is still misrendering as well, days after the problem was first observed and reported.
Igor has edited his last post to add the following:
This is also a big concession, but also really scary. He seems to have gotten to the point where he sees MGTOW is a cult, but accepts that and defends its nature as a cult damaging society.
Or maybe he thinks feminism is a cult and is trying to attack us? Not sure, poorly written.
Pro tip to Eric and Igor: these posts aren’t helping your case.
I’m starting to get really uncomfortable with the way this thread has developed since last night. Calling Eric’s mom was the right thing to do, but I’m not sure that checking his blog every half hour (or whatever) and responding to what gets posted there is equally right. This is a kid, who needs parental intervention and we’ve alerted his parents so that part is out of our hands now. I don’t think continuing to engage with him or his alter-ego is productive or good.
@PoM
At the very least I think we should alert his school to the danger posed. They ought to know. After that we should probably step away though.
Speaking for me too, PoM.
Parents have been told, now let it go. It’s their task to be dealing with it, not ours, and all this is doing is giving the lad a chance to hone his excuses in front of an audience.
I’m done as well. Eric’s been banned and deleted here, and his blog doesn’t matter. I’ve got better things to be doing with my Sunday.
I should probably move on as well. I won’t be reading his site anymore, but I’m not sure if I should still warn the school tomorrow.
I’d not do it, but that’s just me. Pretty sure a school takes a bit more than an, “OK, sure, whatever” approach to meetings.
@Naglfar
If it was just a couple of dumb posts, I’d say let it go, but planning an open-invite MGTOW rally using the school’s name (likely without their knowledge) and the fact that he’s read and admired the ER manifesto are concerning. I guess the question is, if you were a school administrator, would you want to know? Probably it’s best to wait to see if his parents handle things. It sounds like they might already have been arranging to get him help.
Enjoy the rest of your day, all.