A chart posted by Elliot Rodger, giving his chilling spin on a manosphere meme depicting supposed female “hypergamy”
When a white supremacist murders blacks or Jews, no one doubts that his murders are driven by his hateful, bigoted ideology. When homophobes attack a gay youth, we rightly label this a hate crime.
But when a man filled to overflowing with hatred of women acts upon this hatred and launches a killing spree targeting women, many people find it hard to accept that his violence has anything to do with his misogyny. They’re quick to blame it on practically anything else they can think of – guns, video games, mental illness – though none of these things in themselves would explain why a killer would target women.
In the case of Elliot Rodger, who set out on Friday night aiming, as he put it in a chilling video, to “slaughter every single spoiled, stuck-up, blonde slut” in a popular sorority house at the University of California, Santa Barbara, some Men’s Rights activists and other manospherians are doing their best to convince the world that misogyny had nothing to do with it.
Somehow, we doubt that MRAs would appreciate this kind of “protection” for themselves and their fellow men.
One classic bad argument against feminism is the disingenuous claim that “we don’t need it any more.” In the bad old days, proponents of this argument would concede, women may have faced some pesky little obstacles, but now that they can vote, and own property, and briefly work as the executive editor of The New York Times, there’s just no need for feminism any more. Problem solved!
But these days the great minds of the Men’s Rights movement have moved beyond this bad argument to a worse one: feminism was never really necessary in the first place, because women have never been oppressed.
The other day a Redditor by the name of cefarix earned himself a couple of dozen upvotes by posting a version of this argument to the Men’s Rights Subreddit.
Marlene Dietrich oppressing man with her trousers.
Demetri Marchessini is a retired Greek business tycoon, living in London, and has been a major donor to the right-wing, anti-immigrant UK Independence Party (UKIP). He also has some, let’s say, eccentric views about gay people, black people, women, and trousers, views so, er, eccentric that the folks in UKIP are a little embarrassed to be associated with him. Given that UKIP is filled with bigots in all varieties, that’s quite something.
In an interview last week with Britain’s Channel 4, Marchessini expounded at length on some of his more colorful views. He told interviewer Michael Crick that marital rape was impossible, because “you can’t have rape if you make love on Friday and make love on Sunday, you can’t say Saturday is rape. Once the woman accepts, she accepts.”
He argued that there is no such thing as homosexual love, only lust, because “they go out at nights and they pick up 5, 10, 15 different partners in one night.” Even gays in committed relationships are basically just roommates who still cruise for anonymous sex partners.
And he suggested that black slaves were better off as slaves in America than they would have been living in Africa, because if they survived the passage they lived longer.
But let’s just talk about the trouser thing. Marchessini thinks women should be banned from wearing trousers, because otherwise they just might bring about the end of western civilization.
The problem — well, one of the many problems — with a lot of so-called pickup artists is that they think with their dicks, and then use their relatively underpowered brains to rationalize their dickular preferences as The Way The World Should Be.
By contrast, the problems with Lance Christopher, a so-called pickup artist who hangs out in the comments section on Roosh V’s Return of Kings blog, really start when he stops thinking with his dick.
Some dudes roll over and fall asleep the moment after they come; Mr. Christopher contemplates genocide because women don’t want to hear him pontificate about Ukrainian history.
In case you’re wondering, no one else in the discussion suggests that Mr. Christopher’s opinion here might be a teensy bit extreme.
No, the commenters happily share terrible opinion after terrible opinion about the inferior creatures known as women.
Oh, it gets worse.
Cleanup in the pompous misogyny aisle!
You’ll notice that all of these comments have upvotes, by the way.
There may be some even more terrible comments in that thread, but I gave up reading them after a few screens full of this sort of garbage.
Actual screenshot of selection from “antifeminist graphics” collection. Apparently graphics do not need to contain graphics.
So the founder of the Men’s Rights subreddit, a fellow who now goes by the name of notnotnotfred, has done his fellow Men’s Rightsers a little favor and collected together a handy assortment of “antifeminist graphics” to assist them in their antifeministing activities on the internets. I thought I would share some of them with you all, just so you know what you’re up against.
Oh, who am I kidding? We here at Man Boobz love love love MRA graphics. There are few things in this world so hilariously awful. Take a look at these hot messes.
Sasha’s eloquent words, immortalized in ugly MRA poster form by Cloudiah of Artistry for Feminism. And Kittens.
Meet Sasha. Sasha is an angry young man living in England (allegedly), with a super-HAWT girlfriend (allegedly), and a lot of opinions about feminism (not-so-allegedly). The other day, he decided to share some of these opinions with the world. Or at least with any of those feminists who happened to be reading the Men’s Rights subreddit at the time.
In a topic devoted to a conference on “lad culture” in British universities, Sasha lashed out at feminists for what he sees as their hypocritical attack on boorish, sexist “lads.” Hypocritical, you see, because these very same women allegedly have sex with posh men all the bloody time:
Hey ladies! Dean Esmay reaches out to the young women of America
Not that long ago, an 18-year-old student named Carly, appalled by the rampant misogyny on display at A Voice for Men, sent a critical but thoughtful email to a number of the men associated with the site challenging them to rise above their hatred of women.
AVFM “Managing Editor” Dean Esmay decided to take her email as an opportunity to reach out to all the Carlys out there in the world in an attempt to win them over to AVFM’s peculiar brand of “human rights activism,” penning what he called an
open letter … not just to you, but to any young woman who has an open mind and is willing to be challenged on her prejudices.
Naturally, given that Men’s Rights Activists are some of the most verbose douchebags in history, it was long as hell — some 3000 words. But Esmay’s diplomatically worded attempt at outreach didn’t go quite as well as he might have hoped. Carly responded with a note saying that his open letter had merely
reinforced everything I believe. It seems we are at a stalemate, you will never agree with me, and I will never agree with you.
So where might poor Dean Esmay might have gone wrong in his attempt to win Carly’s heart and mind?
Let’s start here, with 5 Arguments Least Likely To Convince A Young Woman That A Voice for Men Isn’t a Woman-Hating Piece of Shit Hate Site, in the form of direct quotes from The Esmay himself. Since Esmay is so long-winded, I’ve highlighted some of my favorite bits in bold.
1)“[Y]ou’re 18, and so, not to put too fine a point on it, you are still a young skull full of mush.”
2) “[M]en have few to no voices speaking about issues that are specific to men, or defending men as a group, in this society. Until very recently in history men never have had such a voice. Because pretty much all civilizations for the last few thousand years have prioritized the needs and desires of women over those of men. For hundreds, even thousands, of years.
3)“If you believe men have silenced women for thousands of years … you believe something that just not true. … Furthermore, if you believe that, what you have to believe is that Asian men have been oppressing Asian women for thousands of years, black men have been oppressing black women for thousands of years, European men, Australasian men, and so on, have all been oppressing their women for thousands of years. And those weak women could do nothing about it. So what you believe here isn’t just wrong, it’s racist.”
4) “For most of history, being female was a privilege. It carried certain special rights that only applied to women, and special responsibilities that only applied to women, and through most of history, being male was a burden, a burden which carried certain rights that only applied to men, and those rights were there mostly so they could discharge their duties to women properly.”
5)“[Y]ou may occasionally see angry remarks or articles on this site. What I would hope you would do with that, when you do see it, is contemplate that there is a difference between righteous anger at real injustice, and what you seem to have misinterpreted as hate.”
The funniest thing about Esmay’s “open letter” is that this bizarre crackpottery, easily seen through by anyone with any knowledge of history or sociology or, hell, the real world, is his attempt to sound as reasonable as possible. He’s reined in the wild conspiratorial ranting he often indulges in when arguing with ideological foes; he’s avoided the misogynistic slurs (cunt, bitch, whore) favored by other AVFMers like Paul Elam and Diana Davison. And this is the best he can manage.
The Men’s “Human Rights” Movement isn’t ready for its close-up. And I suspect that it never will be.
EDITED TO ADD: A commenter has pointed out another quote I should have included as well. So here is BONUS EXTRA LEAST CONVINCING DEAN ESMAY ARGUMENT NUMBER SIX:
6) “The truth is, the most privileged class of people in the whole wide world are young women living in places like the US, UK, Canada, etc.–and if you want to be treated like an equal, you should not flinch or cry like a little girl if someone tells you that.“
How dare you accuse us of sexism, you spoiled little girl!
While the rest of America wastes its time celebrating “President’s Day,” we here at Man Boobz celebrate those who truly run this great nation of ours: Evil, selfish women.
Wait, you were thinking, I thought it was men who mostly ran the world? No. It just looks that way. Oh, sure, all the presidents have been men. The overwhelming majority of elected officials are men. The rich people who seem to have the most influence over politicians tend to be men — it’s the Koch brothers, not the Koch sisters.
But to judge who has power in this world by looking at those who have power in this world is a giant mistake, according to our eminently logical friends in the Men’s Rights movement. That’s the APEX FALLACY.
So over on MGTOWforums — the festering hive of misogyny that is the internet’s largest forum for so-called Men Going Their Own Way — one of the regulars was so impressed with the Evo-Psychy insights of a YouTube commenter by the name of Moe that he decided to share them with the gang there. And I have decided to share them with you.
Brace yourself, though, because Moe is bringing some hardcore SCIENCE to the topics of feminism being awful and why women are such terrible selfish child-murdering monsters.
So over on The Spearhead, the fellas are discussing pop star and self-professed feminist Lorde — no, really — and, well, I have some bad news for you all. Apparently we’re about to be taken over by Barbarian tribes. No, really — again. Blame Lorde, Lena Dunham, Lady Gaga, and of course Sex & the City. Among others.
According to a comment-cum-manifesto from The Other Jim, which won itself a couple of dozen upvotes from The Spearhead’s highly civilized readers, Lorde’s feminism
is merely symptomatic of the fact that we live in what can only be called, ‘The Fem-Centric Reality” … Where the culture of the West caters to female desires. Thus, it’s why we see movies, tv, books, music, etc. targeting women(with the govt. legally and economically empowering women eg Title IX, Lilly Ledbetter, etc.), but more importantly appealing to their innermost desires.
It’s why we’ve seen the popularity of such things like ‘Sex & the City’, ’50 Shades of Grey’, ‘Rom-Com’ movies and shows, ‘Girls’, ‘Dancing With the Stars’, ‘The Bachelor/ette’, Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber, ‘Grrll-Power’ Heroines like Jennifer Lawrence in the ‘Hunger Games’, ABC News, the ‘War on Women’, etc. All of it catering to the fleeting whims and desires of women. Thus, we all live in ‘Chick-World’. *
So, the ‘Fem-Centric Reality’ is the dominant cultural force in the West right now. Of course, it won’t last, nothing ever does, but the price it will exact from Western Civilization will likely help in usher in a cultural, if not civilizational collapse as the Barbarian tribes surrounding the West see the weakness the Fem-Centric Reality engenders and are patiently waiting to take over a weaker civilization.
So there’s that.
Jim ends with this, well, intriguing theory about trans women:
* It’s also why we’re seeing more MTF transsexuals in the public eye, IMO due to a form of Stockholm Syndrome whereby some men aren’t merely sympathizing with the hostage takers(women & the FemCentric Reality), they’re trying to become the hostage takers(women) and be at the center of the FemCentric Reality where the benefits are quite generous.
Fellas: just make sure to get your transition in before the barbarians take over, if you want to enjoy the lady benefits while you still can!
