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If anyone was hoping – against their better judgement – that Men’s Rights activists would be inspired by the tragedy in Isla Vista to reconsider any of their beliefs, or even to reflect for a moment on the many striking similarities between passages in Elliot Rodger’s book-length manifesto and comments posted every day by MRAs and others in the manosphere, well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you should not keep that hope alive.
It’s not that they’re not talking about the tragedy. A look through the top 100 posts in the Men’s Rights subreddit, the largest Men’s Rights forum online, reveals that roughly a third of them, including the top stickied post, relate in some way to Elliot Rodger’s rampage and the discussions that have come up online and in the media in its aftermath.
But the message of virtually all of these posts is: “Nothing to see here! Move along!” There are numerous posts expressing outrage that anyone would see any connection between Rodger’s toxic misogyny to the Men’s Rights movement; there are others mocking and attacking the #YesAllWomen hashtag; there’s even one suggesting that Rodger, who wrote about how he longed to watch all the women of the world starve to death in concentration camps, wasn’t actually a misogynist at all.
Take a look. One post, with more than 500 upvotes, complains:
Another post makes a strikingly similar complaint:
One angry MRA asks:
Another wonders:
Sorry to break it to you, fella, but that’s not how defamation suits work. If it were, all of us who call ourselves feminists would be collecting millions of dollars from the Men’s Rights subreddit for all the patently untrue things you guys say about us every day of every week.
Still others make sure that everyone knows that Rodger hated men too – not that this has actually gone unnoticed in the media or in discussions of the tragedy.
And then there’s this fellow, who seems to think that Rodger only hated men, and that his big problem with women was that he loved them too much:
There are, it’s true, two posts that raise the issue of what might be done to prevent tragedies like this from happening in the future. One of them takes on the issue of “virgin shaming.” (Sure, I’m against that, and against slut shaming too. Odd that roughly 100% of the virgin shaming I’ve ever heard in my life has come from MRAs and other non-fans of this blog, even though — sorry to break it to you fellows — I’ve not been a virgin since the early Reagan administration.)
Meanwhile, the other “positive” suggestion — the stickied top post, submitted by one of the forum’s moderators — is pretty transparently intended as a PR move – and an excuse to bash feminists.
Yep, “creep shaming.” That’s the problem! Way to cut through all the bullshit and get to the heart of the matter! The problem isn’t that some men — well, a lot of men — think and act in predatory and entitled ways towards women. The problem is that sometimes when they do, women call them “creeps.”
The problem isn’t that the world’s creepiest and most entitled man just killed 6 innocent people, the problem is “creep shaming.”
After killing his roommates and a friend of theirs, Rodger attempted to get inside a sorority so he could massacre the women inside it. But he couldn’t get anyone to let him in. Probably because, well, whoever was nearest the door thought he looked a bit, well, creepy.
“Creep-shaming” isn’t some insidious form of discrimination against awkward men. It’s a defense mechanism that women develop to protect them against predatory men. And in the case of the Isla Vista murders, I’m guessing that the willingness of women to go with their gut sense that Rodger was a creep literally saved lives.
But the mods of the Men’s Rights subreddit would rather moan about “creep shaming.” They would prefer that women lower their defenses against men like Elliot Rodger — because it hurts their feelings to sometimes get called a “creep.”
Guys, this is why people think Elliot Rodger was an MRA.
EDIT: I added more to the conclusion because I had more to say about creep shaming.
Creep shaming! Dem evil wimminz
With the exception of “creep shaming,” that list of “male problems” sounds an awful lot like a list of “human problems” that are sadly common to all genders.
I know that many men have gender-specific complications in dealing with those problems. And I’m deeply sympathetic (I’ve seen a man’s unimaginable suffering magnified by his feeling “unmanly” because sometimes he cried in pain.) Hey, ya know–just spitballin’ here, but–maybe if we dismantle toxic macho notions of men as tough lone-wolf manly men, it would be easier for many guys to admit problems and seek help and support?
I just added a bit more to the end about creep shaming; I realized I hadn’t fully worked out just why that infuriated me so much. And now I have!
Mentions of bullying/virgin-shaming (from others at least) were few and far between in Rodger’s “manifesto.” Those seemed to come mainly from the forums he posted on.
“Defamation suit”
LOL @ those entitled douchebags.
I was too slow to read the original ending, but I like the new ending a lot.
Lady Mondegreen, ( sorry I don’t know how to use a quote yet)
you are forgetting that part of the MRA train of thought is that women are not human beings, they are beasts who oppress men with their butts.
So, by wanting my boundaries respected I’m committing a human rights violation against men? MRA logic is simply unassailable!
Creep-shaming is worse than killing and slut-shaming you guys. (sarcasm)
2pm and I’ve already oppressed eight men with my beast-butt. Praise be!
That one guy who was all, “Yes, his problem was putting women on a pedestal…”
Well obviously, that’s why Rodger wrote how he’d like to see women put in concentration camps and starved — when they’re not being bred like cows a la Handmaid’s Tale. Pfft.
These guys are really scary.
Creep shaming, truly the human rights issue of our time.
I am having a tough time wrapping my head around “creep shaming”.
Are they saying that women who call men “creeps” should be shamed? Or that women shouldn’t shame creepy guys like Rodger because they’re creepy? Surely they’re not saying that creepy guys need love too … are they? Nah, couldn’t be. Could it? Are they saying that women should just buck it up and go out with the creepy guy?
Of course, in the MRA world, how could you distinguish creep from non-creep? Because — well — there it is. They’re all creepy. Which is why Rodger “belongs” to them as much as he belongs to the mentally disturbed or the shy loner virgin or any other category you want to place him in.
Hey guys. Don’t go spree shooting people because you’re creepy, OK? People tend to not like it, and last I checked, just about 100% of creepy misogynist spree shooters do not get to go out with the hot chicks. Mainly ‘cuz they’re dead.
Pretty much.
“Why am I being compared to a mentally ill, narcissistic, racist, misogynist, sociopathic serial killer?”
Could it have something to do with being part of a narcissistic, racist, misogynist movement? Have you read any of the other comments? Did that give you any ideas?
(Posts regularly on Stormfront) “Why am I being compared to violent racists?”
*headdesk*
Gotta love the assumption that maleness is somehow inherent to all men, as well as the idea that acting creepy then being called a creep is bad. It’s like this idiots wear kaleidoscope blinders
Kevin, good egg!
However, unless we hear of a diagnoses of a pathological disorder, can you keep away from mentally disturbed.
People with what was formerly known as Aspergers aren’t mentally disturbed. They could be, if they had a separate, more severe condition. Aspergers by itself does not mentally disturbed make.
Shiraz,
Right?
Just because you’d like to own a woman or two of your very own, does not mean you put women on pedestals. Thinking that warped should be painful.
As for “creep shaming”, it’s another ass-backward projection. “People calling out racism are the real racists!!1!eleven!!”
“People calling out homophobia are oppressing and unfairly “labeling” straight bigots who hate teh gay!!11!”
“Women who point out men’s creepy behavior around them and how uncomfortable it makes them feel are the real sexists!!!1 Argle Bargle!!!eleventy”
SSDD
Just remembering why I love Yo, Is This Racist?
<3
<3
Cloudiah,
Thanks for the link. That is awesome!
bunnybunny, well, he did mention some actual bullying in the manifesto, though oddly he decided to hate the girlfriends of the bullies more than the bullies themselves.
As for virgin-shaming, well, he’s the only one obsessed with his virginity. He talks about it constantly in his manifesto/memoir, and shames himself for it.
In the entire document, the only examples of “virgin shaming” from others I found all took place when he was in college.
1) He noticed guys on WoW making fun of virgins.
2) One set of roommates made fun of him for beng a virgin after he brought it up and had a fit when they said they weren’t
3) Another set of roommates also made fun of him. They actually brought it up.
I was a virgin when I started college. I don’t remember any “virgin shaming.”
bunnybunny, just to be clear, I was just disagreeing with you slightly on the bullying thing, and agreeing with you on the virgin shaming thing.
It’s Bro culture that shames male virgins and promotes toxic masculinity. That’s also the culture that mocks “crazy cat ladies” aka happily single women. That’s also where the slut shaming and “mangina” and “f*g” name calling is coming from. The idea that it is hip and cool to be a violence loving, homophobic, transphobic, misogynist douche bucket is not coming from feminists. It does not originate from women or our supposed, evopsych BS, attractions. It is men who are policing the masculinity of other men.
Right. I think I was struck by the dissonance between how others appeared to treat him and his feelings about himself. I am not trying to minimize the presence or effects of bullying although I may have mistakenly come off that way. What I meant to convey is that many of his interactions with people seemed dominated by his own projections, even from a very young age. And that I was surprised by some of the feelings of anger and alienation that he internalized from these encounters.
a thousand thanks for your intelligence, wit, and lazer beam eyes aimed at the facts. it makes a fem heart feel good reading your blog!
It’s hilarious how they think they’re going to be cashing in with positive attention on the heels of this tragedy. Do they not think that anyone checking them out is not going to wonder why they have been around for years but is just now deciding that its “Time to get Positive” and help other men? That people aren’t going to start reading the posts and not realize that much of the bile that Rodger regurgitated is right on those pages? Smh. They are just nowhere near as logical as they think they are.
What I’ve never seen addressed by the misters is why anyone is supposed to care about men who can’t get a date or laid when they are only too happy to shame women for not having the kind of body or looks they want in addition to rating them on a numerical scale. I’ll think about conjuring up a little compassion for those men when they start giving women they would rate 1-6 as much attention and consideration as they give the 7+ women.
It strikes me that part of Rodger’s rage was that people out and about didn’t take any notice of him. You know, the same way people don’t take much notice of strangers in general when they’re going about their own business. But no, the women should have been ripping off their clothes and begging him for sex, the men should have been fleeing in awe of his alphaness, not just … pursuing their own lives regardless of whether there was some dude sitting in the cafe or not.
Which is the MRM in a nutshell. They’re not the centre of other people’s lives, they’re not feared and adored by women, they don’t have everyone’s attention on them in a haze of lust/admiration/fear – and they’re chronically enraged about it.
Grow up, you fucking useless gobshites.
And that nonsense irritated me sufficiently to get off my butt and do battle with Paypal, which always seems a bit peeved when presented with a non-US address; somehow I suspect that this is not what the denizens of MRA land had in mind when they started waffling about David and defamation. And, for those of you lurking who never get beyond the first paragraph, I should note that I disagree strongly with David about creep shame, so bang goes your ‘David is surrounded by people who agree with him all the time because he bans people who don’t lick his boots ‘ post…
I find it extraordinary that a group of men so obsessed with their failure to have sex with whoever they want, whenever they want, could imagine that their beliefs are shared by normal human beings; the only people complaining about young men being virgins are the MRAs themselves. I do not perceive virginity as shameful, whether it’s a man or a woman; we have all been virgins. It’s an inevitable part of the human condition, like birth and death.
Some people choose to remain virgins for their lives; again, I see absolutely nothing shameful in that. Human beings are not required to have sex; sex is not an inevitable part of the human condition and we are free to make that choice for whatever reason.
Equally, I see no attempt at creep shaming; a lot of people have tried to explain why behaviour may come across as creepy, in the hope that people of genuine good will but little social experience can learn some of the vital do and don’ts in social interactions. The commentators here do an amazing job trying to help people in this way; John Scalzi’s Incomplete Guide to Not Creeping, which I recommended to a troll here, is a more formalised version of the same generous impulse; naturally the troll ignored it completely, but I did my best to point him to stuff which could actually help him.
When I say that in my view certain patterns of behaviour are creepy I am not asserting that the people doing them are creeps; it’s the difference between what you do and what you are. We have all of us at one point or another in our lives done things which, with hindsight, were probably a bit creepy; women are not miraculously immune from ever screwing up in this way.
But I’m not trying to creep shame; I’m trying to help people who genuinely don’t want to be creepy by providing a few tips on how not to come across that way. What I’m not doing is providing a list of how someone can pretend not to be creepy in order to improve his chances of screwing women. This is the yawning chasm between what I and other commenters, here and elsewhere, do and what PUAs do.
Of course, the PUAs aren’t doing it for free; there’s a lot of money to be made out of it, so they have to make stuff up. I don’t agree with David’s analysis of creep shaming because I think he isn’t seeing the wood for the trees. The fact that MRAs love the phrase is, in my view, a reason to avoid it like the plague, not embrace it.
Because what women tell each other about making sure you’re never in the elevator with a particular guy has nothing to do with creep shaming; it’s about self preservation above all else. What they are doing is creep shunning, though obviously MRA is never going to admit that because then they have no slogan, no read across to slut shaming and something of an uphill path when it comes to trying to ban women from ever actually talking to each other.
Oddly enough one of the recent posters was passionately aggrieved by the wickedness of women in ruining his sex life by talking to their friends about things he had done in the past. Short of us spending the rest of our lives impersonating the Man in the Iron Mask, I can’t see a solution he would be happy with.
Incidentally, I suppose I should explain that I have lived in the City of London for over thirty years; every day around 220,000 people commute in to work here; and every night they go home, which is just as well because only around 5000 people live here, and we’d get rather crowded. The closest US equivalent is probably Wall St; the City exists to make money and it’s rather good at it, which is why I automatically analyse in terms of money flow and ‘Cui Bono’.
Hence my view of PUA as an endangered profit centre. I will try to translate money speak wherever possible, but at least you now know why I always look at the financials…
How privileged do you have to be to think that “virgin shaming” and “creep shaming” are super way worse oppression than anything women experience?
::tries to count how many mass murderers have targeted male virgins or creeps::
::can’t think of any::
Not sure where to go with this one. It’s difficult to mock an article that is genuinely a parody of itself.
That line about comparison tripped me up, mainly bc Rodgers was a mass murderer not a serial killer. These dudebros are beyond dumb.
I am really bummed that the media wont focus more on his motive, hatred of women, so we can have a real conversation about our culture. This is not an issue about a failed mental health system bc he was rich and had access to mental health professionals and was in fact seeing several. I think its a shame that people need to rationalize that BB he must’ve been crazy in order to reduce their cognitive dissonance despite the fact we KNOW why he did it!
The ppl, mostly men, complaining that the crime was not rooted in misogyny bc he killed more men than women are acting like the death toll is some game to be one. I find who he murdered irrelevant to the reasons he killed bc we KNOW the reason! Why americans gotta be so dumb?! *head. desk.*
Yay! I changed my username successfully. Thanks for being awesome, all!
Wish I didn’t have to go undercover, but those guys are pretty unhinged
This gave me a much-needed laugh. Unassailable logic, indeed! =)
I emailed David.
Someone just posted this Onion-style story about the MRM on /r/AMR.
Feminism: the radical notion that women are people, and should be starved in concentration camps.
pinkfluffyunicrone is a wonderful nym. Also, adding to the Hi and Welcome chorus. 🙂
Cloudiah,
That’s hilarious! Except the MRAs are so ridiculous it doesn’t even read as parody.
enhancedvibes,
The lack of coverage is shameful, but not surprising as the media is controlled by men. It’s largely a boys’ club and it shows. There is some relatively good commentary on an on-line show called “the young turks.” I’m not trying to promote. Sometimes the show pisses me off but their coverage on this issue in particular differed greatly from that of mainstream media.
By the way, as you probably already know it’s not a good idea to read the comments on youtube. It’s almost like a mra subreddit.
🙂
I just want to know why do so many men downplay the misogyny in this case. I understand why MRAs do it, because it goes against their “men are victims of everything” narrative. But why everyone else?
This is not something open to interpretation, Elliot Rodger said it himself in the clearest words possible: He hated women. Why are we not allowed to talk about that without so many men and even women coming out screaming and telling women what TRUE REALITY is when we are perfectly capable of watching a hateful youtube video and reading a manifesto.
So Elliot killed men too so that somehow erases his misogyny? even if I were to accept that bit of non-logic, fine. George Sodini killed women. That shit who killed a girl for refusing a prom date. That case that happened after the UCSB shooting who apparently shot at women for refusing sex…all the women who are killed or raped for refusing a man or leaving them…ARE WE ALLOWED TO TALK ABOUT THE MISOGYNY NOW?
My guess is no. My guess is also that the majority of men don’t actually want women to be killed or raped either, so why can’t we just speak about this?
This just really freaks me out.
We should ask for help from that troll who never found a headline about a feminist murdering a bunch of men because she hates them.
If Elliot Rodger is an example of someone who puts women on a pedestal, I’d hate to see what someone who really hates women is like. /sarcasm
Though I like how TheWhimsicalFox is all like, “I really haven’t thought this idea I just pulled out of my ass through, but I’m just going to throw it out there anyway.”
I near blew a gasket this morning with one of those men who needs to derail any discussion of Elliot Rodger’s misogyny with “Yeah, but he hated everyone including himself”.
Yeah, he was a hater. We get it. He did hate some men and boys. The difference is, for every complaint about men of colour or his brother he had about twenty complaints about all women. He hated some men for specific reasons. He hated all women for their gender.
This attempt to portray Rodger’s hatred of women as no greater or more motivating than his hatred of everyone else is infuriating.
Quackers
I believe some people refuse to talk about it is because they think that equality has been achieved and that this type of misogynistic behavior is rare nowadays. I used to visit an on-line feminist forum. I was shocked by the fact that people there who called themselves feminists derailed every single post that was about women’s issues and made it about men (mra style but without the insults). Many claimed that white men were a marginalized group and that women weren’t because now they have “all the rights in the world”; that because the law supposedly protects everyone meant that racism didn’t exist anymore,etc. It is unfortunately too common for both men and women to think that way, not just in the “manosphere.”
In my opinion, this is why this terrible tragedy is treated like an isolated incident and blamed on the the “failure” of the mental healthcare system. Let’s not forget that the shooting was carried out by a half-white male. This means that some people are going to defend and sympathize with him. It’s sickening.
You people do not want solutions. Elliot wanted a relationship with a woman. He could not get what he wanted, so he killed innocent people. That was dumb on his part. What he did had nothing to do with MRA.
Elliot hated his step mom, little brother, guys who could attract women, women, and non White men who attract White women.
Whay he did had nothing to do with any MRA site.
I see our latest blog herpes has spread to a new thread.
David: gonna call us bitches in this thread too? Fuck off.
Excuse me, Davis.