Collage of images from the PhilosophyOfRape subreddit
For a social media site with pretensions to respectability, Reddit shows an astounding tolerance for hate. As anyone who has ever explored the site’s dark underbelly knows well, the site hosts a vast array of subreddits devoted to celebrations of such things as “white pride” and violence against women.
The latest addition to this archipelago of awfulness is a 3-day-old subreddit with the pretentious and appalling name PhilosophyOfRape, set up by a user of the same name in order to promote and celebrate “corrective” rape of “sluts” and “harlots.”
In a manifesto announcing the subreddit to the world, the user known as PhilosophyOfRape set forth his basic thesis, which he insists is as “serious as a heart attack.”
Rape served a very important function in mitigating female behavior and keeping it in check. Back in the time of prehistory, a woman couldn’t behave as shamelessly slutty as she can today, because of the risk of catching the eye of the wrong male. But now, with “consent” laws barring nature back, and feminism and sexual-liberation perverting whole generations of hearts and minds, we find ourselves in a situation gone way, way, too far.
These harpies need to be humbled. And for their own good. Like the child with absolutely no boundaries and no discipline, they may feel they yearn for no rules, but become absolutely lost without an adult to tell them no! …
It’s not only morally justifiable to rape such a woman, it’s and brave.
At the risk of stating the obvious, this isn’t true for all female human beings. We’re not talking about nuns or grandmothers or humble, married, women of twenty years.
We’re talking about filthy, unmitigated, sluts. Oblivious and loud. Shameless. Belligerent. Entitled. Selfie taking, Tindr-whoring, Teenage-walking-herpes-sores. We are talking about bad, bad, individuals. Unruly, neglicted, children, run-amok. That badly need to be punished. Badly.
For the good of society these women need to be raped.
Here we will teach how to do it safely.
Emphasis mine, typos his.
By “safely” he means safely for the rapists, of course. In a followup post, he explained that
We are here to provide encouragement and advice how to [rape] and do it safely. Regression analysis to find out which variables make it less likely to get into legal trouble. Very few women report the rapes, what can you do to make it even less likely? Example: remind the victim that “no one will believe them”. When they orgasm (which is actually very common during rape, Google it) speak up and let them know that you are aware of it and that it will come out during trial if they reported it.
As he sees it, his program should have a good deal of appeal to the “Elliot Rodger types” of the world.
[T]here are swarms and swarms of filth parading around downtown and around campus every friday and saturday night, very badly needing to be Corrected. And there are many men out there fit to do it with just a little encouragement. The Elliot Rodger types could so easily be making a difference and gaining a purpose with just a little direction and support. I am not a “neckbeardy” type or a perma-virge or anything like that. I’ve had consentual sex with 9 girls, and have had serious relationships etc. But I do have a great deal of sympathy for these guys.
Indeed, PhilosophyOfRape hopes to transform “these guys” into a holy army of rapists:
I hate my generation, they at scum and filth and are not worthy to breathe my air. The brutish and ignorant apes that pass for men are bad, but it is their double X chromosomed counterparts that truly defile the word “human” by associating it with their detestable essences. It is the harlots that are in the greatest need of corrective discipline and it is for these harlots that the appropriate punishment is most clear: rape. Simple, swift, brutal, rape. Impassioned and indiacriminate. A whole team of holy soldiers, cutting these abominations down to a place where their feeble heads can even see Their selves for the meek and lowly creatures they are, and will greatfully bow, averting their eyes in humility and spending their dazed working quietly, tending the home and reflecting on HOW they had once thought it fit to behave.
Emphasis mine.
In a now-deleted comment on the Men’s Rights subreddit that can still be found in his comment history, PhlilosophyOfRape suggested that Emma Watson was a good example of a
harlot [who] needs to be Corrected. As badly as any of them and perhaps even more so because she made choices that allowed her to retain an image with a semblance of dignity. But it is only a veneer.
And in another comment, he responded to a violent threat from a critic with a threat of his own, writing that “I’d love to rape you to death. And your daughter.”
Even more disturbingly, in a comment on TheRedPill subreddit, PhilosophyOfRape claimed that he has raped seven women so far, and that he successfully convinced a friend to rape yet another:
These harlots need to be Corrected. I so far have Corrected 7. Two last year but over five already in 2014 and a brother I’ve brought into the fold has already Corrected his first one, a vile, putrid, one.
PhilosophyOfRape, or some troll inspired by his writings, has posted some of these things on 8chan as well, where they’ve gotten essentially zero traction.
Is he lying? Is he trolling? Possibly, though it’s worth pointing out that Elliot Rodger’s even more outlandish manifesto would have likely been dismissed as the work of a troll had its release to the world not come on the heels of Rodger’s grotesque killing spree. I can only hope that PhilosophyOfRape’s claim to have raped 7 women is a lie. But beyond that he seems quite sincere.
Even if he is trolling, what he’s written is hate speech, and one wonders why Reddit’s admins, who have certainly been notified about PhilosophyOfRape – the user and the subreddit – haven’t banned him outright.
But looking the other way seems to be the modus operandi of Reddit’s admins.
Reddit has won itself a well-deserved reputation as a place where anything goes – particularly if that “anything” involves the degradation of women. During the debacle known as The Fappening, Reddit’s admins allowed their site become one of the primary internet conduits for the distribution of a virtual cache of illegally obtained celebrity nudes – including some featuring celebs who were underage when their pictures were taken. The admins only took TheFappening subreddit down when it appeared they might face legal consequences. By then the subreddit had already racked up hundreds of millions of pageviews, earning Reddit enough to pay for its server costs for several months (and possibly much more).
The admins’ casual tolerance for TheFappening wasn’t much of a surprise to anyone who has paid attention to the site for any length of time. Reddit for years hosted an assortment of subreddits devoted to sexualized, often stolen pictures of underage girls – even honoring the man responsible for the popular JailBait subreddit with an Reddit Alien statuette as an award; the admins only banned the subreddits after activists and an assortment of media outlets reported that child porn was being openly traded on r/jailbait.
The trouble is, this sort of awfulness appeals enormously to Reddit’s user base; even if they don’t partake in it themselves, Redditors tend to react with outrage whenever the admins – belatedly – take down subreddits that have become a danger to the site’s reputation. Jailbait was an extraordinarily popular subreddit, and many Redditors still mourn the day it was taken down.
And while PhilosophyOfRape has only picked up a tiny handful of subscribers in the first few days of its existence – and a small army of detractors who’ve collectively spammed the subreddit with kitten pics – other subreddits with a similar, er, appeal –from RapingWomen and BeatingWomen2 to HotRapeStories and ChokeABitch – collectively have thousands of subscribers. CuteFemaleCorpses, a subreddit devoted to sexualizing pictures of actual dead women, managed to rack up a little more than 800,000 pageviews last month. The WatchPeopleDie subreddit boasts 44,000 subscribers.
Racism also sells. The cartoonishly racist GreatApes subreddit, devoted to over the top attacks on “n*ggers” that make Stormfront seem a bastion of tolerance by comparison, generated nearly one million pageviews in September; the subreddit boasts several dozen other smaller subreddits in what it calls its “chimpire,” the overwhelming majority of which contain the word “n*gger” (without the asterisk) or references to apes in their names.
We hear again and again, without much proof, that the people posting on these subreddits are just “trolls,” though much of what they write is little more than a blunter version of what is regularly posted elsewhere on Reddit, from the racist snark in r/videos to the misogyny of r/mensrights and r/theredpill. Regardless, I’m sure that some of them are trolls.
But there is a very real danger to Reddit’s continuing tolerance of users – and whole communities – driven by hatred. At some point someone – either someone posting hateful screeds like PhilosophyOfRape, or someone inspired by these screeds – is going to take this hate to the real world, as Elliot Rodger did only a few months ago. (If he’s telling the truth about the rapes, PhilosophyOfRape already has.) PhilosophyOfRape may be nothing but hot, fetid air — I perhaps naively hope — but I think it’s a virtual certainty that some day, possibly quite soon, Reddit itself is going to give birth to another Elliot Rodger.
And then the Reddit administrators will have blood on their hands.
EDIT: If you want to report PhilosophyOfRape to the authorities, the FBI’s tip page is here.
EDIT 2: Clarified some things in the final paragraph.
David Futrelle,
I think we might also want to alert the Southern Poverty Law Center to this. They monitor hate groups after all, and this is definitely one.
I was the victim of “corrective” rape to make me less trans… *Sigh.*
I really hope the FBI looks into that asshole. =
I have no words for this level of wrong.
Aylin: Hugs. What a horrible thing for someone to do.
I think the thing that confuses/infuriates me most is how this guy clearly knows some stuff about rape, low reportage by victims, the commonness of orgasms during… but still buys into the patriarchal bullshit. It’s like they’ve evolved into cartoon super villains if Captain Planet had a lot more rapists.
Alyin: Whichever internet gesture of sympathy you like most.
Speaking as someone also a victim of rape meant to make me more of a “real woman”… yeah, this guy needs to probably be behind bars.
More brain bleach: Sugar Tree the Doberman and Pancake the kitten, all grown up!
http://youtu.be/5RJuZmOBg9c
A wolf cub and corgi playing:
http://youtu.be/wwNDpTAqI3Y
Who’s a cute little wolf cub? Aw, look at those HUGE paws! Not that I’d ever want a pet wolf. I’m good with domestics, but he’s still so cute!
He has an interesting story, this one – his name’s Lorne and he’s from a zoo in Georgia that trains a few of their wolf cubs to be among people and other animals, for use in education programs about wolves. They call ’em ambassadors.
Beware of the mega-cute levels in this one: it’s Lorne as a younger baby!
http://youtu.be/iW_CpthVZVQ
“Corrective rape” is one of the most morally repugnant and stupidest things I have ever heard of. Just reading quotes about this being done to lesbians made me want to grab the person who said them by the face with my nails and say in my most demonic-sounding angry voice, “Do you really believe that raping a lesbian is going to make her LIKE men?”
I just…AAARGH!! Thanks, everyone, for the brain bleach. I hope this guy really does get held accountable by the law for this.
Reddit delenda est.
http://killallmen.club/
No, you’re just, in all honesty, a worthless piece of shit. More nonsensical John Galt memes please.
Brittersweet: Exactly! What it is is just an excuse to commit rape. There’s no way in Hell that rape is a corrective for anything. This is just the shit degenerates say to make themselves feel good about something they know damn well is wrong.
Yes! They do know it’s wrong.
They’re assholes who are not honest enough with themselves to admit that, so they tell themselves they’re being brave warriors for a cause instead of the really shitty human beings they actually are.
Can’t wait for the subreddit to be deleted, then for the public statement from one of reddit’s creator whining “We did the right thing – that means we’re good guys so stop picking on us, whaaaaa!”
I think it’s time for a new tag: “men who should not be with populated planets ever”.
And here I thought that being brave was about facing the odds, fighting for the defenceless and speaking truth to power.
Who knew that the real heroes were the ones who punched down and spoke with naked prejudice. Setting fire to the homeless, that’s real bravery.
And people wonder why I consider Rapeddit to be the misogynist and paedophile version of Stormfront.
Included populated by any forms of life at all.
I can’t even. NOPE.
I’m not even comfortable with them being in the same universe as life, I’d suggest the Phantom Zone but not even Zod deserves these people.
Only tangential, but here’s a good example of what the culture of victim-shaming (making it less likely that rape victims will move forward with a case) can lead to:
http://m.newser.com/story/196701/2-women-vanished-from-town-uva-suspect-lived-in.html
Huh, one of the stories that site had on the banner was mentioned in shit Reddit says. Small net.
PZ Myers has cross posted with this, and his mailbox is being inundated by the freezepeach scum of reddit. What a surprise.
“Can’t wait for the subreddit to be deleted, then for the public statement from one of reddit’s creator whining “We did the right thing – that means we’re good guys so stop picking on us, whaaaaa!””
And then the subreddit reappears under a more innocuous name with the same content.
We’re fast approaching the point where we throw our liberal democratic values to the wind and just start shoving rapists AND rape apologists AND rape minimizers against the wall.
I am being totally serious with this comment- I hope the FBI is tracking these really vitriolic MRA commentators because I see a very strong connection between some of the hate speech they spew towards women and sharia. We know that ISIS and other terror groups are targeting entitled, angry men who have severe issues with women’s rights. Punishment by rape sounds like something right out of their playbook. If you look into any of the western ISIS detractors you’ll see a common thread- these guys are pissed at “western whores” and are looking to punish them and instill a traditional society where women bow to men. Sound familiar?
That sort of thing tends to be common amongst most authoritarian arseholes regardless of religion or philosophy. For example, you wouldn’t think the Soviet Union wouldn’t particularly care about women remaining traditional homemakers, but they were pretty staunch on gender roles at various points of their history.
I felt very numb to it for awhile. It’s how four people were able to take advantage of me outside of the relationship where I was being regularly sexually abused. Now that I’m finally undergoing effective therapy, however, things are bubbling to the surface that I hadn’t even realized I’d tamped down for years. I’m having nightmares about my ex rapist again, a panic attack a couple weeks ago caused by a flashback of one particularly bad instance, and I waver back and forth between getting the “object” feelings again. The ones that make every emotion drain from you and you feel like a ragdoll propped in a corner waiting for the next selfish child to pick you up and throw you around.
Unfortunately, it’s been causing me to isolate in the real world, which is always the point at which I start losing friends. No one gets it, and no one wants to. They want to pick apart what’s wrong with you and feel better about themselves, not take a couple seconds to determine where those wrong things may have started and realize you’re fucking working through a lot of fucked up shit.
So today I read that intell pulled ads from a gaming website due to the gamergate fucks harassing them. http://www.dailydot.com/geek/intel-pulls-ads-from-gamasutra/?tw=dd
And then I read about this.
ryeash – All of the internet type things that could possibly comfort you. From me to you.
@Leela
Seeing another Futurama fan cheered me up 🙂 I feel the same way as the professor roughly every time I read this blog. I’d take robot dinosaurs over these stains on humanity any day.
This was pretty rough.
Obscure fantasy novel reference:
This whole thing paralleled, pretty much word for word, the character Bidithal in the Malazan series, with only a slightly different emphasis.
[spoilers]
I thought Bidithal was a “character who is an exaggerated representation of a horrifying mindset who will experience poetic justice as a cathartic fantasy”-type character, but it seems like I was wrong about the exaggeration parts.
[more spoilers]
For an ultraviolent revenge-fantasy dealing with this type, check out Bidithal’s death scene in House of chains.
There is a bottom to the barrel, and it is rancid as fuck and just awful. I don’t know what this guy’s major malfunction is, but he needs to have a visit from the FBI for this shit.
This was the comment I left on the FBI tip page. I’m posting it here should anyone else want to use it.
https://www.reddit.com/r/PhilosophyOfRape/comments/2hofxe/welcome_this_is_serious_as_a_heart_attack/
https://www.reddit.com/r/PhilosophyOfRape/comments/2hy7nu/convo_with_a_potential_mod_great_summery_of_the/
https://www.reddit.com/r/PhilosophyOfRape/
“” We are here to provide encouragement and advice how to [rape] and do it safely. Regression analysis to find out which variables make it less likely to get into legal trouble. Very few women report the rapes, what can you do to make it even less likely? Example: remind the victim that “no one will believe them”. When they orgasm (which is actually very common during rape, Google it) speak up and let them know that you are aware of it and that it will come out during trial if they reported it.”
This Reddit user, “PhilosophyOfRape” is advocating the “corrective” rape of women on a public forum, and in fact, attempting to systematically construct a system of best practices and advice to teach other men how to get away with rape. This is obviously hate speech and a legitimate threat to any woman whom these men may perceive, with impunity and at only their own discretion, as deserving. This is dangerous and frightening, and I ask that you please do everything you can to have it removed from circulation. I also urge the FBI to prosecute this person to the fullest extent of the law for conspiracy, if not for his self-professed past crimes.
@ ryeash
Yesss futurama <3.
And more brain bleach: I give you Bub purring, eating, and drooling.
might help if I actually post the link 😀
strivingally
“whole slabs of the manosphere already believes women are child-like and incapable of making their own decisions”
If women are children does that make straight men pedophiles?
Kirbywarp
“making endless jokes about how black people don’t have dads”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/13/black-fatherhood-statistics_n_5491980.html
Then these guys constantly talk about wanting to abandon their children.
@Leela
Yay brain bleach! Now if only my Kindle would stop being a jerk-face and play embedded videos. It’s being stubborn today >:-|
RE: kirbywarp
You now know the true identity behind this priest of Bootsy, guard it well.
I shall guard your secret with my life, sir! *salute* May Bootsy never fall!
RE: fruitloopsie
That is so amazing! I’m jealous!
Oh, nono, I didn’t make it! *laughs* It’s someone else, I’m just spreading the word!
RE: corrective rape
Mwahaha! By attempting to strike me down, my rapist merely made me MORE POWERFUL THAN HE COULD POSSIBLY IMAGINE! *starts breathing fire and covering the world in comics and stories about happy consensual people*
I know Greyskye already reported the user to the FBI, but I want to report him too. I don’t want to waste the FBI’s time if it turns out this is a troll, however knowing what I know about forensic psychology, I get the feeling that this might be genuine. I checked his comment history and he admits to using proxies.
Oh please don’t let my grim predictions about the Manosphere nurturing and protecting serial criminals be true… 🙁
The nicest thing I could think about this is that it’s a very cleverly set up troll account by a dude that has given it waaaaay too much thought for it to just be a joke.
That, actually, is worse.
On the net, you are what you are. It’s what makes Poe’s Law so terrible. If you don’t make it plain that what you are doing is satire/mockery/pastiche, then it’s out there as what you say it is.
Pretending to be evil, so you can later say, “Gotcha”, means you aren’t pretending. How many times have we seen someone, in all earnestness, repeating someone who was being overtly satirical; stripped of context, and presented as believing the thing they were lambasting?
How much easier it is for someone to use something which isn’t clearly identified as false, as if it were true?
Yeah, the subreddit got found before the Red-Pillers could really try to tweak it into some sort of, “meta-commentary”, and the pushback is nice, but if this was someone taking the piss, that person is still a moral cretin.
Jeremy Johnson: I think the moderators should ban this channel just like they’ve done to “The Fappening” and other questionable subreddits.
They only ban subreddits if they get enough bad PR. So long as it’s not causing large numbers of (non-redditors) to say things which make reddit look bad, they don’t give a shit, because that brings in the bucks.
More bad publicity for Reddit.
The irony here is that you are the only person publicizing this idiot. He doesn’t seem to have any following whatsoever.
What in the everloving fuck. This is horrifying. All of the other subreddits mentioned are horrifying. I just… don’t get it, I just don’t.
This, yes. This.
1. You’re wrong. Other sites are writing about this.
2. Whether or not he has a following is irrelevant. He’s an admitted rapist inciting others to rape.
3. Reddit has done nothing to shut him down, let alone report him to the FBI.
4. Fuck off.
RE: Max Mustermann
<em.The irony here is that you are the only person publicizing this idiot. He doesn’t seem to have any following whatsoever.
Yes, because that’s how to solve a problem: IGNORE IT.
Also, goddammit, someone save me from these chucklefucks who think all publicity is good publicity.
Many people say you can’t compare misogyny and terrorism, but when I read stuff like this, when I hear about feminists receiving rape and death threats persistently and living in a world post Elliott Roger sometimes I genuinely feel to threatened to want to ever publicly, in person or online, talk about feminism, or more generally express any opinion as a woman.
These men aim to terrify women in to submission, even if they haven’t really raped anyone (I pray to god that they made that up) they still succeed in scaring women and making them too afraid to speak up.
Oh gawd, THIS is why I’m not on Reddit, and never will be until they fix that “Freeze Peach, Freeze Peach, über alles” policy of theirs. Seriously, FUCK Reddit.
And fuck this, too:
Um, dude…did you live back in prehistoric times? No? Then how would you know what women behaved like back then? You wouldn’t. And you don’t strike me as a paleontologist, anthropologist, or archaeologist, either. ASSuming a mantle of authority on the subject would be very very foolish. As would saying this:
Um, no. No, we don’t. For one thing, RAPE STILL FUCKING EXISTS. For another, feminism and sexual liberation haven’t “perverted” anything; like I said, RAPE STILL FUCKING EXISTS, as do guys who think it’s “natural”, “normal” and “necessary”, and THAT is the real perversion. Feminism and the law exist to CORRECT that.
Also, consent laws do not “bar nature back”, whatever that ridiculous, pretentiously awkward phrase is supposed to mean. Rape isn’t “nature”. It’s a conscious choice on the part of a sexist asswank to try to “correct” women who are only “out of line” in HIS perverted reckoning.
LOLwut? No. We’re not fucking CHILDREN, dude. We’re the adults here. YOU, on the other hand, are the child who wants no rules. And you are in for one hell of a disciplining, if the law ever catches up to you for this:
…which I sincerely hope is just bluster and bullshit. Otherwise, the cops ought to be at your door with a battering ram.
Also, I love the way he Randomly Capitalizes His Shit. As though changing the word “rape” to “Correct”, with a capital C, somehow makes it a Truly Legitimate Thing And Not A Crime At All, Fuck No.
RE: Bina
Also, I love the way he Randomly Capitalizes His Shit.
He’s trying hard to sound authoritiative and important. It’s not working very well. When even Reddit’s response is to spam you with kittens…
Another thing that gets me about his whole “correction” horseshit is that… well, people have used rape to manipulate and control our behavior a LOT. My rapist, I’m sure, thought he was doing me a favor, making me a proper girl with a proper libido. I don’t know what our grandfather thought, and don’t fucking care either.
And you know what? We fucking BLASTED our way out of there as fast as we could! It took a while to deprogram myself, and it’s an ongoing process, but I’m doing ALL THE THINGS they tried to “train” me not to do. I’m having sex I want, Kid is not having the sex because that’s what she wants, we are stubbornly being happy and living well and those fuckers are dust. They may have hurt us, but they are still nothing and nobody. One of them is dead, and eventually the other will die, and their only legacies will be pain. Sure, we’ll eventually die too, but at least we’ll live a bigger, better legacy than generations of agony.