Internet Lunatics - RadFems, PUA's, MRA's, MGTOW's, etc.

Look at the Forbes article I posted, and then compare that to how coverage of the UCSB shooting is now, and tell me that it's not justified. Coverage has gone from comprehensive factual analysis of his many mental problems, antipsychotics prescriptions, and various breaks with reality like the lottory incident and his obsession with his non-white status to articles claiming he was an "entitled white male" and that "A survey of his subscribed channels reveals the 22-year-old was a Men’s Rights Activist, or MRA" and "We don't know whether Elliot Rodger was mentally ill. What we do know is that he was a Men's Rights Activist, or MRA."

We know for a fact he had a history of mental illness so severe his own parents called the police. We know for a fact he was prescribed antipsychotics. And we know for a fact he not only had no connection to the MRM whatsoever but the only anti-pua group he WAS connected to despised his views.

And this is what's getting spread everywhere from huffpo to the washington post. An unequivocal, absolute, utter lie that gets more outlandish with every repetition.

If feminism was truly what any of you say it is if any of what you said about my claims being about a "minority" of "extremists" were true, now more than ever we should be seeing it. Where are your "good feminists"? Where is your "majority"? Where is one feminist website willing to stand up for the truth at a time when there's no uncertainty or question left? A single perfect opportunity to speak an absolute, fact supported, incontrovertible truth that doesn't even need them to agree with the MRM in any way.

Look at this and tell me that it doesn't make you sick inside to see the dead abused to spread a lie for political gain. Tell me that every ounce of anger and mistrust has not been earned tenfold. Tell me you feel no shame, no disgust, no anger of your own.

 

Man, this Elliot Rodger thing is a goddamn media circus! Have you seen the Facebook fan-pages erected in his honor? Read the comments on this one... R.I.P. Elliot Rodger

And here: Sick Idiots Create Elliot Rodgers Fansites

And everyone's favorite sociopathic sleazster Roosh V of the PUA community, of course, blesses us with his oh-so-philosophical take on the situation (of course, if Elliot had just subscribed to Roosh's ideology, everything would have worked out perfectly!): No One Would Have Died if PUAHate Killer Elliot Rodger Had Learned Game

 

How is this about feminism again?
--- merged: May 28, 2014 4:30 AM ---
(not talking to you, OtherSyde)

 

If his manifesto had been an antisemitic, black helicopter, racist crap everyone would just accept him as that kind of crazy.
But because he's spouting rhetoric that is misogynistic there is a bizarre response.
Yes, he was mentally ill but how much of what he believed came from the culture he was steeped in.

 

I imagine the answer to this question depends largely on a person's preconceived notions.

As far as I can tell, he was acting alone. He got caught up in some shitty ideas and lacked that certain something that prevents a person from committing mass murder. Responses seem to be a predictable combination of blame hurling and proactive offensiveness.

Still, there are societal implications here, and those are much larger than the tragedy that happened last week. There are a lot of women who are threatened for turning down dudes. There are a lot of dudes who can only classify women as bitches or sluts. Not all of these women are murdered and not all of the men are murderers. But society's violence can be a lot more subtle than outright murder, and in this way it can be pretty insidious.

 

You're right, there is a bizarre response. The bizarre response of trying to make a man so insane he thought could telepathically change the outcome of the lottery out to be some kind of statistically significant representative of society. We've had two anti-semitic attacks in about as many months and another crazy student just last month that stabbed even more people than Rodgers attacked.

None of these incidents are even on peoples' radar. Only this one.

The real question is how much of the flat out proven-untrue lies that people are so desperate to paint him with are representative of the culture they are steeped in.

 

It isn't like male on female violence against women in the US is super rare. So to me it makes perfect sense to try to view this situation within that context or to use this situation as a jumping off point to talk about violence against women in the US.

 

Yep... The ideology war is alive and ragin' in our culture, and no territory isn't fair game.

Also, here are some more screen-shots of lunatics agreeing with and even immortalizing him.

And at this web site, where one of his pre-rampage rant videos is posted, the second comment makes a good point about the video: "I know there's such a thing as a punchable face, but I think that's the first time I've ever heard a punchable voice." He does sound like a snooty rich kid. Like I said in a previous post: with lots of money, top-end social connections, a pretty face, and a BMW, there must have been something seriously repulsive about his personality in order for him to be utterly unable to get laid for 22 years straight. Damn.


Also, just to steer the thread back towards its original subject a little, this brilliant article by an incredibly forward-thinking progressive egalitarian named Matt Forney always puts a smile on my face
.

 

Actually yes it is by a factor of fucking three compared to male victimization. So it not only is mathematically unsound it's also beyond offensive to completely erase two thirds of rodgers' victims as well as his racism and hatred for men, the rich, and pretty much everyone and everything else just for the sake of pushing a patently false political agenda. As Forbes already cogently put it:

The truth is all violent crime has dropped by at least 80% in the last decade or two. Women have literally never been safer in America, and they're three times safer than men in homicide alone; 77% or more of all homicide victims are men (a majority committed by black men, so remember the consequences of trying to say statistics justify prejudice). The numbers are similar across the board except only for spousal and sexual violence, both of which have already been definitely proven to have their statistics completely skewed by the artificial removal of male victims and female perpetrators.

So if you want to "talk about violence against women" the only possible honest and scientifically valid thing you can talk about is how surprisingly little of it there is compared to violence against men, and how profoundly disproportionate the staggering amount of aid, sympathy, and media attention all are compared to violence against men. Just look at this very conversation. You are seriously trying to argue that two thirds of his victims and 77% of all homicides are less important than the less than 1/3rd of all murders that are women. I'm left wondering if you just didn't realise the how shockingly wrong you were about actual crime rates, or if you genuinely believe that 2 womens' lives are just worth that much more than six men's lives.


And that's still not getting into the utter moral repugnance of the media spreading flat out disproven lies about this story for political gain, something which if feminism were truly the force for good and equality you claim it to be it would be busy fighting back against right now instead of actively participating in.

So I'll say it again:

You want to prove me and the entire MRM wrong about feminism in one stroke? All feminism needs to do is stand up and tell the truth: Elliot Rodgers had no connection to the MRM whatsoever and his misogyny was just one facet of his profound mental illness which was the ultimate root cause of his violent and disturbed nature.


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Women are drowning in self-esteem and self-aggrandizement. 70+% of the country is overweight, over 1/3rd is obese, and yet girls are absolutely drowning in "love your body" and "real women have curves" messages. Women have so much self esteem as a class that they're not even in the double digits for suicide.

Let's be serious here.

If I hadn't personally seen so many externally verified false flag setups exactly like this I would probably write this off as trolls trying to be offensive on purpose. But given the routine and commonplace employment of the tactic there's a very real possibility those posts are just a setup. Not even a week ago people got busted doing exactly the same thing. It's not a conspiracy theory to suggest they might be doing it again when there's already a massive amount of deliberate lies being spread, to the point of literally everything being reported as completely backwards from the truth. I mean hell people are even claiming he's white just to make it more juicy.

 

I believe you are reading too much into this.

We have a cultural belief (right or wrong) that there is an inordinate amount of male violence against women. We have a shooter that, while he was clearly nuts, peppered his communications with negative things about women and his experiences with them.

As we have discussed elsewhere, people want to understand the why. Mixed up in this is the media's desire to make a narrative that can be consumed.

There is probably too much emphasis on his (dis)association with men's rights, but this sort of thing happens. I don't find it "beyond offensive". Perhaps I can point to your name dropping of Valerie Solanas, someone you associate with her feminist leanings rather than her mental illness. I am sure you can see the parallels.

Ultimately, what would you have the story be? All about his mental illness? Should we completely ignore the context of his writings and actions surrounding his interest in men's rights groups? That doesn't seem reasonable.

 

Charlatan we've gone from a factual and straightforward analysis to articles written by feminists literally saying "This is completely 100% the Men's Rights movement's fault, he wasn't even mentally ill". I know I'm not exactly an unbiased commentor here but these articles are squarely blaming the MRM. I don't think it's reading too much into something when they spell it out that explicitly.

As for his mental effluence... He also peppered his communications with equally negative things about men, including many specific targets for violence, racial prejudice based around his inability to tolerate being non-white, and rage against those richer than him and everything he thought was keeping him from the money and power he thought he deserved. In your own words should we completely ignore the context of his writings? Women were just one part of his much larger problem. He ranted about killing his own family just for being healthier and happier than him.

And for the last time there was no interest or actions even remotely connected to men's rights groups. It is an incontrovertible fact that his only association was with a website dedicated against a dating/sex subculture that he hated just as much as he hated everyone and everything else. Even if he were a PUA instead of hating them he would STILL be diametrically opposed to the MRM's core values because PUAs embrace the traditional gender norms that judge a man's worth by female approval and promiscuity.

What I don't get is how the association makes sense even from your side of this, because even if you wrongly believed PUAs and MRAs were the same thing or on the same side he's still a member of an anti-pua website. There's just no way to get around that being inherently contradictory whichever way you try to slice it.

As for his mental illness... YES. A giant, Resounding, YES. That is EXACTLY what this is about. We are talking about someone so mentally unstable he believed he could telepathically win the lottery and spent his entire life's savings trying to do it. THAT is the context of his writings, someone so violent, so unstable, so mentally ill that he was prescribed anti-psychotics and his own parents called the police on him. Someone who literally hated and wanted to kill everyone in the world including his own family.

 

I am not saying it makes sense to me. I am saying it makes sense given the way things work.

I think you should also take into consideration that the vast majority of people are nowhere near as versed as you in what Men's Rights are all about. It comes back to the question of branding. I would wager money that most people, if asked, would assume some sort of misogyny is at work if asked to describe what Men's Rights are all about.

You are soaking in it. Most are hearing about Men's Rights for the first time and the sorts of connections being made by anchors and columnists are what happens with you don't control your own message. If you don't like what's being said about you, change the conversation.

When even a moderates views you with suspicion you have to take a step back and re-assess. This is not entirely to be placed at the doorstep of so-called feminists. Clearly, your movement's messaging is not reaching its intended audience. If you are indicative of the sort of person that is a possible spokesperson for this nascent movement, I think you are in trouble (and I don't mean that as an attack, but as someone who spends a lot of time thinking about media, marketing and selling).

Where is your Gloria Stienham? Where is your Betty Friedan?

 

You keep saying you're talking to me but the problem is you just don't listen to my responses so you keep saying the same things to me over and over again without ever paying attention to what I'm saying back. How many times are we going to have the same conversation before you stop assuming by default that feminism is perfect and good and moderate and kind and the problem justhas to be with everyone else?

I just linked you to an avowed feminist who literally wrote an article 100% the opposite of the truth in (again, literally) every single point of fact there has to do with this case.

How many times must something like this happen before you accept that maybe, just maybe, these people aren't moderates and the reason people respond to the MRM this way is because of a massive concerted effort to straw man absolutely everything that even remotely dissents from or disagrees with feminism as evil, violent, and sexist?

I mean lets use this very thread as an example and look at Manboobz, which has been quoted in this very thread as someone respected and trusted. David Futrelle is so violently hostile to the MRM that he routinely cuts things up, lies, and alters quotes just generally harasses people. It's the sort of thing he does full timeAnd people consider this to be reasonable and good. A man who goes hand in hand with Cathy Brennan, a woman who hates transpeople SO MUCH she gave a speech to the united freaking nations about how they were a threat to womankind everywhere.

This is the guy that gets called onto the mainstream media to talk about the MRM. That's what's dominating the narrative.

You demand to know where the MRM's Stienham and Friedan are but you ignore the fact that the MRM is working against a near universal media bias so pervasive that even when the facts of a case are already known people are perfectly willing to report completely the opposite and pin things on the MRM.

We've got many influential speakers, a surprising majority of them women at this point, but you'll never hear them or hear the truth about them because they're either completely and utterly silenced or have their quotes hacked up and rearranged to falsely state something else. One of them was driven from her home because of the sheer number of bomb threats, death threats, and finally violent criminal attacks on her family all because of her helping male victims.

This isn't a respectful debate on equal footing Charlatan, it's one group literally committing violent crimes against the other any time they so much as show their face in public, constantly staging false flag operations to frame the other side online, and even reporting news stories that are completely the opposite of the truth.

Yes, it is about branding, but this isn't happening in a vacuum on equal footing with perfectly equal scales. Feminism has already completely dominated the entire narrative.

But even if you ignore all of that... how many of my links have you seriously read? Have you watched to Karen's videos? Read any of Alison's articles? Listened to any of Honey Badger Radio's podcasts? I've given all of you the MRM's Stienham and Friedan on a silver platter, you just can't or won't accept it.

 

I said no such thing. I said that men's rights has a perception problem. That perception problem stems from a number of sources. I recognize that there are so-called feminists that are out to give men's rights a bad name. I have difficulty, as do most who are challenging you here, with painting feminism with one broad brush.

I am not going to change my opinion of feminism based on some posts from you. It's just not going to happen. I can say that I have taken a new look at Men's Rights and I have certainly softened position on it. While I am not hostile, I am still suspicious.

I, like many, do not have the time to read the volume of things you post (Host'd!). I am curious enough to make time to dip my toe in the water. You ask a lot to expect anyone to change their opinions so quickly.

What do you think happens when you challenge someone's beliefs and back it up with sources they are not familiar with? On a subject for which they are already pre-disposed to view askance? If you didn't guess Get Defensive, you haven't lived with humans.

Again, I think there are a number of reasons why someone would see men's rights with a particular point of view. I am not convinced there is a combined conspiracy to do this. I think that there can be good intentioned people who see things differently than you do and see a legitimate threat from men's rights.

First of all, there is a difference between a question and a demand. Adding histrionics to the discussion doesn't help.

I don't know the guy you are talking about. I don't watch much US media these days. I can tell you how it works though... Pundits and talking heads are just people that are easy for news producers to get to speak on TV. All the better if they can do it quickly and succinctly... especially if they are going to speak to the narrative that is already a commonly held belief.

As I keep saying, Men's Rights has a perception problem. Most people don't know shit about your movement. To be honest, when you first started posting about this, I initially had one of two reactions:
1) Dudes howling at the moon and playing the bongos;
2) Men upset about the gains women have made wanting claw those gains back -- a strong wiff of misogyny with a side order of "I am so hard done by".

These perceptions exist because as far as the mainstream is concerned, there is no men's movement. You are a virtual vacuum of information. You are not part of the discussion.

Think on this: Before there was a feminist movement who was the voice of the feminist movement? Before there was a Gloria Stienham or a Betty Friedan what was there?

I can tell you that there was A LOT of hostility to any notion of the idea that women should have ANY equality. You think you are being degraded and dismissed, I suggest you read your history. You want to meet someone who would understand what you are going through, talk to Susan B. Anthony.

It's not that I won't accept it. It's that I don't have time to look at everything. Most people don't.

You might want to consider all of this as part of the process. Is the Men's Rights Movement going to be treated fairly? Probably not. The current popular discourse around gender equality, as we all know, is messy. While I will not agree that there is a monolith called feminism, I will agree that there is a lot of momentum that all aspects of feminism share. I would suggest that Men's Rights are viewed with a range from suspicion to hostility. And why shouldn't that be so?

It is going to take time to change the national (hell, international) discourse. It isn't going to happen over night. If it happens (and I think it will) it will happen over decades.

Your movement is sitting somewhere between Susan B. and Betty F and you have some minds to change.

Some of that change is going to be on the back the kind of outrage you have on display, but note, the true change in perception won't happen until you change the conversation. Outrage is the same conversation. It makes people defensive. It doesn't reach a mass audience.

It may sound glib, but when Eidith stood up to Archie, that was one of many mainstream turning points.

I am still not convinced, but I don't need to be. You need to think longer term.

 

Anyone interested in exploring this further should check out the #YesAllWomen hashtag on ye olde twitter. A lot of women sharing some fairly standard examples of the way more mundane acts of violence effect them in their day to day lives.

 

I've always loved this meme.

 

I've always wondered where the male version of that meme is. But then I remembered that our society doesn't have stereotypes about irrationally punitive men and I was like 'Oooooooooooooooh'.